Here, In This Place: An Origin Tale

TWENTY

-ONE

A N N E

“It suits me very well.”

-Anne Kirkner

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“Don’t go up in that raggedy ass store.”

As cars whizzed past them on Helvering, the girls threw cans at the Dollar General.

“That’s where that one crackhead bitch work.”

“Un unh. Not anymore.”

“What happened?”

“I think the bitch ran into the wrong niggah, myself. But she disappeared in the middle of the day, and she ain’t never been seen again.”

“What about that retarded dude?”

“He waddn’t retarded, but he waddn’t right in his mind neither. He gone too.”

“What if he killed her?”

“I hope he did. Fuck her! You headed home?”

“Yeah,” the girl said, and she left her friends, going up Bristol Street, past the old houses and down the alley which led to the apartments of Victory Terrace.

“Hey, Bitch.”

Her name was Meera, and she did not expect to see these girls. She had wanted to take a shortcut. Now she wondered why she hadn’t taken the long way home.

“I said, hey, Bitch.”

The leader was tall with pink hair, and she had a knife at her side. They went to rhe private school on vouchers and thought they were some shit.

“So I see you’re still hanging with Tommy,” the girl said, touching her knife, “Even after I told you not to.

“Tommy and Jaquice,” another girl said.

“Meera Lee, slutting it up with Tommy and Jaquice. Leave some for the rest of us, bitch”

“Yeah, bitch,” a white girl shoved her in the chest.

“Dumb bitch! Slut.”

“This bitch—” the first girl screamed, jumping around, so that her pink hair radiated from her head—

“—is fucking around with all these dudes we told her not too. Why is she being a fucking slut?”

Her name was Leannie, and she was working herself into a frenzy.

“Fuck you! I’m going to fucking cut you!”

Others reached out to slap Meera. One pushed her to the ground.

“Stay down you fat, black bitch!” Lee screamed, but just then they stopped.

“Go,” the old woman who had just arrived said.

“Who the fuck are you?” Chontalay, a short black girl with a deep voice and a speech impediment began.

“I am your elder. Now go.”

“Rush this bitch!” Chontalay shouted, but as she did, the old white haired woman took out a gun and fired.

The girls screamed and ran, some tripping over Meera in their hurry to escape.

“That’s right,” the old woman shouted, “Get the fuck out!“

When they were all gone, the old woman held out her hand to Meera.

“Mrs. Kirkner,” the girl said, “you saved me.”

The old woman, bent over by age with a face lined by mischief, laughed.

“Come on with me. I think I have a snack and some tea for you until your mother gets home.”

This time a Hey Bitch just wouldn’t do. She had to pay. You couldn’t just let some old white haired bitch scare you like that. They dropped from the sky for her. They found her taking out her trash and fell on her, breaking her back, while the girls screamed, “Get her! Kill that bitch!” their boyfriends kicked at the ribs and knees of a woman who had endured much pain in her life, but not this, only ended by the swift kick in the head.

And then, as she traveled out of the pain close to unconsciousness, lying on her back, unable to do anything else, she saw…

Limbs

A bleeding arm sailing past her

A red wash of blood.

 

The pain was sharp because she was more awake now, and she turned on her side. The old woman saw a body stop, kneel, and remain kneeling, a fountain of blood shooting up from the neck where the head should be. The body collapsed on its side.

She heard, as from far off, screaming, heard girls running. Some of the screams died before they were completed. Running ended in sudden collapse. There were thuds on the ground. Mrs. Kirkner saw a beautiful man, a boy approaching her. His lips were red with blood. His eyes were anxious but he was smiling. He was trying to encourage her.

“Now, Ma’am,” he was saying as he gripped her hand, and she could barely feel it. Why couldn’t she feel her legs, “You’re dying. I’m so sorry.”

The young man seemed to be on the edge of saying something he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to say, and then he said: “Do you want to live, or die?”

Oh, the pain shooting through her head, oh the pain of this knife. Why couldn’t she feel her legs?

