RIVER

I'm not scared of dying. It's one of the few things in life that's guaranteed regardless of where you’re from, who you fuck, how much money you make. The whole planet is going to die. The sun is going to die. The universe is going to die. The very fabric of reality will eventually swallow itself and we won't even feel it happen. I am a single grain of sand in a beach of billions. I am the blink of an eye compared to all the time before and the time that'll come after. I haven't even made a dent. I'm another irrelevant nobody in a never ending parade of irrelevant nobodies. Dying is the most peaceful thing I imagine, and God, do I deserve some peace. I'm always running from something, or someone. Just living moment to moment, place to place. I'm living to die. When your entire life revolves around staking the undead, you get very well acquainted with the most morbid curiosities inside yourself that you didn’t even know you had. That’s been my life since I was twelve. I guess you could call me a hunter.

Maybe that's why I don’t even flinch when the Doctor tells me I was dying. I suppose I already knew. Since the summer of ‘82 we'd been slowly dropping like flies. You'd see some guy who was the ex of a friend of a friend at a bar one night and you wouldn't see him again until he was in a box at a funeral you have no idea why you were even invited to. 

I'm not going to act like I never thought it'd happen to me. I knew it would eventually. Loving someone for more than a few days is too hard, I don't know how anyone does it. Eighteen hours is the perfect amount of time to love another man for, any longer and it’s soppy, any less and you might as well hire a hooker. It's already been four years since they first told me I was sick. I didn’t even know which of them gave it to me. He was probably dead by now anyway. But now I am getting your affairs in order and telling your Mum you're sorry kind of sick. The kind of sick where the doctor puts a mask on to talk to you, asks you not to sit on the same seat as his other patients and refuses to shake your hand when you leave even though he's double layered latex gloves. That might have less to do with my sickness and more to do with just me. 

The waiting room is full of them. Young men with bright eyes and white shirts biting their nails. Some even younger than me. Two of them are holding hands subtly hidden under a denim jacket. Every single young man in this room was going to die before the big year 2000. Hell, the middle aged guy smoking in the corner in the leather jacket fiddling with his wedding ring - him too. The woman in the smart salmon trouser suit flicking through some leaflets about support groups trying to distract herself from the inevitable - her too. That's the whole reason they set up this little clinic, to keep us away from everyone else. To isolate the sick and dirty like they aren't just scared kids who don't understand what they did to deserve this. 

I light up a cigarette before I even step outside. I need it. The steps down into the carpark are blocked off by some goth kids weeping on each other. 

“You're going to be OK,” the girl says to the guy. 

“You shouldn't be touching me,” the guy cries. 

“I don't care. I'm not afraid of you,” she answers.

I whistle through my teeth. She helps him up, wrapping her arm around him and ushering him away. It’s a warm summer night. They'll be OK. 

I rummage through the pockets of my trench coat gathering pocket change as I enter the cramped phone booth in the carpark. I'd have to be quick. I punched in the only number I ever seemed to call these days. 

The same song of a woman’s voice answers as always. “Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow, how can I help you today?”

“A litter was quickly formed, and Aubrey was laid by the side of her who had lately been to him the object of so many bright and fairy visions, now fallen with the flower of life that had died within her.” A very appropriate code for vampyre slayers.

A moment’s silence before her voice hushes.

“She’s not here.”

Shit. “Where is she?”

“She didn’t say.”

“When will she be back?”

“She didn’t say.”

“OK. Well, tell her to call me when she’s back. It’s important.” It’s hard to hear her over the blow dryers and mindless middle-aged gossip.

“Name and number?”

“For fuck’s sake, Carol, it’s me.”

“Name and number?”

I suppose I should take her annoying persistence as a good sign that our security is finally taking us seriously. “River Fallon. F-A-L-L-O-N, not ‘an’ not ‘en’, ‘on’.”

“Number?”

“Same as it has been for the last eleven years you…”

The line goes dead. It’s probably for the best, I’m in no mood to deal with Carol. I hang the receiver up. The one time I need Selma to actually pick up, she decides to go walkabout. This is the last thing I need right now.

My flat isn’t far from here. My ciggie is barely burnt through. I flick the stub into the gutter outside the condemned shithole I’m squatting in. It’s probably the least toxic thing in that water supply. Almost as soon as I drop it, a fat black rat scurries out from some rubbish on the doorstep to sniff at it. I lift the frayed and waving crime scene tape that has covered the front doors to this place since the big smack bust in ‘85. I step into the scent of dope and damp. There’s music blaring and someone screaming in a language I don’t understand. A young woman with a bad perm and her panties in her hand pushes past me on the stairs quickly followed by the weird dog guy from 7B calling out ‘Honey come back, Honey come back’! 

It’s never a good sign when your front door is slightly ajar. I know my place doesn’t have the safest lock and key system but this is the third time this month. My hand settles on my flick knife in my back jeans pocket. I gently nudge it open with my shoulder. It’s not the biggest flat. Just enough for me and my babies to be comfortable without me needing to clean too often.  

She’s sitting at my kitchen table crowded with unwashed plates and packets. White hair curled under her chin and lipstick like blood.

“How the Hell do you live like this?” she asks.

“Jesus Christ, Selma. I thought I’d had another break in.” I pocket my knife and shove the door as close to shut as it could be.

“Another?”

“Long story.” I drag out the chair opposite her and sit, kicking my feet onto the table.

