Vampyr At The Movies

You start out on a wide road full of so many possibilities. But each choice you make, I mean, it kind of narrows as you move along, it takes a certain direction. And then you try to bring in other things, good ideas, but well, now they just can’t live in that world.
--David Lynch, sort of

I am walking across a bridge. It rises in a long curve into the night beyond me, and I cannot see to the other side where it descends. The peak, at first almost level with my head, drops gradually as I walk towards the moon that sits like a half-starved albino above it. To the moon’s right, a comet arrow is aimed at the horizon.

I defy it; I defy them all. Then Calpurnia shakes her head and says, "Alas! my lord. Your wisdom is consum’d in confidence."

"Quiet!" I hiss at her, annoyed and depressed. It’s disheartening to discover that the partner you live with is the part of yourself that demoralizes you.

I have no more ideas on how to run away from that.

Calpurnia fumbles at me, always wanting attention. She knows I never really listen to her. On the other hand, every time she points out a disaster it comes true. But who needs that? In a fit of predictable masochism I shove her away. The wind pushes the smell of my love’s perfume back to me as she slips off the edge of the walkway, falling onto the road. A Number 17 bus hits her straight on. There is a heavy thud in my stomach.

But I cannot cry; instead lurch away, stumble on.

All this happens before. She keeps warning me, and I keep killing her.

One of my ancient mentors, long consigned to the archives, tells me, "I believe that if you’re not fulfilled, you can’t create; you can only deconstruct what could have been—that’s tragedy."

The water is a certain familiar velvet black against the slopping boats anchored beneath the bridge. Pungent smells of charbroiled flesh heavily dusted in Montreal steak seasoning drift up from one of the restaurants on the island beneath the bridge. It makes my stomach growl until I realize I don’t deserve even the dead after what I keep doing to Calpurnia.

I try to be happy because I have a desperate need to create, to be loved. For example, the clean breeze off the bay is tinged by traces of diesel oil and garbage, so I will that away in order to make the world a better place. Environmentalism starts in the mind, eh. By the time I reach the crest of the bridge, I’ve almost convinced myself.

More of the glittering city spreads like cold diamonds beneath the sinking comet.

Approaching me is an indistinct figure. As he nears, I hear his laboured breathing and see one side of his face twisted in a rictus smile like some old lady who’s had a stroke. This is the guy I dream about trying to push me over the railing into the dark water night, or backwards onto the road.

One more time I can only hope, even as I know it won’t work. It never does.

As he passes, I will psychic energy at him: "Do it. Do it!" But he turns his warped face away. I can see the poor man is desperately content, that he cannot take on the burden of ending my desire.

After all, he’s not the one condemned.

If I could, I would do it myself. But it would be useless; there is no bus for me. Not for the first time do I resent Calpurnia and her tricks.

A cloaked leap into the velvet ink far below would be a welcome distraction, but then I can’t deal with imagining my death. Cowards want someone else to live it, I guess.

Now that I’m here, I know Hell is the awareness of being trapped in meaningless repetition.

I remember what we are doing back there—before I find myself on this bridge—all of us sitting in the darkened room and staring at the flickering square of light, watching her, that vulnerable stranger.

She looks at us, piteous, even repulsive in her pathetic hopelessness. Can’t she see that even the blood she will not feed on can be made in a factory? Tears line her face but she seems unaware of them. Then I see it—she pities us! I want to howl at her that it is her world that has collapsed around her. She is the one kneeling in the street amidst the ruins of her house and family, a dead child in her numbed arms—around her a television broken into a million pieces, and a deluded civilization feeding off itself.

I’ve seen all of this before in a movie, but I can’t remember its name.

I see the way the white light halos her. Something inside of me, some distant memory, a desire to comfort, brings her tears into my eyes, and I rise from my seat and move towards the woman. As my hand reaches out and we almost touch, I feel the increasing panic of the others around me. Several hands, frantic, grab my arms; I am shoved roughly back into my seat.

She stares into my eyes, then beyond me.

I can see that she is already dead, and the moment to help has passed. All I can do is feed on her image, my choices long over; feed like the rest of them as they crouch and growl in the terrible darkness around me, their minds sucking and tearing at her pale cinematic flesh.