An Episode of Not Quite Dead.

Content Warnings

• Vivid descriptions of violence and killing, with details about viscera and gore
• Discussions of unethical medical experimentation, including some detailed discussions of methods
• Mentions of torture
• Mentions of mass killing
• Moments of intense relived suicidal ideation, which is then walked back from

Transcript

[MIC DISTURBANCES]

NEIGE
What are you…

[MIC DISTURBANCES STOP AS ALFIE SETS THE DICTAPHONE DOWN]

NEIGE
Oh. 

[ALFIE STEPS FORWARD, HIS FOOTSTEPS SOFT, LIKE HE’S BAREFOOT] 

ALFIE
Yeah. Well. It’s important isn’t it. 

NEIGE
I think so. Though, perhaps… I do not know. Maybe this is not something we want to record. 

ALFIE
Why? 

NEIGE
Because then everyone will know about it. 

ALFIE
Oh, what? You don’t want your private information put out into the world without your consent?! Gee, I wonder how THAT feels. 

NEIGE
I did not just post it on the internet and hope for the best, I shared your words with trusted friends, and you explicitly began this project as a way for others to know the truth about what happened to you!

ALFIE
Yeah, after I was DEAD. 

NEIGE
As I have gone to great lengths to prevent that outcome, I take offence at the idea that your words only mean something when you’re already gone. 

ALFIE
Could have asked me to go with you to the meetings. 

NEIGE
I have already explained, they would have killed you before they heard you out!

ALFIE
Could have asked me before you took my private shit and started handing it out to people! 

NEIGE
Do you want them to hear your story or not?!

ALFIE
YOU SHOULD HAVE FUCKING ASKED. 

NEIGE
I know. I know. I KNOW. I was worried I— non. You know why I didn’t. It was because I thought you would not let me. 

[ALFIE SIGHS] 

ALFIE
Okay.

NEIGE
This should have stopped me from doing it. I should have asked. You’re right. But listening to those recordings, whilst I waited for you to recover from the change, it. They are compelling, Alfie. 

ALFIE
Flattery won’t get you anywhere. 

NEIGE
No. I know it won’t. 

ALFIE
You going to let me record your stupid lesson or what? 

NEIGE
You would let me say no? 

ALFIE
Of course I fucking would. I’m not you. Thank fuck for that. One of you is enough, frankly. Jesus wept. So am I leaving the dictaphone on or what?

NEIGE
Yes. Are you ready? 

ALFIE
Yeah, whatever. From the top, Sensei. 

NEIGE
Okie. As I have explained, the key here is to be fast. Your instincts will tell you to lead with your teeth. Do not do this. 

ALFIE
Alright. 

NEIGE
They are our best weapon, they are the thing you know how to use best. But we are not hunting. We are aiming to kill. You could start with your teeth if you needed to but it would bring your neck close to their teeth, too. Which is why the knife. Comprend? 

ALFIE
Yeah. 

NEIGE
Show me how to stand. 

ALFIE
Uh. Like this?

NEIGE
Bend your knees more. You are not aiming to be solid. You want to be able to move. To spring. To dodge. This is not a fight. Do not think of it as a fight. You are not facing an opponent. You are looking at a thing you aim to kill. You stand side on, your shoulder towards them, your head turned. You see? Yes.

This is how you hold the knife, in a fist, with your thumb upon the base of the hilt. If your hand was at your side, the knife would point behind you, blade facing up. There are two ways you can go. Put the knife down a moment. Give me your hand. Feel here, the notch in my collarbones? 

ALFIE
Yeah. 

NEIGE
Make your fist, as though the knife were still against your palm. Good. You strike here, and push your hand in and back, free your knife from the flesh. 

ALFIE
Fuck. 

NEIGE
This will sever the tendons on one side of the neck. Then, bring the knife back to the tear you have made, use it to pull back the flesh, there will resistance— 

ALFIE
Fuck, fuck. 

NEIGE
It is okie. I am alright. See? 

ALFIE
Yeah. 

