Misty Rose: Nature
Chapter 6
So, there’s something I kind of need to mention at this point because it’s going to be a thing from now on. Being a vampire means dealing with fucked up stuff, except when it doesn’t, at which point it’s boring. Seems like all the shows and stuff make it look like something is always happening, but that’s just because people aren’t going to watch a show where the characters sit around on their asses watching YouTube, which was what I spent a lot of time doing. I had nothing to do, and nowhere to go, and being a vampire kind of fucks up your social life, you know? Couldn’t go to work either. Some of this stuff, I didn’t actually remember the exact day it happened anyway, just what order it happened in. Point is, I’m going to be skipping over some stuff because it isn’t important. Mostly me and Kaitlyn hanging out until she was tired enough to sleep, and me trying to keep busy until dawn but quiet enough to not wake her up. So… boring stuff. Not all that different from when I was alive except we’d usually go to bed at the same time and I was sleeping all day in the closet instead of my bed.
I’ll at least talk about some of it, though, like how I figured out that me and Kaitlyn talking about what actors are hot changes when you’re a vampire. They all look hot, because they all have blood. So do the actresses, but I was still figuring that out. I felt like… I don’t know, like I had to at least act like I wouldn’t bite some of them, which was basically the same as fucking them, or at least it felt like it was. Standards, you know? But they all looked tasty. And yeah, being thirsty like a vampire can be pretty indiscriminate when you get thirsty enough. Being raised with the whole cultural double standard about female sexuality meant I felt like being hungry like a vampire turned me into a slut because I just… wanted people, and I wasn’t all that choosy when I got thirsty. Yeah, I actually wanted to drink them, but it was still getting them somewhere private and doing something intimate with them, and not just share secrets. Other option was to attack them, like with the guy in the park.
Then there was the makeup thing. Not trying to make a statement or anything here, but I’ve always been the kind of girl that doesn’t like to go out without makeup. I got it from my Mom, who’s the same way. I just feel… naked? Something like that. I mean, I’m not totally psychotic about it, I don’t feel like I got to be all made up if I’m just hanging out at home with friends. Kaitlyn wasn’t as bad about as I was. She liked to say I don’t like going out without my face on.
Anyway, being a vampire changes things with your makeup. Not going to go crazy with detail, but you don’t have blood in your skin, so you don’t get all the little weird patches that makeup’s supposed to help cover. You’re also paler, which is kind of a problem in terms of whatever foundation you used to have, like when you lose a tan in the fall. So you’re probably going to end up with a face darker than the rest of you unless your skin’s dark enough. Mine wasn’t. Which was why I wound up in the bathroom with my kit all unpacked… which is actually a big pink deluxe tackle box, like for fishing. My asshole uncle Joe got it for my Dad for his birthday when I was a kid because he wanted to harass my Dad for being a sissy liberal. My Dad gave it to me, and I used it for girly stuff like pretend makeup and Just Like Mommy things. Found out about why Dad had it later, and that my Dad really liked it when I started little girl gushing about how great it was at my uncle Joe because it forced my uncle to pretend his dick move was really a nice gift for his niece. I still had it, and it wasn’t as fancy as the ones you can buy at makeup counters, but it worked fine, even though it did sometimes make Kaitlyn make jokes about me being “bait” when we were “fishing” for guys.
Sorry, double tangent there. The problem was that I was a lot paler than I used to be, and that wasn’t going to change any time soon. So a lot of my makeup didn’t work anymore because of being paler, and also because of no blood in my face, so no red tone, which changed my whole palette. I’d tried a few different things, but it all made me look like a doll, or like I was colorblind. Even when I borrowed some of Kaitlyn’s stuff because she was paler than me, it still didn’t work. Eventually I just gave up and went with a natural look. Lipstick and mascara and a slight blush and a little eyeshadow so I didn’t have as obvious corpse blue eyelids. It’s not like I really needed to conceal a complexion anymore, what with the bloodless face thing.
Yeah, this really does seem kind of stupid to be thinking about, but I’m like that sometimes. Most people are. Some people clean when they’re trying to not think about something. Some people play games, or read, or drink, or whatever. I mess with my hair and makeup and clothes and stuff. And I don’t think I’m alone… some of the female vampires at the social thing had a lot of makeup on, like going to a party levels. Which I guess is okay since that’s what they were doing, but I’d bet they slept in it and only washed it off when it was too messed up to fix. If that’s what works for them, fine, but if they want that, they should use paint. It’d last longer and not get mussed.
