Showing posts with label Satiety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Satiety. Show all posts
Monday, June 1, 2009
Satiety - Index
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Epigraph 1
Epigraph 2
1. Homesick-less
2. What It Means To Be Happy
3. Like a Rolling Stone
4. Beginnings of Woe
5. The Arc of Descent
6. Inane Syncretism
7. Sinister Baby-Steps
8. The Straw That Broke
9. They Come by It Honestly
10. He Who Does Not Learn From History
11. In The Valley of The Shadow of Death
12. A Sounding Brass
13. He Who Holds Down The Cow's Leg Is Just as Guilty
14. The Blood is Home
15. Seek, And Ye Shall Find
16. Not All That Glitters
17. The Last Straw…?
Epilogue: … Or a New Beginning?
D
Monday, March 30, 2009
Epigraph 1 for "Satiety"/Epígrafe 1 para "Saciedad"
I have two songs as epigraph for "Satiety". The first one is by Alanis Morrisette, from her album "Little Jagged Pill"
"Forgiven"
You know how us catholic girls can be
We make up for so much time a little too late
I never forgot it, confusing as it was
No fun with no guilt feelings
The sinners, the saviors, the loverless priests
I'll see you next Sunday
(chorus)
We all had our reasons to be there
We all had a thing or two to learn
We all needed something to cling to
So we did
I sang alleluia in the choir
I confessed my darkest deeds to an envious man
My brothers they never went blind for what they did
But I may as well have
In the name of the father, the skeptic and the son
I had one more stupid question
(repeat chorus)
What I learned I rejected but I believe again
I will suffer the consequence of this inquisition
If I jump in this fountain, will I be forgiven
(repeat chorus)
We all had delusions in our head
We all had our minds made up for us
We had to belive in something
So we did
A manera de epígrafe para "Saciedad", tengo dos canciones. La primera es de Alanis Morissette, de su álbum "Little Jagged Pill".
"Perdonada"
Ya sabes cómo somos a veces las chicas católicas:
tratamos de compensar tanto tiempo perdido un poco muy tarde.
Nunca lo olvidé, así de confuso como era:
no hay diversión sin sentimientos de culpabilidad.
Los pecadores, los salvadores, los sacerdotes sin amantes:
ahí nos vemos el próximo domingo
(coro)
Todos teníamos motivos propios para estar allí;
todos teníamos alguna cosa que otra qué aprender;
todos necesitábamos de qué aferrarnos;
y lo hicimos.
Cantaba "aleluya" en el coro
(alelu, alelu, aleluya).
Confesaba mis peores fechorías a un hombre envidioso.
Mis hermanos no cayeron ciegos por todo lo que hicieron,
pero a mi hasta más me valdría que me hubiera sucedido.
En el nombre del padre, el escéptico y el hijo,
que tengo una pregunta boba más:
(coro)
Lo que aprendí, lo rechacé, pero lo creo de nuevo;
sufriré las consecuencias de esta inquisición:
si brinco dentro de esta fuente, ¿seré perdonada?
(coro)
Todos teníamos delirios en la cabeza;
a todos nos hicieron pensar lo que quisieron;
tuvimos que creer en algo,
y lo hicimos…
"Forgiven"
You know how us catholic girls can be
We make up for so much time a little too late
I never forgot it, confusing as it was
No fun with no guilt feelings
The sinners, the saviors, the loverless priests
I'll see you next Sunday
(chorus)
We all had our reasons to be there
We all had a thing or two to learn
We all needed something to cling to
So we did
I sang alleluia in the choir
I confessed my darkest deeds to an envious man
My brothers they never went blind for what they did
But I may as well have
In the name of the father, the skeptic and the son
I had one more stupid question
(repeat chorus)
What I learned I rejected but I believe again
I will suffer the consequence of this inquisition
If I jump in this fountain, will I be forgiven
(repeat chorus)
We all had delusions in our head
We all had our minds made up for us
We had to belive in something
So we did
A manera de epígrafe para "Saciedad", tengo dos canciones. La primera es de Alanis Morissette, de su álbum "Little Jagged Pill".
"Perdonada"
Ya sabes cómo somos a veces las chicas católicas:
tratamos de compensar tanto tiempo perdido un poco muy tarde.
Nunca lo olvidé, así de confuso como era:
no hay diversión sin sentimientos de culpabilidad.
Los pecadores, los salvadores, los sacerdotes sin amantes:
ahí nos vemos el próximo domingo
(coro)
Todos teníamos motivos propios para estar allí;
todos teníamos alguna cosa que otra qué aprender;
todos necesitábamos de qué aferrarnos;
y lo hicimos.
Cantaba "aleluya" en el coro
(alelu, alelu, aleluya).
Confesaba mis peores fechorías a un hombre envidioso.
Mis hermanos no cayeron ciegos por todo lo que hicieron,
pero a mi hasta más me valdría que me hubiera sucedido.
En el nombre del padre, el escéptico y el hijo,
que tengo una pregunta boba más:
(coro)
Lo que aprendí, lo rechacé, pero lo creo de nuevo;
sufriré las consecuencias de esta inquisición:
si brinco dentro de esta fuente, ¿seré perdonada?
(coro)
Todos teníamos delirios en la cabeza;
a todos nos hicieron pensar lo que quisieron;
tuvimos que creer en algo,
y lo hicimos…
Epigraph 2 for "Satiety"/Epígrafe 2 para "Saciedad"
Tango "Volver", de Carlos Gardel
Yo adivino el parpadeo
de las luces que a lo lejos,
van marcando mi retorno.
Son las mismas que alumbraron,
con sus pálidos reflejos,
hondas horas de dolor.
Y aunque no quise el regreso,
siempre se vuelve al primer amor.
La quieta calle donde el eco dijo:
"Tuya es su vida, tuyo es su querer",
bajo el burlón mirar de las estrellas
que con indiferencia hoy me ven volver.
Volver,
con la frente marchita,
las nieves del tiempo
platearon mi sien.
Sentir, que es un soplo la vida,
que veinte años no es nada,
que febril la mirada
errante en las sombras
te busca y te nombra.
Vivir,
con el alma aferrada
a un dulce recuerdo,
que lloro otra vez.
Tengo miedo del encuentro
con el pasado que vuelve
a enfrentarse con mi vida.
Tengo miedo de las noches
que, pobladas de recuerdos,
encadenan mi soñar.
Pero el viajero que huye,
tarde o temprano detiene su andar.
Y aunque el olvido que todo destruye,
haya matado mi vieja ilusión,
guarda escondida una esperanza humilde,
que es toda la fortuna de mi corazón.
Tango "Volver," by Carlos Gardel
I can guess at the twinkle
of lights which, at a distance,
mark my return.
They are the same that lit,
with their pale reflections,
the deep hours of pain.
Though I did not want this return,
one always turns back to the first love.
That quiet street, where the echo said:
"Her life is yours, her love is yours,"
under the sardonic gaze of the stars
which, indifferent, today they see me return.
To return,
with a withered brow;
the snows of time
silvered my temples.
To feel that life is only a sigh,
that twenty years is nothing,
that the feverish gaze
wandering in shadows
searches you out and names you.
To live,
with the soul clinging
to a sweet memory,
for which I weep again.
I fear the meeting
with the past that returns
to confront my life.
I fear the nights
which, peopled by memories,
chain down my dreams.
But the traveler who flees
sooner or later stops his gait.
And, although oblivion, which destroys everything,
had killed my old illusions,
it keeps hidden the humble hope,
which is the only treasure of my heart.
Satiety 1
Satiety
1. Homesick-less
Carlos Gardel was a dolt. Well, that's what I think… His tiresome tango: life is a sigh; twenty years is nothing; the snows of time bleach the temples; yada-yada-yada. But the lights that mark my return are not the teasing stars, but the jaundiced lamps of the highway on which I walk towards Kingsville, this early morning. They look sententiously and pitilessly upon everything. And not one day of these last twenty years has left a mark on me…
Kingsville was where I won and lost everything, forever. Cheap-ass town had been in its last throes for the last fifty years, amid the mediocre economy of the Valley of Texas. At times it had been devastated by drug trafficking and corruption; at other times, it has been revitalized by the very same things. During the Eighties, which was the last time I was around, Kingsville was already the same depressing pit it is today, in spite of its appearance of progress. Even now the Navy base, the University and the chemical and pharmacological plants still hover at the fringes, like rank vultures on the emaciated near-carcass that clutches King Ranch as if it were the last half-empty canteen—which it is, in fact.
Kingsville was the place where so many immigrant ignoramuses like me dreamt of making something of themselves, after being roughly transplanted from our motherlands by individuals and situations similar to whatever we found here, also. And over here I had to work as a migrant farmer, harvesting someone else's land, and even washing dishes in any restaurant that gave me half a chance. But, with so many guys like me around, it was very hard to eke out a living… It's like my old man would always say, "outta da' fryin' pan and into da' fire."
In the end, though, Kingsville—located three hours away from the Mexican border—had been my home for twenty-three years. There, I learned how to live "on the wrong side of the tracks." And there you could walk around freely, without the police picking you up "for fitting the profile," except every once in a while. In that town I shacked up with a lady that loved me just the way I was, without any reservations, and we raised a son and a daughter up until they were teenagers, until the very end. Or until the beginning, I still can't tell.
* * *
Yeah, whatever, so here I am again, dammit, walking down Main street towards the old Town Hall. Kitty-corner to Joe's Pawn shop they still have the shoddy Savoy Theater, intermittently abandoned to Evangelical hymns since 1975, but that suffers today through its present incarnation as a curio shop. I wonder why this seems to be every old theater's destiny…
I'm about to continue this pilgrimage of penance at dawn when I see out of the corner of my eye a tall, skinny guy, with long and wavy hair, dressed up in cowboy boots, jeans, and a white cotton T-shirt, entering the gas station's store two blocks down. It has to be some sort of optical illusion, because his gait, and that slight slant of the head remind me of my teenage son. He used to like dressing up just like that every day, too… But it couldn't be him, since the last time I saw him was over twenty years ago, when I blew this town.
Regardless, I open up my mind, trying to catch some image from the skinny guy's thoughts, to make sure that the impossible actually hasn't happened. Well, that's weird… There is a slight purring that mostly can be felt on your bones rather than heard with the ears, which increases in intensity a little at a time, until you can feel it behind your eyes. I know very well what this means, and that's the last thing I thought I would find in this run-down town… I thought there was nobody like me left in this town…
The skinny guy is still in the store, motionless, with a hand resting on the magazines that he had been looking at up to a moment ago, and with his head slightly tilted to the side, as if he were listening to something. He doesn't seem agitated at all. I can see him through the front picture window, in the store, and before I finally decide to go into the store to make sure once and for all that he is not my son, I hear a murmur that comes from inside the sewer grate at the corner:
"Are you the Maker?"
Carlos Gardel was a dolt. Well, that's what I think… His tiresome tango: life is a sigh; twenty years is nothing; the snows of time bleach the temples; yada-yada-yada. But the lights that mark my return are not the teasing stars, but the jaundiced lamps of the highway on which I walk towards Kingsville, this early morning. They look sententiously and pitilessly upon everything. And not one day of these last twenty years has left a mark on me…
Kingsville was where I won and lost everything, forever. Cheap-ass town had been in its last throes for the last fifty years, amid the mediocre economy of the Valley of Texas. At times it had been devastated by drug trafficking and corruption; at other times, it has been revitalized by the very same things. During the Eighties, which was the last time I was around, Kingsville was already the same depressing pit it is today, in spite of its appearance of progress. Even now the Navy base, the University and the chemical and pharmacological plants still hover at the fringes, like rank vultures on the emaciated near-carcass that clutches King Ranch as if it were the last half-empty canteen—which it is, in fact.
Kingsville was the place where so many immigrant ignoramuses like me dreamt of making something of themselves, after being roughly transplanted from our motherlands by individuals and situations similar to whatever we found here, also. And over here I had to work as a migrant farmer, harvesting someone else's land, and even washing dishes in any restaurant that gave me half a chance. But, with so many guys like me around, it was very hard to eke out a living… It's like my old man would always say, "outta da' fryin' pan and into da' fire."
In the end, though, Kingsville—located three hours away from the Mexican border—had been my home for twenty-three years. There, I learned how to live "on the wrong side of the tracks." And there you could walk around freely, without the police picking you up "for fitting the profile," except every once in a while. In that town I shacked up with a lady that loved me just the way I was, without any reservations, and we raised a son and a daughter up until they were teenagers, until the very end. Or until the beginning, I still can't tell.
Yeah, whatever, so here I am again, dammit, walking down Main street towards the old Town Hall. Kitty-corner to Joe's Pawn shop they still have the shoddy Savoy Theater, intermittently abandoned to Evangelical hymns since 1975, but that suffers today through its present incarnation as a curio shop. I wonder why this seems to be every old theater's destiny…
I'm about to continue this pilgrimage of penance at dawn when I see out of the corner of my eye a tall, skinny guy, with long and wavy hair, dressed up in cowboy boots, jeans, and a white cotton T-shirt, entering the gas station's store two blocks down. It has to be some sort of optical illusion, because his gait, and that slight slant of the head remind me of my teenage son. He used to like dressing up just like that every day, too… But it couldn't be him, since the last time I saw him was over twenty years ago, when I blew this town.
Regardless, I open up my mind, trying to catch some image from the skinny guy's thoughts, to make sure that the impossible actually hasn't happened. Well, that's weird… There is a slight purring that mostly can be felt on your bones rather than heard with the ears, which increases in intensity a little at a time, until you can feel it behind your eyes. I know very well what this means, and that's the last thing I thought I would find in this run-down town… I thought there was nobody like me left in this town…
The skinny guy is still in the store, motionless, with a hand resting on the magazines that he had been looking at up to a moment ago, and with his head slightly tilted to the side, as if he were listening to something. He doesn't seem agitated at all. I can see him through the front picture window, in the store, and before I finally decide to go into the store to make sure once and for all that he is not my son, I hear a murmur that comes from inside the sewer grate at the corner:
"Are you the Maker?"
To Be Continued…
Satiety 2
2. What it means to be happy
The whispered question didn't surprise me for its incongruous point of origin, nor for having been asked so quietly that no human would have been able to hear it, but because of my certainty that the undefined purring beyond the limits of hearing came forth from this same mysterious questioner.
But it don't matter none. I'm sure that wherever there is one of them, there are several others. It's always like that: they are like some kind of infection, like a rash under humanity's diapers.
Barely focusing on the sewer grate, feeling that presence there like a bruise in my mind, I say what I always say every time I come across them again:
"Burn."
A red flash can be seen through the grate, and a small puff of blue smoke rises slowly, stinking of sewage and putrefaction. It always happens the same way: there's a sensation in my mind that they feel surprised for an instant, and then I feel a great uproar of memories, pain, and incredulity, all together at once, like a passing gust of wind. They are so ridiculous, thinking that they are invulnerable, but without understanding the actual monstrosity of true immortality…
Another uproar in my mind: the skinny guy has disappeared from the store, wrapped up in feelings of amazement and awe. He left in such a rush, tumbling out, that the store's doors got bumped out of their frames and landed on the floor several yards away. The store clerk is astonished, and I'm sure that not even his security cameras were able to picture the very fast movements of the skinny guy, that can move at the speed of thought, apparently.
Damn, another one of those who walk under the Sun. I also thought I was the only one doing that.
It's going to be an interesting day.
* * *
All these things had kept me away from this damned shoddy town for the last twenty years, or so. As a matter of fact, they kept me away from wherever there were people.
The moment that I discovered that the blood was desire and not necessity, I let go of that impulse and took off to all those remote places that are talked about so hysterically in all those green documentaries. It was such a relief to realize that humans, even though they swarm like flies on an oozing sore, require so very many things from nature that their populations actually have quite a limited reach.
So, for twenty years I wandered through stifling jungles, climbing on trees and playing pat-a-cake with orangutans, and poking the bony crown of mountain gorillas in the most inaccessible locales. It was quite a relief to cross the Himalayas on foot, without finding but a few humans among so many goats and geese. It was an almost infinite calmness to take to the air and cross whole oceans without seeing a sign of men or women.
There is more world than people, how lucky. How comforting.
The whispered question didn't surprise me for its incongruous point of origin, nor for having been asked so quietly that no human would have been able to hear it, but because of my certainty that the undefined purring beyond the limits of hearing came forth from this same mysterious questioner.
But it don't matter none. I'm sure that wherever there is one of them, there are several others. It's always like that: they are like some kind of infection, like a rash under humanity's diapers.
Barely focusing on the sewer grate, feeling that presence there like a bruise in my mind, I say what I always say every time I come across them again:
"Burn."
A red flash can be seen through the grate, and a small puff of blue smoke rises slowly, stinking of sewage and putrefaction. It always happens the same way: there's a sensation in my mind that they feel surprised for an instant, and then I feel a great uproar of memories, pain, and incredulity, all together at once, like a passing gust of wind. They are so ridiculous, thinking that they are invulnerable, but without understanding the actual monstrosity of true immortality…
Another uproar in my mind: the skinny guy has disappeared from the store, wrapped up in feelings of amazement and awe. He left in such a rush, tumbling out, that the store's doors got bumped out of their frames and landed on the floor several yards away. The store clerk is astonished, and I'm sure that not even his security cameras were able to picture the very fast movements of the skinny guy, that can move at the speed of thought, apparently.
Damn, another one of those who walk under the Sun. I also thought I was the only one doing that.
It's going to be an interesting day.
All these things had kept me away from this damned shoddy town for the last twenty years, or so. As a matter of fact, they kept me away from wherever there were people.
The moment that I discovered that the blood was desire and not necessity, I let go of that impulse and took off to all those remote places that are talked about so hysterically in all those green documentaries. It was such a relief to realize that humans, even though they swarm like flies on an oozing sore, require so very many things from nature that their populations actually have quite a limited reach.
So, for twenty years I wandered through stifling jungles, climbing on trees and playing pat-a-cake with orangutans, and poking the bony crown of mountain gorillas in the most inaccessible locales. It was quite a relief to cross the Himalayas on foot, without finding but a few humans among so many goats and geese. It was an almost infinite calmness to take to the air and cross whole oceans without seeing a sign of men or women.
There is more world than people, how lucky. How comforting.
To Be Continued…
Satiety 3
3. Like a rolling stone
What did Benjamin see in me? Sometimes I wonder if that was even his real name… But I know full well that this kind of musings come over me whenever I have doubts of my worth, whenever I begin feeling self-conscious and scorn myself because of my own actions.
Yah, whatever, back to Benjamin: What the hell did he want with me? I'm sure that at the very moment when he decided to share his immortality with me there must have been dozens, hundreds, thousands of people much more interesting than me around. Also, there were people more agile, beautiful, intelligent, important, even taller… Who was I, but an undocumented father trying to bring home the bacon for his family, working minimum-wage jobs? Who was I, but one amongst millions?
That damned night, a bit more than twenty years ago, if I had listened to the wife I would have been drinking my beers while watching TV in my own living room. But, because it was fight night on channel 52, I thought that a get-together with my buddy at his house was mandatory. At the end of the party, a little while after midnight, my stumbling steps took me through the back alleys, to avoid having any policeman pick me up for public intoxication.
