A Procession of the Damned: [Jesse Fforde]

[Courtney]

Everything is wrong.

Nothing is right.

"Everything is wrong. Everything's backwards. I just... I just got here from America, y'know? It's just a little different. I'm sure I'll get use to it. New kid. New school." His sentence-structure broke of, words came out more rapid, less calculated, maybe tinged with the nasty, vomit-inducing, gut-clenching rungs of paranoia and adrenaline-junk riding through his tattoo-virgin veins.

Maybe because he said something kind of accusatory, the artist. He said something that said a lot more than it should have. He said, Did you see something?

He asked, Did you see something? And Courtney heard it. No. Immediate response? No. He hadn't seen anything, at all, near here, a few weeks back.

He definitely hadn't seen some girl get sucked dry by some guy on some type of murderous, blood-lusting rampage, or some silent, creeping hunt.

Courtney bit the inside of his cheek and squeezed his fists up as hard as he could, focused on the feel of his pulse strengthening to break through the now-foreshortened veins -- white knuckles and gritted teeth.

It was starting to hurt, more.

[Jesse Fforde]

The answer isn’t satisfactory.

It’s almost as if Jesse wants this human to have seen something, so then he can wrench his fragile body up out of the chair and haul him into some back room. Sink fangs into neck and just drink. Drink, drink up all that glorious, hot, adrenaline-soaked blood. All of it, until there is none left, and the body is a husk. A husk that can do nothing about anything because it is dead. The very notion has Jesse’s mouth watering, and the itching burn of thirst and dryness begins to throb painfully in the back of his throat. It’s ******* torture.

But he’s at work, and he can’t kill the customers. He can’t feed on them. He can’t risk giving himself away. Not here. Not when he’s working for his cousin, and for the man he’s adopted as mentor. The man who’s given him more than Jesse ever believes he deserved. Doing anything to cause the authorities to rock up on the doorstep of Masterpiece Tattoo would be like shitting on Micah’s doorstep. How’s that for thanks? So Jesse clears his throat, and continues to do his job. No answers are forthcoming from this guy, so many he hasn’t seen anything. Maybe he’s just acting weird. Plenty of people act weird.

”Are you doin’ okay, man? We can stop. I can’t have you passing out on me,” Jesse says. The needle lifts from the skin. The buzzing stops, to be replaced by a numb silence. An alive silence, where the remnants of the machine continue to echo, like a harsh memory.

Basically, at the end of the day, Jesse is a tattoo artist and this man is his customer. He has to do right by the customer, and by the policy of the store. One glance at the tattoo assures him that there’s not far to go, not really. But it might be just a stretch too much. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Some people just can’t handle the pain.

[Courtney]

Sometimes answers aren't. Satisfactory. Sometimes they're elusive, evasive. Sometimes, you get the wrong answers, because you ask the wrong questions. Sometimes, you ask all the right questions, and you put all the right emphasis on all the right words, and you still come up empty-handed.

Sometimes you get the truth, and everything still feels unresolved.

In Courtney's business, nothing is ever resolved, even when the newspapers print out, 'Killer Caught!' or 'Man Suspected Now Convicted!', and he's use to getting answers he either doesn't want, or that don't quite add up. When they don't quite add up? Courtney hounds it, rides it for all its worth, the way cowboys ride bulls until they get thrown, and, sometimes, they get horned or trampled, broken up. And, sometimes, cowboys get dead. Don't be a cowboy. Don't get obsessive.

In this case? Courtney had a good, strong reason to be evasive, to walk around the edges of a, 'Yeah, I saw a woman get killed by a guy who sucked on her neck. By the way, since I came here, I'm having black outs like a ***********. Whole hours disappear. I'll be looking at my watch, one minute, and, the next, I'll be walking down a street I don't recognize.' He knew not to go blurting out everything, before he'd come to some type of logical conclusion -- which he hadn't, and he still wouldn't have a logical conclusion by the time he met Pi, three weeks, or so, down the road, by the time Rachel had wept herself dry on the windowsill near his (a loose ownership) bed.

Courtney's mouth burned, and his fingers buzzed. He un-clenched his fists and breathed, the way all things have to breathe, when they're giving birth to something from themselves -- he'd read, once, that tattooes were bringing out what was already under the skin, what had already been growing, rippling, screaming inside the boundary.

