House of Memories

It was a silent, clear evening in Tacoma, as a run-of-the-mill man walked down the orange-lit sidewalk to the south of the city, almost crossing into Spanaway. Music blasted in his ears as he pulled his thick coat tighter against the bite of the wind, only doubling each time another car passed by.

Despite the volume of his music, however, he still heard a strange sound coming from behind him, also getting louder with each passing second. As he finally moved a headphone aside and turned around, he just barely caught the sight of a beat up red car whizzing right by him at insane speeds, a twinned cackle and scream invading the night sky all the while. He wasn’t even able to refocus his attention afterwards before two black cars with tinted windows followed right afterward, hot on the first cars trail.

“YAHAHAHOOOOO!” The cackling driver of the red car shouted as they zoomed down Pacific Avenue. “DON’T YA JUST FEEL ALIVE PETITE?” Their short black hair was tossed by the wind, as the windshield had been shot out before this wild drive started.

“NOPE! JUST AS DEAD AS ALWAYS!” Their companion squealed, her wide, lizard-like mouth clattering in fear. “GO RIGHT GO RIGHT GO RIGHT!” She shouted. The car nearly went around in a full circle as the driver course-corrected in the intersection, coming close to clipping at least two cars waiting at the lights. The black cars, however, were still far behind as they took off down 96th.

“AWWW C’MON! LET THE RUSH TAKE OVER!” The driver suggested, having to shout to be heard. It was their idea to pick a fight with Dorian Martel, and to steal one of his cars while they were at it. While that was already a terrible idea, one that Petite only went along with out of necessity, it was even worse considering that Dorian was a car obsessive.

Bijou was always like this, coming up with insane ideas on the fly. But, one thing Petite always had to hand to them, they never hogged the “fun”.

“THEY’RE GAINING ON US YOU COCKAMAMIE CAJUN!” Petite was having less fun and more of a panic attack at the moment however.

“I spot ‘em, Petite.” They looked through the back mirror, and flashed a toothy grin on their stubble-covered face. “Can we get in the maze from here?”

She took a second to look around as they whizzed down the street. “It’ll be risky, but if we can make it to a manhole-”

She didn’t have time to finish the thought before the next moves were made.

Right behind them, Dorian’s ghouls and lackeys saw the red car turn around and stop in the middle of the road, thinking their targets had given up the goat. Much to their shock, however, the car began to rev its engines in place, and shortly after sped right toward them.

They attempted to brake and turn their own cars around, without either of the pair slamming into each other. The red car was going too fast, however, and before they could even have their wits about them, the lackeys braced for impact.

Only to find nothing but the chill breeze of the night hitting them, as the illusory image and sound of the car passed right by them.

“It was one of the scruffs' weird tricks! Find them and the fucking car!” A more knowledgeable ghoul shouted.

But even as they worked quickly, our pair had long gone, with the rattle of a manhole cover going silent before the black cars even rounded the corner.

For their trouble, they found their quarry in a random parking lot, tires and wires shredded to hell, with several parts ripped out.

It wasn’t an easy trek home, the large sewers other Nosferatu were famed for moving through weren’t a mainstay of Tacoma architecture, but much like its sister city there were many hills to weave through, if you knew where to go.

Luckily, Bijou had started the nights revelry early, so even though the trip through the various Nosferatu tunnels, and the back alleys they weave into, took most of the evening, they made it home with hours until dawn.

The panic had not settled though, as the pair ducked into their small living space, and got a moment to metaphorically breathe.

Letting themself slide against the safely locked door, Bijou tussled their short, thick black hair and began to laugh and laugh, from a chuckle to a total chortle. Petite, on the other hand, could only curl in on herself, letting her too-long fingers clasp and brace the back of her patchy blonde scalp.

“Say what you will about Dorian’s nobodies, but they sure got stamina!” Bijou sighed as they opened their chic crimson jacket.

“That’s not funny. What if they follow us?” Petite did not unfurl.

“Oh please, I think even a bloodhound could not track our path through all those winding caverns and what not.”

“I’m serious, Bijou! What if they follow us? What if they spot us another night? What if they get to the house!” She released her body slightly to gesture to the abode in general. It wasn’t a mansion, but it was a lovely one-story, three-bedroom house, with a garage no less!

