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Winter was hot in Miami. Akin to the winters remembered in my youth, humid and blue with rain fall. And they were loud, bustling, on Night Island. Typical of the consumerist movement of a modern Christmas. Typical of Night Island, which was founded on the indulgence and greed that Armand found his element in.
Earlier in the evening I had spoken to Daniel, a man before me now—yet much the same boy I witnessed all those years ago in my San Francisco apartment, with that naivety and brashness. I spoke to Daniel often now, in our paradise of a mind melting, time bending mansion.
There was an absurd dream-like quality to it all, seeing a young man like Daniel beside a relic of the ancient past like Khayman or Pandora. And yet it was my reality, my disorienting bustling vampiric reality. And so I spoke to Daniel often, because amongst the museum of the chaotic and the confronting vulnerable history, he was something familiar, and something relatively safe.
And I liked Daniel. Daniel was not a random mortal selected by the gods without care nor purpose. I would have never confessed such a tale to just any wayward young person. He was intelligent, well spoken, educated. Beautiful and gratifying to look at in a way that would appeal to a vampire, or two.
He was funny too, and clever. I often found myself caring to hear what he had to say, or how he felt. And so we spoke, and he asked me, “Hey Lou, how do you feel about spending the holidays at a place like this?” I was baffled by this question, for a variety of reasons, mainly “Lou”. Yet I chose to humor him. “I suppose it’s no different than the Christmases of my youth.” I responded “It’s hot, and there are quite a lot of people that I don’t know very well, yet am socially and morally obligated to be with.” He laughed. “Yeah, you're southern.” He agreed, much to my confusion.
“I am.” I confirmed. “Why is it that you ask—- is what I am wondering?” Daniel appeared sheepish, almost guilty. “I donno, it’s just.” He hesitated. “I love Armand, but. I dunno. It feels sort of—unfeeling and..artificial, being here for Christmas. And I don’t know why I care or notice, cause I mean. Most of my adult christmases have been spent alone in a hotel room drinking myself into a coma. So I don’t see why it matters now suddenly..
..But I don’t know. I guess I expected something different since I got my whole um. Fairytale ending thing with my murderer boyfriend and all. Um.” Daniel often noticeably faltered when he expressed explicit modern affections for Armand in conversation with me. It was something I appreciated him for, in a way. His shame in the face of someone such as I, who hadn’t the head nor the sensibilities for his way of thinking, being, or language, was indicative of a respect that I appreciated.
He went on, “I thought it’d feel nicer, comforting, like I was with family almost. Like I remember from childhood, you know? And, it’s hot. Like really hot. So much for white Christmas.” Daniel laughed ironically.
“I suppose.” I said graciously. “I understand how you feel.” I didn’t, but it was the kind, empathetic thing for me to say. The thing he was expecting to hear. “It’s different for me, of course. New Orleans is rather similar to Miami.” Daniel nodded, then waved his hand, in that sharp way one does when they are hoping to rid the conversation from having ever happened. “Hot.” He agreed. “Stuffy. I didn’t know vampires even felt hot.”
I smiled in gentle agreement, thinking something morbid and unspoken about hellfire. It was sweet and endearing to me that Daniel would expect an ideal Christmas after choosing to damn himself to this life. I didn’t condemn him for it, only observed him with a strange realization of how young he was, and how very different we were. Daniel had never understood me as I hoped he would. There was only one man who saw me for what I was at Night Island, and he was locked firmly away in his suite writing down our private most vampiric affairs furiously as if there was some purpose beyond adding another edition to “Anne Rice’s” seductive vampire fiction series.
As I looked out the window, I observed young innocents in festive adornments hefting bags over their shoulders with a neutrality that I clung to. I felt stimulated watching people, the way one would feel stimulated watching raindrops trickle down a window. The melancholy was persistent yet it was typical. It was satisfying in a perverse way to be so downcast on a holiday. The aesthetic value was wonderfully validating. And the remoteness I upkept was soothing.
It was undefiled and sweet inherently to be sitting by a window on Christmas Eve night, watching the activity outside, lost somewhere else, waiting, even wistful. It felt deceptive and corrupt, to sit there with my head in my hands like a boy, staring up at the bleak black and blue clouds. Would Santa be able to make it to Night Island in this weather? I could’ve been thinking.
