Roderick (3)

After a fourth shot, I felt I was prepared for whatever event was to occur. I let myself soak in the aura of a drunken state of mind, sitting down in a chair and reminiscing. My memory fell upon a time when I was a child.

My parents had divorced, and my mother had inevitably married another man in the year following. I was staying the night at my (new) father’s house while he was gone on business with my mother. My older brother, fourteen, wanted to find something special to occupy our time, as we were bored, and our step-father didn’t have anything child-oriented lying around. We searched for something to do, opening cabinets and raiding through drawers.

We came upon a handle of whiskey in the fridge, opened although far from empty. My brother poured us both glasses. After my first taste I was put off, but he continued, eventually calling a friend of his to come over. His friend, a fifteen year old, had connections with some girls, who came as well, one of them having her own stash of alcoholic beverages. While I stayed sober, still very much disgusted by the taste of alcohol, they became very inebriated.

There was a moment when they played spin the bottle and I was invited to join in. Eventually, the bottle landed on me and I had my first kiss, although I was too young to understand its significance or its significance (although I did recognize that it was not something to be repulsed by, unlike those in my classes).

Later that night, the girl who kissed me (Sharon, I think was her name) walked outside to sit on the porch. She lingered for a moment at the doorway and asked me to join her. I followed. She told me all about the things she did and I was enlightened that not everyone was good and kind at their hearts.

The party went undiscovered, of course, but there was the inevitable fear that I we’d be had. The knowledge that what you are doing is wrong and that you should leave immediately. I had that feeling then.

Suddenly, my benefactor appeared behind me. “Are you ready for dinner?” She asked.

I turned and saw that she had changed into a deep red dress which exposed her shoulders but neglected to dip low enough to see much of her chest (to my dismay, although it did reveal much of her curves). “Yeah,” I said. “Nice dress.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I found it here yesterday.”

“Found it?” I asked. “You mean this isn’t your house?”

“It is now, since I found it,” she said, walking across the room. “Do you still not know who I am?”

“You haven’t told me your name, so… no,” I said, in part realizing that she didn’t know mine either.

“My name isn’t what I mean,” she said. She was silent for a moment and looked at me real longingly, like I meant something important that I couldn’t understand. “You’re nice, and I’m almost sorry about what I have to do.”

Two things happened very quickly. Her teeth shone and I noticed two fangs had descended, and secondly she sprang at me from the other side of the room like a monster leaping in a nightmare. It happened much more quickly than it took to say it.

As soon as I’d seen the fangs, I had already begun to stand up, so that I managed to keep my neck out of the path of her gaping maw. Still, she grabbed me and we tumbled to the floor. I tried to kick against her stomach to knock the wind out of her, but of course, had forgotten that vampires don’t necessarily take breaths.

My moment of misjudgment gave her time to rip into my throat, tearing like lightning through the flesh. I’m not entirely sure how I managed to do it, but I pulled my head away from her teeth, and then managed to swing the crowbar out from my belt and scrape along her torso. She leapt back, startled, and the dress now ruined. I scrambled backwards, and turned to run towards the porch door.

She leapt after me and we went tumbling again, this time I remember less except that we tumbled through the cardboard covered door out into the daylight. My plan had not been to go all the way out, but had been to threaten breaking the glass to let sunlight and all the skin-stealers inside. But this would have to do, I thought. We landed roughly against wooden porch, the sun blinding me and forcing my hands up against the sun for a moment.

My benefactor fared less equally. Watching a vampire under sunlight is like watching an animal drown. It simultaneously immobilizes and distracts, so that her grip on my shoulders went limp. I used the opportunity to flee inside, grabbing the hem of her dress and dragging her in after me. We got through the porch door and when I turned I saw the first of the skin-stealers leap onto the porch where we had been.

It was the first one I’d seen from a distance of less than a hundred feet, and everything was now magnified. You can see the human parts of them much better, the bone structure that you’d associate with a human. Beyond the basic form (two legs, two arms, a head) it began to look much different. Its skin was a dark grey-green color, and its eyes looked leafy in their texture. The head is mostly uncovered, except in skin. From the mouth descend the swinging tentacles, hooked on their ends. It crouched down and hunched, so that I saw the way it’s shoulder blades were pulled to support the arms. And then it leapt at me, its thorned arms swinging at me. I hardly sidestepped this first attack, attempting to slash at it with my crowbar.

By now the vampire was starting to regain focus; not much, as the sunlight still filtered in through the porch door, but she now slowly crept to her feet as I barely parried an attack. She must have realized that the only way to survive would have been to attack the skin-stealer; as it was, it was distracted by me.

So she leapt after it, her fangs digging into its neck. I fled to the kitchen.

I heard them crash together and looked back to see the vampire’s mangled form on the floor. The skin-stealer looked up and me and stepped to the side for an instant, thick brown blood dripping from its neck. It must have recognized my own injury, and stepped back for a second, before launching forward again.

I grabbed one of the chairs and spun on my feet, slamming it into the skin-stealer midair. It flailed to the ground and I used my crowbar to give it a swift lobotomy. After it completed its final throes, I gathered the vampire’s body in my arms and carried it upstairs, finding a small room to deposit it, and then did the same for the skin-stealer.

Tired, I sat down, and slowly began eating the skin-stealer, knowing that it wouldn’t stay nutritious as long as the vampire would. My strength restored, I found bandages from a medical cabinet in the bathroom located on the second story.

Upon fixing my neck wound I returned to the room to see that the vampire was once more alive and feebly sipping from the skin-taker’s wounds. Her flesh was already coming back, I realized, now that we’d been out of the sunlight.

I sat down and ate next to her for awhile, knowing that my strength would be enough to finish her. For a moment she stopped and looked up at me curiously. “You’re a cannibal?”

I shrugged.

And of course, now I can see how afraid that’s made you. Please, understand that this is simply the way things go nowadays. I did not tell this story to frighten you, in fact, I’m not entirely sure what purpose this exchange has served. But I thank you for your time. Now if you remain calm, this next part won't hurt at all.