by Sara Beaman
You didn’t give me a choice last time, I remark.
“You needed a lot of blood fast last time.”
Right.
“Okay. I’m ready whenever you are,” he says, extending his hand.
A wide lateral gash now extends across half of his wrist. Blood seeps out slowly, rhythmlessly. I take his hand and forearm in my hands, and, feeling fantastically awkward, I bring his wrist to my mouth. I swallow just a tiny bit of his lukewarm blood, and then I feel a floating sensation, a falling sensation, the feeling of being swept away by the ocean, of being pushed under, of drowning...
...and then I am sitting in a metal folding chair, in a white-walled room, at a table across from a familiar woman an unfamiliar man. There is a door behind them that I know is locked, a mirror behind them that I know is a window on the other side. In front of me is a list of words, mostly monosyllables.
“Read the words for us, please, dear,” the woman says.
I don’t want to read. I can’t remember why.
“Read the words,” she repeats, her voice like the edge of a knife.
I strain against myself to ignore her command, but I’ve already begun.
“Pit. Bit. Tin. Din. Cut. Gut. Cheap. Jeep. Fat. Vat. Thin. Then. Sap. Zap. She. Measure. Loch.” I pause for a breath. “We. Map. Left. Nap. Run. Yes. Ham. Bang.”
Once I’ve finished, the man cuts his finger with a penknife. He stands and walks over to my side of the table, his footfalls echoing against the bare walls. He gathers my hair into a ponytail with one hand; with the other, he draws a line of blood across my throat. He places his hands on my shoulders.
“Good. Again,” the woman demands.
I feel my throat tighten and the sides of my mouth swell. My tongue feels unwieldy, as if my mouth were full of peanut butter. I start again at the beginning of the list. “Bit. Bit. Din. Din. Gut. Gut. Jeab. Jeab. Fat. Fat. Sin. Sem. Zab. She. Measure. Loch. We. Mab. Leff. Nab. Run. Yes. Ham. Bang.”
“Again.”
The swelling worsens; my lips feel bee-stung. My chest flutters with fear. Nauseated, I continue. “Bih. Bih. Dih. Dih. Guh. Guh. Zheah. Zheeh. Hah. Hah. Sih. She. Savv. Savv. She. Eazhah. Ach. We. Bah. Leh. Hah. Ruh. Yeh. Ham. Banh.”
I shake my head no pre-emptively, anticipating her next demand. I want to cry.
“Yes.” She pulls her hair back. “Again.”
“Ih. Ih. Ih. Ih. Uh. Uh. Eah. Eah. Ah. Ah. Ih. Eh. Ah. Ah. Ee. Ehah. Ah. Ee. Ah. Eh. Ah. Uh. Eh. Ah. Ahn.”
She pauses. “Good. Now the other side.”
I pretend not to know what she means.
“The other side of the page, dear.”
I leave my arms by my side and stare at her with silent defiance.
“Read the words for us, please, dear,” the woman says.
I look up at her; her face is my own. Her auburn hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail.
I don’t want to read. I can’t remember why.
“Read the words,” she repeats, her voice like the edge of a knife.
Adam pulls his wrist away from my mouth, and I find myself back in the abandoned office. His wound heals instantly.
“All right,” he says, his voice wavering. “That’s probably enough for tonight.”
I bring my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around myself. I don’t want to think about what I’ve just seen. I don’t want to think about anything.
Adam pauses. “If there’s anything I can—“
No, I think with force. Please just go now.
He stands up. “Well,” he says after a long pause, “try and get some sleep.” He turns to leave, shutting the door behind him.
I slowly uncurl myself, crawl over to the sleeping bag, and wriggle inside. I fall asleep seconds after I close my eyes.
8
A Dream of Dying
{Adam}
Aya and I walked back to my rooms in silence. The surge of emotion quickly dulled, leaving a deep chasm, grey and featureless, in its absence. By the time we arrived at the suite I was perfectly calm once again. Wretchedly calm.
