An Episode of Not Quite Dead.

Episode Content Warnings

Please bear in mind that this show is a work of horror fiction and frequently places characters in situations which jeopardise their psychological and physical health. This episode contains:

– profanity

– threats of violence, including implied threat of violence to a minor

– discussion of traumatic injury

– mentions near-death experiences

– references to medical procedures

– scenes with sexual implications

– descriptions of blood

– descriptions of injuries

Transcript

It’s been six days since I’ve been a vampire. It, uh. It has not gone the way I thought it would, honestly.

Neige, he, he told me to think about a moth when it emerges from a chrysalis. Did you know when they first emerge, their wings are sort of stubby and small. They have to sit and inflate them once they’re out. I never knew that. I feel it, though; half formed. Not like the half-made things, I’m definitely me. I think.

Am I still me? I feel like me.

I need to talk about the change, I know it’s important but. I need to—

Ah. Maybe documenting all of this like this is a bad idea. I can’t be the first person it’s occurred to to try to record what this process feels like, which means there’s another reason I can’t find any documents or records. The vampires like their privacy. I imagine if you try to break that privacy the cost is quite high.

INTRO MUSIC. EIRA: This is Not Quite Dead, Episode Sixteen, Emergence

Neige was looking for Cas when he found me. He’d been following his scent all over the city, with it getting weaker and weaker everyday, him no closer to finding him. He realised my scent mingled with Cas’ a lot so, he decided to track me instead. And he found me.

What I didn’t know when I was coming up with all my big ‘turn into a vampire’ plans, because how could I have possibly known this honestly, is that if you’re hurt? You’re going to need more vampire blood. If you’re weak? More blood. And me? I’d been sick, weak and injured for months and held together by Cas’ blood like glue. There was just too much the blood needed to transform and fix.

Neige, he said– it’s like how viruses work. It’s main concern, the blood, is that it gets to make more of itself. Another hour or two I’d have been a half-made for sure, Neige says. But it wasn’t. He found me in time. There were still no guarantees, of course, but he let me drink from him, sat with me until my heart fully stopped, which is– yeah.

I think the last recording I made was before he came back with the blood, and I– I don’t remember turning that recording off, actually. It doesn’t look like it’s that long though.

Neige must have done it.

I… I’ve upset him, I think. And I should have listen to him but I…

Ugh.

He has this method for hunting, he calls it ‘un petits peuts’, the little bits, where you drink just a little bit of blood from a lot of people, and it’s. I.

I’m sorry, I know I’m all over the place. I’m still not–

I can’t get my head straight.

I am not– I am not.

I’m not good at this.

ALFIE TAKES A DEEP BREATH

The hunger, it’s a pain in my teeth? It’s dull, constant, throbbing. The need for blood, it’s all consuming. It’s desire like I’ve never known, huge, immediate, powerful and alien. It’s almost like being thirteen, fourteen years old, feeling the first heady rush of sexual desire, feeling like it hit me in waves, that at any moment it might drag me under. I’ve never been addicted to drugs so I have no idea how well the comparison would work but it’s a more powerful and profound need than smoking ever was. Nicotine drew me with little twitches on a line, this? This is like being yanked by a chain.

The hungrier I get, the keener the pain of it becomes. I feel it not just in my teeth and my throat but in my whole body. All of me, every part of me just wants to–

To feast.

I…

I think about Cas. About the times he bit me, so restrained. The calm way he was able to lick blood from my chest. I don’t know how he could stand it. I know it’s probably worse for me because I’m new but I– it’s so much. Just being that near to other people whilst they’re bleeding must be agony.

It’s hard enough being close to them when they’re not bleeding.

I– I don’t know what I’d do.

Except I kind of do, because–

ALFIE LAUGHS BITTERLY

I won’t fucking attack them, that’s for sure.

ALFIE SIGHS

Fucking– it’s all– it’s so embarrassing. The whole thing is just so thoroughly humiliating. This– it’s one of those things I wish someone had mentioned to me, that maybe I could have worked out for myself if I thought about it for more than two seconds, but I didn’t.