It wasn’t fully furnished like a standard house, but it had an eclectic smattering of furniture, picked up in various back alleys and antique stores, as well as having a whole smorgasbord of decorations from all manner of fascinations, which Bijou would soon add to as they found a nice nail to hammer into the wall and hung up the torn-off steering wheel of their stolen vehicle.

“So what if they do? They’re just ghouls at best.” The bronze-skinned cajun said, admiring their new addition.

“What if Dorian himself shows up? What if he calls in a friend, there’s a lot that can happen! I…Look, I get you just like to cause mischief, but we really do need to be careful about who we piss off! Who you piss off! I mean, again, what happens if they find the house? Especially if they try to destroy it!” She stood to face Bijou, a solid head-and-a-half above her, with pleading eyes that blinked from the side.

“Petite, they aren’t gonna-”

“But what if they do!?”

“It’s just a house!”

“The house that we’ve made into ours, that we waited out a freaking invasion in, that we have filled with the few things we have left to love and feel good about! Hell, the house that your weird ghoul girlfriend helps us maintain so it looks nice and normal!”

“Ghoulfriend, please, and again it is just a house, if the worst were to pass,”

Petite hopes they don’t say what she feels will come next.

“We just move to another one. It’s not like we’re the ones paying for it or anything.”

There is a moment of one-sided tension, as Bijou does not know the fallacy in what they’ve said.

“So, that’s just it then? Give up and move on, and let it all go to waste!?” Tears of blood begin to well in the young Nosferatu’s eyes.

“Are you saying to just die with the house? It’s property, items, an inanimate thing, it’s-”

“FINE THEN!” She barrels past them, her anger doubled with each comma of the sentence. Her bedroom door slams and locks, and the living room is silent once more.

Time passes and silence fills further, a choking presence all around them. 

In her room, the Nosferatu only known as Petite kept herself curled inward, and tried to wrestle with the unknowing pain in her chest. The worst part? She had no idea why she was feeling this way. Not really.

Every second of her life before being embraced is a faint afterimage, a persistent question tainted by imagination and assumption. It was bad enough she was saddled with the disfiguring curse of her clan, but her mind was disfigured to boot.

Over the years since, she had recovered a few faint pieces of her mind, of the girl she used to be before she was Petite, but what she found in the salted earth of her memory was not a stray surviving fruit or flower, but only the carved trenches that would never be filled and the signposts that imply more than answer along the way.

A worn doll, with faded letters.

“Mama, why do we have to leave?” A pleading youth asked a faceless woman in the driver's seat as she gripped the doll tight.

“Because sweetie, daddy is finding a better job in a new city. We’re going to have a bigger house, and you’ll be in a really nice school, with the best teachers.” The woman replied. She doesn’t know who she is trying to convince more.

“But what about gramma? Or ████?”

“We…We’ll just have to invite them over! A big vacation in our big new house.”

“Okay…I’m gonna miss them…”

“As long as you remember them, they’re never going to be far, dear. Just…hold those memories tight.”

A beat of silence passed.

“Mama, why isn’t daddy driving with us?”

“...He…He has to take the big truck, sweetie…”

An mp3 player, long since broken, whose buttons are worn smooth.

Music played in the young girl's ears as she looked up at the night sky. The melody is lost to her now, but she hummed it happily while straining to see constellations. She was blissfully unaware of the chaos outside her room.

Sometimes it peaked, forcing her to stop her humming and look behind her, but her mother had taught her not to worry too much when it did. In her mothers words, it just means that mommy and daddy were feeling really strongly.

But this time, it just kept going. It kept getting louder and louder, with the girl turning up her music each time to try and drown it out, fear tingling at the edge of her spine, until it suddenly reached a fever pitch-

And stopped.

It took her a bit to notice the silence amidst her music, but when she saw her fathers car speed out of the driveway and down the street, she finally turned down her music. It was mostly silent, but she heard the master bedroom door shut. She started her music once more, quieter this time, and pretended to not hear her mother sob.

Later that evening, the girl was shook awake in the middle of the night. She doesn’t even have time to respond.

“ -ome on, wake up!”

“Wha…what’s going-”

“Pack your suitcase, we need to go.”

“What!? Where? Why!?” Her eyes adjusted enough to see the heavy bruise on her mothers face.

“We…we’re going on a little vacation, just you and me!”

“But…what about da-”

“Don’t worry about him!” She grasped her daughters shoulders tight, as if trying to contain and restrain the very thoughts in her mind. “He told me he’s getting a new job soon, so he’s going to be real busy starting that, a-and the two of us will go somewhere else a-and have lots of fun!”

