Bloodlust

The song referenced in this short story is "Seven Devils" by Florence + The Machine. The video is below.

Alan was a bit late on the brakes and his Toyota pickup hit the bushes at the front of the parking spot. He couldn’t even sit up straight, all of his concentration bent on simply staying conscious. Drenched with sweat, the rash on his arms was on fire. His head was pounding. His hands were like boulders and felt swollen like red balloons. The fever had come out of nowhere, and it was a fever he hadn’t suffered from in thirty years.

Time had slowed to a crawl and distance had become infinite. Alan nearly crawled out of his truck, gasps and whimpers of pain escaping his lips. Somehow, he found himself completely alone. The apartment building he lived in was usually hopping day and night, but the college kids that occupied its rooms seemed to be absent this night. He crashed through the door and fell into the stairs. Straining his blurry eyes, he looked up the stairs and groaned in agony; his apartment was on the third floor, and he was already exhausting his body trying to move it when it had no intention being moved without force.

Why is this happening now? he thought. Every stair was a mountain, every move was pain, and every breath felt like his last. Eons of time passed, one for each step up the staircase. The first door on the right was his apartment, on the third floor, and he was thankful that he left without locking it. Alan pushed through the door and flung it shut behind him as he fell face first on the futon that was his couch. His consciousness was immediately lost, but Alan accepted it gratefully even as the idea that he may never see the light of day again floated through the darkness swallowing him up.

The dream began as it did those thirty years ago, screaming in the darkness. Then a world of light opened up before him, Alan was being born. Now observing from his newborn self, he watched as the nurses rushed him to the other side of the delivery room. He also watched as the doctors tended to his mother, Jean, who was now hemorrhaging blood from her nose, ears, and mouth. It was only moments before the heart monitor told the room that she was dead. It was my fault, thought Alan.

The darkness enshrouded him again, and the red eyes stared back at him. Then he was in his room, a Guns’n’Roses poster tacked to the wall above his paper-laden desk, dirty clothes stuffed under the bed, and bright sunshine streaming through the window on the adjacent wall from his bed. Alan laid there, sweating and groaning, as the fever took him, and the red rash spread over body. He could hear the doctor speaking to his father outside his closed bedroom door.

The roseola infection is much worse because of Alan’s Vanishing White Matter Disease. His immune system is supercharged and attacking his body. Honestly, Mr. Beirman, if his fever reaches one-oh-five, he’ll have to go the hospital and will be in very serious danger.

Why is this happening, doc?

Alan could hear the strain in his father’s voice. The boy had always felt his father’s wrath, a remnant of blame that smoldered in his father’s heart because of his wife’s death. Even being diagnosed with a severe disease didn’t spare Alan from constant bruising and bleeding. But, hearing the sorrow-tinged voice outside of his door, he realized that his father did love him. But righteous anger is still anger, Dad, he thought, his own rage bubbling up. I didn’t deserve what you did to me.

The scene morphed to a few days later, and he saw his youthful self sitting up in the bed with a small smile on his face. Alan had made it through the fever, and though his head still hurt fiercely, he looked forward to being able to push through his mental blurriness and enjoying the weather outside. Then all hell broke loose.

Disembodied Alan watched as the door to his bedroom flew open and nearly off its hinges. His father stood in the doorway, red-faced and drunk. Young Alan jumped in his bed, but his weakness tarried, and he couldn’t move fast enough. Grabbing him by the scruff of his pajamas, his father picked him up out of the bed and threw him across the room. He hit the desk hard, papers from his various stories raining down on him, and a few pencils and pens and other things. The rage inside exploded into an uncontrollable inferno.

Young Alan suddenly glanced into his open closet and glimpsed it. Black skin, long and muscular legs, whipping tail, black, membranous wings, and glowing red eyes. Kill him! The words lit up his mind like a neon sign. Then the being was gone, all that was left was his screaming father. The man tossed his empty beer bottle against the wall where it shattered into a million glinting pieces of glass. It was then that Alan realized the letter opener on the floor next to his hand.

Chrome and shining, the tool was filigreed in gold with Celtic markings. Alan had taken it to use as inspiration for a sword in one of his stories. He never imagined that he would use it as such. But he picked it up and held it in front of him.

Stay back, Dad!

You took her from me, you worthless, little shit!

Alan’s father stumbled then, not noticing the neck of a guitar sticking out from under the boy’s bed. As he fell, Alan watched with horror and glee as the letter opener pierced his father’s neck, just to the left of his Adam’s apple. Wide-eyed, the drunk man fell immediately to his knees. Alan could see the look of regret in his eyes, and the boy didn’t care. Still grasping the letter opener, he watched the blade come out of the wound as his father’s body fell to the floor. Young Alan stared at the body, then at the blade. With glowing red eyes, Young Alan licked the blade and looked around. He felt the need for more blood.

The darkness overtook him again, lit only by the red eyes in the distance. It… Then he was surrounded by people, music in the background, and he watched as his hand swung the wakizashi through the bodies. The bloodlust was upon him.

Alan awoke, still covered in sweat and the red rash, but the strength had returned to his body, powered by the bloodlust and rage. He was a vampire, and he needed blood.

Where time seemed to extend on forever when he arrived home, now time was passing like it was going out of style. Alan found himself standing on the corner of Caroline and Putnam streets, outside of Gaffney’s. The music pounded in his ears, dark and ominous like his thoughts.

Alan entered, his black trench coat hiding the blade he removed from his apartment wall. It was dark inside the barroom, the only light coming from the recessed lighting above the bar. He took a deep breath, reveling in the sick stink of body spray, cologne, sweat, and alcohol. Making his way to the center of the crowd, Alan lowered his head and waited, the smoldering rage just waiting for the oxygen to ignite it. Then a random guy accidentally shoved him, and it was the oxygen he needed.

“And now all your love will be exorcised,” came the voice of the song.

Alan pulled the wakizashi from under his coat and swung it, two-handed, to his right. Then to his left. Then he thrust it forward and through the stomach of the woman in front of him.

“And we will find you saying it’s to be better now.”

Silently, swiftly, and methodically, Alan swung the blade back and forth and thrust it forward. The bodies fell and the screams were voiced, but the music was too loud to cause a stir. The blood of his victims sprayed across his clothes and his face. Alan tasted, in the blood, the very stink that infected his nose when he first walked in. It began to satisfy him, but his thirst was deep.

“And it’s even sum! It’s a melody!”

The bodies fell before him like dominoes, and he saw that he was nearly to the opposite end of the barroom, his killing finally making its indelible mark on the fragile minds of the partygoers. For their screams now overcame the volume of the music, even as it added to the rhythm.

“It’s a battlecry! It’s a symphony!”

Alan stopped the killing for a moment, letting the fear of the crowd wash over him in wave after wave of ecstasy. There, at the table before him, sat a dark-skinned man in a khaki trench coat and fedora. He watched, through the blood dripping from his brow, as the man tossed a small stone to him. The stone was round and smooth, and on it was painted a strange symbol. In an instant, the fire of rage was quenched, and Alan’s body was racked with unbearable pain.

“Seven devils all around me!” began the chorus.

The pain abruptly ceased for Alan, and he understood that he was dead as he floated away from his body. He saw a police officer standing over his body, gun in his hand and watching the blood spill from the exit wound in Alan’s head. He felt the red eyes lift from him, no longer of use to the creature now that he was dead. The last vision Alan’s spirit saw was the man in the trench coat stand from his table and disappear in a subtle flash of white light.