Liquid Diet Chronicles (Book 1): Bite Sized

by Chism, Holly

  “Sounds good,” she said feelingly. “I’m not so good at cooking with a stove.”

  I shrugged. “I can help with that,” I said hesitantly. “I think I remember how to do it.”

  She smiled. “I’d appreciate it. Not like I had somebody to teach me, and my school’s Consumer Sciences class was the math class for non-college track kids, instead of teaching people basic life skills like boiling water, and sewing on a button.”

  I took my eyes from the road briefly to glance at her. She scowled at her reflection, and I wondered if she was as judgmental toward herself as I used to be. And still could be, from time to time. If I was honest with myself. Which I tried to be, but failed at all too often. “Well. That’s just stupid,” I drawled.

  “It is what it is,” she said, shrugging. “I’d like to learn.”

  I let the subject fall, and turned into a back road. Main roads looked like they had a fair bit of traffic, and I didn’t want to waste any nighttime maneuvering through it. Eventually, we made it into the parking lot, and I followed her in and to the service desk. She went into people mode, and charmed the men working behind the desk with smiles and a story of a new home that has a root cellar, not a storm shelter, and could she get one of those, please. The younger guy seemed ready to ride back out with us and start digging by hand, but the older fellow took our phone number and said somebody would call us, come out, and give an estimate.

  And then we got a microwave. And some cleaning supplies for kitchens. And a new water heater, dishwasher and garbage disposal, all scheduled for delivery and installation.

  “Now to go find a yellow pages,” she said. “I did an internet search for contractors, but like I said, I kept coming up with guys that advertised as ‘in your area’ from Connecticut. A local phone book with ads might well be a better approach. I got the one guy called, but…I don’t know if he’s actually gonna show up.”

  I nodded. “Sounds good to me. Do you know how to use one?” I teased.

  She stuck her tongue out at me. “Yes, old timer. I do. What I’m not sure of is where and how to get my hands on one.”

  I shrugged. Fighting down a smirk. “I have one at home. All you needed to do was mention you wanted it.”

  She sighed, bringing both hands up to massage her temples. “Great. Well. I want to look through it.”

  “Tomorrow’s soon enough,” I reminded. “Walmart, now.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Walmart now.”

  Movie Night Isn’t the Same Without Popcorn

  I blinked as the end credits scrolled up the screen, then looked over toward Andi. She wore a crazy grin, and her brown eyes sparkled with humor. “Okay, what the fuck did I just watch?” I blurted out.

  “Deadpool. What did you think?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I mean, parts of it were piss yourself hilarious, but there was a lot I missed.”

  “Figured. It took me a few times to catch everything. What was so funny about the ‘Are you there, God? It’s me, Margaret’ line?”

  I twisted to stare at her in stunned amazement, blowing wisps of brown hair that’d escaped the braid I’d put in during the movie out of my face. “Look up exactly that line on Amazon,” I said after a minute. “Read the synopsis of the book that pops up. You’ll figure it out.”

  Andi yawned, then looked up at the clock. “I gotta get some sleep. And we’ve got to do this again sometime. But next time, I’m getting popcorn.”

  I shrugged. “I was wishing for a rum and Coke, myself. Might have made more of that movie make sense.”

  Andi turned and looked at me thoughtfully, pulling the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth and chewing on a flap of dried skin. “You…can’t drink, can you? Not to get drunk.”

  “Well,” I hedged. “I can’t drink alcohol to get drunk, but I can drink drunks just fine. I can get pretty wasted if I take too much at the frat parties I feed at. I certainly have in the past.”

  Andi stared, then giggled. The giggles turned into a solid belly laugh. “BAC,” she howled. “I wonder how many vampires like to get their meals drunk so they can share it?”

  I grimaced. “If it was more convenient, I might enjoy it more. But I have to make it safely home, and that means driving. Which means tipsy driving, occasionally, or sometimes just sleeping in my trunk when the buzz didn’t fade quickly enough. I’m a hell of lot more careful to not do that over the winter months.”

