To Die Beautifully

"I'm never going to get this apartment the way I want it," China sighed, running her fingers through her hair, absent-mindedly adding an inch. She had painted the walls the night before, and around the walls newspaper and paint rollers still adorned the floor. She had also stripped the carpet from the floor recently, and it lay in a massive heap in the kitchen. China shook her head and gave another dramatic sigh, then grabbed her notebook and headed out the door. Sitting outside her door was a single red tulip. With it there came no note, no card, not even a plastic wrapper, just a single red tulip. She eyed it suspiciously for a moment, looked up and down the hall for anyone who might be setting her up for something, then shrugged and scooped it up, assuming it was just another admirer vying for her attentions.

That night's Esbat location was lit with candles, and furnished reasonably well. She picked a chair with a table and candles nearby, and sat down to contemplate her tulip and wait for things to get rolling. The muse within her stirred as she studied the flower's simple grace. She pulled her pen out of the notebook's rings and began composing a free-verse poem to describe her impressions. She was not naturally a poet, and not terribly gifted in the use of language as art, but the words poured from a deeper place within her.

As China completed these lines, her mind drifted from the poetry back to the delicate flower.... Her beauty is irresistible... The irony of it was poignant. If the tulip had not been so beautiful, it would not have been cut from its stalk, would still be alive and growing. China marveled at the unfairness of it all, to be killed for beauty... But, wasn't that always the way of it?

China herself had been sired as a piece of beauty. Her Toreador Antitribu sire had found her in the middle of a particularly glorious display of wanton sex, violence, and drug use. She had been whoring herself out to pay for drugs... and to help her mother... but mainly for the drugs... and because she had sincerely liked it. She enjoyed the timid sex, the brutal sex, the degrading sex, and the constant adrenaline high of never knowing when a john might snap and kill her. The thought of being brutally murdered actually fascinated her. She was not afraid of the death; her life had never truly satisfied her. And the pain? She was not afraid of pain, she actually needed it. She used self-mutilation the way most people use chocolate or cigarettes. She kept a safety pin through her clitoral hood piercing so she could take it out, scratch, and pierce herself with it whenever she needed it. She fantasized about how she might die. First, the guy had to be white, middle-class, with greasy brown hair, and bad teeth. He would start by trying to fuck her, but he would be so messed up in the head that he would be totally impotent. Being unable to get hard enough to fuck her would make him snap. He'd start screaming at her for laughing at his flaccid dick and start hitting her. Then he would pull out his knife, something decent sized, and he would mutilate her to death. First he would cut off one or both of her nipples, then he would stab her a few dozen times, then he would slit her throat. She liked to fantasize about what being stabbed would really feel like, or what it would feel like to have a nipple sliced off. Her day came. One of her johns stabbed her eight times and threw her body in a dumpster. She was still partially alive, but so whacked out on cocaine and had lost so much blood that she could not even scream or try to climb out. Truthfully, she probably would not have chosen to fight for her life stone sober. Dying in a dumpster was oddly poetic.

However, fortunately or not, she was found by her future sire. He had been scavenging for coked out bums to feed from and scented her coke-laced blood coming from the dumpster. He was so moved by her youthful beauty and the terrific ugliness of her attempted murder that he instantly became infatuated and embraced her.

But that was certainly not the most life-changing thing that was done to her for her beauty alone. Memories had been haunting China for a number of weeks before this particular Esbat. A Malkavian had surfaced a memory in her mind, and it had been plaguing her thoughts ever since. It was a memory of her father raping her. His fat, sweaty body pressed against her young, innocent flesh. Her virginity stolen by her own father. Her trust, her security, her sense of power over her own body, all pounded out of her by his small, hairy, frustrated white penis. It seemed like all she could see whenever she closed her eyes was her every want, need, and motivation all reduced to his dick forcing its way inside her body and sucking all the life out. How would she ever know what was her real personality and what was just a byproduct of her father molesting her? Everything was poisoned. Every white man she saw was just another grunting, sweaty, frustrated child molester. There was no one she could ever trust. All men were predators and all women were little dolls waiting to be played with, violated, and broken.

She lifted a hand to touch her own China Doll façade, and brushed the ruby colored tulip across her ruby colored lips.

