fangednconfused (fangednconfused) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2020-09-17 00:45:00 |
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Entry tags: | derek mitchell, npc |
Time Enough At Last
Who: Derek Mitchell
What: Reckoning
Where: Sin City
When: Present
Ratings/Warnings: High, graphic violence, beware
When Derek was in high school, a group of his friends had sat him down and told him that there was a girl in their class who was obsessed with him. They detailed the way she always asked them about his whereabouts, his likes, dislikes. He had never even met this girl. But they had laid out a very convincing case, and maybe Derek was all too eager to believe it was true.
The next day, he approached the girl by her locker, masking his shyness with cheesy jokes. She had stared at him, dumbfounded, as Derek talked himself deeper and deeper into a hole. It ended with some mumbled statement about her liking him. The stakes hadn’t been high going in. It didn’t make the impending rejection hurt any less.
The point was, knowing someone liked him that much made him like them back, even where no feelings had existed previously. Even if it had all been a prank.
Derek took that memory and expanded upon it. All it took was one single text from him, it was almost disappointing.
I’m sorry. I was wrong. Still wanna be a family?
He had watched the minute hand wind around the clock thirty times before he was rewarded with a buzzing phone. A simple message from the same phone number that had lured him and Penny into what was, in hindsight, an obvious trap. And just like then, there was an address and a time.
Derek stood in front of the full length mirror that hung over their bedroom door. Shoes shined to a spit-polish gleam. Pants smooth and wrinkle-free. Fingers worked deftly over buttons before a jacket was pulled on. He could see his wife sitting behind him on the bed and tried not to watch the look on her face when she recognized this outfit as the one he had worn on her birthday. Instead, he focused on the sharp taste of bile as it worked its way up his throat, a damaged battery lodged in his chest, spilling acid. It was, somehow, easier.
His eyes traveled down to his hand. It was such a small piece of metal, but removing his wedding ring felt a weighty act. One lesson - maybe the only lesson - Derek recalled from English class was the difference between nude and naked. Nude meant wearing no clothes. Naked was vulnerable. This was the latter.
The vampire turned and kissed Penny goodbye. It had been a quick act, ripping off a bandaid. Cruel but swift. Because if he allowed himself to remain in her embrace, he might never have left the apartment.
Derek found himself sliding into the backseat of an Uber, his body on autopilot, or maybe puppet strings. He let his fingertips press against the cool glass as they drove away from the apartment complex, craning his neck to keep it in view for as long as possible. He was a child leaving vacation early. He was a helpless bystander watching a loved one being wheeled into surgery. If he truly wanted to, he could break the glass and jump out of the window, run home back to Penny.
The car snaked quietly through the streets of Las Vegas, the vampire staring languidly out of a window smeared with his own fingerprints. He was never careful. Derek left evidence of his existence behind everywhere that he went, daring someone to find it. If he had been honest, that had been the entire point of slipping his own photo into the e-mail that Annie had ended up receiving. Look at me. Look at what happened to me. Witness it.
After a few blocks of silence, the driver began to speak, the vampire catching his eye in the glittering rectangle of rearview mirror. “Big night out?” His inflection was full of faked anticipation. It was customer service mode. It was ‘rate me five stars’ mode.
“Yeah, something like that.” He tried to look at the driver the way Veronica might have. Food as entertainment, or entertainment as food? A bored outdoor cat came to mind. Well-fed but still hunting, snatching up whatever it could just to hear its panicked cries, to feel the crush of skin and tiny bones between teeth. The strutting tomcat that kills kittens because it can. There was no music playing, no distraction. Derek could sink into the sound of this man’s calm pulse. He could slide into an artery and swim in it. It would only be slightly less warm than a hot tub, he had looked it up.
Note to self, the thought floated through the vampire’s head, if you ever speak to Annie again, ask her if FBI agents really do look at your Google searches.
The driver checked the address displayed on the dashboard-mounted phone and did a double-take. “Hey, thought I recognized that. You the groom or the best man?” he asked Derek, eyes glued to that little mirror again.
The panic would made the blood flow harder. “That remains to be seen,” he answered, smiling. Most people had an abstract vision of how their deaths would play out. Old age, disease, heart attack.
