Post by Barnaby Cuthbert on Oct 1, 2016 10:15:48 GMT -8
Sunday, September 25th, 2016
A tenement building in Denver Colorado
12:56 AM
Suggested Listening
Vengeance - Zack Hemsey
I came from below. I burst through the floorboards like a boat hull splintering on a reef. I grabbed one of the men above in my jaws, another in my claws. With bite I gripped hard, with claws I tore and rent. I overcame, I tore, I feasted. I may have drank too much. I'd like to say I didn't know they were vampires, but you know, the Vitae tastes like gold. Like spring. Like a tanned, tawny-haired woman fresh from a hot spring, her skin still pink from the heat, smelling like sulfur and promises.
These were big mind thoughts, trapped in the background, but red mind was in control. The Beast had me when I rose, and I couldn't blame it. Months, (or was it years?) earlier someone had dropped a building on top of me like I was a wicked witch. The Sabbat probably, when they were busy killing the rest of Denver, Colorado's undead 'Lords of the Night'. The Beast was pretty pissed about that situation. I was pretty pissed about that situation. I was hungry, the Beast was hungry, and these poor fuckers I was eating to death had that situation to thank for why exactly I drained one of them dry with my mouth and grabbed the other one's ribcage through his skin with my claws.
My Beast and I were in agreement, this night. I wanted him close. I aimed to be hungry. I finished his friend by closing my jaws around his throat tight and twisting my neck to the side quickly. Things tore, there was a spray and a snap. I know this killed him because he withered beneath me, desiccated, but stayed juicy, just got foul and maggoty. Young-ish. He couldn't have been over 50 years dead. Couldn't tell what kind. I wasn't about to spend a lot of time checking the leather and biker patches in my fangs for Clan markings, especially now that ribcage-guy was shooting me at point-blank range with a hand-cannon.
His mistake. Gangrel like me don't die easy, we just get annoyed and need new clothes. He did make me spend some of his friend though. Had to give him credit for that. His friend's blood rushed through me, healing me, powering me. I may or may not have bitten ribcage-guy's gun in half and taken half of his arm with it. His fingers smelled like clove cigarettes, and so had the other one's throat.
Poncy fuckers.
I pondered fishing his fingers out of my throat just to choke him with them, a silly notion, considering neither of us needed to breathe other than to pass air over our vocal chords to speak, but the Beast made sure I had nothing but a growl to say, and he, barely more than a whimper.
Somehow, he was running. Ribcage guy was running with his ribcage holes and his arm off. Big mind was concerned with where. Red mind scanned the horizon and found not one single red fuck. We pounced on his back like a spider on a fly and brought him down. We grabbed his spine through the skin of his back and pulled until there was a crack. He couldn't move after that. We drank our fill. I was delirious with hunger as I bit into the back of his neck and started draining him. Romanticizing my Beast was a symptom of that hunger delirium. It was time to stop this before I ate the filthy little shit's soul. The last thing I wanted was a Sabbat soul banging around inside me. I heard about Kindred like that, carrying around the dead they had eaten like little, murderous, vengeful children in their head.
Fuck that.
I exerted my will. Sound returned. I hadn’t realized that it had gone. Things like screaming and gunshots tended to seem far away when the red mind took over. Now they were loud. Ribcage had found another gun, had gotten it out, and had fired it enough times for my ears to ring, and now that I was paying attention, they were still ringing. Or maybe that was the first gun... Had he fired while I was biting it in half? Had it gone off? I didn't know. I couldn't feel my face on one side, and when I tried to feel the inside of it with my tongue, there wasn't a tongue there, so that was probably bad.
He was promising me things that 'she' would do to me for my insults to his person. I squinted to listen, a vestigial aspect of my former breathing self. I guess 'she' was this Lilian I'd been hearing about at the borders of Denver earlier. Some Sabbat big-wig, come to kill us all. It had, apparently been rather effective. Ribcage's blood was coming out of the bottom part of him where I'd severed his spine and chewed open the back of his neck. He was trying to crawl out from under me with one arm, nails tearing at the wood floor of the broken tenement. It was suddenly all a bit gruesome. I felt bad for him for a minute. There was also what smelled like a cowering homeless man in the corner. That was a problem.
