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Awakenings (continued)
At this bar, they entrusted me with the beer, even though I was underaged. I must have done a good job with it considering that they haven't fired me yet.
The only downside to working in this bar was that I was constantly surrounded by drunks. In my opinion, it wasn't that different from home, though here men made passes at me, grabbing my behind when I wasn't looking or repeatedly asking for my phone number. They would start with cheap pickup lines and offer to buy me a drink. I would calmly refuse, then go to Bruno, the bouncer, and ask him to kindly remove the gentleman that was troubling me. It never got too far...except once.
I remember it like it was yesterday. I was passing by a dark corner when a hand shot out of the shadows and grabbed my wrist. I was dragged violently into a corner where a man had been waiting for me. He roughly pulled me to him and pressed his mouth to mine before I could utter a sound.
I struggled wildly to free myself from his grasp, but couldn't get free. It was then that I tried to find a pressure point, kicking and flailing my arms, trying to get him to let go, but to no avail. He held fast to me.
He tasted of the liquor that he had been steadily consuming all evening. It tasted rank, foul, like some bitter emotion caught in your throat. I knew that he was drunk, and probably didn't know what he was doing.
Since everything else had failed, I reached for the nearest object. Unfortunately, that object happened to be a hammer.
I smashed it up against the side of his head, hearing the skull crack but paying no mind. He still wouldn't let go. I gave him another fine blow, he finally loosening his vice-like grip.
I darted from the enclosure of his arms and out to Bruno's corner. As soon as he saw me, he knew something was wrong.
"Rhia, what happened?" he asked.
"A man," I stammered, "he tried to-to..." I let him fill in the blanks.
Bruno nodded and asked where the man was. "Over there," I told him, pointing to the dark corner where I could see his silhouette. The man appeared to be unconscious.
Bruno went to the man's side, kneeling down and giving him a shake. He didn't move. Bruno shook him again, still getting no response. Then he checked the man's pulse, and straightened up, looking worried.
He crossed the room and came toward me.
"Rhia, he's dead."
I was shocked. I didn't think that I had hurt him so badly. I had only intended to get the man off me, not kill him. But still I remained calm, my face the epitome of relaxation.
"Alright," I said. "What do we do with him though?"
Bruno thought for a moment. then he looked up and said, "I'll take care of it." Then he disappeared into the writhing mass of people.
I never did find out what happened to the poor slob who attacked me. But, to this day, I couldn't care less if his miserable corpse rotted on the banks of the Mississippi.
I still work there today, pulling in a steady income to support myself and my family. And it was there that I began my quest to find a vampire.
One night I was working the late shift, serving drinks to those who couldn't sleep, the insomniacs. I came upon one man that was only sitting there, staring into space and watching the people around him with unnatural attention. All the other waitresses were afraid of him, so I screwed up my courage and went to him.
I stepped up behind him and cleared my throat to make my presence known. He turned around slowly and asked me lazily, "Yes?"
"What would you like to drink, sir?" I asked as cheerily as I could.
He appeared to think for a moment, then said, "Well, I am a bit thirsty. I'd like a bit of...blood."
I laughed uneasily. "That's funny. Now, what do you really want to drink?"
He gazed at me levelly and said, "Blood."
I backed away and whispered, "Who are you?"
He laughed and said, "The question, rather than who, should be what am I?" Then he turned his back on me and resumed his staring.
I sat down beside him and said, "Fine then. What are you?"
He turned to me and asked, "Do you really want to know?"
I nodded. He sighed and said, "Alright. I am...a monster. One of the so-called undead that prowls the night like a demonic cat, searching for prey, stalking the alleys for the thing that keeps us alive. You know of what I speak. I am," and he dropped his voice here, "a vampire."
