This Is What Disgust Feels Like

What was in front of me was incredible.

It was bleak and disturbing and beautiful.

And I don’t even use words like that all the time.

As we stepped over that bridge, everything about the world became different. The air tasted different. In the same way, a haunted graveyard could feel like a place of peace if you were the thing haunting it.

I looked around the grounds, the beautiful grass, the orangey, cloudy sky above that spilled weird light down over us, and I was forced to feel it.

The moment.

You don’t understand.

This was the kind of place that made you clean up your speech and realize you can’t say the word nigga in public.

Like I said, my mom taught me better. Sometimes it’s just easier to be what people expect instead of who you are.

Shit, I go through. Y’know?

Lemme log out of hoodspeak and help you out.

I spent my life code-switching to avoid getting beat up.

It’s crazy the pressure you get in the hood to be like everybody else.

The air felt cool and comfortable moving in and out of me. Like I was the first person to step into a place that had never seen consciousness.

Like I was the only thing alive to be here for it. The past.

As we walked, my guests Bud and Cutter stepped ahead of me.

Probably cus I was walking slow as hell.

I looked around the grounds, feeling the pebble rock beneath our feet as we came down from the bridge to the driveway.

I felt it crunch under my sneakers, saw that odd barn in the near distance. A farm on the grounds?

The part of that wide clearing I couldn’t see through the open doorway.

I looked on to see cars materializing in front of us as we walked nearer. They just appeared like ghosts.

Crazy ones, like a renaissance fair and a muscle car, decided to work on a project.

Things I’d never see out there.

Specially not in my neighborhood.

Up over the grounds of perfectly hedged bushes, I saw that rustic, gothic chateau in front of me.

Shit was big.

Not sprawling like when real estate agents use the word in YouTube videos, just tall and present. Weighing on me. Layered in wooden scale-like pieces from top to bottom.

Honey wood tones with dark reds and mahoganies.

Shit was poetry too.

I wanted to say it's as terrifying, right? But I couldn’t… it had the kind of history that just felt inevitable.

Like… yeah, it made sense if I was gonna die, it would be in a place like this.

“Damn…” I said, realizing I was in the presence of real money.

Not like that shit you see on Netflix specials.

More than that.

A lot more than that.

Like billions tucked away in pocket space.

Just then, I heard it. The weird sound. I wanted to call it a ‘vorpal’. That sounded right.

I looked behind us, turning to walk backwards, and saw them.

They just appeared. From where we were walking.

More and more of them.

My eyes went wide as hell as people appeared to just… load into the game, kinda.

They were dressed nothing like you’d expect on Jefferson, that’s for sure.

Long leather coats, modern armor on some of them. More than a few with massive weapons on their backs. Some with guns holstered about.

Here comes a new challenger, type shit.

“What the… Ow!” Cutter snatched me by the collar and turned me around.

“Best not to stare at your Sponsors' guests.”

I glanced back again to double-check what I was seeing and in a flash of… power?

Smoke?

They were dressed in suits, dresses, masks.

Masquerade masks.

“What type of Eyes Wide Shut shit do you got me mixed up in, man?” I whispered.

Cutter turned my head back forward.

“You’re not gonna die, quit being dramatic,” Bud said.

“Fuck you, bein’ dramatic. I’m not about to get fucked, am I? You not— wait, hold on,” I planted my feet, but Bud and Cutter picked my little ass up one by each arm.

I just pouted and let them.

“You gonna walk now?” Cutter asked.

I sighed

“Yeah,” dropping my feet back on the ground and walking, “S’fucked up…”

“Nobody’s gonna fuck you, kid. Least not unless you let ‘em,” Bud said.

I let a sarcastic pause flavor the stare I was giving the side of his head.

“I hate you, man… I just want you to know that.”

We walked up to those elegant doors, and a doorman stepped out to open it ahead of us.

He stepped to the side like a soldier, and I walked in behind my escorts, suddenly enveloped by the wide mouth of an opulent beast.

This place.

It was next-level insane.

“Speak when spoken to, Kiddo. Trust me.” Bud said.

I could respect that right away, keeping pace with them.

Every time I looked back, I saw those… party goers?

But they kept sniffing. Licking their lips.

That’s when I started to panic sweat a little.

I forgot I smelled like a number four with extra pickles to these niggas.

“Aw, hell naw,” I whispered, turning my head back forward.

I stepped up closer to Bud and Cutter.

Cutter chuckled, side-eyeing me.

I walked with them further, through the foyer. A beautiful mausoleum to families thousands of members big.

Pictures all over the walls, up to the ceiling. Some even mounted to it, staring down at me from the past.

We went up one of the curving set of stairs in the room to the second floor when I heard them.

All of them.

The voice of carousing people.

The smell of food.

The smell of so many… many different kinds of blood.

“Oh my God…” I said, my mouth falling open at the cloud of new scents that hit my nose.

I could actually feel my mouth watering.

I had to swallow.

The smells were almost too much. Like Saturday morning after cartoons, smelling my mom make bacon.

I couldn’t feel who I was.

This shit was like trying to pretend I wasn’t high when I was clearly, clearly fucked up.

Bud put his hand on my neck, and it kept me moving forward.

“Takes a second. Sort it out.” He said.

And it started to become clear to me what he meant.

He meant filter.

Like our brains always do. The shit we usually ignore every day. Like noise or crying babies in a lobby, or the clock ticking.

Like ignoring being hungry, nigga.

God, I gotta stop sayin’ the word nigga.

I took a deep breath and held it, following along as we walked into a large meeting room.

