Blood Vivicanti (9780989878579) Read online

  The

  Blood

  Vivicanti

  Part 2

  Wyn

  created by

  Anne Rice and Becket

  written by

  Becket

  The Blood Vivicanti

  Becket

  Copyright © 2014 Becket

  All rights reserved.

  Smashwords Edition

  ISBN: 0-9898785-7-0

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9898785-7-9

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the imagination of the creator(s) or are used fictitiously.

  Under copyright law, if you are not the copyright owner of this work, you are forbidden to reproduce, create derivative works based on this work, download, distribute copies of the work, decompile this work without Becket’s express written permission.

  Becket’s note

  In 2011, Anne Rice and I began talking about the development of a new breed of blood drinkers.

  The first ground rule was that they had to have an entirely different cosmology from her other supernatural stories.

  She and I spent many weeks emailing back and forth, sharing copious detailed notes. We had several energetic lunches and dinners, whence we discussed the foundation and framework of the story you’re about to read. We swapped ideas about the strengths and weaknesses of these new blood drinkers, ideas about the characters themselves as well as their backstories, and more ideas about potential narrative devices.

  One of the amazing facets of Anne’s writing method is that she seems to devote almost as much time to selecting the right names for things as she does to carefully crafting the narrative. Both go hand in hand, I’ve learned from her. She’s taught me much. The right name is as important as le mot juste.

  But what name would we call our new blood drinkers?

  One day, after we’d spent weeks thinking about what to call this new breed, I came into her office as she thumped closed a Latin textbook. She beamed at me with her irresistible smile. She told me she knew what to call our blood drinkers. She had not chosen a Latin word, but had developed a new word from Latin phraseology.

  What was the new word she’d developed?

  “Vivicanti,” she said as her smile broadened.

  I loved the word instantly!

  “Our blood drinkers will be called,” Anne Rice announced: “The Blood Vivicanti.”

  Then it was my job to write the story.

  I passed by you. I saw that you had reached the age for love. I spread my skirt over you and I covered your nakedness. I swore to you and entered into a covenant with you.

  —Ezekiel 16:8

  The Blood Vivicanti

  Part 2

  Wyn

  Here’s my theory: Mom was a duckbill platypus.

  Wyn rejects this theory, of course. Sometimes the scientist can’t see past the size of his test tube.

  My mom must have been a platypus in disguise – the way Zeus disguised himself as cows, eagles, and the ugly duckling. Platypuses are the only mammals to lay eggs. My mom couldn’t have given birth to me. She must have laid my egg. She must have sat on me too hard.

  That must be why I’m so broken.

  Once upon a time I was a seven-teen-year-old girl named Mary Paige who’d suffered rejection and isolation. Once I was a human who’d sought ways to be alone. Often loneliness had been my only friend in the dark. But none of that mattered. I just wanted to stop hurting when people misunderstood me.

  I was misunderstood a lot – I was alone a lot – I was lonely a lot more – I was a secret breed of person: I could breathe underwater because I’d been drowning since the womb. I was a perfect platypus.

  Today I’m still Mary Paige. Only now I am also a Blood Vivicanti. I can pierce your neck with my tongue. I will drink your blood. I will eat your memories.

  But in some ways I’m still the same girl I was.

  I’ve always been an introvert living in an extrovert’s world. Extroverts used to try to make me stop being introverted. They seemed to think introversion was a sickness. Their cure was to cheerfully say to me: “To thine own self be true!” They seemed to think this was penicillin for the soul.

  I always thought it was a load of poppycock.

  Some seemed aware that Shakespeare had written that line. Fewer seemed to know that Shakespeare had given that line to Polonius in his play, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, called “Hamlet” for short. They had no idea that they were quoting the line of a doddering old flesh-monger.

  It was as if they were saying to me: In ignorance is conformity.

  Of course, you’re supposed to be ignorant when a Blood Vivicanti pierces you. You’re not supposed to remember my tongue driving deep into your neck. You shouldn’t know I’m drinking your blood or eating your memories. You wouldn’t even remember what I look like. All you’d recall is the pure pleasure. Our venom fills you with so much pleasure that your mind forgets the pain.

  Yes: I am the first female platypus packed with venom.

  But I remember when Wyn pierced me. I remember falling from the cliff. I remember my body breaking. I remember Wyn driving his tongue into my neck. I remember him drinking my blood. I’ve never forgotten all the pleasure that came.

  I also remember Wyn picking me up as if I were as light as a leaf. He rushed me back to his mansion. He ran faster than wind. I lost consciousness.

  My eyes opened once or twice. I recall glimpsing some of my surroundings. There were white computers – silver instruments – beeping noises – bright lights glinting – Wyn looking down at me. And I was looking up at him. He was wearing a surgeon’s green mask over his mouth. I was wearing a white sheet. He was transferring blood into my veins.