She looked up from her notebook to see Bishop Ja'dan walk past her a small distance away and her heart ached. He was the only man she had ever respected. In fact, she had what she considered genuine emotion for him. She was not certain if it was actual emotion, but since she could never truly know for sure, she simply called it love. But he was lost to her. She'd never truly had him, even when she'd thought she had. His heart belonged to a sire he had not seen in more years than China had been on Earth. She resented him horribly for such romanticism, but in a way, she was thankful. Love was not something she was totally prepared to deal with. Especially not now, with all the newly surfaced memories of what her father had done and the implications it held. Ja'dan was better off with his memories and China was better off with hers. But deep down, in a long sealed away and neglected part of her soul, China felt like Ja'dan was the knight in shining armour she had been waiting for, like he was the lover for whom she quivered in anticipation. But he could never love her. She was just ruined goods. Ja'dan waited for a beautiful woman with flowing blond hair and eyes like a spring morning who was innocent and filled with trust and love. China was not that woman. She was an Asian mutt filled with bitterness and hatred toward all the things she could never have. And she had to realize that Ja'dan was just another one of those things.

She looked back on the time she had spent as a member of Ja'dan's pack. She'd felt safe living with Ja'dan in his haven. She hated herself for ever leaving, but she'd been scared. She hadn't known what to do with all those unexpected and foreign emotions, so she'd run back towards the kind of life she understood, the life of drugs and unrestrained hedonism she found with Setites.

Her feelings for Ja'dan were a mystery to her. Dealing with men had always been so easy, manipulate them, wrap them around your pinky finger, find what they want and exploit it as a weakness. But Ja'dan had not been so easily swayed. She had sunk her claws in as best she knew how, and it was as though her claws were dull and short and glanced off his hide harmlessly. It confused her enormously and intrigued her at the same time. She wanted desperately to believe that he was not like other men, but she could not accept it. It tore her into a mess of conflicting emotions and rendered her helpless in his presence. She had lost all control and it frightened her.

"China, can you come here please?" It was Akasha. China went to the table where Akasha sat, pen and paper in hand, surrounded by her usual halo of adoring followers. Akasha proceeded to drill her about her usefulness as a Sabbat member in the event of the next wave of attacks on St. Charles. It was yet another facet of the Sabbat that never sat well with China. She was not the fighting type. However, she endured it while still mentally composing the next few lines of her poem. As they were wrapping up their interview, Akasha complimented her on her usefulness and called over the next nearby Sabbat member.

China's attention returned to the tulip. It was starting to go limp. She could feel it slowly dying. It was still beautiful and alive in appearance, but its strength was gone. This saddened China for some reason. The flower was so beautiful. She ran her fingers across the leaves and felt the death in them, then ran her fingers across her lifeless China Doll face. Her own continued existence was just a cheap imitation of life. That which is beautiful is cut down for the enjoyment of those less beautiful. Killing is okay, as long as it is done beautifully.

"Hey, do you think you could fix what you did to my face?

China turned to see a man on whom she'd done a little artwork at the previous week's Esbat. It was really quite intricate and well balanced. "Fix?"

"Well, put it back, is what I meant to say-"

"You think my artwork is something detrimental that needs to be fixed?"

"It's just hindering my ability to feed, that's all."

Despite her ferocious indignation at this point, China saw his sincerity, and his charm melted away her anger. Though still a little stung by his desire to be no longer adorned by her art, she carefully removed the safety pins from his flesh and then used the arts the Tzimisce had taught her to change his face back to its original appearance. He then sat down to be questioned by Akasha.

Once again, China became pensive. She had not been able to do any real artwork since her last major piece. A few nights after the Malkavian had surfaced the memories of her molestation she had gone out looking for her father, then brutally killed him and used him as her greatest piece of sculpture yet. It had carried with it an awful note of finality, like it was the most important piece she would ever do. Since that piece, she had compared every other idea to it, and they just did not measure up. Nothing would ever carry the emotional weight of that piece. And what good is an artist who has already completed her life's work, her masterpiece? There was only one more thing she could do, one last masterpiece. To die beautifully, like the tulip slowly wilting in her hands.

Akasha and her flock had long since left. The man she had just "fixed" was loitering nearby. He noticed her sitting by herself and walked over. "Are you still mad at me?" he asked, making a stab at charm.

China ignored this. Instead, she held out the tulip that lay increasingly limply in her hands. "Feel this."

He eyed her uncertainly. China took his hand and ran it across the bottoms of the leaves. "Can you feel the death?"

"Ummm... no?"

"Do you think this flower deserved to die?"

"I don't know, probably not. It's never good when something dies."

"So do you think everything should live forever?"

