Los Angeles 2093 AD, the day before Halloween.

The story had stopped, Daniel was aware of that before he was aware of sleep, of waking from it.  And after realising that he was not listening to a story he became afraid that he'd dreamed up bits of it.  Daniel was convinced he wasn't remembering the story right.  It wouldn't have taken him long at all to dream that Death was female or that she had black hair that danced above her head.  It wouldn't even have taken long for Daniel to dream that the devil was a flaming queer.  And if he ever tried telling the story to anyone else he'd probably misquote all the characters.

He woke the other half of himself that had been stuck sleeping by sitting up in a violent movement.  The room seemed unchanged from the night before, same precise level of dimness.  He wondered if it were really the next day.  Daniel sighed.  One thing was certain, he was alone. 

He let himself into the bathroom, pissed, looked in the mirror.  His face looked a little puffy, but that wasn't unusual in the morning.  He lay back against the wall wondering what had become of Chris.  Daniel hoped he hadn't fallen asleep before hearing what this long and ancient tale could have to do with someone coming to Chris' door.  He thought of finding a clock. 

Daniel stepped onto the carpeting, felt it beneath his feet for the first time that he had noticed then spied his shoes sitting neatly under the daybed beside a pair of 11 hole Doc's.  Chris must be one of those neat freaks, close to anal-retentive.  Daniel had lived in houses with people like that, you'd drop your clothes on the floor and wake to find them neatly folded, or worse: hanging in a closet.  He thought he remembered a movie in which a woman on the run from her psychotic and anal husband had purposely set things in annoying and lopsided ways knowing if they were ever set right he had been there and she should run. 

Sometimes Daniel felt he ran habitually.  He certainly remembered running from New York.  But if Daniel were going to decide to do anything habitually it wouldn't be running.  It would be drinking.  But it seemed then that it was only that the drinking came before the running, the same people drove him to both. 

He found an old watch, one of the rare Death Watches, the one with an ankh on the end of the minute hand.  These watches with the comic book character Death on them were perverse but brilliantly marketed things.  Imagine owning a watch that counted the seconds of your life away.  Well, imagine that you were conscious of it, looked down at Death's Goth-chick face every time you wanted to know the time. 

It was nearly noon. 

Chris wasn't around and under the table Troy yawned then rose.  Daniel noticed only then the studded vinyl collar and silvery tag hanging off its slave ring.  Cute that, putting bondage collars on your pets.  But it was a wolf!

It looked up at Daniel then, yellow eyes looking somehow very serious.  Its fur was gray all along its back, almost silver in parts, and completely white below, even on its feet.  Daniel backed toward the bathroom.  The wolf followed.  Daniel looked around for something.  His bloody shirt was hanging on the towel rack.   And my clothes, shall I throw them in the fire?

 The wolf stared up at him.  Daniel threw his shirt down before the wolf.  It held the shirt down with its forepaws and chewed at it. 

It didn't seem it really wanted to hurt Daniel.  And Daniel did want to touch it.  It wasn't every day you got to pet a wolf. 

He knelt beside the animal and ran his finger through the fur on its back.  "It's OK, just me," he said to it.  Looked down at the wolf dick, saw it was male.

He was licking at Daniel's wrist.  Daniel rubbed the wolf's neck with his left hand. 

He felt teeth breaking the skin of his other wrist.  He fell backward, yelled.  Troy was lapping blood from his wrist.  Daniel pulled his arm away, scrambled backward.  The wolf was staring up at him, long fangs bared. 

Daniel felt the side of the tub against his heel.  "Chris.  Chris!"  He froze still, looking right at Troy. 

The wolf growled at Daniel. 

"Just fucking leave me alone."

He barked and snapped his jaws.  Troy moved closer then, low on his haunches, creeping forward.

"Troy, in the closet!" Chris snapped.  Daniel looked up. He was leaning against the frame of the door, very sleepy, wearing old black denim cut-offs.  The wolf ducked his head down under his forepaws, whined.  Chris stomped a foot forward, made a growl, "Destroyer, closet, now!" 

The wolf turned slowly and slunk past Chris' leg, tail tucked between his legs. 

