by J. X. Evans
“Hey Per, I want to come with in the afternoon if it’s okay with you two.”
“It is, I don’t think that Rob would say no to a laid-back afternoon.”
“What time?”
“Around 18:30 I guess.”
“I will be back by then. See you.”
“Bye.” Perry waved at him, his attention on some other delicacy he was preparing.
Mark went out through the back door, heading towards the subway swinging his backpack over one shoulder, putting his earbuds on and lighting his cigarette.
5. A SINGLE BUS RIDE FROM HOME
The café was slowly being filled by a trickle customers, college students mainly, there to get their morning cup of joe, eat a piece of hot apple pie, and catch up with friends or study for their finals. Some people need a change of scenery from time to time. And some of course were there to bask at Sir Paws’ royal magnificence, the cat had a sort of a fan club, kids and grandmas mainly, but everyone pretty much liked him.
“I am going to run that errand we talked about, will you be okay on your own for a while?” Rob asked, while putting on his leather armor-duster. He lifted up his heavy gym bag, which contained his mace and a sawed off shotgun rolled in old white t-shirts.
“With this crowd? How am I ever going to manage?” Perry answered smiling, his arms open wide to gesture at the small crowd of people chattering under the sound of soft music.
“Does it look like rain to you?”
“Get an umbrella with you. Just to be safe.”
Rob grabbed an umbrella from the umbrella holder, “Well then, good. See you later Per.” Rob said and walked out of the door and down the street, heading for the bus stop, since Betsy was not feeling so well from yesterday’s ordeal.
The bus tilted a little heavily at one side as Rob hopped in, but less than some seemed to notice or wonder much. People used to always stare at him due to the rarity of his dimensions, but after the epidemic of smartphones came to pass, people rarely ever lifted their heads from the screens on public transportation for anything short of getting on and off of it. Just one more reason to love them. He hit a ticket and made his way through the dense crowd of passengers, displacing easily whoever stubbornly refused to move with his bulk until he reached the bus’s end, which for some reason was almost empty. A lot of people seem to get on the bus and for some reason, probably magic, they refuse to walk all the way to the back. Instead they stay put wherever they feel most comfortable, no matter the amount of people getting uncomfortably squeezed together in the front, like sardines in a tin can. Canned sardines marinated in sweaty armpits, occasional foot stepping and kicking, unintentional ass touching and other less delightful experiences depending on the consumer’s culinary preferences. After a bumpy fifteen minute ride with lots of sudden breaking and accelerating and an always delightful show of people holding on to straps and poles for dear life so they would not get flung through a cracked window or at one another resulting in a domino effect, Rob stepped out of just one of the many roller-coaster-like rides of the big circus-like city that is Athens. It seemed to Rob that the bus fare was too meager for providing both safe and punctual transportation along with a dish of high quality entertainment on the side, all at the same time. The bus stop was almost exactly on top of the hospital’s gate. Only a single bus ride from home.
The hospital was a big building. More accurately, it was large complex of smaller buildings, painted in orange and cream white, assembled together side by side, and diagonally, and perpendicular to one another. It seemed to Rob that the plans for the several buildings put together would probably look closer to a piece of abstract modern art rather than the plans for a grand hospital, even for a modern hospital. Put it up in a pretty frame and no one would be the wiser. He could not understand this era’s so called modern art, he did not much like his own era’s modern art, though he at least understood it. At the end of the day he kind of always preferred the classics, but it was not like he really knew anything about art, he was all in for the modern part though. Modern is simply awesome, from hot running water with the turn of a lever to safe and fast automobiles. From airplanes to the television and from delicious chocolate in plastic wrapping to video games and smartphones, he tried it all and he loved it all. He had known many people in his long years, a few of them for their whole lives and most of them, as they grew older, seemed to fear new for some reason…maybe they just could not easily learn the new skills required due to the slow decay of brain matter or they found no reason to do so. Or maybe they feared that small changes like that would ruin new generations, after all they came out alright…why risk it? Fortunately he did not face those problem.
He strolled through the parking lot, little triangles of green with the occasional coniferous tree here and there, scattered wherever the architect could manage a bit of space for a dash of green. Rob reached the main entrance, the sliding door was so big that if a snoozing Snorlax was doing its thing right in front of it, you could probably step right by it without any particular problems. Of course there wasn’t one, so Rob did not have to put the theory to the test, he simply walked right in.
Rob headed for the morgue which was in the basement, which is where morgues usually are in hospital. And which is the absolutely creepiest place for morgues to be in… at hospitals or anywhere else for that matter. A strategical placement to say the least, in case of an emergency, such as a zombiefication, there is only one way for the thing to go, up. It is not as if there have not been quite a number of cases, fortunately though it has always been contained quickly and efficiently.