Yet I wasn’t, I was thinking of another time, another place. Boyhood, sitting at the table with my family. Looking my mother in the eyes for perhaps the first time within the month, since she was so busy as the woman of the house after all. Avoiding my father’s eyes, looking to my lap. Paul was very moved by Christmas. It was the birth of Christ that got to him, and whether it be an unmasked weeping or a silent tear—he always cried during the Christmas dinner prayer. I would hold his hand by tradition and bite my lip at the feeling of the emotive sweat in his palms. The birth of Christ never meant much to me beyond moral imperative.
And yet there was another Christmas that felt even more unbearable to ponder upon, another family. Three stockings, bold red, humble green, and wholesome pink, engraved with three initials L, L, and C. Two coffins beside each other, only one occupied, stuffed full with two groggy men and one giggling little girl, and an abundance of beautiful lovingly picked dolls. Precious high shrieks, passionate laughs, a kiss to my cheek that will be left gracefully unaddressed the following evening, a kiss to my nose treasured like a delicate gift, accompanied by an armful of expensive silk and lace and bouncing golden curls squirming and giggling in my arms.
“Thank you daddies, I love you!”
Reading aloud a newly gifted book by the fireplace, his head on my shoulder, her head on my lap, the heat comforting and non destructive, perfectly wonderful. Lucifer’s angels curled together by the only source that could destroy them, finding warmth in it, finding family.
I didn’t like to linger there, it was sickening and tragic. Two blonde heads, bright laughs, wide sharp toothed smiles. Kisses, hugs, warmth, love. If I was capable I might’ve cried, thinking of her, my daughter, in my arms, shaking me, nuzzling me, “Wake up! Wake up! Santa came!” And Lestat, now as lost to me as my girl, it felt. It was a bitter sorrow that held me this Christmas, as it did far more often than a loving pair of arms.
These Christmases with the three of us lasted a precious handful of years until she grew older and hateful, and no longer took pleasure in our company nor our infantile gifts. For the most part my Christmases were a bitter lonesome occasion spent only slightly more sorrowfully nostalgic than any other day. I had been so alone for so long, and to be amongst so many faces, familiar and old, made the lonesomeness feel all the more horrible. The company held little more comfort than the company of dreadful looming ghosts creaking on floorboards and echoing the cries of children, mocking me, teasing a cold hand on my shoulder in the morbid shadow of a lover's comforting touch.
The door creaked open. I didn't move, almost suspecting I’d imagined the noise. No sound of movement followed, ghosts indeed, and some sense of mortal instinctual fear at the unnatural reared its ironic head. “Louis.” Barely a whisper, barely a sound. “Armand.” I calmed at the realization, “Come in.”
He was standing there stiffly in a white silk robe. It went down to his bare feet and hung over his hands loosely and largely. It gave the impression of elegant androgyny, if not a spiritualism and power that I’d always admired in him. The appearance of effortless grace nearly distracted me from the overall nervousness in his countenance. Off putting to see in Armand, someone often so in control. It was unappealing, and I nearly dismissed him from my room with the request to leave me to my devices. Yet I didn’t, succumbing as I often do, I asked. “Why is it that you approach me?”
“Oh.” Armand said, limply. “It’s Christmas. I have a gift.” Somehow I didn’t expect this, not even having registered the packages held in his hands in my daze. “Ah.” I said. “You didn’t have to.” It was fruitless and absurd to say this, polite banterous exchanges meant for those unlike Armand, and I was instantly embarrassed.
“Yes.” He responded mercifully, as he unloaded the packages onto my bed so that they were spread out with some care. “On Christmas, you aren’t required to get a gift for anyone. But it is good to do, for those that you love.” I nearly said “I’m no alien, you mustn’t explain”, or something biting and rude, and yet I felt too defeated by the innocence of this exchange to bother. “Thank you.” I said instead. Armand frowned. “Will you open them?” He asked. His tone was so plainly blunt and wanting I was struck with an odd second hand shame.
The allusion of someone I once considered entirely all knowing and wise dimmed at times like these, when I was reminded of how very simple Armand could be. Yet there was something noble and intelligent about his simplicity, and his awkward grace, in the sense that he was a creature who was very old and beyond my understanding. I was self aware of my own arrogance at feeling otherwise. He did not operate through my concepts of how a respectable man should act, he was beyond them, which made him all the more worthy of my reverence. “Of course.” I said. Some of the bitterness had left me.
