Misty Rose: Nature
Chapter 38
That isn’t where this part ends. There’s more stuff that happened in October that I need to talk about. I mean, obviously that’s the case because there’s more, but… you know what? Never mind, I’m just going to talk about what else happened and not about the journal.
Anyway, yeah, the rest of October.
Jeez, where to start? Um…
Fuck it, I’m just going to go in the order it happened. Some of it’s kind of confusing and makes more sense if I explain some of the stuff that happened later first, but…
Shit, okay, yeah, just go in order. Chrono… what? Should look that up…
Uh… chronological. Yeah, that. Knew there was a word for it.
Okay, starting over. Um…
The rest of October was kind of confusing but I’m going to talk about it in… chronological order because otherwise I’d have to jump around a lot to explain and it’d only get worse. More confusing. Some of it was just emotionally confusing and some of it… well, I’ll get to that. But it all started way earlier than it needed to because Kaitlyn woke me up around nine in the morning the next day. Sort of a problem for vampires, but yeah, I woke up with a foggy head like a hangover and Kaitlyn on her hands and knees next to me, looking down at my face.
“That still works. Good,” she said. I still didn’t know what she was doing to wake me up.
“Mph,” was about all I could manage. Hangover, right? But a lot worse. Vampires really aren’t supposed to be awake during the day, and being woken up was worse than just staying awake.
“Wake up, lazybones,” Kaitlyn said, getting up off my bed and going over to the door. “Wanted to show you something.”
“Um…” Still sort of brain fried, yeah, but I could feel it was daytime, and that was bad if she was going to open the door. Our apartment isn’t large, and opening the door would mean the sun might fall right onto my bed where I was still laying. I started crawling backwards on my butt away from the door, and of course wound up falling off Kaitlyn’s side of the bed. Two beds, since we’d pushed our mattresses together, but whatever. I fell off it. Wasn’t really thinking too well.
And maybe that was the problem. I remember Kaitlyn trying to explain her idea to me, how the day was really dark any everything. She told me about how it was really overcast, like with those really heavy storm clouds and whatever, but it wasn’t raining or anything. Just really dark. I could sort of tell that, I don’t know, this was important. Maybe because I’d complained about not being able to go outside during the day anymore. So maybe she wanted to see if I could with the weather how it was, you know? But I had daytime vampire brain going, so I couldn’t tell her I thought it was a bad idea. Not really well, anyway, and I guess… I don’t know, I decided to just go along with it so she’d let me sleep. I managed to get to my feet, but I was still feeling afraid. Sunlight isn’t just a hey, this is bad, stay away, like getting burned by a stove or something. It makes vampires freak out, unless they’re really tough, and that’s not me. I’m a wimp. I knew how I’d react because I’d already had it happen.
“Don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, taking a couple of steps back.
“Trust me, you’ll see,” Kaitlyn said and started to undo the locks on the door. I just watched her, not completely awake. But she wasn’t going to leave me alone unless I saw.
When Kaitlyn got the door open… well, it really wasn’t as bright as I was expecting. I couldn’t see the sky because of where I was standing and all the other buildings around our place, but it seemed like it was way darker than I remembered. Kaitlyn stood by the door watching me.
I took a couple of steps towards the door. Wasn’t easy… my vampire side was awake and trying to make me go the other way, hide in the bathroom or something. I could sort of see this spot on the floor where it was just slightly lighter than the rest of the apartment, but it didn’t seem as scary as I’d think sunlight would be. I managed to get up to the edge of the spot of sunlight, maybe a couple feet away, but still not actually in the light, even if it was really faint. Kaitlyn just watched me. I thought she wanted me to see if I could handle just that very faint sunlight, so I very slowly and carefully held out a hand towards the light and moved it forward.
Okay, so… I got to explain something here. My Dad liked to repair old trucks. Pickup trucks, mostly, stuff from when he was a kid. It’s not like an obsession or anything and we didn’t have enough money for him to really get into the hobby seriously, but he liked to tinker. When I was a little girl, he had this red pickup truck. Think he said it was from the fifties. Well, he’d gotten it mostly working at one point except there was something wrong with… the spark plug? Or the wires, don’t remember. But the engine wouldn’t run smooth, it’d sort of stutter or whatever. I was watching him work, and at one point, he left the engine running while he went to get something from inside the house. Well, me being a little kid, I saw the engine making pretty sparkles, so I climbed up on the truck’s front bumper and went and touched it right where the sparks were. Next thing I knew, my arm was up behind my head and I’d fallen off the bumper on my ass and my whole body hurt. Not like I’d fallen, but like something had hit every part of me really hard from inside. My parents came running out of the house, and everything hurt, but… well, I was too shocked to cry.