"Yes, I am angry.  You know you aren't allowed to hurt my friends.  Go on, in the closet, it's time to sleep," Chris said.  He pointed out into the bedroom.

Daniel remained still, frightened.  Chris was frowning as he picked up Daniel's ripped and bloody shirt.  He tossed it in the trash this time. 

"Your wolf tried to kill me!"

"You threw to him a piece of cloth with your own scent and blood on it, let him draw blood from you then pulled it away.  He's a wolf, not a Human, he doesn't think about whether he should kill you or not, he just knows you've stolen from him."

"I'll leave."

Chris twisted in the doorway, lifted his right foot to bar the passage.  "I didn't finish telling you the story."

"That's OK.  I'll just go."

"You want some breakfast don't you?  I thought we'd go down for breakfast."

Breakfast.  The idea of having some breakfast was a good one. "Breakfast, all right, I guess I could stay."

Chris smiled wide and dropped his foot. 

b                  b                  b

McDonald's.  Downstairs on the walk in front of the book shop there was a small round table of glass and wrought metal, lain out with plastic take-out cartons and bags.  And that girl was there, the one with long black hair from inside the store.  "This is Daniel," Chris said and sat beside the girl, now wearing over-sized satin shirt and his boots and of course, a pair of cat's eye sunglasses. 

Daniel sat slowly, eyes on the girl.  "Hotcakes?" She asked.  Then studying Daniel intently said, "Oh, Anne," with gesture to her chest.

"Hi, yeah, hotcakes are fine."

Chris licked at his lips then lifted a new pack of Sampoernas from the table.  "In the morning...how can you?" Anne asked him, nose wrinkled as Chris packed the cigarettes.

"What's that line? 'I smoke a cigarette, and pretend I'm normal.  And I wish I was dead.'"

"Were," said Anne as she shook Tabasco sauce on her scrambled eggs, "I've read all the old books in the store, practically."

"You know I think it was written in two different ways, one on the cover, and differently on the inside.  Wonder if they did it on purpose, or it was all just bad communication.  I'd claim it was on purpose, you know the don't-judge-a-book-by-it's-facade thing."

"Cover," laughed Daniel. 

"You remind me of a friend of mine," Anne said, "not the way you look, ya know, how you act." 

"I think maybe you remind me of someone..."

Chris flicked ashes onto a plastic soda cup lid.  "You like Coca-Cola?" He asked.

"With rum," Daniel said.

"It's very sweet."

"It's not as sweet as Pepsi," Daniel said flatly.  He looked hard at Chris, trying to imbibe his thoughts.  Daniel had heard people say things like this before.  They'd sit with you and suddenly ask you what apples tasted like, or if you'd ever had chocolate before.  They'd pretend they didn't know how to use a phone when you knew used computers in interesting and illegal ways daily.  It was a trap, a game people played.  If you gave in and asked why they didn't know, and especially if you got scared before they could answer, then, they won. 

When you played a game enough you learned to win. 

"I wonder what it's like, drinking blood."

"It's not all that."

"I thought it would be really exciting."

"No, never."  Chris was used to these games too it seemed. 

"That story, how many people have you told it to?"

"One besides you, Daniel," Chris smiled.

"He won't tell me," Anne murmured.

"Am I supposed to think that Shade is you?" 

"I told you, it's just a story.  I'm a writer."

"Saying something is just a story is a bit like saying something is just a dream."

"Are you a dream, Daniel?"

"Are you a vampire?" Daniel asked.

"No."

"No?  You drink blood."

"You think everyone who drinks blood is a vampire, Daniel?" Chris asked. He blew rings of smoke across the table. 

Daniel studied the smoke, looked up to the sun, eyes hurting.  And then he glanced to Chris' bare legs, long, smooth and quite pale in the bright wash of light.  His skin was not smoking.  He did not turn to ash.  "Nephillim Spawn?" Daniel asked then quickly added, "Maybe you're only trying to make me think you are one, I mean."

"Maybe, or maybe I am a vampire, and I think it fun to pick pretty young men up from bars and spirit them away to small rooms where I tell them half true stories," Chris laughed.

"Oh, that would be original," Anne giggled.