Aya opened the door to my suite for me with a polite smile. “Please call me if you need anything. There’s a phone in your office. My extension is twenty-one.”
“Thanks,” I said, avoiding eye contact. I slipped past her and locked the door behind me.
What now? I had come back here to be alone with my grief, but now I was just alone. I didn’t want to sleep; I didn’t want to risk having another vision of someone else’s memories. I had no desire to look at my textbooks or look through my desk. And I couldn’t call Alison again, not with the way her mother had reacted—
I brought a hand to my forehead. Again I was thinking about her like she was alive. As if I could call and talk to her. After all, I was dead too, wasn’t I? Apparently death was a mutable quantity.
I walked into the office and sat down in the desk chair. I picked up the photo of myself and Alison and tried to recall what happened. It had been a car accident, apparently. Had we been hit or had we hit someone? Who had been driving? Why couldn’t I remember any of it?
I needed to talk to someone. I wanted someone to explain to me what happened in plain terms. Maybe then it would start feeling real. But anyone who knew anything about the accident would know I was dead. Who would take a call from someone whose funeral they’d just attended?
If I wanted to talk to someone, it’d have to be someone who wouldn’t have attended my funeral. Someone who wouldn’t have heard about the accident, either. No one in Baltimore would do; probably no one in New York either.
That left only one option. I’d have to hope she wouldn’t hang up on me.
I placed the picture face-down on the desk and picked up the telephone. I hadn’t called my ex-girlfriend Elena more than twice since she’s moved to Atlanta six years ago, but her number came to mind easily as my fingers moved across the dial.
Her son picked up on the other end. “Hello?”
“Hello. Is Dr. Ortiz there?”
“Who is this?”
“Uh—Dr. Radcliffe,” I lied. “From the CDC.”
“Oh, okay,” he said. “Hold on, she just got in.”
There was a long pause and some shuffling sounds as the phone changed hands.
“Hello?” came Elena’s voice on the other end.
I gritted my teeth and gathered my will to reply. “Elena? It’s Adam.”
She was silent for several seconds.
“I’m sorry to borrow you,” I said. “I just... I...” I looked at the ceiling, at a loss as to why I was calling her at all. “Alison is dead,” I blurted out.
“Adam, I know. You told me. On Thursday. Don’t you remember?”
“What?”
“You told me when you called me on Thursday.”
“I don’t remember that at all.” How could I have called her? Didn’t Aya say I was in a coma? “So what day is it now?”
“It’s Monday,” she replied, annoyed. “What do you mean you don’t remember?”
“I...”
“Were you drunk?” She sounded disgusted. “Are you drunk now?”
The room suddenly seemed like it was expanding, or I was getting smaller in it. I heard a faint ringing in my ears.
“Oh God. I wasn’t... when the car crashed... was I?” I couldn’t remember. “Was I driving?”
“I don’t know. Were you?”
I had no idea. Looking back, I saw nothing but a black disconnect, a rift full of static.
“Adam, I’m worried about you,” she said, her voice laden with lacerating pity. “You should probably check yourself into some kind of clinic.”
“I can’t,” I said. They don’t have rehab for dead people, I thought, and almost laughed out loud.
“I think this is more important than your professional reputation, especially if you can’t even remember whether or not you killed your fiancée.”
“It’s not that—“
“You shouldn’t have called,” sh
e said.
I leaned back in the chair, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”
“I’m hanging up now,” she said, and then she did.
I placed the receiver back in the cradle, then stared at the phone for minutes without once feeling the need to blink.
The picture of the situation was blurring. How had I called Elena if I’d been in a coma? Aya must have left something out. She must have. Maybe Alison wasn’t really dead after all?
No. Elena wouldn’t lie to me, especially not about something like that. Not only was Alison dead, it was probably my own fault.
Why hadn’t Julian revived her instead of me?
Why had he revived me at all?
I pushed the desk chair away from the table and stood up. I walked to the door to the suite without considering why. I unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped out into the hallway.
