by Joe Humphrey
“Jesus Christ!” Charlie blurted, ahead of the oncoming rush of laughter. Caroline looked at her, an eyebrow raised.
“Are you okay?” she asked with a slight tone of annoyance. Charlie shook her head.
“You’re a fucking vampire!” Charlie said, almost screaming through laughter. She thumped her hand on her own chest. “I’m a fucking vampire! You made me into a vampire! A real-life honest to shit vampire!”
Caroline shook her head and covered her eyes with her hand.
“I really hate that word,” she said, defeated, and stood up from the chair. Charlie bent over laughing, tears streaming down her face. Caroline wasn’t an angel or a friendly spirit or an otherworldly protector, she was a goddamned vampire, and now Charlie was a goddamned vampire too.
She fell against the counter and slid down to the floor, half laughing and half crying. Caroline knelt beside her.
“I get it. I totally get it,” Charlie said, nearly babbling. Caroline smoothed her hair.
“It’s not like you think,” Caroline said, trying to sound more reassuring than annoyed.
“We live for hundreds of years. We can’t come out in the sunlight and we drink blood to survive. If that’s not a vampire, I don’t know what is,” Charlie said, counting off her points on her fingers, leaning more toward anger than laughter.
“I’m not going to argue with you, Charlie, and I never lied to you. I told you there were sacrifices, and I told you there were rewards.”
Charlie nodded and held her hands up to say ‘Okay, you win’. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Caroline handed her a clean dishcloth from the counter and Charlie nodded her thanks and dabbed her face.
“Maybe we’ll take this a little slower,” Caroline said after a long, pregnant pause. Charlie shook her head and got to her feet.
“No. I’m okay. I’m okay with this,” she said, shaking her hands in front of her as if they were asleep and she was trying to wake them. “I can do this.”
Charlie stepped forward and pulled the bandana off Reginald Donahue’s face. His eyes were closed and he was breathing in slobbery, labored sucks around the belt in his mouth.
“He did the things you say he did? Touched children? Took advantage of hitchhikers?” Charlie asked, staring at the man. He was somehow thin and flabby at the same time, a skeleton with a layer of loose skin hanging off the points like an overstretched balloon.
“More than just touched. Some of them he hurt. Some of them badly,” Caroline said, watching her with interest. Charlie looked around the kitchen, at Caroline, and then back at the old man. A knife block sat on the counter next to her and she pulled a long carving knife from it. Caroline stepped forward and put her hand on Charlie’s shoulder.
“Let me help you,” she said, guiding Charlie’s hand back to the counter and plucking the knife from it. Caroline stepped forward and knelt in front of the old man. She un-clamped the IV tube and caught a small amount of blood in her palm before clamping it again. The blood ran down between her fingers and along the inside of her arm. She held her hand out to Charlie.
Charlie looked at the messy arm in front of her face for a long moment. The blood was slick and oily and shining bright red against Caroline’s impossibly pale skin. Without thinking about it, she leaned forward and licked Caroline’s forearm, following a rivulet of red up to her hand, where she sucked up the pooled blood. When it soaked into her mouth, she fell back into that river of sensations and memories, detaching from her body and drifting back into the darkness.
In her mind's eye, she saw a woman on a beach, her hair long and elaborately pinned up into an intricate bun. She wore an old-fashioned dress and looked entirely out-of-place on a beach. The woman’s face was stern and disapproving. Charlie glanced down and saw a naked child’s body below her. A body, yet not her own. A boy’s body. Perhaps three or four. The stern woman stomped towards her and she realized the boy was urinating. The woman snatched her up by the arm and Charlie yelled as the woman swatted the boy’s body with her hand, on the legs and back and ribs. Laughter came from somewhere in the distance.
