Pathway To Darkness
Or
How To Be A Vampire And Get Down With Goth Culture
A Kimberly Anne Moriarty Misadventure
By
Matt R. Jones, Esq.

            The lights were out and her whole apartment was dark except for the glow of the nearly two-dozen candles she’d carefully set up and had lit, and they made the room smell strongly of cherries, which mingled nicely with the scents of jasmine and sandalwood emanating from the incense, which she’d bought down at the music store a few blocks over.  It was at that same music store that she’d bought the Sisters of Mercy album, along with Type O Negative and Cure, which was playing on her little stereo over in the corner right now, filling the rich-smelling air with the sounds of guitar music and Andrew Eldritch’s voice.  She had all of the curtains drawn, shutting out all of the sights and sounds of the city outside her apartment, and she was wearing the tight black babydoll dress she’d found at that little fetish store a couple of miles away . . . not only that, but she’d painted her nails black, even her toenails, and she was wearing a fair amount of lipstick and eyeliner, to boot.  Excepting her shoulder-length blonde hair, she looked exactly like the goth girls one saw on TV, in the magazines, and at the clubs, but even as she sat cross-legged on her bed listening to the music and reading Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire (for the fifth time, no less), she still didn’t feel like a vampire.  She didn’t even feel goth, not in the least.  Instead she felt ridiculous, like she had on Halloween when she was seven years old and her mother had gotten her that hideous witch’s costume.  She shut her eyes, thinking hard about being a vampire, about being a creature of the night, but try as she might, it wasn’t working, not at all.

            “This sucks,” she growled as she tossed the book across the room, towards a pile of her laundry.  The book bounced off the wall, flapped open, and dropped facedown onto the laundry, a good number of the pages bent from the awkward way it had landed.  She didn’t much care.  The book had been Brian’s, anyway, and he could rot in hell forever . . . so could his damn book.  She just kept it around because she wanted to keep reading it, as she absolutely loved the story, and she didn’t want to shell out the seven bucks to get a new copy of it.  “This really, really sucks.”

            The air in her apartment smelled really nice, but nothing else was to her taste.  She thought candlelight was incredibly cliché, the dress was uncomfortable, and she thought the makeup and nail polish made her look like a whore, regardless of the fact that they were standard gear for a goth girl.  The music sucked, too . . . she didn’t know why that guy at the music store had told her that this was gothic music . . . this just sounded like any other rock band to her, and not even a good rock band at that.  She got up off her bed, stalked over to her CD player, and stabbed at the stop button with one of her long black fingernails.  “Yeah, you’ll make it onto MTV with this crap, riiiiiiiiight,” she said to Andrew Eldritch as she looked at the cover of the Sisters of Mercy CD.  Andrew Eldritch said nothing back, merely stared impassively behind his black sunglasses, and that was fine with her.  He sucked, anyway.  So did the other two CD’s she’d bought . . . there was too much sex in Type O Negative and too much whining in the Cure.  Where were the goth bands that sang about dark forests, haunted castles, and vampires?  The guy at the music store had to have been on crack to even think that this garbage was good music, much less gothic music.  What a dork.  No vampire would want to listen to this junk, no way in hell.

            She then walked over to the light switch and flipped the lights on, after which she turned the TV on, changing the station to MTV.  But even as the room took on its more familiar sights and sounds, she still felt uncomfortable, almost guilty . . . dammit, she was trying hard to be a vampire, she was doing all of the stuff she’d seen on TV and in the movies, but none of it was working!  She wanted desperately to be a vampire like what she saw all over the place, but how could she be one if all of the trappings of a vampire annoyed her or pissed her off?  This was all Brian’s fault . . . he was the one that had gotten her into this by sweeping her off her feet with his haunting good looks, brooding manner that she’d found incredibly sexy, and his dark, elegant clothing, which looked almost as though it had come straight from the Middle Ages, and now he’d gone and left her after their little “accident.”

            “Accident my ass,” she muttered as she pulled her dress off, making sure that the curtains and shades were still firmly drawn, so that no lechers could peek in at her . . . the city was full of them!  She walked over to her mirror and checked herself out in it (she even had on black underwear . . . how much more goth could she get?!), running her hands over her smooth belly and looking at her ass to make sure that she wasn’t getting fat anywhere.  Her metabolism had been screwed up all to hell during the last couple of weeks, ever since the “accident,” and she’d been eating like crazy, eating like her brother back in Illinois had when he was in high school, but fortunately it didn’t seem to be affecting her . . . yet.  “I said ‘Oh no, Brian, you’ve had too much to drink for the night, you’re not going to be very careful, we can do it tomorrow night,’ and what did he say? ‘Oh don’t worry, Kimmie, I’m always careful, and my perceptions aren’t messed up when I’ve had too much.’  Yeah, right, whatever.  Asshole.”  At least her ass wasn’t getting big, which was at least one thing going right.  Now she just had to figure out how to tell her parents . . . that was going to be the hard part.  How does a daughter tell her parents something like this?  Not very easily, that was how . . . they were going to kill her.

            She hadn’t even been in Los Angeles for a year now, and she’d already gotten herself into deep shit, and her mom was just going to scream that she’d told her so, that she’d told her that she’d get into trouble.  But everything had been fine up until she and Brian had had the “accident” . . . and then that bastard had left her after he’d figured out what it was he’d done.  Typical male.  But he could go to hell and stay there for all she cared.

            She’d have to tell her parents eventually, because she knew for a fact she couldn’t hide it forever . . . as soon as they invited her to come back for the family reunion in October, which was just a couple months away, they’d find out, there would be no way to hide it.  But that was still several months in the future, so she wasn’t too worried about it . . . she’d gotten herself out of similar predicaments when she was in high school and community college, so she figured that she’d find some way around this, too.  Kimberly Anne Moriarty wasn’t one to get her ass into a jam she couldn’t get herself out of, and this was no different.  As much time as she had, she’d have this figured out one way or another.

