Misty Rose: Nature
Chapter 30
The first thing I saw the next sunset was Kaitlyn basically right up in my face with a look on hers that said she wanted all the details of my first night on the bar prowl. Lot like her wanting to know details of when I’d go out with guys, but somehow kind of disturbing because she knew what I was really doing and was still that interested. She hadn’t even changed out of her work clothes yet. I blinked at her a couple times before I said anything.
“Jesus, Kaitlyn,” I said. “Let me wake up a little first.”
Kaitlyn rolled her eyes, but sat back so I could get out of the closet. Yeah, I was going to have to put up that black plastic stuff I bought. Tonight, probably. I was tired of the closet. Not because I’d get all stiff sleeping in there, but more like I just didn’t want to do it any more if I didn’t have to. I made Kaitlyn wait, though. I’d gone to sleep with my mouth open, so it felt like I had a bunch of carpet dust in there, and vampires don’t really make saliva, so my mouth was dry and nasty tasting. So I went and brushed my teeth. Not something you’d think a vampire would have to do. But I was pretty sure that at least some of the old stories about vampires having terrible breath were because they drank blood and didn’t clean out their mouths. Blood smells bad when it starts rotting and people didn’t really brush their teeth back when all the legends got started.
Have to say, though, that Kaitlyn didn’t really care about why I was brushing my teeth instead of telling her how everything went. She pretty much followed me around the apartment looking impatient while I made her wait. Least until I got out the stuff I needed to finish off the windows. Then she sat down looking grumpy.
“Fine, don’t tell me,” Kaitlyn said.
“I’m gonna tell you,” I said. “I just wanna get this done too.”
Kaitlyn just made a frustrated noise.
“You could be useful and help,” I said, holding one of the plastic sheets up to the window.
“Fine. Whatcha need me to do?”
“Hold up the far corner. I only got two hands.”
Kaitlyn got up and helped me keep the sheet straight while I tacked down my corner with the staple gun. Then I got her corner and we switched to the other window.
“Okay,” I said as I stapled both top corners. “Thanks. Think I can get the rest myself.”
Our windows aren’t that big, so I could reach fine, and while I stapled the plastic to the wall, I told Kaitlyn about how my first try at feeding off a pickup artist went. She had about the same opinions of the douchebag as I did, and I should have probably expected it, but Kaitlyn thought I let Duke off too easy. When I got to the bit with the spy cameras, Kaitlyn got mad.
“Tell me you at least beat him up a little,” Kaitlyn said.
“I didn’t,” I said. “Didn’t really know what to do.”
“I’d have made sure he woke up in pain.”
“Uh huh,” I said, picking up some black duct tape I’d bought. “But… I figured I didn’t wanna have him tell all his asshole friends that I was violent or somethin’.”
“So?”
“So it’d make feedin’ off ’em harder,” I said, starting to tape down the edges of the plastic sheets. It wasn’t like they let any sunlight through, but I wasn’t going to risk it at all.
“Okay, you gotta point,” Kaitlyn said. “But still. I’dve messed him up somehow.”
“Well…” I said. “I think that’s gonna be handled. I texted Ferret about it, and he got pissed.”
“That’s different,” Kaitlyn grinned. “He tell you any details?”
“Not yet. But I bet he’s gonna soon.”
I finished taping down the plastic sheets while Kaitlyn and I talked about what we might have done if we could have gotten away with it. We’d both had to deal with at least a few of Duke’s sort of assholes, her more than me, and coming up with revenge fantasies was fun. We’d laid down on our beds to talk after I finished with the windows and Kaitlyn was talking about uploading pics of his undersized dick to the internet when she stopped and looked at me.
“Hey, how do you know how big his dick was, anyway?” she asked.
“’Cause I could tell,” I said. “Remember? I pulled his pants down to make it seem more like he’d actually had sex than he’d just came in his pants and passed out.”
“Did he?”
“Yup.”
“Why?”
“I have no clue,” I shrugged. “Seems to happen when I bite guys. Least, every time I checked.”
“That’s weird.”