Petite couldn’t remember if she believed her, but she packed her bag nonetheless.

In the present, she continued to look through her worn cardboard box, and the various items within. A nearly disintegrated movie ticket from when she snuck out on her own, and got scolded. Her first pepper spray, after the third time her father had found them. Pressed flowers, ruined cards, old clothing, all of them random items that told fragments of a life full of running.

But there were no memories of home. Of a place to belong. Just running, fear, fairy tales, and lies.

Her tears began to well up once more, painting red lines down her cheeks, as she threw her box aside in a fit of anger. 

“How could Bijou be so careless,” she thought, “I just want one place I don’t have to run from, to finally have some peace and happy memories! And they’re ready to just, what? Abandon it all!?”

But, as the contents of the box settled, the curled and crying Petite heard a soft thwump against the ground. In the force of it, a blanket fell off of her veritable nest of a futon. It was a ratty, thin, dirty thing. But, it made her reconsider, for just that moment.

Outside on the porch, littered with vases, painted stones, and several gorgeous and meticulously cared-for plants, Bijou sat and smoked. While vampirism had robbed them of many pleasures in life, the passionate burn of a good cigarette, they were spared.

“You’ve really done it now mon amis, sent the poor girl into some kinda spiral. If only I knew how to drag her out of it…” They began to ponder.

Bijou considered themself very fortunate. They did not have the fire that forced them to keep moving, like so many others of Clan Ravnos. They had been given this house, had found a charming lover, and even a true companion in Petit. Only they had never seen the scaly youth act like this. It was a worrying reality, as was the question of how to fix it.

“Aha! I know, young ladies love big gestures, I shall put my feelings of recompense into a song and wail it outside her door!” They proclaimed to none but the moon above.

“Please, god, anything but that.” A tired voice joined in from the slider door.

The young girl stumbled out with the dirty blanket draped over her shoulders, facemask on just in case. “Glad to see you out, Petite. Look, I’m sorry for being a bit crazy tonight…a lotta nights.”

She shook her head and sat down next to him. “Honestly, I’m sorry for flying off the handle.”

“Eh, emotional stability is not exactly one of our perks as Kindred. But, I ain’t trying to hurt you, now or ever. You’re mon ami suprême, Petite.”

“I know, but…I’ve told you before, I don’t remember anything before I was embraced, not reliably enough anyways. The only way I can remember at all, the only thing that reminds me of reality, is…tangible things.”

“And the house is a part of that, it makes sense, doll.”

“It’s more than that!” She begins to shout, worrying Bijou a bit, but she needed to say it now.

“I can’t remember anything except leaving! Except for throwing my life away and having it thrown away! Even getting turned was the result of me just running!” She kept her voice down enough to not cause a masquerade breach, they did have neighbors after all.

“But…these past few years, I finally have good memories.” She wrapped the blanket tighter around herself. “Like you finding me, the first time we got some furniture for the living room, meeting Marjorie…hell, because of your souvenir fascination, we have a whole wall of trophies for crazy plans we got away from!”

“It is pretty impressive, non?”

“What i’m saying is…that is what i’m afraid to lose. My brain, whatever part of it is still truly alive and working, it keeps me grounded with this…structure? I dunno, I hate talking like I'm in therapy. But, I just don’t want to lose the things that remind me of the good times. Of the good people.” She slammed the side of her head against the cajun’s broad shoulder, and they moved in closer.

“I getcha Petite. But, hey, even if something bad does happen to the house, I ain’t gonna leave you alone. I don't want that to happen, 'specially cause of me, but i'll still be around to make plenty of new wonderful memories.”

“You promise?”

“Well duh, without me you woulda been down in the sewer tunnels every night, you’d fossilize, doll!” Bijou cackled, punctuated by a light punch to their ribs.

“But f’real, I’m not goin anywhere. Believe that.”

“I…I’ll try.”

“That’s m’girl.” They ruffled her hair, and the pair leaned in to watch the moon.

“I still don’t want to push our luck though…”

“Fair enough, we can stay well within our limits for mischief and thievery.” They said, cocky smirk audible.

It was a quiet, serene moment, punctuated by only the rustle of the breeze, and the sound of the city blocks away.

“Betcha it’d be easy to steal one of Dorian’s really nice cars.”

“BIJOU I SWEAR TO GOD-”