            All of this passed through Kimmie’s head in the span of a second, and she didn’t even give it much thought, now.  She’d given it a lot of thinking time at first, right after Brian had left her, but now her thoughts didn’t devote much effort to it.  Right now she was more concerned about how she looked and how to best be like a proper vampire . . . hmph, if Brian saw her in a few months, it’d blow his mind at how vampiric she’d be by then!  She just had to get into the right mindset and find the right people to teach her how to be properly goth and vampiric, and she’d be all set . . . she’d secretly loved vampires and their gothic settings and styles since she’d been a little girl, but every time she’d ever tried affecting any sort of gothic change in her appearance, it had fallen woefully short and she’d just felt awkward instead of mysterious or otherworldly.  And the kids at her high school and community college that had thought they were goth and were vampires were nothing but a bunch of losers with no lives, shitty jobs, and horrible fashion sense . . . they didn’t look gothic, they just looked like a pack of idiots dressed all in black!  They wouldn’t have known what it was to be like a vampire if a real vampire had come up to them and offered to teach them how things were.  They’d probably just ask him to come play one of those stupid games they were always going on about, like the gang of geeks that went to the nearby Denny’s every weekend and played their cutesy little vampire game all night long, and then went home when the sun came up . . . ooooo, how cool they were!  Oh yeah, they sure were vampires all right, they could throw dice and dress up in crappy clothes they’d picked up at the Salvation Army!  “Whatever,” Kimmie snorted, stepping away from the mirror, satisfied that her appearance was as good as it always was, even if it wasn’t properly gothic or vampiric.

            She sat on her bed and watched MTV for a while, guiltily enjoying everything she saw and she heard . . . it was so familiar and comfortable compared to the gothic world she was trying to plunge herself into, and she knew that once she got on the right track, she wouldn’t really be able to watch this stuff any more, but then again, once she was properly gothic, she wouldn’t want to watch this.  She’d be spending her time in cemeteries and in the darker corners of the city with other people like herself, and just the thought of that soon happening filled her with a thrill of anticipation and gooseflesh formed on her arms and legs.  She couldn’t wait!  She got herself so excited at that prospect that she reached over onto her nightstand, grabbed the pack of clove cigarettes that she’d picked up at the music store, and lit one up.  The coughing fit came immediately afterwards.

            Kimmie’s eyes teared up horribly and it felt like her lungs were instantly coated with ashes.  She gagged and choked and hacked with every drag she took, but she made herself finish the cigarette . . . the one real goth girl that she’d seen at a coffee house had smoked these, and Kimmie had was trying hard to emulate everything she’d seen the girl do.  She hadn’t talked to the girl, who was sitting by herself at a table and reading a book, because Kimmie’s friends were around and a couple of them had made comments about how creepy and nasty that girl had been, so she didn’t dare go over and talk to her, though she studied the girl as intently as she could from a distance, trying to be surreptitious so that her friends wouldn’t notice and give her the business about it.

            She was extremely grateful when the cigarette had reached its end; she had never smoked anything before she’d opened up this pack, but after this one, the fifth one, she was starting to get used to the whole smoking bit.  At least a little.  As Kimmie wiped the tears from her eyes and nearly hacked up a lung, she was happy that she was starting to slowly become more gothic and vampire-like, even if was just small things.  Her friends had noticed that her attitudes were becoming darker and more negative as of late, especially after she’d started going with Brian and she’d had someone close by to observe and learn from, even though he hadn’t told her very much at all.  He thought he was being so cool with how secretive he was . . . being secretive was fine when you were around the rest of the world, but when you were with your girlfriend or your friends, sharing what you knew wasn’t a bad thing.  It had pissed her off a lot when he’d told her that she was being a poser by trying to be like him; how could she be a poser when that was what she really wanted to be like, deep down?  He’d told her that she was better off staying the way she was, because she didn’t understand the first thing about vampires or being gothic.  She’d show him if he ever saw her again!

            All she had to do was find someone like Brian, but who wasn’t a bastard, to show her how to properly go about being like a vampire and being dark and gothic, to lead her down the correct pathway to darkness.  She didn’t think such a thing would be hard in a city the size of Los Angeles, but she’d been proven sadly wrong on that point.  She’d seen dozens upon dozens upon dozens of posers and geeks and wannabes, but she hadn’t yet seen anybody that looked or acted like what a vampire or gothic person should, other than that goth girl in the coffee house, who she hadn’t seen again after that night.  She found people who had the look down perfectly, and looked even better than Brian had, but they hadn’t acted right . . . they hadn’t been dark and mysterious, they’d acted like they wanted to be members of the Addams Family or the Munsters, or otherwise behaved like they wanted to kill themselves.  A vampire didn’t act like that, she was sure of it . . . she figured they’d act something like Louis, from Interview With The Vampire: soft, moody, and full of mystery.  Most of the people she’d seen hadn’t fit the bill there . . . they were like caricatures!  Then there were those that laughed and bounced around and acted like normal people, and that wasn’t right, either.  If they were going to act like that, why bother dressing up like something they weren’t?  Why didn’t they just put on some khakis and Gap stuff and just get on with it?  Either that or they just acted like complete asses, which only annoyed her further, making her want to go over and scream at them and tell them what posers they were.  Then there were those people that acted very brooding and dark, but they didn’t dress the part . . . they just looked like regular people, often a bit sloppier, and sometimes dressed up so nattily and neatly they looked like they worked for the Mafia.  Dammit, why was it so hard to find someone that looked and acted like a proper vampire person should?  The best example she’d seen thus far had been Brian, and he’d been a jackoff in the end, anyway, and she knew there had to be better people out there than Brian that were knowledgeable and involved with this sort of thing.

            An idea formed in her head, and Kimmie got up and wandered over to her computer, turned it on, and then signed onto the Internet, wondering if she could find someone on there that might be able to get her steered in the right direction.  It was worth a shot, she figured.  She’d struck out just about everywhere else in town, so why not?

