Modern Vampyr

Wintry anorexia of decrepit bone trees, grey overcast sky, sheer emptiness in the howling wind. Deathly mounds of white en masse, roads slick with black ice. Sleet gunking up streets and spilling from snowbanks, pooling atop manhole lids, rushing sidewalk gutters. Whiteout blizzard.

Far beyond Seasonal-Affective-Disorder, he was dead inside.

How long, now, had it been?

Eight years and change, straining memory to think. The courts were in recess, a coerced adjournment to judicial antipathy, sentencing relieved for the moment. The jury fought but to fall silent - their lot of sociopaths and sadists curdling the bleachers. A long time it had been since he cared even wonder what they would decide, or when. Balance of Scales of Justice, as is with contemporary society, was tilted indefinitely against favour of the accused. Laughed at vague mental image stowed somewhere within, of Lady Justice toppling off the roof, smashing into bits. He might never be able to leave the courthouse, not that he lived there, though it were an eternal occupation kept him from liberty.

Freezing fucking cold, pseudo-hated the neat cubicle houses of suburbia.

Despite, paid rent to live in one, at a premium, with nearly complete strangers. It was better lease on things than many endured, freedom commodified, supply-in-demand in such times with the civil duress, unrest, and the supermarket prices skyrocketed, average wages low, available jobs few. Wim was lucky in that way, even if really it did not matter much. Life took its toll on all, barely recognized.

Neuroses, went way from bus-stop toward home. Two blocks with hail raining down from above, icy streets stained with colourful salts. Automobiles that went by sent slush lapping up snowmelt on the curbs, rubber tire treads worn into precipitation on the pavement. Hurling pellets continued pelting him in the agonizingly frigid, knife-slash scenery and dismal silence of the north’s annual misery, akin his own energetic wavelength, yet momentarily suspending certain features of chronic worry.

Something to rejoice about: dead winter was past.

Neurological interpretation would soon increase, somewhat a few points. He imagined a young boy in a clinical room indicating certain proximity on the Pain-Scale between slight-frowny and flat-face. The doctor would put up a sincere act for the fact that this boy had not ranked tolerability of survival in the smileys, although certainly concede to applaud his patient having overcome ultra-frowny at long last. Maybe then, the physician would say something grandparental like Ain’t it darned we cannot control the weather - because euphemistic deflections rue the day. Phew, science of modern medicine predicated on child verbatim (omission) and chart graphs: innovative algorithms. Silly doc would wipe face of concern, beamingly give kid a lolly and send him along his way out of the office.

He arrived, used lanyard key to unlock front door, entered quietly, shut it on longing desolation.

Barely a second in, the sound of footsteps round the corner, fell and getting closer - fire-bell of mind ringing, now once again alarm.

Hands pocketed, it was the male one - Victor - cautious on approach, betraying his beta-mindedness. Little did he know Wim Burrows merely appeared alpha per exterior, yet on the inside, omega.

‘Wim,’ he said with a curt, almost smile. ‘How was work?’

‘Alright, nothing out of the ordinary. Coming down like kamikazes out there.’

‘Good thing you’re home safe and sound - time to get warm and cozy.’

Victor offered a trademark real, sad smile this time. Wim had reflexively been able to tell for some time Vic was acquainted with inner struggle. His mirror-neurons fired a second, as he stood languidly, dripping on the doormat, as with the brief flight of a defunct firework before it fizzles into water.

‘I like your pants. You look very comfy.’

‘Suppose I do. Our world gave up on dressy-casual ages ago, anyway.’

‘Loafing bum: the new business chic.’ On cue, Wim’s brain activity caught up with previously spoken word. ‘You don’t look slobby at all - I was only kidding. Big supporter of knit cardigans.’

‘All good - I knew you were. Don’t sweat it, guy.’

Yet the scene changed for unease regardless, and before Wim could spirit himself away upstairs the door swung ajar. Then their robust, third and final roommate stepped gingerly through the threshold.