“I raised you better than this.”

“No you didn’t,” I chuckle. 

“You called the salon.”

“You weren’t in.”

“Because I was here, waiting for you.”

“Why?”

“Can’t a woman come and see her son?”

“You never normally do.”

She reluctantly agreed. “Newborn fledgling a few towns over, causing all kinds of chaos. £2000 up front, an extra £2000 when the job is done.”

“No can do, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t tell me you finally got a hobby? Or a boyfriend?”

“Worse.”

She finally looks at me. Peering over her small black sunglasses with those same judgmental eyes from my teen years when I’d smashed the good glasses or replaced her vodka with water or tried to hang myself in the bathroom.

“Selma, I’m dying.”

“Christ, Ver, not this again. I’ve told you that sardonic pessimism is old hat.”

“No, Selma. I was at the clinic this morning, that's why I wasn’t here. It’s progressed. I have…” I’m not scared of dying but that word, that word is too much for even me to say. “I’m sick, Selma. I’m dying.”

I watch the woman who raised me, the woman who chose me out of all the other boys in that home, freeze on the spot. I don’t think I’d ever known Selma to be so quiet and still. She lifts her glasses and folds them onto the table. For a moment it looks as if she’s about to burst into tears. The corners of her mouth twitch. Her pristine red nails tap against the table rhythmically.

“You have AIDS?”

“Yeh. Yeh. I do.”

She pushes herself up with a shaky exhale, turning away from me. “OK. How long…”

“They can't tell. Could be a year or two if I get lucky.”

“If you don't?”

“Months. Maybe weeks. I could drop dead tomorrow.”

“Christ alive, Ver, don't say that.”

“I'm sorry, Mum.” 

“Oh, don't be so silly,” she turns around, all traces of pity gone from her face. She opens her arms almost imperceptibly inviting me in. I kick down my feet and settle into her embrace.

I tower over her now. The fake fur of her long white coat still tickles my nose like it did when I was a kid. She doesn’t hug me very often, even less so these days, so I make the most of the ones I could steal. I worry about leaving her all alone more than dying myself. 

“Selma, I need your permission to do something.”

“Is it paperwork? For a hospital or a clinic or?”

“I want to go on one last hunt.”

She pulls away as I watch my mother give way to my boss. “Ver, you better not be about to say what I think you're about to say.” She drops my hands. 

“I want to go after The Old One.” 

It was December 25th 1966. Christmas. I was too excited to sleep so I slept in my parents bed. He came in through the back door that had been hanging off its hinges since Spring. My Dad went downstairs to investigate what had driven the dog so crazy. He came running back up, screaming and shouting. My Mum took me half-awake in her arms to the wardrobe in my bedroom and left me there. She smiled, kissed my forehead and told me to stay still and quiet. I didn't see them again. Not alive. I saw what he left of them. I remember his face, his eyes, his hair, his smell, his clothes. I shut my eyes and waited to die like my Mum and my Dad did. I woke up half-frozen on the steps of the hospital. 

Selma shakes her head so hard her chunky golden chain rattle. “No. No, I forbid it.”

“You said when I was ready he was mine.”

“Absolutely not.”

“He killed my parents, Selma. My real Mum and Dad. I watched him kill them. The fucker is mine.”

“Do you know how many slayers he has taken?”

I had his whole case memorised. “He's seven hundred and thirty seven years old, no one knows.”

“Exactly. Every slayer thinks they can go for The Old One. Seven hundred and thirty seven years and no one has made a dent.”

“They're not me.”

“So you can get yourself killed?” She yells. “No, not my boy.”

“If my options are getting my heart ripped out by the oldest known Vampyre in the entire western world or rotting away slowly hooked up to an IV watching my skin fall off my body, I'm choosing The Old One.” I have pictured both outcomes in immense gory detail. Neither look great but one seems to have a little more dignity. 

“I can't talk you out of this, can I?”

“No. Tomorrow. I'm going after The Old One.”

“You're going to die, River. I need you to understand, you're going to die tomorrow.”

“I can live with that.”

She nods slowly, looking me up and down. “How's your arsenal looking?”

“I'm just going to take everything I have and hope for the best.”

“Hope for the best? No strategy? No plan? This is The fucking Old One, Ver, this isn't some fledgling who hasn't even figured out they can retract their fangs yet.”

“My plan is to walk in, find him, put a stake through his heart and take his fangs as a trophy.”

“No back-up? No stake out? No tracking? Just luck?”

“Selma, I am not going to die from some fucking sickness I got in a bathroom at a nightclub. That's not what I want. You know that's not what I want.”

“Your big hero’s death? Your triumphant legacy across the world? Have you ever considered that I don't want to bury my only son?”

“This isn't about you. This is about me. I watched him drain my Mum, my real Mum. I watched him chase down and scalp my Dad.” I throw my coat off and begin to unravel the white tape I keep around my forearms until I can see the deep bite scar in my wrist from the night my parents died and hold it up to her. “He gave me this. Everything I have done in my life since that day has been for this. He marked me. He took everything from me. This is how I get it back. I don't care if you call yourself my mother, you don't get to take this from me.” I don’t raise my voice to her all that often. If I did that as a kid, I'd taste the back of her hand for the rest of the week. It feels good to do it now. Time is short and shit needs to be said. 

She nods slowly, biting her cheek. “Alright, River, you win. You win.”

