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

– depiction and descriptions of injections – vein access, cannulas, blood draws, infusions

– descriptions of violence and torture (sounds of hitting, gushing blood, squeals of cries)

– depictions of drinking blood – descriptions of violent medical abuse and torture, including vivisection (of vampires)

– sounds of a character in emotional distress

– descriptions of violent murder and killing

– mentions of sex

– sounds of medical equipment

Transcript

So… it’s been a while. Should probably check in. If we’re doing this properly, it feels important that I’m keeping a record.

It’s just, um.

Neige and I have been pretty busy and honestly I’ve not really felt like doing this. I don’t know. I started making these recordings as a way to leave something behind when I die. Then I was documenting an experience that I was certain had never been recorded before. Now I’m arguably dead and I’m pretty certain the change has been documented, so I guess I wasn’t sure what the point of this was, you know?

Honestly, it’s been hard to find the point in anything. You know. Since Casper.

But then last week with Tim and everything….

Regardless, I’ve come to the conclusion that there really should be a record of what we’re doing, here. If we’re doing this properly it’s important we leave some kind of paper trail, because that’s important. It’s not science if you’re not recording your work and measuring it. It’s not science unless someone can look at your process and have a decent shot of replicating it. It’s not even bad science, it’s just. Mess. Even Bonham and his cronies knew that. So, yeah. There’s going to be a record of what I’m doing. Mostly written, but. Yeah, talking aloud, it helps me think a little.

In a weird way I’m right back to where I was when I started, too. Thinking about my obituary. Leaving something behind so that someone, somewhere knows the real circumstances that led to my death. Casper… Yeah.

But if Neige is right we’re risking our necks every single day, trying this. My neck feels very at risk to be honest. Not that I care, particularly. I’m past caring about my own neck. It’s the rest of them that matter now. Absurd as it sounds. I don’t know. We can’t live like this, hiding. It’s too easy to kill us off, in the worst ways imaginable. Sustained by human blood or not we’re thinking feeling beings with needs, with lives, with hopes. These things, they– they matter. They matter on a scale bigger than me, or Neige. Or even Cas.

If I’m to agree with Neige, and think we’re alive, then I have to also reckon with the fact that we can’t live like this. Not any more. And that’s a scary thought because. Well. Change, isn’t it? Big change. Gigantic, reality bending levels of societal adjustments are required. Imagine it. Vampires, until now, we’ve been an idea, a horror story at the edge of folklore. Imagine having to tell the world we’re real. We exist.

Neige tells me it hasn’t always been like this. He says that in the early days of civilisation as we know it, and before, people knew about vampires. We grew up alongside each other as species, not symbiotic, but as predator and prey. When human populations boomed, vampires would boom too, and the number of humans would fall again. Except at some point, and Neige can’t place when, the way that humans lived changed in such a way that we become less of a pressing threat. Sure, there were stories, still. But it changed.

The vampires changed too. They weren’t sewer dwelling monsters anymore. They learned to adapt and survive, like urban foxes, they adjusted their hunting patterns and changed to suit their new environments. Like spectres they haunted drinking halls and bathhouses, picking off those who came alone. They snuck in through windows in the night, or stole kisses from people too senseless to notice the violent red swirling into their eyes.

Huh.

I need to make a note of that.

PEN CLICKS

Our eyes turn red before we feed. How does that work? No pulse, but it seems like blood. I wonder…?

Ugh. I’m sure there’s something about that over there in the mountain of notes. So much time I’ve spent just trying to motivate myself into sorting them out. I’m half convinced the filing is intentionally awful to discourage people from going through it.

Well, it’s working, I’ll give them that. Ugh.

I’m regretting not pulling the hard drives out of those computers, but— god, what am I saying? I wouldn’t even know which bit of the inside of those relics was the hard drive, let alone what to do with it once I’d ripped it out. Would it still even work? I haven’t got a fucking clue, frankly.

You know who would know? Grace. She’d know. I bet she’d be able to get me information I could sort through with control ‘F’ instead of just. Literally. Looking. At every piece of paper ever printed in the entire history of the world.

