Chapter 20

Mitsuko, Bunuel and myself make our way back to the safe house. I don’t know how well Mitsuko knows this part of London, but she knows more than me. Actually, I trust Bunuel more, as he comes from round here, but it is Mitsuko who is determined to lead the way. Maybe it’s because she needs to feel in control right now, the little control she will have. If so, it at least explains why I am sure we have gone round in circles at least once so far. 

I am trying to psyche myself up for what is to come. I think I recall Hemmingway saying that you can bring vampires back to life, but then I am not sure if I am getting this information out of Buffy and other poor Hollywood vampire movies. I try to think of what I know about vampires. It is not my expertise, but I recall something where they originate from wet dreams. This makes no sense to me, I am not about to masturbate over her. Likewise, I recall something going back as far as Adam and Eve. Someone called Lillian? Lillith? She was Adam’s first wife, before Eve, or something like that. But here I am getting onto really dodgy grounds. Something about the wet dreams thing made sense to me at the time. But not the bible-bashing. What was the wet dream thing? A stranger of the night giving blow-jobs, and how semen is seen as a life-giving liquid, just as blood is, and the two are unconsciously related? 

But as I said, I am not going to masturbate over her. I am not a psycho-analyst, even though it made sense to me at the time. I am going too bleed over her, and this is the real issue. We all know I am not against the sight of blood creeping down my skin, and that I am not against being the one to put it there in the first place. But this is all messed up. It goes against all the reasons that I damage myself in the first place. I damage myself for myself, as a punishment, as a way to mark the end of something. I damage myself not for the pain, but for the reward, the blood, the scar. Never before has it been necessary to do it to save the world. I have always known when I am due to cut myself. Often I know for the entire day. Sometimes it is only a matter of minutes. It is never off the cuff, spur of the moment. Always it is borne out of anger and frustration and desperation. What worries me and concerns me is that whenever I have tried to contrive it, not only has it not felt natural, it is never satisfying. It is never deep enough. I am worried about it being too deep. When I contrive, I only end up with a scratch. More pain, no blood. But what is needed right now is blood. I do not know if I am angry enough to get blood. 

There are many, many people who have never cut themselves in this world. I doubt any of them understand what I am saying. Knife, skin. Easy peasy. Then there are those who cut themselves, but for different reasons. To parade their misery, to enforce it, to deny it, to highlight it and to run away from it. There are many different reasons why a person can cut themselves. And maybe many of those who do cannot understand what my concern is because they get their results. 

All I know is this. Whether my tool is sharp or blunt, I don’t always get what I want because I try to hide it. By hiding it means not going to hospital. To avoid that I don’t want to cut too deep. This runs the high, if not almost guaranteed risk of cutting too shallow, which frustrates me and causes more and more. By the time I get to what I need, be it first or tenth go, I am in a state of real self-loathing. But my stakes this time are giving Bateman strength. In other words, I don’t know if I can do this. If I was a normal, non-self-harming person, I could do the job and produce the desired amounts of blood. I would be shocked at the lack of pain, but pleased by the results. I have too many associations with self-harm. Too many. This has formed a large part of my adult life. It has to be done right, but for the wrong reasons. And I fear that the wrong reasons will defeat me. I am too aware of the damage that I can do to myself, because I have been hospitalised as a result of my actions. 

I guess I could ask Mitsuko to do it. But the argument for that case falls apart before it is even suggested in my eyes. It has to be me. If anybody is to do damage to themselves, my ego tells me it has to be me. There is no other person, accept no alternatives. And I will follow this through to whatever end, because this is what I demand of myself. 

Finally we get to the place that we once called our Safe house. It’s funny, but being here, I cannot even remember what day it is. Is it Friday? It feels like a Friday, I’m sure it is a Friday, but part of me believes that it may still only be Thursday. Even so, it has been less than a day since I have been here. I have only actually lived here for a few short days, yet being back, it is like returning home after a long trip. It is familiar, yet very distant in that it has changed. It looks physically different, the atmosphere is different, and all the associations that I have towards it are of a different place. None of them involve bringing back to life a vampire in a desperate, almost futile attempt to save the world. 