            Earlier tonight she’d gotten dressed up in a nice black blouse and slacks and had gone to a club that someone had told her had a very dark and vampire-like atmosphere, called the Hideout, and when she’d gotten there, it had certainly been dark enough, but it hadn’t really been very vampire-like.  It had looked pretty much like any other rock club, with bikers, punks, metalheads, and wannabe goths running around, but she’d stayed, hoping that the band that was playing that night, Rapture, would be more along the lines of what she was looking for.  But they hadn’t been right, either.  The band, which was made up of four women dressed in black and red leather, played only heavy metal songs and even though they had a little bit of gothic elements here and there, they were clearly just a metal band, most very definitely not what Kimmie had wanted.  But she’d sat through the performance, and then had hung around at her table for a while afterwards, snubbing the bikers and the losers that tried to pick her up, hoping that a dark prince would come striding through the crowd and take her away.  No dark prince had come, but she’d left after the lead singer of Rapture, a brunette with purple streaks in her hair, had walked right over to Kimmie’s table and had sat down, then tried to pick her up and take Kimmie home with her.  No way!  Kimmie had been seriously offended by that, and had been especially pissed off when the woman had grabbed her ass after Kimmie had told her off and then had gotten up to leave the table.  Kimmie had turned and was seriously thinking about giving the grinning woman a serious ass-kicking (Kimmie knew judo and hapkido quite well), but had changed her mind when she’d caught sight of one of the woman’s bandmates, the biggest, tallest, and most powerful-looking redhead she’d ever seen in her life, standing at what was probably at least six foot four, came walking through the crowd in their direction.  Nope, if it was one thing that Kimberly Anne Moriarty wasn’t, it was stupid.  So she’d just turned around again and had stomped off for the door, leaving the laughing woman behind.  She vowed never to go back to that trashy shithole of a club ever again, where drunk bikers wandered around and lesbian singers tried to take you home with them.

            Kimmie poked around on the Internet for a while, trying to find something that would prove to be a good vampire resource or be a place where she could make contact with someone who could show her the ropes of what it was like to be dark.  She avoided the chatrooms because, as everybody knew, they were only occupied by 12 year olds and aging perverts, and she knew going anywhere near them would be totally pointless.  After much fruitless searching, with MTV droning on steadily in the background, she got up and went over to the fridge in the kitchen area of her one-room but still good-sized apartment, and after she’d made herself four sandwiches, she decided that maybe she’d have more luck if she shut off the lights, turned off the TV, and turned the stereo back on.  She knew that sometimes a good atmosphere could make all the difference in the world, so she thought that she’d give it a try.

            After she’d set up a much more gothic atmosphere in her apartment, she settled back in front of the computer and started searching anew, eating her sandwiches and trying to fill her head with as many dark and depressing thoughts as possible.  As she looked for something, anything that went beyond the mere vampire fan pages and crappy fiction archives, she fervently wished that Louis was real, that he owned a computer, and that he was online searching for someone to be his companion, to keep him company in this new world of technology and constant change.  She imagined that he looked like he did in the movie, with a face almost exactly like Brad Pitt’s, except that his would be leaner and a bit more ethereal . . . though Brad Pitt had done an excellent job as Louis, Kimmie thought, it was hard for a living person to capture the true essence of what a vampire would be.  Tom Cruise hadn’t done such a bad job himself, but Kimmie didn’t care much for the character of Lestat . . . he was a born jerk if there ever was one, and she’d hated the way he’d toyed with and tormented poor Louis!  It was her dislike of the character that was making her hesitant to pick up the other books in the Vampire Chronicles series . . . in fact, the sequel to Interview was called The Vampire Lestat, and she was sure that she’d have a hard time reading an entire book devoted to that asshole.  Piss on Lestat, she thought Louis was a dream, and it was he that Kimmie held up as the ideal of what a good vampire should be.  And if there were other vampires out there like Lestat, then they deserved getting a stake through their hearts!

            Just as she finished the last of her sandwiches, the computer’s modem disconnected and Kimmie’s phone next to the computer rang, and when she picked it up, it was Charlene, one of her friends.

“So what are you up to tonight?” asked Charlene, and Kimmie made a noncommittal noise.  Charlene was nice enough, but she wouldn’t understand what it was that Kimmie was trying to do, and besides, though they’d gotten along quite well since Kimmie had first moved to L.A. last year, Charlene was a bit on the shallow side.

“Nothing much.  Sitting around listening to music, reading, and thinking,” she replied, her voice soft and even, exactly how she imagined a proper vampire’s would sound.

“Oh yeah?  What’cha listening to?  Have you listened to that Paula Abdul album I loaned you?  It’s really good stuff, you’ll like it.”

“The Sisters of Mercy,” Kimmie replied, putting a bit of emphasis on the name, as though it were an antique with much mystery surrounding it.

“I’ve never heard of them.  Are they new?  Do they have any videos on MTV I might have missed?”  Kimmie resisted the urge to snort.  Of course Charlene wouldn’t know who the hell the Sisters of Mercy were, she was too plugged into the mainstream world to know anything about the darker side of things.  If the band wasn’t on MTV regularly, or had once been huge on MTV at some point in the past, Charlene had no idea who they were, and if something wasn’t currently in vogue, Charlene would have nothing to do with it.  As Kimmie delved farther into the world of darkness, the less tolerant she became of Charlene, who simply didn’t have a clue about anything beyond what she was being told by the media.  As she thought that, Kimmie grinned . . . that sounded like something Brian would have said when he went on one of his little tirades about how dehumanizing pop culture could be, except that she’d come up with it on her own.  Yes, she was learning!  Vampires didn’t have any need for pop culture, as they had their own darkness-based one, and now all she had to do was figure out how to escape the mundane mainstream world and fully get into the goth culture.  As Kimmie listened to the Sisters of Mercy, she imagined the day when her usual wear would be a flowing black gown, and the black nail polish, eyeliner, and lipstick wouldn’t seem so alien on her, and when she’d even go so far as to dye her hair jet black, and she felt almost giddy, despite her efforts to try to keep her thoughts on a more subdued keel.  Oh, her parents would have a snit when they saw her!  But then again, that would be all and well, because maybe they’d wear themselves out screaming at her for her appearance so much that when she dropped the real bomb on them, they’d be too tired to kill her.  Now that sounded like a plan!

Back to the conversation, Kimmie had no idea at all if the Sisters of Mercy had any videos, as the only things she knew about them was that the guy at the music store had told her they were goth, and that the album, called Floodland, was very moody and depressed-sounding.  After thinking about that, she decided that maybe they were more goth than she’d originally thought them to be . . . maybe they were in a more vampiric vein after all.  And the music wasn’t that bad . . . it was kind of catchy in places, at least, she had to give it that.  Yes, slowly but surely she was picking up on this . . . just a step at a time, and after a good lot of steps, she’d be there.

