I
Vin Rouge
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> “Tell me, monsieur, what is a man?”
>
> “A casket of red wine.”
—Narancan’s Folly: the God-King’s Downfall; Act One, Lines Seven-through-Eight, The Riddle of the Ephinxe by playwright Gregorio D’Arcene.
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“Ten-Four on red!” I yelled, dried chicken’s feet in my pockets and a horseshoe hung around my sorry neck. After a while, you get used to the smell and the weight.
Flute and drums cavorted in the background while incense and vapour danced above our misbegotten heads. I could taste it like rain on the ‘morrow: I would win this time. I had counted my lucky numbers times themselves; had rubbed the nose of every beggar in the street; had prayed to every saint and saintess, every apostle and apostate, every god and, yes, every d’yabel that would listen.
They’d only know it was charlantry afterwards when fighting over the scraps of my lowly soul.
“Two-Seven black!”
With that the bouncers took me by the scruff of my neck, the horseshoe my noose, and threw me out into the street. Cobblestones weren’t as hard as one might think when the mayor’s office didn’t put much effort into mending the mud and muck.
It was a cold summer night, naught a cloud in sight and moonless to boot. Without Lucifer’s Left Eye in the sky, I was just as blind as God Himself, bumping into fences and tripping on broken stones. Almost lost an eye proper on a post that had been riven into a jagged stake fit lay to rest even the most ravenous of vampyre spawn.
I did not walk home because I had just been evicted from the very same.
Instead, I treaded drunkenly in search of a cosy alleyway to sleep away the spirits in my veins, without aim like a priestess outside her parish. Unfortunately, as was the theme of tonight’s sorry tale, my huntress was not without her aim. She was an ivory beauty, the purest of marble made flesh—I caught only sight of her arms as she wrapped me in her deathly embrace.
She bit me in the neck from behind, her leech-like tongue taking root deep into my carotid, reaching for my heart. Her fangs were backwards-barbed so that they might rip out flesh in their wake should prey even think of escape. Her hair was much like her aspect: ashen-white like a sacred rowan tree.
For a poor man to fall in love with a highborn girl was to be left heart-broken. Only, my case was rather literal for I’d been disowned, or rather, had disowned myself.
In my veins was only dust and yet my world was orgasmic; each pulse of vampyre venom that took place of blood, the deepest throng of passion. I had hoped to slumber away the spirits but they had been sapped from me by not the little death but rather the long sleep.
After she took what she wanted from me, she threw me away like trash to the mud-slick pavement.
She did me the greatest kindness then. And the greatest cruelty, too.
Perhaps it was guilt for the murder of an innocent. Perhaps it was pity for a wretch like myself. Most likely it was none of those things but rather simple, sociopathic curiosity—the spirit of ’I just wanted to see what would happen’ personified.
Still reeling from the anæsthetic draught of the wine-casket of her fangs, she turned me around and straddled me by my chest.
Independent of sex, vampyres have pricks. Not are pricks but have them. Long, prehensile proboscides with a serrated-tip made of a substance that felt like bone. It unfurled from her navel in a perversion of a flower in bloom, like a serpent ready to strike.
Independent of sex, vampyres have wombs in which they gestate a singular cochlear-shaped parasite.
You see where I’m going with this, right? Rather nasty creatures, vampyres. I couldn’t begin to imagine the depravity of the experiments needed to alquemize such a thing into being. Something to do with mules and the blood of dragoons and a whole lot of in-breeding, at least according to the Bard Gregorio.
Years later, I would learn from my amoré that I used humour to disassociate from traumatic incidents.
As if breaking my heart wasn’t enough, she toyed with it, too.
The venom had thoroughly embrocated me such that I couldn’t feel even a lick of pain. I felt nothing when the proboscis weaved in between my ribs like some profane parody of Lucifer moulding Adam from Lilith’s side. I felt nothing as my lungs were speared-through, my insides violated, and the seat of my soul penetrated.
I did feel something when the parasite awoke inside my impregnated heart.
It, much like my killer’s tongue, grew root inside of me. Tendrils took to the substrate of my flesh, subsuming themselves into the fibres of my being such that they’d never be apart from me.
You could not remove something so intrinsic as your heart without succumbing to death.
She left me to spasm and writhe and convulse senselessly on the ground, my spine snapping under the pain of an autophagic birth. The parasite ate me from the inside out—a malformed fœtus, a mooncalf, a teratoma. When it had its fill of me, it wove a cocoon of ruby amber in place of my heart.
Just when I thought that death finally welcomed me into the Night-God’s embrace of blissful ignorance, I came back to life. The latticework mosaic in my chest beat with all the glory of a newborn, crying out for nourishment, for a teat that would give it not milk but instead blood.