The major thing that happened at this point though came from us looking up what worked to drive away vampires. Which was… well… not helpful. Or fun. Turns out there’s a shitload of stuff out there, and most of it is fake because it comes from some book or TV show or movie. Or it’s just fucking hard to do, like driving a stake into their chest or cutting off their head. But I still felt like we should try, if only because Kaitlyn might need to keep me off her at some point, and… I’d honestly prefer it be her hurting me than me hurting her, you know? Vampires heal from bullet wounds, so unless she was setting me on fire or tossing me out into the sun, I’d get over it. Probably.
Anyway, the anti-vampire things conversation happened I think a day or two after the guy in the park. We were just sitting around looking at stuff on our phones like usual, and I was feeling… I dunno, down on myself for being a vampire again, and sort of… nervous about hurting Kaitlyn. No reason, just because of being down about being a vampire. I brought up the topic in my usual smooth and charming way: “So… find anythin’ that’ll stop me yet?”
“Maybe,” Kaitlyn said. “You sure you wanna talk about this?”
“We gotta see what’ll keep me off you,” I said. Looked like a bit of disappointment on Kaitlyn’s face. “I’m not kiddin’. My other choice is goin’ away and never seein’ you again.”
“Alright, fine,” she said. She did something with her phone. “So… what I found was… sunlight, fire, stake through the heart, cutting your head off, garlic, onions, mustard seeds, holy symbols, holy water, silver, running water, salt, religious music, communion wafers and wine, white roses or just roses in general, thorns and hawthorn specifically, wolfsbane, foxglove, holly, entering homes, and numbers. Dunno how many of those are legit, though. I kept finding comments about how a lot of stuff was made up by Hollywood in the last century.”
I stared at her. “That’s… more than I found. You got into this, huh?”
Kaitlyn shrugged. “You said you’re serious about this. So let’s be serious about it.”
She had a point. Some of those things were going to be hard to test, but I was willing to deal with it if it meant Kaitlyn would be safe. “Okay, um… sunlight we know about. Stake through the heart I’d like to hold off on for now, okay?” Kaitlyn nodded. I wasn’t complaining. “Cuttin’ my head off, no. Um… I don’t think we have any holy water or communion wafers and wine layin’ around. Numbers?”
“Apparently if I throw a whole lot of little things on the ground, you’ll be pathologically compelled to stop and count them,” Kaitlyn said. “Sounds like that Muppet to me.”
“I don’t suppose you…” I started. May as well try, right?
“As a matter of fact…” Kaitlyn interrupted, digging a little packet out of her purse. Then she opened it and threw the contents onto the floor in front of me.
I bent over to look. “Seeds?”
“Mustard seeds. Thought we could test two things at once, save time.”
I picked a few out of the carpet and held them in my hand. I even sniffed them. Yep, they smelled like mustard. But they didn’t do anything except remind me I didn’t like mustard. I dropped them and stood up, looking down at the scattered seeds. “Nope. I have no desire at all to count ’em. And you’re gonna vacuum these up. You threw ‘em.”
“Okay, so mustard seeds and counting are out,” Kaitlyn went on like she didn’t hear me. “Salt is also from the counting thing, but sea salt is supposed to hurt vampires.”
“Do you have…” I asked, expecting she would.
“Sure do.” Kaitlyn pulled a small jar out of her purse, opened it, and threw a handful of salt at me. It bounced off. I watched it fall down into our carpet with the seeds.
“I did say you were vacuumin’, right?”
Kaitlyn watched me carefully for signs of… I don’t know, running around screaming, then went back to her phone. After a moment, music started playing loudly from her phone’s speaker. I listened for a little bit, then shook my head.
“I don’t think bad Christian rock counts as religious music,” I said. “I might scream and run away from that, but I don’t think for the reasons we’re lookin’ for.”
Kaitlyn made a face and changed the music coming from her phone. I listened for a bit.
“That’s better, but still nothin’. Hymn, right? Which one?”
“Ave Maria,” Kaitlyn said. “Sung by three Irish Catholic priests and recorded in a cathedral in… ar-mag? Dunno how to pronounce it. It’s Irish.”
I kept listening for a while. It really was very pretty. “Still not the effect we’re lookin’ for. But send me the link to that, please. What’s next?”
Kaitlyn changed the music again. Much funkier, but still not scary. “Gospel music. John the Revelator. Isn’t that version from a movie?” She shut it off and sighed.
“Maybe it has to be live,” she said. “Let’s see…”
I was starting to get the feeling Kaitlyn was enjoying this. Have I mentioned I don’t like feeling like a lab animal? I don’t like feeling like a lab animal. “Okay. What’s next?”
“Running water?” Kaitlyn said.
“Well, if the canals count, I’ve crossed ’em while wanderin’ around,” I shrugged.