Do I really feel like this place has been a home? From where I stand right now, I actually do. That is strange. Very bizarre. Yet natural. 

We enter. We still, after all, have keys.  Well, Mitsuko does. I was never allowed one. The point being, we never actually relinquished the keys that we had between us. As a group; Mistuko, Hemmingway, Bunuel and me, we stood strong in this respect. My thoughts are distracting me as we make our way into the kitchen. And so they should. The sight of a dead vampire is disturbing, whether you want to think of her as a vampire or not. Or even if she is dead or not. From my understanding, this issue is contentious. And I am about to prove why. 

I roll up my sleeve. This is something that I do not want to do. Everything about it feels wrong. Rolling my sleeves up; what is that all about? I know what it is. Normally I’d be topless, or at worst wearing a t-shirt where it is easy to expose the arm. And I do not want to expose more than is necessary to Mitsuko, This is not because I have changed, this is because I have essentially stayed the same. Never, ever before have I had to do what I am to do in front of witnesses. It would be alright if I could get rid of all the associations. Even if they were to turn away, I doubt that I could do what I am to do. I am exposing my deepest, darkest secret. The fact that she is also my enemy, makes little difference. I could not do this in front of my closest friend. I could not do this in front of my worst enemy. 

Stay positive and yet inflict self-harm. Fuck me. Fuck me blue and see if I can’t turn yellow.

What is it that I actually see? I know that I see two universes, but what do I see in my mind’s eye, as opposed to the closet thing that I can call reality? I can’t see myself cutting, that’s for sure. 

Mitsuko is putting pressure on me to get the job done. Sighing and huffing. I can’t let her get to me. That is all over and done with. I concentrate and put the knife to my skin. I pull back, sharply, but all I achieve is a scratch. Some blood does break through to the surface, but it is nowhere near enough to trickle out of the wound. I do it again, this time not even breaking the skin. I know immediately just how useless this attempt is as it hurts. No sharp pain, just a scratching pain. 

“Oh come on, you useless piece of scrotum. Give it to me.” She goes to grab the knife. I pull it back. Quite a stupid action on both accounts, but it angers me. I can do it. I can fucking well do it. I feel the anger simmering, somewhere behind my eyes. I keep my gaze focused on her, and I slash into my arm, really digging in deep to the skin. She looks shocked. And I smile my victorious, furious, defiant smile before I look down at my arm. There is a huge gash. At first it looks more like a white scar. Possibly I can see down to the bone, the white fatty tissue underneath the skin is clearly apparent, though. Then the blood gushes in, spilling down to the floor. I am at first shocked, mortified. Am I really this pissed off with her? Then the adrenalin rush kicks in. I feel the familiar giddy feeling as my body begins to tremble and I want to laugh out loud. I want to sit, but I am too restless. I can certainly not stay standing still. I start walking around the kitchen, pacing up and down.

Mitsuko picks up Annette’s head and pulls out the stake. She needs Bunuel to help her as it really is jammed in. I would try, but I am currently too preoccupied. Finally they succeed. Mitsuko grabs me and positions me over Annette. My blood splashes over her and we begin to watch the regeneration of a vampire. The body shudders into life, until it calms itself down. Becoming self aware, the arms search around the body, unable to find the head. It pulls itself onto its knees, easing the search. Mitsuko kicks the head into a better position to be found. Once it is, it is placed on the neck. The skin fuses together. It presumably does along the entire neck.

We now have a fully functioning, pissed off vampire that we helped to kill on our hands. We are completely unprepared. Did we think this through enough?

I have not thought any of this through at all. Vampires drink blood. A reflection has no blood. It is composed of light. What have I done? What have I done? What have I done? 

I actually want to break down in tears as I feel I have so desperately fucked everything up. There was a point back then when everything was in suspension. I wasn’t dead, but I wasn’t having to deal with any of this. That’s where I want to go back to. It was mediocre, but it was better than this. It is the most I could ever have asked for, and I want it. 

