u/OriontheGuyMan

Content Warning: Implied Abuse, Implied Self Harm

The doorbell rang a little before six thirty. I answered it to see Carrie in a modest long-sleeved black dress. She smiled at me and glanced nervously behind me at my mom, who very excitedly walked up to the door to greet her.

“Hello! You must be Carrie! I’ve heard so much about you.” Mom reached out her hand. Carrie reached out her hand tentatively and shook hands with mom.

“Nice to meet you,” she said nervously.

We gathered at the table. My mom had made spaghetti since this had all been short notice, but assured Carrie that if she had more time, it would have been something spectacular.

Carrie ate, slowly easing up but never fully letting her guard down. I picked at my food, enjoying the taste but not looking forward to the immense pain my break from my full blood diet would cause later. Mom ate some but was more interested in conversation.

“So, did you have fun at the concert last night?”

“Y—yeah,” Carrie said sheepishly. “It was a good time.”

“I never understood that stuff, but if it makes you happy it makes me happy.” Mom said, looking down at her plate, not noticing the look of confusion building on Carrie’s face.

It looked like Carrie was holding back tears. Mom must have noticed, because she stood up and got on Carrie’s level. “Hey, sweetheart. What’s wrong.”

“Why are you all so nice to me?” Carrie choked out.

I cannot express what an immensely sad thing it is to see someone you care about shocked to be treated like a human being. I wondered what sort of person her father was. He must have made mine look like a saint.

“Why wouldn’t we be? You’re a lovely and polite young woman.” She put a hand up to her mouth and went in close to Carrie’s ear. The next words came out as a whisper, but I could hear them clearly. “And between you and me, that boy over there is enamored with you. I’m beginning to see why.” She winked. Carrie laughed a little. I blushed and shrunk in my seat.

“You weren’t at all what I was expecting,” Carrie said, wiping her eyes.

“And what were you expecting?” Mom asked.

“Someone like my dad. You’re way more like my mom.”

“And what’s she like?”

“Kind, understanding, encouraging, just… wonderful.” Carrie looked down towards the floor. “She was murdered when I was younger.”

I was surprised to hear that. Not just ‘died’, but ‘murdered’.

“I’m so sorry. Alex’s dad has been missing for some time. It’s not the same, but I know what it feels like to miss someone like that.”

Carrie and mom hit it off great. I’d never seen either of them so happy. Mom embarrassed me more than a few times with stories of my younger years, but overall, I was happy. After Carrie left, mom came up to me.

“I can’t say that I’m too happy about you living together before marriage, but she’s a nice girl. Treat her well, Alex. That woman needs someone who cares. When I volunteered at the women’s shelter, I met a lot of girls like her.” Mom had volunteered a lot back when dad was around. She said it was the duty of every Christian to help others. The idea of abuse never crossed my mind when I talked with Carrie, but now it was all I could think about.

I wanted to kill her dad. I wanted to kill Mark. Maybe I could just feed on all the disgusting people of the world and make it a better place for everyone. Bill could die too. Then who? I didn’t know the answer to that. I’m sure I could find someone.

I had my car packed with what few belongings and clothes I had before my shift, with the intention of moving them in afterwards. As I parked in that familiar dark parking lot, I inhaled deeply. I was sure that I would not be ready or whatever insanity awaited me. I hoped that the old man would not make a move right away.

I had packed something else in that car, placing it inside my glove box. I took it out and put it in the large pocket of my work vest. It was a wooden stake, sharpened to a fine point. If that old bastard Renaud was here, only one of us would be leaving. I wasn’t terribly confident that it would be me.

I saw that white van parked close to the store, which was off brand from what I knew about Renaud. What almost escaped my vision was that silver Honda, parked on the other end of the lot. It was going to be a difficult night.

I walked into the store, Carrie was waiting for me, having changed into the shirt I bought for her at the concert along with a long-sleeved white undershirt. She smiled and waved as I came closer. Something was different, more pleasant, more relaxed. I felt more relaxed seeing her but couldn’t let my guard down. Peter and Renaud were both here, somewhere in the store.

I heard Rachel whistling somewhere deeper in the store. I was going to need to pay very close attention to that today. Fear made its home somewhere deep inside my chest, but I put a lock on it, determined to unpack the emotion once Renaud was dead at my feet and Peter was… what was I going to do to Peter? The man was trying to prevent people from dying. Could I really kill him for that? I might not have a choice, I thought.

“Hey, Carrie! Car’s packed, so I’ll be in today.”

“That’s great!” she said, way more excited than I expected. “I’m looking forward helping you unpack.”

“Yeah,” that little twinge in my chest which Carrie induced calmed some. “Me too.”

I was working in the housewares section that night, putting up microwaves and blenders on the shelf. I heard Rachel whistling, a few aisles down. I was close. I could respond quickly if I needed to. I heard footsteps down the hallway on the near side end of the aisle. They were heavy, dress shoes maybe. Peter. I heard the whistle again, but it cut short. Shit.

I ran out of the aisle. I felt a woosh of air run past my head. I looked down the aisle and saw a wooden crossbow bolt sliding against the white tiles. I turned around. Peter was there, crossbow in hand. I don’t know how he made it in with that, let alone how he could parade the aisles, armed and on camera, and get away with it.

My undead heart beat a little faster, pumping blood that wasn’t mine through my veins in a frenzy. “Blessed arthritis,” Peter said, using ‘blessed’ as a curse. “Sorry, Alex. My aim’s off, but I’ll make it quick.”

Not now, not now, not now!

I turned the corner. The old man was there, standing in front of Rachel. He stared down at her. It was like she was in a trance, completely paralyzed and not at all aware of her surroundings. He threw her on his shoulder then looked back at me. I heard Peter’s footsteps stop right behind me. A bolt flew past my ear. Renaud stepped to the side and caught it.

“Those English dogs at Agincourt had far better aim than you, Lutheran,” he hissed, the word ‘Lutheran’ sounding like a slur. He leaped onto the shelf, Rachel still on his shoulder. He then leapt across the tops of the aisles until he was gone. I felt Peter’s hands on me as he shoved me to the ground. I turned around in time to grab his wrist as he tried to plant a stake in my heart.

“Stop!” I pleaded. “He’s getting away!”

“Unless you know where he’s taking her, I’m afraid they’re both long gone. The most I can do is protect everyone else by killing you. Sorry, Alex.”

As I started to overpower him, his other hand produced a flashlight. He turned it on. It glowed that same blue color as the lamp on the pastor’s desk, burning my skin once more. My strength faded into nothing. Terror seized me. Rachel was gone. Carrie would wonder what happened to me. Mom would be all alone.

“I know where he is!” I yelled.

“The seventh commandment says though shalt not bear false witness,” Peter replied.

“I’m not lying! I’ll show you! Please!”

The light turned off, but the tip of the stake poked at my chest.

“I’m listening. Make it quick.”

My skin started to heal, almost bubbling in reverse as it reformed over my arm. I stared up at Peter, this kindly grandpa looking man who held the power of life and death over me.

“When he turned me, he took me to his house. I can bring you there.”

The pressure of the stake on my chest let up. Peter stared at me long and hard as I looked back up at him in a mixture of terror and determination. He sighed, then stood up.

“Meet me at midnight tomorrow. Don’t worry about your friend. Renaud’s old school. I’m sure turning her will be a last resort, if he’s even figured out how to do it. I imagine you were an accident.”

“We need to get her now!” I protested. The thought of Rachel, alone with that creep, made me feel sick.

“We need to prepare. If we rush in now, it’ll be the two of us dead and your friend won’t make it anyway.” With the stake still in his hand, I was in no way able to protest. “At the church at midnight. See you then.” He smiled, then turned away. “Also, don’t make me regret letting you live another night, and don’t think this means I won’t kill you later.”

