American Vampire

By C.Alan Lytle

This is my life, my reality. I am not a vampire, not a real one anyway. I am simply the lucky lottery winner of an all-star line-up of illness. From Anemia to Xeroderma Pigmentosum and all points between. The real diseases which have helped created the Vampire myth. Yes, I drink blood and my skin burns in sunlight. But I don't change into animals and I don't live forever. Not by a longshot. I'll be lucky to see thirty. So will my friends. We share the challenges of our disease, and the dream of living a normal life, as unlikely as that may be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 19, 2000
• ISBN: 9781469703176

C.Alan Lytle

Casey Lytle was a Data Processor until he turned 36 and decided to take time off to write full-time. He's the author of five books including the critically acclaimed “Homeworld” Juvenile Science Fiction trilogy. He lives in Washington State where he enjoys rain, wind and occasional sunlight.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE—"ANCHORAGE

The high school kid in the bloodied white butcher smock is terrified of me. He doesn’t see me but he knows I’m here. He steps gingerly out the back door of the Butcher Shop on Northern Lights Boulevard, leaning to one side from the weight of the blood in the five-gallon bucket. Cows blood is thick and rich with nutrients; better than milk. The bucket probably weighs forty pounds. He looks behind the door as it tries to swing shut; he kicks a brick over to keep it open. If the brick wasn’t there—in the place where he always makes sure it’s handy—he would probably crap his pants, drop the blood and run screaming back inside. That would be a waste of five good gallons of cows blood.

It’s eleven o’clock in the evening, closing time for the shop. But because this is Anchorage, and it’s June, the sun is still up. It won’t set for another forty-five minutes. Anchorage is too far south to get twenty-four hours of sunlight in the summer, but it’s far enough north to only grant me a few hours of pseudo-twilight before the sun returns.

Light doesn’t burn me. Not right away anyway. In Los Angeles, where I lived before I came here, I could handle about ten minutes in direct sunlight before I would feel my skin start to burn. But up here even the midday summer sun is low enough and filtered enough that I can handle it without too much trouble. And even if I start to burn a little, the cool air keeps me from knowing about it until I’m inside.

I wear sunglasses almost all the time. Not because of the sunlight exclusively, but because my eyes are sensitive to any bright light. Like the security lights behind these shops, and the sodium vapor lights on the main streets, and sometimes even my television.

Let me tell you the way things are before you get the wrong idea. Because honestly I can see where you might think this is going. I’m not a Vampire, regardless of how I look. Not a real Vampire anyway. I’m human, I’m not immortal, I don’t have sharp teeth (although I knew a guy who tried to file his incisors to sharp points), I don’t turn into an animal or a bat, and I can’t hypnotize anyone. I just happen to be the happy lottery winner of several ugly genetic diseases. Let me give you the headliners (the minor ones don’t really matter): Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, Porphyria, Celiac Disease, and Xeroderma Pigmentosum. I’m the sort of walking medical mishap which created stories of Vampires in the Old World. Yes, I drink blood—animal blood. My doctors tell me I really don’t need to do that.. .some of them have said I shouldn’t do it—I’m on a special diet—but I find I have a craving which it satisfies, and my stomach will take it and digest it better than most foods. And I enjoy it more than the bland diet of non-wheat, non-dairy, non-etc foods the doctors insist I exist on. Screw that, give me a pint of blood and a cigarette and I’m fine, thank you.

The cigarettes have nothing to do with anything. I smoke them because I like to, and if I’m lucky they’ll kill me before the diseases do. It’s one of the few vices I can enjoy. Beer, wine, and some hard liquors bend me over in cramps and make me wish I was dead. I was in a club in Los Angeles a couple years ago (where the cool vampires are supposed to hang out, screw them, I’ll take Alaska any day), I drank a pint of pigs blood and chased it down with a cold beer. In five minutes I was bent over, screaming for sweet death, puking frothy blood all over the floor. That attracted some attention I’ll tell you. I would have enjoyed the crowd reaction more (a lot of goth-chick wannabes who didn’t believe in anything) if I wasn’t in excruciating pain, convinced I was puking up my large intestine.