Depending on the person’s lifestyle, a gunshot wound. Stabbing. War. By their own hand. Not many folks put money on death by vampire. Beyond just the fear and the pain, there was abject betrayal. The sense that it couldn’t really be happening. Becoming a vampire allowed Derek a kind of insight into this feeling that other victims of crime and circumstance weren’t granted. After all, a serial killer’s human target didn’t reanimate and become a killer themselves. It was an entirely unique experience. Dying only to carry out that same death on others.
The momentum of the car began to slow as they reached Derek’s destination. He could still make the driver turn around. Say he forgot something. He didn’t have to do this. They could speed far away. Grab Penny and Ronnie, head to the border. There was the ocean for the siren. Ronnie could make tacos, and he’d learn Spanish finally and it would make the Duolingo owl happy. The thoughts came manic and fractured, flooding his brain with garbled images.
“Well, man, congratulations or good luck, or have a crazy night! Whatever applies.” The driver attempted what seemed to be a wink. The vampire numbly exited the vehicle, feet hitting the pavement as he stood. The night was warm and still, slipping a blanket of warmth around Derek’s shoulders after the overly air conditioned ride.
The tourist trap wedding chapel where he and Penny had gotten married hovered into view, garishly cheerful. It wasn’t a surprise, he had Googled the address beforehand. There had been time enough during getting dressed to let it sink in and wind its way through his veins, the way the poison from the dagger had. She was good. She was really, really good at what she did.
Standing at the entrance of the chapel was a statuesque blonde in a silky white dress. Her hair was swept up elegantly, the red of her lips a bloody slash across her face. She laughed as Derek approached, the movement making the petals of the white orchid behind the shell of her ear tremble. Veronica held out a graceful, pale arm, her fingers extended. “You look nice,” she said. She almost sounded sincere. “Better than I had hoped.”
“Thank you.” He took Veronica’s hand, allowing himself to be reeled in. Derek wondered if she could feel the rage, the anger and disgust, that flowed through him as blood had flowed through the Uber driver. If she did, she wasn’t letting on.
“No ring,” the vampiress murmured, running her fingers over his. She held his hand up to the light. “Don’t worry,” the blonde continued, smiling and nodded her head toward the chapel. “We aren’t going in there. I just wanted to watch your reaction when you saw it.” Veronica caressed his cheek with her other hand. “You have no poker face at all. I saw everything. But don’t worry, I believe in you. We have time to wipe all that away.”
Veronica leaned in enough that he could feel the slightest hint of sticky lipstick adhere to the skin near his ear. “We have time to make you forget her.”
Derek closed his eyes, throat bobbing as he swallowed. “Where are we going, then?” His hands itched to find her neck. This time, he wouldn’t let go, not for anything. It would have been a sweet thought in any other context. Maybe he was finally thinking like her, because whenever he let himself wander down the darkest hallways of his mind, it was always like that. Drawn out. Making it last. An amateur artist copying the one who had handed him the brush in the first place.
“All in good time.” Veronica let her hands drop, blue eyes dripping with ice. “Follow me.” The hem of her dress flowed as she walked. People turned their heads to watch as the vampiress passed them. In a city of bright lights and visual overstimulation, she stood out. Derek trailed behind her, invisible. He was stuck. He couldn’t do anything to her in public, but there was also no telling where she would take him.
On that busy sidewalk, she halted, turning around to face her creation. The flow of foot traffic was forced to split and wind around them, a parting sea. “Before we go any further,” she said, “Say something nice about me. Something true. And not about how I look.” Her red lips curled up in a mirthless smile.
The vampire didn’t hesitate. He didn’t even need to think. “You’re smart. Smarter than me.” He stood before her. With her height, and her towering high heels, she was almost as tall as he was. “I could live forever and still never be as good as you are at what you do. Could never hope to imagine what goes on in your head.” Derek took a step, his face inches from her’s. They could have been about to kiss. “You’re a perfect monster.”
Veronica stared blankly back at him for a long beat before breaking into a peal of laughter. “That’ll do.” She grabbed his arm, painted nails digging through the fabric of his jacket and tugged him away. “Come on.” He kept his eyes trained on the back of her golden head as she lured him even further away from where he wanted to be. The vampire was on autopilot again, sinking into a memory.
”Come on, man. Talk to her. You’ll never know until you talk to her.” Cade rests an arm over the top of the leather banquette. Bass is booming and he’s practically shouting, his face lighting up in blue, green, purples, making an increasingly drunk Derek dizzy. His other friend, Jason, leans in to speak into his other ear. “I heard her tell her friend she was into you on my way back from the bathroom.”
