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:

Emotional distress

References to blood and blood drinking

Descriptions of violent, life-endangering assaults

Descriptions of characters experiencing PTSD

Discussions of medical torture

Descriptions of scenes of a sexual nature

Transcript

COLD OPEN

NEIGE

‘Allo, little love, precious thing. I have not even left and I already miss you.

You made a feast of me, gorged yourself, you gorgeous predator. And now you sleep, and repair, and replenish. And most importantly, you rest. I know you have not been sleeping. I know this is because of me

Ah. Alfie. I do not want to go, but I must. I’m so sorry for doing it like this, but I won’t regret it. I told you I had to go.

Ah, mon râleur, I love you. When I go I leave my heart with you. Figuratively, of course.

Ah… Goodbye.

INTRO MUSIC. EIRA: This is Not Quite Dead. Episode 42: Baggage Claim.

ALFIE

So. Neige is gone. Fuck knows where, but he’s gone. I went out to look for him as soon as I realised, but god, I can’t track for shit. And there are vampires here. Other vampires. I don’t speak fucking German but I don’t think what they said to me was nice. So I just came back, and I feel so useless.

He’s don’t this on purpose. I should have known, I swear to god. Manipulative little shit. Didn’t even wake me up to say goodbye. Not that I’d have let him go.

Fuck, what am I going to do?! I don’t speak German, Jesus Christ. I’ve always wanted to go to Berlin but not like this. That’s two cities in a row he’s ruined for me. Paris in hiding, Berlin on my own and unprepared. It’s a clubbing city, isn’t it? Bet Neige knows loads of good spots. Pointless thinking about it now, I suppose. Now he’s off and abandoned me.

ALFIE SIGHS HARSHLY

That’s not fair, is it? He’s not— he’s not abandoned me. He said he’s coming back.

So did Casper though. So did fucking Casper.

I know Neige is different. He has a sense of self-preservation, for starters, but. Damn it! It’s not like he’s never been caught before, is it?! Claudio got him. Claudio kept him. Claudio fucking tortured him for god knows how long and—

ALFIE INHALES DEEPLY

I need to calm down. I need to calm down. That’s what I need. Yeah. Because if I get myself in a fit about this I’m going to be nonfunctional and then it’ll all go to shit again. And if someone hurts him what’ll I…

I will eat them alive. And make them suffer while I do.

I can focus on that.

Ah. Right. Good.

It’s not like with Casper. If someone hurts Neige I’ll actually tear them to fucking pieces. I can do it. I know I can do it.

ALFIE BREATHES DEEPLY, MORE CALMLY THIS TIME

Yes. Good. Very good.

Sometimes violence is the answer.

Right. Okay.

MOVEMENT

He’s not taken anything with him. To be honest, he didn’t bring much. I wonder if this is his flat? I can smell him, here. Not just the recent stuff, but older scents, too.

ALFIE SNIFFS

And other vampires. Recent, ish. I wish I was better than this, I can’t tell if Neige was with them or not and… hmm. There’s more than one of them.

Some of these scents are similar?

Ugh this isn’t helpful, it’s winding me up. What can I see? Uh.

ALFIE GETS UP

My clothes. The bag of stuff I brought with us. Door to the bathroom.

DOOR OPENS

Yeah. It’s just the stuff we bought on the way, there’s nothing in the shower. What about—

CABINET OPENS

Toothpaste, toothbrushes. Bleach. Condoms. Expired eleven years ago. Well.

CABINET CLOSES. FOOTSTEPS.

What’s in the wardrobe then?

A DOOR OPENS

Huh. Lot of business wear in here. Somehow I doubt this belongs to Neige.

OPENING DRAWERS

Ladies underwear. I mean. He could pull this off but I don’t think these would fit him on account of his uh…

Huh.

WRANGLING WITH THE DRAWER TO REMOVE IT FROM ITS RAILS

This drawer has a false bottom. You know, someone called me that as an insult once. It’s not my fault that people make assumptions. Where’s the damn— aha!

A CLUNK. WOOD SCRAPES ON WOOD.

Passports. Like. A fuck ton of passports. Other documents too.

PAPER AND OBJECTS SHIFT. PAGES FLICKER.

This is Neige. The passport calls him Seius Pamphilus. Here’s a Belgian one. Here he’s Pierre Tartempion. And an Italian one, here he’s gone for Isabella. Bet that confuses the scanners at airports. Hmm. Here’s a Romanian one, and—

Oh.