“Maybe. Victoria said that humans actually enjoy bein’ fed on. Usually. Somethin’ about vampire bites makes ‘em… I dunno, get all worked up and they don’t really remember what happened. Which is prob’ly good ’cause otherwise they’d remember bein’ bitten.”
“Mmmhmm,” Kaitlyn said. “But did she say they’d actually climax?”
I thought back over that part of our conversation. “Not… that I remember. I mean, it’d make sense but… she didn’t say anythin’ specific about it. Or that they’d pass out.”
“Or maybe it’s just you,” Kaitlyn grinned at me. “Sounds like the Kiss of the Little Death.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “No clue what you’re talkin’ about.”
“Oh, it’s not a bad thing.”
“Sure it isn’t,” I said. “But it’s you sayin’ it.”
Kaitlyn gave me one of her innocent faces, which I only see when she’s messing with me. I narrowed me eyes at her, then picked up my phone and did an internet search. Found a buncha of stuff about some movie, but that didn’t seem right. Wasn’t until I started turning up stuff about what it meant in French that it made sense. I looked up at Kaitlyn, who was still grinning at me.
“Pervert,” I said, glaring at her.
“What?” Kaitlyn said.
“I do not have the Kiss of the Orgasm,” I said.
“You sure? We could test it.”
“How?”
“Bite me.”
I won’t lie, I sort of felt my fangs grow a little when I thought about that, which basically meant it was a bad idea. “Not happenin’,” I said. Not that I thought she’d actually drop the subject. It’s Kaitlyn.
“C’mon,” Kaitlyn said.
“No.”
“It’s for science.”
“No it isn’t,” I said. “You just wanna see if I’m… some kinda orgasm machine.”
“A what?”
“Y’know. Somethin’ you can just… have get you off whenever you want.”
“I’d never think of you as an orgasm machine,” Kaitlyn said, looking offended.
“Good.”
“You don’t have a vibrate function.”
“Ugh,” I said and rolled over on my stomach and buried my face in my pillow. Then I picked it up and put my head underneath, holding the ends to my ears. Not that it worked.
“You don’t breathe, y’know,” Kaitlyn said.
I tried to ignore her. But Kaitlyn wasn’t going to give up, I guess, because she poked me a couple times in the side, right where I used to be ticklish. Only now it didn’t do anything so she waited for a moment and smacked me right on the ass. Which startled the hell out of me. Made me jump, or well, more like bounce up off my bed. Then I tried to get away from her, which just ended up making me fall off the side of my bed onto the floor. I laid there for a second, trying to figure out what was going on while Kaitlyn giggled at me. I sat up and glared at her, which only made her giggle more.
But I wasn’t really mad, which was why I got up and yelled ”Tickle Monster!” and jumped back onto the bed where I could grab Kaitlyn and start tickling the hell out of her. Like I said, both of our mothers would do that sort of thing to us when we were kids, so sometimes me and Kaitlyn would get into tickle fights. Only now I wasn’t ticklish, so she couldn’t really fight back. So I tickled the hell out of her for a little while and she giggled and squirmed and tried to get away. Then Ferret cleared his throat from over by the door, which made both me and Kaitlyn jump and yell and wind up tangled up in a pile on the other side of Kaitlyn’s bed. Kaitlyn recovered first and sat up.
“What the fuck, Ferret?!” she yelled, glaring at him. Which was probably good because it covered for how right then, I was way too interested in how Kaitlyn was breathing hard and was warm and her heart was beating really fast. I actually felt my fangs starting to grow just a little again, and I think maybe I squeezed her a little because she curled her fingers in my hair. But I wasn’t totally sure she’d actually noticed because she seemed more focused on yelling at Ferret.
“Sorry,” Ferret said. “Am I interrupting?”
“Knock first,” Kaitlyn said, sounding less angry.
I wasn’t saying anything because… well, at this point, I had my face against Kaitlyn’s stomach. She hadn’t changed out of her work clothes, and Mr. Lewis’ club was a Hooters knockoff, so that meant boyshorts and a crop top. So the side of my face was right against Kaitlyn’s skin, and I could feel how warm she was. I wasn’t even thirsty because of having gone hunting last night, and I still couldn’t quite manage to pull away from her. Somehow I could even feel her pulse.
