This Is What Realization Feels Like

Do you know what I hate about getting bled?

Not bitten by a baby like me.

That shit feels something like euphoria and a mouthful of candy if you’re doing the biting.

If you’re getting bit, it’s… same thing but opposite. Shit’s drugs. Highly recommend it if you get the chance.

I mean, what it’s like to get bled by somebody with a few thousand years under their belt.

Look. I promised myself I was gonna stop talking to … me… like a nigga.

And I kinda need to.

I just get so used to it. It’s life. It’s the only thing you figure works after you spend your life in a bad position.

When you’re not allowed to be who you want to be because who you are keeps you alive.

You probably get that.

That’s why you’re reading shit like this.

I feel that.

The issue with getting bit, though is afterwards, good or bad, you’re not waking up gently.

The older the vampire, the harder it is to wake up. You feel it.

Like you want to stay dead. Because that’s what happens.

You die.

Before they have their- we have… our first venom. You just die.

Pleasure is the last thing you feel, mercifully.

But god damn, let them get a couple venoms in them.

Fuck me.

Raymond Blossom was old.

That nigga was old as hell.

I had to fight my way back.

That’s the problem, see, they kill you.

That’s the pleasure they get out of babies. We can die over and over again because we already died.

We’re no longer virgins. You can go wild.

Until our blood turns bitter with venom, we’re basically human. Just harder to bite into.

Fucked up, right?

So you get drained to absolute death. And it hurts to claw your way back, man.

Wo-man. Don’t get all… fuckin’…

Butt hurt and shit. Can we talk, or can we talk? Yeah?

It cooks you, though.

Down to nothing, and you’re just in this black space. Imagine being inside a balloon with all the air sucked out. Vacuum sealed in nothing.

It takes all the effort you could ever imagine to move yourself upward.

Slowly, while dying, you have to stop the downward slip.

That feeling of being digested by… nothing.

This is why I’d rather just hoodspeak most of the time when I’m outside…

Niggas can’t understand this shit like we can, you and me.

Or maybe like I now can… Are we an I?

I swear I never thought about my own consciousness.

Coming back was a real hard climb after Raymon took my life.

I forced every astral limb to climb. Felt like crying from the pain of it. The pain of existence.

Crawling back upward to the land of the living.

And then you see that blurry shit. Your eyes open once. A pathetic gasp at waking up.

Oh, you thought we made it? No. You fall again.

You bounce up and down. In and out of consciousness. Climbing to climb again until you grab onto something real.

A voice.

Just a noise at first, then it started to clarify.

“Hey! Wake the fuck up you bum!”

My head snapped up and I stared around wildly, snort-snuffing awake, my arms flying about wildly. Feeling.

Where?

“Hey! Get outta my car, man!” The driver barked.

Driver? Wait, what?

My eyes snapped over to him. I felt like I’d just come out of a coma or some shit.

My eyes blinked independently of one another a few times before they settled on him.

Front seat. Clean car. Smelled nice.

I frantically ticked my eyes all around, knocking them over the interior.

Feeling the seats.

“Who?” I asked.

“Get. Out. Of. My. Car, man! I don’t wanna be down here like this.”

I looked around, saw my apartment building outside, and realized.

“Oh, shit… fuck,” I said, unbuckling my seat belt. “Can you give me just…”

“What? Dude, some dudes put you in my car, and put a fat tip on the ride. They said you’d wake up, bro. I’m a DoubleDriver. Your designated… they said you… y’know.”

Then it all kind of clicked in my head. DoubleDriver.

Right, that designated driver app.

Raymond Blossom was sending me home without making a scene.

Of course.

“Oh… yeah… yeah, sometimes I drink too much,” I nodded, lying. “My bad, man. Yeah, lemme,” I nudged my head at the door and opened it, climbing out of his car.

“Thanks, yeah— close the…” he pointed into the backseat at my door.

He looked frantic to leave.

Couldn’t blame him. This neighborhood wasn’t exactly for everyone.

I shut the door, and he drove off faster than I’d ever seen anybody leave a parking lot.

In my life. I mean that.

“Damn,” I swallowed hard, feeling my sore neck.

Shit felt like a collar around my it, the soreness and the ache from him biting me.

I reached up and felt an actual collar around my neck.

“Wait- what the f…” My eyes went wide.

I felt at it. Smooth leather.

