The Cemetery Diaries
The Better Part of Forever
This club is different. Inside, someone has thought to string up fairy lights, not knowing that real fairies come here to adore the cheap trickery, twirling with gauze and wire wings and arms outstretched to catch the psychedelic atmosphere. Likewise, I’m willing to bet that management doesn’t notice the smell of wet dog that’s actually the smell of werewolf, or the Bloody Marys that slip underneath the bar table, looking just slightly too bloody. I lean against the surface of that bar now, exchanging banter with the tall, dark and handsome, bold-eyed man pouring the drinks. It’s safe to talk without using whispers here, partly because of the setting and partly because of the noise. Nobody will notice what we’re saying, or think of it as more than coded underground gossip if they do.
I drink on purpose, intending to get high, while two elementals, a fiery woman and a cool, blue, watery man reach boiling point beside me. You got tired of slouching by my other elbow, waiting patiently in the puddles of spilled beer. You’ve gone off to dance with the fairies, quite literally. Their neon bracelets can just be seen spinning through the air as their hands wave, swaying like flowers on stems made from long, slender arms and wrists. I ask Dante how business is, because there can only be one object I call you at any given time, and because I’ve always known him by his name. Although I kind normally shun familiarity and its accompanying heartbreaks, we’ve been on naming terms ever since he tended the pub that used to be here a hundred years before nightclubs existed, when he worse a ruffled shirt in place of a tight-fitted, v-necked tee with a packet of cigarettes tucked up the sleeve.
He replies that business is good, and leaves me to my scribbling. Dante, though he is gatekeeper to all kinds of enchanted states of being, is remarkably uncurious. He is about the only one who lets his long-lashed eyes glide over my leather-bound diary and red-filled pen, the only one who doesn’t feel the need to ask tedious questions about what a petrol-headed bruiser is doing making words out of ink, as if it’s anybody’s business. Dante understands that you can be two things at once. After all, he is. A bartender to mortals and immortals alike, he lives a ruse, just like I do. I have a soul, and he has affection for the living. Together, we have a pair of powerful secrets.
Why do I do it, he asks me absently, while mopping the insides of glasses with a dishcloth. I can’t say for certain. I think something about Viggo’s destruction reminded me we’re not infallible, immortal or otherwise. We can be killed, and that means that we can die and be forgotten. I don’t want to be forgotten, so I’m leaving slices of myself behind. I’ve started writing everything down. I know that it’s not normal for a vampire to form attachments to others and give them labels and names. Ordinarily, each vampire is just a part of the faceless sea of the pack, the clan, the gang. Survival is easier that way, and far less painful. But I’ve found that writing lets me understand essential truths about the world. I bring subjects out of the scenery of day to day life, choosing them for their beauty, and writing as though I share some bond with them. I focus on them, making a significant second person character, the world, out of their jumbled sayings and doings. At the same time, I also craft them with my words, and so I pour some part of myself into them for the better part of forever, in the hopes that I might keep.
Dark-haired and olive-skinned, you keep wringing your dishcloths, sopping up suds. You nod as I speak, and now my attention is fixed on you. Neither of us knows exactly how our other brother washed up on the sidewalk in a puddle of black bile. Nothing should be able to do that to a vampire. We last for centuries, millennia, even. We are not easily dispatched, and yet, it happened. The police thought he was just a very strange human, and chalked around him before plastering his face all over the news. No tests were run that might have given away his real species. The cause of death was far too obvious for an autopsy– his head had been cleanly severed from his neck. Have you heard anything else, I ask, and you’re quick to answer. If you had, you would have come to me directly. There aren’t many old ones like us around these parts. We’ve got to stick together.
I turn my head, downing my last shot, and catch sight of you again, my other you. You’re covered in other people’s sweat. It crimps your hair and makes your singlet cling to your chest, where your ribs rise and fall like the tide. You’re doing what I did, feigning symptoms of life, in your case, heavy breathing. It’s a subconscious response to trauma or shock. Something has upset you, and no wonder. There’s a hand-print across one side of your face, and it’s crimson.
I drink on purpose, intending to get high, while two elementals, a fiery woman and a cool, blue, watery man reach boiling point beside me. You got tired of slouching by my other elbow, waiting patiently in the puddles of spilled beer. You’ve gone off to dance with the fairies, quite literally. Their neon bracelets can just be seen spinning through the air as their hands wave, swaying like flowers on stems made from long, slender arms and wrists. I ask Dante how business is, because there can only be one object I call you at any given time, and because I’ve always known him by his name. Although I kind normally shun familiarity and its accompanying heartbreaks, we’ve been on naming terms ever since he tended the pub that used to be here a hundred years before nightclubs existed, when he worse a ruffled shirt in place of a tight-fitted, v-necked tee with a packet of cigarettes tucked up the sleeve.
He replies that business is good, and leaves me to my scribbling. Dante, though he is gatekeeper to all kinds of enchanted states of being, is remarkably uncurious. He is about the only one who lets his long-lashed eyes glide over my leather-bound diary and red-filled pen, the only one who doesn’t feel the need to ask tedious questions about what a petrol-headed bruiser is doing making words out of ink, as if it’s anybody’s business. Dante understands that you can be two things at once. After all, he is. A bartender to mortals and immortals alike, he lives a ruse, just like I do. I have a soul, and he has affection for the living. Together, we have a pair of powerful secrets.
Why do I do it, he asks me absently, while mopping the insides of glasses with a dishcloth. I can’t say for certain. I think something about Viggo’s destruction reminded me we’re not infallible, immortal or otherwise. We can be killed, and that means that we can die and be forgotten. I don’t want to be forgotten, so I’m leaving slices of myself behind. I’ve started writing everything down. I know that it’s not normal for a vampire to form attachments to others and give them labels and names. Ordinarily, each vampire is just a part of the faceless sea of the pack, the clan, the gang. Survival is easier that way, and far less painful. But I’ve found that writing lets me understand essential truths about the world. I bring subjects out of the scenery of day to day life, choosing them for their beauty, and writing as though I share some bond with them. I focus on them, making a significant second person character, the world, out of their jumbled sayings and doings. At the same time, I also craft them with my words, and so I pour some part of myself into them for the better part of forever, in the hopes that I might keep.
Dark-haired and olive-skinned, you keep wringing your dishcloths, sopping up suds. You nod as I speak, and now my attention is fixed on you. Neither of us knows exactly how our other brother washed up on the sidewalk in a puddle of black bile. Nothing should be able to do that to a vampire. We last for centuries, millennia, even. We are not easily dispatched, and yet, it happened. The police thought he was just a very strange human, and chalked around him before plastering his face all over the news. No tests were run that might have given away his real species. The cause of death was far too obvious for an autopsy– his head had been cleanly severed from his neck. Have you heard anything else, I ask, and you’re quick to answer. If you had, you would have come to me directly. There aren’t many old ones like us around these parts. We’ve got to stick together.
I turn my head, downing my last shot, and catch sight of you again, my other you. You’re covered in other people’s sweat. It crimps your hair and makes your singlet cling to your chest, where your ribs rise and fall like the tide. You’re doing what I did, feigning symptoms of life, in your case, heavy breathing. It’s a subconscious response to trauma or shock. Something has upset you, and no wonder. There’s a hand-print across one side of your face, and it’s crimson.