Actors

Sirius—

My head pounded as if spending a night on the town with a jackhammer. Pure agony—yet strangely, that was where the misery ended. The rest of me felt refreshed, as if I’d emerged from a spa retreat where angels wielded massage oils and feathers caressed away every tension. The contrast was almost laughable.

“This is a really nice place that you got here?”

It took a moment to register that I was staring at my loft’s high ceilings—familiar exposed beams and pipes crowned with lighting fixtures that glowed not with harsh fluorescence but with the gentle warmth of a winter night’s fireplace. The ever-present candle-wood scent still lingered, somehow clinging to the hardwood floors despite whatever chaos I typically dragged in. Speaking of dragging in—that voice.

“Shall we watch some of these movies together? You have quite a collection of some I have never seen before.”

The voice didn’t bother to wait for me to answer as I slumped up. How did I go from the hard tiled floors of a hospital mortuary to the soft sofa of my living room?

“Ah, you have a projector. That’s something. Let’s see here. How do we—ah, got it. Marvelous.”

Plastered on the largest wall, it flickered as she tinkered about. My gaze traced slowly around my loft to see my collections of both music and films opened and scoured. For some reason, everything was just coming to me slowly. A murky, groggy coat that just sat ever so present along my temple.

“How did you get into my apartment?”

Evelyn didn’t bother in the slightest to hear my question as she took to making herself popcorn in my kitchen. With a satisfied grin, she plopped at the far end to share our strange seating arrangements before the movie she indulged in played.

The movie was one of my favorites. Hard-boiled cop goes out to investigate a series of murders. Lands himself in some murky waters when he finds his superior is in the company of some bad people. Everyone around him secretly loathes him for his enigmatic nature. Thanks to it, I got a lot of serious one-liners that I practiced myself, though the situations I ended up in never seemed just right for me to pluck one from the air and use.

“Ohhh, this is rather interesting. He’s in love with her…”

“You picked that up rather quickly,” I remarked. We didn’t even make it to the good part, not that I was paying too much attention, before noticing the half-filled bowl of popcorn in her lap.

“Oh, wait a minute, I recognize him. The actor in this one. He and I shared a cup of coffee once. Was this the movie…”

“Cut it out. You’ve never met him!”

“Oh yes, I have,” Evelyn insisted. “What was his name again? Well, whatever. We spoke at this little place. A cafe, was it?”

Finally, feeling right as rain, both in mind and body, I snuck to the other far side and off my sofa. Just underneath the cushion was one of several locations throughout my place where I had hidden some weapons. For me, something sharp made out of wood would suffice.

“It’s not there,” Evelyn chimed, her eyes glued to the large projection on my brick wall. Admiringly so, it wasn’t. A disturbing truth that left me more cautious than concerned. “Oh my. To his nose, just like that?”

“Please, that’s the least of his worries,” I commented. From my sofa, I slipped to the kitchen, the dining room table, and a particular corner where my axe should be.

Evelyn didn’t bother to point out how conspicuously absent it, too, was from its carefully placed location. Rather, she wondered aloud about the film she was engrossed in: “Hmm, I wonder if he dies at the end?”

“It would be a shame if that happened.”

“Ooooh, so you’ve seen this one before?”

“Of course, I have seen most of my collection ten times over.”

“So you know who the killer is?”

Her question was amusing, to say the least. It’s comical that she can figure out who Jake is in love with within the first fifteen minutes but not who the killer is. Granted, I act the same to enjoy the ride that unfolds. You always pick up something new on a second watch, even a third.

However, unlike in the film, I wasn’t Jake, and I didn’t hold a fondness for the stark beauty sitting on my sofa, who shared the same name as the main female lead.

“Where is all my stuff?”

“Why, so you can kill me?” Evelyn asked flatly. “The movie is still playing. Come, come, enjoy it until the very end.”

Her gaze never once left the moving pictures that danced along the wall. Another hour clocked with me still standing, staring at her, trying my best to figure out her angle. What is she? Who is she? How does she know so much?

