Misty Rose: Nature
Chapter 13
Couple days later, I got really fucking bored. Kaitlyn had been bugging me about vampire superpowers again, but that night she was visiting her family on the other side of town, so I was on my own because she spent the night in her room. I kind of envied her that. My parents lived too far away to visit easy when I was alive. And now the vampire thing meant too much shit to deal with. Me and Mom mostly texted each other a few times a week. Nothing major, so it wasn’t hard to pretend like nothing much was happening and just not tell her about the vampire thing. Mom thought something was up, she just didn’t know what. Probably thought I had a new boyfriend or got fired or something. But anyway, Kaitlyn wasn’t home and I was bored. So I figured, what the hell? I’d try to see if I could do any of the stuff the scary lady said vampires learned how to do. Maybe I’d get lucky.
Well, I figured out right away that turning into a bat wasn’t going to happen. Had no clue how to even start trying that kind of thing. Same goes for controlling animals, not that there were any around except our landlady’s corgi, who’d started barking every time I walked by her door right about when I got turned, so that was out. I didn’t really feel like mind control was right, and besides, no one to try it on. Same went for mind reading. Didn’t leave much to try. I already knew I could make myself stronger, and I didn’t really want to test making myself tougher. Turning invisible seemed useful, but near as I could tell, that didn’t work either. Not that I didn’t try it. It just didn’t work.
Of course, I managed to fall on my head because I thought maybe hanging upside down might help me turn into a bat, but the bathroom door was the only thing I thought was strong enough to hang from, and I slipped trying to climb up. Not at all what you’d expect a vampire to do, right? But that’s me all over. I was actually kind of glad Kaitlyn wasn’t there to see it.
Anyway, after that little problem, I plopped down on my bed. That was when I saw the stupid box for that shitty Dracula thing Kaitlyn made me watch. Yeah, it was a joke movie, but I thought, what the hell? Most of what the vampire in that thing did were stuff I already tried. So I decided it’d be just my luck if my vampires superpowers were like the crap I saw in the movie. Gliding across the floor just didn’t work. Tried that for longer than I should have. Also couldn’t rise straight off my bed without bending my knees or anything. Maybe I actually needed a coffin for that. With, like, a hidden board that’d push me up. Mind control, no. Tried the bat thing. Only thing left was whatever the hell it was that let Dracula open the window from outside. It’s got a name, I just didn’t remember it. And for whatever reason, that seemed like exactly the sort of stupid vampire superpower I’d get. So I sat down on the floor with my back against the wall opposite our windows. They were old, and the only reason they weren’t rusted shut was because the latches were brass or something. Not the good kind, either. But it wasn’t like me and Kaitlyn ever opened them except when one of us had burned something and set off the fire alarm or like when Kaitlyn broke a perfume bottle and we had to air the place out before we both choked to death on cheap perfume fumes.
Only thing that’d happened after half an hour was I had a headache. Which is another stupid thing. What kind of vampire got headaches? I thought being dead meant all the… brain stuff that causes headaches didn’t happen anymore. But it did to me, and I got one. The more I concentrated on that stupid window latch, the worse it got. And it seemed like the window just got more locked. I finally gave up when I started going from headache to migraine. I’d gotten a few when I was alive, and my Mom would get them when she got stressed out, so I knew what the light seeming brighter and noises getting louder and the throbbing pain meant. So I stopped. It just figured, you know? Even some stupid movie vampire thing was more than I could do. I got up to go to the bathroom because being in a dark quiet room was the best thing for my migraines, and I didn’t think painkillers would work on a vampire.
I laid on the bathroom floor with the lights off and a towel over my head for like an hour. The migraine eventually calmed down. I could still see in the dark, too, but that didn’t help me feel any better. Didn’t think that even counted as a superpower, even if it meant I could see when there’s basically no light at all. Can’t say when I came out again that I felt much better, but at least my head didn’t hurt as much. I went back over to lay down on my bed, which was right under the window I was trying to unlatch, and I while I was climbing into bed looked at the stupid thing, probably because I was gonna swear at it or something.
Something looked wrong about the latch. It was one of those older ones on the top of the lower window made of some kind of cheap brass like I said, where you flipped it to one side and this half circle of metal slid into the upper window frame and held the window closed, and flipping it the other way rotated the half circle out and let you open the window. Only when I stood on my bed to get closer, it looked like someone had been trying to force the little handle thing too far in the closed direction, so the handle was all bent out of shape. I pulled on the bent latch, and after a bit of work it slid open like it was supposed to. The other direction from what I was thinking when I was trying to open it.
That’s weird, I thought. Hey, give me a break, I still had a headache. So I closed the latch again and stepped back, staring at it like I had before. Only now I thought about the stupid thing going the right way. Nothing happened at first, except my headache came back. Then the thing actually moved. Just a little, but I saw it. Then it moved a bit again. My headache also got a little worse, but… I was actually making the latch move just by thinking at it. Of course, it also meant that I’d given myself a migraine trying this because I didn’t remember which way the latch moved. Which was pretty typical. But I actually got it to work. I’d figured out a vampire superpower, and it was one the scary lady didn’t tell me about. I got to admit, I felt like that was pretty awesome, you know?