This motherfucker put a collar around my neck.

Right when I looked up and…

“Aw, come on, man…”

“What the FUCK IS THAT!?”

Marcus screamed, and he came slow-stepping towards me, pointing with his eyes wide.

“You can’t be serious right now, man,” I grumbled as this dude brought his big dumb ass over.

Of course, his pack of cheerleaders followed.

You know why? Cus the hood was full of ‘em.

Say what you want to about Kanye, he had one line right:

Hater niggas marry hater bitches and have hater kids.

“Nigga why the fuck you got a dog collar on?” He came up to me, towering over me, talking too loud. “Who put you in a collar, man? Where he at, let’s go whoop his ass. I’ll help you.”

His hype men were back there dying.

Shit wasn’t even that funny. I curled my lip up at them.

“Man, what?” I twisted my face up.

Not gonna lie, this shit was mad embarrassing, though. I felt it burning in my face.

You ever wish you could whoop a niggas ass so bad, but you couldn’t?

Like, not even with help?

You’ll never understand a Short King’s struggle.

Don’t worry about it.

“I said I’ll help you beat the nigga ass who put you in that bitch collar, Homie.”

More guffaws.

Fuck these niggas.

“Man, why you always on me?” I asked, squaring my shoulders up.

I do not know why.

“Why you always lookin’ like you got a man up on you?” He said in my face.

His negros screamed with laughter. Bro, at what? I do not know.

“I’m not gay, man. We’ve been over this. Why you always want me to be gay? Are you gay?”

Said the wrong shit.

Said. The wrong. Shit, my nigga.

You know that moment when you know you said the wrong shit, though?

Yeah.

This nigga snatched me up by my cardigan like I weighed as much as his breakfast.

Every eye was wide. Every mouth was open.

Except those three niggas running around screaming about how I’m about to get my ass whooped.

It’s fucked up, I don’t even have to describe them niggas to you for you to know exactly what I’m talking about.

Quit laughing.

We just profiled a whole community together.

Damn, we goin’ to hell. Anyway.

Guess what he said after that?

You’ll never guess.

“The fuck you say, Li’l Nigga?”

You can laugh. Don’t worry. I’ll wait.

So when you get back, something you should know?

This nigga was flat-foot whoopin’ my ass.

You were enjoying yourself.

I was gettin’ my ass beat.

You got back somewhere around the time my back hit the side of my neighbor Cheryl Perkin’s mini-van.

I felt my soul come out of my body, it hurt so bad. I could already feel the line of blood running down the side of my mouth.

I felt myself drip to the ground while my nose bled.

We stared at each other while Marcus prowled back and forth in front of me.

He looked like he was spinning up a reason to beat my ass again.

“I’m good man…” I nodded, “I’m good.”

Let me explain something to you. Everybody tells you what they ‘woulda’ in this situation.

No, the fuck they wouldn’t.

You don’t realize just how fast you can get your ass beat out here, man.

Most fights go about eight seconds. But you know who's gonna win in the first three. Everything after that just came down to how badly a nigga wanted to hurt you or humiliate you.

This nigga was a foot taller than me.

He won the fight forty seconds ago.

I had that kinda day.

The only thing I could be proud of in that moment was the fact that both of us were breathing hard.

Get exhausted beatin’ my ass nigga, fuck you.

“I told’jo punk ass to watch yo mouth, nigga,” Marcus said, glaring at me like Techno Viking from back in the day.

“My bad, man.” Hand to god. I apologized to him.

I don’t even know why.

Only people who have been punched that many times in the face at the same time are gonna feel me here.

“You know what’s even more fucked up, bitch?” He spat over there somewhere.

Why niggas always gotta spit? Shit ain’t even cool.

“What’s that man…” I coughed, feeling my ribs ache.

“You just got’cho ass beat. And Adonis still gon’ beat’cho ass.”

Damn.

He ain’t lyin’.

All I could do was nod and watch him and his group of assholes walk away laughing, recounting stories of how I got my ass kicked all over the parking lot.

Isn’t it funny how time and realities can collapse like that?

You can be laughing while I can be in pain, and both of us end up having the same question in the end about each other.

Are you real?

Just a thought.

I didn’t go down like a complete bitch, though. I dealt with it. Ten toes dealt with it.

Couldn’t feel too sorry for myself, though, as I got up off the ground.

“I really gotta learn to shut the fuck up.”

