The Cemetery Diaries
Last Supper
Feeding is like unearthing liquid gold– inside me there burns a fierce, white joy, for my hunger is gone. I open up a great, red seam along your thigh, my tongue trailing the edges, drinking in the life force that is so quickly fading from you, with your torn throat and pale cheeks. Blue blossoms begin to form like bruises on your skin, the flesh tender where I pinned it down with clawed hands and feet. I’ve been hunting properly, not merely to satiate my needs, but to fully satisfy them, discharging any debts I owe to instinct before I make my next great voyage. It’s the kind of hunting that won’t stand for boots and constrictive garments, the kind that happens barefoot, rough and merciless. I spare no thoughts for the souls of those I have dismembered tonight. May you rest in the simple peace that acknowledges your demise as necessary.
You have served me well this night, a stronger, meatier prey than I normally indulge in. Now is not the time for romance, for picking pretty flowers. Now is the time to feast. Your squared shoulders would have been the rival of mine when I lived, before undeath bestowed on me an unfair power, stacking fate’s cards in my favour. You are firm, muscular, angular, maybe even handsome, in a certain light. No doubt you will be missed, but not by me. I close your staring eyes, black as coals when the fire inside them went out, and rifle through your pockets, taking little things, cash, bank cards, identification– anything that might help me on my journey. I ensure that you’re entirely drained of blood, and then I leave you for the world to find. Nobody will be able to trace you to me. They never can.
I sigh as I try to hold the memory of feeling full in my mind. I’ll have to cling to it for a while, for my pickings will be slim from now on. I’ve decided to narrow my selection of prey. I feel like karma is catching up to me, somehow, and I want to shake it off. I’ll have to shoot up more often, and eat less. If I leave a smaller trail of destruction, a mere trickle, perhaps I will be able to delay what I’m starting to think of as the inevitable. Scampering like an animal, all arched back and hairs standing on end, I race back to my lair, where I collect the few things that are mine. The preservative drugs are most important– those will be secreted on my person. Clothes are essential too, as is the diary I’ve been writing in, the book in which I will later encase these thoughts. The latter is also precious because it is a liability. Its discovery would expose more of my life than I’m prepared to share with just anyone.
Cramming my life into the saddlebags of my bike, I turn my back on the crypt that has been my home for more than a century, leaving it as cold and empty as I found it. There is no trace of life down there, for life it has not known. I’m not the kind to build warm, cosy homes. If anything, the cemetery only looks more ordinary now that it’s free from my touch. The roses look plain, no longer bait for romantic prey. The stones of the church are silent. For the first time in a long time, I veer out onto the open road, my path sketched in the stars. I may never come back, but I don’t look around. There is no space inside me for sentimentality. The darkness crowds it out.
Shredded clouds wrap the moon like bandages, blinding its staring eye. There are no silver edges to this dark wilderness, no cold light to trim every object with the sharpness of knives. The dangers out here are not the precise kind I am used to. Foxes scream in the bush, crying bloody murder. Owls bark, and crows call melancholy. Theirs is the sound of an older evil. I follow the black ribbon of the road as it snakes around hills and mountains, dips down into gullies and bridges canyons and crystal waterfalls. I pass stone golems and the furrows they gouge in the earth, until finally the landscape levels out, becoming fields that roll like gentle waves, strands of wheat and barley swaying with reedy whispers. Here it is, amongst the naked trunks of ghostly gums, where a little river runs brown and bubbling, nourishing a vein of tormented willows. Here is the cramped cottage with the hammered tin roof and the leaning sides, collapsed in its corners by age.
