#6am and i was bawling like a little bitch

[stellarree]

[insomniac-dot-ink]

Forgotten Things

genre: urban fantasy

words: 3.5k

summary: A vampire and a mermaid take a deep-sea walk. Dissatisfied with modern life, a vampire explores the bottom of the ocean and encounters an unnerving mermaid, ruins, and creatures so old they’ve passed from memory.

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Maybe it was because of the selfie. Not the selfie itself, but the fact that I couldn’t take one or go a day without hearing someone complain about them. It was just another form of photo, why were people so upset?

I remembered when the photo was first invented; they said it was a way to capture a soul on a flat surface and trap time itself in one place. The first theory for why we didn’t show up on them was that we didn’t really have much of a soul left and the second theory was that cameras used mirrors. That one made more sense.

Photographs were honest, I liked that about them, and selfie’s were honest too, even the ones with a dog filter. They were all saying something.

I wished I could use the dog filter.

That’s not why I climbed out of my silk sheets one morning, gave the keys to my apartment to the nearest homeless person, and started walking. It wasn’t because of the dog filter, or the second coming of fascism or rising planet temperatures, and it wasn’t even because Anna was visiting town and my restraining order was back in effect (once you live long enough you rack up a number of these with the other undead, bad blood builds up).

I could have gone to the woods then, the woods sounded nice, scare some loggers, spook some BigFoot chasers, climb into a hot spring and grow mold.

But Frida Cat-lo had passed away, God, I loved Frida. I loved the way she yowled at 6am every morning on the dot to be fed or she would riot. I loved the way she watched birds out the apartment window and made chattering noises, photocopying their death receipts maybe. I loved how she slow-blinked in the evenings and let out a deep rumbling purr like that of a forty-year smoker. I loved how she curled up into a loaf on my kitchen counter no matter how many times I told her to get down.

She passed away in her sleep in that position: a perfect loaf under the living room chair with her pink nose covered by her tail and furry grey chest not moving. I spent the entire night getting drunk off dollar store wine and looking at the pictures of her I posted on Instagram. There weren’t any of us together. I stayed drunk for the next week— having barely any blood makes sobering up hard and AA almost impossible. I was never able to reach the group’s step 2: “Come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” If the powers of this world possessed sanity, that would be news to me.

I cried. My last ex would say “like a little bitch,” but that’s what the restraining order was for. Immortality was for people with cold hearts and the rest of us were stuck walking into the ocean and hoping it got easier.

It was an overcast morning, the type of grey morning where California newscasters chuckled and said things like: “now all we need is some rain!” I hated the early morning newscasters ever since they did a poll on whether people washed their feet in the shower or not. The fact that only 56% of the responses came back affirmative was destructive enough for my mental health.

No one stopped me, it was Santa Monica beach, and they definitely weren’t going to stop me. All they saw was a lady in a business suit throwing her car keys at the nearest bag man and kicking her heels off into the trash.

There are weirder things in LA on a Tuesday morning.

The first step was tepid and unimpressive, sand squished between my toes and waves lapped at my shins. And I waited. I closed my eyes and waited. Nothing new, nothing more, nothing that wasn’t something I hadn’t done before.

I walked into the surf, the salt stung my eyes and the waves bawled me over. I took one last breath I didn’t need and plunged my head under, kicking down as far as I could go. Something thrummed in my veins, excited to be eaten by something hungrier than myself. Things tangled in my hair and the water tasted unnaturally murky, grungy from the mass of human life off the beach, but I told myself it was different at least. Enough land, I thought, and kept walking into the brine and the dark.

———

The first year I stayed in the shallows off the coast, I lay on my back and watched the fish and boats pass overhead, the light danced and I drifted in and out of consciousness. I had become immune to most sunlight back in the 18th century. Freddy said he was jealous as hell when I slowly inoculated myself to the burning sizzle of the light one day at a time. And it worked.

My hair grew long and red and wavy in a mess of curls above my head, and I started dreaming again. Not real dreams, more like suggestions and images and memories that had morphed into just blurry fantastical impressions.

You lose a few things with age.