ALFIE SIGHS

Can you imagine though. ‘Hi Grace, I know I’ve been missing-presumed-dead for almost an entire year, but can you please help me access the information about secret vampire torture which I’m sure is stored on these hard drives? Oh, by the way, how is uni going.’

It’s not happening, is it?

Oh, god. Tammy. She– she’ll look totally different. Nearly a teenager. I. She’s. Close to the age Grace was when Dad…

Haley better have given them my fucking letter, I swear. I hope they’re not still looking for me. Jesus. Almost a year, can you imagine? Awful shit. No need for them to not have that finality, that ending which will make it easier to close the book and move on with their lives, because without it, what could they do except keep looking for me, you know? She better have… she better.

In three weeks, it’ll be my birthday. Of course, I don’t age anymore, so there’s no point in celebrating. Nothing worth celebrating has happened since my last birthday, anyway.

Is that true? Do I think that? I don’t know what I think, honestly.

What about you, Cas? What do you think?

SILENCE

Yeah. Same as ever, then. It’s really for you, all this, you know? All of it. No that it matters.

Funny. I’d been so worried about you seeing me as a corpse that I never wondered how I’d feel if we found you as one. Little lamb. I’m sorry we didn’t get to you in time.

Why aren’t you rotting, hmm? What’s going on with you?

PAPERS RUSTLE

There’s just nothing in here about it, you know. I’ve looked and looked. It seems like they all just… they start to decay. But not you.

ALFIE SIGHS

PLASTIC PACKAGING RUSTLES

Let’s try this again, darling, okay?

PLASTIC AND GLASS CLINKING

Right, mm. It’s quite hard to find your veins. Mine are pretty difficult too, unless I’m literally eating when a do it. Our pressure’s pretty low. Should have thought ahead and picked up a blood pressure cuff from that fucking lab before we burnt it down but, you know. Wasn’t really thinking ahead, was I. Other things on my mind. Oh well.

I’ll get one off amazon, pick it up next time I go into Leeds. How’s that? Oh, there, oh yeah, there it is. Your blood.

Okay, so first sharp scratch is coming. Ah, great job.

There we go. Good job, baby.

I’ll just.

Ugh. It tastes– wrong. Wrong. Okay, don’t worry.

We’ll do…

RUSTLING

100mls of Mr Sherman, in 50ml doses. Okay? Right. Sorry about the stethoscope. I know its cold. I’d be able to hear your heart without it but. Just in case, right?

Gonna inject this slow, I don’t know if that would hurt worse or less, sorry. I should have checked. Though my experience might not be applicable to yours. If you’re. You know. Having an experience.

Sorry, I’m waffling. I just. What if you can hear me, you know? I would hate to… yeah. Never mind.

Dose one is done, I’ll just disconnect you. Well done, sweetie. Before we do the next one we’ll just listen a moment.

SILENCE

No. Nothing. But that’s okay, baby, you’ve not done anything wrong. You’re doing a wonderful job, okay? Time for dose two; this time I’ll go fast, yeah? Starting and– done! Oh, I felt a bit of resistance when that… yeah.

PAUSE

And, no sounds in your chest. That’s okay. Don’t worry. It’s okay. You did a good job, Casper, baby. Good job.

PAUSE

ALFIE
I am talking to you directly, I’m trying to make this easier for us and you just lie there and ignore me?

ALFIE LAUGHS TEARFULLY

ALFIE
Fuck!

PLASTIC CLATTERS

SOMETHING BANGS

ALFIE
Fucking fucking fuck! Why won’t you just wake up you useless piece of shit.

(pause)

Fuck you, Casper.

METAL RATTLES AND A CRASH. A HEAVY THUD.

ALFIE
Fuck. Oh fuck. Cas. Cassie. Hey, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry sweetheart.

DOOR OPENS

NEIGE
Mon râleur

ALFIE
Sorry, I’m sorry. Sweetheart.

NEIGE
Oh, mon petit, let me help you.

METAL GROANS

SOUNDS OF EFFORT

FABRIC SWOOSH

NEIGE
There you go, darling. He’s okay.

ALFIE
I shouldn’t– I shouldn’t.

NEIGE
Little one, do you think perhaps you have been spending too much time in here?

