Look, what Beatrice did was just as crazy. Maybe it was some psychic shit where she was able to push herself off the ground with her mind, maybe it wasn’t, but I don’t fucking know, okay? I sure as fuck wasn’t ever in any position to ask her. She was the only person I ever saw do it, and Harry didn’t even want to have that conversation with me because nobody ever does it. I can tell you what I observed, and it wasn’t flight. Not exactly. It was more like how they explained flying in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where Beatrice may have fallen… and just forgot to hit the ground.
Her mode of flying was more like hovering off the ground, and this here is why you can’t call it flying.
Have you ever had those dreams where you remember how to fly, like you’re running down some alley or something, and all of a sudden you’re not touching the ground anymore, but you’re still moving forward, legs skimming the ground as you fly forward, free from gravity? It’s a wonderful feeling, the best kind that you can only get in dreams. I used to have those dreams all of the time, and they’d never be in the same place. Sometimes in an alley, sometimes in a white corridor, sometimes outside in a garden, but that wonder of flight only ever lasted for as long as I didn’t need to stop or to make a turn. That was when I’d end up a flailing mess spinning out of control and eventually inevitably crashing and swearing never to fly again. When you’re hovering, you have to have something to push off against in order to get moving, otherwise you just kind of hang there. The human body has no propulsion system and flapping your arms or making swimming motions is only going to make you look like a fucking idiot hanging in the air against all probability. Stopping could simply be a matter of timing when you wanted to touch the ground. But changing direction and speeding up, yeah, that’s not happening anytime soon. It’s just against the laws of physics, and while physics just might be convinced to allow someone to float, the rules can only be broken so hard.
So Beatrice had the whole flight thing down perfectly. She used the walls and her surroundings to her advantage and good God she was a terrible sight.
She swooped down on me, and somehow I got my legs up at the last minute, catching her in the stomach, taking all of her weight on my legs. Then I kicked as hard as I could. Beatrice flew upward to the ceiling, arms slashing wildly, one of the knives slicing through my thigh, the other cutting off the tip of my left shoe.
Beatrice smashed into the ceiling, cracking the plaster and embedding herself briefly before gravity realized it didn’t have to fuck off anymore and snatched her back into its needy embrace, pulling her crashing down to the floor in a cloud of plaster and dust.
I rolled over, pulling myself further into the kitchen, my healing arms screaming at me all the way, but I could hear her recovering behind me. I knew I wasn’t going to make it, but goddammit, I was going to try!
Beatrice slammed into me, sending the both of our bodies flying into the cabinets and oh god she was laughing.
“What about now Bob? You want to fuck me now dontcha? You want to fuck me hard!”
“Does this ever work for anyone? Does anyone ever want to fuck you after this level of violence?”
“They’re usually not still alive to talk about it.”
She grabbed my crotch then and somehow through all of the pain and abuse and the screaming from my shoulders for mercy, somehow my stupid brainless dick had the temerity to twitch to life at the attention. Seriously dick, what the fuck?
Beatrice also felt the twitch and laughed some more, almost delighted now. She spun me around and grabbed me by the face, straddling me roughly. My poor aching arms
“How did it feel Bob? When you came back to life to the pain. How did it feel? Did you see him? Did you taste the God?”
Is that what this whole thing has been about?
“You have a weird fucking way of sharing your religion.”
“Do I have to kill you again Bob? This time your death will be a lot more painful, I can promise you that.”
“I saw something!” I was lying of course but maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I did see something in the midst of the pain and insanity. If I kept thinking about it and telling myself enough, it wouldn’t be a lie at all, and I would believe it. Something buried in the pain.
Beatrice looked me deep in the eyes, this time searching, a vulnerability about her as if she were searching for a kindred spirit. I almost felt sorry for her. For a second I forgot to be terrified, and met her gaze. She smiled, finding what she had been looking for.
“You did, didn’t you? You saw it.”
“It was beautiful. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
She kissed me then, deep and hard, sucking all of the wind out of me, her tongue probing, aggressive, wanting to taste, wanting so much. She pulled away after a long moment, and I gasped, not for the same reasons that she was.
“I thought you were going to kill me.”
“How can I kill you now Bob? You’ve seen the God. You and I are kindred spirits.”
“What are you doing?”
“Taking off your pants.”
“Can we talk about this?”
“Shut up and fuck me.”
“I don’t think I can.”
Beatrice’s teeth popped into place, yes just like in the movies, and god they were long fangs. With one move, she tore into her wrist and offered it to me.
“Have a drink Bob. You know you want to.”
I really didn’t want to. All of that time I had spent clean, trying to get over this addiction and here it was literally thrust into my face. And I didn’t want it. There was no need, no desire. At that moment I knew I was over it, all of my work hadn't been in vain after all. And yet…
I drank deeply.
Beatrice buried her fangs deep into my shoulder, and I hardly felt it, I just let the waves of ecstasy from the sweet, sweet blood just take me away from the violence and the pain and insanity.