"What do you think?" Daniel asked Anne.  He glanced over at the girl out the corner of his eye.  "You think Chris' a vampire?"

Anne squinted at her eggs as if realizing she had been eating brains.  She slowly looked up to Daniel.  "Is that his name today?  Chris?"

"What did you think it was?" Daniel asked, hearing Chris laugh beside him.

"Robert."

"Well then, is Robert a vampire?"

"Listen, my friend Daniel and I will be walking around this neighborhood and people will shout, 'Hey Dracula!' and stuff like that, and he hardly ever drinks blood.  So, Robert likes telling stories about vampires, so does every reporter and sys op in the city...I like telling vampire stories..."

"Anne, you think Daniel's a vampire?" Chris said quickly.

"Can't say," she smiled, "you can be a vampire without drinking blood."

"Ain't it d'trut," said Daniel.

Chris was smiling at him as he leaned his chair back on two legs.  "You've finished."

Daniel wasn't sure what he meant. 

"You've finished eating," he said.  Chris laughed, fell forward, and gazed at Daniel, both arms on the table.  "I'm hungry," he moaned.

Anne laughed.  "I'd love to come upstairs with you guys."

Daniel shivered, watched the goosebumps come up all over his body.

Chris stood and bowed toward Anne, "I don't think you could manage the two of us, Hon."

Anne said something then that was barely heard, Daniel thought it sounded like, "You aren't allowed to touch me."

b                  b                  b

Daniel took a breath as he entered that dim black-walled room for the second time. He should be going.  He should say that he had an appointment somewhere.  He, Chris Robert Paris Shade, or whatever he wanted to be called, closed the door behind them.  Daniel looked at the closet door, closed.   "What's with the wolf anyway?" He asked.

"I'll tell you later, if you stay," he said.  Daniel decided he would be Robert.  He had said he'd been Robert a number of times and responded to the name.   Robert and Shade, there was something familiar about those names together.  For a split second Daniel had a picture of New York in his head, but then it just went away.

But vampire? Maybe it was that same old story: he was living off others.  Daniel had been someone's dependent his whole life, he'd leave one benefactor after a while, but it was always for another. There was always some rich man or woman who still thought him pretty enough to take him back. 

Sometimes, in the past, Daniel had tricked himself into thinking he was free, independent, that all those people who took him in were suckers.  He made himself believe that in using them to make his living he was being independent.  But they were in control and he could never forget it now. 

Was there no such thing as freedom?

Robert snaked his arms about Daniel's body from behind.  Something in his touch made Daniel feel better.  Robert pressed up against his back, skin a little cool, and Daniel felt good.  He still believed that Robert was some sort of liar, but he also believed just maybe Daniel wasn't the only one who knew what need was.  Maybe there were other people who lived off others and felt sick about it.  It had always made Daniel feel out of control, and so he was always trying in vain to gain control over lovers, and friends, and even strangers. 

"I never feel happy," Daniel said quietly.  It was that level of volume that anyone could easily choose not to hear.  Another useful trick Daniel had picked up.  Another stupid game.

He felt Robert tense, and thought: this is where he becomes violent, throws me over a piece of furniture and fucks me up the ass.  This is the part of The Movie of Your Life where everyone sees you moaning as if the violence doesn't hurt you, where everyone looks at the tears and thinks it must be a really good fuck, 'cause people are cruel like that, and ignorant, and everyone's a voyeur.            

But the violence didn't come.  The fangs broke the skin, but it was merciful, and it didn't hurt as much as it had the night before.  Even this didn't cause Daniel to moan and grab for the headboard, as it would in The Movie.  In The Movie everything that ever happened to you was so true-to-life it was false. 

Daniel just sank down to the floor, slowly, went down until he was sitting back on his legs.  He closed his eyes to shut out the world, listened to the thumping of his heart, the small sound Robert made sucking at his neck. 

He began to feel weak.  Daniel fell back against Robert's chest, the sucking stopped.  Robert slipped away to one side and Daniel connected with the floor.  Robert was licking at his belly, it made Daniel think of those movies and videos he had always rather liked, ones in which silhouettes kissed, or sang into microphones, and a tongue would move out against the light and lick at some other black shape. 

