Events from “An Ivory Tower Education”
Notes by Anthony
Zachary was beginning to think that the universe had a thing for bathrooms. Zachary lay in the fetal position in the tub, his knees awkwardly bumping into the queen-sized mattress Ben had shoved on top of it. His neck and legs should have been protesting the cramped conditions, but all Zachary registered was a dull stretch in his back and thighs. He took an unnecessary deep breath to sigh at his undignified confinement and instantly regretted it. Laundry detergent overwhelmed him at first, harsh and chemically floral in a way that would only resemble flowers to a man who had lived his entire life on the moon. It was a half-hearted attempt to mask the odors that had permeated the mattress over years. Zachary now understood what the sommelier had meant at his sister’s incredibly boring wedding wine tasting. Sweat was a diverse bouquet of flavors that blossomed over his tongue like wine. Frontal notes of acidic, tangy fear sweat were quickly overpowered by the full-bodied musk of arousal, followed by the sickly sweet aftertaste Zachary remembered from visits to his grandfather’s nursing home. Ammonia from overzealous cleaning products and urine stung the back of his throat. He gagged on heavy, rotten earth of mold and tried not the imagine spores invading the soft tissues of his eyes and tongue: blood-red clustering mushrooms blooming up his throat and pushing out his eye sockets. Zachary coughed quietly into the sleeve of his sweatshirt and resolved to not breathe for the rest of the night.
He had to focus. It was only a few minutes before dawn, and Zachary needed to remember everything that happened. His dream last night had been less of a message to the world and more his standard fare of terrifying nonsense. A giant red sun had descended to earth, boiling the seas with its angry fire. From the sun, or maybe from a spaceship that came with the sun (dream logic didn’t always transition cleanly from one terror to the next), red tentacled aliens invaded the earth and began eating everyone. Zachary woke with their tentacles pinning him down and sharp teeth ripping open his stomach. He’d screamed for several minutes in the tub while Ben rubbed his back and tried to calm him down. It worked, but throughout the night Zachary had found himself distracted by faint chittering in the pipes and walls. Shadows kept slithering just at the corners of his vision. Hot breath and teeth scraped his skin every time he moved. It was so much harder to dismiss these sensations as figments of his imagination now that he knew his visions could be real.
But Ben remained his ever-excitable and helpful self, and that consistency helped stabilize Zachary. Ben bought pig blood for Zachary to drink, and while it was a little gross, it was filling. Ben had also checked out possibly every book the library had about vampires, and together they tested out all the vampire myths and legends they could think of. Zachary had found himself laughing with genuine feeling as Ben shoved garlic at his face (still gross! But not magically repelling) or tried to disinvite him from his home. Ben even wrote out a table of hypotheses and results like they’d half-remembered doing in freshman biology. Zachary asked Ben to check out some books about the Masons, but they didn’t learn much – just that the Tower was a tourist trap the Masons had built to celebrate George Washington’s accomplishments and being one of them on this side of the Potomac.
That was when either the best or worst thing happened. Zachary still wasn’t sure which it was yet. Someone had knocked on the door. Zachary told Ben to hide in the bathroom with a kitchen knife while he talked to their unexpected guest. He said his name was George, and he was here to help and protect Zachary from the people after him. He said if he wanted to kill Zachary, he would have already done it. That seemed reasonable enough, so Zachary opened the door and let him in. He looked and sounded like a James Bond – English accent, fancy suit, inscrutable face. Like he could kill a man with a pen and not spill a drop of his martini. Zachary tried to read him with the aura-vision he had used in the diners and “saw” that George was suspicious of him but not hostile, so Zachary called Ben out from the bathroom. Like a stronger and more handsome Yoda instructing Luke, George told Zachary to cut open his hand and talked him through using the blood to heal his wound. Useful. Probably not the thing someone would do if they wanted Zachary to be an easy target later. George told them that if he could track them down, then others could, so they needed to move. Ben and Zachary quickly packed some backpacks and followed George to a taxi, where he directed them the Americana Hotel. A seedy but discrete place for government officials to meet up with their lovers or spies to exchange information. Perfect for a vampire fugitive.
After purchasing two rooms for three nights, George started to actually give them some useful information. The Sabbat, he said, are the bad guys. They don’t care about humans at all and just want to rule the world and make scary monsters and eat kids. The Black Hand are their assassins. The Camarilla are like the US government. They keep humans and vampires safe from each other and make rules so that vampires don’t give into “The Beast.” That was the instinct that had tried to protect Zachary from the sunlight and flame yesterday, and it makes vampires do terrible things to feed when they’re hungry. They were interrupted by birds divebombing the window. Zachary had frozen, remembering the aliens rocketing down to earth, but George went out to investigate. Outside, one apparently stabbed his shoulder with its beak before going back to being a bird corpse, since all the birds had been dead for days at least. George brought it back to see if Zachary could read it somehow. Zachary tried to activate his aura-vision, but the second he touched it the bird smiled at him and said “hello, friend” before dying again. When Zachary went back to the window, all the bird corpses below had disappeared. George said that none of the people after them could conjure tangible illusions or animate dead birds, so they should be safe.
