Donor

by Elena Hearty

  "Pay up?" She stepped backward as Paul grabbed her by the wrist.

  “Yeah,” he said, pulling her toward him, “and I‘m afraid I don’t accept installments.” He brought her wrist to his mouth.

  And pretended to bite into it.

  They both howled with laughter as he let her go. Lenore wobbled unsteadily, and Paul caught her, placing his arm around her shoulders.

  “Okay, Toaster Pastry,” he grinned. “Next time it's for real. Next time -”

  “There won't be a next time,” Richard said, standing in the doorway. “What exactly is going on here?”

  “We're just hanging out, Rich. Charles is still sleeping and-”

  “You are not just hanging out. Let go of her right now.”

  Paul broke away from Lenore, who, in her intoxicated state, leaned against the pool table instead. He glared at his friend. “Jesus, Rich. What's the problem?”

  “When's the last time you ate? How many glasses have you given Charles at this point?”

  “He's had four. I haven't eaten yet, but I was just about to.”

  “No shit, you're about to.” Richard gestured to Lenore.

  Paul‘s jaw fell open. “No. It wasn’t anything like that. I wasn't going to touch her, Rich. I swear. I wouldn‘t do that. She‘s my buddy.”

  “I didn't say you were going to do it on purpose, but you need to go eat. This is how accidents happen.”

  “I wasn't going to touch her, honest.”

  “And I'm keeping you honest. Get out of here. Your dinner's waiting in the laundry room. Sorry it isn't all young and cute and pliable like my roommate over here.”

  Paul headed out of the room, raising his arms in irritation. “You've got the wrong idea, Rich.”

  “I'm sure I do,” Richard said, calling after him.

  He turned his attention to Lenore, crossing his arms paternally. "So maybe you were too drunk to notice—or care—but Paul had fangs just now. What have I told you about fangs? We only grow them when we're getting ready to BITE INTO SOMETHING, STUPID. You need to be more careful. Paul gets very touchy-feely with his victims, and don‘t let him trick you into believing it‘s all in fun; he'll joke around about eating you before he actually does it. I know you guys are pals, but he isn't your pal when he's starving like this. Understand?"

  Lenore clutched her wrist where Paul had grabbed it, sobered and embarrassed at her naiveté. “Yeah, I understand.”

  “So that's good. That's good for both your sakes. Paul doesn't want to hurt you. He's been really concerned about that, as a matter of fact, and he's been making you all those drinks to keep your heart rate down.”

  Lenore nodded, astounded that Paul’s lighthearted diversion was really a security measure designed to keep her alive.

  “But you need to take some responsibility here as well,” Richard continued. “Don't play around with him like that. Not when he‘s low on blood. It isn't safe. I mean, you don't stick your head in a tiger's mouth even when you think -”

  “You can save the analogy, Rich. I know what you guys are.”

  “Never forget it,” he said, walking back into the hall.

  Paul reemerged an hour later, the front of his shirt soaked with blood. He stopped by the sofa to check on Charles before taking a seat next to Lenore at the bar. “I was just messing around earlier. You know that, right? You know I wasn’t going to hurt you, right?”

  “I know,” Lenore lied. “I believe you.”

  “It would really bother me if you didn’t. I promised you wouldn’t die for this, and I’m going to follow through.” He looked down at his hands. “But all the same, Rich is right. Stay away from me when I’m hungry.”

  “You were going to kill me, weren‘t you?”

  He shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “I don’t know what I would have done, to be honest.”

  “TOLD YOU.”

  ✽✽✽

  Tuesday 4:00 am

  “Water. I need some water, Paul.”

  “Hey, Lenore? Would you bring Charles some water?”

  Lenore filled a glass in the sink and walked it over to them.

  Charles took a sip and then spit it out. “That don’t taste right,” he said. “Bitch is trying to poison me.”

  Lenore smiled. How little did he know.

  Paul shook his head. “There’s nothing wrong what she gave you, Charlie boy. You just can’t drink it anymore. You’re ready for blood. I’ll tell Rich to go get you some.”