God damn that nigga was strong.

Honestly, if I wasn’t a…

Zombie. Oh right.

He might have beat my ass half to death.

It’s weird using that word. It’s weird, honestly.

A loss didn’t matter now like it mattered a month ago.

My problems were… as fucked up as it was to say. Largely kinda gone.

Replaced by all new problems with bigger stakes.

But I didn’t have to feel bad about catching hell from Marcus.

Or Adonis.

Or anybody, really.

Long as I didn’t break Omertà and get casketed… I just had to be good food.

I made my way into the building, dealing with the looks. The insults.

“Look at that weak ass nigga.”

“Damn, yo ass got rocked, not gon’ lie.”

“Shut up, Julissa,” I said.

“ Ol’ smart ass, glasses ass nigga,” Julissa said as I walked past the front counter.

“Oh my god, shut the fuck up, Julissa.”

“Where them books at now, negro? Shoulda used one to block one of them punches Marcus was bouncin’ off yo shit! Fuck nigga!” She called back while I headed for the stairs.

Laugh it up, bitch.

Hope you choke on that fuckin’ gum you mercilessly smackin’, cow.

I ain’t say that shit out loud though. I think Marcus like that bitch.

It only hurt vaguely. In an out-of-touch way. Like making a long-distance call to some place I didn’t care about anymore.

My mom was gone. She was my only link to giving a shit.

About any of it.

Glad I wasn’t wearing my glasses.

Staring at myself in my bathroom mirror right now, like I expected my face to look the same as it did this morning.

That’ll be a black eye forming in an hour.

Yeah. He gave me the business.

I licked my split lip and for the first time since I’d turned.

I tasted my own blood.

I rolled it around in my mouth. Savored the front-loaded metallic sweetness of my own taste.

I felt my eyes roll shut, and I couldn’t stop it. The aftertaste was everything I wanted in life.

It was good enough to make me suck the corner of my lip.

I tugged at it, felt the pinch, then euphoria.

My eyes snapped open to stare at myself in the mirror.

“Don’t be a fuckin’ Junkie, man…”

My ass vibrated.

I felt my eyebrows try to stitch together as I reached into my back pocket to grab my phone.

I never put my phone in my back pocket…

Did that dude grab my booty?

He saved his name in my phone as Father Blossom.

Did that dude grab my booty!?

I tapped open the text.

Not a text.

An app on my phone I’d never seen before. Swiping through it, I noticed a few things right away.

There was some odd shit afoot. I had an inbox.

It had messages in it. Fuck those. There was a globe there.

I tapped it.

Search bar. Cool. Index. Yes. Why not.

And in front of me was an online index of… vampires? Not people, though.

Covens.

Houses.

Listings.

They were all empty, though.

Tap, tap.

Rankings.

House rankings? Coven rankings. That’s…

“A thing… okay.” Everybody had those little, brief bullshit bios.

But only people I’d met before. Like, actually met, not walked past.

Bud, Cutter.

Raymond Blossom.

Notes were beneath his page for the things he’d left for me under our correspondence section. Brief, cryptic as I kind of expected, and nothing he couldn’t deny later.

But I could look people up. Bullshit bio only, but it was something helpful at least.

I could see covens.

There were very few. I guess that’s because most of them were little startups or offshoots that didn’t last, type shit.

Least that’s the impression I was starting to get about the vampiric world reading some of the posts in various communities.

Annual Omertà Bloodletting Harvest.

Raymond said he’d give me an echo.

I searched for that in the app, but there wasn’t an entry.

“Guess it’s not Wikipedia.”

As for covens, I guess it meant something to be listed. There were only sixteen.

Only three mattered, though, at least by the rankings.

I tapped back to the messages.

Shit was all business.

[Father Blossom] I hope you made it home safely. You’ll notice in the vampiric world, my mark affords you a certain level of authority. Please act on your best behavior. You are food stock of the Blossom Syndicate. Do we understand one another?

Not gonna lie, I did not. But I wasn’t about to tell him that shit.

[Baby] You realize I’m not keepin’ you saved as ‘Father Blossom’ right? And what’s up with this fucked up kink collar, man?

I sent back, right before updating his contact.

[Blossom] It’s not a kink collar. It’s a traditional mark for feedstock. Understand this is a tradition older than civilization. It exists to tell others your blood has value. I’m your sponsor, not your friend. You have your assignment. I have a company to run.