I was going to ask her how the hell she got into my place, but the best part of the movie came, and she, too, knew it. The famous one-liner, “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown…” queued, with my lips silently following suit to mirror the words. I memorized most of them. Saying them in my sleep was nothing short of trivial, though I admit I do not sleep much at all.

“Beautiful,” Evelyn whispered. Her gaze was not on the screen but on me. How they had shifted without me noticing left me to take two steps back.

“Are, are you really?” The words rolled right off my lips and into the air between us.

“Huh?” Evelyn scoffed. “You think I am not real because I hid your little toys? Because I wanted to watch a movie with you? Oh, how you wound me. Fine, here.”

She tossed a single stake into my hands for me to catch. It was hard to say, “Forgive me for not having a basketful of trust.” She was in my home. Didn’t explain why or how. Not to mention, our first conversation was something that invited wariness and suspicion. She knew things. More than she was letting on. And here I still was, not knowing a single thing about her.

“Movies are fascinating, aren’t they?” Evelyn sparked. “The actors and actresses put on performances, completely unaware as they dive into their characters. They don’t know what sort of story we see, truly. They just know there is a story and that there will be those who see it. Because they are playing roles, they don’t know who they are. From moment to moment, onset in a world for us to watch and listen to. We don’t experience it like they do.”

“…” Her words had no actual point. That was why I could not offer any.

“Gosh, you really do look just like her, your mother. But your personality. The skepticism, the doubt. Those are qualities of your father. Little Rose was more of a glass-half-full kind of girl.”

The word of my mother’s name escaping her lips made my eye twitch. Nothing in this world begged me more than to call her bluff, that she was just riddling off a lucky guess, some parlor trick like some fortune teller in some back alley carnival running a scam. Yet…

“How do you know her name?”

The doctor pulled into view a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Before I realized it, my focus was more on the lighter than on the box and brand of the tobacco. She now blew a plume of smoke like some actress on set during her break.

It was enough to make me snap. Twirling the stake, I lunged forward. With all my strength, I drove it downward, with only one place in mind. It pierced clear through the devil’s hand but stopped a hair graze short from her bosom.

The still-beating heart is just below. Come on!

Her face remained composed and collected as she puffed another plume of smoke in my face. She was casual about it, like some vixen femme fatale in those noir flicks. The lighter was the very one I had seen Woods carrying around. Strangely, the man never smelled of burnt tobacco. Yet he had cigarettes on him once. It’s always a tell. Woods never smoked. This dame? She was broadcasting something between every drag.

The moment of clarification stared me right in the face.

“How long?! How bloody long have you been toying with me?! What did you do to him?! Where is he?!”

“Hmm, not sure. Last we spoke on the phone, he was at the hospital. To answer your other question—uhh, so many. Do you mind if we change positions?

Ignoring her request, I pushed harder. The stake moved ever so slightly closer to end her final breath.

“Fine,” she said, still not with a bead of sweat of nervousness or a slight care of the impending end that came with this, just a shy kiss away from a stake ending it all. “A while, I suppose, and not a thing for you to worry too much about. We chat, flirt, banter, whatever the folks call it these days. Then, I erase the memories from him. He is none the wiser.”

The vixen’s words pushed me to draw more strength. With a grip of two hands and a sturdy hold of being over her, I could feel the stake moving. But…

“Yeah, expected as much that this would be your reaction. Though you have not done it yet.”

Her face, her words still ever so composed and collected. Why was she not scared of the end that comes after the end? A true death.

“Go on, do it,” the vixen goaded me. “What? It’s not so easy now, is it? Even when you have it within arm’s reach? Or is it something else? A strange sensation that hugs you silently, warm and yet cold. Distant like a fading dream, you wish to reach out and have it but can’t. It’s a fickle thing, just like memories. Do you recall who made you into what you are now? Their face?”

The whore’s words had me subconsciously searching. My priority was ending her, yet it was taking a backseat to a thought I couldn’t answer even on a clear night in solitude with my thoughts. The answer to that question was one I had been hunting for three years now. And as I still searched for it, I found a strange feeling inside me. Something was almost pulling me back. I wanted to drive this stake down. I had the strength, and I had the purpose. Yet…

“Why, why can’t I?”