  ✽✽✽

  Tuesday 4:45 am

  Richard garnished his latest creation with a cherry.

  “Why are you decorating that cup, Rich?” Paul asked from the sofa. “Just bring it over. Charles is thirsty over here.”

  “Because I want you to know exactly how stupid this looks.” He added two more cherries to the rim as if each one served as a delicate counterbalance. “Christ. I even feel stupid doing this. Lenore, on a scale from one to ten, ten being balls-to-the-wall-retarded, how stupid does this look?”

  Lenore did not lift her eyes from the puzzle before her. “Rich, remember the last time you asked me to pick a number between one and ten? Remember how I don‘t like to play that game?”

  Richard carried the glass with him to the sofa, saying, “You’re no fun, Lenore. I should have given the job to Stacy.” When he reached the couch, he handed the beverage to Paul. “So we’re doing half and half today? You’re going to bleed yourself the next time he needs to be fed?”

  Paul nodded wearily. “Yeah. What’s bothering me, though, is that the fever isn’t going down. I’m not sure he should have any more of my blood until it does. I might keep him on regular blood for the first half of the day and see how he does with it. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s up to you. He‘s kept everything down so far, though, and that’s the important thing.” Richard winked at Lenore as he said this. She raised her eyebrows inquisitively in return, silently questioning whether or not the bedizened cup contained their secret sauce. Richard shook his head; it didn’t.

  ✽✽✽

  Wednesday 3:25 am

  Lenore polished off her screwdriver. "Okay, your turn," she said to Paul. "Have you got one?"

  “Yeah, I‘ve got one. Go.”

  “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

  “Animal.”

  “Is it a person?”

  “Yes. One.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him and smiled. “Is that person in the apartment?”

  “Yes,” he laughed. “Two.”

  "Oh, will you guys please shut up?" Richard said, folding his laptop and placing it on the bar. "Christ. It's like stupid in stereo." He eyed the patient on the sofa. "Hey, Charles? How are you feeling?"

  Charles did not answer. It occurred to Lenore that she had not heard him speak to Richard directly since losing Deirdre. She could not ascertain whether his silence was due to anger, fear, hatred, or possibly some combination of the three.

  “I asked how you were feeling, douchebag,” Richard pressed, walking toward him. “Are you ready for more blood?”

  Paul followed behind. “Don’t push it Rich. He just had some an hour ago.”

  “I’m not pushing it. I’m just fucking asking him a question. What’s wrong with that?”

  Charles’s forehead glistened with sweat. “Yeah. I’ll take some.”

  “See?” Richard said, vindicated. “He says he’ll take some. I’ll go get it for him.” He caught Lenore’s gaze from across the room and nodded to her.

  She took a deep breath and nodded back. It was show time.

  Richard left for the laundry room and came back holding large glassful of blood, which he handed to Charles directly. Both Lenore and Richard watched with keen interest as he consumed its contents. When Charles was finished, he looked up at Richard and said, “Thanks, man.”

  Richard smiled back at him. “Don’t mention it.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Charles was asleep, and Richard hovered over him, gleefully
tussling the other man’s hair. “Aw, look at him, Lenore. He’s so cute when he’s sleeping.”

  She stood next to Richard with her arms folded, anxiously awaiting Charles‘s final breath. “Adorable.”

  “I wonder what he’s dreaming about.”

  “Probably killing me. That‘s all he‘s talked about today.”

  “You’ve got to admire his focus.”

  “Leave him alone, guys,” Paul said from the bar. “Stop touching his head like that, Rich. Jesus. Just let him sleep. Give him some space.”

  Charles moaned and twisted at the sound of Paul‘s voice. "Ugh. Oh, man. Shit. Paul? I ain't feeling so good. Y'all are all fuzzy."

  Richard scowled at him. “Was that even English?”

  Charles angled his head toward the floor, gagging. “Shit, man. Paul? Paul. Shit, Paul. I think I’m gonna throw up.”

  Lenore and Richard looked at each other, horrified.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Richard said, suddenly alarmed. “You need to keep this down. I swear to God I will fucking kill you if you throw up in my living room. Just close your eyes and go back to sleep.”

