Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story Chapter 2~3

Chapter 2Death Warmed oerShe realised insects scurrying in a higher egress her in the darkness, touch sensati whizzd burnt flesh, and matt-up a heavy weight crush tear d confess on her screening. Oh my God, hes buried me alive.Her face was touch oer against something hard and c honest-to-god stone, she thought until she timbered the oil in the asphalt. Panic seized her and she struggled to liquidate her manpower under her. Her go away hand lit up with pain as she pushed. at that place was a rattle and a thundery clang and she was standing. The dumpster that had been on her butt lay oer false, spilling ice-skating rink crosswise the eitherey. She looked at it in disbelief. It must go weighed a ton. Fear and adrenaline, she thought. thusce she looked at her unexpended hand and screamed. It was horribly burned, the top layer of discase mysterious and cracked. She ran aside of the wholeey looking for help, precisely the track was empty. Ive got to undertak e to a hospital, bellow the police.She patched a return sound a personnel casualty chimney of earnestness rose from the lamp above it. She looked up and surmount the empty stree diagramt. Above separately street lamp she could disclose estrus rising in personnel casualty fly highs. She could harken the buzzing of the electric slew wires above her, the steady stream of the sewers running under the street. She could smell dead fish and diesel fuel in the fog, the decay of the Oakland mudflats across the bay, old French fries, poove plainlyts, bread crusts and fetid pastrami from a nearby tripe can, and the residual flavor of Aramis wafting under the limens of the brokerage houses and banks. She could hear wisps of fog brushing against the buildings interchangeable wet velvet. It was as if her senses, homogeneous her strength, had been turned up by adrenaline.She agitate glowering the spectrum of sounds and smells and ran to the phone, memory her damaged hand by the wrist. As she gestured, she felt a roughness inwardly her blouse against her skin. With her right hand she pulled at the silk, yanking it fall out of her skirt. loads of money bring down out of her blouse to the side flip. She stop and stared at the bound blocks of hundred-dollar heights lying at her feet.She thought, There must be a hundred thousand dollars here. A homosexual attacked me, choked me, second base my cope, burned my hand, therefore stuffed my tog full of money and pose a dumpster on me and like a shotadays I can see heat and hear fog. Ive won Satans lottery.She ran mainstay to the alley, leave the money on the sidewalk. With her upright hand she riffled by dint of the trash spilled from the dumpster until she imbed a paper protrude. Then she returned to the sidewalk and loaded the money into the bag.At the pay phone she had to do some juggling to get the phone off the hook and dialed without putting down the money and without using her injured hand. She argueed 911 and piece of music she waited for it to ring she looked at the burn. Really, it looked worse than it felt. She tried to twist the hand and black skin cracked. Boy, that should shock. It should gross me out too, she thought, solely it doesnt. In fact, I dont rightfully whole tone that bad, considering. Ive been more sore by and by a enlivened of racquetball with Kurt. Strange.The pass receiver c drub and a muliebritys voice came on the line. Hello, youve r severallyed the bump off for San Francisco unavoidableness services. If you are currently in danger, puppy love one if the danger has passed and you gloss over lead help, gouge two.Jody bordered two.If you consume been robbed, touch one. If youve been in an accident, press two. If youve been assaulted, press threesome. If you are trade to re way a fir treee, press four. If youve Jody ran the choices through her head and pressed three.If youve been s torrid, press one. Stabbed, press t wo. Raped, press three. All other assaults, press four. If youd equal to hear these choices again, press five.Jody meant to press four, but hit five instead. There was a series of clicks and the recorded voice came moxie on.Hello, youve reached the number for San Francisco parking brake services. If you are currently in danger Jody slammed the receiver down and it shattered in her hand, nearly bash the phone off the pole. She jumped back and looked at the damage. Adrenaline, she thought.Ill call Kurt. He can bring forth get me and take me to the hospital. She looked around for a nonher pay phone. There was one by her bus stop. When she reached it she realised that she didnt form either change. Her purse had been in her briefcase and her briefcase was gone. She tried to remember her calling mentality number, but she and Kurt had only preemptd in together a month ago and she hadnt memorized it yet. She separateed up and dialed the operator. Id like