I only surfaced once to buy a headlamp, grab a few blood packs, some weights for my feet, and rinse my mouth out. I was stopped by someone trying to tell me there were barnacles on my back and a trash bag tangled in my hair.

The second year I descended, deep and dank and thinking about my goddamn dead cat. God, I loved that cat.

———————-

I had to be careful where I stepped as I went. I was immortal, but that only meant more chances to get stuck somewhere– and if I was really stuck, I was stuck for good. I’d have to be conscious for endless days trapped in some shipwreck or crevice or doomsday bunker with nothing to do but unravel my own mind.

I often waded through settled garbage: heavy plastic children’s toys, fraying fishermen’s nets,  huge metal barrels where the contents had turned to sludge, rotting shipwrecks with coins from unknown eras spilling out. I spent at least five miles kicking one single metal Spam container across barren sand banks.

There were creatures too; nothing new when I first started to walk, tall forests of kelp with otters weaving in and out, clusters of shimmering silver fish that burst apart and poured back together again, disinterested hammerhead sharks, and slightly interested bottlenose dolphins far above.

I saw a pod of whales, once, singing baleful songs and passing overhead in the same way heavy clouds block out the sun. If I still had breath I would have been holding it.

I let it get darker, and that’s when the world transformed into oddities beyond man. Sideways eyes in the sand that I almost stepped on and red fish with mouths formed in the beginning of the time itself. Huge milky white eyes and faces to give you nightmares; I was still dreaming, both nightmares and beautiful mirages all at once. 

Eventually, the silence became the worst part, too many thoughts, and not enough animals yowling at 6am to get me up– that kept me walking.

She arrived in the dark and the silence.

“Be still my beating heart,” she had a southern accent and I never knew why, “is that the unnatural walking dead, in my territory?”

I turned in circles until my light fell on two impressively large and empty eyes. She grinned a mouth full of needle-point fangs. I quickly shone my headlamp up and down her twisting form. Her tail was black and wicked looking–a razor blade cutting through the water. Her torso was human, soft and feminine in ways I didn’t expect, and her face was sharp and alien in ways that might still lure men to places deeper than this.

Her hair was long and black and loose: a storm swirling around her face. She grinned even wider. “Tell me they stopped playing Oh! Susanna up there. Hated that song. Or got rid of Steamers at least.”

I realized she wasn’t talking out loud, her mouth was still frozen in a smile and her words appeared in my mind one by one. I closed my headspace off, putting up wall after wall between her and my deepest reaches. She laughed gaily in return and her eyes smiled just as dangerously.

After locking myself down, I considered her for another long moment. I decided it would have to be sage enough– it had been a while since I communicated with another sentient being. “They still play it, but not like they used to. They have something worse now, but steamships are gone,” I said and tilted my head to the side as I fumbled with psychic communication, “they think you’re gone too.”

“Oh, I am gone.” She swam around in zipping circles, closing in around me. “I’m Loa. And you are bold to come here, dead thing.”

“I’m Jeanne,” I had been Jeanne for at least two decades now and it still worked well enough. The mermaid danced around and I tried to keep my headlamp on her so she didn’t leave my line of sight. “But I’ve been known to go by Dead Thing as well.”

“I bet,” her eyes were still gleaming in happy pools of clear milk. “On vacation are we, Dead Thing? Do you want to know about the deep? I’m sure it wants to know about you.”

I shook my head. “Only here for a walk.”

She laughed again and her chest actually rocked with it, “I see,” she turned in place, “follow me. I’ll show you the way.”

By the look she gave me, I had a feeling I had no choice. I took the first sandy steps after her– I didn’t have anything better to do. “What age are you from?” I asked to the back of her bare shoulders. “You must be… old.”

“Oh no, not that old.” She spoke into my thoughts without turning around. “The old ones are bigger than me. But I am one of the lucky ones.” I don’t pry into that statement. “What type are you?”

I tilted my head back and my light shone over dust-spotted black water. “First blood,” I said after a long pause. “One of the first to make the deal.”

She looked over her shoulder then. “Is that why you’re here?”

“No.” I frowned loudly, hoping she read that and wouldn’t pry. “My cat died.”

“Ah.”