ALFIE
I was just– I was reading the papers.

NEIGE
Ah, is that why darling Casper has a cannula in his arm, oui?

ALFIE
I just wanted to try—

NEIGE
I know, I know. It is okay. You don’t need to lie about it.

(pause)

What is your expression implying?

ALFIE
I do have to lie.

NEIGE
Why?

ALFIE
Because you keep looking at me like that.

NEIGE
Like what?

ALFIE
Like you pity me.

NEIGE
My apologies. That is because I do pity you.

ALFIE
Jesus, Neige, tell me how you really feel.

NEIGE
I have felt this pain, or similar. I would not wish it on anyone.

ALFIE SIGHS

ALFIE
Will you please. Let me try.

NEIGE
It won’t work.

ALFIE
You don’t know that!

NEIGE
I do. It won’t help him.

ALFIE
Please?

NEIGE
Fine. Fine.

ALFIE
Thank you.

NEIGE
Just make sure everything you draw, you use, oui?

ALFIE
Okay.

PLASTIC TEARS

NEIGE
What are you doing?

ALFIE
This is an alcohol wipe. I’m sterilising you.

NEIGE
Why?

ALFIE
Reduce chances of infection.

NEIGE
How does this work?

ALFIE
Um. The uh, wait– just eat some of this?

NEIGE
Okay?

ALFIE
Just easier to find your veins when they’re— yeah! Great. Great job. Okay, sharp scratch.

NEIGE HISSES

NEIGE
It stings.

ALFIE
Yeah, sorry. Wait, have you– nobody’s drawn your blood before?

NEIGE
No.

ALFIE
Fucking hell, okay.

NEIGE
Many people want to take it. I’ve found it is most wise just to avoid giving it up altogether.

ALFIE
I. Oh.

NEIGE
(amused)
What is this expression, eh?

ALFIE
I just. I mean. I’ve had quite a lot of your blood, haven’t I?

NEIGE
This is how I know you can be trusted with it.

ALFIE
Hmm.

NEIGE
Hey, do not think on it. Come on. Try your little experiment.

ALFIE
Okay. I’ll draw off 200ml. I’ll go slow. It’ll feel weird.

NEIGE
Okay– oh– oh. Interesting; it does feel odd.

ALFIE
Yeah. It’s weird, without proper circulation, it feels really odd. I wasn’t expecting it when I first… yeah. That’s why I’m going so slow; it should hurt you less, this way.

NEIGE
You are an excellent nurse.

ALFIE SCOFFS

ALFIE
Thanks. I think.

NEIGE
Why would I be insincere?

ALFIE
No, I just mean. You’ve never had your blood drawn before, how would you know if I’m any good at it?

NEIGE
I have been cared for. You are kind and considerate. You seek to reassure, minimise pain and discomfort. All excellent qualities in a nurse. And in people in general.

ALFIE
Oh. Well. Thanks.

NEIGE
It is merely a statement of fact.

ALFIE
Hmm. Okay. That’s the full measure.

NEIGE
Now what?

FOOTSTEPS

ALFIE
Infusion.

PLASTIC TEARING, RUSTLING.

ALFIE
So I just push it here, and press.

NEIGE
You’re still going slowly.

ALFIE
Infusions can hurt too.

NEIGE
Ah.

ALFIE
He might feel it.

NEIGE
Okay.

ALFIE
Only I– I don’t know. With out lack of circulation, maybe it’s better to go fast? But I can feel pressure when I do that, so. I want avoid putting stress on his veins, as I’m assuming they aren’t repairing the way they normally would. I should probably…

ALFIE SIGHS

NEIGE
What?

ALFIE
If I’m going to keep doing this I should probably fit him with some kind of more long-lasting vein access, just incase structural integrity is a problem.

NEIGE
Are you going to?

ALFIE
Access a vein?

NEIGE
Keep doing this?

ALFIE
Oh. I. Um. I don’t. Know.

NEIGE
You know my thoughts on this.

ALFIE
Yes.

NEIGE
And you know I will not push you to do what you are not ready to do, but there are lines I will not allow you to cross, oui? Comprend?

ALFIE
Yeah, I. Thank you.