Jail time would have been a better option… However, that night my traitorous, drunken feet made me fall in the clutches of Benjamin, quite literally. I stepped on some pebble, invisible in the night, and turned an ankle. I was already losing my balance when I felt marble cylinders shaped like arms stopping my fall. In the beginning, the only thing that surprised me was his sudden apparition. His looks were of a short, slight man, with vaguely Mediterranean and flat features, which was the first thing my eyes noticed. But, right after, I felt such revulsion rise up in me as I had never felt before, as if some filth covered in rot would have splashed my face unexpectedly.
He never said a word. I tried to get out from the circle of his arms, but it was like trying to nudge mountains. And, savagely, like a beast, in a violent movement, his mouth fixed on my neck. The pain! The point of contact with his mouth was a red-hot iron on my skin, and each gulp of blood being sucked out was a barbed wire twisted around my testicles, which yanked the soul out of me a little at a time. At the same time, it was also the thin line between agony and total calm… In a matter of seconds, I felt the part of me that could be considered my "self" unraveling, as if it were some dream in a fog.
Just then, he let go of my neck and looked into my eyes while he chewed his own tongue, from side to side. With a smile twinkling in his eyes, he covered my mouth with his in the most obscene kiss that anyone could imagine. The stink of sewage and graveyard in his breath was the least of things, because the mixture of his horrible blood and the blood he had just stolen from me flooded my mouth so forcefully that I felt the evil mix overflowing even out of my nose, causing me to gag, and making me swallow out of reflex.
Shorty dropped me to the floor. In a matter of seconds the ordeal was over, I thought. My consciousness dissipated little by little, like grains of sand swept away by the wind. Suddenly, though, the universe itself transformed into agony. The pain! If before it had seemed as if a barbed wire was squeezing my gonads, this time it was pain multiplied a thousandfold, a million fold, multiplied to infinity; and, each sensation, each thought, was highlighted by fire. In the middle of this titanic pain, I could hear reverberations in my mind of people I never met, of places I never visited, of words I never spoke, and a name: Benjamin.
When I thought I couldn't take it any more, once again the tiny man sank his teeth on my neck, in the same place, or maybe on a different place, it didn't matter, because pain was all there was, and the flame was the only dimension in my universe. The second time around I didn't feel as if my consciousness dissipated, but instead I felt that all my memories began to find new places in my mind alongside those reverberations in Benjamin's blood. But the pain was even sharper, more apparent, if such a thing were possible.
And then again the horrible kiss that lacking any lechery was the worst of rapes, with its unwelcome images and lessons, which would fill every corner of my soul, little by little…
How long all of this lasted, once and again, how many kisses and how many times I found myself emptied out of blood, I can't recall. But I heard a word in the middle of my being: "Enough." And the last thing I saw of Benjamin was the same smile in his eyes, before he disappeared forever. I have never seen him again.
What the hell did he want with me?
What did Benjamin see in me? Sometimes I wonder if that was even his real name… But I know full well that this kind of musings come over me whenever I have doubts of my worth, whenever I begin feeling self-conscious and scorn myself because of my own actions.
Yah, whatever, back to Benjamin: What the hell did he want with me? I'm sure that at the very moment when he decided to share his immortality with me there must have been dozens, hundreds, thousands of people much more interesting than me around. Also, there were people more agile, beautiful, intelligent, important, even taller… Who was I, but an undocumented father trying to bring home the bacon for his family, working minimum-wage jobs? Who was I, but one amongst millions?
That damned night, a bit more than twenty years ago, if I had listened to the wife I would have been drinking my beers while watching TV in my own living room. But, because it was fight night on channel 52, I thought that a get-together with my buddy at his house was mandatory. At the end of the party, a little while after midnight, my stumbling steps took me through the back alleys, to avoid having any policeman pick me up for public intoxication.
Jail time would have been a better option… However, that night my traitorous, drunken feet made me fall in the clutches of Benjamin, quite literally. I stepped on some pebble, invisible in the night, and turned an ankle. I was already losing my balance when I felt marble cylinders shaped like arms stopping my fall. In the beginning, the only thing that surprised me was his sudden apparition. His looks were of a short, slight man, with vaguely Mediterranean and flat features, which was the first thing my eyes noticed. But, right after, I felt such revulsion rise up in me as I had never felt before, as if some filth covered in rot would have splashed my face unexpectedly.
He never said a word. I tried to get out from the circle of his arms, but it was like trying to nudge mountains. And, savagely, like a beast, in a violent movement, his mouth fixed on my neck. The pain! The point of contact with his mouth was a red-hot iron on my skin, and each gulp of blood being sucked out was a barbed wire twisted around my testicles, which yanked the soul out of me a little at a time. At the same time, it was also the thin line between agony and total calm… In a matter of seconds, I felt the part of me that could be considered my "self" unraveling, as if it were some dream in a fog.
Just then, he let go of my neck and looked into my eyes while he chewed his own tongue, from side to side. With a smile twinkling in his eyes, he covered my mouth with his in the most obscene kiss that anyone could imagine. The stink of sewage and graveyard in his breath was the least of things, because the mixture of his horrible blood and the blood he had just stolen from me flooded my mouth so forcefully that I felt the evil mix overflowing even out of my nose, causing me to gag, and making me swallow out of reflex.
Shorty dropped me to the floor. In a matter of seconds the ordeal was over, I thought. My consciousness dissipated little by little, like grains of sand swept away by the wind. Suddenly, though, the universe itself transformed into agony. The pain! If before it had seemed as if a barbed wire was squeezing my gonads, this time it was pain multiplied a thousandfold, a million fold, multiplied to infinity; and, each sensation, each thought, was highlighted by fire. In the middle of this titanic pain, I could hear reverberations in my mind of people I never met, of places I never visited, of words I never spoke, and a name: Benjamin.
When I thought I couldn't take it any more, once again the tiny man sank his teeth on my neck, in the same place, or maybe on a different place, it didn't matter, because pain was all there was, and the flame was the only dimension in my universe. The second time around I didn't feel as if my consciousness dissipated, but instead I felt that all my memories began to find new places in my mind alongside those reverberations in Benjamin's blood. But the pain was even sharper, more apparent, if such a thing were possible.
And then again the horrible kiss that lacking any lechery was the worst of rapes, with its unwelcome images and lessons, which would fill every corner of my soul, little by little…
How long all of this lasted, once and again, how many kisses and how many times I found myself emptied out of blood, I can't recall. But I heard a word in the middle of my being: "Enough." And the last thing I saw of Benjamin was the same smile in his eyes, before he disappeared forever. I have never seen him again.
What the hell did he want with me?
To Be Continued…
Satiety 4
4: Beginnings of woe
The night that Benjamin attacked me, he left me laid out on the ground, in that dark alley. My thoughts were tornadoes of fake and true memories, that infected my mind while the rotten blood atacked my body. It was impossible to hold on to any of the half-remembered images while each one of my senses felt consumed by the flames. It was rather strange to perceive everything as if it existed for the very first time, for me: each noise and every silence, each glint of light and every shadow, each brushing of the clothing over the skin and every puff of wind sneaking through my hair… Everything was new and trite, seductive and hideous, ecstasy and torture.
I stood up and was amazed with the perspective of my new senses, that now showed me a world with exact definitions, precise edges, diverse attributes, and at the same time rendered everything with almost painful coherence, or an indivisible appearance.
I tried taking a step, pressing down with my foot firmly in order to convince myself that this kaleidoscopic world was real. However, the old motion that knew how to shift my two hundred pounds a yard per step was in fact a brutal exaggeration that propelled me headlong into a brick retaining wall. The wall ended up as rubble, crumbling under my hands as I tried to straighten up. But I was unharmed.
Small accidents like that one continued for several days after, but that night at least I was able to re-learn how to walk, after a few shy try-outs. It seems that the body is wise and knows how to easily adjust to new things, without too many instructions.
I thought about going home at last, but when I walked across Main street, a patrolman parked in front of the gas station at the end of the block turned on his siren and motioned me to go talk to him. He was going to write me up for loitering, for sure.
The moment he started rolling down his window, I smelled scents that I had never noticed in my whole life: the redolence of vitality in the new sweat welling up from his pores, and musky traces of old sweat, threading their way through tiny puffs of soap, Old Spice, nicotine, adrenaline, and the gastric juices refluxing into his esophagus. Not to mention the mixture wafting from the patrol car itself: fragrances of vomit, urine, rancid food…, of madness.
Each of them causing me an anxiety beyond any lust.
The patrolman, poor thing, didn't even have time to scream out in pain. He had barely finished rolling down the window when I had already crossed the thirty yards between us, and pulled him roughly out through the window, not even caring that he still had the seat belt on. My jittery mouth didn't know where to fix itself, so I bit him in the middle of the chest. His desperate struggles lasted only a very brief moment, because I rushed to embrace him with so much anxiety that his spine snapped in half. His heart fluttered like a caged hummingbird, and after vibrating a few seconds, when it finally stopped, I moaned.
"More," I thought. How many quarts of blood are there inside a human? Three, four, five? However many, there weren't enough for me, and anguishing over finding more, I tore at his chest, ripping away clothing and skin, and I rummaged among the ribs until I finally found the heart. I lifted it to my mouth, and chewed on the rubbery fibers, slurping blood droplets that dribbled down from my lips. When I couldn't squeeze anything else out of it, I flung the spent pulp aside and started ripping off pieces of skin, each time larger and larger, and the internal organs, licking up the blood from in between the tissues, until I got to the long bones in the arms, breaking them in half in order to slurp out the concentrated marrow. Inch by inch I explored the body in the search for more blood, until, at the end, I ended up kneeling down next to a patrol car, inside a circle of bloody scraps that had been a patrolman up to about ten minutes ago.
"More," I still thought.
But when I stood up, the face of my wife came immediately to mind. Understanding what the bloody perimeter around me meant, I knew that I had to go away.
I ran and ran, avoiding highways and getting deeper and deeper into the prairie of the Valley of Texas, until dawn caught up with me.
The night that Benjamin attacked me, he left me laid out on the ground, in that dark alley. My thoughts were tornadoes of fake and true memories, that infected my mind while the rotten blood atacked my body. It was impossible to hold on to any of the half-remembered images while each one of my senses felt consumed by the flames. It was rather strange to perceive everything as if it existed for the very first time, for me: each noise and every silence, each glint of light and every shadow, each brushing of the clothing over the skin and every puff of wind sneaking through my hair… Everything was new and trite, seductive and hideous, ecstasy and torture.
I stood up and was amazed with the perspective of my new senses, that now showed me a world with exact definitions, precise edges, diverse attributes, and at the same time rendered everything with almost painful coherence, or an indivisible appearance.
I tried taking a step, pressing down with my foot firmly in order to convince myself that this kaleidoscopic world was real. However, the old motion that knew how to shift my two hundred pounds a yard per step was in fact a brutal exaggeration that propelled me headlong into a brick retaining wall. The wall ended up as rubble, crumbling under my hands as I tried to straighten up. But I was unharmed.
Small accidents like that one continued for several days after, but that night at least I was able to re-learn how to walk, after a few shy try-outs. It seems that the body is wise and knows how to easily adjust to new things, without too many instructions.
I thought about going home at last, but when I walked across Main street, a patrolman parked in front of the gas station at the end of the block turned on his siren and motioned me to go talk to him. He was going to write me up for loitering, for sure.
The moment he started rolling down his window, I smelled scents that I had never noticed in my whole life: the redolence of vitality in the new sweat welling up from his pores, and musky traces of old sweat, threading their way through tiny puffs of soap, Old Spice, nicotine, adrenaline, and the gastric juices refluxing into his esophagus. Not to mention the mixture wafting from the patrol car itself: fragrances of vomit, urine, rancid food…, of madness.
Each of them causing me an anxiety beyond any lust.
The patrolman, poor thing, didn't even have time to scream out in pain. He had barely finished rolling down the window when I had already crossed the thirty yards between us, and pulled him roughly out through the window, not even caring that he still had the seat belt on. My jittery mouth didn't know where to fix itself, so I bit him in the middle of the chest. His desperate struggles lasted only a very brief moment, because I rushed to embrace him with so much anxiety that his spine snapped in half. His heart fluttered like a caged hummingbird, and after vibrating a few seconds, when it finally stopped, I moaned.
"More," I thought. How many quarts of blood are there inside a human? Three, four, five? However many, there weren't enough for me, and anguishing over finding more, I tore at his chest, ripping away clothing and skin, and I rummaged among the ribs until I finally found the heart. I lifted it to my mouth, and chewed on the rubbery fibers, slurping blood droplets that dribbled down from my lips. When I couldn't squeeze anything else out of it, I flung the spent pulp aside and started ripping off pieces of skin, each time larger and larger, and the internal organs, licking up the blood from in between the tissues, until I got to the long bones in the arms, breaking them in half in order to slurp out the concentrated marrow. Inch by inch I explored the body in the search for more blood, until, at the end, I ended up kneeling down next to a patrol car, inside a circle of bloody scraps that had been a patrolman up to about ten minutes ago.
"More," I still thought.
But when I stood up, the face of my wife came immediately to mind. Understanding what the bloody perimeter around me meant, I knew that I had to go away.
I ran and ran, avoiding highways and getting deeper and deeper into the prairie of the Valley of Texas, until dawn caught up with me.
To Be Continued…
Satiety 5
5. The arc of descent
During the next day, hiding under bushes to avoid the Border Patrol's plane finding me out, I remained completely motionless for longer than ten hours.
In the beginning, I was still and quiet because of the horrible and almost uncontrollable desire to feel another life pass through my lips in blood rivulets. I imagined I was paralyzed in order to try calming down the shaking of anxious arms and legs. I pretended I had turned to stone in order to avoid biting my tongue again, every time I ground my teeth.
But after a couple of hours I felt the coming of the dawn, and for the first time in my life I heard the change of attitude of the planet itself with the arrival of the Sun King. My new amplified senses, still burning in the flames of the horrible change, allowed me to feel the momentary relief of the plants as dew fell on them, and the worries of all the living beings out in the open as the temperature rose up quickly. This was August, when the thermometer usually shoots up beyond a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, even before ten in the morning.
In this calm, with the ruthless sun overhead, the flame ran through my senses and my body, until it settled in the center of my soul. Suddenly, all those foreign memories that had been swarming around me like riled-up bats seemed to find a welcoming cave. In an instant, all the things that Benjamin had let me know through the blood transformed from blurry images to crystal clear knowledge.
I spent hours reviewing this new data, like someone who visits his old parents in a nursing home, recognizing half-forgotten faces… Keeping in mind that they belonged to somebody else, Benjamin's memories kept me fascinated with their wonders and vileness.
To begin, I was able to explain to myself that, whatever they had always shown on TV and movies about vampires was not enough as a description of the kind of monster in which Benjamin had transformed me. It seems that, at the beginning of time, somewhere in some Hittite hamlet a young person very full of himself and who fancied himself some sort of wizard that could speak to the souls of the departed had been courting the attention of a malignant spirit—without fully understanding just how malignant these beings could be. The thing is that there are entities roaming around the Earth that are not related to humans at all, nor are they related to whatever beings were named angels and demons in later cultures. Instead, these are entities that have a mind, but that hardly have any intellect, and usually feel a very deep contempt for all flesh. These spirits normally are spread far and wide throughout the world, and since they have no intellect, they have no need to focus in any one particular place and time. Except for this being in question that, in its revulsion for all things material and harassed by the reckless Hittite, concentrated in that one place and time, and attacked the person who it believed was tormenting it day and night. The Hittite lost his mind when he kept feeling invisible fingers and needles raking even through his insides for days on end until, in a terminal fit of uneasiness, he decided to grab a copper blade and open up his veins, in order to escape into the oblivion of death.
But the malignant spirit, riled-up after seeing all the vital force flowing scarlet, tried to invest itself of that life, while its mind was being torn between lust and revulsion and getting lost forever in the empty hole in hemoglobin. It was a cosmic accident, or maybe just the concatenation of all possible bad luck. The Hittite presided over his own death throes fully conscious, and felt the flame of the spirit swallowing his own soul whole. From that moment on, until the end of eternity, his reanimated corpse was his own conscience's coffin. And his soul remained interlaced in the tenuous veil of the malignant spirit, each one tied to the other one in an abnormal yoke.
After a few minutes, one of his neighbors dared to look into his hut, trying to investigate all the shrill shouting that had been heard for days on end, and that had stopped suddenly. The anxious lust of the unclean spirit propelled the Hittite to tear that poor neighbor to scraps, in plain view of everyone else. A great commotion ensued and the rest of the neighbors fled amid cries and tears, and the warriors among them didn't take long to grab all their weapons and hunt him down, and inflict wounds that would have been fatal for any other body.
Wounded, then, feeling all the pain with a sharpness that no other human would have endured in his five senses, and maddened by the impossible situation, the Hittite fled into the desert, never to return to his motherland.
But he arrived to Egypt a few days later…
During the next day, hiding under bushes to avoid the Border Patrol's plane finding me out, I remained completely motionless for longer than ten hours.
In the beginning, I was still and quiet because of the horrible and almost uncontrollable desire to feel another life pass through my lips in blood rivulets. I imagined I was paralyzed in order to try calming down the shaking of anxious arms and legs. I pretended I had turned to stone in order to avoid biting my tongue again, every time I ground my teeth.
But after a couple of hours I felt the coming of the dawn, and for the first time in my life I heard the change of attitude of the planet itself with the arrival of the Sun King. My new amplified senses, still burning in the flames of the horrible change, allowed me to feel the momentary relief of the plants as dew fell on them, and the worries of all the living beings out in the open as the temperature rose up quickly. This was August, when the thermometer usually shoots up beyond a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, even before ten in the morning.
In this calm, with the ruthless sun overhead, the flame ran through my senses and my body, until it settled in the center of my soul. Suddenly, all those foreign memories that had been swarming around me like riled-up bats seemed to find a welcoming cave. In an instant, all the things that Benjamin had let me know through the blood transformed from blurry images to crystal clear knowledge.
I spent hours reviewing this new data, like someone who visits his old parents in a nursing home, recognizing half-forgotten faces… Keeping in mind that they belonged to somebody else, Benjamin's memories kept me fascinated with their wonders and vileness.
To begin, I was able to explain to myself that, whatever they had always shown on TV and movies about vampires was not enough as a description of the kind of monster in which Benjamin had transformed me. It seems that, at the beginning of time, somewhere in some Hittite hamlet a young person very full of himself and who fancied himself some sort of wizard that could speak to the souls of the departed had been courting the attention of a malignant spirit—without fully understanding just how malignant these beings could be. The thing is that there are entities roaming around the Earth that are not related to humans at all, nor are they related to whatever beings were named angels and demons in later cultures. Instead, these are entities that have a mind, but that hardly have any intellect, and usually feel a very deep contempt for all flesh. These spirits normally are spread far and wide throughout the world, and since they have no intellect, they have no need to focus in any one particular place and time. Except for this being in question that, in its revulsion for all things material and harassed by the reckless Hittite, concentrated in that one place and time, and attacked the person who it believed was tormenting it day and night. The Hittite lost his mind when he kept feeling invisible fingers and needles raking even through his insides for days on end until, in a terminal fit of uneasiness, he decided to grab a copper blade and open up his veins, in order to escape into the oblivion of death.