  Charles began heaving.

  “GODDAMMIT, Charles. Don’t you fucking throw up on me. Don’t you do it. Got to swallow that shit back down. Do you hear me?”

  Red liquid projected from Charles’s mouth and landed on the tarp below.

  Richard, in a state of panic, placed his hand over Charles's mouth but was unable to stop the deluge. Sensing that his initial approach was doomed to failure, Richard then tried to scoop vomit from the floor and shove it back down the other man's throat, causing Charles to gag uncontrollably.

  Lenore watched Richard's last-ditch efforts with a sense of detached disappointment. How could someone who took lives on a regular basis possibly be this bad at murder? And why had they not accounted for this scenario? What was the backup plan? She fingered the ten remaining Xanax in her pocket, realizing that even if she were willing to sacrifice the rest of her pills, they would not be enough to accomplish the task.

  The string of profanity that erupted from Richard’s mouth was unhindered by either logic or restraint. Charles was a dog, his mother was a cunt, his father was some sort of cunt as well, and the whole family evidently took it up the ass. Unfortunately, Charles had fallen back asleep, missing out on some truly imaginative details regarding his grandparents and incestuous second cousins.

  “And they called their act, The Aristocrats!” Paul said, walking over with a roll of paper towels.

  He wadded several sheets together and started mopping up the mess, but paused a moment later, eying the liquid on the tarp with skepticism. “Hey Rich, what’s going on here? What are those white specs?”

  Lenore and Richard watched in stunned silence as Paul grabbed one of the larger bits between his thumb and forefinger and placed it on his tongue. He gawked at the two of them. “This is Xanax! Did you guys crush up a bunch of Xanax and put it in Charlie’s drink? You did, didn‘t you?”

  Richard shrugged indifferently. “Let’s not make a huge deal out of this.”

  “You don’t want me to make a huge deal out of this?”

  “He’s fine, isn’t he? I mean, it’s not like it worked or anything.”

  Paul shook his head in amazement. “You two are unbelievable.”

  Lenore opened her mouth to speak.

  But Paul cut her off. “Don’t even look at me right now. I know you had something to do with this. My promise is off. If we run out of bodies, you’re fair game. You‘d better be out of this room the next time I‘m hungry.”

  “Now hang on just a minute,” Richard said. “You can’t call dibs on her like that.”

  “Can’t I? You just tried to kill Charles, so she’s no longer off limits. If anything happens to Charlie at this point—if he doesn’t make it for any reason—she goes to me.” He looked directly into Lenore’s eyes. “And I’m killing her.”

  She winced at his words, but then bit her lower lip and nodded. “I‘m not sorry, Paul. I'd do it again.” She turned to leave. “I’m going back to my room, Rich. I don’t think you need me anymore.”

  “Well, I hope you like it there,” Paul called behind her. “Because that‘s where you‘re going to spend the rest of your life.”

  ✽✽✽

  Thursday 11:00 pm

  Lenore was staring at the watch on her dresser when she heard a knock at the door. Her heart raced. Perhaps Charles had died and Paul had come to collect his compensation. It was impossible to tell for sure; once inside her bedroom, the events in the parlor amounted to nothing more than indecipherable noises in the hallway. Either way, it looked like she was about to get an update.

  “Come on in.”

  The door swung open and Richard stepped in the room. “How are you doing in here?”

  “I‘m decent. How’s Charles?”

  “He hasn’t thrown up again since you left. I don’t get it. Out of all the drinks we gave him…it’s uncanny.” Richard took a deep breath. “It looks like he’s in the clear at this point. Just my luck, huh? That’s good news for you, though, considering I was going to have to hand you over to Paul if he died. I thought you might like to know.”

  “Thanks, Rich.”

  He nodded, furrowing his brow. “How many Xanax do you have left, by the way?”

  “Six.” She lifted six fingers. “I’ve taken a few.”

  “You’re going to start having seizures again. That isn’t enough to taper, is it?”

  “No. I guess I just didn’t think I’d live long enough for it to matter.”