  The blood was so bright it was almost glowing. It was the color of violets soaking in the sunshine.

  I recall glimpsing more…

  A man was lying beside me. He was wearing a black loincloth. His whole body was hairless and smooth. He was very large and muscular. He seemed to gleam as if oiled. His eyes were open as he lay motionless as a statue. Once his chest rose and fell with a single breath. The way dolphins breathe twice an hour. This man’s skin was dark red.

  He is called simply: “The Red Man.”

  Tubes were also inserted into his veins. Flowing through the tubes was the glowing violet blood. And at first I thought the blood was going into him too.

  I was too dazed to realize the truth: The blood was coming from him.

  When the Red Man’s blood had finally filled me up, when all my blood was gone, I had become a Blood Vivicanti.

  Who was the Red Man?

  He was not like me. He wasn’t human. But he wasn’t a Blood Vivicanti either. And he wasn’t anywhere in between.

  In fact, you could say that between humans and the Red Man was my kind. The Blood Vivicanti, we are the middle ground between human and alien.

  That first night, my dreams weren’t merely vivid images. Everything in them had a life of its own. Tables and teakettles seemed to move, but didn’t. Stock-still walls whispered ancient secrets without a word. The whole world seemed alive and dead at the same time.

  Every scent, every sound encompassing me while I slumbered filled my mind with images of fairytales.

  The scent of a rose in the room made my mind dream of Alice’s garden of living flowers.

  The sound of Bach’s Minuet in G Minor on piano made my mind dream the orderly structures of Abbott’s Flatland, with all the peculiar shapes of polygonal love.

  For a long time afterward, I wasn’t sure if I’d dreamed the Red Man. His violet blood had seemed too lovely to be real.

  I was now alien in every sense of the w
ord.

  So how could I be true to my self?

  I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t even know what I was. How could I know who or how to be? I didn’t really have a new “self.” My old self still had me.

  Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever wake up from the nightmare of who I used to be.

  I awoke from sleep to more confusion. I had no idea where I was. I was alert and afraid and worried. Questions swarmed like bees in my heart and head.

  In a sense, it didn’t seem too different from any other day in the life of a teenage girl.

  Suddenly I was aware of countless sights and smells and other sensations. It was a simultaneous attack on all my senses. Light and sound and pain happened all at once, like a lightning strike.

  It was difficult to see anything, not because I could not see. My Blood Vivicanti eyes were seeing too much. They were trying to gather in too much information. It wasn’t darkness. Only blindness.

  It was difficult to smell anything, not because I could not smell. My Blood Vivicanti nose was inhaling too many scents. I could barely breathe. The feeling was stifling. I feared I was choking and suffocating.

  It was difficult to hear anything, not because I could not hear. My Blood Vivicanti ears were hearing too much. All kinds of sounds were hammering against my eardrums. The din was deafening.

  It was difficult to feel anything because every nerve ending in my new body felt too much. Untold touches like little fingers seemed to be grasping and groping my skin.

  In the meantime, my photographic memory was working overtime to catalogue this inundation of new information. The feeling was frightening at first. My hands covered my ears. I held my breath. My eyes squinted to see as though in bright sunlight. I felt cocooned in sensations. I had no clue: I was about to emerge from that cocoon newly metamorphosed, a bloodthirsty butterfly.

  I sat bolt upright in a large bed, holding myself and I screamed, out of pain, out of fear.

  Two other Blood Vivicanti were nearby. They heard me. They understood what I was going through. They let me scream.

  Sometimes it’s good to let someone scream.

  Slowly, the din of the world hushed into white noise and I released my ears. Slowly, my vision came into focus and I could now see much more than I ever saw before, much more than anyone could ever see with human eyes.

  I was in a strange and beautiful room, like an enchanted chamber. My bed was king-sized, draped in a white canopy, covered in a cloud-like duvet, twelve pillows, each a different size. At the foot of the bed was a fireplace beneath a widescreen TV, both were roughly the same size, both were much larger than me. In a corner was a table and chairs shaped like twisting vines. Thick green curtains were drawn over a floor-to-ceiling window in a nook. And through a slight parting in the curtains silvery moonlight was spilling in across the floor.

  My senses greedily devoured all this fresh data. My photographic memory swallowed all these new sensations. Stomaching so much all at once was dizzying. Like being drunk on knowledge. My cup runneth over.

  I could perceive the structure and form and purpose of things.

  The golden carpet – my eyes could see all its tiny fibers. My mind could count each one. Somehow I could envision the machine that had woven them together, the carpet inspectors who’d made ticks on their clipboards, and the carpet layers who’d crawled all over my room.

