Misty Rose: Nature
Chapter 5
When I woke up again the next night, the burn on my arm was gone. That much was good, I mean, not even vampires like being in pain, you know? But I was thirsty again. Not as bad as before the… guy in the park, but more than I was when I got home. So that was new information, maybe vampires needed blood to heal stuff and I’d need to… to get more if I got hurt.
I also noticed that the closet door was open, the curtains were closed, and Kaitlyn was sitting on her bed watching me with her phone in her hand. She didn’t look scared or hostile or anything, more… curious. Which was better. I shifted position a little but didn’t get up yet.
“Did you know watching you wake up is like watching a doll wake up?” Kaitlyn asked.
“Um…” I said. I didn’t wake up fast as a human, and I guess that was still the case. “Never seen myself wake up.”
“It’s like… your face is completely still,” she said. “Like you’re not alive. Then your eyes open, but you don’t start looking like a living person until your mouth moves.”
“Oh.” Good to know, I guess, but kind of weird. “Um… were you watchin’ me sleep?”
“While you were dead? No. Too creepy.”
“Don’t blame you.”
“I wanted to see how long it took you to wake up after sunset. So I closed the curtains a few minutes ago and opened the door to watch. Pretty much instant.”
“What?”
Kaitlyn looked at her phone. “Near as I could tell, you woke up within seconds of the sun going down. But not when it was dark, it’s still twilight outside.”
“Figures,” I sighed. “Only time in my life I’ve been an early riser is when I’m dead.”
Kaitlyn just sort of smirked at me and went back to looking at her phone. “I noticed you’d opened the curtains when I woke up.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks for trustin’ me, but… I feel better that way.”
“Mmm,” Kaitlyn said. Could mean anything.
“It’s kinda funny, really,” I went on. “I mean, you think there’s a monster in your closet when you’re a kid, and you grow up, and there actually is a monster, only it’s your best friend, and…”
“Stop it,” Kaitlyn said. Not mean, more… scolding? She did that sometimes, like when I’d go off on some kind of self-pity kick and she wanted me to stop beating myself up.
“Okay, yeah, sorry,” I said. “Anyway, the closet’s really fine for now. Um… we can get you a rack for your clothes so you don’t hafta keep them in here with me.”
“I’m not worried about it,” she said.
“Yeah, but…”
“Said I’m not worried about it.”
I sighed. “Listen, I… I really appreciate that you trust me, but… you really should know that…”
“I look tasty?”
I just stared at her. She seemed… well, not like she liked the idea, but like she’d… gotten used to it. I guess she’d been thinking about it during the day or something. I still felt like maybe she didn’t really get the whole problem, though. “Yeah. You do look tasty,” I said.
Kaitlyn shrugged. “You haven’t tried to bite me.”
“I’m tryin’ to ignore it.”
“So keep ignoring it.”
“That’s kinda the problem, Kaitlyn,” I said. “I don’t think it goes away for vampires. It’s not as strong when… when I’m full, I guess, but it’s still there. I’m sorry for being fuckin’ creepy, but… you need to know. For your safety.”
Kaitlyn put her phone down and looked at me. “What’s it like?”
“The thirst thing?” I said. “You really wanna know?”
“Yeah.”
“If you’re sure,” I said, then thought for a bit. “It’s… it’s a thirst, yeah. Like actual thirsty. But that’s not all of it. It’s like a really deep thirst, like… wanting something really, really bad, and the thing you want is a liquid, so it feels like thirst. It’s… sort of sexual too, but… not just like wantin’ some hot guy, y’know? It’s like… you’re my favorite food and I haven’t eaten in a couple days.”
Kaitlyn raised an eyebrow when I mentioned wanting a hot guy, and I suddenly felt like I’d said the wrong thing. Not, um, because she was mad. More like the opposite, because…
Okay, time for another tangent about Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn’s bisexual, and she’d probably kill me for talking about it. Not because of being embarrassed, but because she’s tried to explain things to me a few times and… I just got this idea of what being bisexual means that might not be what’s true. In my head, bisexuals are either fake and will have sex with anyone because they’re just desperate, or real ones like Kaitlyn, who’s naturally bisexual and is… attracted to both guys and girls the same way. I know it’s probably not PC to say this, but I’ve met both the real and the desperate kinds of bisexuals, and there’s a difference. The real ones are usually fine with being bisexual, unless they haven’t come out yet, and the fake ones… are sort of porn star bisexual, usually without the porn star looks. It’s probably more complicated than that, or I could just plain be wrong, but that’s my opinion until someone manages to get the truth through my head. Which could take a while.
