Misty Rose: Nature
Chapter 7
Either vampires don’t get hangovers, or I was dead right through it, because I woke up feeling fine. Happy, and good, and full. Not warm anymore, but… still, not bad. Kaitlyn wasn’t home, but that was fine. Just because I had to hide didn’t mean she did too, and she still had a job. Which reminded me. I was going to have to do something about the shitty job I wasn’t going to any more because it was the afternoon shift and sunlight was pretty much death now.
I’ve been avoiding talking about my job for a reason. Both of our jobs, really, because Kaitlyn and I worked the same shift at the same place back then. We were… waitresses. At a… themed restaurant that… featured adult entertainment in the evenings. Or to be honest, we served crappy food and dodged ass pinches from horny middle-aged men while wearing slutty uniforms at a Hooters ripoff that had strippers performing from ten at night until two in the morning. Our boss was Mr. Lewis, who was pretty much the stereotypical dirty old man, but he did at least respect when one of “his” girls was only interested in being wait staff. I’d talked with some of the dancers, who were mostly decent girls, and he apparently also wasn’t as bad as he could have been to them, either. A certain amount of leering, but he kept his hands to himself and didn’t try to get into the changing rooms. He also employed a couple of bouncers who were nice enough guys, except when they had to remove a customer for being an asshole. Then they could get mean. So it wasn’t as nasty of a place as you sometimes hear about, but… he didn’t pay well, as in he would make sure the staff only got thirty hours a week, so even if we covered the shift of another girl he wouldn’t have to pay overtime, or even pay full time employees. And the fact was it was still a Hooters ripoff. And I just didn’t like Mr. Lewis, because he grew on you like a fungus or a rash. After a while, I just felt like I wanted to scrub him off my skin after a shift, even if he hadn’t actually come out of his office upstairs. Think he lived up there too. Wasn’t sure, none of the girls ever went up there, and he didn’t try to get them upstairs.
Yeah, yeah. Not a wholesome place to work. But there weren’t a lot of options for a couple of college dropout party girls, and we had to make money somehow. Only now I wasn’t because there wasn’t any way I could get there without dying in horrible agony on account of the sun. And I hadn’t called in and given an excuse, so… I was probably fired. Which wasn’t good because, like I said, I still needed money. Rent doesn’t pay itself. Our landlady was pretty tolerant, she knew we were just a couple of girls struggling so she didn’t make a fuss when rent was a little late for the month, but we still had to actually pay it if we wanted to keep our tiny little apartment. So one way or another, I was going have to get a real job, because robbing muggers wasn’t going to be a reliable source of cash. Only there aren’t a lot of job applications with “vampire” as an option to explain why you only wanted to work when the sun would be down, even in the winter. I didn’t like the job, but I figured I should at least talk to Mr. Lewis, see if the night shift was an option. Meant I’d be starting my shift just as Kaitlyn was ending hers, and it’d only be part time, but it’d be better than nothing.
Only problem was that I was going to actually have to call Mr. Lewis and make up some kind of story about why I hadn’t been coming in so he wouldn’t just fire me. If he hadn’t already. And that meant I’d have to actually come up with some kind of story, and I’m a shitty liar. So that’s why I ended up just staring at my phone for half an hour, trying to psyche myself up to call. You know… got to do this. Got to make this call. Still got to make rent. Vampire chick still needs rent money. That kind of stuff, over and over, just trying to push myself to do it. Eventually, I just closed my eyes and made the call.
Of course he didn’t pick up right away. It was past time for the… special entertainment to have started, so I wasn’t surprised. “C’mon you old pervert, answer the phone already,” I muttered.
Three rings, four rings, five rings, and finally someone picked it up. I could hear the music immediately, and a woman’s voice answered. “Triple X Factor Gentleman’s Cabaret. How can I help you?” Yeah, it’s actually named that. Mr. Lewis thought it’d generate more business than Beaver Junction, which was its old name. Even had the interior remodeled into a neon soaked takeoff on some kind of futuristic nightclub or whatever. Looked dated now because he’d remodeled sometime in the nineties, but he still got enough customers to keep the place open. The voice on the phone was Melissa, who was the wait staff manager and more or less ran the place. She was also the unofficial mom, and helped a lot of the girls deal with shitty things in their lives. Like working at Triple X Factor.
“Mel, hi, it’s Misty,” I said.
“What?” The music was really loud.
“IT’S MISTY!” I yelled into my phone.
“Oh, hey girl. How’s it been?”