NEIGE
For what?

ALFIE
Just. You know. Checking. Making sure I’m not. Losing my mind with this.

NEIGE
Ah. You’re thinking about what they did to him again. Worrying you are just the same.

ALFIE
Do you think I’m awful?

NEIGE
No. This is born of love and grief. Those scientists felt nothing but contempt and greed.

(pause)

What, why do you shake your head?

ALFIE
Oh, nothing.

NEIGE
Oh, I did not mean to make you cry. I’m sorry.

ALFIE
No, no, do you uh– [SNIFF] do you need some of Tim, to like. Replenish? I can maybe. Uh. We can spare it.

NEIGE
I am fine. Are you?

ALFIE
Yeah, yeah.

NEIGE
You were talking about access points.

ALFIE
Oh, uh. Yeah. So to me, a central line makes most sense. There’s some. Marks. I think they’ve accessed him there, too, but I dunno. It wasn’t on Sherman’s list of their access sites, but to me central vein access makes most sense, you deliver blood as close to the heart as possible, right? But he was talking about diffuse stuff. With haemapheresis. So maybe I’m wrong.

NEIGE
You’re not trying to do the same thing that they were. Why prioritise getting close to the heart?

ALFIE
Uh. I don’t fully understand the processes yet, but when we feed our hearts beat. It seems from what I’ve read from Holden Labs that vampires’ internal structures are just humans’, maybe a little more fibrous? But. Unclear. I do know for sure that the heart is involved in the feeding process because it beats when we eat. It’s instantaneous. Otherwise, though, our blood is just sort of. In us. That’s why it feels odd to draw it out. I’m creating a near vacuum in the vein, manually pulling blood forward to fill the space. It’s odd.

NEIGE
The blood does not clot, either.

ALFIE
Doesn’t need too. In most scenarios, we heal fast enough that it doesn’t matter, and because it’s static all the time, any clotting factor…

NEIGE
What is it?

ALFIE
Nothing, it’s just. I need to read more of the fucking paper work. I’ve just scanned through them looking for mentions of haemapheresis or an explanation of what’s going on with Cas, made an even bigger mess of the order than they were in when we first brought them here, and literally fuck all else. I feel like I’ve skipped all the ground work. I don’t know the mechanism that the vampire virus or whatever takes over cells is. Like. How are we preserved? Does it replace all of our cells the ways it replaces our teeth? What is happening there I– sorry. Sorry.

NEIGE
If you apologise again I will break your jaw.

ALFIE
You won’t.

NEIGE
Don’t call my bluff, you little shit. Stop apologising.

ALFIE
Yeah. Okay.

NEIGE
Why are you torturing yourself with this?

ALFIE
ME tortured? Ah, shit.

ALFIE LAUGHS SADLY

ALFIE
Now look what I’ve– I jolted– Shit, sorry, Cas, sorry.

NEIGE
I am going to go back upstairs.

ALFIE
Yeah?

NEIGE
Will you come too?

ALFIE
Yeah. In a bit, yeah.

NEIGE
Okie.

ALFIE SIGHS

ALFIE
Okay.

FOOTSTEPS

DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES

ALFIE SNIFFLES

ALFIE
Orrgh, okay, yeah. All finished now, my love. Let’s see if. No. Nothing. Nothing. That’s okay. Don’t worry. You’re not doing anything wrong. It’s not your fault. I still love you. You wasted yourself for nothing but I still love you. I’m going to help you, I promise, I promise.

ALFIE CLEARS HIS THROAT AND GETS TO HIS FEET

Right, where was I up to then?

PAPERS ARE LEAFED THROUGH. ALFIE CLEARS HIS THROAT.

Ugh, all this shite, yeah. Okay. Hmm.

BOXES SLIDE ACROSS THE FLOOR.

Okay, oh! Employee records. Helpful.

PAPERS ARE LEAFED THROUGH

Righto, let’s. Huh. ‘Abbreviated transcripts’. I’ve not looked through this envelope yet, I don’t think.

PAPERS ARE LEAFED THROUGH

Oh, fuck. This is. These are– Jesus. The vampires they were holding. This is who they were. Fuck.

