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fruitssalad · 2 months ago

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The Other Son - WoD HalloZine "Haunting"

Commissioned art by @medeaft

Author's Note: It’s been such a joy to take part in @vampemoqueen’s WoD HalloZine—my very first zine! Thank you so much for this experience and putting it all together. Here’s a short story of Kai, my beloved Ventrue, and the shadows of the past that haunt them.

Content Warnings: Brief references to drugs, self harm, maybe suicide (if you squint?), nihilism, and murder of a child.

“Jesus!” they cursed as their feet plunged into the silty drainage and mud squelched underfoot.

It had only been a little over half an hour since Kai entered this godforsaken place, burrowing their way underground like vermin. Beyond the manhole covers overhead, cars zoomed by and train tracks rumbled. They were still close to the surface, close enough to hear the city breathe.

However, down here, filth and grime carved out names for themselves on the grooved walls. At first, they gagged at the stench, finding it unbearable, but as their senses adjusted, one smell blended into another, like a sickness they could no longer distinguish.

Under normal circumstances, they would never be caught dead wandering around the sewers downtown. But since when were things normal? Like all fledglings turned neonates, they had been obeying tall and elusive orders every night since their Embrace. Except, they weren’t like the others—they were groomed to succeed and never to fail.

There was another splash as the ground sucked them in, causing them to sink knee-deep.

“For Christ’s sake!” they yelled again in frustration.

All at once, they heard the scolding voice of Liezel, their mother, resounding in their head just like it was yesterday, “Kai! How many times must I tell you? Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain!”

They mouthed the words as it came. Liezel’s arms were akimbo, her brows furrowed as spittle flew across the room. She had rapped their knuckles harshly with the wooden handle of a feather duster for good measure.

Kai could feel the sting of pain upon their hand, as clear as day, but sharper still was the humiliation, the hurt pride. Their younger stepbrother, Alfie, had giggled to himself in the corner. They clenched their fists. People said they took after their mother’s temper, and more often than not, they found themself agreeing.

At this point, their tailored pants and leather shoes were soaked through and ruined. Even dry cleaning wouldn’t be able to salvage them in their miserable state. Grimacing, they brushed beads of waste water off their waistcoat—it was Sisyphean, almost—as new drops replaced old, blooming in piss-drunk patches across silk weaves.

Why had their sire, Elena, sent them here again? Oh yes, “The sewer rats,” she said. “They’re hiding something from us. Find out what it is.”

They flipped their damp bangs away from their face in annoyance. Nearly two decades as a Kindred and they were still an errand runner—to Elena, to Lady Josephine, and in turn, to Baron Judge, the overarching Camarilla… Stringing them along with faint promises of power, like seductive wisps of smoke unfurling from their tongues, slithering into their ear and making a home in the hollow cavity of their skull.

Well, there were no sewer rats here. Through the dimmed shadows of light, all they could hear was the sound of sewage flushing through the system, pipes hissing and shaking, and molded moisture leaking from the arched ceilings. As they took a right, a group of vagrants huddling over a naked fire in an oil drum eyed them suspiciously. One crawled out from his tattered cardboard bed and shambled over to them.

“You got any er—”

Fentanyl. Meth. Heroin. He probably thought he could score some. The mole people—the homeless, the addicts, the outcast. They lived underground, in the flood tunnels, because there was nowhere else to go. Sometimes the water would reach so high that a bunch of them would drown. Not being quick enough made them easy pickings for the Nosferatu, but still bad blood all around.

Kai scrunched their face in disgust before relaxing their expression. Maybe they would have some use for this pitiful thing in front of them. With a practiced smile, they simpered, “I do… but first, tell me, how well do you know this place?”

The man coughed and shivered, grinning with swollen gums and putrid teeth. “Like the back of my hand.”

A guide. The gatekeeper of the sewer entrance had talked at length about its subterranean depths. Perhaps this man would know more. Raising an eyebrow, Kai focused their gaze, making sure their eyes met. A thin ring around their irises glowed—subtle, enticing, yet demanding. “Take me to its belly.”