Two years ago when I moved here, I learned my stomach could handle straight vodka like it was water. That was a religious moment. I was a fall-down drunk for two weeks. No apologies.

My skin is very white, almost translucent. My eyes are very light icy blue. When the light hits them just right they look pure white and sometimes appear to glow, as does the rest of my face. My hair is naturally dark red, maybe I should call it auburn. But I color it jet black to go with my wardrobe. I prefer black, but I have some blues and greens too. Nothing that will reflect too much light. I wear an overcoat, not because it’s the Cool Goth thing to do, but because I live in goddamn Anchorage Alaska where the daytime high in the summer can get into the sixties on a good day, and the overnight lows struggle to stay above forty. The temperature can drop very fast depending on which way the wind is blowing.

But don’t get the idea Anchorage is some sort of arctic wasteland. It’s not. It’s a modern American City. You could walk down the street during the summer and have no idea where in the U.S. you were. It’s when you get a view of the mountains or the bay you start to realize you’re not in Kansas anymore.

Anchorage was carved out of the middle of nowhere by some hard-assed bastards who wouldn’t have thought twice about making Paul Bunyun their prison bitch. It’s what Denver could have been if it hadn’t been settled by pissants who saw the Rocky Mountains and decided they’d gone far enough. Mile High City? Twenty thousand years ago Anchorage was under a mile of Ice Age Glacier. To this day not thirty miles away are the beginnings of glacier flows larger than the state of Colorado, flowing into the Gulf of Alaska, trying desperately to sink cruise ships that come too close.

I’m sorry if I display overly aggressive civic pride. I wasn’t born here. I have no relatives here. Hell, I’ve only been here two years. But it’s been the only two years of my life when I haven’t felt like a complete freak. That says a lot considering I was raised in Los Angeles, land of freaks.

I’m no damn Goth-boy. Gothics and their black clothes and white faces and Vampire Wannabe lifestyle can bite me for all I care. I don’t do this because I think it’s hip, or because I was some sort of outcast in high school (although I was). I do this because my DNA bent me over and fucked me when I entered puberty. Fortunately I stayed afloat in the real world long enough to get my diploma before I slapped on the sunglasses and turned nocturnal.

My Dad is an investment banker; my Mom is a schoolteacher. Their only disease is alcoholism (although there is rumor my grandfather on my mother’s side was like me. I’ve never seen a picture of him; he died before I was born). At first they were genuinely concerned and took me to all the best doctors. But once I started wearing black and stayed out late at night they decided I was on drugs and distanced themselves from me. They got me an apartment in the valley so I could be independent. In reality they didn’t want a Goth-boy hanging around their proper upper-class neighborhood with a gate at the end of the street, and twenty-four hour security. The end came one night after a little trouble at a Goth club I frequented; they were bringing me home in the Lexus and the Gate Guard gave my parents the look when he saw me in the back seat. I knew my days were numbered. Just weeks later, on my eighteenth birthday, my mother surprised me with the gift of independence. Thanks Mom.

They paid the rent, and never called. I didn’t tell them when I left town. Sometimes I call the apartment just to hear my answering machine. They’re still paying the rent. They don’t know I’m gone. Just in case, I left a note on the door: Gone Out, Back Soon. I wonder if it’s still there.

There are Goths in LA who really drink human blood. There are Goth couples who get off on sucking each other into blood-loss buzzes. There are sick sons of bitches who really think they’re immortal and can turn into animals. Few of them live into their late thirties. That’s the only trait they truly share with us. Most of them need some serious AIDS education.

Not that you can’t get shit from animal blood. But here in Alaska the blood runs pretty pure. Cattle are rugged, the sick and the weak die before they make it to the slaughterhouse. And more than once I’ve looked out my bedroom window at night and seen a Moose walking through the neighborhood. I’ve never killed one for a drink, I’ve never drank from a living animal. But it’s nice to know the resource is there if times ever get tight.