I looked down at the gifts, feeling almost silly. It was silly, my melancholy and isolation being broken by Armand shuffling nervously into my room, wearing his pure gown like a night dress, and proclaiming blatantly that this was a gesture done with love. It was silly in a way that touched my heart for a blissful second, to be cared for so openly and without complication.
“I think you should open this one first.” Armand instructed, as he pointed with a long artist’s finger to a rather small rounded container adorned with a glittering cream pink bow. I obeyed wordlessly, took the container in my lap, and was surprised to find the continents liquified and moving in my grasp. I shook it a bit, with all the unmasked wonder of a boy discovering presents beneath the tree, and Armand stifled my movements with a cold hand on my shoulder. “I wouldn’t want it to spill.” He explained. I removed the bow, creaked open the plastic lid, and let out an unconscious sigh as the scent flooded my nose.
It was blood, thick and warm, as if straight from the source. The heat was wafting off of it in warm appetizing drifts that danced delicately in front of my vision. I shuddered. Armand was sitting next to me, hand still on my shoulder, and there was a moment of tension when we both registered that we were touching. He removed his hand, eyes boring into me, and I turned to face him.
“I restored its warmth with my wondrous machine, the microwave.” He explained. “Then I stirred it, seasoned it, and prepared it for you. It’s soup.” I looked at him desperately, then looked down at the blood. Soup indeed, it was dressed with spices and perhaps mint? Some form of plant. And it was warm of course, microwaved. It could pass for a tomato soup. I breathed again, frailly, almost like I needed the air, as I reveled hedonistically in the smell.
“I was hoping you could drink it, and be warmed by it, and perhaps imagine for a moment that it is not blood you are consuming, but soup, and be without guilt.” Armand said softly. I had nothing to say that could encapsulate my feeling, and so I said, like an idiot. “Yes. Soup.. I liked soup, as a mortal.” Armand smiled, a shocking sight, I was nearly taken aback. Wide and sincere, kittenish fangs on display. “I thought you would,” he said.
“It’s possible, perhaps, that you could enjoy your delicious soup while you open the rest of your gifts. Doesn’t that sound lovely?” I nodded, in a daze. It did sound lovely, I couldn’t deny. Warm, familial, comforting.
Armand smiled smaller, the dimples on his face warmed a bloody pink. He had killed someone, extracted blood, warmed it, so that I could live in delusion, and drink some soup. I found it a gesture nearly as grotesque as I did precious and endearing. It was when I started to wonder if Armand had prepared me utensils so as to feed on this blood more politely, that he placed a spoon easily in my hand.
“I recommend you open this one next.” He said, and he pointed to a square, beautifully designed present, adorned in a pristine patterned green wrapping paper. “Ok.” I agreed. I lifted the package and shook it, with some humor, and Armand’s smile remained. “Not soup then.” I confirmed. He giggled, once again a wonderful shock. It was light and careless, so joyful as to nearly give me pause.
“Open it.” Armand ordered, after I took a moment to observe him, and the gift. “Of course.” I complied, and I began to unveil it with the utmost care, not wanting to soil this beautiful paper. Armand watched me with rapt, borderline impatient attention, which added a tension to the experience, though not an overall unpleasant one. An excitement, was it? An enjoyment was felt, certainly. A tense, hesitant enjoyment, but an enjoyment nonetheless. I discarded the wrapping paper beside me and looked upon the gift.
“Ah!” I exclaimed. At first I had thought it was a book, but no! It was something far more mysterious and captivating in the enthralling tease of what it must contain. It was a “vhs tape” of a modern film, entitled “Scrooge” as in the flawed protagonist from Dickens' beloved tale. “Oh my goodness.” I murmured, as I studied the vhs in a hunt not just to understand what this film was, but why it had been gifted so carefully to me.
“It’s a film.” Armand explained. I was so charmed by his gift giving ordeal at this point that I hadn’t it in me to mind the assumption that I did not recognize a film when I saw one.
