Blood Vivicanti (9780989878579)

The

Blood

Vivicanti

Part 2

Wyn

created by

Anne Rice
and
Becket

written by

Becket

The Blood
Vivicanti

Becket

Copyright © 2014
Becket

All rights
reserved.

Smashwords
Edition

ISBN:
0-9898785-7-0

ISBN-13:
978-0-9898785-7-9

This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of
the imagination of the creator(s) or are used
fictitiously.

Under copyright law, if you
are not the copyright owner of this work, you are forbidden to
reproduce, create derivative works based on this work, download,
distribute copies of the work, decompile this work without Becket’s
express written permission.

Becket’s note

In 2011, Anne Rice and I
began talking about the development of a new breed of blood
drinkers.

The first ground rule was
that they had to have an entirely different cosmology from her
other supernatural stories.

She and I spent many weeks
emailing back and forth, sharing copious detailed notes. We had
several energetic lunches and dinners, whence we discussed the
foundation and framework of the story you’re about to read. We
swapped ideas about the strengths and weaknesses of these new blood
drinkers, ideas about the characters themselves as well as their
backstories, and more ideas about potential narrative
devices.

One of the amazing facets
of Anne’s writing method is that she seems to devote almost as much
time to selecting the right names for things as she does to
carefully crafting the narrative. Both go hand in hand, I’ve
learned from her. She’s taught me much. The right name is as
important as
le mot
juste
.

But what name would we call
our new blood drinkers?

One day, after we’d spent
weeks thinking about what to call this new breed, I came into her
office as she thumped closed a Latin textbook. She beamed at me
with her irresistible smile. She told me she knew what to call our
blood drinkers. She had not chosen a Latin word, but had developed
a new word from Latin phraseology.

What was the new word she’d
developed?

“
Vivicanti,” she said as
her smile broadened.

I loved the word
instantly!

“
Our blood drinkers will be
called,” Anne Rice announced: “The Blood Vivicanti.”

Then it was my job to write
the story.

I passed by you. I saw
that you had reached the age for love. I spread my skirt over you
and I covered your nakedness. I swore to you and entered into a
covenant with you.

—
Ezekiel 16:8

The Blood
Vivicanti

Part 2

Wyn

Here’s my theory: Mom was
a duckbill platypus.

Wyn rejects this theory,
of course. Sometimes the scientist can’t see past the size of his
test tube.

My mom must have been a
platypus in disguise – the way Zeus disguised himself as cows,
eagles, and the ugly duckling. Platypuses are the only mammals to
lay eggs. My mom couldn’t have given birth to me. She must have
laid my egg. She must have sat on me too hard.

That must be why I’m so
broken.

Once upon a time I was a
seven-teen-year-old girl named Mary Paige who’d suffered rejection
and isolation. Once I was a human who’d sought ways to be alone.
Often loneliness had been my only friend in the dark. But none of
that mattered. I just wanted to stop hurting when people
misunderstood me.

I was misunderstood a lot
– I was alone a lot – I was lonely a lot more – I was a secret
breed of person: I could breathe underwater because I’d been
drowning since the womb. I was a perfect platypus.

Today I’m still Mary Paige.
Only now I am also a Blood Vivicanti. I can pierce your neck with
my tongue. I will drink your blood. I will eat your
memories.

But in some ways I’m still
the same girl I was.

I’ve always been an
introvert living in an extrovert’s world. Extroverts used to try to
make me stop being introverted. They seemed to think introversion
was a sickness. Their cure was to cheerfully say to me: “To thine
own self be true!” They seemed to think this was penicillin for the
soul.

I always thought it was a
load of poppycock.

Some seemed aware that
Shakespeare had written that line. Fewer seemed to know that
Shakespeare had given that line to Polonius in his play,
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of
Denmark
, called “Hamlet” for short. They
had no idea that they were quoting the line of a doddering old
flesh-monger.

It was as if they were
saying to me: In ignorance is conformity.

Of course, you’re supposed
to be ignorant when a Blood Vivicanti pierces you. You’re not
supposed to remember my tongue driving deep into your neck. You
shouldn’t know I’m drinking your blood or eating your memories. You
wouldn’t even remember what I look like. All you’d recall is the
pure pleasure. Our venom fills you with so much pleasure that your
mind forgets the pain.

Yes: I am the first female
platypus packed with venom.