The butcher who owns this shop is a friend of our kind. He has a nephew who is one of us and lives a couple blocks away. He doesn’t tell his employees what happens with the blood they set out here; most of them can guess though. He just tells them to fill the buckets and set them out back at closing time. He likes to scare the new ones by saying, if the door closes behind you, cover your neck, scream like a banshee and run like hell for the nearest streetlight.

Anchorage has a substantial Human-Vampire population. Although Los Angeles brags the largest Goth population, few of them are really inflicted other than suffering a serious case of poor fashion sense. People like me (Genuines) will eventually gravitate toward less painful environments, up north where there’s less sun and more privacy.

In the lower forty-eight the highest concentration is probably in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle and Portland have more Genuines than anywhere else. Seattle was my original escape plan from LA. In LA when you mention Seattle you might as well be talking about Paris, or Rome, or some other faraway place. It rains there, people say. It’s always cloudy.

Exactly, I would say. It sickened me that these Goth junkies hung out in the sunniest part of the country. If they were real they’d be screaming to get out.. .like I was.

When I was in high school, probably sixteen years old, I met the first person like me I had ever known. His name was Billy Hensley. We were the same age but went to different schools miles apart. We rarely saw each other except at doctor appointments. I was still a nice All-American boy who was white as a sheet and had scary ice-blue eyes. Billy though was already Goth. He dressed in black and wore black lipstick. He had both his ears pierced and wore crosses in them. His parents were normal like mine (except that his dad was always away on business and his mom was a high-society whore), but one of his Great-Uncles was like us. He had lived in Minnesota and died in a mysterious house fire one winter after a couple farmers blamed him for the loss of some livestock. Billy thought they were probably right, he was likely feeding on them.

His parents wouldn’t talk about it. Even though they were both born and raised in Minnesota, they had become trendy Southern California sons-of-bitches who made fun of everyone in the mid-west. All a bunch of backwater inbreeders.

After we got our driver’s licenses we hooked up more often. Billy tried to turn me Goth, but I was still a few years away from feeling comfortable with it. He laid the groundwork for a future diet of animal blood. He made it sound appetizing. thick, rich, enticingly salty, but I was still afraid. Still pissed off by my condition and hoping someday I would be normal again. Going Goth and drinking blood was too much like surrendering. I wasn’t ready.

Billy though, was more realistic. He had surrendered long ago. Every time we got together he said the same thing, Goddamn sunlight really burns my ass! It was a running joke; it never seemed to get old. You know where we need to be, he would say. Nome, Alaska! Half the year they’re in constant fucking Night!

Yeah, I’d scoff. And what, you’re going to drink Eskimo blood?

Wildlife, he’d say. More than we’ve got here, that’s for damn sure! No one like us should be here. Too much sun, too much bullshit.

We’ve got Goth-chicks here though! Got any of those in Alaska?

Goth chicks! he spat. You know what Goth-chicks are? Daughters of child-molesters that’s what! Dad’s rode’em like their own private whores when they were little.now they paint their faces white, paint their lips and eyes black, and dress like corpses. You know why? Cause they’re dead inside, that’s why. Festering death, just waiting for the real thing to take them some night in a dark alley. They don’t believe in Vampires any more than you believe in the Easter Bunny. But if they found a real one they’d probably be the first ones to stretch their necks out.

He was absolutely right, but at the time it pissed me off. The only person at school who didn’t treat me like The Elephant Man was a Goth-Chick named Jan. She treated me like I was a prophet or something. At first she thought I was a made-up Goth like her. When she found out I was for real she practically had an orgasm right there in front of me. She seemed to think I knew things other people didn’t know. All the old soul crap. As if my condition was the result of divine intervention. She was the first person I ever met who thought my all-star line up of diseases was a good thing.

