2.a, A Rite of Passage
Billy's crinkled eyelids began to close, and slowly enough for me to see that his eyeballs had rolled upwards to stare into his head, leaving only that opaque whiteness to fill the diminishing gap, until that too disappeared. In his hands he took my left wrist, his thumbs and forefingers enveloping it—apropos in readiness to administer an Indian snakeburn—then raised it to meet his descending lips.
I closed my eyes, either in dread of anticipation or due to some hypnotic passage of which I'd been unaware. At first, I thought he had merely kissed me, tenderly, above the pulse at my wrist. But before that thought could even fully form, a tornado ripped through my very veins.
Whatever alien substance had begun to invade me, riding my bloodstream on a barbed surfboard, it was leaving a pre-coital fuzz of ecstacy in its wake, unabashedly berating my unsuspecting senses. First, my forearm caught light, and then my chest, filling it up as if my lungs were going to burst through my sternum. Once this all-consuming tonic passed through the chambers of my heart, my body lit up like a force gale rushing through the dwindling embers of a summer campfire. From my follicles to the soles of my feet, every nerve ending tingled.
But I wasn't alone. Whatever the vampiric equivalent of an orgasm is, Billy crumpled beneath one. His knees buckled so violently that he had to snatch one of the hands from around my wrist to stay himself on the bed frame. The sweetest smile kissed the corners of his closed eyes and...he drank.
I closed my eyes, either in dread of anticipation or due to some hypnotic passage of which I'd been unaware. At first, I thought he had merely kissed me, tenderly, above the pulse at my wrist. But before that thought could even fully form, a tornado ripped through my very veins.
Whatever alien substance had begun to invade me, riding my bloodstream on a barbed surfboard, it was leaving a pre-coital fuzz of ecstacy in its wake, unabashedly berating my unsuspecting senses. First, my forearm caught light, and then my chest, filling it up as if my lungs were going to burst through my sternum. Once this all-consuming tonic passed through the chambers of my heart, my body lit up like a force gale rushing through the dwindling embers of a summer campfire. From my follicles to the soles of my feet, every nerve ending tingled.
But I wasn't alone. Whatever the vampiric equivalent of an orgasm is, Billy crumpled beneath one. His knees buckled so violently that he had to snatch one of the hands from around my wrist to stay himself on the bed frame. The sweetest smile kissed the corners of his closed eyes and...he drank.
Numbness froze my wrist, crept up towards my elbow, then shoulder, wrapping like a helix around the radius, ulna and humerus bones en route. Once it reached my chest, the loss of feeling began spreading across my whole damp frame. If Billy chose to take my soul there and then and leave my carcass a withered husk, I neither had the power, knowledge nor the will to stop him.
Without warning, he broke free. Just as I hadn't felt Billy's fangs' incision into my wrist, neither did I feel their exit. I only knew he'd stopped because he'd returned to his full standing height, basking in the strengthening moonbeams. I couldn't judge exactly how tall he was from my horizontal position, but he was at least 6' 6", possibly more, and broad with it. Or maybe his frame leeching all the moonlight made him appear larger, somehow forcing everything else in the room to retreat into deeper, dingier shadows.
I was still alive, which meant Billy did not mean to kill me. Not yet, at least. So now, I guessed it would be my turn. Should I drink from him, as Louis had once done from his maker, Lestat?
One look told me "No!", and I closed my Death Valley-dry gaping mouth with a clack. Of its own accord, the tip of my tongue flicked beneath my canines. The only difference therein appeared to be a tiny bristle protruding from their otherwise truncated points, squared off, as they had always been. I was confused.
As if reading my mind, Billy produced a knife from a sheath that ran the length of his calf-length boot. Incredibly, I thought of Mick Dundee: "That's a knife!" Like an axe, he brought it down with incredible speed and force towards my forearm. All of a sudden, it hit me: Native American Indian, that's what he was! Simultaneously, I flinched in anticipation of my arm being severed; the blade was certainly capable in the hands of someone—especially a supernatural someone—with Billy's build.
But the keen blade arrested within a hair's breadth of my skin, its edge burning like a strip of magnesium in the moonlight. Before the effect petered out, Billy sank the blade into my skin at a 45-degree angle, up to approximately a quarter of an inch, until the length of the incision ran fully one-inch-and-a-half across my forearm. He slipped the blade out, flipped the knife 90 degrees and made a reverse incision in the same spot. An ellipse of my skin popped away and he speared it with the tip of the blade, tilted his head back and raised the knife so that the sliver of my skin slipped oyster-like into his gaping maw.