NEIGE
This should take a second, maybe less, I am not sure I have not timed it. But once the flesh is parted, you can use your other hand to reach inside. What you are looking for is harder than most of the flesh around it, but softer than bone. It branches five ways. Two go up, one goes down, two each side. These branches connect here, in a thickened knot, just under the collarbones, but not so deep that you will find the heart. Your fingers will slot easily around it. And then you pull. 

ALFIE
Does it hurt? 

NEIGE
Them or you?

ALFIE
Them. 

NEIGE
Yes. It hurts. But they won’t scream, because you’ll have cut through their vocal cords. If you pull with enough force that is all it will take, but if you find this part stays attached, cut it free with your knife. 

ALFIE
How long will they— if I do that, how long until they die? 

NEIGE
Almost instantly. 

ALFIE
Okay. 

NEIGE
It is unrecoverable. Remove this, and the vampire dies. 

ALFIE
What’s the other way? 

NEIGE
Ah. From the bottom of the chest. This is harder, but if you are caught in someone’s grip, turn your head down so they can only bite the very back of your neck where there is mostly bone and muscle. Stab upwards, under the ribs. Force your hand inside. You must reach past the heart. Your arm will be inside of them up to the elbow, maybe deeper if they are tall. follow the big pipes from the heart upwards; they join onto this part, onto the lower stem. hoook your fingers over it and pull down. It’s harder this way as there are more stems working against you and you have further to pull until you know you’ve detached it all the way, and there is no way to use your knife to help you sever the connections, even if you want to. 

ALFIE
Right. So. Neck is priority. through the diaphragm if you’re in a bind. 

NEIGE
Exactament. 

ALFIE
The two top stems. They connect to the brainstem and the throat. The one that goes straight down, it connects to our hearts. And the ones which go side to side. In Casper’s sketches. In what we saw of the dissections in the cabin. They go down into the pelvis. It’s like, when we drink blood, it kicks our hearts into action and this organ, it connects and disperses it as quickly as possible. It’s like an extra layer of plumbing on top of out veins and arteries. It doesn’t need the same flow system as a human has; the blood does need to keep moving to get re-oxygenated. It needs to be dispersed as fast and efficiently as it can. 

In those very first things I looked at from Bonham’s labs. All the stuff where they were fucking. Cutting vampires’ brains away whilst they were conscious. Testing how cognisant they were. They only started losing consciousness when they started slicing the brainstem and even that was recoverable. But you take out the blood organ. We’re dead. 

NEIGE
To my knowledge nobody has ever sliced away at my brain. But I have fallen hard and lost parts of my skull and—

ALFIE
Holy fuck. 

NEIGE
I definitely could not think as clearly when that happened. 

ALFIE
Yeah. The notes, they seemed to imply cognitive function is impaired if you damage the brain, but it comes back. It’s not like that for humans. Brain damage is pretty permanent. But it you take out this? This bit? We just. Don’t work. It seems like. You pull out this, you tear out the brain stem with it. And we just. Die. 

NEIGE
Oui. This is the most efficient way I have found. 

ALFIE
I… Do I want to know how you worked this out? 

NEIGE
I cannot possibly answer that. 

ALFIE
Well. How did you work this out? 

NEIGE
Trial and error. 

ALFIE
Yeah. Yeah I didn’t want to know that. 

NEIGE
And now you know. 

ALFIE
I sure do. 

[ALFIE SIGHS]

NEIGE
What happens if when we get to Bonham, he actually has synthesised some kind of cure or, panacea, or whatever he is trying to do? 

ALFIE
I don’t know. Doesn’t change what he did, does it? 

NEIGE
Would you destroy it? 

ALFIE
The cure? I… I really don’t know. Maybe. Or. I don’t know.

NEIGE
Something which has been… it’s playing on my mind. All of those experiments in the cabin. It seems as though they were trying to built something new from parts of themselves. 

ALFIE
Yeah, but in the notes, it was all about like. Trying to work out the interactions between the parts, you know? How long did it take for someone to turn if they had a bit of vampire grafted onto them. That kind of thing. And the frozen bodies, some of them looked like humans with vampire organs, but it’s hard to tell from all the ice. I’d need to go back, to look over everything again to be sure. Maybe if we went in the summer we’d be able to read more of the books. Maybe that’s a stupid thing to do. I don’t know. 

