The Passion of the Vampire

by Ericka Kahler

Mordecai screamed, body arching as the first of his pains began. He panted as his muscles temporarily slackened. Claudia tenderly wiped sweat off his face. “Shhh. It’ll be over soon. I promise.”

“De – define soon. ” Mordecai managed to lift the edges of his lips, but he doubted Claudia mistook it for a smile. His whole body ached in anticipation of the next spasm. He’d known death wouldn’t be painless; that truth surrounded him everyday, even before he met Claudia. It was hard to live in Israel without seeing the terrible ways people died these days. Or lived, which was often worse. Death presumably meant an end, while the living kept suffering, or causing suffering. It hadn’t changed in the whole of recorded history, it never would change.

Except for him. Mordecai knew God had abandoned his chosen people, so why shouldn’t he abandon God?

Another seizure locked his arms and legs so tight he feared the muscles would rip from his bones. His limbs hurt more than he thought a simple contraction of muscle tissue could. Slowly he started to unknot; his right leg fell flaccid, his foot slipping over the edge of the bed and landing with a thunk on the floor. His right arm relaxed to his side. The left side of his body sagged all at once, like a rubber band snapping. Even now that the muscles were not locked rigid, they held a residual tenderness from the onslaught, a silent precursor to the next seizure. It hurt, unbelievably so, and his transformation had only begun.

“How much more of this,” Mordecai breathed.

Claudia crossed her arms over her breasts. Her fingers gripped her pale arms, nails furrowing the impossibly white skin. She shook her head in small jerks back and forth before putting a fake smile on her face. “It -”

“Don’t lie to me,” he said. His toes twitched. The next wave would start soon.

Claudia dropped her eyes from his.

His legs jerked, muscles throbbing in and out in rapid-fire motion. The pain was more intense this time. He swore he could feel every cell tearing apart. Mordecai glanced down. There should be blood, to go with that much pain, but all he saw was a faint twitching in time with his agony. “You haven’t gotten to the painful part yet,” he heard Claudia say.

Mordecai gasped, struggling to breathe against a sudden pressure on his ribs. He felt them shift under his skin, drawing inward, cutting off his air because the muscles would not make way for his lungs to expand. Surely his own muscles did not have the power to crack bone? Panic spread like a warm fire from his heart outward as the crushing continued second after long second.

Air exploded into his lungs when the grip on his chest released. He gasped it down, ignoring the sharp pricks of pain that came from moving the muscles so soon after cramping. His whole body felt curiously alive now. He could feel each part, intensely and intimately, as if they all wanted him to know they were still there, still fighting to hang on to their life. Stabbing sensations, oscillating aches, and fine tingling grouped together to scream “we live!” He didn’t want them to live, not anymore. But the habits of life were too deeply ingrained to be overcome in only a few minutes.

And Claudia said he hadn’t gotten to the painful part yet? “Good,” Mordecai panted finally. “Shutting God out should hurt.”

Claudia frowned down at him. “Are you on about your god again? If you don’t like him -” She stopped, perhaps sensing that now was not the time for a theological debate. “Having only one seems so stupid to me.”

Mordecai laughed. “To you, it would. With only one God, there’s no appealing His judgment. And you aren’t the kind of girl who takes no for an answer. “Mordecai sympathized, but he did believe. So for him, there was no other. No appeal. No one to intercede for humanity. No one to protect them when God failed to, and no way to make God answer for what he had done. Nothing except to place himself outside God’s presence forever and be done with Him.

If it worked, that is.

—

Claudia turned her back on Mordecai. Another seizure took him, more violent than the last. She could hear the bed shake beneath him, creaking in a grotesque parody of their lovemaking. She turned around again to look at him, to see him. His fingers flailed, like counting ten over and over .Twenty, forty, sixty, she counted along. The relatively small movements didn’t describe the pain that went along with them. It was only because she’d been there herself that she knew just how horrible his ordeal was. She watched him, his arms and legs shuddering against the worn sheet, biting her own lip for some semblance of control. Even gorged on his blood, the small sounds escaping his throat triggered her predator’s instincts. he lay weak, dying. Much as she loved him, part of her wanted nothing more than to pin him under her body and pull the last of his blood from him. The tiny wounds she’d made on his neck invited her. The keg is already tapped, her instincts screamed, finish him off.