The conversation petered out as she dove further down and I stumbled warily behind in the wake of her powerful tail. I paused when the sand gave way to a set of warped black steps. They were worn down by the currents and the color of shiny black ink and volcanic glass. There were the outlines of spires in the distance that jangled my nerves.

“Loa?” I called out with my mind. A hand shot out of the dark and wrapped around my wrist. Her touch was cool and unforgiving.

“Come.”

She jerked me forward and I had no choice but to take the first uneven steps into what felt like a far more forbidden part of the ocean. Loa remained close and I edged my way carefully down into her lands.

“I used to live in a well,” Loa started talking again, flitting in and out of my line of sight. “My mother must have thought I was a runt or something. A farm girl found me beached on the sands, barely breathing. She picked me up and put me in a salt-water well.”

“Sounds cramped.”

“It was all I knew,” Loa said wistfully, “she fed me scraps and sometimes asked me to grant wishes.”

“Do you?”

Loa flashed me her largest smile yet. “For a price.” She thrashed her tail back and forth and opened her needle-point mouth wide. “It’s different for each one. Different times. Different minds. Different desires.”

Something pulsed deep in my veins and I touched my wild floating hair. It was tangled and falling out in places. It didn’t matter. “What type of wishes?”

“Love, hatred, death,” she dismissively waved a hand, “I could rarely grant them anyway. Did you grant them their wishes up there?”

“Sometimes.” I shrugged. “What’s this price for your good graces?” I didn’t have a wish in mind, but it was always worth knowing. There weren’t that many of us left.

“For you?” Loa jerked to stop, treading water in place and staring. “A kiss.” Her voice was fierce and feral; I nearly stumbled down the rest of the steps.

“A kiss?”

“I hear vampire kisses taste like death,” she said slowly. “Taste of the grave before the grave.” Her blue tongue darted out and flicked across her teeth. “Suits my palette.”

I watched her carefully, canny and waiting for her to strike or pur or make a bargain. I waited to make up my own mind. Loa flipped herself upside down and gestured for me to descend. No one will miss you, I remembered. I walked.

We took the next steps in silence. Walls appeared, ancient formations that must have been buildings once, fountains and windows and hallways. Mostly they were just suggestions now, thoughts worn down by time and stripped of their former purpose.

I wondered what fish blood tasted like and if it would go down easy or be frigid and sticky in my veins. The man-eater and I exchanged a brief look like she could hear these too. She pushed something back, images and heated suggestions: her teeth around my throat, hands in my hair, and thick goopy blood filling the water.

“I don’t taste good,” I offered dully, “gamey. Dead.”

“Dead thing,” she confirmed. “What were you like in life?”

“A fool. Like most mortals.”

Loa floated beside me, cocking her head to the side to listen. “Let me guess . . . Did you live in a well too?”

“Ha! Nothing so romantic. My mother told me not to go to the woods or to the medicine woman who lived there or the place where all the men disappeared to.” I shrugged, “I thought she would cure me.”

“Didn’t she?”

“She did.”

We kept walking. Spikes rose as we descended, perfect dark green arches that ended in spiral points. They pierced through the ruins and loomed overhead; I averted my eyes from the scaly texture and focused on the statues. Some of them were humanoid or monstrous, guarding doorways, perched atop toppled buildings. All of their faces were eroded into a smooth inky surface. I liked them, even as their numbers dwindled and the number of spiral spikes doubled.

We walked until we came to the edge of the steps and an endless cliff where a deep nothingness spread out both above and below.

“What is this?” I tried to make sense of the abyss, but all that surrounded us were crumbling structures behind and angular shadows ahead.

“A gift, Dead Thing,” the mermaid rasped. “No mortals survive this. I’m sure you understand.”

My fangs pushed through my gums and I turned on her, growling, “I don’t think I do. Where am I?”

Loa tread water at the place just beyond the drop-off. “I don’t know.” She blinked twice, unphased. “It was here before me.”

“What are your games, you horror?”

“No more than yours, Dying Thing.” The mermaid pecked a cold kiss to my cheek and swept her powerful tail away from the edge. “She gave me the power to speak. You may ask her for more.”