I should have felt disgusted, but instead, I felt honoured. Even moreso when he performed the same operation on his own arm—in his case, the bicep and a lot deeper incision—and hung the strip of his own flesh over my head. With the tenderness of a mother handling her newborn, he slid his huge palm beneath my shoulder blades and raised me up from my horizontal position so that I didn't choke on his cannibalistic sacrifice.
As soon as his flesh touched my bottom lip, it was in my throat, almost as if it had a life of its own, a sentience, and was burrowing down towards my gut. Within seconds, my innards began to bubble; the fatigue and numbness that had stolen over me disappeared as if exorcised.
Shadows vanished into themselves; everything was visible. My ears were filled with the distinct individual sounds of night, which otherwise make up the nocturnal backdrop of white noise. I could smell the bakery a half a mile away cooking up its daily bread; the hum of yeast, which nauseated me even before I'd 'turned', now repulsed me beyond measure. I could feel each individual fibre in the linen beneath my hamstrings and calves; to touch was an ecstacy in itself. I could physically feel and see my forearm healing where Billy had created the tiny valley cut-out to bond us as blood brothers.
The one thing that had diminished was the connection betwixt our minds. I could no longer tell what he was thinking nor he, quite obviously, me. I had to rely on nodding and silent gesticulation to realise he was telling me that it was time to go.
I took one last look around the bedroom, certain I'd never see it again. We left my brother to his dreams, now a picture of peace and innocence. He would have more to worry about later than he could ever imagine as he lay there in what was now a deep (and perhaps conjured) sleep.
Billy and I began descending the attic ladder when he suddenly held his powerful arm across my chest to bar further progress. My step-mother, oddly translucent and glowing white like some Dickensian ghost, carried a full washing basket into the bathroom at the top of the second floor stairs. Even with everything that had just occurred, her presence doing chores at this hour struck me as the oddest of all things. She turned our way and I know that she saw us, the same smile that had touched Billy's eyes earlier now catching at the corner of her mouth. And then, she was gone, like a candle dousing beneath an upturned glass through lack of oxygen.
We reached the base of the third staircase in my house, passed across the reception, through the front door and onto the street without making so much as a squeak. What lay waiting physically stopped me dead in my tracks (as if I wasn't dead enough).
In the recently-vacated attic bedroom, the time had been undisputedly around midnight. But the world into which we stepped—me for the first time and into what would be my forever—was either dusk or dawn. Looking at the sun, low in the east, I assumed the latter, always assuming that we were on the same Earth that orbited the same Sun.
The streets were unevenly cobbled and strewn with debris from (what I could only assume was) a market held thereupon the day before. Outside my front door was a town square (presumably to facilitate the market), where before there'd lived a row of houses much newer than ours, and a mere quarter of the distance away than the bollards opposite that marked the limits of this suddenly-appearing square. Those houses were gone. Just, gone.
The square itself rose into the east, at such a gradient that all I could see beyond its brow was the custard-yellow sun—blindingly echoing off the dewy cobbles—peeping betwixt the tops of some distant, regimented spindly tree branches, possibly poplar. Although I felt no chill (no acknowledgement of the temperature at all, oddly enough) the bare trees and low sun put us in late autumn or early winter. From midsummer to harvest festival in the blink of an eye.
Already, all manner of creature was beginning to populate the square. Mostly, they were human to behold, dressed in drab Victorian clothes: petticoats and frills, cravats and cufflinks, bonnets and bowlers. But not all, a fact assuredly indeterminable without the gift which Billy had so recently endowed upon me.
Immediately beside us came a vermin-faced urchin, reminding me of Moe Szyslak brought to life. He turned in our direction and smiled. Was he smiling at me or with me? At another time, I would have taken offence; but instead, I smiled back, a huge, warm grin that filled me up entirely. He flicked a one-fingered salute off his temple as if to say "Welcome, brother!", and was on his way.
That's exactly how I felt: welcomed into this world by its sunbeams, its character and its people, even though I'd been there but a matter of minutes. This place had a facsimile of my old world, a world struggling to breathe beneath the weight and expectation of materialism and vanity. But here, I could see down to the bare bones of it all, as if my new eyesight stripped away all the fancy trimmings, highlighting people and places' truest natures.
I looked up at Billy, eyes full of questions, which I vocalised remembering that any psychic link we'd shared had been snipped: 'Do these worlds co-exist, and can I skip between the two? Was this all there was to it, a bite and away, as simple as that? Was I now part of this scruffy, beautiful world forever?' And, more pointedly, how was it that the sun didn't burn me?
His head nodded at my wrist, shaking; I knew that there was more to endure before the transplantation and transformation was complete. What Billy had given to me in return for my flesh and blood was merely a Rite of Passage, a 'platform ticket', if you like.
