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

– references to sex

– descriptions of accidental injuries to hand

– descriptions of blood and drinking blood

– detailed discussion of bodily fluids, mostly focused on blood and spit, but with mentions of ejaculate and one mention urine

– discussion of teeth

– sounds of a character pulling out a tooth without pain relief or proper tools, including expressions of physical pain

– mentions of loss and descriptions of complex grieving

Transcript

ALFIE

Neige is out. He’s gone into York, looking for some information about Cas. This is the first time since he took me to the basement of the old house that I’ve had a moment alone. Now we go out to hunt together, they’re harder to get. He doesn’t hang over me or anything, it’s just I know if he’s anywhere in the house, he’ll hear me, you know? And it makes it harder to talk, which makes it harder to think, and.

Ugh. There’s some things I’ve been keeping from him?

I’ve been recording pretty much constantly since our weekend trip. The house he took me to was somewhere down south. We drove all night, stopped and slept under blankets in an olde shed in the back of the car through the day, and drove the rest of the way the night after. About an hour in, I convinced him to let us stop at a service station. There was a little WH Smiths, and they had a bunch of these really cheap phones behind the till for a tenner each. I still had my debit card in my jeans from before Neige took me out of my flat, so bought loads of them. Like, literally about fifteen. Weirdest charge ever gonna show up on my banking history. I wonder how that’ll make my family feel. They probably think I’m just. Dead. At this point. If Haley’s done what she promised she’d do, which she better have bloody done.

ALFIE TAKES A DEEP BREATH

I know the ethics of recording Neige pretty much constantly aren’t like. Great. But he’ll just come out with stuff, you know, and I wanted to keep a record of what he was saying about Cas, and I only had my laptop which you can just hear is running. Now I have these cheap phones, though, I just let them record all the time. Each one does about fifty hours. It’s pretty impressive.

They all have prepaid SIMs in them. I could just. I could phone someone. I could do that, if I wanted. I don’t think it’d do anyone any good for me to do that. Yeah. It’s best to let them think I’m gone. It’s best for them if I can stay away, so they can let me go now. I think that’s the least painful thing to do, for everyone.

Trying to make Neige understand all of… that. It’s difficult. It’s not his fault, he just doesn’t really remember what it’s like to have a family. I think more than anything else he’s been very lonely. I get the impression sometimes that he thinks of relationships as things which are inherently short lived, like when we talk and connect, it’s not about now, he’s always thinking about what the experience will be like to look back on rather than the way it is to actually live through it.

I suppose when you’ve lived so long, so much of you is hindsight that it would make sense to think of everything in terms of how it’ll leave you feeling afterwards. I don’t know. To me it just. Yeah. I feel like sometimes you do things in spite of the consequences. Even if it doesn’t make sense or you can’t imagine looking back on that at feeling very much of anything you still do it, you know? Just because that’s what being alive is.

And Neige is so very insistent that we’re alive. That’s what is at the core of what happened between him and Cas, though he won’t actually speak about anything specific, if there was a specific moment that caused things to finally break down. But it’s such a fundamental gap between how they each think about themselves and how they interact with the world and existing, you know? I can see why any friendship or romance would struggled to navigate a philosophical rift like that.

However much you know him and know he loves you, how do you look a man in the eye and try to connect with him when you know he believes you’re both dead things piloted by a strange bacteria? How the fuck do you navigate that?

How will I?

What am I going to do when I see Cas again and I know, when I look at him, that he didn’t want me to be this? That he wanted me human? That the fear I had before I turned, that becoming the same as him, by being a vampire, I was going to kill what it was between us that made it feel so electric. It’s almost definitely true, I think, knowing what I know now about Cas and what he thinks about vampires. What he thought about me.

I’m special, he said. Why? What made me so exceptional? Neige made some suggestions but none of it really rang true, you know? So what is it?

ALFIE SIGHS

Maybe he just thought I had a really, really nice arse. Who fucking knows.

I just feel like, in a way, like I’ve been had.

All those times I’d joke about him making me a vampire and he’d smile and his eyes would crinkle a little and then he’d get this sad look, moments later, looking away. I always thought it was because of the risk, you know? Because there is such a high chance that someone you try to turn is not going to make it.

And the thing is, I would never have chosen this. Not really.

