The Poison in Your Blood

I’m standing in my shower singing really loudly and washing my hair. I’m dancing, the whole deal. I don’t know if I’m the only weirdo who dances like a stripper in her shower, but I don’t think much of it, it’s just what I do. I like to be different. I hear my doorbell ringing and I’m instantly annoyed. Who the hell is here right now while I’m in the shower? And why?

I rinse my hair quickly and get out of the shower in a hurry and rush to the door in a towel, wrapping another around my hair as I move. I nearly trip and die over Piggy, who has put himself right in the middle of my walkway.

“Stupid cat!” I cry and finally I throw the door open. Austin is standing there and my heart stops beating for a second. Do I let him in? What the hell do I do? “Hi…” I say.

“You open the door naked to everybody?” he asks me with a grin. I stare at him with my mouth open for a few seconds.

“I was in the shower!” I say finally. He laughs.

“Can I come in?” he asks. I bite my lip.

“Sure,” I say. I move and he comes into the apartment. He looks around a little and then he looks at me. I open my mouth to ask him why he’s here but he’s suddenly ultra alert and looking around the room again in a creepy kind of way.

“Who was here?” he asks.

I narrow my eyes with irritation. I don’t like that he thinks he has any right to know who I let into my apartment. “Nobody,” I say. “My girlfriend Madison was here a couple days ago and I got a new cat.”

He looks at me with his own eyes narrowed and it sends a shiver through my body and I look at the ground. It’s been almost a week since Jonathan was here. His cologne smell is long gone. I never did call him for the date. I just don’t know what to do with all these guys. I was hoping not to have to make a decision. Christmas is in a couple days and I kind of was hoping to hang around and eat ham with Piggy.

“Look, did you come here to eat me or something? I don’t know what you want me to tell you. There is nobody here but me and my new cat. His name is Piggy.”

“What an unfortunate name for a cat,” he says.

“You haven’t seen him yet,” I say. I hope he doesn’t notice that I’m kind of hurt. I thought Piggy was a cute name for a big fat cat. He takes in a breath and looks at me again.

“It was a man,” he says.

I think I just choked on my tongue. How the hell can he even fucking know that?! He’s so fucking creepy some times. I close my eyes a second and try to think of how to distract him and not have to talk about Jonathan. I silently apologize then to God and my dead mother before opening my towel and letting it fall. I hope it looked like an accident. He looks at me for a long minute and I walk up to him and press my body against his.

“Lana,” he says. “You are in the danger zone.”

“I like danger,” I say in my most seductive voice. I’m surprised when it doesn’t shake with fear. Danger with him could seriously mean anything. I might be putting myself on the path to an early death.

Piggy waddles into the room then and lies down between me and Austin. He rolls onto his back and lets out a long dramatic meow. Thank you, Piggy, for embarrassing the hell out of me and ruining my sex goddess routine. Austin looks down at the cat and I can see he’s amused.

“This is Piggy?” he asks.

I nod once. Piggy lets out another of his dramatic meows and stretches his feet up towards me. This either means he’s out of food or he needs a tummy scratch. I’m naked…I don’t know how I feel about scratching my cat’s tummy right now. I wish I wouldn’t have left my towel across the room.

“Who was here, Lana?” Austin asks and I pull the towel off my hair and wrap it around my body. So much for being sexy and changing the subject. I can’t win.

“An old friend,” I say. “I didn’t do anything with him. He came to catch up, I wasn’t feeling well and told him I was in a relationship now and I wasn’t going to have sex with him.” Why the hell am I telling him all this? It’s not any of his fucking business. He stares at me.

“A relationship?”

“Well! Isn’t this a relationship?! I can’t get away from you! You come in my house and ask me who was here and shit! I don’t even know how the fuck you knew a man was here a week ago!”

“I can smell it,” he says.

“That’s another thing! You are fucking creepy! I get it; you’re a vampire or whatever! But…”

“Shh!” he hisses. “Keep your voice down, Lana. I don’t want your neighbors hearing you shouting my fucking business. It gets messy when people hear things they shouldn’t.”

I think I’m going to faint. The idea of things “getting messy” makes me sick to my stomach. I see dots dancing in front of my eyes. “Messy…how?” I ask. What the fuck? Why did that just come out of my fucking mouth?

“I think you can guess, babe,” he says. I look at him and his eyes are black and his fangs are out. I’m not sure if it’s the fear or the complete disgust at the idea of him killing my neighbors but that’s it. The dots get bigger and I’m gone.

I come to a while later. He’s got me lying on the couch and it looks like he dressed me in a t-shirt and panties. I sit up and put my hand to my forehead and he’s suddenly next to me. I feel totally disoriented and I don’t know if I want to see him.

“How long was I down?” I ask after a second of getting myself together.

“About ten minutes,” he says. I nod. Well I guess it could have been worse. Ten minutes isn’t bad. He hands me a glass of water and I take it and take a sip.

“I’m surprised it didn’t hurt myself when I fell…” I say to myself.

“I caught you,” he says.

I should have known. I probably never even came close to hitting the ground he moves so fast. Oh well, I guess that’s a good thing. I take another sip of my water and set the glass on my coffee table.

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Lana,” he says after a long pause. I shrug.

“I’m just not totally used to the idea of my…whatever you are…being you know…a vampire that kills people.” I wonder if that sounded casual. His expression tells me it didn’t come off quite as casual as I’d hoped.

“If it makes you feel better, I don’t kill random people for fun,” he says. I see dots again.

“Not better…” I say. “Not better at all.” I take deep breaths through my nose and put my head between my knees. I’m not going to pass out again. I’ve got to get used to this. I have to learn to accept it. “What kind of people do you kill?” Who keeps talking through my mouth?! He pauses.