Rob never liked the feel of hospitals, modern or not. The colors seemed a bit too depressing, the air a bit too heavy with the smell of sickness, diarrhea and old age mixed with antiseptics and chlorine, although like always he preferred modern rather than not. Now that he though back a little better, old hospitals were a lot worse, at least nowadays doctors were washed and clean. He could still remember a time when doctors would come straight from the morgue, their hands full of gooey slime and the putrid smell of autopsy tissue and would plunge those same unwashed hands right into a poor young woman’s vagina while she was aching and screaming and pushing, drenched in fear and sweat to deliver her baby into our world. Of course it is no great mystery why post labor mortality was so high back in the day, for that and many other reasons. Actually hospitals had changed a lot since then…but the atmosphere of morbidity was still there, although the lack of screaming and thicker walls helped somewhat in that regard also.
Rob descended two flights of dim lit stairs that brought him into a long empty dim lit aisle, his footsteps echoing from the empty walls, no furniture to absorb the sound other than a sad lonely forgotten gurney. He turned right at the end of the T shaped hallway, passed through a set of slightly creaking sickly-yellow colored swinging doors and found what he came to find. A tall slender man, almost as tall as himself, and as pale as baby powder, bent over a stack of plastic bags filled with blood in multiple shades of red, probably taken from the recently deceased, almost certainly without the expressed written consent of the relatives.
Dimitri and others like him in the modern vampire society were called providers and they did exactly that, they provided. In the current day and age there is place enough for vampires to live among humans without problems, just like a lot of other magical creatures. A bloodsucker, usually working in a hospital’s morgue or as a funeral director would draw blood from the ‘fresh’ corpses before it clotted completely in their veins and arteries. They would freeze it, and later distribute it to other poor thirsty vampires in the area in need of sustenance, just like we do with our meat, fish and veggies. Rob really did love Norwegian halibut straight from his local super market freezer, in low prices as well. After all vampires are few in number around the world and extremely efficient eaters; most of them can survive on no more than 3 liters of blood per week (a little more than half the blood volume of the average person, which is around 5 lite
rs). Although some of them are known to hunger for more and more, succumbing to gluttony, they are nothing less than addicts and even the vampire society disapproves of them. While others prefer to hunt and play with their victims and feed on fresh steaming blood marinated in fear and catecholamines. Though not many exist today that would succumb to such vices, since those caught acting as such have been hunted and killed by the Order for a long time and have almost been wiped out. For the former group of law abiding monsters Rob had tolerance, for the latter he had his mace, and he was more than happy to use it.
“Hey! Dr. Dimitri!” Rob half shouted in greeting, walking into the morgue, arms wide open as if to give him a hug, big smile on his face, white teeth seeming all the whiter with his bushy black beard framing them. The vampire cringed at the sound of Rob’s voice and after a second had passed he turned around, his face betraying only boredom and the mildest displeasure. Of course he had heard and smelled a presence long before Rob had entered the room, but years of fitting into human society had taught Dimitri the art of being inconspicuous. Most people alive today do not believe in vampires and ghost and such, but some do and if a vampire wanted to be left in peace, it had to be inconspicuous.
“Robert Steele, to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” the coroner said in excellent Greek, crossing his arms and staring down at the big man from the top of his long curved nose. But Rob suspected that he was more displeased rather than pleased at the moment.
Rob walked over and patted him lightly on the shoulder “Now, now cheer up buddy, why the long face?”
Dimitri stared at him with his pale bored eyes, totally unamused “I have work to do. It starts to feel a little repetitive after the first three hundred years or so of doing it.”
“Most people feel the same thing in a much shorter time-span. Myself, not included.”
“They do not know the meaning of the word. You are lucky.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Rob said, “but well, I am happy to hear I still have some time before my job starts feeling tedious and unamusing!”
“Why!? Are you here?” the vampire said in his cold contemptuous voice. Removing Rob’s heavy, veiny hand from his slim shoulder with his own slender one, long pale bony fingers, like spider legs, lightly closing around it. Rob had once fallen inside a tomb in Latin America, in a bottomless pit filled with the disgusting creepy crawlers, he had almost lost all the action…He had almost drowned in them and he had not felt as creeped out then as he did now.
Rob hid his innate reaction and continued, “I was in the neighborhood, thought I’d pass by. Say hi to my old pal.” And he leaned back on an autopsy table, crossing his hands while rubbing them to force the hairs on them to stand back down, a small smile always on his lips. He rarely ever felt uneasy in the presence of monsters, Dimitri though was another story.
“Came by for a physical?” Dimitri said, lifting an eyebrow.
“Why not? Better safe than sorry if you ask me. Even the best of engines should start presenting a problem or two with time. I am trying to stay ahead of the curve.”
“Good for you.” Dimitri said, putting his bonny hands on his equally bony hips. Some time passed, both of them just staring at one another. The air started to feel a bit heavier in the cold room, until Rob finally spoke, his smile evaporating.
“That’s quite the amount of blood bags over there, are you preparing for a party or something?” Rob said in a serious voice, pointing at the table where the small hill of blood bags was laid.
“Very funny.” The vampire said with the same facial expression of neutrality he always wore, “No actually, two buses crushed this morning, fifteen dead, more wounded. Generally we prefer road kills you know, better flavor than the usual eighty year old. Provided the drivers were not drunk or high, which generally happens a lot.”