When I was facing the decision down the barrel, yeah, there was this sense it was inevitable, that it was always leading to there, that it was always going to come to that but. When I think about it now, when I think about who I was and what I wanted… I didn’t want that, you know? When I talked about it with Cas, it was because it felt like logistically— logistically at some stage he was going to have to turn me, or he was going to have to leave. And I couldn’t bear the thought of the latter so it was always the former I wound up thinking about.

I don’t remember when it was, the first time when we actually talked about it plainly, you know? The first time we sat down and properly spoke, in no uncertain terms, about the possibility of Casper turning me. I know we did. I know he didn’t want to. I know it had half come up before that, these little allusions, jokes, you know? But there was this time where, god. Was it when I cut my hand when I was making soup?

You know, I think that might’ve been it. Tammy picked up some rotten flu and within a week my mum and Grace had come down with it to, so I said I’d make them some spiced soup and bring it round in the car.

It was pretty far into the relationship, my mum had seen Cas before, had had this funny little interaction with him, you know?

Anyway, I was slicing up these carrots for the soup and I cut my thumb really, really badly, there was blood everywhere, I– I don’t know what it was, it just was properly profuse. I wrapped it up in a tea-towel and sat on the floor because I could feel myself getting a bit woozy – Casper and I had spent most of the afternoon in bed so I was low on blood to start with. I looked up and he was standing next to the kitchen cabinets, utterly still, utterly silent.

He crouched in front of me, slowly unfolded the cloth from my hand. The slice down the side of my thumb lit up scarlet right away. Casper raised my hand to his mouth, his cool lips closing around my thumb, and he sucked, hard. I felt the cool touch of his tongue across the split skin, a brightness almost like pain, almost like stinging, but not quite.

When Casper opened his mouth, my thumb was healed, a pinkish line the only evidence there had been a cut there at all.

‘What’s the mechanism there,’ I said, running my thumb over Casper’s lips. ‘Your saliva can close wounds.’

‘Whatever keeps me moving, it is in there, too.’

‘It’s in your blood and in your spit,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Casper.

‘I wonder if—’

Casper rolled his eyes. ‘Probably that too.’

I giggled. Casper came to sit next to me on the floor, our backs against the cabinets. I let my head fall onto his shoulder and twisted our hands together. Casper played with the edges of my fingernails, his touch cool, light and quick.

‘Does it heal vampires too?’

‘What do you mean?’

I shrugged. ‘Say, if you were hurt and another vampire licked your wound, would it heal them?’

Casper sighed. ‘Yes, it would work.’

I sat up, looked at him. ‘Why does that make you sad?’

Casper shook his head and said ‘it doesn’t.’

‘You sighed, though,’ I said.

Casper ran his free hand over his face. ‘I just wonder about why you’re asking.’

‘Oh.’

Casper sighed again. ‘You know— if I turned you. If I tried to. It might change things,’ he said.

I’d thought at the time that he meant it would change the way that I saw him. So often he worried I thought he was a monster, and what he never seemed to understand was that of course I saw him as a monster; he was one! But that wasn’t bad.

Ah. Maybe Neige is rubbing off on me.

Not–

Ugh.

Yeah.

I wish he’d explain more explicitly, you know, what it was that happened with him and Cas. ‘I left because we loved each other,’ what does that even…? If you love someone, how do you…?

ALFIE SIGHS

No. I do understand how that happens, that’s lie. I know exactly how it must have felt. What I don’t know is why. What happened? Or maybe it was purely ideological. But Neige talks about buying Cas a house, visiting him, going both ways. He’s said he’s the one who cleans up Cas’ messes and honestly that compels me. He gives off this impression, Casper does, of being this lone wolf, it’s him against the world. Casper Novotny, vampire avenger and all of that, right? There’s an impression there of compentence.

And Neige… I know he can be difficult, and he’s critical, and he has a running commentary at all times because god forbid he has an unexpressed thought. But his criticisms are usually pretty on the money, even if it’s not necessarily the most tactful or helpful approach. He notices things, he calls people out on them. Granted, I’ve only seen how this applies to the way he is with me, but I can’t imagine him being any, like, less, if that makes sense? He’s himself, he’s always himself, you know? He’s so himself. And he’s.

Neige.

The fact we fucked really isn’t relevant. Unless in the context of what Cas and I were talking about, you know, uh, fluid exchange. But Neige and I have swapped out so much blood already, it’d hardly make a difference.

Only.

Ugh.

