Black the light of hope
And I want to go home
Its candle burns so low
Yet with blood-red glow
I feel the crowd pressing hard all around me, so hard I can almost hear their separate heartbeats. Like synchronized war drums; they call to me. I smell their sweat and the tang of aromatic smoke and wrapped in my own personal cocoon, I sing my memories to them. I sing for them, for the desperate children of man. And I sing for us, for the wicked and the lifeless and the cold.
The first thing I remember is Father throwing me up in the air and catching me. I was laughing, though Mother yelled at him, begged him to let me down, afraid that he would drop me. But he never did. But Father went on and killed himself and left Mother and me all alone. Mother was not a bad person. But she couldn’t bear being alone and, apparently, she didn’t consider me much of a company. So she turned to her ex-boyfriend (the one before Father) and soon enough he had moved in with us.
Alec was mostly okay, but he did have this really bad luck. You see, people used to accidentally fall on his fists. A lot. People like Mother. He wouldn’t hurt me though. I was merchandise and, as every single salesman knows, merchandise must not be harmed.
I didn’t understand much back then. I didn’t know the meaning of words such as “pervert” or “pedophile”. Neither did I knew that those men he brought home with him were not friends, that what they did with me was not a game and that keeping it a secret didn’t make me cooler than the rest of the children at my school. And I sure as hell didn’t know that the white powdery thing that Alec cooked in his spoon was not sugar. All I knew was that it was a special kind of sugar and I wasn’t supposed to touch it. But then again, there might have been some truth in that.
All is still, all is cold
And I’ll never grow old
I tremble and cry
Yet I cannot die
I did found out, though. Eventually. And I did understand. I was about fifteen when they said that Mother had something inside her, eating its way out of her body. Cancer, they said. She was going to die, they said. An unprecedented fear gripped my heart with taloned fingers and would not let go. By then, I had realized that the only reason I kept living in that dump was because of Mother. What would become of me if she were gone? So I gathered my few possessions and hitchhiked my way out of there, paying for gas in the only way I knew.
Finally, I got picked up by a band and found myself in London. I hooked up with the drummer. She was a cold-hearted, goth bitch, but pretty as sin and just as hurtful. The singer was her ex and she wanted to fuck him over real bad, so she just used me to get her wish to come true. I didn’t care much. I was a better singer than him either way.
It was the eighties and everyone was goth. We listened to Bauhaus and Sisters of Mercy, we shot drugs and drank absinthe, we wrote ominous songs about death and we wanted to be vampires. We read cheap paperbacks and fucked boys and girls equally. And we were old, oh, so old. We were ancient souls in teenage bodies. Or so we thought.
I feel so much pain
I’ve forgotten my name
For all the people I’ve known
Now I feel so alone
One night we had this gig and I noticed three guys checking me out. I smiled a smile full of innocent lust and promises. It was the special kind of smile that Evlynia –the drummer- had taught me. The one we used to trick people’s money away from them. They asked me to go with them and I did. They were young and pale and beautiful. Would anyone in their right minds have said no?
Next thing I knew, I was locked in a dark room, naked and bleeding all over the place. My left foot was chained somewhere and, no matter how loud I screamed, no one seemed to hear me. They were back and not without company. I don’t think I can remember all that they did to me. They raped me and burned me and forced me to eat insects and beat me until my bones cracked. And then they took me to a place near the sea to kill me.
There is some truth in the urban legend claiming that people in dire situations find themselves armed with inhuman strength. My vision turned red and I completely lost it. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t mind being tortured, for torture I could survive. But who can survive death?
Somehow I got hold of something sharp, maybe a piece of wood or a shard of glass. And when I came to my senses they were all dead and I was covered in blood. Shaking, I managed to somehow get to the main road. Someone stopped, picked me up, took me to the hospital. I can’t remember his name, but I remember that he had a very distinctive tattoo on the side of his neck. It was a man with a dog’s head, holding an ankh. Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead, as I would learn later on. Isn’t it funny how I can’t remember his name but I can recall his tattoo in perfect detail?
The fire is so hot
Though alive still, I rot
I can’t remember the sky
And I’m too broken to fly
I wasn’t charged, though I was hospitalized for a year or so. I’m not sure why. I felt rather fine. Considering how I’d been tortured and raped for forty-four days and all. But, hey, what the heck, at least I didn’t have to worry about food and finding a place to crush.
When they let me out, I felt like a newborn baby. I didn’t know anyone, the band was nowhere to be found and I didn’t even look like a goth anymore. So I went back to the beginning and whored my way into a crappy apartment. I got a dye job and read tons of books that lied on my floor. And then I got a tattoo: the eye of Horus, under my left own. And after that came the wardrobe and one day I was ready to hit the goth scene again.
Finding a new band wasn’t hard. Though the fact that we were actually good surprised me. I was eighteen at the time and cold as ice. What I’d been through had made me tough and suspicious. Instead of my old open-hearted approach towards the crowd, now I had this detached and calculative attitude which, for some perverse reason, seemed to them far more attractive.
Chained so close to death’s door
It’s now day forty-four
Yet my bonds keep me here
Tied with lingering fear
We became a local hit in London. We even got a record deal, though we never did manage to record our songs. Because one night some strangers came to the club we used to play and they killed everyone. Myself included.
I lied there dead, in my own blood and the blood of others, not quite sure of what had happened. Until I awoke and the Hunger took me. Those first days are still a bit foggy. Mostly, I was hiding during the day, killing during the night, lost to the Beast. Until Emile found me and took me under his wing. He explained everything to me and he was the one to introduce me to other vampires in town. Emile is very old and very cruel but he is a generous mentor and a gifted lover, so I don’t really care much about the rest.
For no one will hear me
Though many are near me
All are deaf in this world
And they won’t speak a word
Bright the light of hope
Over my new home
And the breeze of tomorrow
Blows away my sorrow.
We left London a couple of years ago and bought a club in the U.,S., got connected with the Sabbat here. I’m still singing, obviously. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about people – living and dead alike- is that you better kill them before they kill you. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the world is that it’s a dark and twisted place, worse than a serial killer’s blood-hungry fantasies.
