Outsider (29 page)

She read hunger and lust in the cold eyes.
She suddenly missed the human being she had known and left. She
painfully missed the human being she had grown to love so much that
she had run away in fear. Now was too late for regrets. The tide
was rising again with no promise for tomorrow. Who knew what was
about to wash up on the shore this time…….

* * * * * * *

They had fed, quickly, soberly, with no cruel
antics from Sid. They were on their way to a gig. Their favourite
band, one they had not seen for a while ─Joy being abroad, Sid
being adrift─, were playing a good venue in the centre of London,
one with a good acoustic and a good sound, one where they could be
filmed for a DVD. Second Look were going to be at their best and
worst behaviour. They needed the month of September to be
special.

Joy and Sid remembered……. But Sid didn’t care
for the memories anymore. And Joy, Joy wasn’t sure of anything
anymore. At least, they had both fed satisfyingly, hopeful hint for
an easy night.

Definitely unobtrusive, almost invisible,
Death and Life were standing by, watching the crowd of enthusiastic
punters, listening to their cries of delight and their shouts of
impatience. Canned music was ravishing everyone’s ears. “
Come to
my window, Crawl inside, wait by the light of the moon, Come to my
window, I’ll be home soon
……” Melissa Etheridge was crooning
away.

Blue-haired Frank smiled at gothic Tracee and
suggested a drink. They moved on through the crowd,
inconsequentially chatting and joking about alcohol. The goth
hadn’t seen her friend Sid for months and hadn’t really
noticed.

* * * * * * *

Terry Harley and Dawn Ferndale walked on
stage like the world was their private oyster; the venue certainly
was. The audience erupted with enthusiasm, shouting their
names.

“Have you ever thought about feeding on
them?” Sid quietly enquired.

“Mmmh. More than once. But, I liked the
audience better…….” Joy mused.

Sid laughed silently, sending odd ripples
down Joy’s spine. She threw a quick look at her companion and
noticed no threat on the presently quiet features. The soaring
voice of Terri Harley distracted her.

“Alright! Let’s rock!” Music rose and the
crowd quieted down. The keyboard unleashed wild music and the voice
roared. Joy started to relax. She had not noticed how tensed she
felt. Sid seemed already lost in the music. There was definite hope
for an easy night. Hang on. What was that? Joy could sense a
presence, a great power……. Sid, young and arrogant, had not
noticed. Joy’s senses scanned the crowd, her eyes slowly sweeping
the enthralled audience. And there, she saw them, and almost gasped
with surprise. Death and Life were there, too?! The two most
powerful entities she could imagine were there……. Why on Earth, why
in hell, what was their purpose……. Sid was still seemingly lost in
the music…….

“Ah…….,” Sid sighed mockingly. “She is still
good, oh yes, but she’s lost her spontaneity. What a pity.”

“What?”

“I’m referring to the singer. It’s the same
moves. The same facial features. All the way through. She hasn’t
changed an iota…….”

Joy stared back at the stage where the band
was dealing the last notes of their first number to thunderous
applause. Then she stared at Death and Life again. To her great
surprise, Life smiled at her.

“What’s up?” Sid enquired, mildly interested
in her companion’s reason to feel startled. She looked over and
looked back at Joy. Suddenly, her attention shifted again. Joy felt
the hunger rise in Sid. She quickly looked around and saw the
potential food. The black hair of a goth woman, the blue hair of a
free-lance reporter. Joy shrugged.

“They’re your friends.”

“But they look so delicious…….”

Sid licked her lips with a salivating tongue,
her canines sharpening slowly, fire almost spilling out of her
eyes.

“Courtesy, Sid. Besides, they’re your
friends.”

“I am a vampire, they are food…….” She was
already passing the bemused Joy, cruelly joking: “I could at least
say hi to my friends! It has been a long time!”

“Sid?”

Joy’s hand missed Sid’s shoulder. Sid was
already walking away, walking faster than normal pace, but still
passing for human, if anyone wanted to notice her. But whoever
would glance at her was anyway only taking in her green mohican.
Some things never changed…….