I also gave myself another migraine figuring out what I could actually do with it. Which wasn’t a lot. I could move one thing, had to be pretty light, and it moved slow and I couldn’t make it go exactly where I wanted without trying a couple times. But it was a vampire superpower. I celebrated by going to bed and flipping the light switch without getting up, which was something I’d wanted to be able to do since I was a kid and still thought there were monsters under my bed. I figured I’d abused my poor blond brain enough for one night, and a dark room was what I needed most.
Not that I went to sleep. For one, it kind of seems like vampires can’t really just take a nap. For another, going to sleep actually on my bed was asking to get fried because the curtains don’t block out all the sun and like I’ve already talked about, someone could just open them. So I laid there until the migraine calmed down again, then got up and went into the bathroom. The reason was that the scary lady told me that vampires could actually stay awake during the day, and that it was usually easier if they never went to sleep. She also said that I’d probably find it easier than a lot of vampires because of still being as human as I was. So I decided to try, and the bathroom was the only place in our apartment besides the closet that had no windows at all, and the bathroom didn’t have a door pointed at the windows, either. And I was getting sick of that closet. So, yeah, I sat in the bathroom and waited for the sun to rise. Took my phone with me, of course, because I get bored.
Yeah, it hit me while I waited that I wouldn’t actually be able to use the bathroom to hide from the sun in, because Kaitlyn still needed to use it for human reasons. Even if she was okay with that, I wasn’t into watching her pee and stuff, assuming I even made myself stay awake.
Well, it worked. I could feel when the sun came up, and yeah, I started getting… well, not tired really, more like my body wanted to be dead for the day, but I stayed awake. Kept the lights off, though, so I’d see if it was getting too bright so I could hide in the shower, which was the only place even more protected from the sun than where I was because of the shower door. Which still wasn’t very much, but I did a lot of stupid stuff back then, and a lot of it had to do with the sun.
I was kind of proud of myself for a while, too. At least until Kaitlyn got home. I heard the front door open and slam, and Kaitlyn running towards the bathroom like she really had to pee, and she’d thrown open the door and flipped on the light and saw me sitting on the toilet and screamed and fallen over before I could warn her or anything.
“Misty!” she yelled. “What the fuck?!”
“Um…” I said. “Surprise?”
Kaitlyn got up off the floor and glared at me. “Talk later,” she said. “Move!”
“Oh, right.” I got up and got out of her way. Kaitlyn slammed the door, and I stood as far away from the windows as I could. Wasn’t much light getting in, just like from the tops of the curtains, but it still actually made me really nervous to see, so I wanted to stay back, you know? Few minutes later, Kaitlyn came out of the bathroom. She was still glaring at me.
“Okay,” she said. “Explain. I thought you were dead during the day.”
“Um…” I nodded. “Usually. ‘Cept I can also stay awake. See?”
“I see that. But why?”
“Why can I stay awake or why am I doin’ it?”
“Both.”
“Why I can, I think it’s ’cause I’m still so human,” I said. “Why I’m doin’ it, it’s ’cause the scary lady said I prob’ly could, so I thought I’d try.”
“Okay, that’s nice,” Kaitlyn said.
“Yeah. But…” I looked over at the curtains. The room was still too full of sunlight for me to feel comfortable, and it wasn’t just me being scared. The vampire part of me was worried, too. “Still have the sunlight problem. So, um… if you don’t gotta use the bathroom…?”
Kaitlyn nodded, then went over to the closet to get the blanket I usually wrapped up in. She came back and sort of draped it around me, then pushed me into the bathroom. I went along and sat down on the closed toilet lid again. Felt better because I didn’t even have to see sunlight.
“Thanks,” I said, smiling at her. “Don’t like bein’ around sunlight if I can help it.”
Kaitlyn nodded. “I figured. So… why’re you experimenting?”
“Because,” I shrugged. “Got bored, and you’d been buggin’ me about it.”
“Okay. Any luck?”
I sighed. “Not really. Most of what I tried didn’t work.”
“Like what?”
So I gave Kaitlyn the basic list of things vampires could do, according to the scary lady. Most of it… well, it sort of seemed like a bunch of generic vampire stuff. Some of it was weird, but I got that vampires didn’t really match what pop culture said about them, even after centuries of myths. More like what humans knew wasn’t everything, which made sense.
“Any of that stuff work?” Kaitlyn asked. She seemed more interested, like… I don’t know, like she actually wanted me to be able to do vampire superpower stuff.
“Nope. I tried most of it. What I could. Nothin’.”
Kaitlyn frowned. “Any idea why?”
“Maybe I just suck,” I shrugged. “Maybe I’m not the right kinda vampire. Scary lady said that the different… kinds of vampires could do some stuff easier than other stuff.”
“What kinda vampire are you?” Kaitlyn asked.
“No idea,” I said. “Wasn’t told. But if I’d had superpowers, that mighta helped me find out.”