Anyway, I’d met Kaitlyn in a women’s sexuality class my freshman year of college. Wasn’t called that in the syllabus, but the class was mostly women and that’s what it ended up being. I took it because I needed an elective and that seemed way more interesting than basket weaving or whatever. Plus, you know, freshman year at college. Kaitlyn was in that class, and so was a fake bisexual, and they got into an argument, and I was curious, so I found her after class one day and started asking questions. Or, well, sort of mumbling questions because I was uncomfortable. My parents are pretty good about not being all judgey and shit, but they both… well, their parents aren’t as open minded, so I didn’t really get a lot of information about people who weren’t straight, and wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea. But she didn’t laugh at me, or get on my case, or even hit on me, which I think would have been the worst thing she could have done because I would have freaked out or been too uncomfortable. She just… answered my questions. We got along really well, became friends, and wound up getting an apartment together, and… the bisexual thing wasn’t an issue because we talked about it and I wasn’t her type. Too soft, she said, which pretty much meant I was too girly. I mean, I’d catch her looking sometimes, but she never pushed it, and she wasn’t any worse than guys were. Nowhere near as bad, actually. The only time it really came up was at parties, but that’s a different subject.
So when I said that thing about hot guys and looking at her and she gave me that look, I suddenly felt like I’d fucked up. Not like I offended her, but like… I’d shown an interest in her. And that could go a lot of ways. She could ignore it, and I hoped like hell she would. She could get mad, but I didn’t think she would because she usually didn’t unless the person showing an interest wasn’t taking no for an answer. Or… she could also get interested. And that’s what it seemed like happened. You know that thing about hearing her heartbeat? Hers actually went up slightly, and she shifted her position just a little. Most people wouldn’t notice, but the whole vampire thing and being thirsty… well, I noticed. She stuck out her chest a little more and lowered her head a little. Eyes went a little more… hooded? Is that the word? Bedroom eyes, anyway. Just slightly. But I noticed. And that was bad. I still needed to deal with the fact that I guess vampires are attracted to blood even if it’s in a human that isn’t the gender they were into as a human, and I didn’t need her getting the wrong idea. But me and my big fat mouth had probably just given her that wrong idea.
“So, I’m like a hot guy now?” Kaitlyn said, and yeah, she’d gotten the wrong idea. Shit.
“Yeah. No. It’s…” I couldn’t figure out what to say. “It’s not like that. But…”
“Take your time,” she said. “When you’re ready to come out of the closet, we’ll talk.”
God dammit! This was not how I wanted this to go. I was trying to warn her about how… how vampires could be. Towards everyone, and that her being a girl wasn’t going to protect her from me. But she was… turning this into a sex joke. Which I didn’t want, at all. “Can we not make jokes about this? I’m tryin’ to tell you that vampires don’t care about who…”
“… they suck on?” she said, and grinned.
I glared at her. “I’m not fuckin’ around here, Kaitlyn.”
“I know,” she said. “You’re in the closet.”
“This isn’t somethin’ to make jokes about, okay?”
“Aww, but you could make an exception for me, right?”
“Kaitlyn. I could kill you. Don’t joke about exceptions. Don’t tempt me.”
Her expression kinda… froze. “Are you… really tempted? To bite me?”
“Yeah, I’m fuckin’ tempted. You look tasty and sexy and like I could just go over there and jump on you and take you and drink you until…” I stopped because Kaitlyn was looking scared again. Somehow without me knowing it I’d gotten half into a crouch like I was actually gonna jump on her, and my fangs were out just enough to be seen. So I froze too, then just… slowly let myself sit back down with my back against the back of the closet. Made my fangs go back, too. Stupid fucking animal inside me was… well, what I said. I wasn’t even all that thirsty, either, but it still… wanted her. She had blood, you know? And she was cute, which sort of… made her more interesting.
“Sorry,” Kaitlyn said eventually. “You scared me.”
“I’m scared too,” I said quietly.
“You? You’re scared?”
“Hell yeah, I’m scared. I’m scared I could kill you.”
“Why?”
Took me a bit to respond. “’Cause… I think I might have killed someone last night.” Kaitlyn didn’t say anything, so I went on. “I tried to save ‘im, but… I dunno if he made it.”
Kaitlyn looked at me for a moment. “You wanna talk about it?” she eventually asked.
“Yeah.” Actually, I didn’t, but I also wanted her to understand.