He blinked slowly, once, twice, and then nodded. “This way,” he beckoned, turning around and trudging off through the labyrinth like a good soldier.

And so, Kai carried on, past winding corridors and forgotten lairs, crushing soiled glass and used needles beneath their heels. At the sides, strange altars decorated with melted wax candles and rotting pomegranates honored secret gods. The tunnels got darker and colder, so much so that they had to rely on their phone light to brighten up the path, but the guide didn’t seem bothered. In fact, he became livelier the deeper they went, as if he were drawing energy from some unknown source.

“Albert and Persephone would have a field day with this,” Kai grumbled under their breath, mocking the two absent members of their coterie behind their backs. Sarcasm dripped from their lips, cloying and condescending.

They recognized that same unease they felt whenever Albert conducted one of his ceremonies, or the time they witnessed Persephone casting eerily-shaped shadows from her bare hands. The taint of Oblivion clutched at their unbeating heart and made their skin crawl.

Distant screams and moans from an alley interrupted their thoughts and a gnarly hand tugged at their arm. “Not there,” the guide warned before taking off again along another passageway.

The metallic stairs they descended afterward screeched on its hinges, clanking against the wall. Kai wondered how far down they went. It felt like they had been walking for miles. At some point, their phone light flickered and went out, and they stood in total darkness on the suspended staircase swaying in the chilled air.

It was so silent you could hear a pin drop, which was weird, precisely because they heard nothing. No creaking, no footsteps, not even the sound of one’s breathing.

Where had their guide disappeared to? Was this some kind of twisted prank they had fallen for? But it couldn’t be, that mortal should’ve succumbed easily; they saw him submit, enslaved by their will, he couldn’t—

“Kai! Help me, please!” a shrill cry pierced their left ear, shocking them to the core as they stumbled blindly forward, tumbling down the flight of stairs.

When they finally hit the rock-hard ground, something wet and sticky trickled down the side of their face as a dull, throbbing ache blossomed from the crown of their head. “Shit,” they muttered, tasting tangy iron on their lips, like licking a battery.

Dazed, they tried to pick themself up, only to slip on the waxy surface, falling into the muck on all fours. Shame and embarrassment rushed in twofold, rising like waves of heat towards their chest. That prickly feeling at the back of their throat returned, threatening to come apart. This couldn’t be happening—not to them, they didn’t deserve this.

“What do you think you deserve?” the same voice whispered in their ear. Cold, unnatural, and unfeeling, but uncomfortably familiar.

“I deserve a lot more than you!” Kai had screamed, back when they were kids playing on the cliffs along the coast. Resentment reared its ugly head as they glared down at their stepbrother. His chubby hands grasped the cliff’s ledge while he dangled in mid-air, squirming beneath Kai’s feet.

“I deserve all of this!”

They could crush him right now, that stupid weakling who’d never worked a day in his life, who’d everything handed to him on a silver platter, just because he was the favorite.

No one would know.

Crush him.

Do it.

The whispers grew louder as they buried their head in their hands and growled.

“Kai! Help me, please!”

They took one more look at their stepbrother’s soft brown eyes and the ocean of tears that had welled up in them, before setting their foot down on his tiny fingers, treading on them like ants. Alfie lost his grip and Kai had watched quietly as his body was reduced to a simple ragdoll in the tempestuous wind. His limbs tossed about wildly as the howling gust drowned out the boy’s cries. Jagged bedrock by the cliffside framed its subject like a moving watercolor painting. If they squinted, they could pretend it was a bird diving to catch its prey.

They waited, patiently and then some more, until the red sea foam turned pale, and all that was left was a memory of what once was. One less mouth to feed, one less child to fawn over, one less rival to tussle with. Time didn’t bring any remorse. Perhaps they had been a monster even before they were reborn.

From afar, an unearthly roar and mechanical whir shredded through the stillness, jolting them back into the present. Was this what the Nosferatu were hiding? Kai had heard stories of otherworldly entities that existed on this plane, undecipherable, unseen to the naked eye. There were more than just Kindred around, and they were beginning to realize that they weren’t on the top of the food chain.

