Chapter 2 October

7:26 AM

Yes, we kill. We have lived with it for centuries. But don’t overestimate our guilt. We watch carefully what is going on around us. We travel to battlefields, wait to drain the dead. We are always there where there’s a bomb explosion, a plane catastrophe, a terrorist attack. We follow plaques, earthquakes, car crashes. We are always there just before death. We are always somewhere in between. You can be scared by the sight of our white fangs and the smell of freshly cut flowers, but it’s a better sight than the one of raw fear, pain, and grief. We tried to calculate your life. We decided to be merciful. We learned to make storage for thin years when no one seemed to die in big numbers. We constructed devices to suck the blood out of a living body within minutes before the final sleep. Phillip did this in his free time to make our meals as humane as possible. We are merciful. We have worked in hospices, hospitals, old peoples’ homes. We need to be close to humans. A single drop of blood can be given to us just by chance.

I, Nina, have worked in the library. It allows me to see people. It makes it possible for me to read them. Sense if they are sick, if their time is slowly coming to an end. Maybe one day, instead of a book, they will gain something more than a pleasant evening of reading. I will follow them: tired, deep in their thoughts, miserable. I know their sadness. Their unspeakable pain. Their lack of treatment. I know the history of their books’ subscription: Clinical Depression, How to Alleviate the Pain after Losing Someone You Love?, Five Simple Steps of Mood Improvement. I sense that they are lost. That the final step for them is a phone call to seek the last help, receive the studied whisper of consolation words, revelation, discouragement from what they are about to do. To express the unspeakable. These I take for myself. I want to give them the same sight that was given to me decades ago. The same peace. Security. Comfort. I’m in opposition to families, doctors, psychologists, therapists. But I’m there for those who lost this battle of life. Those who decided on a sweet taste of death.

Elizabeth works in a blood transfusion center. She drinks what is considered contaminated, sick, lost somewhere during veins bursting or left in plastic bags labeled the inadequate amount of liquid. She digests your venereal diseases, HIV infections, pregnancy results, leukemia surprises. She does medical tests, licking her fingers every time the blood drops somewhere around her. We decided that it’s the best job for her. She can see whatever she wants to see and she doesn’t raise suspicions. For eight hours, she’s closed in the lab, usually alone, fed, satisfied, adding her brick to the prosperity of those she’s used to killing.

In the nearby hospital, works Phillip, now as a surgeon. The view of blood inspires him. He’s quite a professional. He has years of experience. Nurses are amazed at his cutting technique, colleagues at his ability to conduct an open heart surgery without any sign of stress. His staff is astonished at how clean everything is after each procedure. No blood on the surgery table. No blood on the tools. Phillip has significant expertise both in dissecting the human bodies and saving blood. I would allow him to open my head while awake, take my brain away and put it back inside. He’s this level of trust.

Rob, Bob, and Kit work as rescue workers and ambulance drivers. They bring victims after accidents, they suck from open wounds. They have a deal with a few funeral houses, informing them who isn’t about to make it. It rarely depends on the seriousness of the accident. More often it depends on our boys’ hunger and the number of casualties. If there are only a few, none of the patients can survive the ride.

They remained petty criminals. They just increased their level of a felony. Funeral business brings good money and it’s quite secure. At the end of the day, you all are about to die.

Of course, it looks as if we have it all under control. But people don’t cooperate with you in the way you would like them to. Some suicidal ones at the last minute decide that they want to live. Some patients fight on the way to the hospital. Sometimes there’s a lack of blood. Not only for you who need it but also for us. We have emergency days too.

For instance, Kit is diabetic. When his sugar levels drop down he attacks the first overweight person he sees just to maintain his glucose. At times, he’s so desperate that he will force you to eat a chocolate bar before he sucks the life out of you. At least you won’t die hungry.

Amelie lives from day to night. Sometimes I find her in her sleeping gown, covered in blood, not having the faintest idea where she had been and who she had killed. I suspect the worst. I suspect children, young families, innocent and healthy. But we cannot close her at home. She’s still independent. She can take care of herself. Even though she rarely remembers anything, including our names. She sometimes calls me Elizabeth. Or Nadine. Sometimes she speaks to me in French, Russian, Italian or Spanish. Occasionally, she talks about the eighteenth century. She remembers more than we do. But she forgets to clean the drained body from the courtyard and we have to do this before we leave for work.