  She leaned over from her corner of the couch to where I huddled, curled around one of the couch pillows, and patted my shoulder. “I’m sorry things haven’t been easy,” she said quietly. “You shouldn’t have to worry about getting caught out just because you got drunk. Not when the consequences are so much worse for you than just the standard walk of shame for a drunk slut co-ed.”

  I shrugged. “It is what it is,” I said. “And you are about to pass out from sheer tired right there on the couch. Why don’t you head up for bed, and I’ll see you tomorrow night?”

  “Sure,” she said, stifling another yawn while she stretched and stood up. “Um…I called into town and found out that they’ve got cable running out this far and a little farther—we’re apparently close enough to city limits for it, and development has been moving out this way for a while. So I’ve got guys coming over to do the cable install tomorrow. You okay with them drilling through the wall to run the cable into the house?”

  I shrugged. I rarely watched television, mostly because there wasn’t ever anything on. Maybe having cable would make a difference in having something to watch, but even if not, it was worth getting for Andi’s sake. “I’m fine with it,” I said.

  “One other thing,” she said, sitting down on the coffee table directly in front of me. “I noted your phone bill and the DSL bill. If we transfer both of those to the cable company when we get the cable installed, it can save you about half the dollar amount.”

  I blinked. “Half? I mean, it’s a business expense, and I claim it on taxes, but half? Yes, please. Can I keep my phone number?”

  “Pretty sure, yes,” Andi said, yawning again. She stood and started for the door, mumbling, “Cable, drill through wall, phone and internet bills…okay, that was all I wanted to talk to you about. I’ll get those switched over tomorrow when the cable guys come to hook us up.”

  “Half,” I snorted. Phone had been going up by a few cents to a few dollars a month for the past year. I’d been about at my wits’ end, and just about ready to drop the land line in favor of a cell phone. “Thanks, Andi. You’re a godsend.”

  She paused as she reached the door, and looked back over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised. “Chalk up another inaccuracy about the bloodthirsty undead fiends,” she said wryly.

  “What?” I said, startled.

  “Does divinity bother you?”

  “I told you, anything with calories does,” I said, cranky.

  Andi burst out into giggles again. “Not candy,” she choked out. “God. Jesus. Crosses. Holy water. Y’know. The Divine.”

  I blinked, mystified. “No, not that I know of. For Christ’s sake, I’m in Kansas. There are churches everywhere. If that bothered me, I’d have headed for New York City, instead.”

  “Stories say that vampires burst into flame in the face of the cross, or the name of God, or faith stuff in general,” she said, crossing her arms.

  “Yeah, no.” I shook my head, smiling. “I can’t believe I forgot that.”

  “Well, how long did it take you to learn how to…well, learn how to survive as the wicked, fiendish, immortal undead?” she asked reasonably.

  “I’m a vampire, not a Supreme Court Justice,” I replied drily.

  Andi collapsed in a giggling heap in the doorway. I blinked. It hadn’t been that funny. I guessed she was so tired that likely everything was that funny.

  I groaned and rubbed both hands over my face, and headed into the family room, stepping over my housemate on the way. “I have work to do, and you clearly need sleep so yo
u can work tomorrow,” I reminded.

  She followed me into the library. “No, really. How do you figure out what would and wouldn’t hurt you as a vampire?” she asked. “Did you have somebody teaching you? Did you find books? Websites? What?”

  “It was mostly trial and error,” I said wearily. “The only vampire I ever met was the one that turned me. It was…it was like I knew where I could and couldn’t go by instinct, but the rest was trial and error.”

  I didn’t look at her while I was waiting for the pages I needed to use loaded on my computer. The first few months weren’t…good. I still wasn’t sure why I bypassed Kansas City by so much. Or why Lawrence was also a no-go, but not as strong. I suspected, now, that there were others there, but then? Yeah. Not so much. And I wasn’t always able to be somewhere that I didn’t have to sleep in my car’s trunk. Not at first. It took nearly a year for me to figure out what I needed, and how much blood I needed. I hadn’t ever drank someone dry unless it was in the course of an attack that a mortal predator instigated.