I went towards the front end to leave as my shift concluded. I was staring at the floor, angry at myself for my complete incompetence. I had guessed that the old man was trying to avoid Peter, which was why had tried so hard to be discrete in how he tried to abduct Rachel. I had kept removing his options, and when Peter hunted me down here, it was now or never for Renaud. In short, it was all my fault.

“Are you okay?” I heard Carrie say. I looked up and saw her standing by the door.

“Yeah,” I lied. She looked unconvinced but said nothing. “Let’s get going. I want to get all my stuff in the apartment tonight.”

I hopped in my car and followed her car to the apartment. We got all of my stuff in fairly quickly. I’ve been sitting on the couch typing all this. I’ve been distant all day, I’m sure. I think it’s worrying her. She has this shift off, and I put in a sick day.

I decided to do some research about Carrie’s mother on my phone. She disappeared after dropping Carrie off at school. They found her in an alley downtown with two holes on her neck and completely drained of blood.

As I’m sitting down typing this, I see the light on in the bathroom from my spot on the couch. I can hear Carrie. It sounds like she’s in pain. I wonder if I should check on her or if that would be too much. I worry about her. I can’t begin to know or understand all that she has been through, but I want to be there for her. I also smell something sweet and am so very hungry.

At midnight I will meet Peter and end this, but now I’m scared of what I might do. I feel the hunger seizing me once more. Please God, don’t let me hurt her.

I arrived at Our Savior Lutheran Church at seven twenty-five at night, having cut it close to avoid the wrath of the sun as much as possible. I walked up to the large wooden structure, remembering happier times when I went with my parents as a small child.

I saw that silver Honda in the parking lot. I hoped it belonged to someone else, but almost by instinct I knew that Peter was here. Walking through the unlocked doors of the entrance, the familiar scenery looked vastly alien in the darkness of night. Every light was off, save for one. Down the hall just left of the entrance to the sanctuary, on the very end office, light shone through a square window.

I walked down the hallway, taking in the sights long since forgotten, until I spotted a photograph of my father and Peter, shaking hands with the pastor between them. I don’t know why I didn’t have any strong memories of Peter. I’m sure I saw him as a kid. The congregation was so small that I would have had to. If my dad had been around him so often, why had I not seen them together?

I approached the door to Pastor Jung’s office. He was sitting there at his wooden desk, Bible opened, staring at the window, at me. “Come in, Alex.”

I opened the door. The squeak of the hinges shrieked softly down the empty hallway. I shut it. The clicking of the latch seemed impossibly loud against the silence of the room. The Pastor gestured with his hand to a chair in front of his desk. Next to it sat an antique mirror. I sat down.

“So, why did you want to talk to me?” Jung said with a smile. He looked at me, but for the smallest fraction of a second, I saw his eyes wander to the mirror.

“It’s really a long story. I don’t even know how I’d begin.” My eyes moved from him to the strange shadeless lamp that sat on his desk. Something about it made me terribly uncomfortable, almost as much as the cross he wore around his neck.

“I have plenty of time, truly. I think I may be far more believing than you would expect.” He smiled, but there was something not right about it. I had known this man for a decent portion of my life and seen him smile, genuinely smile. It seemed like he was putting on a show.

“I… I think I’m a vampire.”

“I know, and I’m sorry.” The Pastor pulled the cord on the lamp, illuminating the room in blue light. It burned. I fell out of the chair, clutching to my blistering exposed flesh. “That mirror is genuine silver. You bared no reflection.”

“Why?” I cried through gritted teeth.

“Because it’s the job of the church to deal with those things that run opposed to the natural order of God.” My eyes were tight shut, but I could hear the voice. It wasn’t the Pastor. It was Peter. “That is precisely what I did with your dad. I’m sorry it came to this. If we killed Renaud you never would have turned.”

“But I didn’t do anything. I haven’t killed anyone!” I threw my hands up in a desperate attempt to defend myself. I felt a hand against my chest, shoving me to the ground.

“Not yet, praise Christ, but you will. That’s why we need to do this.” Peter’s voice was filled with sadness, but he didn’t stop. I felt something sharp and wooden over my chest. I braced myself for the end, then the pain stopped.

“What’s happening?” I heard Jung say.

“Looks like Renaud’s getting bold,” Peter replied.

I opened my eyes to a dark room. I could see. They couldn’t. Now was my chance. I rushed towards the door. I slammed the door, turned around, and felt a sharp pain in my shoulder. Standing in front my, holding a tri-edged dagger that was firmly planted inside my body, was the old man.

Terror filled my eyes as he looked at me in abject hatred. The glass of the window attached to the door shattered as a crossbow bolt flew through it. It struck the old man in the ear, and he released his grip on the dagger. I limped down the hallway to the sound of chaos behind me. I heard Peter screaming for the Pastor to get down. I heard the old man scream something in what I thought might have been French. I didn’t stop to see what was happening. I just ran.

I drove home in my car, not sure what else to do. It was in the parking lot that I realized the dagger was still in my shoulder. I removed it. It was very simple in design. It had three edges and discs on either end of the handle. It looked like it belonged in a museum.

I should have called in, but I went to work anyway. My wounds healed rapidly, but I began feeling hungry again. Carrie was at the door, waiting for me. “You alright, man? You look like crap.”

“Y—yeah, just had a rough day.” I knew that to be an understatement but didn’t want to let on just how rough a day I had been having. “Have you seen Greg?”

“Your friend with the acne? No, I haven’t.” I felt a twist in my gut. Bill walked up, the bald spot of his head shining bright.

“You know where that greasy like twig you hang around with is? He’s been missing for three shifts in a row.” Bill sounded less worried for his wellbeing and more annoyed.

“No, I don’t,” I said, sharing three more words with Bill than I ever would care to in any circumstance. I could kill him, I thought. His fat pompous ass would satisfy me for a month, drained white and sucked so dry of blood he’d mummify.

“Well let me know when you do,” Bill said before storming off back to the registers. My eyes followed him. I imagined hanging him upside down and bathing in the crimson from his veins, of slicing his heart open and scooping out the fluid with a cup, of…

“Alex, you okay?” Carrie said. I turned to look at her, not processing fully the words but noticing the profound look of concern on her face.

“Yeah… I’m fine,” I lied.

“Did you know they found a rat today?”

“Really,” I said, having had my fill of small rodents. Maybe this one spoke too. I most certainly hoped not.

“Maybe he’s keeping that bat company,” Carrie said, giggling a little. Seeing her laugh made me feel less nervous about everything. I could delude myself into thinking everything would be alright for just a while longer.

“Hey, before I forget. Mom wanted to know if you could join us for dinner.”

“Sure. She nervous about her baby boy moving out of the house?” Carrie teased.

“Probably,” I chuckled. “She’s super religious though, so heads up.”

“Oh.” She looked a little nervous when I brought that up. “My dad is too. I know how to navigate it. It’ll be fine.”

Given what she had told me last night about her dad, I imagined she had far less to worry about with my mom but didn’t know how to explain it to her. I was really missing Greg’s bluntness right now. Where was he?

We started our shift. David warned us about the rat. I was alone, stocking pet food. I smelled something sweet from somewhere above me. My stomach pleaded with me for something to fill it. I dropped the bag of dog food I was holding. It split open, spilling kibble onto the floor. I climbed the shelf and followed the scent to a vent on the wall. The cover was open. On the end, sat a rat. And just beyond it was a severed head, face twisted in agony, acne marking its cheeks. It was Gregg.

Instinct took over. I grabbed hold of his head, and drank until there was nothing left to drink. The rat looked up at me, and as I returned to my former self, staring in horror into the tormented eyes of my dead friend, whose blood dripped down from my chin, I heard the rat speak. “Bring me Rachel, or Carrie is next.” It was the old man’s voice.