This— this one is Casper. From 1923. God, look at him.

This one is Casper’s too. Using the same picture. this one is from 1936, though. Issued in Portugal.

Wait. Neige and Casper, they weren’t talking by then. This was after Henri, after they’d already parted ways. Neige was still getting passports for him, just in case.

Fuck.

[ALFIE CLEARS HIS THROAT]

What’s this envelope?

[PASSPORTS SLIDE OUT]

Issued in Switzerland. Here’s Neige. He’s gone for Béla Faire. The other one is Irish.

[PAGES FLICK]

Shit. It’s me. But he’s given my name as Myron Dhuine. What sort of a name is Myron?

Wait. Fucking hell I have a fake passport.

Is it even fake? Is it somehow a real passport which— why have I never thought about this before? Of course they’d need passports, it’s. Why is this freaking me out?

[LITTLE SIGH]

We stole a boat to get out of Scotland. Good christ I thought I was going to freeze alive. Or. You know. Undead.

When we got to dry land – or actually wet land, it was some kind of marsh, I think – I insisted we get a hotel. I didn’t even have it in me to care that we had to rob someone to facilitate that. I felt like I literally frozen into my shoes. I was so hungry my throat felt like it was on fire.

There was a couple, just arrived at their home. We jumped them. None of the usual seduction and lure. Just brutal, violent attack. Screams cut off with gargles. These were innocent people.

We only took enough that they passed out but they’d recover on their own, and we carried them into the house. We took all the money they had on them and the keys to their car. It was only when we got into their car that I realised how badly I was shaking.

We ditched the car when it ran out of petrol. Walked the rest of the way to a hotel.

The night was short; it was still August. As we were walking, the sun was rising. The hotel was only an hour away on foot, but every step in the daylight was agony. I don’t know how Neige had the sense to smell the place on the wind, but he kept it together, right until we were in the room.

He ran the shower and got in, fully clothed. When the water hit him, he howled like it was boiling. He stripped off his wet clothes one by one.

There was still blood on him. Blood from the people he’d killed blood from the half-healed wounds across his chest, down his stomach. He was breathing hard as his hands traced over this new topography, sat slumped against the shower wall.

I sat across from him, not meeting his gaze, running my hands along his shin, drawing patterns in the pale hair.

He bit me without asking. Grabbed my arm and bit me just above my elbow, on the underside of my arm where the skin is soft, sensitive. Usually when Neige bites me I can tell he’s not actually trying to drink from me, but this time was different. The draw through the wound was immense, my head was swimming at once, my throat immediately in flames as my own thirst flared hot and bright.

When he let me go he was sobbing.

I pulled him into my lap.

We had not spoken, not since I’d demanded we get the hotel. We’d hardly said a word on the boat, on the horse we rode until we stole it.

We still didn’t speak then, not as I held him. i let him sob, so small at once in my arms, this little thing.

I was so hungry it hurt. It fucking hurt. But I didn’t even think about biting him, or leaving him to feed. I sat there until his breathing evened out, holding him close, trailing my hand up and down his spine, across the ragged scars like lash marks.

He sat up and away from me, curled his knees to his chest. The hotel soap was fancy, heavy with oil. I rubbed it across his shoulders, down his arms, every part of him he’d let me touch. Then I washed his hair. It took three tries with the shampoo to get the water running clear. When I was done, I kissed his head. He reached up, touched his warm hand to my cheek. Very quietly, he thanked me.

‘Of course,’ I said.

I shut off the shower, grabbed him a towel. He was on his feet when I turned back to him, but he let me dry him off, his eyes closed, moving his limbs to make my job easier.

I led him by the hand to the bed, climbed in, held open the covers to let him follow me.

He curled up next to me like a cat. Peering at him through the dark I realised we had not turned on the lights when we came in. I had not noticed. I didn’tt need them.

I lapsed in and out of restless sleep. I was too hungry to rest properly. Every time I opened my eyes I saw Neige’s, steady, focused gaze matching mine. His expression was unreadable. He didn’t move, he didn’t even breathe, not until it was night again. He was up and dressed. I copied him. Out we went, to a darkened bar a few streets away. We fed as little as we could stand, stole a car, and left.

The next day we slept bundled together under blankets in the back of that car, or rather, he slept and I lay anxiously holding him, afraid to let myself relax completely. A rain storm blew in, a thick layer of grey cloud smothering the sun like a pillow. It was dark enough to sit out without it hurting sooner than we thought it would be.

