The Old

So, I almost actively hate horror stories, and the only thing I hate more is the trope of witches and vampires, an ensemble of magic creatures hanging out together and having romance. Making it a queer story is not something that I thought would make it better, and making it a story with people of color I didn't think would save it either, and yet, for a very long time these characters played in my mind and I actively resisted writing about them. Finally I gave in and listened to what they had to say. For this reason, The Old is a story where people who can be known as horrific sometimes encounter horrific things, but for the most part is a slow burn love story. The very nature of being an immortal blood drinker with the long bouts of boredom and friendlessness is slow burning. Unlike TV show, Harry Potter or Marvel magic, the nature of magic is also slow burn and lacking in lightning bolts spraying from hands. What would it be for two people of the night to be meet and fall into a relationship? What would be some of the technical and practical obstacles to overcome? What is it like to feel like you are on the outside of things and finally find another outsider? And so, we continue with The Old.

Lewis caught Chris’s hairin his hands and pulled his face into his chest, wrapping his thighs around him while, plunging into him again and again, the sweat going down his sides and budding on his back, he fucked Lewis harder and harder.

“Almost,” Chris panted, thrusting again, “there.”

Lewis ran his hands down Chris’s sweating back, and pulled Chris deeper in. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth feeling Chris fuck him, In these moments it was almost as if he was becoming Chris Ashby, almost as if he could feel not only his lover, but what it meant to be someone so often out in the cold, so pushed away from normal human existence, once again in this hot connection, brought back to communion with true life and true lust. Chris was so hungry, but then so was Lewis and he rejoiced while he clung to him.

“I’m gonna come…” Chris warned him.

Lewis had already come against his belly a few minutes earlier and now, with the last few thrusts, Chris made a staggering noise and moaned, “Oh—fuck—” as, pulling back from Lewis, he came, and then finished coming, his damp head in Lewis’s arms.

Chris rolled over and the two of them lay side by side on the bed, gasping.

When Chris had finally caught his breath, he turned on his side and took the wet cloth from the little table beside them, wiping Lewis’s chest, wiping the semen from his stomach before applying it to him. For a moment Chris was out of time, he stopped and looked at the cloth. He was supposd to be a dead thing, but his heart thumped and hear on this cloth he saw the glisten of semen, the liquid life, still hot, the last of it, making a glistening drop at the top of his penis.

Lewis turned on his side and Chris ran a hand over his chest.

“I love looking at you,” he said.

Lewis, always conscious about his body, always wishing he was a little thinner, a little younger, refrained from saying anything sarcastic, let himself be loved.

“When I’m with you I feel—”

“Alive,” Lewis said.

“Yes.”

“I wasn’t guessing,” Lewis said. “Not guessing how you felt. I mean I feel alive with you. You are the most alive person I’ve ever been with. I feel more real with you.”

Lewis lay on his back and he said, “Very often I feel outside of things, as if my world isn’t real, or it has only me. And then here you come, and you are the most real thing I know.”

“That man of yours seems so classy,” Erika said.

“He is. I mean, I do like him.”

“And he’s staying over every night. Well, that’s a good thing.”

“It’s something I haven’t done before, but I like it. He makes sense. Not a lot of people do.”

“That’s how I feel about Mike.”

“Mike? Have you told me about him?”

“I thought I had,” Erika closed her eyes and tilted her head.

“Well, if I haven’t I am now. I’m so excited about that man, and the way he talks to me, and we have been talking every night. I think he’s going to stay over tonight. I don’t know if we’ll have sex or not. You know, sex with Jordan was so terrible. I felt like he was making me have sex with him, and that triggers old stuff. Old abuses. I think that’s why we had to break up. I didn’t feel free at all. So, I don’t know what’s going to happen with Mike. I haven’t been with a new person in three years. We may have to take it slow.”

Lewis did not say that he didn’t think they would take it slow at all, or that Erika went through men like shark went through teeth, and no sooner had one gone than another rose up in place of the last. The only thing strange to Lewis was how sincere she was in her new loves, and how she never seemed ot notice this.

“You know, we were in love in the past. And things didn’t work out then. He was always going to prison and always doing some drug, and we were never sober. So maybe it’ll work out this time.”

Lewis doubted it would, and doubted he cared. Being Erika’s best friend didn’t mean he had to be invested in her mistakes, and so he said what he could which was, “I feel the same way about Chris. Like I’ve known him forever. Like we’re just making up for lost time. And I feel like we’ll always be together.”

Which is odd, Lewis thought, because that means Chris would have to make me a vampire, and I don’t know what that entails or even if that’s possible outside of the novels, and I don’t think I would want it. Still, it doesn’t matter. I know we’ll always be together no matter what. How childish. How silly of me. But I can’t help feeling silly like this.