‘Gooday, ol’ roomies.’

‘Have you been on a jog this evening?’

‘Warmest weather in weeks. High time you peeled yourself off the couch too, Viccy.’

‘Like hell.’

Hey, Wim,’ she said, shifting aside to look at him.

‘Hello Kinsey. Why the heck were you running in that?’

‘Pssh, it’s barely spitting. Do either of you chaps have tea by chance?’

‘Caffeine or herbal?’

‘Oh boy, nothing stronger than green matcha.’

‘There’s some Egyptian chamomile, I think.’

‘Amazing.’

‘Interested in a cup, Wim?’

‘For starters, to skip back a beat, it’s a divebomb, bloody downpour - spitting my ass.’

‘Tea, yes?’

‘I won’t say no to chamomile.’

‘It’s nice to get wet, though. Rain taps are rejuvenating.’

‘I suppose maybe in the heat of summer.’

‘Not so fully charged with vitality these days, are we Wim.’

‘Got wattage like batteries in the remote of a basement television, disused for many years.’

‘Quick wit. Ever try stand-up?’

‘Not yet, eh.’

Off in his room that night, he remembered a case study which detailed how lab rats exposed to controlled traumatic experiences later died in the wild due to lack of endorphin opiate activity, which disabled them from crying when lost, tucked away from their mothers.

His own mom used to explain to him during youth that he’d been born with a caul. She had suggested, as folklore portends, that this meant he’d become someone special: to do great things, borne. Freud, who’d also been born with a caul, thought anything less than utmost fearlessness in the face of fear to be inadequate. Wim considered cauls to signify a bodily area which could get sick, an early warned, spiritual nod that this part - that right there - might break anytime out along the way. So that in the case they were Spartans, to discard, or otherwise realize that the baby in question was best left dangling umbilically, or put back in. Metaphysical proof to potential of becoming shit, even in infancy, thus dissonance not later necessary to be administered as opposition to the narrative in head.

In actuality, his adrenal glands were drained, nor did he despise anything at all, for all the things he thought of contentiously. Lo, mental energy perpetuated as with the simmer before a boil. For hatred, Wim lacked conviction, electricity; the lights were out. For ages on end, he’d tried feverishly to get them back on. The electricians were off-duty, lest retired, the breaker circuits not simply tripped but blackened, after a combustion which had taken place during a teenage nervous break never fully recovered. He did not feel love, joy, nor anger, sadness or grief ever anymore in any real way.

Wim existed as the living dead, or so he fancied to think, sometimes.

Bowling past the three-quarters closed door, in shortness of a breath, Kinsey sprung into his bedroom.

‘Oh, jeez. Did I give you a start?’

‘Sorry about that. My neural wiring is shit.’

‘Always so self-deprecating,’ she said, smiling at him sideways.

‘Well, do you know of any good technicians?’

‘I might have some sources for you. I wanted to say I really enjoyed that banter, earlier. You don’t always have to be such a stranger, keeping yourself locked away up here. We should all go out for beers soon, get to know the people living under the same roof. Rapunzel, please let down your hair.’

‘That sounds good. Count me in.’

‘Alrighty, we’ll set a date this week coming,’ she said, grinning fully and slowly backing into the corridor. ‘Until then, don’t forget we operate a free-living space policy. Join us anytime, John Matuszak.’

In the silhouetted hallway she disappeared, and Wim returned focus to preoccupation. Such was, from then until it went off, capitulated, he needed to ensure that this would be so; subtle brainwave patterns incurred over time caused it. He must, or there was no telling the consequence: so he made it go out.

When he came to, slunk out of an oak chair, traversed to the window. Hands pasted to the sill, gazed out the grime-smeared glass, heat from the floorboard radiator warming legs, groin. The road was empty, their street quiet as a war ghetto, one lone woman out walking a tiny dog in a woolen overcoat.