What a shit show.
"...will destroy you! She will hunt you and she will toy with your entrails! She will devour you wherever you flee! She is the shadow of the dream of the fire of the everlasting li-"
I put one clawed finger into the base of his skull, the soft part at the back where the spine attaches, deep. He stopped screaming, and got mildew-y and rotten just like his friend had.
I took stock.
Smells: Piss and sweat from the homeless guy, one. Moldy dead vampires, two. Concrete dust and ashes, everywhere. Old fire smells. Left-behind human smells. Rags, oily. That unique and sour bacterial scent of dirty flesh being invaded slowly AKA the homeless smell. Gun smoke, freshly spent rounds. Dead blood.
Sights: The room was broken, and partially open to the elements in places, where brackish water dripped through levels of condemned tenement apartments to a puddle on one side of the room. There was no electricity here naturally, but the hobo shivering and pissing himself in the corner had dragged an extension cord from somewhere and was running a heater and a hanging work-light from it that he'd clipped to an exposed, dead wire dangling from the ceiling where it had tumbled out like so many entrails from a torn-open belly. The light illuminated stark contrasts and deep shadows. The bullet holes in the walls behind me, the hole in the floor, me. The floor was wood, weathered, scratched where ribcage guy had tried to crawl away from me. The hole where I'd come up from the dirt floor of the foundation was a lightless pit that gaped with splintered wood. Windows were boarded. Streetlight flickered through the gaps. A lone door sat behind the dangling light. It canted to the left a bit above the slightly warped wood of the floor, leading to a set of concrete stairs lit by a distant, flickering florescent bar bulb. Something had power.
Sounds: Hobo heartbeat, hobo mumbling in terror, hobo clutching a knife that was scratching against the wood floor and revealing its presence. Far away police sirens. They'd get closer soon. There had been gunfire. This was a shitty part of Denver, sure, but not so shitty that people still ignored gunshots. Or maybe they would be ignored. Who knew what this town becoming Sabbat territory would even have done to the cops? I healed the holes in me with the blood I'd gotten from the first unlucky Lick I'd murdered. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven bullets clattered onto the floorboards, flat from striking me. Something popped in my jaw and all of the sudden I could feel my face again. Hobo heartbeat increased. Red mind noticed. We were hungry again. Red mind was into hobo. I told red mind to shut the fuck up, with difficulty. I heard distant road traffic, city traffic, the buzzing of the light, and the faint buzzing and clicking of the florescent bulb in the stairwell.
Tastes: Bad blood. Bad night. Bad city. Bad year.
"H... huh, hey mister," said the hobo in the corner, clutching his knife. I had been staring, it seemed. Musta been a sight as my face, half in shadow, closed around a shattered jaw that had popped back into place.
I stood up, saying nothing, waiting for my tongue to grow back, and dragged the corpses of the Sabbat down over to the hole in the floor and started going through pockets. About $150 cash between them, IDs, clearly stolen, some credit cards, probably tracked, and likely ripped off. Flip lighter, pack of cigarettes. Spent .9mm with a spare clip, serial number still on, police issue by the looks of it, the dumb assholes. Nothing stirs up shit like wandering around firing a cop's gun at people. I pocketed it anyway, or started to, before I realized my jacket pocket had a hole in it.
"Huh... I don't want no trouble... Are you... are you gonna kill me?"
"Been enough killing tonight, don't ya think?" I said, trying to sound affable under the circumstances. I dragged both bodies into the hole, where they fell and tumbled into the black earth. The hobo shied away from me. I squeaked a squeak to the nearby rats, the call was 'feeding time'. They went to work on the corpses below. By down they'd be to the marrow. In a day or two, they'd be gone completely.
