Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale Page 2

  He ran back downstairs to get rid of the vagrant in the back of his truck. He hopped into the back of the truck and approached the lump cautiously. His nose registered the stale stench of cheap wine and body odor. He kicked the figure in the ribs, not softly, but not hard enough to do any damage.

  “Get the fuck out of my truck.”

  “Lemme sleep.”

  It was a woman’s voice. He hadn’t been expecting that. He felt bad about kicking her, but he had to get this thing back before it cost him any more money. He was already a hundred bucks in the hole because he had forgotten. Christ, how could he have forgotten? Maybe he could play it off with the guy in the office and claim that he had gotten jumped and was in the hospital for two days. Yeah, that could work. He certainly looked like he had been worked over.

  “Get the fuck out! I gotta get this thing back before I have to pay more money. You got fifty bucks you wanna throw in on this?”

  “If I had fifty bucks, I wouldn’t be sleeping here asshole.”

  “Then get out, before I call the cops.”

  “C’mon, lemme stay. I’ll give you a blowji.”

  The wretched shape sat up abruptly and smiled at him with a gummy grin devoid of teeth. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her hair looked like the tangles you might find on Bigfoot’s ass. He gagged.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, if you want me out of here, you’re going to have to drag me out.”

  “Don’t make this difficult, just get out.”

  She didn’t even respond, she just laid back down and rolled over turning her back to him. He lost it. He grabbed her by the Bigfoot tangles and dragged her out of the back of the truck. He lifted her up onto his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and let her down on the sidewalk. The smell of her rancid body clung to his shirt. He’d have to remember to look for a laundromat on the way to the U-Haul place.

  “Ooooh, big strong man, pickin’ on the lil’ drunk lady. Bet you’re proud of yourself. You don’t know who you’re fuckin’ with.”

  “You’re a bum. That’s all I need to know.”

  “You just fucked up real bad. You coulda had yourself a blowji and maybe some more… butchyoo gotta be an asshole. I’m leavin,’ but I’ll see ya real soon. You can count on that.”

  He grabbed a dollar out of his pocket and tossed it at the lady. “Go get a fuckin’ Whopper and stop your whining. You think I’m gonna let you live in my U-Haul for the rest of your life?”

  She picked up the dollar and wandered off muttering something to the effect of “Fuck your Whopper” or “Fuck you” or some combination of the two. He hoped the U-Haul people didn’t step into the back of the truck or they would smell the baglady’s stale nastiness. It was as if it had sunk into the molecules of the walls. He wondered what a toothless blowjob was like; maybe he should call her back. As he was debating the pros and cons of a toothless blowjob, he saw a puddle of urine in the corner of the vehicle and decided against it. He wondered if there were any hot chicks out in the world that didn’t have any teeth. He doubted it, but he crossed his fingers at the same time. He bought a newspaper from the newspaper box on the corner for 35¢ and sopped up the bag lady’s urine. It was a dirty job, but if he wanted to save some cash, he was going to have to do it. He hopped in the truck and drove it to the U-Haul place with the back door open in the hopes that the swirling wind might dispel the bum stench a little.

  Chapter 5: Hipsters for the First Time

  Convincing the U-Haul guy that he had been in the hospital for a couple of days wasn’t too difficult; he did look the part. The guy even gave him a twenty dollar discount on the price. Now he had to find his way home.

  Portland was a new city to him. He had been there a couple of times to see Blazer games, but other than that, it was unfamiliar territory. He knew he was about four or five miles from his apartment and that he had crossed the river on the way in. He also knew that he didn’t want to stick around in the neighborhood that he was in right now. The place consisted of strip clubs and mini marts all populated by dirty looking people that seemed to have nothing better to do on a Thursday morning than sit around and look forlorn. It seemed that the whole city was filled with these dregs, these filth. The only normal looking people were the ones driving through the town making their way to work. They cruised by with blind eyes to the rot that was happening all around them. People like Old Cap’n Skin & Bones seemed to be as common to Portland as rednecks were to Scappoose. Everyone had that hungry look and the itch of addiction on their faces.