But the malignant spirit, riled-up after seeing all the vital force flowing scarlet, tried to invest itself of that life, while its mind was being torn between lust and revulsion and getting lost forever in the empty hole in hemoglobin. It was a cosmic accident, or maybe just the concatenation of all possible bad luck. The Hittite presided over his own death throes fully conscious, and felt the flame of the spirit swallowing his own soul whole. From that moment on, until the end of eternity, his reanimated corpse was his own conscience's coffin. And his soul remained interlaced in the tenuous veil of the malignant spirit, each one tied to the other one in an abnormal yoke.
After a few minutes, one of his neighbors dared to look into his hut, trying to investigate all the shrill shouting that had been heard for days on end, and that had stopped suddenly. The anxious lust of the unclean spirit propelled the Hittite to tear that poor neighbor to scraps, in plain view of everyone else. A great commotion ensued and the rest of the neighbors fled amid cries and tears, and the warriors among them didn't take long to grab all their weapons and hunt him down, and inflict wounds that would have been fatal for any other body.
Wounded, then, feeling all the pain with a sharpness that no other human would have endured in his five senses, and maddened by the impossible situation, the Hittite fled into the desert, never to return to his motherland.
But he arrived to Egypt a few days later…
To Be Continued…
Satiety 6
6. Inane Syncretism
Stretched out under a stunted bush that could hardly trace fine lines of shadows with the morning sun, I decided that the Genesis to my disaster didn't matter much to me. The more memories of "the Hittite" that I unearthed, the more I convinced myself that Benjamin was that character. I guess that, if he wouldn't identify himself as such, it was because that part of the story wasn't all that significant, not even to him.
Anyway, there were memories of many years of living out in the desert like an animal, stalking unlucky nomads, and of great passionate relationships with men and women, of falling in love head over heels with either one, which always ended up in tragedy whenever his thirst would win again over his loneliness. It was by coincidence (as it is wont to happen) that the Hittite, in a fit of passion, decided to bite and let himself be bitten, and to share his blood with a beauty of kohl eyes. The horror of the transformation shocked the Hittite so much, that a moment later he tore the body of the unlucky woman in tiny pieces. But the solitude is stronger than anything, and very few years went by before he tried to share the blood again. Of the first experiments, none survived the pain of the transformation, or the heat of the sun, or the vengeance of the warriors, since they would find ways to destroy themselves when they lost their sanity. Sometimes, though, their end came through the disgust and boredom of the Hittite. By whim he would create them, and by whim he would destroy his "progeny", without rhyme or reason.
Of the memories of those years, the only thing that caught my attention was the lecture of the eventual discoveries of bizarre abilities and skills given to him by his fusion with the spirit. The Hittite, being the only one of his kind on the Earth, discovered the first mysteries by happy accident.
For example, when he learned that he could transport his body faster than his reflexes allowed for, letting the spirit move him.
This one time, in order to escape a mob of fishermen that had cornered him riverside on the Iteru, with his back to a shack and facing two dozen hoes and harpoons, the Hittite imagined himself standing on the other side of the river. Before he could even figure out what was happening, there he was, standing on the other bank.
Astonished, he used his unnaturally sharp sight to look upon the river bank he had just vacated, and was able to distinguish the fisherman, all of them howling in consternation and looking after their friends who had been ran over by the Hittite when he escaped like a shooting star. The shack had crumbled to the ground, and several of the fishermen had broken arms or legs after the impact with the Hittite's body, that crossed from one river bank to the other, over sixteen hundred feet, in a flash.
Back then, the Hittite's body was still fragile, and adventures like that one caused him an immense pain. The air itself turned into a razor, and any dust mote impacting on his skin would raise welts when he propelled his body to impossible speeds with the spirit that lived in his dead blood. However, day after day he could actually notice that his body was hardening a bit at a time, layer after layer.
There were other skills that were even stranger, like causing objects to move without touching them, or listening to whispers of the sweaty thoughts of people, or even rising in the air, like a feather caught in a draft. These disconcerting powers were a side effect of the fusion of the Hittite's soul with the unclean spirit that had fastened to his body. The formerly limitless spirit was a conduit towards a dimension that exists on the flip side of the physical world, and that created those secret links with everything material. They seemed like sorcery.
But, of all these magical powers, the most interesting one for me was when the Hittite would order the spirit to withdraw suddenly from the blood of another monster like himself. The spirit, by abandoning the hemoglobin at once, caused extreme heat, and the body would incinerate in a sudden bonfire. Since he discovered that power, the Hittite started making monsters left and right, so that he could practice his new powers against them.
That was the beginning of The Wars, which have lasted over six thousand years already.
Stretched out under a stunted bush that could hardly trace fine lines of shadows with the morning sun, I decided that the Genesis to my disaster didn't matter much to me. The more memories of "the Hittite" that I unearthed, the more I convinced myself that Benjamin was that character. I guess that, if he wouldn't identify himself as such, it was because that part of the story wasn't all that significant, not even to him.
Anyway, there were memories of many years of living out in the desert like an animal, stalking unlucky nomads, and of great passionate relationships with men and women, of falling in love head over heels with either one, which always ended up in tragedy whenever his thirst would win again over his loneliness. It was by coincidence (as it is wont to happen) that the Hittite, in a fit of passion, decided to bite and let himself be bitten, and to share his blood with a beauty of kohl eyes. The horror of the transformation shocked the Hittite so much, that a moment later he tore the body of the unlucky woman in tiny pieces. But the solitude is stronger than anything, and very few years went by before he tried to share the blood again. Of the first experiments, none survived the pain of the transformation, or the heat of the sun, or the vengeance of the warriors, since they would find ways to destroy themselves when they lost their sanity. Sometimes, though, their end came through the disgust and boredom of the Hittite. By whim he would create them, and by whim he would destroy his "progeny", without rhyme or reason.
Of the memories of those years, the only thing that caught my attention was the lecture of the eventual discoveries of bizarre abilities and skills given to him by his fusion with the spirit. The Hittite, being the only one of his kind on the Earth, discovered the first mysteries by happy accident.
For example, when he learned that he could transport his body faster than his reflexes allowed for, letting the spirit move him.
This one time, in order to escape a mob of fishermen that had cornered him riverside on the Iteru, with his back to a shack and facing two dozen hoes and harpoons, the Hittite imagined himself standing on the other side of the river. Before he could even figure out what was happening, there he was, standing on the other bank.
Astonished, he used his unnaturally sharp sight to look upon the river bank he had just vacated, and was able to distinguish the fisherman, all of them howling in consternation and looking after their friends who had been ran over by the Hittite when he escaped like a shooting star. The shack had crumbled to the ground, and several of the fishermen had broken arms or legs after the impact with the Hittite's body, that crossed from one river bank to the other, over sixteen hundred feet, in a flash.
Back then, the Hittite's body was still fragile, and adventures like that one caused him an immense pain. The air itself turned into a razor, and any dust mote impacting on his skin would raise welts when he propelled his body to impossible speeds with the spirit that lived in his dead blood. However, day after day he could actually notice that his body was hardening a bit at a time, layer after layer.
There were other skills that were even stranger, like causing objects to move without touching them, or listening to whispers of the sweaty thoughts of people, or even rising in the air, like a feather caught in a draft. These disconcerting powers were a side effect of the fusion of the Hittite's soul with the unclean spirit that had fastened to his body. The formerly limitless spirit was a conduit towards a dimension that exists on the flip side of the physical world, and that created those secret links with everything material. They seemed like sorcery.
But, of all these magical powers, the most interesting one for me was when the Hittite would order the spirit to withdraw suddenly from the blood of another monster like himself. The spirit, by abandoning the hemoglobin at once, caused extreme heat, and the body would incinerate in a sudden bonfire. Since he discovered that power, the Hittite started making monsters left and right, so that he could practice his new powers against them.
That was the beginning of The Wars, which have lasted over six thousand years already.
To Be Continued…
Satiety 7
7. Sinister Baby-Steps
Anxious to try out those magical powers found in the memories of the blood, I finally got up from my scrawny hideout. Right away a stampede of groundhogs sprouted from their lairs under my feet. I guess they were right to be afraid of me, because my arm automatically shot down to the floor dragging me behind it, and snatched one of these vermin with hardly any effort. Before I was able to understand what was going on, I was already slurping the innards of the tiny animal that I had bitten open.
But I wasn't disgusted at all. On the contrary, I felt slight jolts of pleasure as I felt the life force of the small mammal dissipating lightly, like a puff of cigar smoke lost in a gust of wind. I guessed that the unclean spirit that infected my veins, with its contempt for anything material, was who enjoyed the extinction of any vestiges of life. Although, even now it's still difficult for me to distinguish how much of it is the spirit's fault, and how much of it is due simply to the destroying evil of human nature…
But it don't matter none.
I spent several hours practicing these new powers found in the memories. But not all of them were accessible to me. For instance, I couldn't pick up stuff with my mind, not even small pebbles, even though I could make them flip over. And I couldn't read thoughts. The hares and falcons around only projected blurred feelings of fear, aggression and hunger. And the ants and scorpions had such alien thoughts that I only perceived them as dull and pulsating colors. But I couldn't catch even a stray thought from a human. I guess I was too far away from any town…
But I was flabbergasted when I confirmed that I could let the spirit move my body at incredible speeds. It was enough to imagine myself standing next to a mesquite grove hundreds of feet away to find myself there after a matter of a few moments. At those speeds, the air itself felt as if it were a cement wall that scrubbed my skin raw. With all my senses amplified, I could feel everything with an unimaginable immediacy that made me suffer as I had never suffered any pain, but without any actual bodily harm. All the pain, and none of the damage. Today, over twenty years later, I still don't know if it's all worth it…
However, all my complaints were forgotten as soon as I tried to let the spirit lift my body through the air, and was able to do it. I had always suffered from vertigo, but this new sensation of seeing the ground far below, sliding underneath my feet, and the air sneaking into my clothes and hair, filled me with an unhealthy joy. This was the final proof that I was actually a monster. This was proof that I was no longer human at all.
Still experimenting, I tried to imagine that I would find myself in some exotic and foreign place, like Timbuktu, but the spirit couldn't take me out there. I guessed that, if I hadn't been there before in person, the spirit wouldn't be able to transport me. And when I tried to rise into the air to see if I would reach outer space, my body wasn't able to go beyond a couple of miles off the ground. I deduced that the spirit tied me down to the monster maker, to Benjamin. Since he was origin and center of this damned infection, I imagined that if there were more freaks like me then we all were obliged to remain wherever he would be. I wondered what would happen if Benjamin was launched in a rocket to Mars: Would the rest of us be destroyed, or would we be transported out to that planet?
But that don't matter none, either.
During my musings I had let my body float adrift, like a lost kite, until suddenly I realized that I had arrived to the outskirts of the Navy base in Kingsville.
Anxious to try out those magical powers found in the memories of the blood, I finally got up from my scrawny hideout. Right away a stampede of groundhogs sprouted from their lairs under my feet. I guess they were right to be afraid of me, because my arm automatically shot down to the floor dragging me behind it, and snatched one of these vermin with hardly any effort. Before I was able to understand what was going on, I was already slurping the innards of the tiny animal that I had bitten open.
But I wasn't disgusted at all. On the contrary, I felt slight jolts of pleasure as I felt the life force of the small mammal dissipating lightly, like a puff of cigar smoke lost in a gust of wind. I guessed that the unclean spirit that infected my veins, with its contempt for anything material, was who enjoyed the extinction of any vestiges of life. Although, even now it's still difficult for me to distinguish how much of it is the spirit's fault, and how much of it is due simply to the destroying evil of human nature…
But it don't matter none.
I spent several hours practicing these new powers found in the memories. But not all of them were accessible to me. For instance, I couldn't pick up stuff with my mind, not even small pebbles, even though I could make them flip over. And I couldn't read thoughts. The hares and falcons around only projected blurred feelings of fear, aggression and hunger. And the ants and scorpions had such alien thoughts that I only perceived them as dull and pulsating colors. But I couldn't catch even a stray thought from a human. I guess I was too far away from any town…
But I was flabbergasted when I confirmed that I could let the spirit move my body at incredible speeds. It was enough to imagine myself standing next to a mesquite grove hundreds of feet away to find myself there after a matter of a few moments. At those speeds, the air itself felt as if it were a cement wall that scrubbed my skin raw. With all my senses amplified, I could feel everything with an unimaginable immediacy that made me suffer as I had never suffered any pain, but without any actual bodily harm. All the pain, and none of the damage. Today, over twenty years later, I still don't know if it's all worth it…
However, all my complaints were forgotten as soon as I tried to let the spirit lift my body through the air, and was able to do it. I had always suffered from vertigo, but this new sensation of seeing the ground far below, sliding underneath my feet, and the air sneaking into my clothes and hair, filled me with an unhealthy joy. This was the final proof that I was actually a monster. This was proof that I was no longer human at all.
Still experimenting, I tried to imagine that I would find myself in some exotic and foreign place, like Timbuktu, but the spirit couldn't take me out there. I guessed that, if I hadn't been there before in person, the spirit wouldn't be able to transport me. And when I tried to rise into the air to see if I would reach outer space, my body wasn't able to go beyond a couple of miles off the ground. I deduced that the spirit tied me down to the monster maker, to Benjamin. Since he was origin and center of this damned infection, I imagined that if there were more freaks like me then we all were obliged to remain wherever he would be. I wondered what would happen if Benjamin was launched in a rocket to Mars: Would the rest of us be destroyed, or would we be transported out to that planet?
But that don't matter none, either.
During my musings I had let my body float adrift, like a lost kite, until suddenly I realized that I had arrived to the outskirts of the Navy base in Kingsville.
To Be Continued…
Satiety 8
8. The Straw that Broke
I guess it shouldn't surprise anyone that the marines who patrolled the Navy base, once they recovered from the stupefaction of seeing a guy floating several feet off the ground, opened fire after barely a warning.
The sharp pain of the barrage hardly caught my attention this time: I was flummoxed because of this sensation, marvelous and revolting at the same time, came over me. Being close to all those marines, my mind filled up with distorted images and psychedelic colors that felt like rancid, warm grease dripping over my brain. At the same time, a cloud of half-formed whispers and a million shreds of light filled my ears and eyes. I thought I understood: I was sensing every thought of every soldier who was attacking me, but it was all jumbled, because I was perceiving every single thought, all at once: from memories to sensations.
I let my body drop straight to the ground. Hardly noticing the small crater and dust cloud that I caused, I advanced until I reached the closest marine and grabbed him by the neck to keep him still while I looked into his wild eyes. Without bothering with the rest of the soldiers, who were running around like exposed termites, I fixed all my attention on the trapped man.
I opened my eyes wide in surprise, while I felt a small smile pulling the corner of my cheek: The rest of the sounds and images disappeared, and the thoughts and sensations from this man started parading through my mind like publicity billboards. They didn't come in any particular order, but it was easy to guess which physical sensations were related to which memories, and which perceptions belonged to the actual moment. Everything was like a layer cake with several tiers of different contents and flavors, but in the end with an understandable coherence. A mouth-watering coherence.
That idea of a dessert transformed me into a beast of pure desire. I felt the saliva sprouting from under my tongue, and my sense of smell was filled with the live presence that I was holding in my hand. Rolling my eyes back in anticipation, I picked up the man with a single hand and pulled him towards my mouth in a violent move. Just like the poor patrolman the night before, the end of the marine was a bloody puddle at my feet. But this time, though, since I was completely focused on him, all his memories, all his feelings, all his being was poured into me along the life force of the blood. It was such a communion as no lover, no father, no son, no one else could have had with this man, ever. Nobody knew him in this world better than me. Not even himself: He and I were one. I almost felt sad he was not alive anymore…
At that moment I understood how it would have been possible for Benjamin to cross those horrible oceans of time: if every time he satisfied his lust he was in touch with the soul of a person, then each one of all those countless vile acts had been actually acts of love.
Therefore, I decided to make love to each and every one of the Navy base residents.
Of course, once the marines noticed that they were being decimated one by one, they started increasing the intensity of the hostilities. What had been in the beginning only disciplined volleys of side arms, soon became an exposition of every piece of artillery available in the Navy base. In the beginning, since I was afraid even of simple revolvers, I recoiled with every cruel sting of bullets. But, when I noticed that the pain was everything, but the damage was nothing, the expectation of more blood became larger in my mind than all the suffering caused by the artillery. So I continued advancing. One by one the marines marched into my gap-toothed mouth. When the marines noticed that not even their impressive MP5A2 machine guns or their M14-DMR rifles made me pause, they broke out their grenades, RPG's, and even a Howitzer. They didn't have any more success with them than their bullets, but they were not letting me enjoy the blood, since they were disintegrating everybody that I grabbed, rather inconveniently. At a distance, I could see all the pilots rushing to climb into their fighter jets, trying to scramble the alert fighter squadron. And, lost among so much noise, smoke, blood, human remains, and debris, a stray thought reached me, floating like a lost balloon: "-sition AH-64 Helicopter squadron with Hellfire missiles and Hydra 70 rockets… I say again, mayday mayday mayday, fix on and dispatch to this position…"
With the blood amplifying my already riled-up senses, it wasn't all that difficult for me to sense the location of the marine that was radioing for help. In my blood-frenzy all my senses were expanding farther and farther, like splayed tentacles, and when I understood that the helicopters would raze everything in their wake, my anxiety about drinking the rest of the soldiers and the realization that they were trying to prevent me from doing just that, made me feel furious like I had never felt before. In my mind I told the tattle-telling marine, "why don't you just fucking drop dead?"
Much to my surprise, with the eye of the mind I was able to sense the spirit extending out of me and reaching the marine where he had taken shelter, and felt it placing its damned fingers into the brain and heart of the poor soldier. With a hand clutching his chest and a look of complete surprise on his face, the marine keeled over, dead of a massive stroke.
By the time the Apache helicopter squadron appeared and hosed down the military base with waves of flame, I had already made love to about half of the base personnel. I had drank so much blood and gutted so many bodies that I was covered head to toe with scarlet, and my tattered clothes were saturated with the fluid, and all the blood that had filled me to the brim and beyond for many minutes already was dripping out of my lips and nostrils, and even dripped out of my penis and anus. But I wanted more.
Rising aloft slowly and menacingly, and parrying all the rockets shot at me from the helicopters, I disassembled those fighting dragonflies mid air, one by one. I think that part of the perspective of the spirit that dwells in the blood, which is so far removed from this material world, imparts me with an almost instinctual understanding of things that appear rather complicated, like all machines, because the spirit understands all about essences and hidden intentions. And, on that day, it wasn't hard for me to understand which sections of the Apaches were the most vulnerable, so that it took very little effort to tumble each one of them out of the sky.
