The Cemetery Diaries
Black Leather Night
I’m too old to have pity, too cold to have mercy. What do I do, you ask, and I tell you. I visit cemeteries. I hunt. I call it my grand tour, and it’s a show that has been touring for centuries. You shouldn’t look so disappointed. I adjust my sunglasses, which I wear in place of a wry smile– or any expression at all, if it comes down to that. You should get used to it. You look a bit like this, too.
You wonder also why I don’t call you by your name. Poor, whimsical creature! What name? What need have we for names? You’re the eternal victim, come vampire flesh. I call you like I call them all. It’s my only way of exerting some control over my existence in a world that is so impossibly strange as to be beyond all reason. I want a world that will keep my vows. You can call me whatever you like, too, if it helps you. If it helps you to have names and places for all your monsters, then so be it. After all, the worst monsters aren’t under our beds, they’re in our heads. What is monstrous of you now that you are stony skinned and everlasting was always there, in seed form, buried deep inside your chest or in your mind. All it took was a little breaking of the rules to bring it forth.
I sigh as I inhale the softening night. I love the mulchy smell of the earth after a dousing rain. It smells of life and potential and green things, even in a place where the thing that grows most is the moss on the headstones. Jade leaves shake off droplets in the wind and I open my arms, spreading the vault that is my blackened robe. I welcome the earth of living things, because it does not truly belong to the living, no more than the rat race belongs to the rat. The world of the living is the world of survival, and I alone, the ultimate predator, am exempt from the struggle. I alone am free to relish and enjoy the luxury that is existence.
You only stare at me. In time, you’ll understand. I hold my hand out, long fingers tapered to points like wands, and watch as your smaller hand takes mine, holding me tightly like a talisman. There is still wariness in your step, but it is tempered by weakness. You must be hungry, I tell you, and you nod. Perhaps you’re expecting me to offer to buy you a burger? A shake? I laugh, throwing back my head so that my jet hair is ragged halo or a black hole. I like to wear sinister colours, as a wasp wears stripes. I like to give my prey a chance: too bad then, that midnight is in fashion. I let my incisors glint, perfectly white despite the blood that has rushed over them. These teeth won’t get service anywhere but at the goth bars, where soon to be casualties always remark on their remarkable realness.
Come along, I tempt you, along the sidewalk. It is a black leather night, studded with stars and flashing neon strips that reflect in the grease and vinyl of oil puddles. It’s a dirty, smoky night, thick with exhaust fumes and the dampness of the recent rain. It’s a night that tastes acrid and metallic in your mouth. Past the dusky moths we walk. Your sneakers pad on the concrete, banked with a dam of cigarette butts. Well, I can’t expect you to be a perfect walker yet, not a slinking shadow in skinny jeans and motorcycle boots, as I am. I shed my robe and bundle it into the saddlebag of my ride. Get on, I urge you, and the beast rumbles urgency with the tone of a four hundred horse stampede.
You strap yourself to me with your arms. There is some wiry strength there, despite how bony life made you. Fragile thing as you are, you were lucky to get out of it intact. I feel your ribs against my chest, pressing through the thin fabric of your singlet. Locks of hair the colour of crude oil hang like damp seaweed down your back, flowing over your narrow shoulders to the tapered middle of your waist. Your breath is stale, as is only natural for somebody who ran half the night on a mad paper chase after a vampire, and then succumbed to nearly instant death and resurrection. I can only commend you for your bizarre death wish and the effort you were willing to pour into it, malnourished as you are. I’d ask you about it, but there’s no time.
Ah, we’re here.
You wonder also why I don’t call you by your name. Poor, whimsical creature! What name? What need have we for names? You’re the eternal victim, come vampire flesh. I call you like I call them all. It’s my only way of exerting some control over my existence in a world that is so impossibly strange as to be beyond all reason. I want a world that will keep my vows. You can call me whatever you like, too, if it helps you. If it helps you to have names and places for all your monsters, then so be it. After all, the worst monsters aren’t under our beds, they’re in our heads. What is monstrous of you now that you are stony skinned and everlasting was always there, in seed form, buried deep inside your chest or in your mind. All it took was a little breaking of the rules to bring it forth.
I sigh as I inhale the softening night. I love the mulchy smell of the earth after a dousing rain. It smells of life and potential and green things, even in a place where the thing that grows most is the moss on the headstones. Jade leaves shake off droplets in the wind and I open my arms, spreading the vault that is my blackened robe. I welcome the earth of living things, because it does not truly belong to the living, no more than the rat race belongs to the rat. The world of the living is the world of survival, and I alone, the ultimate predator, am exempt from the struggle. I alone am free to relish and enjoy the luxury that is existence.
You only stare at me. In time, you’ll understand. I hold my hand out, long fingers tapered to points like wands, and watch as your smaller hand takes mine, holding me tightly like a talisman. There is still wariness in your step, but it is tempered by weakness. You must be hungry, I tell you, and you nod. Perhaps you’re expecting me to offer to buy you a burger? A shake? I laugh, throwing back my head so that my jet hair is ragged halo or a black hole. I like to wear sinister colours, as a wasp wears stripes. I like to give my prey a chance: too bad then, that midnight is in fashion. I let my incisors glint, perfectly white despite the blood that has rushed over them. These teeth won’t get service anywhere but at the goth bars, where soon to be casualties always remark on their remarkable realness.
Come along, I tempt you, along the sidewalk. It is a black leather night, studded with stars and flashing neon strips that reflect in the grease and vinyl of oil puddles. It’s a dirty, smoky night, thick with exhaust fumes and the dampness of the recent rain. It’s a night that tastes acrid and metallic in your mouth. Past the dusky moths we walk. Your sneakers pad on the concrete, banked with a dam of cigarette butts. Well, I can’t expect you to be a perfect walker yet, not a slinking shadow in skinny jeans and motorcycle boots, as I am. I shed my robe and bundle it into the saddlebag of my ride. Get on, I urge you, and the beast rumbles urgency with the tone of a four hundred horse stampede.
You strap yourself to me with your arms. There is some wiry strength there, despite how bony life made you. Fragile thing as you are, you were lucky to get out of it intact. I feel your ribs against my chest, pressing through the thin fabric of your singlet. Locks of hair the colour of crude oil hang like damp seaweed down your back, flowing over your narrow shoulders to the tapered middle of your waist. Your breath is stale, as is only natural for somebody who ran half the night on a mad paper chase after a vampire, and then succumbed to nearly instant death and resurrection. I can only commend you for your bizarre death wish and the effort you were willing to pour into it, malnourished as you are. I’d ask you about it, but there’s no time.
Ah, we’re here.