“Well, a lotta stuff has happened…”
“What?”
“LOTTA STUFF!”
“Hold on, I’ll pick up somewhere quieter.” Mel put me on hold. The hold music was an entirely different strip club routine song. I actually like EDM, so I didn’t mind, but it could get old.
“Still there?” Mel’s voice came back on the line. I could still hear the music, but more muted. I figured she was in the kitchen. Mr. Lewis closed down the club every night at nine, and when it opened again, they didn’t serve food, so the kitchen was empty. Still had waitresses, though, but their jobs were more about taking drink orders and jiggling. Which wasn’t all that different from the afternoon shift, it was just more obvious.
“Yeah, I’m still here,” I said.
“You want to talk to Kaitlyn? I think she just left.”
“Um… actually no,” I said. “Needed to talk to Mr. Lewis.”
“Uh huh,” Mel said. “Kaitlyn told us your mom is sick.” She paused for a moment. “That true?”
I was kinda hoping to avoid this sort of conversation, actually. I didn’t wanna lie to Mel, she was a good manager and nice and helpful and everything. But it wasn’t like I could tell her I wouldn’t be coming in for my shift anymore because I got turned into a vampire, you know? So I sort of… settled for some of the truth, and just leave the rest out if I could. “No. It’s somethin’ else.”
“Uh huh.” Mel didn’t really judge people. “Boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Drugs?”
“No, nothin’ like that.”
“You get religion?” Don’t laugh, it happens.
“Nope.”
“Anything you want to talk about?”
And that was the problem. Mel was good to talk to. She wasn’t a professional, but she knew how to listen, and a lotta the time she’d suggest things that’d help. Enough, anyway. I kind of felt like maybe I’d be able to talk to her about what’d happened to me, but… I couldn’t know for sure, and it was probably best to keep the number of times I broke that rule to a minimum. Being a vampire also means you have to keep your distance. “I prob’ly should talk to someone, but… no. Thanks, though.”
“Uh huh,” Mel said. Didn’t sound convinced, so I went on.
“Thing is, I can’t work my shift anymore,” I said. “And… I gotta talk to Mr. Lewis about the night shift. See if there’s any slots open. Still need a paycheck, y’know?”
“Afternoon shift’s gonna miss you,” Mel said. “But you do what you gotta do, girl.”
“Thanks,” I said. There was another pause. I could almost feel Mel trying to decide if she was going to push the issue any. Guess she decided not to.
“I’ll put you through to Mr. Lewis,” Mel said. “But… two, three years before you started, there was another girl, did the same thing. Had to work nights. No clue what her deal was, but she got weaker and sicker little by little. After a month, she just… stopped showing up. No call, no quit. Went round to her place a week later, and it was like someone had trashed it, and no one had lived there for a couple weeks. Never heard from her again.” Neither of us said anything for a couple moments, then Mel went on. “Whatever’s happening with you, girl, you be careful. Y’hear me?”
“I’ll be careful,” I said. “Thanks, Mel.”
“You need to talk,” she said. “You come find me.”
“I will.”
There was another pause, then Mel said, “I’ll put you through to Mr. Lewis. Take care.”
“I will, thanks.” Mel put me on hold, so more strip club music. I felt like shit. I didn’t lie to Mel, but I didn’t tell her the truth either. But it honestly felt like I’d lied. But what was I supposed to do? Either way, I was going to have to be careful if I went back to work there. Mel wasn’t nosy, but she wasn’t stupid, either, and I’m a shitty liar. She’d figure out something major was up, and the last thing I needed was her trying to help me fix being a vampire. The phone went off hold before I could really start to brood on all that, though, which was probably best.
“Misty! Hey! What can I do for you, kid?” Mr. Lewis always reminded me of a really shady used car dealer. Or like he’d picked a stereotype of a hustler as his image years ago and stuck with it.
“Hi, um…” I said. “I needed to talk to you about… schedulin’.”
“Yeah, I heard about your mother. I’m sorry, kid. How’s she doing?”
“Better. She’s better.” It wasn’t convincing, but Mr. Lewis never sounded sincere, so maybe he wouldn’t notice how badly I was lying. Or ask what my Mom was sick from. “I’m not gonna be able to work my old shift anymore. Sorry.”
“Hey, don’t sweat it, kid. Shit happens.”
“Yeah. Um… but I still need to work. So… I was wonderin’ if… you had any slots open for the… evenin’ shift?” Not that I actually wanted to work there, but it was easier than finding a new job.