There was a Nine Inch Nails video with a scene like that. Industrial music, that brilliant 20th century invention...not that NIN was a very good example of it, just good for Daniel's particular purposes.  What had people done in ancient times when they felt like they wanted to fuck the world, like they wanted to kill everyone?  Start wars?  Lock themselves up in dark rooms?  How much easier it was when you could scream into a microphone and get paid for excising your own demons, when you could lie on the floor and listen to noise and someone screaming your life.   The next best stuff for the pain of living was Gothic, preferably the bands that still had some sort of punk edge to them, they gave better anger.  Gothic Ambient just didn't cut it, wasn't good for much but drinking to, maybe for rolling about on floors kissing during rain storms, but not much else.  It was all coming back into vogue with all the horror crazed Californians hungry for something to become for a short while.

Yes, all coming back...  "I dreamt of Goths," Daniel said.

"Which?"

"All of them.  The barbarians that invaded Rome, their hair braided and dyed with streaks of red, the leather clothing.  There was a man called Alaric.  And then I dreamt of a village, it became a town, then a city, and they built a cathedral.  And the Italians hated them, the Germans, because they dared to call their empire the Holy Roman Empire.  They hated their cathedrals, and so they called them Gothic.  The English Romantics wrote stories set in old castles and abbeys in Gothic buildings with many tall airy halls and so many pointed arches.  And so they called these stories Gothic Romances and Gothic Horrors.  The children that came after the punks, the ones that couldn't bring themselves to be political and angry, the sad ones, they came.  They painted themselves death-white, dyed their hair in barbaric streaks they became the Gothics."

"You know what you missed?"

"What?" 

"The children's crusade, the sad black-clad children from those cathedral cities of the Empire who marched toward Jerusalem, and all died or were made slaves.  They were rather like Gothics are."

"I suppose."

"They were," Robert said.

Daniel opened his eyes.  Robert was lying close beside him, head propped up in one hand as he looked down over Daniel's chest.  "In the story," Daniel said, "what did Shade see when he went north?  Did he see Goths?"

"I told you that part, perhaps you'd fallen asleep."

"And he saw the towns become cathedral cities?  The Black Death?"

"Yes, The plague scared Shade at first, because he thought he might be able to get it.  He understood about disease only a little better than those people did.  And even when he was sure he'd never get it, he was worried that he might carry it from one Human to another.  Even knowing he could not transmit it, or die from it Shade was still worried by the plague. He stayed away from the cities afraid to make friends of people who would die with the next summer.  It was always worst in summer and he did fear having friends who were mortal."

"And Shade, did he live long enough to see AIDS?" Daniel asked.

"Yes."

"Did he think the same things about it?"

"Yes, I think so," Robert said, "only, you must understand, the Bubonic plague was only the first he really noticed, others had come before, and several came afterward.  By the time Syphilis came around he would not be so shocked as the Humans of that time.  And so he was not so shocked when AIDS came around.  Eventually plagues all pass by.  Though, AIDS was different in that by that time Shade had, unfortunately, found he cared about mortals."

Daniel thought of continuing with the conversation on plagues, but he didn't.  He said,  "And Shade, did he have a pet wolf?"

"OK, he did.  He named it Destroyer."

"Troy for short?" Asked Daniel.

"Yeah, Troy for short."

"So what happened with Shade?  What's the rest of the story?"

Robert made a sigh.  "OK, let me get back into it, let me get comfortable," he said.  He crawled up to his feet and walked to the daybed.  He sat back against the wall, got up for a cigar box, then sat down again. 

Daniel felt dizzy when he tried to stand.  He crawled to the daybed, knowing Robert was watching intently. 

"Lie down, you'll feel OK again lying down."

Daniel felt almost nauseous as he heaved himself up onto the bed.  He lay down quickly, his head pounding for a while until he relaxed.  He thought maybe the smoke from the clove would make him sick.  Robert had a box full of them and was lighting one; it was obvious these weren't his other cigarettes even before he'd lit it as these had black paper.  Daniel didn't say anything. 

"First I'll tell about the children, Troy comes later in the story."