[Baby] Assignment? Wait, what? No, I don’t. You just got me beat the fuck up, man.

[Blossom] What do you know about zombies?

[Baby] Everything you told me. That’s all.

[Blossom] Exactly. I have a very long time on my hands to enjoy holding your freedom in them. I’ll expect to see you once a month, every month, until you have information or a resolution for me. You’ve got infinite youth and time to develop cleverness.

[Baby] You want me to go through that once a month?

[Blossom] Let me make something clear, Baby. I own you. The alternative is once per month or once per day. It’s all the same when you count your years by the thousand. Talk to Agent Cutter.

That last message sat with me. Or I sat with it, leaving the bathroom with a warm, wet rag to hold on my lip.

Anything to keep me from tasting it. I wanted to eat my bottom lip off and drink from my own wounds.

It was weird knowing euphoric bliss was in my veins. That I could bite myself and dumb out for weeks, recycling myself.

That was also terrifying.

To know if I wanted to, I could just dig a hole, disappear in it, and feed myself until I calcified to a husk.

God, is that what it’s like to get casketed?

Then my other problem.

Zombies…

I sat on my couch and considered that.

“I know what he knows. So I gotta go know more… or I’m food,” I chuckled mirthlessly at that, “I’m actually a loser. That’s crazy…”

Think about that. You live your whole life to eighteen thinking you’re the one who's the rockstar. You’re the one who breaks out. The doctor. The lawyer. The singer. The politician.

The hot kid. The famous kid. The something…

Then you just end up like me.

For a guy, you find out real quick where you stand in life. You don’t get to live in the delusion of being special.

Life teaches you real quick you’re not that.

“What do I do with that shit?” I asked, grabbing the remote and turning on the TV.

It was just noise. And light. Washing over me.

I looked around my apartment. The small two-bedroom space I grew up in.

The pathetic kitchenette.

The spot on the floor where I killed my mother.

I couldn’t even end it all.

“I don’t even know how… damn.” I shook my head. “Wish I was Bruce Leroy. Least I wouldn’t have got my ass tore off.”

“So what are my options? Can’t kill myself, I’d just come back.

Guess I could set my body on fire.

Even if I could, who cares? Why? What good would it do? Seen that shit… nigga dies, everybody’s like: oh my god, he dead.”

Don’t act like you never sat in your house talking to yourself. Fuck you.

“Then soon as some other shit’s on TV nobody cares anymore. Couple people think about you on Tuesday or some shit… fuck that. Plus I’ve been dead. Shit sucks. So then what, Loxadante? Ol’ Baby ass nigga…”

I stood up and walked over to my living room window.

I stayed there for a long time.

Then my phone rang.

[CALL: CUTTER]

“The fuck… ? Aw, hell nah. Note to self. Don’t go to parties with your white friends.”

I hung up.

It rang again.

[CALL: CUTTER]

“God damnit.”

I answered, “Yo.”

“9am. Raymond wants you on the path to getting sworn in…”

“Sworn in to what, man? I’m not down for whatever that Eyes Wide Shut shit was last night.”

“That was the Early Harvest.”

“Early Harvest—? Talk normal.”

“It’s an event. A holiday really. Yesterday. You caught the tail end of the first one. One of the only times The Black Ministry lets vampires have a harvest. There’s only two ay ear, that was the Early Harvest. The big one is coming up, the Black Parade.”

“The Black Ministry aren’t vampires?” I asked, feeling my eyebrows tighten.

“Kind of. Omertà is a lifestyle; the Black Ministry is its police. Agents of Omertà are ministry agents. Terms are the same. Some people swap them around but they always mean the same thing. ”

“Makes sense. So the Black Ministry operates dry? No blood?”

“We don’t drink blood. Bloodless vampires turn into wolves after a few hundred years, but the change starts to set in after about five weeks off the sauce.”

“Bro… you’re tellin’ me I gotta deal with werewolves too?”

“Yeah. Kid… you’re talking to one.”

This is what realization feels like.

Just days ago I’d had my eyes opened to an entirely different world. Now I just had it opened to the fact that the world I’d just met was far deeper than a street kid like me was ready for.

“… I think we need to have a conversation about what I’m really up against here, man. Do zombies turn into wolves, too?”

“I dunno. Guess we’re gonna find out. 9 am.”

He hung up the phone.