I woke up at sunset and turned on the news. I should have learned my lesson last time but I didn’t. Before I could make it to the kitchen to feed Diablo and give her some water the news announcer said, “There is a person of interest in last month’s murder of Leanne Washington. Police are looking for a white male that was seen leaving the area around the time of the murder. The police had this to say ‘We are asking if anyone in the community who has any other information to please come forward and help us solve this heinous crime.’” The show cut back to the talking head who said, “A heinous crime indeed.”
Heinous. Yeah, that pretty much summed it up. There wasn’t anything that I could say in my defense like, “I didn’t mean to slash her neck with my fangs and suck her dead.” I’m sure that wouldn’t play very well in the court of public opinion. I had thought that I had forgiven myself for killing her but I hadn’t. I still felt guilty even though it was something that I didn’t have any control over. The most disturbing part was that even if I did have control over myself, I would have killed her anyway.
Chapter 5
Before I was turned, I had a gun pulled on me in DC after a friend’s party. A girl, Tristan, who I worked with at a bar who had graduated from Georgetown Law. To celebrate she had a party at her place. I didn’t want to go but she was nice to me and graduating law school is a big deal so I sucked it up and went. When I had stayed a polite amount of time I decided to walk to the Metro. Her visiting mother and sisters were going the same way as I was so I decided to walk them back to their hotel. It wasn’t sheer chivalry that propelled me. One of Tristan’s sisters was a really pretty redhead. I didn’t think that I had a chance with her or anything but I didn’t see any harm in spending a little more time with her.
We decided to walk down 19th street NW, from T Street. The street was darker than it should have been because one of the streetlights had burned out. The rest of the sidewalk was in the dark because thick trees had grown underneath the lights. I might have thought that we should’ve taken another street but perhaps that is revisionist history.
For a long time, the mere thought of what happened next made me sweat.
We approached a boarded-up house that had a set of stairs at the end of the yard that was hidden by hedges. When I was a few steps away from the stairs, a guy jumped out from the steps with a gun.
“Holy shit, you scared me,” I said starting to laugh it off. Then I saw his gun. He held his gun on me while the woman he was with went to all the ladies and grabbed their purses. I thought that I was going to see a flash of light from the muzzle blast and then I would be off to the big unknown.
The ladies gave up their purses pretty quickly but their mother hid behind me, using me as a human shield. She had a hold of my shirt in the back, and was playing tug of war with the male mugger who had a gun in my face. Without putting any thought to it, I reached behind me, grabbed the mother by the back of her shirt, and tilted her head up so that she could look into my glaring eyes. I said, “Give him the purse, Mom.” She did. The woman mugger ran off while the guy backed away slowly and held eye contact with me to make sure that I wasn’t going to do anything. I didn’t. Then they were gone.
We filed a police report, but nothing substantial ever came of it. A detective called and asked me a few questions but he didn’t follow up. I haven’t ever forgotten the face of the man who robbed me. I saw him in my dreams for months afterward.
After I was robbed my feet didn’t seem fast enough. Every time I was out past dark, my body clenched when I saw another male on the street. I’m ashamed to admit that I would cross to the other side of the street when I saw black guys coming my way. In my head I knew that, no matter what color, every single person that had passed me on the street, before and after, didn’t rob me. But that didn’t matter because I had looked down the barrel of a gun, waiting for a blast to end my life.
A few weeks after becoming immortal, I walked the streets at night because I didn’t have much money and all of my friends had to work in the morning. Passing time sitting at home made me feel sorry for myself. Outside, I listened to the familiar sounds of people snoring, televisions blabbing and drunk people talking over each other when I heard someone say, “Give me your purse, bitch!”
I sprinted towards the corner of an apartment building and saw a woman with her back to me playing tug of war with a man who was cocking his fist to punch her. He threw the punch and I caught his fist mid-swing. Then I slammed him up against a parked car. The girl was still holding her purse, watching us.
“Run,” I said. “Now.”
She snapped her out of her shock and ran away, heels clicking into the night.
The guy started to get up. He was dazed but looking for a fight so I punched him in the ribs. He dropped to his knees, gasping for air. I grabbed him by the back of his neck and forced him to look me in my eyes. Then I backhanded him. Blood flew from his nose splattering the sidewalk. When I let him go he flopped to the ground, writhing around on his back trying to get a full breath. I stood over him, straddling him with my feet on both sides of his jacket so that he couldn’t move.
“If I ever catch you or any of your friends out here fucking with people, I’m going to beat the shit of them,” I said. “I’ll be watching you.”
When I reached down, he flinched, and I went through his pockets. I found a wallet and a set of keys. I wanted him to know what getting robbed felt like. I took them and got off of his jacket. He rolled into the fetal position. I stood over him trying to look into his eyes for a few moments but he was shielding himself from another attack. He stayed on the ground until I was around the corner.
As I walked away, I realized that I was being two-faced for punishing a robber after mugging a couple not too long before. But saving that woman made me feel good about myself, and it had been a long time since I had felt that way, so I tried not to dwell on it.