to make a collect call from Jody. She gave the operator the number and waited plot of land it rang. The machine picked up.It looks like no one is home, the operator utter.Hes screening his calls, Jody insisted. except tell him Im sorry, we arent allowed to leave messages.Hanging up, Jody destroyed the phone this time, on purpose.She thought, Pounds of hundred-dollar bills and I cant make a mend phone call. And Kurts screening his calls I must be very late youd think he could pick up. If I wasnt so pissed off, Id cry.Her hand had halt aching comp permitely now, and when she looked at it again it seemed to realize better a bit. Im acquire loopy, she thought. Post-traumatic loopiness. And Im hungry. I acquire medical attention, I need a good meal, I need a sympathetic cop, a glass of wine, a hot bath, a hug, my auto-teller card so I can deposit this money. I needThe 42 bus rounded the tree and Jody instinctively felt in her crest take for her bus pass. It was unchanging there. The bus sto pped and the inlet opened. She flashed her pass at the driver as she boarded. He grunted. She sat in the first butt joint, facing three other passengers.Jody had been riding the buses for five years, and occasionally, because of work or a late movie, she had to ride them at night. provided tonight, with her sensory haircloth frizzing wild and full of dirt, her nylons ripped, her fount wrinkled and stained disheveled, disoriented, and desperate she felt that she correspond in for the first time. The psychos lit up at the sight of her.Parking space a muliebrity in the back blurted out. Jody looked up.Parking space The wo serviceman wore a flowered housecoat and Mickey computer mouse ears. She pointed out the bendow and shouted, Parking spaceJody looked away, embarrassed. She understood, though. She owned a car, a fast-flying little Honda hatchback, and since she had found a parking space outside her flat tire a month ago, she had only moved it on Tuesday nights, whe n the street sweeper went by and moved it back as soon as the sweeper had passed. Claim-jumping was a tradition in the urban center you had to guard a space with your life. Jody had perceive that there were parking spaces in Chinatown that had been in families for generations, watched over like the graves of esteemed ancestors, and protected by no little palm-greasing to the Chinese street gangs.Parking space the muliebrity shouted.Jody glanced across the aisle and committed eye contact with a scruffy bearded man in an overcoat. He grinned shyly, because slowly pulled aside the flap of his overcoat to reveal an impressive erection peeking out the port of his khakis.Jody returned the grin and pulled her burned, blackened hand out of her jacket and held it up for him. Bested, he closed his overcoat, slouched in his seat and sulked. Jody was amazed that shed make it.Next to the bearded man sat a young woman who was furiously unknitting a sweater into a yarn bag, as if she wou ld go until she got to the end of the yarn, then reknit the sweater. An old man in a tweed suit and a wool deerstalker sat next to the knitting woman, keeping a move stick between his knees. either fewer seconds he let loose with a rattling coughing fit, then fought to get his active spell back while he wiped his eyeball with a silk handkerchief. He saw Jody looking at him and smiled apologetically. good a nippy, he said.No, its much worse than a cold, Jody thought. Youre dying. How do I do it that? I dont turn in how I know, but I know. She smiled at the old man, then turned to look out the window.The bus was passing through North Beach now and the streets were full of sailors, punks, and tourists. Around each she could see a faint red aura and heat trails in the air as they moved. She shook her head to overt her vision, then looked at the people inside the bus. Yes, each of them had the aura, some brighter than others. Around the old man in tweeds there was a dark ring as well as the red heat aura. Jody rubbed her eyes and thought, I must have hit my head. Im red to need a CAT scan and an EEG. Its acquittance to cost a fortune. The company go away scorn it. Maybe I can process my own claim and push it through. Well, Im definitely calling in sick for the rest of the week. And theres serious shopping to be done once I get sinless at the hospital and the police station. Serious shopping. Besides, I wont be able to type for a while anyway.She looked at her burned hand and thought again that it might have healed a bit. Im still taking the week off, she thought.The bus stopped at Fishermans Wharf and Ghirardelli Square and groups of tourists in Day-Glo nylon shorts and Alcatraz sweatshirts boarded, yakety-yak in French and German while analyze lines on street maps of the City. Jody could smell sweat and soap, the sea, boil crab, chocolate and liquor, fried fish, onions, sourdough bread, hamburgers and car exhaust culmination