The Cemetery Diaries
Pride and Precipice
It’s nice to be in the cemetery, to see everyone gone to dust, reduced to dates and simple letters; things that are easy to understand and comfortably ordered. If someone suffered a long illness, or led a long and lonely life, that is nothing irregular in the larger pattern of life. It becomes but a cause of death etched into simple stone. Even amassed in rows and columns, all of humanity’s troubles amount to little, and certainly not to any cause for alarm. On the other side of death is a peaceful place to be. Not much troubles you, usually. But that’s the way it is for the stiff and still dead. For the living dead, things are not so rosy. Nobody plants flowers for us. Nobody can say that we’re at rest. All we do is grow old forever, and we do not age with grace. We become monstrous in the way that only men born human can ever be monstrous.
Generation upon generation has besieged me in this state of semi-living. As I grow wiser, the amorphous landscape of people that surrounds me grows stupider, its concerns more trivial, and its plights less engaging. It becomes easier to prey, and harder to pray for answers. God vanishes in a puff of smoke, like a sun blocked out by man-made pollution or smog. I’ve realised over the years that, amongst the clamour of the crowds, it’s impossible to actually be somebody. A few select humans rise to fame, but none are truly remembered, or cherished for what they were. First, they become catchphrases or quotes– the pen of his generation, a splendid voice, that kind of thing. Then they become one-dimensional, and finally all fade in time, becoming lines in someone’s history textbook, or filigree on the spine of a moth-eaten book.
What’s all this got to do with anything, you ask. Well, I’ll tell you. My use of substances –vampire and human in origin– is less a question of why than why not. Sometimes you get hurt, and you know it’s never getting better. Why pretend at health from that day on? Why hope for the impossible, to reverse the avalanche of entropy? So sometimes you take a hit you can’t recover from, you say, reluctantly handing me the syringe. That’s no reason to make yourself worse. You’re wrong. I tell you that I need it, in order to survive. Survival is all about doing a bit of dying every day. That way you don’t have to die all at once.
You sigh, rustling your bright orange head of flames as I take a drag on a cigarette post-injection. You’re getting less enthused with me by the second. Your eyes drift down to the leather-wrapped book tucked under my arm. What’s that, you ask, and I refuse to answer, still sucking on the butt of my nicotine boost. Your next question throws me. Do I read? I blink twice. Do I what? Good writers read, you inform me, wearing an expression of smug superiority. Obviously you’ve noticed that the book is a diary. I am forced to agree. Good writers do indeed read, as a way of learning their craft. Excellent writers, however, read not a bit. Getting invested in other people’s stories stops them from investing properly in their own.
I’m arrogant, you tell me. Again, I do not deny this essential truth. I am a vampire, I reply, what did you expect? You can’t cheat the odds for two centuries without accruing a bit of self-confidence. To this you retort that my arrogance will be my downfall. Perhaps. That remains to be seen. All I know for the time being is that my family’s gone, my sense of self has gone, and there’s nothing left for me outside intoxication. There’s a grim precipice where my future ought to be, and I’m afraid to jump.
Fine, you spit, and leave me to my ways. We’re tied together now. You know that I’m older and much more powerful than you are, and that I’ll destroy you if you try to leave. You change the topic, grinding my cigarette to dust beneath your heel. Let’s talk about Viggo, you say.
Generation upon generation has besieged me in this state of semi-living. As I grow wiser, the amorphous landscape of people that surrounds me grows stupider, its concerns more trivial, and its plights less engaging. It becomes easier to prey, and harder to pray for answers. God vanishes in a puff of smoke, like a sun blocked out by man-made pollution or smog. I’ve realised over the years that, amongst the clamour of the crowds, it’s impossible to actually be somebody. A few select humans rise to fame, but none are truly remembered, or cherished for what they were. First, they become catchphrases or quotes– the pen of his generation, a splendid voice, that kind of thing. Then they become one-dimensional, and finally all fade in time, becoming lines in someone’s history textbook, or filigree on the spine of a moth-eaten book.
What’s all this got to do with anything, you ask. Well, I’ll tell you. My use of substances –vampire and human in origin– is less a question of why than why not. Sometimes you get hurt, and you know it’s never getting better. Why pretend at health from that day on? Why hope for the impossible, to reverse the avalanche of entropy? So sometimes you take a hit you can’t recover from, you say, reluctantly handing me the syringe. That’s no reason to make yourself worse. You’re wrong. I tell you that I need it, in order to survive. Survival is all about doing a bit of dying every day. That way you don’t have to die all at once.
You sigh, rustling your bright orange head of flames as I take a drag on a cigarette post-injection. You’re getting less enthused with me by the second. Your eyes drift down to the leather-wrapped book tucked under my arm. What’s that, you ask, and I refuse to answer, still sucking on the butt of my nicotine boost. Your next question throws me. Do I read? I blink twice. Do I what? Good writers read, you inform me, wearing an expression of smug superiority. Obviously you’ve noticed that the book is a diary. I am forced to agree. Good writers do indeed read, as a way of learning their craft. Excellent writers, however, read not a bit. Getting invested in other people’s stories stops them from investing properly in their own.
I’m arrogant, you tell me. Again, I do not deny this essential truth. I am a vampire, I reply, what did you expect? You can’t cheat the odds for two centuries without accruing a bit of self-confidence. To this you retort that my arrogance will be my downfall. Perhaps. That remains to be seen. All I know for the time being is that my family’s gone, my sense of self has gone, and there’s nothing left for me outside intoxication. There’s a grim precipice where my future ought to be, and I’m afraid to jump.
Fine, you spit, and leave me to my ways. We’re tied together now. You know that I’m older and much more powerful than you are, and that I’ll destroy you if you try to leave. You change the topic, grinding my cigarette to dust beneath your heel. Let’s talk about Viggo, you say.