The old woman, however, he did not dismiss. How old was she? Sixty, perhaps-no, much older. Ninety was more likely. And yet, her face, her neck, her hands were curiously smooth, unlined. At times, she might only have been fifty. And the dyed hair, which should have made her seem raddled, somehow enhanced the illusion of a young woman.
Yes, she fascinated him. Probably she had been an actress. Foreign, theatrical-rich. If she was prepared to keep him, thinking him mistakenly her pet cat, then he was willing, for a while. He could steal from her when she began to cloy and he decided to leave.
Yet, something in the uncomplexity of these thoughts disturbed him. The first time he had run away, he was unsure now from what. Not the vampire name, certainly, a stage name- Draculas-what else? But from something-some awareness of fate for which idea his vocabulary had no word, and no explanation. Driven once away, driven thereafter to return, since it was foolish not to. And she had known how to treat him. Gracefully, graciously. She would be honourable, for her kind always were. Used to spending money for what they wanted, they did not baulk at buying people, too. They had never forgotten flesh, also, had a price, since their roots were firmly locked in an era when there had been slaves.
But. But he would not, he told himself, go there tonight. No. It would be good she should not be able to rely on him. He might go tomorrow, or the next day, but not tonight.
The turning world lifted away from the sun, through a winter sunset, into darkness. Snake was glad to see the ending of the light, and false light instead spring up from the apartment blocks, the cafes.
He moved out on to the wide pavement of a street, and a man came and took his arm on the right side, another starting to walk by him on the left.
"Yes, this is the one, the one calls himself Snake."
"Are you?" the man who walked beside him asked.
"Of course it is," said the first man, squeezing his arm. "Didn"t we have an exact description? Isn"t he just the way he was described?"
"And the right place, too," agreed the other man, who did not hold him. "The right area."
The men wore neat nondescript clothing. Their faces were sallow and smiling, and fixed. This was a routine with which both were familiar. Snake did not know them, but he knew the touch, the accent, the smiling fixture of their masks. He had tensed. Now he let the tension melt away, so they should see and feel it had gone.
"What do you want?"
The man who held his arm only smiled.
The other man said, "Just to earn our living."
"Doing what?"
On either side the lighted street went by. Ahead, at the street"s corner, a vacant lot opened where a broken wall lunged away into the shadows.
"It seems you upset someone," said the man who only walked. "Upset them badly."
"I upset a lot of people," Snake said.
"I"m sure you do. But some of them won"t stand for it."
"Who was this? Perhaps I should see them."
"No. They don"t want that. They don"t want you to see anybody." The black turn was a few feet away.
"Perhaps I can put it right."
"No. That"s what we"ve been paid to do."
"But if I don"t know-" said Snake, and lurched against the man who held his arm, ramming his fist into the soft belly. The man let go of him and fell. Snake ran. He ran past the lot, into the brilliant glare of another street beyond, and was almost laughing when the thrown knife caught him in the back.
The lights turned over. Something hard and cold struck his chest, his face. Snake realized it was the pavement. There was a dim blurred noise, coming and going, perhaps a crowd gathering. Someone stood on his ribs and pulled the knife out of him and the pain began.
"Is that it?" a choked voice asked some way above him: the man he had punched in the stomach.
"It"ll do nicely."
A new voice shouted. A car swam to the kerb and pulled up raucously. The car door slammed, and footsteps went over the cement. Behind him, Snake heard the two men walking briskly away.
Snake began to get up, and was surprised to find he was unable to.
"What happened?" someone asked, high, high above.
"I don"t know."
A woman said softly, "Look, there"s blood-"
Snake took no notice. After a moment he tried again to get up, and succeeded in getting to his knees. He had been hurt, that was all. He could feel the pain, no longer sharp, blurred, like the noise he could hear, coming and going. He opened his eyes. The light had faded, then came back in a long wave, then faded again. There seemed to be only five or six people standing around him. As he rose, the nearer shapes backed away.
"He shouldn"t move," someone said urgently.
A hand touched his shoulder, fluttered off, like an insect.
The light faded into black, and the noise swept in like a tide, filling his ears, dazing him. Something supported him, and he shook it from him-a wall- "Come back, son," a man called. The lights burned up again, reminiscent of a cinema. He would be all right in a moment. He walked away from the small crowd, not looking at them. Respectfully, in awe, they let him go, and noted his blood trailing behind him along the pavement.
