by Garon Whited
I’ve never dressed like that, not even for a renaissance fair. But the guy in the painting had my face.
“Welcome home, my lord,” she said.
And my creepy-feeling factor went off the scale.
Okay, I was rude; I don’t like to be, but I was. I didn’t say a word. I just went up to the bedroom and got dressed. I ignored her when she followed, I ignored her when she watched, and I ignored her when she started asking me what I was going to do.
Bloody hell! Like I knew?
I walked out the front door and kept walking. She followed me to the front door and stopped there, watching me. I could feel her looking at me.
“My lord?” she called after me, with a tremble in her voice.
I kept going.
I was thoroughly confused and pretty badly beaten, emotionally. I might have coped better if Terri… if any of a number of things had been different. As it was, I couldn’t take it. Losing a loved one because she changed her mind, nothing more, had hit me hard. Then a fresh upswing in meeting Sasha… and then finding she was a raving lunatic with obsessive tendencies, apparently over some guy from the tenth century or some such I happened to resemble. Added to the fact I was obviously infected with something…
No.
It was just too much.
I couldn’t stand it.
I walked down the drive until I hit a road, picked a direction, and kept going. I didn’t even hitch a lift; I didn’t want to talk.
I was betrayed. Disappointed. Let down. Major bummer. Like that.
Finally—about the same time that my stomach started snarling at me again—I hit a truck stop. I went in and ate, and kept eating for a while. I was lucky I had my wallet—and my credit card. I must’ve spent close to sixty dollars on food.
People were staring.
“Tapeworm,” I said, as I paid the check. The waitress nodded, not saying anything. I checked the map on the wall and started walking again.
Blast it; I was hungry when I got into town two hours later. I finally found a pay phone to call a cab, my guts grumbling about the wait, and went home. There, I cleaned out everything in my bachelor kitchen. I mean everything. I even drank the ketchup. It was bad. The hunger, I mean; it made straight ketchup taste good.
This forced me to reconsider my position. Sasha knew something about my condition, even if she was crazy. I couldn’t argue that I had a condition. I cursed myself and the world around me for being unfair. A happy man I was not. And one that could feel himself growing hungry again. Bad sign. I get grouchy when I’m hungry.
Fine, I decided. I’m going to eat like a horse for the next twelve hours—she said something about it being mostly over in the morning, so I could tough it out. I would. I was far too stubborn to go back.
Night fell. When it did, I suffered an attack of a sort I never felt before.
I felt a cold prickling sensation all over, at first. It got worse, much worse, and I began to shiver uncontrollably. As I was considering calling 911, the pace accelerated. I fell to the floor, convulsing. My teeth ached as though I were biting down on a metal bar. I could feel my heart thudding, slowly, like someone was striking my chest with a hammer. I sweated profusely, until my shirt was wringing wet; it smelled terrible and the white shirt turned a dingy, cloudy yellow-gray. Inside, I could feel things moving, shifting; my guts knotted and twisted, and every joint in my body seemed to be on fire and swollen. My breathing became labored and I couldn’t seem to get enough air. I twisted and writhed like a dying thing, and I was afraid I might be.
And then I wasn’t. It cut off like someone pulled the plug on my own personal misery machine.
I sat up, easily, effortlessly, with no pain at all. I felt fine. Better than fine, I felt ready to spring to my feet and lash a few serfs. I got up from the floor, noticing with distaste the wet place I had managed to sweat into the carpet—and then the nasty odor of my own clothes. I quickly peeled out of them, hoping this feeling of well-being wasn’t just a stage. I stepped into the shower, turned on the hot water to start, and started rinsing my clothes. I held them up, piece by piece, and wrung them out before dumping them in the laundry basket.
When the last of the laundry was in the basket, I noticed the steam. The mirrors were completely fogged; steam hung in the air, and I was standing under the blast of hot water. I wasn’t scalded. It just seemed… warm.