“It’s a redoing of “A Christmas Carol”, don’t you remember? We saw the original film portraying the tale told in the novel— on December sixteenth, 1938. It was very shortly before the end of our time traveling together, and we were in America, and I asked to see a film. You agreed and so we saw it, and I held your hand close to my heart as we watched. You allowed it, and when we returned home you smiled at me, and you said you liked the film, and that you always had liked the novel, and you spoke of how they did a rather good job putting it to the screen. And I agreed.” Armand paused. “Don’t you remember?” He repeated.
I did remember, not so precisely, but I recalled the film being well done and Armand’s holding of my hand, which I found strange but inoffensive enough to tolerate. “Yes.” I whispered. “This is so thoughtful of you Armand…thank you.”
Armand observed me carefully. “Always.” He said. “Louis?” He paused. I gestured for him to go on. “Could we watch this film together as we did then. I miss you. I want you with me. It’s a musical, did you know? I found that queer yet intriguing. I would want to watch it with you, if you would allow it.” I was startled by the vulnerability of the request.
For a moment I was in another place, another sanctuary governed by Armand, the bleak fire-light ghostly tower, where he had said to me “I want you—more than anything in the world.” And I had known deep within my soul—displayed in all those private areas that beckoned to him through the mind gift, that I wanted him the same, and that there was no place I could find within myself to deny him.
“I..” I hesitated. “I think we shall. I don’t see why we should not. It’s only a film.” He nodded, mouthed something silently, the word “yes” it seemed. “Yes.” He then said aloud. “We shall.” I smiled, sincerely, feeling so strangely and nostalgically drawn to him. Armand observed me with the uncanny mask-like features he often wore, though the hints of the smiles I’d seen from him that night were apparent in his ease, his slouched posture, his slightly drooping eyes. “There is one more gift.” Armand reported plainly. “Mustn’t you open it?”
“Of course.” I consented and took the last gift onto my lap, something larger and sturderier, that Armand warned me with a steadying hand to my shoulder to be careful handling. “Is it soup?” I wondered, and I joyed to see the mask falter and a purely ecstatic laugh erupt from his countenance. "Open it, find out." He said, smiling as he playfully nudged my shoulder.
I opened it wordlessly, unwrapping the same green paper to discover a box within. "Ah." I said ironically, "A box, lovely. Thank you." Armand's grin widened. "No.." He insisted, "Open the box."
I laughed openly. "Alright, alright." I assured him as I used my claw like nail to split open the tape binding the box together. The packaging fell open, and I hitched a breath as I saw–a small tree. A pine tree, Christmas tree, tiny and frail. The pine leaves scattered messily about my feet as I lifted it from the box and placed it beside myself. It went to my waist, nearly to Armand's chest.
"Oh my." I said, taking stock of it, registering. "I went to a "farm" they call it, that sells trees intended to be displayed for Christmas, then discarded once the season is over with. I was curious about the tradition, and so I investigated, and came upon this beauty. She reminds me of you.” Armand explained.
“Oh..my.” I said again. Looking upon this frankly half dead tree, with its smallish misshapen form and its rapidly shedding pine leaves, with the context that Armand had seen it and thought of me, made my heart ache in a way that was not overall wretched. “I thought you would like to have something..” Armand hesitated. “I thought that you would like to have something here.. that’s alive.”
This struck me peculiarly as wonderfully optimistic. “It is alive, isn’t it? By god.” I exclaimed. “With some proper care it may even start to lose the scruffiness and take on a fuller appearance.” I didn't know what was coming over me, this strangely sincere cheer and whimsy. If I paused to think too deeply about the going ons of this affair I’d become so embarrassed the bliss of it all would leave me like a punch to the lungs, and I didn’t want to come down. “Precisely.” Armand echoed. “Louis.” He said.
“Hm?” I responded, slightly dazed. “You’re letting your soup go cold.” He said quietly. I looked at the forgotten soup container with a slight start. “Ah, my apologies.” It had felt almost like the soup was something hypothetically pleasurable, and not a material meal meant to be manually consumed, and it felt so frighteningly bold to actually physically indulge in the gesture. I lifted the container, and with a slight shake I pressed the spoon to my lips and drank. I moaned softed, swallowed, and took another great spoonful. Armand stared at me with a cool intensity. The intimacy of being looked at directly in the eyes as I fed on a meal prepared by said onlooker was not lost on me. I couldn’t do much to avert this closeness, it was something I was ensnared in, a fly spelled into the jaws of death with no desire to fly away.