“Hmm,” Kaitlyn frowned. “The plants’ll hafta wait until I can get to a garden supply store.”
“Yeah, and it’ll suck if I’m supernaturally allergic to roses.”
“Entering homes… well, you live here. Don’t think that counts.”
“Yeah.”
“Holy symbols and silver… here, catch,” Kaitlyn said, tossing me something. I missed it because I’m not very good at the hand eye thing, but I picked it up, some kind of necklace.
“Hmm…” I looked at it. “Isn’t this your cross pendant thing?”
“Yeah,” Kaitlyn said. “It’s silver, too.”
“Nothin’,” I said and tossed it back. “Maybe you need to, I dunno, present it. Or somethin’.”
Kaitlyn picked up the necklace, then held it out towards me. “Get thee back, spawn of Satan,” she said in an entirely unconvincing way. I guess the look I gave her was enough because she just put the thing down and looked back at her phone.
“That leaves garlic and onions,” she said.
“Do we have those?”
“Neither of us really likes onions, so don’t think we have that,” Kaitlyn said. “Garlic, yeah.”
“Where?”
“Fridge. Pizza box.”
I walked over to the fridge and opened it. Yeah, there was a pizza box in there, but… “I don’t think two week old pizza is gonna do anythin’. Unless you wanna use it as a stake, in which case you should prob’ly leave it for a couple more weeks. Or freeze it.”
“Inside the box, smartass,” Kaitlyn said. “Packets of garlic powder.”
I opened the box, and yeah, there were. Covered in two week old pizza grease and whatever the hell pizza turns into after two weeks. “Ew… we should get rid of this.”
“You know where the garbage can is,” Kaitlyn said, not looking up.
I rescued the garlic packets from the box and threw the rest away. Then I put the packets on the counter and looked at them. “Nothin’ yet.” Kaitlyn just grunted. I got a mostly clean glass out of the sink and opened up all the packets and dumped the contents into the glass. Smelly, but still nothing. I looked over my shoulder and saw Kaitlyn was watching. I sniffed the powder, even dipped a finger into it, and still nothing. I shrugged at Kaitlyn.
“I saw something about having to put the garlic in the vampire’s mouth,” she said.
That sounded fishy to me, but apparently vampires counting mustard seeds was a thing, so I guess folklore can include just about any stupid idea if enough people believe it. I picked up the glass and looked at it. I didn’t really even like garlic when I was alive, and the sort of clumped powder in the glass looked nasty. I sighed and dumped the whole glass into my mouth.
The effect was pretty much instant. I dropped the glass and bent over the sink, almost clawing at my tongue, trying to get the powder out of my mouth. “You okay?” Kaitlyn asked. “Did it work?”
I choked a bit before I could answer. “Oh, ugh!” I tried to spit. “Gross! No. That was completely disgustin’, but it’s not drivin’ me away. Oh god, that’s nasty. Hope you’re appreciatin’ this.” I looked over and Kaitlyn was grinning at me. “I gotta spit this out.”
“That’s what she said,” Kaitlyn said as I ran for the bathroom.
I washed my mouth out a couple times before I said anything. “Yeah, that is what she said. Where’s the mouthwash? That’s gotta be the worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth…” I stopped. I could feel Kaitlyn’s smirk from the other room. “You shut the hell up.”
About five minutes of gargling later, I felt like I’d only be tasting garlic for a day or two instead of for the next ten years. I went back into the other room, wiping off my mouth with a towel. Kaitlyn was grinning at me. “We done playin’ fuck with the vampire?” I asked, glaring at her.
“For now,” she said.
“Great. I’m glad one of us is enjoyin’ this.”
“So that’s a no on testing the stake through the heart?”
“I dunno. Do you think you could drive a stake through my heart?”
“Probably not.”
“Yeah,” I said, then sighed. “Seriously, though. We need to find somethin’.”
Kaitlyn nodded. “Maybe all the old stuff is bullshit,” she said. “Superstition. Maybe something more modern might do it. Stuff that works on humans.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Well… we know bullets don’t work. Can prob’ly rule out knives and clubs and that kinda stuff, given how I heal. Um… I don’t breathe, so gas wouldn’t work.”
“Pepper spray? Taser?”
“Do you have either of those?” Oh, goodie, this was just getting better. And by better, I mean it was giving Kaitlyn more excuses to do shit to me. Yay.
“No,” she said. Well that was a mercy. ”So we’ll hafta try this again later.”
“Great.”
And we did, but I’ll get to that later. Last thing I should probably share that happened was… well… the first time I went hunting on purpose. Figured out after a few days that I couldn’t just coast along on a few pints of blood for very long. I’d need to go out and… feed.