“She?” I peered over the edge. I gasped and briny water tasting of decay and rot filled my mouth. The Thing in the pit was larger than any whale, knelt at the bottom and glowing a sickening white. Her body was covered in bleeding sores and a silvery shifting light. Or perhaps the silver was her blood. Pulsing cuts throbbed and bled and healed over and bled again in rapid succession. I swallowed my horror down again and again to speak. “Is she hurt?”

“No.” Loa whispered. “She remembers.”

I should have known she wasn’t the sacrificed lamb. I should have known that to be deathless is to be hungry. And patient.

The Thing in the pit stood, filling the space and swinging its massive head toward our ledge. I screamed until the sound died in my throat. Yellowed jaundice eyes held me in place and I knew she was the last one– and this the last place she could dwell. The world had aged out of magic and magic would wait. I shook and wished I wasn’t cut from the same cloth.

This thing was older than I was, older and not allowed to let go. The eyes glowed a blank yellow-ish white, crusty and leaking a gunky rainbow like light off of oil slicks. Scars on the creature's face bled and healed and pulsed and wept sores and never healed and stitched together again anyway in rapid succession. A massive twisted horn crowned the creature’s head, a spiral that made my stomach cramp to look at, up and up, twisting and spiraling into a point. They looked like the ones buried nearby.

Loa’s expression broke into open reverence and she reached for the horn, murmuring, “Let us sing for you. Let us sing.”

They opened their mouths. I should have run.

The first song, the very first sound itself, pulsed against me in a wave and I managed to scream. The music flooded down my open mouth, corporeal and choking. I reached for my throat and stumbled. The notes plucked at my tendons and yanked at my spine as if to tear it out. She wanted to crush the world into this song and end it all, end it for good–and could help her.

The creature lowered her massive twisted head. The horn would touch my bare flesh and I always knew I would die again, but somehow this wasn’t how I imagined it, walking into the bottom land and into the hands of something beyond undead and mortal.

My headlamp burst in a rainbow of light and something burned through my scalp down to my center. My heart gave one painful pump in a way that it shouldn’t have. My skin thrummed with some forgotten heat of the sun. An animal-fear burst in my chest in a way I had forgotten how, my heartbeat a trapped, angry thing trying to escape the cold of the vampire I was.

Don’t do this to me! I begged inside my own throbbing skull, trying to shout above the music. Don’t bring me back, I’m yours, I’m yours. I’ll be yours, just don’t bring me back to life.

A vision ripped through my head space, tearing away my thoughts and everything I had ever been. I could hear Loa laughing, and the beast spoke in tongues that licked my insides bare.

Maybe vampires do have souls, because I felt mine convulsing just beneath my skin.

And then, after a long moment, all moments at once. I closed my eyes, and I was dreaming again, dreaming and yowling and waiting for it to end.

——————–

I woke, woke to the bright terrible sunlight with my mouth tasting of brine and salt and the flavor of blood. I rolled over and threw an arm over my face. 

Something meowed.

I jerked upright in bed, my chest heaved and damp sweat ran down my brow.

“Mrreow.”

I twisted in place and an enormous grey cat was sitting at the foot of my bed and staring expectantly. I choked down several words until one escaped, “Frida?” I raked a hand through my hair. It was short and dyed brown again. “How?”

She yawned as if on cue and a pair of exceptionally sharp fangs stuck out from her already deadly mouth. I sensed it on her, like a prickle across the skin, like a scent.

She wasn’t alive, but she was here.

I fell to my knees and crawled to her. “Frida,” I gasped and gaped at her. “Did you want this?”

She padded over to me, slow-blinking and swishing her tail. Like maybe she had wanted to be with me too. I didn’t think there was any such thing as a vampire cat before this. 

I pet her soft head and looked over the room, the carpet was damp in some places and I could still smell the ocean on me. I knew then that I had been given something I could never take back. Maybe you never grow out being foolish and mortal and wanting. Maybe it was the damn want that made you mortal in the first place.

My wish had been granted, Frida would stay with me up until the earth began to shake apart and the ocean split in two from rainbow oil spills and the end times descended from the tip of her horn. And I would be there, by her side, as the very last of the forgotten things.