by Cara Coe
I blotted away some of the color and rubbed a towel over my cheeks.
Better.
My hair could not be saved. It was a cross between my father’s straight locks and my mother’s curls. It was wavy near the roots and frizzed out towards the ends where the moisture was lacking. I had long given up on it since attending to it took up too much time to waste on something no one would ever lay eyes on.
I took the red dye and chose a few sections to highlight, blocking some streaks and going thinner on other strands. After washing it out, I spent twenty minutes in the shower under a deep conditioning mask trying to revive the strands.
Even with my efforts, the ends were still knotted and no comb was going to break through. I took the shears and sliced them off. I cut all of them out, creating a haphazard short look. It appeared at though I pissed off Edward Scissorhands and he attacked my follicles.
With I sigh I went shorter and shorter until most of my wayward strands were cropped around my ears. Running my fingers through it, I decided I kind of liked the effect. It had an intentional bed-head feel to it and gave me an edgier look. I put the scissors down before I could second guess my final product and bald myself trying to make it perfect.
I glanced at the clock. Eleven thirty-six. I still hadn’t called him.
I pulled my boots on and slipped out of the cottage past my sleeping dogs. I didn’t want their company for this walk.
I didn’t go out after dark very often. Not since the wolf attack. With humans gone, night time creatures encroached further into the city, claiming the concrete and bricks for their own. I carried a flashlight in my hand and a gun tucked into my back waistband.
Every day I looked forward to picking a spot in the early afternoon in which to get comfortable and make my call. The surroundings where I settled starting picking up grains of him. What I was looking at when he shared a story or what was in my view that inspired a conversation soon etched a memory of him in that object or that space and I enjoyed passing it some time later and remembering.
If we were going to include night conversations, it was time to snatch one of these phones and put it in my cottage. I headed for the house on Windsong Road. The woman that had lived there had a few phones like the ones I needed in several rooms. I’d take one of those back with me.
I stood in the entrance way and contemplated which room I would call him from. The study would be the most innocent choice. It was hunkered down with heavy oak: sturdy oak desk, tall oak cabinet, rigid oak chair. All that oak made you sit up straight and keep your logic close. No room for funny business or weird feelings.
The upstairs bedroom had a corded phone on the nightstand. I blushed just picturing me laying on the bed, his voice pressed to my ear in the middle of the night.
Nope. Not happening.
I chose the living room sofa. I stowed my gun and flashlight on the coffee table and kicked my boots off to the side. I pressed in the numbers on the phone slowly. It was almost midnight at this point. He probably wouldn’t even answer. Surely, he didn’t mean call him in the dead of night when he mentioned-
“Hello?”
Oh, crap. He answered on the first ring. I coughed.
“Uh, hey. It’s me.”
My insides were tumbling. That must be why I was mumbling stupid sentences like, “Hey, it’s me.” Like he needs differentiating between me and the zero other girls in existence that call him.
“Hi, you.” His voice was soft. This must be a new nighttime soft.
I let out a nervous breath before speaking. “So…do we pick new names for this call or go with the ones we had earlier? I don’t know the protocol. We’ve never done two calls in one day.”
“Why don’t we skip the aliases for this call? It’ll just be you and me. I am absolutely ecstatic to hear from you tonight, by the way.”
“You are?”
“I am.”
“Oh.”
Quiet hung between us. Where my quiet was a nervous ball of twine, I could sense his was an easy one. I could almost see him stretched out languidly, smiling, enjoying the charged silence between us on the phone.
“I changed my hair,” I blurted out. “I cut it off and dyed chunks of it red.”
“Why did you change your hair?”
“Because I was embarrassed when I described it to you. All tangled and crazy. I had to fix it.”
“I loved what you described to me, even the tangled and crazy parts. Never be embarrassed about your tangled or crazy parts. Any of them.”