“For a little while…it was people who…were going to get themselves killed anyways. Alcoholics and drug addicts and shit…” he pauses. “But I’m sure you know my story.” He’s got this expression of amusement and it irritates me.

“You’re story? What story? You’re rehab story? Do vampires really get addicted to Vicodin?” I probably come off a little more angry then I meant to. He looks at me for a minute and then he shrugs.

“I guess we do,” he says. Well at least that makes him seem a little more human. “I’ll tell you one thing. It’s really really difficult to feed when you are under constant surveillance in a rehab center.”

“I’m going to puke,” I say. He laughs. “So if it’s not drug addicts, who do you kill?”

“Lana,” he says and looks down at my floor.

I frown with irritation. I don’t want him to baby me just because I fainted one time. I hate that about men. A woman faints or threatens to puke and instantly men think she’s a sissy who can’t handle anything. I can take it.

“Bad people,” he says. “Mostly. Sometimes I can’t make it that long or whatever and…an innocent person gets hurt. It’s usually fast. They never know what hit them.”

“Bad people?” I ask with my head between my knees again.

“Why are you so interested?”

“Because you are my boyfriend…sort of…and I think I have a right to know what kind of people my boyfriend murders and has for dinner.”

He laughs out loud this time and I look up at him from where my head is between my knees. I kind of hate him right now. I don’t feel like any of this is funny. I should have stuck with Jonathan and let him hurt me some more. At least then I wouldn’t be asking what kind of people he kills.

“Lana, it’s bad people. I don’t think I need to go into detail, do I? It’s guys who try and pull women into dark alleys. Murders, rapists, shit like that. This has been difficult for me too. I’m not out trying to hurt people. So I found a way to justify it for myself. Early on, I may have killed a couple women who…I took home to sleep with. It gets easier to control as time goes on.”

“I have to know…where you planning to kill me when you took me to your house the first time?” I don’t know if I actually want him to answer this question but a part of me really really has to know if he was going to kill me.

“You are going to make yourself sick, Lana.”

“Oh my god,” I whisper to myself. “You were going to kill me! And now instead you’ve dragged me into this weird mess and…oh my god.”

“Lana! It’s not like that,” he says. “I could smell your scent…at the show. I was drawn to you, but not to kill you. If I was going to kill you I’d have done it before you ever even knew what was happening. I told you, when its innocent people it’s fast.”

I don’t know if that makes me feel better. But I guess I’ll take it. I stand up then and try to get myself all the way together. “Why did you come over?”

“I missed you,” he says.

The words hit me hard and I about choke on my tongue again. I don’t know that a man has ever told me he missed me before in my life. Honestly most of the men in my life have been assholes. I look at him and I want to kiss him. The desire is fast and pulsing in my chest and I throw myself at him like a freak and kiss him hard on his lips. He probably thinks I’ve lost my mind, but I can’t help it. He pushes me off slightly though and I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the heart.

“I can’t…” he says. “It’s been too long since I’ve…been out…and I can’t be that close to you.” I feel bad now. I should have considered that I’m a human full of blood and he’s a vampire.

“You’ve bitten me before,” I say. The hideous mark only finally went away completely. I don’t know why I’d put myself out there like that. Maybe because I want to be close to him. I’m lonely, I’ve been lonely for a long time and I’d do anything to be close to somebody.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says.

“Will it hurt?”

“I assume it will,” he says. His expression says it should be obvious that having my throat bitten into would probably hurt. I guess I didn’t think about that. I take a breath and look down at my feet for a minute.

“If you were to bite me…could you manage without killing me?” I ask in a kind of skittish way. I don’t know why this is running through my head. It’s weird. Maybe it’s just desperation. If he’ll let me lie with my head on his chest I’ll let him tear my throat out. Seems fair enough doesn’t it?

“I didn’t kill you the first time,” he says. It is surprisingly reassuring. “But I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to…”

“And I won’t become a vampire?”

“No,” he says.

“So how does somebody become a vampire? I thought if you got bit by one you became one.”

He pauses for a long time as he tries to find a way to explain this to me. I guess it’s a little more complicated than I thought it was. Of course, I also thought vampires were fairy tales. So what the hell do I know? Maybe Madison is secretly a werewolf. Okay, she probably isn’t a werewolf.

“That’s mostly right. If I just bit you…and I didn’t take anything from you, you’d change.”

“So when you bit me the first time, you took blood out of me?” I ask, and I’m feeling queasy again.

“I…I had to. This isn’t a curse I’d wish on my worst enemy, Lana,” he says. Well that makes me feel better. He drank my blood for my sake. How thoughtful of him. I think I might puke.

“Okay,” I say. “Well…I want to be close to you.”

“I can’t right now…” he says.

“You can,” I say. “Here I am, just go for it.”

“Lana, please,” he says. “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want you to think you are going to become some kind of weird buffet.”

“No, really,” I say. “I’m offering myself to you. If you’ll lay down with me after.” My heart is thumping in my chest and I can hear blood rushing in my ears and I know that this is crazy and weird and there is something terribly wrong with me but I don’t care. I’m so fucking lonely. I was going to spend Christmas alone with a cat named Piggy. Maybe this way I can spend it with him. He has hold on both my biceps and I close my eyes. “Promise not to kill me.”

I hold my eyes tightly together and I can see the nightmares I’ve had about him playing in my head. He scares me so completely and yet here I am, offering my jugular vein to him. I tilt my head to the side so he can get to me and I take a deep breath. I open my eyes and instantly I regret it. His eyes are black as coal and before I can say anything I feel the skin on my neck tear apart and everything goes black in a second.