Redemption 1
He walked down wind-whipped streets, where bits of garbage whirled through the air and were dispersed in darkened alleys. He followed the scent that wafted back from these narrow corridors and detected the unmistakable odor of an unwashed body, the fetid breath of the malnourished.
These alleys, the niches abandoned by upstanding citizens as too dank and loathsome, were his hunting grounds. He slipped around the corner and in an instant was absorbed by the obscurity. A pile of clothes near a trash dumpster drew him closer. This pile, which concealed within it the emaciated body of a man long homeless, was attended by another. The other leaned over, not with solicitude but with avarice, and mauled the flesh beneath the pile as though selecting the best morsels from discarded carrion.
Benza’s stealth advance left both victim and victimizer unaware until he was upon them. He did not announce himself but grabbed the aggressor from behind, stunned him and forthwith drained his body of blood. Then he turned toward the pile of clothes. The man within, barely conscious, stared in terror at the phantom who in an instant was both savior and likely executioner. Benza spoke, his voice rising above the two of them as though from a pit deep within the earth.
“This is your home?”
The human, immobilized by fear, opened his mouth and through quivering lips managed only a tremulous, “Ahhhhhh.”
“Why do you fear me?” The predator asked.”I would think that you’d welcome what I have to offer. Why do you cling to life when it treats you so harshly?”
The man saw in Benza’s question the possibility for negotiation. It was not usual for someone to express curiosity about the state of his mind. He discovered a bit of courage and managed to whimper, “Pity.”
Benza regarded with curiosity the remnant of humanity which lay at his feet.
“To relieve you of this life--would that not be to show pity? What can you hope for tonight, or tomorrow? How can you sleep knowing you will wake to the same struggle?”
And the man thought, I am alive.
And Benza read the thought.
He bent over the corpse he had dispatched and removed money from its pockets.
“Pity you shall have, as you see it. Your life for the moment is a gift from me--the money a gift from your erstwhile companion. You will see neither of us again, nor will you recall anything that has transpired. Perhaps one day I will meet you again in an alley and then perhaps the outcome will not be the same. But for tonight, as you say, pity will prevail.”
Benza scooped his kill in one arm and disappeared further into the alley. The homeless man, twice redeemed in the space of a few minutes, looked after the disappearing shadow and then passed out.
Benza disposed of his cargo deep in the ocean and entrusted its mutilation to the creatures of that region who fed opportunistically on debris. He would return to the city for one more feed. His last would have been the vagrant in the alley, but Benza had exercised his prerogative to spare.
This attachment of humans to life at any cost interested him. He contrasted the phenomenon with his own enduring existence. In those early days, if he had been given the option, would he have chosen to continue as a vampire, or would he have found extinction preferable?
For centuries he had wandered the earth and sustained himself. But had he lived? The dilemma of the vagrant, was that not his own and had he not resolved it in favor of “life”, unwholesome as that life might be?
Redemption 2
He descended upon the sprawl of decrepit bungalows and crumbling sidewalks. This purlieu had proved fertile feeding ground on previous nocturnal prowls. The small, closely built domiciles that crowded the neighborhood had once been seasonal refuges for central city’s vacationing bourgeoisie. It had been at least a generation, though, since the ramshackle houses had served as summer retreats. Now they were year-round residences for the residual elements of society, left-over persons who led left-over existences. People who survived on the leavings of everyone else.
Here Benza found targets who did not begrudge him his nourishment. Here the prospect of death was not a horror, but a respite. Oblivion, for some, was a merciful alternative to life.
Benza spied an open second-floor window at the end of a dark alley.
“Are you so casual about life,” he wondered of the resident, “so accustomed to the cruel vagary of fate that you do not take the simplest precaution to protect yourself? The open window is an invitation for me to finish the sordid process which began long ago, perhaps even at the time of your birth. I come tonight as fortune’s agent to expedite the erosion of your humanity.”
He perched upon the scarred sill, which had been hollowed over the years through the efforts of innumerable boring insects. The room he surveyed was unremarkable - cramped, as he’d expected, crowded with more pieces of furniture than could reasonably fit in such a modest space. He noted, however, one exception to his expectation: there was no clutter, no sign of filth.
