Mirror

by Noelle Ryan

  “Oh damn, sorry about your eyes. I’m just glad you had sunscreen on already. Hold on, let me grab...”

  And then a soft, dark fabric covered my face and I sighed in relief. Slowly, my brain began catching up. I recognized the voice, but I wasn’t sure why just yet. I tried to lift the fabric to see, but my arm still wasn’t moving.

  “What happened? Why can’t I move?” And who the hell are you? I started flipping through faces in my memory, trying to match one to the voice.

  “You were attacked in the alley behind San Jose grill. I carried you down another alley before the cops could find you.” He said it like this was a tremendous favor, which is perhaps the reason I didn’t begin screaming—well, that, and the fact that I wasn’t actually frightened. I briefly tried to convince myself I probably should be, given that I was paralyzed in an alley and apparently alone with a man whose voice I only vaguely recognized, but nothing changed.

  “Um, and the cops not finding me is a good thing because…?”

  “Because you’re a vampire now. That’s why you can’t move—temporarily, of course.”

  I laughed nervously.

  “You find this funny? That’s a new one,” he said, sliding his arms beneath me and lifting me up.

  “No, I’m sorry, I’m just—I must have hit my head too hard because I thought you just said something about vampires.”

  “Yes.” His voice grew softer. “That thing in the alley was also a vampire, a dying one, and he’d snapped your spine and drank most of your blood before I caught up. I had no choice but to turn you, and I had to do it fast, which is why we’re still outside where the sun can hurt you. I’m sorry. I would have run out sooner if I’d realized he wasn’t already dead. He is now, though—fully—if that’s any consolation.”

  Before I could decide whether to feel guilty or delighted about that fact, a sudden wash of warmth and comfort eased me back into blackness.

  The next time I awoke it was dark. I stretched my arms experimentally and discovered, to my delight, that they not only moved but did so pain free. Next I tried my legs. Good on that front, too. Bracing myself, I cautiously opened my eyes, waiting for that lancing pain to begin again. Nothing. I was about to yip with joy, always amazed at how good normalcy feels after being in pain—when I suddenly remembered what I’d been told. A vampire? What kind of kook had rescued me? And where was I now?

  Out of habit, I slowly edged my feet over the side of the bed I was laying in and began feeling the nearby table for a lamp, before it occurred to me that I could see everything just fine by the lights coming in through the window. I took in the tidy room: double bed, blue blanket, gray carpet, wood dresser, bookcase, and a small chair with my purse resting on it. No lamps. Definitely not any kind of hospital room.

  “I see you’re up again”

  I spun around. Tom? What the hell was he doing here? Then it clicked—his voice was the same voice from this afternoon. Damnit. He hadn’t seemed like a lunatic in class, not even with that weird stint in the parking lot, but I must have misjudged him. Now I had to figure out how to get out of here without triggering his delusions—and then how to get him out of my class without incurring any disciplinary hearings. I did not want to have to explain this one to Dr. Vente. I flashed to a picture of him, tapping his pen on his desk and raising his eyebrows as I tried to explain. He’d probably blame my student’s delusions on me. Ugh.

  “Yes, but I really need to get home,” I said. “Thanks so much for, uh, looking after me.”

  “You still don’t believe me.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “About being a vamp,” he said, his voice cool and mocking. It ticked me off, and an unfamiliar rush of anger washed through me. It felt so good I found myself briefly wondering why I'd always tried so hard never to get angry at anyone.

  “I’m still your instructor, rescue or no, so I would strongly advise you—”

  “You’re not actually going to leave; you need to rest.” He said it confidently, like it was a factual statement about the weather, and for a split second I felt myself lean back toward the bed. And then I shook myself, baffled and now even angrier, and glared at him.

  “You would be wise to go online and drop my class tonight, Tom, or else I might be more inclined to see this as a kidnapping than a rescue.”

  I grabbed my bag and stalked out the front door. Outside, I was relieved to find that I was down in lower Clifton, an easy quarter mile walk from my apartment. I glanced back only once, to make sure Tom wasn’t following me, and saw him standing on the curb, watching me with a puzzled look on his face.