“Kim?  Kimmie?  You still there?” asked Charlene’s voice from the phone, and Kimmie started as she realized she still had a phone conversation to deal with.

Kimmie kept her voice soft and made it even sound a little wistful as she talked.  “I’m still here, I was just getting into the music, that’s all.”

“Oh, okay.  I know how that is, I do that a lot.  So did you listen to the Paula Abdul album yet?”

“I did, and I didn’t much care for it,” said Kimmie, though she had actually enjoyed it a fair amount.  But it was the same guilty kind of enjoyment she got when she got hooked in by MTV or when she went to the mall and couldn’t help herself from going into the Abercrombie & Fitch store.  She knew it was something she probably shouldn’t be getting herself into, but at the same time, she couldn’t quite help it . . . she wasn’t totally goth yet, and she still had plenty of attachments to the world she’d taken for granted for so long, while the dark little voice inside her stayed deeply within the shadows, only whispering to her from time to time.  But now the day was coming that the dark little voice would take its rightful place as her main voice, while the one that had been speaking for her for so long would have to learn to like it in the back of her head.

“What?!  I thought you loved that stuff!”

“I used to, but I don’t know, it doesn’t really work for me any more.  Thanks anyway,” said Kimmie, loving how solemn and quiet she was able to make her voice.  “I’m liking what I’m listening to right now a lot more, actually.”

“The Sisters of Mercy?  That sounds like a band made up of nurses, if you ask me.”

“Well, I didn’t ask, and they’re a goth band.  One of the best I’ve ever heard,” Kimmie said, which was true enough, seeing as how she hadn’t heard any goth bands before she’d gone to the music store.

“Uh huh,” said Charlene.  “I don’t know about you . . . listening to this goth music all of a sudden, wearing a lot of black, reading those vampire books, and going to those weird clubs.  You aren’t going to go and slit your wrists on me, are you?”  Charlene sounded more than a little bit derisive about the whole thing.  Showed what she knew.

“No, I’m not going to go do that, don’t be ridiculous.  I’ve liked this stuff for most of my life, but I’m just getting more into it now than I was in the past.”  Kimmie tried to keep her voice from being snotty, and succeeded quite well, she thought.

“If you say so,” said Charlene.  “Anyway, we’re all going over to Denny’s for a midnight snack, do you want to come?  As much as you’ve been eating lately, I figured you’d be more than up for a late-night breakfast.”

Kimmie frowned and almost asked just what the hey Charlene had meant by that, but she let it slide.  “No, it’s okay.  I’d just rather be alone tonight, you can go on without me.”

“Man, you’re going to start worrying me if you keep this up for very long.  Are you sure you’re okay?  I thought you’d be over Brian by now . . . it’s been almost three weeks, after all.”  The tone of Charlene’s voice said that it would have been absolutely ridiculous to have been broken up over an ex-boyfriend for longer than just a few days.  But then again, Charlene would think that, wouldn’t she?  She didn’t know anything about deeper feelings, depression, or the pain of a severed relationship . . . Kimmie knew all of that quite well, it was just that since Brian was such a loser, she didn’t want to let herself get messed up over him for very long.

“It’s not Brian, not him at all,” snorted Kimmie.  “I wouldn’t want to give him the satisfaction.  I just like to be alone with my thoughts and my music and my reading more these days . . . after spending time with a jerk like him, I’ve come to appreciate some of the simpler, more introspective things in life.”

“Oookay,” replied Charlene, sounding as though she didn’t buy it for a second, which didn’t surprise Kimmie any.  After all, Charlene wouldn’t understand what was going on in her head or her life and the changes she was trying to bring about for even a second, so of course she was going to think it was all a line of bull.  Let her, it didn’t matter what she thought.  Besides, it’s not like Kimmie was going to be hanging around with her for much longer anyway.  “We’ll be down there for the next couple of hours at least, so if you want to come out of the gloom and drop by, go right ahead.”

“All right, thanks.”

“Say hi to Dracula for me!” Charlene cackled, and her laughter emanated from the earpiece of the phone.

“Screw you!” Kimmie snarled, immediately clamping her hand over her mouth afterwards, as though she were a little girl that had just uttered the dreaded f-word in front of her very strict mother.  She hadn’t meant for that to slip out, dammit!  Fortunately, Charlene had already hung up by the time Kimmie’s unexpected utterance had escaped, so she’d missed that bit of unseemly behavior.  She scolded herself for the slip-up for a few moments, but then decided to ease up . . . after all, Rome hadn’t been built in a day, and she was still new to all of this.  The occasional slip was bound to happen . . . but that was still all the more reason to try to find someone who could help properly guide her into the whole gothic and vampiric world.  With that in mind, she reconnected to the Internet, making sure that she remembered to enable the modem option that prevented calls from breaking through and disconnecting her, and she got back to looking.

She bounced around from message board to message board, from vampire website to vampire website, trying to keep her focus on people and websites that originated from the L.A. area . . . after all, it wouldn’t do to find someone that was exactly what she wanted but was located in New York.  While there were some things that could easily be taught and shared through e-mail and online chat, there were many others that just wouldn’t work . . .  there were things that you had to be there with the teacher in person to be able to get the full effect of, to catch every nuance, and she didn’t think that she could properly learn the proper way to go about the sensual gothic and vampiric lifestyle without actually having someone in the know right there to get everything across to her.  It was frustrating, because every time she thought she’d found a website run by someone that seemed to have the right idea about things gothic, or several messages left on an online message board by someone whose writing seemed like something that Louis himself would have written, it always turned out that person was located somewhere far away from Los Angeles.  What help was someone living in Montana, for crying out loud?  She needed someone in or around the city, dammit!  And to make matters even more annoying, it seemed like for every one person that appeared to actually know their stuff, there were at least a dozen others who were obviously dorky wannabe kids.  Kimmie leaned back in her seat and sighed.  It was so hard to find good help these days.