Zachary smiled in the tub, remembering how nice it was to not be the only one seeing crazy, impossible shit. The smile fell when he thought of what happened next. George said that, before he could continue, Ben had to become “of the blood.” Ben already knew too much, so he needed to be ghouled. According to George, Zachary had to feed his blood to Ben at least once a month, but in return Ben would be able to heal from a bullet to chest in the same way Zachary had healed his cut. Zachary told George if that was really so benign then they should think of a better term for it than “ghoul.” Ben agreed, and Zachary cut his hand again and dripped blood into a plastic motel cup. Seemed less intimate than having Ben drink from directly from his hand.
If Zachary’s heart hadn’t already been spat up in bloody chunks and tossed in the dumpster, he’s sure it would have stopped when Ben collapsed and began spouting about a temple and numbers. Zachary thought the numbers were 76614112. George suspected that Zachary’s “Malkavian” blood, which is the vampire clan he’s apparently part of, passed on his prophetic ability to Ben. Zachary felt the strange organ clench within him in a confusion of anger and guilt, and he bit his knuckles to keep from banging on the sides of the tub. He should have just walked away from the station and Ben when the power went out. He should have tried to look for someone who could make Ben forget everything that had happened the past few days. How could Zachary poison Ben with the vampire blood that had upended his life and the visions that had tormented him for as long as he had been alive? But the guilt he felt even now wasn’t strong enough to overpower the wave of selfish relief when Ben agreed to be ghouled. When Ben willingly infected himself with Zachary’s madness to stay by his side and then seemed none the worse for wear. He just hoped that Ben won’t end up hating him for this. Or at least that Ben could live long enough to hate him for it.
Zachary reached down for the flashlight he’d brought into the tub and clicked it on. He tried not to look at the stains that ringed the tub or the mildew that festered in the grout just visible where the mattress rested on top of the tub. He pulled out a pen from his pocket and the old college notebook they had used to document Zachary’s vampire powers. He wanted to get this down before the sun rose and the nightmares drove all other thoughts from his mind.
Camarilla. Seven clans of kindred (discrete word for vampires). Rule city-domains like Alexandria. Each domain has its own Prince (gender-neutral).
Tremere. Sorcerers. Do magic. Make wards so kindred & ghouls can’t enter.
Ventrue. Leaders but not always the Prince. Connected to govt., big companies, defense.
Toreador. Artists. Musicians. Center of attention. Drawn to beauty.
Nosferatu. Physically cursed. Good spies. Control bugs & birds. Can always watch you. Live in sewers.
Gangrel. Like Dracula. Turn into animals, mist. Have claws. Like the outdoors.
Malkavians. Me! Seers. Sometimes respected & sometimes disregarded as lunatics. Madness is source & consequence of prophecy.
Brujah. George forgot this one! Had to remind him he said seven clans. Leaders like Ventrue. Angry & prone to uncontrolled frenzy.
Sabbat.
Defectors from other clans
Lasombra. Turn into literal shadows. Brutal. Like to play games.
Tzimisce. Flesh monsters. Take people & merge them into bigger flesh monsters. Can avoid detection. Related to aliens or thing in NYC?
Setites. Snake god dudes.
Giovanni. Italian merchants and necromancers
Camarilla Traditions. Each prince has different rules. Some want to kill me because I broke traditions.
Masquerade: don’t reveal true nature to those not of blood (why I had to give Ben my blood and why they’re mad about broadcasts)
Domain: domain is of own concern (do what Prince says)
Progeny: only sire at your elders(?) permission (broke since Immanuel didn’t have permission)
(didn’t catch this one): ones you create are your own responsibility (Immanuel is responsible for my actions)
Hospitality: honor domain & present yourself to the Prince when you enter (we broke that too)
Zachary let the flashlight rest under his chin and watched it cast strange shadows on the porcelain tub. After that information dump, he and Ben shared what they experienced in their visions. They’d both seen the Temple in the cornfield, though Zachary didn’t know what the numbers meant. Ben drew it and it looked a little like the Capitol building, but all black and very old. Truth be told, they didn’t share much that hadn’t been already said on the radio, except that the woman in the water was trying to find herself and that his sire had said it would be bad if she did. Only things Zachary kept back were the name of his sire and the instruction to find and open the First Gateway. Immanuel had told Zachary that people might read her mind and he was afraid that they could read Ben’s or George’s too. Nothing Zachary could do if they tried to read his mind. George theorized that the woman/women Zachary saw might be really old vampires, as some of them have been around since before humans left Africa.
Zachary ripped out the page from the composition notebook and shoved it in his pocket with the pen. He suspected George might not be thrilled he was keeping notes and tape recordings of what was happening given the Masquerade tradition, but Zachary needed some way to keep it all straight in his head. To know what was real and what wasn’t. He believed that George and the Camarilla wanted to stop the end of the world, but that didn’t mean they would go about it the right way. When Zachary woke up tonight, he’d share whatever terrible vision he’d had with Ben and George. He’d ask George what the next steps were and exactly who George was working for. Then he’d contact Immanuel and ask if he should go with George. Zachary didn’t think he could get away from George without a fight Zachary was sure he’d lose, and certainly not without risking Ben’s life. But at least Zachary would know to look for an exit.
Zachary felt the heavy darkness pulling at his eyelids and turning his muscles to stone. The sun was coming up and it was time to let the monsters in his head have their fun. Zachary thought he heard banging from the room but couldn’t summon the energy to move or care. He just prayed that he had made the right decision to trust George. That this was the way to stop the end of the world. That was the important thing. That was the only thing that truly mattered.