CLOTHES RUSTLE. PAPERS TURN.

There’s not one here for you, darling. Not that I can see. I suppose Bonham wouldn’t need one. Oh, wait. Hang on. On the top of this one, someone’s written ‘Snow Blood’. That’s Neige, isn’t it? Yeah. Josephine ‘Josie’ Cartwright, that’s the vampire’s name.

Confirmed information; born Sussex, 1862. Onset of Type 2: 1881. She was nineteen. She must’ve been so scared. She– she doesn’t know who turned her. There’s a footnote here. Group B Mark 26. Some kind of classification. Uh. She killed three people right after, and then she was completely horrified by what she’d done. ‘I remember coming to my senses, but it felt like a dream, all the blood on my hands, on my clothes. I couldn’t believe I’d done it. I felt so detached. I was very scared. It’s stupid really, my first thought was to return to my parents. I’d been missing for days, apparently. My father assumed I’d been attacked, that the blood I was covered in was my own, but when my mother bathed me, she found no wounds.

‘The whole time, I was completely numb to it. My father had been about the call the constables but my mother begged him not to. I wouldn’t speak; couldn’t. Mother put me to bed. I heard them talking outside my room about sending me to a hospital.

‘In the morning, my maid, Penny, came in and opened the curtains. Right away, the burning on my skin made me cry out. I hid under the bed clothes. My mother and Penny forced me out but being in the sun for just a few minutes made me come out in violent blisters. Inside me, too, felt burned, a desperate raging hunger inside me.

‘Mother called the doctor after that. I remember, he pressed the stethoscope to my chest. His eyes went wide. He made me lean forward, listened again at my back. This brought him in close to me. I could hear his heart inside of him, hammering, even as he tried desperately to find any whisper of my own and found none. He pressed me back against my pillows, but I could not move. I was coiled like a spring. He called my name, and the rush of warm breath across my face was too much for me to control. I sprung forward, teeth tearing into his skin, blood slopping in thick gluts from my lips as I drank messily from him.

‘The doctor was so stunned it took a moment for him to fight me or even cry out. As soon as he did, my mother burst in, no doubt worried he’d found some dreadful sign of sickness in me.

‘I will never forget her face. Her eyes were wide as she looked at me, the doctor’s twitching, rasping corpse in the blood stained lap of my nightdress. My mother’s mouth hung slightly open, in a small, round ‘o’. She slowly covered it with her hand.

‘I stood up from the bed and turned my back to her. She asked, very quietly, what I had done, as though the doctor was not lying, gargling on the bottom of my mattress, blood bubbling out of his neck, aerated by the choking breaths he was desperately trying to draw.

‘I looked out of the window. It was dusk. I leaped out into the street, jolting my ankle, and ran.

‘I ran and ran and ran. I gasped for air, but it brought no relief. That hunger, sharp and impossible to ignore, was rising in me again already. The smell of them, of the humans, it was everywhere. It was on the wind, it was in the earth. Every way I turned my head, I found a new trail to follow, a new hunt that called me to it, even as I tried to root myself in place on the earth.

‘In the midst of that senseless confusion, I fumbled my way down the street. It took every ounce of strength I had not to kill everyone who passed me. If I had not killed the doctor, I don’t know how many would have died that night, because looking back I am now certain that once it had begun, I should not have been able to stop myself. So fierce was the hunger, so bound by a thread was my sanity, that it would have perhaps been a pit I’d never have seen myself clawed out of.

‘Eventually I came across an old house which looked uninhabited. The windows were boarded, the door nailed shut. I fought my way inside and curled by the dripping wet hearth and lay as still as I could manage, willing in no small part for my own demise.

‘Death did not come for me that night, though. Nor on many nights that followed. I lay and the hunger in me grew fiercer, and I grew weaker and weaker in my attempts to fight it. My mind became cloudier and cloudier, to such a degree that I don’t even remember how it felt when it snapped, only the moments after the hunger was finally near sated and I stood at the dinner table of a family whose still-warm corpses lay sprawled atop their tipped over chairs.

‘One maid remained, her apron splattered with the blood of her employers. How I must have looked her, in my filthy nightgown, my eyes as red as the blood my hands and chin, viscera falling from my fingernails.