Claudia reached behind her for the towel, then laid it down over the bite marks. Mordecai jerked at the touch. How much control, she wondered, had it taken her own sire to leave her to her transformation? She could barely constrain herself. Her eyes locked on him, taking in every detail in a state of hyper-alertness. His skin, normally a velvety olive the gods must envy, turned splotchy and pale under a layer of beaded sweat. A rivulet ran down the side of his body, the beads that formed it being replaced from the well of his skin. The veins of his hand stood up and out, framing the stark ridges of ligaments in his stiff, curled fingers.

Mordecai finally lay limp again, though she could see his eyebrow twitching, flickering too quickly to be voluntary. He’d asked for this, begged her for it. Now she wished she’d denied him.

Now she wished she’d never told him what she was to begin with. She hardly made a habit of it. So why him?Claudia asked herself.

“This is a long way from Rome, isn’t it?” Mordecai’s eyes scrunched shut, the folded skin marking where his wrinkles would have been in old age. He would never be old now, one way or the other.

“It’s not that far. The flight would be about four hours or so. I can take you there if you want. ”

Mordecai laughed.”No, I meant it’s been a long time since you were a girl in Rome.”

Claudia snorted.

“Tell me about Rome.” His voice trembled, the words hoarse and half-formed.

“You know I don’t like to talk about the past.”

Mordecai gasped in a breath. “I’m dying. Humor me.”

Claudia rolled her eyes with an exasperated sigh. “You want to know about the past? Stinking bodies, bad teeth, and an utter lack of air conditioning. There’s a Hyatt in Rome now. We could stay there. Get room service.”

“I’m serious.” Mordecai struggled to sit up on one elbow. Claudia stepped over to him, miming pushing him back down. He lay back, but his eyes stayed on her, clear and aware.

“Why do you want to know,” she asked. “It doesn’t mean anything now.”

Mordecai looked away. “All those years. Do they weigh on you, Claudia?” He lowered his voice to a bare whisper. “Is this really better than facing God?”

She hated it when he started with the bullshit about his god, the arrogant one who said “thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Judaism was nothing more than a quaint sect in her youth, its children the Christians just seeing the star that marked their messiah’s birth. She had a hard time taking it seriously, even after all these centuries. The Olympians made far more sense, with less philosophy and much better festivals. But the peace process failing, again, snapped something inside Mordecai.

“Can’t you just let him go? I thought this was about being with me, not -”

Mordecai screamed, a short burst of sound cut off as he arched off the bed again. The leg that draped over the side kicked out and fell back, his sole slapping the floor. A salty rain of sweat flew through the air. One drop landed on her cheek and tumbled down, reminiscent of a tear. Claudia thought she heard a cracking noise, light and muffled, and wondered what piece of him had given way under the onslaught. He’d heal, if he survived. She hoped Mordecai would be around to finish their argument.

—

Mordecai lost consciousness for a few seconds during the seizure. But passing out did not provide any relief from the pain. Now, even with temporary control of his body, the pain lingered. More than an ache this time, his skin tingled like a fire started just under its surface. He shimmied his hips, hoping the damp surface of the sheet might soothe this new sensation, but the twisting made it worse. Tingling gave way to stabbing needles buried deep in his flesh. He hated needles, hated the sensation of metal parting his cells to get at the veins and muscles underneath. Mordecai gritted his teeth and a surprise jab hit him there too. A splinter of enamel from his molar stick in the back of his tongue. He gasped in surprise.

Claudia’s arms stiffened, and she licked the top edge of her bottom lip. Despite the pain, Mordecai forced himself completely still, suddenly afraid. “Are you going to make it through this,” he asked gently.

“Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that question? I’m fine, you’re the one who’s dying.”

“You’re hungry.”

She smiled, big and false. “I just ate, remember?” Her finger touched a spot on her neck close to where she’d bitten his. Mordecai felt another spasm start, but fought his body still for as long as he could. He fake smile, the edge to her voice, the seductive touch of her skin – for the first time since he’d known her, he feared her. Feared what she was. Claudia had always been an impulsive woman; would her impulses get the better of her, now, when he was unable to defend himself?

