Judas

BY DR. AGONSON

Breaking from reverent prayer, I sense the faltering light through my closed eyes. Opening them, I lift up my face to the dimming stained glass: Judas kissing Jesus. The light all but fades as the first plunk of a raindrop strikes the outer side of this masterpiece. An example to his fellows, innumerable follow suit, likewise darkening the image, cascading against it with violent noise. Each unpredictable drumbeat melds into an overarching roar.

I’m alone, and so shout to the only one who can hear, “Forgive me!”

The echoes of that cry reverberate through the old cathedral. The bite itches, my deal with the devils. The muscles in my face contort, stretching my lips into a forced smile as the tears roll over my burning cheeks. I don’t know why, but I cover my head as I try to keep from weeping, cowering before that image, that greatest betrayal. As the convulsions die, I reach into my coat pocket, my fingers brushing the thin membrane of the Ziploc bag. Sitting up, I hold the wrinkled plastic before my face, gazing upon the solitary gel capsule, its rounded point sticking into the corner of the sack. It seems so small, so insubstantial, one little pill.

“O God.” I think about what I’m doing, what I’ve done. “Will I be damned?” There’s Judas, his lips pressed against the Messiah, but not in love. Damned if I do; damned if I don’t.

I hear a click as I pry open the seal. Stretching two fingers forward, I pinch the false medicine, throwing the bag away. My hand trembles as I bring the pill toward my lips, its center full of silver powder. I had asked them for thirty, thirty of their empty capsules, and now only this one remained.

~

“Car trouble,” I told him, “Mr. Johnson called, could barely hear him the reception was so bad, but I think he said something about a radiator.” In actuality, Mr. Johnson had not called me about the radiator, nor anyone else, for possessing his phone and wallet before he had left, I, with other such devices, ensured my crimes against uninvited witnesses or interruptions. Everyone was accounted for, busy with assignments elsewhere. It would be just the two of us. “Called to remind you to take your pills.”

Of course, this was two hours off of his schedule, two hours late, and he looked up at me in a frenzy, demanding, “Where are my pills!”

Every drawer of his desk was opened, every file rifled. With the bottle palmed, stuck to my hand with a bit of glue, I reached under an elevated set of papers which were partially lifted up by an elaborate miniature sword stand, a fanciful letter opener. Together, these formed a small tent, an empty space that could well have housed the bottle had it actually been there.

“He told me he left it on—it’s right here,” I said. Retrieving the bottle, I held it out to him. I couldn’t hide the twinges of a smile dancing at the corners of my mouth as his hands desperately reached forward, and in the same moment retracted to his breast.

“I need five. Please, please give me five.”

“Of course,” I reassure him. Unscrewing the lid, I smirk at his little precaution against his own insatiable hunger. He’d down all the pills at once were the bottle’s lid not made of silver. Upturning the container, I fill my cupped hand with three, then two more, carefully letting the excess fall back into the bottle. “Is six okay?” I ask him, holding my palm close to my face—out of his sight—as if counting the dark, oblong capsules.

“Fine! Fine!” he repeats, stretching out his hand.

“You sure six is okay?”

“Give them to me!” he shouts, and springing over his desk, grabs the capsules out of my palm. His hand flies to his mouth, and he gulps down all five of the pills without counting them. Panting, he reclines in his chair, the springs whining as he leans back. Wondering what they, my fellow conspirators, might be thinking, or suspecting, I decide to distract everyone.

Taking the seat across from him, I put my arm to one side of his desk, and in a flurry of papers, clear his workspace with one wild swipe. He stares at me agape. Sparing a glance at my feet, I chuckle at the letter opener. A little impromptu, but it had landed perfectly.

“What,” he pants, barely getting the word out, “What. . . ”

“What is the meaning of this?” I fill in. Closing my eyes and rubbing my neck, feeling the fresh sores, I ask, “how far back do you want to go?” I can tell he can’t talk by the wordless moving of his lips. “Well, let’s start with recent history,” I suggest. “When you started this, brought us all together under your direction, I tried to show you some of my inventions, and you were very short with me, remember?”

“What, what’s happening?” his faint airy voice asks.

“It was odd. I’m used to people being annoyed with me, but you weren’t, you were,” I paused, my eyes wandering to the ceiling and the high window, “afraid,” I added turning back towards him. “But you couldn’t be afraid of me; we’ve played chess together, and you’re a fearless, aggressive player. My inventions, garlic bombs, garlic spray, who’d be afraid of that?” Slapping my palm upon the table I pull the letter opener free of the stand with my feet. “The same kind of creature afraid to touch the silver lid on this bottle.”

I look him in the eyes, watching as they mutely grow wider.

“And the information,” I go on, “Information only an insider, only a mole, could provide. But what if, I thought to myself, there was no spy.” Biting my lip, I study him. His bloated double chin, glimmering with sweat, swells like a croaking frog.

“I don’t understand,” he begins, but gasping, then loses his power of speech. Swallowing, he tries again, “You think I’m some sort of—”

“You are the source, the one on the inside feeding us their information,” I interrupt. “It was easy, once I had that key, to put everything else together: your fear of garlic, the silver lid, and these pills.”