The French clock chimed sweetly in the salon; it was seven. Beyond the window, the park was black. It had begun to rain again.
The old man had been watching from the downstairs window for rather more than an hour. Sometimes, he would step restlessly away, circle the room, straighten a picture, pick up a petal discarded by the dying flowers. Then go back to the window, looking out at the trees, the rain and the night.
Less than a minute after the chiming of the clock, a piece of the static darkness came away and began to move, very slowly, towards the house.
Vasyelu Gorin went out into the hall. As he did so, he glanced towards the stairway. The lamp at the stairhead was alight, and she stood there in its rays, her hands lying loosely at her sides, elegant as if weightless, her head raised.
"Princess?"
"Yes, I know. Please hurry, Va.s.su. I think there is scarcely any margin left."
The old man opened the door quickly. He sprang down the steps as lightly as a boy of eighteen. The black rain swept against his face, redolent of a thousand memories, and he ran through an orchard in Burgundy, across a hillside in Tuscany, along the path of a wild garden near St. Petersburg that was St. Petersburg no more, until he reached the body of a young man lying over the roots of a tree.
The old man bent down, and an eye opened palely in the dark and looked at him.
"Knifed me," said Snake. "Crawled all this way."
Vasyelu Gorin leaned in the rain to the gra.s.s of France, Italy and Russia, and lifted Snake in his arms. The body lolled, heavy, not helping him. But it did not matter. How strong he was, he might marvel at it, as he stood, holding the young man across his breast, and turning, ran back towards the house.
"I don"t know," Snake muttered, "don"t know who sent them. Plenty would like to-How bad is it? I didn"t think it was so bad."
The ivy drifted across Snake"s face and he closed his eyes.
As Vasyelu entered the hall, the Vampire was already on the lowest stair. Vasyelu carried the dying man across to her, and laid him at her feet. Then Vasyelu turned to leave.
"Wait," she said.
"No, Princess. This is a private thing. Between the two of you, as once it was between us. I do not want to see it, Princess. I do not want to see it with another."
She looked at him, for a moment like a child, sorry to have distressed him, unwilling to give in. Then she nodded. "Go then, my dear."
He went away at once. So he did not witness it as she left the stair, and knelt beside Snake on the Turkish carpet newly coloured with blood. Yet, it seemed to him he heard the rustle her dress made, like thin crisp paper, and the whisper of the tiny dagger parting her flesh, and then the long still sigh.
He walked down through the house, into the clean and frigid modern kitchen full of electricity. There he sat, and remembered the forest above the town, the torches as the yelling aristocrats hunted him for his theft of the comfit box, the blows when they caught up with him. He remembered, with a painless unoppressed refinding, what it was like to begin to die in such a way, the confused anger, the coming and going of tangible things, long pulses of being alternating with deep valleys of non-being. And then the agonised impossible crawl, fingers in the earth itself, pulling him forward, legs sometimes able to a.s.sist, sometimes failing, pa.s.sengers which must be dragged with the rest. In the graveyard at the edge of the estate, he ceased to move. He could go no farther. The soil was cold, and the white tombs, curious petrified vegetation over his head, seemed to suck the black sky into themselves, so they darkened, and the sky grew pale.
But as the sky was drained of its blood, the foretaste of day began to possess it. In less than an hour, the sun would rise.
He had heard her name, and known he would eventually come to serve her. The way in which he had known, both for himself and for the young man called Snake, had been in a presage of violent death.
All the while, searching through the city, there had been no one with that stigma upon them, that mark. Until, in the alley, the warm hand gripped his neck, until he looked into the leopard-coloured eyes. Then Vasyelu saw the mark, smelled the scent of it like singed bone.