  And the tufted chair in the corner – somehow I could see deep into its craftsmanship. I could perceive the intent of its craftsman. I saw that the chair had been commissioned over two hundred years ago. The craftsman had been an angry Italian. He’d been lonely, a widower, an obsessive compulsive by our standards. He’d made the whole chair in a day and a night. Then he’d tried to destroy it. Now it was mine.

  How did I know all this?

  The laptop computer on the table – I saw it now – another man had personally handcrafted it – all of it – inside, outside, keys, screen, ports, and cards. I could also see that the man was a gifted engineer. He had programmed it with his own operating system. He’d loved his work. There was no other computer like it in the world. And now it was mine, like the chair.

  Yet how could I know this too?

  The tufted chair and the laptop computer had been made centuries apart. Yet they were connected by patterns of human behavior. Both men had a passion for working with their hands. Both loved freethinking and independence.

  Separating them only was means. The two hundred-year-old craftsman had been poor. The contemporary engineer is exceedingly wealthy.

  How could I see all this in mere objects?

  My ability to know knew. My ability to understand was trying to play catch-up.

  Slowly I inhaled.

  The scent on the laptop, the scent on the chair, the scent on everything in the room, I knew that scent. It was the scent of the man who made me a Blood Vivicanti. It was the scent of Wyn. His scent was everywhere. I was in his house.

  I inhaled again. I realized more.

  No, I wasn’t in his house. I was in his mansion! A great big mansion that seemed to go on forever, like a magic castle. Wafting into me were the scents of too much wealth and much more worry.

  The strong scent of fresh pine needles told me I was elevated a few stories from the ground. The scent of Cool Beans Coffee House far in the distance told me I was still in Idyllville. Filling this mansion was the strong scent of new – new cars, new computers, new things – I love that scent!

  Yet that scent also perfectly blended with the scent of old. Ancient history dwelt in this mansion too.

  All these old and new scents of the mansion also mixed with the clean scent of spring water and smooth river-rocks. The water and the rocks were not in the mansion. But they weren’t far away either. They seemed right beneath me. They hummed of mystery.

  My clothes were gone. I was naked beneath the sheets. New clothes were laid out for me on the nearby table.

  No one else was in the room.

  I slipped from the bedclothes. The air was cold and fresh and it gave me goose bumps.

  The luxury carpet was thick and soft. It felt good beneath my feet.

  Folded neatly on the table were undergarments, a white t-shirt, a red V-neck sweater, and blue jeans. Snug shoes lay on the floor.

  All my new clothes fit as though they had been tailored to my petite size.

  The clothes had tiny rough filaments that only a Blood Vivicanti can feel. They scratched my skin, satisfying places I never knew had been itching for years.

  My clothes smelled of fresh laundry. I love that scent too.

  Yet their aroma was also the scent of direction. I could tell where they’d come from, how they’d been handled, the kind of people who’d touched them.

  I opened my chamber door. I peeped through the crack.

  The hallway was more ornate than my room. Empty too.

  I crept from my room into the hallway. Like my room it too was carpeted in luxury. The hallway was lined with various chairs from various periods in history – the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and even the Computer Revolution.

  On both sides of the hallway, soft cream-colored lights hung in sconces. On one side were marble statues of Christian saints and Greek gods. On the other side were suits of shiny armor standing in chivalrous formation. Small tables between them had flower heads floating in bowls of water. Computer panels were imbedded into the walls near doors that led into other rooms. All the other rooms were empty.

  I had this wing all to myself.

  Hanging from the walls were several paintings that I’ve come to love.

  San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk. Monet.

  Starry Night. Van Gogh.

  No. 5, 1948. Pollock.

  Girl Before A Mirror. Picasso.

  None were copies. All were authentic and I could particularly smell the scent of each painter.

  I could relate to the Picasso. Still can. Sometimes the girl in the mirror is too much Blood Vivicanti and not enough
Mary Paige.

  I can also relate to the Pollock. A reviewer once referred to it as “baked macaroni.” Sometimes I feel similarly when I’m bloated on too much blood.

  The scent of the hallway exposed the fullness of its history.

  I could smell Pollock painting. I could see his fingerprints in the paint.

  I could smell knights of yore fighting in their armor. I could see the spots where their blood had been wiped away.

  I could smell the electricians who’d been in the hallway. And the carpenters who’d been building and the housemaids who’d been cleaning and the mice that were always scurrying through the wainscoting.

  My mind could envision their images before me – like ghosts.

  My photographic memory recalled facts that I had read about the paintings themselves, and general facts about painting canvases and houses.

  My memory recalled more facts – facts I’d read about interior design – facts about floristry – facts about housekeeping and heraldry and hosting parties like Mrs. Dalloway. All these facts came together in my mind. They touched one another. Then they wove together into a lovely pattern of human behavior. And they helped me perceive how everything in this hallway was connected in some way.