Neither of them said anything for a moment, then Ferret said, “You okay, Misty?” I felt Kaitlyn tense up right then, and I guess that was enough for me to finally get my brain working again. I pulled back my face, then sat up quickly. Kaitlyn and Ferret were looking at me, and the hand Kaitlyn had in my hair had fallen to rest on my thigh. I looked at Ferret, then at Kaitlyn, then at Kaitlyn’s hand, then scrambled to my feet. “Um… ‘scuse me a sec,” I said, and ran for the bathroom.
Once I was in the bathroom, I pulled off my clothes and got in the shower. Cold shower. Kind of cliché I know, but I needed it. This wasn’t like human horniness, though… I wanted to drink Kaitlyn. That was pretty fucking clear. But some of the same stuff worked, like the cold water. Or maybe it was me just… forcing the feeling down. Either way, I calmed down pretty quick once the cold water hit me. Enough that I could think back over everything and… it seemed like my vampire side woke up when my face was against Kaitlyn’s stomach. I’d probably have to think about it more, but that was good because it showed some kind of boundary, you know? And I didn’t want to give up the Tickle Monster because it was one of the few ways I could get Kaitlyn back for teasing me. And it was fun.
Didn’t stay in the shower long, though. The water was pretty cold. I mean, no hot water, and it was night in early October, which could get seriously cold this far north. And, honestly, I just didn’t like being cold. Living humans didn’t really think about it unless they got sick or something but vampires are usually the same temperature as whatever’s around them, and that still felt cold to me. So I was almost always cold, except for a little while after feeding. So after a few minutes, I dried off, put my clothes back on, and went back out into the other room. First thing I did was put on my robe.
I guess Kaitlyn and Ferret had gotten over Kaitlyn being mad, because they were talking about something when I went back out. Kaitlyn was sitting on her bed, and Ferret was sitting on one of our stools, and they both looked at me as I came out of the bathroom. I was… feeling kind of embarrassed, really, because I was pretty sure they could tell why I’d run away. They both gave me an “Are you okay?” kind of look, which helped me feel better.
“I’m alright now,” I said once I’d gotten my robe on. They both smiled at me, but didn’t say anything about it, which was also good. Sometimes talking about something doesn’t help. Instead I guess they were talking about Duke, and what Ferret had done to the douchebag. Which was fine by me. I sat down on the edge of Kaitlyn’s bed facing Ferret.
“So, I don’t think you hafta worry about that asshole,” Kaitlyn said. “What was his name?”
“Duke,” I said. “Or that’s what he told me.”
“His real name is Shaun,” Ferret said. “With a U. And he’s a real asshole.”
“I could tell that,” I said.
“You only saw part of it,” Kaitlyn said. “Ferret told me about the rest.”
I raised an eyebrow at Ferret. “Worse than recordin’ his… conquests?”
“Oh, yes,” Ferret nodded. “Try recording them and uploading them to a web site.”
“Jesus fuck,” I said. “Glad I found that cam.”
“That one, yeah,” Ferret said. “There were others. Two more in the main room and three in the bedroom. All expensive tech with high resolution.”
“Really?” I said. “He didn’t seem like a tech guy.”
Ferret grinned at me. “He isn’t. It was all off the shelf stuff. Plug and play.”
“And then what?” I asked. “He’d post ’em somewhere? Jeez.”
“Yeah,” Kaitlyn said. “But Ferret got him back for you.”
“Oh, really? I said, lookin’ at Ferret. “How?”
“Well…” Ferret said, grinnin’. “I did a couple things. Wasn’t sure how long I had before he woke up. So I went with what came to mind right away.”
“Wait, he was still out when you got there?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Ferret said. “What’d you do to him?”
“Um…” I started, but Kaitlyn interrupted me.
“She has the Kiss of the Little Death,” she said, grinning at me.
“Shut up, Kaitlyn,” I said. “I do not.”
