An Interesting Guest (Mark)

[Janson Mark]

Now, Maark couldn't even talk.

'God damned bitch' he thought to himself. 'I'm bugging out of this joint first place I get.'

Soon, he took her advice subconciously and drifted into sleep.

She left the ceiling fan on, though.

Mark was back there. Back in Iraq. On a Blackhawk with his squad. Flying through a city that was recently liberated from the last of Saddam's troops.

"You been in the suck long, dude?" asked Riley, a new recruit.

"Too long." Mark mumbled in response.

"What's it like?"

"You get the thousand yard stare. Like you seen beyond into hell or purgatory or whatever's there."

"Really?"

At this point, Jesse spoke up:

"All marines get it when they been in it, man. I got it, you'll get it."

Martin chuckled. "Don't listen to Jesse, man. He ain't ever been in it. He don't know shit."

Jesse scowled. "Hey, Martin, go fu-" Then, the helicopter was hit by an RPG.

"HOLY SHIT!" The pilot shouted.

Their helicopter smashed down.

"Everyone alright?" asked Sergeant Foley, squad leader.

"We're good." said Mendleton.

Then, Mark realized that the helicopter propeller was slightly cutting through his leg and moving up. When a helicopter propeller slightly cuts through your leg, it isn't really slightly cutting through your leg unless you're comparing it to what it would do if it was really in your leg. Wrapping it up, Mark's leg was cut way the hell up.

Mark woke up in a cold sweat, berserk. rolling back and forth, he soon fell off the couch loudly and rolled under the table. Trying to rub his arms (or head) up and down the part on his left leg were he had a terrible scar and being unable to, he whimpered weakly as he lay helpless under the table.

[elizabeth]

Elizabeth heard Mark struggling in his sleep before she fully awoke. She drowsily climbed out of bed and pushed herself to her feet, going for a robe to cover the goose bumps on her arms and wrapping it close to her midsection. She felt as if she was a little human girl again and her mother was waking her up for school. None of the same joy of youth came to mind. Elizabeth whisked into the living room and bent down to pull Mark from under the table, leading him to the couch and lowering him onto its soft cushions. She gently broke the ties of his hands and feet with her nails and padded the blood with the sleeve of her black satin robe, then rolled up his left pant leg up to get a look at what he was trying to reach.
A thick scar ran jaggedly down his leg, harsh and mean like a winter morning. She touched it gingerly, as if she would be able to draw a story from its line. She could see from its slight redness that it was not so old, yet not fresh.
“Nightmare?” she guessed, looking up at Mark. She wasn’t worried about him escaping. He was still fresh from the dream, which had been a bad one from the look in his eyes.
“How’d you get that?”

[Janson Mark]

The first thing Mark did was snatch the sock out of his mouth and collapse on the couch, exhaling quickly and practically hyperventilating out of pure fear. He was still sweating.

"Oh, shit. Oh, Jesus. Oh, my God." He spoke at a normal pitch but in a frantic tone. He shivered as Elizabeth traced the scar. He groaned.

"It..It was a helicopter...We were shot down and...we..." He began to mouth silently the word "propeller" but just laid back down as his eyes unfocused and then focused. He was staring at something.

The ceiling fan.

It was the trigger for the helicopter of his dreams as the blades cut through air like the helicopter blades cut through his leg. He continued to simply stare at the ceiling fan in total, fearful, silence.

[elizabeth]

Elizabeth left Mark lying on the couch to get him a beer and to shut off the fan. She opened it and set it on the table, then took a cloth from the bathroom and soaked in cold water. Taking the beer and the cloth, she walked back to Mark, and padded the sweat away from his face before handing him the drink. She found herself wondering what had happened to Mark, and genuinely caring, of all the miracles of the world.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” she asked, “Or do you want to watch TV until you go sleep?” She flipped the old TV set on and colored dots flickered across the screen, light reflected in her dark eyes. She shut the TV off with an annoyed flick of the finger and turned back to Mark.
“Or just sleep?”
‘Because everything in my house is crap,’ she added in her mind. A silence stretched between them and she walked forward, kneeling so that their eyes were level.
“I can always take you out to a bar, get you stinking drunk, and then catch you a girl to do what you so quaintly call, ‘the no pant’s dance.’ Of course, to make her do that, I think I’d also have to get her pretty drunk,” Elizabeth joked.