"Yuh... yussir."
I crouched back down a decent distance away, looking at the hobo.
"I don't smell any booze on you and I don't see any needles, so I'm guessing you're clean, right?"
The hobo seemed suddenly surly. "I don't do H or Meth or none of that shit. But on the booze, not for lack of tryin' I assures ya."
I held up a couple of twenties I'd collected from the Sabbat. I've got forty dollars here for one of your jackets and one of those hats. Should keep you in booze for a while, you spend it right.
"Fifty," said the hobo. "And you can drink blood from me, but just a little. Don't kill me mister. I'm weak and I dunno if I'll last another winter down here."
Well shit. I guessed this guy was cutthroat or ribcage's hookup before. I might even have broken a blood bond when I'd killed them, it occurred to me.
"What's your name?" I asked the bundled pile of human being, still white-knuckling the knife. My voice was gravel over smoke. Probably hadn't healed right.
"Myers sir. Folks call me Narrows though, on account of I don't shoot up, cuz I'm on the straight and narrow and I came from the narrows over in T-town... that's Tacoma Washington some time back, and because I'm skinny, I guess."
"You gonna try to stick me with that knife if I come over there, Narrows?"
"I oughta."
I chuckled. Red mind was not amused with my delay.
"Wouldn't work out for you I'd say, Narrows."
"Yeah..." said Narrows. "But I don't wanna die without a fight."
I sat down next to the hobo. He was skinny all right, thin as a rail beneath a seven layer burrito of secondhand clothes. He jumped a little as I moved.
"I know the feeling," I said. "Why don't you give me that coat, and I give you this fifty, and you tell me all about Washington state." I tapped out a clove cigarette from the soft pack I'd taken off of cutthroat and offered it to my new friend Narrows. He nodded, took it and I flicked the flip lighter open, the clink echoed in the empty space like a spent shell casing falling on stone.
Touch: Cool metal surrounding the warmth of a small, hot flame.
It was time to catch up.
A tenement building in Denver Colorado
12:56 AM
Suggested Listening
Vengeance - Zack Hemsey
I came from below. I burst through the floorboards like a boat hull splintering on a reef. I grabbed one of the men above in my jaws, another in my claws. With bite I gripped hard, with claws I tore and rent. I overcame, I tore, I feasted. I may have drank too much. I'd like to say I didn't know they were vampires, but you know, the Vitae tastes like gold. Like spring. Like a tanned, tawny-haired woman fresh from a hot spring, her skin still pink from the heat, smelling like sulfur and promises.
These were big mind thoughts, trapped in the background, but red mind was in control. The Beast had me when I rose, and I couldn't blame it. Months, (or was it years?) earlier someone had dropped a building on top of me like I was a wicked witch. The Sabbat probably, when they were busy killing the rest of Denver, Colorado's undead 'Lords of the Night'. The Beast was pretty pissed about that situation. I was pretty pissed about that situation. I was hungry, the Beast was hungry, and these poor fuckers I was eating to death had that situation to thank for why exactly I drained one of them dry with my mouth and grabbed the other one's ribcage through his skin with my claws.
My Beast and I were in agreement, this night. I wanted him close. I aimed to be hungry. I finished his friend by closing my jaws around his throat tight and twisting my neck to the side quickly. Things tore, there was a spray and a snap. I know this killed him because he withered beneath me, desiccated, but stayed juicy, just got foul and maggoty. Young-ish. He couldn't have been over 50 years dead. Couldn't tell what kind. I wasn't about to spend a lot of time checking the leather and biker patches in my fangs for Clan markings, especially now that ribcage-guy was shooting me at point-blank range with a hand-cannon.
His mistake. Gangrel like me don't die easy, we just get annoyed and need new clothes. He did make me spend some of his friend though. Had to give him credit for that. His friend's blood rushed through me, healing me, powering me. I may or may not have bitten ribcage-guy's gun in half and taken half of his arm with it. His fingers smelled like clove cigarettes, and so had the other one's throat.
