Misty Rose: Nature

Chapter 1

It all started with a visit to the dentist. Not for me, for my friend Kaitlyn. We were supposed to be going to this huge party she’d been invited to, so when she told me to be ready a couple hours early, I was kind of surprised, but she was getting me in. Not that I knew right away, either. She didn’t like to tell me some things, like…

Oh, wait. Details. Okay. Kaitlyn was my roommate and my best friend. We lived in the same little studio apartment and worked the same shitty job, and we dropped out of college together. She was about five four, bit shorter than me. She had black hair at the time and blue eyes and close enough in size that we sometimes shared clothes and… I think she was Russian. She had one of those weird Russian last names I can’t pronounce or spell. Think she said her grandma was actually from the old country. Or her great grandma. One of those.

And me… well, I’m blond, about five six, cute enough I guess, blue eyes… kind of stocky though because my family is all like that. I’m… normal, I guess. Only special thing about me was these tattoos I’ve got of these climbing roses. Blaze roses, I think, goes up both sides from my ankles to my shoulder blades. Because of my name, Misty Rose. I dated a tattoo artist for a few months, he said I inspired him, so he gave me my ink, and as it turned out a case of crabs from some skank he was cheating on me with. I kept the ink, but that fucker had to go. Took a long time, but I spent most of it drunk, so the ink wasn’t a hassle. The roses are red, and they get a lot of attention at parties. Kaitlyn’s got tattoos too, but not as many as me and hers were more little decorative things like the little fairy on her shoulder. We did get matching tramp stamps one time we were really drunk because we thought it’d be really funny, and…

Sorry, sort of wandered off topic there.

Anyway, um… we took her scooter to go to the party. It was old and sort of a faded beige color, but it usually worked and it was easier to park than a car. Cheaper, too. But the party wasn’t where we went first. Instead we wound up in some kind of… industrial park, maybe? One of those places with all the ugly gray buildings that look like big old storage units, but it’s a bunch of different businesses doing stuff like fixing cars and furniture and stuff. Boring buildings that all looked the same. It also sort of smelled bad, like some kind of industrial cleaning stuff. It was getting dark, and I wasn’t too happy about where we were. We stopped in front of one of those metal doors that roll up. No sign, and it didn’t look like there’d be a party in that place, so I was kind of confused and asked Kaitlyn if the party was there. I mean, how big could a party be in a dump like that?

“No,” she said. “I’ve got something to do first.”

“Like what?”

“Dentist appointment.”

“Seriously?” I asked her. I mean, the place looked closed, like there wasn’t anyone using it for anything, but she went up and knocked on the side door next to the big one. After a minute or so, this old man opened it — kind of skeezy looking, and I shit you not, he was wearing hospital scrubs or something like that. Kaitlyn walked inside and I followed her in. I kept thinking the old guy was leering at me like a perv, but when I turned around, he was glaring like he didn’t want me to be there, which was weird. He wasn’t saying anything either. Rude. Inside was a little room, like a waiting room, but it was empty except for a messed up old desk with some kind of ancient computer on it. I was feeling some kind of weird hospital vibes, but there was a window in the wall behind the desk, and I could see a dentist’s chair. Seriously. Kind of old and with cracked vinyl and shit, but a straight up dentist’s chair, with tools and everything on a counter. The old man saw me looking and glared again, but still didn’t say anything. Then he walked into the other room and started messing with the tools.

“This is gonna take an hour or two,” Kaitlyn said. She didn’t look happy about it.

“A dentist. He’s a dentist?” I asked. “Not just some freak with a fetish?”

“Yep. Used to be, anyway.”

“Okay. But… right before a party?”

“It’s the only time he had open to see me. Look, it’ll be fine,” she said. “We’ll be drinking by the time the drugs he’s gonna give me wear off enough to have anything hurt.”

“Yeah, but…”

Kaitlyn handed me the keys to her scooter. “It’s cool if you don’t wanna stay. I know you don’t like blood,” she said. “Just come back and pick me up, okay?”

“You sure?” I said.

“Nah, it’s fine. Go walk around.”

I started to say something, but the old guy looked up and sort of… waved Kaitlyn in, so she gave me a quick hug and went and sat down in the chair. I was seriously weirded out. The old guy glared at me again, then he went in the other room and shut the door on me like he’d tuned me out.

