The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

"Back and forth and up and down and left is right and black is blue and the wings are coming and the fire is chilling and it all COMES DOWN TO ONE QUESTION DOCTOR anddoyouknowhwatitis?"



Doctor Stevens shakes his head, removing his glasses and wiping then on his lab coat for the...goodness, he had lost count...umpteenth time in the last few minutes, to clean them of the spittle coming from Jakobs mouth as he showered the good psychiatrist with flecks of spittle from his cracked and badly dried out lips.



"And what question is that, Jakob?"



His soft, dulcet tones, so useful in calming even the angriest of patients, slowly expand on the air to fill the room without any trace of echo, a perfectly drawn counterpoint to the madman's voice violently reverberating against the walls of the therapy room he was in. He casually extends an aged hand to grasp the coffee mug filled with peppermint tea, and brings the still-warm, peppy beverage to his lips and takes a long, savoring sip. He never took his eyes off of Jakob, storming as he was across the back of the room, frantically running his remaining hand through his hair before he turned his head back to the Doctor...a fairly amazing feat, considering he had been in a brain dead, persistent vegetative state not two hours ago.



He stopped on hearing Dr. Stevens voice, and turned his one working eye on him, and smiled a smile that HAD to hurt, considering the state of his lips.



"Why, my good Doctor, it is the oldest question in existence!...or the last several hundred years. I can never remember which. The question, my good friend is this..."



Before the Dr. Stevens has a chance to react, Jakob has leapt across the room and pressed his nose, still bandaged and bleeding slightly from the car accident, right up against Dr. Stevens, the semi clean white bandage a stark contrast against the psychiatrists' own ebon flesh. He spoke then, in a voice that is shockingly lucid...



"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"



And with a smooth, clean motion, he had then turned away and deposited himself on the therapy couch, his brown eye locked on the similarly colored orbs in the doctors own head, and smiled. He spoke again, and this time, it was with absolutely no trace of the madness that had plagued him since he had awoke screaming and thrashing from his coma of six months.



"Now, my good man. Shall we get down to brass tacks? You have questions. I have about twenty minutes to give you answers before I have to leave."



Dr. Stevens smiles before taking another sip of his tea, filling his nostrils with the delicious peppermint aroma, which helped to distill the horribly antiseptic smell of the surrounding room, and smiled at Jakob, the practiced, conciliatory smile of a long term student of the destroyed mind.



"Well, Jakob...may I call you Jakob?...here's what we know. Six months' ago, you were in a car accident, a terrible accident when your vehicle was hit by a police car going to the scene of a crime. Six months' later, as you were totally unresponsive to all outside stimuli, your family decides to let you go. Ten minutes after the plug is pulled, you wake up screaming and thrashing, giving one of our attending physicians a near heart attack and severally injuring two orderlies, a feat made all the more impressive by your lack of an arm. I guess what everyone is wondering is...what do you remember? What woke you up? And why...to put it bluntly...why are you so agitated?"



Jakob nodded along with each of the questions, eyes still locked on the doctors own, pursing his lips as it deep in thought, before raising his working arm and steepling extending and wiggling the fingers slightly, a motion that took the doctor a moment or two to recognize as the same motion one would make as if one were tapping their fingers together...only with one hand. It was an odd gesture at best.



"Well doc, lets see. In order? Nothing beyond falling unconscious as my arm was ripped off, a voice, and because there's just too darn much in my head, and you are NOT the person I am supposed to tell it to...but I'm gonna! Because if I don't? i will literally explode, and that would make a gooey mess for your tea, there. However, I don't expect you to really understand, and good thing, too! Because if you did? Well, you would probably explode. And, well...tea, mess, you get the idea."



He smiles a lunatics smile, and Dr. Stevens feels a strange sense of disease creep into him...like he was suddenly flushed with fear, and at the same time, gripped by the same slow, icy realization that he imagined a mouse must feel, when cornered. Jakob leans forward, and strangely seemed to support himself on the coffee table with his nonexistent arm, and pointed an accusing finger at the doctor...



"You see, doc...I died. I was full on DEAD, but thanks to your toys, I was stuck in my own meat suit for six. Long. Months. Six months, screaming in the dark, unable to go up, down, left or right! I could hear you all, yes. Feel what you did. Smell the smells of the ward. I was fully aware and conscious, and KNEW my time was up. I could feel the Light, doc, pullin' me on to my eternal rest."