Joy rushed, bumping against the people
closing the gap in the wake of her monster, ignoring their
vocalized complaints
. Since when do I care, I am as much a
monster as Sid is now!
The crowd unconsciously parting ahead of
the young vampire and her fiery hunger. On stage, another song was
lifting up to the sky, flowing up through the ceiling, breaking
sound barriers. Joy was not listening anymore, the pace was
increasing away from her. Hunger was turning into a tidal wave,
engulfing Sid’s failing consciousness. Joy sped up, faster than
human, causing a commotion that was barely rippling by the instant
she caught up with Sid, faced her and opposed her:

“No!”

Sid laughed: “What do you care? I’ll be happy
to share with you!”

Joy’s facial features hardened:

“No.”

Sid’s smile died slowly, rage burst out with
her voice:

“Who are you to oppose me?”

“I am your sire.”

The words had barely crossed Joy’s lips,
carrying all her power and might, when Sid’s backhand caught her
across the face, flinging her against several rows of people, like
a bowling ball striking bowling pins. She stood back up
automatically, in one swift movement and threw herself at the
writer, with all the undead strength in her body. She felt like she
had hit a cliff…….

A circle started to open around them. The
band kept on with their song, still unaware. Frank and Stacee felt
the ripple in the crowd and turned around to look. Sid and Joy
levitated up, locked in their struggle. And the punters, row by
row, started to look up in awe. And the singer let her voice fade
out at the sight. The musicians joined her in her amazed silence,
one by one.

Sid roared with fury when Joy threw her
against a wall. She only bounced back. To beat Joy with a mighty
fist in the chest, which would have definitely terminated someone
else’s breathing. As swiftly, hitting faster than a human eye could
see, the side of her other hand hit Joy’s neck. Joy fell to the
ground. Only to be gently picked up by Death herself. The crowd
around them, the band on stage, looked frozen in time and space.
Sid’s face turned around to see a smiling Life levitating alongside
her.

“What’s that?” The vampire snarled, her nose
hardly an inch away from the entity’s nose. “A rock and roll
intervention?”

“Oh, my sweet Sid,” Death replied with an
amused smile. “It is, if you want it to be! Why don’t you go and
sit down on the stage with Life while I’m having a quick chat with
Joy.” Death shifted her eyes from the incandescent Sid to the
still-a-bit-stunned Joy. But Sid the vampire didn’t like being
dismissed. She growled and threw herself at Death with every
intention of beating her down to a pulp and probably knocking a few
frozen punters off for good measures, including her friends Tracee
and Frank.

Before she knew it, Life had thrown her
through the air. She landed in the midst of the drum kit in a crash
of cymbals and thrashing of toms, killing the snare, unhinging the
hi-hat and barely missing the shaved-head drummer hired for the
occasion (the gig, not the fight). Life was already bending at the
waist, her hand extended down towards her to help her up. Fury made
the vampire snarl and she refused the friendly hand.

Amongst the frozen punters, Death and Joy
were taking a walk, always finding a path between the absurd
bodies.

“Joy,” Death started, seriousness in her
voice. “You spelled chaos when you turned Sid into a vampire.”
Shushing the vampire with a wave of her left hand, she went on: “I
know, you never meant to. You acted on impulse. But you spelled
chaos. We were going to let Sid die on that evening. She had earned
it. Besides, I spent so many millennia playing Death, I had decided
to retire. So, yes, you threw quite a spanner there.”

“What do you mean? You were going to grant
Sid’s wish? Why? After so many years turning her down!”

“By the way, did I forget to mention? Life is
retiring, too. Oh, not to worry. Our replacements are already
planned. They’ve been training since night one of their
assignments.”

“Ok. But, all this as nothing to do with me.
Except for Sid…….”

“We’ll get there. Let me explain first. You
abandoned Sid.” Joy looked away. “You were afraid. Afraid of
yourself, weren’t you.” Joy was looking away, silently. “You’re a
vampire. You’re supposed to have no soul. No heart? I doubt it. It
was simply frozen. Petrified with cruelty. Cruelty is necessary for
a vampire. Without cruelty, you cannot kill. If you cannot kill,
you cannot feed. But, these, Joy, were the old ways. You know that.
No matter how much fun you had leaving a trail of dead corpses, you
adapted. Feeding was still fun. What do you think happened to
you?”