Right, I hate to say it but like, there’s a difference, I think, in the functionality of the spit and the blood. Casper rarely called it his blood, only the blood, and I think that’s got something to do with how he’s conceptualising the way that vampirism works. There is something in the blood that’s not Casper, is what he thinks. It’s not Casper, or Claudio, or Antoinette, or Neige. It’s this thing, the source, an infection, a bacteria, something. And it can pilot us around. It preserves us, better than formaldehyde. Keeps us soft, supple, functional, coopts our bodies to reproduce, and converts human blood into more of the vampire blood in our hijacked vasculature.

This lines up with what I understand of it, too. Vampire hearts beat only when they feed and for a few minutes afterwards, circulation picking up, redistributing this resource through the body to get converted. The blood might be what helps vampires heal so well and so fast; they need to feed after they’ve been injured, and if they don’t and their injuries are bad enough, they won’t be able to heal fully or at all, as I understand it. When given to a human, the blood can heal them, too, albeit in a less permanent capacity.

The spit, however.

ALFIE TAKES A DEEP BREATH

Look, I’m sorry, but yeah, so the spit. It seems like there is some kind of transfer happening with it, like some of the genetic material crosses over from vampire to human in the spit, which is why Casper was worried I was going to be found by other vampires if he bit me too much, and also was how Antoinette was making decisions about which vampires she would try to create. All that is to say, you can smell a vampire on a human if they’ve bitten them, even if that human has never tasted the blood.

The spit can also heal superficial wounds in both humans and vampires. And in vampires, it can even close the wound of another vampire’s bite if applied liberally enough, an injury which in all other cases would leave a scar. Which is odd, isn’t it, because like. My assumption would be that it’s something in the spit which makes it so the bites are able to scar, but that is contradicted by the spit being able to close these wounds.

Fascinating, isn’t it.

Hmm.

TAP TAP TAP

Maybe it’s these things in my face.

They’re not normal fucking teeth I can tell you that.

I’m still not ready to– I can’t properly talk about the feeling of the change itself. The remaking of me. It’s too much. I keep– no. I can’t, not yet. But something I remember really distinctly is this awful pain in my jaw, this deep, throbbing ache. I woke up at one point and spat out all this horrible foam and there was this… chunk of stuff in it. I didn’t have the energy to move, but when I woke again later, the chunk was on the floor a few inches from my face. And I– I know it’s mad but I think it was my filling, and the foam was my teeth, and… ugh.

I wonder…

MOVEMENT

Huh. No. No fillings. No cavities. No stains, no chips. My teeth are perfect.

Well. No, not quite perfect, they’re still kind of wonky, but. Hmm.

It’s like there’s a kind of… it’s a translucent casing over them?

When I bite, now… it’s different when I bite. It feels different. These teeth are different. They’re thinner, sharper. My canines are just a little bit longer, not enough that you’d notice right away, but it’s there and you can tell if you’re paying attention

Fascinating.

I wonder… where’s the tool box?

Aha!

RUMMAGING THROUGH METAL, PLASTIC AND WOODEN OBJECTS

Yes, perfect.

ALFIE MOANS SOFTLY

Ugh! Fuck, fuck, fuck.

A WET SQUELCH

Oh god, I’m bleeding, ugh.

SPITTING

Mmmmmggghhhh.

ALFIE BREATHES HEAVILY

Fuck me, that hurt, right. Let’s have a… bleh. Let’s have a look.

It’s– the tooth, it’s kind of broken a bit, where I’ve pulled it out.

Oh, Jesus Christ. AH.

It’s not hollow, but it’s like. The structure looks almost like bone marrow? That foamy, honey comb texture. They don’t teach us much about teeth at nursing school, but. Hmm. I’m pretty sure teeth don’t look like this.

Fuck I really wish we had fucking internet access out here, Christ.Oh, oh my god, I can feel a new one growing, oh my god.

Hmmmmmhhmmmhmhmhmhmmmnnn.

This was a mistake. A mistake. My god that hurts, Jesus.

And I’m hungry.

Oh. Man, I am– I am so hungry. I feel a bit. Yeah my hand is actually shaking a little. It’s not dissimilar to that feeling of when you’ve not had enough to eat, where you need a bit of sugar, you know, except I can also feel, at the edges of my psyche, this kind of— hmm, heat. Emotional heat. I’m– I feel fucking dangerous.

