The Vampire

There are things he cannot see. There are things that transpire beyond his recognition. So many doors. So many windows. So many streams all running their courses hither and yon. Ever onward the flow goes, pausing in eddies, sweeping swiftly along the banks. He stands amid it all letting it wash over him like the constant assault of water shapes and polishes smooth rough stones. He lets out a breath taking it all in; taking in the chaos, the tumult.

Before him stands the epic swilling of humanity manifested in a mall food court. Even here, in the dying husk of suburban ideals the expanse is properly occupied. Shoppers sit in pairs or groups sipping Starbucks or nibbling cinnamon buns wrapped in greasy napkins soaked with oil. Grains of sugar grace many a table. All is light. Fluorescent and natural light illuminates the enclosure ensuring that no corner goes darkened either in space or in the human heart. All is seen. All is open. All is illuminated. No deception, no guise, no ruse, only the unabashedly materialistic aims of retailers. There is honesty in that, he thinks.

Yet it is not shopping that draws him out on a golden autumn day. It is not the allure of some unmet need or purchase that beckons.

He watches as the stream of humanity parts before him and he ascends a set of four stairs, freshly waxed and buffed. No stone left unturned. He sees roughly the outline of his own form crudely reflected in the polished tile. As he takes each set he observes the obscure points hanging lights mirrored back at him like passing streetlights on a foggy night. Each step resonates with a satisfying click of his heels upon the floor. Somehow he finds fullness in each step; each hollow reverberation.

He is tall, 6’4”. At fourteen he was already nearly 6”. He wonders if that in some way has shaped his demeanor. Perhaps, had he been a shorter man, 5’6” or 5’8” he would have developed differently. How might height affect one’s view of the world? He considers writing this down. However, he notes that he has had this thought before. Somewhere this surely is scribbled in the margins of some other notebook stored on some dusty shelf; intricately denoted but falling prey to moth and rust, where man can break in and steal. All is fleeting, he muses.

His name is Peter and he is twenty-seven years old. He could hardly be described as fit yet he was also not altogether obese. He was the equivalent of the American average. He’d never lifted a weight in his life but his biceps yet had a well-maintained appearance. A lucky genetic advantage, he mused.

He begins by selecting a table otherwise unoccupied and proceeds to sit, setting his backpack on the floor beside. From where he sits he can look out on the western arm of the mall. He sees the Godiva outlet, an L.L. Bean, and Papyrus, a luxury greeting card retailer. There is moderate traffic up and down the aisle ways; shoppers proceeding to and fro clutching purses and glossy bags, keeping their eyes always on the floor in front of them, on their feet moving like vicious blurry engines.

He wonders how long the institution known as ‘the shopping mall’ will continue to exist. During the growth of the suburbs the mall became the symbol of economic development and cultural utility. The needs of the people, once met by a dozen small stores, became optimized into the shopping mall and the supermarket. Big box stores grew from this desire for efficacy. Now however with the advent of online retailers, the purchasing power has become fractured again with the ease of obtaining an item from a specialty retailer without the need to seek out a brick-and-mortar store to find it. Even more powerful is the ability for consumers to avoid any unnecessary interaction which for many is a desirable advantage. Yet, paradoxically, the artisanal movement seeks to promote those exact things: customer interaction with the producer and locally produced products. In both of these scenarios, the shopping mall is doomed. It loses its advantage of having all the desired items in one place to the internet while for those desiring personal connection and sustainability it is often viewed as a nameless, impersonal husk; a cavernous corporation sucking the life from individuals, taking away the very core of what it means to be human.

Here, too, in the breadbasket of the Great Lakes region, the small towns which once sustained it were dying a slow, protracted death. Mainly due to the corporatization of large scale farming operations, the small farmer was being increasingly pressured to sell out and move to the larger towns. Kalamo, Vermontville, Nashville all once sent their teens in to flood the aisles with teenage angst and expendable income. Now, the clientele consisted of mainly local shoppers.

