Vampire Doodle

The lady who took my vitals wore a silver pin that had the name Jill on it.

“You know that giving blood saves millions of lives,” Jill said as she entered my information into a computer. “Can you imagine that? It just takes an hour.”

It was hard not to roll my eyes. I didn’t give blood because I cared about lives but because I was too broke to buy my own t-shirts. The last one I received had a big mosquito and the words Got Blood written across the back. Sometimes it gets a laugh or two – usually by those who aren’t skilled in using their frontal lobe. But hey, better than naked right?

Jill dropped her hands in her lap. “I wonder why more people don’t do it. It’s such a wonderful thing…giving blood.”

I stared at her. Usually the people who take my blood are the silent types, the kind that view it more like a job than a work of nobility. I wondered if Jill lived in a little place called earth…with bills, and decidedly non-noble things.

“So beautiful…”

Jill’s voice faded. Then, “Because of the saving lives, you know.”

I nodded and wondered how many times she was going to say it.

“Not enough people give blood. You should tell your friends to come to us. We have bigger cookies and a wider selection.”

“Yeah, ok.” Bigger cookies were a plus in my book.

It didn’t take long for Jill to hook everything up just so. Sometimes I could watch them slip the needle into my veins. Sometimes not. It just looked so…brutal to me.

I wished I could read while the blood splashed into the sack. But it was too difficult to do so, flat on my back, squeezing a ball. So I thought about our literature class instead. The books we’d been reading had been such a drag – books written in the 1800s. Who cared about them, honestly? We didn’t even talk like them anymore.

I wondered if, years in the future, 21st century language would become as strange as the 19th century was to me.

Maybe English wouldn’t exist.

It was a disturbing thought.

Other people trickled in. Jill and some others got them situated, asked them the usual questions. Some tried to give when they were sick, which I thought was a bit rude. Life and death people…what was so hard to understand about that? It was hard to imagine that life was so fragile that it could sometimes be destroyed by a simple cold.

Life is screwed up sometimes.

I heard one guy ask if he could give blood, even though he was on the last round of antibiotics.

Moron.

I was surprised when Jill let him donate anyway. But I wasn’t a doctor – I didn’t know anything.

I just wanted my cookies. And my shirt. And to pass my college classes with preferably flying colors (but it was ok if they stayed on ground level). Maybe get a boyfriend or two? At least two of those options were in my reach.

When I finished, I had a warm cookie chock full of chocolate chips. How many blood places serve warm cookies? Too few, let me tell you. It was like a taste of home, without the clean up afterwards.

It was hard not to watch Jill take blood from patients. I was concerned when I saw a bum off the street try to donate. I actually had a bet with myself to see if she’d take him, but she didn’t, much to my relief. I tried not to think about the sanitary conditions of the needles and things.

That would be cruel irony — to die giving blood so that other people could survive.

I tried not to think about it.

Sometimes the world was too ironic for its own good. Besides, I had seen her wipe the alcohol across my arm and take the needle from a sealed package.

No germs in that scenario, right?

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and fumbled for my antibacterial hand gel. Not that that would help anything…but it was still reassuring to smell the alcohol.

I was too busy trying to feel safe that I barely noticed Jill walk into the women’s restroom with a bag of blood in her hand.

I didn’t know where they stored blood…but the bathroom just seemed so unsanitary to me.

The door creaked open. I figured she mustn’t have closed it all the way.

Jill was there, fully dressed, head tilted back, holding the bag to her mouth – which was kind of odd.

Then I noticed the blood dribbling from the corners of her mouth, staining the front of her dress like ketchup sauce.

I was so shocked I dropped the cookie.

Wasn’t drinking blood some sort of taboo, like cannibalism? I felt like throwing up my cookie, it was just so revolting. My stomach still heaves when I think about it.

Jill must have noticed my staring because she turned and faced me. I tried to remember if her teeth had been so pointy during our interview, but I really hadn’t been looking at her mouth as it flapped on and on about saving lives and nobility.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

She licked her lips. “Having a snack.”

