Drinking blood after killing a vampire is almost obligatory. The ensuing thirst is never easy to quench - I tried to sneak into a house full of sleeping townsfolk to sip a drop of the red stuff - and a second later, every human on my small world hates me. They run out of their funny thatched huts when I pass by, waving their silly cleavers and forks, eyes filled with murderous gleam. "But I killed Uzu the Gleaming Pot of Pondering, freeing your stupid village of decades old horror!" I want to tell them, and shake their hands, even a few words of simple gratitude would be nice. But no, those mudheads never listen, they cleave at me, stab at me, forcing me to chop them apart and spill their beautiful ruby aqua vitae on their ridiculous patches of cabbage, celery and carrot. Sad and lonely is the path of the truly Great, those words written by a hundred years old necromancer Udu Grimnecked surely bear certain bitter truth.
So what else to do? I swam across the sea and back, the islands full of pointless emu and crabs. I tasted both their vitae and their flesh, and found them dull as a bourgeois matron in the autumn of her life, waiting in vain for one last flirt to warm her aging bones. Arrggh, if this world has a "Creator", he surely run out of inspiration before the lunchtime of his working day. Disgusted, I noticed a tip of a high, stone tower above the waves when I swam back to mainland. Necromancers - perhaps they will present martial, intellectual, or culinary elements to color this dull river of days and months passing by?
The tower was certainly impressive, with every redundant architectural bell and whistle crammed into an impossibly narrow and tall space. The first floor was full of shambling zombies, their flesh hanging in torn straps, their unseeing eyes glittering in the dusty stone hall. They paid no attention to me, I repaid them with the same coin, for oblivious apathy seldom cares to greet with uncaring indifference. The next floor was the home of their masters - and it looked rather pathetic, just an old library with shelves crammed full of mouldy tomes, hunched silhouettes scribbling on yellowing parchments, few streams of sickly light from outside and insane amount of dust everywhere.
They sensed my presence and their minds called to their lifeless minions, only the minions did not move. The rotting timelessness rarely bothers to answer the screams of the passing fragility. They fell to my blade easily enough, their limbs and ears and teeth and guts served to underline passages in their manuscripts with lively red freshness. The afternoon tea in the Literary Club for Ageless Gentlemen. How touching. I emptied the shelves and piled the books on the roof of the tower, and spent a few pleasant days reading. I could not help but notice the dull monotony of those texts - the Tower, my love for the Tower, how I wrote my first book about the Tower: fact or fiction?, short stories from the Tower, the Tower and other travesties, Journey beyond the death... yes, that was how I learned their nifty trick of waking up the sleepers. Necromancy is really like a bad anecdote - once you know it by heart, so to speak, you can tell it over and over, and people always laugh, even though it's the same stupid joke every time.
I woke my slightly mutilated victims to ask questions about those secrets "from beyond", but to no effect - their teeth just clattered without saying a word, their minds blank like the few pages in this oversized library that escaped their graphomanic rampage. Never mind - they did not impressed as writers, but perhaps they would do better as mimes. I scanned the horizon, noting the gay yellow roofs of distant villages that I learned to think about as wine cellars. There was a sturdy-looking castle not far to the west, and I decided to pay a visit - after all, a polite newcomer comes first to introduce.
The castle courtyard was paved with marble, shining like a lily pond in dim moonlight, drunk guards scattered here and there. I drunk the drunks, and quietly as an autumn cloud ascended the main tower. There, in the rich room boasting golden furniture and maple chests, on an extravagant limonite bed, lay the lady of the castle, like sweet flower in a well kept garden. I took just a sip, and oh yes, she was delicious, a sharp spicy start with lingering, full-bodied taste with rich, spicy tones, followed by a masterful touch of vanilla and liquorice, with lingering, passionate after-taste. I relaxed and delved deep into her essence, enjoying this fresh, complex taste like the deserved reward of a passionate seeker, which it truly was, when she woke up and spoiled that beautiful moment with a hideous, terrified shriek that was better fitting for an animal than to a being of such beauty.
Driven by a sudden impulse, I bit her head, latching firmly with my rather spectacular fangs, and shook here body across the floor like a crocodile subduing his prey, when her neck cracked and her head came off with an audible, sharp snap. Oh, the fragile wonder human body really is - a scene that would have seemed horrifying to me a few years ago, no doubt, induced only a single feeling - surprise. I decided to keep her and woke her from the premature death I brought, when her personal guards arrived via the main staircase, awakened, no doubt, by their Mistress' last call. Frozen with fear they stood, their feet shaking, a minimalistic dance macabre of neophyte performers, like human bowling pins on the chequered marble floor.
With a theatrical, grotesque parody of an ancient athlete, I rolled the now-liberated head of their former Mistress towards them, giving the bowling theme a last, finishing touch. The lady did her acting part quite well, her clattering, undead teeth together with the clattering teeth of the fear-frozen guardsmen played a short, cacophonous staccato, and though nobody in the room beside me, certainly not the actual corpses, nor the corpses-soon-to-be, was able to appreciate the subtle choreography of the scene, I thought maybe there were unseen forces watching this world, and maybe they were as horribly bored as I am, and if so, may be, just may be, they appreciated my desperate effort and if they had been asked to write a review, they would have given my Bony Bowling Buddies at least six out of ten. And in that very moment, somewhere in a dusty corner of my rotten consciousness, I thought my inner sight caught a glimpse of a sarcastic half-smile. The moon-lit bedroom was now completely silent and lifeless at last, so I dared to bow to my unseen audience. Today's performance was over, but immortality consists of countless and countless of evenings that must be filled with something. Who knows, maybe I even start writing someday? Some sober, decent, factual prose to show those old geezers how it's done, something like: "The life and beyond - the agony of unliving flesh: Fact or Fiction?". The writing, I assure you, will be completely serious.
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Topic: My first vampomancer (Read 1841 times)