I’ve got… I don’t know what to call it, resting dumb face, I guess. When I’m not paying attention, or when I don’t get something, or when I’m too weirded out to react or something, I get this expression that makes people think I’m stupid. Being blond probably doesn’t help, but I’m not as dumb as people always think I am, and it’s like they forget I’m there, almost, or just think of me like I’m furniture and ignore me. So I was in this dinky room and there was only one chair and the desk and I could see the old guy putting some kind of mask over Kaitlyn’s face, gas or something, which also bugged me. I pulled out my phone, but the reception was shit for some reason. I sat in the chair, checked my makeup, made sure I had what I needed for the party, wandered around, and all the time I was trying to ignore drill noises from the other room. I kept thinking about how I was wearing party clothes and in some kind of secret dentist office or something. The noises stopped and I looked through the window. I mean, it’s not like I wanted to see any blood, but maybe the old guy was done, you know? But he wasn’t.

The old fucker had stopped working on Kaitlyn’s teeth and was… standing there just… groping her. She was there passed out, there were dentist tools everywhere, and that asshole had… had his hands… ugh! I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I couldn’t just stand there and watch, but I couldn’t run in there and scream at him, you know? And then it was like… I could feel it happening. Like I was having that shit happening to me. So it wasn’t just me watching Kaitlyn, but like both of us were… being taken advantage of. Raped. Felt like it, anyway, I got some issues. I started feeling like I had to get the fuck out of there. I suddenly started thinking of one of the parties we went to where I… and I had to get the fuck out had to escape and I couldn’t save her couldn’t do anything and… and…

Um… sorry. Like I said, I got issues. Bad shit that happened.

So… I left. I grabbed Kaitlyn’s keys and ran out and I felt like shit, but there was nothing I could do. That fucker was just… standing there doing… what he was like there wasn’t shit I could do about it. And he was right. Not when I was feeling like it was happening to me too. I couldn’t fight. Never been able to. I just… freeze up. Or run away. Like how some animals do when a car’s coming at them. Or like a possum playing dead. That was me, the possum playing dead until I could get the fuck out of there. It was all dark outside, and there wasn’t a lot of lights, but I just started walking. I felt sick, and what I saw in there just kept going round in my mind. Tried not to think about it, but… it just wouldn’t go away. I’m not a pussy despite what Kaitlyn thought, but that was just too much. I’m not proud of it, but that’s how I was. Anything I couldn’t deal with, I just… ran away. Hid from it. It’s textbook… something I can’t remember right now, but it’s normal. Even for people like us.

Anyway, I wasn’t really paying attention to where I was walking, and I wound up going towards the back of the industrial park or whatever. There were still a few of the places open that late. I passed one with the big door up, and there were a few guys inside, some kind of car shop. They were tossing around a ball or something and listening to some sports thing, I think. I could smell fast food. I didn’t really want to deal with guys right then, and thinking about it just… brought the dentist back up in my head. So I moved over to the other side of the road where it was still dark because the lights weren’t going that far. The guys didn’t really seem to notice me. I mean, it was dark, and they were in the light, so it’s not like they’d have night vision. One of them glanced at me, maybe he heard my chunky boots even though I was trying to walk quiet, but I guess something happened in whatever game they were watching because he looked away again. I kept walking.

At that point, I wasn’t feeling so sick anymore. I decided I was going to tell Kaitlyn what happened. I mean, she should know, right? I wouldn’t want to not know if that happened to me. But I started feeling like someone was watching me. Following me. I mean, I couldn’t hear anything, but I could just feel someone watching. Or some thing watching. I’d get that sometimes, just this feeling that something wasn’t right. And I’d run away, so I didn’t know if it was real or if it was just me being all scared and paranoid. Wasn’t a useful feeling, because mostly it just made me afraid and, I don’t know, maybe it was just me trying to come up with excuses to not do stuff. Didn’t seem to actually help me any, I’d had lots of bad relationships and a few… things happen. But after I got past a couple more of the shops or whatever, the feeling went away, so I figured it wasn’t anything important.

Or maybe it was tripping over my own feet, because I did that, too. One of my heels caught on something in the dark and I almost fell over, but I didn’t actually fall. Which was a good thing because right where I was going to fall was a patch of something darker than the asphalt that stank like burnt oil, and I’d have landed right in the middle of it. But after all that, I didn’t feel like I was being watched any more. Or maybe I just felt too dumb to notice.