Flared nostrils. He mouthed his damp upper-lip, didn't reach back to touch the ink, like he wanted. "How much is left?"

[Jesse Fforde]

Jesse doesn’t like the subconscious. He doesn’t like the way his body reacts on instinct, sometimes; he doesn’t like the way that certain factors all add up to make him act in a way that he only realises is wrong or mildly idiotic until later. He had never been much of a planner. Spontaneity is the name of the game, and it’s the best ******* game in the world.

Not that the current scenario will lead to anything idiotic, or even noticeable, in the grand scheme of things. There’s no one else in the shop. And it’s an establishment owned by a vampire. He’s got a customer in the chair who knows nothing about tattoo application, or how long it should take, and with the searing, burning pain of needle against skin, he’s not going to know how fast Jesse is working.

The answer had left Jesse’s lips before he’d had time to stop it. He looks at the design and, with a cant to his head, calculates how long it would take. ”Half an hour, give or take,” he says. Give or take – because by rights, it should take longer than half an hour. If Jesse were human and his focus were less sharp, he’d take his time to make sure that the ink is in all the right places, within the lines, blended properly. Now that he has inhuman sight, however? He can afford to move a little faster, pausing only long enough to make sure the ink has been absorbed by the right layer of the dermis. Deep enough to remain bright and vibrant for a very long period of time, but shallow enough so as not to cause any scarring.

Thing is, Jesse knows when to trust his hunger. He knows when to distrust it. He knows when he’s liable to do something spontaneous and stupid, and he supposes his subconscious reaction to the question is a blessing. A good thing. If he takes his time, it’s likely that his insatiable thirst will only get worse. He has to keep reminding himself – you cannot feed on the customers. And this will be the last customer of the night. He has to do something about this damnable thirst. It should worry him that it’s hindering his work. But he refuses to dwell on it.

”We can leave it. You can come back tomorrow night, and we can finish it. If you need time to recuperate,” Jesse says. It’s nothing out of the ordinary. It’s what he offers any customer who struggles with the burn.

[Courtney]

Courtney was encapsulated, like the contents of a pill, like a baby in a womb -- trapped behind a constant, thin, membranous film. Right now, the film was Jesse, whether or not Courtney knew it. Jesse's hunger was all over him, pulsing, making his gums throb, making his stomach quiver. Courtney attributed it to the adrenaline.

Typically, he believed emotions he experienced,from the outside, to be his own emotions, even though those were beaten back and beaten down so much that they hardly existed, at all.

All of the things that people felt, around him, he felt, for himself, with no real grasp on what his own emotions looked like -- malformed, malnourished, like Rachel, some wilting, some completely dead. His emotions, self -- starving, like Jesse, hungry with a desire that amounted to newborn frenzy.

Courtney's unchecked empathy swarmed out, everywhere. It grasped, wrapped its hands around him and squeezed from all sides, until he thought that strange, sordid need was his own, that murderous feeling came from too many years looking through snapshots of snapped necks and gutted people, spending too many hours in the putrid stink of post-mortem as he marked crime scenes with sticky notes in little suburbia.

When he did have one of his own emotions -- his very own emotions, like a diamond -- it spilled and leaked, gurgled and (too much pressure) ruptured him.

Jesse said something about another time, and Courtney could only agree, because...

Like Courtney had imagined Elliot, he imagined Jesse. Jesse splayed open from the hollow of his throat to his belly button. Jesse's organs pumping and working, then slowly stopping as eternity closed in on them.

Ravenous -- but a different type of hunger, something deep and primal, more than the act of cooking a meal, sitting down at a table and chewing supermarket trash you bought off a shelf or from a deep freeze. Ravenous for... Pulsating in the throat, around the chest, all inside the meat of his rib bones and the insides of his cheeks.

Courtney knew he wasn't dehydrated, because he could feel the moisture in his mouth.

He swallowed spit, sucked on his own tongue, then rubbed his hand over his face.

"Yeah. I'm feeling, uh. Sure. I'll come back, another time. Just..." He wanted it to be over, then. Some screaming instinct in the back of his head pounded, said, 'Get the **** out; get the **** out, now.' He needed it to be over, because something else inside him was scratching at the insides of his skin, making him feel disconnected and disengaged, like a PTSD victim. Very, very far away.