Mordecai succumbed to the next spasm. Any thought but pain left his mind. Time seemed irrelevant as the straining and crushing of muscles overtook him. It could have lasted a moment, it could have lasted a hundred years. Burning, cracking, tearing, stretching, things his body was never meant to do all happened at once. He had no recourse from the pain, not even the scant solace of prayer, that comforting deception people relied upon in these situations. He could hardly ask God for respite under the circumstances.

He hadn’t realized the spasm had passed. He only knew it was over when a tearing sensation on his forehead broke through the haze of the seizure. He reached up to brush away whatever touched his face, and the tearing sensation spread to his cheeks. His hand found Claudia’s fingers there, caressing the ridge of his cheekbone.

Mordecai opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t move his tongue. Baby noises came out, not coherent words. Where his fingertips touched Claudia’s a buzzing jolt slid through them, what he imagined it must feel like to stick his finer in an electric outlet. He moaned, and it came out more wounded than he intended. He glanced at Claudia apprehensively.

She placed a hand above his mouth, trying not to touch him and cause more pain. “Don’t talk. We’ll have enough time for talk later. All you want. I might even listen.”

Mordecai wasn’t sure he could draw enough breath to speak another sentence. His diaphragm still moved, but the rhythm of his breathing changed, became more staccato, less reliable. He concentrated on moving that one muscle. Pull air in, push air out. Keeping the rhythm steady required more work than he’d ever expended on such a simple task.

His next breath filled his lungs deeper than before. Sharp pains radiated through his upper abdomen and Mordecai lost the pattern as his stomach cramped in response. He panted, each short breath a slightly different length than the one before. He’d never notice before what a constant the act of drawing breath created until now, when the metronomic beat failed. Panic rose in his stomach, eating away at what was left of his composure. Even pain couldn’t match the power of that awful disruption. Breath was life, his body knew. He tried again to steady the flow. What came of his efforts was a sort of half-wheezing, punctuated by strangled involuntary noises as his vocal cords constricted with the overtaxed muscles of his neck and throat.

This is only part of dying, Mordecai thought to himself. I shouldn’t fight it. This is what I want to happen. He forced himself to stop regulating his breathing. It wasn’t simple. His body still attempted to recapture the normal rhythm. The will is stronger than biology, Mordecai thought to himself, fighting the desire to breathe. Where the will goes, the body will eventually follow. Except most people got the causality backwards in this age of Darwin. Biology never determined destiny. It hadn’t since the first man sampled the Forbidden Fruit and gained a will separate from God’s. Mordecai could shape his biology into his destiny. He would. Then God would leave him alone, forever.

Every heartbeat brought pain with it, as if it beat only reluctantly, as if the most enduring of the body’s muscles decided it had had enough. Mordecai gave himself to the agony. Each nerve danced with fire, each cell quivered in the last throes of living. Thousands of sensations rushed to be the foremost in his pain-drugged mind, every one more pain than he’d felt in the entirety of his life. The demands of his body created a chorus of pain, a symphony of agony. Mordecai relished it all for what time he had left. Death would follow, one way or another.

—

Claudia paced. Mordecai was far beyond knowing if she sat by his side or abandoned him to die. She stayed only because she would know that she’d left him alone as he died. Yet she’d moved as far from his struggling body as she could inside the confines of the room. While Mordecai believed he was too stubborn to remain in his grave, Claudia remembered her own transformation. Mordecai’s will wouldn’t make any difference. This could be the last time she saw him.

His hoarse throat managed another weak scream. She whipped around, going to him before she’d decided to walk across the room. His right arm jerked upright, flailing in the air before dropping down beside him. She tightened the muscles of her own arm in sympathy. Scratchy kitten whimpers scarped past his vocal cords, even though his breathing started and stopped erratically. Claudia caught her hand already lifted to caress his hair.

Right now, every surface of his skin that touched another was alive with pain. She’d never imagined such pain existed before it happened to her. Once, she’d badly burned her foot by stumbling into the hearth fire. The spot on the back of her heel charred around the edges and the raw, red center of the wound glistened with fat where the skin had been burned away. Her mother tended the burn, but air blowing gently across the surface felt like sandpaper grinding her nerves; a constant assault that left her breathless, unable to feel anything but the agony. Now Mordecai’s entire body felt the same.

