Outsider (27 page)

She had reopened old scars in her wrists and
dug deeper. The blood had seeped out, drenching the tiger pattern
of the quilt cover with a sticky red, and when her heart crawled to
a full stop, her spirit saw me in the doorway. And stated, unfazed
and matter-of-factly:

“You’re not Death.”

I smiled slightly, remembering everyone’s
favourite bet that Sid Wasgo was a poker face with the sense of
humour of a frying pan, and replied:

“I’m her Envoy.”

She studied me, she studied my flat chest,
and sighed. Well, her physical body would have; now she was a
disembodied spirit, who smiled:

“I knew I could look great. If only I hadn’t
been so lazy.”

It sounded like a joke, and no one she knew
would have laughed at it. It was her self-appointed prerogative. I
walked to her and held my hand out to Sid Wasgo’s spirit. She
accepted it and the spirit lifted itself away from her body. Sid
Wasgo was now officially dead.

“Are you taking me to Death?” She asked me
point-blankly.

“Yes, these are my orders.”

She looked around her. The dark heavy
curtains, the starry ceiling, the red and black shelves loaded with
music tapes and CDs and books, the shiny black doors of the closet,
the photos of Second Look performing in various venues around
London trailing along the walls, the desk unusually tidy. This was
the box she had shaped for her night dreams.

“Let’s go.”

* * * * * * *

Walking down the steps, I could feel the air
getting thicker and thicker around us, cooler too, with a feeling
of water. It meant that Sid was getting “deader and deader”, as we
Envoys called it, and this factor was letting us slide into a
parallel realm, a spirit realm. She didn’t comment on it, she
seemed to understand.

By the time we walked through the front door,
it would have felt normal to see fishes swimming by. Instead, we
saw a Chinese middle-aged man looking directly at us, seeing us.
Sid looked back.

“You can see me!” He exclaimed jumping on his
feet, metaphorically that is, because he was a spirit that no one
had collected after his successful suicide. “You can see me! My
god, you can see me!”

Surprised, Sid had the good idea to keep
silent. He had been left to wander until his Appointed Time. And
there was nothing I could do for him. Believe me, you couldn’t
afford compassion for the spirits of suicidees, that would have
been tempting Death’s wrath and she was no joker.

“Please, help me! What is happening to me?
Take me away! It’s too lonely!”

Sid looked at me, her eyes querying an
explanation. I looked at the man and stated flatly, because there
was not many ways to tell him:

“You are dead. Someone will come for you
soon.”

“Dead?”

He turned around, flabbergasted, and walked
away, muttering to himself. I looked at Sid:

“You’re lucky.”

Her right eyebrow shot up. She laughed,
waving the statement away, then spotting my motorbike, she absorbed
herself in its study for a minute or two, then shifted her
attention to her own two-wheels, and with a wistful look at it, she
commented:

“In a way, I won’t miss it. It was getting
too heavy. Or maybe I was getting too tired.” She shrugged her
shoulders. Whichever didn’t matter to her anymore. “The Suzuki,
it’s yours?”

“Yep!”

“You’re taking me for a ride?”

I smiled, knowing she would enjoy this ride
no problem!

* * * * * * *

As a dead, Sid Wasgo was definitely a happy
camper. She started whooping and hollering when my Suzuki took off
and left the ground: wow! And went on all the way. To humour her
enthusiasm, I swerved and whirled every possible acrobatic all over
her neighbourhood. Before really going for it, we shot through the
Brixton Academy to check out the band gracing their stage that
night, but “No way!” said Sid, the “Crocodile Shoes” singer was not
her cup of cocoa.

* * * * * * *

When we walked into Death’s office, two
versions of Sid Wasgo, Life looked at us intensely and Death
ordered, her eyes never straying away from a monitor:

“Rikki, I wanna see you immediately after
your debriefing.”

Ok. I showed Sid an armchair –in Death’s
realm, everything is material and immaterial altogether- and took
my leave.