“Thank you.”

“But promise me this. You're going to fight. This isn't a lay down on the tracks and let the train hit you situation.”

“Come on, Selma. You raised me for sixteen years. When have I ever laid down on the tracks?” 

“When I've been the one to drag you off them.”

I let the silence sit. She has a strange look in her eyes caught between betrayal, anger and premature grief.

“If I survive, if I come home in one piece, I will do whatever treatment in whatever hospital you want me to.”

“What do you need from me?”

“I need you to take care of my babies.”

“Babies?” she hesitates. “Your snakes? No, I don't like them. You know I don't.”

“I can't just leave them.”

“Take them to Hassan, he always used to watch them when you were out working.”

Fuck, that is not the name I need to hear right now. “He and I aren't talking right now.”

“River, you're not going to get another chance. That boy has been by your side since before I was even around. He deserves to know why another one of his friends has disappeared. I'm speaking to you as your Mother, not your boss, not your handler. You can kill yourself, you might find some peace there and I hope you do. But people are going to miss you and it's your responsibility to decide how much closure they get.” 

“You're right. I'll go over tomorrow.”

“Or you could go over tonight?”

“I need to be in my best form tomorrow if I'm going to get a shot at this bastard. I'll drop the snakes off tomorrow morning before I head out.”

“Will you come see me before you go?”

I know I won’t. I won’t go through with it if I do. If I see her, I'll be too weak to go on. “Of course, you're my mother.”

She rests her hand on my shoulder as she walks past me. “Get some rest, sweetheart.”

“See you.”

“See you.” She smiles over her shoulder as she closes the door behind her. She sighs loudly with a shake as soon as she’s on the other side.

‘See you’. My last words to my mother were fucking ‘see you’. Not ‘goodbye’, not ‘I’m sorry’, not ‘I love you’, ‘see you’. For a second I almost feel nervous. Or at least that’s what I think it is. Slayers can’t afford weak emotions, it’s one of the first things Selma ever taught me. Regret, guilt, hesitation, anxiety, love and complacency - they can never be in our lives. I hadn’t even bothered to ask why she was in my flat to begin with.

In my pitiful excuse for a bedroom, I drag my creaking bed frame across the room, moving the small stack of books that keep it from rocking when I move in the night. I find the floorboard with the small finger hole and pull it up. Board by board I expose my hidden nook. I take a mental inventory.  

X1 Beretta 950

X8 silver bullets

X3 75cm wooden stakes

X4 50cm wooden stakes

X2 20cm wooden stakes

X1 135cm wooden stake

X1 16oz spray bottle of holy water

X1 250ml plastic bottle of holy water

X3 18cmx2.5cm wooden crucifixes 

X1 solid silver crucifix necklace 

X1 solid silver crucifix bracelet chain

X1 solid silver crucifix ring

X1 lucky flick knife

X1 hunting knife

X2 Bowie knives

X1 10-inch survival knife

X3 metal lighters

X1 7oz stainless steel hip flask (12-year single malt whiskey)

This I can work with. 

Every slayer has a vague idea of where The Old One is shacked up. He’s been in Springhollow since 1593, working tunnels underground that we still couldn’t successfully navigate. He doesn’t hide, he doesn’t need to hide. He’s the fucking Old One. We’d tracked him to 66 Canary Avenue. It’s the poshest street in all of Springhollow. It’s like something out of a movie all pastel and pristine. Dads work 9-5 at the office and drive home in their brand new cars to spend their nights mowing the lawns, drinking whiskey and sneaking off after dark to do God only knows what. The kids are all named after flowers and popstars and have colour TVs in their bedrooms. The wives get their hair curled and their nails painted at the salon every week and go home to spend their nights laughing at game shows and making pasta salad. I am sitting in a fleapit with malfunctioning electricity, no running water and a rat problem eating cereal with no milk straight from the box. 

From the back of my fridge I take the two dead mice vacuum sealed in their little plastic tombs, unwrap them and open my babies’ tank. Frankie and Judy, my garter snakes, are the closest thing I have to company these days.

“Are you going to be good girls for your uncle Hassan?” I ask as Judy slithers into my hand. She doesn’t like being held for too long so I take my chances and keep her low to the enclosure. I can never get a hand on Frankie, she hates it. “He’s one of those vegetarians so I’m not sure he’ll be any good with your mice but I hope he’ll try his best. Daddy’s real sorry he’s got to leave you. If I didn’t, I’d just get sicker and sicker and sicker and I wouldn’t be able to take care of you. You understand that, right? You’re all I’ve got, girls, I just want the best for you. You’ll be safe with Hassan, he’s a doctor so his house is massive. Plus no more nasty Selma calling you pests.” Judy is slinking out of my hand and I let her go. “You’re going to be fine, babies. Hassan always did right by me, he’ll do right by you as well. Nothing to worry about.” I close their enclosure and pull the fleece blanket over top. I have no idea how the hell I am meant to carry them to Hassan’s place in the morning.

This could be my last night on Earth. I should be out doing something. One last drink, one one last fuck…well maybe not that. I smoke through an entire pack of Camels, drink the last three beers in my fridge and touch myself whilst playing a Carly Simon vinyl. 

