Misty Rose: Nature
Chapter 39
Kaitlyn let me sleep for the rest of the day, so I woke up that evening more or less like normal. I say more or less because there was something off, but I couldn’t tell what. I laid in bed just thinking and trying to figure out what was wrong, but it wasn’t easy because Kaitlyn was home and watching a movie. So I turned so I could sort of watch it, too. The Crow, one that her brother gave her, which we’d watch sometimes because Brandon Lee was hot and Kaitlyn’s thing about vigilantes.
I got to say, it’s not my kind of movie. I’m not into violent stuff in general. I mean, I can handle action movies, but the whole thing with what happened to the girl just… brought up bad memories now. Victim girl characters tended to do that. And her character and Brandon’s character were still dead at the end, and I never really got into the whole thing about lovers being dead together, so everything was okay really. Seemed like it’d be happier if they weren’t dead, y’know? But Kaitlyn liked it, and it was something to watch while I was thinking.
“You woke up early again,” Kaitlyn said eventually.
“Huh?” I asked. “Early how?”
“About fifteen minutes before actual sunset,” Kaitlyn said.
“That’s weird.”
“Think it was because it was so dark outside?”
I thought about it for a bit. “Maybe,” I said. “But it still felt kinda weird when I woke up, so maybe it was somethin’ else. I dunno.”
“You still feel weird?”
“Um… no. Sun’s set now.”
Kaitlyn checked something on her phone. “Yep. How could you tell?”
“I can just feel it,” I shrugged. “Vampire thing, I guess.”
“Huh,” Kaitlyn said. We went back to watching the movie for a bit.
“You go to work?” I asked after a while.
“Yeah,” Kaitlyn said. “No one in the club, so Mel let me go home early.”
“Why’d she do that?”
“I have this friend who’s needs emotional support.”
“She’d feel better if you didn’t wake her up durin’ the day so much.”
“She can be kind of a wimp sometimes.”
“Funny. How’ve you been wakin’ me up? You never said.”
And she still didn’t say, so we didn’t say anything for a bit longer.
“Y’know, you could do that,” Kaitlyn said, after the scene where… Eric? Brandon Lee’s character got shot up a lot and healed and still killed all the bad guys.
“That many guns? Pass,” I said. “I still feel pain, and that’s a lotta holes to heal. I’d… prob’ly hafta bite some of ’em to do that. And I’m a vampire, not a vigilante.”
“Oh, c’mon.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Okay, first, I don’t have a big fuckin’ bird.”
“Okay, that’s true,” Kaitlyn said.
“Second… I appreciate that this guy wears way more clothes than the last vigilante outfit you suggested,” I said. “But you saw it. It got all shot up and full of holes, so I’d hafta replace it.”
“So?”
“Leather pants are expensive. Leather shorts and halter tops are expensive, and that’s a hell of a lot less leather to hafta deal with.”
“You don’t hafta wear what he wears.”
“I’d prefer it to the Captain Skank outfit.”
Kaitlyn sighed like I was being a pain. She probably rolled her eyes, too, but I wasn’t facing her, so I couldn’t see it. “Okay, fine,” she said. “Anything else?”
“Third, it’s showin’ people supernatural shit exists.”
“Yeah, but…”
“No buts, Kaitlyn,” I said. “I’d be gettin’ shot and healin’ and doin’ stuff that humans can’t do.”
“You do that now.”
“How?”
“You beat up thugs and rapists and shitheads like that even though you’re a girl.”
“Girls can be badass fighters too.”
“Yeah, but you aren’t. You don’t even look like one.”
I sighed. “Okay, sure,” I said. “But a girl who… beats up bigger guys and doesn’t seem to get hurt by anythin’ isn’t… some dude runnin’ around that heals up bullet holes right in front of the people who shoot him. That’s a lot more obvious.”
“Yeah, but it didn’t matter.”
“’Cause he killed ‘em,” I said. “I don’t kill people.”
“Some of those assholes deserve to die,” Kaitlyn said. Her voice was cold.
