If Someone You Love Has Become a Vurdalak - The Dark Magazine (original) (raw)

My brother on my front porch wailing my name, soaking wet and without a jacket in the cold spring rain, with nowhere else in the world to go, wondering why I won’t let him in.

My brother crashing at our mom’s house, preying on her weakness the way he always did; me calling her every day and waiting for when she’ll let it slip that the TV is missing or a credit card is gone.

My brother phoning at four AM, begging for fifty bucks but forgetting the username of his latest account on Paypal or Zelle or Venmo or CashApp, the previous one having been shut down like all the others for fraudulent activity.

I think of Planck now and it’s shit like this that comes to mind. Which is so profoundly fucking sad it makes me even madder at him.

We’re twins. Our first fifteen years were a bubble of shared bliss and ill-advised adventures, secret language and all, us against the world, but now his name pops up on my phone or an old friend asks how he’s doing and I don’t think about jumping fences to steal apples from a neighbor’s orchard, or dressing identically to engage in uncanny performance pranks in public. I think of my brother’s hollow sunken eyes across the Thanksgiving dinner table—six Thanksgivings ago, the last one he was invited to. I think of my brother debasing himself in a sleazy non-studio porno film clip a so-called friend sent me.

Planck and Faraday, named by our mom after two scientific constants, meant to be “universal and unchanging” for each other . . . but the only constant in Planck’s adult life has been addiction.

It’s a common misperception, that vurdalaks are a sub-subspecies of vampire. True, both creatures are dead and drain the life force of the living, but ethno-archaeological studies have traced distinct lines of descent.

Vampires, as everyone knows, originated in Egypt, and while scientific consensus on the origin of the vurdalak is lacking, most researchers believe it was Eastern Europe. The first known use of the word is in Russian, in a poem by Pushkin, and scholars still argue whether he made it up or was merely citing a folkloric tradition that had not been previously recorded.

For nearly a century, vurdulaks were said to subsist on blood, but this is now believed to be a relic of an earlier scholarly period when parahuman subspecies were less well understood, and intermediary strains outside the primary taxa of vampire, werewolf, and zombie tended to be grouped in with one of those. There are documented cases of vurdulaks consuming blood, but this is typically ascribed to confusion about their own mechanism of feeding, or a desire to be erroneously believed to be vampires.

The simple, unique, horrifying defining characteristic of the vurdulak is this: postmortem animation can only be sustained by feeding on people who love them.

Strangers and mere acquaintances are toxic to them. Vurdalaks can only derive nourishment in the presence of actual love.

Vampires can make ethical choices about who they feed on, and how. Vurdalaks have no such freedom.

Death was just another step on the long rocky staircase down to rock bottom for Planck. I don’t know how or when it happened, just that one day he showed up a lot paler than he’d been before. Shunning sunlight more than normal. Prone to showing me shitty party tricks like cutting himself and no blood coming out.

I’ve asked around. Nowadays every gay guy knows a vurdulak or two, just as we all have friends who’ve fallen victim to tina—aka christina—aka crystal meth.

I’d already heard about the addict cuddle puddles. A group of crystal-heads will get a hotel room and spend days fucking and slamming and sleeping. Splitting costs and steadily lowering standards. Losing touch with reality.

Turns out, vurdulaks love that scene. Since they swiftly consume or alienate everyone who loves them, they have to form new attachments. Get new folks to fall in love with them. So they find a drug-addled orgy on Grindr, show up, fixate on someone drugged out and desperate and in the grip of extreme feelings, show them a little kindness and a lot of sexual availability, and, bam. Give it a couple of days and that person has fallen in love with them. Which means they can feed on them. And maybe turn them.

So I figure that’s how it happened. He ended up at an orgy on a Tuesday and was food by Friday. A monster by Monday.

Planck was always one to fall in love fast. That’s something that’s true of me too.

But the silver lining of finding out at fifteen that you have an astonishing genetic propensity for addiction is, you learn what danger signs to steer clear of. I lost my brother, but I gained boundaries. Walls I could build, around my heart. So I never experimented with any substances, and I learned not to trust or indulge my own needs.