Ferret looked at Kaitlyn. “By little death, I assume you mean the French meaning?”
“Yep,” Kaitlyn said, grinning at Ferret now. I rolled my eyes.
“Oh,” Ferret said, then cleared his throat. “I see. Well, whatever it was, he was still out.”
“No stamina,” Kaitlyn nodded.
“Anyway…” Ferret said. He seemed kind of eager to move on. “First thing was his cameras.”
“Did you steal ‘em?” I asked. I also wanted to move on from Kaitlyn’s sex jokes.
“Nope,” Ferret grinned at me. “Worse. I went through and shorted out every single one of his spy cams. Even the ones he hadn’t set up anywhere. I also replaced all his SD cards with ones I’d shorted out inside where it isn’t visible.”
“How is that worse?” I didn’t get it.
“Those things are expensive,” Kaitlyn said. “And he won’t know until he tries to use them. SD cards aren’t expensive, but same thing, he won’t know they’re bad until he tries. ”
“Pretty much,” Ferret said. “He’s going to have to replace all of them, so he’s looking at a couple thousand dollars to pay for all of them again. Assuming the prices haven’t gone up.”
I made a face. “Okay,” I said. “But spy cams aren’t all that hard to get.”
“True,” Ferret said. “But ones that don’t look like home security cameras are more expensive and usually have to be ordered from specific companies. So it’s inconvenient at least.”
“Well, okay,” I said. I wasn’t convinced that was enough payback. It was also kind of weird. “Um… why d’you have damaged SD cards?”
“More or less this exact reason,” Ferret grinned at me. “Or for if I need to take a working SD card and need to replace it so they don’t know anyone took it. If it’s damaged, they’ll usually waste time trying to recover their data before looking for a thief.”
“Okay, that’s sneaky,” I said. I was getting the feeling that Ferret might sound like a charming computer nerd, but he was also a pretty good spy himself. Or could act like one, anyway.
“By the way, how’d you even know what spy cams are?” Ferret asked me.
“There’s a YouTuber Kaitlyn and I watch sometimes that did a thing about ‘em,” I said. “You remember, the girl that made the LCD shutter top I refused to let you make for me?”
“Oh, her,” Kaitlyn said, nodding.
“You make tech clothes?” Ferret asked Kaitlyn.
“Wants to,” I said. “But we don’t have the money for most of it, and I’m afraid Kaitlyn’s gonna burn down our apartment.”
“That wasn’t my fault,” Kaitlyn glared at me.
“Yeah it was,” I said. Ferret was looking at us like he had no idea what was going on, so I explained. “Last year Kaitlyn bought this… hangin’ flame light decoration thing for Halloween, only she didn’t like how it looked, so she swapped the bulbs for somethin’ brighter and they got too hot and fried somethin’ inside. Took like an hour to get the burnt plastic smell out of the place and the thing stopped workin’ completely.”
“Yeah, and ever since, she’s been afraid I’m gonna set her on fire,” Kaitlyn pouted at me.
“Decorations is one thing,” I said. “But you wanna put lights on my clothes.”
“LEDs, dumbass,” Kaitlyn said. “They don’t get hot.”
“Whatever. You still haven’t done my shoes.”
“I can’t find the right kinda lights!”
Ferret looked confused again.
“I blew like fifty bucks on a pair of clear Lucite heels a while ago,” I said. “Hollow, six inch heels and platforms and everythin’ ’cause Kaitlyn was gonna put lights in ‘em.”
“You have clear Lucite heels?” Ferret asked me.
I rolled my eyes. “Yes,” I said. “Girls other than strippers have ’em, too.”
“She doesn’t wear them,” Kaitlyn told Ferret.
“You like ’em so much, you wear ‘em,” I said.
“Your feet are bigger than mine,” Kaitlyn said. “You have man feet.”
“I do not!” I said. “They’re just a little bigger than average for women my size.”
“She has man feet,” Kaitlyn told Ferret.
“Ugh,” I said. “Can we get back on topic, please?”