NEIGE
Perhaps. Do you think there is any merit in what they were attempting? 

ALFIE
I… I don’t know. From Casper’s notebook it seems like basically, they thought that finding a way to make vampire parts work in tandem with human ones was a way towards getting what both of them wanted. And it makes what he ended up doing with me and those other kids make more sense in context, really. Because he was putting his stem cells inside us. It’s just a different kind of transplant. 

NEIGE
Oui. One made in blood.

ALFIE
The haemapherisis thing is bothering me. I’ve looked over all the notes I have again, and it’s. Remember what Tim Sherman said? Haemapherisis is a treatment, not a cure. Now I understand everything better, it’s like. I don’t know. It looks like the Haemapherisis gets some of the vampire stuff out of the blood, almost? But eventually they just get re-infected. Become vampires again. I wonder if what we saw at the lab before we burned it down, if they were trying to work out if you take enough of the vampire body away, they could stop that from happening. 

NEIGE
It is barbaric. 

ALFIE
Yeah. It is. And all this shit about slicing down vampires’ brains, it’s like they’re testing the limits of… 

NEIGE
What is it? 

ALFIE
Oh shit. 

NEIGE
Quoi?!

ALFIE
I don’t— it’s mad but. What if they were taking— taking blood organs out of vampires and trying to put them into humans? Maybe that’s… maybe they can’t find a way to cure the body but they. They were trying to see if that would work? 

NEIGE
But it’s just another part of us, non? So surely it would go the same way as all the other grafting experiments. 

ALFIE
I mean. Yeah. But it doesn’t mean they weren’t trying it. 

NEIGE
Non. I suppose not.
You seem distracted. 

ALFIE
Yeah. We should probably go through the knife thing again. 

NEIGE
If you like, I will show you again. I wish there were a more visceral way for you to practice this. 

ALFIE
I don’t. 

NEIGE
I want you to be safe. I want you to be able to protect yourself. 

ALFIE
This is more than self-defence, Neige. You said it yourself. You’re not thinking about them like opponents. They’re marks you’re bringing down. 

NEIGE
It’s easier this way. The horror comes after, when there are only corpses, still, unfeeling. Killing is simple. Dull. Perfunctory. It’s living with yourself after that is difficult. 

ALFIE
And how do you do that? 

NEIGE
With patience. You have to trust that you did what you did because it was the best option available at the time. This is an action which cannot be undone, however much you will it to be. So you live with it, or you die. Those are the only options you have. 

ALFIE
Fucking hell. 

NEIGE
But you want to kill Bonham. 

ALFIE
Yes. 

NEIGE
Can you live with what it will be, after? It’s different to the kind of killing you have done before. Accidents and crimes of passion, born out of desperation and the heat of the moment. This is deliberate.

ALFIE
It’s an execution. 

NEIGE
Or a murder. Depending on how you want to look at it. 

ALFIE
I guess. 

NEIGE
Would you like me to show you again how it is done? 

ALFIE
No. I— I don’t think so. 

NEIGE
I am not proud that I am good at this. But I respect the effort I have taken to make sure I am as efficient as possible. People only suffer by my hand if I make it so. 

ALFIE
Is it bad that I want to make Bonham suffer? 

NEIGE
I… objectively. Yes. But I understand it. 

ALFIE
Did you make Claudio suffer? 

NEIGE
No. 

ALFIE
Why? 

NEIGE
I’m not that kind of monster. 

ALFIE
Oh. 

NEIGE
Whatever you choose, there are precious few decisions which would make me love you less. 

ALFIE
Is hurting Bonham more than I have to one of them? 

NEIGE
That would depend on the manner of it, I think. 

ALFIE
Right. 

NEIGE
I am only being honest with you. 

ALFIE
I know. It’s… good. It’s my favourite thing about you. Or, one of them. You tell me what you mean. Most of the time.

NEIGE
I’m also a liar, though. 

ALFIE
Yeah but. Only when you think you have to be. You are usually wrong about that but you’re trying. 

NEIGE
I hope this is true. 