Sex was fine. Sex was easy. But love was work, was stress, was risk.

I steered clear.

Vurdalaks are believed to be the smallest in population size the of the confirmed supernatural subspecies, and certainly the least-studied. Most scholarship on the subject originated in either the USSR or the USA, and throughout their existence both nations were notorious for the unethical standards of scientific treatment of sentient creatures, the dubiousness of “consent” in their historic research traditions.

A Soviet paper from 1979 remains the most cited, and while it’s clear from reading between the lines that the study subjects were incarcerated and their participation was not voluntary—and possibly induced under extreme duress—no subsequent investigations have disproven its primary data. Chief among them, this tidbit that accounts for another major difference between vurdulaks and vampires: you can’t become a vurdalak by accident, or against your will. You must consent to it. You must embrace it.

G-d help me, I googled it.

I googled Vurdalak feeding.

A man on the floor, his body twisted at an unnatural angle, like he was in the middle of writhing away from something when he froze. A child squatting behind him, pressing her forehead to his neck. A woman off-camera, wailing, sweetie that’s your DADDY! Please, sweetie, stop, that’s your DADDY, you’re KILLING him.

Skin to skin contact is all it takes, said a comment.

fake, said another.

That dude died, said a third.

I googled Vurdalak interview

I googled Vurdalak starved.

I googled Vurdalak in sunlight.

That one I had to watch with the sound off, and even then. It was way too much.

Half of what I found was bullshit. And the other half was so horrific I prayed it was also bullshit.

I swore to stop googling.

Three PM the next day; a text thread from Planck. I wondered if it meant he was up early or up late. Whether vurdulaks lived fully nocturnal afterlives.

I had so many questions. And every time I called him up or sent a text to try to have a conversation, he asked to come over. So I stopped trying.

I’m not our mom. I’m not letting him anywhere near me.

I visited Alavi this weekend, he says. An ex of mine.

Don’t worry, I didn’t pretend I was you. I know he knows you have a twin, so I figured he’d figure it out.

He must really still be hung up on you, if he agreed to see me. And then agreed to invite me over after he saw what I look like these days.

His love for you was fucking delicious. The life force of strangers is usually so sweet it makes me retch, and so toxic I’ll become catatonic if I take more than the tiniest amount, but his was dizzying. So weird how that works. Like his love for you was almost love for me.

But it didn’t fill me up, no matter how much I drank.

They kept coming. I didn’t respond.

Alavi had been a brief fling for me, a fun Fire Island weekend and a few balmy city summer weeks. It never occurred to me it might mean more to him. That his feelings might be so strong that a monster could taste them years later.

Or maybe I’d known. Maybe I’d seen it in his eyes and run screaming for the exit. Or the mechanism was even weirder, a subliminal scent of affection that had me breaking it off with Alavi without even knowing why I was doing it.

Maybe my whole life I’d done too good a job of protecting myself. One more thing to blame Planck for. I started going through the mental rolodex, the empty swamp that has been my relationship history, wondering what flowers could have blossomed into something big. The paths that could have brought me somewhere other than my present utter aloneness.

Here’s the thing I’ve been trying not to say: mom’s sick. She hasn’t said so but I see the familiar haunted ashamed panic in her eyes when I video call, and the dark circles under them. Mom’s sick, and I know it’s Planck. When he shows up on her doorstep wailing for help, she invites him in. Except now he doesn’t just take the cash out of her purse; he sucks the life force right out of her.

So, obviously I’m not thinking straight. Doing dumb shit. So desperate that I’ve turned to cheap sanctimonious pamphlets from some quasi-religious recovery center I found at my doctor’s office

So, someone you love has become a vurdulak. Please accept our heartfelt sympathies, and validation of any fear or anger or grief you may be experiencing. The toll-free number and website provided are staffed 24 hours a day, should you need counseling or emergency assistance.

Because vurdalaks are so poorly understood compared to other scientifically-documented supernatural post-humans, we have attempted in this pamphlet to shed some light on their history and operational realities and mechanisms of action. But please understand that this is no more necessary for you to know than the logistics of the pharmaceutical industry’s dishonest opioid marketing would be if a loved one became addicted to OxyContin.