We don’t have any real understanding of how the process of vampirification goes, obviously, due to obsessions with secrecy. But it makes sense your body would be depleted. And my god is my body depleted. Let me tell you, its not a shock to me that so many vampires die in their first year – I’m shocked I’ve not just curled into a ball and expired like a sad rat already.

Neige calls me ‘ma souris’, his mouse, which feels generous to me. I am that pathetic. He tells me I’m doing okay that it’s not that bad but oh my god. I can tell he’s lying. I am somehow the worst, the most pathetic, I…

He’s been feeding me here. He goes out, he eats, he comes back and he– he lets me–

He has this ring? There’s a blade that flicks out, like a tiny switch blade. He keeps it with the blade towards his palm, most of the time, and he just, he takes it to the crook of his arm, makes the barest nick and he lets me drink.

It’s so–

I. I can’t even…

I can’t even bite him and he’s willing. He sits, he offers out his arm to me, and I can get myself to put my mouth on his skin but I– I can’t bite.

The urge is there, the need, it burns so bright, even though Neige doesn’t exactly smell like something I should eat, it’s like– like how candyfloss smells nice but it’s not exactly appetising, does that make sense? Like your body knows it’s just sugar, and it’ll keep you alive but there’s nothing nutritious about it? Or maybe I’m just full of shit, I don’t know. All I know is I smell him and I know he’s edible, and he sits so quietly and so patiently and let me tell you that has to take a lot of effort because–

ALFIE LAUGHS

Neige, he’s not a very quiet kind of guy. He does not stop talking, usually. He won’t shut up. Going through my old CDs whilst I’m lying on the ground, moaning, twitching, sweating as my body adjusts to the new state I’ve forced it into, and Neige is there on the other side of the room messing with the hi-fi, ‘oh I don’t like the Madonna album’, listening to ‘Like a Prayer’ ten times on loop, talking over the entire thing. ‘I saw her live in Paris you know’, he’s saying, and I’m just lying there, and he knows I can’t fucking speak–

ALFIE SIGHS

He knows I can’t speak because he’s so kind when he sits with me, and he cuts his skin because I can’t make myself bite him. It’s so– I feel so—

ALFIE SIGHS, AGAIN

And he’s so fucking– ugh. He’s so French about everything! But you know what!? He’s not even actually French. He says he’s ‘proto-indo-eurpoean’ whatever the fuck that means. All I know is he’s annoying and he won’t go away and I’m so glad he’s here. I’d be so dead if he wasn’t here. But I might have to kill him, just so that he’ll leave me alone.

Accept I can’t do that because I– I can’t.

I can’t bite him.

And Neige. He– he knows Casper. He talks a lot, Neige does, but he doesn’t really actually say very much, except in these fleeting little moments where it becomes so apparent that he’s–

I don’t–

At some point I got used to the fact Casper was over two hundred years old. It got normal. He’d talk about how amazing it was to have indoor lighting that doesn’t make the house smell, sometimes, and it– it’s wild. But it also just kind of became ordinary.

When I–

When I made that profoundly stupid trip to Ros and Eponine’s right after Casper left, I told them I was going behind his back to try and find out what was happening, and I was obviously lying and it was obvious they knew that. But I don’t think they suspected that Cas was gone.

He’d told me a little about them. About their dynamic, what they did at the house, that kind of thing. I know Ros is approaching five hundred years old, but that number, it feels kind of. I don’t know? It’s reachable. It’s. Like, I know things that happened in the fifteen hundreds, you know what I mean? Queen Elizabeth, right!?

And yeah, Ros is odd, she talks a bit like she’s been displaced in time, but you would, wouldn’t you? I just. But there’s history there, anchoring her in place, I can understand how long ago it was even if I can’t wrap my head around what the experience of actually living for all of that time would have been like. But Neige? I–

Sometimes he’ll talk and it’s like. I– I don’t! Know! There’s this implication that he’s seen so much. There are times when he speaks, and I feel like he’s talking pre-history, you know?