I fell from the shelf, dropping on my back to the floor. Greg’s head rolled down the aisle before being stopped by the ripped bag of kibble. The rat dropped down, turning into the old man as he landed on his feet. He picked up the head, Greg’s head, and smiled at me. He vanished into mist, along with the remains of my friend.

I was distant with Carrie for most of the day. She must have noticed, because as we clocked out she confronted me. “Hey, what’s going on?”

“Nothing, it’s just…” I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t let her die. I couldn’t let Rachel get taken by that creep. “Do you think I could move in tomorrow. I know it’s sudden, it’s just…”

She laughed. I shrunk a little. She saw my demeanor and was quick to correct herself. “I wouldn’t mind the company. Besides, I’d feel a little safer with you there.” I was so flattered by the remark that I didn’t think to ask what it was she’d feel safer from.

“I’m glad. I bet mom’s going to want to meet you sometime today then. She won’t be bothered, I’m sure.” Though I was certain that I would be. I could already picture my mom doing all the things that made me cringe. “I’ll see you around six or seven tonight. I’ll text you the time after I talk to her.”

I walked out alone into the lot, still thinking of Greg. Poor Greg. He died because of me, because he was close to me. I was determined that no one else would die. I had to kill that old man.

The bat sat at the driver’s side mirror of my car once more. Furious, I stormed towards it. “You tried to get me killed.”

“You’re already dead, Alex. I was just trying to lay you to rest, like I did for so long all those nights I went out.”

“Who are you?”

The bat transformed. I stepped back as the figure appeared before me. I recognized the greying hairs, the familiar stubble, those eyes which mirrored my own. It was my father.

“Dad?”

“Hey, son. It’s been a while.”

I don’t know what emotions I should have felt, and I’m not entirely sure that I knew what emotions I was feeling. Anger, sorrow, joy, frustration, just a mess of everything assaulting me all at once cascading together until I found one singular word to search for a reason to justify every single feeling. “Why?”

“I am a church trained vampire hunter. I turned when fighting Renaud, that old man you keep seeing. I was too much a coward to have Peter put me down but couldn’t stand the thought of putting you and your mother in danger. So, here I am.”

All those years gone. He had lied to us. “Did mom know what you were doing all those nights?”

“No. She never needs to.”

In the swirl of emotions I found one feeling and clutched on to it. It was anger. “I lost my faith because of you. Did you know that? Did you know how long I waited, how long I prayed for you to come home? I gave up on you. I gave up on God. Do you know how much that hurt mom, to see me like that? Do you know how much it hurt me?”

“I’m sorry.” It was all he could say. It wasn’t enough.

I pushed past him, entered my car, and drove away. Tears fell against the steering wheel as I raced home. I dried my eyes and entered the apartment. Mom was sitting there, sipping coffee and reading her Bible.

“Hey kiddo, how was work?”

“Messed up,” was the only response I could give.

“You want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

Carrie is going to be over for dinner at six thirty today. Mom is ecstatic. I could never tell her about dad. I hope he stays away. I wish he had stayed missing.

I started feeling hungry an hour before Carrie was set to pick me up. It was seven at night and already getting dark. The concert started at nine. I thought about trying to scrounge up some poor animal and satisfy the craving, but the only thing within an hour’s distance would be someone’s dog, and I’m not prepared to murder some poor old lady’s Yorkshire terrier.

I took a walk outside around the perimeter of the apartment complex, looking at the highway situated below the hill the complex sits on, and trying to find something, anything I could feed on that wasn’t human or someone’s pet.

I did see something, slithering at the bottom of the hill. It was a snake. I walked down the hill and towards it. Startled, it struck me, holding onto the flesh of my hand with its fangs. I felt some sympathy for it. We weren’t too different from one another, both fanged predators wanting to live long lives and needing to kill to do so. I sank my fangs into it, making it my first kill.

It did the trick, but I wasn’t at all full. I had to hope that it would be enough. I couldn’t keep Carrie waiting, not tonight. I was worried about Greg and had hoped he just dozed off. He’s done it before. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. I chose not to think about it. Tonight would be me and Carrie, enjoying music, and each other’s company, and… my mind wandered towards possibilities. I liked her, sure, but I didn’t know as much about her as I wished. We hung out all the time in middle school, though never outside of school. She’d never met my mom, and I never met her parents.

Something or another happened to her mom when we were in eighth grade, and she got really distant from me. We went to the same high school, and it was like she was a totally different girl. She had long hair, did cheerleading, and all sorts of things that were out of character for her. I had a huge crush on her at the time, but looking back I never did see her smile in those four years, not when her team went to nationals, not when Mark had taken her to prom, not at all. During middle school she wore dark colors and dark make up, dyed her hair, all that sort of stuff that your parents tell you is just a phase. Seeing her back to her old self a few days ago had felt refreshing in a way I didn’t expect. There was a lot of time to make up for.

As I waited in the parking lot for her car to show up, I could feel my mom staring down from the small balcony that was attached to our unit. I looked up at her and she was smiling wide. It should be a surprise to no one reading this, but I had never brought a girl to the house at any point in my life. My mother always hit me with that talk parents give to their terminally single children. “You’re such a nice young man. Those girls are missing out.” Things like that. Of course, I always attributed my terminal bachelor condition to my immense awkwardness. Greg had suggested that I should get tested for autism, and if doctors’ offices were open during nighttime hours I might consider it. Greg… I hoped he was okay.

She came in a black Honda that looked to be about as old as my mom. She was blasting death metal. She rolled down the window. “Hey, Alex! Ready to roll?”

“Yeah! Let’s do it!” I looked back and waved to mom. She just smiled down at us. I hopped in the car, and we were off.

As we were driving, there was a silver Honda behind us. I thought I had seen it parked in the lot of the apartment complex before we left. I brushed it off. There were a lot of cars that color, make, and model. I could have easily confused it with any number of other vehicles.

My eyes were on Carrie for a good bit of the ride. She was stunning. She wore black lipstick and eyeliner and had the nastiest looking metal shirt I’ve ever seen with “Cannibal Corpse” plastered in big messy letters on the top. She wore a long sleeve dark striped shirt under it.

“I would never have guessed you were into this stuff in high school,” I said, still surprised by her.

“My dad was less tolerant of my tastes after my mom died.”

I had no idea that her mom had died, just that something bad had happened to her. “When was this? I’m so sorry. I had no idea that she had passed.”

“Eighth grade. I never liked any of that crap I was a part of in high school. Dad made me do it hoping I’d come out normal. I don’t live with him anymore, so I’m choosing to be myself from now on.” She smiled.

“How’d Mark take that?” I regretted asking as her smile vanished immediately. At the mention of his name, she winced.

“Well… it doesn’t matter now, does it.”

We parked outside the venue. It was a little bar at the edge of town called “Ma’s”. The silver Honda parked a couple rows behind us. It unsettled me, but I convinced myself that I was getting paranoid.

“Ready?” Carrie asked, smiling at me.

“Y-yeah. I’m ready.”

We walked up to the entrance. The line was short. Carrie was talking about the band, telling me all sorts of facts and trivia. It was an underground group, so there wasn’t likely to be a lot of people, but the venue was small so it would all even out.

As we got to the front of the line, the staff member, a large gentleman who looked like he ate creatine for breakfast and protein powder for lunch, checked our tickets and IDs before marking our right hands with a black X. I looked back at Carrie, confused.

“Have you never been to a concert before? It’s so we can’t order alcohol from the bar.” I nodded. Alcohol wasn’t what I was worried about drinking. My stomach started growling sometime during the ride over.

We walked in. The light was low. There must have been a hundred or so people inside. It wasn’t terribly crowded, with tables and bars on either side of the floor and a large space in between for the crowd when the music started. There was a merch table on the right side of the stage.

