by Z. Rider
And it hadn’t happened again, the eye thing.
“It hasn’t happened again,” he said.
“That’s good to hear. Because, man, that was fucked up.”
“Yeah. It was.”
Ray hit his blinker and eased onto I-293, the road black with rain. They rode in silence till Dan’s exit came up, his apartment just around the corner. Ray pulled up behind the building, engine running, windshield wipers sweeping water off the glass. “Well. Thanks for coming.”
“Anytime. Hope it sticks for him.”
“That’d be nice.”
“See you Thursday.”
“Yep.”
He shut the door, ducked his head against the rain, and hurried toward the building. The parking area smelled like fresh dirt, all the grit in the asphalt getting stirred up in the rain. Ray’s car pulled away from the sidewalk just before Dan’s feet hit the wooden steps. As he hauled himself up the two flights, all he wanted was to swallow a couple ibuprofens for the headache that had come back with the storm clouds.
CHAPTER TEN
A few hours later, he picked the scab off the cut on his hand and squeezed it until blood welled.
He put his mouth on it and closed his eyes, and the headache went away, taking with it the tension in his shoulders.
Okay, so it is blood.
Which was fucked up as hell.
He stood in front of his freezer, the door wide open, looking for meat. Red meat. All he had were TV dinners and single-serving casseroles his mom had frozen. Plus some ice cream that’d be freezer-burned into tastelessness and a cut-open bag of ice from the gas station across from Dunkin’.
Fuck it. The headache was gone; there’d be no buzzing. He pulled his jacket back on and headed down to his car.
It coughed a little before the engine caught. Great. Another problem he needed like an extra hole in his ass. He backed out and headed to Market Basket. Bought the rawest, juiciest steak he could find at the meat counter. Up in his apartment, he unwrapped the Styrofoam tray and set it on the table.
He took a seat in front of it.
People ate steak raw all the time, right?
He did an internal check while he stared at the glistening slab.
Actually, he felt okay. A little grumpy, a little twitchy, but on the whole okay. If he wanted to see if this worked, he needed to wait till he was having symptoms.
He stashed the steak in the fridge and went to waste time on the internet instead.
He typed in “Urge to drink blood.” The top result gave him a little checklist of all things: “Are you drawn by the sight of blood? Do you have an attraction to the sight or smell of blood? Do you fantasize about drinking blood or rubbing it on yourself?”
“How about, ‘Do I get headaches and bees in my head until I drink blood?’”
“Do you fantasize about vampires? About being a vampire? Do you watch vampire movies or read vampire fiction? Do you dress like a vampire? Do you wear prosthetic fangs?”
“If so,” Dan muttered, “you need to get out more.” He scrolled to the next group of questions.
“Do you cut yourself to drink blood?”
He ran a hand through his hair.
“Have you drank or thought about drinking animal blood? Have you drank or thought about drinking human blood? Have you injured someone or thought about injuring someone to get their blood?
“Do you believe you need to ingest blood to survive?
“Do you believe you obtain health or special powers from drinking blood?”
“Well, you know, if you consider feeling fucking normal a special power…” But his face was clammy. He wiped his palm on the leg of his jeans.
The end of the questionnaire was a single paragraph: “If you answered ‘yes’ to these questions, you should seek help from a qualified psychiatrist, doctor, or therapist. There are many conditions that could be causing your urges and impulses, and they are treatable.” It contained a list of some of these conditions. The words blurred together. Dan put the heels of his hands against his eyes. Great. He was just fucked in the head.
After a few minutes, he sat forward to read up on the first possible condition: Renfield’s syndrome, which it turned out was attributed to a traumatic childhood event, not to being attacked by a rubbery bat in a dark alley. He ran a search on his symptoms and found that if he took blood out of the equation, he might have high blood pressure. That at least he could test at a drugstore, except that when the symptoms were occurring, the last place he needed to be was a crowded drugstore—or any other place people were likely to be.
Finding no answers—no cancers, viruses, or bacteria to explain what was going on—he switched over to Netflix and spent the rest of the evening skimming vampire movies, less for inspiration than the mindless occupation of his brain.
After that, he got another serving of the shepherd’s pie his mother had left in the fridge—eying the steak as he took the container out—and ate without tasting it much.
When it got late enough, he swallowed a couple sleeping pills and got in bed, in the dark, with his iPhone plugged into the speaker by his bed, Chelsea Wolfe drowning out the cars passing in the street below.
After a while, he thought the headache was coming on again, so he rolled over and resettled his head till he didn’t feel it as much anymore.
When he woke, it was black as night in his room, his bottom sheet soggy with sweat. Grogginess crowded his head. He tried to get comfortable over to the left and fall back to sleep, but the headache pressed on the backs of his eyes.
He put a hand to his neck.
The skin back there was on fire. He touched his forehead, his cheeks. What if he was just coming down with post-tour crud?
He slipped out of bed and padded through the kitchen. If nothing else, he had to piss.
He rubbed his hand over the low hum of bees.