The other blood people had noticed us and were closing in behind me. Their teeth were pointy, too. The donors were on the cots, eyes closed, blood splashing into bags. I wondered sickly if they were still alive.

That was, honestly, the first time I’ve ever been afraid. Near car crashes or rollicking roller coasters that might fall off the tracks or air planes toppling from the air just don’t compare to that moment.

It wasn’t the frozen in place kind of fear – it was the kind of terror that gave wings to my sneakers, terror that would have enabled me to easily beat a marathon record.

Unfortunately, there was a door in my way. And it was locked. Which was just inconvenient.

This all seemed vaguely familiar to me.

It reminded me of vampires at the time…which was weird because, as far as I was concerned, they just didn’t exist.

Except on Halloween…but even those are just poser wannabes with masks on.

I tried to remember everything I knew about Vampires as I ran as fast as I could. I hadn’t really committed all the details to memory considering that they just didn’t exist in my world.

I remembered the sunlight thing of course – that would be why there wasn’t a single window in sight. I was surprised I hadn’t really noticed it before.

I guess I just really wanted that shirt and cookie.

But, considering the lack of windows situation, that wasn’t particularly helpful.

I remembered crosses and crucifixes…but I’m not the religious sort. I avoided them, like the plague. There should be some sort of -ism for that in the vampire slaying category, but there probably isn’t, because the world just doesn’t play fair like that.

Of course, if the world were fair, then it wouldn’t take something special like a wooden stake to kill a vampire. I mean, they’re just a person who’s dead. It shouldn’t be that hard, but how many people carry a wooden stake in their purses?

Of course, one could also say that it wasn’t fair to the vampires that they could be killed with something so incredibly anticlimactic and ordinary as a piece of wood, but considering that they were at the moment chasing me with blood drool foaming at their mouths, I didn’t really consider that side of the story much.

I tumbled over the reception counter and tried to breathe. Tried to think but all I wanted to do was live or to find something that remotely resembled wood.

That’s when I noticed the number two pencil on the floor, neatly sharpened and everything.

It wasn’t exactly a stake, and it wasn’t long enough for comfort, but it was a wooden something with a pointy end and that was enough for me.

I clutched it in my hands and tried to compose myself.

I’d never been in a fight before and I was all shaky and trembly because of the whole scared shitless thing going on at the time. I was so terrified I could only think in incoherent sentences.

Wood. Stab. Kill. Scared. VAMPIRES!?

That about sums it up.

I heard them approach – they hadn’t even bothered running after me…I wondered if running was too good for the likes of them or if I was just too pathetic a prey.

“Where is she?” one of them asked.

“Somewhere,” Jill said. “I can feel her, her life.”

I gripped the pencil tighter, and felt the ground tremble as one of them stepped closer.

“There’s no where to hide,” the other said. “She’s here, behind the counter.”

“Run aground,” Jill said. “Like a rabbit.”

The footsteps felt very close. I closed my eyes. I’d show them that they couldn’t drink me. That’s what I told myself, at least — otherwise I don’t think I could have unrolled myself from my fetal ball of fear.

One of the vampires was just about to lean over the counter when I plunged the pencil into the left side of her chest. She looked surprised – her eyes wide, pointy mouth opened in what, I presumed, was an astonished gasp.

And then she died…and it was kind of weird, because technically she was already dead.

“Don’t come any closer!” I said in what I hoped was a very menacing voice. I held the pencil like a very short sword, like I’d seen in the movies.

Jill motioned the other vampires back. “We don’t want to kill you.”

“Yeah?” I asked. I had wanted to say something witty and snarky but words were in short supply at the time.

“Well, I don’t,” Jill said. One of the vampires behind her grinned and snarled.

I almost dropped my pencil.

“I remember being human and I remember becoming a vampire.” She turned away from me and said to the others, “Why don’t you get something to drink from the fridge, hm?”

“It’s very nice – being human and all that,” I said once the others had gone.

“Exactly.”

“Why were you chasing me then?” I asked.

“It was nice to hear your heart beat. Ours don’t, you know.”

Jill took a step towards me.