We know you have questions. But in the end, an addict is an addict. And sometimes understanding them is dangerous.

I showed up at Alavi’s place. I don’t know why. To make sure he wasn’t dead, I guess. Not vurdalakified. But also. I wanted to see what I felt, when I saw him. Whether I could feel anything.

I didn’t just ring the doorbell. That felt invasive: something you do only when tacit consent has been given. If you’re the delivery person showing up with the meal they ordered. Or the hookup, arriving for the encounter they specifically asked for.

I texted him from the sidewalk: surprise! sorry to show up unannounced. my brother said he saw you, so i figure I’ve probably got some apologizing. For his bad behavior. And maybe for mine. Can I come up? Or can you come down and we go for coffee if you’d prefer?

It was a little shitty. A little manipulative. Banking on his feelings for me; that he’d want an apology; that he’d hope that this was a sign I’d gotten over my shit and maybe we could start from scratch. I didn’t see it until I’d sent it. But once I had I felt like a fucking jerk.

The door buzzed. I pushed through instantly, on reflex, honed over dozens of visits in apartment buildings all across the city where the door buzzer didn’t last long enough to make it through both doors and I had to endure the agony of ringing them up again.

So many one-off encounters. So many strange buildings. So few dates—so few boyfriends. What if I was an addict, after all? Hooked on anonymity, on boys I’d never see again? Self-medicating with meaningless sex?

“Hey,” Alavi said, when he opened his apartment door. Sunlight filled the space, with no apparent ill effect on him. He looked healthy. But he looked sad. And he wouldn’t hold eye contact for more than a fraction of a second. “What a surprise.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I know this is super weird. But I was worried about you. My brother’s a . . . ”

“Yeah,” he said, turning and beckoning for me to follow him into the apartment. “I know.”

“What, do you know?” I said. “I’m just wondering what he told you.”

It’d be just like Planck to cop to being a crystal addict but omit the bit about being post-mortal life-force-sucker.

“Want tea?” he asked. “He told me he’s one of those . . . the vampires that don’t drink blood.”

“A vurdulak.”

Alavi shrugged. Put the pot on to boil. The kitchen was a mess. He hadn’t been expecting anyone. If it was me I’d have been angry, to have my disorder exposed to outside eyes, but Alavi seemed fine with it. A short chubby bearded beautiful man, who I had done wrong.

“Are you okay? He told me he . . . fed from you.”

Alavi laughed, at the double entendre. Looked at me cynically. “Yeah. I’m okay. It was nice, at first. A really good feeling, a little like E. You know. Blissful, ecstatic. A feeling of a deep real bond with someone. But then I started to get dizzy—sick—nauseous. I tried to tell him to stop but I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. I panicked, thought he was going to kill me. But he stopped. It really didn’t go on super long.”

“Did he ask, first? Before feeding?”

“He did,” he said, avoiding eye contact again. “But you know me. Once sex gets started I never could say no, to whatever crazy shit someone asks me to do.”

I didn’t know him, not like that. Or had I? Had I also asked for something he hadn’t wanted, and he’d agreed because he valued my affection more than his own safety? His need for intimacy overpowered his self-respect?

“I know this is inappropriate,” I said. “It’s a conversation I should be having with him, but I can’t risk letting him get close.”

“It’s okay,” Alavi said. And I wondered if this was why he said yes, when Planck came knocking. If he let him suck him dry in the hopes it might bring me around.

We were both broken. Me and Planck: two monsters, fighting a proxy war with stand-ins like Alavi and our mom.

“And did he ask if you wanted to become like him? The theory is, you have to choose. You can’t become one against your will.”

Alavi shook his head. “No. But I asked, afterwards. How it happens. Not because I wanted to, but because I was curious. He said he’d never turned anyone. And that he didn’t want to. Because he knows it’s super fucked up, and he wouldn’t want to put anyone else through the hell he’s been through. Said the guy who turned him did it because he’d already burned all his bridges, couldn’t get in to any of sex parties where he used to find dudes to . . . you know. Get to develop feelings for him. Apparently Planck would be able to access a lot of spaces that were closed to him, and then could let dude in. Something like that. I was a bit dizzy, out of it, wasn’t fully following him.”