Nevertheless, her other Goth friends avoided me. At night they hung out in dark places and played Vampire games. But during the day if they didn’t work they were on the beach, darkening the tan they wore under the white make-up. I couldn’t do that. I was for real.

Billy moved north when we were seventeen. His parents were moving to Seattle to make millions in computer software (they didn’t, they ended up opening a chain of espresso stands) and he went along for the ride, and for the cooler weather. A couple years later, when I was ready to ditch LA for the Northwest I tried to get in touch with him. I left messages with his parents, but never got a response. The day I was headed out the door with a bus ticket for Seattle in my hand I got a postcard from him. Anchorage, Alaska. My roommate just moved out, the note said. If you’re in the area.

CHAPTER TWO—"FRIENDS

Most days I just want to make it through the day. Like a solider in combat, battling through a heavy fog, bullets ricocheting off metal, the music of death inches from my ears. I hang on and wait and hope that I make it.

Then other days I wish I could stand out in the rain, raise my thin arms and pale lifeless face skyward, and let the cool droplets of rain melt me like an ice sculpture until I’m nothing but a puddle in the street; winding my way toward a storm drain and the anonymous destinations beyond its dark caverns.

Vampires are supposed to be strong. But I’m not strong. I’m thin and lanky with skinny arms and bony legs. People might say I look like a runner, but I’m not a runner either.

I wander slowly down the alley, carrying the five-gallon bucket of fresh blood. The white plastic lid keeps it from splashing out. I’m not going far, down the street to Cusack’s Pub where I’ll leave the bucket in the alley then walk around front and enter like an ordinary white-faced, dark-clothed guy in Anchorage.

One of the bartenders on the late weekday shift knows our special needs, and when I nod to him he knows I’ve just left a bucket in the back.

Dark thick ones all the way around, I call out, pointing to a table of people I recognize; Billy sitting alone, not drinking, waiting for the blood. Colette and Dhark playing darts. They smile when they see me. They’re all Genuine, meaning they look like Goths but they’re sick like me. Dhark revels in the Goth lifestyle, he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s Genuine because that means sick and weak. He wants people to think he’s a strong young man living like a Gothic. He sees Gothics as young, strong and powerful. That’s how he wants to be seen. Sometimes I get the impression he would really like to be a vampire. A real vampire with their strength and immortality.

I don’t know what his real name is. He’s tall, with pale skin, large dark eyes (colored contacts covering his natural crystal blue), jet black hair and slim build over which he hangs long dark coats. He was big in the LA Goth scene for a couple years but got burned—literally—one too many times waking up on the deck of a beach house well after the sun was up. He has graft marks on his back and scars on his legs from the burns. When he heard about the scene in Anchorage he packed up and moved.

Colette, like all of us, is also pale and thin, with icy blue eyes. She leaves her long straight auburn hair untouched by artificial color. She’s sullenly attractive with full lips which always seem on the verge of saying something which she’s afraid to say. She insists on being called Clit. There is sadness in her eyes, even when she’s having fun. As if a deep guilt feasts on even the slightest pleasure. She dated Billy for almost a year, then a few others who came and went. Right now she’s hanging out with Dhark more than anyone else, but I’m not sure I’d say they’re dating. Just hanging out, trying to get by. Looking for those brief moments which make it worth going on.

The man brings the goods, Billy says as I pull up a chair. Colette—Clit—grins and turns quickly away as if she’s been caught doing something bad.

Dhark scowls at me. I don’t take it personally, he scowls at everyone, it’s his default expression. We could have met at the Dark Horse, he says. At least I could have had shots while we waited.

I didn’t feel like dragging forty pounds of product half way to the Air Force Base, I say with a grin. He turns on his heel and dances toward the bar. The bartender is walking in from the back with the bucket.

Dhark has been up from California just a couple months. He came in on the heels of winter, so he hasn’t seen a full season yet. As damaging and feared as the sun can be for us, it can still be a shock when you stand outside on a winter day, seeing the twilight coming, waiting for the sun, only to see the twilight peak and turn again to darkness. Personally I love it, but some of the transplants find it depressing.

