Blood Vivicanti (9780989878579) by Becket Page A

finally filled me up, when all my blood was gone, I had become
a Blood Vivicanti.
    Who was the Red
Man?
    He was not like me. He
wasn’t human. But he wasn’t a Blood Vivicanti either. And he wasn’t
anywhere in between.
    In fact, you could say
that between humans and the Red Man was my kind. The Blood
Vivicanti, we are the middle ground between human and
alien.
     
     
     
     
    That first night, my dreams
weren’t merely vivid images. Everything in them had a life of its
own. Tables and teakettles seemed to move, but didn’t. Stock-still
walls whispered ancient secrets without a word. The whole world
seemed alive and dead at the same time.
    Every scent, every sound
encompassing me while I slumbered filled my mind with images of
fairytales.
    The scent of a rose in the
room made my mind dream of Alice’s garden of living
flowers.
    The sound of Bach’s Minuet in G Minor on
piano made my mind dream the orderly structures of Abbott’s Flatland , with all the
peculiar shapes of polygonal love.
    For a long time afterward,
I wasn’t sure if I’d dreamed the Red Man. His violet blood had
seemed too lovely to be real.
     
     
     
     
    I was now alien in every sense of
the word.
    So how could I be true to
my self?
    I didn’t know who I was. I
didn’t even know what I was. How could I know who or how to be? I didn’t really
have a new “self.” My old self still had me.
    Sometimes I wonder if I’ll
ever wake up from the nightmare of who I used to be.
     
     
     
     
    I awoke from sleep to more
confusion. I had no idea where I was. I was alert and afraid and
worried. Questions swarmed like bees in my heart and
head.
    In a sense, it didn’t seem
too different from any other day in the life of a teenage
girl.
     
     
     
     
    Suddenly I was aware of
countless sights and smells and other sensations. It was a
simultaneous attack on all my senses. Light and sound and pain
happened all at once, like a lightning strike.
    It was difficult to see
anything, not because I could not see. My Blood Vivicanti eyes were
seeing too much. They were trying to gather in too much
information. It wasn’t darkness. Only blindness.
    It was difficult to smell
anything, not because I could not smell. My Blood Vivicanti nose
was inhaling too many scents. I could barely breathe. The feeling
was stifling. I feared I was choking and suffocating.
    It was difficult to hear
anything, not because I could not hear. My Blood Vivicanti ears
were hearing too much. All kinds of sounds were hammering against
my eardrums. The din was deafening.
    It was difficult to feel
anything because every nerve ending in my new body felt too much.
Untold touches like little fingers seemed to be grasping and
groping my skin.
    In the meantime, my
photographic memory was working overtime to catalogue this
inundation of new information. The feeling was frightening at
first. My hands covered my ears. I held my breath. My eyes squinted
to see as though in bright sunlight. I felt cocooned in sensations.
I had no clue: I was about to emerge from that cocoon newly
metamorphosed, a bloodthirsty butterfly.
     
     
     
     
    I sat bolt upright in a
large bed, holding myself and I screamed, out of pain, out of
fear.
    Two other Blood Vivicanti
were nearby. They heard me. They understood what I was going
through. They let me scream.
    Sometimes it’s good to let
someone scream.
     
     
     
     
    Slowly, the din of the
world hushed into white noise and I released my ears. Slowly, my
vision came into focus and I could now see much more than I ever
saw before, much more than anyone could ever see with human
eyes.
    I was in a strange and
beautiful room, like an enchanted chamber. My bed was king-sized,
draped in a white canopy, covered in a cloud-like duvet, twelve
pillows, each a different size. At the foot of the bed was a
fireplace beneath a widescreen TV, both were roughly the same size,
both were much larger than me. In a corner was a table and chairs
shaped like twisting vines. Thick green