  He started walking down the street. He knew that in a place like this it wouldn’t look good to gawk like a tourist. Bad things happened to tourists or people that didn’t seem to know what was going on. He felt like a tourist, and he definitely didn’t have his thumb on the heartbeat of the city, but he had already seen what had happened to those that didn’t at least pretend. He walked with purpose, observing the world out of the corner of his eyes.

  He walked down Sandy Boulevard until it joined with Burnside at one of the most fucked up intersections he had ever seen. The sun beat down on his brown hair until he felt that his brain was boiling in blood. He was surprised that steam didn’t escape from the small gash on the back of his head. He had to get out of the sun. It did not agree with him and his eyebrows were waterlogged with sweat. A little bead of sweat spilled over and dropped into his eye, stinging him and forcing him to squint.

  He waited at the intersection for the walk signal, trying to think of what he should do. He was definitely hungry. He decided to keep walking until he found a place to procure a little sustenance. His feet cooked in his shoes as he crossed the street. The gutters were littered with old coffee cups, crushed cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and cigarette butts. He felt the danger of the stopped cars thrumming engines as he walked past their lifeless eyes. The engines revved and changed pitch as the air conditioners kicked in, making his way from one side of the street to the other. It sounded like they were threatening him, letting him know that if they weren’t enslaved by their owners, they would grind his body into spaghetti sauce and sausage. Cars were like that, all beautiful when you were sitting inside them, all mayhem when you had to walk in front of them. He finally crossed the street feeling like he had just run the gauntlet, when he saw a promising place a couple of blocks up the street. He ambled past a couple of bums in an alley who apparently hated the sun just as much as he did. He had become accustomed to the bums by now as they had lined pretty much every street he had been on in Portland. He didn’t even feel bad that he didn’t look at them or care about them. He didn’t even care that he had stopped assigning them genders. They weren’t “that homeless guy” or “that homeless girl.” They were just bums.

  He finally made it to the refuge of a coffee shop. People were situated out front, drinking coffee and eating little biscuits or muffins. These people definitely weren’t bums. They all looked like beatniks from the seventies. The ladies and the guys wore dark black glasses, the kind that soldiers wear in Vietnam movies. The clothing they wore consisted almost completely of earth tones, very boring. One of the girls had a knit cap on that made her look like an out of place snowboarder. The beatniks stank; they didn’t stink like bums, but they definitely seemed to have their own odor that wasn’t entirely pleasant. They smelled like high end cigarettes and cat food, which was odd because one of them had a big shaggy dog that was curled around his master’s feet, which were encased in socks and sandals. The beatniks were apparently enjoying the sun.

  It wasn’t a hamburger joint or a taco stand like he had hoped for, but he doubted he would make it that far if he didn’t sit down and get something to eat. He stepped inside the glass doors, past the Stanks out front, and into the cool damp of an old building painted in gaudy colors and filled with trendy furniture and black-haired people that made the furniture bow in deference at their coolness. Eyes looked up, gave him a cursory glance, and dismissed him as an oddity or a bore.

  He walked
up to the counter and looked at the food in a glass case as the coffee-making woman with the holes in her ears eyed him with disdain. Her attitude billowed off her like waves of fog pouring in from the coast. She didn’t like him, or she didn’t like people, or she didn’t like men, or one of those things that makes people instantly dislike someone else.

  “Are you gonna want any coffee?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “What kind?”

  “Uhhh, I don’t know… coffee.”

  “Just coffee? We don’t do ‘just coffee.’”

  He was getting annoyed with the girl with holes in her ears. He noticed she had a little moustache growing. He wondered if she did that on purpose or just didn’t know.

  “What do you recommend?”

  “How about I just make you something?”