“I brought some money. You want a shirt?” I asked.

“You’re a real romantic, y’know?” She said with a laugh. “Yeah, I’ll take one.” I smiled and blushed at the statement, joke or not. I don’t think she noticed. We entered the line, and towards the end I caught a glimpse of the prices.

Can you believe they charge that much for a shirt? Thirty dollars for a T-shirt. She saw the face I made and laughed. “Having second thoughts?”

“No… I just… didn’t’ realize they were so expensive.”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to. I’m flattered though.”

“No, I’ll still get it.”

We came up to the front of the line, and I bought her one with a melting skull and the indecipherable logo of the band printed over the top of it. She threw it on excitedly over her other shirt. I wondered if all those layers got warm. The temperature of the bar was notably warmer than the air outside.

Right as she put it on, the lights dimmed, a soft guitar fluttered through the air hitting classical acoustic melodies with dark undertones which shifted slowly into something sinister, then the distortion kicked in and the lights flicked on. The band was on stage playing the most brutal sounding song I had ever heard in my life.

Carrie lit up. “Come on!” I could barely hear her say as she turned to me before rushing towards the stage. We managed to make it at the metal dividers right up front, the amps blasting so loudly in our ears that I could feel the bass vibrate in my chest. A mosh pit formed behind us. For all those unaccustomed to the wonders of metal, a mosh pit is when a crowd forms a circle and then violently throws themselves at each other.

It got a little close for comfort, as men who came into the pit crashed against us or fell down next to us. I tried forming a barrier between Carrie and the pit. It settled down for a moment as the first track ended.

“Hey everyone! We are The Cerebral Emulsifiers!” the singer yelled into the microphone. “Now, for this next song I want to see you rip this floor up!” They then began playing another even heavier song.

I could feel the pit behind me growing wild, when something sweet entered my nostrils. I turned around. One of the men in the pit, a short lanky fellow, was holding his nose in his hands as someone in the pit helped him to his feet. Blood gushed from his nose.

My stomach growled. My mouth salivated. I saw him exit the pit. I followed the scent instinctively, feeling like I was watching out of someone else’s eyes, like I was merely an observer and not an active participant in what was transpiring. It led me to the bathroom, where I was stopped by a familiar looking older gentleman who looked very out of place.

“Hey, that you Alex?” he said.

“Yeah… who are you?”

“I’m an old friend of your dad’s from church.” He reached out his hand to shake mine, which I confusedly accepted. “Nice to see you again. This sort of stuff isn’t my thing, but my son loves it, so I bought him tickets and drove him up as a birthday present.”

That explanation felt off, but in the absence of other sensible conclusions, I accepted the story. “I gotta get going,” I said. “It was nice seeing you…”

“Peter,” he said. “Name’s Peter. I have to go use the men’s room. Hopefully I’ll see you again soon.”

I had vague memories of my dad going out late at night to meet with the pastor and do work for the church with his friend. I wondered if Peter was the friend. I had probably seen him at church before and not even realized it.

I smelled that sweet scent once more, but it had a different quality to it. I followed it to the bar and found a small rat trap in the corner. Snapped in its jaws was a rodent of decent size. With all eyes focused on the band, I quenched my thirst on the poor animal.

I went up to bar and grabbed two waters. I squeezed through the crowd, the smell of beer, weed, and sweat filling the air, and found Carrie leaning against the railing.

“Thirsty?” I said, barely audible against the brutal crunching of electric guitar. She smiled at me.

“I wondered where you went.”

The rest of the night was good fun. The band played their last song about an hour and a half later and we all crowded towards the door. I saw Peter once more, no sight of his son. He was by the bar, looking down at the rat. He looked up at me. I waved. He waved back, though his expression was solemn.

We got back into the car, our eardrums about shot out. “That was a lot of fun. I’m glad I came,” I said.

“Yeah. I’m glad we could hang out,” she replied. She looked at me and then down at the floorboard. “Alex, I had a question I wanted to ask you…” My heart caught in my chest. I saw her hand resting on the console as she looked back nervously at me. I reached out for her hand.

As my fingertips touched her knuckles, she recoiled back, breathing heavy. Her whole body pressed against the window. She inhaled and exhaled deeply as I apologized profusely.

“I’m so sorry. I’ve been misreading this whole thing. I—.”

“No,” she cut me off. “No, it’s okay. It’s not you, just something I need to work on. I was actually wondering if you’d want to be my roommate.”

“Wha—” I didn’t have words. Between romance and rejection, this was not an expected possibility. “I—I don’t…”

“I’m sorry. It’s just with Mark gone it’s become impossible to pay the bills, and you’re probably the nicest guy I’ve met, and I don’t really have many friends after having to fake who I was in high school, and—”

“I’d love that,” I said without thinking too much. Regardless of where all this was going, Carrie was a good friend. I wanted to preserve that. I also figured that I could let mom have a break from me. My determination to never tell her I was a vampire may have also influenced my decision. I thought I might be able to tell Carrie someday, just not today. Mom on the other hand…

“Yeah, it was a silly question and…” her head snapped to look at me, “wait, what?”

“I said yes. I was just taken aback is all. I’d love that.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

She smiled wide. I blushed a little. She might have noticed because she blushed too. We drove home, talking nonstop about bands and music and life. She dropped me off at my apartment.

“See you tomorrow, Alex!” she said.

“Yeah, see you then.”

We exchanged smiles before I walked up the stairs to the apartment. I entered and saw mom sitting on the couch, reading a book titled “How to Pray the Psalms”. She put it down and smiled at me. “That late already?”

“Afraid so,” I said.

“How’d it go?”

“Wonderful,” I replied. “Hey, I have some news.”

“Go on,” she said, really dragging out the last word. She pressed her hands together.

“I’m going to be moving out of here soon. Carrie said she needed a roommate, and I said yes.” Mom just looked at me a little shocked. “You aren’t upset with me, are you?”

“Well, I’d prefer you two married before living together.”

“It’s not like that, mom. We’re just friends,” I said while imagining being married to Carrie. My mom could see through me, I was certain of it. Christian or not, there was some witchcraft in that woman.

“Mmhmm,” she replied, a smug expression on her face. “Tell you what, why don’t you bring her up here for dinner in the next couple of days before work. Let me meet her.”

“I’ll talk to her about it. I’m going to call it a night. Love you mom.”

“Love you too kiddo.”

I walked into my room, closing the door behind me. I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. Aside from my entire circadian rhythm being thrown off from night shift and vampirism, there was just too much to think about. The thought of living with Carrie was more than a little exciting, though it hadn’t come the way I had envisioned it. Something was terribly off about Peter. I swore that it was him inside that silver Honda. The way he looked at me at the end of the night set off alarm bells in my brain that I couldn’t begin to process or understand. Then there was the meeting with the pastor, and Greg…

I called the pastor in the morning and made our official meeting time seven thirty at night, which would make it just dark enough to move around and early enough for me to make it to work afterwards. I called Greg too. He didn’t answer.

I meet with Pastor Jung tonight. There’s a sense of foreboding to it that I can’t quite place. I’ll have to see what comes of it, I suppose. For reasons I can’t explain, I hope Peter won’t be there.

My day off was rather uneventful. I stayed in bed, thinking of the bat, of the old man, of Carrie. I tried to turn into a bat for an embarrassingly long amount of time. I jumped out the window once when no one was looking to try and force the transformation out of me and only succeeded in tasting the concrete sidewalk at the bottom.

I told mom that I’d be out on Saturday. She was sitting on the couch, reading some devotional book. “Hey mom, I’m going out with a friend on Saturday.”

“Where to?” she asked, not looking down from the book.

“A concert,” I replied.