When I came back later, looking my true self,
Sid stared at me, shaking her head with amusement. Gone the green
mohican and the Native American tattoos. Just a blond pony tail, a
pair of green eyes, a tribal snake tattooed around my right wrist,
the leather outfit I was wearing at the rock gig before being
called on the job, and my unmistakable female shape. I was
wondering if Death and Life would reset time for me and let me go
back to the biker haunt and resume my audience participation. But
Death looked at me, straight in the eyes, and that was quite
mesmerising. Her voice deliberately broke the spell:

“Rikki, I decided to promote you.”

She got up and stepped around her desk, Sid’s
eyes following her every move. She smiled, a radiant smile,
something no one had seen for a long time –too much work, even for
someone who could stretch time. And then, she dropped her bomb:

“This is your desk now. I’m going on
holidays. Life will explain to you every detail you need to
know.”

(London: Seven Sisters, November 2002 –
Brixton, January 2003)

At the very least, it was Death's plan: have
Sid Wasgo collected and go on holidays with her. From one universe
to the next, do the best-laid plans always work out? For example,
what happened in the next parallel universe?

Like in the aforementioned one where everyone
got a happy ending, Sid Wasgo did achieve a few of her dreams and
cult status of a sort.

Our writer had learned to play the piano and
was requested by a lesbian, feminist and anarchist director with
underground fame, to compose an instrumental soundtrack for a
movie. By the time this music was released on CD, Joy had left
London, and Sid.

She had a novel published: "
The Private
Life Of A Vampire
". By the time readers started picking up the
book off the shelves and turned it into a bestseller, Sid had lost
contact with Second Look.

Depression was a faithful companion,
constantly abetted by isolation, standing by Sid Wasgo's side, day
and night, unflinching, unfailing, its affection steady and
unrequited.

So, what could happen on this fateful summer
night, to interfere with Death's eventual granting of Sid's dearest
wish?

* * * * * * *

She certainly looks tasty
, Joy thought
almost grudgingly, eyeing the young rock chick prancing in front of
her: a blonde sylph barely out of her sweet teens and rather
scantily clad, dancing the night away.

This was Joy's new hunting ground in London:
a lesbian club with no punk or Goth in sight. Boring looks, but
nourishing food. Yes, Joy was back in London, after two restless
years wandering throughout Europe. She didn’t have the faintest
idea why, she just knew she had to come back.

The uninspired DJ swiftly transited from one
techno tune to the next, a music that was so boring to Joy’s ears.
No soul, no heart, no spirit, no feeling, no story, no voice. But
she felt her fangs grow at the sober sight of the slender and fresh
neck. Oh yes, dipping into this jugular was going to be so
delicious…….

Abruptly, the spell broke. The sudden thought
of Sid was invading her mind, for the first time in a long time.
Something felt utterly wrong; she could sense it with every fibre
of her being. Something was wrong with Sid……

* * * * * * *

Rikki parked her modified Suzuki Intruder
next to Sid's black Kawasaki Eliminator. She walked through the
security door of the writer's building and up the sets of stairs to
the second floor, barely noticing the unkempt walls and steps, the
indecipherable haikus and the graffiti. Through the front door of
the writer's flat. She admired the artistic work on the door to the
bedroom, passed through it, and froze.

There was a woman bending over Sid's body.
She was wearing black from the roots of her hair to the toes of her
knee-high-booted feet. There were strands of white mingling with
the strands of black in the long mohican spreading across the
shoulders. The trousers were leg-hugging and the sleeves, flowing
out of a body-hugging waistcoat, were wide. Rikki recognized the
gothic style of the vampire known as Joy……. Drinking Sid's blood
out of the freshly slit wrists was what she was doing. Sid's
heartbeat, despite its fading slant, was not about to stop. The
death mark was already clearing out of the dying aura. Sid was not
about to see the double Death had sent to collect her…….

* * * * * * *

"Death." Life's tone was carrying a warning.
Death immediately took her attention off the monitor and brought it
to the Envoy standing in front of her desk. The Envoy was standing
alone.

"What happened?"

"The vampire Joy."