After the bathroom, he returned to the kitchen and pulled the steak out. Standing in the light of the fridge, he peeled back the plastic wrap. The absorbent pad was a purple bruise. Syrupy blood dribbled toward the corner of the tray when he tilted it.
Here goes nothing.
He tipped it into his mouth.
It was cold, and tasted like beef.
And it didn’t do shit for his headache.
Tentatively he took a bite of the meat, wrenching it free with his teeth.
It just tasted like cold, raw meat. He’d eaten grosser. He managed to swallow it down.
The bees were uninterested.
Fuck them then. He dropped the steak in the fridge. As he headed back to the bedroom, he tore yesterday’s scab off again. With the side of his hand jammed in his mouth, he worked up fresh blood. Copper pennies blossomed over his tongue.
Feeling marginally better, he crawled between the sheets on the dry side of the bed, sucking his hand. When he had silence again, when the headache had eased away, he rolled over and fell asleep with his hand in front of his face.
† † †
He woke up groggy, pushed himself up, and looked around. The hyper-real sensation was back. He had an urge to struggle awake, like he was caught in one of those dreams where you only think you’re awake. Instead he crawled off the bed and padded to the kitchen to get a knife.
The scab came up easily, if painfully. Underneath, pink skin tried to heal. He pinched it hard, but all that brought up was more pain. So he dug the knife in.
The bees hummed as he lifted his hand toward his mouth, and they quieted as he closed his eyes and sucked.
When he’d gotten everything he could get out of the wound, his kitchen looked like his kitchen again, nothing hyper-real or dreamlike about it. Pale morning light filtered through the window.
He sat on the floor and put his head in his hands.
He didn’t feel great, the way he had when he’d woken in the hospital. The headache had left, but his muscles were tired, like he was coming down with post-tour crud after all.
He could become a herm
it—was this what happened with agoraphobics? They hid in their houses because they couldn’t trust themselves anymore beyond their own doors?
He made half a pot of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and took a piss while it brewed.
He got through two mugs and a shower before the headache threatened to come back.
Below him, the second-floor tenant was letting herself into her apartment. With his third cup of Joe in hand, he felt himself drawn to his own door, listening. She made it inside and stopped, probably to pick up grocery bags she’d set down.
As she crossed her kitchen, he crossed his, the bees vibrating distantly at the base of his neck. He followed her from counter to refrigerator to cabinet, then into the bathroom, sitting on the toilet lid as she relieved herself below him. She had a daughter—Lily—three or four years old, who must be at a sitter’s, or her father’s. Janice—that was the downstairs neighbor’s name. He followed Janice to her bedroom, just beneath his. Back to her kitchen. He sat on the floor while she fixed herself something to eat.
This is insane.
She was still in the kitchen when he forced himself to his feet. His muscles resisted; it was like trying to get up with a piano leaning on his back. He hauled himself to his bedroom, shut the door, and climbed into his bed, in the darkness: the shades drawn, the blackout curtains pinned shut. He pulled the blankets over his head and breathed his own heavy air.
After a few hours, Janice left.
Dan pushed back the covers and ate the leftover steak raw, standing in front of the kitchen sink, staring through the window. The only thing it did was give him the shivers, which was enough reason to go back to the warm cocoon of his bed. He left the knife he’d used earlier on the nightstand, in case he needed more. He probably needed more. How long could he hole up here, fending for himself?
What was the alternative?
The fucking hospital?
Maybe if he’d found information on anything remotely like he was dealing with on the internet, but he wasn’t keen on the idea of walking in there with something entirely unknown.
In fact, the idea scared the fuck out of him—more, even, than what he was going through did.
When Janice returned—with Lily running into the apartment ahead of her—he fought the urge to get up and follow them around. Instead he slid the knife under the blankets and made a new cut. Fresh blood skated down the side of his hand. He licked it, sucked on the cut, and both the headache and the urge to stalk his prey receded.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Somehow he made it to Wednesday. He smoothed the last Band-Aid he had in the medicine cabinet over the latest cut before he started a pot of coffee. If this kept on, he was either going to have to brave Wal-Mart or level up to gauze bandages. The razor blade he’d used sat on the side of the sink, licked clean. The safest place for him was in the bed, under the covers, and when he got sick of hiding there, he’d swallow sleeping pills with a tall glass of water and returned to it, shoving his laptop back onto the nightstand—it hadn’t given him any more answers today than yesterday. He’d crossed more things off the possibilities list: spinal meningitis, Lyme disease, Meniere’s disease, peripheral neuropathy, stroke. They were easy because none of them came with an urge to drink blood.
A text message came in from a friend: “Just saw Ray. Didn’t realize you were back in town. Call me when you get a chance.” He turned the screen off after reading it.
Somehow he was going to have to get past this.
The cut on his arm itched. He rubbed it through the Band-Aid. The headache was out there, waiting to come back. The sense of hyper-realness. The bees. With luck, the pills would kick in before it all did come back, buying him time before he had to make another cut.
The phone rang. His mom. He let it go to voicemail, listened to the message later. Dinner Sunday. Call her if he couldn’t make it.