The corridors seemed different. The portraits had changed, the intersections had shifted. I walked down hall after hall, opening doors at random. I wanted to leave, go to outside. Where were the stairs to the first floor?
Was the sun still out? Julian had said it was the afternoon. The sun would probably kill me, now that I was a vampire.
That’d be fine.
After searching for several minutes, I found a stairwell. It was dark, but I couldn’t find a light switch, so I shut the door behind me and began climbing blindly. After twelve stairs, I found myself at a landing. I stumbled forward, feeling along the wall for a door, then for a doorknob. It was locked. I ran my hands along the wall again, and led myself to a second flight of stairs. Holding the railing, I began to climb.
On the ninth stair I heard a door slam shut somewhere beneath me. Someone was approaching from below, sprinting towards the door to the stairwell.
I ran up the remaining stairs. I could see a slice of light beneath the door to the second level; it provided just enough illumination for my hands to find their way to the doorknob. As I threw open the door, Aya screamed at me from below.
“Adam, what are you—Wait! Stop!”
She started running up the stairs. I shut the door behind me. At the end of the hall I saw a window to the outside, its drapes drawn shut. I started to walk down the hallway, then to run, then to sprint. Behind me, the door creaked open. A split second later, I saw a flash.
Then I heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing.
9
Rag Doll
{Anonymous}
“Hey.”
Haruko’s voice.
“Hey, are you all right? Wake up.”
I peel my eyes open. The office is dark, save for the light of a streetlamp seeping in through the blinds. I’ve wriggled myself into a corner without leaving the sleeping bag. I must have abandoned the pillow somewhere back in the middle of the room; I can feel the imprint the industrial carpet left on my face.
“Jesus. I thought you’d gone comatose.” She extends a hand and hauls me up to a sitting position. “It’s already ten. Have you been asleep this entire time?”
I rub at my eyes, trying to swallow. My mouth is parched. I nod.
Adam appears in the doorway, carrying a stainless steel bowl and his folding knife. He walks over and kneels down next to me. “Could you give us a minute?” he asks Haruko.
She looks at the bowl, then at Adam. “Don’t overdo it,” she says. “We’re not doing what we did last night ever again.”
“I understand that,” he replies tersely.
She smirks at him and steps out of the office.
What’s the bowl for? I ask.
“You didn’t seem to enjoy sucking on my wrist. I wanted to give you another option.”
I frown. If I do it that way, will I remember anything?
“If you take it from the vein, you'll recover something for sure. If you don’t...” He puts the bowl on the ground. “Well, normally things would come back to you in dreams, but...”
All I’ve been dreaming about is you. I unintentionally recall his suicide attempt; it makes me feel ashamed for both of us. Jesus. Sorry. I can’t help it.
He flips the knife open. I look away before he makes the cut.
“It’s all right,” he says after a pause. “I guess it’s only fair. I mean, you’re an open book to me, and I can’t help that, either.”
I nod, still averting my eyes.
“So which way do you want it?”
I want my memories back.
“The wrist, then.”
Yeah.
I reach for his arm. I put my lips over the cut. I push down my feelings of disgust. This is going to be a regular thing now, so I might as well get used to it.
As his blood enters my mouth I feel that same floating, disembodied sensation, the same feeling of sinking and drowning. Unlike before, however, as the office fades away the feeling persists.
I’m still submerged, still in over my head. I’m in some kind of huge fish tank—one large enough to hold a shark or an octopus, or, in this case, me. The tank is full of blood.
I swim up to the top; there’s just enough room to allow my head to surface if I tread water—tread blood?—if I tread blood with all my might. The effort is excruciating. I can feel a matrix of sutures all across my torso, limbs, and face. Every time I flex a muscle, the stitches pull. My reflection in the glass of the tank looks like a macabre sort of rag doll stitched together from swollen flesh.
I push against the lid of the tank, trying to force it open, but I can’t. I end up pushing my own head back under, back into the blood, and I inhale some of it accidentally. I sputter and cough, flailing back to the surface and gasping for air.