“Actually,” Mr. Lewis said. “You’re in luck. Spot opened up a couple weeks ago and we still haven’t been able to fill it.”
That sounded promising. “Really? Well, then…”
“Yep,” Mr. Lewis went on. “Our girl next door married the guy next door, and we still haven’t found anyone to replace her. But I think you’d do just perfect.”
“Um…” I didn’t respond right away because I didn’t get it right away. But then it hit me. He wanted me to be the next girl next door. “You… want me to… dance?”
“Yep,” Mr. Lewis said. “Blond, blue eyed, attractive but not too far out of a normal guy’s league, maybe a little shy and clumsy. You’d work just fine.”
“I, um…” I said. This wasn’t what I was thinking at all, and not just because I didn’t like that he thought of me as shy and clumsy but attractive enough to strip.
“You’d need to lose a few pounds first,” Mr. Lewis went on. “And you’d need to audition, of course. The other girls could teach you, but it helps to at least know your way around a pole.”
“Um, actually…” And he thought I was fat. The jerk.
“So whaddaya say, kid? Pay isn’t much, but if you work hard, you’ll make a lot in tips.”
“I was thinkin’, um…” Yeah, not at all what I was thinking. “Wait staff? Like my old job?”
“Ooh, no can do,” Mr. Lewis said. “Wait staff is full. Overfull. Might have to let someone go.”
“Um, I really wasn’t…”
“Tell ya what. I’ll let you think on it,” Mr. Lewis said. “And while you’re thinking on it, you can practice. Take a few classes, that sort of thing. Deal?”
I didn’t want to turn it down. I still needed a job. But I also didn’t want to strip. “I’ll… think about it,” I said. Mostly just to keep the option open in case I couldn’t find anything better. And I really wanted to find something better, but… like I said, vampire. Not good for job searching.
“You do that, kid,” Mr. Lewis said. “Hey, it’s been great talking to you. Take care now.” Then he hung up. That’s more or less how conversations with Mr. Lewis went… him talking at you, you trying to get a few words in, him basically making choices for you. Like becoming a stripper.
I didn’t have anything against the dancers, or against stripping. The sort of moral outrage you see about it usually comes from the people who can afford to not be strippers. They’ve got the luxury and the money to be offended. They usually aren’t anyone who’s had to live so close to being homeless and hungry that you’ve got to think about what you’re willing to do to survive. That sort of thing just doesn’t exist in their sheltered little lives in some quiet neighborhood in the middle of people just like them. They’ve never been urban poor, which is how I grew up, so they can afford to be outraged, to condemn and judge and basically be assholes. World looks different when your choices are to do something you don’t wanna do, starve, or be a criminal. Or a vampire.
As for the dancers themselves, I actually liked them. They were decent people, none of them were junkies… okay, yeah, drug problems sometimes happened. But that wasn’t the only reason they were working as dancers. Some of them actually liked the work. There were even a couple of girls who were actually doing the stripping through college thing for extra money. I know it’s not like that in other clubs, or even most clubs, but if it wasn’t for Mr. Lewis and the bad customers, it wouldn’t be so bad a place to work. Even the bouncers were decent people, and we all got along.
Except Angie. Angie was a nosy bitch.
Thing was, I didn’t think dancing was right for me. Other people, sure, but I wasn’t like that, and not in the judgey, stuck up asshole sense. More like… it just wasn’t something I was comfortable with for my own reasons. Some women don’t want to be truck drivers. Other women don’t want to be mothers. I didn’t want to be a stripper. It just wasn’t right for me. And it also felt like, I don’t know… something or someone was trying to force me into being a stripper. Not Mr. Lewis, he was obvious. More like… I don’t know, maybe like what religious people think of as God. Or maybe it wasn’t an actual being so much as… fate. Random chance. Whatever. I just felt like I was being forced into something, and I didn’t like it. Maybe it was the vampire thing, but the idea of being forced into something like this rubbed me in all the wrong ways. If I could find something else, I would.
Besides, isn’t a vampire stripper kind of cliché?
Of course, Kaitlyn came home right about then, so she got to hear me swearing at Mr. Lewis after he hung up. She just looked at me a moment, then went to put her stuff down. “Anything I need to know about?” she asked, heading towards the bathroom.
“Yes,” I said. “No. I dunno. Mr. Lewis.”
“Oh.” I could hear water running, so I guess she was washing off her makeup or something.
“I was… tryin’ to see if he had a night shift slot open,” I said. “He doesn’t.”