Dappled autumn sunlight streams in from a cloudy skylight and in it the man feels the comfort of the season. Stores display the muted natural colors of fall. Cut out leaves and window clings adorn the many glass panels. All is decorated for the season. It has always been his favorite, he muses. Even now he can smell the freshly cut fields where combines idle expelling their exhaust into the waiting sky. He sees farmers warming their hands beside fires and swapping stores of better times; better harvests. In all there is a sense of yearning; yearning for better days, better harvests. It seeps from the ground, from the trees, from the sky--- a sense of loss. What it is exactly he cannot quite grasp. They themselves cannot grasp. A void; an aborted future perhaps leaving an aching hole; a nameless expanse they seek to fill with story and recollection. They’ll cast their votes for politicians from bigger cities promising to return to the greatness of an American era that never existed and eat heartily of the promises of the rosy remembrances of their own lost youth. They’ll stretch out their hands to take hold of some illusion; a mirage. The man does not fault them for this exactly. He can feel their loss; their desperation. He feels the ache in his own bones; the ringing emptiness in his own chest. So he looks at the shoppers treading the tile with a sense of understanding, a sense of camaraderie. He sees them as the children of promises lost. He sees even the mall as the decrepit skeleton of a nation’s dreams and assurances. He sees in receipts and bags the shallow reality of the promises of the past. Here, life continues with the countenance of familiarity but is truly only the dry, flaking exterior of desperation, of a changing world longing to be mourned. He feels it. He feels their pain; their unacknowledged anxiety. He wants to envelop it; to consume it within himself. He knows he cannot yet it nourishes him too, feeding his spirit.

Crossing and uncrossing his legs he begins to observe those who occupy the tables around him. Pair of twentysomething women sit with their eyes focused on their Panda Express which they pick at with plastic forks. Neither makes eye contact and they eat in silence. One, a regal looking blonde, wears several gaudy rings that belie her otherwise distinguished appearance. A Forever 21 bag rests at her feet.

Her companion wears a mask of absolute indifference. She consumes her Black Pepper chicken as if it were some type of obligatory nutritional supplement that must at all costs be consumed. She appears to take no pleasure it in.

Why is she even bothering to eat? the man wonders. Is the dining experience merely a utilitarian ritual? What unspoken disagreement leads these two to dine in silence? Surely they came here unbidden. No parent or children surround them to implicate a familial responsibility. Two friends attend a mall yet each maintains a peculiar indifference toward the other. Was there a disagreement? These questions flood the man’s mind. Questions he is unable to answer. Questions he will never know the answer to. Secrets that will lie like bloated corpses in an unmarked grave.

After a moment, a young professional looking man sets down on the ledge that serves to separate the upper level of the mall from the recessed food court. He crossed his legs, right over left and settled himself against the cement puncheon, pulling a freshly purchased book from his bag. Peter hears the crisp cover crack as the young man opens it for the first time. It is Stephen King’s Song of Susanna. He smiles.

“Getting close to the end, eh?” Peter asks leaning to his left to address the man. He plants his right hand on his ankle to stabilize himself.

“Huh?”

“The Dark Tower, you’re getting close to the end?”

“Oh,” the man says with an air of recognition. His demeanor changes as if a veil is lifted. “yeah, only two more books to go.”

“Have you read them before or is this your first time?”

“First time, my brother read them years ago and is always raving about them. They’re making a movie of the first once I think, so I figured that if there was a time to read them, it was now. My brother has pretty good taste.” He says this last bit with a bit of vagueness.

“So, I don’t mean to pry,” Peter says lifting himself up and turning his chair around to face the young man, “what order did you read them in? I mean did you read The Wind Through the Keyhole where it’s placed in the series or are you waiting till the end to read it?”

“I read it in order.”

“See, I wish I could go back and do that. I finished the series before Wind Through the Keyhole came out so I had to read it afterwards. I wish I could have gone back completely blind like you did and read it in order. It really changes the way you read and interpret the book.”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t my favorite anyway.”

“What’s your favorite?”

“Right now? I think Wizard and Glass. It felt really satisfying to hear Roland’s backstory. I’m Branch, by the way.”

“Peter,” he says shaking the man’s hand.

The two men now face each other as equals, as if linked by some ineffable force. Their countenances are transformed and there is a kindred spirit between the two. Peter makes a mental note to write this down later. Branch puts down the novel.

“Yeah, I always thought that Wizard had the best self-contained story. Though Wolves was pretty good in that regard too.”

“My brother says Wolves is his favorite.”

“Your brother seems to have really good taste” Peter says with an air of pregnant expectation. He is leading and he knows it. Does Branch notice?

“Sometimes I guess. He tends to get into horror more than I do. I mean I like The Dark Tower series but I’m not really into King’s other stuff. You know, Pet Cemetery, The Shining.”

“Well, we’re all into different stuff I guess. Is he older or younger than you?”

“Huh?”

“Your brother.”