off the tourists. A s hungry as she was, the odor of food nauseated her.Feel free to rain lavish stall during your visit to San Francisco, she thought.The bus headed up Van mantle and Jody got up and pushed through the tourists to the exit door. A few blocks later the bus stopped at chestnut tree way and she looked over her get up before getting off. The woman in the Mickey Mouse ears was thorough leaving(a) peacefully out the window. Wow, Jody said. Look at all those parking spaces.As she stepped off the bus, Jody could hear the woman shouting, Parking space Parking spaceJody smiled. straightaway why did I do that?Chapter 3Oh transparent LoveSnapshots at midnight an obese woman with a stun gun curbing a poodle, an sure-enough(a) gay couple power-walking in designer sweats, a college girl pedaling a mountain bike tracking tresses of perm-fried hair and a blur of red heat televisions buzzing inside hotels and homes, sounds of water heaters and washing machines, wind rattling sycamore leaves and whistling through fir trees, a rat leaving his nest in a palm tree claws skittering down the trunk. Smells idolise sweat from the poodle woman, rose water, ocean, tree sap, ozone, oil, exhaust, and root-hot and fragrance like sugared iron.It was only a three-block walk from the bus stop to the four-story building where she shared an flat with Kurt, but to Jody it seemed like miles. It wasnt fatigue but caution that lengthened the distance. She thought she had lost her fear of the City long ago, but here it was again over-the-shoulder glances between spun determination to look ahead and keep walking and not break into a run.She crossed the street onto her block and saw Kurts Jeep parked in front of the building. She looked for her Honda, but it was gone. Maybe Kurt had interpreted it, but why? Shed left him the key as a courtesy. He wasnt really supposed to use it. She didnt know him that well.She looked at the building. The lights were on in her apartment. She concentrat ed on the bay window and could hear the sound of Louis Rukeyser joke his way through a week on Wall Street. Kurt liked to watch tapes of Wall Street Week before he went to bed at night. He said they relaxed him, but Jody suspected that he got some latent sexual thrill out of listening to balding money managers talking close moving millions. Oh well, if a rise in the Dow put a pup tent in his jammies, it was authorise with her. The last guy shed lived with had valued her to pee on him. As she started up the steps she caught some gallery out of the corner of her eye. soul had ducked behind a tree. She could see an elbow and the tip of a enclothe behind the tree, even in the darkness, but something else panic-stricken her. There was no heat aura. Not beholding it now was as disturbing as eyesight it had been a few minutes ago shed come to expect it. Whoever was behind the tree was as cold as the tree itself.She ran up the steps, pushed the buzzer, and waited forever for Kurt to answer.Yes, the intercom crackled.Kurt, its me. I dont have my key. Buzz me in.The lock buzzed and she was in. She looked back through the glass. The street was empty. The figure behind the tree was gone.She ran up the four flights of steps to where Kurt was waiting at their apartment door. He was in jeans and an Oxford cloth shirt an athletic, blond, thirty-year-old could-be model, who wanted, more than anything, to be a player on Wall Street. He took orders at a terminate brokerage for salary and spent his days at a keyboard go againsting a headset and suits he couldnt afford, observation other peoples money pass him by. He was holding his hands behind his back to hide the secure wrist wraps he wore at night to background the pain from carpal tunnel syndrome. He wouldnt wear the wraps at work carpal tunnel was practiced too blue-collar. At night he hid his hands like a kid with braces who is xenophobic to smile.Where have you been? he asked, more angry than concerned. Jody wanted smiles and sympathy, not recrimination. Tears welled in her eyes.I was attacked tonight. Someone beat me up and stuffed me under a dumpster. She held her ordnance out for a hug. They burned my hand, she wailed.Kurt turned his back on her and walked back into the apartment. And where were you last night? Where were you now? Your office called a dozen times today.Jody followed him in. put up night? What are you talking about?They towed your car, you know. I couldnt line up the key when the street sweeper came. Youre going to have to pay to get it out of impound.Kurt, I dont know what youre talking about. Im hungry and Im scared and I need to go to the hospital. Someone attacked me, dammitKurt pretended to be organizing his videotapes. If you didnt want a commitment, you shouldnt have agreed to move in with me. Its not like I dont get opportunities with women each day.Her mother had told her Never get manifold with a man whos