Without speaking, we climbed through the the front of the car, drove some way through the austere beauty of the wilderness, stopping for fuel when we needed it, drinking from unsuspecting smokers loitering by their trucks. This hunt was guileless, too. We climbed onto the truck’s and jumped down like wild things.

There was something primal about it, visceral. To say I enjoyed this would be wrong. But. Neige had this dead expression on his face when I looked at him, teeth bared, blood dripping from his chin. I was used to seeing him hunt carefully, coyly, neat sip at a time. Seeing him move so swiftly and violently… it felt revelatory.

I felt like I should feel disgusted or at the very least afraid. I didn’t. It shocked me to look at that violence and see elegance in it. To admire the cleanness of his bite, the arch of his back.

We were careful not to kill them, to leave our victims with enough blood to live if they were found soon. Afterwards, when the hunt was done and we had to pass for human, a cold would settle over me. I’d ask myself over and over in my head, what are we, what are we. Like I don’t know. Like Casper didn’t tell me years ago. Monsters. Like Neige doesn’t wear it like a badge of pride. Monsters.

We stole more money, bought new coats which did not have blood on them, which actually fit. We spent another day in the car, Neige lying on top of me, my arms holding him fast against my chest. He lapsed in and out of sleep as I traced the scars on his back, the notches in his spine. When I closed my eyes I saw the white flash of his ribs peering through his ragged flesh. I didn’t sleep at all.

It was not until that next night when we crossed the border into Sweden that Neige finally spoke more than a word. ‘You haven’t asked where we’re going,’ he said.

I hadn’t. I hadn’t even thought to. Just away, as far away from that fucking laboratory as we could get. As far away from the place where I’d carried him, hissing, senseless, hollow. Where I had been shot, in the fucking head. I still didn’t ask. I didn’t care. I just asked if we could stop at a hotel again.

This time I showered alone. I was frightened to let Neige out of my sight but I need a closed door between us so fiercely that I was shaking as I turned the lock. In the dark bathroom, under the hot stream of the water, I let myself shake, let my breaths turn ragged and erratic. It felt like I’d been holding in a panic attack for days, not preventing it, just delaying it, keeping myself at a just-functional level of anxious.

I closed my eyes. The sound of his ribcage as I’d pulled it closed over the empty place where his heart and his lungs should have been. Tying him to the bed as he snapped at me, only his canines grown back in his blood-filled mouth, his eyes red, so red, not just the irises, but all of them, all of them.

[A STEADYING BREATH]

I don’t know how long I was under the water. I know Neige would have heard the swearing and the shouting and the shaking. He didn’t try to come in. He let me be. I’d locked the door, after all.

I got up, put myself back together. He was sitting on the end of the bed. ‘Better?’ He asked.

I touched his cheek. ‘Much,’ I said.

He kissed my wrist. The first kiss he’d given me since we’d got off the boat. He trailed his tongue up my still-damp skin, grazed the crook of my arm with his teeth. He looked up at me through his eyelashes. His eyes were scarlet. ‘I need you to fuck me,’ he said.

Still shaking, I said, ‘okay.’

I was systematic about it in a way I’m usually not. I like things to be kind of ragged actually, usually. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to do anything but touch him softly, carefully. Every movement measured, precise, slow. I kept him on his back, pillow under his hips, so I could keep my eyes on him, so he could see me, know it was me, know he was safe. He kept wrapping his arms around his chest. I— it took a while for me to understand what he was doing. Hiding those new scars, cut into him with shards of vampire teeth, stolen from hungry, desperate mouths.

I felt like they were cutting me too, watching as he tried to cover them.

I let a bit of my care and caution break to grab his wrists and pin them down, to trail my tongue along the marks.

‘Fuck them,’ I said.

Neige shook his head, eyes squeezed shut. ‘Bite me,’ he said.

‘I can’t.’

‘Please!’ He said it with such force I was almost frightened. I did it. I bit his chest, hard and fast, felt the blood well around my teeth, could not help but moan at the divine taste of it.

‘Again,’ he said, dragging me off his skin by my hair. I bit him again, again, again until he pulled me back. Pushed me aside. I moved to lick the bleeding wounds closed but he shook his head. ‘Let them scar,’ he said. He turned to me, vicious, feral, blood running from the bite marks on his chest, his eyes bright red. He said, ‘turn over.’

I swear to god I have never been fucked like that in my life.

