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The boy reeks of drugs, desperation, and depression. It’s no wonder Louis was so entranced.
Tapes preternaturally unspool themselves, winding back the day’s indiscretions onto the kitchen floor: names unuttered, stories untold.
“You’re going to teach me how to be fascinating.”
Daniel watches in horror while Armand delights. If the boy wanted a story, a story is what he would get.
–
There’s unexpected freedom in paralysis.
Armand leaves the apartment for a day. Or maybe an hour, or a week. Time bleeds, a casualty of his relentless pursuit.
While Daniel’s body is frozen, he wanders the caverns of his mind. All of its usual sharpness is gone, wit and discernment bulldozed by the drugs, blood loss and concussion he’s brewing. He’s walking through his old school, examining the would’ve could’ve should’ves of the high school football team. He recalls the kid who beat him up in the bathroom during school, only to fuck him after. Memories, once buried, seemingly resurfaced by Armand’s digging.
It’s not quite a dream, but he’s not awake either–perhaps time has stretched into some sort of purgatory that the Catholic boys always told him he’d end up in. The effort of it all sees his mind humming along with the television, whirring up heat from overexertion. The sounds, the flicker of the TV, the lingering smell of death and decay, all occasionally interrupt to bring him closer to the present. Is everything appearing in shades of yellow because he’s drugged and dying, or is that just the ‘vampiric chic’ brand of 1973 interior design? He never quite gets an answer on that one.
At some point, the newspapers on the wall become interesting. There’s drab political commentary. A feel-good interview with a pet store owner about rebuilding after an earthquake. A priest with a hidden drug problem, gone missing. Daniell retches up a darkly funny thought, that if he doesn’t make it out of this, at least he may end up on these walls. How’s that for a last laugh? Daniel Malloy, bright young reporter, reported dead at 23.
“Something funny, Daniel?”
The voice snaps him back into shape - mind rigid from panic and trauma, body shaking with fear. It’s alarming how long it took to recover from this state and how quickly he returns to it.
“No, no–none of that now.” Armand’s voice gets closer until he’s in front of Daniel again, confronting him with those orange-brown eyes that burn cold. “Stay with me, Daniel. I want you here and present. It’s just us now. No more distractions.”
By distractions, he meant the cellophaned corpse and retched wails of his charred lover, of course. Slowly, and seemingly without another choice, Daniel’s eyes raise to meet Armands.
“There you are,” the monster says. “You must be in terrible pain.”
A window opens up inside him, and Daniel’s body hits the floor with a wet thud. The return of sensation welcomes a flood of pain into his legs, a raw aching like he’s never known before.
“Come to me.”
It’s not a command, at least not one of the mystical, vampire sort, because Daniel remains on the floor. He struggles to his feet; he falls. Struggles again, falls again. Maybe that’s why Armand released him, he thinks: to relish in this struggle.
On cue, Armand’s steps into view, his hand offered out like a gift.
Daniel accepts.
The vampire guides the boy to a chair, supporting his weight then easing him down onto the seat. While the boy comes back into his body, the vampire urges him into the present by rubbing gentle circles into his legs.
“That’s better, isn’t it?” Daniel almost nods, but thinks better of it. Armand notices anyway.
“I can see that it is,” he declares. Confident, but not boasting. “I can see so much in that head of yours.”
“You’re wondering what part of the story we’re at,” Armand says, continuing to chart paths in the topography of Daniel’s legs.” Is this the part where I say it’s all a joke, and now that you’ve got me on my knees, I say it’s all just some prelude to sexual deviancy? Is this the part where the wizard in polyester pulls back the curtain to reveal his dark tricks?…Is this the part where I kill you?”
If the boy could feel his stomach, it’d be in knots.
“No, Daniel. We’re not quite there yet,” he assures, running his nail across the boy’s nervous face. “Now you’re thinking that you can still pass this test; that if you just find the right thing to say, you can make this all go away. Is it submission or a fight that I crave, you wonder.”
“I would never tell,” Daniel insists, shaking his blood-spattered head back and forth. A nervous laugh slips out. “All we did was talk, I swear. And-and you have the tapes, just throw them out, burn them, and it’s all gone! I mean, who would even fucking believe me anyway? ‘I went to a gay bar to slut myself out for drugs and met a vampire?’ It’s fucking crazy! I hardly believe it myself.”
Then it’s Armand’s turn to be bored, and Daniel learns what it feels like to float and to fall.
–
“You need to eat something.”
