~*~

Moisture on my shirt front. is it tears? no, it's too dark. I sniff, taste. sour, faintly copper. Blood vomit.
& they say the dead feel no pain.
Well, that's just crap, I say, because i feel it, I fucken feel pain, & it's this Thirst that's causing it to me. Like any good addiction. It hits me where my stomach pain used to be, brings back that nausea like nostalgia...heyy kurdt, thought you could escape it? This goes deeper than Til death do us part, kiddo. Much deeper than that.

Ok, well, to fill you in briefly, dear diary,(as if we didn't know!) i guess i should start out by saying in the so-called profession I chose to be in life, there are no friends. Lonely boi seeks fame in a sad attempt to feel 'popular'. Cultivates it, chases it like prey. Well, once you are there you cannot make friends, see everybody who does approach wants a twisted, bitter piece of you, to steal a second's worth of glimmer.
They may SAY they love you, but that's just your Image they're loving, like all good consumers they are sizing you up & thinking "You gotta get this look." Obvious by how vicious they turn when you won't smile & play Good Rock Star. Instead, you see it light up in their eyes, ooh. he's a CREEP.I'll tell this story to my friends & play the white hat, see what happens. yeh.

Only friends you can have in this biz is the ones you made prior. Only friends you can have, & see even that's tainted, you know the only reason they're keen that you're clinging is they'd like a taste of that fine life you're allegedly leading, too.

Me? I'd rather have a home-made sandwich to canapes any day. Good thing of home-made is someone cared, someone cared enough to make me- ME!- this thing, whereas catering... well. Palahnuik is right there, these guys, they know their clientele has money whilst they, they do not. So I would go without. I don't want the canape if I have to eat all the resentment right along with it.

of course now, I don't eat anymore at all, but I digress...

Let me tell you about Dave.
Not once, but 3 times I've turned him, & in spite of it all, he grows to resent me every time. First time it was accident, well, not planned by ME, anyway ((link)) I was walking, & he was there, & to the Thirst he smelled like a gourmet meal. He smelled like homecoming. I have, had known this guy. At this point, I've tasted his blood these three times, known his musk better than any woman who has loved him. He is so much a part of me that I can safely say I had wanted to own him. To possess him utterly. But the fucker keeps right on eluding me. I take it from him, the blood, the warmth, the life, & I give him the best of what I have to offer. He has never once appreciated it properly.
He will learn. I have forever to get this thing right.

First time, it was Kasi who drained him. I'd wanted him, I'd craved him &, coward that I was, I fled from my own nature. Not she. She had no reason to see him as anything other than a food source.
I think she knew, tho.
I think she knew exactly what he means to me. Because she let me view the body after she'd drained him. She knew. She had to've, because she left him just that much alive. I think she drove me to do this, for whatever purpose she had in mind. She knew I could not leave him this way. She knew I couldn't just let him slip. & so, I made this fledgling.

But, even then, even now, Dave was never mine. She took him in hand then, & that time, he got it. For her anyway, never has for me. Beautiful & brutal, he enjoyed the Gift as I never had. They hunted together nightly, a dangerous pair, & eventually he tried to lure his bandmates into this with him as well. Taylor we kept- we had to- Cronus had done to him as Kasi'd done to Dave, & even not knowing him, I felt pity for the poor kid then & there, come running all the way to Paris on his boss's beck & call, only to have his throat ripped out & his blood drained.
Taylor is so strange, he's healthy. But more on him later. Dave....

Eventually, Dave got too brutal.

Dave wasn't playing the game. Altho I'd told him to end Foo Fighters, he hadn't, & was feeding on his fanbase. Even the trade papers knew of the trail of weird murders following the tour, & altho Dave had made sympathetic noises for MTv, it was only a matter of time.
We cornered & confronted him. He scarred my face with his fangs, tried to kill me. Instead, Kasi & Cronus killed him, right in front of Taylor & I. Cronus impaled him on his claws, & Kasi tore his heart out & ate it.

I went to the afterworld & brought him back.
And again. You're asking yourself- why? how? It wasn't difficult. I had been dead before. And by now I knew it- I needed Dave. Couldn't tell you why, I just did.
It takes more than death to deny me anything. After all, s'taken more than death to shut me up- OD, shotgun blast to the head, & still I found myself in an afterlife I hated, so I crawled free of it.
Found the Inn. set myself up to party hearty. Living large for a dead guy! I was a playah! I thought I was playing to win, this time.

Gwynna, the vampyress caught me out for the slutboi I was, drained this Wraith of allt he ectoplasm in that body I had. Embraced me. Somehow the transcience become substantial. How? You got me. But so it was. & I became Vampyre.