***
“I killed your friends, you know. I had to.”
“The guys from the support group? Why? What did they do to you?”
“They were nothing like you.”
“I’m nothing special.”
“You’re still alive. That's special.”
***
“I have no idea what the hell is going on Bob, but this has to stop.”
“You don’t understand Sammy, it’s… complicated.”
“It looks more fucked up than anything else.”
“Well, it’s definitely that. It’s really fucked up and really complicated.”
“I don’t care. The bitch has to go.”
When you’re trapped between a furious Sammy and your psychotically dangerous and abusive vampire stalker, who is using you as the occasional sport-fuck while simultaneously scaring and scarring the fuck out of you, that is the number one place in the world you don’t ever want to be.
Sammy had been noticing that there was something wrong with me all week. The first day she had shown up late, and I’d managed to hustle Beatrice out of the store before Sammy could make any connections, but damn I paid for it the next night when Sammy came in early, just to torture me. I had ignored most of her texts and messages on Facebook all day, but she knew exactly how to trap me.
“Who’s the skank you left with last night?”
The situation was made a little more awkward by the fact that said skank was currently in the act of aggressively fellating me from under the counter.
I stammered something incomprehensible as Beatrice first bit me, and Sammy realized that something was up. She looked down at the counter, completely unbelieving as Beatrice pushed me backward and emerged from under the counter, licking her lips like the skank that she was.
“Are you going to let her talk to me that way?”
Sammy was giving me the look of death. It was a very deadly look full of pain and -- wait, was that disappointment? Was she actually disappointed in something I did? Usually she was my head cheerleader for all of my fuck-ups. How c
an this be any worse than usual?
I glanced over at Beatrice, and I got a good reminder.
***
What I’d thought was some random customer showing up just when I didn’t want them to, was Beatrice in all of her glory. My shoulders were still sore from having had knives driven into them, despite the rapid vampire healing ability, and I’d seriously considered not showing up for work, but I was still emotionally raw and in a state of fucked-in-the-head and needed just to go back to feeling something normal. When night came, I just took off from the apartment after having spent the previous hour just sitting in a stairwell feeling sorry for myself. Beatrice had scared the shit out of me, and the blood-induced fucking we’d done after all of the violence hadn’t been entirely my idea. It was forceful and hard and just so fucking angry. When you fuck someone as insane at Beatrice, even while under the influence, it’s more of an endurance test. It wasn’t pleasurable and here’s the thing: just because I’m a guy doesn’t mean I enjoyed it. There was no taking a break with Beatrice, and there was no passion, mainly because she scared the fuck out of me, but also because she scared the fuck out of me.
I’d been left feeling raw and exposed and just… dirty, so when she left, I was surprised to hear myself let out a huge sigh of relief.
I’d spent the first part of the night just walking around the city. I’d found myself down by the waterfront and just watched the tourists being normal, while wishing I could be as oblivious, as normal as they were. I’d called my mom at one point, but when my sister had picked up, I’d just not said anything. I sat there listening to her rage against the motherfucker who dared to call and just breathe into the phone like "a sick fuck, like some fucking coward, what’s the matter too much of a pussy to say something well suck my dick you sick fuck!" My sister had a way with words when she was riled up and I hated that bitch more than anyone else in the entire world. But yet, listening to her cuss out what could be a random stranger on the phone… even that felt more normal than anything I’d been through in the past three weeks. It felt good to listen to her rage at the phone and I eventually hung up before she ran out of steam and clued in that maybe it was me on the line. That would have gotten her going for another hour of abuse, so maybe it was better this way. She hadn’t forgiven me for what I’d done to her boyfriend, and I still wasn’t sorry that I had done it.
When I wandered into the shop, the day shift guy, Andre had just nodded and left a few minutes later, after handing off the till and the float was settled. No conversation required.
I’d spent the rest of the night in a daze until thirty minutes before Sammy was supposed to show up for her shift. I’d gone to help a customer in the toys section, not paying attention.
“Does this come in a larger size?”
She was holding up a strap-on harness with a 12-inch black dildo attached. It was ribbed and veined for her pleasure, a very popular model. “The Penetrator," very popular, especially if you got the optional vibrating head.
I said as much, still in a daze, not even really looking at the customer.
“Do you think my boyfriend will like it?”
I looked up at her this time, the voice cutting through the haze and my heart stopped beating for all of the wrong reasons. Beatrice looked from the 12-inch dildo to me and grinned in what she thought was a good natured way.
“You have a boyfriend?” I said cautiously, willing the ground to open up and swallow me now, right fucking now goddammit why aren’t you swallowing me?
Beatrice moved in close, and I took a step back. She reached out to stroke my cheek, and I flinched back. My heart was pounding now, desperately trying to escape from my chest to do the one thing I wanted to do. (Hint: it rhymes with “Run away” and sounds exactly like “Run away.”)
“You’re my boyfriend now Bob. After what we shared last night?” She stopped, and her expression grew dark, her one good eyeball piercing sharp. She brandished the 12-inch dildo at me. “You’re not breaking up with me, Bob.”