[Janson Mark]

Mark sipped the beer and looked at Elizabeth with hollow eyes. "Uh, just a beer..unless you have anything heavier, especially whiskey...Actually, don't go to the trouble, I'll just look for one myself." He stood up and went to the refridgerator and found a bottle labelled "whiskey" that thankfully and luckily was not full of blood. He went back and sat down, then began to drink.

"I can't stand civilians," Mark mumbled. "They act like they don't know what's going on in the world, they're like god damn robots, man. They do dull shit and they just keep doing it and don't stop or complain until they retire or die. And they just keep going with their lives and ignore all the bad shit in the world, man."

Suddenly, he jabbed an accusing finger at her.

"But you, you god damn vampire people, you're way worse, man. You treat us like, like god damn cattle!" He fumbled for words, half drunk. "Do you even consider human beings to be equal to you, man?! Or do you just kill 'em and eat 'em and forget, like that poor cop? Jesus!" He raved before slumping onto the couch.

[elizabeth]

Elizabeth almost felt like stopping Mark from drinking too much, but she figured that if she were to ask him anything about himself, he would more likely answer while drunk. On top of that, he wouldn’t remember what they talked about, and that might be useful to her.
“Comparing humans to vampires is like comparing a two year old boy to a man of fifty. We are older and have seen more of the world, although many of us are still ignorant. It is not possible to hold life in value when you have lived so long and forced to kill so many. The very first was brought to me by my sires. The man was a store-owner, or so I learned from him, and he said his name was John. He spoke very fine English for a foreign man. He was German, and when he begged, I heard only a slight accent in his voice. The vampires thought it was funny how he tried to keep his dignity while on his knees. I fed from him, and never felt such relief. All the pain and torture was gone. My vampire body was satiated, and from then on, it continued like that. I would become ugly, veins popping and body distorted, until I surrendered to the hunger. I learned quickly to kill and to ignore life. Life is fragile, but a vampire would be foolish to put it on a pedestal. We consume it so quickly.”
Elizabeth paused in the speech, wasted on a drunken man. She found the best listeners those who will not remember in the morning. She carried a chair over to sit nearby and crossed her legs, covering them with the long robe.

[Janson Mark]

Mark nearly teared up. Not knowing of life's values because you have killed so much? He shuddered. That could have easily been him and it did happen to many of his colleagues. One of the few fates worse than becoming like those Vietnam vets who humped through third world countries trying to get into the shit because they can't do civilian life or like one of Hell's Angels, Those World War 2 fighter pilots who became motorcyclers because they always had to live on the edge. Mark liked to think that that would never happen to him, but he knew in the back of his mind that it was going to happen and it just took time.

Suddenly, a very sobering and frightful thought hit Mark and he sat up in fear and revelation. He said very softly to Elizabeth, "So you're gonna kill me too?"

Mark wouldn't let that happen. He had gone through too much and seen too much to get killed by some vampire that didn't know how much life mattered. He couldn't go out like that. If there was an omnipotent power in the universe, it would keep him from dying like that.

[elizabeth]

“I can’t say for sure. I wouldn’t care to, but you seem ready to murder me at any second. There is no way to know,” Elizabeth said matter-of-factly.
“But then again,” she added, watching the worry flicker through his eyes, “If you cry, I might kill you out of pure irritation. Most humans don’t realize that begging either entertains vampires or annoys them. For me, it’s a bother.”
Elizabeth stood abruptly, the robes falling smoothly around her body, and whisked away for a new length of rope. Maybe something more gentle. Pain is not affective when the only purpose of captivity is to make the victim stay put. If Mark were less of threat to her, she might actually let him be, but she knew that men like that did not sit when told.
The rope she found felt like a braid of silken blonde hair. She stole a drink of bottled blood, made her way back to Mark, then, after taking his whiskey, tying his wrists without grinding the skin and binding his ankles loosely, took her seat once more.
“Now what do you want to say, besides ‘give me back my alcohol’? Any words before I make you go to sleep?”