  He guessed she disliked him so much that she didn’t even want to recommend anything. That was fine. He didn’t much feel like talking to her either. Besides, if she was busy making something, he could take a little time and interpret the strange food that was contained within the glass case.

  “Make me something.”

  She whirred into life, temporarily dropping the chip on her shoulder, and started to pour, grind, fill, and steam something. He redirected his eyes back to the glass case. Little pastry things gleamed in rows as grease stains spread imperceptibly on the paper that surrounded them. Biscotti, scones, and little cakes all peered up at him. He picked out a little cake with some type of jelly on it and asked the lady with the holes in her ears to grab one for him when she got the chance. Three minutes later she had finished preparing whatever she had concocted and retrieved his fatcake and proudly announced that his total was $7.50.

  He handed over the cash and took his high priced snack over to the window to watch the Stanks live their lives from behind the nasal protection of the glass. He devoured the cake in no time at all. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t two dollars and fifty cents good, but it was ok. He still would have rather had a whopper or two.

  The Stanks outside sat in their chairs with ease and sipped their coffee every now and then. They seemed in no hurry to get to their lives. He wondered if the coffee shop owner paid them to sit there, because they all looked bored. Their eyes searched the streets for something that they never seemed to find and they didn’t even seem to be conscious that they were looking for anything. Some of them read books or magazines, while others engaged each other in the sort of conversation that was free of laughter. He watched as one girl reached down to scratch her leg; he clearly saw the shine of blonde hair all over her legs. This was definitely not the place for him to be.

  The inside of the café was quiet, except for the occasional blast of steam. He wanted to leave as soon as possible, so he pulled the lid off of his drink and took a sip. It was like swallowing liquid earwax. He felt stuck. There was no way that he was going to throw away five dollars worth of coffee, but he definitely didn’t want to drink it. He felt the eyes of the other customers focus on him in his front row seat. What were they thinking? Were they wondering why he was still here? Were they silently waiting until he had left before they began talking about him? He wanted to go. He wanted to throw his five dollar cup of earwax on the floor and run down the street and go to sleep with the bums. At least bums didn’t expect anything from you. They didn’t care if you didn’t belong. Shit, they were the lowest of the low. What did they care about style? What did they care if you let a swear word slip every now and then? What did they care if you liked to laugh a little? Society said they were nothing and so they had nothing to say… not anything that mattered, at least.

  He took another drink.

  The lady with holes in her ears began straightening up the café. She carried a wet towel with her and gave each empty table a cursory circular swipe that left water streaks in the dampened brightness of the sun. She gathered together sections of the day’s newspaper and put them back in the rack next to the front doors. He watched as she flitted across the room and wondered why she had holes in her ears.

  You could put your fingers through her earlobes. He took another drink.

  Shit, the right man could put his cock through her earlobes. He wondered if she liked cocks and if her moustache would feel pleasant on his balls. He took another drink.

  He wondered what she would do if someone got their dick stuck in her earlobe. Would they have to rip her earlobe to get their dick back out? Or would they simply pull out that piece of pipe she had stuck in her ear?

  The lady with the holes in her ears wiped down the last empty table and stepped outside for a quick cigarette. He took another drink.

  He wondered if she took out those pipes in her ears, would her earlobes go back to normal. Would they close up like a butthole after a rectum-tearing dump? The lady took a drag off of her cigarette and smoke billowed around her head like attitude pouring off of a waitress. He took another drink.

  Chapter 6: On the Bridge

  He finished his coffee and his wondering and decided to find a real place to eat. The coffee was tearing at his insides and sitting painfully in his stomach. He left the cup on the table so the lady with the holes in her ears would have something to clean. He strolled past the hairy-legged lady and the man with the dog and the sandals. He was sure that if he came back in four or five hours, they would still be there.