He had waited for such a long time to dole out this chance, or so he'd intimated whilst drinking my blood. His previous visits had been but precursors, scouting trips. I could now assume that he'd been simultaneously appraising others, using slippage as his vantage point. He'd chosen me. That I could walk these streets at all with fear of neither reprisal nor attack was his gift.
Thus far, I had not let him down when the time had come to give (and take) that which he'd subconsciously implied he might. But my real test, the qualificant into this existence per se, lay ahead. What form that examination would take was the guess of any of the random strangers we continued to meet. In hindsight, I bet some of those strangers would have had answers for me.
Upon realising that I was close to a point of no return, I turned to take one last look at my old house. Where it should have been instead stood a huge open entrance, easily 18' x 25', set in a long red brick wall, opening into what looked like a warehouse or maybe an indoor market. Without warning, the street and all its inhabitants disappeared before my eyes. I know not to where, but with them went my consciousness.
I next came to in an altogether more eerie place, far removed from the bright morn whence my mind had last played host to consciousness. We passed by columns that looked to be made of charcoal, the setting sun elongating their shadows until they themselves dissipated into darkness. Was this darkness where we were headed?
Of course it was. My test—and destiny—lay ahead. Do or die. Even then, I knew not which I had the stomach for. I was very soon to find out.
Without warning, he broke free. Just as I hadn't felt Billy's fangs' incision into my wrist, neither did I feel their exit. I only knew he'd stopped because he'd returned to his full standing height, basking in the strengthening moonbeams. I couldn't judge exactly how tall he was from my horizontal position, but he was at least 6' 6", possibly more, and broad with it. Or maybe his frame leeching all the moonlight made him appear larger, somehow forcing everything else in the room to retreat into deeper, dingier shadows.
I was still alive, which meant Billy did not mean to kill me. Not yet, at least. So now, I guessed it would be my turn. Should I drink from him, as Louis had once done from his maker, Lestat?
One look told me "No!", and I closed my Death Valley-dry gaping mouth with a clack. Of its own accord, the tip of my tongue flicked beneath my canines. The only difference therein appeared to be a tiny bristle protruding from their otherwise truncated points, squared off, as they had always been. I was confused.
As if reading my mind, Billy produced a knife from a sheath that ran the length of his calf-length boot. Incredibly, I thought of Mick Dundee: "That's a knife!" Like an axe, he brought it down with incredible speed and force towards my forearm. All of a sudden, it hit me: Native American Indian, that's what he was! Simultaneously, I flinched in anticipation of my arm being severed; the blade was certainly capable in the hands of someone—especially a supernatural someone—with Billy's build.
But the keen blade arrested within a hair's breadth of my skin, its edge burning like a strip of magnesium in the moonlight. Before the effect petered out, Billy sank the blade into my skin at a 45-degree angle, up to approximately a quarter of an inch, until the length of the incision ran fully one-inch-and-a-half across my forearm. He slipped the blade out, flipped the knife 90 degrees and made a reverse incision in the same spot. An ellipse of my skin popped away and he speared it with the tip of the blade, tilted his head back and raised the knife so that the sliver of my skin slipped oyster-like into his gaping maw.
I should have felt disgusted, but instead, I felt honoured. Even moreso when he performed the same operation on his own arm—in his case, the bicep and a lot deeper incision—and hung the strip of his own flesh over my head. With the tenderness of a mother handling her newborn, he slid his huge palm beneath my shoulder blades and raised me up from my horizontal position so that I didn't choke on his cannibalistic sacrifice.
As soon as his flesh touched my bottom lip, it was in my throat, almost as if it had a life of its own, a sentience, and was burrowing down towards my gut. Within seconds, my innards began to bubble; the fatigue and numbness that had stolen over me disappeared as if exorcised.
Shadows vanished into themselves; everything was visible. My ears were filled with the distinct individual sounds of night, which otherwise make up the nocturnal backdrop of white noise. I could smell the bakery a half a mile away cooking up its daily bread; the hum of yeast, which nauseated me even before I'd 'turned', now repulsed me beyond measure. I could feel each individual fibre in the linen beneath my hamstrings and calves; to touch was an ecstacy in itself. I could physically feel and see my forearm healing where Billy had created the tiny valley cut-out to bond us as blood brothers.
The one thing that had diminished was the connection betwixt our minds. I could no longer tell what he was thinking nor he, quite obviously, me. I had to rely on nodding and silent gesticulation to realise he was telling me that it was time to go.
I took one last look around the bedroom, certain I'd never see it again. We left my brother to his dreams, now a picture of peace and innocence. He would have more to worry about later than he could ever imagine as he lay there in what was now a deep (and perhaps conjured) sleep.
