Confessions of a spray can - chapter 1
Foreword: This is a work of fiction so any resemblance to people either living or dead is purely coincidental. This story features male-to-male relations in sometimes violent and sometimes tender, sexual and romantic situations, and is based upon white wolfs, Vampire: The Masquerade. So if this offends you in any way, shape or form I suggest you go elsewhere. Also, you must be 18 years or older to read this as the nature and content discussed has been deemed by most societies to be of an adult nature. So, if you aren't 18 (or whatever the legal age is in your area) or it is illegal for you to be viewing such material please cease your perusal immediately, as I wouldn't want to get you into trouble. Standard disclaimers apply. The author retains all rights to this material and people caught stealing it for personal gain will either have a professional contract taken out on them or be litigated by my impressive legal team, which ever one will hurt the most, so if you got no money your life is forfeit. I do have the financial resources to back up any and all promises. Now then, if you haven't been scared away by all of the threats of bodily harm and financial ruin and you still wish to continue to read then please do so. Also, feedback is very much appreciated but flames are not. Feedback can be sent me at makutu_matakite@yahoo.com. For those of you who would like to play an active part in my story writing process or would like to get receive further updates hot off the press then I suggest you sign up to my group, which can be found at:
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Chapter 1
Pain and pleasure, pleasure and pain, these sensations were all the same. One folding in, the other folding out, but which did which I was yet to work out.
Lines of colour cascaded across my vision and as always left me feeling confused and desiring, but desiring what? Nothing ever made sense until I expressed what I saw and then, for a faction of a moment... Peace.
I wondered the streets looking for my muse and my perfect canvas. Down this way, round that, over, under, shit! What was that?
My head turned and what I saw before me stole the colours from my sight, drawing, beckoning, calling. I had found it and it was perfection.
I shucked the pack from my back and quickly set to work, instinct guiding my hand to the correct cans and the correct nozzle nib. The cans were my palette, the nib my brush.
Rattle, rattle, hiss...
The lines and colours return and as they do so my hands move of their own volition and paint what I see.
Never blessed with the vision of the whole, I must remain content with the fragments until the end.
Emotions rise to the surface of my fractured awareness and disparate vision, made more pronounced by the scent of the heady paint fumes that permeated the air around me and resolved into the colours of my creation.
Rattle, rattle, hiss...
New colours, new shapes, new emotions, new nib. This part requires a finer point, razor sharp to cut through the chaos that is my conscious awareness. To express the true me, but what could that be if not even I knew that.
As with my art I am ever in the dark as to my true self. My awareness, my thoughts, my deeds, my PURPOSE, all hidden from me but hinted at, like the lines of colours that cascade across my vision.
Only with each new creation, each new work of art do I grow closer, ever closer, to understanding the whole.
My paintings, the windows to my soul.
Rattle, rattle, hiss...
This next part requires a fatter nib, applying broad colours to the otherwise stark outline, breathing life into the lifeless shell. New emotions bleed from me and into the creation as small epiphanies too varied in scope to comprehend. These are my rewards for my labours, each one like a tiny jigsaw piece used to make up a larger, though, in the grander scheme of things, just as tiny piece of the entirety of my reality, past, present and future, but each lacking in point of reference and only being placed in context once the work is completed.
Rattle, rattle, hiss...
Rattle, rattle, hiss...
Rattle, rattle, hiss...
More colours, more nibs, more emotions. Each colour, each emotion, each sweep of my hand brings purpose, understanding, insight and brings the creation closer and closer to completion, and awareness closer and closer to comprehension.
Rattle, Rattle, hiss...
The finest nib this time, the creation almost complete. The last minute details, the fine lines needed for emphasis and clarification, placed here and there seemingly at random to most, but with a purpose all to clear to some unfathomable part of me. Clarity begins to descend upon me and the disparate pieces of my jigsaw puzzle begin to fit together. Emotions are replaced by logic and analysis of the greater whole becomes my only desire.
The last line is made and the can slips from my grasp as I step back to drink in the sight before me.
What is this I have created? What insight can I gleam from it? Just as the colours cascaded across my vision, so now do the collective epiphanies that I have had, each replaying and taking their rightful place, and suddenly everything is clear to me...
Ahhhh, the Peace...
Then... Hunger.
It intrudes upon my reverie. 'As it has in the past so shall it be in the future.' I muse presumptuously to myself.
Ravenous I depart from my newest creation and into the night searching for my next victim to sate my hunger.
As I depart the subway I see him, my next victim, his outline evident across the street from the bus stop. I can almost taste his sweet vitae...
Caden's auspex heightened senses allowed him to follow the semi-detectable psychic impressions left by his target.