He’d feel better by then, he hoped. It had to end eventually, right? Work its way out of his system, like a bad bug. Maybe he needed to stop feeding it—not that licking his own wounds was helping much anyway.
He turned off the ringer and pushed the phone under his pillow.
† † †
Thursday morning. Janice was getting ready for work. He was on all fours over her head, tracking her movements.
The bees wanted to go out the door, down the stairs, and in through her door. Grab her by the neck and tear at her face with his teeth until blood gushed, hot and delicious and sanity rescuing. He dug his fingernails against the hardwood and held himself on his hands and knees with all the strength he could muster.
She crossed into the kitchen, with him right above her. His knees banged linoleum. His nostrils flared. She was heading toward the door, thank god. All he had to do was keep himself from opening his.
He pushed his forehead against the painted wood, his teeth gritting, sweat trickling along his temple.
Her car door creaked open in the small parking area. It groaned on its way to thunking shut. He dug his head against the door and breathed easier. For now.
If the bees would shut up for two fucking minutes, he could at least think.
He pressed a hand to the door, tried to pull himself to his feet. And dropped back down, his vision swarming.
The light through the windows crept over the linoleum, laid its warm hand over his calves. He was shaking, and everything was going black.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The bees the bees the bees the bees. They were going crazy about something, but all he could see was darkness. Tiny feet, the beat of wings—his body vibrated with bees, and he couldn’t get up. He thought he was on the kitchen floor. It felt hard under his cheek, his hips. And the bees the bees.
In a split second, all his muscles jumped. He was as mindless as the bees: clawing, grappling, hitting. Tasting.
Sweet relief, the bees humming as one: Hallelujah.
Peace.
His elbow thudded against linoleum.
Every breath he took was difficult, his chest slammed hard against the floor.
His finger twitched.
Someone panted, close to the back of his head.
He twitched his finger again and dragged in a long, shallow breath.
“Dan?” Ray whispered behind his ear.
Dan shifted—hard to do under Ray’s weight.
“Yeah?” he said back, quietly. A little scared. The twitching finger, he saw, had a streak of red on it. Panic scurried on little feet through his scalp.
“Jesus, Dan,” Ray said.
He stared at the streak of red. “What’d I do?”
“You were passed out,” Ray said.
The bees were gone. “What did I do?”
“Shh. Are you okay now? Can I let go?”
He didn’t know. He knew he probably wasn’t going to do anything he’d regret—but he didn’t know if he was okay.
He sure as fuck was not okay.
“Are you okay?” Dan asked back. He felt trembly, his skin cold. He ground his temple against the floor. Jesus what the fuck?
“I haven’t had a chance to check that yet,” Ray said.
Ray moved on top of him.
“I think I’m okay,” Dan said.
“Think?”
“I’m okay.”
“Don’t fucking move.” He shifted again, moving off him a little but holding him down. “Okay? Don’t fucking move till I get out of the way.”
“Okay,” Dan breathed.
The weight came off. Boots scrabbled across the linoleum, away from him. When they stopped, Dan planted his hands against the floor and pushed onto his knees. He hung his head for a moment, afraid to look.
Ray cursed quietly.
Dan sat back, hands on thighs. That smear of blood on the inside of his finger. Shit.
And that’s what Ray said too, looking at his own arm, his lip curled as he squeezed his wrist. Blood dribbling between his fingers.
Ray’s bangs hung down, hiding his eyes until he lifted his head, looking
at Dan.
Dan put a hand to his mouth, an old copper aftertaste there.
“What the fuck?” Ray pulled back against the wall, wedging his shoulder against the kitchen door. Blood oozed from the marks Dan’s teeth had made. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” Dan looked around the kitchen. His kitchen. Normal kitchen, except for the mail splayed across the floor, the knocked-over chair. Otherwise completely fucking normal.
“You should clean that,” Dan said. He closed his eyes. Peace. Quiet. So fucking good. But he was shaking—what the fuck had he done?
“What the fuck is going on?” Ray asked.
He opened his eyes and looked around again. The door hung open, the traffic from the street louder than it should have been. “I forgot you were coming by today.” What would have happened if Ray hadn’t? How long had he been lying comatose? He remembered Janice leaving. Remembered pacing his apartment, the bees urging him toward the door, toward people, toward blood. Remembered even considering tying himself down to keep from running outside, scared of being that crazy person on the news: He just grabbed the woman pushing her child in a stroller and started eating her face!
“I think I have a problem.”
“No shit?” Ray said.
“You should clean that out. I won’t come after you. I’m good right now.”
“I’ll stay over on this side of the room anyway, if that’s okay.”
They watched each other for a long stretch of seconds, until Dan said, “I don’t blame you.”
“What are you, a fucking vampire now?”
Dan pulled himself back, hugging his chest. “Vampires get cool side benefits. All I’ve got is bees.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Jesus—he didn’t remember anything. “Did you see them again? The squirmy things in my eyes?”
“I didn’t have time to examine you. As soon as I put my knee on the floor, you were coming at me. Barreled right into my chest. Fuck, man. Is it the same thing as before? On the bus?”