“You’re not using that on me.”
“But it looks like so much fun!”
“Not from where I’m sitting. Use that on me, and I don’t think I’ll ever be sitting again, so, no thanks. Pass.”
“But I love you Bob.”
“No, you don’t. You really, really don’t. You just like to hurt me.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“You’re truly and completely insane.”
“Want to fuck on the counter?”
“No! Can you please just leave me alone? I don’t want to do this. There is no “you and me,” no “us”. It’s all just fucked up, and I need to move on with my life and forget you ever existed!”
That’s when Beatrice started to cry. I’ve never seen anyone cry like that where the tears just welled up and rolled down her face in long streaks, completely ruining her mascara.
“You said you loved me!”
“I never did! That was you that said that!”
Just like that, the crying stopped. Beatrice tried to look coy now, seductive, but the effect was ruined by her eye patch and the fact that she was a fucking psychopath. Apart from that, it was almost a perfect seduction.
“I’m going to stalk you Bob. I’m going to follow you around wherever you go until you realize that since I’m there, you might as well accept me; you might as well love me. I’m going to be such a part of you that you will have no choice but to love me. It’s not a hard thing to do, and it’s going to be hard not to do. I will do all the nasty things you want to do in bed, all of them. I will fuck you like a cheap whore if you want me to and you will love it. You know I will, because I want you to love me, and is that such a bad thing? Who do you have in your life right now Bob? Who are you holding out for? Nobody loves you. Nobody. But I can. Nobody loves me, I know that. I’m flawed, I’m fucked up and yes I might have a few anger issues… but look past all of that to the girl who’s just standing here asking for a chance, a girl who’s asking you to love her.”
Bloody hell.
Crazy chicks are the absolute worst. That kind of honesty shouldn’t be allowed.
So yes she went home with me, and we may have talked, but I’ll be honest, it was just a lot more wild freaky sex, after which I didn’t feel so raw and used anymore. Mostly I just didn’t feel so alone. That sounds fucked up, right? Well, it is, but it’s honest, and Beatrice got that right in all of her insanity. We each needed someone even though we might be the absolute worst things for each other.
Besides, she let me suck her blood, and it was the sweetest thing I had ever tasted.
***
So here’s Sammy and Beatrice face to face, and it’s a giant fuck-you contest with me in the middle of it all.
“Well Bob? Are you going to let me talk to her like that?” Beatrice demanded.
I am so fucked.
“As a matter of fact, I am.”
Beatrice stepped forward, and Sammy got the message. She glared at me like I had betrayed her in the foulest way possible.
“She’s a fucking vampire? You’re fucking a vampire now? What the fuck Bob?”
“Since when do you care, Sammy? What’s it to you who I fuck anyway?” Whoa, where did that come from? “Am I supposed to sit around and pine about Jaime for the rest of my days, pine for something that is never going to happen ever again?”
Sammy pretty much exploded on me. “Oh, get off your fucking high horse and pull your head out of your ass Bob! You can fuck anyone you want, but this one here is poison. You can smell the crazy coming off of her.”
“Fuck you little girl!”
Beatrice had had it with being insulted. She made to charge Sammy, but super speed reflexes or not, you don’t fuck with Sammy on her turf. Sammy whipped out a small can and gave one squirt, an all too familiar mist spreading into the air. I propelled myself backward, not wanting to be feeling the pain, and fell to the floor, but it was too late for Beatrice: she charged right into the mist and stoppe
d instantly, gagging horribly.
“Pepper spray bitch,” Sammy spit at her, and walked past her to look down at me on the floor.
“Get her the fuck out of here and get your shit together man.”
I got Beatrice out of there. She spent the rest of the night hemorrhaging from her eyes and ears. I talked to her, tried to tell her that Sammy was only trying to protect me, but she never said a word. She just cried and refused to look at me.
Beatrice didn’t show up at the store the next night. When Sammy showed up for work, she looked for Beatrice, and seemed surprised not to see her.
“Where’s your girlfriend?”
“Do you have some kind of death wish, Sammy?”
“Do you? You’re the one banging psycho girl.”
“And you’re the human who just gave her a face full of pepper spray. Do you know how much that shit hurts? Enough of it and you can kill a vampire with it.”
“Why do you think I did it? That girl is fucking dangerous!”
“Then you should have killed her!”
“Excuse me? Can I just—“
We both looked around and realized that the customer who had been hanging around looking at all of the magazines for the past hour had finally made a selection and was desperately trying to leave.
I rang him up while Sammy just glared at me uncomfortably. I could see her doing the math in her head and not coming up with the right answers, no matter how hard she tried. See, while you don’t fuck with Sammy, you also don’t fuck with crazy, especially vampire crazy.
The customer smiled nervously at us and took his porn. “He’s right you know,” he said to Sammy. “You’re going to have to kill her.”
He exited, and Sammy let out a yell of frustration.
“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!”
So You Might Be a Vampire Page 26