Ferret got this look on his face like he had something to add, but I glared at him and I guess decided to get back on the subject of what he did to Duke… er… Shaun. “Right, well… after I snooped around finding all his cameras and breaking them, I took a look at his computer,” Ferret said. “I thought maybe I’d have to just short it out because he had biometric security, but…”
“Bio what?” Kaitlyn asked, and I was glad she did because it meant I didn’t have to.
“Thumbprint scanner,” Ferret said. “It’s an extra layer of security. They’re pretty new. I thought it might mean he actually knew some amount of cybersecurity, and I didn’t have time to brute force my way through his passwords, but it turned out he didn’t have any.”
“Wait, what?” I said. “But he had the bio thing.”
“Mmmhmm,” Ferret nodded. “But that was his only security, and hey, he was passed out in the next room. So I picked him up, unlocked his computer with his thumbprint, and put him back. I thought I’d just install a rootkit on his machine, but I also did something much worse.”
“Rootkit?” Kaitlyn asked.
“It’s…” Ferret thought for a moment. “How much do you know about cybersecurity?”
Kaitlyn and I looked at each other. “Viruses are bad?” I said.
“We’d use the computers at the college if we needed to write a paper,” Kaitlyn said. “Otherwise we use our phones for internet stuff.”
“So not a lot,” Ferret said. “Okay. A rootkit is a piece of software that runs as a computer is booting up. They can do a lot of things, and can be hard to stop because they run before most kinds of antivirus software even starts. The one I like lets me control a computer from somewhere else as long as it’s online. I put that on his machine, but I also found out that he’d done something amazingly stupid with his browser. Get this: he actually had his logins and passwords saved for all of his sites.”
Kaitlyn and I just looked at him, so I’m thinking he thought we’d know what he meant. But both of us did all of our online stuff through our phones. After a moment, Ferret explained.
“That means I could get his activity and his login information from his browser,” Ferret said. “It’s like having your phone unlocked. Anyone could use it to do whatever they wanted.”
I think I probably got a guilty look on my face because Ferret grinned at me. I had stuff like that saved on my phone, and my security or whatever was a PIN and not letting anyone else touch my phone. Which was sounding like it was a bad idea, least if Ferret wanted to get into it. “Okay,” I said. “So… you messed up his accounts or somethin’?”
Ferret shook his head. “Didn’t have time,” he said. “So I put on my rootkit and copied all of his login information. Then I left.”
Kaitlyn looked disappointed, and I got to say I sort of felt the same. “That’s all?” she asked.
“Not quite,” Ferret grinned at us. “When I got home, I put Shaun’s information on a couple of boards I belong to. And what he was doing to the women he seduced.”
“Okay…” I said.
“Let’s just say the people on these boards are also computer nerds,” Ferret said. “And they really don’t like people doing certain things. Especially to friends… and I told them a good friend of mine who’s like us almost got caught feeding and put online by this guy.”
I still didn’t quite get it, but Kaitlyn nodded. “They’re… ethical hackers?” she said. “I’ve heard of people like that. They go after nasty people online.”
“Well, they’re all vampires,” Ferret shrugged. “So their ethics are debatable. But they don’t like people who take advantage of friends, and they really don’t like the idea of humans knowing about vampires. Not just because of the rules It’d make their lives inconvenient.”
“But I don’t know any of ‘em,” I said.
“No, but you’re my friend,” Ferret smiled at me. I smiled back.
“Okay, so… what’re they gonna do?” Kaitlyn asked.
“Oh, lots of things,” Ferret shrugged. “I just asked them to have fun with it. I can’t be totally sure what they’ll do but… one guy they went after got raided by the FBI because someone used his bank account to order extremely illegal things on the dark web. Cleaned out the account, too. Another guy seemed to start posting extremely racist and sexist things on his Facebook, which were very believable because he’d really been posting them under a false name on white supremacist sites.”
“Damn,” I said. But Shaun deserved it.
“They’ll come up with lots of ways to hurt the douchebag,” Ferret said. “Might be best not to ask too many questions, though. These people are more or less ethical, but they are not nice.”