I understood, though, that soon they would come to bear more and more powerful weapons, and that it was possible that one of those weapons could actually destroy me. In my gluttony, I would have risked any confrontation as long as I could continue feasting. But, at that moment of madness, I heard a new sound in the middle of my mind. It was a soft purring, as if a cat would have snuggled up behind my forehead, but that became more insistent by the second, until it reached the point that I believed that it would make my eyes pop out of their sockets and that my few remaining teeth would fall out of my head. And, along this purring, and inside of it, these words arrived:
"Stop this madness! You must not reveal our existence to mortals! Flee!"
With the spirit guiding me to the place whence these thoughts came, right away I directed my flight towards the small town of Alice, thirty miles Northeast of Kingsville.
I guess it shouldn't surprise anyone that the marines who patrolled the Navy base, once they recovered from the stupefaction of seeing a guy floating several feet off the ground, opened fire after barely a warning.
The sharp pain of the barrage hardly caught my attention this time: I was flummoxed because of this sensation, marvelous and revolting at the same time, came over me. Being close to all those marines, my mind filled up with distorted images and psychedelic colors that felt like rancid, warm grease dripping over my brain. At the same time, a cloud of half-formed whispers and a million shreds of light filled my ears and eyes. I thought I understood: I was sensing every thought of every soldier who was attacking me, but it was all jumbled, because I was perceiving every single thought, all at once: from memories to sensations.
I let my body drop straight to the ground. Hardly noticing the small crater and dust cloud that I caused, I advanced until I reached the closest marine and grabbed him by the neck to keep him still while I looked into his wild eyes. Without bothering with the rest of the soldiers, who were running around like exposed termites, I fixed all my attention on the trapped man.
I opened my eyes wide in surprise, while I felt a small smile pulling the corner of my cheek: The rest of the sounds and images disappeared, and the thoughts and sensations from this man started parading through my mind like publicity billboards. They didn't come in any particular order, but it was easy to guess which physical sensations were related to which memories, and which perceptions belonged to the actual moment. Everything was like a layer cake with several tiers of different contents and flavors, but in the end with an understandable coherence. A mouth-watering coherence.
That idea of a dessert transformed me into a beast of pure desire. I felt the saliva sprouting from under my tongue, and my sense of smell was filled with the live presence that I was holding in my hand. Rolling my eyes back in anticipation, I picked up the man with a single hand and pulled him towards my mouth in a violent move. Just like the poor patrolman the night before, the end of the marine was a bloody puddle at my feet. But this time, though, since I was completely focused on him, all his memories, all his feelings, all his being was poured into me along the life force of the blood. It was such a communion as no lover, no father, no son, no one else could have had with this man, ever. Nobody knew him in this world better than me. Not even himself: He and I were one. I almost felt sad he was not alive anymore…
At that moment I understood how it would have been possible for Benjamin to cross those horrible oceans of time: if every time he satisfied his lust he was in touch with the soul of a person, then each one of all those countless vile acts had been actually acts of love.
Therefore, I decided to make love to each and every one of the Navy base residents.
Of course, once the marines noticed that they were being decimated one by one, they started increasing the intensity of the hostilities. What had been in the beginning only disciplined volleys of side arms, soon became an exposition of every piece of artillery available in the Navy base. In the beginning, since I was afraid even of simple revolvers, I recoiled with every cruel sting of bullets. But, when I noticed that the pain was everything, but the damage was nothing, the expectation of more blood became larger in my mind than all the suffering caused by the artillery. So I continued advancing. One by one the marines marched into my gap-toothed mouth. When the marines noticed that not even their impressive MP5A2 machine guns or their M14-DMR rifles made me pause, they broke out their grenades, RPG's, and even a Howitzer. They didn't have any more success with them than their bullets, but they were not letting me enjoy the blood, since they were disintegrating everybody that I grabbed, rather inconveniently. At a distance, I could see all the pilots rushing to climb into their fighter jets, trying to scramble the alert fighter squadron. And, lost among so much noise, smoke, blood, human remains, and debris, a stray thought reached me, floating like a lost balloon: "-sition AH-64 Helicopter squadron with Hellfire missiles and Hydra 70 rockets… I say again, mayday mayday mayday, fix on and dispatch to this position…"
With the blood amplifying my already riled-up senses, it wasn't all that difficult for me to sense the location of the marine that was radioing for help. In my blood-frenzy all my senses were expanding farther and farther, like splayed tentacles, and when I understood that the helicopters would raze everything in their wake, my anxiety about drinking the rest of the soldiers and the realization that they were trying to prevent me from doing just that, made me feel furious like I had never felt before. In my mind I told the tattle-telling marine, "why don't you just fucking drop dead?"
Much to my surprise, with the eye of the mind I was able to sense the spirit extending out of me and reaching the marine where he had taken shelter, and felt it placing its damned fingers into the brain and heart of the poor soldier. With a hand clutching his chest and a look of complete surprise on his face, the marine keeled over, dead of a massive stroke.
By the time the Apache helicopter squadron appeared and hosed down the military base with waves of flame, I had already made love to about half of the base personnel. I had drank so much blood and gutted so many bodies that I was covered head to toe with scarlet, and my tattered clothes were saturated with the fluid, and all the blood that had filled me to the brim and beyond for many minutes already was dripping out of my lips and nostrils, and even dripped out of my penis and anus. But I wanted more.
Rising aloft slowly and menacingly, and parrying all the rockets shot at me from the helicopters, I disassembled those fighting dragonflies mid air, one by one. I think that part of the perspective of the spirit that dwells in the blood, which is so far removed from this material world, imparts me with an almost instinctual understanding of things that appear rather complicated, like all machines, because the spirit understands all about essences and hidden intentions. And, on that day, it wasn't hard for me to understand which sections of the Apaches were the most vulnerable, so that it took very little effort to tumble each one of them out of the sky.
I understood, though, that soon they would come to bear more and more powerful weapons, and that it was possible that one of those weapons could actually destroy me. In my gluttony, I would have risked any confrontation as long as I could continue feasting. But, at that moment of madness, I heard a new sound in the middle of my mind. It was a soft purring, as if a cat would have snuggled up behind my forehead, but that became more insistent by the second, until it reached the point that I believed that it would make my eyes pop out of their sockets and that my few remaining teeth would fall out of my head. And, along this purring, and inside of it, these words arrived:
"Stop this madness! You must not reveal our existence to mortals! Flee!"
With the spirit guiding me to the place whence these thoughts came, right away I directed my flight towards the small town of Alice, thirty miles Northeast of Kingsville.
To Be Continued…
Satiety 9
9. They Come by It Honestly
With my eyes on the horizon, it was but a few moments before my body broke through like a sledgehammer into a sonic boom. And a few moments later, I had already arrived at Alice, and had landed in front of a small abandoned farm house, with its windows and doors boarded up with rotted two-by-fours.
I headed inside, barely noticing that I had pulverized the barriers. Everything inside was broken furniture and dust powder. I continued looking for the insistent purring through the living room and the kitchen, and finally I found them, all of them sitting down on the ground in an empty larder. My sudden appearance among them caused disbelief and confusion in the beginning, but after a few seconds all of them withdrew to the opposite end of the room, stumbling one on top the other, and piling around a bearded young man, who stood there looking daggers at me.
"What is it that you were saying?" I looked at him with my head tilted to the side, making small waterfalls of all the dried-out blood flakes that covered my whole body. "Why did you want me to flee? And how is it that you can place words inside my mind?"
Instead of replying, he rushed at me, followed by the half-dozen kids around him, all of them with hands like hooks in front of them and a feral expression on their faces. I was surprised into backing up by reflex to the other side of the small room, bumping off empty shelves. They were coming at me at normal walking speed, and when they got close to me, about to put their hands on me, I felt qualms about letting them touch me, so I raised an open hand with the palm towards them.
"No!" I thundered with a voice like the Angel of Revelation.
Immediately, they all fell flat on their backs. Well, well, I thought, I can't pick up little pebbles but I can bowl over homeless jerks. Interested in this new discovery, I bent my concentration on the kid closest to me, at my feet, and extending my hand in a dramatic gesture, I made him rise into the air with only the power of my mind. I laughed and laughed when I saw the kid's ridiculous gyrations, who kept yelling for help as he twisted slowly in mid air. His buddies had been crawling on their butts away from us, with mixed expressions of dread and anger on their faces. When my eyes found the bearded guy again, I lost all interest in playing around with floating-skinny-kid so, with barely a gesture, I flung him through the doorway, all the way into the kitchen. Twisting around and screaming through the air, he landed like a sack of potatoes. Then, once more I faced the beard guy, but this time I brought him towards me by making him float in the air.
"You still haven't answered me… What are you all doing here, and how do you place words in my thoughts?"
Beardy moaned, whined, cried, drooled, and babbled. But after a few seconds he mustered a tiny amount of dignity and asked me to please put him down. I agreed, amused with the impotent tantrum I'd just witnessed. Almost in a docile manner, he informed me that his name was Joachim and that he was the most powerful vampire in Texas. I couldn't help myself and laughed at him. The poor guy seemed on the verge of tears. He tried to tell me some of the very numerous events in his glorious life as a vampire, which had been going on for over a hundred years. But the only thing that interested me was to learn who had made him a vampire, and which powers he possessed.
"Did Benjamin also make you? Can you fly? Can you read minds?"
Joachim seemed reluctant to answer. He was working himself up into taking control again, and started insulting me for having exposed the vampires' existence to the armed forces, and tried to tell me off for having been careless. Supposedly, you shouldn't go out in daylight because it was very obvious that the vampires are walking dead bodies, and that you were supposed to be very careful because we had very fragile bodies that could very easily be consumed by fire. But I got tired of listening to him quickly, and so I tried to read his thoughts. I was quite surprised to find myself incapable of doing it.
"Get out! Do not try to get into my thoughts!"
I didn't know if he had spoken out loud, or if Joachim had only though it. But, in order to avoid useless arguments, I suddenly grabbed him and bit him. The rest of the vampires shrieked, but remained at our feet, still intimidated.
Ah, the blood! There was hardly any blood inside Joachim, but whatever little I managed to suck out was a concentration of all the pleasant sensations that I had just enjoyed with the platoon of marines in the Navy base. Through the blood I learned all the answers I was looking for…
Distracted and with lots to think about, I let Joachim drop to the floor. He hadn't even lost consciousness, and was writhing weakly on the floor. Right away two other vampires jumped on him and started biting him, trying to suck out the rest of the blood. I looked at them for a little while, somewhat bothered by the unseemly vampiric cannibalism, when suddenly I remembered the most important power in Benjamin's memories.
Holding my breath, and concentrating really hard, even biting my tongue to the side, I ordered the spirit to come out from them. Instantly seven human-shaped torches appeared on the floor of the house, amid sobs and howls. Their flames and their moans lasted quite a long time, and I stood there, looking at them while it happened. Long minutes after the house itself had been swallowed by the flames they were still groaning, even though they were just piles of hot charcoal by then. Their sighs didn't stop until I went around kicking, so as to scatter their ashes among the debris. Walking slowly, I emerged from the fire, unscathed. In the distance you could hear a firetruck's siren, rushing to come and put out the fire before it could spread all over the dry grass of the prairie.
I left, walking out into the empty valley, walking slowly, naked, smudged with ashes, and meditating on everything I learned from Joachim's blood, and whispering time after time, like I had been doing all the while I had witnessed the pyre:
"Burn! Burn!"
With my eyes on the horizon, it was but a few moments before my body broke through like a sledgehammer into a sonic boom. And a few moments later, I had already arrived at Alice, and had landed in front of a small abandoned farm house, with its windows and doors boarded up with rotted two-by-fours.
I headed inside, barely noticing that I had pulverized the barriers. Everything inside was broken furniture and dust powder. I continued looking for the insistent purring through the living room and the kitchen, and finally I found them, all of them sitting down on the ground in an empty larder. My sudden appearance among them caused disbelief and confusion in the beginning, but after a few seconds all of them withdrew to the opposite end of the room, stumbling one on top the other, and piling around a bearded young man, who stood there looking daggers at me.
"What is it that you were saying?" I looked at him with my head tilted to the side, making small waterfalls of all the dried-out blood flakes that covered my whole body. "Why did you want me to flee? And how is it that you can place words inside my mind?"
Instead of replying, he rushed at me, followed by the half-dozen kids around him, all of them with hands like hooks in front of them and a feral expression on their faces. I was surprised into backing up by reflex to the other side of the small room, bumping off empty shelves. They were coming at me at normal walking speed, and when they got close to me, about to put their hands on me, I felt qualms about letting them touch me, so I raised an open hand with the palm towards them.
"No!" I thundered with a voice like the Angel of Revelation.
Immediately, they all fell flat on their backs. Well, well, I thought, I can't pick up little pebbles but I can bowl over homeless jerks. Interested in this new discovery, I bent my concentration on the kid closest to me, at my feet, and extending my hand in a dramatic gesture, I made him rise into the air with only the power of my mind. I laughed and laughed when I saw the kid's ridiculous gyrations, who kept yelling for help as he twisted slowly in mid air. His buddies had been crawling on their butts away from us, with mixed expressions of dread and anger on their faces. When my eyes found the bearded guy again, I lost all interest in playing around with floating-skinny-kid so, with barely a gesture, I flung him through the doorway, all the way into the kitchen. Twisting around and screaming through the air, he landed like a sack of potatoes. Then, once more I faced the beard guy, but this time I brought him towards me by making him float in the air.
"You still haven't answered me… What are you all doing here, and how do you place words in my thoughts?"
Beardy moaned, whined, cried, drooled, and babbled. But after a few seconds he mustered a tiny amount of dignity and asked me to please put him down. I agreed, amused with the impotent tantrum I'd just witnessed. Almost in a docile manner, he informed me that his name was Joachim and that he was the most powerful vampire in Texas. I couldn't help myself and laughed at him. The poor guy seemed on the verge of tears. He tried to tell me some of the very numerous events in his glorious life as a vampire, which had been going on for over a hundred years. But the only thing that interested me was to learn who had made him a vampire, and which powers he possessed.
"Did Benjamin also make you? Can you fly? Can you read minds?"
Joachim seemed reluctant to answer. He was working himself up into taking control again, and started insulting me for having exposed the vampires' existence to the armed forces, and tried to tell me off for having been careless. Supposedly, you shouldn't go out in daylight because it was very obvious that the vampires are walking dead bodies, and that you were supposed to be very careful because we had very fragile bodies that could very easily be consumed by fire. But I got tired of listening to him quickly, and so I tried to read his thoughts. I was quite surprised to find myself incapable of doing it.
"Get out! Do not try to get into my thoughts!"
I didn't know if he had spoken out loud, or if Joachim had only though it. But, in order to avoid useless arguments, I suddenly grabbed him and bit him. The rest of the vampires shrieked, but remained at our feet, still intimidated.
Ah, the blood! There was hardly any blood inside Joachim, but whatever little I managed to suck out was a concentration of all the pleasant sensations that I had just enjoyed with the platoon of marines in the Navy base. Through the blood I learned all the answers I was looking for…
Distracted and with lots to think about, I let Joachim drop to the floor. He hadn't even lost consciousness, and was writhing weakly on the floor. Right away two other vampires jumped on him and started biting him, trying to suck out the rest of the blood. I looked at them for a little while, somewhat bothered by the unseemly vampiric cannibalism, when suddenly I remembered the most important power in Benjamin's memories.
Holding my breath, and concentrating really hard, even biting my tongue to the side, I ordered the spirit to come out from them. Instantly seven human-shaped torches appeared on the floor of the house, amid sobs and howls. Their flames and their moans lasted quite a long time, and I stood there, looking at them while it happened. Long minutes after the house itself had been swallowed by the flames they were still groaning, even though they were just piles of hot charcoal by then. Their sighs didn't stop until I went around kicking, so as to scatter their ashes among the debris. Walking slowly, I emerged from the fire, unscathed. In the distance you could hear a firetruck's siren, rushing to come and put out the fire before it could spread all over the dry grass of the prairie.
I left, walking out into the empty valley, walking slowly, naked, smudged with ashes, and meditating on everything I learned from Joachim's blood, and whispering time after time, like I had been doing all the while I had witnessed the pyre:
"Burn! Burn!"
To Be Continued…
Satiety 10
10. He Who Does Not Learn from History
Burdened with the new memories that I drank out of Joachim, I didn't mind walking aimlessly until nightfall. Also, it made no difference to me to be naked. Anyway, with a pot belly and a dingus like a twisted peanut with an Afro wig, there wasn't much to feel bashful about.
It seemed simple enough to organize the memories in the blood. They were rather few, compared to the avalanche of reminiscence from Benjamin, which buried my own evocations. But I wasn't feeling antsy about the amount of them, but about the conclusions I was drawing from them.
First and foremost, I started having the awful suspicion that my intellect would never increase. I had already imagined that the spirit that lived besides and around my soul would impart me with extraordinary wisdom. I was even thinking ideas in my head with big words that I had never learnt before. But, when I reviewed the memories of the blood, I started understanding that my mental powers would never go beyond what they already were before the transformation. Joachim seemed like a mental giant compared to me, and Benjamin was some sort of dark god over both of us, especially after having consumed so many experiences along the blood of countless victims. But it wasn't as if they were more intelligent than me, no.
Simply, they knew more facts.
All the experiences throughout so many years filled them up like saddle bags to bursting, but they (and me, too) would never reflect any of the experiences that were collected. They would never improve on single bit the way they were.
I finally understood what the death of my body had meant… I would never change, nor would I ever have the chance to be better than before. As a matter of fact, according to the memories of the blood, I could only assume that I would become a worse and worse version of myself, day after day.
But that fit of self-pity was quickly gone, and I lost all interest in it when I remembered what I had learned. Joachim had been a vampire for a hundred years, and he had belonged to many monster's covens. And he had never met Benjamin.
In all the years that Joachim roamed the Earth, with every meeting of those assemblies of vampires, he discovered that there were always the same list of rules, as if they were some sort of boy scouts or kindergarten kids. The purpose of all those rules was to avoid catching the attention of the world of the living. The reason was simple: no matter how powerful the living dead thought they were, every day there were more and more living people, and less and less vampires.
So, the most important rules were these:
It is forbidden to make vampires out of children, because they are uncontrollable and wont to throw inconsolable tantrums, and in a matter of hours after being created they could create such a catastrophe that even the vampire leaders would be destroyed. It is forbidden to have two elder vampires in the same group, because sooner or later they will end up at each other's throats along with all their fledglings. It is forbidden to give any powers of the spirit to fledgling vampires, because only after the passage of many years they can learn to control them. And the most important rule for all vampires: It is absolutely forbidden to search for the Original Maker.
In my mind I could see the horrible results each time that someone would violate the rules. Although it seemed that the vampires had made up their rules in order to break them: almost every weekend there was some sort of crisis that ended up in great bonfires and lots of small parcels of ashes kept in leather pouches (and, in more modern times, even in plastic bags) as punishment.
