My Name Is Death

“There,” Pam said after a few moments of allowing the room to simmer in your frustrated silence. She moved away from Eric, whose head was now almost entirely wrapped in foil and who looked very much the part of the paranoid schizophrenic trying to hide his thoughts from aliens. She moved to wash the dye off her hands behind the bar.

You stood up to look around, pulling the Fangtasia shirt as far down your thighs as it would stretch, knowing full well that everyone there has probably seen everything when Eric had healed you. You stopped your exploration every once in a while to glare back at him, and you were comparing the contrast of the club’s décor with the lights on and off when your stomach growled loudly.

You ignored it for a bit, flicking the light switch up and down until you started getting that nauseous feeling that usually comes over people when they haven’t eaten in a long while. Throwing up wasn’t going to make you look any more menacing, so you stopped messing with the lights and looked over at the two vampires, who were ignoring you to the best of their abilities. (In other words, it was as if you weren’t there at all.)

“Um, you would happen to have any food here, would you?” you asked in a strained attempt at politeness. How’s that for showing some restraint? you thought proudly.

“We do,” Eric answered, as Pam stepped in to start pulling pieces of foil out of his newly dyed hair. The bleachy smell made you want to gag.

“Food for, you know, humans?” you specified, realizing that he would think nothing of eating you for dinner and would probably include you in his answer just to be an asshole.

Eric, however, nodded slightly.

As fun as your little game was, you really were hungry and his being incredibly technical wasn’t exactly putting you in a better mood. “Can I have some then?” you asked snappishly.

“You may.” He gestured toward Pam, who set the last piece of foil onto the pile and rolled her eyes before tossing you an unopened bag of peanuts that were probably more for decorating the bar than for anything else. You hoped they hadn’t expired, and once you found that the sell by date was acceptably far off in the future, you opened the bag and started crunching down on your poor excuse for a meal.

Pam began washing the leftover dye out of Eric’s hair while you were munching away on the peanuts. After a few handfuls, your stomach had stopped trying to digest itself and you had become significantly less agitated. The wonders a full stomach will do for some people.

“How long have I been here?” you asked.

“Oh, about six or seven hours,” Pam drawled apathetically.

“Jesus,” you muttered. You had only missed one dose, as opposed to the three you would have missed if you’d actually been unconscious for as long as you had initially thought, but still. “And I’ve been out for that long?”

“I gave you only enough blood to keep you alive long enough for your body to make use of it and heal,” Eric clarified. “Which, given my age, isn’t much. We had more pressing matters to deal with.”

“Like rounding up all your human patrons and glamouring them before they had the chance to call the cops on your asses,” you supplied sourly. “And thanks,” you tacked on hastily, though it came out a bit sarcastically. He had let you lie unconscious on a table for six hours when apparently you could have been fit as a fiddle within minutes. Well, at least he had saved you.

“That, among other things,” he agreed.

“So what happened to the guy who shot me?” you asked, as “we took care of it” was in no way an acceptable answer. The phrasing of your question brought another to mind, and you blurted it out without waiting for another answer. “Wait! If you guys can’t die from being shot, then why did everyone go batshit?”

Pam was now rubbing Eric’s hair dry with a towel while he sat texting on his cell phone. “Wooden bullets,” she explained. Or, she said it as if it explained everything.

“So they’re like mini stakes?” you thought out loud. “That’s… creative. What an asshat.”

Eric looked up at you for a moment, an unreadable expression on his face, and then went back to his phone.

Boy, they sure are a talkative bunch, you thought, fighting the urge to roll your eyes as Pam put the final stylings on Eric’s hair. It looked exactly the same as it had earlier that night, clean and blonde, but you guessed that from all you’d heard about vampires that they could see better than humans could. You plopped down on a stool a safe distance from them. “So why didn’t the party continue after you, you know, fixed everything? Don’t you think kicking everyone out will look suspicious?”

“We have some business to attend to,” Eric said matter-of-factly. He then turned to Pam. “Speaking of which, I believe now is as good a time as ever to begin.” He returned his gaze to you. “You may leave now.”

“It’s after two AM!” you exclaimed, angry again. “Alan has the car by now, and I can’t drive it now anyway!”

“Ginger!” Pam ordered sharply, and in came the woman who had dressed you earlier. “Escort our guest home.” She gave you a sickening smile.

“Thanks for your hospitality,” you said sarcastically, letting the empty headed Ginger lead you to the door.

“I may call on you again,” Eric said as you stepped over the threshold into the parking lot that was empty except for one car. “I trust you will be happy to oblige.”

You shot him your most menacing glare yet as you slammed the door behind you and stepped into the night.

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On the car drive home, Ginger babbled on and on about how nice Eric and Pam were, and what good hosts they were, and how she’d lost so much weight while staying with them, and blah blah blah while you sat, scowling, with your arms crossed over your chest. Lucky for you, it took less than forty-five minutes to get to your house due to the lack of traffic.

You thanked Ginger as she pulled into your driveway, because although you were severely annoyed at having been booted out in the middle of the night (and of course taking a gunshot to the chest), you knew it wasn’t her fault. She had even less control over the situation than you did.