Poncy fuckers.
I pondered fishing his fingers out of my throat just to choke him with them, a silly notion, considering neither of us needed to breathe other than to pass air over our vocal chords to speak, but the Beast made sure I had nothing but a growl to say, and he, barely more than a whimper.
Somehow, he was running. Ribcage guy was running with his ribcage holes and his arm off. Big mind was concerned with where. Red mind scanned the horizon and found not one single red fuck. We pounced on his back like a spider on a fly and brought him down. We grabbed his spine through the skin of his back and pulled until there was a crack. He couldn't move after that. We drank our fill. I was delirious with hunger as I bit into the back of his neck and started draining him. Romanticizing my Beast was a symptom of that hunger delirium. It was time to stop this before I ate the filthy little shit's soul. The last thing I wanted was a Sabbat soul banging around inside me. I heard about Kindred like that, carrying around the dead they had eaten like little, murderous, vengeful children in their head.
Fuck that.
I exerted my will. Sound returned. I hadn’t realized that it had gone. Things like screaming and gunshots tended to seem far away when the red mind took over. Now they were loud. Ribcage had found another gun, had gotten it out, and had fired it enough times for my ears to ring, and now that I was paying attention, they were still ringing. Or maybe that was the first gun... Had he fired while I was biting it in half? Had it gone off? I didn't know. I couldn't feel my face on one side, and when I tried to feel the inside of it with my tongue, there wasn't a tongue there, so that was probably bad.
He was promising me things that 'she' would do to me for my insults to his person. I squinted to listen, a vestigial aspect of my former breathing self. I guess 'she' was this Lilian I'd been hearing about at the borders of Denver earlier. Some Sabbat big-wig, come to kill us all. It had, apparently been rather effective. Ribcage's blood was coming out of the bottom part of him where I'd severed his spine and chewed open the back of his neck. He was trying to crawl out from under me with one arm, nails tearing at the wood floor of the broken tenement. It was suddenly all a bit gruesome. I felt bad for him for a minute. There was also what smelled like a cowering homeless man in the corner. That was a problem.
What a shit show.
"...will destroy you! She will hunt you and she will toy with your entrails! She will devour you wherever you flee! She is the shadow of the dream of the fire of the everlasting li-"
I put one clawed finger into the base of his skull, the soft part at the back where the spine attaches, deep. He stopped screaming, and got mildew-y and rotten just like his friend had.
I took stock.
Smells: Piss and sweat from the homeless guy, one. Moldy dead vampires, two. Concrete dust and ashes, everywhere. Old fire smells. Left-behind human smells. Rags, oily. That unique and sour bacterial scent of dirty flesh being invaded slowly AKA the homeless smell. Gun smoke, freshly spent rounds. Dead blood.
Sights: The room was broken, and partially open to the elements in places, where brackish water dripped through levels of condemned tenement apartments to a puddle on one side of the room. There was no electricity here naturally, but the hobo shivering and pissing himself in the corner had dragged an extension cord from somewhere and was running a heater and a hanging work-light from it that he'd clipped to an exposed, dead wire dangling from the ceiling where it had tumbled out like so many entrails from a torn-open belly. The light illuminated stark contrasts and deep shadows. The bullet holes in the walls behind me, the hole in the floor, me. The floor was wood, weathered, scratched where ribcage guy had tried to crawl away from me. The hole where I'd come up from the dirt floor of the foundation was a lightless pit that gaped with splintered wood. Windows were boarded. Streetlight flickered through the gaps. A lone door sat behind the dangling light. It canted to the left a bit above the slightly warped wood of the floor, leading to a set of concrete stairs lit by a distant, flickering florescent bar bulb. Something had power.