While everyone in Death's office was
dramatically forgetting to smile, the vampire Joy was feeding her
own powerful blood to the moribund writer. She had cut the fleshy
part of her right breast with her long nails. Sid's lips were
tightly locked on the wound, greedily sucking the flowing blood,
with an animalistic and deliberate quality that the writer would
have never allowed herself in life.

Survival instinct gave Joy the desperate
strength to pull away from Sid when she reached the edge of her
consciousness. Survival instinct made her bite the tarantula tattoo
on the inviting throat ─throats are always so inviting to
vampires─, where two tiny old scars were blemishing the skin. Sid's
arms encircled the body, their grip weakening as Joy was regaining
her strength.

When she stopped and looked at Sid's face,
her mouth equally smeared with blood, she noticed a strange
expression in the writer's brown eyes, one she had never seen. It
was deep and cold, indifferent and calculating, greedy and
lusty.

The vampire sat back on her knees. Her
waistcoat and shirt were opened down to below her waist, revealing
her pale white skin, her bloodied right breast, the lips of the
wound already joining to mend. Sid's eyes were only one step ahead
of her hands.

Wow, Joy thought, sitting up. Sex had never
felt so …….sexual, so passionate, so deliberate, with Sid. What was
going on? She looked into the writer's deep, brown eyes and didn't
feel the psychic pull. No, even if she had just made Sid into a
vampire, a blood drinker, Sid was no longer a psychic vampire.

Joy grabbed her black shirt and gracefully
shoved her arms into the long sleeves, under the curious stare of
her lover, or ex-lover, the labels felt confused. They used to be
lovers, and Joy had left, in need of space, in search of new
horizons. The new horizons being the old horizons of Europe. She
had left with no warning, leaving Sid to wait for her, night after
night. They had not broken up per se, Joy had not exactly dumped
Sid, but what do you call it when you up and go without a
word…….

"How did you know?" The question, simple and
direct, startled the older vampire out of her wandering
thoughts.

Joy's right hand fumbled for her knickers.
She felt the night was still with them, but could sense it was on a
short slant now.

"By drinking your blood a few years ago, I
created a bond between us." She remembered the taste of Sid's
menstrual blood, it had been almost as sweet and tingly as the
blood she had just drained. This blood had been worth every moon of
waiting.

"You didn't want me to …….die?"

Ah, the relativity of death……. For humans, it
is simple: you are either alive, either dead. Or comatose. But for
a vampire…… Technically, vampires are dead. But technically, they
are alive, too. Hence the literary creation of the word ‘undead’.
It definitely sounds better than ‘unalive’. But, let's get back to
the matter at hand.

"Come on, Sid!" Joy tried to infuse her voice
with a light, jokey spin. "Since the first time I ever set eyes on
you, I’ve always wanted to turn you into a vampire!" She eventually
located her black knickers under the tiger-patterned quilt and
stood up to put them on, her eyes scanning the bed in the dark
bedroom for more items of clothing. "I suggest we hurry, we both
need to feed before the sun rise."

Sid didn't look peckish, didn't even feel
peckish, but opted for apparent obedience to the suggestion. Blood
had tasted rather nice on this first time…….

* * * * * * *

Sid was voraciously feeding, gorging herself
with blood, enjoying the feel of her fangs still sunk into the warm
flesh, under Joy's watchful eye. The voracity of this new vampire
was something that the older vampire would have never thought
possible. Sid, when alive, seemed to be of such a gentle
disposition.
Ok, she thought. I never was a gentle vampire. A
gentle vampire would never survive. I was angry: I had never asked
to become a vampire!

Sid had never exactly asked to be made into a
vampire, but she seemed to accept her new condition rather well, so
far. She also seemed to be very well disposed towards Joy: she had
initiated sex, quite a first in the history of their acquaintance.
Curiosity started to bite at Joy's heels: what had Sid's life been
like, after her sudden departure?

"Stop!" She firmly grabbed the green mohican
and pulled her young fledging away from the unconscious victim.
"You don't want to kill her!"

"Why not?" The fledgling enquired, almost
absentmindedly, licking her own lips with an appreciative
tongue.