LAST WEEK: Jeremy took Beethoven to San Francisco and began work as a street magician.
Read last week’s installment here. See all installments here.
Chapter 127
Jeremy
San Francisco — 1879
Le Club de Magie
One night, while performing at Le Club de Magie, Jeremy sees a woman in the audience. She shines like the evening star, dimming the room around her. Her eyes are the dark blue of a fathomless ocean, her hair is gold and her skin so fair she might never have seen the light of day.
She has, but it was a long, long time ago. Jasmine is ashen, lovely, and very, very old. She had been one of the first to arrive in San Francisco, emigrating from Europe in 1848. Most vampires lack the stamina to live so long. For immortals, vampires are fragile things. Not only are they at the mercy of sun, werewolves, and stakes, they are still part human, some more than others. Many still long for love and pity the slain. Many feel horror at the shells of the bodies they have sucked dry. Most are alone and lonely.
Jasmine is not like those. She’s calculating and detached, made to be a predator. She enjoys watching Jeremy. He’s not a very good magician, but his enthusiasm is contagious. Even Jasmine, not prey to human emotions, finds him charming. She wants him. She’s curious to see him metamorphosize. To lose his life yet keep his youth. To retain the elasticity, and shed the ingénue.
She begins to visit Le Magie on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays, when he warms up the crowd before the man act. Jasmine never stays to watch the headliner. Faux magic bores her.
After two weeks of visits, Jeremy nods. She’s so beautiful, she takes his breath away. She nods back, beckoning. When he follows her into the night, she disappears. But the next night she’s there again.
Chapter 128
Gabriel
San Francisco — 1992
The Color of Empathy
Gabriel passes a junk shop daily on his way to Mike’s. When he walks by the window, busted blenders grind and broken vacuums grumble. The junk shop man notices that at certain times of day, a cold shadow seems to fall across his soul and all his defective appliances come alive. He’s grateful, yet dreads that unknown hour when, even on the hottest days, his shop grows cold and death seems tangible.
Gabriel buys a cell phone and an answering machine. When he records his voice, soft shadows hiss in the background like rattler’s tongues. His voice is almost obscured by their vibrations. Not that it matters. He has no one to call and no one to call him. It’s just that he enjoys the sleek uncompromising lines of the machines, their lack of color and complexity.
He’s exhausted by dreams where it is always sunset. The sky is alive, mixing and blending in a glorious symphony. Hues merge and blend as if there were no restrictions, no hard lines separating dark from light. Silhouettes of birds fly overhead like living clouds.
In dreams, the world is no longer divided, no longer separate, no longer apart, yet still he lacks the color that will make him whole—the color of empathy.
Chapter 129
Jeremy
San Francisco — 1880
An Unsuccessful Changeling
One night, walking home late, Beethoven at his side, Jeremy feels two small pricks in the side of his neck. His insides swirl, wild as waves beating against the rock cliffs. He gasps for breath, but he has no breath. All is darkness, all is still.
And then comes a hunger, so painful, so vast, it seems that a tiny vicious animal is eating him from within. Something hot and wet, warm, and liquid is pressed into his mouth. As he struggles for air, the liquid flows into him. He gags. He craves it, and yet it revolts him.
Even then, not knowing what he drinks, his stomach turns. He throws up, dry gasping heaves, splattering small droplets of blood against unseen darkness.
Jasmine sighs.
“Lie still,” she says, pressing her wrist firmly onto his mouth. Slowly, slowly, the heavy fluid fills him. He blinks awake, panting. He would cry but there are no tears in him. He’s in a cellar, deep beneath an abandoned house. Beethoven crouches in the corner, hissing like the wild creature that all cats, in their souls, remain.
“Beethoven,” Jeremy cries, holding out his arms, “Here Bee, come here.”
But Beethoven will not.
Jeremy no longer needs to fiddle to make insects fall from the sky. Birds and bugs drop lifeless to the ground like winged falling stars when vampires are about. True, Jeremy can no longer return them to life, but that’s not what disturbs Beethoven. As cats sense earthquakes, storms, and emotion, they sense death, and like most living creatures, they fear it.
If Jeremy had not had the lightning-fast reflexes of a vampire, he’d never have caught Beethoven in his arms. The cat scratches and struggles, even though Jeremy speaks soothingly to him. As Beethoven drags scythed claws across Jeremy’s white hand, leaving three red tracks, Jeremy bites.
The cat grows limp in his arms. He forces his bleeding hand into the cat’s mouth. Beethoven chokes. He writhes and twists as his organs melt and reform. He howls. His canines lengthen. His pupils contract.
“These changes never work out well,” Jasmine says, watching Beethoven struggle and shriek. Beethoven twists out of Jeremy’s arms and disappears yowling into the night.
“Bee!” Jeremy calls, but Beethoven has vanished.
Soon the neighborhood is empty of cats. None can resist the lure of the sleek black cat that waits for them in the night. Even the tamest tabby or the calmest calico will claw through a screen or wriggle through a casement, desperate to reach their end.