We both grinned at Ferret. That actually sounded pretty good. Sometimes when you don’t got money or connections, you got to get back at people who hurt you by other means. Can’t say I expected Shaun to learn his lesson because people like that are really good at finding reasons it’s not their fault, but at least I could be sure he’d be too busy dealing with whatever Ferret’s friends came up with to hurt anyone else. If Shaun didn’t go to prison, anyway. Which would be fine by me.
Of course, Kaitlyn had to take the whole thing a step further. “Hey, I had an idea,” she said, grinning at me. “Why don’t we use Misty to get close to more people like that?”
“Kaitlyn, no,” I said. “We talked about this.”
“Aww, c’mon,” Kaitlyn said.
“I’m not a vigilante,” I told her. “I do what I do ’cause it’s not as bad as feedin’ off normal people. Not ’cause I’m lookin’ to be a hero. Last thing I need is an excuse to… to…” I wasn’t quite sure how to explain this to her. “To go vampire on people. Even bad people.”
Ferret had been watching me. Then he nodded and turned to Kaitlyn. “Actually…” he said. “It’s called a honeypot, and con artists use it. And it’s not such a good idea in this case.”
“Why?” Kaitlyn said.
“Usually it takes a while for the mole — that’d be Misty in this case — to get close enough to the mark to get any kind of useful information,” Ferret told Kaitlyn. “And that’s a problem for vampires because it usually means having to be around the mark during the daytime. Besides,” Ferret grinned. “I can usually get what I need without sending anyone else into danger.”
From there, the conversation wandered into Kaitlyn asking Ferret how he got into places, and Ferret not really answering her questions. I honestly wasn’t paying much attention because he wasn’t explaining how the hell he kept letting himself into our apartment. After a while, Kaitlyn started having trouble staying awake. She looked kind of like those videos of kittens falling over.
“Okay, you,” I said. “Bedtime.”
Kaitlyn pouted at me. “Ferret’s still here.”
“Actually, I was going to be heading out soon myself,” Ferret said, then looked at me. “Feel like going for a walk? I could use the company.”
“Not going to ask me to do anythin’ illegal, are you?” I asked Ferret.
“Not unless you want to,” Ferret grinned at me.
“Mmmkay,” I said. “S’pose that’ll hafta do. Let me get some real clothes on.” I got up and put on my usual street clothes and some shoes. Then I grabbed my phone and my keys.
“You kids play nice,” Kaitlyn said, yawning.
“We will,” I told her. “Oh, hey… do me a favor?”
“Depends on what it is,” Kaitlyn said.
“If you’re awake, mind checkin’ how much light gets in around noon?” I said, pointing at the covered windows. “Hard to tell how good it is at night, y’know?”
“Mmmkay, I will,” Kaitlyn said.
“Alright. Sleep well,” I said, and Ferret and I walked out the door. I locked everything behind me, and we set off down the street. Didn’t say anything right away. Ferret didn’t seem to mind.
“Thanks for distractin’ Kaitlyn back there,” I said after a block or so.
“No problem,” Ferret said. “She do that a lot?”
“The vigilante thing? Nah, mostly when stuff like this comes up. Which I try to avoid.”
“Not everyone needs to be a hero, you know. It’s fine to just be a decent person.”
I shook my head. “Not like that,” I said. “It’s… well, we got these rules, y’know? And vigilantes get attention, and I’d prob’ly fuck up and sword guy would hafta clean up a buncha mistakes, which would prob’ly mean people die, and… well, I’d be responsible. And I don’t want that.”
“I understand,” Ferret said. We walked on for a little while without saying anything, but it kind of seemed like Ferret had something on his mind.
“Okay,” I said eventually. “Spill it. Whatever you’re wantin’ to say.”
“If you insist,” Ferret said. “You and Kaitlyn. You’re…?”
“You too?” I rolled my eyes. “We get that a lot, and we’re friends. Just friends. I wasn’t her type before, and now…” I just gestured at myself. “Vampire. Not good for that sorta thing.”