Yeah, some of the assholes I fed from deserved to die. But it wasn’t going to be me that killed them. I felt like… if I started doing that, the vampire would make it worse and I’d wind up killing everyone I fed from and I’d be a full monster instead of… whatever I was now. Kaitlyn could think whatever she wanted, but she didn’t get what it was like for me. In any case, I decided to change the subject.
“Anyway, it’s not showin’ people vampires exist,” I said. “But it’s still somethin’ I could get in shitloads of trouble for. Y’know, just showin’ that supernatural shit is real.”
“Fine,” Kaitlyn said. She didn’t sound happy, but too bad.
“Besides, didn’t Brandon Lee die makin’ this movie?”
“So?”
“So it’s bad luck.”
“Now you’re just being superstitious.”
“What am I, Kaitlyn?” I asked. “A vampire? I’m allowed to be superstitious.”
“Eh, whatever,” Kaitlyn said.
I looked back at Kaitlyn… and yeah, she’d gone to work. She was still wearing whatever dumbass costume Mr. Lewis had made her wear while she was waitressing. Sexy… hell, I didn’t even know what it was because she had a hoodie over most of it, but there were thigh high fishnets and some kind of black frilly skirt coming out of the bottom of her hoodie. And it was distracting, which meant I should probably go hunting soon. But that was also a vampire thing. Not sure how to describe it because… well, I talked about Kaitlyn being bi. We’d talked about what it was like for her, and I was damn sure I wasn’t bi while I was alive. But now… well, blood was pretty much the most important thing ever for a vampire. I’ve tried to describe how it felt, but I just can’t do it justice, and when you go from what a human can feel to what a vampire feels when they feed, it fucks with your head.
So… I didn’t find girls attractive before. I mean, I could look at a girl and see she was cute or hot or sexy or whatever, but that was more… distant, like looking at a painting or something. There wasn’t any kind of physical thing. But now I’d look at girls and know they’d have blood and… that made them attractive. And the cuter or hotter the girl was, and what she was wearing, well… that made her more interesting to me. Like… you’d want to eat a burger that looked good over one that looks all greasy and smashed and weird, right? Kind of like that, and I hated thinking about people like burgers, but there really isn’t anything that humans experience that’s like a vampire and blood, so I got to go for the things I remember that seemed closest, and using food sort of worked. The attraction to girls still didn’t seem natural, though, not like Kaitlyn talked about. It was more like… I was attracted to the blood, and the… package it came in being better looking was a bonus. Or something. And the package being male or female didn’t really matter. I still… there was still some of what I remembered about looking at guys when I was human when I looked at guys as a vampire, but that wasn’t the same either. The blood again. That was what was important. The rest was just the package, but I still… I don’t know, found a guy package more interesting than a girl package. And I know what that sounds like.
Kaitlyn, though… Kaitlyn fucked that up. Maybe it was because of the way my vampire side felt about her, but her package was… sort of more like a guy’s package in how I felt about it. And I got to stop talking about this because it just keeps getting worse. So, yeah, back to that night.
I guess Kaitlyn noticed me looking at her, because she shot me a look and said, “What?”
“Why’d you still have that thing on?” I asked her.
“It’s my costume,” Kaitlyn said and shrugged.
Okay, so it was actually Kaitlyn’s dumbass costume, but it was still distracting me. I sighed and turned back to the movie. Which was almost over, but at least it wasn’t going to make me thirsty.
“You okay?” Kaitlyn asked.
“You’re distractin’,” I said, hoping she’d get the hint.
“Oh. You need to hunt, and…”
“You’re still wearin’ that costume. Yeah.”
“I’ll go change,” Kaitlyn said. I heard her get up and go into the bathroom. Can’t say I felt good about the whole situation, but at least she wouldn’t look as tasty, you know? But I was saved from getting too down on myself because my phone rang. Pops’ ringtone, too. Which was fine, I kind of felt like I needed to talk to someone who had more sense than me right then.
“Hey, Pops,” I said after I picked up. “What’s goin’ on?”