“Oh, younger. Three years younger, but I never really felt like he was younger.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, in high school he pretty much hung out with my friends or the other kids in my class. So he was always around me. He just felt like the same age as me.”

“Oh.”

“It wasn’t bad or anything, we’ve got a good relationship. It’s good. We operate pretty much as equals. Even our parents treat us like there’s no difference in age.” A pause. “What do you do?”

“Me? Oh, well I try different things. Right now I’m working for hardware store in Battle Creek. Overnight stock. I like it. I’ve got a team of 3 or 4 that I manage. You?”

“DNR up in Lansing.”

“Oooh, a conservation officer.”

“Nothing like that really. I’m basically an administrative assistant.”

“Still. Do you like the outdoors?”

“Like the outdoors? Yeah I guess so. I’m not really much of an outdoorsy guy though. I mostly took the job because it was the best job available. It’s not like it’s a passion of mine or anything.”

“What is a passion of yours?”

“Look how deep you got with that. Um. I guess entertainment. I went to MSU for journalism for a while but I dropped out and never picked it back up.”

“What did you want to do with it?”

“When I was younger I had dreams of writing editorials. I always felt kind of confined by reporting in general. You know, just giving the facts. It always felt like there was no creativity in it. But editorials I think I could write.”

“You should try again. You’re obviously still passionate about it. Look at how you said ‘I think I could write’. Present tense.”

“I guess you’re right” he averts his eyes. Perhaps he is ashamed. Ashamed of what? Because he didn’t finish school? Peter wants to know; needs to know, but how to ask? He can’t quite formulate the words to present the question. The silence lingers. He knows the moment is passing. He wants to save it. But how? He has pushed too deep. He knows it now. Too deep. Delving too deep.

“What do you…” Peter begins, but is cut short as the man begins to stand up. Picking up again the novel.

“Hey, I need to get going. I’ve got to meet my girlfriend at 1. Nice talking to you though, Peter.”

The shake hands again. Peter leans forward.

“Yeah. Nice” he says as Branch makes his way up the three steps and back up onto the storefront level of the mall. Peter watches as he exits through the eastern wing of the mall.

Peter is alone. Again. He turns his chair back toward the table and rests with his elbows pressed against the surface until he can feel the grain of the wood, its skeletal canyons molding rough patterns into his flesh. He presses until he feels the slight sensation of pain, and then relents. He closes his eyes and lets the sounds of his surroundings wash over him. He tries to isolate and articulate each one. The whir of a blender over at a smoothie shop. Indistinct conversation. Indeterminable wheels on the tile--- a miniscule squeak. A rolling basket perhaps? The moderately melodic whispers of music emanating behind shop walls. Always. Always. Always, the gentle drone of the air conditioner which has replaced the rush of traffic, and, before that, the whooshing of wind through treetops as the ubiquitous omnipresent refrain of these times.

He lets the sound wash over him; lets it fill him, every pore, like air filling a vacuum. He prays for rebirth. Prays for the strength to persevere. He prays for freedom. He prays. He listens for the non-silence; that which would-be silence. He stares in the darkness that is his sealed eyelids. He traces the patterns and colors that swim across his vision; visions of immaterial electrical impulse.

He opens his eyes, his suddenly exhausted eyes. He tries to iron his thoughts flat like a board. Smooth the edges. Smooth the wrinkles. Maintain the balance. Some type of balance. He feels the void lingering, just upon the barriers of his consciousness, always present, always waiting, waiting for just the right moment, the right chink in the armor. No, he cannot relent. He must persevere. He must run the race set out before him.

Unsure of how long he has remained motionless, Peter looks around. Not much time has passed. Minutes perhaps this time? Some of the same diners still remain, now sipping from smoothies or nursing the barest remains of their lunches. The girls have gone however, their silence broken perhaps by some light comment or familiar memory. And where to? No indication. It makes no difference. Gone. Simply gone.

The lunch crowd had dwindled but there seemed to be more shoppers actually walking the halls. Peter rose and threw his backpack over his shoulder, not truly putting it on but not carrying it. He pushed in his chair with a firm but calculated amount of force in spite of the fact that nearly all of the other fifty or so chairs lay about in varying degrees of discombobulation. This one chair; this chair will be clean, will be perfect.