“No, I don’t know actually. Never had the chance of experiencing the difference in flavors. But it seems reasonable, I guess.” answered Rob in mild disgust.
“Don’t get like that. Of course you would have not.”
Rob sucked in a sharp breath and treaded lightly to the point, “So, I hear we have got new arrivals in town. Any friends from the good old days paying a visit?”
“I haven’t heard anything, no new faces and the old ones are getting scarce. The population has been going down slowly and steadily ever since the accords were drafted. After all, as you know it is forbidden to create new vampires. I expect that if a new face showed up I would know… Where did you get that idea?” Dimitri said, his face a marble statue, no emotion written on it, no indication of a lie or none that Rob could read. Not in the very least.
“Only a rumor.” It was obvious that the vampire was in no mood for conversation, he would get nothing from pushing the matter further. Maybe he would even make things worse, if he had not already done that. “Well then, I suppose I should let you get back to your work, before the blood clots completely. Anyway, here is my phone number. In case anything comes to your attention.” and Rob stood up from the table, handing Dimitri a white piece of paper from his coat’s pocket with his name and phone number written on it with plain blue ink.
“I already have it… All of us have it.”
“Take the damn paper.” Rob smiled. “Just in case.”
“Sure.” Dimitri said and put the card in his pocket, not even glancing at it. He turned his back to Rob and continued his work of pumping and storing the thick red liquid.
Rob left the same way he came. Started his ascend back towards the ground floor, certain that something was amiss, so he followed his instincts. He went to the hospital’s cafeteria on the ground floor. It was a pretty standard space, clean and calm with lots of windows, it would be hot and bright if the sun was shining. He got in the short line of people waiting to order and bought a chicken sandwich with white bread, tomato, lettuce and mayonnaise and a regular coca cola. He sat down at a table with a good view of the entrance, slowly munching at his snack and waiting. Maybe they were on to something.
6. JUST ANOTHER TEST
Tap, tap, tap, tap, Mark was rhythmically tapping his pen on his desk, spinning it on his fingers, tossing it low in the air and catching it again, and generally finding his pen only a tad more interesting than his microeconomics test. To the growing annoyance and impatience of the students around him of course. The boy next to him gave him a look and Mark stopped it, mumbling a sincere apology towards his way. Mark was on his second year of studies and he was still not finding any interest in this particular field. In the Order’s academy they were taught everything that people their age needed to know to keep up with further advancing their education on the real world, but he never really stuck to any single one of the basic sciences. And don’t even start about languages, he had not found any particular joy in learning French, English, Greek nor the Order’s very own official language. He should have probably gone with something like physics or biology. Math and economics were turning out not to be for him after all, a bit too stale maybe. In the words of the great Peter Griffin ‘Math, my dear boy, is nothing more than the lesbian sister of biology’. Mark had never fully understood the meaning of the sentence, but he was pretty sure that Peter and he were more or less on the same page in this one.
He had not managed to study for today. He was busy training and hunting supernatural troublemakers. He probably could have made some time to study between work and training and shifts at the café but he hadn’t. Either way he had not planned on passing the class this semester, not on his own at least. Christiana was sitting right in front of him though, so all he really had to do to pass was wait for her to finish a page and then just copy it when she set it aside to go on to the next one. That girl wrote a lot more than it was needed, not always the right thing to do. Mark copied the gist of things, and the professor either did not much care or had not realized yet. And how could he? Mark had the eyesight of a hawk, so it was easy to make sense of Christiana’s tidy writing without any difficulty.
> Christiana was a petite young woman with curly brown-blondish hair, big blue eyes and a small round nose, really good grades. And she lived only a couple of blocks away from Mark’s place, so they had gotten to know each other on the first year of university while returning from class; well the two or three times that Mark actually attended class per week. His life as a protector of the human race against the threats of the supernatural world did not leave him much time to attend class, or study. or even try to like his field, or gain some interest in it even without liking it. Or maybe he did not want to use his free time to do all those things.
After an endless hour and ten minutes Christiana finally finished her test, and naturally so did Mark. There were still twenty more minutes to go until the end of the test, so she set to checking her answers again, even if she was always checking them quickly just after writing them in the first place.
Mark got up, placed his ballpoint pen in his right jean’s pocket and tossed his backpack over a shoulder. He grabbed the couple of pages from one corner and strolled up to the professor’s desk to hand them over, walking as less noisily down the steps as he could; these classrooms have damn good acoustics. He signed his name and student number on a paper and got out of the class, pushing the heavily creaking door open. ‘That’s that’ he thought and put his earbuds on, blasted the music and sat on a bench, head bobbing to the rhythm while he waited for Christianna to finish and come out of there herself.
About twenty minutes later, no surprise there, the test was officially over and Christiana came swaggering out of the class with a big smile on her small round face.
“So, how did I go?” Mark asked, removing his earbuds and letting them hang from his black leather jacket’s neck, putting a couple stray hair blown out of place by the wind behind his ear.