014: Vampires and Starting But Not Finishing
Hey everyone,
I’ve probably mentioned this in the past, but my parents bought a house in LA recently. Over the past few weeks, I’ve moved into it to help them renovate. It’s exciting, but a really overwhelming time. I have truly no idea where any of my things are, and my only options for seating are the floor or the bed right now. But it’s exciting to have a yard, and to paint walls without worrying about whether or not I’ll get my deposit back. (Spoiler alert: I sure didn’t get it back on my last apartment.) I can’t wait to be settled in and get back to my routines, but I’m trying to focus on the excitement of this experience for now.
Today I’ve got something a little different for y’all. I wanted to share the beginning of a story I started a long time ago but have never been able to figure out how to finish. It’s been on my mind a lot lately because I think it has so much potential but I really can’t see a way forward. I wonder if that’s because that’s how I feel about the house too? 🤔 Anyway, I keep hoping that someday I’ll be able to figure out where to take the story next, but it’s already been four years and I haven’t yet.
Also, I wanted to share this because it’s a story about a vampire and I’ve already started mentally celebrating Halloween. (Think less Twilight and more The Fuck-Up, in terms of style and content.) Anyone else on the Halloween train already?
Enjoy, y’all!
On Clearance
The stickers on the clearance packages were bright orange. It was the wrong kind of orange to match the thick red inside the plastic bags, and the harsh fluorescent lighting above wasn't helping matters.
Jeff stared blankly at the shelves in front of him. He looked just at the bottom shelves and tried not to let his eyes wander to the higher shelves, where the packages were nicer - bottles sometimes, even - and turned his head away from the refrigerated stuff that was top of the line. Those packages wore a price tag he couldn't afford. A splurge now, when he was so close to the anniversary, would leave him short on funds and drinking chicken's and fish's blood until he caught up again. Down here, where his eyes were stuck, were the bargain brands, but they weren't the truly desperate ones yet. He hadn't sunk quite that low.
"Attention shoppers, Johnson's Market will be closing in five minutes."
He grabbed several squishy packages off the shelf, the blue label proclaiming that they had been Flavored to taste just like real healthy human blood! Warm them up to 98 degrees Fahrenheit and it will taste just as good as the real thing! It was a lie, a bad lie. Not only did a little artificial thickener (flour, it was probably just white flour) not make up for the difference in taste between anemic blood and healthy blood, but no amount of microwaving could make packaged and FDA-approved human blood supplemented by cow's blood taste anything like fresh blood.
Plus, there was something about knowing it was donated blood, taken from donors who probably got their only good meal of the week a few hours before being pricked, that really ruined it for Jeff.
But it was almost May, and that meant he'd taste real blood soon. That mantra calmed him as he stood in line to pay. The attendant ringing him up would keep a straight face, he knew, but the older woman in front of him was shifty and nervous. He could almost hear her considering to just abandon her choices and leave before the vampire behind her might decide he'd prefer fresh human blood to the clearance-labeled mix. He was tempted to lean over and whisper in her ear that he could smell the heart disease on her; that heart disease made for a thicker-bodied blood but not necessarily a better taste; that no one would be biting her any time soon.
He resisted though. She was old enough to remember the time Before, when vampires still lived more in the shadows of the human mind than in the public sphere. It had been close to twenty years since vampires had come into public, and society had adjusted; it hadn't been the bloodbath apocalypse people had feared. Little was different at all, in fact, except now vampires like him could buy blood at the same supermarket where human soccer moms bought their kid's juice boxes. Vampires could even play soccer too.
Hell, he was old enough to remember the time Before too. He remembered the first time Johnny Fischmann had told him vampires were real in homeroom. He had scoffed, but Johnny had shown him the news reports and soon vampire children were attending school with them. They never physically aged, but they passed through the system too if their grades were good enough.
Jeff had wanted to be a vampire ever since he first saw one in real life. If he'd known how fucking boring it was to live in the same dead-end job - now for eternity - he probably wouldn't have changed over.
"Hey again, Jeff." The pimply kid at the register started ringing up his bags.
"Hey Maurice." He watched as the plastic bags filled with blood went into a paper sack. He held his card in one hand, ready to get out of there.
"Still drinking this trash?" Maurice asked.
Jeff shrugged at first, then narrowed his eyes at the kid. "What do you know about the difference?"
Maurice shrugged back. "Nothin'. Just you guys always complain about this bargain stuff like it's worse. Does drinkin' from a live human really taste better?"
How should he answer? A straightforward yes normally scared people. But Maurice probably saw more disturbing shit working the nightshift at a supermarket on the edge of the shady part of town to be rattled easily. “It's just different. I guess it tastes fresher. Like the difference between eating ninety-nine cent ramen and a stew prepared by a master chef. They’re almost not even in the same league.”
Maurice nodded, then looked around. He'd turned off his light after Jeff had stepped up, so no one else was in line. He leaned in, beckoning Jeff in closer too. "Could you uh... just for shits, could someone be bit but not turned or killed? Like, if the vamp just bit a little then left, couldja stay human?"
"Why?" Jeff drew the word out, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.
"It's not for me! Jus', you know, I know someone who was askin'. He's tryin' a get inna gang and he thinks it could be pretty impressive he could say he got bit an' didn't turn. So is it possible?"
Jeff pressed his lips together. "Even if it was possible, and I'm not saying it is, you'd have to find a vampire who would be able to stop themselves once they bit you."
"Well, could you do it?"
"No," Jeff smiled, showing off his incisors. "I couldn't."
Maurice stared.
"A word of advice, Maurice," Jeff started, reaching over the counter and laying a vice grip on the kid's shoulder. His pale hand looked even whiter next the black uniform polo Maurice wore. "Don't join a gang. Graduate high school, get your degree, get a good-paying job, then fuck around with this vampire stuff. Because let me tell you, working a dead end job like this for eternity? It sucks."
He left Maurice a bit open-mouthed and staring behind him. Just before walking out the door, he heard him call for another customer.
Jeff mulled over what Maurice had asked him on the walk home; Jeff had no idea if it was possible to bite someone without turning them. He instinctively thought not - to turn a human a vampire had only to bite them and drink some blood. If all of the blood was drank before the human could turn, they just died. He heard rumors about it though. About once a year there seemed to be someone in the news claiming they had been bitten but not turned, chalking it up to the blessings and protection of a holy creator. This was generally joined by a round of 'vampires are from Satan'. Jeff ignored these claims; he'd wait for definitive evidence and science to let him know if he was satanic creation.
When he got into his apartment, he dropped the blood into the fridge except one bag which he tore open. Heating it up made it less terrible, but the improvement wasn't enough for him to be willing to go through the work. He crossed another day off of his calendar — just a few days left in April now — and collapsed on to the couch. He alternated between flipping through channels and squirting blood into his mouth.
"Mmmm, pig's blood," he muttered out loud when he pinpointed the taste. He tried to feel angry, but at least it was different. If he couldn't have better, at least he could settle for different.
He stopped channel surfing at the ten o'clock news, and almost immediately regretted it. "An arrest has been made today after a woman was found attacked and drained around the corner from her apartment in Manhattan last Friday."
That was what newscasters called it now: Drained. It was an effective euphemism for ‘her throat had been ripped out and all her blood drunk by a vampire.’ In the early days, they had graphically described each attack, but eventually the fear-mongering stopped and murder by vampire was like any other murder.
He groaned, and put on a movie.
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Stay healthy, friends!
xx,
Valorie
Image by Dieter_G.