‘I don’t know what came over me, looking at her cowering face. I drew myself straight up and commanded her to draw me a bath, which she did. I soaked in it, washed the blood out of my hair, and afterwards the maid brought my towels. She was crying, sniffling, but her expression was fixed into a careful smile. I stood up from the bloody bath water. It dripped onto the wooden floor. I left pale copper-pink stains on the starched white towels.

‘I dismissed the maid. I wonder what happened to her, for I did not see her again, but she also did not send the police. The murdered family I took down into their cellar. I had an awareness of who they were, sent some notes out to their friends that they’d been called to Italy to visit a sickly relative. Nobody would question it, not for some months.

‘It took some weeks to figure out how I would present myself, how I might conduct my way in society. The daylight stung my eyes and burned my skin, I learned this quickly, so it was easier to hunt at night. Fortunately, London came alive after dark. I would go to operas and the theatre, I would follow men from the doors of brothels and opium dens and steal them down alleyways as they stumbled home to their wives.

‘It was months before I met another vampire. The first one I saw was a woman, Rosalind, I remember, like Romeo’s forgotten lover. She seems to prefer Ros these days. —

Ros? I wonder if that’s like Eponine’s Ros…

Hmm.

‘Ros was working as a madame at the time, had a troupe of some fifteen or so human girls she protected and paid well for their services. They were reliable and discreet; her house had a fabulous reputation for its security and would often attract noble clientele. This was what Ros revelled in; she enjoyed the principal that she had some influence over them, the humans, in the human world. Her maker had taught her that humanity was a lesser thing, that vampires were more evolved, and she had been raised with many siblings. They’d all seemed to have suffered horrible deaths, and Ros was disillusioned, distrustful of other vampires, though she seemed to take a shine to me.

‘I would often call in on Ros at the end of the night. We spent some dawns together in her velvet rooms, hidden away in the dark safety of her curtained chambers. I loved spending time with Ros; she had so much knowledge about things I’d never even thought about when I was human. She knew about law and politics and philosophy. She even talked about art in a different way than I had ever know how to. Paintings and music which had seemed dull to me before took on new life with her insights. I found myself stopping and noticing architecture, and when I went to the opera, I felt myself reflecting on the relationship between the melodies and the words.

‘One such morning, I was full of the blood of cheating men and Ros’ was telling me about the human government’s many intricacies, there was a knock on the door. One of Ros’ girls had answered but they’d come back in fearful and upset. Ros went out into the bar, though the curtains were thinner and it must have stung to stand out there. I sat and watched through a crack in the door.

‘Above the smell of the humans who had come and gone the night before, of the alcohol and tobacco and opium, I could smell an extremely singular smell. There were notes of it which seemed familiar to me, something of him smelled of something that was in Rosalind to, but whatever he was, what ever flowed in his veins, it was different, sharper, brighter.

‘I barely saw him. Just a glimpse, really. A small man with hair like pale gold that hung in knots and waves about his face, as though it had been a long time since he’d had chance to tend to it, though there was a neatness to the cut which suggested he usually did. His posture suggested an ease and nonchalance that his tone of voice did not. He spoke to Ros in rapid French which I barely understood; Ros explained later that the dialect they spoke in was the one Ros had used when she was human, and was now mostly defunct, with only a few words left borrowed here and there.

‘As he left, he spotted me in the gap of the doorway. I hadn’t considered until that moment that if I was able to smell him, with his peculiarly icily scented blood, he would have been able to smell me to, would have known I was there throughout the conversation, just as I had known about his presence, too. His eyes were blue, wide. His expression profoundly neutral.

‘I asked Ros what he had come to ask her about, but she would not explain, and I hardly had chance to press her for more answers, because within a month after the Winter One’s visit, Ros was gone, without a word of explanation.’

METAL CLATTERS

ALFIE’S BREATH CATCHES IN HIS THROAT

ALFIE
Casper?

SILENCE

ALFIE
Cas?

ALFIE SIGHS

ALFIE
God. I’m being ridiculous. I need to go to bed. Goodnight, lovely creature. We’ll try again tomorrow.

[END]