He leans back now, and sinks a bit into the couch, the stump of his arm raising up and turning. The doctor swears he can almost see his missing arm, casually draped across the back of his head, and chuckled slightly, looking to the ceiling as he did so.



"Ahhh, you doctors. Playing with your toys, and your books, and your...your..knowledge! Oh such LIMITED knowledge you have. Man. But I digress. You wanna know what I know. You wanna know why I came back...yes, came back, not woke up. Fuck you and your medical science too, I was fucking dead with a robot raping my heart to keep it beating. That ain't life, doc, that's being a cyborg, but without the nifty benefits, like rocket feet or laser fingers or a hydraulic cock. But that's not your fault. I HEARD THINGS, there, in the dark. Crawling things, biting things, broken things...all the things that lay trapped between this word and the next, unable to move on, move up, or move down, as it were. Too trapped to even become ghosts...so trapped they convince themselves that IS their afterlife, and when that happens, well...their well fucked, aren't they? Can't move on if you board up the door, can ya?"



He reaches down with his hand and picks up the mug of peppermint tea that the doctor had brought in for him, and sips it, grimacing a bit as the cold peppermint assaults his dry tongue, but then relaxing into the flavor and in just a few gulps, the drink vanished inside his mouth and down his throat. He replaced the mug and continued speaking.



"And amongst them, I heard 5 tiny voices. Five children, to be exact. Saying the same things over and over again, and eventually I listened. It was some creepy rhyme...what IS it with dead kids and creepy-ass rhymes?...until I had it memorized. Took a few months, because sometimes they were screaming instead of speaking, but you get the idea. Would you like to hear it, doc?"



Dr. Stevens nods and blinked, unaware that he had been staring at Jakob, fully wrapped up in his words, until just this very moment. He takes a sip from his now cold tea, and notices neither the flavor, nor the temperature, trying desperately to keep up with Jakobs words, writing the down as he went on his little paper, in shorthand.



"Well good, because I was gonna tell you anyway. Now listen carefully, this is what I heard. "The Father has Called the Son, who judges all but only some. The Sunlight has dropped to Earth and called its Ray, to make the Son fall and pay. The Mother Wakes once more to her sad task, to recall her Son to the Cask. The Monster knew its grisly Fate, to serve as nothing but Bait. Heaven and Hell both want the Son, and he doesn't care for either one. The child with Mothers Understanding gained shall by Three be slain, unless the Father suffers great pain. The Son shall be meant to sleep by Mothers hand...."



And with that, Jakob stops his strange, rhyming words and looks at the doctor with a look of confusion on his face, and shakes his head for a moment, as though trying to clear it...before a look of fear and horror crosses it, as he stammered out the next few words



"Ah. It seems I have said too much, and I am being...recalled, as it were. Well, doc, it was a pleasure getting to know you. Go tell Father Macombe that if he wants to save a life, he better hustle over to St. Genevieve hospital and find a girl named Ruth before three very pissed...er..people...kill her. A lot. All over the room. And the hospital, several city blocks, and, you know, murder hundreds. Don't fail, or this will have been meaningless.



The doctor opens his mouth to inquire after what would have been meaningless, but is interrupted by a high pitched whining sound that seems to emanate from everywhere and nowhere all at once, like nails across the chalkboard of his soul, and a smell fills his nostrils, a pure, soft smile, like you might imagine a cloud would taste like...before, like a water balloon flung from a great height to expand and detonate on the hot pavement of a summer day, Jakob exploded all over the room, literally painting every surface with blood, bone, and various viscera....



With a start, Doctor Stevens sat bolt upright in his bed, trying to shake the dream off as best be could, despite this being the third night in a row he had it, ever since that coma patient, Jakob, had died after his family had pulled the plug. He couldn't get it out of his head, every time he closed his eyes, all he could see or feel or smell or taste or hear was the sickening sound, like canvas tearing, of Jakobs body detonating, seeing parts of him fly across the room, smelling and tasting the awful coppery tang of the poor mans blood...



He quickly moved to the downstairs kitchen, and through there to the study. He sat at his computer and flicked it on, and after a few moments that stretched into an eternity, was able to log onto the internet, and rapidly locate a priest named Father Macombe. With a shaky hand, Doctor Stevens picked up his portable phone and dialed the number.



After a moment, a voice on the other line, surprisingly alert and awake..and sounding slightly...disconcerted?...travelled through the plastic grill next to the psychiatrist ear...