[Janson Mark]

Mark was silent the entire time as she put the restrainting ropes, now less much less painful and much less constricting, on, since she told him that whining or crying or complaining or threatening or pretty much anything involving speaking in a negative way may make get him killed.

He chuckled as she spoke to him. "Hey, don't underestimate me, I think I'm smart enough to know that it's gonna be nearly impossible to drink from a bottle when my arms are bound together." He lay back and shut his eyes, preparing to go to sleep and hoping she wouldn't kill him or even drink his blood while he slept.

ooc- would be longer but i don't really have time

[elizabeth]

Elizabeth put the drink away and switched the light off, the last sunlight of the day blocked off by the thick, frilled curtains. She had to do redecorating, she noted to herself, and make this cave something worthy of a vampire. One would think a vampire that lived as long as Elizabeth would have finer things, but seeing that she stole money from the dead to survive, it was almost a good deal.
A bad apartment for a bad job. Or as her uncle used to say, ‘shallow awards from shallow efforts.’
“When night comes, we’re going to a club nearby to here,” she told him, lingering at the bedroom door. “If you don’t want to go, you can stay right here. But I suggest you come. You’ll get a free drink, at the least.” Elizabeth headed towards her bed to squeeze the last few minutes of sleep from the day.
The night came as a graceful blessing. Elizabeth got up, consumed a bottle of blood (the only one she would have before anything she found at the club) took a shower, and went to get dressed. Picking an outfit was difficult. She didn’t want to scare her American dandy with anything too gothic in style, so she tried toning it down. She brushed back her short, black hair, so that it curled at the nape of her neck and combed the wavy hair over one side of her forehead, allowing the waves to dip over her eyes. She applied the usual amount of makeup, heavy eyeliner and a subtle tone of red to her lips, and dressed in an outfit similar to the one she wore when she picked Mark up. Band t-shirt, ripped jeans, an army jacket, and a visor cap pushed onto her head. The process took within five minutes, and at the sixth, she was out in the living room, untying Mark’s binds before he even awoke. When done, she shook him lightly and waited for him to wake up, humming the theme song of Scooby Doo.

OOC: It’s okay. Fast forward to night.

[Janson Mark]

As Elizabeth shook him awake from a rare non-freaky flashback dream, Mark made a noise akin to "Wha?", only with more slurred seech and tiredness. And with the bad headache that usually comes with being woken up. "What now?" He yawned. "Oh, club, yeah yeah." He spoke sluggishly and started to stand. "What time is it, man, I feel like I just went to sleep."

He leaned against a wall as he started to wake up. "Well, it's not like I have a change of clothes. I'm ready." He wanted to just run when he got out. Just get up and run away from these freaky vampire girl and find a way home. He would at least try but he didn't know if he would make it, but then again he did not really care either. Just trying to get out and dying escaping and not like a damn dog or cow would be fine with him.

"Why are you humming Scooby Doo?" Mark asked the girl in confused amusement. He may have been acting like her friend but that would get her guard down, hopefully. He was still going to get out and still going to escape, or die trying. He couldn't think of living tied up in the girl's house and being fed off of until he keeled over and died.

[elizabeth]

