I don’t remember before. Though I try and try, what comes back to me is only a series of snapshots, badly fragmented flashbacks, like a hacked up commercial about my life the way it was. Before. Before what, you ask. I can’t really be sure, but something happened to me before that chilly morning in March when he found me. Something horrible, and my past was no longer there. I was a new being. That morning is my first real memory.
You could say I was born that day, though possessing a body that might have been about nineteen years old. I couldn’t tell him my name, my age, or where I lived. I was as helpless as a newborn babe when I looked up from my dirty naked state, crouched in a narrow alley, and saw the light forming a halo around his face.
He called himself David, and said that I was in shock and that he was taking me to a hospital. It was a nightmare. They stuck all sorts of tubes in me and pumped burning fluids into my veins. I found my voice, and I howled with pain.
Sensing that something was not quite right and that these people would be unable to help me, David took it upon himself to extract me from that place, and shortly afterwards, I found myself in his apartment. He wrapped me in his bathrobe and offered me warm tea. I put the dainty opalescent cup to my lips, but its taste did not appeal to me. I set the teacup back in its saucer, and the tea grew cold. David tried to feed me, but I could not eat. He asked me questions, but I knew nothing. It went on like this for several days, and David’s eyes were becoming deep and shadowed with worry. He went to the police station and asked questions, but was unable to find anything about me.
David was a clerk at a small law firm, and he was gone for many hours each day, which left me to my own vices. For the most part, I lounged about his apartment and rummaged through his things, though hours could pass for which I could not account.
One evening he urged me to sit next to him by the fire. His place was warm and cluttered with books and masculine objects. “What is this?” I asked, holding up an instrument that looked like an odd wheel.
“Gyroscope. Here, let me show you.” He took the wheel from my hand and wound a string around it. When he pulled the string, the wheel began to spin, and, mesmerized, I watched it spin.
Tenderly, he pulled a stray curl away from my face. “You need a name,” he said. “I’ve been thinking I will call you Annabel. Do you know Edgar Allen Poe?”
“The name sounds a bit familiar, but I’m not sure,” I said.
“He was a writer. He wrote a poem called ‘Annabel Lee’:
“It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.”
I was enchanted. “Tell me more.” And so, he continued to recite the entire poem, which ended with the haunting lines:
“For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
and the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling-my darling-my wife and my bride,
In the sepulcher there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.”
Thus, I became known as Annabel. a
Though the food he offered did not appeal to me, I hungered. David tried again and again to feed me. Even once, in a horrible ordeal, he held me tightly in his grip and forced food down my throat. I struggled and was sick. Yet, I was starving.
In my mania, I began to hear a sound like drums. I realized that I did not hear this sound when I was alone, but only when David came around. When he took me out on the street, the lights were so bright and the sound of the drums around me tremendous! I covered my ears and screamed in terror. David took me home, and I did not feel safe until I was alone in my room again, with the heavy curtains drawn tight.
When all was quiet, in the night, drawn by a hunger I did not understand, I left David sleeping and crept out of the apartment, down the narrow stairs, and onto the street. I had walked several blocks when I realized that I was being followed. I turned quickly and saw her, a mere child with a pale face and brilliant red hair.
“Are you lost?” I said, though I was the one who felt lost.
The child came towards me. “I want to show you something.”
She then took my hand, and I followed her to the alley. A man lay there shivering.
She pointed at the man. “He will die,” she said.
“He is sick, but someone might help him,” I said.
She shook her head. “No, he will die. I will show you.”
The man looked up with fevered eyes and saw the child, who, in turn, reached down to embrace him. I watched her as she bit into his the soft flesh of his neck, and I watched the life flow out of him. I heard the drum beat slower and slower and then stop altogether.
We found another, a creature whose disappearance would not be missed, a girl who had stumbled out of a nightclub. I called to her, and she came near the alley. The child watched approvingly as I fed. The taste was metallic, like no other, and I could feel all of my senses coming back to life as I drank. I felt like I was flying. There is a point where the flavor begins to sour, and at that point, I stopped. I looked at the girl, so peaceful now, and I felt for her. Felt the sadness of her life gone into me. I knew the father who had left her and the boy who had only just had her. I began to pick her up.
“Leave her,” the child said. “She is nothing. The police will deal with her.”
“I can’t. I won’t.”
“Then bring her to the cemetery.”
So, cradling my first victim in my arms, I entered the cemetery. I propped her against a tombstone, and taking a rose from a nearby post-funeral flower arrangement, I placed it in her limp hand.
“She was a common whore,” the child said. “I don’t know why you bother.”
I looked back at the child, who seemed to have grown impatient with my sentimentality. “I knew her,” I said. How could I explain what I had felt, what I had seen?
We left the cemetery and started back towards David’s apartment.
“We know all of them,” she said. “You will tire of that soon enough.”
“And my world shall become nothing but a cemetery,” I said, feeling a bit wistful.