Category: short stories

viviocentrism + vampires 5

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

You flick open your pocketknife and grip the handle. It’s two in the morning. Your friend’s breathing has finally slowed. You’ve eased him over, but the back of his head is not looking at you, not yet. In your other hand, you clench a wrinkled Wikipedia article. Your lips press themselves together as you read again: 

The alp also possesses an “evil eye” whose gaze will inflict illness and misfortune. Removing or damaging this eye also removes the alp’s malicious intentions.

The back of his head blinks at you. It then stays open, frozen as if in fear. You cough, bile catching at the back of your throat. You grip your knife even tighter by its sweaty hilt and pose it over a soot-colored iris.  

“It is our responsibility to preserve the most lives possible in any given situation,” you whisper, a reassurance. Holding your breath, you plunge the knife home to its gelatinous target. Your hands splatter black with blood. This is what you can do. This is what you have become. 

vivocentrism + vampires 4

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

You leave the room to your friend’s triumphant slap on the back. 

“Told you I’d see you in semi’s.” You take his praise in your usual joking way, but you then continue to stare. Your gaze, though you don’t know it, holds sadness and fear in equal measure. Your friend pulls back and scrunches his face at you. “What’s your problem, man?” he snaps, like he has communicated nothing out of the ordinary. You shake your head. 

“Nothing, just…thinking.” He shrugs and turns away. And the back of his head winks at you. 

viviocentrism + vampires 2

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

You hear sirens and run. Within the characterless walls of the high school hosting this big-deal national tournament ring the sounds of disgust and fear.

Everyone is running away, but you, through some inexplicable self-destructive urge, run towards the sounds of fear.

You come across one victim and you come across another, and the only word you can think of no matter how inhumane is littered. The first you see is a man, his shirt ripped open at the front. His heaving chest marks him as still alive, barely. Below his collarbone and above his navel the man is bleeding, bitten, from his nipples.

Even through your senseless horror, you continue forward in a torrent unquelled. The shut-eyed, almost-dead victims continue to litter the grimy floor as you follow them to their source and some sort of explanation. Only the females do not bleed, but bite marks still punch in, dark purple around their breasts, clearer and deeper along the edge of the nipple.

You reach the epicenter in trance-like agitation. Your friend is there, amidst the ambulances and squad cars. You run up to talk to him, but he is in handcuffs, and the officers are pulling him back. He opens his mouth to you, blood spilling from his gums. 

“This is what could happen,” he warns you. “This is what I can become.” 

viviocentrism + vampires 1

Sophi Nielsen1 Comment

“Elephant in the room. What is death?”
You’re caught off guard. Death is accepted, no value assigned.

“Death is an absence of life.”

The room holds its breath, waiting for the mocking response to what feels like a
stupid answer to a stupid question. But stupid questions are the name of the game when one slip-up in Cross-Examination can cascade into a disaster of outrageous proportions.

“Then what is life?”

You look at the judges, rebellious and unemotional.

“What isn’t life?”

“This is my Cross-Ex. What is life?”

You pause but you cannot wait forever

“Physical and emotional awareness.”

“Why should life be preserved?”

The question seems insensitive and unnecessary to the casual audience members gathered for the big event, but the audience isn’t deciding the round.

You incline your head at the judges.

“Life has a tendency to preserve itself. That tendency takes the form of a basic desire and fundamental human right. It is our responsibility, therefore, to preserve the most lives possible in any given situation.”

Your opponent’s next question is interrupted by the rude and persistent beep of the five timers in the room. An hour later the round ends, and as the judges turn to their careful notes to deliberate, your best friend, a lower caliber debater with rebelliously gelled hair and a persistent fedora leans on the desk you have just stood up from to stretch your legs.

“An interesting issue you discussed today,” he comments glibly. You shrug in
response.

“Critique of viviocentrism, it’s going around.” Your friend laughs.

“Like a disease.” He pauses to scrutinize the three judges and your opponents in
turn. “You know, it’s interesting,” he begins again, “under your definition, a Vampire would be alive.” You shrug again, determined to brush it off in an as distantly objective way as possible.

“They’re undead. It’s a grey area.”

“Zombies?”

“Half-dead, no emotional awareness.”

“But plants do?”

“They have experiences similar to pain.”

“Pain is not an emotion.”

“So? There’s a sliding scale of emotional awareness. It determines the life we feel
compelled to preserve.”

“And psychopaths?”

“They have emotional awareness, just…”

“Less?” your friend snaps. You have trouble accounting for his change in behaviour.

“Well, yeah–“ you shrug defensively.

“And that means?” Your words choke you. You’re tongue-tied in a way you have never been in round. “Right,” your friend finishes, “it means they’re not alive.” There is nothing to explain the disgust in his voice.