I wish that I could say something positive about Nick. That he remained our mascot, our little child, our joy and reflection of our positive traits. He remained eleven. He was in schools, we sent him to the best ones that were available. Boarding schools for boys, private schools for growing gentlemen. Christopher sponsored it all, saying that his father did it for him with no apparent outcome. Nick was thrown away from them all. Not for attention deficit disorder. Sure, even now it is a challenge in the upbringing. He was thrown away for alcohol abuse, degrading influence over his peers, skipping classes, participating in fights, teachers’ threats. He’s still at school. I sometimes see him in front of his computer. He watches clips of some guys setting the cat on fire or making explosions out of Mentos and Coca-Cola light, adding to this hip hop and rap music videos to which he sings in his premature voice. But he mainly watches porn. He doesn’t turn down the volume so we can hear all moans and screams coming from his room. We have learned to ignore them.

Sometimes an old homeless alcoholic comes to our place and asks about Nick. It’s usually his friend from some old school. One of the best ones who was a companion in his mischievous plans, suspended or expelled to the despair of his parents. They laugh and hang out for some time until the old friend dies or Nick mercifully drains his blood. He’s lucky when they are drunk. Nick can also have fun from the sucked amount of booze.

Finally, there’s Christopher. I don’t know what he does. Maybe I don’t want to know. He doesn’t ask us for blood, he spends some time with us and disappears for month or years on end. He comes back with money. Big money. He leaves gold, jewelry, stocks, and shares. We bet he has shares in all of the most significant companies that were started over the last two hundred years. He observed every kind of business idea put into practice. He personally knew the entrepreneurs, he suggested structural changes. He watched the biggest go bankrupt and the most unexpected blossom to success. Thanks to him, we own the best jewelry, clothes, gadgets. We have collections that would suit the greatest galleries and museums all over the world. We turned our asylum into our own museum of the passing time. We have original paintings by Manet, Van Gogh, Gaugin, Picasso. We keep them for sentimental reasons. The value of money is no value for us. We keep dresses of changing fashion, we maintain fabrics, laces, shoes. We play music at night amazed at how the piano concert can be watched online and arouse almost the same emotions as during the actual performance of Verdi, Chopin or Schumann, whom we saw with our own eyes when they were still alive. We store in our drawers century-old pictures of royal families and we still watch them, seeing the resemblance of grandchildren to their grandparents, treating their family history as our own. We remember Tsars, Queen Victoria, weddings, funerals, affairs, abdications. We recall colonies. The glory of Russia and France. The magnitude of the British Empire. The rise of Hitler. The first plane flight. The first walk on the Moon. The first atomic bomb. We remember all of it distinctly. The stepping stones. The fear and excitement of changes. These were our lives, lives prolonged endlessly through the consumption of death.

Sometimes we sit in our living room, surrounded by paintings, after a hard day at work, and we recall. Nick takes the stash of his favorite cards and sets them on the carpet. Elizabeth sits on one of the pillows with her knees under her chin. Phillip sits by the piano and plays. Over the years, he learned how to do this with the proficiency of a Chopin contest winner. Amelie tells us something about the French Revolution or the Polish Constitution. Rob, Bob, and Kit laugh at their own nasty jokes with a questionable sense of humor. We see the setting sun. Its rays never did us harm. We don’t sleep in coffins. We are immune to garlic. We used to work in military hospitals located in the churches, indifferent to the presence of crosses and figures of Saints. We wear silver necklaces and have a reflection. We don’t change into bats, wolves or rats. We cannot fly as a mist. For years, we have been searching for answers. We have looked for our background. We have read every book about vampires, saw every film, heard every story. In vain. Sometimes we all sit in front of a TV set to watch Coppola’s Dracula, Interview with a Vampire or Twilight. We appreciate that you care. That we exist in your mythology. That you accept us somehow, even though we have probably killed one of your beloved. Even though we would kill you without the slightest hesitation and cause you pain.