Finally, after hours of searching, Kimmie came upon someone who seemed like a likely candidate on one of the message boards that was located within L.A. itself . . . the board was on the website for one of the bigger goth clubs in L.A., the Glass Rose, and there was a fair amount of traffic on it.  While the majority of it consisted of the usual wannabe crowd, there were some on the board that sounded very intelligent and insightful, and this one stood out . . . his writing had a nice flair to it, almost poetic, and what he had to say on the message board was usually very witty and clever, often coming out in rhymes, though not in an obnoxious way.  He seemed like a very polished, very confident individual, with all of the right touches of the dark and gothic about him . . . even his online name, Raven Claws, was perfect.  She read through all of his posts on the Glass Rose online message board from the last week, and the more she read, the more intrigued she became.  At times, he spoke of his life as a vampire, hunting in the dark alleys and streets of the town, feeding upon criminals, and other times he talked about more everyday matters, such as music and books he enjoyed, clubs he liked to frequent, and things like of that nature.  He came across as a very social, well-read, worldly individual, full of class and intellect, dark, but not depressingly so, and with a good grasp upon life in general . . . exactly who she was looking for.  This guy sounded like he was everything Brian wanted to be, but was too damned much of a loser to pull off . . . perfect!

After reading through every post Raven Claws had put up on the Glass Rose message board in the last month, Kimmie sat in thought for a few minutes, getting into the best gothic mood that she could think of, and then she started to write an e-mail to Raven Claws, trying to be as eloquent as she possibly could be, telling him that she was in search of someone that could teach her exactly what it was like to walk on the darker side of life, someone that could instruct her like Brian couldn’t, since he was too incompetent and caught up in himself.  After she’d written the letter, which was probably one of the best things she’d ever put down, definitely a lot better than any paper she’d ever done, she read and reread it half a dozen times, making little changes here and there, until she was sure that there was no chance in hell that Raven Claws would think that she was a flake or an idiot.  She argued with herself for a while over whether or not she should send it, but in the end, she gritted her teeth and hit the send button on her e-mail program, figuring that she wasn’t going to get anywhere if she didn’t at least have the courage to at least try.

By this time, it was extremely late, and she decided that it was time to get to bed, as she had work the next day and she didn’t want to wander in looking like a member of the walking dead from lack of rest . . .  It seemed like she needed a lot more sleep these days than she used to, and if she didn’t get a good ten hours of sleep at night, she was absolutely useless the next day.  As Kimmie pulled up the covers, she grumbled to herself that between all of the eating and sleeping she’d done since the breakup with Brian, she was sure to end up being a heifer before the year was over.  But maybe things would turn around if she were able to get something going with Raven Claws . . . maybe she could get a new direction in life, and that new focus would help set things straight for her again.  Kimmie rolled over in bed, sincerely hoping that was the case.

*     *     *

            Kimmie liked it here.  Everybody was dressed up in a very goth and/or vampiric manner, the music and atmosphere was properly dark, and everybody seemed genuine and intelligent, if a little untalkative to a newcomer like herself.  That was okay, though.  She was still new to all of this, and in time she was sure that she could be accepted into this fascinating group of people, once she’d learned the ropes . . . perhaps Raven Claws could help with that, she thought excitedly, scanning the interior of the Glass Rose for anybody that looked as though he might be called Raven Claws.  But the problem there was that almost every male, not to mention female, looked as though they’d have the moniker of Raven Claws.  That didn’t bother her terribly, though . . . with any luck there’d be a message from Raven Claws waiting for her when she got home and she could go from there, and besides, it was nice to be able to simply sit in a club full of people with interests like her own.  When she’d woke up in the morning, she’d gotten back online and had jotted down the address of the Glass Rose from the message board she’d found the night before, deciding that if the message board was intriguing, the club itself would be even more so.

Before heading off to work at Wal-Mart, she’d grabbed a black lacy, velvet dress from her closet, some lace fingerless gloves, boots, and her makeup kit and had put them in the back of her little Geo Metro, so that she could go straight to the club once she got off work at seven o’clock.  She’d almost not bothered with that, though . . . despite the fact that it was a nice, balmy day with a very clear sky, she’d started to feel rotten almost as soon as she’d stepped out of her door, her arms full of her accessories for the night ahead.  She’d come damn close to leaning over the railing on the outside hallway by her second-story apartment and puking her guts up all over the parking lot below, and all she’d wanted to do was crawl back into bed, but she’d already missed too much work during the whole mess with Brian, and she couldn’t afford to miss any more, so she sucked it up as best she could and got on with it, regretting how much peanut butter toast she’d after she’d gotten up . . . more than an entire loaf’s worth!  She pushed away any thoughts that this might have to do with the “accident,” gripping the wheel of her Metro tightly as she waited at a stoplight and gritting her teeth, willing her body to keep the peanut butter toast down, at least long enough for her to get the bathroom at Wal-Mart.

By the time she’d gotten to work, she was sure she was going to barf all over the place and then die immediately afterwards, she felt so horrible, and she made a beeline straight for the ladies’ room.  But once she was on her knees before the ever-hungry Mr. Thirsty in the first stall of the bathroom, she felt her gorge rapidly dropping back into place, and the headache and dizziness that had come up on her began to fade as well . . . the sense of relief was like cool water being gently poured onto a raging sunburn, and she’d rested her head on the rim of the toilet bowl for a few minutes, thanking whatever power-that-was that had taken mercy upon her.  She’d clocked in for work right on time, and had had a pretty good day as far as working days went . . .  she worked in the electronics section, which was also where the music was at, and things had ran quite peacefully, the only annoyance being a young boy who looked a great deal like a duck arguing with her over the release date of a video game.  He’d insisted that the release date was today, while the computer informed Kimmie it was a week from today, but Duckboy had taken issue with that, even after Kimmie had turned the computer screen around so that he could see it, and it was all that she could do to not take his thick glasses and shove them up his bill, especially after he’d made the insinuation that she was a stupid girl who didn’t know how to run a computer for shit.  She’d wished that Duckboy’s mom hadn’t been there, so she could have told him what an asshole he was and then lied about it if the brat went and told the manager, but unfortunately she couldn’t do that since there was a witness, and a biased one at that, so she gritted her teeth for the second time that day.  But beyond that, things went very smoothly, and she amused herself with thoughts of how hard it would be for a jerk like Duckboy to get a girl later on in life . . . kids like him had no game whatsoever, the little bastards.

