TIMING: Mid April
PARTIES: Mercy & Inge
LOCATION: Dance Macabre
SUMMARY: Inge finds Mercy in the club bathroom, where the vampire is hiding from the loud noise and flashing lights.
CONTENT WARNINGS: N/A
Going to Dance Macabre had lost some of its charm now that Inge couldn’t get down on the dance floor as she was used to. She tended to get into the club with an air of confidence, ready to dance to the goth music that usually ruled the speakers and make it through a sleepless night. But there was no fun to be found in dancing now and so she found herself evading the club or, if she visited, sitting in a booth, sulking.
Most days, she didn’t even make her way there by car and foot — she just manifested in a bathroom stall, locked it and waited a moment before exiting. Today she chose that way, preferring her commute through the astral. She’d been back at school teaching and her body hurt from the standing, but she didn’t want another day at home.
So she swung open the door of the bathroom, finding it empty save for one person. A woman – no surprise there – and as would be Inge’s luck, she was upset. For a moment she stood there in the doorway of the bathroom stall, wondering if she could get away with astral projecting somewhere else but eventually deciding against it. “Hey,” she said, walking up to the sinks and mirrors. She opened a faucet, let cold water run over her hands despite her not having used the toilet. “Everything okay?” She wondered if this was a human, hoped it wasn’t. “Something happen out there?”
—
Mercy was tired of being confined to Caleb’s house. It was where she lingered most days, unless she were at The Sugar Pot working in the shadows learning about how the 21st century seemed to work. And even then, those days could be quite frustrating. Nothing about Wicked’s Rest was as she had remembered, except the occasional stroll through nature where somehow man had decided to leave things untouched. Those were her favorite places. And they had reminded her briefly of the life she had once lived.
But tonight, while Caleb was out doing his own thing, Mercy had found herself venturing out into the darkness and down sidewalks and streets until she had come to a place known as Dance Macabre. For whatever reason, it had given her an odd sensation. It had felt right and where she belonged. Even the name seemed to remind her of the works of one of the greatest playwrights of her time…William Shakespeare.
As she moved forward, drawn in, she smiled as a man who was much larger than her small 5’2” stature allowed her to pass into the haze of living and undead alike. It wasn’t what she had expected at all. And in fact, it was so loud that it hurt her ears. Music thumped and the smoke and haze with strobing lights left her feeling disoriented. She had immediately regretted coming into the loud nightclub. But Mercy couldn’t seem to find her way out, and instead, she stumbled towards the bar, where a tall blonde woman had asked if she was okay, before the vampire made a break for what seemed to be a dark hall that was mute with anything flashing.
Coming to a doorway, she desperately looked for the handle and out of frustration pushed on it, which sent her careening forward and into a smaller room that wreaked of an all too familiar stink that lingered in the fields of Salem many, many years ago. But Mercy didn’t care. It seemed like a safer place to be - with muffled sounds and steady white candlelight overhead, and without thinking any harder, she found a dark and safe space to crawl up under, until she heard a voice speak to her.
Peering out from under the sink, Mercy looked up to see a woman standing there, “Nay, tis much too loud and all consuming. I hath made quite the mistake in coming here. But I know not of how to leave.” The 17th century vampire realized her words were once again aging her, but in this moment, the fear and anxiety she felt was much too great to worry about what someone thought.
—
The bathroom was often a place for things like this, wasn’t it? For drunk girls to deliver compliments as if they were soliloquies and wipe a strand of hair from your face. To hold someone’s hand, tell another that the man she was after was hardly worth her time, to exchange tampons and lipgloss. Inge still carried tampons with her for this reason, even if she didn’t need them any more.
And those things she was good at, but this? A woman crouching under a sink, looking absolutely overwhelmed with her surroundings. As if this was the first time she’d been a club. Distantly she remembered what it had been like, to venture into the city and go into a place like this for the first time. She’d gone to parties back in town, but they’d been held in sheds and living rooms, sometimes in the town cafe — and the attendants had all been familiar figures. Former babysitters, classmates, colleagues of her parents, the veterinarian and friends of her husband.
Going out in Amsterdam had been dizzying. Everything had been dizzying after she had been transformed, of course, but she had felt like this. That was so long ago now — Inge frequented clubs aplenty these days, found their noise and sounds comforting.
She dried off her hands, looked down at the other woman. She spoke like she was stuck in a different era which might have made plenty raise their eyebrows. But Inge was an undead woman in an undead nightclub, so it wasn’t entirely out there. She gave a look of sympathy, something she extended primarily because she hoped the other was undead like her.