Sounds: Hobo heartbeat, hobo mumbling in terror, hobo clutching a knife that was scratching against the wood floor and revealing its presence. Far away police sirens. They'd get closer soon. There had been gunfire. This was a shitty part of Denver, sure, but not so shitty that people still ignored gunshots. Or maybe they would be ignored. Who knew what this town becoming Sabbat territory would even have done to the cops? I healed the holes in me with the blood I'd gotten from the first unlucky Lick I'd murdered. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven bullets clattered onto the floorboards, flat from striking me. Something popped in my jaw and all of the sudden I could feel my face again. Hobo heartbeat increased. Red mind noticed. We were hungry again. Red mind was into hobo. I told red mind to shut the fuck up, with difficulty. I heard distant road traffic, city traffic, the buzzing of the light, and the faint buzzing and clicking of the florescent bulb in the stairwell.
Tastes: Bad blood. Bad night. Bad city. Bad year.
"H... huh, hey mister," said the hobo in the corner, clutching his knife. I had been staring, it seemed. Musta been a sight as my face, half in shadow, closed around a shattered jaw that had popped back into place.
I stood up, saying nothing, waiting for my tongue to grow back, and dragged the corpses of the Sabbat down over to the hole in the floor and started going through pockets. About $150 cash between them, IDs, clearly stolen, some credit cards, probably tracked, and likely ripped off. Flip lighter, pack of cigarettes. Spent .9mm with a spare clip, serial number still on, police issue by the looks of it, the dumb assholes. Nothing stirs up shit like wandering around firing a cop's gun at people. I pocketed it anyway, or started to, before I realized my jacket pocket had a hole in it.
"Huh... I don't want no trouble... Are you... are you gonna kill me?"
"Been enough killing tonight, don't ya think?" I said, trying to sound affable under the circumstances. I dragged both bodies into the hole, where they fell and tumbled into the black earth. The hobo shied away from me. I squeaked a squeak to the nearby rats, the call was 'feeding time'. They went to work on the corpses below. By down they'd be to the marrow. In a day or two, they'd be gone completely.
"Yuh... yussir."
I crouched back down a decent distance away, looking at the hobo.
"I don't smell any booze on you and I don't see any needles, so I'm guessing you're clean, right?"
The hobo seemed suddenly surly. "I don't do H or Meth or none of that shit. But on the booze, not for lack of tryin' I assures ya."
I held up a couple of twenties I'd collected from the Sabbat. I've got forty dollars here for one of your jackets and one of those hats. Should keep you in booze for a while, you spend it right.
"Fifty," said the hobo. "And you can drink blood from me, but just a little. Don't kill me mister. I'm weak and I dunno if I'll last another winter down here."
Well shit. I guessed this guy was cutthroat or ribcage's hookup before. I might even have broken a blood bond when I'd killed them, it occurred to me.
"What's your name?" I asked the bundled pile of human being, still white-knuckling the knife. My voice was gravel over smoke. Probably hadn't healed right.
"Myers sir. Folks call me Narrows though, on account of I don't shoot up, cuz I'm on the straight and narrow and I came from the narrows over in T-town... that's Tacoma Washington some time back, and because I'm skinny, I guess."
"You gonna try to stick me with that knife if I come over there, Narrows?"
"I oughta."
I chuckled. Red mind was not amused with my delay.
"Wouldn't work out for you I'd say, Narrows."
"Yeah..." said Narrows. "But I don't wanna die without a fight."
I sat down next to the hobo. He was skinny all right, thin as a rail beneath a seven layer burrito of secondhand clothes. He jumped a little as I moved.
"I know the feeling," I said. "Why don't you give me that coat, and I give you this fifty, and you tell me all about Washington state." I tapped out a clove cigarette from the soft pack I'd taken off of cutthroat and offered it to my new friend Narrows. He nodded, took it and I flicked the flip lighter open, the clink echoed in the empty space like a spent shell casing falling on stone.
Touch: Cool metal surrounding the warmth of a small, hot flame.
It was time to catch up.