I’ve never been great at sleeping. Not since I lost Mum and Dad. I pace and pace by the small glow of the light I can’t turn off. I can’t sleep in the dark. I can’t do anything in the dark. The shrink at the boy’s home called it a trauma. She said I was always on guard in case someone was lurking in the dark to take me like The Old One took my parents. She didn’t believe in that part, she thought it was just some burglar psycho, so did the police. They called me crazy, they even marked it on all my forms so when families came by no one would want the fucking loon. I struggled to forget the nights when I was dragged to the storage cupboard. I never slept a wink those nights. I would scream until my throat was dry and my voice was hoarse, and sob until it burnt my eyes. Selma tried it too at first. She’d sit in the doorway of my room and hope I’d eventually stop crying. I never did. She caved and let me keep the light on eventually. I still can’t do it. I’ve got a reputation around the clubs of being the kind of guy who is gone without a ‘goodbye’ before the sun comes up. They judge me for it — of course they do — but that is kinder than having to admit I was twenty-eight and still need a nightlight. 

I steal a few hours of rest as the sun rises. A full night would’ve been preferable, I needed my strength for my challenge today, but I’ll make do with what I have. I spent the morning packing up all my stuff into boxes so it’d be easier for Selma to clean once I was gone. I label them ‘clothes’ ‘trinkets’ ‘bin’ and ‘other’. I don’t exactly have the room for decorations. The only thing that doesn’t find its way into one of the boxes is a small blue velvet covered circular tub. I admired it one last time. Eight hundred and sixteen long fangs torn fresh from the gums of my kills. Some crooked, some chipped, some discoloured but all genuine vampyre fangs. I had hoped to hit one thousand and become a real legend but eight hundred and eighteen will have to do. I leave the tub on top of the boxes that are now stacked in my former bedroom. Selma will know what to do.

I gather up my inventory into my leather coat and belt. I can just about carry Frankie and Judy’s tank. I wander through my three room flat one final time. The scuffed and scraped floor, the damp and peeling wallpaper, the unflushable toilet, the live wires hanging from the socket, the cracked window. I will not miss this place. 

I should be fully focused on The Old One and how to tear his cold, undead heart from his chest but I'm walking down the main street with a double snake enclosure. Hassan is only a few streets away and my arms are starting to tire. He lives in a house that he actually owns and makes mortgage payments on which is more than can be said for me and most of the other people in my life.

I knock by kicking his door with my foot. I can hear his footsteps approaching. I probably should’ve just dropped the cage and run for it but Selma was right, he deserved to know.

Hassan has always been the handsome one in our pair. Even at the home when we were boys he just had to bat those huge brown puppy dog eyes and the Mums would melt. They’d always bring him back when he set the kashmir rug on fire but that's besides the point. Even now standing in his doorway, his dark curls unbrushed, sleep still thick in his eyes, looking at me with what I can only describe as unmistakable disdain he is handsome. Handsome enough for me at least. I guess you could call us lovers maybe once or twice. We were young and lonely and had no one but ourselves and our left hands to survive the nights in the home. When we were grown up we were still young and lonely. We still kissed and shared a bed and held each other. We fucked more then a few times when we were between people and places. He told me he ‘loved me’ and I asked him ‘why’? and we never spoke about it again. He’s my best friend and I don't know how he deals with me.

“What the fuck do you want?” Such a way with words.

“Did I wake you?”

“Yes, yes you did. I just did a twenty-four hour, I am in no mood to be dealing with you right now so make it quick.”

“I have a birthday present for you.” I hand him the enclosure.

“My birthday is in January.” He pulls the blanket off and rolls his eyes, sighing loudly. “What is this?”

“I need you to take care of them for me. You feed and clean them when I’m out hunting anyway, you seem like the most knowledgeable person to have them now.”

“Why can’t you keep them?”

“I’m going away for a while.”

“How long’s a while?”

“Like forever.”

He places the enclosure in the corridor next to him, stepping out to talk to me. “What does that mean, River?” 

I take a step back. “You probably shouldn’t get too close to me.”

There is a moment of sleep-deprived silence as we stare at each other. I can hear the cogs in his brain turning before his hand shoots up over his mouth as if he was about to vomit. “Not you too.”

“I found out yesterday.”

“Fuck, River, I didn’t even know you were…”

“I didn’t really tell anyone.”

He tears up, sniffling. “Do you want to come in?”

“I actually have somewhere to be. I’m going after The Old One.”

“You’re…” he laughs under his breath, “OK, right of course you are. Why are you so determined to kill yourself?" 

"I'm dying either way, I'm not going out like… that." 

"Like what?" 

"Like you see on the news." 

"I don't see it on the news. I don't need to. I'm down there twenty-four hours a day with my friends, with our friends, calling mothers and arranging flowers. You should come down some time."

“I’d rather go out doing what I love than rotting away in some ward.”

“You don’t love anything.” His voice was raising as he flared his nostrils and fought tears.

“That’s not true.”

“Did you ever love me? None of your eighteen hour bullshit. The times we had together. The nights we spent together. We were all we had for years and now you’re just going to fucking leave me?”

“Like I have a choice.” I shake my head slowly. “I never hated you, Hassan. That’s more than I can say for most people.”

“Is that the best I get? After everything we went through. Holding your hand when you were scared of the dark back at the home. My first kiss, your first kiss. Our first kiss when we were fifteen years old. Fucking me in the back of your first car. I have spent half of my life waiting for you to be ready, River and now you're…” He runs his hands through his hair. “I have been to eleven funerals already this year, I cannot go to yours as well. Do not make me go to yours as well, River, I can’t take it, I can’t lose anyone else,” He finally weeps.

