Detritus

[zephonate]

Music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgxKm2k342g

#
The ensuing days were not easy on Leo or Katelyn, instead wracked with pain for the both of them. The girl's body was having a tough time recovering from the near miss regarding blood types. She would frantically wake up in the middle of the day in cold sweats, unable to see in the dark of the tunnel, making it difficult for her to get her bearings on where she was. She could barely stomach any food and when she could, more often than not it would result in a gastric expulsion, further damaging her throat and sending fresh volleys of anguish throughout her.
Leo's pain came from helplessness in the wake of his companion's illness. Though always there to hold her and remind her where she was and that she was safe, always there to supply patience with her feeding, he couldn't keep from feeling worthless in the grand scheme of it all. It tortured him to see her in such agony when he wanted to do anything to relieve her of it--even bear it himself if need be.
On a night that would come to hold much meaning for them both, Katelyn burrowed into Leo's chest, her limbs shivering uncontrollably despite being wrapped under thick layers of quilts, blankets, and clothing. She fought as hard as she could to stifle the jittering of her appendages to no avail. Her protector remained strong, his grip on her tight as he attempted to will as much of his body heat to her as possible.
"I-I-I'm so...so sorry. This is all...my...f-f-fault."
"Stop apologizing. I don't blame you. We just gotta tough this out."
"I'm a...I'm a b-burden," she said between the chattering of her teeth.
"You're not, I promise," he reassured her. She responded by burrowing deeper.
"I'm so...c-c-cold."
"I know....I know. Try to think about something else. Try to imagine something happy."
There was a pause interrupted only by the muffled repetitive clicking of her jaw.
"Tell me a s-story?" she begged.
"Sure. What about?"
It took a long time for her to answer. Far longer than it would have, had her mind not wandered to a question that still plagued her relentlessly. She knew it was slightly manipulative and hated herself a bit for it, though she knew she wouldn't have a chance like this again. It was something she needed to know. Besides, focusing on some of Leo's torment would be a surefire way of distracting her from her own.
"I think...I think you c-can probably g-g-guess what ssstory I wanna...hear," she said lowly.
The two were at a point in their relationship where they could read each other's body language and tone of voice perfectly, as if it were a dialect invented by them. He tensed his muscles for a moment before sighing.
"That's about the least happy story I can think of. It's not gonna make you feel any better. Definitely won't make me."
There was a point that needed to be made, to the extent that Katelyn freed herself from his grasp and endured the frigid air around her to make it.
"L-Leo...I...I know how hard it is fffor you to. For you to talk about this. B-Believe me, I do. I'm the sssame way about my parents, about my p-past. The only reason I was able to open up to y-y-you so easily about it is because...I feel safe with you. I f-f-feel wanted, needed, like nothing c-can phase me. I know you're ssscared. I know it hurts. B-but you've become the most...important thing in my life. The only important thing in my life. I w-want to get to know you, every part of you. Even the worst parts. You...certainly know m-mine."
He didn't answer. He only stared--not at her--off in the distance like he was lost in the unforgiving expanse of human memory.
Relinquishing, Katelyn hung her head down and curled into a ball facing away from Leo. She continued to shiver, trying so hard not to cry. Within seconds she felt a pair of arms close around her, pulling her close as a warm body sidled up behind. They sat there quiet for a while, the two of them facing forward with the girl between the boy's legs, one arm enclosed around her waist, the other across her shoulders and collar bone, pressing her back to his ribs. Finally she sighed her tears away, pulling the blankets over them and wrapping her arms over his.
"Remember my dad's journal entry--the one about digging up the baby's grave in Sweden?"
Her body froze. Not from cold. She nodded intently.
"It happened the night after he got back. The only other defining night of my life, aside from meeting you. The night I made myself an orphan."