It is easy, Peter thinks, to get lost in the magnitude and the perspective of life; to get overwhelmed by the vastness and ignore the minute things. That is folly, he concludes, it is only in the individual thing that there is any true perspective. He tries to imagine a sky full of stars such as he had seen as a child. The awe-inspiring and crushing reality of one fraction of the universe, the fragment visible from northern Michigan on a summer night in late July. That tiny sliver of reality threatens to eclipse all of life. Compared to that profundity of existence, of what import can one tiny pin-prick of creation maintain? What prominence can any one life have? With all its machinations and memory and feelings and doubt, what can it compare to the grandness of the grand? He knows the answer. He has memorized it; internalized. It is no rote creed though; he knows it deep down in his bones, in the very core of his person. The One does matter. It is in fact the only thing that gives the grandness its wonder. He must seek the Oneness; the overwhelming uniqueness of it all, never relegating action to merely words spoken or deeds done. One chair it may be. One chair amid fifty. But it is one chair that bespeaks the dignity of all.

He walks as if trespassing a world that is not his own, passing shops from which he seemed as far removed as a foreign country. It seemed impossible to him that so many clothing retailers even existed let alone made a profit. He himself had rarely shopped for new clothes over the last ten years of his adult life. What little he had acquired came from the Salvation Army or as gifts at Christmases or birthdays. Attire had never held much sway over him. In fact, he rarely looked in a mirror long enough to form an opinion on his style. Still it was not as if he had pronounced judgement on those who availed themselves to style and accessories. It was simply removed from his own sphere. There were some grey areas of interpretation after all.

“Hey, take a look at these watches” a voice called in a half-hearted sales pitch.

Peter turned to see a kiosk employee, who himself sported a burnished timepiece, beckoning him toward the glass cases. Peter stopped but made no effort to approach.

“You interested?” the sharp-dressed man inquired.

“Not particularly.”

Peter resumed his pace.

He came to the end of the east wing where the halls opened up into a kind of a gathering area just in front of JC Penny’s. There were a number of benches set in a semi-circle where a diverse group of people had settled. A mother leaned forward looking in at her small child in a stroller. Another watched her two children run about in the guarded expanse.

Peter paused to wonder at the world these children would grow up in; the world they would experience. How different would it be from their parents’? Not only in specific differences in events but even deeper at the level of perception. How would they perceive the world? How would a generation raised with computers as functional technology interpret their existence? Would such technological augmentation change their perceptions of information or pain or beauty? He had always been struck at how much our own understanding of the world rests upon our personal (and biased) observations and experiences. What would these children see? Or perhaps more pointedly, how would they see their world?

On the other half of the crescent-shaped row of benches a woman in a sharply tailored suit sat sipping on a coffee and reading a tablet. Every inch of her spoke of control and professionalism. Every hair and eyelash had been meticulously managed.

Peter approached and sat on the bench next to hers.

Retrieving from his bag a small, black notebook, he began to write furiously, utilizing his knee to stabilize himself. He finds himself fighting off tremors that seem to originate at the very core of his being. Every ounce of resolve he can muster he focuses on remaining calm. He waits, savoring each anticipatory breath, feeling it engorge his waiting lungs with cool, sterile air.

At last, he can abstain no longer.

“What’s going on in the world?” Peter asks, desperately striving to sound causal.

“Nothing much,” the woman replies without missing a beat. “You know, wars and rumors of war. Same ole stuff.” Her don’t leave the tablet hovering about ten inches from her face.

“It’s a crazy world.”

“No crazier than it’s always been. We just have more access to it. Not that that makes it any better.”

“Do you really believe that?” Peter asks. The question is genuine. He has wondered that for a long time. In the darkest hours of the night he wonders it. When the weight of the world seems pressed down upon his shoulders and the pain in his mind is a swirling, stinging sensation he wonders and wonders as the embrace of sleep seems lost; a tantalizing echo. In the darkness he wonders.

The woman hesitatingly puts down the tablet. Her eyes are a rich sea of green seemingly flecked with darker browns. Her age is indeterminate. She seemed to be the type of woman who might have been twenty-five or forty. A cadence of beauty surrounded her masking the effects of age. He is struck.

“I think so. All the media we have it makes us think that the horrible events of the world are far more commonplace than they are. Fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, we knew the events that affected us: the events of our town or our state or maybe one or two national events and that was it. We weren’t troubled with more than that. Horrible things were happening but we didn’t know about them. Now we look back and say ‘aww if we would only get back to the good old days; if we could just make America great again.’ It was just the same back then. Though we were unaware of it.”

“You seem like you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this.”

“I teach Introduction to Electronic Media, it’s kind of my thing. More than that though, I just really get into it.” She makes a conscious effort to make eye contact with Peter, something that she has conspicuously avoid until this point. “I’m Annette.”

