I woke up tonight to blood being sneezed into my face. Lucy’s blood. She sneezed and then woke up choking on it. Which isn’t a threat to her life, but it’s freaky as all hell’s. She started making this gargling noise. The noise a scream would make if it was underwater trying to get out. Her face was complete fright. Quickly I grabbed her and bent her over me and slammed weight into her back. The blood came up all over Suzanne’s nice bed sheets. My nice bed sheets I guess.
“It’s him. The workhouse vamp. He’s outside. He’s been watching. He just dream raped me.”
“dream raped?”
“not sexual, but you know forced himself into my dreams. It was like being violated.”
“he’s outside now?”
“Fuck. I don’t know, yeah, I think so.” She said as the remains of the blood in her lungs and mouth streamed out. I hopped out of bed and looked out the window while she laid there with her head over the edge of the bed. At least the sheets were good for wiping the blood off her face. Nothing was outside.
“I don’t see it out this window. I’ll go out and look for it.” I was being brave, I’d been brave since the other night. Nothing was scaring me except myself lately.
“No, I think it was leaving. I think it just came to leave dream mail. I’m not even sure it knows how to talk to people normally anymore. Shit that was weird. Totally fucking weird.”
“What happened?” I asked. Even in the dark I could tell she was drained. I disliked when she was running out of steam. It reminded me of how bad of a hypocrite I am for being with her. Being with a vampire. I’m bad television.
“I don’t know. I normally don’t dream. I’m not sure if vampires do, but I don’t. I remember thinking it was odd for me to be at Isabelle’s house. The house she held me in for all those years, ‘training me’. I was in my old room, looking for something. Not looking, like tearing it apart, frantic. Then he was there, sitting in the window. It was funny, this young boy, maybe seventeen, long hair, sitting in my window in my fucking dream and my first thought was of Angel in Buffy’s window. You are so right about us blood suckers.”
“good to know I’m right about something.”
“seriously, totally going to get a vampire tv show lobotomy one day. Anyway, he didn’t say anything he just kept pointing at my old journal on my dresser. I was screaming at him to tell me why he kept pointing, and he kept looking more and more frustrated, and eventually I yelled so loud that I yelled blood onto you.”
“you did that?”
“No, I didn’t mean too. I think he was stressing me out being in my head. I guess being raised by Isabelle’s stupid theories helps me understand things sometimes.”
“You alright, you need something?”
“Yeah, I’ll go.”
I hate hearing those words. The idea that she leaves to go eat bothers me. The fact that I don’t want to know how she does it bothers me more. I think I’m afraid if she tells me then I’ll have to reject her. That my own dual value system will collapse when it points out it is a duo. She got up and pulled her pants on. She smiled coyly at me in the doorway. “why the journal?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It was the only thing that I had from my old life. I never wrote in it after I went to live with Isabelle. I completely forgot about it since meeting you. It doesn’t seem important anymore.”
“Like your human life?”
Her eyebrows narrowed in the way they do when I strike some truth she hadn’t been thinking about. “I guess, yeah.” She went into the hall for a second but then appeared again. “Even if you could change me back, I wouldn’t want you to. You know that right?”
“Yes.” I said.
When she left I did laundry. Fucking laundry. One of the hazards of having a vampire live with you, blood and fabric. Vampire problems, as the kids would say. Laundry however gives me time to think. I pored some iced vodka into a tumbler and hit random on my digital music collection. The glass in my hand, the only thing cold in the room. The heat was still a dragon breathing down on the city.
It struck me a few moments before I started writing.
The vampire has been listening. He wants to be human again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi3hihPeWNU