I wasn’t sure how long it’d been since I left, so I headed back because everything had just been too freaky and I just couldn’t deal with it right then. We were supposed to be going to a party, but instead we were at some kind of pervert dentist’s office, and he… took advantage of my best friend and… I couldn’t handle it. I wasn’t going to go back inside, though. Couldn’t handle looking at the old fucker. So I’d wait outside. That was the plan, anyway.

Kaitlyn was waiting by her scooter when I finally found the place again. I could tell she was a little numb still because her face was sort of off, but she’d driven us home when worse than that, so I gave her keys back. Well, that and miniskirts and scooters don’t mix well, but she was wearing pants and if she rode in front it wasn’t as cold for me. The doors were closed and the lights were off at the dentist shop or whatever again. Neither of us was saying much, so we got on her scooter and drove off. After a minute or two, it just got too awkward for me, so I leaned forward.

“What the hell was all that?” I asked. Well, shouted, really. Kaitlyn’s scooter was… I guess it was a Vespa or something decent, but it was old and didn’t go very fast, and it was kind of noisy. Neither of us had the money to get it tuned up without saving for a few months.

“He’s a dentist,” she said. Sort of defensive.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “But why was he acting like he’s all shady?”

Kaitlyn didn’t say anything for a bit, and I just kept feeling more awkward. Didn’t know how to bring it up, but eventually I just blurted out that I saw what the dentist was doing to her.

“I know,” she said.

At that point, I was seriously shocked, so I didn’t say anything. I guess Kaitlyn thought I was judging her or something, because she went on.

“Howd’ya think I could afford a dentist? We’re dropouts, Misty,” she said. “We got shit jobs, we barely make the rent some months, and we spend all our time partying. I can’t afford insurance, but my job means I can’t get the free kind either.”

“Yeah, but…”

“He acts shady because he is shady,” she said. “Got caught using his own drugs, then got caught doing that same shit with the daughter of a guy who actually had the money to press charges. Lost his license, so now he does cheap work for cash for people who can’t pay for a legit dentist.”

Okay, that made sense. But… “Why’d you bring me?”

“Because I… wanted the fucker to know that someone knew where I was,” she said. “I… got some weird vibes off him last time and I just wanted someone with me. I kinda wanted you to actually leave before he did that, but… you didn’t get the hint. Sorry you hadta see that.”

“Why me? Why not call the cops?” I asked.

Kaitlyn laughed. “Cops don’t care,” she said. “Maybe they do something. Maybe they actually investigate. But I paid the perv for an illegal service. How’s that gonna look? And maybe he gets charged with something, and goes to jail, and I don’t get my teeth fixed. And neither does anyone else that goes to the guy ’cause they can’t afford a legit dentist.”

“Okay, sure,” I said. I felt kind of dumb, bit I kept asking anyway. “Why not bring your brother?” Kaitlyn’s brother… well, I’ll talk about him later. He’s a criminal.

“Pretty sure if I did that, the old pervert would end up in the bottom of the river,” she said. “And my teeth still wouldn’t be fixed.”

I got to admit, I was still shocked. Normally Kaitlyn was sort of… happy and cheerful and maybe a little crazy. She always seemed to see the bright side of things, which I didn’t, and she was totally obsessed with glitter. But sometimes Kaitlyn could be… well, she had this cold streak to her sometimes, like she could put up with shit that I’d freak out over because… she’d been through worse, maybe. She didn’t talk about it much, but we’d both had some shit happen, the kind of shit that happens to party girls sometimes, and… she watched out for me as best she could. Mostly she was happy, but some things she could be really cold about. Usually the stuff you had to put up with because social justice doesn’t put food on the table when you live paycheck to paycheck.

“I know what he does,” Kaitlyn said. “We all do. But… there’s a whole lotta people out there who wouldn’t have teeth if he didn’t do what he does for as cheap as he does. People who can afford a couple hundred dollars, but not what they’d pay for a legal dentist, and who don’t have insurance at all. And some of us… put up with some extra shit because there’s no other choice.”

“Aren’t you afraid he’d… do more than… what he did?”

“Yeah. S’why I wore pants.”

Jesus. I’d be freaking out over that. Still was, actually.

After a bit, Kaitlyn went on. “So, yeah, guy’s an asshole and a pervert, but some things you just gotta deal with. I got cavities, and he fixes them. What else am I gonna do?”