Don't believe in ghosts, vampyres, any of it? No, of course not, how could you? It's alright.
Let me tell you one thing. Rest assured, it's that disbelief'll do me well when I find you & sink fangs in your thorat. Makes my nights just that much easier.

This time, & Dave's as reluctant as I once was- after all, I had found him after another misadventure (I always find him. I will always find you, David. Now & forever.) he was there, on the astral &, weeping for him, I told him all. Look, he told me, if you've done this so many times before, then it's plainly not meant to be. See? I was never meant to be made brutal, & you were never meant to see 30. Ok? So. Give me back my life again, thank you, & you? go seek you rvampiric destiny or whatever it is that you have. Leave me & my Foo Fighters alone. Ok? I'm over you. I've done my mourning & moved on. Grant me the same courtesy. Have some damned empathy.

Easier said than done. Like said, see, I wanted him. As much or even moreso than Cronus, the lover I had then & now, moreso than Sabria, as much as my own greedy unlife itself. Needed Dave. He was my only link to a past I no longer had! Wanted him for myself.
Took him. again.
I went to him in his house in Virginia. It scared him lots- he had no memory of those times before, after all, & he thought I was a ghost.
I was no ghost. & certainly no longer scared of taking anything I wanted.

Used to be, tho.
One night, with Sabria, my second Sire? I had expressed my queasiness for the kill. not a wise thing, not with vamps such as she.
That accent. Never could puzzle it out entire. She'd asked me tho, why would i fight it? The blood was such ecstasy.
I told her it was wrong, this cannibalism. That I should be taking the lives of other humans like this. A sensitive as shit pissy little lost boi like me, locked in a killer's shell.

& were you not drained completely?
Sure, I agreed, I was.
& given this blood, so that I was turned, not as a man is, but with eyes that glow, & fangs and claws to rend & tear?
This was all true, I concurred.
Then, she said, it is clear that human is something that you are not! This fear of yours surely must fade away, needs to. Why begrudge the taking of what is so obviously inferior, when to take of it causes such ecstasy for you?

Took me years to internalize that message, but no,I never forgot it.

Poor Dave! When he met me that night in his home in Virginia, I was sure no ghost. I was not even his old nbandmate. I was utterly this hunting animal I had become, & if there was any human burning in the fever of my Thirst for him, it was my love, pure & simple, for this man I had known before.
It was true I had qualms- even still!- about who- about what- I fed on.
This didn't stop me from enjoying playing with my food.
& oh! did I ever play with David then.

3 nights it took me to drain him. 3 nights, & 2 days... the first day, I hid myself. Left him to wander his home, weakened but helathy still, fearful, but unsure if that night had all been just a terribly vivid nightmare.
He had those, after all. I knew this of him. I who had known him before.

The next night, he thought he was ready for me, but I was nothing he could prepare for.
In our past, as humans, he was stronger than I was, & he probably figured that was still true. That he could beat me back, overpower me, find out the nature fo what I was by force.
But any vampyre is stronger than any human, just the nature of the beast, comes with the territory. I caught him & drank, let him crawl free, let him try for me, took him again & again. He took some pretty devastating shots. & failed. & failed some more.
Oh, he hated it. Oh, he hated me, I scared him as nothing ever had before, violating him in his own home!

The second day I slept right there. Lying in his kitchen, one arm draped over him. He knew. He knew now what I was, & worse, who I had been.

I had no fear he could hurt me back.
How hard it must have been for him, that second day!
I had drained him too deeply , left him too weak to move much, & in sleep I am somehow heavier than my meager weight.
How he must have lain there, wishing he could crawl to the kitchen door & expose me to the sun! But he was weak, drained, made invalid & anemic by my relentless sucking hours before, & by day I was completely immovable for him, a stone statue holding him pinned.
How dreadful it must have been, to watch that sun set knowing soon I would begin to stir, & that I would then finish it.

& I did. I woke, & first thing I did was kiss him, good warm sloppy kisses, for I knew this was it, that I'd had my fill ofhim. It had been so good while it lasted. But he could not live thru one more night of such torture & blanching, & we both knew this.
I kissed him & then, right then & there, I killed him.

No, I didn't. I almost wanted to tho, to end his suffering. He was so angry & terrified. But I loved him too much. I gave him the gift, again. I guess I figured since I'd bested him so utterly, he'd behave this time. Be my good fledgling, meek, & devoted.

No, but all the fucken bastard does is dream of escape. He refused to feed for months,initially, torpid, silent, stubborn. I would feed him like a baby bird, forcekiss blood into his mouth. We all picked on him- Cronus,Kasi, even Taylor'd try to goad him into some kind of reaction. Like a zombie, he'd defy us. Silent. Stubborn.
I wanted at least his rancor, some sign of passion. Even now, he seems barely awake. He feeds, he walks, he talks, but his innermost thoughts? he keeps all locked inside. Hides his thoughts behind a smokescreen of those sappy Foo Fighters songs.