Yeah, yeah, bad pun, bite me. I got no other way to say it.
Anyway, my parents took me to the hospital, and I guess… I don’t know, everything was just right for me to not have anything serious come from it, but I do sometimes wonder if it did something to my brain, especially when I do really dumb things. But I’m talking about all this because of that part where I went from trying to touch the pretty sparkles to being on my ass with my arm up and no idea what happened in between, because that was like what happened between when my fingers moved into the faint sunlight, and when I realized I was in the bathroom with my hand in the toilet. I don’t remember running from the main room into the bathroom and sticking my hand in the water in the bowl, but that’s what happened. From so little sunlight that I could barely see the difference. My hand stung a little, but I didn’t seemed to be burned, which was good.
I had maybe a couple seconds to figure out what the hell was going on before Kaitlyn came running into the bathroom, where she more or less jumped on me. I think she was trying to hug me and help me feel better, but what actually happened was I wound up whacking my face on the toilet as her weight knocked me onto the floor. If I’d been human, I’d probably have gotten a concussion or something, I’ve gotten them before, or at least a bloody nose, but I’m not alive, so it just hurt. Wound up on my back under her looking up, sort of dazed.
“Oh my god, are you okay?” Kaitlyn more or less yelled down into my face.
I just stared up at her, probably with my resting dumb face on because I couldn’t think straight. We’d landed with me sort of half on my back with my hips to the side and her basically on top of me. Sort of jammed into the space between the toilet and the shower, which forced us together more. And like I said, my brain wasn’t working really good, so right then I was thinking that I was glad I’d cleaned around behind the toilet, too, because of where my head was, but I wasn’t comfortable, so I forced my hips over so I was fully laying on my back, which… well, pushed Kaitlyn off balance, so she moved so one of her knees was on either side of my hips and… that was when things got weird. Like in those shows where two characters have a bunch of sexual tension between them and they wind up in the sort of position that directors like to use that basically screams sex without actually being sex. Except, you know, also we were jammed between a toilet and a shower stall. My brain didn’t catch up until my mouth had opened and my fangs came out a little and I’d started to raise my head sort of like I was going to kiss Kaitlyn, but also like I was going to bite her. But I guess that’s when her brain caught up too, because it was like she woke up and scrambled back and wound up with her back to the wall beside the door on the far side of the bathroom. I let my head back down and put my hands over my face and just concentrated on making my fangs go away again.
“Sorry,” Kaitlyn said after a little while.
“S’okay,” I said. Kept my hands over my face, though. Neither of us said anything for a while.
“Does that happen with everyone?” Kaitlyn asked eventually.
“What?” I said. Wasn’t exactly sure what she meant. I think maybe I’d started to fall asleep again, because it was like I could feel my brain shutting off.
“You go all… sexy face, I guess,” Kaitlyn said. “Just before you bite someone.”
I just groaned. I didn’t even know I did that. I mean, okay, with the guys I’d pick up in bars, I’d sort of… perform the sexy to get them alone. But I didn’t think I’d do that just… whenever. And especially not when I’d just had my face rammed into a toilet because my best friend had slammed into me while trying to help me feel better because she’d made me have a vampire freak out.
“I mean, I’ve seen your sexy face,” Kaitlyn went on. “It’s not like this one.”
I don’t know why I kept thinking not saying anything would get Kaitlyn to shut up, but it never did. Guess I just don’t learn some things.
“Your sexy face looks more… tired than bedroom eyes. Or stoned. This was…”
I groaned again and rolled over on my side. Facing the shower, of course, not the toilet.
“Hollywood starlet seductress sexy face,” Kaitlyn said. “Like those women whose only job is to be sexy for the camera, so they don’t get a real character or lines or…” Maybe she kept talking, I don’t know, because the next thing I remember is her kicking my feet and telling me to wake up again.
“What?” I said. “I’m awake.”
“Uh huh,” Kaitlyn said. “You didn’t answer.”
“Answer what?”
“Does that happen with everyone? When you’re going to bite them.”
“No, just you,” I said, without thinking. Then I realized how stupid that was. And sick. Probably the only reason the sexy face happened was because she was my best friend, and my inner Savage was all… possessive and shit about her. And it ruined everything it touched. And I didn’t actually know if only happened with Kaitlyn because none of the other people I’d bitten were going to tell me after. But I sure as hell didn’t need Kaitlyn thinking there was anything more going on than she was human and had blood. I’d told her about how I felt and… I didn’t think she got what it really meant.