“I guess… um… that makes sense,” I said. I mean, I was still shocked, and that’s seriously all I could come up with to say, but Kaitlyn sort of laughed and she… she would do this thing where she laughs but she’d be all tense when she didn’t want to talk about something, and she was doing that, I could feel it because I was holding onto her. So that was it. We didn’t really talk much after that. I was still trying to process all that shit and she… well, I didn’t know what Kaitlyn was thinking right then. Maybe that I was judging her or something. I mean, we’d both done worse, woken up with guys we didn’t know after parties, but… I don’t know, maybe she thought I thought she’s a whore or something. I didn’t. I thought she was being used. But I couldn’t say anything because of that whole running away from problems thing, and we got to where the party actually was before I could wrap my head around all that. Which was fine. Parties were a good way to wash out the times when life served me a heaping bowl of fucked up. Like handsy illegal dentists.

The party was… normal, I guess. For a rave, anyway. Lots of younger people dressed in club clothes and scene clothes, strobe lights and black lights, glow cords, and techno. Lots of drugs, too, but mostly the lighter stuff like E because most of the people there just wanted to dance, not get shitfaced and hook up with strangers. The thing was being held in an empty building in the warehouse district, and it was… normal. Almost comforting. Kaitlyn parked the scooter, we checked our hair and makeup and clothes, and Kaitlyn got us past the guy at the door. We started getting attention almost immediately. We also got there kind of late, and I guess the party was still mostly guys like happens sometimes. Not a lot of girls. Some of the guys had gang colors, but whatever. Someone handed me a drink, then someone handed me… something. Some kind of pill, I didn’t care. I was just wanting to get everything else from the day out of my head.

I don’t remember a lot after that. Raves can be hard to remember anyway, and whatever I took fucked up my head pretty good. I remember dancing, a lot of dancing. I remember showing off my ink because it usually involves me getting partly naked so I can show how far it goes. I mean, I usually put my clothes back on, but it’s hard to show off that much ink with my clothes completely on, even party clothes. I remember lights, and music, but all in kind of a blur. Kaitlyn wasn’t pulling her usual party routine for whatever reason, so I lost track of her. Besides, I was dancing. That was the real reason I went to raves. Can’t say I was a great dancer, but after dancing for long enough, I could forget my shitty life and just enjoy myself. The drugs, guys, hanging with friends, that all just helped me forget.

The only thing I remember completely clearly was still feeling like I was being watched, but not hot girl at a rave watched. Watched like something was hungry. I also remember a guy. He was… handsome, I guess? I don’t remember what he looked like. Just his eyes. Dark, intense. I felt like he could stare right through me, into my soul or some romance novel shit. At some point, it was like all the lights and the music and everything just revolved around those eyes. I think we danced and wound up making out in a corner at some point, not sure. Eventually I passed out.

When I woke up, the first thing I thought was that whatever I’d taken had the worst comedown ever. I felt like shit — cold and thirsty and hung over like I’d been drunk for a week. And yeah, I know what that feels like. The second thing was that Kaitlyn was going to kill me, because I’d gone home with some random guy again, and somehow I knew it was dark outside even though there wasn’t a window, so I’d been out all day. I looked around, and I was on a musty old mattress with no sheets in some shitty little bedroom with peeling brown wallpaper and a dead guy on the floor.

Yeah. Dead guy on the floor. I mean, I started sort of freaking out over that, but not really, like I was thinking I should be freaking out, but not really doing it. It was just a dead guy. Some kid, looked sixteen or something, dressed like he’d been at the rave which he shouldn’t have been because he was underage, but sometimes no one checks. Awkward, kind of nerdy looking. And dead. Pale skin, staring eyes, and a couple holes in his neck, but no blood. Definitely wasn’t the guy with the eyes from the party, but I didn’t know how I knew that. Don’t know how long I stared at the dead kid, but I was thirsty and like I said, I wasn’t really freaking out about the dead guy, which was weird. I was also still wearing all my clothes, even my underwear, which was also weird. I mean, you wake up in some stranger’s bed after a party, don’t remember how you got there, you kind of expect something happened, but as near as I could tell, nothing happened. And there was a dead guy.