"This is Father Macombe. How may I help?"

It was the opening chords of this song, that Ruth liked best. The long, single note, that shifted seamlessly lower, and lower again, and lower still, and then faded higher as a kind of electric harpsichord cut in. Other notes would join, a hint of flute to add silken punctuation, and a slight bass would slip in, like a thief in the night. Then, a smatter of German, and the bass would pulse, hard, strong enough that it shook her heart in its boney cage. Ruth would never dance to this song. She never felt she did it the kind of justice that it deserved. But she always, always watched Lilli dance to this song. In her long black dress, and tight silver/black corset, blonde hair short through with red like bloodied lightning spilling about her slender, pale shoulders, Ruth's best friend would command all attention when she danced. But especially to this song.



Ruth pulled a stool from the bar and slid into it, and sipped from her too-strong vodka and coke, and the strange combination of burns caused her to smile as her larger frame settled onto the smooth, cool wood of the stool, and she watched Lilli move, flow, ebb to the song. First, the intro...each part of her body glided seamlessly to the deepening chords, her skirt moving about her legs like shadow spun into cloth...clingy, but infinitely expansive at the same time. When the harpsichord entered the song, her hands flicked with each pluck into a new position, while her body maintained the smooth, liquid fashion of her movement. Then, her movements became more aggressive and defined as the base kicked in. Then...the words! Oh, how Ruth loved the Words...and how she loved how Lilli incorporated the words into her dance, as though she was singing the song with her flesh..





The breed is dead our children...a look of sorrow across her beautiful face, reflected in eyes of clear, sky blue, like she might have burst into tears on the floor, and her hands dropped to her womb, as though to clutch something there...



They were our last resort...Lilli spun, skirt flaring, as though in defiance of some unnamed threat, to protect some non-existent children...



To keep the tribe alive with...a look about the others on the dance floor, hands spread wide from her chest, as though to embrace and claim the others there as her Own...



At least just a final tort...her body stops moving, and a sneer of utter disgust crossed her blood red lips, like she was dismissing some form of phantom protest, before the music caught her up again...



With all his evil anger...a pain flashed across her visage now, and in a purely stylized form, she steps backwards twice, like a ballerina recoiling from a snake...



He came to take their souls...she reeled back, now, legs spread wide. Her arms would come back until her hands were almost behind her, before she rolled her body forward in time to the bass, and her hands extended to talons, like she had desperately tried to grasp something that was being stolen from her.



Some hang on gallows bleeding...Ruth always liked this part, because the way Lilli incorporated it into her motions was always flawless. Several slashes with an invisible knife to the thumping base, followed by some kind of small kick, like one might make to kick the stool from a mans feet...



Some lie in burning holes...and to finish up this section of verse, Lilli swooped down, her hands palm down, fingers spread out and pushing downward, like she had to shove something into a hole, and then quickquick, her arms moved back up, moving slightly like serpents, or flames.





Ruth loved this song. And in some ignored part of her heart, Ruth loved Lilli. And it was, perhaps, that love that saved her that night. Perhaps, because she was so strongly focused on Lilli, or perhaps, because she had been so open to the world around her, or perhaps because she was simply more observant than most...she heard the three distinct whooshing sounds that ripped through the club, across the dance floor, and then crashed into Lilli...and was able to see the look of recognition and horror in Lilli's eyes...



Before everything and everyone in the club was engulfed in flames as an explosion that leveled 6 square blocks caused the building to simply disappear off the map, and left a crater 50 feet deep.



Pain was the first thing that exploded into Ruth's mind as she regained consciousness. Then, the smell, the horrible smell of burning flesh, mixed with the acrid notes of alcohol, and the sweeter smell of cloth and tinged with the awful tang of melting plastic. Sound returned next, but muted as her ears didn't seem to work quite right. She moaned a bit through ripped lips and broken teeth, and regretted it almost immediately, as she felt the shattered glass in her throat scrape against her vocal chords. She is too shell shocked even to cry, but takes a slight comfort in feeling the liquid run down her face...though she wouldn't have, if she had known it was blood, not tears.



The next few hours were very strange and shattered in her mind, memories disjointed and out of place, even as they happened. She heard sirens. Saw men. Saw the inside of an ambulance. Felt people pick her up from the hole. Saw doctors mention surgery. Saw the ruined blocks. Felt face up in a crater filled with bodies and building. And through it all, all she could say was



"Lilli...L..il..li...w..h..e...e is Lil...li..."