#
In the very early morning of February 2nd, 1989, Leo awoke to a sound he couldn't describe. It was reminiscent of the good old days when he would sit in the living room doing his homework and he'd hear his mom in the kitchen cutting the fat from thick and juicy beef to prepare for dinner. This sound resembled that to a disturbing degree. The metallic scraping of a knife against something hard (wood, bone?), the squished separation of pieces of meat from one another. He found it odd, puzzling to say the least.
He sat up in his bed and darted an eye to his window. Through the duct taped blankets he could tell it was still dark outside, still windy as the night before. Stray clumps of debris hurtled through the air of their neighborhood, kicked into gear by what could have passed for a low-grade hurricane in some small towns. He wondered why he could hear the meat-cutting noise so much louder and clearer than the gusts beyond his home.
It's inside. Down the hall, in Mom and Dad's room. What could they be doing?
He knew a normal person would be unable to hear such a noise from his distance. His vampiric senses were tuning in the recurrent waves for him, alerting him of the presence of strange goings on down the hall. He couldn't rightly explain why his heart began to beat faster, his stomach tossing and turning with worry.
Using his catlike reflexes, he stood from his bed and approached his door silently.
Don't open it.
Something in his gut told him to freeze in place. He did as instinct instructed and listened carefully.
Something else. Causing his ears to act as filters, he could now discern a wetness to the aforementioned cacophonies. A drip. Water? Something spilled?
That's it. One of them knocked over a glass in their sleep. The metallic noise is the glass rolling around on the floor. Go back to bed and stop scaring yourself.
The boy emitted a small sigh of relief, returning to his bed and burying himself in comforters. He would have to work to drown out the persistent noise. The noise that seemed to only be growing louder, more erratic with each passing minute.
A voice. His mother's. Faint, distant, low. Part of him wanted to ignore it and continue trying to sleep. Another part linked to his elevated heart rate and pumping adrenaline urged him to listen closer.
"Did--this--us. So--lesson. Monster--not--late. Need--make--mine--again. Shut--cut--wider. Shut--cut--down."
Something was wrong. Very wrong. Convinced his imagination was not running wild, Leo stood from his bed again, this time daring himself to open the door a crack. He peered through, funneling his vision through the crevice and zooming like a camera's lens, ascertaining the details of what was going on.
Miranda Backman walked slowly from the open door of her and her husband's quarters. There was an odd cadence to her step, communicating a sense of imbalance. Her dirty blonde hair was frayed, tussled and tossed in every direction imaginable. There was a glazed look in her brown eyes and strange patterns on her white nightgown the boy never noticed be--
There was a large steak knife in her right hand. It was coated with blood. Her nightie, spattered with blood. She tapped the blade against her hip incessantly, keeping no discernible beat. She twitched occasionally as she sauntered down the staircase towards the living room. Once he could tell her body had come to rest somewhere in the living room, the boy sprinted into his parent's abode where an image would proceed to brand itself to his brain, sear itself to his memory for the rest of his unnaturally long life. Later he would muse that carrying such a mental picture must be akin to how a Holocaust survivor might feel with the constant reminder of the number sequence tattooed to one's arm.
His father. His daddy. The man who he aspired to someday be, no matter how much he grew to resent his son in the end. His papa...in pieces. In shambles. Bleeding across every wall, every surface. His face contorted in a permanent look of fear, horror, and grim acceptance. His blue eyes pointed up at Leo unblinking, unmoving. His body was still. Lifeless. Loveless.
In the commotion caused by Leo's entire world crumbling before him, his mind blowing into screaming fragments of a shattered childhood that would remain his until the end of time, he didn't notice his mother's approach. She stood statuesque behind him, unmoving but for the scraping and patting of the knife against her hip.
"You did this to us. So it's time to teach you a lesson. You're a monster. But it's not too late. I need to make you mine again. Shut up. Don't fight it or I'll cut wider. Shut up or I'll cut you down."
The young boy turned, looked into the hysteric eyes of what was once his mother and wondered who the real monster was. He still couldn't posit an answer, not even after she chased him back to his room and cornered him against a wall, her silhouette black as the sky itself as she passed by the blocked window.
"Mommy, please. Please don't. I love you," the boy sobbed, snot and tears dribbling down his face as he shook his head from side to side in disbelief and terror. The woman merely rolled her neck in exasperation.
The knife plummeted down. The banshee shrieked. The part of Leo's mind that wanted to stay in that bed and pretend it was all a dream closed his eyes for him and made the bad thoughts go away. The part that contained his survival instinct, the part that forced him out of that room and into his father's tomb took over the rest of his body, using its hands to wrench the knife free. The wrist attached to the thing wielding the blade snapped like brittle saltines. The beast howled as the knife was driven home into its own heart and a kick was delivered into its abdomen that sent it rocketing through the door of the child's room, knocking it off its hinges. The dislodged rectangle of wood splintered into a hundred shards as the demon in woman's skin careened over the stair banister, breaking most of what was in its body in the resulting crash down to ground level. It was dead within a matter of blinks.
When all was silent once more, Leo wanted to run back to his dad's body and cradle it in his arms, bathing in the same blood that coursed through his own veins. He wanted to run downstairs and apologize profusely to the broken body of his mother. In the end he had the strength nor the resolve to do either of these things. Instead he crawled back onto his bed, retreated beneath his covers, and cried helplessly, hoping against all hope he would fall back asleep and the Condition along with the pain it had wrought would turn out being nothing more than a horrible nightmare.