  Throwing up the instant I swallowed something that wasn’t blood, water, coffee, or tea hurt. Hurt a lot. And included any and all blood in my system at the time, leaving me not just having to hunt, but damn near too frenzied with hunger to avoid killing when I did.

  “How badly did you hurt yourself while you were learning?” she asked quietly.

  I sighed, plopping bonelessly in the leather executives’ chair at my desk. “Badly enough, but nothing permanent,” I said. “I always heal just fine after being dead for a while and feeding.”

  “Maybe so, but memories can leave permanent scars, too,” she said. I heard her footsteps leading away from my office door, and up the steps.

  I shut down the financials pages, and surfed the internet for a while, shaking. Trying hard to not relive the early days, while I was learning to live with the changes.

  Memories could, indeed, leave permanent scars. I carried plenty.

  Perchance to Dream

  I woke all at once, as I usually did. I sat up and leaned over the floor, dry heaving and shuddering. I’d dreamed. I had dreamed. I never dream. Or at least, I hadn’t since I’d woke up dead and gotten far enough from the Illinois side of St. Louis, where I’d died. What’s more, I’d been awakened by a nightmare, which I had hated more than most things. Still did.

  I wiped my mouth, despite the fact that I don’t actually vomit, most of the time. Nothing there but drool—some physical reflexes don’t vanish with death, I’d found. Retching came with drooling, always. Didn’t matter if I actually puked or not, I drooled like a St. Bernard.

  I glanced up at the little clock just past my pillow on the cart containing underthings. 6:39 pm. I was early waking, tonight. First dreaming, now waking before sunset? I wondered what was doing on. I sighed, thinking about the house’s layout. I’d be able to get upstairs and into the hall bathroom without being exposed to the sun, I thought. No reason to huddle down here in my own horror for the next—I checked the clock again—twenty minutes. Not when I could spend that time huddled in a hot shower.

  Yeah, waking from nightmares sucked. Not dreaming was one of my favorite parts of being dead.

  I rolled out of my bed and dug out clothes to change into after I’d showered. Remembering to do that was already becoming automatic, and Andi had only lived here for just two days.

  I made it up the steps to the main part of the house, and barely cracked the door. The hallway was dim, but not pitch dark like it got if I forgot to leave a light on when I went to bed. I edged out, and made my way cautiously upstairs. Hallway up there was dim, too, so I made it to the hall bathroom without catching so much as a glimpse of sky, much less feeling like the sun was murdering me again, mostly due to all of the bedroom doors being closed. The master, with its south and west facing windows would be particularly bad.

  No sign of Andi, either. Then again, I could hear the TV. I couldn’t tell what she was watching, but it did let me know where in the house she was. And that she was there in the first place.

  I felt filthy. Like I had right after waking in the morgue.

  But in the dream, I was the rapist. And male. And skin-crawlingly filthy.

  I sat in the corner of the shower and steamed and scalded myself good, reveling in the feeling of hot, clean water pouring over me. Raised my face into it and let it run through my hair. I had a sense memory of greasy hair, and shuddered, standing and reaching for the shampoo. I scrubbed myself down, jumped out, and dressed, then stepped out into the hall in time to see the last edge of the sun slip down below the horizon. The clouds, all salmon and golden orange, were glorious against the sky, which shaded from bright blue and gold at the edge of the land up through indigo, and the indigo advanced quickly, driving the last of the light from the sky.

  I stood there, staring at the last dregs of sunset through the now-open door to the master bedroom, and felt cleaner on the inside than the shower had helped me feel on the outside.

  The toilet in the master bathroom flushed. And Andi wandered out, her whole face and posture brightening as she saw me. “Hey, Meg! You’re up early!”

  I grimaced. “Had a bad dream.”

  “You dream?” she said, blinking.

  “Apparently, I do now,” I said, shoulders slumping. I tried not to show it, but she saw. And moved into the hallway and put an arm around my shoulders. “I was happier when I didn’t dream.”