“God, don't cry, please don't cry.” He is such a beautiful crier. Shit. “You know I always will…you know.”

“I'll watch your snakes but I'm not doing the mouse thing.”

“Thank you.”

“Is your favourite flower still Sunflowers?”

“I guess.” I hadn't thought about it in a while. 

“I'll bring some. Every other weekend.”

“You don't have to do all of that.”

“Well fuck you, I'm going to,” he shouts before looking around to make sure no neighbours are present.

“OK. OK.” I hate being touched but I can’t stand there and watch him cry. I wrap my arms around him and pull him against my chest. “You're going to be OK.”

“River?” he sniffles against my chest.

“Yeh?”

“If you survive this, don't come back here. I mean it this time.” He says it with conviction but grips my shirt even tighter in his little hands. 

I force him to pull away. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. I see it in his eyes before he does it. He pushes himself onto his tiptoes and brushes his lips against mine for only a moment that I don’t have the strength to reciprocate. He turns, his hand slipping from mine and goes back inside, closing the door in my face. 

I sometimes wish he and I had done things differently. More formal and soppy. Less masturbatory. Not that it matters now. I’m dead meat. A corpse walking amongst the living one last time. This is my final bow. 

66 Canary Street. A twenty minute walk to my death. I lit up what could be the final cigarette I ever smoke. I never noticed how fucking disgusting these things tasted until now. I drop it onto their unlittered street. Call it an act of protest.

It looks exactly as I remember it from cycling past as a kid. Houses all neat and tidy, children in paddling pools giggling whilst the radios play gently and their Mums bring them cucumber sandwiches. Three teenage boys on expensive bikes peddle past me.

“Fag!” One of them yells. 

Suddenly I am aware of the entire street staring at me like some creature in a zoo. I set my sights on number 66. My birth mother’s silver cross necklace feels heavier today as I kiss it to my lips. I don’t believe in pre-hunt rituals but I’d rather have her with me. I press my hand against the untarnished golden knob against the stark white door. It's unlocked as I had predicted. The back door, a window, literally any other entry would have been better for a hunter. 

I don’t care. I stopped caring a while ago. Pretences were gone the moment I walked up the street. If he is awake, he will smell me, hear me, he’ll know I am here no matter what I do. If he is asleep then fuck it. 

The walls are a sickly yellow that is all the rage these days. The carpet feels like it has never been stepped on or washed since it was made. The blinds are closed and the lights are off, only leaving the beams of light from the windows and the flung open front door to illuminate the interior. An Interior which is immaculate. It is like a showroom house that God forgot about. Plastic on the furniture, table polished, plastic plants and a smell of rot. As perfect as the rest of this house is, the smell from its sole occupant and his dealings is near impossible to hide. Like week old meat you find in the back of the fridge but amplified.

I move further through the home, my pistol in my left hand, raised and ready. A crucifix gripped in my right, using my wrist to steady my gun. I move quickly. Part of me wants to take my time with it but sixteen years of experience take over as I clear the two rooms either side of the hallway that lead to the lounge and kitchen beyond. First room on the left is an office with a bookshelf but no books. A spotless washroom on the right with no towels laid out. No sign of undead monsters, only more pristine furniture and untouched living space. I move my way into the lounge, big and spacious and eerie as fuck. There has never been any awkward family bust ups in here. Even the fruit in the fruit bowl is fake. Every nerve in my body is tense and I can feel something in the air. Something tells me I’m being watched, that gut instinct gained over a lifetime of repetition. The lounge further on connects to a kitchen and then to what I assume is the back door next to the stairs leading upwards. I sweep the room with precision and find it empty. I almost feel disappointed. There’s no food and the fridge isn’t even plugged in. The linoleum has never been cleaned but looks as though it has never needed to be. This place has not been lived in.

I move towards the stairs. The tunnels were underground but I don’t want to start looking for a passageway unless I know I can get out. Part of me wishes to rush now. To find The Old One as soon as possible, to get this party started and end it one way or another. One by one I step further up the creaking wooden stairs, taking care to watch the front incase he shows himself, the rat fuck. Every step makes a terrible cry and I cringe at my lack of scouting. Had I been a trainee I’d have kicked my arse for being so careless. Had Selma been here she’d have taken my gun and told me to go wait outside for being such an idiot if she didn’t shoot me herself. But I’m on my own. Fuck it, right? I’m dead anyway. I almost take the next step before I hear the slightest of disturbances from below. A shift in the air, a change in temperature. I would call myself paranoid if the wooden board beneath my foot didn’t turn to splinters as a taloned weathered hand reaches through, grabs my ankle and yanks me down with an impossible strength.

My body erupts in pain as I land flat on my arse. My leg screams especially from just being used to gouge wood. The air escapes my body as I let out a groan and my eyes refocus. The dust begins to settle and I see him. The Old One. Skin so grey it was almost purple with only the partial onset of wrinkles to show any age. His eyes may have once been kind but now like two black holes, they stared squinted and soulless. His hair grazes his lower back even when tied back as it is now. He doesn’t stand much taller or broader than me but the way he scrunches his nose and drags his nails across the wall turns my stomach. A grin on his teeth, his fangs sliding over his lips like tusks. He is exactly how I remember him.