“Not much,” Pops said. Sounded like he was in a bar or restaurant or something. “How’re things going for you tonight?”
“Eh…” I said. Wasn’t sure how much to bring up. “The usual, I suppose.”
“That could mean a lot of things,” Pops said.
“No kiddin’,” I said. And I suppose Kaitlyn messing with my head was normal.
“I can talk about it if you like,” Pops said.
I looked at Kaitlyn before I said anything. Honestly, what I had to talk about was her, and it probably wasn’t a good idea to do it right in front of her, you know? “I should prob’ly…” I said to Pops, then I stopped and looked at Kaitlyn again. “I’m gonna go for a walk. Okay?”
“Need to talk about me, hmm?” Kaitlyn said, not looking away from the movie.
“What? No,” I said, but it sounded like a lie even to me.
“Take your keys,” Kaitlyn reminded me. She didn’t seem upset, which was good.
“Hold on a sec,” I told Pops and put my phone down so I could put on some clothes that at least looked like what humans would wear outside in October. Then I picked up my phone and keys and let myself out. I didn’t think Kaitlyn would listen at the door, but I still walked down the street a little before I started talking again. “Okay, so… yeah. Usual stuff. And… Kaitlyn stuff.”
“I thought that might be the case,” Pops said. “She causing you problems again?”
“Some,” I said. I was trying to think of how to talk about it without… talking about vampire stuff out in public. I couldn’t make myself invisible, and there weren’t a lot of people around, but still.
“Being annoying?” Pops asked. “Or being… interesting?”
“Both. But the second one right now.”
“I see. Have you told her?”
“Sorta. Tried to make her understand why… bein’ interestin’ was a bad idea.”
“And she still does things?”
“Yeah,” I frowned. “Makes jokes. Gets… too close. Y’know.”
“Have you thought about why?”
“Um… sorta,” I said. “She’s always been like that.”
“Has she? Or has it gotten worse?”
“It’s gotten worse. Overall.”
“Mmmhmm,” Pops said. “Have you thought about why?”
“Um…” I thought about it a little, and no, I guess I hadn’t. I’d always been more thinking about what she was doing and not why she was doing it. I mean, not in any depth, really. “Guess I haven’t,” I told Pops. “And I can’t figure it out, anyway.”
“You know her pretty well, yes?”
“I think so. Been livin’ with her for a couple years.”
“When does she usually make jokes about things?”
“Constantly.”
Pops chuckled. “I mean, when does Kaitlyn go out of her way to make something a joke?”
“Um…” I wasn’t exactly sure what Pops was asking me. Kaitlyn made a lot of jokes about things, and it never really seemed like she went out of her way. Except… well, okay, there was the thing she’d do where she’d go cold, then sort of try to laugh things off. Maybe that counted. “I guess… when she’s bothered by something? Stuff I wouldn’t joke about that bugs her, but she… laughs about it. Sometimes that seems kinda forced, y’know?”
“Mmmhmm,” Pops said. “And those things bother her because…?”
“Because she’s… afraid of ‘em?”
“Could be, yes.”
“But then why would she…” I stopped. If she made jokes about things because she was afraid of them, why’d she make jokes about me? Was she afraid of me? She didn’t act like it. I kept walking for a bit, trying to fit this into my head, but it didn’t seem to work. “I don’t get it. She’s afraid of me?”
“It’s possible,” Pops said. “What did she think about you before you… were turned?”
“Um… she thought I was soft. Girly,” I said. “She’d… sorta watch out for me, I guess.”
“And now?”
“Now…” I sighed. Now I was this… monster. Undead. I went around beating up the sort of guys we’d try to avoid when I was still human. I saved her from a bunch of party rapists. I drank blood, when blood usedta upset me before. I had friends like Pops and Ferret, who weren’t human. Ferret didn’t even look human. I could heal from stuff that would kill humans, and I had other things I could do that humans couldn’t. Me, the girl she used to think was a wimp. “Now I’m this… thing. That does stuff I’d never have done before. And she’s seen me do some of it.”