"Yeah, tomorrow," he re-asserted the agreeance, because Jesse was the artist, had seen a hundred people in his chair, knew the effects of ink-in-skin better than Courtney did, who didn't really question the need to recuperate, who

kept
getting
slapped
by
images
of
gore.

[Jesse Fforde]

The guy agrees, and Jesse has only to nod.

Before Courtney can get up and run away, however, Jesse is applying pressure to the middle of his shoulder blades – forcing him to stay, just a little longer. There are still things that need to be done, to make sure everything is kosher. A cotton swap is retrieved and doused in alcoholic cleaning liquid; it is used to clean the area of the tattoo, adding a freshness after the sting and burn of the needles. After the skin is clean, Jesse applies a swathe of lotion. The stuff he uses is made from palm oil, and is a little gritty, but it will help the healing process, and will keep the ink fresh and bright.

After the lotion is applied, Jesse covers the ink with cling wrap, attaching it to the skin with long strips of masking tape. That’ll keep the airborne infections out, and give the ink time to linger, to sink properly.

”Keep this in place for a couple of hours – the skin will leak ink, but that’s normal. It’s just getting rid of the excess. Don’t scratch or rub at it. When washing, just dab gently. You need to take the wrap off after a couple of hours, to let it breathe. And if you don’t want to ruin your sheets, I suggest changing them to something you don’t like so much,” he explains. It’s a speech he gives several times a night, when working. It slips from his tongue with practiced ease.

Only when he is done does he step back and peel away the surgical gloves and toss them in the bin. He’d have to clean the workstation entirely, disinfect it. He’s looking forward to it, if only because the acrid sharpness of the disinfectant will get rid of the warm scent of blood. Jesse might be able to control his thirst. And, if afterwards he is still craving something fresh, he’ll have to go hunting. He’ll try to avoid hunting. He couldn’t do it every night, otherwise he’d draw attention to himself.

From one of the benches behind the counter he retrieves a silver tube of the lotion, and hands it to Courtney. They give one away free with each new tattoo.

”We’ll call it one-fifty for tonight, and you can pay the rest tomorrow, when we finish,” he says.

It’s actually amazing, how many people don’t end up coming back.

[Courtney]

He had to be pushed into place. Mostly because his head was swimming, not out of pure ignorance.

He knew that they were supposed to put the plastic and the lotion over the ink. He knew, because he'd seen people. An observer, Court.

When he heard Jesse's gloves snap, Courtney got out of the chair, pulled his shirt over his head, and breathed.

He wasn't in physical pain, anymore. At some point, natural pain medication was released into his bloodstream.

The body -- you're wounded, let me help.

He pulled his wallet out, as he walked, counted out 'one-fifty', then offered it to Jesse.

Quiet.

[Jesse Fforde]

Jesse’s work schedule is sporadic. When he’d been hired, Micah had said, outright – he could choose his own hours. He could come and go as he pleased. He likes to make appointments with people, so that they can be assured that he will be there at a specific time, and he can be assured that they will be there, too. Sometimes, when Grey is at work, he’ll come to Masterpiece – it’s a good place to sit and draw, and to work on commission pieces.

Jesse nods and takes the cash, pushing it into the register. The arms of the register snap shut and the whole thing chings as he shoves it shut. When the cash has been put away, he pulls out the appointment book, and leans over it, pen in hand. He prints out COURTNEY APPLE in his characteristic lettering – all capitals, evenly spaced, as neat as a printed computer sheet. The writing is hasty, quick – Jesse Fforde is a man accustomed to writing. It had been his only form of communication, bar body language, for the better part of a decade.

”Do you have a phone number, man?” he asks, pen poised over the paper. ”I’ve penned you in for the same time tomorrow night – do you think you can make it?” he asks. Yeah, the guy had agreed for the next night, but Jesse is double checking. Honestly, this Courtney character seems a bit out of it – like it might slip his mind, that he’d made any kind of appointment.

Jesse waits, with an arched brow.

What the **** kind of name is Courtney Apple, anyway? Probably made up. People like to make up names.

[Courtney]

The real question is more like, What kind of a man is Courtney Apple, anyway?

Courtney Apple is just a name, after all. One of those unfortunate names doled out by unsuspecting, liberal-arts parents who smoke too much pot and sway their own way. They lived in Canada, actually.

Yeah, he'd said, he could make it. No, he didn't have a phone number, unless the guy wanted to call Lancaster's and leave a message that one of the girls would get to him.