I hear footsteps approaching. I swim up to the glass and try to look out into the room beyond, still hacking and wheezing, but I can’t see. It’s too dark. It’s getting harder and harder to keep my head above the level of the blood—harder and harder until it becomes nearly impossible—and then it overwhelms me, and I’m going under, and I might never be coming up again—
And then I flash back to the abandoned office in the abandoned grocery store.
Did I pull away or did Adam?
He picks up the bowl, stands up and doesn’t say a thing.
///
We get back on the highway, heading west, further into the mountains. Adam drives. I sit in the back with Aya, reading the signs as they pass with the feeling that I’ve been down this stretch before. Morganton, Marion, Black Mountain. We’re in western North Carolina.
Adam takes us to a shopping plaza somewhere near Asheville and parks the car in the enormous, floodlit parking lot of a big-box retailer.
“Why don’t you and Aya go fill up the tank?” Haruko says to him. “I can take her in on my own.”
What? Take me where? I look at Adam. I don’t want to be alone with her.
“I... need to get something to eat,” he says.
“Whatever,” Haruko says. “That’s fine.”
“I’ll be along as soon as I can,” he says.
Haruko shrugs, unsnaps her seat belt and hops out of the car.
Adam and I follow her towards the entrance. She pulls a smartphone out of her back pocket and starts fiddling with the buttons.
What are we doing here?
“We don’t have any food,” Adam says. “Or anything else you might need, for that matter.”
I guess he’s right. Haruko’s clothes are too tight to be comfortable, and I’m dying for something to eat.
We step through two sets of sliding doors and past an elderly greeter who waves at us with blithe indifference. I squint and shade my eyes; the light inside the building feels nearly as oppressive as the sun. Haruko grabs a shopping cart, pushing it one-handed while continuing to type with the other.
The store is crowded even at this time of night, full of teenagers, young couples and families. I watch Adam slip away from us and into the crowd. He looks perfectly innocuous in his dark jeans and black track jacket. Nothing about his appearance giv
es him away.
I shudder.
“Let’s get you some clothes,” Haruko says. She starts walking towards the women’s clothing department.
I follow her, my stomach churning. I can’t stop staring at her, thinking about her like she’s some sort of big cat set loose from the zoo. And I can’t get the image of her stabbing that man out of my head. She’d killed like a machine. She’d killed the other double, too. And she’d wanted to kill me. Said I was a liability.
Just tell yourself you’re out with a friend, I decide. A human friend who doesn’t drink blood. Or kill people.
She stops playing with her smartphone and hands it to me. “I found a text-to-voice application,” she says. “I know your voice is shot right now, so you can use it to talk.”
I accept the device, blushing. I punch the word Thanks into the miniature keypad on screen and hit Enter. A tinny android voice reads the word aloud.
“No problem.” She stops in front of a rack of acrylic sweaters. “What are we looking for, exactly? What’s your personal style?”
I blink, shake my head, shrug.
She starts throwing garments into the cart. “Okay. I’ll find you some jeans and stuff.”
OK, I type. Then: I’m going to go get underwear.
“Don’t go too far.”
I wander into the intimates section and start collecting value packs of boyshorts and socks, shoving them under my armpits. I look at the underwire bras for a little while, trying to remember what size I wear. I give up and grab two size medium sports bras instead.
I look back to the women’s clothing section, trying to find Haruko, but I don’t see her. I duck behind a rack full of socks. If I lose her, maybe I can try to hitch a ride with someone in the parking lot and get away from the three of them. The thought seems desperate and reckless, but could it really be any worse than being stuck in a car with three vampires? Probably not.
I shove my hands in all four pockets of her jeans, hoping I’ll find some loose change. Nothing, not even any receipts or lint. Fuck it. It doesn’t matter. I need to suck it up and run.
Just as I emerge from behind the rack of socks, there’s Haruko, pushing the cart towards me.