Chapter 130
Gabriel
San Francisco — 1987
Infinite Variety
Gabriel sees a world of subtlety. Light and shadow alter everything. Shadows of umber and indigo give depth and texture. Light makes frond tops silver blue. A single leaf holds an infinite variety of green. Edges are no longer clear. Borders are no longer sharp.
Birds sing outside. Gabriel should not be able to hear them through his window. He should be isolated from the life and confusion beyond the pane, but somehow trills and coos, whistles and warbles carol into the room, knocking him off balance. This domain of color and light, harmony and refrain, makes him feel alien.
Gabriel has always lived completely in the present, never remembering the past or contemplating the future. He is the never-ending now, a Buddhist’s ideal, a Christian’s nightmare. He is outside of time, but now, inchoate memories waft through his consciousness.
He’s never thought about his lack of parentage, never wondered. He has been without sorrow or joy, but like smoke curling around a door, tendrils of emotion have begun to coil around his heart. It’s like warm wind, an odd sensation. He wants to feel more, and he wants not to feel at all. He yearns to be connected to the infinite variety and craves the comfort of black and white. There is safety in isolation. In a prison cell, there are no epidemics. Amidst soft diversity lurks danger as well as charm. Unknown vistas wait around the bend, concealing unimagined colors, unborn harmonies, and perhaps, monsters.
He turns on the radio, hoping and fearing that the song he hears will be sweet as bird song. Perhaps fate is malleable, perhaps roles can be recast. But the music is flat and slow.
Emptiness is replaced with rage. Why let me hear what I can only ruin? Why let me feel what I can only destroy?
He pulls at the window. It is sealed, not meant to be lifted, but it glides open at his touch.
A pigeon, trying to nest on the ledge, tumbles lifeless down thirteen stories. Gabriel smiles.
Chapter 131
Jeremy
San Francisco — 1880
Solitary Sonatas
Jeremy is not a successful changeling. His feelings are too human. He misses Beethoven. He tries playing his violin, hoping that familiar chords might call him back. Jeremy’s music waves into the night, containing sorrows older than time and stronger than death. It vibrates inside of souls. Small nocturnal animals are drawn to him, pulled by his music, repelled by his being. He’s been turned inside out, an assassin Orpheus, a musical murder. Bats circle low, plucking stunned insects out of the air before they hit the ground.
“Bats, such a cliché,” Jasmine sighs. She stalks off into the night, fangs lengthening. Nevertheless, she returns that night, and the next. She stays for six months, her longest relationship in almost forever.
One night, however, she does not return. For eight years, Jeremy wanders the streets of San Francisco, driven by hunger and memory. He’s alone, and very, very lonely.
Sometimes he sees signs of Beethoven, a cat’s tail or paw, forgotten like an old shoe. Beethoven does not merely drain his victims, he eviscerates them. When there are no more cats, he moves on to dogs and babies, climbing the food chain with grisly effect.
Children disappear, never to be seen again. Only Jeremy or some other nocturnal being occasionally notices the end of a finger or a toe discarded in some forgotten alley.
Vampires have no hearts, so it is peculiar that Jeremy feels his breaking. Not only has he lost Beethoven, he has created a monster.
Chapter 132
Gabriel
San Francisco — 1987
Thwarting Fate
Gabriel’s tinkering with the message on his answering machine. He wants it to play bird song, but every tune morphs into a dirge. It’s the only time he hasn’t been able to control something mechanical. It’s the only time he has ever tried to thwart his fate.
If Gabriel were more human, he might have gotten a new tape player. He might have returned it to the store or traded in it for a new one. He might even have flung the sleek black box across the room. But if he were more human, he would not be having such problems.
Instead, he sighs and lights a lavender cigarette, slowly exhaling gray-violet rings around his orchids.
His Bulbophyllum dangles four striped petals, like gloved, tapering fingers. A fifth, which smells like rotting flesh to attract flies, rises from its open mouth. Gabriel doesn’t mind. He’s never been, and is still not, a creature of senses. He’s the ultimate observer.
Feelings and music have infiltrated his dreams. He’s not sure it’s a change for the better. Joy and pain, two sides of one coin, and he might be better off without either.
Gabriel smiles as he hears the faint click of the Bulbophyllum snapping shut. The flower has hinged lips that trap hungry flies inside so that a pollen sack can be secured to the fly’s back. Some never make it out alive.
Watch the author read this week’s installment in the video below:
NEXT WEEK: He bites without thinking, watching as she twists and writhes, her mouth opening and closing in a quest for air. Puncturing his wrist, he forces it against her mouth. Feeling his blood, his being, flow into her is like a homecoming.
Edited by Mitchelle Lumumba and Sophie Gorjance.
E.E. King is cohost of the MetaStellar YouTube channel's Long Lost Friends segment. She is also a painter, performer, writer, and naturalist. She’ll do anything that won’t pay the bills, especially if it involves animals. Ray Bradbury called her stories “marvelously inventive, wildly funny and deeply thought-provoking. I cannot recommend them highly enough.” She’s been published widely, including Clarkesworld and Flametree. She also co-hosts The Long Lost Friends Show on MetaStellar's YouTube channel. Check out paintings, writing, musings, and books at ElizabethEveKing.com and visit her author page on Amazon.