Vampire Manifesto (11 page)

“
I don’t know if he’s a ghost, or maybe both me and my Grandma are just crazy, but I believe you. When you say you were saved by a person who vanished afterwards, I believe you, cause it’s not the first time I’ve heard that kind of story from someone I trust before.”

There was silence between us. I wasn’t really sure what to say, it was just so much to digest. So random and yet, set within the events of tonight, more plausible then I would like to have admitted.

“
Awk-ward.” Abigail laughed.

“
No, I’m just absorbing everything, Abby.” I said reassuringly. “And you’ve seen this...boy repeatedly since your Grandmother died?”

“
Yeah.” She admitted.

“
What did it look like when he, you know, disappeared?” I needed to compare the similarities, I wondered if she was just trying to humor me, make me feel not as insignificant as I already do.

“
It’s hard to explain, I guess.” Abigail stated. “It’s like he was there, then he wasn’t.”

“
Abigail!” Aiden’s voice interrupted us, cutting through the conversation like a real world commercial break. “Do you know where my PlayStation controller is?”

Abigail let out a frustrated sigh. “That boy couldn’t take a Number 2 without me demonstrating toilet paper first.”

I chuckled. “I’m tired anyway. I just wanna sleep and try to forget this night even happened.” That was a lie of course. There was too much adrenaline pumping in my veins for me to even attempt going to bed. Too many things running through my mind, untamed and unchecked, mental imagery that I lacked the proper motivation to contain or control.

“
Are you sure?” She was still being protective. “I am not thinking about Aiden and his nonsense right now.”

“
No, it’s fine Abby, go to him. Besides, he’s gonna want to know what went down tonight and I’m not up to talking about it again. What’s past is past. It’s done. It happened and now I just wanna move forward and not have to relive it all over again.”

“
Fair enough.” She finally conceded.

“
You are staying though, right? Spending the night, I mean?” Just cause I wanted to be alone didn’t mean I wanted to be alone.

“
Yeah, of course.” Abigail gave me a hug. “I wasn’t planning on leaving, not tonight.”

“
You’re not gonna get in trouble for staying out all night are you?”

“
No worries Madison.” Abigail got up from the couch. “Long as I stay Honor Roll, my parents don’t really care what I do.”

“
Abigail!” Aiden yelled out again.

She breathed in deep, gaining her composure. “Did you check the closet floor?”

“
The closet floor? Why would his controller be in the closet?” I asked.

“
Because your brother is an idiot.” She responded coolly.

“
Found it! Thanks!” Screamed Aiden.

“
Point proven.” She sighed sarcastically, feeling completed vindicated.

I just laughed. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” She was bouncing up the steps, heading towards Aiden’s bedroom and I found myself suddenly alone.

Not that I was spazzing anymore, talking to Abigail soothed my nerves, giving me the time I needed to unwind somewhat, the edge slowing leaving. Maybe sleep was possible, though I doubted that I was going to get up from the couch tonight.

I stretched out on the sofa, getting comfortable, declaring a good position for the long haul, then switched the television on, flipping through the channels. If I was gonna sleep, it needed to be soon, cause school was about four hours off. I had considered cutting class again, it’s not like I didn’t have a good reason for it this time around, yet decided against it. I didn’t want to be in the house all day by myself. Maybe I’ll just come in late. Nothing serious was happing in first period anyway.

I was flipping through the channels at turbo speed; slowing down occasionally, warp speeding through all the Spanish and Jesus channels all together when something caught my eye.

I was already four or five channels past it before the image registered in my brain and I clicked back a couple of channels until I found what I was looking for. It was a news station, a local one at that. I turned up the volume frantically, hoping I hadn’t missed everything the Anchorwoman was talking about, because right there, plastered across the right hand side of my TV screen was a photo of the man who tried to carjack me earlier tonight.

“
...found dead near Flagler Beach earlier this evening. The unidentified male was found behind a dumpster on the corner of Palm Coast Highway with an apparent gunshot wound in his upper left thigh; however preliminary autopsy reports confirm that death was attributed to strangulation. Police have no suspects at this time.”

“
On a stranger note, another Mutant sighting occurred in the San Francisco yesterday. This marks the United States seventh unconfirmed sighting in the last fifteen months, five of which were in the State of California, one in Washington DC and one Texas. Oakland and the San Francisco Bay area seem to be the epicenter for...”

I couldn’t believe it! He was dead. Just like that. I knew it was him, not just from the photo, but from the gunshot he took in the leg as well. They said he was unidentified, but I recognized him well enough and after seeing him up on the screen like that, seeing a close up of his face, I swear I had seen him earlier today as well. At the beach where me and Aiden first met. He sold us ice cream.

Last meals are always on the house
.

A shudder rumbled its way across my entire body as I remembered his words, placing the drunken slur of a voice against that of my late night attacker. Of course they matched, just like their faces when placed together in my mind fitted perfectly.

But then...if he was the same guy, the same drunk, clown who sold me ice cream, then that can’t be just a coincidence right? I mean, once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern. I didn’t see him three times in one day, but still...

What’s so important about you in particular, that a man, using a three thousand dollar gun would try to kidnap you?