  Despite the humidity that coated me in a damp film, the walk was invigorating. I’d never noticed the soft susurrus of crickets, or the occasional hoot of an owl, when walking along these mostly residential streets before, but I did tonight. By the time I got home, I’d convinced myself I didn’t really need to head to the hospital, and realizing my car was likely still at the restaurant seven miles away only confirmed that I was better off just assessing things tomorrow, and deciding then whether or not to visit a doctor.

  The next morning, however, my migraine returned, and I found myself grateful for the blackout drapes my sunrise-hating ex-boyfriend had put up in my bedroom. I set up my laptop on my bed, trying to ignore the stabbing pains that had been triggered by just a few seconds in my too-bright living room retrieving it. Fortunately, they faded by the time I’d finished the first email from a student asking whether the homework had changed since I hadn’t shown up for class. Then an entirely different kind of headache overcame me as I read my other emails: a panicky-sounding message from Ava and a chilly inquiry about my well-being from the department secretary, Alma. She’d apparently fielded one too many calls from my confused students and decided to remind me of my appointment with Dr. Vente at ten in clipped tones that made her disapproval of me all too clear.

  I knew I should call Ava immediately, but I wasn’t up to it, so I just sent her an email saying I was fine and would explain later. Then I composed a brief apology to Alma for not following the usual class cancellation procedures yesterday, explaining that tonight’s class would need to be cancelled too and I'd need to have my meeting over the phone. I cringed as I did this, knowing Dr. Vente wouldn't be happy at the change, but I simply could not imagine facing anyone in person today, students or colleagues. Especially when going on campus would mean holding a discussion about vampire fiction in a class where one student actually believed he was a vampire—and that he’d made me one, too. Maybe I should reassign Moby Dick after all.

  It took about an hour to finish answering all my Wednesday students' emailed questions and to post the announcement and revised syllabus for my Thursday class. I glanced at my watch: just a few minutes until ten.

  One perk of talking to the department chair over the phone would be avoiding his usual appointment procedure. Like all petty dictators, he was inordinately fond of messing with the minds of his underlings. One of his favorite tactics was to leave us sitting out in the anteroom to his office, where the student workers made copies and the various administrative assistants might glare at us for being in their way as they tried to get their work done.

  The last time I'd had an appointment with him, I'd sat there smiling awkwardly at them for a few minutes. Eventually I'd given up and simply opted to stare at the notebook I’d pulled onto my lap instead, as if I’d recorded some of the more essential secrets of the universe in my cramped handwriting and needed to study them.

  The notebook hadn't been just a prop, either. Dr. Vente was the type who expected you to take notes at every meeting, whether it was one-on-one or campus-wide. As a pre-tenure professor I didn’t feel comfortable practicing some of the milder revolts my older colleagues engaged in, like suddenly discovering all their pens had run dry simultaneously. They were also more willing to ignore the disdainful looks he gave anyone who dared to address him by his first name, Myron, and I wanted to join them in their resistance. Just
as soon as I got tenure.

  At ten sharp I picked up my phone and dialed Alma, to see if Dr. Vente was available. She put me on hold for a few minutes. I guess meeting over the phone didn't change things that much after all. I flipped my phone into speaker mode and laid it on my desk, the tinny sound of phone-filtered soft jazz, as played by UofL’s music students, filling my room.

  “Ah, Dr. Wilson. Thank you for calling, though I admit I'd hoped to see you in person. Are you all right? Alma said you were too ill to attend class yesterday or today.”

  “Yes, um, actually I'm not sick, I just had a rather bad accident,” I said.

  “I'm sorry to hear that” he murmured, though his tone clearly said I could not care less if I tried. “I wanted to meet so we could discuss the rather unconventional turn your class conversation took Tuesday night.”

  “Huh?” It never took long for a conversation with him to make me feel more like I was a freshman in one of his classes than a fellow professor.