[DMt.]

Oooooch. Tough stuff.

[zephonate]

Music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuYg00_uCSY

#
As the boy finished his tale, no tears were present in his eyes or on his face. He only held a look of vacancy and numbness, his mind and heart hollowed by the decadence of his memories. When he withdrew from his past and reemerged in the present, enveloping the no longer freezing body of a girl who seemed to be crying all his tears for him, he could muster nothing but his characteristic sad smile.
"I don't know what was worse...the fact I killed my parents, or the look on my mom's face afterward."
The notion he believed he murdered his father, despite the circumstances of his genetics being out of his control struck Katelyn like a bullet. She held in her outrage as best she could.
"W-what do you mean?" she said weekly.
"Eventually I went down stairs and looked at my mother's body. Her face...she was smiling. Not happily, not creepily. It looked smug. Satisfied. Like in the act of defending myself, in the act of trying to stay alive I had proven everything right she--along with everyone else--has ever thought of me. That I'm a monster. After that I packed what little I could carry...and I ran."
The girl spun in his lap to face him. She wiped the tears from her face forcefully and grit past the aches in her throat and muscles.
"You are not a monster! What happened to your parents was not your fault, Leo. Anyone would've done what you did. It doesn't matter who it's from, there's no sin in fighting for your life!" she rounded on him, placing a hand to her neck and squeezing lightly in a fruitless effort to dull the pain.
"Knowing something and believing it are two different things," he retorted, hanging his head down, that same sad smirk still masking his true emotions. The girl would have none of it.
"Yeah, they're not mutually exclusive either. I know how guilty you feel. Trust me, I do. We have these amazing abilities, these terrifying powers, and because people have such a hard time accepting us, we like to use our gifts--our curses--as scapegoats. I had to learn the hard way that some things in this world are out of our control, even for people like us who are stronger than most. Faster than most...weaker than most."
The smile faltered. Slightly.
"There are days when I try to tell myself I didn't cause my mom to go crazy. That I wasn't to blame for her going insane. I try to convince myself there had to have been something wrong with her long before I came into the picture. A stew fated to bubble over eventually. I don't know what that says for my own mental stability. Probably not a lot, considering we both know I'm co-dependent, obsessive--"
"--And I'm quick to anger, stubborn, and we both have gnarly abandonment issues. I don't have to like what I am, but I made peace with it a long time ago. You need to do that too, Leo. You can't spend the rest of eternity blaming yourself for what happened. Your mom needed help and your dad couldn't get it for her because he was afraid it would get her talking and lead people to you. On the other side of the coin, your dad worked himself to the bone trying to protect you, sacrificing his own well-being to do so. That's not your fault because it's what any good father would've done. Hell, my dad used to say he'd dive in front of a moving truck to save me before I turned into a bloodsucker."
Another crack in the smile. Quivering lips were barely visible beneath the slowly crumbling façade. She leaned forward and cupped his face in her hands.
"You haven't even said you're sorry," the boy croaked, avoiding eye contact.
"You don't need an apology. What you need is a wake up call. You need someone who won't take your bullshit," she said, using a shared chuckle to tear down the last remnants of his faux-grin.