“You’re going out to listen to someone scream into a microphone, aren’t you?” Mom didn’t have any moral issues with my music, which as far as really religious parents go is admittedly rare. Despite that, it was very safe to say that her tastes in tunes were far tamer than mine. She sighed. “Who are you going with? Do I know him?”

“Carrie.”

She put the book down, looked up at me, and smiled. “You didn’t say it was a girl! Carrie? The one you kept talking about in high school?”

“Yeah…” I was starting to regret initiating this conversation.

“Well, I’ll pray it goes well. I’m so proud of you.” Even though it was just the two of us, I felt my cheeks flush with embarrassment. “I’ll pray that the two of you have a good time together!” She smiled and winked, then returned to her book.

I started my shift the next night. Carrie was off. Rachel was by the door, ecstatic. “Hey! I’m night shift now!” she said.

“Already?” I asked, both surprised and relieved.

“I talked to HR and they expedited my transfer.” In between sentences, she whistled. It was one of her milder tics.

“Courtesy Clerk needed to the front for customer assistance,” said the voice over the loudspeaker. I looked down towards checkout. The old man was standing there, staring out at us. I could see the realization forming on his face that Rachel no longer had any reason within her job to help him. His face twisted into a sort of hatred I had been wholly unfamiliar with as he looked at me. I felt my full body shudder as I remembered that night, of what he was and is capable of. Rachel stuck out her tongue at him. At least she was safe, or safer at the very least.

I looked up and saw the bat. It was hanging from the struts on the ceiling. It wasn’t looking at me this time. Instead, its attention seemed to be focused on the old man. The old man must have noticed, because he looked up at it, and I swear that bat shook a little. It flew off somewhere deeper into the store.

I clocked in for my shift. I was working alone in the canned goods aisle, putting soup on the shelf. I broke open a box of chicken noodle soup cans, grabbed one, and as I went to fill the empty space on the shelf, there was the bat, staring at me from between the cans on the shelf. I nearly fell over.

“You need to listen to me, Alex,” it said. I felt my panic build.

“Who are you?”

“A friend.” It twitched its nose. “You can’t be a vampire and live a normal life too. You’re a danger to everyone. You need to leave.”

“I… No, no I’m not leaving. I can handle this.” My fear turned to indignation. This bat, who I was sure was another vampire, knew nothing about me. Who was he to judge what I could and couldn’t handle.

“You’ve fallen for that girl, haven’t you? Carrie? If you love her, truly, you’ll disappear.”

“Stay away from her,” I growled, fury building in me.

“It’s not me you need to worry about. It’s you.” With these words the bat turned into mist and disappeared.

The rest of my shift went smoothly, but I couldn’t get the words of the bat out of my mind. I saw Rachel a few more times. She seemed in much higher spirits than I had seen her in a while. Her tics weren’t as severe either, though I occasionally could hear the distant whistle or swear word from somewhere in the store. It was large comfort to me because it meant that the old man hadn’t snatched her.

I wondered why he didn’t just come and take her? He was strong enough to do it. Perhaps he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. What was the old man afraid of? That was a thought that I very much did not want to entertain.

As I walked back to my car after my shift, I was careful to scan the dark lot for that van. It wasn’t there, thank God. I was less inclined to thank Him when I saw what awaited me at the car. It was the bat, sitting on my side mirror.

We locked eyes as I moved closer. I wasn’t afraid of it anymore, just deeply annoyed. “Why don’t you show me who you really are?” I asked.

“I’m hoping I won’t have to. It’ll be better for both of us, trust me.”

“What do you want?” My patience for the brown little bat was long gone.

“If you won’t leave, talk with pastor Jung at your church. He’ll know what to do.” I looked at this little bat with perplexion deeper than I thought I was still capable of.

“How do you…”

“It doesn’t matter. Please just listen to me.”

“So what? Is the almighty hand of God going to reach down and cure me?” I said half mockingly.

“If only it were that simple. It’s what I should have done all those years ago. Don’t be a coward, like me.” There was something familiar about the look the bat was giving me, something that I couldn’t quite place.

After I drove home, I gave the pastor a call.

“Pastor Jung, God’s blessings, who is this?”

“Hey… it’s Alex.” I hadn’t talked to the pastor in years. I stopped going to church with mom when I was fourteen, much to her protest. The idea that I’d ever go back for any reason was an impossibility, until today. “I’d… I’d like to meet with you sometime soon. Maybe Sunday?”

“Sure,” he replied. Pastor Jung had always been likeable. He was kindhearted and a good listener when I went to church with my family, even as I was losing my faith. It felt good to talk to him again. “I have on opening after the ten-thirty service. We can talk then.”

“Actually… this might sound weird… can we meet while the sun is down?” There was silence on the other end of the line.

“Oh…” he said, followed by more silence. “Meet me tonight at eleven. Come alone.”

“Actually… I was still hoping to meet on Sunday. I have plans today.”

“I’d much rather we meet tonight, but if you insist. Where are you going, out of curiosity?”

“A concert. Not sure where. A friend is taking me.”

“Right. While I hope you have fun.” There was something decidedly different in his voice, like I was meeting a different side of the man I once knew. I brushed it off. The bat said that I needed to talk to him. I had no trust for the bat, but I respected the pastor, even if I couldn’t bring myself to see his God with the same reverence that he did.

I also got a call this morning from management. It was Bill, much to my disgust.

“Hey, do you know where that little friend of yours with the acne went?”

“Nice to talk to you too Bill. Is Greg late today? That’s not so unusual, is it?”

“Well, he didn’t clock out yesterday, and I didn’t see him after he helped that old geezer you guys keep making such a fuss over.” My heart dropped. “He probably just went home and slept in. Kids like him just don’t want to work these days.”

I had no remarks or comebacks to Bill this time. “Yeah… guess so…” I said, my mind so distant that I didn’t even really understand the words that came out of my mouth. Bill said something else I couldn’t make out as I hung up the phone and stared from a distance at the light that seeped through the bedroom window. The concert is tonight. My meeting is with the pastor is tomorrow. Greg is missing.

Sorry for the late update. A lot has happened since that traumatic night a couple of days ago, and it was hard to put to paper.

The next morning was difficult. I got up around noon. Sunlight trickled in through the window and between the curtains next to my bed. Its warmth encompassed the blanket I had wrapped myself inside of. As my arm emerged from under the covers, the skin of my forearm made brief contact with the light that came in from the window. It burned.

The sensation was like a million needles all taken out of a four-hundred-degree oven and pushed into my arm. I winced, a scream caught in my throat, and rolled off the bed, hitting the floor with a thud.

My eyes were shut tight from the pain, but I peeled them open and looked down at my arm. The skin was charred black. It smelled like burnt pork. The blackening receded until it vanished entirely, replaced by its normal pale shade. My mom opened the door to my room.

“Alex? You okay?” she said, then she looked down at my pathetic form on the floor. “Whatcha’ doin’ down there, bud?” She put her hands on her hips and gave me that look I have assumed all mothers have perfected, somewhere between concern and amusement.

“Rough morning,” I said, looking up at her.

“Rough noon, more like. I got lunch ready. I figure it’ll be the last time we get to share lunch in a while, with you working nights and all now.”

I smelled the food coming from the dining room. She’d made her church famous casserole, something worth crawling out of bed, for sure. In my case, however, I’d be crawling off the floor.

I stood up, cautious of the light that had threatened to tear me apart only moments before and walked out of my room. The cross on the wall sent terror through me just as it did the night previous, but I was able to force those feelings down and push through.

Mom had crosses everywhere. I had grown up in the church. Dad was actually a pretty important member of our congregation, always organizing events and meeting with the pastor. He went missing ten years ago. I was only nine, but the damage was irreversible. Mom grew closer to God, and I slowly stopped believing that there was anyone up there to hear my prayers. I wanted to believe but just couldn’t. I couldn’t rightfully call myself an atheist anymore though, with the symbols of Christ having such a traumatic physical and emotional effect on me. I didn’t know how or if I could tell mom.

