take one, pass it on

Hello. Hello. Is this thing on. Testing. Does this feel weird as shit because of the fingers, or because I probably haven't written longhand in twenty years? God, this looks like a five year old wrote it. Well, they work well enough, I guess.

It's stupid, but just when he was poised above my hand with the knife, shit, did that scare me. I mean, not like I was exactly looking forward to the pain, but okay, it's only pain. But even now, I just keep thinking, am I being duped? Am I insane? I mean, I grabbed a guy and drank all his blood until he was dead last night. That's pretty fucking conclusive. But still. Maybe I'm hallucinating. Maybe if I let some lunatic cut off bits of me, they're not going to grow back. But then I figured, well, I'd have to be pretty damn insane to be imagining all of this, and if I am, might as well just give up, you know, live in the fantasy.

Armand asked me first. At least that's what he says, anyway, but honestly, I think he might have said that to everyone. Pretty ironic, that the one guy whose weird fucked-up mind I could most do with being inside of, is the one I can't touch. Well, probably a good thing. For one, I'd never get anything done if I could just reach into Armand's head and browse around whenever I wanted. He's insane. The shit that comes out of his mouth is insane, so what must be going on bubbling under the surface?

Yeah, so, this particular insane idea. He comes to me all simpering. I don't think he knows he does this, or maybe he knows too well, but he gets these fuck-me-master eyes when he really wants something. Sometimes the thing is actually being fucked. Usually it's worse. This one was a lot worse.

I was gonna say no, I mean, just on principle, right? But then I just thought— I mean, I didn't used to be able to write like this, with a pen. I gave it up because I got a computer, obviously, but towards the end, my hands also just did not work well enough to do something like this, and picking at a keyboard was going downhill, like, I could fucking feel it, my aim getting worse. And then that was it, writing would be gone. Well, I could dictate. Let some machine learning model try to pick out my words and type up my book for me. But really, I mean, a whole life spent using these things for what they were made for, and it's sappy but— he gave it back to me. I can write because of Armand. I could write that stupid book, piss Louis right off enough to tie him to me forever, because of Armand. Is it insane to say my hands are his? Yeah, probably, so— well fuck it. I love him, okay, I just love him and want him to be happy, so I said yes.

So I said, yeah, all right, I will. You're not gonna get Louis or Lestat to agree to it, but I'll do it with you. Only it turns out that he went right out and asked Louis and Lestat, and you know what they said? Exact same fucking thing. I'll do it, for you, Armand, but you're not going to get the others... those fucking eyes, I swear to God, he can do anything with those things. Lunatic.

So we all got together in New York. If this kind of stuff is gonna happen to you, it's gotta be in New York. Armand, of course, brought a spreadsheet. Oh, well, he did send us all a copy of the spreadsheet by email to review. He kept asking if anyone had any comments on it. I don't think Louis even knows how to open an email, and Lestat's probably got binned by some intern who thought it was spam. And who am I to object? Well, here's the spreadsheet:

He'd done some kind of research on finger symbolism, or whatever. I was a bit more worried about the rest of it. We laid down plastic everywhere, because Louis and Armand are above licking secondhand blood from the floor (well— Armand's above it unless and until Louis tells him to, of course) but Lestat isn't, and then there's me, a stupid fucking kid with no handle on his appetites at all. Embarrassing.

So yeah, I was scared. Actually I was scared out of my fucking mind. Pain is like that, you know? It's nothing, and it's everything. It can't hurt you and it's the only thing that can. Well, Lestat was a huge baby about it and made Armand do some sort of mind anaesthesia on him, which was pretty hot, actually, but not exactly an option for me. And anyway, Louis wouldn’t let Armand touch his brain with a ten-foot pole these days, so he did it raw, and it's not like I was gonna let him best me, right? Anyway yeah, getting three of my fingers cut off fucking sucked. That hurt like— metaphors fail. It just hurt.

But you know what, as we all sat there, bleeding, pressing our new mismatched fingers to their bloody knuckles and waiting for them to knit back into our bodies… I can't lie, it was nice. It was kind of romantic, actually. Getting all these pieces of ourselves mixed up. Like the thing I was most afraid of before this vampire shit was dying alone, and then I did die, and somehow I'm not alone. And if the rest of them didn't feel the same, why would they have agreed?