But Joachim was very obedient, and he always did what was asked of him. For ten years after he had been turned into a vampire he was his maker's favorite pet. In the covens, the new vampires are the ones sent out to hunt for new victims, but are not allowed to drink the blood but only once a week. So the new vampires spend many years maddened by the thirst, but kept in check and obedient by the terror they feel of the elders, who are full of weird powers and unpredictable violence. After a while, the new vampires start learning to control the thirst a little bit, and that's when they begin to discover the powers of the spirit. But all the vampires in the world nowadays are very weak. It's as if all of them, even the most powerful elders, had received diluted blood for their transformation.
It was an easy mystery to solve, aided by Benjamin's memories. Of the first vampires that Benjamin created in ancient Egypt, almost none of them survived his experimentation with the spirit's fire. Afterward, when Benjamin began traveling throughout the world, he gradually started learning to control how much potency he transmitted to new vampires when he created them. After a few centuries of try-outs, hundreds of years before the Romans arrived to every corner of the ancient world, Benjamin had created vast legions of domesticated vampires, prey to the madness of the thirst, but without the solace of magical powers. For a thousand years, Benjamin ruled like a god over his creations.
But those few survivors from the first years of the thirst, gathered their own immortal armies slowly, and then, for a hundred and fifty years, there was open warfare between the first-born and the dark god.
Of course, Benjamin was the victor. Day after day, Benjamin searched far and wide for any sign of his creations, and made sure that each and every one of them ended up as a fistful of ashes. The malignant spirit could reanimate their wounded bodies and could heal almost any wound, but after the fire, there was no return. And there was no escape from it, either.
The world that the Romans inherited was innocent of monsters, except for one.
Sudden, like a bucket of cold water to the face, a new power awakened in my mind: Miles away I could sense a new presence. Joachim's memories informed me that he had been the leader of the coven at Kingsville, with dozens of fledglings, created from among the University students. But just yesterday one of the first-born had arrived on the town and had started decimating all of Joachim's followers. In fear, he had fled to Alice along with the last survivors of his group.
My new power told me with great precision where I would find this millennial first-born: Right on the dwelling of a lady, mother of two teenagers, who had been my whole world up to two days ago.
I ordered the spirit to fly with me to Kingsville, and in a matter of seconds, we had already crossed the distance of thirty miles…
Burdened with the new memories that I drank out of Joachim, I didn't mind walking aimlessly until nightfall. Also, it made no difference to me to be naked. Anyway, with a pot belly and a dingus like a twisted peanut with an Afro wig, there wasn't much to feel bashful about.
It seemed simple enough to organize the memories in the blood. They were rather few, compared to the avalanche of reminiscence from Benjamin, which buried my own evocations. But I wasn't feeling antsy about the amount of them, but about the conclusions I was drawing from them.
First and foremost, I started having the awful suspicion that my intellect would never increase. I had already imagined that the spirit that lived besides and around my soul would impart me with extraordinary wisdom. I was even thinking ideas in my head with big words that I had never learnt before. But, when I reviewed the memories of the blood, I started understanding that my mental powers would never go beyond what they already were before the transformation. Joachim seemed like a mental giant compared to me, and Benjamin was some sort of dark god over both of us, especially after having consumed so many experiences along the blood of countless victims. But it wasn't as if they were more intelligent than me, no.
Simply, they knew more facts.
All the experiences throughout so many years filled them up like saddle bags to bursting, but they (and me, too) would never reflect any of the experiences that were collected. They would never improve on single bit the way they were.
I finally understood what the death of my body had meant… I would never change, nor would I ever have the chance to be better than before. As a matter of fact, according to the memories of the blood, I could only assume that I would become a worse and worse version of myself, day after day.
But that fit of self-pity was quickly gone, and I lost all interest in it when I remembered what I had learned. Joachim had been a vampire for a hundred years, and he had belonged to many monster's covens. And he had never met Benjamin.
In all the years that Joachim roamed the Earth, with every meeting of those assemblies of vampires, he discovered that there were always the same list of rules, as if they were some sort of boy scouts or kindergarten kids. The purpose of all those rules was to avoid catching the attention of the world of the living. The reason was simple: no matter how powerful the living dead thought they were, every day there were more and more living people, and less and less vampires.
So, the most important rules were these:
It is forbidden to make vampires out of children, because they are uncontrollable and wont to throw inconsolable tantrums, and in a matter of hours after being created they could create such a catastrophe that even the vampire leaders would be destroyed. It is forbidden to have two elder vampires in the same group, because sooner or later they will end up at each other's throats along with all their fledglings. It is forbidden to give any powers of the spirit to fledgling vampires, because only after the passage of many years they can learn to control them. And the most important rule for all vampires: It is absolutely forbidden to search for the Original Maker.
In my mind I could see the horrible results each time that someone would violate the rules. Although it seemed that the vampires had made up their rules in order to break them: almost every weekend there was some sort of crisis that ended up in great bonfires and lots of small parcels of ashes kept in leather pouches (and, in more modern times, even in plastic bags) as punishment.
But Joachim was very obedient, and he always did what was asked of him. For ten years after he had been turned into a vampire he was his maker's favorite pet. In the covens, the new vampires are the ones sent out to hunt for new victims, but are not allowed to drink the blood but only once a week. So the new vampires spend many years maddened by the thirst, but kept in check and obedient by the terror they feel of the elders, who are full of weird powers and unpredictable violence. After a while, the new vampires start learning to control the thirst a little bit, and that's when they begin to discover the powers of the spirit. But all the vampires in the world nowadays are very weak. It's as if all of them, even the most powerful elders, had received diluted blood for their transformation.
It was an easy mystery to solve, aided by Benjamin's memories. Of the first vampires that Benjamin created in ancient Egypt, almost none of them survived his experimentation with the spirit's fire. Afterward, when Benjamin began traveling throughout the world, he gradually started learning to control how much potency he transmitted to new vampires when he created them. After a few centuries of try-outs, hundreds of years before the Romans arrived to every corner of the ancient world, Benjamin had created vast legions of domesticated vampires, prey to the madness of the thirst, but without the solace of magical powers. For a thousand years, Benjamin ruled like a god over his creations.
But those few survivors from the first years of the thirst, gathered their own immortal armies slowly, and then, for a hundred and fifty years, there was open warfare between the first-born and the dark god.
Of course, Benjamin was the victor. Day after day, Benjamin searched far and wide for any sign of his creations, and made sure that each and every one of them ended up as a fistful of ashes. The malignant spirit could reanimate their wounded bodies and could heal almost any wound, but after the fire, there was no return. And there was no escape from it, either.
The world that the Romans inherited was innocent of monsters, except for one.
Sudden, like a bucket of cold water to the face, a new power awakened in my mind: Miles away I could sense a new presence. Joachim's memories informed me that he had been the leader of the coven at Kingsville, with dozens of fledglings, created from among the University students. But just yesterday one of the first-born had arrived on the town and had started decimating all of Joachim's followers. In fear, he had fled to Alice along with the last survivors of his group.
My new power told me with great precision where I would find this millennial first-born: Right on the dwelling of a lady, mother of two teenagers, who had been my whole world up to two days ago.
I ordered the spirit to fly with me to Kingsville, and in a matter of seconds, we had already crossed the distance of thirty miles…
To Be Continued…
Satiety 11
11. In the Valley of the Shadow of Death
I wasn't able to think at all for many minutes. Even though my senses would force me to experience the world in an extravagant manner, what I was seeing overwhelmed my body and mind's ability to actually feel. Without any sign of reaction, still, cold, totally disconnected even from my body, my soul wailed like a distant siren, or like the abandoned pealing of a high-seas buoy.
The humble abode that had been my home for so many years, where the wife and I raised our children, looked like the inside of a cruel abattoir. Great pools of blood flooded the cheap carpet in the living room, and all the furniture was a shambles. Runners of blood climbed the walls, like vast scarlet doodles drawn by an idiot hand. Small pieces of flesh laid strewn on every surface, some with hairs still stuck to them. I went through the small rooms enveloped in my new mantle of coldness, with every new discovery making the howling of my soul sound more distant at every turn, as if the soul itself shrank while it withdrew more and more. Each room was a worse horror than the previous one. And the final terror awaited for me in the master bedroom.
It was the only room that had no blood-splattered walls or floor. But, where my bed ought to have been, there was only burnt lumber surrounded of soot and rubble. A couple of fire extinguishers laid spent in a corner, and among all this, a silhouette drawn in ashes.
Appalled, I realized that the howling that I thought was coming from my soul actually was moans coming from the immolation. With my eyes almost popping out of their sockets, I noticed that among the ashes an "L" shaped piece of metal stuck out, at the place where the hip bones ought to have been. The final fright overwhelmed me: My wife had suffered a car accident a couple of years back that left her with a fractured hip bone, which had to be replaced by an artificial implant.
As quick as I could, and finally getting rid of that coldness enveloping me, I knelt besides the figure in order to scatter the ashes with my hands.
I hadn't noticed that several minutes had gone by and I was still scattering the ashes, with reddened tears rolling down my cheeks, growling through clenched teeth along my weeping, until I heard a small laugh behind me. In a single motion, I stood up, turned around, and lifted the laughing person from the neck, with a single hand.
This was another short man, but his appearance was frightening. Even though he was attired with a plain shirt, pants and shoes, he looked like a blackened mummy. And still he smiled at me. Without wanting to hear any explanations, and still full of sorrow for what I had just seen, I passed judgment right away:
"Burn!" I yelled hatefully.
I was astonished to see this smiling mummy make a face of extreme pain, and then break out in guffaws.
"Oi! Tiddler, surely you know one must be full of blood inside to be caused to sprout flames, yah?" And he still laughed.
Not wanting to speak to him, I bit this buffoon in the neck. A single drop of blood was all I was able to suck out of him, after spending long seconds trying in earnest. But that single drop was like a nuclear explosion inside my brain. With all kinds of details, almost as if I was actually there, living in that moment, I witnessed everything that had happened in my home.
The vampire Imenand had come to Kingsville following the deafening klaxon of Benjamin's presence, which is how he is perceived by the mind of those who can read thoughts. When he arrived to the town he discovered that there was a coven here already. Imenand would destroy any vampire he came across, as a way to avoid complications later on. He was in the process of eliminating all of them when he felt in his mind the quickening of new klaxons in the town of Kingsville. Suddenly, instead of hearing the solitary bellowing of Benjamin's soul, there was a complete brass section, like the Final Trumpets of the Apocalypse.
For the first time in many centuries, Benjamin must have been creating complete vampires, with all the powers, as he did in the beginning. When Imenand arrived at my home, where the chorus of trumpets had been sounding off, he found the same scene I did. Except that my wife was still aflame. It was Imenand who took the fire extinguishers from the kitchen and put out the fire. There was nothing left to do for my wife's body, but he was able to prevent the rest of the house burning down. His purpose was to investigate just what it was that had happened here. But when he noticed that Benjamin's presence had vanished again, he lost all interest and left to investigate instead the killings at the Navy base. Later on, when I returned, he detected me and so he came to see me.
With an incredible strength, Imenand took my hand away from his neck, and pushed me all the way to the opposite wall. But he didn't seem interested in fighting. Instead, he was looking at me with a half-smile on his face.
"Benjamin did not enlighten you, did he?" Not waiting for an answer, he went on. "That would be just like him: He thinks it is better for one to explore and discover. I can see that he bestowed extraordinary powers, yah? Very few vampires could have challenged a whole platoon of modern marines without harm. Forsooth! A mere platoon of Roman soldiers would suffice to trounce any of us, turn us into minced meat, back in the day… Alas, it matters not… I am to assume that you also ignore Benjamin's new whereabouts, yah? I divine that he must have gone to abscond himself again in the Ministry of Mysteries. Bah! May he take his ease for as many decades as he desires, for now it shall be my turn to reign, seeing as Benjamin has disappeared. Which reminds me: There cannot be two kings. So, burn!"
The pain was gigantic, but it couldn't compare to the fulminating pain that I felt with my transformation, or to the numbing coldness I felt by being in this house. I took it as a passing bother only, because the flames did not sprout. And, mostly out of anger than out of resolve, I put my hand up like a traffic cop and said again, "No!"
Imenand's smile fell off his face like a wet spaghetti from a spoon. Alarmed, he resumed his attack, but the spirit refused to obey him. Not minding any of the mysterious powers of the spirit, I tried to solve this problem like I had done all my life, and in one single bound I landed in front of Imenand again. Without any remorse whatever, I punched him on the temple and kneed him in the groin. He only stood there, looking at me incredulously.
"Oi! What do you think you are doing? Do you think you will make me unconscious with fisticuuuuuuuuuuh…?"
Tired of his arrogance, before he finished the word "fisticuffs" I stuck my hand into his mouth as far as it went, and with a violent jerk I ripped off his jaw. Imenand yelled out inarticulately, retreating as quick as possible, and feeling gingerly with his hands around the hole on his face. When I saw that it was not that difficult to rip him apart, I went after him. Taking hold of anything I could grab, I started to rip off piece after piece. His hand, making a claw, which tried to scratch my face off, was the first thing that came off amid gnashing teeth and hard jerks. Each piece that I managed to rip off made me angrier and angrier, until the moment came when everything turned into a white wash in my eyes and I transformed into a destroying automaton.
Panting in a rage, several minutes later I was sitting on the floor surrounded by small pieces of Imenand. I was holding his head was on my lap, looking into his eyes, terrible eyes that still moved from one side to the other, wildly. Still furious, I collected all the scraps of Imenand's body. Once I had them piled up, I placed his head on top, carefully, making sure that he could see what I was doing at all times. Then, with a savage move, I tore my wrist with my teeth, and started spraying blood all over the trembling shreds. As if by the blackest enchantment, the pieces started fusing together while Imenand's eyes shone in understanding and terror.
I repeated the spraying several times, until the gelatinous mass started taking human form again. Then, concentrating harder than ever, I said again, "Burn!"
Watching that pyre consuming the remains of my former home, I decided from that moment on never to surrender again to the thirst, and to go far away, to wherever there wouldn't be any human beings.
I wasn't able to think at all for many minutes. Even though my senses would force me to experience the world in an extravagant manner, what I was seeing overwhelmed my body and mind's ability to actually feel. Without any sign of reaction, still, cold, totally disconnected even from my body, my soul wailed like a distant siren, or like the abandoned pealing of a high-seas buoy.
The humble abode that had been my home for so many years, where the wife and I raised our children, looked like the inside of a cruel abattoir. Great pools of blood flooded the cheap carpet in the living room, and all the furniture was a shambles. Runners of blood climbed the walls, like vast scarlet doodles drawn by an idiot hand. Small pieces of flesh laid strewn on every surface, some with hairs still stuck to them. I went through the small rooms enveloped in my new mantle of coldness, with every new discovery making the howling of my soul sound more distant at every turn, as if the soul itself shrank while it withdrew more and more. Each room was a worse horror than the previous one. And the final terror awaited for me in the master bedroom.
It was the only room that had no blood-splattered walls or floor. But, where my bed ought to have been, there was only burnt lumber surrounded of soot and rubble. A couple of fire extinguishers laid spent in a corner, and among all this, a silhouette drawn in ashes.
Appalled, I realized that the howling that I thought was coming from my soul actually was moans coming from the immolation. With my eyes almost popping out of their sockets, I noticed that among the ashes an "L" shaped piece of metal stuck out, at the place where the hip bones ought to have been. The final fright overwhelmed me: My wife had suffered a car accident a couple of years back that left her with a fractured hip bone, which had to be replaced by an artificial implant.
As quick as I could, and finally getting rid of that coldness enveloping me, I knelt besides the figure in order to scatter the ashes with my hands.
I hadn't noticed that several minutes had gone by and I was still scattering the ashes, with reddened tears rolling down my cheeks, growling through clenched teeth along my weeping, until I heard a small laugh behind me. In a single motion, I stood up, turned around, and lifted the laughing person from the neck, with a single hand.
This was another short man, but his appearance was frightening. Even though he was attired with a plain shirt, pants and shoes, he looked like a blackened mummy. And still he smiled at me. Without wanting to hear any explanations, and still full of sorrow for what I had just seen, I passed judgment right away:
"Burn!" I yelled hatefully.
I was astonished to see this smiling mummy make a face of extreme pain, and then break out in guffaws.
"Oi! Tiddler, surely you know one must be full of blood inside to be caused to sprout flames, yah?" And he still laughed.
Not wanting to speak to him, I bit this buffoon in the neck. A single drop of blood was all I was able to suck out of him, after spending long seconds trying in earnest. But that single drop was like a nuclear explosion inside my brain. With all kinds of details, almost as if I was actually there, living in that moment, I witnessed everything that had happened in my home.
The vampire Imenand had come to Kingsville following the deafening klaxon of Benjamin's presence, which is how he is perceived by the mind of those who can read thoughts. When he arrived to the town he discovered that there was a coven here already. Imenand would destroy any vampire he came across, as a way to avoid complications later on. He was in the process of eliminating all of them when he felt in his mind the quickening of new klaxons in the town of Kingsville. Suddenly, instead of hearing the solitary bellowing of Benjamin's soul, there was a complete brass section, like the Final Trumpets of the Apocalypse.
For the first time in many centuries, Benjamin must have been creating complete vampires, with all the powers, as he did in the beginning. When Imenand arrived at my home, where the chorus of trumpets had been sounding off, he found the same scene I did. Except that my wife was still aflame. It was Imenand who took the fire extinguishers from the kitchen and put out the fire. There was nothing left to do for my wife's body, but he was able to prevent the rest of the house burning down. His purpose was to investigate just what it was that had happened here. But when he noticed that Benjamin's presence had vanished again, he lost all interest and left to investigate instead the killings at the Navy base. Later on, when I returned, he detected me and so he came to see me.
With an incredible strength, Imenand took my hand away from his neck, and pushed me all the way to the opposite wall. But he didn't seem interested in fighting. Instead, he was looking at me with a half-smile on his face.
"Benjamin did not enlighten you, did he?" Not waiting for an answer, he went on. "That would be just like him: He thinks it is better for one to explore and discover. I can see that he bestowed extraordinary powers, yah? Very few vampires could have challenged a whole platoon of modern marines without harm. Forsooth! A mere platoon of Roman soldiers would suffice to trounce any of us, turn us into minced meat, back in the day… Alas, it matters not… I am to assume that you also ignore Benjamin's new whereabouts, yah? I divine that he must have gone to abscond himself again in the Ministry of Mysteries. Bah! May he take his ease for as many decades as he desires, for now it shall be my turn to reign, seeing as Benjamin has disappeared. Which reminds me: There cannot be two kings. So, burn!"
The pain was gigantic, but it couldn't compare to the fulminating pain that I felt with my transformation, or to the numbing coldness I felt by being in this house. I took it as a passing bother only, because the flames did not sprout. And, mostly out of anger than out of resolve, I put my hand up like a traffic cop and said again, "No!"
Imenand's smile fell off his face like a wet spaghetti from a spoon. Alarmed, he resumed his attack, but the spirit refused to obey him. Not minding any of the mysterious powers of the spirit, I tried to solve this problem like I had done all my life, and in one single bound I landed in front of Imenand again. Without any remorse whatever, I punched him on the temple and kneed him in the groin. He only stood there, looking at me incredulously.
"Oi! What do you think you are doing? Do you think you will make me unconscious with fisticuuuuuuuuuuh…?"