“Working with the dancers there?” Kaitlyn asked from the bathroom.
“Yeah. I know most of ’em already. Um… wait staff, of course.”
“Oh.” Kaitlyn not really saying anything was getting a little annoying.
“But like I said, he didn’t have any openings.”
Kaitlyn came out of the bathroom, now without any makeup. She walked over and sat on the end of her bed, looking at me with no expression. I looked at her, then looked down and sort of messed with my phone. I couldn’t tell what Kaitlyn was thinking about, and it was awkward.
“Um… I was askin’ ’cause of the rent,” I said. “I only had a week of PTO, and sick leave isn’t paid, so… I figured I should see about maybe still havin’ a job.”
Still nothing from Kaitlyn.
“Dunno what I’ll do,” I said. “I’ll figure somethin’ out.”
More silence. I was definitely uncomfortable now.
“You okay?” I asked.
“You only fidget like that when you aren’t telling me something,” she said. “What’s up?”
Well, fuck. Yay for me being a shitty liar, even lying by not saying anything. “Um… I talked to Mel,” I said. “She knows it’s not my Mom, and thinks somethin’s up, but I didn’t tell her ‘bout… you know. The vampire thing. Oh, and… um thanks for coverin’ my ass with the boss.”
Kaitlyn just shrugged. “What else?” she asked.
“Um…” I felt like I’d be blushing except the whole no blood in my face thing. I guess I sometimes forgot that Kaitlyn knew me as well as she did. Or that she wasn’t as spacey as me. Was kind of hard to remember that when she’d gone insane with glitter recently. But this was definitely inside the general range of things where she could read me like a book. So I wasn’t gonna get away with not telling her the rest. “Mr. Lewis said… um… that there was an openin’. As a dancer.”
“Oh,” Kaitlyn nodded, then shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me.”
“Yeah, but it does bother me,” I said. “It’s… not my thing, y’know? I mean, I’m not judgin’ the girls that do that. But it’s just not somethin’ I really wanna do.”
Kaitlyn shrugged again. Neither of us said anything for a while. I let it go on for as long as I could stand. “So… you got anythin’ t’say about it? You been really quiet.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Isn’t a vampire stripper kinda cliché?”
Oh, thank god. Maybe I was just being paranoid, but something about the whole idea… I don’t know, made me think Kaitlyn would grab it and start running. She did that sometimes, got really into something and just… took it as far as she could. Party outfits, for example. She had a few that should really be called costumes and not just party clothes. I mean, we kind of both did, it’s part of the scene, but… furry leg warmers? Yeah, she got into that. Twintails with a bunch of crap braided into them? Did that too. All of that, and she’d drag me along with her. Probably the worst was when she saw some chick online topless with glittery heart-shaped pasties. Tried to tell her it was probably more like the girl was a stripper or something but Kaitlyn was sure she was a raver like us. I got her to let go of that idea eventually, but she’d already bought everything for the outfits. As in, for both of us.
But I wasn’t going to get out of this one so easy because suddenly Kaitlyn said, “But you could make it work by totally owning it.” And I knew that was pretty much it. This was going to be one of those ideas for her, so it was going to stick around for a long time, and probably involve glitter. But if I’m going to be totally honest, if Kaitlyn was going to focus on the “stripper” part of “vampire stripper” I couldn’t really complain too much. It’d be embarrassing and she’d take it way too far, but… it still wasn’t her being focused on me being a vampire, you know? So yeah, thinking back, I could’ve probably done more to push back on that, but I felt like maybe I shouldn’t. At least at first. It wasn’t like I actually had to be a stripper anyway, I’d just have to… put up with Kaitlyn being focused on it.
Right then, though, I didn’t need to worry too much. Kaitlyn went on about me owning being a stripper for a while like that would help me be less embarrassed, then suddenly stopped because she remembered something. She went rooting around in her purse and came out with this little black cylinder thing with green text which she pointed at me. Pepper spray. I jumped back because I was thinking she was going to spray me to see if it worked.
“Jesus, Kaitlyn!” I said. “Don’t just point that shit at me!”
“Sorry,” she said. “But I got this to try and see if it works on vampires. That’s why I was so late, I hadta go pick it up. This kind isn’t available everywhere.”
I wasn’t so sure. “Vampires’re dead,” I said. “So why would pepper spray work?”
“I looked it up,” Kaitlyn said. “Pepper spray’s capsicum, right?”
“So?”
“Capsicum’s a…” Kaitlyn pulled out her phone and looked at it. “It’s an alkaline base.”