We have a live vampire on our hands. And she is fucking beautiful. So beautiful it hurts. I desire her, I need her. But I am useless, I am crap and I am nothing. I can’t even look at her. I don’t want her to notice me because I do not want to embarrass myself. More than that, I want to fight the disappointment. Just looking at her is an acknowledgement that I desire her, but it is not her acknowledgement I am concerned about. It is mine. I can fight this, I can put it away. By allowing myself to want her I will only build up resentment towards myself that there is nothing that I can do. She won’t want me. She will never want me. 

“Why won’t you look at me?” she asks.

I don’t want to answer her. This is too much. This is the next level. The one where I have to talk. I freeze. I know that I can, on occasion, be witty and charming. But that is always spontaneous, when I don’t actually fancy the other person, or I don’t need their approval in any way. I need something to do, and start patting my body for tobacco. I actually know where it is, when I find it, it is where it always is. The need for me to search for it is my own unconscious need to do something else, and it just wants to make me hate myself more. Because it was unnecessary, because it made me look a fool. I pull it out as well as the filters and the papers. I start rolling. 

“You’re a vampire,” I finally reply. This is true. I had forgotten this myself. It makes me feel slightly better about not wanting to look at her. I look at her, in defiance of my own self. To recognise that I can look at her, and it doesn’t need to be pathetic desire or lust. But I fail. I look away, concentrating on rolling the cigarette. For some reason I am finding it hard to construct. The tobacco falls off, I need more. I can’t roll it properly. Like any beginner, I can’t get the edge to tuck itself under in order to roll. This cigarette needs my full attention. I am relieved. When finally I do roll it, it is loose, the filter falls out. I stoop to pick it up. Years ago, when I first started rolling, I would use sellotape to close the gap over the filter. Now I just fold the loose paper after reinserting the filter. It will have to do. I light the cigarette. Only I would, but I am failing to ignite the lighter. Annette saunters over. Even though I keep my eyes down, I cannot get the impression of two breasts heading towards me. She takes it and lights the cigarette from me. I am conscious of my neck. Completely conscious of my neck. Whereas before that had always been to hide my acne, now I am conscious of it, wanting to expose it to Annette. Still, a traitorous thought hits me that she might be disgusted by sucking in the pus. 

“Crunchy,” begins Mitsuko. “Crunchy. Isn’t there something else that we should be doing?”

“There is, but I don’t see why that little shit Bateman should get all the fun.” Because I deserve this. I deserve all this attention. 

Mitsuko grabs me roughly, forcing me to look at her disgusted, furious face. A dangerous move. She is slapped across the room by Annette who then grabs me and turns me to face her.  

I know Bateman is here. Why isn’t he doing anything? Why isn’t he doing something to provoke a reaction in me?

“Yes, I am a vampire. And you know what? It isn’t that bad. I don’t kill anyone, I just feed off them. But you know, in this day and age, everyone gives blood, is a donor. Blood regenerates itself, you know? Any human, pretty much, can spare a pint. It leaves you feeling a bit weak for a while, but is no worse than the common cold.”

“You turn people into vampires.”

“I fucking hate Hollywood. You know, the process of me sucking blood does not turn anyone into a vampire. I am a carnivore, that I can’t deny. But unlike humans who eat practically any animal if looked at over the vastness of culture and time, I do not compete. None of my kind put together compete with humanity or any other carnivore species. We are kind. We let our ‘prey’ stay alive. We let our ‘prey’ continue with their lives. We feed as and when necessary. Humanity has set times, spread out across a day. Nor are we as greedy. We don’t overload ourselves with greed and consumption. Maybe we could, but we are too badly destroyed by our reputations. We are creatures of necessity. We are pushed down to sub-human levels out of fear but more importantly ignorance. We are super-human. We are humanity, with all the benefits of humanity. We were humans. We retain our intelligence. We have the same brains as yourselves. But we have added extras. We fly. We can shape shift. We are immortal. Who cares if we come out only at night? The whole day-time bullshit is propaganda created by farmers. Humans are videos. We are the DVD’s of homo-sapiens. Isn’t it time to evolve?”