The gate creaks as I open it, protesting entry to this place as though I am here to pillage the long-quiet house of its ghosts. Cockroaches scurry in the kitchen, fleeing from the fresh air that stirs the dust in cosmic motes. Coins of dim moonlight fall onto rotted floorboards, shining through gaps in the roof where rust has caused the nails to fall out. Every inch of timber groans as I cross the floor, running fingers through the dust that has settled on the kitchen table, the book ends, the shelves. An old armchair slouches in the main room, become a castle for spiders. It is riddled with web. Over the fireplace, a single, grubby oil painting hangs, portraying the farm in a livelier age. It’s not much, I think, as I turn on the spot, catching every cobweb that hangs from the ceiling beams, but from now on, it’s home.
You have served me well this night, a stronger, meatier prey than I normally indulge in. Now is not the time for romance, for picking pretty flowers. Now is the time to feast. Your squared shoulders would have been the rival of mine when I lived, before undeath bestowed on me an unfair power, stacking fate’s cards in my favour. You are firm, muscular, angular, maybe even handsome, in a certain light. No doubt you will be missed, but not by me. I close your staring eyes, black as coals when the fire inside them went out, and rifle through your pockets, taking little things, cash, bank cards, identification– anything that might help me on my journey. I ensure that you’re entirely drained of blood, and then I leave you for the world to find. Nobody will be able to trace you to me. They never can.
I sigh as I try to hold the memory of feeling full in my mind. I’ll have to cling to it for a while, for my pickings will be slim from now on. I’ve decided to narrow my selection of prey. I feel like karma is catching up to me, somehow, and I want to shake it off. I’ll have to shoot up more often, and eat less. If I leave a smaller trail of destruction, a mere trickle, perhaps I will be able to delay what I’m starting to think of as the inevitable. Scampering like an animal, all arched back and hairs standing on end, I race back to my lair, where I collect the few things that are mine. The preservative drugs are most important– those will be secreted on my person. Clothes are essential too, as is the diary I’ve been writing in, the book in which I will later encase these thoughts. The latter is also precious because it is a liability. Its discovery would expose more of my life than I’m prepared to share with just anyone.
Cramming my life into the saddlebags of my bike, I turn my back on the crypt that has been my home for more than a century, leaving it as cold and empty as I found it. There is no trace of life down there, for life it has not known. I’m not the kind to build warm, cosy homes. If anything, the cemetery only looks more ordinary now that it’s free from my touch. The roses look plain, no longer bait for romantic prey. The stones of the church are silent. For the first time in a long time, I veer out onto the open road, my path sketched in the stars. I may never come back, but I don’t look around. There is no space inside me for sentimentality. The darkness crowds it out.
Shredded clouds wrap the moon like bandages, blinding its staring eye. There are no silver edges to this dark wilderness, no cold light to trim every object with the sharpness of knives. The dangers out here are not the precise kind I am used to. Foxes scream in the bush, crying bloody murder. Owls bark, and crows call melancholy. Theirs is the sound of an older evil. I follow the black ribbon of the road as it snakes around hills and mountains, dips down into gullies and bridges canyons and crystal waterfalls. I pass stone golems and the furrows they gouge in the earth, until finally the landscape levels out, becoming fields that roll like gentle waves, strands of wheat and barley swaying with reedy whispers. Here it is, amongst the naked trunks of ghostly gums, where a little river runs brown and bubbling, nourishing a vein of tormented willows. Here is the cramped cottage with the hammered tin roof and the leaning sides, collapsed in its corners by age.
The gate creaks as I open it, protesting entry to this place as though I am here to pillage the long-quiet house of its ghosts. Cockroaches scurry in the kitchen, fleeing from the fresh air that stirs the dust in cosmic motes. Coins of dim moonlight fall onto rotted floorboards, shining through gaps in the roof where rust has caused the nails to fall out. Every inch of timber groans as I cross the floor, running fingers through the dust that has settled on the kitchen table, the book ends, the shelves. An old armchair slouches in the main room, become a castle for spiders. It is riddled with web. Over the fireplace, a single, grubby oil painting hangs, portraying the farm in a livelier age. It’s not much, I think, as I turn on the spot, catching every cobweb that hangs from the ceiling beams, but from now on, it’s home.