Joy’s eyes turned back to the stage where Sid
was silently, albeit rather disgruntled, sitting with Life.
Stubborn silence shaping the young vampire’s body.

“You fell in love. Yes, Joy, you did. You
fell in love with Sid. Strange feeling, isn’t it? You didn’t know
this feeling. You had never experienced it while alive. You knew
what it was to love, as you loved your children. But love, in
love…….” Death let her voice trailed with innuendos. While Joy
considered the meaning of this statement. She didn’t want it to be
true, but she couldn’t deny it either. It felt scary. Death
resumed: “Scary, isn’t it?” Joy looked at her. “It’s ok, Joy. And
this is why you ran away without a word. This is why you abandoned
Sid…… Now, Joy, as you must remember, you had quite a good life.
Even if you never fell in love back then. Oh, you certainly did
like your many lovers, but I’d be surprised if you really
remembered what most of them looked like.”

Joy frowned. What did this matter anyway, a
century later? Her past lovers were all dead and dusted. So
what.

“What’s your point?”

Death smiled:

“Now, this is a Joy I recognize. Direct.
We’ll get to that point, but later. What you would like to know
now, is what happened to Sid after your sudden departure…… What
made her turn into such a monster.” The sadness in Death’s voice
surprised Joy. “She believed in you, Joy. As much as she believed
in me. Except that, with me, she knew waiting was the name of the
game. You, you felt solid, you were always turning up at some
point. She was unconsciously relying on you. And even if she never
acknowledged it even to herself ─you didn’t read it in her diary─
she felt betrayed. Betrayed by someone she had learned to trust. To
trust with her life…… Yes. Ironic, isn’t it. But remember, Joy,
Sid, when alive, suffered from depression. She was isolated. As you
know, Sid never had any real understanding of the real world. She
could never belong. Her entire life. Even as a child. You turn up,
exotic by nature, as different as her even if in a different way.
She did fall for you, too, you know. But she didn’t run
away…….”

“And that, my abandoning her, made her the
monster she is?”

“Well……. Depression is a form of emotional
exhaustion. Ultimately, it did make her the vampire she is. Your
abandonment of her was just one of the triggers.”

“One of them?”

“Yes. What happened next……. Or, let me
correct, what did not happen next, is a social structure. Didn’t
you notice, when you read her diary, that she stopped mentioning
her friends, one by one? You abandoned her, you ran away from her,
and her friends, not deliberately though, abandoned her, too.”

Joy looked at the sulking young vampire
again. There was no trace of the whale left in Sid, she was …….like
a werewolf possessed by the full moon. The old vampire’s eyes went
back to Death, then looked at the floor sticky with spilled beer.
Eventually, Joy spoke:

“So, where do you think we go from there?
What’s your plan? Because I am sure as hell you didn’t show up at
this gig just for the love of music.”

Death laughed. It sounded like a sweet ripple
in the air. Even Sid looked at her, surprised, and for a second or
two, her face softened.

“I believe this is our cue.”

The vampires both looked up, surprise painted
across their faces, to watch the five entities walk towards Death
and stop just a few feet away. By then, they had all slid into a
parallel dimension, where the frozen punters were unsubstantial
ghosts floating across the air. Joy stared at the newcomers,
wondering which one had spoken.
They
were totally look-alike
and genderless, expressionless and synchronized. Hairless, shiny
faces with eyes of steel. Perfectly smooth bodies sporting simple,
black clothing. When they heard the eerie voice again, Joy and Sid
saw that
They
were speaking in unison, with a medium pitch
that gave no hint.

“We guess that poker games are becoming
redundant and obsolete again. What are your claims?” Death opened
her mouth, but
They
interrupted her before she could even
utter a word. “We do not want to hear it from you, Death. We want
to hear Life’s take on this one first.”

Every eye turned to Life. She gracefully
jumped off the edge of the stage, took a deep breath and infused
concentration in her facial features, before answering
formally:

“Once upon a time, I became Life and served a
few millennia of time. And…….” She hesitated, breathed deeply again
and resumed. “I now wish to retire and ask for my Boon.”