A crackle escapes his lips. “The Little Fallon Boy…”

Before he could finish his bullshit sentence I return to my senses, level my gun and fire off two rounds from my pistol. One clipping him in the arm, the other tearing a chunk of his neck out. This only seems to piss him off. As I try to get to my feet I’m slammed back down as his wrinkly twig-like hand smashes into my chest.

I feel the floorboards buckle and creak beneath my back as I'm pushed more and more. With a crunch and a crash my whole body falls through the wood veneer. I feel my sternum bend with the force of making a me-shaped crater. Force suddenly turns to grabbing as The Old One throws me forwards back towards the main door. I feel the floor shatter and bend as I’m thrown through it. My coat takes most of the damage, coming out shreds. I feel my spine scream a painful protest. I try to stand but he’s on me like lightning.

“I remember you, boy.”

“I remember you, cunt.”

The Old One grimaces and looks down to see one of my crucifixes burying itself deeper into what I hope is his kidney. A snarl grows on his face as he grabs my hand and stares into the barrel of my mace spray.

“Made you look.” 

I squeeze the cap and holy water mixed with whatever shit they filled this thing with squirts straight into The Old Ones eyes and face. Immediately he scrunches up, covers his face and pushes away steam rising from his eyes. He lets out a cry like a grandfather falling down the stairs. I reach for my pistol and unload all remaining six bullets into his chest. Five hit. the sixth goes wide from the rapid fire. Each shot sends the old one sprawling, tunnelling deep into his flesh and blasting out the other side. I aimed for his heart but I missed by a hair. He falls to one knee and grunts holding his bleeding chest. I finally work my way to my feet, every bone and muscle in my body screams. I toss my empty pistol, it’s done its job. We’d had a good ride my pistol and I. Selma got me it as a welcome home gift after my first tour of the old country. I ready a stake to couple my spray. My clothes are in tatters, I'm covered in dust and I’m panting like a dog but I am ready. He takes a moment to stand with me, the bullet holes fizzle and steam from his body.

"Have you thought about me everyday since?" he says through gritted fangs.

"You killed my fucking parents."

"I did?” He bends down, flexes his claw like hands and hisses at me like a tiger. 

I tighten my grip on my weapons and charge him. He could have dodged a thousand times but he stands there with a sick smile on his face. I pull my arms back as I launch the tips of my weapons forwards. He moves at the last second as the tips pierce his ancient skin but millimetres away from where I aimed. I keep pushing forward like a rugby scrum, driving him back into the kitchen. We crash into the fridge. Glassware and plates fall and shatter around us. He lets out a chuckle, it’s distorted from my stake inside his fucking lung and he laughs anyway. His head strikes forward, crushing my nose into my skull. He dazes me, I see stars, I feel his hands reach around my shoulders to my chest but my body feels too sluggish to respond.

His clawed fingers hooked around the cross pulling it from my neck with a snap of the latch. He threw me backwards against the wall across into the lounge, knocking me to the ground. 

"Now this little trinket I remember."

I spat up a mouthful of blood, trying to count my fractures and breaks. "You a magpie or something?"

"I remember how this glinted in my eye as I sank my teeth into your mother's breast."

"Stop."

"You remember it so vividly, don't you? Her placing her finger to her lips as she closed the closet door on you. Watching out of the peephole like some creeper as I tore her dress off. Her little hands slapping against my chest like that could have stopped me."

"Don't talk about my fucking mum." I find my feet and stumble towards him. His hand strikes me almost instantly, casting me back into the kitchen. His hand worked around my ankle dragging me across the shattered glass. 

This isn’t going well. I feel the glass and porcelain slice through my shirt and skin like razors. In the same flick of opening the blade I slice his hand with my smallest hidden blade. I aim for a joint in his finger and I'm rewarded by being freed and a severed Index finger. I’m complimented with a chorus of curses in ancient tongues and a kick to the hip so hard I feel my body spin away, catching on shattered floor boards and glass. I hurl the little knife across the room towards The Old Ones’ throat. A millimetre further and it would have struck home had he not caught it between his fingers. He would have stopped it sooner had his hand not been slick with his own blood and missing a digit. His hand obscuring his face, he doesn't see me race forward, nor does he notice the next blade flash across his periphery as I drive it through his neck into his body followed by another into his gut. I drive both blades down and up respectively, I feel the ancient connective tissue give way as the blades drive deeper inside. He’d be screaming if the airways to his lungs were not filled with blood. 

He grabs my left arm in his and squeezes, immediately pulverising every fragment of bone in my forearm, twisting my appendage at an unsightly angle. It was my turn to scream and my turn for it to be cut short. He grabs my side, his claws dig into the meat and I feel myself being lifted upwards, the breath being pushed from my body. He crouches for a moment and the next we’re racing upwards. I feel plasterboard and wood shatter against my back. 

When we crash back down we’re in a children's play room. I've broken more bones than I can count and my head has been concussed so many times that my eyes can barely focus, so I don’t take the necessary amount of time to consider why the fuck The Old One has a children’s play area. The Old One isn’t looking good either. I count at least four stabbing weapons inside him, each blessed and coated in silver as well as the bullet holes that litter his body. Every wound steams with burning smoke and his eyes run red with blood from blisters on his face. Yet here he is, still standing, proud as ever, like he hasn’t even felt any of this. 

