by P. T. Phronk
A commercial break began. Stan’s jaw dropped.
“Wait a minute. You didn’t … turn him into a …”
“A lady never reveals her secrets.”
“You did! You made David Letterman into a vampire.”
Bloody’s ears perked up. She gave Dalla a peculiar doggy smile.
“Would you rather I let him die?
Stan’s neck still hurt a bit when he nodded. “Yes. Yes, I would rather you let him die.”
“Now now, Stanley, I find that very insulting.”
Letterman’s band played him back from commercial. He introduced his first guest: one of the chicks from Grey’s Anatomy. Her new romantic comedy is called Anyways, And Then. Letterman said the title with sarcasm dripping from his voice. The audience laughed. It opens on Friday, please welcome back to the program, the lovely Katherine Heigl.
“Oh my gosh,” said Dalla, her voice high-pitched, “I didn’t know the movie was opening already!”
You look amazing, Dave, said Heigl.
Thank you, my dear. You look stunning. He pointed off-camera with his pen. I think my assistant just dropped his coffee.
The audience laughed.
So, said Letterman, the question on everybody’s mind, what they all want to know about you … what was it like kissing Damien Fox?
Heigl giggled and shifted her gaze demurely. The audience clapped, women howled.
It was, ahh, hard work, Dave. Long days of shooting, making out with Damien Fox, hard work.
Letterman arranged his cue cards, tapping them on his desk. Now, mister Fox, rumors are just flying about this guy. He’s disappeared. He’s not doing interviews, won’t return our phone calls. Are you friends? What is the deal with that?
I don’t know why he won’t return your phone calls, Dave.
Well can you please call him up and ask him?
The audience laughed.
I think Damien just wants his privacy. He put so much into this movie, and he just wants to let it speak for itself.
Well you know, there is Oscar buzz for this movie, for both of you, which is just unheard of for a romantic comedy, isn’t that right? But enough about mister Fox, let’s talk about your plans.
Thank you, she said.
Letterman leaned forward, his face twisted. Is it true he’s dating Hillary Miller?
The audience lost it. Heigl continued to avoid the question. Just as she was getting visibly annoyed, Letterman moved on to other topics. Dalla sat rapt as a clip from the movie played.
“Why Damien Fox?” Stan asked when the show went to commercial again.
“Have you seen him?”
“Okay, so he’s a good looking guy. Even I can look at him, and yeah, he’s symmetrical. But so are a lot of guys. What’s special about him?”
She pondered it for a moment. “I dunno, he’s just so …” She smiled, staring off into space. “You know!”
Stan laughed. “I don’t know!”
“It was only a few days before I met you when I decided to find him. I woke up one evening, and the idea just smacked me between the eyes. Like destiny.”
Stan rolled his eyes.
“Oh shush, Stanley. If you were like me, if you could do whatever you wanted, you’d be chasing whatever famous biddy gets you off when you come home alone. Wouldn’t you? If you had this power, wouldn’t you use it?”
Stan immediately thought of his sick mother. Could the creature’s terrible power do anything for her? That is what he would do first. Okay, and then maybe see what Scarlett Johansson is up to.
“I’d off myself before letting your disease infect me.”
“Once again, pet, you’ve insulted me. That cuts deep.”
She was out of the bed in one motion. “Just for that, you stay locked up all day long. Oh, and,” she said, floating to the thermostat, “no heat for you!”
The door slammed shut behind her. Bloody curled up on his chest, and they shivered through the night together.
At a shitty motel, interchangeable with any of the others they’d stayed at, Dalla sat on the bed beside him. She pulled her knees to her chest, then lifted up her dress, revealing her long, thin legs, with bandages around the calves and ankles.
“Can you do me a favor, Stanley? Can you clean my wounds? It’s awfully hard to reach down there.”
“Why should I?”
Her intense eyes met his. “Because you did this to me. Because I’ll hurt you if you don’t. And because I asked nicely.”
