And so I found myself alone often. Dasius said to me in exasperation, "As you can imagine, I grow tired of keeping watch over you," and so over time, I noticed that he left me to myself more. We remain friendly to this day, but I came to understand that he had been spying on me. He was then and is still now Laurent's creature, and you see how the dynamic develops that Laurent has a cohort that preys upon the weak. But I don't like to see myself as weak, and never have, and so I found myself standing in the upstairs hallway a lot, staring at the hatch in the ceiling. What happens to a fool? I wondered to myself, who ventures willingly into danger?
But I found myself dreaming of Leis more and more, as we had been, and developed a hangdog look, and there were many mirrors in the house where I could see myself looking like that. It made me angry that Laurent was doing that to me. I know that he should not shoulder all the blame, but he is beautiful enough; let him take a little burden for this ugliness. Afterall, it was his house, which he was very happy to harangue me with all those years after, as if it were my fault for going there. I'm still angry at him because when he had a mind to be mean he was good at it.
"Nasty filthy shrew. Look at him, sniffing around for money." That's what he used to say to me, as if I ever asked for any money at all. He liked to accuse me of stealing. He had a little smile he couldn't control when he knew he was being hurtful and behaving badly. "Let me at him, you selfish cow. Don't you get enough at home? I made him. I can unmake him as easily. All it would take is the lifting of my baby finger." But he would never have lifted that finger. Does a little nostalgia creep into my voice? Even though it was boring, the conflict felt enough to constitute something of a life, and he never criticized me in the same way he did to those he felt affection for. My hair, my clothes, my skin, my style or lack thereof. He left those things alone with me. He hissed at me a lot. He huffed at me a lot, like a fat, white, cross-eyed Persian cat with a breathing problem. Yes he was a little cross-eyed. I'll have that on the record since he criticized my teeth all of the time.
But in those early days I didn't know that he wouldn't hurt me, and so I felt afraid a little, and nervous, and dubious about the idea that Leis would defend me if Laurent tried anything. Hadn't he slapped me at the hotel in Laurent's defense? That slap rung in my ears in the weeks after it. What else might happen? But as I have said, as time went on a certain numbness to the prospect of my death crept into me, and so I found myself creeping up there, and listening to the ceiling.
I could hear it up there, that one who had whispered "Latin?" to me. And I did know a little Latin, though not enough to be conversant. I say "it" because I didn't know if it was male or female yet, or if the distinction mattered at such the advanced age, and horror that we could grow so old stopped me from thinking on it very far. It occurred to me that over time, one's mind must experience paradigm shifts, and shape itself differently, and that these changes must necessarily be brutal, and I had no way of knowing what a mind like that might be like in the end. Beyond this, what changes to the body might there be? And did I want to know it? For surely, if I did not succeed at some stage in killing myself, it would happen to me. Unless we long-lived could be different from one another in essential ways, and I had no way of knowing that either.
It seemed that it paced a lot over the course of the day and went quiet at night. I wondered if it slept. I thought that it must not be like me, who likes to sleep at light hours and becomes more active after dark. I thought, perhaps light does not hurt it, and it made me hopeful for myself. It never occurred to me to ask those sorts of questions. I suppose I am not good at asking for help or knowledge even now. I stood beneath the ceiling hatch, trembling, holding my left wrist with my right hand, my fingernails digging into my palm. And then, one day, from above,
"Me tuipudet. Veni. Sanguis mei." I am ashamed of you. Come along. My own blood.
And it had never occurred to me that we might be of the same blood at all. It took my breath away, and froze me, and to that I heard a soft pounding on the hatch, as if with the flat of a hand.
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The Story of the Vampire, L (Completed | Featured )
VampireHe looked over at me in the dimness, fingers loose in my grip. "You are hurting me," he said, without interest. He had caked powder on his already pale skin, all of one shade except for points made by a hot pencil. Though it was no longer the mode a...