“You can fly?”

“Can you imagine how wonderful it is to be so free?”

“Yes. I have done so.” 

This knocks Annette back slightly. She certainly was not expecting this answer. But she recovers quickly. “Then don’t you want that again?”

All I know is that in an effort to combat Bateman, I am trying to be positive. But what is positive? What is a positive attitude? Isn’t it merely an effort to gain self-achievement? To fit in with other’s ideal of positive, successful equals somebody that I want to be around? Self-achievement. Again, that is a glorification of selfishness. The pursuit of one’s own ideals in the face of anyone else’s lack of success. I want more money. Who gives a shit that I don’t deserve it, I need more money. We revere, as a world, those that have pursued their selfishness to a maximum. Celebrities who are no better actors than many who are not in the public limelight, but who have the instinct to screw over any one who might take that light away from them. Businessmen who make a living out of taking money from those who cannot afford it or are stupid enough to give it to them in large quantities. Businessmen who, despite what they say, don’t care about the customer, telling them what they want as opposed to listening to what they want, who fear opposition taking their business way, who fear customer’s disinterest, who fear their superiors, who fear lack of profit. And we make them celebrities. Rockstars who fuck many groupies a night. Sex may be de-valued in this day and age, and groupies know the score. But to de-value human emotion? Anyone who pursues self-achievement ultimately does this. 

I am trying to be positive. All I want is respect. Do I de-value my morals? The ultimate question is what I want as opposed to what is best for everything? By doing what is best for everything, I am being humble. I am accepting my place in fate, in the world. By doing what I want, I am rejecting all that. I have to be positive to fight off Bateman, and that really is doing the best. For once, being selfish is a good thing. For me. For everyone. 

“I want to fly.” I know that this isn’t the first time that I’ve said this, and I know it isn’t the first time that I’ve said this to someone of dubious backgrounds. I am aware of and prepared for a false promise. But fuck it, because I want so badly to fly. Who cares if I have to be a bat to do so? I want to fly! I want to be separate from everything I know. I have to be, because I am. I don’t care for, neither give a shit about, the consequences. If I need to be positive, then I need to be someone else. Doesn’t this sound like the ideal opportunity to do such a thing?

“Listen, love. I’m a bit famished. A bit weak. Coming back from the dead and all. Mind if I get something to eat, first? Oh, and by the way, tip for you. Remove the heart next time, right? If you really want to go to the effort, you can cut me up into little pieces. Won’t stop me in the long run, but it slows me down a little bit.”

Annette’s question knocks me off track a bit. “Um… no? Right, er, yeah. Eat.”

“Jolly good.”

“Crunchy,” Mitsuko interjects. “Don’t you think –“

But I cut her off. “Look, just shut up, Mitsuko. Right? Everything’s being sorted here. She’s just a bit hungry, okay? Try and be a little bit positive…” God, I feel like such a hypocrite after years of being the complete opposite, “…here. She isn’t any danger to us. The situation is under hand.”

And then I remember why she was a danger in the first place. “Actually, Annette, can it not wait? We’ve kind of got a world to save and we need you. There’s not really a lot of, you know… blood that is currently available, erm, that isn’t kind of needed by ourselves until this whole thing is over.”

“But this is London.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of the thing, ‘cos it’s kind of not right now.”

“But this is the kitchen Hemmingway killed me in. Isn’t that the hole in the ceiling from where you, yourself shot me?”

“It’s a bit difficult. There’s like two, three even, London’s right now. We’re kind of in two of them. I am, anyway. The third one is outside this bubble thing holding these two opposing alternate London’s. It’s like, you know how you’re dead, but alive? Undead? An alternate you? Well, it’s kind of like that. Anyway, the point is, there’s no living people here except us. Hi.”