This wasn’t working. Everything he said kept having an effect on my body. I squeezed my legs together. “I thought about you earlier today.” I hadn’t meant to say that, but it seemed that it was a running theme today, this unbridled honesty.
“After we talked?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, I think about you all the time on or off the phone so I can relate.”
“I thought about you like…that.”
His breath grew uneven. “Like what?”
“Like…like…” I blew out a sigh. I couldn’t say it. My ears were flaming. How can I let him know without actually saying it? “Like the Divinyls song.”
“Please, please tell me they are the one hit wonder I think they are and they don’t have some other hit I don’t know about that’s not I Touch Myself.”
I bit my lip. “Nope. Just that one song.”
I heard him swallow. “My heart is beating really fast,” he said.
“So’s mine.”
“I didn’t ask you to call me tonight so we could…you know. I just love talking to you.”
“I didn’t plan on saying anything I just did.”
“I’m glad you did. You’re not alone when it comes to that. You have the exact same effect on me.”
I hesitated then boldly asked, “Am I having that effect right now?”
“Yes.”
Deep breath. “Are you touching yourself right now?”
He paused. “Yes.”
I screamed silently into my fist.
“Do you want me to stop? I don’t mind.”
Did I? The wetness on my underwear said no. I shook my head then felt like an idiot because he couldn’t see me. “No,” I whispered.
I heard him exhale. “Where are you?” he asked.
“I’m on a couch in a house I frequent. I’m lying down across it.” I looked down at myself. I should describe what I’m wearing. That’s how this goes, I think. “I’m wearing a black t-shirt and jeans,” I added hastily.
“Quit wearing them,” he said with a smile in his voice.
That command sent my pulse into overdrive. I complied, wriggling out of my jeans and whipping off my shirt. The hurriedness mussed up my hair and nearly caused me to drop the phone. “Hello?” I asked breathlessly once I was done.
“I’m here.”
“Okay. I’m shirtless and jean-less.”
I could hear him groan softly. “God, you’re beautiful.”
“You can’t see me.”
“Your voice is beautiful. The things you reveal to me are beautiful. I’m imagining your body on that couch. In the dark. Whispering to me on the phone with your hand in between your legs. It’s driving me crazy.”
I closed my eyes. My hand drifted to the area where he imagined it. The spot was already engorged and sensitive to the touch. My light rubbing caused a low moan to slip out.
“I love that sound,” he said.
My fingers moved a little faster.
He kept talking in a low voice. “I want to feel you. I want my lips on your body. I want to make that sound come out of you over and over again.”
Faster.
I clutched the phone, breathing heavily. My fingers were dripping wet. The need to touch him was so overwhelming, I tingled with it.
“I want you to know where I am,” I said in the heat of the moment.
I heard him go still. “What?”
My hand paused but my breathing was s
till rapid. I talked through it. “I want you to know where I am. Really am. I’m ready to break the rules.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t answer for so long, my eyebrows drew together and I sat up a little on the couch. “Hello?”
“I haven’t gone anywhere,” he said quietly.
“Did I say something wrong?”
My heart started pounding forcefully. Something was off. I pulled my underwear back up.
“No. Definitely not. You said something right. Something I’ve been waiting to hear for weeks.”
“Okaaay,” I drew out slowly, not understanding. What was wrong? Was he scared to meet me now that the possibility was real?
“I would love nothing more to see you. In person. But before you break your rules…I have to tell you something.”
“I’m listening,” I said suspiciously.
His sigh was long and hesitant. “Look. Before I say what I need to say, I just want you to know that these past couple of months have been absolutely amazing.”
“This sounds bad.”
“It doesn’t have to be. Jesus, I’m scared.” Another sigh. “Okay. The thing is…I’m a vamp.”