“Alright,” Kaitlyn said. She reached under her bed and pulled out the vodka bottle. Still had about a quarter left, but she didn’t open it. “When you’re ready.”
So I told her about the night before, about the guy in the park, and what I did. Kaitlyn didn’t say much, just listened. At one point I couldn’t sit down anymore, so I got up and started pacing around. I don’t do it much, just when I’m really nervous, and… this counted, you know? I was possibly telling my best friend I’d killed someone, and that I could do the same thing to her. But when I got to the end, Kaitlyn hadn’t opened her bottle, and she didn’t seem… mad at me, or scared, or anything. Maybe she was doing her cold streak thing, I couldn’t tell because I couldn’t make myself look at her. I finally stopped talking and sat down on one of our stools.
She did have some questions, though. Like about how I got the junkie to the hospital. I told her I felt like I was stronger now, but she didn’t really believe me until I lifted the whole end of her bed off the floor. With one hand. It wasn’t exactly easy, but… I’ve got noodle arms. Just getting one of our dressers into the apartment was bad enough that we ended up having to get some guys to help us because both of us together couldn’t move it, and I’ve never been any more athletic than what it takes to lose a few pounds so I didn’t look like a whale in a bikini. But being a vampire made me stronger, and a mattress and box spring isn’t all that heavy compared to like a dresser.
Other thing was… well, typical Kaitlyn. When I got to the part about walking the last couple of blocks in my bra, she almost started laughing.
“What?” I said. “My top had a bunch of bullet holes in it.”
“Anyone see you?” She grinned at me.
“Of course not.”
“That’s probably good. They’dve thought you were doing a walk of shame.”
“Walk of shame my ass. Very funny.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Anyway,” I glared at her. “I changed clothes when I got home. The rest… well, they need a wash, but at least they don’t have blood or holes in ‘em.”
I guess it wasn’t as funny as Kaitlyn thought because she stopped grinning pretty soon after that. Just… sat there not saying anything. I wasn’t sure if I’d gone too far. I mean, her making jokes was a good thing, meant maybe she wasn’t completely freaked out by my story. But there was a hell of a lot to think about. I started thinking maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, maybe just left out possibly having killed the guy. But I also felt like… Kaitlyn deserved to know, you know? I think I’d wanna know if I was living with a murderer as a roommate, even if they didn’t mean to kill anyone. I still sort of felt like she had the right to kick me out if she didn’t feel safe. And I would’ve gone. Couldn’t be easy finding somewhere to stay as a vampire, but I’d have managed somehow, and she’d be safe from me. Not a fun thought to have, at all. We were both quiet for long enough for my mood to take a nose dive, thanks to thoughts like I just said going around in circles in my head.
After a little while, Kaitlyn said, “Let me see if I got this. You left here all upset because your drunk roommate kicked you out. After wandering around for a couple hours, you ended up in a park at like four in the morning by yourself, where a homeless junkie tried to rape you. While you were defending yourself from an attacker, you hurt him more than you intended, but you took him to a hospital despite what he tried to do to you. Sound about right?”
I shrugged. “Mostly. You forgot how I drank prob’ly most of his blood.”
“Details,” Kaitlyn said. “You didn’t shoot him or stab him and fuck up his organs. People survive blood loss. Otherwise no one would make it through surgeries.”
“You got a point.”
“No shit. You defended yourself against a rapist and you helped him anyway. Doesn’t sound like something a monster would do. Monster would’ve let him die.”
She was right, but I felt like that wasn’t all there was. Like, I dunno, Kaitlyn was ignoring things just to make me feel better. “Yeah, but… I lost control, Kaitlyn.”
“What, like when you’re drunk or high?” she said. “When you do shit you wouldn’t do except you’re on something that makes you wanna do it, or makes you not hold back?”
“Yeah…”
“Okay, and?” Kaitlyn shrugged. “We’ve both done shit we didn’t wanna because we were on something. And you did what you did because you were… on vampire. Great big hit of V that the fucker basically forced on you by shooting you. Do what you did when you did dumb shit while you were on anything else. Learn from it, remember it, don’t do it again.”
“It’s… not that simple…”
“Maybe not,” Kaitlyn said. “But you’ve spent how long now trying to convince me you’re some kinda monster? To protect me? Real monster wouldn’t have said anything. So you might have something fucking with your head, but you’re not a monster. We’ve both dated people with less morals than you, and you know it. Frat boys. You think any of them would have tried to help?”