“You say that you are the only living people to a vampire who has stated how hungry she is?”

Well, here’s a puzzler. How do you stay positive in front of a vampire? It’s like my worst job interview. 

“Help us save the world and then you won’t starve after finishing me off. Look how skinny and undernourished I am. Look how much I have ripped myself to pieces and bled already. Do you think you are going to last long on me?”

“There’s two others.”

“That’s hardly the issue. I can’t condone your… choices or your needs. All I can offer you is your life.”

“And how do you intend for me to help you… save the world?”

“Right, well. We brought you back to life because you’re a vampire. And…”

“Well, that seems fair enough.”

“Crunchy!” Mitsuko yells at me. “What the fuck are you doing? Was there any fucking need for us to do this? Is there any fucking need for me to be here? How is this saving the world?”

I can feel chuckling somewhere. I know it doesn’t come from me, only confirming what I think I know. 

“I need you to kill a reflection for me.”

Annette just smiles at me, in a bewildered, repressed laugh kind of way. “What, you want me to smash up a mirror?” She finally lets the laugh out, disguising it behind the joke, a poor disguise at a dig at me. Layers, layers, layers.

“No, I tried that already,” I try to smile back at her, trying to join in with the ‘joke’, but unable to stop thinking about the naivety, the desperation with which I did smash the mirror, the foolish belief that a reaction so violent could kill something who’s main supper is just that - violence. 

I try to smile back, try to laugh along with the ‘joke’, aware that there will always be someone prepared to have a go, to mock me, to find foolishness in my actions. Actions that are based around such need and desperation, not a desire to display self-‘awesomeness’.

I try to smile back at her. I give up laughing along at the ‘joke’. I did what I did, because I did. I learned from it. Would she have done any different? Forget her, she’s a vampire, she has no reflection. Would anyone have done any different? Mitsuko didn’t. She believed me. She went along with my idea of smashing all mirrors. She was extremely pro-active in that. She wouldn’t have done any different. Hemmingway didn’t. He had more concerns, but he at least considered it as an option in that he followed Mitsuko’s lead, after my suggestion, and was unable to throw up any other answers. I don’t smile any more. 

We all make mistakes. Mine happen to be a bit different. It’s easy to laugh at me, isn’t it, after I’ve done the learning for all of us. Easy to see the flaws retrospectively. Easy to overcome fear and depression and negativity after it’s all gone away. 

How was I to know how bad my hair would look long until I grew it to almost shoulder length? Sure, then I knew it was a mistake. But only because everyone told me it was. Some people liked it. I had belief in it. I needed to do it. I stood by my convictions. My weakness was giving in, getting it all cut off instead of trying to do something else. But that doesn’t matter. That was eight years ago. Eight years ago, and it comes to my attention when a vampire mocks me? 

Stay on track. Don’t get defensive. That’s when they have you. That’s where they get their reward. Stay on track. Keep the momentum going. They don’t need to like me. We just need to get a job done, not squabble. 

“Vampires don’t have reflections,” I state, looking serious, hiding the hurt. “Can you kill reflections?”

“How do you expect me to do such a thing?”

“Crunchy, you prick! We resurrected a vampire. For what! To get killed? Very clever. How am I supposed to save anyone when dead?”

“I’ve told you before, just shut up!” I throw the remains of my cigarette at her. “It’s not you who’s supposed to save the world! It’s me!”

“Then what the fuck am I doing here? Why is Bunuel here? You’re endangering him, too!”

“You’re here because… it’s important!”

“It bloody well doesn’t sound it to me. Stupid, that’s what it sounds like.”

I feel the chuckling inside me once again.

“You came along. I only asked.”

“I came because of Bunuel.”

“Doesn’t matter. Same result. Same positive outcome. Who cares about the means? I need you here because of Bateman. It’s something to do with that. To defeat Bateman, I first needed you here. It’s complex, I don’t understand it, but it’s my unconscious’ way of saying that I can do things. That I can do what I need to do. I needed to get you to listen to me. You did. Now I need to get rid of Bateman. You being here doesn’t weaken him much, but it separates me from him, just a fraction, and I need that.”