After getting a few voicemails from my mom, I called her back before she decided to fly down and chew me out personally. Growing up as the youngest, with a father that passed away, I had to learn to deal with my remaining parent giving me the attention of someone playing the role of both parents.
“Hi Mom,” I said.
“Well, well, well. I guess you’re alive,” she said. I could tell that she had a smile on her face. I thought to myself, I’m not technically alive but that is beside the point.
“Yes, I am,” I said. “Are you staying out of mischief?”
“I’m trying to but you know how that goes.”
I asked her that question as a running joke between the two of us. She had been a stay at home mother for all of my life. My father died in an accident on an oilrig, and in exchange for never talking about the accident to the press, or anyone else for that matter, the oil company gave her enough money to live the rest of her life without having to work. It wasn’t a huge sum but enough. We didn’t talk about it much, but one night after some wine she told me that she would give all the money away and go back to work in exchange for one hug from my father. I was drunk enough at the time to tell her that for that amount of money she should hold out for a shag. She chuckled a little bit, rolled her eyes then got up to get another glass of wine.
“How are things down there?” She said.
“Oh you know, crack, murder, and extortion. And that’s just the Members of Congress,” I said.
“Ha.” She loved corny jokes. “When are you moving home?” She asked me this every time we talked. She was joking when she asked, but she also wanted me to move home.
“The day that you tell me you have the dough for me to retire.”
“That will be the day.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay Smartypants,” she said. “I’m going to let you go.”
“Is everything okay?” Our conversations usually lasted at least fifteen minutes.
“I’m feeling a bit under the weather so I’m going to rest for a bit, okay? I’ll talk to you later.”
; “Okay. Later Tater.”
Then she hung up.
After I stopped the mugging I decided that I would be a superhero. I would get a uniform and figure out how to make money from it, but those were just minor details when I was fantasizing. A few nights later I wandered over to Foggy Bottom because I was tired of being on the Hill. Somewhere off of 22nd Street I heard a guy pushing around a woman.
I made a note of the row house and watched it for a few days. There was a side garage surrounded by a wooden fence. I climbed to the roof of the garage and from the roof I could see into what must have been a little girl’s room that had pink and white curtains with Power Puff girls on them.
A man came out to put trash in one of the trashcans when I jumped down from the roof and landed right behind him. I had nothing to fear. I created fear. I put my mouth next to his ear.
“So you like to push women tough guy?” I asked in a whisper.
“Who the fuck are you?” he said, turning around and dropping the trash bag he was carrying.
“Don’t worry about who I am, Mr. Bad Ass,” I said.
I pushed him into the row of trashcans he had lined up along the wooden fence along his driveway. He landed on top of them. One of the cans tipped over and a white trash bag poked its head out of the formerly covered can.
“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” I said. “Come on pretty boy with your big phallic Lexus. You can push around women, so let’s see how tough you are.”
He got up and began to brush himself off. He wanted to fight but he wasn’t used to fighting something that could beat him up. He was master of his household and he exercised his will over everyone who lived there, but now I was on his property and he knew he wasn’t in control.
I closed the distance between us and kneed him in the nuts. Then I pushed him back on top of the knocked-over trashcans.
“What’s going on out here?” said his wife who had appeared in the side door.
“No more,” I said to the man.
I didn’t look in her direction. I just ran away. As I was leaped over the fence I noticed a pair of brown eyes watching me from the window with the Power Puff Girl curtains.
I came back a few nights later and sat on the same part of the roof. I felt pretty good about myself. I would settle some domestic violence and make him learn to keep his hands to himself. While I was sitting there I heard rustling in the girl’s room. The curtain opened a bit and there was elementary school-aged brunette with pretty brown eyes that were almost too big for her head. They were the same set of eyes that I had seen before the last time. She stared at me for a minute, then began to open the window very slowly. She winced when it squeaked and looked back at her door to make sure no one was coming. I could hear her parents were downstairs talking.
She leaned to put her mouth close to the window crack. “You have to go away.”
“What?” I whispered.
“You are only making things worse,” she said. “Now Ron is mad all of the time. Go away please. Okay?”
I hadn’t ever dreamed that a voice so small could sound so forceful. I nodded and left. Short of killing the guy, I didn’t have any other options. He would be able to hurt them during the day when I wasn’t there.
My stint as a superhero was over. No one ever told Superman that he was making things worse.
CHapter 6
“Hey, douche, what are you drinking?” asked a pink-haired, chubby girl wearing a red and black latex-looking shirt that caused her to spill out of the top. I’m sure she thought she was being sassy and charming, if not to me then to the other patrons, but instead she came off as desperate and cliché.
I tried to think about what she had asked me but the atmosphere transfixed me. It felt more like I was on a movie set. People were acting the way that people expected them to act, not the way they wanted to act. It was reflective of DC as a whole.