I noted it and was puzzled. If my nerves had been affected, I should be scalded; I wasn’t. So the scalding water didn’t scald me. I wondered why. Then I had an idea. If I was suddenly much more resistant to heat, how about cold?
With some trepidation, I started turning on the cold water, slowly, and turning off the hot… eventually, I had nothing but cold water running over me. It felt cool, but I knew from past experience it would be far, far too cold for me to tolerate.
I climbed out of the shower and dried, thinking.
So temperatures didn’t bother me much. It was strange and I had no explanation for how it could be, but I couldn’t deny the evidence. I was tempted to boil some water and just dip a finger for an instant. After all, there are fakirs and shamans who walk across hot coals. On the other hand, I’m crazy, not stupid. I got dressed and went to get an ice cube. I held it in my fist, tightly, and waited.
It took a long, long time to melt. Much longer than I thought it should. When it was gone, I dried my hand. That was it.
I took a breath and said, “Hmmm.”
I was missing something, here. Oh, yes. I was hungry. I ordered a pizza; that should keep me from starving to death before I could finish shopping. I offered extra for a rush delivery and got dressed.
While I waited, I wondered… what sort of changes would it take to make a person ignore things like scalding and frostnip? I got down a couple of textbooks and fired up the computer. I read and researched to take my mind off the hollow ache in my middle.
When the pizza arrived, I swear I could smell it before the delivery guy even knocked. I paid him off, slammed the door, and started to wolf down a slice of sausage-bacon-hamburger-pepperoni with extra cheese.
Suddenly, I felt ill—very ill. I barely made it to the bathroom in time, wondering if this was the start of the second phase of my earlier agonies. I threw up violently into the toilet.
As I regarded the floating chunks of masticated meat, cheese, and dough, I realized I felt fine again. And still hungry. I started looking forward to the prospect of being hungry and tossing up anything I ate.
I mentioned I get grouchy when I’m hungry. Well, I got grouchy.
I rose. I brushed my teeth. I stared.
There was something wrong with this smile. What is it? I asked myself.
I calmly finished brushing my teeth, rinsed, and headed out into the night.
I broke her front door coming in. A foot planted right next to the lock plate broke the jamb and sent the door slamming back against the wall. I stomped into her house and shouted for her.
Sasha came down the hall, wearing jeans and a tight blouse. She was smiling.
“I’m so pleased you’ve come back.”
I pointed a finger at her like it might be loaded and said, seething with rage and terror, “You have a lot of explaining. What the hell is happening?!”
“Come in. Don’t mind the door. I tried to explain earlier, but you—”
“Don’t shove this off on me!” I shouted, feeling less than reasonable. “Just tell me what’s going on!”
She nodded, looking patient.
“All right. Come in and sit down. You’ve been hungry ever since sunset, and you can’t eat; I have something you can keep down. Follow me.” Fury and hunger warred for a bit. I don’t like being a grouch; I followed, trying to keep from shouting.
She pulled a bottle out of the oven and handed it to me; it felt quite warm.
“This will keep you, for a while. I’ll talk, you drink.”
I unscrewed the cap and sniffed; whatever is was, it smelled good. My stomach reinforc
ed that opinion in no uncertain terms. I tried a small sip to test it. It tasted… well… okay. It left a slightly bitter, metallic flavor in my mouth. Coppery. But it stayed down.
It left my head reeling. It was like being drunk without being impaired. It was liquid elation and bottled contentment. I wondered if it was drugged. I felt… stronger. I felt powerful. If I flexed my arms, I felt I should ripple with muscle like a bad cartoon. I was powerful… I was invincible. I was perfect.
The feeling diminished my earlier fears, but supplied new ones. The net effect was I was less scared and more worried, if that makes any sense.
“What has happened,” she said, sitting on the other side of the counter from me, just audible over the ringing in my ears, “is that you have acquired a peculiar disease. You know the difference between a parasite and a symbiote?”
“Yes,” I replied, still trying to get a grip on the overwhelming feeling of power. Confidence. But it was easy to think; my thoughts were clear and lightning-fast—or seemed to be.