I tried not to be stupid about it. I mean, just going out and jumping the first person I saw was a pretty good way to get in a shitload of trouble, and it’d mean I was probably going to hurt someone who didn’t deserve it. So I spent some time looking at stuff online, checking the kind of places you check to know where’s too dangerous to go at night if you’re a girl. The places to check when the cops wouldn’t know because they don’t patrol there much, or problems just don’t get reported. If you know where to look, you can find that kind of shit online. After a couple nights of looking, I figured out a few places where people were getting mugged and shit and the cops didn’t seem to care much. Kept my eyes open for rapes in particular because I figured if I was gonna have to lure some asshole out, I should give the fucker a target. Bait, right? And yeah, I knew this was pretty much the exact opposite of why I’d have gone looking for this shit before I died. Is that irony? I don’t exactly get irony.
Of course, I did all this while Kaitlyn was asleep. I… didn’t really want her to know what I was planning because I didn’t want her to think of me like that. I was going to have to do it if I wanted to keep my head. Kaitlyn was looking more and more tasty each night. And it kinda felt good that Kaitlyn was mostly still acting like I was human. Mostly. I found out pretty quick that Kaitlyn got bored waiting for sunset sometimes, because she started playing How Much Stuff Can I Stack On My Friend While She’s Dead or amusing herself by drawing on my face with eyebrow pencils. The drawing stopped pretty quick, though. I guess she got too close to one of my eyes, because she said I grabbed her wrist hard enough to sprain it without opening my eyes or waking up. So, yeah, that ended that.
Oh, and Kaitlyn snored. Not all the time, but she did. She said she didn’t but that was another reason for me to go out while she was asleep.
Anyway, after I’d figured out where to go, I waited for Kaitlyn to go to sleep and went out into the city. I’d dressed in a hoodie and short shorts and running shoes and stuck some earbuds into my ears like I was listening to music. Basically, made myself look like a college girl out for an early morning run. Really early because it was like two in the morning, but I didn’t know how long this was going to take, and I didn’t think the kind of asshole that’d jump a jogger would care all that much what exact time it was. I’d put a route that took me through all the bad places into my GPS and plugged my earbuds into my phone. Don’t think the people who made the app thought it’d be used for what I was using it for, but that’s life. Or undeath, I guess.
Didn’t take as long as I thought. Maybe after an hour of pretending to jog around and thinking it was good vampires didn’t get tired, some asshole stepped out of an alley and grabbed me and held a knife against my neck. I didn’t hear him at first because right then the GPS lady was giving me one of those useless route updates the app likes to do, so he caught me by surprise… which wasn’t a bad thing because it helped me pretend I was just a human girl. Scared, you know? But I wasn’t. His dinky little knife wasn’t a threat, and a lot of the shit girls are afraid of in this kind of situation doesn’t seem to matter as much when you know the attacker can’t really hurt you. I’m not much of an actress, so anything I could use to help me was good.
Probably didn’t matter. Guy was slurring like crazy when he demanded my money. Sounded like he was really fucking drunk, or maybe on some kind of downer. Idiot pills maybe. He sure seemed like an idiot. I went to hand him my wallet and just let it go so it fell out of his hand. As he was trying to decide what to do, I pushed him. Hard. Yeah, I could’ve punched him, but… I hit like a girl, and I didn’t know if being kind of vampire strong would help. But it helped with pushing. The creep went flying back and hit his head on the wall of the building behind him. He wasn’t down, but he was kind of stumbling around and waving his knife. I got a look at him, and yeah. Jeans, hoodie, sneakers, and all of it was dirty like he hadn’t washed them in a few days. So, mugger, and not a good one and probably not a nice guy on top of that. Someone I could feed from and not feel bad about it if I didn’t take too much.
Took a bit more to actually put him down, mostly because I was slapping him. Hard, yeah, but like I said, I hit like a girl, so I didn’t even try. After a few vampire-strength slaps, he sort of went dazed and fell over. I kicked his knife down the alley and rolled him over with my foot. Then I got on my knees next to him, pulled his hood away from his neck and… bit him. I wasn’t sure I’d get it right. I mean, I wasn’t a biter before I got turned, you know? And you kind of don’t want to draw blood anyway. Well, unless you’re into that kinda thing, and I wasn’t. But I guess the whole vampire instincts thing came with some kind of blood sense or something because it worked first try. I barely even had time to notice his neck wasn’t very clean before the blood hit my mouth and… that was it for a little while.