I wanted to argue with her. I really did. But it was like… something kind of broke open inside me. Or maybe I just couldn’t keep it together any longer. Either way, I started crying. I hadn’t done that since before the party, even with all the shit that happened. But here at home with my best friend, it was like I just couldn’t keep up the act any more. And this wasn’t the attractive crying that girls in movies and soap operas and shit do. This was full on bawling like a child, snot-nosed and gasping and just letting it all out at once. At some point in there Kaitlyn came over and put her arms around me, and I hugged her back, like we used to do when one of us had a bad breakup… or, really, more like when something a lot worse had happened while we were wasted. Felt like it, too, like she was trying to help me get over some seriously bad shit by just holding me and letting me cry it out. So, yeah, it felt good, letting out the pain and all the shit that’d happened. There really isn’t anything like having someone who cares about you there when you need a shoulder and a hug, who’ll just let you bawl your eyes out for as long as you need to. Have to admit, the hug also felt better because she was alive and warm and everything, too, but that was a minor thing.
It wasn’t just the hug, though. After a while, when I’d calmed down enough that I’d stopped sobbing, Kaitlyn started talking. “I wasn’t sure it was you. You looked like you, and sounded like you, but… the things you’ve been talking about. The things you’ve done. I wasn’t sure this wasn’t… something else that was… wearing you, I guess. Pretending to be you. Or that something else hadn’t… possessed you, like a ghost or a demon. Yeah, I was scared, but… not just for me. I was scared you were trapped in there somehow, with something else deciding what you were going to do. I didn’t know if you were crazy. The whole vampire thing. I thought maybe you’d taken some really bad acid or something that’d fucked up your head, and that maybe that guy you’d left with had done something to you. Brainwashed you or something.” Kaitlyn paused, then squeezed me. “But now I know it’s you. When you started crying… I knew it was you. There’s something else now, something that’s… changed you. Given you sharp edges you didn’t have before. But you’re still you, Misty. You’re still my best friend. And I’m still yours. This is all pretty fucked up, but I’m still your friend.”
I started crying again. Well, crying harder again. Couldn’t help it. I didn’t have any other way to respond. But I also hugged her tighter, because I felt like… that I wouldn’t hafta deal with being a vampire alone now, you know? That my best friend was still there for me. And that she was going to help me deal with all this shit, even if it meant she might be in danger.
Some things we’d definitely need to allow for, though. Like one that turned up pretty much immediately. After we’d just held each other for a while, and I’d calmed down again, I moved one of my hands higher on her back and felt something squishy and wet. I pulled my hand away, and there was blood smeared across my palm. Her shirt was soaked in blood, too, from the shoulder I’d had my head on down her back. First think I thought was that I’d hurt Kaitlyn somehow, but she didn’t say anything, but when I pulled my head back to see, she looked at my face and gasped.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Me?” I blinked at her. “Why?”
“Your face is…”
I touched my face with one hand, and my fingers came away bloody. I stared at ’em a moment, then at Kaitlyn, then went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Instead of the trails of tears and snot that kinda crying usually made, it looked like my eyes and nose had been leaking some kind of thin, watery blood. In large amounts. Or, well, like I’d been crying blood, which is exactly what I’d been doing for half an hour. Which was fucking creepy, and pretty much shocked me out of wanting to cry any more. Like, ever. “Oh my god, that’s gross,” I said.
“Yeah,” Kaitlyn said from the door. I turned and got her top thrown into my face. “You’re doing laundry this week, Miss Creepy Vampire. Oh, and hey, it’s open all night. Lucky you.”
I guess I actually felt better because of that, too. Arguing about which of us had to go down to the laundromat with a bunch of quarters each week and be bored out of their skull while trying to be invisible was a regular thing for us. Somehow, I felt like Kaitlyn was even going to turn my being a vampire into an excuse to have me do it every time from now on, too. And to be honest… I could live with that. I felt like… normal things, even annoying normal things… well, they could help. Stuff that actual humans took for granted, and vampires just ignored, or avoided, or… dealt with by being a vampire. Some things had to change, obviously, but… maybe I didn’t actually get my entire life turned upside down. Just most of it, which is better than all of it.
Of course, I still had shit I needed to deal with. Being attracted to Kaitlyn’s blood, for one. Her not really understanding what that was, well, I’d need to fix that, too. Couldn’t go to work because my shift was afternoons, and I still had to talk to my boss about not showing up for a few days. Sunlight being death, having to drink blood, all of that was stuff I’d have to get used to, but maybe it wasn’t quite as bad as it seemed like before. At least I could still get help from my best friend.