This was a mistake. Ow.

ALFIE INHALES SHARPLY

When those people took Neige. They knocked his teeth out. Ahhh. I can’t remember which of them told me this now, but I’m pretty sure one of them said that if a vampire’s teeth are damaged their whole body with prioritise regrowing them.

What an incredible survival mechanism. You need the teeth in order to feed, so the rest of the body can repair. Incredible.

If the blood, the stuff in it, the thing that thinks in there, if it’s adapted so sophisticatedly that it can achieve something like that, it’s not unreasonable to assume that there’s something about the exterior of these teeth that means wounds won’t seal. Like, if you were fighting another vampire, it would be helpful if you could tear their flesh in a way that would make the wounds more difficult for their bodies to heal, right? Which has to be the mechanism behind why vampire bites scar vampires but nothing else does, doesn’t it? Or at least, it’s a good hypothesis for why that happens.

And it also gets us out of the problem with the spit. There’s such a small amount of it on the teeth when they go into the flesh, it’s easy to counteract, but if you lick the wound enough, you can get it to seal up faster and scar less.

And all of this does raise the question of the jizz, unfortunately, because it happens, it’s there. Your digestive tract, that can be woken up if you eat enough human food, and I’ve not actually tried this yet so I don’t know but according to Neige it hurts like fuck and does not satiate the hunger. The closest I got to that was when I drank that alcohol and the next day I did, in fact, pee, but it was not a pleasant experience and it was really weird to realise it was the first time I’d done that in months because until it happened, I hadn’t thought about it literally at all.

Which all is to say: maybe the jizz is just jizz, like that. Maybe vampires can procreate that way? Who fucking knows? I’ve not been having the kind of sex where you find something like that out.

Do vampires with uteruses have periods? Man. I need to speak to more women. I’m having a very man-centric vampire experience. Not that I mind. They’ve been very pretty men, after all.

Neige is just objectively pretty, shut up. He just is.

God, my face hurts. He is going to yell at me for pulling out my tooth.

It was a dumb thing to do, to be fair.

I hope he’s fed. I hope he’ll let me bite him. I don’t want to go out tonight.

God what do I fucking sound like? A monster.

ALFIE GROANS AND RUNS HIS HANDS OVER HIS FACE

I wonder, though.

About Casper’s hypothesis. What Neige described about the cure, an intensive treatment with chemotherapy which will completely rid the body of all traces of vampirism, which–

Huh.

Hang on.

How would Neige know it removed all traces of vampirism? Casper was working on his experiments before virology was a thing, Neige himself said that microscopes were not yet powerful enough for Casper to have meaningfully studied the blood.

But Neige knows about the cure.

What I was going to say is that it’s not really a cure, is it, if you always die when it’s administered. Neige also didn’t describe the mechanism of the death, when it occurs. What happens. Why do people die when vampirism, whatever it is, is eradicated from their systems?

Is it like what Neige says? You and it are not separate? When you’re made there’s a kind of symbiosis, one cannot exist without the other, and you become so irrevocably changed by becoming a vampire that those changes cannot be undone.

Is it what Cas thought, and we don’t die when the virus is eradicated because we died when we were turned, and after that we’re just being puppeted by an organism that uses our preserved corpses to reproduce? In which case the treatment doesn’t kill us; being turned does.

But if it’s the first, and not the second… Maybe, possibly, theoretically it is possible to mitigate that problem.

Neige hasn’t told me much more about the cure beyond the fact that it exists. Why didn’t I think to question how he knows about that and can explain the mechanism of the cure itself so practically? Why did he specifically buy Casper a house with a basement large enough to house a laboratory, supply him with half-mades and dying human beings?

Why won’t he tell me why he and Cas parted ways?

ALFIE TAKES A LONG DEEP BREATH

One thing I know for sure is that Casper knew Bonham, and I think Neige was right and he went to him willingly. Somehow, this has got something to do with me. And it seems to go beyond the fact he thought I was a nice piece of ass.

Neige knows more than he’s letting on. About this, about Casper, and maybe about Bonham too. And he definitely knows more about the cure than he’s telling me.

He will probably be back in a couple of hours.

Right. I’ll check in like this again next chance I get. It’s good to organise my thoughts like this, I think. It’s good for my brain to do things unperceived. Neige hates digital monitoring but I swear to god he’s got more data on my habits than fucking google at this point.

Right.

[END]