After going to bars for weeks looking in pursuit of Charlie (I didn’t know if it was her real name or not), I ducked into a little dive bar called Subterranean Jungle. There were mohawks and the assorted piercings of people who don’t want to fit in with mainstream society but still wanted to fit in somewhere. A counter-culture culture. Neat.
“Whiskey, rocks,” I said.
I leaned in close and took an audible sniff though it wasn’t necessary.
“I can smell your period,” I said. “Quite the heavy flow day my dear, maybe you should have that checked. And you should consider going easy on the tequila.”
She leaned back from the bar and for a moment her tough façade was shattered. Her pupils dilated and she held her hands in front of her chest. Then she reached under the bar and poured my drink. She slid the glass across the bar without making eye contact. I dropped a $20 and left to find a corner where I could see everyone.
Even in my all black attire (the better to bleed you with my dear), the other customers looked at me like I didn’t belong. They were right, I didn’t belong there, but not for the reasons that they thought. For a self-conscious moment I wondered if I wasn’t goth enough to be there until I remembered that I’m so goth that I can’t go out in the sun or I would die so those posers could suck it.
As I negotiated my way to a different section of the bar, a short blond ran into me. I couldn’t see her face but I could feel that she was like me. My spine tingled and my fangs came out. She moved through the crowd, weaving through people, using her small size to fit quickly through openings that were too small for me. I couldn’t keep up without smashing into people.
I saw the door open and she was gone. I pushed through the crowd and went outside. There were a few smokers hanging around outside of with the sad, decrepit, industrial buildings that surrounded the area but the lady was no where to be found.
I figured that I might as well leave. I had no other reason to be at the bar. A few blocks later I heard someone in heels running across the roof of a building on the same side of the street as me. I ran into the alley between two of the buildings and jumped up the right side of the one wall, which propelled me up the wall on the left. From the left-side wall I was able to jump to the roof of the nine-story building. When I got to the top, she was standing there waiting for me.
She was the same petite blond from the bar, wearing jeans and dark red leather jacket. Despite her diminutive size she looked like she was made of nails. She couldn’t have been more than 5’1” and a hundred pounds fully clothed and soaking wet, even though her heels gave her an extra artificial inch or two. She walked over to me and looked me up and down.
“Interesting trick to get up here,” she said. “Did you have to practice that?’
“Not really,” I said. “I couldn’t think of another way.”
I tried to sound cool but her confidence unnerved the hell out of me. I had gotten used to being the only monster in the night but now I was face to face with another one. For the second time since becoming a vampire, I wasn’t in complete control. The first time was when I was feeding and I didn’t have control of my body because I was trying to survive. This time I was scared, the same way that mortals must have felt about me.
“In time you will be able to jump up here. The longer you live, the stronger you’ll get.”
In what appeared even to me to be a flash, she pinned me to one of the nearby doors that led to the roof. We hit the steel door so hard that it buckled a little under the force. She held me by my jaw and pushed my head back, exposing my throat. Her fangs came out and she was licking her lips. Then she took a few steps back. She had shown me how easy it would be for her to kill me.
“Everyone that I have created goes to that ridiculous bar at some point. It took you much longer than I expected. I’m a little disappointed.”
“I looked at quite a few other bars before this one,” I said, a little annoyed at her implication that I was dumber than the rest of the people she turned. “How the hell was I supposed to know where to find you? You didn’t leave anything behind so I’v
e been going out every night looking for you.”
“Oh come on now. We both know that you weren’t always looking for me,” she said. “You mugged some tourists, hypocritically beat the shit out of a mugger, and then you stepped in when that guy was beating his wife. That’s pretty noble for someone who has to kill other humans to stay alive.”
“I try. And I don’t always kill humans.” It unnerved me to find out that she had been watching me and I didn’t notice.
“By the way, I killed the wife beater for you. I drained that piece of shit half dry and pushed him off of his roof. I checked their mail and he had life insurance policy so his wife and step-daughter will be fine.”
“How?”
“How did I kill him? Easily. I waited until his ladies were out and then I cracked the window with my fist. When he came upstairs to see what was wrong, he opened the window and leaned out to see what had happened. Then I pulled him out of his house by his hair, emptied him then tossed him off the roof. It turned out that he had hair plugs. A few of them fell out when he hit the ground.” Then she scrunched her nose in an adorable way that obscured the fact that she was talking about killing someone.
There was a lull in the conversation as we sized each other up. I didn’t know if I was supposed to ask her why she made me like this or all the other questions that had plagued me since I had woken up as a monster.
“This is where you ask me why I made you this way.”
I looked at her, trying to get a read on what she was thinking but it was no use.
“I did it for fun. I get lonely. When we met, you seemed like a great guy and you have lived up to it so far. To mortals, some of the things that you have done may seem ghastly, but in our world you almost qualify for sainthood.”
I felt my anger rising.
“You didn’t even ask me,” I said. “How can you completely change someone’s life without even talking to them or anything? You don’t even know me. You fucked me over because you were lonely. Fuck you.”
After Sunset Page 4