Tired of his arrogance, before he finished the word "fisticuffs" I stuck my hand into his mouth as far as it went, and with a violent jerk I ripped off his jaw. Imenand yelled out inarticulately, retreating as quick as possible, and feeling gingerly with his hands around the hole on his face. When I saw that it was not that difficult to rip him apart, I went after him. Taking hold of anything I could grab, I started to rip off piece after piece. His hand, making a claw, which tried to scratch my face off, was the first thing that came off amid gnashing teeth and hard jerks. Each piece that I managed to rip off made me angrier and angrier, until the moment came when everything turned into a white wash in my eyes and I transformed into a destroying automaton.
Panting in a rage, several minutes later I was sitting on the floor surrounded by small pieces of Imenand. I was holding his head was on my lap, looking into his eyes, terrible eyes that still moved from one side to the other, wildly. Still furious, I collected all the scraps of Imenand's body. Once I had them piled up, I placed his head on top, carefully, making sure that he could see what I was doing at all times. Then, with a savage move, I tore my wrist with my teeth, and started spraying blood all over the trembling shreds. As if by the blackest enchantment, the pieces started fusing together while Imenand's eyes shone in understanding and terror.
I repeated the spraying several times, until the gelatinous mass started taking human form again. Then, concentrating harder than ever, I said again, "Burn!"
Watching that pyre consuming the remains of my former home, I decided from that moment on never to surrender again to the thirst, and to go far away, to wherever there wouldn't be any human beings.
To Be Continued…
Satiety 12
12. A Sounding Brass
But of course, the best laid plans of mice and man… For months on end I would believe that I had already mastered the thirst, but the moment I came across clueless trekkers in some dark forest, I would turn the poor guys into bloody puddles in a matter of seconds. I tried going to several places in the country, like the Mojave desert in Nevada, or the Badlands of South Dakota, but in all those places I kept finding tourists. Afraid that one day I would come across Boy Scout troops, I decided to finally look for more exotic destinations.
I went to Northern Canada, and the first week was really hard to stop thinking about Eskimos, although there weren't any around. But the absence of humans helped me to understand that the thirst was nothing but desire, and not a necessity. For the next two months I dedicated myself to investigate what kind of sustenance my body needed to keep going on.
The answer was surprising, although I suspected as much: My body did not need anything at all since it was dead.
I could spend hours without blinking, days without sleeping, and weeks holding my breath without any of it affecting me in the least. After trying it out several times, I decided to never do those things again, whatever for? The hares, the foxes, and the owls learned to ignore me after I practiced remaining still for days on end, and sometimes they would scurry around on top of me. During that period of time I tried to detect some sort of internal movement in my body, but could not hear any of the normal sounds. My heart did not beat, my belly wouldn't churn, I wasn't burping, or farting; I wouldn't pee nor take a crap.
However, it seemed that the mysterious powers of the spirit would turn sharper during the fasting, as if the blood that I had gulped down before had been dulling it. Without any new blood I even felt smarter. I guessed that the spirit was who yearned for those red rivulets, and while interlacing itself in the hemoglobin hollow gaps it would transmute the liquid into some other substance, that turned my body into something more enduring, a little bit more at a time. Maybe the spirit is what propelled the transmuted blood to run from one side to the other of my body through my veins. It remained a mystery to me, about how the blood I swallowed into my tummy would pass into my veins, without a heart to pump it around, or without metabolic processes to absorb it. I guessed it must have been another magical spirit power.
After that period of discoveries, I decided to travel the world and get to know all the places that were not accessible to humans. For twenty years I crossed jungles, steppes, deserts, mountains, volcanoes, seas, lakes, icebergs, and glaciers. For twenty years I avoided the humankind and kept the blood off my thoughts.
But about a couple of years ago, while I chased a tapir in order to investigate its prehensile snout, suddenly I felt that bothersome purring behind my forehead, and I knew there was a vampire close by. I ran to where I detected the hateful presence, a few miles away. Quite abruptly I broke into a clearing in the Amazon jungle, where there was one of those lost tribes that have never come across "civilized man."
The spectacle before me made me furious immediately. It was a hamlet of a few huts and a long building in the middle. The building was surrounded with a tied reed fence, with unmistakably human tiny skulls and bones decorating each post. And inside I could feel the presence of the vampire.
A group of five or six men, bearing pikes, darts and atlatls, tried to attack me. But with a broad gesture, sweeping the air in front of me with my hand, I flattened them to the ground and kept them unable to move there. I advanced into the communal hut, and found something almost incomprehensible to me. The rest of the tribe, about twenty more people, were kneeling down with their heads on the ground before a kind of throne carved into a large rock. An emaciated teenage girl, holding her arms high and without looking up was offering a baby to the throne.
Sitting on the throne, the vampire there was so befuddled by his anxiety for the blood that he didn't even notice me standing next to him. With a tremendous slap I sent him sailing through the air, to crash against a tree at a distance. As he fell to the floor, I was already standing next to him again. I waited only long enough for him to see me, and before any useless words or questions could start, I incinerated him with my magic.
Since that day forward, I decided that it would be a good hobby to travel all over the world, but now with the purpose of eliminating all of those bloody monsters, wherever they were hiding. With a little bit of luck, I would also find those millennial first-born, so that it would be a greater challenge.
But of course, the best laid plans of mice and man… For months on end I would believe that I had already mastered the thirst, but the moment I came across clueless trekkers in some dark forest, I would turn the poor guys into bloody puddles in a matter of seconds. I tried going to several places in the country, like the Mojave desert in Nevada, or the Badlands of South Dakota, but in all those places I kept finding tourists. Afraid that one day I would come across Boy Scout troops, I decided to finally look for more exotic destinations.
I went to Northern Canada, and the first week was really hard to stop thinking about Eskimos, although there weren't any around. But the absence of humans helped me to understand that the thirst was nothing but desire, and not a necessity. For the next two months I dedicated myself to investigate what kind of sustenance my body needed to keep going on.
The answer was surprising, although I suspected as much: My body did not need anything at all since it was dead.
I could spend hours without blinking, days without sleeping, and weeks holding my breath without any of it affecting me in the least. After trying it out several times, I decided to never do those things again, whatever for? The hares, the foxes, and the owls learned to ignore me after I practiced remaining still for days on end, and sometimes they would scurry around on top of me. During that period of time I tried to detect some sort of internal movement in my body, but could not hear any of the normal sounds. My heart did not beat, my belly wouldn't churn, I wasn't burping, or farting; I wouldn't pee nor take a crap.
However, it seemed that the mysterious powers of the spirit would turn sharper during the fasting, as if the blood that I had gulped down before had been dulling it. Without any new blood I even felt smarter. I guessed that the spirit was who yearned for those red rivulets, and while interlacing itself in the hemoglobin hollow gaps it would transmute the liquid into some other substance, that turned my body into something more enduring, a little bit more at a time. Maybe the spirit is what propelled the transmuted blood to run from one side to the other of my body through my veins. It remained a mystery to me, about how the blood I swallowed into my tummy would pass into my veins, without a heart to pump it around, or without metabolic processes to absorb it. I guessed it must have been another magical spirit power.
After that period of discoveries, I decided to travel the world and get to know all the places that were not accessible to humans. For twenty years I crossed jungles, steppes, deserts, mountains, volcanoes, seas, lakes, icebergs, and glaciers. For twenty years I avoided the humankind and kept the blood off my thoughts.
But about a couple of years ago, while I chased a tapir in order to investigate its prehensile snout, suddenly I felt that bothersome purring behind my forehead, and I knew there was a vampire close by. I ran to where I detected the hateful presence, a few miles away. Quite abruptly I broke into a clearing in the Amazon jungle, where there was one of those lost tribes that have never come across "civilized man."
The spectacle before me made me furious immediately. It was a hamlet of a few huts and a long building in the middle. The building was surrounded with a tied reed fence, with unmistakably human tiny skulls and bones decorating each post. And inside I could feel the presence of the vampire.
A group of five or six men, bearing pikes, darts and atlatls, tried to attack me. But with a broad gesture, sweeping the air in front of me with my hand, I flattened them to the ground and kept them unable to move there. I advanced into the communal hut, and found something almost incomprehensible to me. The rest of the tribe, about twenty more people, were kneeling down with their heads on the ground before a kind of throne carved into a large rock. An emaciated teenage girl, holding her arms high and without looking up was offering a baby to the throne.
Sitting on the throne, the vampire there was so befuddled by his anxiety for the blood that he didn't even notice me standing next to him. With a tremendous slap I sent him sailing through the air, to crash against a tree at a distance. As he fell to the floor, I was already standing next to him again. I waited only long enough for him to see me, and before any useless words or questions could start, I incinerated him with my magic.
Since that day forward, I decided that it would be a good hobby to travel all over the world, but now with the purpose of eliminating all of those bloody monsters, wherever they were hiding. With a little bit of luck, I would also find those millennial first-born, so that it would be a greater challenge.
To Be Continued…
Satiety 13
13. He Who Holds Down the Cow's Leg Is Just as Guilty
In the beginning I felt kind of disappointed that it hadn't been a greater challenge. With all my amplified magical powers, each one of the monsters would stand out clearly for me like a clear bugle among the numbing murmurs of human minds. When I detected a great concentration of those monsters living in the Old World, I took aloft and relocated to Europe. For months on end I roamed through countries filled to bursting with history. And monsters. Every so often I would go into Asia and Africa, but I would always return to Europe, because there were more vampires there.
It was easy to find their hideouts. Most of them lived in covens with dozens of vampires trying to obey all the rules and feeling completely miserable all the time. Those were the weakest ones, and very few of them were older than a century. I took to phoning the fire departments ahead of time before I would arrive to wherever my next victims would be, to avoid unnecessary fires. But others lived like packs of wild dogs, terrorizing whatever county in which they would have settled down, and wreaking havoc among the natives. For those feral vampires I reserved the punishment of cutting them to pieces first before lighting them up in flames.
The vampires that were at least a century old were completely different: they spent most of their time accumulating wealth, alone. The strangest thing about them is that they used human guards and servants. They ruled their gangs with outlandish rewards and cruel punishments. Some of the most dangerous drug cartels in the world were controlled by those centenary vampires. They were much more paranoid and difficult to find, and never hesitated to shield themselves behind any human at hand.
Like I cared… From the beginning I was convinced that, if the humans in question knew that their boss was a vampire, they deserved to be destroyed along their chief. It was easy to read their minds when they were in a state of panic, when I would advance on them and there would be nothing that could deflect me. However, it wasn't all that easy to hunt their bosses. Those centenary vampires did have some of the spirit's powers, and sometimes I had to stalk them for many days before being able to destroy them. Generally, they also fell pray to my power of the flame, although they knew how to use some powers to avoid my attacks. For instance, the ones that could read thoughts detected me because of that noise like a trumpet of final judgment resounding in their brains whenever I would be close to them, and so they managed to escape for a few more hours. Some others knew how to weasel away very well by using the swiftness of the spirit, but they would forget that I could track them down by letting the spirit itself guide me towards them. I would invariably ambush and destroy them.
After a while, I started carrying strapped to my back a couple of hoes, just for style. For some strange reason, the actual use of my body with human movements (although much swifter and more powerful than any other human) made me feel additional pleasure when I would charge a mob of blood-thirsty monsters and would emerge unharmed, leaving behind only trembling chunks. Sometimes, when I felt especially cruel, I would break apart those centenary vampires in large chunks. While I kept them paralyzed with the power of my mind, a single slice the hoes would separate a hand, or a foot, or from the knee to mid thigh. Slowly, deliberately, I would place the chunks in an almost anatomical position, without letting them touch each other, and I would leave them there for many days, letting them contemplate the horror of immortality. I must admit that I forgot more than two or three of them and left them behind in that position. I hope no one has found them, because in time it is possible that the spirit might mend their bodies and that they might emerge again, like thirsty Quasimodos. But, were it to happen, I'd only have to visit them again, this time in a more definitive manner.
After some time this diversion bored me and I started roaming among the settlements and the large cities like the Angel of Exodus. Instead of taking the life of Egyptian firstborns, I would walk the streets starting lonely conflagrations in some hidden basement, or multiple blazes inside abandoned buildings. The powers of the spirit grew stronger and stronger in me, and I guessed that it was in part due to not having drunk blood in a long time. But also there were many less recipients in which the spirit could dwell, and its powers would grow more concentrated in those of us who still survived.
That notion worried me quite a lot, thinking that I hadn't found any of the millennial vampires yet.
True, Benjamin's memories had shown me a history where Benjamin had massacred all other vampires and left behind a world in Roman times without vampires. But something that I had been noticing is that there were very large gaps in Benjamin's memories, and that he did not know everything. A simple example was Imenand's appearance. If I had understood it right, there were millennial vampires that could hide from Benjamin, and would wait for the opportunity of coming out into the world while Benjamin "took his rest," whatever that meant.
Although revolting, I started an investigation with the centenary vampires that I found. Every time I caught one of them, I would empty out his memories along with the blood. I didn't feel revulsion to the blood, for sucking it out was still the most pleasurable thing in this universe, but instead I found it revolting to come in contact with their twisted souls. From them I learned two important things: Most vampires believed that the millennial firstborns had resettled in the New World. And there was another very important power of the spirit that I should learn to perfection.
I practiced the new power with those few vampires left in Europe, Asia, and Africa: To veil my presence completely from the eyes of people and vampires, and from the minds of those who could read thoughts. I learned to be invisible. If I used the speed of the spirit to move from side to side, several steps away, changing positions continuously, it was almost impossible for anyone to actually see me. Maybe one of those ultra high-speed Phantom cameras could photograph me for one or two frames, but I doubt it. And if I asked the spirit to fold its tentacles inside the center of my soul I could go unnoticed by inquiring minds.
Confident that I had learned to use my powers well, and that I was leaving the vampire population virtually reduced to zero, I crossed the Atlantic, towards the Gulf of Mexico.
In the beginning I felt kind of disappointed that it hadn't been a greater challenge. With all my amplified magical powers, each one of the monsters would stand out clearly for me like a clear bugle among the numbing murmurs of human minds. When I detected a great concentration of those monsters living in the Old World, I took aloft and relocated to Europe. For months on end I roamed through countries filled to bursting with history. And monsters. Every so often I would go into Asia and Africa, but I would always return to Europe, because there were more vampires there.
It was easy to find their hideouts. Most of them lived in covens with dozens of vampires trying to obey all the rules and feeling completely miserable all the time. Those were the weakest ones, and very few of them were older than a century. I took to phoning the fire departments ahead of time before I would arrive to wherever my next victims would be, to avoid unnecessary fires. But others lived like packs of wild dogs, terrorizing whatever county in which they would have settled down, and wreaking havoc among the natives. For those feral vampires I reserved the punishment of cutting them to pieces first before lighting them up in flames.
The vampires that were at least a century old were completely different: they spent most of their time accumulating wealth, alone. The strangest thing about them is that they used human guards and servants. They ruled their gangs with outlandish rewards and cruel punishments. Some of the most dangerous drug cartels in the world were controlled by those centenary vampires. They were much more paranoid and difficult to find, and never hesitated to shield themselves behind any human at hand.
Like I cared… From the beginning I was convinced that, if the humans in question knew that their boss was a vampire, they deserved to be destroyed along their chief. It was easy to read their minds when they were in a state of panic, when I would advance on them and there would be nothing that could deflect me. However, it wasn't all that easy to hunt their bosses. Those centenary vampires did have some of the spirit's powers, and sometimes I had to stalk them for many days before being able to destroy them. Generally, they also fell pray to my power of the flame, although they knew how to use some powers to avoid my attacks. For instance, the ones that could read thoughts detected me because of that noise like a trumpet of final judgment resounding in their brains whenever I would be close to them, and so they managed to escape for a few more hours. Some others knew how to weasel away very well by using the swiftness of the spirit, but they would forget that I could track them down by letting the spirit itself guide me towards them. I would invariably ambush and destroy them.
After a while, I started carrying strapped to my back a couple of hoes, just for style. For some strange reason, the actual use of my body with human movements (although much swifter and more powerful than any other human) made me feel additional pleasure when I would charge a mob of blood-thirsty monsters and would emerge unharmed, leaving behind only trembling chunks. Sometimes, when I felt especially cruel, I would break apart those centenary vampires in large chunks. While I kept them paralyzed with the power of my mind, a single slice the hoes would separate a hand, or a foot, or from the knee to mid thigh. Slowly, deliberately, I would place the chunks in an almost anatomical position, without letting them touch each other, and I would leave them there for many days, letting them contemplate the horror of immortality. I must admit that I forgot more than two or three of them and left them behind in that position. I hope no one has found them, because in time it is possible that the spirit might mend their bodies and that they might emerge again, like thirsty Quasimodos. But, were it to happen, I'd only have to visit them again, this time in a more definitive manner.
After some time this diversion bored me and I started roaming among the settlements and the large cities like the Angel of Exodus. Instead of taking the life of Egyptian firstborns, I would walk the streets starting lonely conflagrations in some hidden basement, or multiple blazes inside abandoned buildings. The powers of the spirit grew stronger and stronger in me, and I guessed that it was in part due to not having drunk blood in a long time. But also there were many less recipients in which the spirit could dwell, and its powers would grow more concentrated in those of us who still survived.
That notion worried me quite a lot, thinking that I hadn't found any of the millennial vampires yet.
True, Benjamin's memories had shown me a history where Benjamin had massacred all other vampires and left behind a world in Roman times without vampires. But something that I had been noticing is that there were very large gaps in Benjamin's memories, and that he did not know everything. A simple example was Imenand's appearance. If I had understood it right, there were millennial vampires that could hide from Benjamin, and would wait for the opportunity of coming out into the world while Benjamin "took his rest," whatever that meant.
Although revolting, I started an investigation with the centenary vampires that I found. Every time I caught one of them, I would empty out his memories along with the blood. I didn't feel revulsion to the blood, for sucking it out was still the most pleasurable thing in this universe, but instead I found it revolting to come in contact with their twisted souls. From them I learned two important things: Most vampires believed that the millennial firstborns had resettled in the New World. And there was another very important power of the spirit that I should learn to perfection.
I practiced the new power with those few vampires left in Europe, Asia, and Africa: To veil my presence completely from the eyes of people and vampires, and from the minds of those who could read thoughts. I learned to be invisible. If I used the speed of the spirit to move from side to side, several steps away, changing positions continuously, it was almost impossible for anyone to actually see me. Maybe one of those ultra high-speed Phantom cameras could photograph me for one or two frames, but I doubt it. And if I asked the spirit to fold its tentacles inside the center of my soul I could go unnoticed by inquiring minds.
Confident that I had learned to use my powers well, and that I was leaving the vampire population virtually reduced to zero, I crossed the Atlantic, towards the Gulf of Mexico.
To Be Continued…
Satiety 14
14. The Blood is Home
There was no overriding reason for me to have headed to Texas directly, except that I felt an unhealthy attraction to return to my town, Kingsville, and let the scenes formerly familiar to turn into some sort of self-flagellation.