But what she said was: “I want to live.”

“Alright,” the blond angel nodded, looking determined to help her.

But what he did was lean down and sink his teeth into her throat.

The last thing Mrs. Kirkner knew of this world, she was being drained by a vampire, and then, on the edge of her death, a flame, a fine fire erupted into her veins, and she knew no more.

“If I was in the wrong, forgive me,” Sunny said. “In that moment there was nothing else I could do. I could not let the old woman just die.”

“You were right to save her,” Kruinh said. “And if it does not turn out well, well it can be amended.”

No one else was in the house when Sunny arrived with the body of the old woman. Kruinh laid her out in the parlor the way one did a body for a wake, and indeed if this was not her wake, what was? He didn’t know her. She was not family, or at least not yet, so he did not strip her of her clothes. When, after a time, both Sunny and Kruinh realized there would be a smell, they removed her to a downstairs freezer.

“We will have plenty of time to take her out,” Kruinh said, as if the corpse were a steak.

David had not given up his job, only he planned to return to Lassador, and he wished to work the night shift. So far neither one of those things had been arranged, and Tanitha was on what they referred to as, “Tanitha’s business.” Both of them arrived home around six thirty, and over drinks more than dinner, Sunny and Kruinh discussed the day.

“You mean there’s an old dead woman in this house?” David said. “Right now?”

Kruinh nodded.

“We’re going to unthaw her after dinner,” he said, licking his fingers, “and see what happens.”

“Let’s not bring her back upstairs,” Sunny pled. “We can wait downbelow.”

“Yes,” Kruinh reflected. “Aside from being convenient, it is also poetic.”

Kruinh had presided over many Rebirths, the very latest being David’s.

After dinner they removed her from the freezer and some time later, when it was closer to the time, he directed Sunny in overcoming any squeamishness, and they stripped the cold body of the dead woman with her broken back, wounded hands and crippled feet. Tanitha washed her in honey water and rose water, and set her lips careful. Her face had not been bound, but now it was. Her filth was washed away.

They rose early in the afternoon the next day to await the miracle. They attended the corpse of Mrs. Kirkner sorrowed over her sorrowfully done body, and then as the afternoon drew on, the face that was but a poor imitation of human yawning, the rictused and tilted open mouth, the turned out eyes, drew themselves in. Feet, shooting out apart, drew together. Fallen skin, where age and lividity had made dark sagging pools of flesh, rose, tightened, became firm and rounded. Wrinkled skin and swollen knuckles changed. There was a great sucking, popping sound—the back—at the same time bruises and cuts fled from the face, and all the time, in place of an old woman, a young one was growing. Breast, like old busted balloons, rose and filled and liverspotted skin went clear, smooth and supple. The short white hair in its permanent grew out. It was replaced by loustrous tea colored hair, all but for one white streak. Breast grew, round and firm. The chest rose and fell. Breath escaped,

The old eye pits filled. Wrinkles fled. Old dead skin flushed with youth. A girl was before them and her eyelide fluttered and then Kruinh said, “Good afternoon.”

She yawned and looked at David, Kruinh, Tanitha. At last Sunny.

“There you are. The last thing I saw. You are the one who—”

Her voice was low and mellow and young, and she sensed it, sensed much. Mrs. Kirkner touched her throat, then said, “Might someone hand me a mirror?”

Tanitha handed her a compact and the old woman, new blood drinker, looked at herself in curious wonder.

“It is real,” she said. And then she said, “This is real.”

“Does it suit you?” Kruinh asked.

She held one of her breasts, delighted by the firmness and youth of it.

“It suits me very well,” she said. “Thank you. Thank you all.”

“Do you have a name?” Sunny said.

“Anne. My name is Anne.”

“Well, Anne,” Kruinh said, holding out his hand while Tanitha draped a delicate kaftan over her, “We have a lot to teach you.

 “But first, lunch.”

THE END

The vampires WILL return!