He lifted open the pane, crisp cold kissing his face. A steady, gentle din vis-à-vis the icy breeze, distant traffic and howl of the highway hummed on in the night. PC picket signs strewn the snow-covered lawns of neighbouring townhouses, a party heavily championed out of the largest cities. Their district’s candidate was a white man accused on a plethora of sexual demeanours, who openly supported the AfD of Germany, publicly exhibited recalcitrance toward the influx of refugees, formerly voted against female abortive rights. Thus, it was the semi-rural, closeted elderly keeping to the status quo, holding up the old ways: conservativism and its white-faced xenophobia veiled beneath suits and ties.

Lurid headlight burst into the room, flitting through the parted blinds as cars spun past, turning perpendicular at the cross-section. This was a point where he expected something, when he did irrevocably, deep-down knowing no difference would come. At work, in a factory he operated a big metal bailer that spit out parts onto a conveyor belt. They wound about, concentric circles until being fed onto a track for a mechanical arm to fit pleated packs into each boat. The loop had oft gotten stuck, all jammed together and clogged up too densely, whereas nothing could thereafter cycle. Yet, Art History-Classics was not a degree conducive to translate in the real-world. The jobs in warehouses and factories were the ones which paid, that university students might covet. Regardless, he’d quit today.

His bookshelf, across from the desk, underneath a raised bed was comprised of many magnum opuses and histo-cultural treatises. Many of the works were stringent compendiums on fascism and communism. His friends, when they still visited, japed about whether Wim was to turn-out a manifesto in the vein of Ted Kaczynski. Along the bottom shelf, were biographies on the bold and damned.

True stories, about the real-life vampires: Countess Bathory, who bathed in blood, Prince Vlad Tepes the Impaler, Jack the Ripper, Hitler, Stalin, Franco, Zedong. Such macabre-morbidity had always fascinated him, symptomatic of the modern condition. They that were of the old, and he was part of the new.

He could never be like the people living in the labour camps of societal life not realizing the veracity of their own indentured servitude. Still, currency of his existence did not suffice in the slightest. How the minstrels surely wept that to live forsook was never the same as with complete, utter abandon.

Neither alcohol nor marijuana had served. For some time, true, intoxicatedly numb had felt better than soberly distant. Though booze was not the holy elixir and weed made him overtly aware of insufficient consciousness. Even caffeine sent him reeling, pinned down in bed up-tempo for several hours like Jesus nailed to the Cross. Crestfallen, as the Christ whose denominations sip-sap and drank of his body to the tune of their blood libel; not even through rigorous, in-vitro synthetization could he still be produced.

For too long Wim had sought nirvana via the wrong grail, and then in failure retreated to the dim haunts of mind, hall. Ere, whatever was necessary to procure libation from the fountain - even if need be become a hippy-dippy-sage junkie diddling a didgeridoo, and mowing down grams of shrooms, so be it. Romania’s authentic Dracula himself enjoyed raising the stakes. Fuck else, why not? He would try it all.

Without realizing, having removed sheaves of paper and an ink pen from the drawer of his stout writing desk, his dominant left hand had scrawled across the page impatiently, virulently in scars:

DOWN WITH OCD؟

DOWN WITH ANXIETY

DOWN WITH DEPRESSION

DOWN WITH DISSOCIATION

DOWN WITH PSYCHOSIS

Cerebral varicosa=cardiovascular anorexia, because when the mind breaks so does the body. This was that yearned for instance, throughout the years’ anguish: wiled and riled enough to tackle his struggle.

Psychologically defibrillated, emotional bandwidth increased minimally, a moment of calm in a life become naught other than transactive. He let it be, for giving self credit would yield judge slamming gavel, as happened daily any given instance. Avoiding indictment, perennial occupation. Atone, chains shackled, drawn, dragged off to dungeon. Left alone, cold chambers, till confess؟ Pitched quicksand, synapses shot, brimstone structures mired, neurotransmission fried, nerves torched to steel mettle, enabling subsistence. Perhaps sole purgatory: continuity of wasteland heart and hellscape mind.