They came to a stop in front of a gleaming red sports car, shiny and flawless. “Look familiar?” Veronica teased. Her hands swept over the curved body. “It’s newer than the one you were in before, of course,” she explained with a cruel smirk. “I had to upgrade.” She shook a loose tendril of hair out of her face, exposing the hard line of her elegant jaw.
“Daisy knows all about it.” The vampiress’ face lit up in delighted glee. “I got her to tell me everything about your adorable little hero act, her vampire obsession, her family. It wasn’t difficult, she broke fast. Faster than you, by the way.” She rolled those unfathomably cold blue eyes when she saw his expression. “Oh, come on. Let yourself be a little proud.” Veronica held up a key fob and clicked a button, the car emitting an electronic beep as the locks disengaged. She pulled open the passenger side door.
“Get in.”
He gets up from their table, swaying only a little before catching himself. His friends’ voices blend and melt into the music behind him. She sees him coming, the blonde in the silver dress, disco ball bright. She’s smiling warmly, welcoming. A boost of confidence steadies him and he’s hooked.
Derek folded himself into the front seat, the leather molding against his body as he leaned back. He didn’t turn to look as the door closed on him, sealing him inside. A fancy car could still be a death trap. It could be a 1990 Honda Civic, for all he cared. She slid into the driver’s seat, starting the engine with that same key fob.
They sped off with a jolt that pushed the vampire’s skull against the headrest. “Seat belt,” Veronica snapped. “Wouldn’t want you to go through the windshield when I brake,” she added with a wicked grin. Derek grabbed the belt and pulled it over his chest, locking it into place with a snap.
“Where are we going, Veronica?”
“I’ve got a full tank of gas and a lot of money,” she told him, eyes fixed on the road ahead, headlights and taillights swimming before them. “We can go anywhere I want.” She stretched and rolled her neck, the orchid swaying with every movement. “I can take you anywhere I want.”
He watched the city speed away and recede in the side view mirror. Whatever would happen, there was no turning back. “So,” she broke the silence, “what was it like? When I stabbed you. What did you feel?” Derek let her questions linger in the circulated air. He didn’t stop staring out the window. He was a ghost being whisked away. He was ten years ago.
”Noticed me, did you?” Her voice matches her dress, bright and clear. She looks up at Derek and there’s no mocking there. She pats the seat next to her, and her companion scoots off to the side to make room. “I noticed you,” she adds, and those words go straight to his brain to join the alcohol he had been pouring back all night.
“Tell me.”
“It was like losing every last piece of hope,” Derek whispered, his eyes on the horizon. “You watch movies where characters are getting tortured by some maniac. They say things like, when I’m through with you, you’ll be begging to die. You never understand that until it happens to you.” The vampire pressed a finger against the button to roll down the window, warm air whipping against his face.
“You never really forget what it was like before, but you can feel yourself drifting away from it. You come out the other side, and you know you’re different. And you look at each person you see and wonder if they’ll be the one to make you forget. Kill just one more, and you can lose yourself, finally. Become the monster, and you’ll never be a victim again.”
Veronica made a disgusted noise between her teeth. “You’re not talking about the dagger.”
“No, I’m not,” Derek agreed. “I won’t do that. Not for you.” Finally, he turned to look at her. “Isn’t it enough that I’m here?”
She pressed a heeled foot against the accelerator. “For now.” Veronica met his gaze. The odometer needle crept up. “I thought maybe whatever was in that blade would make you grow up,” she admitted quietly, her eyes back on the road. “Make you see things from my perspective. Now I’m not so sure.”
Derek’s head snapped up. He could sense her doubt growing like a dark cloud, and he couldn’t let that happen. “It did,” he assured her, the words tumbling out of his mouth. “I left Penny. I realized I shouldn’t be with a siren. I should be with my kind, the one who created me. I never finished learning from you, Veronica. That was my biggest mistake.”
The vampiress slowly relaxed her foot, the vehicle returning to a normal, level speed. Dust trailed out behind them from beneath the tires. “That’s the good thing about us,” she told him, pulling down the sun visor, flipping the cap up off the vanity mirror and checking her makeup. Everything in its right place. Veronica snapped it back. “There’s time to fix our mistakes. You’ve made so many. But we have time.”