Notwithstanding the many years gone by, the loss of my family remained an infinite abyss in my mind, and not even my own monster-fication allayed the guilt storm. In moments of cold meditation I found it inconceivable that something so trite as the simple demise of three individuals could have such a deep importance for me. Didn't I have a whole eternity before me? Had I not been bequeathed the whole world?
Maybe the reality of their absence in my life had been the herald of something that I had not wanted to accept during all those years, but that I had divined regardless: Day after day, and even second after second, every bit of my being will go missing, until all that remains will be the thirst.
The search for those millennial vampires would perhaps fill many of the years to come; but, meanwhile, I could not avoid that pilgrimage of homesicklessness.
Although the Cayo del Grullo spreads almost all the way into the Navy base at Kingsville, I landed at Loyola Beach, about half way up the cay. Even though it was about twenty miles away from Kingsville, I thought it prudent to skirt the base, so I started walking north down highway 77. At those early hours of the morning, there hardly was any traffic, and I could let myself slide underneath that lunatic concatenation of memories that accosted me at every step…
That's how I returned to my starting point, finally, to face the bitter news that Kingsville played host to vampires again.
Damn everything to hell.
There was no overriding reason for me to have headed to Texas directly, except that I felt an unhealthy attraction to return to my town, Kingsville, and let the scenes formerly familiar to turn into some sort of self-flagellation.
Notwithstanding the many years gone by, the loss of my family remained an infinite abyss in my mind, and not even my own monster-fication allayed the guilt storm. In moments of cold meditation I found it inconceivable that something so trite as the simple demise of three individuals could have such a deep importance for me. Didn't I have a whole eternity before me? Had I not been bequeathed the whole world?
Maybe the reality of their absence in my life had been the herald of something that I had not wanted to accept during all those years, but that I had divined regardless: Day after day, and even second after second, every bit of my being will go missing, until all that remains will be the thirst.
The search for those millennial vampires would perhaps fill many of the years to come; but, meanwhile, I could not avoid that pilgrimage of homesicklessness.
Although the Cayo del Grullo spreads almost all the way into the Navy base at Kingsville, I landed at Loyola Beach, about half way up the cay. Even though it was about twenty miles away from Kingsville, I thought it prudent to skirt the base, so I started walking north down highway 77. At those early hours of the morning, there hardly was any traffic, and I could let myself slide underneath that lunatic concatenation of memories that accosted me at every step…
That's how I returned to my starting point, finally, to face the bitter news that Kingsville played host to vampires again.
Damn everything to hell.
To Be Continued…
Satiety 15
15. Seek, and Ye Shall Find
Usually, the coven vampires spend their time burdened by so many rules that they use re-interpretation tricks to avoid breaking those rules, even if they do whatever they want anyway. For example, that thing about it being absolutely forbidden to go out during daylight? They just flip the finger at it by crawling during daytime through storm drainage pipes or through the sewers of towns and cities…
I can guess that the vampire I just torched right now, when I arrived at Kingsville, was one of those guys, but of the least novice ones. I mean, he could actually sense me with his mind, which proves that he did have some powers. And he discovered me because I had cast off my invisibility shield when I was surprised to have seen that skinny guy that looked so much like my son…
Yeah, whatever. So here I am, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, looking towards the gas station two blocks away, where the station store clerk is checking the damaged doors. The damage was caused by the skinny guy, who fled in a rush when I torched the vampire in the sewer grate with my mind. Meanwhile, behind me, the blue smoke of the charcoal vampire dissipates lightly in the morning air. Now that I had let the spirit spread its tentacles, I can detect at least two dozen vampires fleeing in terror away from me, crawling through the sewers like dirty rats. They all seem to be converging at the Texas A&M University, at the other end of the town. I will have to take care of them before I find out anything about that slender vampire that walks in sunlight, like me.
Once again I order the spirit to withdraw under the skirts of my soul to avoid being detected. I look around to make sure that no one is paying much attention to me, and again I start my abnormal walk, sliding several steps from side to side while I advance, at the speed of thought, and it appears that I simply vanish. To avoid complications, I head towards the University through the back alleys, and in a few moments I arrived to the campus.
For some strange reason, their Poteet wing, next to the co-ed dorms, has been closed down since the eighties, and although the conference rooms, the kitchens and the banquet halls are still being used frequently, the rest of the building has been curiously abandoned. I guess that's why it became the perfect place for some twenty vampires to have settled down in there.
I think it will be more fun to make a spectacular entrance than to sneak around like a thief through some window. So, once I'm standing in front of the basement gate, I drop my invisibility. Immediately I hear shouts of fear and alarm in the building, and the purring in my forehead becomes almost unbearable.
However…
What's this? I don't believe it! There's a presence in there, like Imenand's presence, among all those novice vampires! It sounds like a muted trumpet, and I can detect that it shies away from my mind, but its powers of obfuscation are lesser than mine, and so I can perceive it regardless.
With a smile in my face, and kicking down the steel gate, I proceed with my triumphal entrance.
Usually, the coven vampires spend their time burdened by so many rules that they use re-interpretation tricks to avoid breaking those rules, even if they do whatever they want anyway. For example, that thing about it being absolutely forbidden to go out during daylight? They just flip the finger at it by crawling during daytime through storm drainage pipes or through the sewers of towns and cities…
I can guess that the vampire I just torched right now, when I arrived at Kingsville, was one of those guys, but of the least novice ones. I mean, he could actually sense me with his mind, which proves that he did have some powers. And he discovered me because I had cast off my invisibility shield when I was surprised to have seen that skinny guy that looked so much like my son…
Yeah, whatever. So here I am, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, looking towards the gas station two blocks away, where the station store clerk is checking the damaged doors. The damage was caused by the skinny guy, who fled in a rush when I torched the vampire in the sewer grate with my mind. Meanwhile, behind me, the blue smoke of the charcoal vampire dissipates lightly in the morning air. Now that I had let the spirit spread its tentacles, I can detect at least two dozen vampires fleeing in terror away from me, crawling through the sewers like dirty rats. They all seem to be converging at the Texas A&M University, at the other end of the town. I will have to take care of them before I find out anything about that slender vampire that walks in sunlight, like me.
Once again I order the spirit to withdraw under the skirts of my soul to avoid being detected. I look around to make sure that no one is paying much attention to me, and again I start my abnormal walk, sliding several steps from side to side while I advance, at the speed of thought, and it appears that I simply vanish. To avoid complications, I head towards the University through the back alleys, and in a few moments I arrived to the campus.
For some strange reason, their Poteet wing, next to the co-ed dorms, has been closed down since the eighties, and although the conference rooms, the kitchens and the banquet halls are still being used frequently, the rest of the building has been curiously abandoned. I guess that's why it became the perfect place for some twenty vampires to have settled down in there.
I think it will be more fun to make a spectacular entrance than to sneak around like a thief through some window. So, once I'm standing in front of the basement gate, I drop my invisibility. Immediately I hear shouts of fear and alarm in the building, and the purring in my forehead becomes almost unbearable.
However…
What's this? I don't believe it! There's a presence in there, like Imenand's presence, among all those novice vampires! It sounds like a muted trumpet, and I can detect that it shies away from my mind, but its powers of obfuscation are lesser than mine, and so I can perceive it regardless.
With a smile in my face, and kicking down the steel gate, I proceed with my triumphal entrance.
To Be Continued…
Satiety 16
16. Not All That Glitters
Even though my motivation before had been mostly rage, this time I feel incited to impress the first-born here before I eliminate him. I want to show off, and out of conceit I have decided to destroy the score of vampires here by hand. Well, not quite, because I like the skills I've developed with the hoes as weapons. I am going to dice up everyone in here.
Standing by the gate that I kicked down, I pull out the hoes from their sheath that strapped to my back, slowly, and I start grinding one against the other in an unmistakable sharpening gesture. I take slow and deliberate steps, and when I cross the threshold, I order the spirit to spread its tentacles and shut off all windows and doors leading to the outside. We are set: unless they dig out a tunnel or they punch a hole through a wall no one will escape me.
I am counting on the millennial vampire's vanity to keep him here, without trying to escape, trusting that no other vampire except for Benjamin could possibly harm him. And I am counting on the hope that any other millennial vampire will be as relatively easy to harm as Imenand was.
I am advancing towards the group of vampires, walking at the normal speed of any live person, but there's something strange going on: All of them are standing, facing me in this lobby, and although the ones at the very front are completely terrified, not one of them has tried to escape yet. They seem to be ready to fight me as a group.
Bah! Let them try whatever they want, that I have gotten rid of even larger numbers.
Ah, I see…
They are grouped around the millennial vampire. They are like a troop of monkeys, with the least important ones on the periphery, and the higher ranking ones in the middle of the group. And I can see it in the minds of the rookies (who still can't disguise their thoughts) that they are all willing to be destroyed in order to protect… Well, that's weird… There is no name in their minds. It's only "Who I Will Protect."
No matter, I'm getting excited about having to hack my way through so many monsters with my hoes. But, before advancing, I realize that my powers have grown beyond my own understanding: I just locked up doors and windows with my mind, where as before I couldn't even pick up pebbles in the air. I immediately abandon my intentions of avoiding the use of magic… Let's find out what else I can do now.
I bend my concentration towards the yahoo closest to me and I make him rise up into the air with the power of the spirit. I make him float at a point between them and me, halfway up the lobby, and I keep him there, slowly twisting away for a few seconds while I make up my mind about what to do next.
With a smug grin on my face, I focus completely in picturing each cell of his body, with the fingers of the spirit grabbing hold of each one of them. When I can feel that everything is being held down, then I ask the spirit to pull away all those cells in different directions.
The noise heard is like a dozen bed sheets torn apart at the same time, a wet shattering, and hundreds of muted slaps. We are all stupefied to end up sprayed with microscopic vampire particles, and the entire lobby has been spray-painted with a light pink tone. The vampires all groan and yell out in fright, while I guffaw away like a loon. In none of the memories of Benjamin had I seen such a thing. I think that I have finally invented something new in this world of monsters.
I let the hoes clatter down to the floor, and once again I try the experiment. And again; and again; and by the fourth time around we are all dripping vampire chunks, and finally a few in the group try to fight me, while others try to escape. Those who come towards me in a flurry of teeth, punches, kicks, headbutts, knees, or whatever, are the ones easiest to deal with, because with my almost impenetrable body and my massive strength it's a simple matter to hit them with the edges of my hands to separate arms, legs, and heads from their bodies. In a flash, the quartet of vampires that decided to attack me lay at my feet, with their limbs and heads still rolling and bouncing off a few feet away. Those six that tried to escape are still pounding their fists against doors and windows, and I am surprised to realize how weak they are. The are hardly stronger than mere humans…
Not thinking too much about it, I decide to burn them with my mind. The dozen or so vampires that are left look around, everywhere at once, trying not to miss a single detail of the spectacle. They have a look of resolve, and I think that they realize very well that there is no escape and no way to avoid me doing to them whatever I feel like doing. In a moment of destroyer euphoria, I use my magic to fling all of them up to the roof and hold them there, while I make them burn like torches. A few seconds after I have ignited them, I also pulverize them, and all around there are small cascades of sputtering embers.
But…
There's a trio of vampires that remain in the middle of the lobby. Two of them kneeling down, one on each side of the most terrible and beautiful thing that I have ever seen:
They seem to be my wife, my son, and my daughter.
Even though my motivation before had been mostly rage, this time I feel incited to impress the first-born here before I eliminate him. I want to show off, and out of conceit I have decided to destroy the score of vampires here by hand. Well, not quite, because I like the skills I've developed with the hoes as weapons. I am going to dice up everyone in here.
Standing by the gate that I kicked down, I pull out the hoes from their sheath that strapped to my back, slowly, and I start grinding one against the other in an unmistakable sharpening gesture. I take slow and deliberate steps, and when I cross the threshold, I order the spirit to spread its tentacles and shut off all windows and doors leading to the outside. We are set: unless they dig out a tunnel or they punch a hole through a wall no one will escape me.
I am counting on the millennial vampire's vanity to keep him here, without trying to escape, trusting that no other vampire except for Benjamin could possibly harm him. And I am counting on the hope that any other millennial vampire will be as relatively easy to harm as Imenand was.
I am advancing towards the group of vampires, walking at the normal speed of any live person, but there's something strange going on: All of them are standing, facing me in this lobby, and although the ones at the very front are completely terrified, not one of them has tried to escape yet. They seem to be ready to fight me as a group.
Bah! Let them try whatever they want, that I have gotten rid of even larger numbers.
Ah, I see…
They are grouped around the millennial vampire. They are like a troop of monkeys, with the least important ones on the periphery, and the higher ranking ones in the middle of the group. And I can see it in the minds of the rookies (who still can't disguise their thoughts) that they are all willing to be destroyed in order to protect… Well, that's weird… There is no name in their minds. It's only "Who I Will Protect."
No matter, I'm getting excited about having to hack my way through so many monsters with my hoes. But, before advancing, I realize that my powers have grown beyond my own understanding: I just locked up doors and windows with my mind, where as before I couldn't even pick up pebbles in the air. I immediately abandon my intentions of avoiding the use of magic… Let's find out what else I can do now.
I bend my concentration towards the yahoo closest to me and I make him rise up into the air with the power of the spirit. I make him float at a point between them and me, halfway up the lobby, and I keep him there, slowly twisting away for a few seconds while I make up my mind about what to do next.
With a smug grin on my face, I focus completely in picturing each cell of his body, with the fingers of the spirit grabbing hold of each one of them. When I can feel that everything is being held down, then I ask the spirit to pull away all those cells in different directions.
The noise heard is like a dozen bed sheets torn apart at the same time, a wet shattering, and hundreds of muted slaps. We are all stupefied to end up sprayed with microscopic vampire particles, and the entire lobby has been spray-painted with a light pink tone. The vampires all groan and yell out in fright, while I guffaw away like a loon. In none of the memories of Benjamin had I seen such a thing. I think that I have finally invented something new in this world of monsters.
I let the hoes clatter down to the floor, and once again I try the experiment. And again; and again; and by the fourth time around we are all dripping vampire chunks, and finally a few in the group try to fight me, while others try to escape. Those who come towards me in a flurry of teeth, punches, kicks, headbutts, knees, or whatever, are the ones easiest to deal with, because with my almost impenetrable body and my massive strength it's a simple matter to hit them with the edges of my hands to separate arms, legs, and heads from their bodies. In a flash, the quartet of vampires that decided to attack me lay at my feet, with their limbs and heads still rolling and bouncing off a few feet away. Those six that tried to escape are still pounding their fists against doors and windows, and I am surprised to realize how weak they are. The are hardly stronger than mere humans…
Not thinking too much about it, I decide to burn them with my mind. The dozen or so vampires that are left look around, everywhere at once, trying not to miss a single detail of the spectacle. They have a look of resolve, and I think that they realize very well that there is no escape and no way to avoid me doing to them whatever I feel like doing. In a moment of destroyer euphoria, I use my magic to fling all of them up to the roof and hold them there, while I make them burn like torches. A few seconds after I have ignited them, I also pulverize them, and all around there are small cascades of sputtering embers.
But…
There's a trio of vampires that remain in the middle of the lobby. Two of them kneeling down, one on each side of the most terrible and beautiful thing that I have ever seen:
They seem to be my wife, my son, and my daughter.
To Be Continued…
Satiety 17 & Epilogue
17. The Last Straw…?
My wife was a woman that might have never won a beauty pageant, but that was very, very nice to look at. And my children had the good luck to inherit the best features out of each parent: Almost everything from my wife, and hardly anything from me.
But this triad of monsters in front of me is the prototype of every single thing that is lovely and desirable in human beings. They are the apotheosis of anything anyone could long for physically. And they are a cruel stab in my heart of ice: Indeed, we are all dead.
I don't know what to think, I don't know what to say.
Not her, though.
"There had been rumors, but I never believed they could be true," she whispered, almost too softly to be heard, and with a slight line of consternation on her forehead. "So you are the alleged 'Angel of Death' that they all have been… I mean, that they had been mentioning, all my refugees." Her mild rebuke, stressed out by a raised sculpted eyebrow, filled me with anguish and desire, by reminding me of all the times she would rebuke me playfully with the same gesture. "I thought you were gone for good, that you forgot all about me right away. Why didn't you come back for me, after you got rid of Imenand? We could have ruled together…" Her face turns hard, all her features sharpen. "Well, it don't matter; the only one who will rule here is me. So, burn, dimwit, burn!"
Had the flames been able to ignite my veins, the pain caused by them would be nothing compared to the desolation I feel at this precise moment by this betrayal. Almost by reflex, I am about to order the spirit to cease trying to hurt me. However, in a fit of complete despondency, instead of impeding the spirit's lunge, I let its malice drown me completely. The suffering is infinite…
Through the filter of affliction, I actually notice that those perennial teenagers kneeling by her side have a very similar appearance to my children.
But it's not them.
The rage again overwhelms me, and I interrupt my abandon into torment. The split second in which all this has happened is too short for my ex-wife to notice that something is not going according to plan. I use the speed of the spirit and cross the lobby, and appear in front of her, with my hands on her shoulders. I squeeze just hard enough to let her know that, should I want to, I can grind her bones into dust with my bare hands.
Their expressions might have been comical under any other circumstance, especially the reaction of those impostors by her side, that up to this moment had not noticed that I'm already close to them, and scurry away on their knees to the opposite walls. Both of them, eyes almost popping out of their sockets. In her face, awe and vexation.
"Wait, I can explain everything! It was Imenand! The thing is that…"
"Do you think I'm going to waste time in listening to your bêtise?" My voice, unused for over a decade: a sirocco of threat, especially because of its timbre full of dry splinters. "Don't you know that the path towards the truth is climactic and short through the blood?"
With a grimace of disgust on my lips, I wrap her in my arms, like a caress of old, but that now is full of intimidation. She tries to push me away, and I feel her hands exerting titanic pressure on my chest. But it's all in vain: she will not stop me drinking from her veins…
***
In the beginning, her evocations are unconnected images. Scenes in a house after dinner time: Feelings of loneliness and abandonment. Scrubbing dirty dishes, grumbling against the husband that prefers drinking beers with stupid friends than being at home with the wife; she feels remorse at having permitted such behavior from the beginning. Maybe she deserves it. Even her teenage children would rather spend the time out with friends, sometimes even after midnight, as long as they don't have to be in the house with her, without caring about being scolded, or not even caring about the back-handed slap on the face from their intermittently present father. Maybe they all deserve it, that she encouraged all those behaviors with her silence. "Silence means consent," goes the old saw. True. However, she would have wished that…
An earthquake? In the Valley of Texas? Inconceivable! But the intensity of the tremors increases, and suddenly, in the middle of the kitchen's floor a geyser of soil clods and wood chunks erupts. Screaming, she backs up and hikes herself up the kitchen sink, trying to get away as much as possible from the horrible nightmare that bursts forth from the crater: a blackened mummy crawls towards her like a mutant alligator. His bared-teeth smile and his withered face are the worst part. Without giving her time to do anything at all, the horrible mummy takes hold of her with hands like stone spiders, and sinks his smile in her neck. The pain is huge; it's millions of times worse than birth contractions, and although she wishes she could sink into the oblivion of unconsciousness, the suffering follows her through all the corners of her mind. Right on death's doorstep, the monster's mouth lets go of her neck violently. Falling down, she can see in a scene that tilts to the side s-l-o-w-l-y that her attacker is cowering against the opposite wall in the kitchen, and a short, tan man is standing in the middle of the rubble in the kitchen, smiling at them, looking first at one and then at the other, from the wall to the floor. The words exchanged by these characters are incomprehensible at the time, and only through the passage of time and blood become intelligible:
"Well, well, The Hidden One makes an appearance." The short man speaks in a young voice, with a touch of boredom and humor, "You've just resurfaced and already you cause a ruckus… How quaint are you, eh? So, when was the last time you roamed the world? Five hundred years ago? Ah… I see, before the Spaniards arrived here… Interesting…" He does not sound interested at all, "Well, look, I'm bored, I need a diversion. So give the blood to the lady. Come on! She has got about six seconds before dying. Do it!" The last part is said with a roar.