Billy and I began descending the attic ladder when he suddenly held his powerful arm across my chest to bar further progress. My step-mother, oddly translucent and glowing white like some Dickensian ghost, carried a full washing basket into the bathroom at the top of the second floor stairs. Even with everything that had just occurred, her presence doing chores at this hour struck me as the oddest of all things. She turned our way and I know that she saw us, the same smile that had touched Billy's eyes earlier now catching at the corner of her mouth. And then, she was gone, like a candle dousing beneath an upturned glass through lack of oxygen.
2.b, A Facsimile of Life
The raw beauty of the slender bare bricks and laths of our house, an ancient construction, beamed through the latterly-applied plaster, paint and wallpaper as if they weren't there. My old world was still here, somewhere, but buried beneath an altogether more Victorian facade. Which one was real? I could only reckon by tangibility, so I had to assume that this new olde world was the most realistic.We reached the base of the third staircase in my house, passed across the reception, through the front door and onto the street without making so much as a squeak. What lay waiting physically stopped me dead in my tracks (as if I wasn't dead enough).
In the recently-vacated attic bedroom, the time had been undisputedly around midnight. But the world into which we stepped—me for the first time and into what would be my forever—was either dusk or dawn. Looking at the sun, low in the east, I assumed the latter, always assuming that we were on the same Earth that orbited the same Sun.
The streets were unevenly cobbled and strewn with debris from (what I could only assume was) a market held thereupon the day before. Outside my front door was a town square (presumably to facilitate the market), where before there'd lived a row of houses much newer than ours, and a mere quarter of the distance away than the bollards opposite that marked the limits of this suddenly-appearing square. Those houses were gone. Just, gone.
The square itself rose into the east, at such a gradient that all I could see beyond its brow was the custard-yellow sun—blindingly echoing off the dewy cobbles—peeping betwixt the tops of some distant, regimented spindly tree branches, possibly poplar. Although I felt no chill (no acknowledgement of the temperature at all, oddly enough) the bare trees and low sun put us in late autumn or early winter. From midsummer to harvest festival in the blink of an eye.
Already, all manner of creature was beginning to populate the square. Mostly, they were human to behold, dressed in drab Victorian clothes: petticoats and frills, cravats and cufflinks, bonnets and bowlers. But not all, a fact assuredly indeterminable without the gift which Billy had so recently endowed upon me.
Immediately beside us came a vermin-faced urchin, reminding me of Moe Szyslak brought to life. He turned in our direction and smiled. Was he smiling at me or with me? At another time, I would have taken offence; but instead, I smiled back, a huge, warm grin that filled me up entirely. He flicked a one-fingered salute off his temple as if to say "Welcome, brother!", and was on his way.
That's exactly how I felt: welcomed into this world by its sunbeams, its character and its people, even though I'd been there but a matter of minutes. This place had a facsimile of my old world, a world struggling to breathe beneath the weight and expectation of materialism and vanity. But here, I could see down to the bare bones of it all, as if my new eyesight stripped away all the fancy trimmings, highlighting people and places' truest natures.
I looked up at Billy, eyes full of questions, which I vocalised remembering that any psychic link we'd shared had been snipped: 'Do these worlds co-exist, and can I skip between the two? Was this all there was to it, a bite and away, as simple as that? Was I now part of this scruffy, beautiful world forever?' And, more pointedly, how was it that the sun didn't burn me?
His head nodded at my wrist, shaking; I knew that there was more to endure before the transplantation and transformation was complete. What Billy had given to me in return for my flesh and blood was merely a Rite of Passage, a 'platform ticket', if you like.
He had waited for such a long time to dole out this chance, or so he'd intimated whilst drinking my blood. His previous visits had been but precursors, scouting trips. I could now assume that he'd been simultaneously appraising others, using slippage as his vantage point. He'd chosen me. That I could walk these streets at all with fear of neither reprisal nor attack was his gift.
Thus far, I had not let him down when the time had come to give (and take) that which he'd subconsciously implied he might. But my real test, the qualificant into this existence per se, lay ahead. What form that examination would take was the guess of any of the random strangers we continued to meet. In hindsight, I bet some of those strangers would have had answers for me.
Upon realising that I was close to a point of no return, I turned to take one last look at my old house. Where it should have been instead stood a huge open entrance, easily 18' x 25', set in a long red brick wall, opening into what looked like a warehouse or maybe an indoor market. Without warning, the street and all its inhabitants disappeared before my eyes. I know not to where, but with them went my consciousness.
I next came to in an altogether more eerie place, far removed from the bright morn whence my mind had last played host to consciousness. We passed by columns that looked to be made of charcoal, the setting sun elongating their shadows until they themselves dissipated into darkness. Was this darkness where we were headed?
Of course it was. My test—and destiny—lay ahead. Do or die. Even then, I knew not which I had the stomach for. I was very soon to find out.
« « Chapter 1
Edited and republished 21st April, 2020
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