“Peter Wolff.”

“Like, Peter and the?” she asks fighting a grin.

“I guess. Parents didn’t really think that one through.”

“Maybe you just looked like a Peter?”

They both laugh.

“What do you do Peter the Wolf?”

“Um, I’m kind of a writer.”

“Ah, that explains it. Great nom de plume though. No one will ever believe it’s your real name.”

“I guess.”

He is alternately uneasy and assured. The woman has that effect on him. He desperately wants to rest in the comfortability that this woman seems to elicit in him. Though he has conversed with many people on many, many occasions, he has never felt this level of rapport. For a moment it breaks his concentration. For a moment.

“Where are you a professor?” Peter staggers.

“Eastern, though technically I’m a lecturer.”

“What are you doing out here?”

“I’ve got Thursdays off and I’ve got a wedding on Saturday in Grand Rapids, an old college roommate.”

“Oh, well thanks for stopping in on our little town.”

“Well, it really was just for gas but I made some time to linger.”

“I’m glad.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She eyes him warily now. Her countenance seems to alter. Slivers of distrust seem to flash in those beguiling eyes.

“I’m only stopping in for a few hours. I’m meeting a friend for dinner.”

“Oh. It’s good you have a wedding to celebrate,” he flounders, “with all that’s going on in the world.”

“Yeah,” she begins tentatively, “the only way to cope with the evil in the world is by maintaining the good; celebrating the good.”

“You really believe that?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I wish I could. I’ve seen too much, I think.”

“That’s rough. Not that I know what you’ve seen. But it’s rough to keep the faith when you’ve been hurt,” Annette says with renewed compassion. Peter winces. “Without some standard of morality, the only basis for action is one’s own desires. We all know, either from ourselves or from observing others, that if every resorts to rampant hedonism, that evil will grow. When everyone seeks the best for themselves only then the world very quickly descends into anarchy.”

“It’s not that easy to deny yourself,” Peter says quietly, averting his eyes.

“Agreed, but without it, we enter into a spiral of destruction. We see how that’s working in the world; in this country. When we seek only to elevate ourselves we by necessity denigrate others.”

He cannot bring himself to raise his eyes. He can only stare helplessly at his own worn shoes as if the weather-beaten Keds held in them some glimmer of absolution. He closes his eyes momentarily and relishes in the relief that the nothingness brings; no fear; no temptation; no pain; no regret. Yet even as he revels in this one moment of pure ecstasy, he is also carefully calculating how long he can keep his eyes closed without causing any social complications. One second, two seconds, three seconds. He removes his glasses and rubs his eyes simply to give himself a few more milliseconds of peace. Four seconds, five.

Fighting the desire within himself he asks “how close are you to your roommate?”

“I’m sorry?” she responds, affronted.

“Your old college roommate, how close are you? Were you? I mean what school did you go to?” the tenor of his voice echoes with self-loathing; pervasive and all-encompassing shame.

“Listen,” she begins.

“No, I’m sorry. I... I just was wondering about the wedding, I mean how well did you know them. Um, like are you staying with friends? You said that already. Sorry. Is the wedding in a church? Where’s the reception?”

“I, um, I have to go.” She rises, clutching the tablet and her purse against her side. “It was, nice, talking to you Peter. I’ve got to go. You know. Have a great day.”

She turns to leave. Peter hears the click of her shoes against the tile floor. He does not watch her go. He knows that she is gone. He knows that she will turn once she reaches a safe distance to look back to see what he is doing. He does not move. He does not want to give her the satisfaction. He is not desperate. No, he is desperate.

He feels the familiar disappointment.

He feels the sting of habitual failure.

In through, the nose he breathes, holding his breath until his lungs reach the point of exhaustion, when his entire body is crying out for relief, it is here in this moment that he knows the meaning of control. He holds in his will the power of life and death. With every cell screaming out in desperation he releases the now useless carbon dioxide through his mouth and pulls another gasping lungful into his yearning body. It is here that he knows the satisfaction of having done something to the fullest. Though trivial and inconsequential he knows what it is to have dominion over something even if it be his own body. He knows what it is to do something to the fullest.

He opens his eyes.

The sting of failure still burns strong; the failure to do the best he was possible capable of doing. Yet he is satiated. He can trace the outline of the glimmer of hope in the air around him. He knows he can go on for another day; that he can try again; knows that he must try again. Tomorrow is another day.