"Well... no... I mean, some things deserve to die, like people I don't like..." he laughed nervously. The conversation was obviously making him uncomfortable.

"So people you like should live forever?"

"Well, no-I mean-everything has to die eventually, I guess. I just don't have to like it is all."

China went introspective again, caressing the dying flower. After several awkward moments, she spoke quietly, "Care to help me with a piece of art?"

"I just got you to undo the last time..."

"It's not going to be like that. It won't involve you in that regard. I need you to build me something, and you seem masculine enough to be useful that way. Are you?"

"Well that depends on what you want built," he replied, his interest piqued.

China made a quick sketch of what she wanted, a three-legged frame with a board across the front, roughly six feet tall and sturdy enough to hold her body weight. "Can you do it?"

"Sure. Looks easy enough."

"Can you do it tonight?"

"Tonight?" he asked incredulously. "I don't know if any hardware stores are still open."

China jotted down a list of all the things she wanted: a utility knife, heavy metal wire and wire cutters, large nails, a hammer, and the supplies with which to build the scaffold. "Go find out. Get me these things."

"Okay..."

Again her thoughts drifted, this time back to the memories that plagued her night and day. Ever since those nightmare images had come into her mind, everything she once enjoyed seemed poisoned and disgusting. She had at one time been a self-proclaimed nymphomaniac and sexual deviant, now the very idea of sex revolted her. She had gone through her belongings in a rampage, destroying every sex toy, every porn flick, every porno mag, half her sexy clothes and all her lingerie. She remembered lingering over a blindfold she had last put across Ja'dan's eyes. She'd held it lovingly in hands that trembled with a tumult of rage and despair, remembering everything, his beautiful face, his strong hands, his scent and the sounds he made. Then, with a scream of rage and uncontrollable weeping, she had torn it to shreds.

By the time her new architect friend came back, her mind was wrapped entirely in what she planned to do. He tried to relate to her the difficulty he'd met in obtaining her items, but it fell on deaf ears. She was no longer in control of her actions. When greatly inspired, artists are no longer creating the art, they are merely the vessel through which what is meant to be created comes into being. The masterpiece China was to create now moved her, she merely watched from the inside.

China led her architect friend to a spot in the downstairs area of the Esbat site. There she watched him build as she idly took off her clothes.

"What did you say your name is?" she asked absently.

"Martin Schole."

"Mm. Did you get me that knife I asked for?"

"Yeah, it's right over there."

China walked over to the small table on which the knife sat, along with the other small items she had requested. She took the knife and carved a heart shape over the place where her own heart lay dead and motionless.

"Umm, is that really necessary?"

"Yes," China muttered. She then flipped her hair over and cut across the back of her neck, and pushed her blood out of the wound to saturate her hair. Her hair is red like blood…

"All done," Martin said, giving the scaffolding a pat.

"Good. Now bind my wrists and ankles with that metal wire. Once you've done that, hang me by my ankles and nail me to the top board on the scaffold."

"Whatever you say..."

Once on the scaffold, China gave a satisfactory sigh. "Now, there is one thing more I need to make my art complete. Give me the Kiss."

"Uh... okay..."

"Drink from me."

Martin leaned in close and bit into China's porcelain-white neck. She hissed with pleasure as she felt the life blood drain away. "Yes... keep going..." But just as he would have killed her, he pulled away. "What are you doing?" China gasped. "Finish it!"

"But, I feel like I'm going to kill you."

"This is what I want Martin. Finish it."

"I won't kill you."

"But I'm already dead! What you do for me now is simply art. You can't kill what's already dead."

"But you'll cease to exist. You won't move or talk anymore. It doesn't have to be this way. I can help you."

"You can help me by finishing what you started."

"I can't do that. I won't."

At that, the sound of footsteps drew near, and an Inquisition member entered the room. "The trial starts. You will join us now."

China glared first at the Inquisition member, then at Martin. "Fine," she said to Martin, "I'll just finish this later."

Martin put his wrist to her mouth and she drank involuntarily. He then helped her down and followed the Inquisition member out.

For the first several minutes of the trial, Martin pleaded with China to reconsider, but her heart would not be moved. Eventually he gave up, and China began deciding how to proceed with her grandest creation without him. Across the room she noticed another young vampire she had turned into art the same night she had done her work on Martin. He looked easy enough to manipulate, and easy enough to kill if he tried to interfere. She walked over to him and quietly sat beside him, running a hand up her thigh in an inviting manner.

"Are you artistically inclined?" she purred.