“Really?” Kaitlyn said. She didn’t sound scared. At all. More interested. Well, shit.
“I dunno,” I said. “Maybe. I’ve never seen the… vampire sexy face, so I dunno. You’d hafta ask the guys I bit. If they remember it. I didn’t get a chance to look, y’know?” It sounded kind of lame to me, but it was the truth, more or less, and the best I could do during the daytime.
“Oh. Okay,” Kaitlyn said, sounding kind of disappointed.
I sighed. “Don’t forget what that face means,” I said. “That I’m gonna go vampire on you.”
“You haven’t yet.”
“’Cause I still got some control,” I said. “And you do the smart thing and get away from me.”
Kaitlyn didn’t say anything for a while, and I started feeling like I’d upset her. “I’m sorry about the other thing, too,” she eventually went on.
“Other thing?” I asked.
“The sunlight,” Kaitlyn said. “I just thought… I dunno, you might be able to… handle the sun if it was as overcast and dark as it is. That you might not be trapped in here at least some days.”
I sighed again. She meant well, but there was some shit that being a vampire just… meant I’d never get to do. Like go out in the sun, apparently, even if it was really weak. “Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate the thought. What happened wasn’t your fault.”
“Yeah, it was.”
“You didn’t make bein’ a vampire as shitty as it is. Or make me burn in the sun.”
“Yeah, but still.”
“I didn’t get burned, we learned somethin’ about me. No harm done.”
“I’m still sorry you hafta deal with it.”
“Thanks.”
Neither of us said anything for a while. I sort of got the feeling Kaitlyn wanted to hug me again, but… well, I guess she’d figured out hugging an upset vampire was a bad idea, even during the day. Then she suddenly jumped up and ran out the bathroom door.
“Wait there!” she yelled from the other room. Then before I could even think of a response, she’d come back in, dropped my phone on top of me, and ran back out again. I heard the door open, then slam closed, and a second later, my phone lit up, telling me I had a video chat call. Which I guess I should have expected even though I tended to have trouble getting the stupid app to work right. Or maybe my phone just didn’t like to do video chats, I don’t know. But I fumbled with my phone a bit and finally got it to accept the call. Kaitlyn’s face filled up my screen… along with what was definitely the outside, complete with whatever sunlight was actually coming through the clouds. I flinched away from my phone basically by reflex, but then figured out that the light wasn’t actually hurting me.
“Hey, stop that,” Kaitlyn said through my phone.
“Sorry,” I said. I made myself get up, at least enough to sit on the toilet so I could look down at my phone comfortably. There weren’t any other seats in our bathroom.
“You should be able to handle this, right?” Kaitlyn said. “It’s not real sunlight.”
“Yeah, seems like it,” I said, looking past her through the screen.
“Good. Means I can at least take you out like this.”
“Um…” I said, but Kaitlyn didn’t seem to have meant anything like dating by what she said, so I didn’t push the issue. I could’ve just been too sensitive, you know? Anyway, Kaitlyn ended up walking around the neighborhood a bit and… well, showing me things with her phone. And talking. Most of it, I don’t know, sounded like she was doing a vlog or talking to someone who lived far away, so it wasn’t a big deal, but if she was going to keep doing this, I was going to have to remind her not to say anything too obvious. She didn’t mention vampires at least. I tried to pay attention, I really did, but I already knew our neighborhood, and there’s only so many times someone can say it’s weird how dark things are before it starts getting hard to pay attention. So I got bored. And probably just after that, I fell asleep again. Like I said, vampires don’t do so well during the day, and it’s not like normal falling asleep, either. It’s more like… what’s the word? Um… whatever it’s called when people just fall asleep in the middle of conversations and stuff. Not like falling asleep in class, either, but the serious kind.
Anyway, Kaitlyn woke me up again. I guess she’d run back when she saw my phone fall because she was worried and… well, I’d been sitting on the toilet leaning forward with my elbows on my knees, and I’d ended up faceplanting on the bathroom floor when I fell asleep. It didn’t hurt because it’s kind of hard to hurt a corpse, and that’s what I was. Not asleep. Dead. But Kaitlyn managed to wake me up while leaving me on the floor anyway because it was funny. Then she helped me up and back into my bed so I could go back to being dead for good. I was going to have to ask how she was waking me up at some point, but not right then because it was daytime. And that was about it, except that I took a look at my phone before I went back to sleep, and my phone service app had the little warning thing that said I’d used up all my data for the month on Kaitlyn’s video tour of our neighborhood during the day, which was great. But I could deal with that later. Right then, I needed to sleep. Be dead. Whatever.
