The Cemetery Diaries
Dagger and Danger
It’s like you’re giving me life or death, and I can’t choose. On the one hand, I could chase the men who butchered Viggo and left that imprint on your cheek, and face nearly certain death, or, on the other hand, I could back away from this situation and rot in the same way I always do, in the same shady corners of the city, with the same people and the same droning pattern of hunt-kill-feed. Those are the paths I can take superficially, but I know it won’t matter what I do, in the end. There’s never really a choice when you’re what I am. Every option open to you is destruction, sure as the pull of gravity; you just get to pick your flavour on the way down. I look in one direction, and see the nightclub teeming. Dancers throng to mosh in the pit, and up on stage the band is a hydra sprouting half a dozen scruffy heads– rabid singers, gnashing teeth and words, intense lead guitarists and cool bassists. Shows in the Saturn have got the lot.
Then, I let my gaze slide the other way, towards your shocked face like a round, pale moon pocked with craters under your cheeks and where your eyes should be. How did they get you, I ask. What happened? You reply that it happened so quickly, you didn’t really see. A hand pushed you down, out of the way. You weren’t the main target. That was…
A circle recedes from a space on the floor, where a small, pink body lies crumpled. A shriek goes up, a fairy shriek, sharp and animalistic– a fairy voice, robbed of niceties. It’s not difficult to guess whose dead the broken girl is, or to whom she belongs. Crushed winds fan out behind her back, their glamour faded, now revealed to be real translucent panes of membrane, veined with copper colours like a stained glass mural. Her skirt is sewn out of leaves, whose green tips are slowly curling and turning brown, relieved too of the magic that kept them preserved. I wonder what it would be like to see vampire skin and bones waste so rapidly, if blood and drugs were ever denied me. I shudder.
The three of us, bartender, bikie and beauty convene around the beer taps, in which interest has suddenly dropped. You inform me of the shadow men, the ones who slipped in under a glamour sufficient to fool fairies and all other kinds of underworld scum. They ran invisible into the centre of the dance floor and stabbed the victim, now the deceased, seemly at random. The athame that was embedded between her ribs was even left behind. Now, its crimson length glitters in your hand, shining with more than wetness, twin rubies glinting in its hilt. You picked it up off the ground, you say. You were right there, and about the only one who wasn’t afraid. I turn the bloodied blade over in my hands, staining them as red as my face is white. I recognise this weapon. I wouldn’t dare to say aloud where it came from, but I have suspicions.
I see your eyes on my, beady as a hawk’s, and sigh my resignation. I can’t talk about it, not just yet, but I can take us outside for some breathing space. Maybe then I’ll inflate into somebody braver. I weave through the crowd, grad the door handle, clammy with cold sweat, and open up a hole that leads to the outside world. Here, a weak sun glows like a dying light bulb. It peers through sulking clouds that promise drizzle, onto a steady flow of cars and the million mirrored angles of office buildings, some stacked like blocks and others rising like sharks’ fins, dagger sharp and curved. Even in the back alley shade, I wince behind my glasses and light a fresh cigarette. The sensation of smoke caressing in my throat and filling my lungs is strangely satisfying, but not as satisfying as the syringe I draw out of my pocket.
I stop when you ask me what I’m doing. What do you mean, what is that? How do you inject preservatives? You shake your head, implying my foolishness. You only drink human, you inform me, and you inject nothing into that flawless skin of yours, not even the fine points of needles crafted specially from seraph steel. Well, I reply, aren’t you are right little Elizabeth Bathory. I bet you bathe in the blood of virgins, too, lest water touch you. You slap me away, interrupting my laugh, and probably rightfully so.
Well, it has come down to this. Here I am, explaining my addiction to a mixture of preservatives and blood to a vampire girl outside a fairy nightclub where the night part is whenever you feel like it. The music is still pounding in my head. I can feel its faint tempo in my eardrums. I open my mouth, sigh once, look into your narrow, blue eyes, hesitate and begin.
Then, I let my gaze slide the other way, towards your shocked face like a round, pale moon pocked with craters under your cheeks and where your eyes should be. How did they get you, I ask. What happened? You reply that it happened so quickly, you didn’t really see. A hand pushed you down, out of the way. You weren’t the main target. That was…
A circle recedes from a space on the floor, where a small, pink body lies crumpled. A shriek goes up, a fairy shriek, sharp and animalistic– a fairy voice, robbed of niceties. It’s not difficult to guess whose dead the broken girl is, or to whom she belongs. Crushed winds fan out behind her back, their glamour faded, now revealed to be real translucent panes of membrane, veined with copper colours like a stained glass mural. Her skirt is sewn out of leaves, whose green tips are slowly curling and turning brown, relieved too of the magic that kept them preserved. I wonder what it would be like to see vampire skin and bones waste so rapidly, if blood and drugs were ever denied me. I shudder.
The three of us, bartender, bikie and beauty convene around the beer taps, in which interest has suddenly dropped. You inform me of the shadow men, the ones who slipped in under a glamour sufficient to fool fairies and all other kinds of underworld scum. They ran invisible into the centre of the dance floor and stabbed the victim, now the deceased, seemly at random. The athame that was embedded between her ribs was even left behind. Now, its crimson length glitters in your hand, shining with more than wetness, twin rubies glinting in its hilt. You picked it up off the ground, you say. You were right there, and about the only one who wasn’t afraid. I turn the bloodied blade over in my hands, staining them as red as my face is white. I recognise this weapon. I wouldn’t dare to say aloud where it came from, but I have suspicions.
I see your eyes on my, beady as a hawk’s, and sigh my resignation. I can’t talk about it, not just yet, but I can take us outside for some breathing space. Maybe then I’ll inflate into somebody braver. I weave through the crowd, grad the door handle, clammy with cold sweat, and open up a hole that leads to the outside world. Here, a weak sun glows like a dying light bulb. It peers through sulking clouds that promise drizzle, onto a steady flow of cars and the million mirrored angles of office buildings, some stacked like blocks and others rising like sharks’ fins, dagger sharp and curved. Even in the back alley shade, I wince behind my glasses and light a fresh cigarette. The sensation of smoke caressing in my throat and filling my lungs is strangely satisfying, but not as satisfying as the syringe I draw out of my pocket.
I stop when you ask me what I’m doing. What do you mean, what is that? How do you inject preservatives? You shake your head, implying my foolishness. You only drink human, you inform me, and you inject nothing into that flawless skin of yours, not even the fine points of needles crafted specially from seraph steel. Well, I reply, aren’t you are right little Elizabeth Bathory. I bet you bathe in the blood of virgins, too, lest water touch you. You slap me away, interrupting my laugh, and probably rightfully so.
Well, it has come down to this. Here I am, explaining my addiction to a mixture of preservatives and blood to a vampire girl outside a fairy nightclub where the night part is whenever you feel like it. The music is still pounding in my head. I can feel its faint tempo in my eardrums. I open my mouth, sigh once, look into your narrow, blue eyes, hesitate and begin.