After almost an hour of talking back and forth, they leave the club together, hand in hand. His friends wave him on, a blurry mix of grinning faces, moving mouths with no sound. The valet pulls up in a flashy red car. Derek barely notices it, he can only stare at Veronica. It doesn’t feel like real life. It’s a movie. She tells him to get in. He’s not sure if he imagines her shoving him in. The valet winks as he closes their doors and Veronica presses a bill into his gloved hand.
They drove and time stretched into a small eternity. There was nothing to break it up. Derek didn’t know where they were going, so there was nowhere to go except backward. The film strip in his head at that point would begin to heat, blister and warp, the walls of memory collapsing in on themselves. The brain could only handle so much pain. Veronica knew the tipping point before unconsciousness set in and had kept him there for untold hours. Because it was fun. Because she had been bored.
“There’s one last thing I need, before I leave everything behind,” Derek told her now. “Please.”
She squeezed the steering wheel. “One thing,” she allowed, her voice begrudging. “I’ll give you one thing. Better make it good.”
Derek took a moment to compose his words carefully, to inflect them with curiosity and admiration instead of revulsion. “I want to know why you don’t turn them right away. I want to know why you draw it out. It’s...inspired.”
Veronica smiled softly. “I’ve been around a really long time,” she told him. “The first time I ever turned someone, it was because I…” She trailed off uncharacteristically, her thumbs rubbing slow circles into the leather of the steering wheel. “I loved him. I was newer, then. Maybe five years a vampire? I wanted to be with him forever. We had grown up together.”
Derek listened, saying nothing, but he made sure she knew his attention was on her. He angled his body toward her, tilting his head minutely. “We spent a few decades side by side. He got bored. I didn’t,” the blonde continued, her voice drifting away from the car and into some distant spot in her head.
“It’s supposed to be forever, but they forget your face. They might even forget your name. You become a story, if that. I saved him from dying sad and alone and he repaid me by leaving.” Veronica accelerated again. There was a long stretch of empty road ahead of them, the only illumination from the LED headlights.
“What about who made you?” Derek asked. “Where were they?” Inwardly, he was slightly disgusted. Is this what he sounded like to other people when he complained about his own turning story?
“Killed shortly after.” Veronica waved her hand. “Angry mob, it happens. They took her head. It was upsetting, but we have to deal with death, don’t we? Anyway, after he left me, I realized what I had to do. I had to make sure they couldn’t ever forget me. My face, my name, my work would be carved into their new DNA, in the blood I gave them. I find blank canvases and I make them my masterpieces. You will never, ever get away from my memory.”
She glanced at the GPS screen. “Ooh, we’re almost there.”
Derek sat up in alarm, his hands coming to rest on the dash. “What? I thought you said we weren’t going anywhere in particular.” He stared at the lit up screen. They were at the corner of Nothing and Nowhere. Where was she taking him? He dug his heels into the floorboard of the car. Just as the thought of taking the wheel and making them crash occurred to him, Veronica had started slowing down, easing off the accelerator.
“I said that I could take you anywhere I wanted,” she corrected, rolling her eyes at him. “And I figured out where I wanted to take you. It’s special.” The vampiress reached out a hand and placed it over one of his. “Trust me. Have I ever lied to you?”
“Yes!” He stared at her. “Multiple times.”
She didn’t reply to that. They went offroad, kicking up sand and gravel. The headlights lit their way. Derek could feel how alone they were here. It was desert as far as he could see. The car shook as it passed over rocks or maybe animal remains. She eased onto the brake and they came to a stop on a patch of land with some oddly shaped mounds dotting it. A metal shovel lay on the ground.
“Get out.”
He exited the vehicle slowly. His shoes left prints in the sand. She grabbed the flower behind her ear and tossed it to the ground before pulling her hair loose and letting it tumble free around her shoulders. “This is where I bring them,” she said, staring wistfully at the loosely packed mounds of dirt and sand.
“Bring who?” His voice was empty and flat. There wasn’t enough wind to carry his words past them. It was the same thing here in the desert, the same thing in the ocean. Utterly small and nothing. Derek could sink right into the ground and disappear. He stared at that shovel. The dots weren’t difficult to connect.
“The mistakes. The almost was. The could have beens.” Veronica knelt down, her knees in the grime, dress riding up over her thighs. She dug her fingers into the earth. “I bury them. There might be..twenty? Thirty? I pile them together. Sometimes in pieces.” She wiped her hands over the immaculate silk, leaving rusty stains behind.