She sat at the end of the table across from the empty chair which had served as a reminder of the thing that had made my faith wither and die. I sat on the long side near my room. Casserole was on the center of the table with a serving spoon inside the porcelain container. She held my hand to say grace. I toned the words out. After she finished, we both took a helping onto our plates.

It was good but lacking in a way that was difficult to explain. My mind flashed to the previous night, of being baptized in my own blood, of slurping up the crimson fluid, of the taste…

“You okay there, kiddo? You’ve been staring at your fork for a minute,” mom said, eyebrows raised in concern.

“Y-yeah I’m fine, just spacing out.” She shrugged her shoulders and went back to the food.

I spent the day researching about my current condition on my laptop, a cheap crappy thing that I’ve exchanged more than a few harsh words with. I have no doubt that it is vampirism I’m suffering from. Trying to find concrete information on a condition that the world at large believes to be fiction is more than a little difficult.

The top search was on whether or not vampires have blood. I checked my pulse once more. It was very faint but had returned to me. The general consensus was that vampires have the blood of their victims flowing through their veins. How that blood passes from the stomach to the veins is beyond me.

 “Do vampires have a sensitivity to sunlight?” was one of the things I typed just for posterity. I knew the answer to that one. “A largely 20^(th) century invention,” it said. My formerly charred arm would disagree with that.

I had read sometime prior that vampires wouldn’t need to feed regularly because of the richness of blood, or some crud like that. I hoped that was true. I googled that as well, and the answers, to my dismay, varied greatly. “Lovely,” I said to no one but myself. Someone in the comments of my last post suggested I try animal blood. I’m not terribly fond of that idea, but neither am I fond of having to do to another human being what the old man did to me.

I shut the laptop with a clack. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was eight at night, an hour before my shift. I sighed, grabbed my work vest, and walked past my mom on the couch and towards the entryway.

“Gonna leave without saying bye to your mom?” I heard her voice from behind me. I turned around to see her standing there. A gold cross hung around her neck, a gift from my dad years before I was born. She had worn it every day since his disappearance.

As the dread of the object built its way up from my stomach and into my chest, I focused as much attention as I could on her face and away from the necklace. She saw my expression and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Don’t worry, kiddo. You’ll do just fine.” She must have thought I was nervous about my promotion to night shift. Small comfort, but comfort all the same.

I hugged her, the cross burning against my chest, but I didn’t care. I felt tears form in my eyes, but held them in. “I love you mom,” is all I could say, and all I will say. She doesn’t need to know.

“Hey, what’s all this about? I love you too, kiddo.”

“It’s… it’s nothing. Just nervous.”

“Don’t be. You got this. I’ll be praying for you.”

Little comfort given what I took to be God’s current feelings toward me. I took a deep breath and let go. “See you in the morning, mom.”

“See you, kiddo. It’ll be fine. Trust me.” I nodded, then left out the door.

The sun was down. The moonlight stung a little on my skin as I walked down the stairs and to where I normally parked my car, where I saw that it was missing. I never drove home from work. It’s probably still there.

I sighed. “Crap,” I muttered. It wasn’t too far. I could walk. I could… I could try out my limits. If I really was a vampire, I should be able to do a lot of things. I looked around at the empty lot, making sure there were no observers. I looked up at a tree and jumped. I went twenty feet into the air, my head smashing into a branch. I landed back down with a tremendous thud. My head throbbed. I saw spots. I stood up. “Guess I’m walking.”

It was a thirty-minute journey. My headache cleared far faster than it should have. As I approached the lot of the Super-Mart, I scanned the parking spaces for the white van. It wasn’t there. I also saw my old beater parked a couple spaces closer to the store than employees were supposed to, as you do.

I stepped across the lot and into the store. I saw Carrie by the door. She was wearing a shirt with a pentagram and “Atreyu” on the front of it. She wore a long sleave undershirt beneath it. “Hey, Alex! Looks like we’re working together today.”

My undead heart caught in my chest. “Y—yeah! Looking forward to it.” I smiled and quietly wondered if vampires sweat. I hoped not, because I was certain I would be otherwise.

“Yo, before we start, I had something I wanted to ask you.” She walked closer to me. I tensed up like the corpse that I was.

Before she could elaborate, Greg walked up. “Hey, man! How are you doing? You forgot to clock out yesterday.” Greg made for a terrible wingman.

“Yeah, I’ll adjust it later.”

Carrie poked my shoulder. “I’ll tell you later. I want to grab a coffee from the break room before we get started.”

I turned to Greg and couldn’t hold back my scowl. “Dude, bad timing.”

“Sorry. Crap were you about to—”

“No. She was going to… you know, I don’t actually know.”

Greg gave me a look like you might give to someone who is mentally unwell, which in all fairness was one way I could have been described in that moment.

“So… a bat flew in earlier,” Greg said, switching the subject. “He never left. You might still see him.”

“Did you run around asking the customers if you saw where he went, like last time?”

“No. I didn’t incite panic a second time, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Right… well, I’m going to go to the back. I’ll see you around Greg,”

“Yeah. See you bud!”

As I walked towards the back, I saw Bill berating Rachel, probably for something wildly outside her control. If I was to feast on any singular person in this store, it would be Bill. Rachel stormed off towards the back, crying and smacking her side. I imagined myself ripping out Bill’s throat and drinking up what poured out. I tried to put that thought back where it came from, but it grew louder in my head with every passing second.

“Hey, you one of my newbies?” I heard a voice, deep and commanding, coming from behind me. I turned around. There was a dark-skinned old man with thick stubble. It was Dave, the recently promoted night shift manager.

“Yeah,” I said, breaking out of my violent trance. “I just transferred from another department. Dave, right?”

“I prefer David but call me whatever. See you back there.”

“Yeah. See you.” David walked away at a pace that spoke of purpose. My own pace was less enthusiastic. As I moved past the clothing section, something tucked on a hangar between the jeans caught my eye. It was the bat.

I stopped for a moment and looked up at it. It stared back at me, tilting its head. It was perched upright, which I found unusual. I had always thought that bats hung upside down.

I walked away from the weird little bat, feeling its eyes on me as I stepped to the time clock in the back. I looked at the time clock. I still had a couple minutes. Rachel was sobbing in the breakroom. I sighed and walked in.

 “What did that idiot say this time?” I asked.

“I don’t want to— screw off! — talk about it,” she replied. I pulled up a chair and sat at the table with her. “I’m quitting. I have to.” Her physical tic, where she hit herself on the side, worsened. It looked painful and she winced with every blow.

I thought about the old man. If he found out where she lived, and if she was there all the time, that could be bad. There was nothing keeping him from doing that now. He could come in while she was sleeping at her house and... A weird idea popped into my head.

“You could work nights with us. They’re still hiring. I know that we’ll be short tonight, so it’s not like they’ll say no.”

“I’ll—frickin’ stupid— think about it. Thanks, Alex. You’re a— terrible— good friend.”

I smiled and sat up. “Hopefully I’ll see you on shift soon.” I walked back to the time clock. Three minutes late. “Crap.”

I clocked in and met up with everyone in receiving. David was going over all the specifics on how to use the equipment and pallet jacks.

“Who has stocked shelves before?” David asked. A few people raised their hands. Carrie, to my surprise, was one of them. “Alright, take one or two of these guys and show them the ropes. We got a few pallets up and down the aisles that stocking crew left us and a truck coming in a couple of hours. Let’s get to work!”