Resurrection was a rather grotesque process. The saint-skin scrolls did not deem it important to elucidate the grim reality of Lucifer's one and only son’s return to the world of the living—just like the Cross on Golgotha, my body was erected to face the West where the bleeding sun set.
I retched in the alley, vomiting out innards that I had no use for. What need was there for a stomach or bowels when your diet primarily consisted of liquids? In their place, a vampyre’s accursed womb festered into being. It wasn’t fully formed yet—Night-God knew how I could know such a thing—but it was waiting to.
All it needed was blood to complete the metamorphosis.
My teeth fell out from my gums as if years of decay had gone by in but a blink. Fangs grew in their place, backwards-barbed and entirely too big to fit in my mouth. So my jaw dislocated itself, bone breaking as flesh mutated and I became something other than human.
The thirst was all-encompassing, all-consuming, all-devouring. An addict would shiv their mother for the next draught; a vampyre would eat a thousand infants to sate their moonless appetite.
Sacra, how I wanted to sink my teeth into something—anything! So long as it moved, so long as it was animated with ichor, so long as it would stop the pounding in my head!
The longing, the visceral need, did not cease. It did not wane but instead waxed with every passing breath—a full moon that made me into its lunatic. There was no giving in to the compulsion because no man born of a woman could even begin to put up a resistance to it.
The bouncers threw out another of my kind. I could hear it even a league away, the beat of their hope-addled heart. Oh Gods, my insides—what was left of them, at least—shrivelled and writhed under the hunger.
A man could only know the worth of their heart when it was weighed against Azazel’s feather after death, balanced upon the Sin-Eater’s scales.
I came to know my worth in life.
When the jagged-edged stake of a post came into the periphery of my sight, my muscles froze as if under a Golgothan’s stare. Each plodding step was an act of utmost compassion for my common man.
I frothed at the mouth, venom dripping down my chin. My skull pounded in concerto with my heart of ruby stone. How easy would it be to give in and rip out the gambler’s throat with my bare teeth? How much better would you feel if you just gave him a little nibble? Just a peck, not enough to kill but just enough to take the edge off.
The compulsion whispered sweet-nothings in my ear, each lie more lurid than the last that I almost believed it. But I was done with the tricks and the chicken’s feet and the horseshoes and the numbers. I was done drinking deeply of the draught of hope, of deluding myself into thinking that fool’s gold was gold.
I staked myself through the heart just like the folk tales said.
Only two ways to put a vampyre to rest—a stake of sacred rowan or decapitation.
Couldn’t find a guillotine at the ready, though I think I would’ve preferred the clean cut of its blade rather than the jagged demise of the post.
My name was Lamaré D’Amice, and I pray that whatever fool I saved from myself makes a life for himself worthy of living and equal to the worth of my soul.
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“Sacra!”
I ran over to the man that had just thrown himself upon a post, the red lamp-light my Northstar in a moonless sea of black. Turning him over, I saw that he’d been pierced through the heart by the jagged wood of the post and yet he was strangely bloodless.
The only vin rouge spilt tonight had been in the house of chance for not a drop stained the stake with which the man had killed himself. The wound was white as first snow and it wriggled as if a thousand-thousand maggots feasted within.
I was a fool then for not throwing away the corpse in disgust, but the peristalsis of whatever lurked beneath the skin was enrapturing, entrancing, hypnotic. A cochlear parasite crawled out from the man’s bloodless heart, its countenance that of a naked ammolite without its shell.
By the time that my wits returned about me, it was already too late.
The spawnling grabbed onto me, burrowing its sinkers into my skin. I shook my fist with all my might, attempting to dislodge the monstrosity, that freak of nature, an abject abomination that sent shivers down my spine.
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In my desperation I only hastened my doom. I shook the thing off, sending it up over my head and then down my back, the spawnling having entered through the breach of my untied shirt—mother had always chided me for my unkemptness; ‘no Éderi girl would take a liking to a pig’ she’d say. I rather took a liking to boys so I hadn’t heeded her words then.
Lucifer’s gouged-out eyes, I could feel it burrowing into me!
My arms could not reach it as the creature sequestered itself just far enough away from my grasp.
I fell backwards, aiming to smash the thing against the cobbles but instead met only mud as the wend of the pavement grew too wide. At the junction in between my shoulder-blades, the parasite settled, tendrils spreading around my spine, consuming whatever strings that puppeted the human body and taking their place.
I grew limp then, control over my limbs disappearing under numbness and tingling as my nerves were devoured from the inside-out. I was imprisoned within the gaol of my own body; my skeleton, the bars; my skin, the cell; my eyes, the windows into freedom dangled before me but that I could not have.
I was stuck this way until the sun bled dawn across the roofs of the City of Saint-Getaine. By then, the roots reached the base of my skull, wrapping around it like the vines D’Getaine that took to the eponymous city of the Ashen Saint.