I wriggle on the floor and grab my survival knife. Never once have I actually used this in combat, only for surviving in the wilderness. But it was this, my lucky knife or a bottle of holy water…I choose the survival knife.

“You took everything from me,” I stammered.

“Not yet I didn't.”

Within a flash he’s on me, his hand around my throat and crushing like a vice. He lifts me off the ground and I feel the blood rush in my head. He opens his mouth and his fangs slide out of his mouth into a hellish smile. I slash and stab wildly at his arm, more of a last ditch effort than coordinated skill but it's not enough. I let out what little cry remains as his fangs slice into my neck. I feel them like cold tusks goring me. My blood gushes out and into his mouth to which he greedily drinks. This is it. This is how it happens. Just when I start to see darkness I feel the blade slice tissue in his shoulder. Suddenly his arm goes limp like it had been cut off.

He drops me and the blood rushes back to my head for the split second before I hit the ground as a fist like a truck slams me upwards into the second ceiling. Any air in my body has been thrown out with all the blood in my stomach. The blade falls from my hand as I slip in and out of consciousness as I crash back down to the floor. I'm left a single wheeze of breathing before I feel a cataclysmic impact against my lower back that sends me crashing through the floor again to ground level. My body is broken. I can’t get air to my lungs and the blackness around my vision grows. I can't move, I can’t speak. The last thing I see before I lose my presence of mind is The Old One landing in front of me and walking towards me. 

I think I dreamt of my Mum and Dad. I don’t really remember. 

By the time I wake up, I’ve forgotten what even sent me to sleep until I try to turn my head and feel the gaping wounds in my neck tear open even more underneath the thin cloth bandage crudely taped over them. My breath is shallow and my heartbeat slows. God, it was so dark in here. This must have been the tunnel judging by the dirt and soil now coating me. He’s removed my jacket and laid it by his side, all my weapons far out of reach. The Old One is crouched in a dusty corner running the length of a katana along a whetstone. The blade would appear almost unused to the untrained eye but the hilt and handle are frayed from no doubt centuries of use. The myth says he takes the heart of each victim as a souvenir. My tools have been pulled from his body and sit in a bucket of water at his feet. He has dressed his wounds as he has dressed my neck. His eyes are agitated and he still bears a grimace but he is in much better shape than me.

"Why aren't I dead?" I manage to choke.

"Because I'm not done with you yet.” He checks the sharpness of his blade with his fingertip. 

"December 25th, 1966. You spared me. Why?"

"I suppose you want me to tell you I knew you were born for greatness?"

"Don't you owe a dying man the truth?"

He places the sword down and laughs shallowly. "It is the taste of the blood. A kill who is calm, unafraid, accepting of their death will taste sweet, rich, indulgent. The prey that screams and fights and panics is bitter, salty, he burns the throat and stirs the gut. Your mother was wine, your father arsenic. You were a boy, terrified and alone, I tasted your wrist and was reminded of biting into a lemon as a child. You were disgusting."

"You took me to the hospital. In a blanket."

"I held you to my chest the whole way, do you remember that? You fazed in and out of consciousness but soon slept in my arms."

"Why not kill me? Or just leave me at the scene for the pigs to find?" It was just one of the hundreds of questions that haunted me since that night.

"Hospitals are prime hunting grounds. It was a feast awaiting me."

"I wish you would've killed me."

"Well, your dream may yet come true. You are dying, aren't you, Fallon?"

How the fuck could he tell? Maybe my blood tastes different too. "So what if I am?"

"Does your blood feel different now that it's infected?" He crouches by me, dragging his claw along the length of my wrist until blood pools at my feet. He grabs the back of my head and makes me look at the thick, ruby puddle staining my sleeves. "Does it look the same?"

"Yes."

"So did mine once. Before I was this. We both made mistakes, didn't we, Fallon? Strange men in the night costing us our lives. Mine suckling at my neck when he was done with my cattle, yours with your mouth through a hole in a bathroom stall. Both dirty, both tainted, both outcast. You for your sickness, me for mine."

"Difference is you're a monster and I'm..."

"A man who is dying. I can change that."

"You got the cure for AIDS down here in this shithole?" I cough.

"I have the cure for everything. You may be the perfect candidate. I could offer you the most amazing life..."

"Live forever? Here with you?" He is being serious, I can tell by his voice. I grew up in a boy’s home, I know when I’m being lied to.

"Would you like that, Fallon? Spare your new mother and that lovely boy your heart beats for the pain of burying you."

"Hassan?"

"From the look of the blood, I'd say you've got five minutes to make your decision.” 

Fuck. Fuck. Immortality. Living forever. Watching Selma shrink and grow fragile. Watching Hassan's hair slowly turn to grey and his eyes start to fail and his back starts to hunch. Never growing or ageing myself. No more sickness, no more sleep. This creature, this thing that massacred my family was offering me a way to evade death. 

Ever since I was a boy I've wanted to die. I told it to the nurse who cleaned my cuts in the early hours of Christmas morning. ‘I want to be with my mummy'. I told it to Hassan after my fourth family returned me with two black eyes and two stone lighter. ‘I wish he'd killed me too’. I told it to Selma as we waited for the ambulance when she found me in the bathroom choking. ‘Just let me die. Let me die’. Dying is all I've ever wanted. I’ve built a life on it. But now…fuck.

“I'll do it.” 

His lips twitched into a smirk. “You'll join me in darkness?”