“Tell me.”
“A parasite is an organism that survives by feeding on another creature. A symbiote does the same thing, but it gives something back—it’s more of an ally than a burden. A tapeworm is a parasite. A seeing-eye dog is a type of symbiote, if we can stretch the technical definition.”
She nodded. “Good examples; I see why you teach. Well, the disease you have acquired—from me, yes—is a symbiotic organism. It requires a considerable amount of feeding, but also provides some interesting side effects.”
“Like?” I prompted.
“Your musculature is developing new fibers to replace the old ones—denser, more compact, and stronger. Your bones are becoming both harder and stronger. Your tendons are attaching to those bones with new strands and better anchoring. Your joints are changing; their basic design is altering. Your cells split and multiply much more quickly, and your body’s ability to repair damage no longer results in scarring. This I know. I believe that your nervous system is becoming more conductive…”
I wondered, for a moment, just how crazy she might be. Or how crazy I might be. She just sat there, straight-faced, and kept talking. I only half-listened, drinking absently, as she went on about polymers, superconductivity, mitosis, myosis, Hayflick’s limit, fertility, mortality rates, aerobic and anaerobic function, and other things.
Finally, I got a grip. I was upset. No, I was angry. And afraid. I was feeling betrayed and infuriated and frustrated and frightened. I had been changed in a way I did not understand and to which I had not agreed, no matter how overwhelmingly better it felt.
Oh, yes, it felt good to be this way. But I don’t trust anything that feels too good.
“Stop!” I said, finally. She did, and she looked at me, waiting.
“I don’t understand,” I finally went on, gripping the edge of the counter—I was putting finger-shaped dents in it—“why you did this to me. You said it was hard to contract this… this… this. But you went out of your way to expose me to it.”
She hesitated. “This will be more difficult to believe.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. It broke me up completely. It was either laugh or weep, and I couldn’t weep anything but tears of rage. So I laughed and laughed and the windows rattled in their frames.
When I quieted down, I was less angry. Still mad as hell, but I was more controlled.
“Go ahead.”
For the next two hours, I drank and she talked. She told me a long story about a man who had saved her from the plague in London. A man who loved her, married her, taught her, and defended her until the day of the peasants, there in France—and who sent her to safety while he fought to give her time to flee. Moreover, who promised her he would one day return to her through death and time.
While she talked, I calmed down a lot. It explained—if I could accept it as true, and why not? More incredible things were happening in front of me; hell, to me—the portrait in the shrine-like room I’d seen. It explained why she took an interest in me. It also explained—without excusing—her sudden decision to hand me a virus or whatever with unpredictable consequences.
When she finished, she had tears in her eyes. She told me her story and waited. She didn’t ask me anything. I just sat there, trying to grasp the whole of that story and come to grips with what it meant to me.
Even angry as I was, I could never have made a move to hurt her, not when she was beautiful and hopeful and desperate. Desperate women trigger my gallant tendencies, regardless of the circumstances. I’ve pulled over on long car trips to help stranded motorists—all female. One was in a driving downpour, and she wasn’t that pretty, either. But the combination of both beauty and desperation…
I sighed and tried to let go of my anger.
“You think I am this… person… reincarnated, or some such?” I asked. She nodded, wordless, eyes bright. Who knows? Maybe I am. My personal verdict is still out on what happens after we die. I continued, “You know that, if I am, I don’t remember any of it.” She nodded again. “And I’m going to need… a while… to sort out what I think about this.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I will wait, as I have waited. It is not so difficult a thing, waiting. But would you please… not think so much that you forget to feel?”
I agreed, of course. “I’ll try my best. While I’m thinking it over, is there anything I need to know about this, ah, condition for day-to-day living? The whole alterations thing is nice to know, but have you any practical advice?”