“It’s nice to see how scared you are. I’m sure your blood would give me quite an adrenaline rush if I were to bite you just now. I haven’t felt scared for ever so long.”

“I have a pencil, you know.” I mimed a stabbing motion.

“That might have scared me when I first turned,” Jill said. “But not anymore.”

It was harder to hold onto my pencil – my palms were too wet and slick. I wondered how many people she’d killed, and if I’d be worthy of a footnote on the list.

“Why haven’t you killed me already?” I asked.

“I haven’t decided to yet.”

“I thought…I thought that’s what vampires did,” I said, desperately trying to remember Bram Stoker’s book. “Kill people. Without remorse?”

Much to my relief, Jill stopped in her tracks. “I don’t know about that. It’s definitely very nice to do that. We vampires aren’t quite dead you know, but we’re not alive either. And being alive is a very nice feeling. It’s easiest to feel alive when we feel another’s life flowing into us as we drink their blood, fresh from the jugular and everything. It’s quite exhilarating.”

“Oh,” I said faintly.

“But they’re people…which we were once. Some of us remember our lives being ripped from us. Some of us don’t.” Jill shrugged. “I still do. I’d like to be alive again.”

“So…you guys aren’t…automatically evil…or anything like that…right?” I asked, allowing myself to hope that I’d make it out alive.

“I don’t know about that. It’s just very hard to be good.” Jill pouted. “You saw me in the bathroom. I had to have a snack, I couldn’t wait like I should have. Or maybe I wanted you to see and then to watch your reaction – I haven’t decided which yet. But your reaction was ever so satisfying. I fancy I once had emotions running riot like that once upon a time. But it’s hard to be afraid of anything when one is basically immortal.”

I raised my pencil stake thing again.

Jill just sighed at me. “I’ve told you. That might have scared me once, but not anymore.”

“It makes me feel better,” I said even though it really didn’t. But good guys were supposed to be full of bravado, right?

“I won’t kill you, I think,” Jill said, advancing again.

All my courage went away and I stumbled backwards.

“Just a little bite. Nothing deadly. Well, no promises though. It’s awfully hard to stop once it’s begun.”

“Stop!” I tried to shout, but it sounded more like a squeak than anything.

“You’re so scared, I can almost taste it.” She started to climb onto the counter top. “Blood from pint pouches just isn’t the same. It’s old, half dead already. We already know about half dead. We want to feel alive again.”

I stabbed her right in the left side, through the heart, just like the last one.

Except that she didn’t die.

She just kept coming towards me.

“I told you already that that doesn’t scare me.”

I felt the wall against my back. “Why?” This was all wrong…the books had lied to me! Except…they hadn’t…because I had killed one vampire.

“Well, if I told you, then every person would know how to kill me…and that’s not very fun. It’s supposed to be a secret.”

“The kind of secret that you kill people over?”

She frowned. Her teeth dropped over her lips in the most disturbing fashion. How had I not noticed before?

“Yes. I’m afraid so. But you don’t know the complete secret yet so..” her voice trailed off.

I felt a little relieved, mostly because she was looking at the ceiling instead of me.

“If I wanted to be fair, then I couldn’t kill you, because you don’t know the whole secret yet. But life isn’t fair, but I’ve always wished it was…haven’t you? But I’ll tell you what – I’ll give you a chance to figure out the rest of the secret. I’ll give you a week.”

“What if I just don’t…figure it out?” I asked. “Wouldn’t that be more conducive for my well being?”

Jill shrugged. “I’ll kill you if you don’t come back in a week.”

“But you’ll kill me anyway if I discover the secret,” I said carefully.

Jill nodded. “It would be bad for my health if it got around. It’s a matter of survival, you see.”

“Being immortal isn’t enough?” I asked.

“Not really,” Jill said. “An undead life is better than no life at all. I’ll take what I can get.”

“Right,” I said faintly.

“See you in one week?” She smiled at me and it really was quite grotesque since her teeth had red stains on them.

“I suppose so.”

They let me go after that, but, even as I write this a few days later, I’m still absolutely terrified.

Next: Part 2