The rest of the apartment was empty. Like, no one lives there empty. Kaitlyn and I weren’t rich, and it’s not like our little studio apartment had much, but there’s still a lot of stuff when two girls are roommates. This little rat hole had nothing — couple of beat up chairs and a table, and that was about it. Nothing in the fridge at all. I looked because I was still thirsty and the faucet didn’t work. Place even smelled empty, that kind of half dust, half mold smell. Nothing in the bathroom, and the toilet was dusty like no one’d used it in forever. Probably best I didn’t hafta go. Nothing in the medicine cabinet. I took a look in the mirror, which was cracked, and my makeup wasn’t any more smeared than I’d expect from a party. Maybe my lipstick was a little smudged. The dead kid didn’t have lipstick on him, so I must have made out with the eyes guy. Which was what I was thinking about. Um… well, you think of all kinds of stupid shit when you’re trying not to think about what’s actually happening, you know? And a dead guy was something I definitely didn’t want to think about.

Don’t think all this was easy. I was still wearing my party clothes and my chunky boots, and I was super thirsty and I felt cold and I was in some shitty apartment god knows where with nothing but a dead guy and my purse. I checked my phone, but the battery was dead, and the apartment had no power. Did I mention that? Yeah, it was like they’d cut off the electricity to the place. And the water. Not even any light from the street because the windows were all boarded up like they’d been broken and no one wanted to fix them. No curtains or anything. But somehow, I don’t know, it was like the dark wasn’t as dark, and I could still sort of see anyway. I went and fixed my makeup because wasn’t like I had anything else to do and I was still trying to not think about all that shit.

I sat in one of the chairs for a minute or two and finally tried to wrap my head around all this, but right about then a couple of people started screaming at each other in some other apartment. It was like the walls were paper thin or something. I seriously didn’t need that right then, so I got up and headed towards the door. On the back of the door was a piece of paper. All it had was an address, but it looked like the newest thing in the apartment. I thought maybe the eyes guy had left it, so I pulled it off and stuck it in my purse before I left. I locked the door behind me. Or tried to, anyway, I guess someone broke it open with a screwdriver. Somehow the dead guy still wasn’t really bothering me, but I didn’t feel like dealing with it. Yeah, I could have called the cops, but my phone was dead and… well, it’s like Kaitlyn said. Maybe the cops would do something, maybe they wouldn’t. But it’d mean I’d have to talk to them, and what was I going to say? Sorry, officer, I don’t know what happened because I was on something illegal and don’t remember how I got to the apartment or anything that happened? Yeah, right. I might have been a poor white girl, but I was still poor, and poor people always get fucked over by the cops. Someone would find the kid eventually. Don’t they look for fingerprints or some shit when the cops find a dead guy in a shitty apartment? Well, the door was at least closed, and it’s not like I killed the kid, so I probably didn’t really need to go… wipe things down or… whatever.

Maybe it was the hallway outside that was making me try to remember those cop shows I saw sometimes, because it was actually shittier than the apartment. Carpet was all stained with god knows what, ew, walls all tagged up, trash in the corners. I mean, seriously, it looked like the places a lot of the murderers seem to live in those shows, but somehow I wasn’t afraid. It was like with the dead guy… I could think about being afraid, but somehow it just didn’t get to the rest of me, even when I walked by a couple of homeless guys passed out on the landing. Hot girl, dressed for a party, walking around alone in a murderer apartment building, not actually afraid of being raped or anything. Weird, right? Or just stupid. I was more worried about Kaitlyn being pissed at me than the stairs.

Oh, right, the stairs. My chunky boots are good for parties, and I can dance in them, but they don’t do stairs really well. I sometimes got the heels caught right on the edge when I was drunk or high or tired or just not paying attention. I’d fallen a few times, which was usually insanely funny when I was high, but this time I didn’t. Even though I was in a weird headspace, and extremely thirsty, and everything else, I had no problems with the stairs. I got down two flights before I remembered about my boots. It’s like I was in the zone or something, just totally graceful without trying. I actually kind of wished Kaitlyn was there to see it because it’s like somehow she’s always there when I do something clumsy but not when I do something cool like not tripping on stairs in my boots. But that’d mean she’d have to be in the murderer apartment building too, so I figured it was best she wasn’t.

The front door to the murderer apartments was locked, but I found a side door and let myself out. Outside was… weird. Not as dark as I would expect, and not just because the streetlights. I could… hear more. Feel more. Smell more too, and in this part of the city, that mostly meant piss. But somehow it was also… distant. Like I wasn’t really a part of the city. Or something. Didn’t know how to describe it then. At first I was looking for somewhere to charge my phone, but eventually I was just… walking. Watching the cars go by, the people on the street. I passed some restaurants, but I wasn’t hungry. I was thirsty, but I didn’t want what the restaurants were selling, and I didn’t know how I knew that. Well, aside from not being hungry for it. Not my first time being so hung over I couldn’t eat. I wanted to call Kaitlyn, let her know I was alive, but… I also didn’t, you know? Like she wasn’t part of where my head was at right then. Also because she’d yell at me, and I didn’t want to deal with that either.