“Alright,” she said, crouching down a little. “Why don’t you get out from under there, huh?” She extended a hand. “I know this place like the back of my hand, so I can show you the way out.” Inge hadn’t planned on doing something like this tonight, but she found that life never seemed to go as planned as of late. “What’s your name? Did anyone bother you?”
—
The new world had really been something. Over the course of nearly four hundred years, Mercy had laid deep underground in a pine box that held dirt and decay leaving her with one struggle…keep her mind intact. There had been a lifetime’s worth of worry to dwell on for centuries having no answers and never having contact with anyone but bugs crawling over her slowly rotting form. In and out of her mouth on occasion. Over her eyes, in and out of her ears. Nibbling on her clothing and flesh. And at first, she would scream trying to shake off the creatures that scared her so, but as time passed, she had given in…allowed them to linger on her form considering it was as close to human touch and companionship as she could get. The millions of tiny legs and bodies over the years crawled around looking for food or a place to reside, all while she began to focus more on mental tasks and memories. Until finally, one day, there was just silence from giving up, except for the occasional hard thump, rumble, or rattle that shook the ground around her.
But now, here she was surrounded by too much noise. Too many people. Too much stimulation struggling to accept all of it and understand what it meant and why people were so different.
Leaning back slightly as she watched the other woman kneel down, Mercy was cautious. And as soon as she noticed her hand, she hesitated, before giving in and taking it. Managing to pull herself out and up, the petite woman straightened up in her posture, “Thankee. My name is Mercy, and what shall I call thee?” She looked with sad blue eyes in her direction, “Nay. No one hath bothered me.” It probably seemed absurd to someone such as the woman standing in front of Mercy, but here they both were having this strange interaction.
—
There was some kind of nurturing instinct within her still. Inge didn’t enjoy it when this instinct gave her responsibility, but that didn’t mean it didn’t prop up from time to time. She wasn’t wholly uncaring, after all — she cared for her fellow undead, in most cases, and even as a professor she didn’t mind being a bit of a guide. And so it made sense to extend a hand and be glad when it was taken, looking at the shaking woman with a hint of concern.
She continued to speak in that ancient way and it reminded her of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, with all the flashing lights behind the door but the Shakespearean speech falling off her lips. Something about it was theatrical, but it was also not wholly strange in a world where people could live to be a thousand years old and not age a day. Inge moved a pluck of the other’s blonde hair behind her ear.
“I’m Inge,” she said. “And I am glad no one has bothered you.” She had a small inner debate on how to broach the subject of the other’s potential immortality. She let it go for now. It could be discussed outside. “Alright. We’re just going to get out of here now, okay?” She took her hand again. “Get some fresh air. I’ll guide the way.” She gave a small smile, used her free hand to open the bathroom door and welcome the sounds of the club, heavy bass pumping through her ears. She pushed past people with ease, as she was practiced in the art of moving through large masses and reached for the doors once she’d gotten there, letting go of Mercy’s hand as they got outside. “Better?”
—
Mercy, though apprehensive about leaving the safety of the bathroom, no matter how dingy it was, had felt something familiar and warm with the woman that stood in front of her. Her words were soft and kind. There were no harsh stares, just someone who spoke gently, compared to the other people who had milled about earlier in the bathroom not even noticing Mercy tucked away in her hiding space, “Tis a pleasure to meet thee, even under such circumstance. I am Mercy.” A small, subtle smile appeared across her face cutting through the sadness that lingered in her blue eyes.
At the request to leave, Mercy inhaled deeply and released a small sigh as she nodded in approval of the plan. And with a grip much tighter than before, she latched onto Inge and followed the other woman through the overwhelming loudness of the music and modern people to finally reach the outside of the club.
With the coolness of the night air hitting her face, she let out another sigh, but this time it was one of full relief. Mercy was free and safe. The music thumping inside the building was still somewhat intimidating and the people wandering around outside Dance Macabre made her somewhat nervous, but she was free from the modern prison of a cacophony of sounds and peculiar people, “Much better, aye. Thankee from freeing me from such a prison. How dost one stand such chaos?” She looked to Inge with genuine concern.
—
Mercy’s hand was cold in her own, which was to say, she was the same temperature. Inge knew some people were just coldblooded but this was a meeting place of the undead. She would take the leap, she decided, once they were outside. For now her goal was clear: she was to take this confused and lost woman outside, to lead her to a place where lights didn’t flash and music didn’t pump.
She laughed softly at the question Mercy asked once they were outside. She had been like this once, she kept telling herself. Overwhelmed and wide eyed. Wondering why people enjoyed places so crowded, so filled with the stench of alcohol and cigarettes. Back then people had smoked inside. Back then she had smoked inside. “You learn to like it, if you want. It’s nice to enjoy the music together. To find people …” She smiled. “To have fun.”