After work she’d went out to her car, grabbed her gear, and had gotten dressed in the employee area, locking the door for a few moments while she got into her dress, so that nobody could walk in on her and get a peepshow.  After she’d gotten everything together, she’d left, ignoring the catcalls of a few stockboys who’d whistled at her and called her Lily Munster and Vampira.  To hell with them, what did they know?  Pitifully little, that’s what, and not only that, they flat-out sucked, the gawky losers.  She’d hopped into her Metro and after a few wrong turns and some cursing, she’d found the Glass Rose, parked in its parking lot, and here she was, all gothed up and ready to go.

She liked how it was set up . . . there was a stage to the back of the club, and in front of the stage were a good two dozen or so circular tables adorned with black tablecloths and a glass vase holding a black rose.  Off to the side was a floor where people could dance, as well . . . there were also little lounges, conversation pits, and a bar where food and drink was served, and not only that, but there was an entire second level to the club she hadn’t even seen yet, so there was plenty here to keep anyone busy.  The more she sat in the club, the more at home she felt, and she decided that she’d have to make this a regular haunt of hers . . . this place was so much nicer than that awful Hideout place, and there were no brunette-and-purple-haired lesbians running around grabbing her ass, either.  She debated about whether or not to smoke a clove cigarette, as smoking was obviously permitted with so many of the others in the room lighting them up, but she decided against it, at least until she’d built up more of a tolerance to the cloves . . . she mentally cringed when she thought about the scene she’d make if she started coughing and hacking like an old sailor with emphysema.  No, smoking in public would have to come later, after she’d mastered that particular art . . . maybe Raven Claws could help her out with that, or maybe he could recommend a different brand, one that would be less ruinous to her lungs.  She almost giggled in glee thinking about sitting with Raven Claws on the beach, sharing a cigarette under the full moon . . . that would be so romantic, and it would be so vampiric as well, a perfect combination!  She couldn’t wait to get home and check her mail to see if he’d written her back yet, but she made herself stay where she was, as patience was a virtue, and besides, this was a nice place, nice enough to make her want to stay where she was for the moment.

The already-low lights dimmed a bit, and the stage that was at the far end of the room became slightly more illuminated, to draw attention to it and to make anyone on the stage easier to see.  The murmuring in the crowd softened up almost to silence, and Kimmie realized that the night’s performances were getting ready to get underway: tonight was open talent night at the Glass Rose, where anybody was welcome to get on stage and play music, read poetry, tell stories, show paintings or drawings, let fly with some performance art, or do basically anything to entertain the crowd.  Kimmie thought it great luck that she’d chosen tonight to be the night she made her visit to the Glass Rose, and this open talent night sounded like a great way for her to get a good dose of the elements of goth and vampire culture, especially since it would be something of a mixed bag, so that she’d get a sampling of a little bit of everything.

Kimmie sat back at her table and watched the stage for a while, getting lost in things a bit, enjoying it a great deal . . . yes, now this was more like it!  She looked at art several people had made, some of it obviously vampirically-inspired, listened to the grief-stricken poems of a thin, reedy girl that seemed on the verge of tears the entire time she read, and listened to the songs of a synthesizer band comprised of two guys dressed in black sweaters and pants . . . she didn’t have the slightest idea what their songs were about, as the lyrics were extremely obtuse, and she only had a notion about what the poems were about, but she still applauded with the rest of the crowd.  They knew what was fine better than she did, so she took their word for it, and figured she’d pick up on this stuff soon enough . . . after all, she hadn’t been very fond of chocolate the first time she’d tasted it, and now it was one of her absolute favorites.  This was her first exposure to real goth culture right there in the flesh, so of course she was going to be a little out of her depth, but she’d learn all in good time, she had no doubt about that.  The performance art bit, with several people standing around in various odd positions, dressed all in black, was a bit over her head as well . . . after they’d stood there doing nothing for a very long time, she came very close to yelling at them to do something, but she stopped herself, as she didn’t want to exposure her ignorance.  Something was going on, as she saw several people at a table near hers nodding their heads approvingly, so this was just something she hadn’t caught on to yet . . . but the urge to yell at them was still very strong.

After the performance art piece had finished (they never did move during the entire performance, they’d all just stood around), a girl only a little over five feet tall took the stage, and she immediately caught Kimmie’s attention, but not because she was very goth . . . in fact, she was easily the most un-goth person in the entire club!  She had long red hair that went down to the middle of her chest, with blonde streaks up front (blonde streaks were sooooooo passé!), and she was wearing a short blue dress that shimmered and shined up in the dim lights of the stage, with knee-high white boots that looked like they were made out of vinyl; she wasn’t even wearing goth or vampire-style makeup, and instead her eyeshadow was a pale blue and her lipstick bright red!  What in the world was she doing up there?  Was she lost?  When she stopped in front of the mike, she grinned at the crowd of people looking at her questioningly, her eyes flitting back and forth in a manner that suggested mischief.  There was a slight murmuring among the people gathered as they took her in, not sure what to make of this girl who stuck out from them like the proverbial sore thumb . . . she didn’t seem to care, though, and continued to grin at everybody.

“How’s everybody doing tonight?” she called out to the crowd, her voice husky with a pronounced English accent.  When nobody responded, she called out, “I said, how’s everybody doing tonight?  Bloody hell, the least you sops could give me would be a little rumble . . . I’ve gotten shagged in graveyards livelier than this place!  And what the blazes was that bunch of idiots standing around doing nothing for ten minutes?  If you ask my humble opinion, I’d say you all just got snookered into thinking you saw something brilliant and insightful when it was nothing but a bunch of fops standing around doing nothing, except that nobody’s got the bollocks to admit that they had no idea what the hell was going . . . I’ll admit it, though!  I had no bloody clue what the hell they were doing up here, and I don’t give a damn if any of you think I’m a dope because of it, either!  So what if I’m culturally inept, I’m a bloody good time!  And I thought a little change of pace from the regular club scene was going to be nice!  I came here to get a little change of atmosphere and what do I get?  The stuffiest bunch of saps I’ve seen in a long time . . . I’ve been trying to strike up a conversation with the people at the tables around me all night, and everybody bloody ignores me, like I’m some kind of disease!  I’m neat, I’m clean, I don’t smell bad, I don’t even have any offensive body hair, I’m polite, and I still got snubbed!  What the hell’s up with that?  Blimey, I thought your sort would be a lot more open to another weirdo like me, since you’re supposed to be on the outskirts of society and all that good rot, and instead you’re just as tight-assed as the losers at the mall who used to ignore me!  You know what?  Piss on all of you!  Yeah, that’s right, all of you!”  She then gave the entire crowd the finger, waving her hand around in front of her to make sure everybody got it, and then she seemed to forget the mike was even there, and she started having an animated conversation with nobody.