Hell, I can’t even get my head around my own life, let alone whatever that is.

My life.

Do I have a life? That’s. That’s a big question. If I do I’m probably wasting it, aren’t I? So spectacularly shit at all of this, I am. I cannot believe I’m the first man in history to be terrible at being a vampire. I’m so– I’m so bad at this!

I can’t–

And I keep thinking about Casper and what he told me about when he was turned. The violence, the fear of it. He says it comes back to him in a sequence of static moments, disconnected, and maybe it’s sick of me to say this but I hope that’s how all this feels to me down the line because–

Yeah. I don’t want to remember the details.

Something about the fleeting moments of it does make sense to me already. I feel like I’ve hardly had time to think, to notice anything, since I turned. I’ve felt hunger and desperation and exhaustion but honestly? When I’m not eating all I’ve been able to do is sleep. I’m like a newborn baby. I must’ve slept twenty out of the last twenty two hours, and I’m still exhausted.

And I can’t be exhausted. I can’t keep being like this. Because Casper is out there, somewhere, and I called me and he told me to run. He was scared, and I have to help him, and I can’t because I’m too fucking tired and incompetent!

Ugh.

UGH.

I hate this, and I hate that Neige was right and I wasn’t ready.

I said I needed him to show me how to hunt and he just– he smiled. He has this way of smiling. It’s dazzling. He’s always got a little half-smile on his face, whenever I glance over at him, but there’s a specific smile he has when he’s being. I don’t know. Kind.

ALFIE SAYS ‘KIND’ LIKE IT’S A CURSE WORD

Ugh. It’s. It doesn’t sit right with me. There’s this little smug expression he usually has on his face is fine, that looks right, to me. He’ll be reading something or picking through the cupboards, and I’ll look over at him and there it is, the smug half-smile. I’ve never met anyone more self-possessed than he is.

He just- he. He’s like that. He’s small, but he fills the room with an energy. It’s. Kind of overbearing, to be honest, when I just feel like. I don’t know. Like a dead rat in a gutter or a wad of hair from the plug hole or. Yeah.

Tonight I woke up face down on the carpet drenched in my own sweat. I felt cold, hot, wet, disgusting. I looked up and there he was, sitting on the kitchen counter, reading the back of a packet of pasta there’s no point in me trying to eat. He didn’t even glance at me, it was like he could feel that I was looking at him, and he said ‘I don’t know how they can justify calling it ‘Italian pasta’ when it doesn’t have any eggs’.

What the fucking hell am I supposed to say in response to that, honestly?

This fucking guy.

So I just said I needed him to show me how to hunt. And he smiled the smile. The kind one. And I felt like. I don’t know, it’s anger but it’s. It’s just like. He was so nice about it. Ugh.

And then he asked if maybe I thought I was skipping a few steps.

I knew what he meant, I know what he meant, that he was talking about the fact I can’t bring myself to close my jaw tight enough to break his skin, even though it would be so, so easy. Even though I’m so hungry I feel like I might implode. I can’t bite him, sitting patient and willing. So how did I think I was ready to hunt?

Okay, no, in fairness to me, actually, there is some logic here. Botched logic, but logic all the same. It would be easier to bite a human person because that’s what vampires do, isn’t it? I’m designed to do that now, right? And Neige is a vampire, and he’s been feeding me willingly, and if I’m in a different context where I have to bite, I’ll bite, right?

Right?

See what I mean that the logic is botched but you can at least get where I’m coming from here, can’t you.

Neige smiled wider, softer. He hopped down off the counter. He’s small, but there’s a steadiness to him.

When I lean against him to drink from the crook of his arm, he’s firm under my hands, like a coiled spring. He has a halo of pale hair that frames his face.

Neige took my face in my hands and said okay.

He told me if I thought it was time, then it was time.