So now...
so now, we are going to America.
For nearly a year I have kept these fledglings in paris. Bloodbound to Cronus's clan, & bloodbound to me. Kasi? I don't know. She frightens me, because I do not know her intentions.
Taylor adores her. Taylor is an enigma, a creepy fledgling, in that he is so happy & simple. ((link)) It was his birthday when Cronus killed him. He tells me I gave him the best birthday gift ever. Crazy. the kid's crazy.

Cronus I love, but it's a kind of reserved love, I'll admit. He can be distant, both beautiful & terrible, a grumpy old man with the face of a Botticelli angel. He looks a bit like a young David Bowie. But I know even when I am romancing him, he could crush my skull like an egg, & probably not even feel anything.

I can play his lusts like a fiddle tho. I know. I make him feel like a randy old chicken hawk. He is. I am "you irrational childe." I am "you beautiful disaster." Love-names. Likewise, he is my "special tiger." Allows me to make off-color jokes about tiger sauce, which he always gets pissed about. Grumpy old thing. Heh.

& what of the old ones, my sweet Sire-ladies, of dark Sabria & frenetic, crazy, beautiful Gwynna? Always spinning out of control, that one, sometimes wanted me to save her, confused childe that I was. What of them? I don't know. I love them. I love her, Gwynna. I do not know that I will ever see her again. Sabria? I do not think that she eve rloved me. I do not think she is capable of such a thing. She played me like a toy. & now she is gone away. Dead? or still lurking, somewhere, wrapped in her mystery?
I have not seen them, either of them.
or Courtney, or Krist, or Frances Bean. Can I, will I ever hold my child again, speak to her? No, I cannot. Not after what I've become.

Today, Taylor & Dave, Cronus & Kasi & I. We are going to America because taylor wants it, & Kasi gives Taylor anything. I have not been to America since 1994, since my death.
The experience will be an interesting one, I can tell. I can smell nostalgia, all but taste the past, like a fangpang, & it makes me Thirsty as fuck. Let's just see what it brings.....
~*~

------

**********

Dave waited until Kasi had left to try the door; of course, he found it locked. "Shit," he snarled, "shit!"
Taylor regarded him from where he was lying on one of the beds, content, eager for more fun, & no little annoyed Dave was finding such a nice vacation to be shit.
"s'majiked," he yawned, "you're gonna have to graduate from Hogwort's to get that lock. It's ok tho, Dave. Kasi'll get us food. & tomorrow, when it's DAY, I will go out to the beach..."
Dave groaned. Finally, realizing that there was no way to force the door open, he changed tact. Tried to reason with Taylor.
"Tay," he began weakly, "it wasn't always like this, remember? We were friends..."
"You were my employer," Taylor said matter-of-factly, "not really my friend per se. You're a bit hard to get along with."
"I mean," Dave reiterated, "you remember, don't you? we were human once."
Taylor thought for a few. "It's only this last time you haven't liked this, Dave," Taylor replied glibly, "before you died, you really liked blood-drinking a lot."
But Dave did not know what to make of THAT. "Before I what?!"

Taylor sighed. Told him briefly the story Kirke had told, of the time travel & afterlife adventures he had apparently had while he had been comatose, of all that had passed.
"Now what I don't see really," Taylor mused, "if this last time Kurt got back BEFORE you were turned, how I managed to remain a vampire, but either way, it's not like I'm complaining." He shrugged. Quantum physics were a big bore anyway.
Dave looked at Taylor as tho the drummer was from Mars.
"Was you who dragged me into this in the first place," Taylor explained, "you called me to Paris. To eat me conceivably- you bit me real bad & it hurt. Mr.Cronus killed me, & Kurt turned me, but you started all this."
Dave gave up trying to understand, & tried the door again. Still locked.
"I have to get out of here." Dave muttered.
"Why?" Taylor asked, "Kasi'll be back any minute with food."
"With PEOPLE, you mean," Dave said bleakly, "and she'll expect us to eat them. To drain their blood."
Taylor nodded. "s'how it works," he agreed, "Kasi's nice."
"She's got you hypnotized." Dave said, an accusation, not a question.
Again, Taylor's nonchalant shrug. "She's drank from me, I've drank from her. Course we're bound. I think she's great anyway. I'd like to hope she's got enough of me in her veins she loves me too." Taylor replied, "course, if not, chances are she'll just eat me one of these days."
"And you're not UPSET with that prospect?!"" Dave was shocked.
"I'd..prefer to avoid it," Taylor admitted, "so I stay on her good side. She did it to you, once. You were naughty, so she killed you. Ripped your heart right out & ATE it." Taylor seemed to enjoy Dave's look of horror at these words.
"Anyway," Taylor added hurriedly, as if he KNEW Kasi would not approve of this part of the conversation, but he wanted to make his point to Dave anyway, "it's me she loves, not you, so you just keep your distance. I can kill you too. & I don't have to care for you to do that." There, Taylor thought, said it. Kasi shouldn't be hanging round Dave in the first place. He's funny-looking, all rubbery faced & buck toothy... no. It's me she loves. It's ME. He looked down at his fingers & smiled knowingly. Dave had best watch himself, was all. Taylor had big claws, & he could run awfully fast.