When I held him afterwards he was loose, like a doll who had been poorly strung. I buried my face in his hair, slept clinging to him like I wanted to absorb him. In a way I sort of did. I wanted to keep him safe, safe in me, away from everything else.

The next night, in the car, he told me we were going to Paris, there he needed to speak to about what happened, and what was going to happen next.

Next.

I had barely thought beyond us getting through the night on the road, through whatever strangeness happened in our day, whether it was in a hotel or jammed into the back of this, the fifth car we’d stolen so far. In the end it was neither, though. We’d reached a city, I don’t know what it’s called, but Neige had a flat, there. Everything was covered in dust sheets but there was heating and hot water, and money. And phones. We were there two days.

Neige was gone a lot, those couple of days. All that way, on the boat, on the road, in every hotel, every car we stole, I was lugging Henri’s notes with me. It wasn’t until we were in that flat that I had chance to pull it out. I couldn’t make out most of what it said. It was in French, which I’m getting better at, but it was weird French and Henri’s handwriting was pretty impenetrable.

I wonder how old Henri was. Neige said he was made by someone Claudio made. I wonder how long before Claudio was brought down that Henri was made. How long did he live with that ideology? What did he know about it? How much did it inform what he went on to do? All those people he murdered, all those vampires he made just to kill. I feel like I only have half a grasp on what even happened with Claudio. Enough to make me hate him. But I don’t get it, not really. How is this enough to build a cult, you know?

Is that even what it was?

I feel like there will be something in Henri’s notes which might make it click together. Which might make my theories about how vampirism works click together too. I’m probably being optimistic, though. Neige hasn’t tried to take the book from me. It can’t be that important. It’s bad that I thin that, isn’t it.

I. He keeps things from me. I know that. He’s told me that. I just. I don’t know.

After the night in the hotel where he’d made me scar him, he became fixated on it. He’d go out and over hunt, come back woozy, gorged, make me bite him. Well. ‘Make’ is an overstatement. I’d bite him any day if he asked. Knowing he wanted it just made it better, though it did worry me, in its own way.

I tried not to think about it too hard. I’d missed the taste of him. Something about his blood makes me feel different. Human blood is fantastic, but Neige? I don’t know. Maybe it’s that it’s vampire blood. The taste is just divine. Maybe it’s because I’m used to it.

Though I don’t know how Neige expects me to manage hunt here if there’s scary as fuck vampires lurking about the place.

I should have eaten more in Paris. God. He did tell me to do that, didn’t he? Goddamn it. Fuck.

He’s fine. He’s going to be fine. He’s lived for millennia without me and I am, functionally, pretty useless by comparison. What the fuck do I know about anything, really? As if I could actually protect him.

Please, please. Please just be okay. Please?

I don’t want to have to see him like that again. I’d take it over losing him. Of course I would. But if I can avoid it, never again.

I never want to see him look at himself with that kind of despair. He’s. Fierce. He’s an animal. He’s powerful and beautiful and proud and a fucking dickhead and totally full of himself and honestly he deserves to be. He is the most annoying creature I have ever met. And if anyone, ANYONE, fucking DARES to treat him like that again? Whoever these fuckers are, they are dead. Deader than dead. Fucking erased. Gone. A smear on the fucking ground. How dare you.

[ALFIE TAKES A STEADYING BREATH.]

Think like Neige. Think like Neige. I need to work out how to hunt. To do that, I need to get a sense of the place. Uh. How suspicious is it going to look if I buy a laptop with cash? Ugh it doesn’t matter. I’ll just. Act rich. Yeah. Ir’s fine. Uh.

I’ll go out in the day. There’ll be fewer other vampires. It’ll fucking hurt, but. What can you do, needs must. Right, right let’s… yeah. I’m going to be fine, and Neige is going to come back, and nobody will have hurt him, and it’s all going to be okay. In a few hours, when the sun is up and the shops are open, I will go out and buy a laptop and a map or whatever and I can work out where the fuck I am.

And email Haley. God. Haley.

One thing at a time. One thing at a time. Laptop. Map. Hunt. Email Haley.

Wait for Neige to come back.

Because he’s going to come back.

He’s not Casper. He’s not.

That gaping void inside me where that connection used to be. It aches, sometimes. Like a phantom limb.

I should talk about him, but I— I can’t. Not yet.

God, what if something happens and I never, he never gets to…?

Shut up, Alfie.

 The plan. Stop recording, charge this shitty phone. Sleep as much as you can. Laptop. Map. Hunt. Haley. Yeah.

It’s alright. I can do this.

I can.

END