It was like a converted ballroom. Somebody really loved themselves too cus the ceiling had a ripped off rendition of that one scene in that chapel with God and the dude on it.

Fun you, I don’t remember what that shit was called.

You do, though. Look at you. Can’t wait to make a note about it. Look it up, bitch.

Anyway, I heard them all at once. I smelled them all at once.

Even tasted them all at once.

Each and every vampire in the room. Suited and booted beautifully.

Gorgeous women in numbers I’d never seen in my life.

A collision of some of the most exotic smells that ever hit my uncultured ghetto nostrils.

I never saw so much pussy I wanted to smash in my entire life.

And it hit me… why was that?

Every one here. Even Bud and Cutter, now that I thought about it.

They were attractive, vital-looking.

We walked through the flock of people, and I watched my escorts stop to talk to this person or that person.

Shaking hands.

Random people I didn’t know patted me on the back like they were welcoming me to this opulent fold.

Honestly… it felt kinda anti-climactic. I thought there’d be ghosts or corpses or some shit.

There was a clear distinction, though, as I walked around. Smelling the smells.

Humans. The ones I wanted to eat the most. The ones that caught my eye, made me snap to them.

They were less beautiful. Some were, most weren’t. They seemed so ordinary compared to the ones that smelled really good.

The ones that looked really good.

Impossibly good on both counts. Then it made sense to me.

As I looked at the faces. The younger vampires weren’t as beautiful as the older ones. But they were all… attractive.

None of them looked that old. Maybe twenty-five? Twenty-eight at the oldest?

But the humans? They were all over the map. Fit. Fat. Pretty. Not so much.

Like they wrestle a random collection of people brought here to hang out with the divine.

People more attractive than movie stars, some.

I know cus… I wanted to fuck the shit outta most of these bitches. Not gonna lie.

And the one horrible notion that hit me about it all was … I could already see it.

Station.

It meant everything in this room.

Pockets of attractiveness.

Pockets of fashion.

Pockets of culinary mastery.

Everybody had their pocket.

I see why they kept me locked up for the first few days. I could hear every conversation at once.

I could feel every pulse of every person in the room who wasn’t dead like me.

Sniff…

Sniff…

There’s meat here.

My eyes locked onto it immediately, and I started walking in its direction. A person. A human. A woman, actually.

Like it suddenly occurred to me… they’re here because someone cared to bring appetizers.

God damn, she was beautiful.

I’d eat the ass end off of that and swallow the-

“Gghnk!”

Cutter grabbed me by the throat and pulled me back.

Then he coolly lowered his hand to my chest and patted it twice.

“Relax, Baby… Remember where you are,” he chuckled.

I nodded, suddenly remembering myself.

Looking over at her.

Not just the beauty.

That booty.

And her smell.

I wanted to eat that bitch.

In more ways than one.

Is this the urge I’d have to deal with for the rest of my life?

And never satisfy?

Chew.

I bit at nothing twice, grinding my jaw.

“I know,” Cutter said, “You get used to it.”

Then this modern blast from the past with its gas-powered lanterns and dim, sparkling light strings dangling overhead in cute little mason jars…

Beautifully casting this shot out of a vampire graduation ceremony in amber light.

Like a moment of serenity in the middle of some shit I couldn’t possibly understand.

All of its lights went out.

Pitch. Fucking. Dark, my nigga.

“Shit,” I said.

And then it was carnage.

I couldn’t see it.

I could hear it.

Screaming.

Agony.

Biting.

The animal, savage growls of monsters sating hundreds of thousands of years of primal desire.

The hunt. The chase. The conquest. The kill.

Over and over again.

And Cutter just stood there with his hand on my chest.

My heart was thumping, blasting. I didn’t want to move.

I could hear and feel them.

Moving around me.

Scattering this way and that. Chasing. Tackling. Biting.

All the humans I smelled in that moment.

All the pulses I could feel thundering around me.

Each and every one of them thumping incredibly fast.

Racing until they staggered to a stop.

And then the gnashing of teeth.

The smashing of fangs into meat, biting into flesh.

Feasting.

Drinking.

Taking each and every last beat of those pulses.

Flooding my nose with the dark and metallic smell.

That delicious fucking amazing, incredible stink that reminded me what I am.

A fucking monster.

I stared at the darkness in front of me. Forced to hear it all and examine what I am.

Because I wanted to join them.

I wanted a bite…

Of raw fucking carnage.

I wanted at it so bad.

But I knew I shouldn’t.

I knew all the terror I was feeling.

All that horrible agony I was hearing.

If I moved, I’d be part of it.

Only unlike the humans, I wouldn’t die.

They’d drink my ass all night.

“What the fuck, man… Why the fuck would you bring me here?” I said in the dark, panting, terrified.

You know what that nigga said to me?

The coldest shit ever.

“Welcome home.”

“Nnnaaahhhh….” I shook my head.

“Welcome home.”

“No, no. You fuckin’ with me. I can’t be around this shit,” I wanted my momma.

Then I remembered she was gone.

Damn.

That’s how cold life is sometimes.

I could have cried.

“You’re part of this shit. You either adapt or… adapt,” he said as the screaming died down to near nothing.

Then it was just gulping.

Satisfaction.

The murderous gurgling laugh of someone savoring something they’ve wanted for a long time.

I hated it when the lights popped back on.

Because I had to look at it.

Cutter stepped aside, and I stood there.

Slowly turning… looking around… trembling at what remained.

At death.

Like my mother.

Like those college students.

Like the mailman.

Real human lives. They were gone.

“What. The. Fuck.”

You know what I hate the most about myself…?

That til this day…

I wonder how they tasted.

This is what disgust feels like.