He returned with some stale bread, which I began to eat immediately to keep up appearances, but I also started talking to him.
He was stuck here, he told me. A prisoner of his father’s wishes for him. There was a girl, and a dream of being a soldier. He wanted to see other places, have adventures, do something that mattered and be with the one he loved.
He wanted to live his own life, he said, not his father’s. But he was the oldest, and only, son. The girl was of a higher social class, and he would probably be stuck here, he said, for the rest of his life.
In that moment, I knew I would eat.
It wasn’t hard to get him into the barn, and at the time I had no knowledge of the level of attraction humans had for vampires. Even if I had been human, it wouldn’t have been hard.
It took me a few minutes of kisses and touches and clothes coming off for me to figure out exactly what to do. Then I thought of that first squirming rabbit in my hands that I had bit, and the next time my lips grazed his neck, I bit down.
I expected him to cry out, to struggle, to throw me off of him, but instead his eyes closed and he melted into my embrace.
I had been so hungry, and for the first time, the hunger began to subside. Before I was fully aware of what I had done, I had drained him dry and he lay limp on a pile of hay.
I wiped my mouth where some of his blood had spilled and then licked my hand so as not to waste any.
I wondered what his family would think had happened to him as I looked at the two little holes in his neck. Then I watched as they healed over.
I would like to say that after his neck wound healed, he just looked like he was sleeping, but he didn’t. He looked dead.
The way his head and arms draped in unnatural ways, how still he was. There was nothing that animated this body anymore, and, frankly, nothing left for me to do but let his father find him.
I assuaged my guilt by telling myself I had saved him from an existence in which he could never be happy. Of course, it wasn’t like he could live out his dream either, but at least he was no longer trapped.
I couldn’t say the same for myself.
I wandered back out into the woods and, with my new knowledge of what I needed, began to hunt in earnest, finding similar young men at similar farms to keep me alive.
My thoughts finally returned to my living room and the present day, and I read all the way through to the evening. Matt finally woke and, without even a “hello” first, made a proclamation as soon as he reached the living room.
“I want to do the hunting tonight. I want to do it myself.”
PART THREE
1
I told him I’d still come with him, even though he wanted to hunt on his own. I’m not gonna lie, I was a little worried about setting him free on the city. It was fine if he wanted to do it himself, but I could still be there to offer guidance.
This was weird for me, being out three nights in a row like this. Actually, it made me nervous. If I began to look too familiar, that wasn’t good.
Matt’s hands shook a little as we got ready to go. I didn’t think that was all hunger.
I hadn’t yet told him that for most vampires, the way that I hunted was risky. Every vampire had their preferred method, based on what they were best at and what they could get away with. Many chose to hunt within isolated populations, for obvious reasons.
I didn’t have to hunt the way I did. I just wanted to.
However, I would let Matt start to figure this out on his own. With his gift of speed, there was probably a better way for him, but he needed to work that out for himself.
“Tonight, I’m hunting a woman,” he said, a little defiantly, and I chuckled to myself that he was still uncomfortable with the idea of hunting men.
In fact, most male vampires hunted men, at least a majority of the time, because there was simply more blood. I didn’t actually need to hunt men. I just found it easier that way.
Matt looked good. He didn’t need vampiric attraction to attract women. He would have been fine on his own.
Matt was one of those men who actually possessed beauty, in the same way a woman did, and so when relating to women, there was always something familiar about him. Comfortable, yet exotic. Like looking at your own face on another body. He was a mirror for them, and they couldn’t look away.
But like most men who are beautiful, he didn’t want to know it.
He threw on a jacket over the shirt he wore that was unbuttoned at the neck. His final touch. We were ready.
We set out looking like a fantastically attractive couple. People stared at us on the street, unable to hide their attraction, but I caught the eye of no one. It was easier to feel invisible that way. Like we were just normal people.
I had always wished I could see from the vantage point of a human viewing a vampire. Did we look different? Shinier or glossier in a way? I would never know, of course, but I wondered.
I took Matt to the very place he had met Lola and me three nights ago, for a little bit of familiarity, but also because I felt that Matt would fit right in there.
When we arrived, I walked in first and took a seat up at the bar. Before Matt had settled in at a table, I ordered an Old Fashioned and watched as the bartender made it. He smiled as he handed me the glass and I smiled back, realizing that if I really wanted to, I could feed on him by the end of this night. Luckily for him, I wasn’t that hungry.
I kept something of an eye on Matt as I sipped my drink and people watched. A man a few seats down from me kept looking over, desperate—I could tell—to come and talk to me, but not having yet consumed enough liquid courage to do so. I’d let him keep drinking, I thought. All the better to keep tabs on Matt.
I watched as a waitress walked up to Matt to take his order, and I could tell he was considering her. I almost communicated to him that she would be a bad target for a couple of reasons, but decided to let him make his own decisions.