~*~

Kirke looked up when Kasi tossed in a boy for him & Cronus. well, for him, mostly, Cronus seemed content right then anyway, to just watch. It ocured to Kirke he didn't see Cronus feed much. But right then he was too Thirsty to give this more than a brief consideration. He crawled over to the food.
His eyes were glowing in contentment, & he was gnawing the soft skin, trying to get a bigger gush when he really stopped to think. There had been a time not that long ago he would NEVER have done this! but then, the artery he'd been looking for was beneath his tongue; he parted it with a quick bite, & went back to drinking.
Immediatley after his feed he felt tingly, both still aggressive and horny, & yet relaxed & sated. He pounced Cronus as tho the elder were just another victim; he knew had Cronus wanted him away he could flick him off like a fly, but this didn't stop him from being forceful all the same. It occurred to him this amused Cronus, this little fledgling being like this with him. He crawled over Cronus, sniffing him, licking him, covering him in little kisses. Finally, his ardor cooled, and he laid back. It should be Cronus's call if anything was to go on beyond his little bit of snuggling anyway.
And Kirke began to think too much, & as a result, got broody.
"Dave hates me, you know," he told Cronus, "HATES me. I can see it in his eyes, the way he pulls away from me if I so much as tap his shoulder. He winces when I touch him. I know why too." he sighed, rolled over on the bed, staring at Cronus earnestly. "I guess in a sense I raped him." Kirke said, "I know I did it, too. I wanted to. I enjoyed it, playing with his fear of me like that. I loved the taste of his blood, all full of fear that way."
For awhile Kirke said nothing, but the look on his face was anguished. Dave's hate hurt him. But he had no idea how to undo what he had done, was not sure if, even if he had it all to do again, it would not have turned out the same.
In fact, the prospect of having it to do again, of Dave once again human, & weak, was turning him on a bit. He sighed again, wanting to be disgusted with himself for these thoughts, not able to. I've changed, Kirke thought, so much, & in so short a time. How, when did it happen? Can I ever go back?
At length Kirke said, "I can't kill him, you know." He said, "I can't let him go, either." He pondered awhile more. "I should never have made him." he realized, "but now that I have, I want him to adapt. I want him to..." want him to WHAT? he thought fiercely, be more like ME? but I'm not even like me anymore! that's what shocked Dave, why he hates me. Who I was once would NEVER have done that to Dave!!! "I want him," he finished weakly, "to be able to feed, comfortably. But not get overviolent! I want him to accept his fate, I want him..." he saw what he wanted before him, an impossible goal. Impossible to ask of Dave. Their roles reversed he himself would never go there. But it was what he wanted of, for Dave. "I want him to forgive me," he said, "I want him to LOVE me. I want him to be thankful I came back for him, that I care that much about him. I could never have left him mortal. I could never abandon him to grow old & die! I think maybe..."
A thought had been niggling him since they had got to the west coast, maybe dave needs a a friend as much as I did... He sighed, shook his head, snuggled up to Cronus. He loved being with Cronus. at last, a sire-figure who had not abandoned him! and even let him HAVE fledglings, Sabria had killed all the ones he had made prior. It was probably for the better tho, & he knew it. He had tried turning the downtrodden girls of the inn, battered goodwives, used up harlots, abused kitchen wenches. Left with that kind of power, they would have no doubt been fouller monsters than Dave had ever become! No...
He rubbed his head against Cronus's arm, slowly trailed his long hair across. The thought would not leave him. It was almost the same thought he had chastized Dave for, once. Not soon enough tho, he considered, or Taylor'd not be with us. It's ok tho, Taylor's shaping up. I LIKE Taylor.
he thought how easy it would be to rent a car, to drive up the Cali coast. thru Oregon, & up into.... Washington? Good gods, no, it was crazy!
Krist, he kept thinking, what if I were to bring Krist to us, with us, into this? We could be a GROUP again, almost a family!
Almost.
It was bad. He must stop thinking on this. He could barely manage the fledglings he had. He needed to work on Dave, to get Dave adapted, accepting, obedient. To get another childe now would only make things worse.
But he could not stop thinking it, all the same...

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