Hello friends! Last night, at a bar, surrounded by loud people and hanging out with football fans, sipping Angry Orchard Cider and listening to 90's rap, I wrote four pages of my short story! Woot! Obviously I just need a totally inappropriate atmosphere for the muse to strike. So here it is, the next installment. Enjoy!
The antiseptic smell woke me, the smell that always reminded me of hospitals. My eyes were heavy and when I finally got them open I shut them again with a curse. It was bright as hell. I tried to lift my hand to my face but my arm wouldn't budge. I risked opening my eyes again and glanced around. I was strapped to a gurney in a white room. Tubes led from my arms to a bag of blood that was a quarter full. Were they giving me blood? But no, my blood was dripping into the bag. They were taking my blood. Of course. But I hadn't thought they'd do it so humanely.
I tested the bonds. They were tight, metal. No Velcro for me. My legs were shackled in a similar manner. Resigned, I lay back against the gurney and waited.
The metal door sweeping open pulled me from my reverie. The woman with the clipboard and the white suit would have been pretty except for the alienness about her. She moved too fast, her face was too ageless. Her eyes, bright blue, were just like Frank's.
"I see you're awake, Noah," she said in clipped tones. She checked her clipboard, then glanced at the bag of my blood. "Almost done. Then we'll move you to a more comfortable location."
I cleared my throat. I wasn't sure what to say. "You...aren't going to drain me?" I finally got out.
She smiled. "Heaven's no, Noah. We wouldn't be that wasteful. And the boss wouldn't like it."
The boss. They had a boss? Well, it made sense that there would be a leader of sorts. The name on the Treaty had been simply the letter H.
"If you aren't going to kill me, then what am I doing here? Why take me? And what about the boy and the old lady?"
She tsked at me. "They are alive, though how long that will last depends on you I believe. Now, no more questions. Your blood pressure is going up and that could affect the process."
After checking a few more things: my temperature, my blood pressure, my heart rate, she left the room.
I was confounded. They didn't want to kill me yet they were taking my blood? The lives of the civilians depended on me? To what purpose? What did these creatures want with me?
When the bag was mostly full she returned and deftly removed the needle from my arm. She took my blood away almost reverently, stuck a needle in my arm that brought a warmth coiling through my veins. She closed the door behind her. I tested the bonds again. They hadn't loosened in the slightest. I didn't let panic overwhelm me. Whatever she'd given me began to take effect, and I drifted off before I could make any plans.
A gruff voice jolted me awake, either that or the drugs they'd given me had worn off. I'd never had much luck with sedatives. I glanced to my right and instead of the "nurse" of earlier two males leaned against the wall staring down at me.
They were of an age, if vampires could be defined by that. They'd probably been in their twenties when they'd turned. The one on the left had a scruffy beard and dark curly hair. He wore jeans and boots with a loose black shirt which his arms were crossed over. His body was heavily built, and the glare he was sending me should have maimed. His companion was shorter, slighter, clean-shaven. His hair was lighter but also curled. His expression was curious, almost eager. His clothing was more clean-cut, his hands in his pockets. I returned their scrutiny blandly. I badly wanted to lick my dry, cracked lips but I refrained. Best not to show any more weakness than I already was. Couldn't sink much lower than being strapped virtually naked to a table.
The gruff voice spoke again. It came not from the angry dark vamp, but the curious light vamp. "Amazing. Simply amazing. See how he stares at us? He does not know."
His companion grunted. "Why would he? And why should we care?" He broke my gaze and looked to the other. "We're wasting our time here, Felix."
"I think if he just knew..."
"She forbade it."
Felix sighed and sent me one more long look as he exited with the angry male. That look. Those eyes, so alien and yet...I had a son named Felix.
There was no point in fighting the wave of exhaustion that engulfed me then. Not yet. Instead I let my mind drift, and I thought of the fire.
The fire.
I'd smelled it before I'd seen it. The bedroom hadn't been burning around us as we'd talked of casual things, as in my nightmare. I'd pulled into the driveway after taking the boys to their grandparent's house. I'd smelled it, and I'd pulled out my phone as I'd sprinted to the door. The phone was new, a Christmas gift, and my thumb fumbled over the three numbers as I burst through the front door. Smoke greeted ne, heat embraced me, it's source the kitchen. I plowed through the smoke, screaming her name. I coughed at the foot of the stairs, rambling off the address, the urgency, before pocketing the phone and taking the stairs two at a time. Her name, repeated, and a hoarse answering cry that assailed my ears from the direction of the bedroom.
"Graham! Help me!"
By God I would. Eyes half blind, throat seizing, I found her. Heat blasted through the floor, melting my shoes. I lifted her, and she wrapped her arms around me. We were safe, together.
It was the hall floor that caved in below my feet, the hall floor that we fell through, into flame and smoke.
I couldn't know what I'd looked like, carrying her burned body out of the flaming building that had once been our home. They got it on tape, they'd showed me. But even I could hardly believe it. And I'd been there. Her body was red, angry, charred in places. Her long, gorgeous hair was gone. Her clothes, my clothes, were burned ruins, flaking away as I moved inexorably toward the ambulance. They took her from me, put her on a stretcher, wanted me to get on another one. Wanted to separate us. I fought them, pleaded with them, and they gave up and let me follow the ambulance in my car.
The next hours were terrible, terrifying. I let them examine me, let them show me the footage as they threw questions at me. My wife was near death, burned over 70% of her body. I was unscathed. I couldn't answer their questions. I only pleaded with them to save her.
And finally I slept in the waiting room, in my old jeans and t-shirt that I'd pulled from my trunk, my ball cap pulled over my eyes. And I awoke in a jungle hundreds of years and the devil only knew how many miles from that hospital.
Unscathed. Fireproof. Super-human. They wanted my blood. To drink? What had the nurse said? Something about not wasting it? And the two vampire males. One with my son's name. My younger son. My older son had his mother's dark hair, was built thicker, like me. Nicko. Nick for short. They'd been 8 and 10 when the fire happened. When I'd vanished. They'd been safe with their grandparents. What had happened to them when I'd disappeared? They would have felt so abandoned. I couldn't even think about their mother, too much pain. Had I saved her? Had she pulled through?
My head spun, my breath came in gasps. Something was trying to worm into my brain. Something dangerous. I let the nurse give me more drugs to calm me and said nothing, turning my head away. Had to think of the now. Had to learn what the enemy was planning. Had to escape.
There it is, until next time. Oh, and I quit my job because it was terrible. And I'm going to be home in less than a week! And then I'll have plenty to write about!
Peace and Love and Muses who finally got their acts together
Shanti Elena
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