“I’m not judging,” Ferret said. “Vampires have different rules for relationships, but we can still have them. It just seemed like there was… chemistry there. That’s all.”
I sighed. “No, it’s my Savage side,” I said. “It… gets really protective. And it… um… wants her.” I was actually kind of surprised I could say it so easily. But it was Ferret I was talking to, so I figured he could get it even if I didn’t go into a lot of detail, you know? And it seemed like he did, because for the rest of our walk, we just talked about random stuff, until we got back to my place.
“Don’t forget the party’s tomorrow,” Ferret said.
“I haven’t,” I grinned at him. “Kaitlyn wouldn’t let me.”
“I bet she wouldn’t.”
“You gonna be cool for tomorrow?”
“Yep. Not the first time I’ve done this, so no worries.”
“Alright, then. G’night,” I said, givin’ him a hug. “See you tomorrow night.”
“Yep, nine o’clock,” Ferret said, hugging me back. He was our ride there.
Ferret headed off down the street, and I let myself back into the apartment. Kaitlyn was asleep, which was good because she needed it. She’d been staying up real late again a lot. I messed around on my phone for a while until dawn rolled around, then went to sleep.
Next thing I knew, it was daytime. Not sure exactly when because I could tell sunrise and sunset but had to look at a clock otherwise. Kaitlyn was sort of kneeling over me in the closet, looking down.
“Oh, so that works,” she said and sat back.
So, I got to say it, waking up during the day after I went to sleep sucks. It’s a hell of a lot easier to just stay awake. Waking up again before sunset is like… well, it felt like trying to wake up when I’d been dancing all night and was coming down from something like amphetamines. I was fucking exhausted, and my brain didn’t want to work, and all I wanted to do was sleep. But after a moment or two I remembered asking Kaitlyn to wake me up, so it was more or less my fault.
“Ugh… feel like shit,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
“You wanted to see if the sun was blocked,” Kaitlyn reminded me.
I tried to stick my head out of the closet, but that meant I wound up sort of leaning on Kaitlyn to do it. Then I fell asleep again. Only for like a second or two, I think, because Kaitlyn woke me up again.
“Hey, wake up,” she said. “You wanted to see this?”
“What?” I blinked at her. “Oh, right. Windows.”
Trying to get up didn’t work very well, so Kaitlyn more or less hauled me to my feet, complaining about how heavy I was. I leaned against her. She was warm, and… waking me up again, as it turned out. I yawned, more because I remembered doing it when I was alive than actually needing it and looked at the windows. And yeah, the black plastic and the duct tape were blocking all the sun like I thought. Kaitlyn sort of dragged me closer, and we wound up standing at the end of my bed while I tried to make my brain work. One thought did wander through, though.
“Uh… what’d you do… to wake me up?” I asked.
“Looks like your idea with the windows worked,” Kaitlyn said.
“Uh huh. But… what’d you do to wake me up?”
“Might be a problem if someone opens the door, but at least the windows are fine.”
“Just hafta… keep away from the door,” I said. “But what’d you do…?”
“Could switch the beds around,” Kaitlyn said. “Or just… you take mine and I take yours. Swap the sheets. It’s not like our mattresses are different.”
“Okay,” I said. “But what…”
“You want me to help you back into the closet again?”
“Um…” I tried to think about it. The whole point of painting the windows and putting up the plastic was so I could sleep in an actual bed again. Sleeping in the closet bugged me. Not a lot, but enough because I was obviously not being human that I wanted to go back to my bed. But even through my messed up daytime vampire brain, I could tell Kaitlyn was avoiding telling me what she did to wake me up. Which was also kinda bugging me. But laying down again seemed like a really good idea.
“Let’s just try that for today,” Kaitlyn said, moving me over to the foot of her bed. “I’m awake for the day, and I gotta run an errand, so I’ll just cover you up with all the blankets I can find.”
“Okay,” I said. “But…” Kaitlyn started helping me to lay down, but I honestly don’t remember actually laying down because I was probably dead again before I hit the pillow. And that was pretty much it for the day because I didn’t wake up again. Or get woken up. However it was Kaitlyn did it.