“Oh,” Elizabeth said, flustered. She offered an awkward smile.
“Well, Scooby Doo, a vampire’s favorite mascot.” Then she exited quickly, muttering that she had to get her bag. Great job with the frightening vampire act, she told herself. Very convincing. A talented performance. She grabbed the ragged knapsack from the table and arranged it around her neck, went back to Mark, cut his binds with a pocket knife, and guided him through the apartment door towards the elevator, too lazy to even think about taking the stairs. The elevator walls were white, lit like a cheap Hollywood set by the florescent light above. The button to the ground floor refused to light until Elizabeth had hammered it with her thumb for the sixth time, and it started with a jolt.
She turned to Mark, soft, white skin glowing underneath the bad lighting, dark hair curiously devoid of anything but the faintest highlights.
“Save making an escape for another evening,” she warned him. “You’d be surprised how easy it is to murder someone in the middle of a dark street or a raging nightclub.”
She took a wallet from her pocket, and waved it.
“Especially an anonymous American without any ID.”
The elevator shook to stop and the metal doors squealed as they opened. They walked a few blocks before reaching a club, but the music so loud that Elizabeth could feel the vibrations through the cement only a block away. A long red canopy reading ‘Block Joint’ marked the club’s entrance, groups of people lingering in front with bottles of beer and doing things that would have been more appropriate in a hotel room. To get to the entrance, they had to shove into the spaces between people, and if not for the vampire hearing, Elizabeth would never had heard her name being called.
She looked up, surprised, and saw a scantily dressed vampire weaving towards them. Elizabeth felt threatened immediately, but managed to hide her dislike behind an impartial face. She put a hand on Mark’s shoulder, feeling the protective hostility of a predator hogging her prey, even as the woman greeted her with a familiar smile.
“You don’t remember me, Elizabeth?” the stranger questioned. Elizabeth shook her head, watching cautiously. The vampire laughed, eyes wandering over Mark as one would look at a tasty piece of desert.
“I’m the vampire who arranged for your stay in Paris. I’m Helena. Don’t you remember?”
Elizabeth suddenly did, recalling the vampire club she had gone her first night in France, and the woman with red hair. Helena had offered to give her an apartment in exchange for the death of a certain human she could not be connected with. Although Elizabeth never learned the reason of the human’s death, she carried out the deed, since she was in deep need of the charity.
“Yes, I do remember you. After the apartment, you showed me around a bit. Thank you for that.”
“Well,” the woman said modestly, “You did me a great favor.”
Her eyes wandered towards Mark, and then back to Elizabeth, a mischievous smile on her crimson lips.
“I see you’ve got yourself a man pet. You certainly have come a far way since you first came.”
The woman stepped forward and grabbed his arm from his side, turning it over so that the blue veins could be seen pumping under his wrist.
“Do you mind?”
Elizabeth thought about this, and then shrugged.
“I think not. He’s already itching to escape. If I pass him around, he might get out of control.”
Helena smiled again.
“Well let’s see what he thinks.”
She looked up at Mark.
“Would you like me to feed from you, mortal?” she asked, snaking a hand around his neck.

[Janson Mark]

Things were going less than fantastic for Mark. Elizabeth had taken his ID and threatened him with death if he tried to escape. He was sulky and brooding for most of the way to the nightclub and when they got there things took a turn for the strange.

There was a woman there that thought she knew Elizabeth. Apparently her name was Helena. Elizabeth held Mark protectively, but in a way that a person holds a pet protectively. Helena treated Mark like he wasn't even a human being.

Helena asked him if he would like for her to feed off of him. "Kiss my ass, freak." Mark growled in response.

[elizabeth]

Helena fed anyway, digging roughly into the skin and sparing no pain from the human’s body. When she finished, she turned to Elizabeth with a polite smile.
“Thank you for the drink, m’dear. Come with me and I’ll show you a bit more of the food.”
She turned and disappeared into the crowd, and Elizabeth was forced to follow her, nudging Mark in front of her but trying to resist dealing him a firm kick. Nothing worth while ever comes out of his mouth, she thought, but of course she could have expected his rude statement. He did not have a sense of survival.
“Well, where’s the meat?” she asked when Helena stopped her at the bar.
“Ralph, come here,” Helena called.
Elizabeth stared as a worn out looking man stepped out of the crowd, and stopped in front of him.
“Beautiful size,” Helena said. Elizabeth almost expected him to turn around with his arms out.

[Janson Mark]

Mark couldn't wait for this night to be over. He couldn't stand being with not one, but two demonic blood drinking monster women. Life couldn't be much worse. He ignored Ralph, who was probably not going to live very long anyway, and stepped away from Elizabeth and Helena, a move that would probably piss her off, but Mark really didn't give a shit about what she thought. That feeling was probably mutual.

After stepping away from Elizabeth, he spoke to the bartender: "Hey, bro, can you get me a bottle of whiskey?"

The bartender replied, "You mean a shot, right?"

"No."

The bartender shrugged and handed Mark the bottle and he began to drink.