  “Well, if it’s all bad, I can see that,” she said. “Hey, the cable got done today. Your bills should go down quite a bit.”

  I smiled, tired. “And you’ve got TV to watch, instead of just DVDs.”

  “Yup.” Her cheer was contagious; I could feel my mood lifting. “Hey, why don’t you grab some coffee, and come watch home design shows with me?”

  “Sounds good. I’ll be there shortly,” I said, shrugging out from under her arm. “What else have you accomplished?”

  “Well,” she said, following me down the stairs, “I got in contact with the contractor that’ll be putting in the new safe room. He ‘sold’ me on the really big one, that can also be used for a root cellar—and would be more comfortable for you to stay in while we’re dealing with your basement’s remodel.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I really appreciate that. I always wake up feeling horrible when I’ve had to sleep in the car’s trunk.”

  Andi grimaced. “I don’t doubt it. The guy that was supposed to come out to look at the downstairs bathroom didn’t show. I finally got in contact with another contractor, through the safe-room guy. He’ll be out tomorrow to give estimates on the downstairs bathroom repair, and on a couple other updates. Your bathroom vanities really need replaced, for example—they were cheap, particle board pieces that are starting to come apart in places.”

  “I’d noticed that,” I said. “It was the best I could do. I don’t think I installed them right, either.”

  “Oh, you did that?”

  “Yeah. The ones that were here when I bought the place? Yeah, they’d had the sides kicked in and the doors yanked off. Didn’t I tell you this was a foreclosure?”

  *

  I was amazed at how fast things happened, after that. Experts certainly had access to tools and specialized knowledge that sped construction: the storm shelter was installed in three days, from initial estimate to finish. Andi told me it took three hours, start to finish, once they got there with the equipment.

  It took me longer to move my bed and clothes over to the shelter than it took to install it. I’m not a large woman, and while strong, mattresses, dressers, and such are awkward as hell to maneuver around. Even with what help Andi was able to lend, both in moving my bedroom stuff, and in putting stuff into the room I’d been living in, to make it look like a general storage room took nearly the whole night.

  I wasn’t sure when the dishwasher and garbage disposal were installed. I know it was within the same day they were delivered, though. Andi claimed it would increase the value of the house, were
I to sell sometime in the future.

  The downstairs bathroom project didn’t get started until after the storm shelter was put in. It was just as well it happened that way, timing-wise, as it turned out—the joists needed replaced, as well as the flooring itself. Andi’d told me that the contractor said he was shocked the toilet hadn’t fallen through the floor and flooded the basement. And he had to have access to the basement. He bought Andi’s assertion that she was house-sitting, and that I wanted a full, efficiency apartment built in that unfinished basement for her to rent from me, and took on that job, too.

  I suppose the notarized letter to that effect we’d put in place so that she could take care of these things helped immensely.

  Even better, I went four weeks without a nightmare. I was hoping, when I went to bed in the storm shelter after a month of sleeping out there, that my apartment would be done soon. It was starting to turn colder. A lot colder. Yesterday, the tiny thermometer measured the temperature inside the shelter at thirty-eight degrees, when I’d awakened. Much longer, and I’d need to make other arrangements to not freeze solid during my sleep.

  Pretty much spang on a month after the first nightmare, I had another. Almost exactly the same as the first, and I woke twenty minutes before sunset—4:58, according to the battery operated analog clock next to the battery-operated storm lamp—dry heaving.

  I watched the last of the light fade from the edges of the foil-covered unbreakable window in the hatch of the storm shelter, huddled in the corner, arms wrapped around my shins, chin on my knees. Freezing, and feeling filthy, inside and out. Waiting until I could get into the shower.

  I wasn’t sure why I was having these dreams. Or what I could do about it. I just…wanted them to stop.

  The light finished fading, and I found myself wishing I could have seen another sunset as I unfolded myself and popped the shelter open, a carry bag full of clean clothes for the night slung over my shoulder, and last night’s dirty clothes in a Walmart bag in the other hand, to be dropped in the hamper I’d started keeping in the laundry room.