“When the sun rises or sets, be indoors and away from the light; you’ll react badly to it. Find a quiet spot, preferably without witnesses, because you will have a period of illness. They are bad, at first, but they become easier to bear after a week or so, and you grow used to them, eventually—rather like sneezing; you do it, it’s over. You will also want to stop by here every night for a drink.”
I glanced at the now-empty bottle. “What is this stuff, anyway?”
She bit her lip.
“It’s blood.”
MONDAY, JUNE 13TH
If you’ve ever gone for a walk in a city at night—especially after midnight on a Sunday night—you know that no city really sleeps. Some of them doze fitfully; some lie in a great drowse. Others merely get another cup of coffee and go right on being wired and half-mad—the half that isn’t the sane half.
So I was walking through the city, feeling sorry for myself, and noticing that as much as I had changed, the world seemed to have changed even more.
Traffic was a constant rush of sound. Lights were blazes of brilliance. The smells of the city were like hammers to the nose. Someone had turned up the volume on all my senses and I couldn’t find the knob.
But I couldn’t have stayed with The Crazy Lady for another minute. I needed this walk to sort things out—to sort me out.
Good gods and little fishes! How do you go about coming to grips with being some sort of vampire? I mean, really. I couldn’t argue I was feeling… well… different. I couldn’t find a pulse, for example. I tried holding my breath. After about ten minutes I gave up because I’d proved some sort of point. I hadn’t actually cut myself to see if I bled, but I didn’t really think I would.
So I walked, and I thought, and I wallowed in self-pity and misery.
Part of it, I realized, was I liked Sasha. But, like her or not, I felt she had done something horrible. By her lights, she was being kind and helpful. Even to the point of giving me a fantastic gift, I suppose. Who wouldn’t want to be super-strong, super-fast, and immortal? But to me it was an assault on my person, a betrayal of trust, a rape of my being. Maybe I’m just ungrateful. Would it have been so bad if a stranger had just done this and left me? Probably not; then I could have hated and blamed someone. I can’t hate her for it, and I don’t really want to blame her for it. She’s just a little crazy.
Still… I was hacked.
What really bothered me about this was… who was I going to tell? When I have a lot of
nasty problems, I generally find one of my friends and we have a talk. I feel better, and I get on with life. Everybody does this to some degree or another; shared pain is diminished.
Who do you trust? In my shoes, do you have someone you could tell?
I wallowed in self-pity for a while longer and tried not to think about it.
There’s only so long I can wallow in self-pity. That’s generally about a day or so—Terri being a notable exception—and I’d had a head start on this one. So when morning came, I made sure to avoid the sunlight.
Yes, she was right. I had a bout of illness much like the one that came with the sunset. It was like having a foot go to sleep and then wake up, except it was my entire body… and there was no numbness. Then it was like being set on fire… and the shivering and convulsing started. I could feel my heart starting, moving the cold, sluggish blood. I gasped, suddenly out of breath. I sweated a nasty, vile secretion that stank like a dead thing.
When it stopped, I was wrung-out and gasping, but otherwise just fine.
I hate this, was the first thought through my mind. I need a shower, was the second.
I took care of the clothes I wore, showered, and found the hot water was hot again. Apparently, dead people don’t mind temperature much. It’s us living folks that mind being scalded and frozen.
That got me to thinking. What, exactly, was changing? How? What did this do to me?
I determined to find out.
Oh, looking back, I can see I was avoiding the issue, sort of. By distancing myself from the problem, by treating it as a clinical, scientific problem—not a life-and-death matter of immediate concern—I was stepping back from it. But it did help me to come to grips with it.
First thing: call in. If I’m going to be sick, I’ll use a sick day. Maybe several. No problem.
Second thing: I’m going to need someone to help.
So I called Travis. Travis is about six months past his RN, and he’s been my friend since high school. If I ever needed a kidney, Travis would volunteer. I might even go so far as to make the man a gift of one lobe of a lung. There are two things I needed at that point: someone to listen to my troubles and someone who wouldn’t get bent out of shape about them. That was Travis.