“Pick up that shovel.” The vampiress stood and kicked off her heels.
Derek grabbed the wooden handle, waiting. The ambient noise of the desert played around them in surround sound. The headlights illuminated them, casting long shadows over the graves. “Then what?
“Then you dig,” she answered, her tone sad. She crossed her arms over herself. “There. Where you’re standing. It’s perfect.”
The vampire brought the tip of the metal shove down into the sand and brought it up, letting a pile of the stuff fall behind his shoulder. Veronica laughed. “Don’t you want to take off your jacket first?” Derek shook his head and kept working, silently, his limbs a flurry of movement. He dug quickly. He wanted this all to end.
Veronica circled around him, watching, giving him directions every few moments. There was no telling how much time had passed, but there was a steadily growing pile of displaced earth behind him and a hole a few feet deep. “Stop. Put down the shovel.” Derek let it fall. She smiled. He was finally listening to her. “Open the trunk.” Veronica pointed at the car.
Derek was going to walk around the back of the vehicle when she spoke again. “The trunk is in the front.” His fingers searched until they located the handle and slowly brought the red hood up. There was something small curled up under a blanket, and an oddly shaped lump next to it. The vampire grasped the cloth between two fingers and pulled it off, and it swirled fluidly to the ground.
“Daisy.”
Her body was curled up in the fetal position, arms around her knees. She was wearing the same outfit she had on when Penny and Derek checked her into the Blue Sky. He dragged his eyes away from her ragged and mangled neck. The young vampire’s head lay next to her, face up to the sky, eyes open and blank. Veronica crept up behind him and pressed her lips against his cheek.
“Bury the past.”
There was an earthquake going on inside him, but he stood frozen, rooted to the spot. It was only in his desperation to get away from Veronica that he dared to move again. He scooped Daisy’s body up in his arms. Gently, even though she wouldn’t feel it. Guilt and shame rushed through his core and splintered out into his limbs.
He carried her to the shallow grave and set her inside, smoothing down her skirt. Derek returned to the car and picked up her head, the weight sickening, the hair spilling down and hanging lank and limp. The vampire cradled it in one arm and stooped down to grab the blanket. Once she was arranged, he spread the cover over her.
Derek stood at the precipice of the grave and let a moment of nothingness pass. He picked up the shovel. Splinters buried themselves underneath his skin as he gripped the handle. “Fuck! Veronica. I think she’s moving.” He jumped backward away from the grave.
“What? That’s impossible.” She ran up to the edge of the hole, leaning down to examine the covered body. There was nothing more satisfying in that moment than the metal blade of the shovel hitting Veronica in the face and rocketing her backward. She let out an ear-piercing scream as she hit the ground, her fingers scrambling to clutch at the mangled mess.
He didn’t give her a chance. He brought the shovel down again, this time letting the tip split the top of her skull, stunning her. “This must be the good vibes Tiernan was talking about,” Derek mused out loud. Blood gushed from her head and her nose, dripping back into her hair, spilling out onto the front of her dress, stark against the white.
Derek threw the shovel down and knelt on top of her, pulling a knife out of his jacket. She tried to blink through the stream of blood, her arms flailing out to find purchase and push him off. He pushed them aside easily and pressed the blade against her throat. “This is what you made,” he told her. The vampire pressed down with his weight and slid the weapon across her neck.
She swiped her nails across his cheek, leaving blazing red marks that he ignored. Her bare feet dug into the dirt. He kept cutting in a sawing motion, one hand against her solar plexus, pinning her down. All that rage and violence he had unleashed on people who dared to remind him of himself, he channeled now, into her. Derek felt her ribs crack.
“I will never, ever forget you. I promise.”
The blade wasn’t meant to cut through bone. It was sheer force of strength, every ounce of vampiric power behind the knife. He knew she was still alive. He could feel it. Derek had never killed anyone like this before. His hands trembled, but he didn’t stop. Her own hands flopped uselessly against him, two dying fish gasping and desperate for a last breath.
When it was done, the imprint of the knife handle was indented in his palm and he was covered in a sticky spray of her blood. He let himself drop backwards, lying on his back and looking up at the sky. He was empty, a black sucking void that she had once occupied. Derek could let himself crumble into it, or he could claw his way out. After he rested for a moment.
He would rest.