 To my surprise and elation, Carrie chose to show me the ropes. We powered through some pallets, stocking shelves and putting away overstock. I was so focused on Carrie that I almost didn’t notice that feeling I had when I came in, when I saw that bat. I looked up, and sure enough, it was perched on a support on the ceiling, watching me.

The truck came and went. Boxes were far lighter than I expected, probably more to do with my newfound power than any hard-earned muscle. We finished putting some toilet paper on the shelf when lunch break came.

“Hey, about that thing I wanted to talk about,” Carrie said as we sat at the table in the breakroom together. She looked down at the empty spot in front of me. “You going to go all shift without eating?”

Something I neglected to mention was how badly my stomach reacted to mom’s casserole. I can eat regular food as a vampire in the same way that someone with lactose intolerance can enjoy ice cream, so for now I was choosing not to.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. You were saying?” I was aware that my voice may have been more than a little over enthusiastic.

“So, before Mark broke up with me I got these tickets to a concert. It’s an underground band, real heavy stuff. I have two, and I’m obviously not going with him anymore, and you seem cool, so I was wondering if maybe—”

“Sure!” I said, once more aware of my over eagerness but helpless to stop myself.

“Are you sure? It’s this Saturday.” Her expression was pleasant, one of relief.

“Yeah, I actually have that day off. Crazy coincidence!” I wanted to follow up with asking whether or not this was a date, but decided that if I hadn’t scared her off yet with my awkwardness, now wasn’t the time to push my luck.

We spent the rest of lunch talking about bands and music. It was pleasant. My anxiety around her started to settle some. The rest of the night went by quickly. There was always work to do, and since the only one with experience working nights was David, we really spent most of the night learning the job.

I clocked out, waved goodbye to everyone, exchanged a smile with Carrie, and made my way towards the front door. My spirits were higher than I expected. For a moment I believed that the worst of it was all behind me, that last night was the end of it and, somehow, I would figure it all out.

As I walked out into the cool night air of the parking lot, I felt a gust of air blow in from behind me, followed by tiny paws on my shoulder. It was the bat. It put its head up to my ear. “Alex,” it said. “You need to leave.”

I ran to my car and sped home.

I’m off tonight, so I don’t suspect much more will happen. I haven’t seen the bat or the old man since. I don’t want to see either.

I don’t think that I’m alive anymore. I mean, I can feel the keys of the laptop beneath my fingertips. I’m conscious, but there’s no blood in my veins. When I lift my fingers to my neck, there’s no pulse. Let me explain. It’s best if I start from the beginning.

 I was standing in the hallway leading to the break room at work, looking at the poster showing open positions in other departments. “Overnights” hung there in large bold letters.

“You aren’t really thinking about it, are you?” Greg asked me. He was a cart pusher, just like I was. He was this acne ridden scrawny teen, a couple years younger than me, with a complete lack of filter. He was also a very good friend, and despite his mouth, not terrible company.

“More than thought about it. Didn’t I tell you? I start tomorrow.”

Greg frowned a little. “Leaving me so soon?”

“Come on, you know it’s not like that. Do you know how much of a pay boost I’ll be getting?”

“Everyone on overnights quit at once, except Dave, and he’s been here longer than I’ve been alive. Is that really what you want to get into?”

I scoffed. “Everyone quit because the last manager had a toddler level meltdown. Dave’s the manager now. I’m not too worried.”

As we were talking, I almost didn’t notice her. She would have passed me straight by had she not stopped.

“Alex?” I heard a familiar voice say. I turned and saw her. My voice caught in my throat. She was pretty. Short dark hair, a sweater with the angriest and most incomprehensible death metal logo I have ever seen, and...

“Carrie?” I asked, bewildered. She nodded. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

“Yeah. Had a bit of a makeover since high school. I’m glad to see you again.”

“Me too.” I stammered out, maybe a little too loud. “W-what are you doing here?”

“Job opening,” she replied, her thumb pointing to the poster I was just looking at. “Me and Mark broke up last week. Rent’s getting harder to pay so...” she waves both arms.

“Cool,” I say, then immediately regret the decision. Cool? Her boyfriend dumped her and she’s having trouble paying rent. What’s cool about that? You’re an idiot. She’ll know you’re an idiot. “I-I’ll be starting overnights tomorrow actually. Maybe we’ll work together?”

“I’d like that,” she said. I melted. She giggled and walked past me towards the break room. “See you tomorrow, Alex.”

“Who was that?” Greg asked.

“Carrie. She was my high school crush. She looked way different back then though.” I had actually known her since elementary school. Something happened in middle school with her mom, and a month later it was like she was a totally different person. The person I saw today looked far more like the one I had grown up with than the one I knew in high school.

“Sounds like she’s available. Do you need a wing man?” Greg nudged me. I laughed.

“Greg, I don’t think you’d be helping me,” I teased. The loudspeaker let out a jingle.

“Courtesy Clerk needed to the front for customer assistance,” the voice said over the speaker.

“Rachel is up there. She can handle it,” Greg said.

“It wouldn’t hurt to check. After what happened last time I- “

Rachel burst through the doors and down the hallway towards us, whistling and smacking her hip hard enough to hurt. Rachel had Tourette’s.

“He’s back,” she said, her tone urgent.

“Who?” Greg asked, as if we didn’t both know the answer.

“The old- perv!- old guy from before.”

“Did you say what you did last time?” Greg asked. Rachel shrunk a little.

“You didn’t mean it then and you don’t mean it now,” I said. “I’ll handle it, like I did last time.” Rachel smiled a little. The spastic smacking of her arm against her stomach slowed.

The word “perv” may have been just a verbal tic, a misfired synapse, but it was damned accurate. Rachel was 18, a year younger than me. Around this time of night, an older customer who looked to be around 70 years old would request her to help him pack his groceries in his car. This wouldn’t be so concerning if he didn’t also spend nearly the entire time shopping staring at her, grinning every time she let out a verbal tic. She let out a particularly dirty string of words last time, completely against her own volition. He just smiled wider. It gave me the creeps.

I helped him to his car last time. He seemed gravely disappointed. I was sure he would be just as unhappy to see me this time, but I didn’t care. I walked out onto the floor, down past the home goods section, towards the front-end registers. There he was, in his shriveled, wrinkled, frail glory.

“What can I help you with?” I asked. Bill, the front manager, scowled at me.

“Actually, he wanted Rachel,” Bill said not hiding the annoyance in his voice. Bill never believed Rachel had Tourette’s. Bill was one of those special people who didn’t believe in any disability that wasn’t physical.

“Well, he’s getting me today.” There was an awkward silence before the old man nodded. I took his cart, and we walked together into the cold dark parking lot. He was parked in the spot with the dead camera and the dead streetlamp, which did not improve my opinion of him in the slightest.

The squeaking of the cartwheels halted as we approached the trunk of his vehicle, a white windowless van. Real sketchy, I thought to myself. The old man, hunched and decrepit, put one shaking hand into his pocket and produced a set of keys. The keys rattled in his shaky hands as he inched them towards the lock. He turned the key and the van’s doors swung wide open. It was one huge empty space, dark and foreboding. A shiver went through me. I quickly composed myself. I wasn’t the target, and anything short of him pulling a gun on me would be something I could handle. The man looked like he could barely walk.

I put the groceries in one bag at a time. I couldn’t help but notice that there was no food in the cart. It was all toiletries and housewares. Something felt terribly off about that. As the last bag entered the van, I turned around and almost didn’t recognize the man standing behind me. He was no longer the slouched decrepit old man. His posture was different. His back was straight. His hands were steady. His eyes shone red in the moonlight.

“I...I think I’ll go now,” I stammered, my earlier bravado quickly dissolving. “H-have a nice night sir!”