ALFIE
It’s weird to be back here. 

NEIGE
At this house? 

ALFIE
Yeah. And in England. You know. They didn’t take any of the notes back when they came for Casper. 

NEIGE
Non. They did not. 

ALFIE
Why do you think that is? 

NEIGE
I suspect they think they do not need them. 

ALFIE
You’re sure York is where they are? The parts of you? 

NEIGE
Ah, oui. They were I think frozen for some time. It is very strange when this happens. You don’t feel them the same. 

ALFIE
No? 

NEIGE
Non. But then I felt them again. And this is where they have led me. 

ALFIE
Right. 

NEIGE
Oui.

ALFIE
I, ugh. I don’t know how to ask this but. Was it like… did you want to hurt him? Claudio, I mean? Did you want to make him suffer but decide you shouldn’t because you’re better than that? 

NEIGE
I… I do not know how to answer this. 

ALFIE
Sorry. 

NEIGE
Non, non, it is not— I fantasised about it, sometimes. When I was in my chains. When I had the energy to think. I’d imagine stringing him up, slitting him from throat to pelvis, letting his insides hang out of him, leaving him to hang and drip the way he had left me. I dreamed of slamming his head into a rock until it turned to paste. But. It was not like that. 

ALFIE
So. What was it like? 

NEIGE
You really want to know? 

ALFIE
I mean. What Bonham’s done, it’s not. But I want to be the one to kill him, you know? I—it’s not the same. But I want to know what it was like for you. To do that. You know? 

NEIGE
I understand. 

ALFIE
So will you tell me? 

NEIGE
Ah… I will try. But my tellings of Claudio have been piecemeal for you so far, oui? To understand it I fear you will need more context than you have already. 

ALFIE
I don’t mind context. We’re not in a hurry, are we? 

NEIGE
Alright. I think the easiest way to… you know how we met, how I came to turn him. The mess of his first years. How I stuck by him some centuries and we went our own ways. It was after this I met with Justinian and Theodora. I saw Claudio a little in this time. I think he hoped the Byzantines might become what he hoped Rome would always be, but. Non. I admit this is in part why I was there in Constantinople at all. I feared Claudio may try to influence the seat of power there. 

ALFIE
So you influenced it yourself. 

NEIGE
I suppose I did. Though it was not my intention. It was Theodora, not Justinian, who caught my eye. Her entanglement with the future emperor was an accident. Claudio made it clear he had no interest in Byzantium after Rome was lost again. I think he hoped next to influence the church, but it was fraught with its own tensions and complications. No amount of influence he exerted was enough to overwhelm the factions which governed it, unwieldy institution that it was. Then there was the Great Schism and after this? Well. Claudio gave up on that route into power. 

Mostly. 

He had seen how powerful belief could be in shaping people’s views. I think it was his time in the church which led him to making his movement one on the basis of gods and godly power. The pursuit of divine right, not of an expanding empire. But I don’t know. 

I had dedicated myself to other things. To becoming something which felt, more than anything else. And then I met Menet. And thenClaudio had him killed. 

I was angry about this. Unbelievably angry. I wanted revenge. I had misunderstood what Claudio had been building, so dedicated to ignoring it I had become. I knew he had been killing, expanding his group of faithful, replacing those with some modicum of power in vampire communities with captains of his own making. Seeding the most powerful institutions of humanity with women he turned and groomed to serve him. 

I’d have hunted him down right away but. Menet. He had left me with an… obligation. His niece. A little girl, no more than four years old. Claudio had slaughtered everyone she’d ever known. She had lived only because she had hidden in an haystack. This little thing, so like Menet in the shape of her face, the curl of her hair… my Cosette. 

I did what I could for her. I should have taken her to be with humans, but I… I could not stand to let go of this last piece of the man I had loved, who had love me so truly that… Ah. We moved to Paris. I raised her there. She knew something of what I was, though I tried to hide it from her. By the time she hit her teens, the fact I did not age, it was inescapable to her. There were other vampires in Paris, and Claudio had many connections there, but it had never been his centre of power. 