I couldn’t have heard that correctly. That’s not what he said. I looked around the room. Everything seemed gray in the washed out darkness. My eyes flicked to odd details. A tube of Chapstick without its cap. That meant a dried out stick of uselessness. Why am I staring at Chapstick? Why is this the thing I’ll remember when I think back to this moment? The moment my heart crushed in on itself. I couldn’t breathe. Somewhere in this crazy train of thought, I stopped breathing.
My gut. It sucker punched my gut. My gut hurt.
“Hello? Hello?”
He was speaking again, trying to get my attention. How long have I been silent?
“You’re a what?” I croaked out.
“I’m a vamp. My father was a vampire. My mother was human. I was born a hybrid. I grew up with my mother. I’m just like you. Only…different.”
“No, you’re not just like me. You’re a vamp. You’re a different species. It doesn’t get anymore unlike me.”
“I know this is a shock-”
“No, this is more than just shock.” My anger replaced my surprise and my voice grew stronger with the new emotion flooding me. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you. I should’ve listened to my gut on day one.”
“Your gut told you to talk to me. I was there. You had the same spark I did.”
My face burned at his observation. “I did not,” I lied. “I hadn’t heard a voice in years and I was desperate. But I’m not that desperate that I’m going to sit here and get tricked by a vamp!”
“I’m not tricking you!”
“I can’t even stand to hear your voice right now.”
What I said must have struck a nerve with him because he spoke his next words in low, worried tones. “Please. I get it, okay? You feel betrayed and I’m sorry. You have every right to be mad at me. Just…feel what you need to. When the anger fades, just think about all the things we talked about. All that was me. Our conversations meant something to me. Don’t just shut me out. Please.”
I sat woodenly on the couch. My hand still pressed the phone to my ear but I felt like I was about to drop it any second. His words kept slicing through me. He forced a divide in me that felt like it was going to rip through my skin. The guy I had been smitten over now had to compete with the realization that he was one of them. I felt sick.
“I have to go,” I said flatly.
“Will you call me tomorrow?” His voice was a plea.
“No, I won’t call you tomorrow. I wouldn’t talk to you if you were the last vampire on earth. And that’s not a fucking figure of speech.”
“Wow. Seriously?”
“Seriously. I’m not dialing this number again.”
And I hung up.
Chapter 15
Her
I had the rest of my miserable, lonely life to be mad. The anger was potent and magnified by the fact that I had no one to display it to.
“Of course he’s a vamp!” I screamed at an innocent crow. The stupid bird sat perched on the power line and cocked a confused head at me. That only made me madder. “I spent every day alone and when I finally find signs of intelligent life, it’s a VAMP!”
More head cocking.
I couldn’t reach the crow that questioned my right to be angry so I turned my rage onto a car. A full out, Carrie Underwood, baseball bat scene played out on a white Toyota Scion until I was heaving and sweaty, and my dogs had run for the hills to ride out my outbursts in safety.
Once I drained all the fury out of me, the desperate need to be productive came next.
I threw myself into my tasks. Since studying was out (my anger turned my concentration into a frayed, red haze) I focused on my cottage. More and more of the improvements I made to the area made it the picture of The Before. It breathed with life.
I checked my garden and frowned. The tomatoes were fine. I was still losing cabbage. I poked the green tarp that tempered the Arizona heat. So help me, I was going to bend this desert air into something that sprouted my plots into vegetable Chia pets.
After resetting the tent to a new angle and adding fresh soil, I took a can of paint to the side of the cottage. Teal. Made for little girls’ rooms or accent walls in trendy home designs but I was painting the whole cottage teal. There was no one to scrunch their nose up at it or shake their head. I could hot pink and black zebra stripe this thing and no one would care.
I kept a sob from leaving my throat.
No one would care.
No one.
Productiveness over. Now it was time to wallow.
Chapter 16
Her
First I was tired. I couldn’t finish my jog that morning. Bagheera kept whining and circling back to nudge his wet nose in my hand but my feet grew heavier and I quickly realized even walking made me achy.