He definitely -- defiantly -- re-took up smoking that night.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When he got back to Bunk, that night, he crawled into bed, still queasy, still rushing, his brain tremulous, like his nostrils and his lips, the roof of his cocaine mouth all smacked up, like some abused housewife on twenty-second street, downtown, out-town. All the nerve-endings worried thin, there, worried numb, because he couldn't stop rubbing his tongue to the ridged, pink skin.

He hoisted himself under the covers and looked through files while he tried to wind down with a steaming mug of Pomegranate-Cranberry Lipton. His fingers smelled like cigarette smoke. His breath smelled like tobacco and spearmint toothpaste.

The type of man who sleeps in pajamas, even when there's nobody else, there, except a plant named Rachel and a cat who murrs and rolls over and over itself. The cat rolled on top of Courtney's files, and Courtney set his tea to the side, leaned back in the bed and dragged the cat onto his chest. Stroked and kissed its furry cheeks.

He doctored the tattoo with the lotion.

He slept like a natural disaster.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

What kind of a man was Courtney Apple, anyway?

The kind of man who watches a murder and doesn't do dick about it.

He was the type of man who showed up for appointments, though, when he had them.

He dragged his Pacer through the cold night down the black street, parked back at Riverwood Market.

The next night, and it all looked the same. It all looked like it had, however long back -- days and nights he couldn't sum up, on the spot.

Instead of getting out of the Pacer -- it wasn't time for his appointment; not yet -- he rolled down the manual-pump window, then lit up a cigarette, smoked in the driver's seat while he waited for the clock to roll around, for him, like his cat had, the night, before.

[Jesse Fforde]

Jesse decides that he’ll feed before going to work tonight.

And not just from a blood bag. Not a plastic blood bag, anyway. He’ll feed from a living, breathing blood bag. Maybe not just one, but two. Several. He knows he shouldn’t, but it’s an urge that he cannot shake. It’s an addiction that he cannot avoid, or quell. That’s the definition of an addiction, isn’t it? Intervention is required. Someone to step in and shake some sense into the addict. Maybe even that won’t work. That’s what they say, isn’t it? The addict has to hit rock bottom.

Jesse hasn’t hit rock bottom yet. Arson is a hard thing to track to a person – and when bodies are burnt to crisps, down to the bone, it’s harder still to determine the cause of death as severe loss of blood. There’s no skin to find sucked dry.

The tattooist doesn’t take anyone with him on these field trips. He’s sure that Grey has some kind of inkling of where he goes and what he gets up to – maybe – but he never tells her when she asks how his night was, or what he did. There are only a couple of other individuals who know about his pyromaniac tendencies – or about his monstrous lust for blood – and they’re individuals in his own lineage. Who share the same lusts – and need to know that they can be sated, but they have to be careful.

The hood is drawn up over Jesse’s features, shadow obscuring his face – all but his lips, that are red with smeared blood. A pink tongue slides over those lips, to taste the very last drops; the thick cruor is stuck under his tongue, and to his gums behind his teeth, in the crevices of his lips. With every swallow, the taste ebbs, decreases, and the burning scratch intensifies.

But at least he is full, and satisfied as far as needs go.

He turns away from the inferno. This time it was a caravan just outside of the city limits. A couple of hipsters who thought it would be a nice little get away. Jesse had killed the man, first – had him pinned to the wall with his body, fangs latched into his neck, while his fingers held the frantic girlfriend in a vice-like grip. She couldn’t scream, because he had his claws in her neck. The man was finished off quickly. From the girl, he drank slowly. He revelled in every languorous swallow.

Now the van is burning. Whoops. Those poor hipsters were using an out-of-date gas can. Didn’t they know those things could blow up?

_____________________________________________________

Freshly showered, Jesse sits in the same place as he had been sitting the night before. In the chair at Masterpiece, his knee swinging back and forth as he texts Grey; just one appointment, and then he’ll be home. One appointment, a few hours, maybe. Maybe less. And then he’ll be home.

The inks are already set up and waiting. He knows how he needs to continue, and with what needle. All he needs is the canvas. And this time, he’ll control his blood lust. This time, hopefully, the guy won’t sweat and his heart won’t beat so hard and maybe he won’t look so ******* delicious. Maybe those hipsters will quell the hunger. Just for a little while.