  “I’m referring to the conversation that was ostensibly about the literary classic Frankenstein devolving into a conversation about sexy supernatural creatures, and from there into a lampoon of the literary classics and the offer to have your students read some piece of pop culture junk instead.”

  My jaw hung open. Fortunately, my cat ensured there were no flies to catch in my apartment, or I might have gotten a mouthful before I finally realized what I was doing and slowly closed my mouth. How the hell did he end up with such a distorted version of what had actually happened—and how had he heard anything at all so quickly?

  “Dr. Wilson,” he continued, “Moby Dick is one of our greatest literary treasures, and while I've grown used to hearing it bemoaned by some of our students, I never would have thought a literature professor would deny its splendor.”

  His grating arrogance finally returned my ability to speak.

  “You're joking, right? Are we talking about the same book—the one that never saw an editor's touch and is filled with whole chapters on whale blubber and knot tying? Because, while it certainly has its merits, I'm not the only one of my colleagues to deny its 'splendor,'” I snapped, and then immediately wondered why I was getting angry at someone who would have a large say in deciding whether or not I kept my job.

  I sank back into my seat, mortified. I heard him shift in his chair, as if he were leaning forward. Somehow, I could even tell that a smile had just slipped across his face, as if I could hear his lips widening. It disturbed me, and I tensed involuntarily.

  “Alyson,” he said, and then paused. “Do you mind if I call you that?”

  I nodded, out of surprise more than anything. He'd never addressed me by my first name before. Then I realized he couldn't see my acquiescence, but he continued anyway.

  “I'm not as oblivious to the difficulties of teaching a book like Moby Dick as you might think. I wouldn't even mind if you chose another book from that era to teach in its stead—say Pride and Prejudice, perhaps?” He paused again, apparently awaiting some kind of reaction from me. “But having our students read stories about supernatural creatures strolling through the modern world—well, surely you, of all our professors, can understand why that might be a bad idea?”

  I stared blankly at the phone, still sitting on my table in front of me.

  “We wouldn't want to encourage our students in having any, shall we say, delusions” he chuckled as if he'd just made a rather clever joke, “about the actual existence of the supernatural, would we?”

  I dropped back in my chair, stunned. Could he possibly be referring to Tom, to yesterday? But there was no way for him to know any of that, was there?

  “Dr. Vente,” I stumbled, brain racing, “I promise you I have never done anything to encourage my students in believing that the supernatural was anything other than fiction, nor would I ever—”

  “Dr. Wilson,” he said, his tone abruptly formal and distant again. “I did not request a meeting so you might offer excuses; I merely wished to inform you of what I do and do not consider acceptable reading material. That, and to point out that your faculty presentation has been moved forward by a few weeks. You will need to deliver your lecture on Pedagogy and Literature next Thursday at noon.” He paused. “Given your obviously unconventional techniques, I’m sure we will all find it terribly enlightening.”

  Crap. I’d completely forgotten about that presentation. Of course, initially it wasn't scheduled to occur until just before Thanksgiving. Now I was going to have to come up with something that would not just scrape by as tolerably boring, but instead undo some of the suspicions Myron had cast on my teaching techniques. Numb, I mumbled some sort of agreement, and continued to sit there long after the line had disconnected and gone silent, staring at my now dark cell phone.

  Three

  Fifteen minutes later, I gave up trying to puzzle out whether Dr. Vente’s remarks were pure coincidence or not. Instead, I tried to drill up the courage to go examine myself in the mirror, something I'd been avoiding all morning. I had changed out of blood-stiffened clothes last night when I got home, and then showered in the dark, eyes shut, not wanting to look at the after-effects of my attack and ruin the lingering enjoyment from my walk home. I’d felt a fair amount of what I assumed was dried blood flake off in the hot water, though, so I knew it couldn’t be pretty. I was betting I looked like crap on toast, and if I was right it would mean I could avoid the doctor no longer, especially not if these migraines continued. I stood up and marched myself into the bathroom, closing my eyes just before I could catch my image in the glass.