When she walked away, Matt smiled at her in a way that made me think he would look elsewhere. Sweetly, but with no desire. He turned his eyes to the rest of the room a second later and looked just a little nervous as he surveyed the room.
I think I saw her before he did.
She was with a couple of friends at a table behind Matt’s table. I watched as they put their heads together, looked at Matt, and then laughed. A couple of seconds later, she got up and walked right up to Matt, who turned quickly when he felt her hand on his arm.
Without waiting for him to ask, she sat down in the chair adjacent from him and began chatting him up.
His smile told me that he thought she was a good pick, and when she looked back at her friends as if to say “I’m actually talking to him!” he looked over at me as if to ask “what do you think?”
I communicated back to say I thought this was a good pick.
It was slightly tricky with her friends being there, but when she went off with Matt for the night, they would at least continue on together and figure that they would hear all the details in the morning. There would, of course, be no details tomorrow morning, but they wouldn’t figure that out until then.
As I finished this thought, I started thinking that Matt had done really well on his first time out and felt sort of proud of myself as his mentor.
Then it hit me that there was one huge problem with this.
When her body was found, her friends would tell the police that she had gone off with Matt and that was the last time they had seen her.
When it came to my hunting, I never worried about this. One, because I often picked up men who were out by themselves, but also because people never assumed that the woman the dead man was last seen with was capable of killing him. Especially when he had no markings on his body that seemed to indicate foul play. Of course, it was an entirely different story when the dead girl was last seen leaving a bar with a man bigger and stronger than her in every way.
I sat at the bar realizing I had made a huge mistake letting Matt hunt o
n his own and by allowing him to hunt in my territory without explaining the risks to him.
By the time I began hunting in night spots, I had been hunting for centuries. I may have been playing with fire, but I wasn’t exactly new to pyrotechnics. Matt was a baby at this point and I had made a grave error.
I set my drink down and hopped off my bar stool. Matt was going to kill me, but this was for his own good.
He saw me walking over and his eyes bugged out.
“Excuse me,” I said to the woman sitting with Matt, who looked practically homicidal at my presence. “He’s not available.”
“Vic...” Matt said.
“You know her?” the woman asked.
Matt fumbled his words and before he could get them out I spoke.
“I’ll let you figure out how we know each other,” I said, and before I had a chance to utter anything else, the woman gave Matt a dirty look and left to rejoin her friends, who had gotten up from their seats.
They stared at me like they wanted to slit my throat, but then they all turned at once and, leaving half-finished drinks on the table, walked out the door.
“Are you insane? I thought you told me to go for it,” Matt said, leaning in close to me so no one would hear our conversation despite the loud music.
“I did, but then I regretted it.”
Matt looked so angry with me and I knew he was hungry too.
“I made a mistake. Let me get you food and then we’re going back to the apartment and I will explain. Okay?”
Matt nodded at me and shook his head at the same time, not concealing his irritation.
“When I tell you, follow me,” I said, and went to find the desperate man that was still sitting at the bar.
2
“That was a disaster,” Matt said, sitting down on my couch.
He wasn’t hungry anymore, though, and that was all that mattered.
The man at the bar had been thrilled when I went up to speak with him, and only too eager to leave with me when I suggested it. He had also made a great second meal for Matt.
I walked him down toward the river first, and when Matt was finished, we pushed his body into the water. It’s a shame what happens when you’ve had too much to drink and get too close to the edge.
I had become something of a master when it came to disposing of bodies. Water was always a good choice.
“Matt, I’m sorry. I didn’t think that through. I should have never taken you to hunt there.”
“But, why? You do it all the time.”
“Well, number one, I’m a woman, and it’s just different. When that girl showed up dead the next morning, the first thing her friends were going to do was tell the police exactly who she had left the bar with the previous night. You don’t want people—anyone—becoming suspicious of you. We would have had to leave the city.”
“But I still don’t get it. You do this all the time.”
“Yes, I do... But as I already explained, I’m not as suspicious as you are, and... with my gift, well it’s just the right place for me to find food. I’m in my element. And...” I stopped here, not sure if I wanted to share my next thought, but something on Matt’s face gave me courage—his willingness and curiosity to hear me out. “It’s a risk...and I like that.”
Matt seemed like he understood what I was saying, but his brow was still furrowed.
“So what’s my element?”
“That’s what we have to figure out.”
I got up this time and did the pacing while Matt continued sitting.
“Usually, a vampire’s gift will dictate where he or she hunts. And you, my friend, are very, very fast. So where’s the best place for you to catch someone?”
Matt turned his head away from me, thinking, and I suddenly saw his face change. Like a light bulb had turned on that he immediately wanted to turn back off.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Hmm? Oh, nothing.”
“No, you had an idea. What was it?”
“Well, it’s not a good one, but I was thinking of open spaces, and places that aren’t real crowded, and I thought...of the university campus.”
That wasn’t a bad idea, and I think I may have communicated that without meaning to because Matt formed a smile on his face.