“I'm not ready to die.”

“No one ever is.”

“Before you change me. Can I have one final drink of water? You have been dead for seven hundred and thirty seven years. Do you not miss water? There was a bottle with the stakes in my coat.”

“I no longer recall how water tastes.” He reached into my long, dark coat and pulled out the plastic bottle. He twisted off the cap and approached me, tilting my head back to ease it into my mouth.

The cool water slakes against my mouth. This shit is holy water alright. It stings against the wounds in my mouth and the teeth that were cracked or missing but it feels divine. It takes almost all my strength to not swallow, he’s so close, I can smell the stench on his breath and feel the cold air around his skin. I see the smile stretch across his inflamed face and his blood red pupils blow from watching me suffer. 

I take a deep breath in through my nose and fiddle with my lucky knife stuffed in my leg pocket and with nearly all my strength squirt the water from my mouth into The Old One's face. I was aiming for his eyes but the water instantly turns to smoke and burns away the skin on his face and eyelids. He screeches out a high wail and grabs his head with his last good hand, falling backwards kicking out his legs. 

I could run, make it to the exit, I could see Hassan, I could see Selma, I could get treatment and maybe live for another few years yet. 

I will my broken body to move. Every bone screaming out in agony, every muscle on fire. I can barely see but I find my mark with my hands. I flick my lucky knife and start stabbing. His legs then his stomach, then his chest. I pour every ounce of life I have left into each thrust of my blade. He screams louder and louder, his panic killing him as quickly as I am. Finally I strike true. I find what I can only assume to be his heart as with a summary thrust he goes silent. His legs fall limp, his screaming goes to a whine to quiet. I feel his body go limp and soft and slowly start to sizzle and turn to steam. Fuck me I did it. I actually did it.

I ease my shaking fingers into his half-open mouth, twisting my fingertips around his fangs. They fall out into my hand so easily with little pull. 

I scream. Exhaustion, pain, grief, release. God, it feels fucking good. So fucking good.

It feels so fucking good until I notice the burning, bleeding gutting sensation in my stomach. His claws are embedded deep inside of me. His last act before his arm fell limp by his side. Blood spilled out of me onto him in a gush of thick crimson. I roll myself off of him, trying to hold myself together. My head is already foggy and heavy as I force myself to my feet. There was so much blood. I see the faint light coming from one end of the tunnel and stagger towards it, tripping over myself.

It’s hard to know what to feel in a moment like this. I just slayed The Old One and now I was going to bleed to death on the fucking pavement. I use everything I could grab to support myself. Counter tops, chair arms, curtain drapes. The front door had swung shut during the brawl. I fall through it, stumbling out onto the street. I hear the rich kids start to scream as their mothers drag them inside their dream houses. I keep tripping and dragging and willing myself to go just one more step. I know I’d seen a phone booth not too far from here. The sun was just starting to set as I finally reached it. Looking down at my macabre hands my flesh is ashy and pale. Even under the glorious orange sun I felt cold. Cold all the way to my insides. I don’t have much change in my pocket. 

“Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow, how can I help you today?”

“A litter…a litter…a…a.” Speaking is agony.

“Mr Fallon?” Carol asks.

I hear Selma yelling distantly down the phone as she snatches it.

“River?”

“Hey Mum.” I grip the side of the booth to keep myself standing.

“Sweetheart, where are you? Are you safe?”

“I did it, Mummy. I killed him.”

“You…”

“I killed him, Mummy.”

“River, I’m coming to get you. Tell me where you are.” How could she sound so uninterested? I just did what our kind had been trying and failing to do for seven hundred and thirty seven years and she cared more about me?

“I did it, Mummy.”

“OK, OK, sweetie, you did it.”

My eyes won’t focus. It hurts so fucking much. I’ve been stabbed before, beaten black and blue, bitten and drained, but all at once in this heat, in this light, I finally knew how it felt to die. ““Why did you pick me?”

“Twenty-six little boys with their hair all combed, beaming at me with big sad eyes or the one scrawny boy locked up in the supply cupboard crying and shouting that the vampyres were coming for him. When I opened that closet door and you threw your arms around me, crying those baby blues raw, I knew it had to be you. It’ll always be you, River. You’re my little boy and I-”

The phone goes dead. I have enough coins for one last call and enough breath for one more person. I can’t stand anymore. I fall to my knees bringing the receiver down with me. I crane my neck and type in the number. I think about what my final words will be. It’s something I’ve been planning for a while now. But now the time has come to say them, I can’t think of anything worth hearing.

“Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?”

“Hassan…”

“River?” his voice rises with alarm. “You sound bad.”

“He got me real good, Has.”

“Are you safe?”

I pause. “Yeh, yeh, I’m safe.”

“No, you’re not,” his voice drops.

“No, I’m not.”

“Want me to stay on with you?”

I have to say it, God forgive me, I have to say it. “Hassan, I lo-”

“Shhh, save your breath. I already know.”

My head begins to tilt to the side as the receiver slips from my hand. I’m trembling. My shallow breath is hitching in my chest as more blood oozes from my wounds, my nose, my mouth. Hassan is calling my name on the other end of the line. I am calm, peaceful. The light of the setting sun is beautiful. THe pink clouds are beautiful. The yellow sky is beautiful. Hassan’s tear-drenched voice is beautiful.

It’s all so beautiful.