Our diseases are similar, but various. We have different combinations of ailments. Variations of lupus and porphyria. It affects moods and drives differently in different people. Dhark seems angry and horny all the time; Clit seems sexless. I don’t talk to Billy about his drives, and when he disappears for days at a time I don’t ask what it’s about. As for me.. .well.. .I come and go. I’m not seeing anyone right now, but I don’t know if it’s because I’m not interested, or if women are simply not interested in me. There are definitely enough Goth-chicks in Anchorage to go around.

Jan, down in Los Angeles, had been my first serious hormone crush. She would hold my hand when we were out together, put her arm around me in clubs. But she wouldn’t get too close. Nothing intimate. I never knew whether she was simply not interested in me, or if she thought my diseases were contagious. Shortly after Billy moved north Jan hooked up with a Goth boy. I didn’t know about it until I walked out of The Fang one night looking for her—she had been gone almost two hours—and found her doing him on the hood of a black Ford Galaxie. They didn’t bother to stop when they saw me. In fact, I think the sight of me walking up looking humiliated and emotionally destroyed, brought her to orgasm.

There was a Goth girl at The Fang on my eighteenth birthday. She got me so hard I thought my pants were going to rip open. But when she dragged me into a restroom stall and hiked her skirt up I got so nervous I went limp. I’m not sure there’s anything more emotionally painful for a guy than that. I’d rather puke in public, or piss myself, or fart in an elevator. I’ve always been thankful she didn’t laugh or say something purposely hurtful. She looked down, saw it shrink like a clam, then frowned, adjusted her skirt and said, it’s no big deal really. Maybe we can hook up later. She kissed me lightly, politely, and edged past me out of the stall. I stood in there for almost half an hour. Afraid to come out. Humiliated. Terrified.

What finally drove me out was the sound of two people stumbling into the stall next to me. I heard the slurping and smacking of desperate wet kisses, excited moaning then jeans unzipping. I leaned down to glance under and saw her black spikes. She squealed suddenly as he entered her, oh yes.. .finally! she said. I still don’t know if she was saying that to him or if she knew I was still in the stall next to her.

I wasn’t a blood-drinker then. That would come the night I lost my virginity. Just six months before leaving LA.

I had stopped seeing doctors, they could do nothing more for me but prescribe medicines and lecture me on diet. I hated eating, everything was mush. No texture, no taste, no satisfaction. I would eat, but felt like I wasn’t eating. I started to suffer migraines. Maybe from the diseases, maybe from stress, maybe both, I was never sure.

I was with some friends at The Silver Spike, an all out Goth club in the valley. The headache came on fast. The club was dark by normal standards, dim off-lighting and candles, but suddenly they were too bright, the music too loud and I thought I was going to puke. This girl I had met the week before—Caitlin—offered to take me back to my apartment. Up until that night I had assumed she was a Goth girl. She was almost six feet tall and ultra-skinny. Probably not even one-ten. She wore a short tight black skirt, black fish-nets, black lipstick and eyeliner. Pale painted skin. She was a wannabe. An actress. A Goth by night and beach-bunny by day.

But Caitlin turned out to be a Genuine. Her large dark eyes were the result of contacts covering the telltale ice blue.

By the time we reached my apartment I could not even stand upright. I walked bent over through the door and into my bedroom where I collapsed. I remember Caitlin taking my clothes off. I tried to lean this way and that to be helpful, but I was feeling like shit and really wanted her to leave me alone.

You don’t know. I think I remember her saying. Then something about the Mayans.

I had my eyes pressed tightly shut against the minor light shining into the bedroom from the living room. I was completely naked and a little cold lying on top of the covers.

I kept licking my lips. I was drooling or something, I couldn’t dry my lips off. They were sticky

Reviews for American Vampire

[chris burback · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I gave this book 5 stars because it made me feel and think. its what I look for in a book!