“I don’t think you’re going anywhere,” he growled in a voice that should not belong to a human being, let alone one so old. He lunged at me, biting down on my neck. I wanted to scream. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. I felt the skin of my neck break. It didn’t hurt, but the sensation of blood leaking out was horrifying. His tongue pressed against the wound, lapping up every crimson drop. I grew faint, then fell unconscious.

:

My head was pounding. My arms dangled somewhere beneath me. My neck felt wet. My hair was drenched. My eyes refused to open. My ankles burned, constrained by something I could not see. Something sweet and coppery assaulted my nostrils. I was so very cold. I lifted a hand up to my neck, the movement much harder than I anticipated. It occurred to me then that I was hanging upside down. As my fingers brushed my throat, I felt a gap where the liquid was spilling out. It was deep, so much so that I felt bone. I inhaled and felt liquid in the back of my throat. I could taste it spilling down into my tongue. It was sweet, savory, delightful, a cold contrast to every other sensation.

The heavy lids of my eyes began to part, and I took in the room. I was hanging from my feet by a rope in a dingy basement. Beneath me was an old porcelain tub. It was filled with blood, which dripped down from the ear-to-ear open wound on my neck. Why am I not dead? It was the only thought in my head. Even it would be silenced as I heard a door creak open. Light poured down from the staircase in the corner of the room. The sole of a shoe clacked against the top wooden step. It creaked. Another step followed, then another... then another... then another. Each time the wood steps screeched.

I could barely see as blood had run into one eye, and the other was completely devoid of moisture. My whole body felt dry, save for the blood which had slowed its flow considerably. I didn’t need to see to know who it was.

He stood straight up; his hands folded behind his back. His eyes glowed in the dark room. The shadows obscured his expression.

“Six hundred years,” his voice echoed, deeper and healthier than the frail old man he had presented to us when he shopped at the Super-Mart. “That’s how long I waited to find her.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out. My questions, which were numerous, would soon be answered anyway. I felt a slow tickling itch across my throat.

“You turned,” he said with a sigh. “Thought that if I slit your throat you’d just bleed out and die before you turned. Honestly, I never understood the science or the rules behind it.” He walked over to a table, where a number of objects lay. My vision was still too blurry to make out the specifics. “Over six hundred years ago I wed a woman, wonderful and sweet. Profanity, at random, exited her mouth.” He picked up what looked like a wooden mallet. My vision began to clear some. “People whispered that she was possessed. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t. The understanding wasn’t there yet.” He picked up a wooden stake. “I went to war. I took an arrow. They left me for dead. Something else found me before then, turned me into this. I went back home, and they had burned her at the stake.” He looked down at the instruments, then up at me. “My sweet Marie had an episode in the presence of a rival nobleman, and dead in the eyes of the kingdom, I no longer was there to save her. I took that nobleman and did to him what I have now done to you.”

“Wha-“my voice sounded before I cut myself off. My hands flew up to my throat. The wound shrunk considerably. I was healing, much faster than I should. Really, a wound like mine shouldn’t have healed at all. I should have just died.

“Then came your friend. Same condition. She even looks the same. When I was on the verge of having my Marie back, you happened.” There was much vitriol in the word ‘you’. “Take it to your grave you mongrel dog.”

He placed the wood stake up to my bare chest. The sharp point dug into the skin around my sternum. He lifted the mallet and hit the stake. It grazed off my sternum, tearing skin as it went. I cried out. My body swung back and forth from the ceiling.

“Stay still,” he said, agitated. I thrashed around, making me an impossible target. He put down the would be instruments of my demise and grabbed a knife from the table. He pulled out a stool from the dark corner of the room and stood up on it. He cut the rope that tied me, and I fell into the blood-filled bathtub.

My own blood filled my nostrils, clogging, burning, choking. I thrashed around hard as blood splashed around the tub. Some entered my mouth. The taste was sweet, savory, like a steak with a side of fruit punch. I found myself gulping up large bits of it involuntarily. My hands gripped the edge of the tub, and I pulled myself out. I looked up at the old man, who was still on the stool. I kicked the stool. He fell to the ground with a tremendous thud, his head smashing against the side of the tub, cracking the porcelain. I leaned down, my hands frantically working at the knot that kept my feet bound together.

I worked the knot until it was loose. The old man was back on his feet, approaching me fast. I got my feet freed just in time for the old man to pounce on top of me, knife in hand. My hands flew up, colliding with his face with a surprising force, throwing him off me. I stood up, nearly stumbling back down on my face. I raced towards the stairs. I could hear him behind me. His steps echoed behind me in quick succession as I scrambled up the staircase.

I reached the door at the top of the stairs. My blood covered hands gripped the doorknob, sliding off uselessly due to their crimson lubrication. Even as my grip firmed, I found that the door was locked. I looked back down the stairs and immediately regretted it. He was a few steps away, rage in his eyes, baring his fangs. I threw myself at the door and the wood cracked.

I had never been particularly strong or fit. Had it not been for the adrenaline I would have found my newfound strength quite out of place. In that moment though, I could form no coherent thoughts. I threw myself against the door once more. The wood gave way, and I crashed onto the white tile floor of a well-kept kitchen.

I scrambled to my feet, rushing towards the counter, searching for anything to defend myself with. I found a knife block. I gripped the handle of the largest knife on the block. I pulled it out and turned around.

He was standing at the doorway, silhouetted by the moonlight that poured out of the window in the middle of the kitchen. His eyes glowed yellow and catlike. Moonlight glimmered off his fangs. The blade of his knife, much larger than my own and designed for killing, gleamed bright.

“I’ve killed far more experienced men than you,” he said mockingly. “You don’t have a chance.” He spun the knife around, holding it in reverse. He inched towards me. I backed up until my back was up against the counter. My shadow lay on his chest as the moonlight shone against the back of my head from the window... The window! I thought.

I turned around, climbed up the counter, and leaped through the window. Glass shattered, slicing into my arms as I rolled onto the soil of the outside yard. I stood up and ran, paying no attention to where I was going and not daring to look back.

:

My heart was still racing when I reached the front door to my apartment. My thoughts, which had previously been solely on the terror that I had just been subjected to, now were erratically going through what explanation I could possibly give my mother if she were still awake.

She sometimes stayed up late reading her Bible or some book, usually religious. If I was lucky, she’d be in bed before I was set to come home. As my shaking hand, on which the blood had begun to dry, turned the doorknob and the door swung open, I was relieved to find that it was the latter. She was not in her usual spot on the couch.

I stumbled into the entryway and down the hallway. The blood on my feet had dried so I left no trail. I walked straight to the bathroom, grabbed a towel, threw away my blood-soaked clothes, and jumped into the shower. Crimson waves of water poured off me. The cut around my throat had healed, but the bite marks on my neck remained. The water and soap stung as it brushed against the twin marks on my neck.

I scrubbed. I scrubbed until it hurt, trying to take off the trauma of what had transpired in that awful basement. The fear dissipated as I collapsed into the shower, exhausted. Adrenaline left my body in waves until it became difficult to stand. I shut off the water and wrapped the towel around myself.

I looked in the mirror at my reflection. My skin was deathly pale. My irises had a yellow tinge that glowed slightly in the dimness of the bathroom. My tongue brushed against my upper canines and found that they were sharper than I had remembered. I opened my mouth and looked in the mirror. Fangs. I had fangs. What am I becoming?

I left the bathroom and was immediately confronted by the cross on the wall next to the door to my bedroom. In that moment I was seized by the largest migraine I had ever experienced. My heartrate skyrocketed and my only thought was to flee. I barreled into my room, slamming the door behind me. I threw on some clothes, crawled into bed, and closed my eyes expecting to wake up from this nightmare in the morning.

I sit here now, typing and recollecting my thoughts. I don’t know what I am becoming. My shift starts at 9pm tomorrow. I could call in, but I think I’ll go just to grab some normalcy from all this.