I didn’t know how to respond, but when he told me to go shower, I numbly found myself obeying him. The hot water felt almost good. I don’t know how long it’s been since I washed before then. I just. All I’ve done is sleep and shake and writhe for days. It didn’t even occur to me that I should.

I stood in front of the fogged bathroom mirror and cleared a stripe with the side of my hand so I could look at myself. I looked thin, sickly, blue-lipped, dark shadows around my eyes, bruises around my joints.

Casper’s scars were still there on my skin, glossy, almost pearlescent. I looked like myself, but worse. Like a corpse.

But I wasn’t rotting. I wasn’t one of those things. My eyes weren’t that cloudy, foggy blur that comes on so quickly after death.

They were a swirling, vibrant red. I was myself. Whole, or as whole as could be expected in the circumstances.

In the living room, Niege was pulling on a pair of my jeans. They were a little long for him. He’d put on the ‘I heart vampires’ t-shirt I’d bought in Whitby.

He handed me a shirt and a pair of trousers. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that he’d definitely laundered my clothes. He told me to get dressed and sat himself down on the couch to roll up the hems of the jeans. When I didn’t leave he looked up at me with confusion, and then said ‘sorry, I should probably have asked first, but I left my clothes in Paris and Casper is much too tall for me to steal any of his’.

‘Right,’ I said.

I still don’t know much about him. In fairness I’ve barely been awake to ask. I know he is a friend of Casper. I know he came here in a rush. He said, I think, that he was going to help me find Casper, but we couldn’t try yet. He had to help me first. I don’t know if that really happened, though. He’d just come back, I’d just eaten, sleep was pulling me like a rock toward the seabed. He could have said anything, or nothing at all. Maybe I was dreaming.

Maybe those things he says that make him sound ancient, thousands of years old. Maybe they’re a dream too.

ALFIE SIGHS

But. No. No, tonight wasn’t– it wasn’t a dream.

We went out.

There was– it was so much, out there. The smell of everything. The streetlamps along stung my eyes. I couldn’t imagine how it would have felt to try to be out in the daylight. I could hear people’s heartbeats as they talked; some people’s fell in sync as they walked and stood together. I could smell people’s blood, all different notes and flavours. I could feel the thread count of my t-shirt and the lights were so, so bright.

Neige took my hand. His fingers were cool, his pulse absent. I could hear the whoosh of air in and out of his lungs. ‘Hold your breath, mon petit,’ he told me.

And I did.

It had even occurred to me before, but I didn’t need to breathe at all. It didn’t help with the sound of course, or the lights, but it was at least one less thing. And the cool of Neige’s palm against mine was something to focus my attention on.

He led us upstairs into a club. It was absolutely packed out. Even not breathing I could smell the people and the booze. Neige turned to me and smiled, small and easy, and led me through the crowd. The light was red and blue, it hurt my eyes a little less. I could see everything so clearly.

Neige pulled me across the room to the mirrored wall. He leaned close to my ear and said, ‘listen.’

I closed my eyes and did as he said. I could hear the rhythm of the song, and everyone’s heart, it was almost in time, with each other’s and the music. I opened my eyes to find Neige’s close and twinkling.

‘Magic, isn’t it?’ he said. He let go of my hand. ‘Don’t you just love people? From a distance, of course.’

He stepped away from me, onto the dance floor. I almost lost him in the press of bodies. I felt frightened, I felt wrong, I felt like I was going insane.

In a brief part between the gyrating dancers, I saw Neige between a man and a woman. She had her hands on Neige’s hips. The man leaned over Neige’s shoulder, kissing him. Neige’s hands wound around each of them. When the kiss broke, Neige looked at me, right at at me, and he grinned.

He kissed the woman next, rolling her lip between his teeth. He leaned next to her ear, whispered something I couldn’t make out over the music and the thudding pulses, and then he bent over her, his mouth on her neck, and I heard it, the rapid, frantic hammering of a vampire heart kickstarting to life after the taste of blood.