Her sire failed to prepare her for how much it hurt. She tried to explain it to Mordecai, but how do you explain something like that? She’d wanted to rip off her own skin just to make it stop. The bedclothes under her back became a bed of knives tearing her down to the spine. When she writhed, as she could not help but do, the pain shattered and fragmented into a thousand new knives, on and on, each second exponentially worse than the last. That kind of pain can only be experienced, never described.

Mordecai’s eyes glassed over. He couldn’t even control his blinking now. One eye dulled as the moisture left its surface, the twitching eyelid unable to descend completely. The other eye blossomed tiny pinpricks of red as blood vessels burst from the strain of his breathing and the convulsions of his neck and facial muscles. The spasms lifted him off the bed. His muscles jerked out of time and at random, a dischordian ballet.

He didn’t last much longer. The flailing calmed to residual movements before fading all together. She could tell when he’d passed. Her desire to take him vanished from one moment to the next, some subtle cue telling her instinct he had died before it became obvious to her conscious mind. Oddly, she felt tenser now than she had before. She only had one more task, and all that was left after that was to wait. Claudia hated to wait.

She brought him to the cemetery. Mordecai arranged for a mausoleum here, a small stone structure only large enough to slide his corpse into. She explained it wasn’t necessary, the cemetery part. He’d rise without grave dirt or whatever other nonsense legend required.

“I’m only thinking of you,” he’d said. “You can’t have a dead body lying around your house. So bury me, and if I rise I’ll break out and come to you. If I don’t . . .well, then I’ve already been buried. No need to explain why you let me rot in your back room first.”

That was sweet of him, and smart. She was glad she hadn’t thought of it when she was transformed. Of course, her people usually burned dead bodies, so she would have been killed for sure. She would have hated waking up cold and alone after all that pain to have to kick her way out of a stone box. The night manager of the cemetery arrived to escort to the mausoleum. Mordecai arranged this, too.

“So this is the special one, right? No funeral or nothin’?” The night manager looked curiously at the hospital gurney she rolled out of the back of the station wagon, Mordecai’s body discreetly covered in a cotton sheet and strapped down tight. “He said he had cancer or some such. Didn’t want to burden the relatives. Went fast, though. He was just here a couple of weeks ago.”

Claudia nodded not ready to discuss her dead lover with a complete stranger. Whatever pile of bull Mordecai gave him, it worked. The manager led her through worn dirt paths to a newer section of graves, swearing as he stepped on stones he couldn’t see by torchlight. Soon he stopped and pointed to a squat stone rectangle about two feet high. At one end, a square piece opened into the blackness of Mordecai’s grave.

The night manager shined his torch on a thick piece of stone. “Here’s the end piece. Once you load him in, I’ll set it into the opening. Workmen will come by in the morning to mortar it up. I’d help you with him, but . . . “He trailed off. He didn’t want to touch the dead body. Claudia shrugged and shook her head, indicating it was no big deal. “I’ll take care of him,” she said. “I’ll let you know when I’m finished.”

He nodded and turned around on the path. She waited until his torchlight faded and her eyes adjusted to the darkness. With a full moon out, there was plenty of light for what she had to do. Claudia let down the gurney so it rested at its lowest point over the tiny wheels. She noticed this left Mordecai at the same height as the opening in his mausoleum. So thoughtful. He must have designed it that way. She unstrapped him and carefully tilted the gurney so he slid in slowly, feet first. She’d dressed him in thick leather before she came, to keep the stone surface from damaging him. He made it about halfway in before had to maneuver him by hand. A few minutes of pushing and it was done. Claudia didn’t call the night manager to place the stone over the opening for her. Instead she knelt down and lifted one corner. It was heavy, only raising a few inches, but she managed to slide it over to the opening then lever it up to cover him. The clink of stone sounded ominous in the dark, warring with the sense of hope she treasured in her chest.

She left the cemetery to wait. He would rise in three days.

Or he wouldn’t.

—

Ericka Kahler has lived in eight states: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas, Illinois, Alabama and, most recently, Michigan. She graduated from the University of West Florida with a BA in history. In 2004, she won the Mumee Valley Writer’s Conference Short Story Contest and has since written many articles and procedure manuals for businesses. Ericka is also a freelance writer and editor, and her book, Stories and Poems? We’re All Forum: The Best of the Northwest Ohio Writers’ Forum was published in November of 2006 and is available through amazon.com