I hadn’t fed in so long, how could I deny myself this? There were few animals of flesh with so much restraint as I, and yet flesh subjects us all to limitations. And a lovingly made soup is a temptation no creature under God could resist. In no time at all the container was empty, and I sat back on my bed like a bloated tick. I felt so sleepy suddenly, succumbing with so much relief to the comfort of the bed and the exquisite softness of the blankets.
“You enjoyed the soup.” Armand stated, with a blankness that may have come off as ominous to someone less close to him. I could tell from his mere desire to state such a thing that he was satisfied with the outcome, and pleased to acknowledge the obvious as true by speaking it into existence. “I did.” I sighed.
Armand continued to look at me, his neutral expression intact. His mind up until this point had been closed to me with some respect I gathered, for my lack of understanding of such magic, but now I could feel something being communicated perhaps without his explicit direction. A deep satisfying relief, and a sentiment of gratitude and love. A sincere care and happiness. “I’m so happy you are well,” echoing vaguely in my subconscious.
“Good. And so I leave you.” Armand announced, lifting himself from the bed and heading towards the door. “No..wait.” I murmured, so entrenched in feeling that I spoke without thinking. Armand paused, his back to me, a tenseness in his shoulders holding my breath prisoner in my chest. “Must you go?” I whispered, feeling foolish and yet beyond self discipline as it were.
There was a slouch of the shoulders. He didn’t speak. “I just-” I began hurriedly, feeling a need to explain. “I would like to have company on Christmas, and I believe you’re a good company to have, Armand. And if you'll have me, would you stay? I don’t think..” I shuddered, “I don’t think I could bear the loneliness at a time such as this.” Armand turned to face me, and I was overcome by what I saw. There was such feeling in his features, eyes brimming with bloody tears, and a desperately wanting smile playing on his lips. “Of course, of course. I would love it.” He uttered, the emotion threatening to spill out of his mouth.
Armand crawled beside me in bed, and he very slowly, rather hesitantly, took his place by my side. We were so close I felt his chest’s rhythmic pulsing, so heavy, the breathing of someone deathly nervous. “Do as you wish.” I allowed him, trying to ease the hesitancy. Armand’s eyes were pleading. “You may hold me.” I said, trying to keep my tone distant and lacking the severity I felt our scenario to hold. Armand carefully allowed his arms to wander around my body, encasing me in a hug of sorts.
I could not upkeep the tenseness at the warmth and the feeling of security in his arms- and so I melted into him, which spurred on his movements. Armand nuzzled into me like a cat would, and soon his head found his way to my stomach, which was warm with soup. Armand let out a pleased sigh. I could have died there, in Armand’s powerful arms, content to submit to the simple pleasure of being held and being loved.
It was when I started to drift off that I heard him, within my thoughts spoken so distantly and vaguely that it could’ve been within a dream, “Lestat wants you, and he wants to be with you. He’s scared to act. And so you are both left longing.” I didn’t open my eyes, nor even move from my position, only thought back, “We are both scared. To love is a cross excruciating to bear.” Armand nuzzled his head more deeply into my stomach, did not respond.
“Daniel feels distant from you. He wants to feel warmth and family this Christmas and yet he feels as alone as he would on a Holiday spent without you. I know you can provide this warmth he craves, as you have for me this evening, and yet you don’t.” Armand shuddered slightly in my arms. “Daniel is as lost to me as I feared. I can not reach him.” I heard echoed amongst my own contemplations. “Try talking to him” was what I thought to advise him, but it struck me how empty the words were when I knew I could not perform them myself. “It’s hard.” Armand communicated wordlessly, and I agreed with a silence we both took comfort in.
“You're so warm.” Armand spoke aloud, words muffled. “I want to be here forever.” I hummed in understanding, and thought wistfully, “If only it were that simple..”
The Christmas tree looked at me from beside the bed, its messiness and sincere kindness speaking with it a condemnation I did not want to confront. “Creatures such as us are not built for such simplicity.” I found myself thinking, as I drifted off into a cat nap. And while Armand’s head rested on my stomach, warm with soup, I knew forgottently, that this was not the truth.