“So nothing worked?”
“Well…” I kind of felt like I’d disappointed her, so I guess telling her about moving things was something I could talk about. She’d probably want to see, and I wasn’t looking forward to the headache, but it’d at least be something. “I did figure out I could move stuff. Um… with my mind.”
Kaitlyn didn’t look convinced, so I looked around the bathroom. I guessed the toothbrush cup would work, it was light and not too far away. So I held out my hand towards the cup and concentrated. Imagined it moving from the sink to my hand. Only like three or four feet, but it’d still be something that’d obviously not be me just picking it up. And after a moment, it sort of jerked from the sink into my hand. Lost both toothbrushes along the way, and I got a little bit of a headache right away, but it still moved without me having to touch it.
“Huh,” Kaitlyn said, looking at the cup in my hand. “That’s something. What else can you do?”
“Not much,” I said. “Little things. Flip switches and latches. Can prob’ly do doorknobs. Easier to just… grab stuff like that or do little movements. And it always gives me a headache.”
Kaitlyn nodded, then reached out and hugged me. “It’s something.”
I hugged her back, then let go. “Yeah. But it’s also kinda weird.”
“Weird in general or weird for vampires?”
“Both. Y’see…” I thought for a sec. “This isn’t somethin’ the scary lady mentioned. So I kinda think it isn’t somethin’ most vampires can do, y’know?”
“Okay. So why can you?”
“I dunno,” I shook my head. “Maybe I’m just weird.”
“You are,” Kaitlyn said. “We already know that.”
“I mean…” I frowned. “The scary lady said somethin’ about… I guess sorta like families of vampires. Or like how vampires can… I dunno, change or evolve.”
“Mutants?” Kaitlyn grinned.
“Yeah, I’m a mutant vampire,” I gave Kaitlyn a flat look. “Anyway, sometimes the… mutants or whatever can do stuff that other vampires can’t. So maybe that’s it.”
“Could be,” Kaitlyn said. “She say anything else about them?”
“Nope. That was one of the things she said I didn’t hafta worry about right now.”
“Except you do.”
“Yeah. What kinda mutant I am, for one. I mean, is it like…” I frowned again. “I dunno, like I’m a mutant vampire that… sorta gets what it does from movies?”
“Like a bad movie mutant vampire?” Kaitlyn grinned.
Great. Last thing I needed was an excuse for Kaitlyn to force me to watch more bad movies. “God, I hope not,” I said. “But it’d be just my luck, right?”
“We gotta explore this,” Kaitlyn said. “Find out what else you can do.”
And that was pretty much it. The rest of the day, and the evening until Kaitlyn went to bed was her looking up terrible vampire movies and seeing what kind of powers the vampires had. She came up with a lot of stuff, like everything from sticking to walls to being able to fire really big guns without being knocked over. Some of it had to be a joke, like being able to wear skintight catsuits without chafing. I played along with as much as I could, just to be nice to her, but none of it seemed to do anythin’. Like the clinging to walls just made me fall on my ass because Kaitlyn insisted I had to actually jump up and not just see if my hand would stick to the wall. Some of it just wasn’t possible, like when she started finding anime vampire movies. I also got to admit I tried the mind control thing again, trying to get her to let go of the whole thing because I felt like she was going too far. Didn’t work.
She did that sometimes. Get ahold of an idea and just… run with it. I think she was trying to get me to feel less like being a vampire was just shitty with no good sides. So I didn’t really want to tell her to cut it out, you know? Plus I also knew she was doing it for herself. She didn’t talk about it much, but Kaitlyn’s brother Mike turning into a criminal had more of an impact on her family than she wanted to think about. On her parents, yeah, and on her grandma, who sounded like she was still kind of stuck in the old country. Or maybe that was her great grandma. Either way, having a son that was a crook, especially the kind Mike was, well, that was a stain on the whole family. Kaitlyn’s family wasn’t rich or anything, but they still had pride, and Mike was a big old chunk chopped out of it. So family stuff could get kind of awkward, like any time someone was telling a story that somehow involved Mike. Tact wasn’t something that Kaitlyn’s grandma had any time for, and reminding her of Mike tended to cause the old lady to wander off topic into one of a handful of ways she’d tell Kaitlyn’s father, her son-in-law, that he’d failed to raise her grandson right. Like Mike being born an asshole had anything to do with his father not being enough of a true son of the motherland or whatever the hell she thought.
Sounded like a pain in the ass, but I couldn’t really point fingers. My own Dad tried not to let his family into our own lives except when he didn’t have a choice. Most of his side was like Kaitlyn’s grandma, except American and Bible Belt Christian. Don’t really have to get into that except to say that they were pretty much all the stereotypes, and would get mad if anyone pointed that out. Anyway, Kaitlyn did eventually fall asleep, and I got a few hours to myself. Could have been worse, really.
Didn’t go for a walk this time. Didn’t want to run into more of the twisted people vampire culture seemed to create. But I decided to talk to Pops about all this when I got the chance. And if I got to be honest, not much else happened the rest of that month, so I’m going to skip ahead here.