How Snake, crippled by a mortal wound, bleeding and semi-aware, had brought himself such a distance, through the long streets hard as nails, through the mossy garden-land of the rich, through the colossal gates, over the watery, night-tuned plain, so far, dying, the old man did not require to ask, or to be puzzled by. He, too, had done such a thing, more than two centuries ago. And there she had found him, between the tall white graves. When he could focus his vision again, he had looked and seen her, the most beautiful thing he ever set eyes upon. She had given him her blood. He had drunk the blood of Darejan Draculas, a princess, a vampire. Unique elixir, it had saved him. All wounds had healed. Death had dropped from him like a torn skin, and everything he had been-scavenger, thief, brawler, drunkard, and, for a certain number of coins, wh.o.r.e-each of these things had crumbled away. Standing up, he had trodden on them, left them behind. He had gone to her, and kneeled down as, a short while before, she had kneeled by him, cradling him, giving him the life of her silver veins.
And this, all this, was now for the other. Even her blood, it seemed, did not bestow immortality, only longevity, at last coming to a stop for Vasyelu Gorin. And so, many many decades from this night the other, too, would come to the same hiatus. Snake, too, would remember the waking moment, conscious another now endured the stupefied thrill of it, and all that would begin thereafter.
Finally, with a sort of guiltiness, the old man left the hygienic kitchen and went back towards the glow of the upper floor, stealing out into the shadow at the light"s edge.
He understood that she would sense him there, untroubled by his presence-had she not been prepared to let him remain?
It was done.
Her dress was spread like an open rose, the young man lying against her, his eyes wide, gazing up at her. And she would be the most beautiful thing that he had ever seen. All about, invisible, the shed skins of his life, husks he would presently scuff uncaringly underfoot. And she?
The Vampire"s head inclined toward Snake. The dark hair fell softly. Her face, powdered by the lampshine, was young, was full of vitality, serene vivacity, loveliness. Everything had come back to her. She was reborn.
Perhaps it was only an illusion.
The old man bowed his head, there in the shadows. The jealousy, the regret were gone. In the end, his life with her had become only another skin that he must cast. He would have the peace that she might never have, and be glad of it. The young man would serve her, and she would be huntress once more, and dancer, a bright phantom gliding over the ballroom of the city, this city and others, and all the worlds of land and soul between.
Vasyelu Gorin stirred on the platform of his existence. He would depart now, or very soon; already he heard the murmur of the approaching train. It would be simple, this time, not like the other time at all. To go willingly, everything achieved, in order. Knowing she was safe.
There was even a faint colour in her cheeks, a blooming. Or maybe, that was just a trick of the lamp.
The old man waited until they had risen to their feet, and walked together quietly into the salon, before he came from the shadows and began to climb the stairs, hearing the silence, their silence, like that of new lovers.
At the head of the stair, beyond the lamp, the dark was gentle, soft as the Vampire"s hair. Vasyelu walked forward into the dark without misgiving, tenderly.
How he had loved her.
Hunger.
by Gabriela Lee.
Gabriela Lee is a graduate of the University of the Philippines with a B.A. in Creative Writing, and received her Master"s degree in Literary Studies from the National University of Singapore. She is based in Singapore and works for an online gaming company, developing content. Lee"s fiction has appeared in the anthology A Time for Dragons, edited by Vincent Simbulan, in the Dark Blue Southern Seas 2009 literary anthology from Silliman University, and in an anthology of Filipino fiction called A Different Voice, in which this story first appeared.
"Hunger" deals with the vampiric mananaggal myth, which, in Philippine mythology, is a blend of old-school Western vampiric myths and native superst.i.tion. "In myths, she"s a beautiful woman who can separate the upper half of her body from her lower half," Lee said. "The lower half stays rooted in one place while the upper half goes on a feeding frenzy-usually sucking the unborn fetus from a pregnant woman. If you look at the duality of such a creature, it serves as the perfect metaphor for adolescent hunger."
You feel like a small star orbiting around a center of gravity as you step out of the car and instinctively move towards Kian. He smiles at you: that kind of smile reserved for best friends and childhood confidants, and for once you wish that you hadn"t known him since first grade, when you squished a sugary ice cream cone into Joseph Bulaong"s nose because he was beating Kian up in the middle of the school playground.