I need a cigarette. I start rolling. Time to think. Something I said earlier, ‘Do you think you are going to last long on me?’ in reference to Annette sucking my blood. But it’s not just me, is it? It’s Bateman, too.

“Annette. I need you to suck my blood.”

Mitsuko slaps herself in the face in disbelief and out of defeat. She takes a few moments to remove it, trying to assess whatever is currently going on. “Just shoot me now, Crunchy.” She tosses the gun over at me, I am forced to catch it fearing that is going to fire whether it lands in my hands or on the floor. “Please. Just put me out of my misery. You… won.” I can feel my heart flutter at this. I light my cigarette in an effort to absorb this. “Never before have I met such a fucking moron. Usually I can just slap them until they leave me alone. Just… kill me.”

I feel the gun, and I can’t put it down. It is still too magnetic. But the desire to shoot her isn’t there. The desire to shoot, however, is. I can listen to myself just enough to know that it doesn’t work. Bateman, however, knows otherwise. 

The gun, the gun, the gun.

“Please, Annette. Now!”

She is there. Her teeth dig into my skin. And she sucks. And there is pain. Pins and needles where she sucks, the blood being involuntarily being forced out of its circuit, and not by process of finding an escape route via a normal cut or wound. The pins and needles are intense, they weaken me. It’s all I can concentrate on. And I want to faint.

And it all happens at once. 

Bateman tries to pull himself out of the shadow that I know he has been hiding in. Annette sucks as if she wants to kill me. The ghosts, aware of Bateman’s presence attack. Mitsuko fights me for the gun. I want to shoot myself. She wants to shoot me. Bunuel tugs at Mitsuko, desperate to let me save the world my way to save his parents. Bateman tries to fight Annnette off. I try to stay positive, to pull him back in to me, into my soul, into my blood to be sucked into Annette.

This is a cognitive therapist’s nightmare! Only they shouldn’t be having nightmares, positive power of thought and all that… And I’m pulling the gun to my head. Because it all has to stop. And in the confusion, this is all I can think of. Because if I don’t kill myself, Annette will. If she doesn’t, Mitsuko will. If Mitsuko doesn’t, Bateman will. If Bateman doesn’t, the ghosts will. It is my only way of control. I know it will achieve nothing. But if it is all going to fail, then this is my only control. Whoever kills me, I am doomed to be another part of Bateman. Let the ghosts kill him. Then I can die too. I did not think of that earlier. I was too foolhardy to try and save the people trapped in the bubble. Fuck them, they are not the world. I got too far above my station. 

All I wanted was to fly. 

I fire. Into Annette. The shock stops everybody. I lunge. I drink her blood. I will fly. I will be a vampire. I feel good. I feel the negativity drain away. I am losing my soul to become eternal. And I drink and I drink.

And I stop. I wipe my mouth. There is glass in front of me. Mitsuko’s reflection appears in it. She stands directly behind me. I turn to face her.

“Where is he? Bateman?”

I look back to the glass. I see the floor beneath. I see Mitsuko behind me. 

“Mirror. I need a mirror!”

I run out of the kitchen, pound up the stairs and into my room. My mirror is not there. But shards remain. I hear a volley of rapid gun shots, but pay little attention. I am not in any of the shards. More importantly, neither is Bateman.

I’m too scared to feel jubilant. I have run this risk before. But it is difficult to repress, all the same. I return to the kitchen to witness Mitsuko staking Annette’s decapitated body into the ground. 

She looks up at me, revealing the extent to which she is covered in blood. “I took the chance whilst she was still weak from your little feast.”

“Take the heart.”

She indicates to where a messy red object lies nearby. “Shot through the ribcage so that I could get easy access to it.”

“Good thinking.”

“Be careful, you’re next, Mr Vampire.”

There is no humour in her whatsoever. 

I only note Bunuel’s absence when he runs back in. “They’re retreating the bubble!”