I watched people. I do that anyway, just to be careful, but this time they were… more interesting. I guess the sun had just gone down because there were a lot of people on the streets still. They sort of saw me, but not really, like how people would forget about me when I had my resting dumb face going. Maybe I was a little annoyed by that, I mean, I was still wearing my party clothes, but somehow them not seeing me seemed… normal? And for some reason the people I saw were connected to how thirsty I was. Like they were what I needed, and not in a sex way, either. I didn’t get it, but I figured maybe whatever I took was still doing something to me.

After, I don’t know, an hour or so, I realized I was pretty close to the address on the paper. It was also kind of close to where the party was, but I didn’t feel like going back there. Not like it would have mattered, they usually clear out everything after. If the cops didn’t raid the place, which would mean I wouldn’t want to go back anyway. Besides, Kaitlyn might have been there looking for me, and I didn’t really want to deal with her right then. So I walked up to what was… another warehouse, really, one of those ones that looks like no one’s used it for years and it’d be torn down if it wasn’t cheaper to leave it alone. This one had really stained brick walls and no windows. But there was a bunch of people going in, so I thought maybe it was another party, and I didn’t really feel like another party right then, but I didn’t know what else to do. I thought maybe I could use someone’s phone, or at least find someone who could tell me what the hell was going on, but… something seemed off about the people going in. Couldn’t really explain why, they were just wrong somehow. And some of them were wearing way more expensive clothes than you’d wear to a rave unless you want to get robbed. Lots of expensive cars parked in the little lot and along the street, also not the kind of stuff you brought to a rave. Something seemed weird about all of it, but I couldn’t tell exactly what was wrong.

So I picked a spot to the side and just watched. Kaitlyn calls it lurking, but sometimes I just… don’t want to jump right into something, so I just find some place I won’t be noticed and see what’s going on before getting involved. If Kaitlyn caught me, she’d just haul me straight in anyway, but she wasn’t there, and it seemed to work because no one was paying attention to me. Only guy not going in was this old black guy. I mean, he didn’t move like an old guy, but his hair and beard were all white, and he was just… leaning against the wall by the door. Wearing this baggy sort of gray-black suit. Charcoal? Something like that. He wasn’t saying anything, but everyone who went in said something to him and he nodded at them. I thought maybe he was the doorman or something, but he was dressed in just the suit and he wasn’t acting like he was official anything. So I didn’t what was going on. I just kind of… lurked until it looked like everyone else had gone in, and then walked over to the guy at the door.

He just looked at me. Like, really looked at me, like no one else had since I woke up, and… it didn’t feel weird, you know? He wasn’t leering or staring or whatever. Just like he… knew me somehow even though I’d never met him before. And honestly not shitting you here, he seemed like the first sane person that I’d found since the party. I mean, he was just looking at me and kind of smiling but I didn’t feel like he was gonna hurt me or even be mean, and that maybe he could help. I don’t know. Maybe I was still kind of messed up, but… I walked over anyway.

“Hey there, Pops,” I said, which was super weird. That’s not a name I use, don’t know where I even heard it or anything, but somehow the guy just seemed like a Pops. Didn’t seem like he minded, he actually started smiling a bit more and I felt… better. Just a little. Or like… I didn’t know how bad I felt because I wasn’t thinking about it until I felt a little better, then I noticed how bad I felt. Or something. Jesus, this sort of thing is confusing. Anyway, Pops seemed like a good guy.

“Can I help you?” he said. Calm and friendly.

“Maybe. What’s goin’ on in there?” I asked, nodding at the door.

“Just a little social gathering,” Pops said, still smiling. “Nothing important.”

“Okay. Except… well, this.” I handed Pops the paper with the address. He took it and looked at it, but didn’t… really seem to react. Or maybe he did because I guess he seemed a little sad for a second. But he went right back to smiling.

“I see,” he said. “You just wake up?”

“Yeah. Like an hour ago, I think.”

“Sunset?”

“Somethin’ like that.”

“Uh huh. Don’t know what’s happening?”

I looked at him a moment. “No.”