Bolting forward, they couldn’t care less if they looked more animal than human as the sludge clung to their feet. It felt like a mass of hands creeping up their legs, dragging them down into the dirt where they belonged. They should’ve been put down for what they did. But they felt nothing. Years and months of nothing. At the funeral, they pressed a shard of glass into their palm, squeezing it within the pocket of their trousers, so that they would cry. Liezel couldn’t look at them for weeks.

Maybe this was the day of reckoning, their last chance to repent, but was there really something to feel guilty for? They had merely taken what was rightfully theirs from the beginning—before their mother remarried another man they were forced to call father, before they were told to sacrifice whatever they had for the sake of the other son.

They had reached the end, knowing this to be so as loose stone and rubble gave way, crumbling into the void pit below. It was pitch black, a long drop into a vortex of emptiness. For every second they stopped to pause, the darkness enshrouded them further, heavy and suffocating as it seeped in through their orifices.

And they were back on the cliff, at the scene of the accident. Although, instead of Alfie, it was Kai who was standing at its edge, waiting to be pushed.

“How does it feel to be in my shoes? How does it feel not to exist?” The tone was derisive, contemptuous.

Did Alfie expect them to accept their fate? To beg for forgiveness and mercy? They convulsed with laughter, the sound ricocheting off the walls. Their body was hollowed out, empty, a vacuum where nothing could be replaced.

There was only one thing left to do. Fear and weakness had no place in the Clan of Kings.

“Don’t you know?” they remarked, eyes black as coal. “I always win.”

And then, they jumped.

Dividers by @diableriedoll

#ate #kai u hurt my feelings #vtm

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fruitssalad · 2 months ago

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Memento Mori - The Cardinal North

Author's Note: Fyi, I used the prompt “Haunting” as I was originally going to submit this for @vampemoqueen’s WoD Hallozine, but ended up choosing another entry. Shoutout to the lovely @childofmalkavians for their art direction on my cover image!

“Memento Mori” is about Dávdna’s (or Dagny, as she was once called) near-death experience as a child, and how that resulted in her future sire haunting her throughout the years.

“Eh, Dagny, stop that,” her father called out. There was a stern edge to his voice, weary, and worn like cracked leather. He sucked his teeth, yellowed from tobacco, which he sometimes chewed or smoked in his pastime.

Her humming mellowed into a sigh before sputtering out like an extinguished flame. She knew better than to upset him further when he addressed her in that tone. He turned his gaze back towards the horizon, crow’s feet splaying out at the corners of his eyes as he squinted—searching, hoping, wandering.

It had been a long day out at sea, casting lines and nets, but each time they came back empty handed—peculiar for what was considered the prime cod fishing season. It was that period of the year where the days were short and darkness swept across the windstricken landscape of the region they called home: Romsa. With nightfall approaching, whatever light they had was fading. They would need to set sail soon.

One of the men said Guolleipmil was angry. The people have been taking too much and giving nothing in return. And that was when the god would withhold any catch as punishment.

“Her singing attracted a bad omen,” another one accused, his eyes narrowing in Dagny’s direction.

“Pshh!” the skipper snapped, his patience wearing thin as he came to his daughter’s defense, silencing the man with a single hand raised in the air.

“One last try,” he urged, his broad, calloused fingers already working through the fishing tackle. “Then we go.”

Murmured whispers broke out among the crew, but their actions betrayed their words, hands and feet busying themselves at their stations as if on autopilot, one step ahead of where their minds were at present.

“Dagny,” her father whistled low through his crooked teeth, his hand lethargic and weighty as he motioned for her to join them.

Folding her legs in, she pressed her palms against the wooden floorboard of the deck, smooth and cool against her clammy skin, pushing herself up onto her feet. She didn’t want to disappoint him when he’d fought with eadni—mama—to bring her along on one of his many fishing trips, instead of leaving her at home to tend to the farm, like a good little girl should. Dagny was at the age of restlessness, where the world was an oyster, and everything had to be explored, at least once.

Áhčči had quelled the tumultuous waves surging underneath mama’s calm veneer. “Let her be,” he had said, his gruffness replaced with warm velvet caressing her shoulders. “She is all we have...”