“Right,” Pops said. “You’ve changed. And you changing changed her world. It’s not the world she used to know, and it has a lot of things in it she doesn’t understand.”
“And her best friend is part of that,” I said, and sighed. “She’s… afraid of all the stuff I’ve brought into her life, or somethin’, and I’m part of it too. So… she makes jokes.”
“Because a joke isn’t something scary,” Pops said.
“Okay. Say that’s all true. Why does she make… the kindsa jokes she does, then?”
“I assume her jokes are… bawdy?”
“If you mean sex jokes, then yeah, a lot of ’em. Or she does things to make me uncomfortable, or confused or…” I stopped, then sighed again. “Not as scary.”
“Human,” Pops said. “Like you were before all this.”
“Okay. I think I get it.”
“Good,” Pops said. “Does that help you understand why she does what she does?”
“A little,” I said. “She’s still annoyin’ though.”
“Never said she wasn’t.”
“Okay. So… what am I gonna do about this? Be less scary?”
“It might help to talk to her about it.”
Yeah, I’m a real genius sometimes. Duh. Talking to her would probably be a good idea. So glad I managed to come up with the idea myself, instead of having to be told to do it by someone who’d just walked me through actually thinking about the whole thing. Because I’m an adult. Yeah. “Thanks, Pops,” I said. “I’d prob’ly get there eventually, maybe, but… this helps.”
“Glad I could help,” Pops said.
“Now I just needta figure out what I’m gonna do about it.”
“You don’t need to do anything right away. Think on it. Perhaps remember why she does what she does the next time she starts being annoying.”
“I’ll do that,” I said. “No promises on not bein’ annoyed, though.”
Pops just chuckled.
“Um… actually, I did have somethin’ to ask about,” I said. “If you don’t mind.”
“Go right ahead.”
“The, um… drivin’ thing. Is it gonna be… soon?”
“Did you have plans?”
“Well, no. Not really. I just… wanted to know if I hadta… keep that in mind.”
“We’ll let you know if we need you,” Pops said. “Until then, don’t worry about it.”
“I won’t. Thanks.” Honestly, I was kind of relieved.
“Of course.”
“I, um… didn’t have anything else to bring up, really. But if you do…”
“I don’t. I just wanted to hear how things were going, see if you needed help.”
“I think I’m good for right now,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Alright, then,” Pops said. “You take care.”
“You too,” I said, and hung up. Pops was… well, like I said, it was good to talk to someone with more sense than me sometimes. Even if he did have to lead me through figuring stuff out. Took me a sec to figure out where I was, I’d been wandering around while I was talking to Pops, but I wasn’t lost. Not really. I got back home without any problems and let myself back in. Kaitlyn was sitting on her bed. The movie was over, of course, and I guess she’d been doing something on her phone because she looked up at me and smiled, but didn’t say anything before going back to whatever it was. I smiled back, but I didn’t really have anything to talk about, so I just kind of… messed around for a bit.
After a while, Kaitlyn was still doing something with her phone. Didn’t seem like she was texting anyone, but there was a lot of writing. It was something to talk about, anyway.
“Whatcha writin’?” I asked.
“Hmm?” Kaitlyn said, looking up. “Oh. Nothing important. Why?”
“I dunno,” I said. “You’ve been doin’ it for a while.”
Kaitlyn just shrugged, still typing on her phone.
“Just thought you were writin’ somethin’,” I said.
“Nothing important.”
“Mmmkay. If you say so.”
Kaitlyn kept writing on her phone. She seemed… like she was thinking about something that was… not upsetting but not easy to think about. Or something like that.
“You okay?”
“Hmm?” Kaitlyn looked up again. “I’m fine.”
“You sure? You seem kinda… off. Or somethin’.”
“Nah. I’m fine.”
“Okay…” I said. She still seemed a little weird, but I wasn’t going to push her. “If I can help…”
Kaitlyn looked up at me and grinned. “Well, I’m feeling a little pent up, if you’re thirsty…”
I glared at her. “No,” I said. “Still not gonna bite you.”