“You think that’s good?”
“I think it’s definitely a good start.”
I thought if Matt hunted at night, which he definitely would, a campus—even a large one—wouldn’t be that crowded, and there would inevitably be students walking by themselves in the dark. And frankly, college campuses weren’t strangers to accidental, tragic deaths. Afterward, people would say that he or she shouldn’t have been walking alone at night. That even though you were on campus, you were still in a city.
I knew Matt was thinking of the large, state university located here, but there were five or six other colleges in the surrounding area. That might give him enough room to feed. But, he’d still need to branch out periodically.
Matt got up and looked worried, and I remembered that this was only his second full day as a vampire.
No matter how long you lived or what special things you could do, feeding was always your utmost concern. It consumed you as much as you consumed others.
I had given Matt this burden. And it was too late to take it back.
“I graduated from there,” Matt said, as he ran a hand through his hair, and I realized that it must have only been a few years ago.
I didn’t say anything.
“Do you mind if I sleep in your bed again? I think I’m going to rest,” he said.
I shook my head, and smiled, in spite of myself, and Matt began walking back toward my bedroom. He stopped and turned after only taking a few steps.
“I don’t know if you want to sleep, but...if you do, I don’t mind—I mean if you don’t mind—if you want to sleep in there too. Or if you want to kick me out later. Whatever, but I’m just saying, I don’t care. Whatever you want to do.”
I almost smiled again, but I hid it instead, and this time nodded my head.
3
I put my book down—an actual paper one, I still had those around—and looked back at my bedroom door, which had been closed five-sixths of the way.
I wasn’t sleepy and didn’t have any particular reason to rest, but I contemplated getting into my bed for a nap.
Maybe I was just bored. I could always call Lola.
I stared at my phone and willed myself to pick it up, but I never reached for it.
Finally, I decided that I would just take a quick nap to pass some time. It was always a long day and an even longer night when you were a vampire, and I had more time to waste than any other creature on this planet. A nap couldn’t hurt, even if I didn’t need the sleep.
And, anyway, Matt said he was cool with it.
I laid my book on the coffee table, got up very quietly, and then moved even more quietly toward the bedroom. I wasn’t sure why I was being so quiet.
I pushed the bedroom door open and it creaked a little, which almost made me close it and go right back out to the living room. But I didn’t.
Matt was sleeping on his right side, on the right side of the bed, which is where I usually slept. A bare arm rested on top of the blankets he had pulled over himself, and I could see his chest rise up and down as he breathed.
I tiptoed over to my closet and took off my clothes, pulling on a t-shirt and a pair of shorts instead, and then went over to the left side of the bed and pulled back the blankets.
Matt moved just a little as I disturbed the bed, but he was still again when I got into it. I turned over onto my left side and with both arms underneath, pulled the blankets up to my chin.
I could feel the warmth from Matt’s body a couple of feet away, but also the perpetual coolness that comes off of a vampire’s body. Icy hot.
I felt my breathing raise my body up and down as I got comfortable and was about to doze off.
“Vic?”
I jumped at the sound of Matt’s voice. Startled for the first time in what seemed like decades.
Of course, I knew he must have been aware of my presence. I was just hoping neither one of us would acknowledge it.
“Yeah?” I said, suddenly nervous.
“Did I startle you?” Matt said, in place of what he was originally going to say. (I could tell.)
He had turned over onto his left side, placing his elbow on to the pillow and his head on his hand, so he was propped up. His chest was exposed, and as I looked over I traced over all the muscle ridges with my eyes.
“Yeah, you did,” I said, still lying on my back, but turning my head.
Matt chuckled and then continued to smile.
“That’s funny. Me scaring you.”
“Ha-ha,” I said, sarcastically, and after moment of silence I remembered that he was going to say something. “What were you going to say?”
He looked up at the ceiling, still propped on his elbow and scrunched his face up.
“I forget.”
I made a sound that communicated to him that I understood and closed my eyes again. I felt myself dozing off.
“I’m bored.”
Matt’s voice brought me fully back to consciousness once again, and my first thought was that if he was bored now, after two days, he would have another thing coming after two decades. And it wouldn’t stop there.
Now it was my turn to prop myself up. I turned to the right, facing Matt, and saw that he had lain back down.
“Are you?”
“Yeah, and I sleep funny. I can fall asleep almost instantly and wake almost instantly too. And in between is like the lightest and deepest sleep I’ve ever had. At the same time. It’s like...the line between being asleep and being awake is much, much thinner.”
“Yep,” I said because I didn’t really know what else to say.
“What about you? Do you get bored?”
I exhaled loudly, much more loudly than I had intended. I had never told anybody this before. Not even Lola.
It was common, though not spoken about often. Despite your powers, despite your gifts there was something oppressive about time bearing down upon you. A clock that would never stop ticking. A watch that never lost battery power. A veil that descended upon you the day you were transformed and could never, ever be lifted.
Bored To Death Page 5