Papa longed for a boy, even though he had never mentioned it out loud. But Dagny knew. And she couldn’t fail him—not now, not ever.

She darted over, taking on her gloves like a second layer of skin before throwing the hooks out, watching it sink out of sight with the plummet attached at the end of the line. Her hands slipped into a repetitive pattern, pulling the cord taut between her fingers, checking every so often if anything would bite. The practice itself was meditative, her eyes turning glassy like the gentle swell sloshing against the hull.

They said her eyes were waterlogged—too pliant and weak. She would go places, but never gather any moss. Yet there she stood, legs rooted to the ground, listening to the waters rolling in like the rhythmic tick of a grandfather’s clock, comforting, in silence. Apart from the occasional flock of oystercatchers overhead, they were relatively undisturbed. Time grew sluggish. The blistering winds pierced her cheeks and crystallized on her lashes.

There was a glimmer on the surface, maybe it was the last rays of sun catching on the ripples. She rubbed her eyes, once distant, now focused on the spot where the light had blinded her. And it reappeared, that unearthly sheen—a secret morse code, beckoning and luring her like prey.

Someone called her name. A deep voice, like her father’s, except… it wasn’t her name, not quite. She jerked her head in each cardinal direction, but the men were still, like marbled statues, lost in space and time to the twilight hour. Papa was nowhere to be found.

“Dávdna…”

Again.

“Čahcerávga,” she muttered under her breath, knowing them as one of the many who had perished at sea.

Don’t answer. She had been taught not to.

But a force tugged at her from within the bowels of her chest, and she felt compelled to speak. “Bures?”

There was no response.

“Hei?” she tried again, but nothing stirred. Not even the men tried to shush her. Were they still around?

Something bobbed in the waters below. She leaned over the railing, watching bubbles froth in the foam. A monstrous face flashed across her vision and she gasped, dropping the line she had held as it slid carelessly into the open sea.

“No!” she cried out, scrambling to salvage the rest of the tackle, clutching onto it for her dear life as the cord entangled itself around her fingers.

Without warning, the boat keeled on its side and she lost her balance, plunging headfirst into the murky depths of saltwater. Frantic shouts of commotion came from the vessel and she saw the crew’s distorted faces reflecting back at her from the world above. They popped up next to each other like scattered stars in the sky—so magnificent and beautiful, she could stay here forever.

“Man overboard!”

The yell cut through the air like a knife, sharp enough to reach the pit she was falling through. It ripped her from her reverie the way a patch of hair would be torn from her scalp. She shook her head, limbs awakening from their temporary slumber as they powered into motion.

Dagny had always been a strong swimmer, but little did she know that she was caught in the middle of a cross sea. And even she was no match for that.

Pockets of water swirled around her as she struggled violently against the undercurrent. It resisted her like thick sludge, clinging onto every part of her body, coaxing her to stop, to surrender, to accept that this was where she would finally meet her end.

The freezing temperatures numbed her flesh, lulling it back to sleep. Pressure filled her eardrums as she was sucked deeper into the briny abyss. How far had she fallen? Her mouth flew open and she screamed and screamed. But it was silent—no sound could travel here, not in this godforsaken place she had once considered her second home.

So cold…

Tired…

Give in…

Her soul would be offered to Čáhcealmmái now.

She could hear her heartbeat quietening, eyes falling heavy as her lungs burned. Yet she carried on, defiant in her pathetic, feeble paddling. The nerves in her fingers twitched and her muscles spasmed, but she continued moving.

“I’m still here! I’m still alive!” she wanted to howl.

In return, she felt scaly, webbed claws hook onto her oilskins, shredding the fabric and scratching her back. The next minute, she was hurled upwards, yanked from the womb of the ocean’s belly as she rose to the top.

Amid the flurry of activity, a pair of glowing embers greeted her from beneath the waves, like pin prick dots of a blazing sun. Globs of saliva drooped from elongated fangs in sinewy strings, dissolving into the tide. She should’ve been scared, she should’ve turned away and bolted, but she didn’t. Instead, she reached out, delirious, noticing how the fire flickered in those eyes. But before her hand could draw any closer, the creature shrieked, pushing her back as it disappeared as quickly as it came.