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“Réveillez-vous. Ei, réveillez. Vous!”
With a kick to my rump I awoke to an irate guardsman
“No drunkards on the streets by dawn. Else I’ll hav’ta throw ya into the gaol. Get up before the others get here—I’m doing ya a kindness.”
Strange world where a kick in the rump was considered a kindness, but very well. I got up and walked away, my arse sore and my pride just as battered. My back wasn’t in any better shape after having slept on the ground; mud stained my clothes, undercut by the aroma of strong drink and the tang of iron at the back of my mouth.
I couldn’t remember anything past seeing an unlucky bastard bet all his savings on ten-four red and then get kicked after his pockets were emptied—had I not been a frequent patron of the various betting establishments of the Eastside Docks, I would have been stupified by seeing desiccated chicken’s feet fall out of the man’s trousers. It was a common sight for chronic gamblers to fall into superstitious habit. Misery likes company and no greater misery than vice.
I had probably been thrown out not long after my brother-in-vice but couldn’t, for the life of me, remember what happened after. I looked around, seeing a broken post and nothing else. Not surprising given that I had more alcohol in my bloodstream than actual blood.
Eh, well, if I can’t remember it, it was most likely unimportant anyways.
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I made my way back to my humble abode: a rented out shack in the slums.
The creaky wooden barrier was held together by fool’s-gold hope and pig-iron, the confines within not much better than the rickety exterior. A hay-filled cot was hung above the sometimes-flooded floor by a hammock and it was there that I laid my head to rest.
I sent a prayer to Lucifer for the hangover not to become my noose but I knew that it was futile: the Blind-God was just as deaf as He was unseeing. And I had drunk my weight in spirits and red wine twice-over.
Small miracle that I was still alive.
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I dreamt of the most handsome man I had ever seen. He had the strong, burly frame of a prize-fighter, hair crawling up from his navel to caress a barrel-chest that could lift a hay bale and throw it twenty yards with ease.
He screamed bloody murder and I could not hear a single damn thing.
Beneath my feet, as if a reflection from a mirror, the man stood. We were separated by red amber, the crystalline substance oozing as if oil-dye atop water.
I looked down at the man and saw a wound in place of his heart, bleeding up at my feet. Tracking the flow I saw it crawl up into my own chest, a hollow within.
“Réveillez-”
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“-vous!”
Bloodshot, emerald eyes opened to harsh light. Pounding at the door. The world swayed to a rhythm not unlike a ship at high sea.
“Rent due, Raphaël! Pay or I’ll tear down the damn shack with you in it!”
Groggily, I fell out of the hammock, my chest impacting the trodden and mud-slick ground of the shack. Had I not occupied my days with brawling and my nights with gambling, the blow would’ve kept me down for an hour.
Instead it only took my breath while I stumbled to the door, huffing and puffing like the Wolf Herself. I opened the damn thing before Antoine broke it off from its rusted hinges. The slumlord was midway into knocking when I appeared before him, near-twice his height but only half his width—the corpulent man was wide.
I took the coin purse from my trousers, disturbing my trouser snake all the while, and threw it at Antoine’s face. He was clean-shaven so the darker hair stood stark against his pale skin and blond mop.
“This’s two Crowns less than—”
“Hels take you because I sure won’t.”
The door slammed shut and I went back to sleep, the rheum at the corner of my lids the colour of red amber.
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Again, I saw the handsome man.
This time we were head-to-head, hands reached out to grasp at the other. The tips of our fingers touched, static ambaricité shocking us both.
He did not scream this time.
Lifeblood flowed from my chest into his and his into mine—two souls, one body.
Before we could attempt another contact, the sands of the dream fell between the cracks of our collective fingers and into the vast ether.
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I awoke to a waxing crescent moon that was near-gibbous when just yesternight it was moonless. Going by the lunar phases, I had slept three days and three nights, consecutively.
At first I had thought that I’d only slept until noon, my sight overcome by lightness. And then I peeked through the cracks of my shack and saw the moon.
Wrongness chilled my gut like a morning fog, glistening my mind under the thin water of dread. And then, came the sheer exhilaration of something unknown, something new.
I could see into the darkness and pierce its veil like a black-powder pistol through unarmored flesh. My vision exploded outwards unimpeded, every nook and cranny in sharp relief and crystal-clear detail.
Looking down at my hand I could perceive every fibre of hair, every pore of skin, every creaking tendon pulling against bone and muscle. Existence was layer upon layer and I pulled them back, savouring each one like the most sublime of red wines—Sauvignon Sanguine—infused with rubis-ambré; the coalesced blood of the Blind-God when He gouged out His eyes so that Man might see. Left became the weeping moon and right, the bleeding sun.
The experience was divine, my senses heightened to an apogee that was near-orgasmic. I could hear the heartbeats of each and every person in my quarter of the slums, as if my ears were held right up against their breasts. The only others capable of such a superhuman feat—that I, a lowborn and outcast Éder, knew of—were the sacrūna.
