Category: speculative fiction

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.” 

the windy city 0

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

“I was following the pack
All swallowed in their coats
With scarves of red tied round their throats
To keep their little heads
From falling in the snow
And I turned round and there you go
And Michael you would fall
And turn the white snow red as strawberries
In the summertime”
-“White Winter Hymnal” by Fleet Foot Foxes

Sinfi
The caravan was broken. It had never been broken before. It had been burned, cracked, cut, and bruised, but never broken. But now the red and gold pieces had caved in, fallen over and up, crushed ships in a dark, white-capped sea.

Sinfi’s blue dress lapped around her ankles, chasing her, demanding that she follow the others.

The others ran ahead, colors dancing a fast, rich, dangerous dance. The yellows leaped and turned white. The reds stomped and turned black. The oranges twirled and turned grey.

But the dance behind them followed, faster, richer, more dangerous. The broken wood turned to flame, the flame danced, but it did not turn white, not black, not even grey.

A small solo lilted away from the fire, his voice rising and falling in tiny pants and
fast heavy footsteps. Sinfi fought against the current: the crowd, her dress, the fire. She reached back.

“Hurry Hanzi,” she urged. “Run.” His dark eyes reached for hers, but his feet
stumbled. They were right behind him.
They didn’t dance. They struck. Hanzi’s head fell to the white-capped waves, red
capped sea. Neither would part, and neither would hold back the Pharaoh’s men.

Sinfi let the current carry her, and she moved on, a steel skiff that knew how to
brave a winter storm.

Hanzi was gone, and the caravan was broken.