  He continued his journey down Burnside. The morning sun had been replaced by the noon sun and his skin quickly resumed cooking again. He wondered if bruises burned like regular skin. His nose throbbed but he couldn’t tell if it was burned; it was usually the first thing to burn.

  In the distance, he could see the beginnings of the bridge that he had crossed earlier in the day, when he was driving the U-Haul. The street sloped down towards the bridge at an almost imperceptible angle. Heat waves danced in front of his eyes and even the bums had disappeared. He walked past cheap hotels, used car dealerships, and a used condom glittering in the sunlight.

  He saw some bus stops along the way, but he didn’t know where they went or if they would take him to the right place. Plus, the people sitting at the stops didn’t look like the type of people you would want to sit next to. Hell, at the moment, he didn’t look like the type of person you would want to sit next to. He would rather just keep walking rather than deal with the awkwardness of scaring people.

  There were no food places on the east side of the bridge. There wasn’t even a burger place. The people changed as he approached the bridge. There were still a few Stanks and bums, but now there were people on bikes and people on skateboards. There were even a few ragged punks walking dogs and carrying the things they owned on their back. He liked the ruggedness of the punks. They didn’t seem to have given up on life yet. They seemed to have some sort of purpose.

  He walked by all of the new-to-him denizens of the city and set out across the Burnside Bridge. The bridge began to rise from the city floor and soon he was walking past the tops of buildings and then over some train tracks, until he was finally able to peer over the side of the bridge at the water below. The water was fascinating. What made certain sections of the river calmer and darker than other sections? Tiny boats moved across the surface of the river headed for nowhere in particular.

  Chapter 7: No Beans

  The food wasn’t great but it was certainly better than the crap he had consumed at the coffeshop full of Stanks; he sat in a shitty McDonald’s downtown on Sixth Avenue with a beautiful shaded view of the bus mall. A never-ending stream of busses filed past the pristine McDonald’s window as business people strolled past the bums that peered into garbage cans looking for magic beans. All they ever found were half-eaten sandwiches and empty bottles and cans. No beans, no hope of grabbing the golden goose, just more of the same.

  The sun couldn’t penetrate the valley between the tall office buildings so it was cool inside. He was glad of this, because the warmth emanating from his nose told him that he had already gotten his fill of sun for the day.
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  Greasy meat and potatoes filed past his teeth and down the back of his throat in an orderly, but nonchalant, manner.

  The plan – a guy had to have a plan. There was no use moving from this spot if he didn’t have a plan. He felt a little overwhelmed at the possibilities. Nothing could move a man to indecision like an overabundance of choice, and he had never been good at making decisions. Even if he only had two things to choose from, he could waste four or five hours weighing the consequences of each choice until he finally jumped in and dealt with the consequences. He thought back and realized that this was his problem; this was why he was here, in a new city, trying to build a new life and bury the old. Maybe he wasn’t trying to build anything. Maybe he was just trying to bury the past and forget about the present. It was always harder to get rid of what had already happened than to deal with what was going on.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t have anything going on at the moment. He just was. For all intents and purposes there was no present; there was no now. He was here in the window of a McDonald’s watching bums dig in the garbage; the only thing keeping him from being one of them was the shower that he had taken a few days ago. Give him some time and some expenses and he could just as easily be digging for magic beans like the guy in the sailor cap and the beaten up white loafers who had just found a barely edible chicken nugget at the bottom of the garbage can. It wasn’t a magic bean, but you couldn't eat a magic bean anyway.

  He laughed to himself, looking dangerous to those around him. He wondered what would have happened to old Jack if he had come home and soaked the magic beans for a couple of hours, eaten them when they were soft, and then gone to bed. He wouldn’t have had to worry about his shitty little life anymore, because that goddamned beanstalk would have erupted right out of his stomach and climbed the clouds to the sky. He would simply be a pile of fertilizer under the great roots of a beanstalk that fostered false dreams of redemption and security in the minds of simpletons. Isn’t that what they all were anyway?