She was in darkness, the smell of burning oil and canned beans in the air. Someone was screaming and there were loud pops in the distance. Fire exploded all around her and she could see young men in their underwear and white t-shirts running and burning. The walls were on fire and she understood that she was in a large canvas tent and it was aflame. The popping grew louder and suddenly all noise ceased when an explosion blew the burning tent away completely. She was up and running, jumping over the dead and the wounded, and seconds later she was crouched in a trench, a dead soldier propped against the wall next to her, half of his twisted face a pulverized mess of red and black meat and gleaming white bone. She reached with a young man’s shaking hands and pulled the helmet and jacket from the dead soldier’s body and put them on. The sky was orange and black with fire and smoke.
The smell of bleach and rubbing alcohol replaced the oily, smoky stink of war. A hospital waiting room. Her mouth tasted like rum and cigarettes and she felt a nervous twisting in her stomach. A nurse in a pristine white uniform and cap approached her and said that Deborah was still in labor but it was going well and would be over soon. Charlie nodded along with the man and thanked her and when she was gone, she took a swig from the flask in her jacket pocket.
She was standing over a sleeping child, a girl with a stuffed giraffe tucked under her arm. With the man’s arms, she pulled the covers aside and crawled into bed next to her. The child stirred and she shhh’d it with the man’s finger, told the girl to go back to sleep. When the man’s hands crept under the covers, Charlie began to scream from behind the man’s eyes. Scream for the child to wake and to run.
Standing over a grave among a small group of mourners, with the man’s hands she tossed a yellow rose onto a casket. There was anger and confusion and despair whirling inside her. Charlie didn’t care anymore. All she could see was that sleeping baby with her stuffed giraffe. She wondered where that child was now and if she was okay.
Driving a massive boat of a car, the leather seats warm and sticky in the summer evening heat. Her hands were the knobby, speckled hands of the elderly. The polished wood of the steering wheel was slick with sweat. Beside her, a teenage girl was sleeping, her legs curled up on the seat. She pulled the car over into a trucker’s rest stop and shut off the engine. The sleeping girl stirred but didn’t wake. With her old man’s hands, she reached across the seat and cupped the sleeping girl’s breast, and squeezed gently. It was a small breast, firm, and familiar. She rolled her thumb across the fabric that covered the girl's nipple and felt the rush of adrenaline surge through the old man’s body. That mixed feeling of doing something wrong but loving it, painted with a black streak of anger. Anger at himself for what he was doing, anger at the girl for tempting him. None of it was enough to stop him from what he did next, which was unzip his pants and pull them down to his knees. He grabbed the girl’s hand and Charlie felt him resist the temptation to twist it until the bones in her tiny arm cracked and she howled in pain. She saw this in the man’s mind as he pulled her against his body and put her hand on his crotch.
Charlie scrambled to get out of this vision, to back out of the stream. She didn’t want to see it. Didn’t want to feel it. It was horrible and made her sick to her stomach. The girl opened her eyes and looked up at her and for a brief, awful moment she thought she was looking in a mirror. The girl was her.
Caroline caught Charlie by the arms as she stumbled backward toward the counter, nearly hitting her head. Caroline propped her up and held her as she sobbed.
“I know baby, I know,” Caroline muttered into Charlie’s hair as she stroked and patted her back.
Suddenly Charlie stood up straight and turned around. The old man who called himself Francis but whose name was Reginald was still unconscious. Charlie gripped him by the chin and tipped his head up so she could look at his face. A thin white mustache lined his lip and the yel
lowed bits of his eyes that hung from beneath his lids were bloodshot.
“Wake up!” Charlie said into his face. She slapped him, first lightly, and then hard enough to knock his dentures loose. His eyes popped open and rolled around as he tried to figure out what he should look at. Charlie snapped her fingers in front of his face. He turned his gaze up at her, his eyebrows gathered in a confused scowl.
“I know what you did,” Charlie said, poking him in the chest. “I know what you did, you fuck. To that little girl. To me. To god knows who else.”