He got up to pour out the tea, brought two mugs. I sat and I watched steam uncoil in the late-afternoon sunlight. I sat and I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t. Eventually I took a sip of tea: ginger, an instant Caribbean brand that came from powder, so strong it made my eyes smart.

“But he said something else,” Alavi continued, and I didn’t want to hear anymore, didn’t want to be there with this boy who cared about me, who I’d hurt, didn’t want to make him open his veins for me any more . . . but cutting and running was selfish, was what I always did, so I sat and I sipped and I smiled and I listened.

“He said he wouldn’t want to turn someone? But that he might. Sometimes he can’t control himself. Sometimes he gets the need so bad and when he starts to feed it feels so good he does really really bad things.”

There is no therapeutic consensus around how best to navigate a relationship with someone who has become a vurdalak. Most mainstream treatment centers counsel treating a vurdalak like you would any addict you cared about: make sure they know that you’re available when they are ready to get help, stay in their lives enough that they trust you and will be open to your support when they’re ready to seek sobriety, but that attempts at deeper more meaningful interactions are dangerous, both to you—as they’ll try to take advantage—and to them, as these relationships can become enabling, and stop them from seeking the help they truly need.

But here at Skye Island Lighthouse, we are unequivocal. There is no safe way to keep a vurdalak in your life. Only heartache can come from it.

Because for a vurdalak, there is no such thing as sobriety. No hope of recovery.

Even though I knew it was idiotic, I went to see my mom.

I called her first, to make sure Planck wasn’t there. She said he was in the city for the weekend, which his social media posts seemed to confirm. So I felt sure I was safe from seeing him.

But still. It was dumb. Dangerous.

Because me and my mom are the same. We each have our kryptonite. The person we can’t say no to. For her it’s Planck. And for me it’s her.

He was feeding on her because she still loved him, possibly the last one who did who would let him within fifty feet. But feeding on her wasn’t the end of it. He would turn her. The one who could always do what he asked. The one I couldn’t shut out. He would turn her to get to me.

And she wouldn’t want to. But if he begged her—if he said how much he needed her—if he said how much pain he was in, pain that only she could help end—she’d do it.

I was the one he wanted. The one who loved him most. Because the love was still there. He knew it, and I knew it. Even if the love was mostly outweighed by the hate.

There’s much more to be said about vurdalaks than we could fit into this pamphlet. Please visit our website for more resources. Use password vurd4l4k to access the Crisis Options section.

“I’m fine,” she said, chain smoking on the porch and looking like she’d racked up ten more years than the sixty-five she actually had.

“He’s killing you,” I said. “I can’t believe you can’t see that.”

“He would never hurt me,” she said.

“He punched you in the face when you caught him stealing from your purse when we were seventeen,” I said.

“That was different,” she said. “Those boys he owed money to . . . ”

“You know it’s not.”

She knew. She shivered in her seat. It wasn’t even that cold out. I reached out my hand and she took it, held it tight. Felt like her bones had shrunk.

I was still on the porch at three AM, alone, when Planck returned.

“Faraday!” he called, my brother’s voice unchanged, swelling my heart so I almost wept. He stepped out of her car—so at least he had managed to keep from selling it—and the dim light turned him into the kid he’d been, my double, my heart. His face unravaged. His heart unmonstrous.

“Hey, bud,” I said, and he ran up the lawn and wrapped me in the biggest tightest hug I’d ever had.

I braced myself. He could do it. Take from me. His forehead was resting against my bare neck. Skin to skin contact. But there was no bliss, no nausea. Just Planck. The pleasure of him. The missing piece to my puzzle.

“I’m so fucking happy to see you, brother,” he said, and I could hear the sorrow in his voice. The pain. The thirst. “Thank you.”

“I love you, buddy.”

If someone you love has become a vurdalak, know this: they need you more than anything on earth, which means you are their greatest weakness. It’s true that they can and will manipulate you—but they can be manipulated far more easily.