  Richard pursed his lips and pulled a bottle of pills from his pocket. "I‘m probably going to regret doing this, but here," he said, throwing the container onto the bed. "Paul brought these with him on Sunday. He must have forgotten to give them to you because I found them at the bottom of one of the bags from the hardware store. You‘d better start tapering, though. Either that, or you'll need to find yourself a new drug dealer."

  “I know.”

  They both turned to the sound of yelling in the hallway.

  “I’m still hungry, man,” Charles said, his voice getting closer.

  “You couldn’t be that hungry,” Paul replied. “You finished off the final victim only two hours ago. When I eat that much, I’m good for days. It’s all in your head.”

  Charles appeared behind Richard in the doorway, and Lenore was immediately aware of the transformation that had taken place. She watched his long limbs sway with unnatural fluidity as he stared at her, licking his lips. “You said if we ran out of bodies she was fair game.”

  Lenore clutched her blanket, paralyzed with fear. There was nowhere to run inside the tiny bedroom. There was no protection from the greedy monster lurking at the door.

  Paul stepped in front of his friend. “Charlie, let’s get out of here. Forget about Lenore. She’s going to spend the rest of her life rotting in this little room until Rich finally decides to eat her. What could you possibly do to her that’s worse than that?”

  “Bitch tried to kill me, man.”

  Lenore swallowed. So he knew. He knew about the poison. Perhaps Paul had told him, or perhaps Charles had not been sleeping as soundly as she'd thought. Did it make a difference? Horrible consequences filled her mind.

  “I know,” Paul said. “And she’ll suffer for it, believe me. I’m not helping her anymore.”

  Richard sneered at Paul. “I don’t fucking believe this. Who do you think you are, anyway? You think Lenore's going to suffer without your help? I think that's unlikely. I think she's got more balls than you and your pussy friend put together, and she's going to be just fine without you. You're the one who's going to suffer. You should have traded her for Charles when you had the chance because now you're fucked. Now you're stuck with that mascara wearing freak for the rest of your life, and I think it's time you got it out of my apartment."

  Paul stood in silence, his eyes shifting anxiously between Charles and Lenore.
>
  Richard clapped his hands, walking toward him. “What are you waiting for? A restraining order? GET OUT OF MY HOUSE.”

  Chapter 10

  The Encore

  The universe had grown colder now that Lenore had fallen out of Paul's favor. In the weeks that followed, she found that even the little things she had taken for granted, such as their conversations in the hallway, had faded into the realm of bittersweet memory. Now he would not even look at her as he passed by, and Lenore found herself longing for their friendship, not caring anymore if it had ever been real in the first place.

  And it was lonely. It was lonely to listen to Paul talk to Richard from the seclusion of her bedroom. It was lonely to hear him leave, knowing that he would never again take her with him. And when the pantry was bare, it was lonely to think that there was no one in the world who cared enough to buy her groceries.

  ✽✽✽

  Lenore stepped into the library. “Hey, Rich?”

  Richard did not look up from the computer. “Yeah?”

  “I need food,” she said, walking over to examine his baseball card collection. “I haven’t eaten in two days. Did you get the notes I left you?”

  He placed his laptop down and turned to her. “Yeah, I got them. I’ve just been busy is all. Mrs. Grayson’s turned out to be a much bigger pain in the ass than I’d expected. It’s like that bitch is still irritating me from beyond the grave. Her son’s claiming I threatened her before she went missing. Can you believe that shit?”

  "That you threatened a seventy-year-old woman in public? Absolutely."

  Richard smiled. “Oh Lenore, what you must think of me. Why didn’t you tell Paul you were out of food when he was here yesterday? You know that going to the store really isn’t my thing.”

  The words that emerged from Lenore’s lips were tinged with unexpected emotion. “Because he’s still mad at me,” she said, tears forming in her eyes. “He isn’t going to go to the store for me. He won’t even speak to me. He -”

  Richard raised his hand in the air for silence. “You think you’re the only person on the outs with Paul? You think he’s talking to me about anything besides work these days? He’ll come around, though. He always does. You two morons will be playing twenty questions together again in no time, I promise.”