“Because it’s hard to kill a parent.” Her words left me to retreat from her and drop the stake. My mind went blank, searching for the meaning of her words. “Let’s try something simpler. What about the last 24 hours? The reason for your blood-sulking bender?”

My mind ran through blank memories, searching for something to latch onto. Eventually, grabbing my face, my thoughts flooded back onto another’s.

“Grace,” the name whispered along my lips, my nails scratching at my eyes and cheeks as they drew blood. How could I have forgotten? The pain, the suffering, the insatiable rage that came over me to the point I practically went feral. My mess, my problem. All because of what?

It was then another face that stabbed me even deeper. Delilah’s.

“What? I-I, I…”

“Don’t strain yourself too much, Siri—”

“You! You don’t get to call me that! I…” Again, just as I was consumed by rage, I still couldn’t muster the strength to end her and her sultry tone. I couldn’t even bring myself to ruin based on the stark, bleak fragments that surfaced about my drunken bender.

“What’s this supposed to mean?”

“In essence, it’s hard for a child to kill their parent. Common among vampires.”

“B-but, if you were the one who turned me, then—”

“Ah, be careful, child. Aye, I’m the one who turned you, but I am not the one who killed your mother.”

***

Holding back my frustration took effort—part of me still itched to strangle certain answers out of a certain someone. But the explanation she finally offered was enough to stay my hands, replacing murderous impulses with something more... calculated.

A two-step plan was what she proposed. First, I would track down a particular person. Then came her part, where she emerged from the shadows like a nightmare, driving him into a panic. She’d lead him on a rat’s maze chase through dark streets until he finally scrambled to his car—only to flick on headlights and find her crimson gaze waiting in the beam, patient as a spider.

Everything unfolded exactly as she’d promised. Leslie—our target—didn’t even think to fight when he saw her. The sight of her alone had him frozen, his face a portrait of pure terror. That moment of paralysis was all I needed to shatter his driver’s side window and drag him onto the asphalt.

“Who are you? Wait—you’ve got to be kidding me. You’re supposed to be dead!”

“You should have done yourself a favor, Leslie, and skipped town long ago.”

The man’s head cocked to the side. His gaze was frustrated and flustered as his sights shifted from me to the woman before him.

“Eve! Doll, long time no see. Didn’t recognize you at first! Did something with ya hair?”

“Quit,” Evelyn chimed with an elated grin. For a moment she stared at Leslie as if pondering a thought. She eventually came to take a handful of fresh snow, running it through her hair. The orange tint to it faded away as if to be washed as well as dyed by the frosted crystals. The long strands soon flushed white, white as the snow itself. A more comforting sight that came with all the daunting memories with it.

“Look, you don’t gotta get all glammed up for me?! I have been a good boy,” The man’s voice spat, riddled with fear. “What is it you want? Don’t tell me it’s got something to do with her.”

He paused, taking a nervous glance in my direction.

“It wasn’t personal. I swear! If I had known she was with you, I wouldn’t have sent one of me own to shoot her.”

“Hmmm…” Evelyn hummed. “Sure.”

“Okay! Fine! I had to—sue me! It’s always about sending a message. It was my place of business, ya know!”

“I know. But we aren’t here for that, at least not tonight.”

Evelyn rifled through his pockets with theatrical flair, her grin growing more wicked as she dangled the keys before his face like teasing a terrified cat. I couldn’t summon an ounce of sympathy for him—and though part of me itched to repay him for that bullet the other night, I had bigger fish to gut right now.

“Hey!” I snapped. “You swear it—that you will tell me everything?”

“I don’t break promises. You can ask your grandmother when you get the chance. For now, let’s get what we came for. You wanted an opportunity to get your revenge, yes?”

Indeed, I did. And popping the trunk of Leslie’s car left a sight to behold. With what he had, I was certain that I would have my chance with the bastard who killed my mother.