  “Okay, don’t be ridiculous, just open your eyes,” I murmured. But when I finally opened them, I saw nothing. Or rather, I saw a version of myself, but it was one that not only lacked any bruises or cuts but actually looked far better than I usually did. My lashes looked darker, my always fair skin now seemed to have a faint pearlescent glow, and my hazel eyes shined. Even the curls in my dark auburn hair seemed shinier, lacking their usual frizzy halo. I couldn’t generally manage to look this good even after a few hours primping, on those rare occasions when I actually bothered with that kind of thing. What the hell?

  I stripped off my clothes and began searching for any sign of yesterday’s attack. I checked my legs, arms, waist, and even—remembering the sickening sensation of being crunched against my car—my back, but there was nothing to see. Well, nothing but that faint glow. I scooted closer to the mirror to examine my face in more detail. My pupils were dilated, I realized, and then I found myself wondering just how badly I’d misestimated Tom. Could he have given me some kind of drug? Oh God…had I been drugged and blacked out in some kind of lunatic’s house for hours? A spike of fear abruptly jabbed through my gut, and I wished I’d felt it yesterday when I first awoke in that alleyway. If I’d been smart enough to scream then maybe the cops would’ve heard me.

  Cops. Should I call them, file a report? If I did, what would I say? “Officer, yesterday I was attacked and tried to call 911, and then I woke up in an alley and a student was with me, and he told me he’d turned me into a vampire, and then let me leave without a fight when I woke up in his apartment later that night. And oh, by the way, I haven’t the slightest scratch on me but yesterday I was covered in blood.”

  Yeah, that would go over great. I'm sure they'd be happy to escort me to Our Lady of Peace and find a nice padded room for me right away. If there really was some kind of drug that healed wounds this quickly, with the side effect of making your skin glow like you’d spent all day in a spa…well, wouldn’t some drug company be making millions off it by now? Who in her right mind would complain to the cops that something must be wrong because she looked too good?

  I turned back to resume studying myself in the mirror, looking for any evidence of what had happened yesterday. That’s when I noticed the two bumps on my neck. They were barely visible, two tiny raised scars about an inch apart just above my collarbone.

  Right on my jugular.

  Glowing skin,
bright eyes, fast healing, and two almost invisible scars on my neck when I’d never had so much as a bug bite in those spots before…was it really possible that Tom wasn’t just some psychotic student I’d had the bad luck to encounter in my classroom but an actual vampire?

  I slowly slid down the wall beside my mirror until I was resting on the tile, my brain racing. Surely there was some alternate explanation. I mean, yes, I enjoyed vampire stories, and I'd had my share of daydreams about having a sexy vamp lover, but I’d never wanted to be one. Absurdly, I found myself fixating on my fourteen years of vegetarianism—how on earth would I stomach blood if I couldn’t even touch a steak? Just the thought made me gag, and I lurched to the toilet, glad I was already in the bathroom.

  Two hours later, after spending thirty minutes worshipping the porcelain and another ninety trying to find alternate explanations on Google, I’d resigned myself to believing that Tom might have been telling the truth. And that made me want to bury him with the questions that were now suffocating me. But if he’d been telling the truth, then that also meant two other things: that he’d been the one to turn me, and that he’d killed someone. Whether that made him my knight in shining armor or a psychopath I couldn’t yet decide, and until I resolved that question, I figured it was best to simply write all my questions down instead.

  I grabbed a pen and started writing. Did I really have to drink human blood to survive? If so, how much, and how often? Obviously the sun didn’t kill me—though it did appear to give me evil migraines—so that myth was out, or at least distorted, but what else was partially (or fully) true? Garlic? Crosses? Holy water? Wooden stakes? What about super human speed or strength to go along with the rapid healing? Or the ability to hypnotize people with a look or suggestion? Then, my training kicking in, my questions became more academic: What is the nature of vampirism? Is it a disease and, if so, is there a cure? How long have vampires existed, and how many are there? Are vampires truly immortal?