“Which means what?”
“Means it’s caustic. Like quicklime and stuff.”
“So?”
Kaitlyn rolled her eyes. “Quicklime’s what they dissolve bodies in. So it should still work.”
“Why do you know about dissolvin’ bodies?”
“I looked it up.”
“Not from your brother?”
“Nope.”
“Okay. So… you’re expectin’ to… test it. On me. Like, take a spray to the face with the stuff.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t like bein’ a lab animal.”
“Hey, stopping you was your idea. Gotta test it to see if it works.”
I sighed. “Fine. But… I’m gonna spray myself. Don’t need to do a full dose to see if it works.”
Kaitlyn shrugged and tossed the can at me. I dropped it, of course. I bent over to pick it up, but stopped. “Um… is it safe to just pick up like this?”
“It’s got a flip top,” Kaitlyn said. “Won’t fire unless it’s flipped open.”
“Oh,” I said, picking it up. I looked at the top, then flipped it open and held it up, pointing it at my face. I was already flinching away from it. Didn’t help that Kaitlyn was grinning at me. “Stop that.”
“What?” she said with a totally unbelievable innocent face.
“You’re enjoyin’ me pepper sprayin’ myself too much. This is serious.”
Kaitlyn nodded and put on a more serious expression.
“Anythin’ I need to know about this stuff?” I said, still sort of flinching away.
“Don’t think so,” Kaitlyn said. “It’s not the strongest stuff out there, ’cause that stuff isn’t legal for civilians in this state. But it’s up there. I don’t remember anything else important.”
I looked at her. She seemed serious enough, so I didn’t think she was lying. This still wasn’t easy, though. I knew it was supposed to hurt. Well, if it did what we wanted it to. And I’ve never been good at deliberately hurting myself. I used to carry the stuff in high school, but when it expired I just… never bothered replacing it. Didn’t seem like it was worth it, which kind of says something about how much I expected it to actually protect me, you know? Anyway, I’d never used it, and didn’t have it with me the time I ended up needing it later. I’d definitely never tried using it on myself. So it was really hard to push that button. And to keep my eyes open. Eventually I sort if… pulled down my lower eyelids with my other hand and looked up. Took a deep breath. Tensed my finger and pushed the button and…
Yeah, that hurt. A lot. Can’t really remember what all I said, but Kaitlyn said it involved a lot of the word “ow” and swearing. I mostly remember burning pain in my eyes and tripping over every fucking thing in the apartment getting to the bathroom and missing the doorway the first time so I bounced off the wall and lots and lots and lots of pain. So, yeah, pepper spray still worked. I mean, it fucking hurts when you’re cutting peppers or something and you rub your eyes, so I guess it made sense. I think it wore off faster for me than it does for humans, but that could of also been how I would have drowned myself washing out my eyes in the shower if I actually needed to breathe.
“You okay?” Kaitlyn asked from the other room. Not the first time, I think, but I was kind of distracted for a few minutes. Sounded like she was in the doorway.
“Don’t come in here!” I yelled. Not just because of the pain. The… animal or whatever felt sort of pissed off, too. But it… didn’t have a target because I’d sprayed myself? I don’t know. I could feel it wanting to hurt something but it couldn’t find anything and I wanted to keep it that way. After a few minutes with my eyes open under the shower, I could at least see again. Wasn’t fun, but I could see. Closed my eyes again because of the pain as I shut off the water and wrung out my clothes because I didn’t really have time to take them off before getting soaking wet. I’d also gone from swearing out loud to swearing under my breath, so I guess that was better, too.
When I came out of the bathroom toweling my hair, Kaitlyn looked at me and started laughing. Not just like giggling but full on laughing. I glared at her best I could, but that just made it worse. “The fuck you laughin’ at?” I demanded. Sometimes Kaitlyn could be really fucking annoying.
“You didn’t look in the mirror, did you?” she said, still grinning at me.
“Didn’t even have the lights on.”
“Might wanna go look. And no, I didn’t know about it. I swear.”
I glared at her some more, then went back into the bathroom and flipped on the light. My face in the mirror was bright fucking neon green, like I’d been spray painted.
“So… apparently this kind comes with green dye,” Kaitlyn said from the other room. “Says it’s for attacker identification. It’s… permanent dye.” She didn’t say anything for a moment, then went on, “I’m sorry. I didn’t see that when I bought the stuff.”
I sighed and looked at myself. Permanent green dye all over my face. Fuck my life.