Two persons slumbered in this ordered dormitory. One, a female, rested in a narrow bed and the other, a young male, dozed in a crib on the other side of the room. Benza leaned near to the recumbent female and entered her mind. He was curious about this woman who demonstrated through her diligent housekeeping a stalwart resistance to the chaos that pressed all around.
He traveled deep into the woman’s subconscious and viewed, as though watching a movie, the scenes that had filled her day. There was a room, with soiled underwear on the floor and ashes on a dresser. There was a brown stain by the couch, the consequence of a recent spill. And there were crumbs, some that had been pressed into the carpet in the shape of a footprint and some that remained intact around the base of the coffee table.
The woman cleaned. She vacuumed the floor and scraped the carpet until it was free of soil. She scrubbed soap scum from the bathtub and removed strands of hair from the sink’s drain.
The room was spotless when she left and removed the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign from the door. Then she rolled her cleaning cart down the hall to the next room. In her mind, as she performed these chores, was no resentment. Instead there were plans: curtains for the window in her cramped room at home; shopping for the dinner she would prepare; a new mattress for the crib that held the young male.
He saw that young male through her eyes and was stunned by the empathy and warmth that surrounded her vision of him. Him. Folded like an accordion that had never been played. Silent. Unseeing. Feet that had never walked. A tongue that had never formed a word. Hands that had never held a toy. Him.
Benza withdrew from the woman.
Not a life he would take. He transferred his attention to the boy, who was really a man. Benza saw in that person what she saw, but without her empathy and warmth.
Surely this being would find release in death. A puzzle to be explored. Benza entered the mind of the benighted human and watched the movie of his life. Soft tones surrounded him, muted sounds and gentle hues. Absolute simplicity. Caresses and tender ministrations. Kisses and embraces. Meals gently introduced and eagerly accepted.
The young man in the crib was the first human of this type that Benza had ever entered and the vampire was amazed by the purity of his host. Questions long ago resolved emerged once again in Benza’s mind. What was the essential nature of the human?
This person, unmarked by experience beyond that of a loving parent, was surely the most accurate representation of native consciousness that one could find. And in this person the vampire found only innocence. No avarice, lust, hate, greed, or aggression. Benza withdrew from the male.
He saw now, as the mother saw, a sweet and worthwhile being. Empathy and warmth were beyond the vampire’s ken, but understanding he had in abundance. And understanding drove him from the room; he left the two humans in their sleep, unscathed. He did not attempt to introduce his own thoughts into their lives, as he often did for amusement. Such meddling in this case would have been akin to contaminating a natural resource. There was nothing the vampire could do to improve the psyches of these two humans. While their material existence was, by most standards, difficult, their moral and psychological health was unimpeachable.
The vampire poised upon the sill once more and looked out over the warren of streets which promised so many prospects.
“The wheel turns,” he murmured. “While I spare these two, my hunger remains. Out there, in an alley, or hallway, a urine soaked lobby or fetid apartment, another awaits the fate I have not visited upon this home. One person’s fortune is another’s misfortune. And thus are the vicissitudes of life.”
He soared over moldy rooftops and spied a prone figure in a sewer-filled corridor. He landed beside the malodorous bundle that represented a human and said softly, in a pitch no human ear could detect, “What secrets do you carry in that miserable pate that has retreated from the comforts of society? In a moment I will discover if you nourish me--which I fear is the likely outcome to our encounter--or if you retain in the recesses of your mind some shred of a person that merits redemption.”
The vampire made his excursion into the subconscious of the vagabond and almost instantaneously withdrew to extract from the individual the measure of blood that would sustain him for yet another day.
Redemption 1 and Redemption 2 were excerpted from a book I wrote years ago. Most of the book was not good so the book was never published, but I like the parts posted here. These were true to my original intention. I strayed from that intention when I tried to make the book marketable.
What's that old saying? Be true to yourself. With these two excerpts, I believe I was.
The excerpts are published in Scholar and Scribe because of the community's flexibility in accepting chapters/excerpts and because the community does not seem to have a very strict rule about violence. I hope I'm right about these parameters...if not, I apologize.
These excerpts would never see the light of day if they weren't published here, and I did want them to have an airing.
Thank you for reading (if you have).
Hive on
Image source: Generated from Deep Dream AI, a Pixabay image and a public domain image from Wikimedia Commons by Gian Bernal