Like New

Originally written Saturday, January 14, 2006

He kept on laughing, now comfortable that he was playing along and oblivious to the fact that he wasn’t. “Oh, yeah, Charlotte. That was a bonny lass if I ever knew one.”

I could hide nothing anymore. My demeanor grave, I looked him straight in the eyes and asked, “Who are you?”

“Marya, it’s me.”

“Who the hell is me?”

“Me. Rick. Rick from Rochester. What’s wrong with you?”

“You need to leave.”

“Whoa, now. What’s going on? I’m sorry I haven’t been up-front with a lot of stuff. I just don’t have such lofty, keep-the-universe-running goals like you do, and I thought you’d think I was an asshole. Or a selfish asshole. Let’s start over.”

“Let’s not. I need to think right now. Maybe I’ll call you in a day or two. Maybe. Thanks for telling me what you’ve told me. It’s been very enlightening, and I won’t forget to thank you if Kay and I and… whoever… decide to help each other out.”

I got up and walked around the table to pull him to his feet, ready to lead him to the door. But I was unprepared for his next move. As soon as he rose, I felt him spin me around and pin my arms to my torso, his in a bear hug around my body. Instinctively, I attempted to ground my feet, preparing to rob him of his balance and propel him into the nearest sharp and stationary object. But before I could, I felt his ankle wrap around one of mine, lifting it from the floor. Together, we came crashing down to the hardwood, and I found myself pinned beneath his weight.

What I really wanted to wonder in the next moment was what the hell he was trying to do, since he’d know—even the emptiest of shells of Richard would know—that there was little he could do to harm me without a weapon, but then I felt him force my head to the side with his own, his nose sliding along my jawline from behind. The absence of breath on my neck was striking, and when the teeth pierced my flesh, I froze, more from surprise than from fear or pain.

He had trouble keeping the wounds open at first: my skin, as well as the vessels housed beneath, mended instinctively each time he extruded his fangs to lap up whatever blood he could from what remained on his teeth or dribbled down the outside of my throat, leaving him unable to suck from open wounds as he normally would. And so instead of taking a single long draught, he fed from me by sinking his sharp teeth into me again and again, establishing a throbbing rhythm, chewing on me as if it were my meat he was trying to consume and not my blood, until I, resigned to my circumstances and unable to roll his bulk off of my back, focused my energy on keeping the punctures open. He didn’t realize right away that the holes were no longer healing, and he gnawed two or three more times, creating a pair of gaping lesions that allowed him to finish the job in a very short time.

As every third Crypt kid can probably tell you, only the incisions hurt. You barely feel the fluid drain away, so long as it isn’t more than your body can spare. What my body could spare was not a concern of Richard’s, however, and as a tingling and then a loss of sensation spread from my extremities toward my heart, it became harder to stay awake. With his arms around me and his chest against my back, his lips and tongue seeming to take as much pleasure in the moment as his appetite, my last conscious thought was, It definitely wasn’t him at the club, along with a sense that this truth was, for some reason, a good thing.

The events of this day to be continued...