I stared at the mysterious figure that was sharing his story. He appeared young, though after seeing his eyes for a while, you gradually see something there that conveyed great age and understanding. He had dark hair, clipped short in the present style. He was dressed in a polo shirt and jeans, unextraordinarily. The only thing that was not normal was his skin. It had a sort of...resilience, gleaming in the weak light of the bar. It was extremely pale, white nearly to the point of a marble-like appearance. Then I got a good look at his hands. They were fine-boned, pale like the rest of him. It wasn't the hands themselves that caught my stare though...it was the fingernails. They glittered and sparkled like glass, completely clear and shiny. No polish could have done this. I only assumed that it was part of his vampiric veneer. Also, the eyes were opalescant, catching the light here and there when he turned his head. It was to the point that it was impossible to tell the actual color.
I asked softly, "What did you come here for? I'm afraid we don't serve blood."
He looked up, a mischeivous glint in his eye. "Well, I thought you'd have figured it out by now. I came here for you, dearie."
I leaped out of my chair, suddenly so afraid that nothing else around me mattered. I only wanted to get away, far away, from the bar, from the noise...but most of all from this predator that nearly had me spellbound.
I ran out of the bar, not knowing where to go at first, then getting an idea. I'd do a little research, reading, seeing if these "vampires" really did exist.
So I sprinted to the library, getting there winded and out of breath. I jogged up to the librarian and asked her, "Do you have any books on vampires?"
She looked up from her scribbling and said, "Why, yes we do. I even think we might even have some books by vampires." Then she looked back down and chuckled, muttering, "Crazy kids," under her breath.
I walked away from her, disappointed. I guess I'll have to do it the old-fashioned way, I thought.
I spent the next three hours searching, finding only little snippits of information about the creatures, mainly just folklore and legends of the Old World. Then, I came across a book called "The Vampire Lestat".
I sat down at one of the small tables and began to read. I read for another three hours until closing time. "We're locking up," said the sarcastic librarian. "You'd better go home."
So I checked out the book. I remember reading it, and seeing the author describe himself and other vampires. And the funny thing was, the descriptions were not unlike the one of the vampire I had met in the bar.
I knew that I had stumbled upon the real deal, a genuine vampire. I was enchanted with this secretive world that nobody knew about. I wanted more, so I made multiple trips to the library, picking up all the books I could find that were written by the infamous Vampire Lestat. I gathered clues, visiting all of the places described by Lestat, gradually finding out that it was real. It was one of these books that led me here, to St. Elizabeth's. And here I am, talking to the very beings that I've searched for for so long. I've acheived my goal. I've done it. I've found not just one, but a whole...coven, of sorts, of vampires.
And that's my story. There is no more to tell that matters. That's it.
She had been playing with her hands, fidgeting with them in her lap. It was now that she looked up, expectantly, into the faces of her listeners. Lestat still sat staring at her, enrapt, almost as if he was wanting to hear more.
She spoke. "Now, Lestat, it's your turn. Tell me why. Tell me why you did it, saved me."
He avoided her face, clearing his throat uneasily. "In truth," he said, "I don't know. Maybe I wanted redemption, someting to make up for the wrongs done to Claudia. You remind me so much of her...it almost scares me. And, even though I am the supreme evil, I want so badly to be good. I want to be a saint. I want to save mankind, be the god they bow down to worship. I want to be St. Lestat, the most good of all good people. Why not start with a small deed, gradually working my way towards greater and more important things? I know that I can never truly be redeemed, but I can dream, can't I? I'm not totally evil. I am capable of feeling. I feel all the time. I--"
Rhia cleared her throat now, cutting Lestat's reflection short. "I get the picture. I understand."
Lestat looked at her, slightly abashed. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "I tend to get a little passionate with my reasons."
"Indeed," she said teasingly.
It was now my turn to speak. I thought about what Rhia had said about the origins of her family. It seemed oddly familiar, the woman she described. It sounded almost like a woman I had known from my mortal days in Venice. I was dreadfully curious.
"Rhia," I asked, "do you know the name of the woman that you see in your visions?"
She thought for a moment. Then she looked up and said, "I remember hearing my grandmother say a name right after she had one of the visions...I can't remember exactly what it was..."
"Bianca?" I offered. I held my breath in anticipation.
She snapped to attention. "Yes, that was it."