Those eyes boring into him, he could feel whatever power of influence she possessed; on the tip of his tongue were promises to help, to never refuse anything from her again. He resisted. He met her gaze.
“No,” he said.
She smiled. “You’re getting feisty again, Stanley. How about this: you help me with this, and tonight you get freedom and heat. Plus dinner’s on me.”
He sighed. He peeled back the bandages on her legs, revealing blistered skin streaked with black and yellow. With the assortment of bottles she pulled from her purse, he washed the wounds, disinfected the area, then started to apply fresh bandages.
The vampire winced as he worked. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes.
“So you feel pain,” he said.
“Of course I feel pain,” she snapped.
When he was done, the creature touched his shoulder. “Thank you, dear.”
She left for nearly an hour. When she returned, she was carrying a paper bag smudged with red that she handed to Stan. If he hadn’t been so hungry, the blood would have ruined his appetite.
With a lighter from her purse, she lit some candles she had placed around the room. Stan dug into his chicken sandwich and fries, sharing with Bloody. Dalla, from a plastic bag she’d picked up while she was out, ate unidentifiable bits of meat.
Stan was most sickened by his lack of reaction to the gore. He at least faked a look of disgust.
“If it helps,” she said, “I’m pretty sure he was a Mormon.”
She offered a bit to Bloody, who trotted up to her, took a piece of meat, then licked the blood from Dalla’s fingertips.
“Oh God, Bloody, no! Bad girl!”
The dog shot him a resentful look before returning for more French fries.
They sat on the bed, side by side, watching television, flipping through the channels.
“I always confuse Bill Paxton and Bill Pullman,” said Dalla.
“I hate this commercial with the fucking Sasquatch,” Stan said later.
“I miss my cats,” Dalla said during some reality show about a woman with eight kids.
When their eyes were getting heavy, she looked at the clock. She jumped out of the bed.
“Oh my, it’s past my bed time.” She gathered her purse and bags, but left the bandages and disinfectant. “Remember to wash your wound, dear.”
She left Stan untied and the heat at a reasonable level. When morning came, Stan walked outside with Bloody. He stood in the cool morning air, letting the sun hit his face. There was a landscape of patchy bushes and rolling hills in the distance. He could leave. Just start walking until night fell and she found him again. But where would he go?
So instead of walking out into the sunshine, he shuffled back into the darkness of the motel room, and slept.
Dalla splurged for a nice hotel. They happened to be near Boise, Idaho when she ran out of energy for driving and the Marriott-branded hotel was in sight.
She used a stolen credit card to check in. When the clerk informed her that Internet access was included, she swiped a woman’s laptop at the lobby café.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Stan asked as she hammered on the button to summon the elevator.
“Nobody saw.”
“Even still, there are ways of tracking computers you know. IP addresses and serial numbers.”
She patted him on the shoulder as they entered the elevator. “You worry about details too much, Stanley. I won’t have it for long. You’re good with co
mputers?”
“Good enough.”
They arrived in the room. “Can you please get me connected to the World Wide Web then?”
He found the wireless network settings, connected the laptop to the Internet, then handed her the computer.
“Aww, look at her wallpaper,” she said, turning the screen to him. “Looks like she’s on vacation with her boyfriend. Maybe her husband? But she looks awfully young for marriage. Now where do I click for the Internet?”
He pointed to the Internet Explorer shortcut. She clicked it, then typed in a few memorized web addresses.
“Useless!” she said. “Look at Damien’s Twitter. All useless crap. Fight for those you love. Barf. Thank God for new friends. Not even a hint about where he is.”
“Isn’t that what me and Bloody are here for?”
“Sure, but I’d rather just eat you now,” she said matter-of-factly.
She browsed a few more entertainment news sites. She showed Stan her secret message boards of adoring, faithful, creepy-as-hell Damien Fox fans. All of them were trying to figure out where he was holed up, most of them still pretty sure he was spending time with a knocked-up Hillary Miller.