If it hadn't been for the fact that he had been exposed to the individual's personal signature many times over the past few years then he may not have found the trail at all, in fact it was purely by coincidence that he was in this position at all.
He had been dispatched by the prince to investigate the viability of opening up a new hunting ground in the Sunshine area. He was supposed to feel out the area, estimate the general nocturnal activities of the denizens that inhabited the area, how many vampires it could comfortable support on an ongoing basis and discern any possibly threats or other miscellaneous information that could be useful.
He had hopped off the train at Albion station, intending to work his way through the residential and light industrial area that marked the boundaries of the perceived territory and in towards the centre of town.
Using the power of his vitae he activated his auspex abilities and used them to augment his already enhanced vampiric senses, scanning the area for possible threats. He had been asked on a number of occasions to perform this exact same task and his phenomenal success in opening new areas was in large part due to his ability to successfully deduce perceived threats purely by their psychic impressions. It had save his unlife on more than one occasion.
Caden hadn't been in the area long at all before stumbling upon the faint traces of this particular psychic signature. He had good reason to follow it too because the person responsible for it had become something of an obsession for him. The person was an artist by not just any artist, he or she was an exceptionally gifted graffiti artist who's works sent him into rapture each time he beheld their vivid beauty, haunting messages and palpable emotionally charged depictions of events, people or verse, each and ever single one touching some cord of unknown and presently unknowable truth within him, rendering him senseless with their power over him.
He fought with himself a little, torn between completing his assignment, or finally meeting the source of his raptures, but it was fight that was lost almost before it began.
He followed the trail as it meandered haphazardly through the parks, streets, and alleyways of Sunshine before leading him to the shops across the road from the bus interchange and the Sunshine train station.
My victim moved closer and closer to where I waited from him crouched behind the wall of the main ramp that led down to the subway entrance up to the main train platforms. I popped my head round the corner ever so quickly; sneaking little looks to judge how much longer it might have to wait. The beast stirred within me and fantasised about how rich and sweet his vitae would taste.
I peeked out once again and stopped, there was something about the way he moved and how he held himself that made me pause and reconsider my actions. He moved with too much self-confidence for this time of the night, his pace too even and relaxed and his movements had a deadly grace about them.
I shrouded myself from his minds eye, effectively rendering myself invisible using obfuscate and the power of my vitae silly thing to do when hungry but I wasn't taking any chances. He had just become an unknown element.
I stood up properly to get a better look at him as he came closer.
He stepped beneath a streetlight not 20 meters away from me and I was frozen to the spot. How could this be?
At that same moment his gaze which had been following something on the ground shifted and he look directly at me as though he could see through the shroud.
My gaze met his and I realized that he could in fact see me, despite my carefully constructed precautions. Shit! I needed to make a quick getaway or I was in deep trouble.
Again using my precious vitae to give me preternatural speed, I disappeared down the ramp, through the subway and out the other side, trying to put as much distance between myself and the other lick as was inhumanly possible. I had to find sustenance and fast, all this hiding and dodging was seriously depleting my already low reserves, and I had to do it while the lucidity remained with me.
I could feel the beast shaking at the chains that bound it. I was get too close to frenzy for comfort. I needed blood and I needed it now...
Caden continued to follow the trail as it ambled towards the subway leading down into Sunshine station.
He walked beneath a streetlight about 20 meters from the main ramp leading down and looked around to get his bearings, scanning the area with his preternatural vision. The first thing he saw though was a strange distortion in his field of vision, a strangely human shaped shimmering that began to waver and disappear before his very eyes. If he had thought the graffiti art paintings were beautiful, they were nothing compared to the artist.
Caden judged him to be about 19 at the age of his embrace, yeah, he was sure he was a vampire too, the telltale marking evident upon his aura. He was 6'1" with short spikey black hair, fair skin, well defined fined jaw and chin, high cheek bones, fine straight nose and a dimple in his left cheek. His eyes were a deep emerald green which seemed to burn with a fire that made Caden's blood run cold.
One word came to mind... Malkav.
Then, in a blur of movement too fast for mortal eyes to follow or comprehend, he was gone.
"Two can play at that game." Caden mused to himself.
Using a little of his vitae, Caden felt the rush that celerity gave him prior to its activation and then in a matter of moments, he was off in hot pursuit.
Down the ramp he descended and into the subway in a bur of motion before stopping dead in his tracks.
Before him stood the newest creation, still fresh and the heady scent of spray-paint still in the air.
Once again, the familiar rapture that was the curse of clan Toreador descended upon him. This one however caused chills to run up and down his spine as he recognized the subject of this latest work.
It was himself.
End Chapter 1