“Weird-shit-o-meter going off?”

“Um… sorta. Thought it was a hangover. Or somethin’.”

Pops just looked at me and sighed, then shook his head.

“You know anythin’ about this?” I asked him.

“About you? No,” he said. “About what you’ve been forced into? Yeah. Lots.”

“Okay, good, ’cause I got no idea what’s goin’ on.”

Pops looked at me for a while, then said, “How about you tell me what happened?”

So… I did. All of it. Somehow telling him made me feel better, and he asked questions about stuff, got me thinking about it like I hadn’t yet. I’ve talked to therapists, well, student therapists anyway because they don’t cost anything, so I guess it was kind of like that, only… more like talking to my grandpa. Not my actual grandpa, who’s an asshole, more like… the wise old grandpa in books and movies and whatever. Or the bartender. Or something. But I wound up telling Pops about everything from the dentist onward, and even some of what I was feeling because he asked. Only problem was that… it seemed like when I got to waking up after the party, he got sadder, a little. Which… I don’t like making people sad. Or seeing people sad. Makes me sad, you know?

“You okay?” I asked.

“Just a little down,” Pops said, and sighed.

“Was it me? I’m sorry if I did somethin’…”

“Not you, child,” Pops said. “I’m sad for you. Not because of you.”

That was weird. “For me?”

“Yeah. I know what happened to you, and why you feel like you do.”

“It’s the drugs, right? I took somethin’ bad.” It had to be. I mean, I guess I sort of recognized his sad thing from some of the people who tried to talk me clean, but Pops didn’t seem like that sort.

Pops shook his head. “Nothing that good.”

“What, then? Some kind disease?”

“In a way,” Pops looked at me for a moment. “You believe in God?”

“Um…” Well, shit, I was thinking to myself. Was Pops gonna preach at me? I could see it. But I was pretty much an atheist, given my Dad’s side of the family and all the crazy shit they believe, and I really didn’t want to piss off Pops. He seemed like a good guy, even if he was a believer. Um, I mean… not that I think believers are bad. Just that the ones I’d met were mostly like my Dad’s side of the family, and there’s a reason he doesn’t talk to them, you know? Because they’re assholes. But Pops didn’t seem like that. “No, I’m… I don’t really believe… in anythin’, I guess. Sorry.”

Pops made a face. “Makes this harder. Okay. I need you to listen to me, child. I know you don’t believe in anything, and that’s fine, but the sooner you accept what I’m going to say, the better.”

“Okay…” I said, but I’m thinking that shit, he’s gonna start in on some kind of sermon.

Pops looked at me again, then said, “Misty… you’re a vampire.”

I got to admit, right then I was thinking, how’d he know my name? I didn’t tell him. So the rest didn’t sink in right away. But then it sort of hit me that maybe I’d been talking to a crazy guy. After all the shit that happened, this guy looked at me all serious and kind of sad, and told me I’m a vampire with a totally straight face. “What? A vampire? You’re shittin’ me. Vampires aren’t real.”

“They are,” Pops says. “I’m one. So are you.”

Totally serious. Like I’m supposed to believe him. But it was starting to make me uncomfortable, so I sort of laughed and said, “Right, like in those stupid books. Nice joke, Pops.”

“Not a joke,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

I just stared at him for a bit. He couldn’t be serious, right? He was standing there, acting like he’s just told me I have AIDS or cancer or some shit, only he’s saying I’m a fucking vampire. I mean, seriously, first I got to accept that Count fucking Dracula was real, then I got to accept that I’m a fucking vampire now too? Then it hits me. “Oh, I get it,” I said. “This is one of those nerd games, right? Where everyone pretends they’re a vampire or an elf or whatever? Only I didn’t sign up, and tryin’ to get me to play by doin’ all this is pretty fucked up, y’know.”

“It’s fucked up,” Pops says. “But it’s not a game.”

“Um…” I say. Yeah. Great at conversations, that’s me. But… well, this was pretty freaky, you know? The hangover and Pops telling me I’m a vampire and… everything. I felt like maybe I hadn’t come down from whatever I took, or maybe I was crazy myself. It must have shown on my face because Pops gave me a look like he knew what was going on in my head and felt bad for me.

“You know how to feel your own heartbeat?” he said.

“Seriously? Okay…” I put my fingers on my neck like I learned in… I don’t know, health class or something. Waited for a moment. “Um… why can’t I feel my pulse?”

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