I made it home and flopped onto my mattress. I guzzled some water, rolled over, and went to sleep.
The cramps woke me a few hours later. I squeezed my abdomen and let out a grunting cry but sitting up made me woozy. I turned on my mattress, scrunching my knees to my chest, splaying them back out, bucking my hips. I tried to find any position that would alleviate the pain but none did and I resorted to curling up on my side and bearing it with labored breathing.
This must be like childbirth, I kept thinking but what a joke of nature. Nothing this hellish should produce something you want to kiss and cuddle and love forever. This kind of pain should spawn ugly, evil, live-under-the-bed-and-rot kind of monsters.
The cramps made way to pure nausea. I vomited sporadically until it was less vomit and more of a dry heaving. I tried to flick back over what I ate. I was always careful and checking cans for bulging or smells. Perhaps it was as simple as being sick. I hadn’t been sick since The Before. There was no one to play tag with on viruses or bacteria. No sneezes in crowded rooms or coughs in a tight space or food service workers that didn’t wash their hands.
On day three, I stopped moving altogether. My water supply was running low. I threw up most of what I ingested. My lips bled from dry cracks. My throat was raw and scratchy from all the acid coming back up. Even scarier, my left eye was drooping so much it was hard to see out of it.
My dogs paced nervously around me. When the animals were nervous, it was bad. They could sense things beyond what normal people could. They could sense death. In the early days, they were vital in letting me know which houses to explore and which to pass on.
Pacing dogs. Okay. I needed to move. I needed to move or I wasn’t going to live.
The Great Move (I named it such because it was so monumental it needed a name) took all day and into the night. Little by little, I used what strength was left in my arms to scooch myself across the floor. When I got to the front door, I scooted over the pebbles that lined the walk to the cottage. Then I scooted over the concrete parking lot.
&n
bsp; During all this, when my arms became rubbery tired, I would like flat on my back and bake in the sun like a chicken leg on the grill. I would think about quitting and just laying here, baking to death, until I was done (ding!) and perfectly roasted and tender for whatever animal was coming for dinner.
Then I’d quit wallowing, pick up my arms, and scoot some more. My legs felt like flopping jelly. The couple of times I asked for their help, they scared me with how useless they were. My back was a crosshatch of scratches from the various surfaces I raked my body over.
Night came and the air cooled. Instead of baking, I was shivering. I was thirsty. I was exhausted. I was close to crying for the second time since The Sweep. My muscles cursed me and I gritted my teeth. I was now using my elbows as leverage and they were raw and bloodied.
My target came into view. The house was the two story brick home that sat at the front of the street on Windsong. I’d been there many times before and had already dug through her story. An older woman lived there, an empty nester if the pictures of the developing humans that spanned the wall down the stairwell was any indication. A boy and a girl and they both proudly displayed diplomas at the end of the progression with their salt-and-fire haired mom standing next to them, beaming. Upstairs there was a room in an awkward mix of blue plaid, a batman poster, and a sewing machine. The other room was untouched. The daughter’s bulletin board of friends’ pictures and a prom corsage were still hanging up.
Why did you sacrifice his room for your crafting hobby and not hers? I had wondered. I loved wondering about people’s stories.
Downstairs was a spacious kitchen, a den, a living room anchored by a couch that provided cushy seating for my butt when I found a book I couldn’t put down, and a study of furnished with unending oak that held a number of outdated items: a calculator, a typewriter, and a corded phone.
After several minutes and frustrated guttural cries, I lifted myself high enough and long enough off the ground to turn the knob and fall heavily into the foyer. Baloo nosed me in the neck when I didn’t move. I still didn’t move. I kept my forehead pressed to the cold marble and bit a trembling lip. I wanted my pills. I wanted to numb everything. My body was so weak. The cramps were a fresh kind, the kind that asked for water and that punished my body for its denial. My headache was just there to join the party. No purpose. Just pounding away, refusing to be left out of the fun.