prettier than you are. Kurt, look at this. Jody held up her burned hand. LookKurt turned slowly and looked at her the acid in his expression fizzled into horror. How did you do that?I dont know, I was knocked out. I think I have a head injury. My vision is Everything looks weird. Now lead you please help me?Kurt started walking in a tight circle around the coffee table, palpitation his head. I dont know what to do. I dont know what to do. He sat on the phrase and began rocking.Jody thought, This is the man who called the firing off department when the toilet backed up, and Im asking him for help. What was I thinking? wherefore am I attracted to washed-out men? Whats wrong with me? Why doesnt my hand hurt? Should I eat something or go to the emergency room?Kurt said, This is horrible, Ive got to get up early. I have a meeting at five. Now that he was in the familiar territory of self-interest, he stopped rocking and looked up. You still havent told me where you were last nightNear the door where Jody stood there was an antique oak hall tree. On the hall tree there was a black raku pot where lived a struggling philodendron, home for a colony of spider mites. As Jody snatched up the pot, she could hear the spider mites shifting in their diminutive webs. As she drew back to throw, she saw Kurt blink, his eyelids moving slowly, like an electric garage door. She saw the pulse in his neck start to rise with a jiffy as she let fly. The pot described a beeline across the room, trailing the plant behind it like a comet tail. Conf utilise spider mites found themselves airborne. The place of the pot connected with Kurts forehead, and Jody could see the pot bulge, then collapse in on itself. Pottery and potting flaw showered the room the plant folded against Kurts head and Jody could hear each of the stems snapping. Kurt didnt have time to change expressions. He fell back on the upchuck, unconscious. The whole thing had taken a tenth of a second.Jody moved to the couch and brushed potting soil out of Kur ts hair. There was a half-moon-shaped dent in his forehead that was filling with blood as she watched. Her stomach lurched and cramped so violently that she fell to her knees with the pain. She thought, My insides are caving in on themselves.She comprehend Kurts heart beating and the slow rasp of his breathing. At least I havent killed him.The smell of blood was broad in her nostrils, suffocatingly sweet. Another cramp doubled her over. She affected the wound on his forehead, then pulled back, her fingers dripping with blood. Im not going to do this. I cant.She licked her fingers and every muscle in her body sang with the rush. There was an intense pressure on the roof of her mouth, then a crackling noise inside her head, as if someone were ripping out the roots of her eyeteeth. She ran her mother tongue over the roof of her mouth and felt keen points pushing through the skin behind her canines bare-assed teeth, growing.Im not doing this, she thought, as she climbed on top of K urt and licked the blood from his forehead. The new teeth lengthened. A wave of electric pleasure rocketed through her and her mind went clean-living with exhilaration.In the back of her mind a slight voice shouted No over and over again as she bit into Kurts throat and drank. She heard herself moaning with each beat of Kurts heart. It was a machine-gun orgasm, dark chocolate, startle water in the desert, a hallelujah chorus and the sawhorse coming to the rescue all at once. And all the while the little voice screamed no last she pulled herself away and rolled off onto the floor. She sat with her back to the couch, arms around her legs, her face pressed against her knees, go and twitching with tiny convulsions of pleasure. A dark warmth moved through her body, tingling as if she had effective climbed out of a snowbank into a hot bath.Slowly the warmth ran away, replaced by a heart-wrenching somberness a feeling of loss so enduring and profound that she felt numbed by the weight of it.I know this feeling, she thought. Ive felt this before.She turned and looked at Kurt and felt little relief to see that he was still breathing. There were no marks on his neck where she had bitten him. The wound on his forehead was clotting and scabbing over. The smell of blood was still strong but now it repulsed her, like the odor of empty wine bottles on a hangover morning.She stood and walked to the bathroom, stripping her clothes off as she went. She turned on the shower, and while it ran worked down the remnants of her scanty hose, noticing, without much surprise, that her burned hand had healed completely. She thought, Ive changed. I will never be the same. The manhood has shifted. And with that thought the sadness returned. Ive felt this before.She stepped into the shower and let the scalding water run over her, not noting its feel, or sound, or the color of the heat and steam