Floating on the water’s surface, Dagny took her first gulp of air, reborn.

When she was safely hoisted up onto the boat, her father lunged forward, grasping her frail body in his arms as he pressed his lips desperately into her wet hair. “Mu mánná…” he choked.

My child.

She peered up at his sore, reddened eyes, and his grip around her tightened. It was only then that she realized it was the first time she had seen him cry.

━━━━━━━━━━━

For a long time afterwards she searched for answers. A sprinkling of hints or clues as to what she had witnessed down below.

“Be grateful that the spirit spared you,” she was often told.

Whatever questions she had were put to rest, buried six feet under, unspoken and unheard of, as if it had never happened at all. As if one could only will something into existence by acknowledging it. If only it were that simple.

Those eyes, like scorching coal, haunted her wherever she went. She could never shake off the unsettling feeling of being stalked—from the shadows, the blurry figures in her peripheral vision, or the glint in a smiling fox’s gaze, like she had been branded to the bone. In her sleep, she dreamt of those demonic eyes, the same eyes that belonged to her savior, and the strange name it had called her.

Eventually, she grew up, taking after her father like a replica. Though she had flown from the nest, making a life for herself in another coastal town down south. He sailed less now in his age; she sailed more.

One night, she found herself back in the same hometown where she had spent most of her childhood years. It was enroute along the course they had mapped out beforehand. While her crewmates hogged the local bar, crass and blustery with their swollen faces, she slinked away, paying a rare visit to her old man.

He was thrilled to see her. Mama had passed a few years ago and he missed company.

“You’ve cut it short,” he remarked, eyes crinkling as he thumbed through the ends of her hair. His toothless grin proud, as if he had raised a son in place of a girl.

“Come and live with me, áhčči,” Dagny suggested. She had made the offer countless times, but he was stubborn, ox-headed.

“I won’t go any further south,” he scoffed, clearing the phlegm from his throat as his mouth twisted in disgust.

They spoke differently there; they lived differently. That was not his home. He would rather die alone than surrounded by a community he didn’t belong to.

When he headed to bed, she wandered off, aimlessly ambling along the shore. She stepped over the seaweed and debris that had washed up along its banks, twirling the neck of a liquor bottle between her fingers. The faint strains of drunken sea shanties echoed from a distance as she sat upon a half-forgotten log sunken in the sand.

The sulfur smell of the sea calmed her. She took a swig, scrunching her face as the harshness stripped her throat bare. There was always dried fish blood under her nails, no matter how hard she scrubbed, and flakes of scale embedded in her clothes. She’d grown accustomed to the odor of sour wool and stale sweat—this was her life now. But she couldn’t help but wonder: was there something more?

A shift in the breeze caused her to shudder, and she heard that damn name again.

“Dádvna…”

It carried the scent of something new, something foreign, and along with it, a sense of unease—one she had tried so hard to suppress, time after time.

Just as she picked herself up to leave, there was a loud gurgle and a roaring whoosh, and she found herself slipping, face hitting the ground as she was dragged by her feet into the brackish waters. She thrashed about, swiping at whatever it was that had caught her, clawing her way free.

But it didn’t let up, holding her in a vice-like grip, too powerful for her to overcome. All at once, she was taken back to the time she had nearly drowned as a child, flopping like a dying fish, only to be released back on land. All of it amounting to this.

How apt.

And she laughed and laughed. Bubbles escaped from her mouth as seawater suffocated her lungs. Through the darkness, she saw the same blood red eyes that had haunted her over the past decades, and she threw her arms open, welcoming it.

━━━━━━━━━━━

Endnotes

Thank you for reading!

I’ve tried to do my research on coastal Sámi communities, as well as their language and mythology, which I hope I’ve portrayed respectfully. However, if I’ve made any mistakes, I’m happy to receive feedback, so I can correct them accordingly.

Dividers by @strangergraphics

#dávdna #🫶🫶#vtm

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