Imenand crawls again towards her, with much weeping on his face and a palpable terror before the mysterious figure standing in the middle of the kitchen. He chomps down on his tongue and kisses the lady, while placing his withered hands over her breasts. Before she has been able to drink but a few drops, the short man pulls them apart brusquely.
"Do not give her the memories! But give her everything else."
Imenand looks confused, but does as bid. While she undergoes the fire of the transformation she can hear Imenand through the flames, begging.
"I implore you, Lord, allow me to disappear into the ground again, I did not know you were still roaming the world, I would never would have importuned you had I known, please, do not destroy me, I have always kept my distance, I have always respected your rule, I beg of you, please, please, Lord Benjamin…"
"Stop your whining. Ha! It has been centuries since anyone has been able to detect me… Look, I will not do you harm at the moment. In this town there is a coven. Go destroy a few of them and bring me a lass of about the same dimensions as this lady. But go already… Ah, one more thing: you are forbidden to drink. Go now!"
The pains of her transformation are just finished when the regular din of teenagers is heard, all full of loud voices and hauteur, arriving at the house. The vital smell of bodies in full flower is maddening, and the thirst of the spirit that reanimates her body is undeniable. Like a gust of wind, she runs to the living room, and there, standing in front of her children and their guests, she suffers indecision for a moment. But it's a fleeting moment. She chases them around the house, and with a predator's skill she reduces half a dozen teenagers to small fragments of flesh and bone. In the end, it is impossible to identify which remains belong to whom…
When the lust of the thirst slackens its control over her a little bit, she comes to realize what has happened, and howls with a piercing shriek, while she begins ripping out her hair by the fistful at the same time.
Imenand returns, dragging a young woman by the foot, who twists in hysterics on the floor amid screams and threats. One can see how he trembles with desire when he finds the house redecorated with human remains. But he obeys regardless…
"Well done, faithful servant…"
Benjamin seems indifferent to everything. He takes a few steps and grabs the ex-mother by the neck. With harsh movements he straightens out her arm and bites her on the wrist. After a few gulps, Benjamin smiles again, and holding the lady still, he tears off her jeans with one single swipe of his hand. Next, he sinks his fingers into her waist, and tears out the metal prosthesis violently from inside her hip. She screams out in pain, but forgets everything when Benjamin grabs the vampire girl by the arm and pushes her down on the floor, so that both women are knocked down side to side. Right away the ex-mother rushes over to the vampire, and drinks. Before she can start tearing the blood-empty body apart, Benjamin tears it away from her grip and drags the body to the master bedroom. He throws the vampire towards the bed, and in the middle of the air, burns her. He instructs Imenand to bring the fire extinguishers from the kitchen and between the both of them they put out the flames before they start a fire. With infinite care, Benjamin inserts the prosthesis hip high, taking care so that the ash figure does not collapse.
"This is what you will do to entertain me: Take this lady and make her your queen, or whatever pleases you, but do not share the memories with her, understand? In a few days, maybe her husband will return. I will transform him, to see what happens… I want you to face him and eliminate him. I guess you know how to tell stories through the blood, right? Well, more than likely the husband will try to bite you, so let him do it, but take care that you hide whatever really happened here. Tell him whatever lies you want, I don't care… I only want to find out what happens, I want to see how far the so-called family ties can actually go… I will be watching you: Do a good job and I may let you survive all this."
Next thing anyone could tell, Benjamin had disappeared already. Imenand, not a gentleman at all, took the ex-mother by the hair and dragged her behind him, looking for some hideout…
***
Throughout all those images, I could hear the actual thoughts of my ex-wife, that kept up a continuous monologue of self-justification:
"I couldn't help myself. Couldn't resist, you understand? Surely you too know how difficult it is to refuse the blood. In the beginning, after Imenand did not return for several days, I decided to escape the dark basement where he had left me, but the first thing I did was to attack some lady that was out watering her yard. I realized that I couldn't go around chewing people left and right. I tried to satisfy myself with only criminals, and for a time that was enough. Imenand didn't give me the memories, but he gave me powers… I may not have the same powers you have, but I know things you don't. I know that I can create vampires that only have the powers I decide to give them. I know that I can create them to resemble whoever I choose. Years ago, when I found some kids that resembled our children a lot, I transformed them with the blood. With the image burned in my mind of my children, I made what you see here today: immortals that look like your son and your daughter. Isn't it enough, that I have restored them? Isn't it enough that they are the living image of them? I did it for you! I did it for us! And what if I tried to attack you? Of course I tried to burn you. You would've done the same if a monster showed up trying to destroy everything you've accomplished. Can't you see we can have anything we want now? Any house, many riches, we can dress in the latest fashion, we can have the newest cars… We could even fill the whole world with our slaves! We could create them without powers and dominate mortals, too! The world is ours: Since Benjamin is gone, there ain't no one more powerful than you are. Look at our new children, walking in silence without any other vampire able to detect them… We can do whatever we want… Can we not be together again? Can we not be a family again?"
***
No.
We cannot…
There is no forgiveness; there is no oblivion.
There is nothing at all.
My wife was a woman that might have never won a beauty pageant, but that was very, very nice to look at. And my children had the good luck to inherit the best features out of each parent: Almost everything from my wife, and hardly anything from me.
But this triad of monsters in front of me is the prototype of every single thing that is lovely and desirable in human beings. They are the apotheosis of anything anyone could long for physically. And they are a cruel stab in my heart of ice: Indeed, we are all dead.
I don't know what to think, I don't know what to say.
Not her, though.
"There had been rumors, but I never believed they could be true," she whispered, almost too softly to be heard, and with a slight line of consternation on her forehead. "So you are the alleged 'Angel of Death' that they all have been… I mean, that they had been mentioning, all my refugees." Her mild rebuke, stressed out by a raised sculpted eyebrow, filled me with anguish and desire, by reminding me of all the times she would rebuke me playfully with the same gesture. "I thought you were gone for good, that you forgot all about me right away. Why didn't you come back for me, after you got rid of Imenand? We could have ruled together…" Her face turns hard, all her features sharpen. "Well, it don't matter; the only one who will rule here is me. So, burn, dimwit, burn!"
Had the flames been able to ignite my veins, the pain caused by them would be nothing compared to the desolation I feel at this precise moment by this betrayal. Almost by reflex, I am about to order the spirit to cease trying to hurt me. However, in a fit of complete despondency, instead of impeding the spirit's lunge, I let its malice drown me completely. The suffering is infinite…
Through the filter of affliction, I actually notice that those perennial teenagers kneeling by her side have a very similar appearance to my children.
But it's not them.
The rage again overwhelms me, and I interrupt my abandon into torment. The split second in which all this has happened is too short for my ex-wife to notice that something is not going according to plan. I use the speed of the spirit and cross the lobby, and appear in front of her, with my hands on her shoulders. I squeeze just hard enough to let her know that, should I want to, I can grind her bones into dust with my bare hands.
Their expressions might have been comical under any other circumstance, especially the reaction of those impostors by her side, that up to this moment had not noticed that I'm already close to them, and scurry away on their knees to the opposite walls. Both of them, eyes almost popping out of their sockets. In her face, awe and vexation.
"Wait, I can explain everything! It was Imenand! The thing is that…"
"Do you think I'm going to waste time in listening to your bêtise?" My voice, unused for over a decade: a sirocco of threat, especially because of its timbre full of dry splinters. "Don't you know that the path towards the truth is climactic and short through the blood?"
With a grimace of disgust on my lips, I wrap her in my arms, like a caress of old, but that now is full of intimidation. She tries to push me away, and I feel her hands exerting titanic pressure on my chest. But it's all in vain: she will not stop me drinking from her veins…
In the beginning, her evocations are unconnected images. Scenes in a house after dinner time: Feelings of loneliness and abandonment. Scrubbing dirty dishes, grumbling against the husband that prefers drinking beers with stupid friends than being at home with the wife; she feels remorse at having permitted such behavior from the beginning. Maybe she deserves it. Even her teenage children would rather spend the time out with friends, sometimes even after midnight, as long as they don't have to be in the house with her, without caring about being scolded, or not even caring about the back-handed slap on the face from their intermittently present father. Maybe they all deserve it, that she encouraged all those behaviors with her silence. "Silence means consent," goes the old saw. True. However, she would have wished that…
An earthquake? In the Valley of Texas? Inconceivable! But the intensity of the tremors increases, and suddenly, in the middle of the kitchen's floor a geyser of soil clods and wood chunks erupts. Screaming, she backs up and hikes herself up the kitchen sink, trying to get away as much as possible from the horrible nightmare that bursts forth from the crater: a blackened mummy crawls towards her like a mutant alligator. His bared-teeth smile and his withered face are the worst part. Without giving her time to do anything at all, the horrible mummy takes hold of her with hands like stone spiders, and sinks his smile in her neck. The pain is huge; it's millions of times worse than birth contractions, and although she wishes she could sink into the oblivion of unconsciousness, the suffering follows her through all the corners of her mind. Right on death's doorstep, the monster's mouth lets go of her neck violently. Falling down, she can see in a scene that tilts to the side s-l-o-w-l-y that her attacker is cowering against the opposite wall in the kitchen, and a short, tan man is standing in the middle of the rubble in the kitchen, smiling at them, looking first at one and then at the other, from the wall to the floor. The words exchanged by these characters are incomprehensible at the time, and only through the passage of time and blood become intelligible:
"Well, well, The Hidden One makes an appearance." The short man speaks in a young voice, with a touch of boredom and humor, "You've just resurfaced and already you cause a ruckus… How quaint are you, eh? So, when was the last time you roamed the world? Five hundred years ago? Ah… I see, before the Spaniards arrived here… Interesting…" He does not sound interested at all, "Well, look, I'm bored, I need a diversion. So give the blood to the lady. Come on! She has got about six seconds before dying. Do it!" The last part is said with a roar.
Imenand crawls again towards her, with much weeping on his face and a palpable terror before the mysterious figure standing in the middle of the kitchen. He chomps down on his tongue and kisses the lady, while placing his withered hands over her breasts. Before she has been able to drink but a few drops, the short man pulls them apart brusquely.
"Do not give her the memories! But give her everything else."
Imenand looks confused, but does as bid. While she undergoes the fire of the transformation she can hear Imenand through the flames, begging.
"I implore you, Lord, allow me to disappear into the ground again, I did not know you were still roaming the world, I would never would have importuned you had I known, please, do not destroy me, I have always kept my distance, I have always respected your rule, I beg of you, please, please, Lord Benjamin…"
"Stop your whining. Ha! It has been centuries since anyone has been able to detect me… Look, I will not do you harm at the moment. In this town there is a coven. Go destroy a few of them and bring me a lass of about the same dimensions as this lady. But go already… Ah, one more thing: you are forbidden to drink. Go now!"
The pains of her transformation are just finished when the regular din of teenagers is heard, all full of loud voices and hauteur, arriving at the house. The vital smell of bodies in full flower is maddening, and the thirst of the spirit that reanimates her body is undeniable. Like a gust of wind, she runs to the living room, and there, standing in front of her children and their guests, she suffers indecision for a moment. But it's a fleeting moment. She chases them around the house, and with a predator's skill she reduces half a dozen teenagers to small fragments of flesh and bone. In the end, it is impossible to identify which remains belong to whom…
When the lust of the thirst slackens its control over her a little bit, she comes to realize what has happened, and howls with a piercing shriek, while she begins ripping out her hair by the fistful at the same time.
Imenand returns, dragging a young woman by the foot, who twists in hysterics on the floor amid screams and threats. One can see how he trembles with desire when he finds the house redecorated with human remains. But he obeys regardless…
"Well done, faithful servant…"
Benjamin seems indifferent to everything. He takes a few steps and grabs the ex-mother by the neck. With harsh movements he straightens out her arm and bites her on the wrist. After a few gulps, Benjamin smiles again, and holding the lady still, he tears off her jeans with one single swipe of his hand. Next, he sinks his fingers into her waist, and tears out the metal prosthesis violently from inside her hip. She screams out in pain, but forgets everything when Benjamin grabs the vampire girl by the arm and pushes her down on the floor, so that both women are knocked down side to side. Right away the ex-mother rushes over to the vampire, and drinks. Before she can start tearing the blood-empty body apart, Benjamin tears it away from her grip and drags the body to the master bedroom. He throws the vampire towards the bed, and in the middle of the air, burns her. He instructs Imenand to bring the fire extinguishers from the kitchen and between the both of them they put out the flames before they start a fire. With infinite care, Benjamin inserts the prosthesis hip high, taking care so that the ash figure does not collapse.
"This is what you will do to entertain me: Take this lady and make her your queen, or whatever pleases you, but do not share the memories with her, understand? In a few days, maybe her husband will return. I will transform him, to see what happens… I want you to face him and eliminate him. I guess you know how to tell stories through the blood, right? Well, more than likely the husband will try to bite you, so let him do it, but take care that you hide whatever really happened here. Tell him whatever lies you want, I don't care… I only want to find out what happens, I want to see how far the so-called family ties can actually go… I will be watching you: Do a good job and I may let you survive all this."
Next thing anyone could tell, Benjamin had disappeared already. Imenand, not a gentleman at all, took the ex-mother by the hair and dragged her behind him, looking for some hideout…
Throughout all those images, I could hear the actual thoughts of my ex-wife, that kept up a continuous monologue of self-justification:
"I couldn't help myself. Couldn't resist, you understand? Surely you too know how difficult it is to refuse the blood. In the beginning, after Imenand did not return for several days, I decided to escape the dark basement where he had left me, but the first thing I did was to attack some lady that was out watering her yard. I realized that I couldn't go around chewing people left and right. I tried to satisfy myself with only criminals, and for a time that was enough. Imenand didn't give me the memories, but he gave me powers… I may not have the same powers you have, but I know things you don't. I know that I can create vampires that only have the powers I decide to give them. I know that I can create them to resemble whoever I choose. Years ago, when I found some kids that resembled our children a lot, I transformed them with the blood. With the image burned in my mind of my children, I made what you see here today: immortals that look like your son and your daughter. Isn't it enough, that I have restored them? Isn't it enough that they are the living image of them? I did it for you! I did it for us! And what if I tried to attack you? Of course I tried to burn you. You would've done the same if a monster showed up trying to destroy everything you've accomplished. Can't you see we can have anything we want now? Any house, many riches, we can dress in the latest fashion, we can have the newest cars… We could even fill the whole world with our slaves! We could create them without powers and dominate mortals, too! The world is ours: Since Benjamin is gone, there ain't no one more powerful than you are. Look at our new children, walking in silence without any other vampire able to detect them… We can do whatever we want… Can we not be together again? Can we not be a family again?"
No.
We cannot…
There is no forgiveness; there is no oblivion.
There is nothing at all.
Epilogue: … or a New Beginning?
"Cape Canaveral, Florida, Sunday 15 March, 2009. (Associated Press) The space shuttle Discovery was launched for Mission STS 119, which will conduct repairs at the International Space Station. The only moment of levity in what has been described as a perfect launch, discounting the delays for weather, was the news that a bat had ridden on the external fuel tank.
However, this reporter has received several anonymous reports of eyewitnesses who were able to observe through telescopes and binoculars what seemed to be a group of three or four people lashed somehow to the main connector yoke in between the tank and the shuttle.
The National Administration for Space and Aeronautics labeled those reports as ridiculous, since the data from thermal fluctuation on the surface of the tank indicated only the presence of the small flying mammal. In a press release…"
***
In his subterranean stone lair, in London, surrounded by several paintings, books, and other items, Benjamin is laying down on his back.
A slight smile slides on his lips for the second time in over twenty years. As is his custom, he speaks out loud his musings even though he is completely alone here. It has been whole eras since he has cared whether someone listens to him or not: He just loves the sound of words.
"Well, well, he had all the appearance of being the worst scum, but even so, he had flashes of genius. First, he surprises me with his technique of total disintegration. And now, he has found a definitive way to destroy himself. Why didn't I think of that before? When he reenters the atmosphere, he will burn at over seven thousand degrees Centigrade. Surely he will not survive… Pity, he hardly lasted twenty years… I suppose that the final revelation really was the last straw that broke his sanity's back. Anyway… At least he almost got rid of all those useless fledglings. I had high hopes that he would find another one of those millennial vampires, to save me the effort. It seems incredibly ironic that in a thousand years I have only found the smartest one among them… However, I was never fond of Imenand… Well, it doesn't matter, at the moment I shall consider myself satisfied…
"Cape Canaveral, Florida, Sunday 15 March, 2009. (Associated Press) The space shuttle Discovery was launched for Mission STS 119, which will conduct repairs at the International Space Station. The only moment of levity in what has been described as a perfect launch, discounting the delays for weather, was the news that a bat had ridden on the external fuel tank.
However, this reporter has received several anonymous reports of eyewitnesses who were able to observe through telescopes and binoculars what seemed to be a group of three or four people lashed somehow to the main connector yoke in between the tank and the shuttle.
The National Administration for Space and Aeronautics labeled those reports as ridiculous, since the data from thermal fluctuation on the surface of the tank indicated only the presence of the small flying mammal. In a press release…"
In his subterranean stone lair, in London, surrounded by several paintings, books, and other items, Benjamin is laying down on his back.
A slight smile slides on his lips for the second time in over twenty years. As is his custom, he speaks out loud his musings even though he is completely alone here. It has been whole eras since he has cared whether someone listens to him or not: He just loves the sound of words.
"Well, well, he had all the appearance of being the worst scum, but even so, he had flashes of genius. First, he surprises me with his technique of total disintegration. And now, he has found a definitive way to destroy himself. Why didn't I think of that before? When he reenters the atmosphere, he will burn at over seven thousand degrees Centigrade. Surely he will not survive… Pity, he hardly lasted twenty years… I suppose that the final revelation really was the last straw that broke his sanity's back. Anyway… At least he almost got rid of all those useless fledglings. I had high hopes that he would find another one of those millennial vampires, to save me the effort. It seems incredibly ironic that in a thousand years I have only found the smartest one among them… However, I was never fond of Imenand… Well, it doesn't matter, at the moment I shall consider myself satisfied…
Daniel A. Franco
Carrollton, Texas
March 16, 2009
Translated: April 21, 2009
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