Dalla slammed the laptop closed in frustration.
“Can you turn into a bat?” asked Stan.
“Oh, I didn’t realize it was question time again.”
He grinned. “I can’t help myself.”
“No I cannot turn into a bat,” she said all at once as if it were one long word. “And before you ask, not a wolf either. That’s only werewolves, and I’ve always practiced safe werewolf consumption.”
“Wait, so you could be both? At the same time?”
She rolled those big blue eyes. “Can you catch a cold when you have cancer? Duh.”
“Good way to put it. Real tactful,” said Stan, then braced himself. She pursed her lips, then pulled back as if to punch him, but lowered her hand a moment later.
“What were you doing when I first saw you? When you … met … Letterman?”
She exhaled, her nostrils flared. Her eyes met his, searching, vulnerable for a moment. He gave her time.
“I was on my way back from visiting family,” she said finally.
“You have family?”
“I have a father.” She broke eye contact.
“A human?”
“No. My father is the one who changed me.”
Stan paused. “Why were you out in the morning?”
“I am about to hit you again. Hard this time.”
“At least tell me first.”
“Honey, you’re incorrigible.” She sighed. “I am not always as careful with time as a good vampire should be. As you know. Besides, I was rushing to get home to my kitties, because I was very upset. If you ask why—I am not joking when I say this—I will rip out your lungs before you can finish the question.”
A foreign feeling sat at the back of Stan’s tongue. A mix of wanting to ask more questions despite the dire consequences, and something even stranger, more dreadful: pity for the vampire.
Later, she silently stood and left for the day. Stan was left alone, untied, in a luxurious hotel room. He slept for a few hours, then got up and took a long shower.
“We could get used to this, huh girl?”
Bloody wagged her tail.
Stan went downstairs, then ordered an Americano from the lobby café. He chatted with the pretty redheaded server. It was strange to talk with a person—a human person—for the first time in days. Maybe it was the boosted confidence from knowing that his life was ending, or maybe it was the mystery and promise of danger that a missing finger provided, but she seemed to like him.
And oh how he wanted to ask her for her number. Better yet, ask her if she wanted to come up to the room. What the hell was there to lose?
Her life. That’s what there was to lose.
So when the pretty redheaded server leaned over the bar, her cleavage right there—when she asked him if he wanted to buy her a drink when she got off work tonight—God dammit, all he could do was thank her for the coffee, pay her with trembling hands, then scurry back to the room.
He took a deep breath and patted Bloody’s head.
“Let’s eat, girl. Let’s eat like it’s our last mea—” he began, but then, “to celebrate our inevitable impending freedom.”
He lit Dalla’s candles then ordered room service, charging it to the room. The credit card belonged to a dead person anyway, so it wasn’t really stealing. He ordered every deep-fried appetizer on the menu, and a couple of steaks, rare as they would make them. Bloody wagged her little tail furiously as she ate one.
Stan flipped through the television channels. Nothing the least bit interesting. He cycled all the way through, then came to the hotel’s paid programming menu. Visions of the redheaded barista still swimming in his head, he clicked down to the adult selections.
Charging porn to a corpse’s card, it wasn’t that wrong.
Bloody looked at the screen, snorted, then stomped into the bathroom. She must have felt sick from eating so much and gone to sleep it off. It’s not like she knew what Stan was about to do. She was a dog.
Stan turned the volume low, so nobody in the hallway would hear. He got comfortable, then pressed buy. It was nothing spectacular—a generic selection called Make Me Cum—but it would normally have been good enough. Today, it just wasn’t doing it for him.
He thought about the redhead. Nothing.
When the door burst open, Stan was holding the remote in one hand and his limp cock in the other. An expression of childlike amusement spread across Dalla’s face.