But I remember when Wyn
pierced me. I remember falling from the cliff. I remember my body
breaking. I remember Wyn driving his tongue into my neck. I
remember him drinking my blood. I’ve never forgotten all the
pleasure that came.

I also remember Wyn picking
me up as if I were as light as a leaf. He rushed me back to his
mansion. He ran faster than wind. I lost consciousness.

My eyes opened once or
twice. I recall glimpsing some of my surroundings. There were white
computers – silver instruments – beeping noises – bright lights
glinting – Wyn looking down at me. And I was looking up at him. He
was wearing a surgeon’s green mask over his mouth. I was wearing a
white sheet. He was transferring blood into my veins.

The blood was so bright it
was almost glowing. It was the color of violets soaking in the
sunshine.

I recall glimpsing
more…

A man was lying beside me.
He was wearing a black loincloth. His whole body was hairless and
smooth. He was very large and muscular. He seemed to gleam as if
oiled. His eyes were open as he lay motionless as a statue. Once
his chest rose and fell with a single breath. The way dolphins
breathe twice an hour. This man’s skin was dark red.

He is called simply: “The
Red Man.”

Tubes were also inserted
into his veins. Flowing through the tubes was the glowing violet
blood. And at first I thought the blood was going into him
too.

I was too dazed to realize
the truth: The blood was coming
from
him.

When the Red Man’s blood
had finally filled me up, when all my blood was gone, I had become
a Blood Vivicanti.

Who was the Red
Man?

He was not like me. He
wasn’t human. But he wasn’t a Blood Vivicanti either. And he wasn’t
anywhere in between.

In fact, you could say
that between humans and the Red Man was my kind. The Blood
Vivicanti, we are the middle ground between human and
alien.

That first night, my dreams
weren’t merely vivid images. Everything in them had a life of its
own. Tables and teakettles seemed to move, but didn’t. Stock-still
walls whispered ancient secrets without a word. The whole world
seemed alive and dead at the same time.

Every scent, every sound
encompassing me while I slumbered filled my mind with images of
fairytales.

The scent of a rose in the
room made my mind dream of Alice’s garden of living
flowers.

The sound of Bach’s
Minuet in G Minor
on
piano made my mind dream the orderly structures of Abbott’s
Flatland
, with all the
peculiar shapes of polygonal love.

For a long time afterward,
I wasn’t sure if I’d dreamed the Red Man. His violet blood had
seemed too lovely to be real.

I was now
alien
in every sense of
the word.

So how could I be true to
my self?

I didn’t know who I was. I
didn’t even know
what
I was. How could I know who or how to be? I didn’t really
have a new “self.” My old self still had me.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll
ever wake up from the nightmare of who I used to be.

I awoke from sleep to more
confusion. I had no idea where I was. I was alert and afraid and
worried. Questions swarmed like bees in my heart and
head.

In a sense, it didn’t seem
too different from any other day in the life of a teenage
girl.

Suddenly I was aware of
countless sights and smells and other sensations. It was a
simultaneous attack on all my senses. Light and sound and pain
happened all at once, like a lightning strike.

It was difficult to see
anything, not because I could not see. My Blood Vivicanti eyes were
seeing too much. They were trying to gather in too much
information. It wasn’t darkness. Only blindness.

It was difficult to smell
anything, not because I could not smell. My Blood Vivicanti nose
was inhaling too many scents. I could barely breathe. The feeling
was stifling. I feared I was choking and suffocating.

It was difficult to hear
anything, not because I could not hear. My Blood Vivicanti ears
were hearing too much. All kinds of sounds were hammering against
my eardrums. The din was deafening.

It was difficult to feel
anything because every nerve ending in my new body felt too much.
Untold touches like little fingers seemed to be grasping and
groping my skin.

In the meantime, my
photographic memory was working overtime to catalogue this
inundation of new information. The feeling was frightening at
first. My hands covered my ears. I held my breath. My eyes squinted
to see as though in bright sunlight. I felt cocooned in sensations.
I had no clue: I was about to emerge from that cocoon newly
metamorphosed, a bloodthirsty butterfly.

I sat bolt upright in a
large bed, holding myself and I screamed, out of pain, out of
fear.

Two other Blood Vivicanti
were nearby. They heard me. They understood what I was going
through. They let me scream.

Sometimes it’s good to let
someone scream.

Slowly, the din of the
world hushed into white noise and I released my ears. Slowly, my
vision came into focus and I could now see much more than I ever
saw before, much more than anyone could ever see with human
eyes.