She became… entangled. No other vampire in Paris would touch her, knowing she was dear to me. Not without Claudio’s instruction. And his plan for Cosette was much more insidious than simply to snatch her away, as he had with Menet. No. He wanted her for himself. When I refused to turn Cosette despite her begging me she ran away. It took some time to find her as I had never tasted her blood nor let her taste mine. I’d done it to protect her, but it just made it easier for Claudio to keep her from me. 

When I found her in Venice, she had been turned. Not just into a vampire. But into one of Claudio’s. The reverence with which she spoke to me. It made me sick. 

I had to tear it all apart, you understand. But when I went to Claudio, I… I was expecting to talk. To fight, maybe. I do not know. I should have gone to kill him. But I didn’t. 

I should have known he could not be reasoned with. Should have anticipated the numbers of faithful he’d be able to gather, to create with his own blood, over so long a time. A few hundred years to me does not feel like nothing. I live each day the same as you do. But it is easy for time to slip away and distort. I had forgotten how long just a decade could be in terms of amassing power. I did not consider what he could have done in the centuries since we parted. Not fully. 

What he did to me was quite efficient. What he told his following was that their god had lost his way. He’d been sending people to watch me. Writing down my activities like they were gospels. How far I have fallen. The most mighty among them. I was supposed to be their god. 

The golden room, with the chains, where I bled. It was not built when he took me. I was sealed first in a golden casket. There was a hole, over my face. It was so close I could not move to see out of it but I could taste the air, and the blood dripped through. ‘This was how you kept me,’ he’d tell me. 

He fed me enough to keep me alive, but I was weak, and eventually I lost my ability to think. I only vaguely remember the day the chains were placed. I was fed more than I had been allowed in years. My first thought was that it was nice to feel the air upon my skin. And then I felt the pain. 

ALFIE
Fucking hell. 

NEIGE
It was a kind of hell, yes. But I did prefer the chains to the box, at least at first. I hung there a long time. The Byzantine empire had fallen by the time I was freed by Claudio’s own faithful. Those who could not stand to see their god so sullied. 

It took a long time for me to heal. Decades, I would say. The accumulated toll of a hundred years of barely avoiding starvation took a lot of doing. 

Alina. That’s the name of the girl who started it, who turned her daughter because I told her to, against Claudio’s wishes. She would comb my hair, wash my skin, feed me from her own veins. When I was strong enough to drink human blood she’d bring them to me, clean up the mess while I was still too weak. 

There were others too. Some who had been closer with Claudio, who knew something of his plans. I began to understand what he aimed to do. As I was beginning to reckon with the task before me, that was when Cosette came. In secret. She had become Claudio’s captain in Venice, she had not known he had me captive the way he did, she’d never seen it. But once I was free, the rumours were everywhere. The group of faithful beginning to form around me was small but it was made of Claudio’s own defectors and so the word spread far and fast through his empire. And finally reached Cosette.  

She came to ask if it was true. What he done to me. That I had never been a willing guest. 

In the end I could not find enough words to tell her what I had— felt. 

So I just let her taste my blood. And do you know what she said? 

ALFIE
What? 

NEIGE
‘This is just blood.’ I didn’t prompt her or convince her. She simply understood. It all began to unravel, in horror at herself for what she believed. She still had snatches of memories of her childhood. Of Menet and I laughing, dancing together. A human and a vampire, in love. And I had raised her, hadn’t I? Raised her and refused to turn her. 

I couldn’t bring myself to explain to her at the time how trying to turn Menet had killed him and I was afraid she would not survive the change either, but we were then more than father and daughter, we were equals, creatures who had lived and grown to understand. So when I explained to her what had happened and why I had been the way I had with her, she understood. And so. Venice was the first stronghold Claudio lost. 

I left Alina’s home in Romania and— 

ALFIE
Wait. Romania? 

NEIGE
Ah. I do believe the particular preoccupation writers have with this region is inspired somewhat by what happened in those hills whilst I was there, recovering in Alina’s ancestral home. The rest of her family had died away. It was an old castle she took me to, to recover. Hundreds of miles she took me, to be away from Claudio. 

