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In the coffin, life becomes a repetitive spiral between familiar and distinct instabilities.
A part of the instability is desperate for Louis to return. It fantasises about Louis realising his mistakes and returning and loving Lestat. It fantasises about hunting Louis back and dragging him back home, perhaps tying him up and punishing him for leaving, never letting him leave again. It fantasises about doing some grand gesture that wins him back.
But such a fantasy cannot last, not with the gaping yawning hurt inside him, and Lestat falls into a fantasy of hurting Louis back again, showing him what he did to Lestat.
Killing him is satisfying as a fantasy until he either considers that a quick death would be a mercy for Louis compared to what Louis put him through, or considers that if Louis was dead that might hurt Lestat even more, and it was already shocking enough that he could endure this pain.
He considers keeping Louis prisoner in some way, draining him each night and keeping him weak, making him desperate for a taste of Lestat - even if only for sustenance.
The fantasy only works if Louis is pathetic and desperate and begging. The (too predictable) scorn Louis might hold against Lestat – the look in his eyes that says he thinks Lestat is insane – would not be enjoyable. It breaks the fantasy.
One night, his fantasy becomes simply Louis sitting opposite him, magically able to hear Lestat’s thoughts again, Louis’ eyes filling suddenly with understanding and sympathy and regret for what he has done.
The image of Louis truly regretful brings on the full body shuddering uncontrollable sobs for the first time.
After a while, a part of Lestat’s mind becomes self-aware enough to worry the noise might attract someone, but it doesn’t change what his body is doing.
It just happens for a while.
He’s somewhat disgusted with himself afterwards. He is pathetic.
He cries a little about that fact as well.
He sleeps.
After that for a while he is able to imagine murdering Louis with satisfaction, at least until an unsatisfying rat or orgasm. Afterwards the distaste for the idea returns.
Maybe a fantasy of Louis willingly being kept prisoner? As some kind of penance? The idea of that sustains Lestat for a while. He’s not sure if it’s weeks or months.
Yes, if Louis was truly understanding of how awful he had been. If Louis agreed to let Lestat work through it on his body.
If Louis let Lestat beat him bloody, then let him lick him clean of blood again.
Maybe they could be happy again after that.
After doing that a few times.
Maybe that would quiet the howling rage inside Lestat that wanted Louis in every way, good and bad.
Another place his mind would turn is seeking the mistake.
The mistake, made twice now, is perhaps making a vampire out of someone who wants Lestat. Their desire cannot be trusted, not like Lestat’s love. It’s fickle.
He is filled with disgust at all other beings, for being loveless, for framing Lestat as insane because he is the only one who can love wholeheartedly, who can love through pain and cruelty.
Maybe the mistake is others. The religious. They have destroyed the world and a millennia of otherwise happy souls, condemned them to a false hell on earth.
The pilgrims that first set off from Europe to the Americas. If there was a God who was interested in preventing suffering, surely He would have sunk their ships before they could reach the East Coast? What would be the point of destroying the societies that were here before and replacing them with people so repressed by the word of the so-called Lord that they are incapable of love; who fill their hearts with shame in its place?
Lestat, for a while, entertained the idea of remaking Armand’s stupid devil cult in his own image, of ridding the country of the superstition that blighted it. Destroying the church, rather than propping it up, of course. Forcibly bringing a New Enlightenment to the New World.
It all had a poetic arc to it that appealed to Lestat’s aesthetics. The belief of Christianity was stupid, but it had some good symbolism to it that one could take advantage of. Drinking blood at the alter being the obvious one.
This thought, however, proved to be a mistake, because it left him ruminating for an indeterminate number of days on the night he had turned Louis: the image of blood given freely on the alter to a false God who also, allegedly, gave his blood freely.
Would Louis respond to the repetition of this act appropriately? See it as the romance it so clearly was?
Would he be jealous?
That would be acceptable. That would prove something.
Would he feel betrayed?
That would be good. Louis should suffer for what he had put Lestat through.
The turning had been so romantic, but maybe it was a mistake to have tied their bond to that stupid set of beliefs?
Oh, well. Lestat had eternity to remake the meaning of that.
Lestat fantasised about finally getting to the Pope and sending up red smoke through their little symbolic chimney as a sign of his conquering of the Church.
Of course, to do this he might have to take down the Italian coven, which would have every other coven after him. Hm. Did that matter?
The lucky thing about the deranged state Louis had left Lestat in was that it made it easy to jump between trains of thought without worrying about not wrapping up the logic.
The problem of the Italian coven could be solved by a stronger version of himself, sometime in the future.
The stronger version would return. Given time.
In the meantime.
Lestat comforted himself with the thought that Louis would not be able to replace him. Not truly.
Louis would find it impossible to let himself go and descend into the heady love of the years of their seduction, or the best years of their young family, for fear it would go south again.
Lestat had been so proud of himself that he had shucked open the oyster shell that was Louis’ heart. And he knew no-one else would truly be able to do it again. Not after it had backfired so hard on Louis. Not after every reason he had for resisting Lestat had, to Louis’ mind, been proven right.
He would never let himself be truly happy, without reserve. The reserve would be back permanently now.
But Lestat had opened the shell.
And he knew he was still an annoying grain of sand that Louis would not be able to get rid of, that Louis would have to make a pearl around.
It might be a pearl of hate, but it would be the one pearl. And it wouldn’t be removed unless Louis died.
God he did hope Louis didn’t die.
Well, he hoped Louis wouldn’t die by anyone else’s hand. He still might want to – but maybe that was a decision for a stronger Lestat.
For now, he could imagine it, and he would be safe in his coffin (his coffin that Louis had … left him in? Out of love? Hate?) and Louis would be safe from Lestat.
Fine, Lestat could admit it: the murder attempt had perhaps been somewhat romantic.
Forget the petite mort, here is the grande mort.
Louis should have drunk the blood though. That would have added to the whole thing.
Instead he had simply let Lestat spread his innards across their home.
And had watched.
Fine, maybe that was erotic too.
Lestat had never truly understood the mortals in the throes of passion who wished to be degraded, though obviously they enjoyed it. But.
Louis making Lestat pathetic.
That had been something.
But before he could really enjoy this, the anger rose in him. How dare he. How dare he degrade Lestat like that.
Louis is the one who should be degraded.
And once again, Lestat found himself imagining Louis under his power, trapped, begging.
This time, Louis being told he was awful, pathetic, and, like those mortals, willingly agreeing. Willingly confessing. “Yes, I am stupid. Yes, I was awful. No, I am not worthy, not even worthy of being hit. Yes, please, hit me. No, I’m not worthy, but Yes, I deserve it.”
The coffin lid is still covered in warm bloody ejaculate when Lestat falls asleep that night.
The spiral goes like that for a while.