"Not if it's like what you did to me before."

China was slightly taken aback, but she quickly recovered. "Oh no, nothing like that. It will only involve me."

"Oh. Well, in that case, count me in. What will I be doing, exactly?"

"Hang my naked body upside down and drink from me."

He nodded. "Alright. I can do that." He then walked off to continue his mingling. China looked around to find Martin so she could remove him from the task, but her eyes instead fell upon Ja'dan. He stood with his back partially to her some distance away, arms folded across his chest. He had a severe look on his face as he watched the proceedings. China wondered what he was thinking, how he felt. She gently considered the fact that he had no idea what she planned to do. She thought about the fact that they were here, together, but that they would not say a word to each other on this, the night of her ultimate ending. This also seemed oddly poetic, and thus she allowed it to be so.

She continued scanning the crowd until she spotted Martin, who also stood, watching the proceedings. She sauntered up to him magnificently. "Don't worry about completing my artwork for me. I've found another."

Martin turned an agonized look on her. "Does he really know what you want him to do?"

She shrugged. "I've told him I wish for him to drink from me."

"Just tell me why. Why are you doing this?"

"I have outlasted my usefulness. You wouldn't understand."

"You're right. I don't."

"Remember how you said some things deserve to die? Well, I deserve to die."

"But why?"

She thought about it a moment. "Because I am a truly wicked person. I have destroyed just to destroy. I have killed just because I wanted to kill something beautifully."

Martin looked at her in shock. "You mean you've killed innocent people?"

"Yes."

He looked away a moment. "Who did you ask to drink from you?"

"Does it matter?"

Martin turned toward her again, his face filled with passionate anger. "Tell him to forget it."

"Why, are you going to do it?"

"Tell him to forget it."

China smiled. "As you wish."

The trial lasted for what seemed an eternity. Throughout the entire proceeding China watched a small boy hold his hand to the accused's back in an immensely touching display of compassion and sorrow. China was feeling strangely sentimental this particular evening, and the love in that gesture moved her callused heart. It served to quietly remind her that no one would show such misery at her own passing. For a moment her soul cried out in pain and despair, but she calmly snuffed it and waited patiently for the moment of her ultimate destruction.

It came. The judge called a recess, and the three grim participants took their cue. As one, China, Martin, and the man she's asked to work in Martin's stead, Smoke, all moved toward the stairwell. In away it was like China's own, more private trial and execution; Smoke as the jury, China as the accused, and Martin, her executioner. Martin gave China a brief look that spoke volumes of his reproachful disgust, then led her rapidly down the stairs, with Smoke trailing casually behind.

Once again China removed her clothes, and once again she willed her vitae to flow from the back of her neck to stain her hair red as blood. Martin now moved with furious conviction, tightly binding China's wrists and ankles. Smoke lifted China up to the scaffold, and Martin pounded the nails home.

"Don't forget the tulip," China whispered.

He found the tulip and stuck it into the wires at her ankles with obvious distaste.

She hung, upside down and naked, her hair drenched and dripping with blood, her hands and ankles bound with wire, with the heart shape carved into her chest. Her mind flashed like wildfire across all the things that had gone wrong for her. She remembered her wasted childhood, the merciless teasing, the abusive father, the loneliness, the petty and short-lived friendships, the drugs, the sex, the many, many times she cried herself to sleep. She remembered her attempted murder... the exquisite pain of being stabbed to near death... the exquisite abandonment of being left for dead in a hotel dumpster. She remembered her sire, a totally self-absorbed prick who drained her of what small amounts of humanity she'd had left, then traded her off to the Setites for a vial of crack. She remembered with deep regret how joyfully she had begun her studies in the Path of Ecstasy. At the time it had seemed so right... now she saw it as no more than a twisted continuation of the lifestyle her father had forced on her, an acceptance of what he was... She now had become her own destroyer. Her father had been a sexual predator, a drug user, and a remorseless manipulator. He had ruined her life. Now it was she who was the drug-addicted, manipulative predator, and it was she who ruined her own unlife. It was the bitterest pill of all to swallow. She had tried to manipulate Ja'dan; for a time she had even toyed with the idea of getting him onto her path and trading his existence to Setites for more of what she wanted to help her escape the pain. But all she really wanted was for him to love her utterly, and that would never happen. She was utterly unlovable, and for that she could not blame Ja'dan. She had even tried.

She briefly considered what Ja'dan would think and do when he found her here. Maybe he would think she was beautiful.

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