My Saviors voice echoed in my head, the words taking on new meaning as his interpretation of the events superseded my own somewhat. Maybe he was right; maybe it was more than just a random carjacking. What if he was targeting me directly?

“
Doesn’t really matter now, he’s dead.” I whispered to myself and upon hearing the words aloud, I breathed a sigh of relief.

The Bogeyman couldn’t hurt me anymore.

He was worm food now. This made me happy. It made me content, yet the fact that his death was serene in my eyes gave me pause. Despite what happened to me, murder was not something that I condone, yet not only the fact that he was dead, but also the overwhelming fact that he was strangled and his body discarded like trash, these things should not give me any semblance of joy and yet they did.

I resigned not to let this attack weaken me; make me afraid to live life the way I normally would. If I do that, then the Terrorists win. I refused to let it change me, yet I could feel it rearranging my outlook, coloring how I view the world. A part of me was colder, meaner and uglier now. Utterly jaded. A small portion of my innocence had been taken, stripped from my soul like it didn’t belong there in the first place.

I didn’t want to think about it anymore. Enough was enough. I shut everything off, anything that took electricity and headed back upstairs towards my room. Once inside my bedroom, I locked the door the behind me, stripped down and grabbed my leather jacket.

I tossed the current painting in the corner, replacing the finished portrait with a fresh canvass on the easel. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do yet, simply staring at the blank whiteness, doing brushstrokes in my mind before I even picked up the paint.

It was like that for at least twenty minutes. Me just standing there in nothing but my old, battered jacket, which was sporting enough paint on it for twenty pictures. I grabbed the brush, dipped the point in black paint, closed my eyes and freed myself, the restraints of the world breaking free, broken shackles crumbling to rust strewn metal around me.

Nothing else mattered other than the brush in my hand and the paint on the canvass. It was all I saw, all I wanted to believe existed for that singular moment in time. It was all that mattered to me. I rarely opened my eyes this time, just when I needed to add more paint to the brushes tip or take a quick glance at my work, then I would close my eyes again, visualizing what it was I wanted create, my hand tracing out the picture on the canvas as I imagined.

It was something I had one day realized that I could do. That if I was able to find that zone, that inner place within where words didn’t exist, just raw abstract emotion burning its own eternal flame of brilliance in the space between spaces, if I was able to come to that place, I no longer needed to look at what I was painting, because it was all just part of me, there inside my mind. My body would just project that inner vision onto the canvas.

These paintings, the ones that require little to no sight to produce, these were some of the best that I’ve ever created and tonight I was in that place, in the space between spaces, the thought between thoughts and my hands were just an extension of this, working tirelessly to recreate what I saw there.

I replaced this canvas with another, barely even recognizing what was happening, only knowing that there was no more blank portions for me to express myself on. I had filled them all up with parts of my soul, yet my story wasn’t complete, it demanded to be told in full and if it couldn’t be visualized on one canvass then another would do.

There was a noise outside my door which pulled me away from myself and begrudgingly I opened my eyes, my muse working its way back to her internal hideaway, that locked portion of my mind that I crawl into in order to have conversations with her.

Someone tried to open the door, realized it was locked, then tapped softly against the hard wood.

“
Madison? You awake?” Aiden asked in a small whisper.

I cracked the door open slightly, just enough for him to see my face. “Yeah, what’s up?”

“
You staying home today or you going to school with us?” He asked.

“
You’re asking me this now?” I tried to hide my frustration at his intrusion, but I’m sure it played out in my tone somewhat. “You couldn’t have asked me this in the morning?”

“
Uh, hello, it is morning Madison, First Period started like, fifteen minutes ago. Me and Abigail overslept, but we’re heading out in like thirty. You coming with or you staying in?”

I glanced at my alarm clock, the one I forgot to set. It was already past nine in the morning. “Umm...yeah, I’ll...I’ll be down in a few.”

“
Are you sure? You kinda look...”

I closed the door before he could finish. He was saying something sarcastic now, but I paid him no attention. I had been up all night painting and hadn’t even realized. Sometimes I get a little OCD with it, painting for hours nonstop without even recognizing how much time had elapsed, like tonight, or today rather. I hardly ever sweat it though.

It is what it is.

I looked at the easel and found the face of my Savior staring back at me from the painted canvas. Even though I had only met him once, I captured his likeness within the thick brush strokes, to the point you would have thought he was in the room posing for the painting the entire time.

I hadn’t realized how hauntingly beautiful he was until now, the eyes almost eerily hypnotizing. I’d never seen eyes that color before come to think of it, being an odd combination of both gray and amber. His hair reminded me of something a Roman would wear in one of those old Bible movies, yet it framed his face perfectly and didn’t seem out of place or old school.

Yet no matter how gorgeous he appeared, there was something about him that seemed hard and violent. Something in the scowl that spoke violence with his brow. Or maybe it was because I witnessed firsthand how dangerous he was. You would think he would make me feel safe, he did rescue me when there was no one else who could, yet if I never saw him again, I would be okay with that.

My attention was pulled to the first painting I completed and I realized that it was yet another image from my recurring dream, however this time it wasn’t the mysterious stranger that was stalking me through the ancient forest grove. Instead it was the item that lead to his ultimate destruction at my hands.