Kimmie’s eyes were huge.  She couldn’t believe this girl!  How dare she come into the club and insult everybody like that!  Was it their fault she decided to come in here to blatantly different?  Of course she was going to get snubbed: with her outfit and manner, she was like a Martian among the Amish!  She glanced around and saw that quite a few of the patrons of the club were starting to look rather ticked off at this intruder into their formerly peaceful and orderly domain, and Kimmie couldn’t blame them.  What right did she have to go up there and start to abuse the crowd?  Granted it was open talent night, but this went beyond any sort of performance and into the realm of just plain rude.

It was almost as if the girl had read Kimmie’s thoughts, as she suddenly piped up, “Lucille says that if I were dressed all in black and had my hair dyed black, too, and came up here and did this, you’d all think I was some sort of bloody visionary and that this was the cutting edge of performance art, and you know what?  She’s right!  Pretentious bunch of jackasses!”

Someone in the crowd yelled at her, “Go home!”

“Naff off!” she snarled back, giving him the finger, grinning from ear to ear, plainly enjoying herself.  “I’ll go home when I’m bloody good and ready . . . what was it that Joker bloke once said?  ‘This town needs an enema?’  The whole lot of you need a bloody enema, if you ask me . . . lighten up!”

“Where does she get off with this?” Kimmie growled to herself, shaking her head, pissed off that this girl was trying to ruin what had been a lovely evening thus far.

“Get outta here, you Spice Girl wannabe!” someone else yelled at the girl, and she stopped up short, her grin getting positively huge now.

“That’s right, I’m Loony Spice!  Loony loony loony!” she threw back her head and laughed madly.  “Mary Swafford, Loony Spice, Queen of the Nutcases, that’s who I bloody am!  I don’t wanna be a nightclub queen, I wanna be queen of the asylum, with a diamond-studded straight-jacket!  Mummy and Daddy tried to have their crazy little girl locked up in the funny farm, but she ran away!  Hail Mary, utter lack of grace, twisting in a world of madness, cursed art thou!”  She held her arms up above her head and spun around in a circle, laughing like a hyena.

“Somebody get her out of here!” Kimmie hissed, rapping her knuckles on the black tablecloth covering her table in impatience with this obnoxious girl.

“I’m with her, get that nut out of here,” said a girl at the table next to Kimmie’s, and when Kimmie glanced over at her, she gave Kimmie a half-smile, nodding at her.  Kimmie glowed with happiness, despite the situation . . . that girl had looked at her with acceptance and not like she was an invader into the club, Kimmie was one of them at the moment!

“I don’t think she’s grown up enough to be able to come play here,” Kimmie said, loud enough for the girl at the next table to hear her, and the girl and her boyfriend both nodded in agreement with Kimmie, which made her want to jump for joy.  In a way, she almost wanted to thank the wacko on the stage for giving her an opportunity to demonstrate that while she was still new to this world, she was more than suitable for it.

“I think what really pisses you guys off is that you know bloody well that you’re all like me, you’re just as weird and messed up as me, but unlike me, who’s only got me, myself, and I, you’ve all banded together in your little group and subculture, and once you’ve got the safety of numbers, you’re just as bad as all the assholes who used to persecute you for being weirdos!  You’re just like me, you just don’t want to admit it!”

“What I want is for you to leave!” yelled a guy up close to the stage.

“Is that what you want, what you really want?” asked the girl, smiling at the crowd, her voice oozing like honey.  Then she tilted her head to the side as though she were listening to something through an earpiece, and while she was looking off in the distance, she said, “Of course I’m going to do it, why wouldn’t I?  You two shouldn’t doubt me when I say I’m going to do something, sillies!  Trust me, you’re not going to be disappointed!”  She shook her head once, then turned her attention back to the crowd, her grin sly now.  “Now, where was I?  Ah yes, what you guys really wanted . . . what you really, really wanted.  And since you told me what you really wanted, I’ll tell you what I really, really want!”  And then, to the utter horror of everybody assembled, she started to belt out the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe,” jumping and prancing around the stage like she was giving a concert.

Everybody began to look frantically around, and finally, at long last, the club’s bouncers got up on stage and fought with the girl to get her to shut up.  It took them a surprisingly long time to get the microphone away from her, and she put up a tremendous fight as they bodily dragged her off the stage, bellowing “Wannabe” at the top of her lungs the whole time.  When one of the bouncers covered her mouth with his hand, he screamed and yanked it back: she’d bitten the hell out of it, and she had a broad grin on her face when she did it.  Once the hand was away, she started singing again, even louder this time, and everybody was shaking their heads in disgust and wincing at the horrendous racket.  But amidst all this, Kimmie had a pleasing moment when the girl at the next table leaned over and asked her, “You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?  I need one after all of this, and I’m all out . . .”

Kimmie was more than happy to offer her one, and she beamed when the girl complimented her on her brand, as she said it was a very good one.  Kimmie truthfully told her that was all she smoked, and the girl smiled approvingly.  This was great!  And then the moment abruptly came to an end when the crazy girl crashed down onto Kimmie’s table and lunged for her.

The bouncers had been carrying her across the floor, heading for the door, and their path had taken them right past Kimmie’s table, and when the crazy girl had caught sight of Kimmie, who wasn’t paying attention to her at the moment, she’d bolted forward, out of the bouncers’ arms, and had slammed into Kimmie’s table.

The blonde didn’t even have time to yelp as the crazed redhead yelled, “You!  You’re like me!  I know you are!” as she shot across the tabletop, grabbing for Kimmie’s shoulders.  Her eyes were blue and wild, there was blood all over her mouth from when she’d bitten the bouncer, and she really did look like she belonged in a mental asylum.  “Come with me!  I know we’re alike, I can feel it!”  She latched onto Kimmie’s shoulders with a steely grip, coming closer and closer with each second, and she was writhing around on the table, giving the bouncers a hell of a time as they tried to grab hold of her again.