“Where we going?” he said, buckling his seat belt.

“I wanna have an honest talk with you, which means things might get heated,” I said. “I don’t want mom hearing. Cool?”

“Cool,” he said, the same sweet cheerful kid he’d always been. The one that was buried for so many years beneath addiction and then something even worse.

“Figured we’d go to the river,” I said. “Where we used to swim.”

“Where mom caught us, and tried to fucking kill us.”

“Right,” I said, cheerful, friendly, his brother, his twin.

The legal status of post-mortal entities is complex, and different countries and provinces (as well as the USA successor states) have adjudicated them differently. Nothing contained on this website should be interpreted as intended to encourage or facilitate harm to a vurdalak or any other supernatural sentient being.

It was easy. Of course it was easy. We sat on the bench facing east across the river and we talked and he was sweet and sad and trusting and I didn’t even have to rush when I pulled the handcuffs from my pocket and snapped one around his wrist and the other around the metal arm of the bench that was embedded in the concrete of the boat launch. He could easily have twisted away before the fatal second click.

“Faraday,” he said, his voice unspeakably small and lost.

“I’m so fucking sorry, buddy,” I said.

He’d never been bad. He’d just done bad things. Because he had to. But he’d always hated doing them. Hurting people or stealing from them wasn’t in his nature.

Neither was begging or screaming or cursing me out. Or breaking his own wrist, tearing his whole hand off to get free. Flexing superhuman muscles that could snap the metal bench strut like wet paper. Which. For all I know those are things vurdalaks can do.

“I love you,” I said. “I know it doesn’t seem like it but I do.”

Planck laughed. “Relax bud. I know all about that. Loving someone but hurting them anyway.”

“It’ll be quick,” I said. “I watched videos about it.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I watched those videos too. Lots of times.”

Bad as he was, he had always been the best in me. The part that was open to love and life and adventure and people.

Now that I had him there—docile and defeated and apparently not entirely unhappy at the approaching end—I could have asked him all the questions that had been building up in my brain. About who turned him—what his name was, where I could find him to fuck him up. About what his life had been like. His afterlife. Who else he’d hurt. What it was like. Being this. Being him. But I didn’t want to know anymore.

With his free hand he took his phone from his pocket. Bad move Faraday. You’re a terrible murderer. Leaving your victims with the means to call for help.

But I didn’t try to snatch it away.

He turned on his camera, flipped it to selfie mode, angled himself so he was alone in the shot. Started recording a video.

“I’m sorry, mom,” he said. And breathed. And smiled. “For everything.”

Then he set a schedule-send for an hour after sunrise.

“So she’ll think I did it to myself.”

That’s what pushed me over the line into actual sobbing. Which started him too.

We held hands and we wept. And after a very long time, he whispered, in a voice made almost beautiful by need: “Can I?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know the answer.

“Least you can do, Faraday,” he said with a boyish chuckle. “After you fucking murdered me.”

We laughed. And yes, I know, of course it was crazy to even contemplate it. Maybe this sad semi-suicidal embrace of his destruction was an act, a feint, a way to get me to let my guard down. Maybe a little nibble would be all he needed to knock me out, drain me dry. But he’d still die in that scenario, handcuffed to a bench with a corpse until the sun came up.

I’d spent my life hiding from the harm love opens us up to. Who could quantify the harm it had done to me instead?

“Yeah,” I said. “Just a little bit.”

“Just a little bit,” he said, voice breaking.

He took my head, turned it toward him. Pressed his forehead to mine.

It felt like summer, like sunshine, like being nine years old and finding yourself with sole custody of a forest. Pine sap; honeysuckle. Mosquito buzz. Babble of a brook forever eluding us. I could see us, smell us. Inhabit the memory. But only for a little bit.

“Thanks, brother,” he said, in our secret language.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you,” I said. “Before.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and did not get specific. The words were big enough to cover all of it.

We sat in the dark and cried together. Boys again. Brothers. No longer divided by a gulf of monstrosity. I’d joined him on the far side of it.