“I’ve never seen your place,” Lewis said a few days later.

“Oh, my God,” Chris put down his fork over dinner, “All I’ve done is sleep in your bed every night. I haven’t even gone back home. I mean, you must want me to go back home. I’ve been here every night. Or every day.”

“That,” Lewis held his fork midway in the air, “is not even close to what I said. I just said I’ve never been to your place. And maybe we should stay there one night. Or day. If you’d like.”

“We could, I guess,” Chris said. “It’s just I would go there to sleep and get dressed. I mean, I usually do stop back there to get clothes. And when I’m asleep you’re at work, and after I get off work well, you’re already home, so it just seems like a waste to ask you to stay at my place. Still, we could try.”

“We don’t have to,” Lewis said. “and it does make sense to stay here. I was just saying maybe you’d want us to. It just seemed strange of me not to bring it up.”

“I think,” Chris said, digging into the chicken casserole, “we’re just going to have to acknowledge that we’re a strange couple.”

“Still, I do want to see it, and I do plan to come where you live. If it’s nicer than this we should move in. I mean, it doesn’t seem like we’re living together.”

“Yeah, it does,” Chris said. “But don’t worry, it’s not nicer, but sure, we’ll go there.”

Thinking about it, Lewis realizes it doesn’t make much sense to go to Chris’s place. Lewis likes living in his own space. He doesn’t even like leaving town for vacation. He hates staying the night in someone else’s place, and Chris is the perfect lover. When he sleeps he is completely asleep. He sleeps like… well, like the dead, and whatever private business Lewis wants to do, whatever personal time he needs he has. If Lewis gets up and goes to work and it is early, there is Chris to be company. If he goes at eleven or ten, Chris is on his way to bed. If he wakes as it pleases him and works at home, then again, Chris is on his way to bed at eleven or ten. He doesn’t wake up till five or six. They usually have sex. They either shower together, or Chris goes home to get dressed and go to work, and most of what Lewis does is at night, as witches prefer. And most of it is done by the time Chris comes back at one or a little bit after. Then they keep each other company until it is time for Lewis to go to bed again. They usually go to bed together.

The night of the full moon, Lewis is not entirely sure what is different about Chris, but he is worried for him, protective of him, which is foolish. He’s a grown man. He’s a grown vampire. After he heads out to work, Lewis smokes two cigarettes. His heart is light because of tonight despite his abstract worries for his lover.

From the altar he takes the water, and then he adds to that the water and sand in the refrigerator, and then sea salt, and then witch hazel and then water from another vial. Naked he goes into the bathroom and showers, pouring the water over himself, washing away what has come before. He takes the pinch of basil and sprinkles it over himself, rubs it over his skin. In the heat of the shower it is fresh and sweet, and he pours the last of the salt and the water over himself and then, half dry, returns to the altar.

Kneeling before it once, he pours new water into the empty glass dish.

“Every day your mercies are new.”

He rises, holding the small dish toward the refrigerator, which is the west, and murmurs, “Blessed be thou water…” other words follow and he sets the dish down and lifts up the dish of black salt to the wall, to the north. “Blessed be thou salt…”

Murmuring and singing he mingles salt and water and sprinkles the altar. The water he makes a clockwise circle with. With the salt dish, he describes an up and under circle.

Lighting the candle he holds to the south, he makes the sign of the cross, all elements, bringing them back to the center each time. From the center he takes the fire down and then raises it up, joining the above and below. He sets the candle down in the middle of the altar, and sitting down on cushions, he is silent before taking up the sage and the patchouli and bundling them, burning them and smudging pungent smoke about the altar, blowing on the blackened sage till red sparks give off new smoke, murmuring the old hymns, again returning to silence.

There are other words and other rites, but tonight he is only doing a few of them, over and over again he censes himself and then takes up the small green goblet and pours wine. He pours some on the altar and some over the images. He drinks the rest and goes between chanting and silence. When the kitchen is full of the smell of sage, he takes up Nag Champa. He puts on the first necklace of the priesthood, and then the second necklace of the high priesthood. Now he sits here, becoming a pillar of light and joining the above to the below. He is the world tree, his hands are roots and branches, webs. One must give himself. Once must be opened, one must be filled like the chalice. It is like how he was that night, that first time he gave himself to Chris. Chris’s face rises above other things. It is not a distraction. At this moment Chris is God to him. And then Chris moves on and several images pass before him and he gives himself to them until they are passed and he is a little emptied. Until the sun is setting a little lower, and it is time to get dressed slowly, not in a rush, not now that power has been awakened.