“My pills,” he said, gritting his teeth.

“I was curious; stole one or two; analyzed them. Do I need to tell you what they are?”

“I was helping you,” he spluttered, black bile flying from his mouth onto the desktop. Wiping up one of these little spots with my middle finger from the polished wood, I bring the expulsion to my nose. “What does it matter if I’m,” he stops, swallowing hard. Taking a long inhale, he resumes, “I’ve brought you together,” coughing, more black rain falls from his mouth. “Without me . . .” he gives up, falling into the back of his chair. Panting heavily, he stares at me, a flow of thick, black drool dripping from his mouth.

“I thought of that, what does it matter? Maybe there are good vampires, maybe.” Allowing a quick glance at the window, I shift in my seat, turning my back upon it, blocking their view. Leaning forward, I exaggerate a wiping motion, cleaning my finger against the lower part of my pant leg. At the same time, I grab the knife, working it under my sleeve.

From beneath the desk I continue, “So I took a sick day.” Sitting up, I add, “Well, many sick days. Two months, I think.”

I gaze upon the dying man. I have killed many before, but never in this terrible, drawn out way. He was always fat—folds of sagging skin, like a bloodhound, would hang from his corpse, swaying to and fro as he walked—but as he sat there before me, I watched him inflate with dark bile. He looked like some balloon-ish caricature of himself, his skin stretching against his clothes, especially around the collar. Standing, I went around the desk and popped the buttons on his shirt. Gasping, he began to breathe again.

I leaned down, my lips nearly brushing his ear as I whispered, “And I followed you, knew you as you’d know yourself. I was beside you when you told them what your plan was for us, that is, what you would do once we had dealt with your rivals, once you had all the power you desired. I was at your right hand then, when you admitted your purpose.”

I could hear his throat gurgling, and thought it prudent to step aside. A black vomiting of stale blood spewed from his mouth, covering the papers I had dispersed onto the floor. Rubbing his back, I cooed soothingly.

“It’ll be okay,” I add. Sliding onto the edge of his desk, I continue, “So much for recent history.” My sneer wanes a moment as he desperately clutches at my knees. His pleading eyes lift up, searching my hardened soul for some hint of compassion. Touching his hands, I say, “It’s done,” and he releases me from his plaintive hold, his arms falling in hopeless despair.

I try to continue, to tell him what else I know, but somehow my heart is broken as I watch my friend—he was indeed my friend—settling back into his chair to die. I see it, and all the hate burns up in me, leaving nothing but ash.

“You’re the one,” I finally manage to say, my head falling into my chest. I doubt he heard me, for he grew very still, the black spread of necrosis conquering his face. His skin was of two tones: some fading patches of the bloodless white swiftly vanishing under the swell of black decay. “You were the first vampire I ever met. All those years ago. You made me.” A cold shiver running up my back warns me they are near. “I was a boy. You were what? A professor or something. You were teaching my dad English. You were using your position as a teacher to feed on students. Then what? Happenchance? Did you keep tabs on me after you killed my father? Or was it just fate bringing us together again after you cooked up this little scheme? I thought I knew you the first day we met. It just took a while to remember.”

“It’s fitting,” the stranger whispers behind me, “that your career as a vampire hunter should begin and end with him.”

A glance over my shoulder reveals three of them: Suits and ties, shaven faces, one carrying a suitcase. I look to the bloated carcass beneath me. The skin is quickly flaking away, dissolving like a log in a fire.

“You’ll find the transition painful,” he continues, “but I think you’ll enjoy the benefits.” I hear the rattling of the pill bottle as one of them picks it up. “We can help, if you come with us.” I say nothing. He walks up beside me, his gaze settling on the ashy corpse. “It’s a great opportunity you have. Few ever get a chance to become one of us so easily.”

“Do you know how many vampires I’ve killed?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder. The other two, their backs turned, are walking toward the door.

“I know your name is notorious,” he replies. “I don’t have an exact number though.”

“Personally, that is, with my bare hands, counting him, that adds up to ninety nine.”

“Remarkable.”

“I know all the different ways to kill you—I mean, us.”

“That knowledge may still have some use—”

I cut him off, “but this one, it was the most personal.”

He sighs. “You’ll find those sentiments grow dull as you change.”

“Then I should enjoy them now,” I say.

Hopping off the desk, I lean down and kiss the bleached skull of my friend, my hand working the knife free from my sleeve.

“Do you think it will help with OCD?” I ask, holding the knife out of sight.

“What?”

“The change.”

“I’m afraid that’s something many vampires struggle with. It might make it worse.”

“Oh well,” I say, thrusting the knife into his chest. He crumbles to dust. “One hundred.”

~

The rain pelts the cathedral, and I sit alone in a pew listening to the sound. I hold the little pill in my palm, gazing at it. I know the pain it will cause, but I know too what a vampire can do, what I will do. The change is like a fever, and I feel my mind drifting away into delirious sleep. What sort of dreams will I have?

Pulling myself back from the darkness, I jump up from my seat, and racing to the aisle, fall to my knee, crossing myself with the suicidal pill clutched in my hand. Half running, I hear the echoes of my footfalls as I make my beleaguered way toward the alter, and falling upon the railing, I pray.