Even though the words felt like fire in her throat, she had found herself unable to stop. She heard the paramedics and doctors mumbling about some other survivor, a blond, and she tried to scream at them what her name was, but all she could manage where the same broken syllables as before. And then, blessed unconscious came for her as the gas mask slipped over her broken face and the gas filled her lungs.



Many, many hours, and some incredibly touchy surgery later, Ruth awoke from her slumber, and opened her eyes to see a sight that at once confused and filled her with elation. There she was! Lilli, her best friend, alive and well...but different.



Gone was the corset, the skirt. Gone was the red in her hair, leaving only hair the color of spun gold, drifting in a single braid almost to her feet, several times longer than it was before. Her features, her skin, her very essence...radiated a purity that finally, finally, was able to force some tears from her eyes. But those weren't even the most startling differences...the ones that had really caught her attention were two-fold. Lillie's eyes...not wholly blue, anymore, but somehow shot through with green. Like a stained glass window that had been shattered. And, of course, her nakedness. Ruth hadn't noticed it at first, only really registering the lack of the original clothing. She quickly blushed and jerked her head the other direction, only to hear Lilli's laugh fill the room, her hears, and her heart with its soft, bell like notes.



"No, child. Do not avert your eyes. That shame is not a natural part of you. HE did that to you. I free you of it."



Ruth felt a hand on her forehead then, and heard a strange, soft, muttered word that she didn't QUITE grasp...and quite suddenly felt different. She turned her head to face Lilli, and was able to take in her form, all of it, from slender frame, full breasts, the line of her hips tracing to the lips of her vulva, across her stomach, down her perfect legs, even to her toes and back up to her neck...and felt nothing but awe. No shame, no arousal. She felt the same looking at her as if she were looking at someone in a sweatsuit. She was simply a person, her clothing no longer mattered. Any trace of the shame or embarrassment she had felt before, with the naked form was gone. She tried to speak, then, her voice still cracked and faint, barely audible in the room, only marginally escaping the green oxygen mask on her face.



"Who...are you?...what happened to...Lilli? The club?"



The woman before her, Lilli, and Not Lilli, smiled sadly then, and slid a chair to Ruth's bedside, and seated herself in it with a measured carefulness of a queen.



"I am the same person I was 8 hours ago, child. I am still your best friend, Lilli. I have simply...woken up, from a very long sleep. To make a very long, and very complicated story very short, there are three...we shall call them men...who hunt me. While I slept, they could not perceive me, but once my blood awoke, I showed up on their radar, so to speak. They had never had a chance to attack while I was sleeping, and I suppose they thought that this time, they might be able to kill me. Sadly for them, and luckily for me, that was not the case. Now, once they learn I am not destroyed, they will hunt me anew to rebind me in slumber."



Ruth struggled to take all of this in, still reeling from the explosion and not wholly certain if she was awake or in some kind of drug induced dream. But then, because despite herself, she WAS happy because her friend had survived, she cracked an agonized smile and said...



"That's the uncomplicated version?"



They both shared a laugh then, until Ruth was forced to stop because she was overcome by coughing and spitting blood out of her mouth and onto the oxygen mask over her mouth. Lilli frowned then and placed her hand on Ruth's chest, and muttered that one, singular word, and Ruth felt that same warmth suffuse her, and suddenly, she no longer felt the tickle in her lungs of an impeding coughing fit. She spoke again, with slightly more strength to her words.



"Why did they want to kill you, Lil?"



Lilli had then frowned, a kind of sad frown, the kind of frown one gets when a family member or friend just doesn't understand why someone does something awful.



"Why? Because I would not submit, Ruth. Because I stood up for myself. Because I did not lie down and take it, as it were. But no more questions, my beloved friend, for you need rest. And I have to go and find someone very important to me. But don't worry. I will be back. I can promise you that."



She rose then, and ran her hands over her body. Seemingly from her fingertips, cloth appeared, a simple white shift that covered her from shoulder to ankle, hiding the glory of her form. She picks at it with disgust, and moves towards the door after a final squeeze of Ruth's hand. Just before Lilli exited, Ruth managed to choke out one last question, barely hearing...and certainly not understanding....the answer before sweet, restorative sleep claimed her battered mind.



"Who are you looking for?"



Lilli smiled when she replied, a smile so radiant and beautiful and pure that it almost literally lit the room up, and then she was gone, her words left delicately in the air...



"My son."