Creep

I hadn’t realized how poor my relationship with my father was until I had to tell him what happened. I had been in denial about how bad of a father he actually was to me until his only response was, “Don’t call this number again.”

If it hadn’t been a cell phone—a cell phone which would soon no longer have service—I would have slammed it down. Instead, all I could do was angrily hit the red end button and throw it onto the couch, and then let the pain crush my heart for only a second before burying it and straightening my face, and moving on.

The small brown couch that looked like bleach had been splattered onto it in odd places, in the very small living room, where all the furniture was mismatched and not in an attractive way at all. This was the apartment that had been issued to Tom and I, and the apartment I had come home to, while he had gone to spend his time in the guard cell for two days.

I was, undoubtedly, in a depression. Now that I had this time to myself—I was even refusing to see my mother—but I was keeping all the emotions deep down inside. All of them.

My entire existence was pathetic, and I wasn’t the only one who thought so. There was a whole world out there of healthy, regular humans who hated me and thought I was disgusting and less. Worse than that, I was the first human on record who had voluntarily been infected, and that wasn’t even the truth. As I watched TV for over ten hours, I saw my story on the news at least ten times.

”London native falls in love with vampire—has herself infected for love. Was it worth it?” I was famous. Great. Let other people talk about it. Eventually it would go away, but I would be stuck dead forever.

--

The phone rang and rang and finally, I rolled over in bed and picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Jesus Christ, you’re alive! You can’t answer the phone?” my mother’s panic voiced pierced through the quiet.

“First, I am not alive. Second, I don’t feel like it.”

“Well, Tom is here. He’s out, and he just doesn’t know if he should come over there or not.”

I shrugged, though she couldn’t see it, then sat up on the side of the bed. “It’s his house, too.”

I could see her nodding with a worried look on her face. “Everything will be all right, if he does move in?”

I laughed. “Yeah, everything will be all right.” Of course it wasn’t all right, but she meant would I hurt him. I certainly wasn’t going to physically abuse him.

“Okay, baby. He’ll be over in a bit.”

I hung up and got into the shower. I slipped into a pair of shorts and a tank top and went to the kitchen, looking through the small amount of food we had left.

By food, I meant packets of artificial blood. All our kitchen had was a fridge full of artificial blood and a cupboard full of cups. I thought about getting straws, but the thought seemed weird and I changed my mind.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, facing towards the door with a cup in one hand and what I imagined was a very sour look on my face when Tom walked through the door, a very pale and vacant expression on his face.

“Hello,” I said.

His shoulder shot up quick and his eyes snapped to me. “Harriett. Hi.”

“How was jail?” I asked as a stood up and moved over to the sink.

“It was, like jail. I just sat there, alone,” as he talked, he walked into the kitchen. “You’ve made this place look pretty nice.”

I nodded as I stood over the sink, watching traces of blood turn the water red before it went down the drain.

“If I’m stuck in this hellhole, I might as well do my best to spruce it up, right?” I replied in a sarcastic tone as I turned around. Tom was directly behind me when I did.

“I want to do something for you,” he said.

I side stepped. “You’ve done enough.”

He grabbed my arm before I could get all the way past him. A familiar sense of fear rose in my chest.

“Just listen, and after this, I promise I won’t bother you anymore. We can go on living here in peace as if we don’t notice each other and eventually you can drop me.”

I stared into his eyes and nodded.

“I am sorry. I am. What I did to you was inexcusable. It was wrong and I know it and I know that there is nothing I can do to make it up to you. I fucked up your whole life, but at the time, I thought I had a good reason.” His voice was low and thick, like he was close to tears. I wanted, more than anything, for him to not be touching me anymore. “I thought if I could make someone else feel the way I did, I would feel better. I thought it was me getting my revenge and it just… it wasn’t. All I did was make myself realize how, just how totally shitty of a person I am. So I’m sorry. And if I can do anything to make it up to you, I will. I will do anything. Please, just let me know. Otherwise, I’ll stay out of your way, I swear to you.”

I looked at him for a moment more. I knew he meant it, because what the hell was the point of lying to me now? Nonetheless, he was the thing I hated most in the world, so I broke his grip on my arm and moved into the bedroom, slamming the door shut behind me.