You unlocked your door as she drove away and headed straight to the kitchen. Just as you’d suspected, Alan had scrawled you a note across the refrigerator telling you that he’d left and wasn’t coming back. Apparently, you’d better not expect to see him around Bon Temps again anytime soon. Well, good riddance. You crumpled the note and tossed into the trashcan, snorting. He’d be back by Christmas, begging you to let him spend his winter break with you. And of course, you would let him.

You kicked off your shoes and socks and tore the Fangtasia shirt off of you before you even reached the bathroom, grabbing a towel from the hall closet and letting everything else fall to the floor. You closed yourself in the bathroom and turned the shower to scalding and then stepped under the water.

Your skin turned red from the heat as you scrubbed viciously at every inch of skin Eric might have touched, or even seen. Which, you were horrified to think about, probably included everywhere. There was no evidence of a gunshot wound on your chest. Anywhere. So you scrubbed extra viciously there.

After about fifteen minutes, which was twice the length of time you normally spent showering, you turned the water down to the bottom faucet and grabbed a razor and shave gel from the side of the tub. There was no use going to prove to Sam that you wanted to keep your job with stubbly legs when part of the uniform was tiny black shorts, so you sat down on the edge of the porcelain and quickly ran the razor over them.

When your skin was feeling sufficiently smooth, you turned off the water completely and toweled off. Wrapped in the soft cloth, you ran a brush through your hair and pulled your bangs back. You were not in the mood the blow dry it; you were just going to have to go messy. You quickly brushed your teeth and then headed into your bedroom to get dressed.

Your sleeping schedule was completely screwed to hell because of that stupid vampire bar, so you slapped on a pair of black track shorts and a plain white t-shirt and hoped that Sam didn’t notice it was missing the green Merlotte’s logo. You figured you might as well head to Merlotte’s as soon as it opened (which, granted, was still hours away) to show Sam that you intended to do better at his restaurant.

He had sent you home to calm down. And while you couldn’t exactly tell him why your clothes were missing, you could tell him you had had an emergency, and he’d probably understand. He did know about your condition, you’d had to state it on the job application. And besides, Lafayette had taken two weeks off without notice and gotten his job back a few days earlier. You could always point that out if he gave you trouble.

The peanuts were starting to wear off, so after you swallowed your pills that you should have taken hours before and prayed that they would still work, you ambled into the kitchen to make some breakfast. You walked straight past the oven, which you had never used and probably never would, grabbed some frozen waffles from the freezer, and crammed them into the toaster.

Of course you were still angry. Eric, who was probably the most arrogant son of a bitch you had ever had the displeasure of meeting, had saved your life but in doing so had staked some kind of claim on you. You knew very little about vampire blood, because honestly, up until that night you hadn’t really cared, but now you wanted to know exactly what it was going to do to you. You knew it was used as a drug, but all you’d heard about it hadn’t mentioned anything about healing or life-saving or anything like that. You would have to ask Sookie at work, or if she didn’t know, have her ask Bill Compton. But how would you go about doing that without having to explain why you needed to know?

“DamndamndamndamnDAMN it,” you seethed, and jumped back as the waffles popped up out of the toaster, extra crispy. Before letting them cool or putting syrup on them or anything, you grabbed one and bit into it. And something was wrong… it tasted overprocessed and even burnt, which was all wrong, because this was exactly how you always made and liked them. You hadn’t touched the toaster settings in years. Must have freezer burn, you thought, spitting out the chewed piece into the sink and dropping the rest in before running the garbage disposal.

You tried again with bread and strawberry jam, and had much better luck with that, so you pushed your luck even further and poured yourself a glass of milk before taking your breakfast of champions into the living room and turning on the TV. You flipped through channels for a bit, knowing that nothing was going to be on at five AM, until you threw the remote to the floor and stared up at the ceiling.

Steve Newlin was on the screen, bitching about something or other having to do with vampires, which was all fine with you at the moment. Until he asked the reporter how Americans were supposed to let their little girls feel safe on the playground at school if vampires were given equal rights.

“Oh yeah right,” you spat, getting up to turn the TV off. “Because kids go to school when vampires are out. Why the hell is everyone so stupid?”

You laid back down on the couch and stared up at the ceiling some more.

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“Leona?” someone was calling, combined with a banging sound. “Leona, Sam’s been wondering where you’ve been. We all have. You in there?”

Your eyes fluttered open and the midafternoon sun streamed into them. “Sookie?” you called, recognizing the voice. “Oh God… I’m sorry, hold on!” You scrambled up and raced to the door, cursing yourself for falling asleep and hoping to save her the sight of her friend’s corpse popping into her mind. You’d heard that she’d been sent to wake up a fellow waitress and ended up finding her dead, and you certainly felt bad about possibly bringing back that memory.

You opened the door and there she was, looking stick skinny, blonde, and very relieved. Even though you’d only known her for a week, she pulled you into a hug and you wrapped your arms awkwardly around her.

“Honey, you missed your shift,” she said, letting you go. “You didn’t answer your phone and Sam said he knew how much you wanted to keep your job. We’ve been worried sick.”

You swallowed the saliva in your throat. You’d missed your shift. Well, there went your job. By the looks of it, it was around two in the afternoon. An hour after your early shift ended. “I had a bit of an emergency,” you explained, desperately trying to find something to tell her that sounded believable. And you didn’t want to tell her about your condition… it was bad enough having Sam know about that. You didn’t have to say anymore, however, because something in her eyes changed and she muttered, “Oh shoot. Not you too.”