She had broken through. What now laid on display for her to see were Leo's true feelings, his real emotions. She could tell by the moist, sunken look in his eyes that he wasn't hiding anymore. He was glued to her every word, drinking in her speech's mutually regenerative properties. He felt a hot pressure building at the top of his chest, his neck pulsating, choking away any words which might try to escape.
"You need someone who," she hiccuped, tears spilling over, "w-will tell you everything's g-g-gonna be okay. Someone who...cares about you as m-much as I do."
Now we're both crying. This is getting us everywhere. If you hadn't walked into my life that night, we'd both still be living half lives. Please. I need to breathe. I need to be here, now. I need you.
I love you. A phrase unspoken, unnecessary in the wake of their shared kiss. What started as a tender meeting of the lips quickly transformed to a passionate hunger for each other that superseded any petty need for food, water, air or blood. A strength greater than any either of them had ever known overtook their bodies, willing them to become as close to one being as possible.
Seven weeks of uninterrupted closeness, the duo separated from each other by mere breaths. Seven weeks of shared pasts, humiliations, scars and hopes. Seven weeks spent discovering just how much they had been searching for one another, how much they craved a companion of like mind to lessen each other's burdens.
Leo and Katelyn had been in love this whole time, hurtling towards each other at breakneck speeds without ever realizing it until this very moment. The moment both of them wished could go on forever. Maybe it was impossible for the moment itself to go on, but there would be more. So many more. Be it blessing or curse, it was a consequence of the Condition that ensured the two would be able to live out every happy couple's dream--for it to never end.
As soon as their lips disconnected, Leo buried his head in the crook of Katelyn's neck, crying harder than he thought possible. She wrapped her arms around his back and held him tight, nuzzling his hair and wetting his brow with her own tears, their sadness, grief, shame, and joy all commingling in a cornucopia of bared souls.
The idea that beings such as them could be considered dead by anyone--myth or otherwise--was a foolish hypothesis. No dead thing could feel such happiness from the discovery of a kindred spirit. No dead thing could feel devotion of such magnitude. No dead thing had a heart that beat so strongly within its chest, in fact stronger than ever before.
Perhaps Leo and Katelyn weren't human. The only thing assured was they were not monsters, for no human is incapable of earning such a distinction. They were a new breed, living proof that Donald Backman could've been wrong. Living proof the future of their species might not be so bleak.

[thestich]

Maybe a little too sweet for my taste, but the characters shine through.

Still those teenage hormones running around!

Side note, I wonder if this type of vampire can procreate, and what the implications are if so?

Very good so far with the mix of tragic and romantic. Enjoying the story.

[PeteMork]

The horror of his parents' deaths certainly left him damaged, but, as with Oskar's dark life, it made him capable of loving and accepting Katelyn. I'm not sure he would have done it so whole-heartedly otherwise.

[zephonate]

While you guys wait for the next post, I thought I'd show off a piece I received in a trade via deviantART.

It's the opening scene of Leo happening upon the dying body of Harold. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. What do you all think?

[DMt.]

Can't see it at the moment, Zepho, which seems a shame.

[zephonate]

Can't see it at the moment, Zepho, which seems a shame.

How 'bout now?

[DMt.]

Now's good.

[Jimm]

use of cold colour and centre of painting is on Leo
Really good stuff