I gasped, the rush of air into my lungs bringing with it all the violent smells of sweat and booze and blood, and her blood was right there, so close. She was bleeding, he was drinking and–

He pulled back, his tongue lathing over the bite again and again until it stopped bleeding.

The woman continued to dance, kissing Neige again as he turned to the man, whispered to him, too, only this time I heard it. ‘Can I bite you?’ he asked, his voice low, like a soft growl. The man nodded and even leaned down a little so Neige, slight as he was, could reach the side of his neck.

As his skin was pierced, the man gasped exquisitely, knees bowing, body arching backwards, Neige so careful as he held him for a second, two, three, then released. The man gasped frantically and kissed Neige before he had chance to lick the wound.

The blood welled on the bite. So warm I could almost feel it on my tongue.

Neige said my name, touched my arm, because without realising I’d walked right there.

Neige’s heart still had not stilled in his chest. I was still staring at the man’s neck, one trickle of blood running down to soak into the damp white cotton of his shirt. The smell of it mixed with the salt of his sweat. I was breathing fast and shallow.

‘You’ll let my friend bite you too,’ said Neige, and there was something in the words, something shimmery and bright. The man nodded mutely, tilted his head. The movement made the blood well to the surface, made the bite Neige had made in him shine. A fat glut of blood spilled out, running across his skin, this time towards the back of his neck because of how he was holding himself, so open, just waiting for me to bite.

I didn’t even have to bite, Neige had broken the skin for me, I just had to suck and I–

I thought about the nuzzling half-made things, about Casper almost drinking me dry on the passenger, and the empty, hollow pit inside of me. I was so desperate to bite him, to drink and drink and drink, I imagined him going limp in my arms, I imagined the final desperate squeeze of his now thumping heart, I imagined turning to the woman and tearing through the bite Neige had healed on her neck and draining her too and– and–

I raised my forearm to my face and bit that instead.

Neige slammed into me.

‘What are you doing!?’ he said.

I couldn’t let go of my arm. I didn’t trust myself.

‘You can’t live like this!’ he told me. ‘You’re a vampire, you have to hunt! They like it! You saw! You just have to ask, they’ll let you, if you’re gentle.’ I think he started swearing in French. He grabbed me by the hair at the base of my skull and yanked me into the bathrooms.

He shoved us into a stall and pulled my arm out of my mouth.

My blood moved sluggishly around the ragged wound.

Neige pulled a handkerchief out of the pocket of his jeans and tied it firmly around my forearm, all whilst talking in low, rapid, furious french. Furiously, he said to me, ‘you are ridiculous.’

I think that’s when I started crying but it might’ve been before that. Still keeping his grip tight on my bitten arm, Neige wadded a bunch of toilet roll at my cheeks. ‘Silly little thing,’ he grumbled. ‘I’m sorry I yelled.’

He peeled back the handkerchief. The bite on my arm looked half-healed.

‘How’s your throat?’ Neige asked.

‘On fire,’ I told him.

He nodded grimly and flipped the lid down on the toilet seat with his foot. ‘Sit,’ he told me. I did. ‘This won’t last you long, but it’ll get you home and keep you from going wild before I can get back to you.’

‘You want me to go on my own?’

Neige snorted. ‘It’s not like you’re going to bite anyone, is it?’ he rolled his eyes.

I stared at the ground.

Neige cut open the pad of his index finger and held it to my lips. I drank his cool, wintery blood. It was nothing on the fine wine of what human blood had smelled like, but apparently, apparently I’m incapable of tasting that. I can’t even– it was right–

And I couldn’t.

So now Neige is out, I don’t know, dancing with people and drinking their blood and maybe fucking them and god knows what else, and then he’ll come back here and feed me like what, like a fucking– like a little baby bird in a nest, how mortifying.

ALFIE SNIFFS

And I’m crying again. Damn it, damn it. I should– I should go.

Yeah.

[END]