The Cost of Living

The Cost Of Living.

Jacob slammed himself against the door, forcing it closed and bracing for the next hit. It came like there was a bulldozer on the other side instead of just a man. Jacob’s sneakers slid through the grit on the cement floor as he struggled to keep the other from coming through. His whole body shook with the strain, his face already scarlet went nearly purple and black flecks swam in front of his vision like flies come to feast on his ruin.

Whatever pain it takes to keep this door closed, a surprisingly calm voice spoke within his throbbing head. You must endure it. If he gets through, you will be torn apart.

After a few seconds that felt more like hours to Jacob, his shoes managed to grab some traction and he was able to force the door closed once more. It sealed with a delicate click. From outside there came a bestial roar of rage and frustration.

Jacob looked around the musty warehouse, his eyes jumping frantically from shadow to shadow until they found what they were searching for. The clock on wall showed a quarter passed six; sunrise was minutes away. Bracing for the next barrage, he feared the remainder of his stamina could be measured in seconds. They ticked away in the odd stillness that descended over the room. Then two more thuds came. They were hard, but not enough to break through. Wedging his shoulder against the dented, rusty surface of the door, Jacob chanced a quick glimpse through the small square of Plexiglas set just at eye level.

Martin’s face was pressed against the glass, his eyes blazing and his lips pulled back in a grimace of psychotic fury. He was newly turned and his teeth had not yet sharpened to that elegant lethality like the fangs of the elders. Instead his mouth was a crooked trap, filled with jagged shards. He barred them: a threat of pain as he stared through the Plexiglas into Jacob’s eyes.

Jacob stared back, defiantly. The dreary blue glow of morning bloomed beside every shadow and grew, driving away the darkness. The promise of dawn reinforced his strength and he dug his feet into the ground preparing to hold off Martin’s final assault before the sun came to finish him off for good. The young vampire saw the resolution on Jacob’s face through the small scuffed window and knew it was now or never. He could feel the heat of day growing closer to the point when it would blaze in the sky like a ball of inferno shinning destruction.

Tapping into his life force: the blood he took to remain alive, Martin closed his eyes and held his hands on either side of his face. He drew a breath in a clumsy spasm and ruddy color flushed into his cheeks. He trembled all over and gooseflesh broke out across his skin. A dull light began to bake out from his mouth and nostrils; it brightened turning his face nearly translucent. A network of veins beneath his flesh became visible; they twitched to life as the glow intensified. Behind his lips, Jacob could see the silhouette of Martin’s fangs. When the light became so bright it was almost painful to look at, the vampire’s eyelids vanished to reveal his eyes, diabolical in their malevolent intensity. They bore into the face on the other side of the door, a picture of hatred and murder. And then, the light disappeared taking that demonic countenance with it and leaving only the face of Marin behind. His expression was peaceful, perhaps that of a sleeping man. Jacob recognized the man who had once been his friend. And then his eyes opened.

Martin’s pupils had become two red pinprick sized embers: coals left over from the fires of hell. His hands shot forward in a lightning fast shove causing the door to jump forward out of its frame, leaving handprints in the metal. The force knocked Jacob back and the door came open three or four inches.

“No!” Jacob screamed as he struggled against the Vampire’s strength.

Martin managed to get his arm through the door. His hand slashed and clawed for Jacob’s face; his nails clicking and clacking against the door. Forcing his way forward, the vampire came through up to his shoulder and now Jacob could see his face, no longer through the safety of the Plexiglas but right beside his own. But he could also see, through the window, a shimmering finger of light cresting along the roof of the buildings across the street. But though salvation was literally just on the horizon, Jacob new his strength would not last. His palms, slick with sweat were sliding along the surface of the door just as his shoes were sliding across the floor as Martin pushed forward, his head now all the way inside. His jaws were snapping just inches away, his rotten breath carrying an acrid mist of spittle into Jacob’s eyes.

The sun crept higher in the sky and its first rays fell upon Martin’s back. He roared and fought harder as tendrils of green smoke rose out around his collar filling the room with a foul odor like burning garbage. Balling his hand into a fist he drove into the side of Jacob’s head and forced his torso through the door. Jacob reeled, his head rocking on his neck like a tetherball and he could hear the fibrous tearing of the tendons in his neck. Martin managed to get his other hand through. He gripped the side of door and began to pry it wide open, his feral strength final overcoming the last of Jacob’s endurance.

Knowing he had lost the battle, Jacob realized he had just seconds to figure something out. He had tried in the beginning to wedge his shoe in the narrow gap beneath the door, but it hadn’t fit. Struck by a sudden grim inspiration, Jacob dropped to one knee and laid his palm flat on the ground just in front of the door. It swung open over his hand, peeling the flesh from his knuckles. The metal gouged into tendons and meat before coming to a halt, wedged on the bones of his wrist.

Martin screamed as he burst into green flames, black clots of smoking bile shooting from his mouth. The blast singed off Jacob’s eyebrows and half the hair on the left side of his head. But in a grisly flash it was over. Martin’s head fell from his shoulders like the ash of the tip of a cigarette. It hit the ground with a soft thud and disappeared in a chalky cloud. His clothes lay smoldering in the door way.

Jacob knelt, trembling and spitting to clear his mouth of Martin’s remains. He looked down to see his hand, pinned between the bottom of the door and the ground, a soupy puddle of his own blood and Martin’s ash surrounding it. Reaching behind him, he fumbled until his left hand found a moldy scrap of would from the warehouse floor. Slowly, he placed it between his teeth and bit down as he placed his free hand against the door.

“Mmmm,” he counted aloud in a garbled sob.

Jacob drew a deep breath.

“Mmm…”

Shoving forward with his left hand he pulled back with his right and his hand came free with a sloppy tearing sound. He screamed a till he had no more breath and went right on in an agonized shaking his. When he saw the ruin of his bloody hand, Jacob passed out which he found relieving since the pain only followed him half way down into the darkness.

He slept in relative peace on the warehouse floor and did not rise until the sun was once more retreating from the sky. He awoke to find the warehouse full of shadows; shapes and sounds writhed within them.





*Every now and then it strikes me to write a Vampire story. So I have decided to start using the same characters in them to see what comes of it.



-James