But Venice? Having this be our centre of power was symbolic. Cosette had been a jewel in Claudio’s crown; a girl he had plucked almost from my own arms to sit at his feet. He’d trusted her with a lot of information. Information which now came to me. And she had many connections with the other captains too. We talked and schemed, but in the end, there was no way around it. Cosette’s reach would help, but it was not enough to kill the ideas that Claudio had spawned. To win this fight, first I had to let myself become the god that I was not. 

It was a systematic dismantlement. Bit by bit, Claudio’s empire caved inwards. I killed those fanatical about him, converted the rest with threats and displays of violence. My own faithful were as violent and cruel as his had ever been. Though I tried to impose limits upon them, often this was difficult. Eventually, the only place where Claudio had any power was at his compound in the Alps. 

I let him stew there a while, whilst I finished what I had begun. To do this I— I had to turn on those who’d served me closest and longest. Tried my best to kill the idea that this was anything but the destruction of what Claudio had built. Of course, you know I was not successful in this. 

ALFIE
When you say you turned on people who served you. 

NEIGE
Yes. I killed them, too. 

ALFIE
Fuck. 

[AS NEIGE CONTINUES TO SPEAK, ALFIE’S BREATHING JUDDERS AND SHAKES, LIKE HE’S CRYING]

NEIGE
I had turned Claudio’s ideology against him but those who were most faithful to me were also most likely to become faithful to him again once they realised I did not believe I was their saviour. There was no way to cleanse them of those beliefs. those who could be convinced of the truth of things, that I am just a person the same as they are, that my blood is not special, that vampires are simply creatures not superior beings destined to inherit the earth, they chose not to stay with my by themselves. 

And after this, the ones who were left? I… I could not let them live. They believed I was a god. And I’d made them into a weapon. As soon as Claudio was gone, they’d have pointed themselves at someone or something else. And it seemed most likely to me that whatever that thing would be, it would be in aid of what Claudio had wanted in the first place. To make the world a place which belonged to vampires, when the world should not belong to anyone. 

ALFIE
I. Yeah. I get it. 

NEIGE
You don’t have to get it. I in fact very much hope that you do not. I have done a great many terrible things. This isI think by far the worst. A deliberate slaughter of people who loved me. Many did not even beg for their lives. To die by my hand? In ways, it was an honour. 

For me, this made it far worse. 

I returned to Venice to tell Cosette goodbye. She was distraught, but I think she understood. She understood this would have to be the end. But she let me go. She knew what I had done, what I had given of myself to do it. The last thing she said before I left was that she loved me. But before that, she told me nobody could ask for more of me than I had already given. 

ALFIE
Oh Neige. 

NEIGE
When I got to the compound I was expecting a fight. But it was quiet. Deathly quiet. The stink of the dead on the floor of the killing room was sweet and thick in the air. Claudio sat there in his chair, clutching the stump of his hand. I hardly questioned it at first. Some kind of symbol of some kind. 

He was dressed like a king. A crown of laurels upon his head. He was beautiful as he’d always been, but I saw only what he’d done when I looked at him, and what I had done because of him. I looked at him and for a moment I thought about peeling off his skin. Listening to him scream. But he was smiling at me. Satisfied. Smug. 

He was hungry. I could smell it. He could have eaten any of his followers before he let them burn alive but he’d chosen not to. He’d chosen to cut off his hand and bleed slow into his heavy robes and furs and wait for days for me to come to kill him. 

I don’t know why, for a moment, he looked exactly as he had the night I met him. How embarrassed he’d been that he’d mistook me for a woman. The taste of wine on his lips. All that bloodshed. All that suffering. Everything he’d done. All of it folded back into that small, nervous kiss under the stars. 

[ALFIE WHIMPERS] 

NEIGE
I did not think. There was no thought. I looked at the sleeve of blood on my arm. 

I searched for the hand whilst the rest of him was burning. I just wanted all of him to be gone. But I could not find it. 

And the sun was rising. 

I stepped out into the killing room, amidst the half-dried remains of those Claudio had kept closest. 

I felt the first rays of sun touch my skin. And I thought. I do not want to die. 

ALFIE
(crying)
And then what did you do? 

NEIGE
I tried to live. 

[END]