I was in shock. How was it that I was the source of her family? Well, I knew good and well the actual how of it, but I couldn't imagine being this girl's forbear...her...grandfather.
I kept these suspicions to myself. It was possible that it was an entirely different Bianca than the one I had known. I didn't want to arouse hope in this girl's heart that she had finally found family, true family.
All of a sudden, Rhia grabbed her ears and squeezed her eyes shut, as if she were in pain. "Lestat!" she shrieked. "Get out of my mind!"
She then snapped her head forward very quickly, like a snake striking its prey. Lestat was jolted out of his seat, nearly falling to the floor. If he hadn't looked so enraged when he righted himself, I might have laughed outright.
"What did you do that for?" he demanded, glowering at Rhia. "That hurt!"
"No kidding," she said wryly. "I did it because I don't like it when people probe my mind. My mind is private. I've left yours alone, now I expect you to leave mine alone. I will use my mind against you if you do it again, but next time, I'll hit you harder. This was just a warning."
Lestat was still glaring at her. She noticed this, and laughed. "Oh, stop acting like a sullen child."
He shot her a nasty look and said, "I'll give you a sullen child."
He then closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. Almost instantaneously, Rhia clapped her hands to her ears and started to scream.
Then, with what I could tell was a tremendous effort, she leaned forward in her chair and gave Lestat a long look that could peel paint. Slowly, a look of panic crossed his face. Then, Rhia snapped her head forward again, and this time, Lestat didn't just fall out of his chair.
He flew through the air, slamming against the wall with a hideous crunching noise. Then, he was slammed down into the floor, where he began to writhe in pain.
Rhia was standing up now, walking towards him slowly, a murderous glint in her eyes.
"I WARNED YOU," she bellowed. Her voice seemed to fill the entire room and was much deeper. Then, her hands crackled with a kind of electricity, and she continued toward Lestat.
I could tell that he was trying to move, but he didn't seem to be able to. Rhia was right in front of him, and she raised up her lightning hands and prepared to strike him.
All of a sudden, she blinked, and her face relaxed. Then she brought her hands down and looked at them. The lightning faded, and her hands were back to normal. Then she took a look at Lestat, and what she had done, then collapsed into a heap on the floor, sobbing into her hands.
I got up to comfort her, kneeling on the floor next to her and wrapping my arms around her shoulders. She turned toward me and began crying into my chest, her sobs muffled by the fabric.
Lestat still lay on the floor, unmoving. For a moment, I honestly thought she'd killed him. Then he stirred, groaning loudly and rubbing the spots on which he'd fallen.
Rhia heard him groan. She rushed to his side, tears still streaming down her face. She pulled him into a bone-crushing embrace, frantically saying, "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to, it was an accident, I'm so sorry, are you hurt, can I help you, please, say something!"
He looked at her with a dazed expression, then said, "It's alright. I forgive you."
He returned the embrace, and there they sat, for the moment one and whole with one another. I decided to leave. I stood up and went to the door, but instead of just closing it and going away, I spied through the keyhole. I only wanted to make sure my granddaughter was safe.
They stayed that way for fifteen minutes at least. Finally, Rhia drew away, ever so slightly, so that she was still in his grasp yet looking him in the face.
"I can't always control it," she said quietly. "When someone does something to me that I don't like, I just...become a different person...one that I'm afraid of. I kept telling you to leave my mind alone. It hurts me when people probe inside my head. I don't know why. I can't explain it. But...I almost killed you, and...I didn't mean to, honest!" She erupted into tears again, sobbing into Lestat's velvet overcoat.
This time he took her face in his hand and looked her in the eye. "I'm not angry. It just gave me a good scare is all. You were terrifying with that lightning around your hands. I was really and truly scared. But I forgive you. I understand that you didn't mean to, and it's alright."
Here he kissed her gently on the forehead, then the top of her head, both cheeks. On the second cheek, she turned her head slightly so that instead of getting her cheek, he got her lips instead. They melted into each other, wrapping their arms around one another and holding the other tight. It was then that I left.
Back to Life Remixed
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