"Good gig," he says, giving you a thumbs-up sign. "Your rendition of that Buckley song was amazing." You blush and grin, batting away the compliment with one blue-manicured hand. He is the ba.s.sist for Hands Down; you are the lead singer. You see him three gigs a week, the last of which is usually at Hole-In-The-Wall, a small smoky bar with faux 1960s American diner-style interiors and a bathroom that flooded every fourth toilet flush. You resist the urge to step closer to him; instead, you wait until Lia and Paolo step out of the car and make their way towards Ababu. It is past two in the morning, and you"re sure your parents will have a hissy fit when they smell your clothes (they reek of cigarette smoke, courtesy of the patrons at the Hole) but that it"s all right: more time spent with Kian is definitely time spent well.
The small neighborhood Persian-esque eatery is filled with students and other night owls-your group has to stand at the curb for ten minutes before a free seat emerges, floating like an empty gla.s.s bottle in the middle of the sea of people. You move towards it, quickly manipulating an extra chair to fit the four of you around the mon.o.bloc table. You already know what you want, and wave the waitress away. Shawarma at this time of the night is always a treat.
Paolo and Kian immediately fall into conversation regarding the set: Paolo you"ve known since your freshman year at the Ateneo, where he mistakenly thought you were a high school student looking for the Office of Admissions and kindly directed you to Kostka Hall. Both of you were in Comm; Lia, whom you met through friends of friends, was a part-time model and no-time student. Kian, you"ve known since forever. (A Sarah Geronimo song suddenly plays in your head, and you want to smash your internal radio for even considering such a cheesy song to describe...oh never mind. Forever really isn"t enough, anyway.) The food arrives, courtesy of a sleepy-eyed waitress in shorts and a pink cotton shirt. Another rerun of a bad Filipino action movie plays on the TV mounted at the corner of Ababu, where n.o.body pays any attention (well, except the manongs who would usually sit at the proper angle, just to watch the rapid-fire exchange between Fernando Poe Jr. and Max Alvarado). Paolo scarfs down his food, occasionally squirting the fiery-hot red chili sauce liberally across the mound of white rice on his plate. Lia eats delicately, drinking her Diet c.o.ke with a pinky slightly raised in the air; if you didn"t know where the place was, you"re sure you"d have thought that Lia was eating at one of those five-star restaurant chains that her father owns.
Surrept.i.tiously, you watch Kian scoop up the rice and meat into his spoon and put it in his mouth. You watch his lips surround the neck of the spoon, the silver giving way to warm pink flesh. You watch his tongue swirl slightly around the depression of the spoon, cleaning the surface and making sure that the savory white sauce was gone from the utensil. You feel a shiver run down your spine. ( G.o.d, am I being turned on by watching him eat?) "Rachel, are you all right? You"re not eating your food." Paolo peers into your face, his eyes wide behind his gla.s.ses. Despite his pudgy, well-dressed exterior, he was the best d.a.m.n drummer you had ever met; drum sticks were lightning bolts in his hand, hurled at the next beat with deadly accuracy. Kian glances at you sideways but doesn"t say anything. His eyes are dark behind the long, stylish bangs.
"Oh, I"m fine," you say, fl.u.s.tered. You cover up the fact that you"ve been checking out your best friend for the last five minutes by grabbing the chili sauce and pouring it into the shawarma. "I was just thinking-"
"We all know what you"re thinking," cut in Lia suddenly.
"We do?" Paolo asks, raising an eyebrow.
You feel panic rise inside your throat, acid green bubbling just up your windpipe. ( f.u.c.k.) "What are we thinking of?" Kian seconds. You feel like you"re suddenly part of a hive mind.
"That Rachel fudged up the second verse to that Jack Johnson song. She went too fast. She was half a beat early."
Breathe. Breathe. Everything"s fine.) You mentally count to ten, and then turn to look at Kian. His eyebrows were slightly raised, the corners of his lips curved slightly in a smile of suppressed mirth. You are briefly reminded of one of those battery-operated dolls that grinned (evilly, you think) whenever you pressed a b.u.t.ton. He doesn"t suspect a thing. Grinning, you bite into your shawarma, savoring the bite of onions and tomatoes and lettuce/cabbage (you"re never sure which is which) and the sweet, sweet essence of the meat. You wonder briefly if that is how Kian will taste in your mouth: a riot of flavors, clamoring for attention, slipping/sliding across your tongue.
You don"t have a gig tonight.