She started to walk from the sound of the pulsing music, though, looking at Mercy to see if she was following. “So … and correct me if I’m wrong,” Inge said. It was dark out. She could disappear if this was a mistake. “But are you of the unaging kind? You seem much older than you look. And that is a compliment.”
—
Mercy looked back as people stumbled out of the club laughing. It was nice to see people enjoying themselves. To see happiness, when she had come from a stricter time. One of morals and standards you did not question out of fear of what could happen. People liked to talk, and Mercy hated being the subject of their talk, but it seemed that people in this day and age were more wrapped up in their own needs, then that of those around them. Of course, the vampire had only been present in this new, modern world for the briefest of moments, so she hadn’t discovered tabloid magazines and online trolls.
“Fun? I do not recall such a word.” It was true. The word hadn’t come around until the early 1700s when Mercy was already buried deep underground. And like the people leaving Dance Macabre, laughing and smiling was something she hadn’t done in quite a while. In fact, the only genuine smile she could remember recently was something Caleb had said. The moving people in the wall often made her laugh, but it was somewhat hollow and only because it got her mind off of things, “I hope to find enjoyment in life once more, when the shock of these modern times has dulled.”
Noticing Inge move forward, Mercy followed, “Aye. I hath not aged. At least as far as one can tell without being able to see one’s own reflection. I was born in 1657 and lived in Salem town, up until I was accused of being a witch. From there I fled to Wicked’s Rest, but fate hath determined an early grave after being accused of being a demon, in which I was laid to rest in a pine box where I hath been for nearly 400 years.” She looked towards the ground remembering what both Caleb and Alistair had warned against, but Inge had saved her, and she felt she had owed the woman an explanation.
—
There was a chance that this woman was some kind of cosplayer, a goth who committed to the bit very hard, but Inge doubted it. Mercy had seemed genuinely upset by the noise and chaos in the club and hadn’t seemed to be performing for any kind of audience. Besides, Inge had met people who were old before — vampires and mares who’d ran around the world for multiple centuries and weren’t able to shake the antiquity from their way of speaking. This seemed more like that.
“Maybe you’ll have to look somewhere else besides clubs, then. They aren’t for everyone.” She gave a little hint of a smile, glad that the other was walking with her. And then Mercy offered a kind of honesty that was dangerous in these parts — even though she had been the one with the forward questioning in the first place. She was nearly half a century old, it was hard to imagine such a life – especially such a life spent in a pine box.
She could not be a mare, then. If Inge had been buried alive for so long, she would have perished after a while due to starvation. Her mind flashed to Ariadne, locked in a van. It flashed to Italy, where she’d hungered while trapped. “That’s horrible,” she said, “Fate …” She tsk-ed, halted and looked at Mercy. “There is no such thing as fate. Just ignorant and cruel humans. I’m sorry that happened to you.” She shook her head. “I’m undead too, for what it’s worth. A mare.” She looked over the other. She hoped this wasn’t a lie. She wondered if it was — but she knew how cruel hunters could be. She could still flee away if this woman was a hunter who knew how to play her cards. “And I am of the opinion our kind should stick together, hm? Watch each other’s backs. Maybe teach you a thing or two about this twenty first century.”
—
Mercy was starting to relax and find comfort in Inge’s company. She had spoken harshly, but from the last days of the vampire’s time with the living, before being shoved in a box, there was some truth held in Inge’s words. However, Caleb had been kind. Even Alistair. The paths she had crossed so far held kindness, but the more she thought about it, including learning what Inge was – not that Mercy knew what a mare was, she was coming to find that everyone who had been kind had been far from being a mere human, “I suppose you speak truth in the regard of humans.” It was still an odd notion knowing she wasn’t technically a part of the living human world anymore.
“Preytell, Inge, but what is a mare?” Mercy looked to her new friend as they walked slowly down the sidewalk. There was still so much to learn in this world. More about vampires, such as herself, and the other creatures that seemed to roam the modern streets of Wicked’s Rest. But she wanted to learn. She wanted to know. If this was to be her new life, she had to know.
“I propose a deal. I shall teach thee of life in the 1600s, if thee shall be so kind as to teach me of life in the 2000s.” With a more confident smile, now that she was away from the booming nightlife of Wicked’s Rest, Mercy locked arms with her new friend. If there were more people like the Inges, Calebs, and Alistairs of the world, she had hoped she would cross paths with them sooner or later, because at least life in modern times wouldn’t be so lonely or so hard.