People whose skin were covered in rúna; tattoos not unlike sailor’s marks that endowed their bearers with preternatural abilities and sorcerous talents.
My skin was bare, unknowing of the alquemiste’s needle and yet I saw in the dark of night just as well as in the light of day.
The wrongness returned, an impending sense of doom ringing out like tinnitus. There was something I should remember but I couldn’t and I knew that it was important, that it was life-or-death.
I held my head in my hands, cradling my skull as I folded-in on myself until I was in the fœtal position, screaming-mutely in the muck. Pails of weakness and fever took me, inkblots of delirium at the edges of my consciousness.
There was something inside of me. And it wanted out.
I could feel it reach my gums, my canines falling out as fangs grew in their stead, elongating and dislocating my jaw for such a thing to fit inside. My tongue mutated as if poured with some alquemique substance, tissue bubbling like a witch’s cauldron into a new shape.
The pain then became too much, and I fell into the beckoning, open arms of the little death.
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Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me thrice, I may have been dropped on my head as a child.
I looked down at the handsome man and finally understood the depths of my situation. When he slept, I awoke in the belly of the beast. When he dreamt, I was lucid. When he was, I was the shadow.
I was dead. I was a spirit. I was alive.
The man thrashed under the barrier of rubis-ambré, a hand reaching out for salvation.
I had saved him once and I would do so again.
The first time was pure, egalitarian love for my fellow man. The second was decidedly less pure because I rather liked how he looked. The third, well, let's hope it doesn’t get to that because I am running low on similes and metaphors.
My fingers met his, interlacing, becoming one.
When next the beast within tried to take over, it had to contend with two fools instead of one.
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I opened my scarlet eyes to the weeping moon, to the Left Eye of God and knew that He’d never welcome me into the Empyreal Host. Gone was the emerald, and in its place, ruby.
I was a vampyre but not entirely. I was a man but not quite. I was neither and both and the first of my kind. I did not feel the call of blood, I did hunger for life but did not thirst for death.
I stood on my own two feet, the hollow ravaging of my insides gone as a new homeostasis asserted itself: my heart had become ruby stone, yes, but I had not a vampyre’s womb. I was an infertile mule, born of both, my line doomed to die with me. And with that, I was at peace.
Possibilities upon possibilities unravelled before me, unfurling into would-be futures and could-be pasts. But before my new lease on life could begin, I had to contend with the baggage of before.
Namely, the downright-lecherous man at the back of my head.
You do know that I can hear you, right? Well, hearing is kind of a nebulous thing in the mind’s eye—well, ear, in this case—but you catch my drift.
Silence.
Well. That certainly complicates things, mon ami. It seems that there are no inside thoughts when you occupy a place that is only made-up of inside thoughts.
More silence.
So… do you owe me rent, or is a squatter sort of arrangement?
Even more silence.
Now, this sort of thing only happens in novels of rather… lurid repute, but I can only pay with my body. Well, my mind since I am a disembodied spirit inhabiting the well-toned vessel of your most-well-endowed body.
Somehow even more silence.
I could recite Gregorio—a familiar spirit educated in the rhetorical arts, if you will. I memorised the lines in childhood, sneaking out in the dead of night to watch the theatre of your most well-travelled people, Éderi.
Since the voices in my head were beginning to take up too much space, I answered out-loud: “I’d like that—been a while since I heard something from the Bard. The name’s Raphaël.”
Enchanté, I am Lamaré D’Amice but my friends call me Ami.
The spectre at the back of my overcrowded skull laughed at the jest in a manner that I somehow knew was both roguish and charming. I couldn’t help but be infected by the sheer absurdity of the black comedy we’d found ourselves in, caving in to laughter.
Because if I did not laugh, I would cry.
I would cry enough for the both of us. I would cry enough to drown the world in my tears as if a reenactment of the Flood. For, I remembered each and every thing that Ami had been through and done. And he knew me down to the marrow of my bones as well.
The man, annoyingly-lecherous as he was, had given up his life for a stranger. An outcast Éderi, no less. If the Éder were the lowest of the bloodlines, then an outcast Éderi was the lowest of the low, the dust of the dust.
Lamaré D’Amice had a surname while I did not. Though down on his luck, I knew his blue-blooded origin—his marrow was noble while mine was, most assuredly, not.
Mayhaps it was because he’d been a degenerate gambler like me. Mayhaps his heart always was hopelessly selfless if sempiternally lustful. I did not know because not even he knew why he’d chosen the stake instead of eternal life. Why he chose his death over mine.
And so, with a lech living rent-free in the back of my head, I went out into the night, my blood singing in my veins and a pep in my step. There was no fear of the dark for a creature moulded by and for it.