The man’s eye rolled wildly. Charlie grabbed the belt buckle and unstrapped it from his head.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Charlie asked. She was holding the knife again, not even sure how it got into her hand, and pointed it at him. He bellowed, a hollow, terrified wail, half sob, and half scream. It was a horrifying and nauseating sound and it made Charlie’s skin crawl. She pressed the palm of her hand against his mouth in a futile attempt to quiet him. His false teeth came out in her fingers. Then, without much more than a flicker of intention, the knife was in his neck. The stainless steel blade slid through his loose skin like paper and behind his throat. His wailing turned into a gurgling, overflowing cascade of blood, spilling from his mouth and the dribbling from the red opening in his neck where the knife was protruding. Charlie staggered back, looking at her hands.
Caroline put her arm around Charlie’s shoulders.
“Charlie,” Caroline whispered.
“What?” Charlie whispered back without looking away from the dying man.
“You need to get his blood before he dies.”
Caroline put her hand under Charlie’s chin and turned her head so that their eyes met. Charlie shook her head.
“You have to or else this is simply murder, and we are not murderers. We’re selective hunters. Do you understand?”
“I don’t want to see the things that I saw again,” Charlie muttered, shaking her head, tears spilling down her cheeks.
“You don’t have to. You can tune it out. You can find a better memory. Everyone has good memories if you look for them.”
Charlie looked at the man in the chair, his eyes wide and staring up at her. They were wet with tears. Blood soaked into his short-sleeved white collared shirt, the armpits stained yellow. She stepped toward him, his terrified eyes following her as she approached. When she pulled the knife out of his neck, the red slit in his skin pumped blood out in a slow, steady waterfall. Charlie touched her hand to his forehead, pushed his head back, and covered the opening in his neck with her mouth.
Again she was drawn up into the black stream of his memories. It was like floating down the rapids of a river on a rotting log. She reached out for something to hold onto and suddenly she was in a department store, carrying shopping bags and following a dumpy blonde woman.
The woman stopped and looked at a blouse on a mannequin. With the man’s eyes, Charlie stared at the woman’s ass in her canary yellow skirt. A barrage of angry, hateful thoughts rushed through the man’s mind. Fat fucking bitch I’d like to pull that skirt up and give her a surprise spend my fucking money you dumb —
Charlie spun out of that memory and into another.
The sun was setting over the hills in France. Sitting next to her was a woman on a bench, smoking a skinny brown cigarette that smelled faintly like cinnamon. The man was young and healthy. The woman had striking red hair and a pretty green dress. She looked at Charlie with eyes full of admiration and love. Charlie felt it too, deep in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t know who this woman was but the man loved her. He really loved her. His thoughts about her weren’t colored with that black and red anger and hate. There was no guilt or resentment wrapped up in this memory. Only adoration and a feeling of desperate need. Charlie wondered who the woman was and when they were. She knew it was France because the man knew it was France, but the woman was a mystery to her. Perhaps she was a mystery to him as well, or perhaps he somehow protected that memory a little more than the others.
Darkness began to fall all around her, like street lights shutting off one by one. Soon, they were alone on the bench in a tiny bubble of light. Charlie leaned forward and kissed the woman on the mouth as the last light around them faded. It occurred to her that she hadn’t just fallen into this memory. This memory was chosen. The man, Reginald, selected that memory. That’s what he thought about as he died, and she watched it. Lived it.
Charlie fell to the floor with a thud. Blood covered her face and neck and breasts. Her shaking hands were drenched with it, pattering to the floor in fat red drops. She was a mess. The robe was gone and she was naked again. The old man was a lifeless thing in his chair. Looking at his tiny, frail frame she could hardly believe that he was so recently a living, breathing person. She looked up at Caroline, who was holding the robe over her arm, her red lips the only sign that she too had fed on the dying man.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Caroline said with a bloody smile, offering a hand.
- 6 -
The steam from the shower turned the room into a cocoon. Charlie scrubbed her face and neck with the washcloth and soap Caroline gave her, both of which were stained red, as was the water that ran down her body. The last two days were a blur of chaos and had a surreal nightmare quality, as though at any moment she might wake up and find herself back in the hospital under the spell of some painkiller or another. The curtain rattled and a wave of cool air rolled over her as Caroline stepped into the shower, a toothbrush poking out of her mouth. The fact of her nakedness only added to the weirdness of the situation. Of course, Caroline was in the shower with her. Of course, Caroline was naked. Why not? She’d just murdered an old man and sucked at the wound in the loose skin of his neck like a baby sucks a tit. This barely registered on the strange scale.