She was at the foot of the bed. Stan stammered; he tried to get his pants up, but she was strong, and part of him didn’t want to resist.
“This is a favor, Stanley,” she said.
“No,” he said weakly.
But her lips were already around him, wet and unnaturally hot.
He winced. He could feel the tips of her fangs, nubs in the roof of her mouth that hadn’t quite broken through the skin yet but itched to burst out at any moment.
“It’s okay to enjoy this,” she said.
His body relaxed and his cock stiffened. He found himself moaning.
He opened his eyes. People fucked on the television screen behind her, around her, glowing like a halo. When her eyes met his, he felt her fangs emerge, producing a strange pressure as he moved in and out between them.
A trickle of her blood ran from her chin. He arched his back and gripped the pillows around him.
He was momentarily released; he’d always imagined death at the hands of the vampire, but not this petit mort. He’d always imagined her consuming him, but as she closed her eyes and leaned back, it wasn’t his blood that she swallowed.
After Stan finished wiping fingerprints off anything he’d touched, and Dalla finished showering and packing, they surveyed the room. Plates of half-eaten appetizers and fatty bits of steak littered the nightstand.
“You had quite the party yesterday, didn’t you? Stanley, hun, you are a real gas.”
He grabbed a bag and huddled by the door, avoiding eye contact with her. “Maybe you should leave the credit card,” he said.
“Why?”
“They’ll be tracking it soon. If you use it again, they’ll find us.”
She tapped her temple. “You’re always thinking. I would have used it again, wouldn’t I? That would have been just like me.” She tossed the card onto the bed, beside the stolen laptop.
Stan pulled up the collars of his coat as they passed the hotel café, taking only a brief glance at the redheaded server. She didn’t see him; she was wrapped up in settling the bill of a guy in a striped dress shirt.
They packed up the truck, and Dalla took the wheel. The farmer’s beat up vehicle looked out of place among the parked sports cars and the high-end minivan pulling out of the parking lot behind them. Bloody’s trick pointed them almost due northwest, so they got on the I84. She floored the
gas pedal.
“I’m feeling much better,” she said after a few minutes on the highway out of Boise. She reached down to scratch at her leg. “Leg’s feeling much better, thanks for asking. Just itchy as all heck now. We’ll make good time tonight. Maybe even find him, finally. Unless he’s all the way in Canada.” She laughed.
Stan realized that his mind had been wandering, lazy, failing to come up with escape plans. Bloody seemed distracted too. She hesitated to do her pointing trick, and wouldn’t look Stan or Dalla in the face all evening. Time was running out, and all they could do was coast along on this fucked up family road trip.
The vampire made occasional comments as they drove, entering Oregon (“do you think this is where oregano comes from?”), then Washington (“Sunnyside? Isn’t that where Buffy the Vampire Slayer lives?”). Stan nodded and grunted. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her. He kept his eyes on the side mirror.
They stopped to piss, and she gave Stan a few dollars for snacks. After she got back in the driver’s seat, Stan lingered behind, scanning the gas station parking lot before getting back in the truck.
“You’re distant,” said Dalla as she pulled back on to the highway.
He reached up and fiddled with the rear-view mirror. He inhaled sharply.
“Stanley!” shouted the vampire, anger in those eyes. “Tell me what is bothering you.”
“Besides the obvious,” Stan said softly, “two things. One, I just saw you reflected in the mirror.”
The road dipped as they entered a tunnel going under another highway.
“Two, there’s a minivan about to ram into our ass, and it’s been following us since Boise.”
12. Boy Loses Girl
WHEN HE TURNED AROUND, STAN made eye contact with a man in a striped dress shirt hanging out the driver side of his minivan, a crossbow in his hand. Stan ducked. The back window of the farmer’s truck shattered. Something thumped into the back of Stan’s seat.
Dalla floored the gas. The old truck shook as they sped out of the tunnel, the minivan behind them.
“What in the world was that?” asked Dalla.