I tried to describe what drinking warm blood from living humans was like before and… honestly, I can’t say I did it justice. Blood is literally the most important thing to vampires, except really weird ones with worse issues than just being a vampire. It’s the best sex ever and the best food ever and the best booze ever and the best upper ever and best euphoric ever, all at the same time. Only more. I don’t think there’s actually anything a human can feel that comes close. I sure didn’t when I was alive. And on top of everything else, you feel alive and warm and… well, satisfied. There’s definitely a post-feed glow that lingers for a little while. At least as long as the blood is still warm inside you. I’m actually getting a little thirsty just talking about it, and I’m full right now.
It wasn’t easy, but I managed to stop myself after a couple of pints of blood. I’d looked up how much blood a human could lose too, because I didn’t want to hurt anyone bad enough to need the hospital, even the assholes I’d find by making myself a target. Wasn’t easy… it was probably the hardest thing I’d had to do since before becoming a vampire. Like stopping right before orgasm, only your whole body is screaming at you to keep going. And, like, so is your soul. Or whatever vampires have that works like one. The animal thing maybe? It was screaming at me too. It was like every part of me except the bit that is actually me wanted to drink the creep totally dry. I actually found myself trying to justify it, thinking he was a mugger, and probably a rapist, and I could… clean up the world by killing him, and that he deserved it. But I made myself stop. I was a blood drinking corpse, and possibly some kind of monster, but I wasn’t going to be a murderer. So I tore myself away.
Dramatic way to put it, but that’s what it felt like.
Weird thing was, I could… sort of tell how much blood I’d taken. Feel it. More like… I don’t know, compare what I had to what I could have, like knowing how much food I could eat, but more… exact. Not like I had a measuring cup in my stomach. But maybe I could use it to… guess how much blood I could take from someone without hurting them too badly. And that’d be okay. Not great. Not something I was happy with. I didn’t like the idea of drinking blood, even while my whole body got worked up just thinking about it. But I didn’t really have a choice about that. What I could choose is to not kill anyone, and not even hurt them all that much. Take about what they’d give for a blood donation, and there’s no way those guys are going to put donors in danger. Probably meant I’d have to find more assholes to feed from, but I wouldn’t be a murderer.
I wiped off my face using his hoodie. I was going to have to learn how to drink without getting it all down my chin. I also took his wallet. Hey, he tried to take mine, and wasn’t like I could work my old job. I had to pay my share of the rent somehow, and it wasn’t like my tiny little bank account would last long even if I wasn’t buying food and stuff. Do unto others, right? Well, I was doing unto him what he tried to do unto me. So I dragged him unto the alley and left him there to sleep it off.
Could’ve done some more hunting, but… it went well enough my first time out. Only casualty was the sleeve of my hoodie, which I guess one of his wild slashes caught or something. Nothin’ major, I could probably fix it. Or get Kaitlyn to do it, she was better at DIY stuff than me. Something did kind of bother me, though. Even though he was mostly out when I bit him, his reaction was… well, more like he was having sex than having a vampire sucking his blood. Like… he really liked it. And his stupid skinny jeans made it damn clear he got hard while I was biting him. Pretty sure he came in his pants, too, because he did the muscle jerk thing guys do, and yeah, I’ve experienced it more than a few times. So either he was some kinda closet pervert, or some part of all the stories saying people actually enjoyed being bitten by vampires was true. I was going to have to figure that one out. But not right then.
Walking home was a lot nicer than when I left. I was full and warm and had the afterglow going and actually felt good. More or less. Like every other damn thing about being a vampire, there was some shit I’d have to figure out, but at least I knew I could take care of one problem. Keeping myself full seemed to help with Kaitlyn being too tasty to ignore. Didn’t wanna go hunting every night, but… once or twice a week was probably reasonable. Enough to stay on top of things, but not enough that I’d get too hooked on the feeding itself. I was also feeling… I don’t know, like maybe I was getting sort of a contact high from whatever the creep had been on. Enough to relax me. So that was something else that I’d have to figure out, but right then was fine. Everything was fine.
I got back to our place and let myself in, being sure to stay as quiet as I could. Kaitlyn didn’t wake up. I sort of stood and looked at her for a bit. Yeah, she still looked tasty, but… more like how dessert can look tasty even if you’re too full of dinner to eat any more. I could deal with that. And yeah, some of it probably was whatever was in that creep’s blood, because even curling up in my closet didn’t seem like so bad of a thing. Even Kaitlyn starting to snore again a bit before dawn wasn’t a big deal, because I felt good. I sat and watched cat videos on my phone until the sun came up and I passed out. Aside from the hunting thing, it actually felt… sort of normal. First time in a while I felt like things might actually be sort of okay. Weird, but okay.