“Hold on, ma’am, we’ll take care of her!” one of the bouncers yelled to Kimmie, but she didn’t even hear the large man, as she was damned close to pissing herself from the way the girl was looking at her and how hard she was clamped onto Kimmie’s shoulders.

The crazy girl now tilted her head to the side, didn’t say anything for a moment, and then she screamed, “Bugger off!  I know she’s like me, and I need someone else!  It’s not that I don’t like you guys, but I want someone in the flesh!  Of course I still love you!  I always will, but you don’t understand!”  Then she pulled closer to Kimmie, their noses practically touching, and Kimmie could smell her breath, which had the combined scents of peppermint and blood on it, and Kimmie’s stomach rolled and rocked as soon as the scent of blood hit her nostrils.  Her eyes met the crazy girl’s, and for a split second there was an electric connection between them, as though the girl’s madness was starting to go into Kimmie, and then it was over as the bouncers gave one final heave and pulled her away from Kimmie.  The girl’s fingers slipped from Kimmie’s shoulders, and she continued to vainly grasp and reach for Kimmie as the bouncers hurriedly carted her off across the floor of the club, taking her towards the door where they’d eject her and get her out of everybody’s hair.

Kimmie sat at the table, dazed after the sudden beginning and the abrupt end of her encounter with the crazy girl, and the girl at the table next to her moved over and tapped her on the shoulder.  “You okay?” she asked, and Kimmie shook her head to try to get everything straight again.

“I . . . think so, I just hadn’t come in here tonight expecting that,” she said, and the girl nodded.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen that happen . . . Rapture comes in here every now and then and they get a bit rowdy, but it’s never quite like that.  By the way, I’m Wendy.”

“Kimberly,” Kimmie said, deciding that the full version of her name sounded a lot less childish than ‘Kimmie,’ though her personal preference went with the latter.  “Rapture . . . I saw them the other night.”

Wendy, who was tall, slim, with long black hair, large green eyes, and a classy Morticia Addams (but not cheesy) style dress, grimaced.  “I feel sorry for you, then . . . they’re a bunch of punks.  They go around telling people they’re vampires, but nobody’s gonna buy that, the way they act . . . no vampire would be as uncivilized as them.”

Kimmie nodded rapidly.  “Exactly!  They didn’t have any class at all!  They remind me of a bunch of bikers more than they do anything else, definitely not vampires.”

“Not at all,” agreed Wendy.  “So what did you think of everything else tonight, until that Spice Girl reject showed up?”

Kimmie faked it, and she assumed she did it pretty well, because she and Wendy seemed to be on the same level, and that was definitely reassuring . . . slowly but surely Kimmie was learning.  She and Wendy talked and chatted for the rest of the time that Kimmie was at the Glass Rose, and when she left, Wendy told her that she hoped to see her there again, as she had really enjoyed talking to her.  Kimmie said that she was new in town, but she thought that she may have just found her first regular haunt, and Wendy had laughed at her choice of wording.  Kimmie had almost skipped on the way back out to her car, but she refrained for two reasons.  One, it wouldn’t have been very seemly to do so, and two, she wanted to keep her eyes open in case that crazy girl was still running around, but she made it back to her car with no incident.

When she got home, the first thing she did was hurry over to her computer, turn it on, and check her e-mail, dying to know if Raven Claws had written her back . . . and he had!  She allowed herself a squeal of delight, and even jumped up and down in her chair a little before making herself settle down so that she could read the letter.  He was every bit as eloquent in the letter as he’d been in his posts, possibly even more so, and she savored every word of his letter . . . it was almost as if he’d responded to her letter with a poem, and best of all, he was more than willing to meet with her and take her on a walk through gothic and vampiric culture in Los Angeles.  Another thing that she liked about him was that he didn’t invite her to meet him in person right off the bat . . . he hadn’t even said anything about an eventual meeting between the two, which struck her as a good thing: he was interested in something besides a piece of ass, which was more than she could say for most males.  Instead he told her to feel free to ask him any questions that she desired, and he’d answer them to the best of his abilities, and he hoped that he’d be of some help to her.  This was turning out to be a very good night indeed!

Kimmie wrote him back, trying to match his style of writing as best as she could without seeming imitative . . . she wanted to impress him with her grasp of language and the eloquent way she carried herself, she didn’t want to come off like a little school girl gushing over her latest crush.  When she was done, she thought that she’d done a pretty good job of it, and she reread her letter just to make sure . . . after she’d decided that she most definitely hadn’t made a fool out of herself, she sent the letter, keeping her fingers crossed as she sent it, hoping that she’d get a good reaction out of it.  She’d asked him quite a few questions about the vampire culture of Los Angeles, where the best places to hang out were at, what some of the basic do’s and don’t’s were, where the best spots to buy clothes were at, that sort of thing.  She was still trying to stay pretty basic at the moment, just on the off-chance he was just humoring her . . . she wanted to make sure that he was the real deal before she started to step into the real heavy-duty stuff, like drinking blood and that kind of thing.  She’d read articles about people who thought they were vampires, but didn’t drink blood or do much of anything vampiric, other than dressing in black (like those dorks at Denny’s who played that stupid game all the time), and she wanted to make sure that she had the real deal here before she put too much energy into it.  Granted he’d made mention of feeding off of people on the message boards, but that was his public face . . . she wanted to see what his more private face was like, and if he really and truly lived the life he claimed to.

She shut her computer off and got up to make herself a snack, chastising herself for eating so much but at the same time unable to help it . . . she was damned hungry!  She felt as though she hadn’t eaten in months already, even though it had only been several hours . . . if she got fat off of all of this eating she was going to be pissed.  After she’d eaten, she curled up in bed, avoiding looking at herself in the mirror, feeling rather guilty about the number of sandwiches she’d put away in so short a space of time.  As she drifted off to sleep, she imagined what it would be like if Raven Claws truly was a vampire, and if he was, she dearly hoped that he didn’t have a girlfriend . . . just the thought of his fangs against her neck made her skin prickle.  She fell asleep not long afterwards, and her dreams were full of elegant, dark, and mysterious vampires . . . and she was a vampire princess among them, her hair long and blacker than the depths of outer space, and her fangs were ivory and perfect.  When her alarm woke her the next day, she almost smashed it to pieces, as leaving her dreams was the last thing she wanted to do. 

Go To Part Two