“Turn around,” Caroline said around the toothbrush, a slight bend of authority in her voice that momentarily made Charlie uncomfortable. Caroline took the toothbrush out of her mouth and set it on the lip of the tub, spitting a mouth-full of pink foam on the floor between them. Charlie did as she was told and she felt Caroline’s fingers push into her hair. She was shampooing her. This was definitely bizarre.
“Caroline?” Charlie managed to squeak out.
“Yes, doll?” Caroline said, working the shampoo through Charlie’s hair.
“I’m not a lesbian,” Charlie said, trying to come across as firm but only sounding scared. Earlier, she'd believed that going through the motions of sex with a woman could be reduced to a tolerable mechanical process. Standing there naked, feeling Caroline's fingers moving through her hair like a gang of little boney snakes, the idea of trying to do anything sexual with anyone seemed impossible. It wasn't even that she found the idea repellant, but somehow it was as though there was a hole inside her where the idea of sex used to be. It just wasn't there anymore. She didn't want to have sex with Caroline or anyone else. The fact that she'd just stabbed an old man in the throat with a kitchen knife after watching him molest a small child may have had something to do with it as well.
Caroline laughed as she massaged Charlie's scalp.
“Me neither. That’s not what this is. We’re beyond anything like that now. Rinse,” she said, tapping her on the shoulder. Charlie turned around again.
“Then why are you in here washing my hair?” Charlie asked, leaning her head back into the spray and rinsing the shampoo, self-conscious about the way this pushed her breasts out toward Caroline.
“Because it feels nice when someone washes your hair. Now quit psychoanalyzing and do mine,” she said, handing Charlie the shampoo bottle and turning around. Charlie squirted a bit into her hand and spread it over Caroline’s hair.
“Switch places with me. I want the water,” Caroline said, pushing past her. Charlie turned and went back to shampooing Caroline. It was such a surprisingly mundane thing to do after what just happened in the kitchen.
“What are we going to do with him?” Charlie asked. Carol
ine turned around and rinsed the shampoo from her hair.
“Who? Reggie?” Caroline asked, taking a tube of conditioner from the shelf built into the wall. She held the bottle out to Charlie who took it and used some. The fact that she called him 'Reggie' as though he was an old friend and not their murder victim was unsettling.
“Yeah”
“Oh, he’s easy. We’ll put him in my trunk, take him out into the desert and dump him somewhere. A shallow grave for a pathetic old pervert. Don’t sweat the logistics. That part is nothing,” Caroline said, running a bar of soap over her chest and under her arms. She smiled at Charlie. “I’ve been doing this for a long time. All you need to worry about is paying attention and learning. I’ll take care of the rest, and take care of you,” she said, giving her a playful poke on the nose.
Looking up at Caroline, with her hair wet and stringy and her makeup washed off, Charlie could see the contours of the bones in her face.
“Are you okay?” Caroline asked, eyes narrow, scrutinizing her. Always watching her. Charlie shook her head. She held her hands up and looked at them. There was blood around her fingernails and in the fine lines of her knuckles. Caroline took Charlie's hands in her own and kissed her fingers, then wrapped her in a hug, resting her chin on top of Charlie’s head.
When she closed her eyes, all Charlie could see was the old man with the knife protruding from his neck, the blood seeping around it. His eyes staring up at her, terrified. The fact that he had looked at her with such horror was what she really struggled with. It wasn't guilt, just the enormous line she'd crossed.
“I killed that man,” Charlie whispered into Caroline’s shoulder. Caroline stroked her hair.
“Yes, you did,” Caroline whispered back.
“Did he deserve to die?” Charlie asked, pulling out of the hug and looking up at Caroline, her eyes wide. Caroline looked at her for a moment, calculating her best approach.