Daniel’s chair spins around, unnaturally fast and precise so he’s face to face with Armand once again. He’s armed with a bowl and a spoon, and somehow he’s never been more threatening. Then, there’s a release on his body–a sliver of freedom granted, tinged with restraint and a reminder that this privilege can be given and taken at will.
He’s presented with a spoonful, mimicking a choice he doesn’t have.
“Eat.”
Hesitant and eager in equal measure, Daniel’s warning lights dim while instinct takes over. He takes a sip.
“Good boy,” Armand says.
The soup bubbles up in his stomach, bland and burnt. “Tastes like shit,” he offers as an explanation. If the joke lands, Armand doesn’t let it be known.
“Again.”
Daniel obeys.
–
“Were you disappointed, when he didn’t fuck you?”
“No, I–”
“Lie.”
Daniel’s body twists into deformity. It’s as if Armand thinks himself the next Picasso, shifting the boy into an unwitting and unwilling muse.
From the periphery, Daniel can hear Louis pipe up, his moans scoring the torture. Only a few hours ago–or days, was it–he felt like he was sitting across from an alien, but context had made him into a companion.
“I don’t know what to say, man,” the boy cries out. “I-I don’t know what you want!”
Sometimes their screams seem to harmonize.
–
In between beatings, Armand presses a hand to the small of his back and lets him know how well he’s taking it all.
–
“Not fun being on the other end of this, is it? Not when you have so many questions banging around in there.”
The distant moans have stopped; Armand has not. The prying feels indulgent now, his spindle feeding off itself. Daniel watches leather shoes trace familiar patterns onto the floor, responding only intermittently to the questioning.
“‘Isn’t it sadistic,’ you’d ask, ‘to want to pull someone apart and put them back together?’” Armand continues. “‘Isn’t that what journalists do?’, I’d answer.”
The pacing stops, and the vampire replaces his glare with something softer.
“Do you think I’m cruel?”
Daniel chooses his next words carefully, and wonders if it even matters after all of this, when he’s talking to a mind reader. He decides that it does. “Your audience of one is currently locked in a coffin, so why the fuck are you doing this to me,” he says. “Unless it’s for yourself.”
He whispers the last part, as if that makes any difference. Armand hears it, feels it, and discerns that he’s fallen into the same trap as Louis, confused and enchanted and disarmed by this boy and his words. Down, down, down the black hole of Daniel Molloy.
He hates the feeling of it; the fascination, stuck like food in his teeth.
“You asked me, in your mind, whether it’s submission or resistance I like. It’s neither. It’s about the chase. It’s about watching you run; the pleasure of running circles into the ground without ever leaving a middle-class living room.”
A million questions rattle in Daniel’s mind. But in the first act of journalistic integrity since he arrived in Divisadero, he decides to shut the fuck up and listen.
“I’m not cruel, Daniel. I’m you. I’m curious .” Armand's voice rings clear, cutting through the mess he’s made of the boy’s mind. “You didn’t ask a girl to put a bag over her head because you wanted to hurt her. You wanted to see what would happen.”
“You happened,” Daniel says, in answer to the unspoken question. Armand smiles at that answer, and leans in closer.
“Now I wonder what you’ll do with all this truth; if you’re satisfied that you’ve gotten to the bottom of me.” He cold hand runs over the boy’s chest, trespassing beyond the collar of his bloody shirt. “You can tell your racing heart that we’re almost at the finish line.”
Armand says the last part so only Daniel can hear: and rest.
–
“He bit you.”
“He bit me.”
“You blacked out.”
“I blacked out.”
“You woke up in a drug den.”
“I woke up in a drug den.”
They rehearse together, agreeing upon the lie. Around the 54th time Daniel’s woken up in a drug den, Louis leaves the monotony behind for a new fix.
Armand listens for one closed door, then another. He leans in. An echo of the night before, he pulls Daniel close, whispering in his ear.
“You won't think of this Daniel, but you’ll think of me. You'll think of my tender evils and the quiet dark. When you feel a pull on the back of your neck, you’ll faintly recall death’s caress, and remember where I marked the inflection point between pain and pleasure.”
His fingers trace patterns into tracks that tears have left.
“You’ll wonder about dark gifts and magic tricks, but know that what we have on our side is time. Time, the ambivalent soldier, marching on and on and on–unrelenting toward our inevitable conclusion.”
A flicker of awareness in the boy, a parting gift.
“I’ll meet you at the ending.”