You open the windows of your bedroom and let the night breeze play with the ta.s.sels of your curtains, the tips of your hair. You parents are out late; another charity event, this time for the pediatrics ward. You managed to excuse yourself from tonight"s festivities, claiming a headache. Your mother tells you that maybe it"s the pain from not doing anything (except that "d.a.m.n band"), but you barely hear her. Tonight, the winds are calling. The stars are now within your reach.
You lift up your shirt and run your fingers across the smooth line that neatly bisects your stomach, just below your navel. The cut is clean and there is almost no bleeding now. You close your eyes and allow everything that is dark and bright to resurface. You can"t see it now, but the slice of pain across your mind tells you that your wings have emerged from beneath your skin: warm and leathery, smelling of old streets and older shadows. You give them an experimental flap, feeling the gust of wind lift you slightly off the ground, your toes sc.r.a.ping the floor. Your shoulder blades complain of the exertion, and you return to the surface, your heels conforming with the flat wooden surfaces.
Carefully, you inch your way towards the window. Your wings beat faster, and you hear a swift crack as your bones sever themselves. You feel lighter suddenly, half flesh and skin, the human side stripped away as you abandon yourself to another creature, feral and wild. A scream rips from your mouth, and you hear others answer. The wind whips around you, invisible fingers running through your hair. Pale and wide-eyed, you prepare to fly.
You take a deep breath. Hunger returns: stomach pangs stronger than any need for human food. ( Well, there is such a thing as "human" food.) Your mouth tastes imagined blood, sweet/thick, and you know that tonight will be a feast.
Candy-coated words dribble out of your mouth as you lean into the microphone, your hands running around the slender neck of the stand as you would encircle your fingers around a lover"s arm. Around you, the stage lights sweep across the tiny stage, creating a chiaroscuro effect. The beat consumes you: everything moves from one melody to the next. The riffs leave you sweaty, your heart pounding to song. You know that everything you do is dictated by the cycle of words and music-every thrust of your hip, every movement of your head, the flow of your arms and legs. This is the closest you can get to heaven, to a high, to falling in love.
You know Kian finds you beautiful when you sing-some residual psychic abilities remain at least twenty-four hours after you feed. You give him your patent come-hither look that you use whenever you sing "Hanggang Saan." That was the latest song you guys had penned, and your most popular to date-NU 107 has been playing it constantly, rumor has it that labels have been wanting to snap up your band. The ripple of excitement from hardcore fans (they were with you ever since college-orgmates and cla.s.smates, high school friends and indie audiences) was palpable. You and your bandmates try to downplay it, but even (the ice-queen) Lia can"t help but break into a silly grin once in a while.
But tonight, you are focused on Kian. You run the tip of your tongue across the edges of your teeth, and pretend you aren"t looking at him while he"s looking at you. He"s dressed up for tonight"s gig: pressed midnight blue jeans and a b.u.t.ton-down polo (you were with him when you bought this at People Are People) with a Tasmanian Devil tie. His sneakers are newly washed, and he smells like soap and deodorant, clean and smooth, like clear river water constantly washing over the shiny pebble sh.o.r.es.
You are feeding more often now, at least once every two days. The siren call is harder and harder to ignore. Your mother finally notices the dark circles under your eyes, fingerprints of a night spent without sleep, and your chalk-white cheeks. You wander around your house barefoot, dragging your legs, tired. Your father presses the back of his hand on your forehead, an act of concern. You try and stop yourself from tilting your head back and forcing his fingers into your mouth, a small snack in the middle of the day.
Your back is constantly sore, and drops of blood pepper your sheets. Your mother asks you if it"s anything she could help you with, and you smile sweetly and tell her no, perhaps it"s just dysmenorrhea. (You know you"re a good liar.) You tell the band that you"re having a case of the stomach flu, and if Lia could sub first while you deal with the pain. They acquiesce, understanding that pain is a part of your life. Kian visits you often, bringing rolls of ensaymada from Red Ribbon, and complimenting your mother on her new hairdo. She simpers and smiles and asks him if he has a girlfriend, and you know where the conversation is going and start wishing a hole in the ground would open up and swallow you alive. Or your mother. Your stomach starts hurting again, like there is an invisible dwarf with a silver knife that is slowly peeling away layers of flesh, and dammit, you know that tonight, you have to fly again.