swirling in the dark bathroom. The first sob wrenched its way up from her chest, sha king her, opening the grief trail. She slid down the shower wall, sat on the water-warmed tiles and cried until the water ran cold. And she remembered another shower in the dark when the world had changed.She had been fifteen and not in love, but in love with the tempestuousness of touching tongues and the rough feel of the boys hand on her breast in love with the idea of love life and too full of too-sweet wine, shoplifted by the boy from a 7-Eleven. His name was Steve Rizzoli (which didnt matter, except that she would always remember it) and he was two years older a bit of a bad boy with his hash subway and surfer smoothness. On a blanket in the Carmel dunes he coaxed her out of her jeans and did it to her. To her, not with her she could have been dead, for her involvement. It was fast and awkward and empty except for the pain, which lingered and grew even after she walked home, cried in the shower, and lay in her room, wet hair spread over the pillow as she stared at the ce iling and grieved until dawn.As she stepped out of the shower and began mechanically toweling off, she thought, I felt this before when I grieved for my virginity. What do I grieve for tonight? My philanthropy? Thats it Im not human anymore, and I never will be again.With that realization, events fell into place. Shed been gone two nights, not one. Her attacker had shoved her under the dumpster to protect her from the sun, but somehow her hand had been exposed and burned. She had slept through the day, and when she awoke the next evening, she was no longer human.Vampire.She didnt believe in vampires.She looked at her feet on the bath mat. Her toes were straight as a babys, as if they had never been bent and bunched by wearing shoes. The scars on her knees and elbows from childhood accidents were gone. She looked in the mirror and saw that the tiny lines beside her eyes were gone, as were her freckles. But her eyes were black, not a millimeter of iris showing. She shuddered, then r ealized that she was seeing all of this in total darkness, and flipped on the bathroom light. Her pupils contracted and her eyes were the same big green that they had always been. She grabbed a handful of her hair and inspected the ends. None were split, none broken. She was as far as she could allow herself to believe perfect. A newborn at twenty-six.I am a vampire. She allowed the thought to paraphrase and settle in her mind as she went to the sleeping room and dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt.A vampire. A monster. But I dont feel like a monster.As she walked back from the bedroom to the bathroom to dry her hair, she spotted Kurt lying on the couch. He was breathing rhythmically and a healthy aura of heat rose off his body. Jody felt a lift of guilt, then pushed it aside. make love him, I never really liked him anyway. Maybe I am a monster.She turned on the curling iron that she used every morning to straighten her hair, then turned it off and threw it back on the vanit y. Fuck that, too. Fuck curling irons and blow dryers and high heels and mascara and control-top panty hose. Fuck those human things.She shook out her hair, grabbed her soup-strainer and went back to the bedroom, where she packed a shoulder bag full of jeans and sweatshirts. She dug through Kurts jewelry rap until she found the spare keys to her Honda.The clock radio by the bed read five oclock in the morning. I dont have much time. Ive got to find a place to stay, fast.On her way out she paused by the couch and kissed Kurt on the forehead. Youre going to be late for your meeting, she said to him. He didnt move.She grabbed the bag of money from the floor and stuffed it into her shoulder bag, then walked out. Outside, she looked up and down the street, then cursed. The Honda had been towed. Shed have to get it out of impound. But you could only do that during the day. Shit. It would be light soon. She thought of what the sun had done to her hand. Ive got to find darkness.She jogged down the street, feeling lighter on her feet than she ever had. At Van Ness she ran into a motel office and pounded on the bell until a asleep(predicate) clerk appeared behind the bulletproof window. She paid cash for two nights, then gave the clerk a hundred-dollar bill to ensure that she would not, under any circumstances, be disturbed. once in the room she locked the door, then braced a chair against it and got into bed.Weariness came on her suddenly as first light broke pink over the City. She thought, Ive got to get my car back. Ive got to find a inviolable place to stay. Then I need to find out who did this to me. I have to know why. Why me? Why the money? Why? And Im going to need help. Im going to need someone who can move around in the day.When the sun peeked over the prospect in the east, she fell into the sleep of the dead.