by HC Hammond
Slim pickings though, nothing but Type-As wandering around looking nervous. A couple of balding pates in white polo tee shirts identified a family man or two looking for his next mid-life crisis. Nothing horrible enough to warrant eating, really. As he watched, Harold’s nose developed a throbbing pulse. Blub, blub, blub, right under the burnt skin. He looked at it in the rearview. Yup, still a blackened pepper.
He prodded it, poked it, picked ever so gently to avoid the scream of pain his flesh would inevitably give off from the molesting by his curious finger in its current cooked state.
One prod to many, Harold yelped, and the skin cracked diagonally across the bridge causing a quick of spurt of blood to hit the rearview mirror, leaving Pollock’s like splatters on the glass. Now his nose was screaming, sending minute shocks of pain deep enough into his face that Harold could feel it in his soft palette. He hissed against the pain, wiping the blood quickly from the mirror with his jacket cuff and lay his head onto the head rest to wait for it to subside. He focused on breathing through his mouth, bringing cool air in and out.
Thank god, the pain did go away and his nose settled back into the bliss that was the gentle blub, blub, blub of his blood pulsing through swollen flesh. The throbbing wasn’t too bad. In a way it was almost soothing.
Harold drifted off into a semi-doze, carried on a red sea, a warm metallic breeze blowing in his hair and a beautiful woman beside him. He couldn’t see her clearly, but it could have been Maria. Her hands touched his face, traced his jaw and spread across his shoulders. They kissed and her hands slid down his chest, feeling him up all over his sides and back to his shoulders which she shook gently. He kept kissing her soft, full lips and reached to stop her hands where they still shook his shoulders. He pulled away to tell her to stop shaking him and finally saw her face. It was Potts.
Harold screamed, woke up in his car and barely stopped himself from rubbing his face with his hands before he hurt himself. He screamed again when he realized there was actually a hand on his shoulder.
“This one’s a real skittish putz, Joe,” Potts said, bringing Harold’s nightmare to life in a garish twist. The squat man’s jowls reflected glints of light from the streetlamp as he spoke, then jiggled madly has he laughed at his own words. Harold truly despised the man in that moment, enough to kill him… Not with his teeth. Harold wouldn’t get close enough to bite the bastard, not if his life depended on it. Not even then. Maybe he could do it with his bare hands.
“What the hell,” Harold pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and sighed. Another craptacular evening this was turning out to be. Feeling distinctly trapped in the car, Harold pulled the door handle and opened it into the Gee man’s paunch. His woof of surprise was satisfying. Harold leaned into the door, forcing the fat man to back up so he could get out of the vehicle.
Harold closed the door and leaned casually against it. “Is it me or did I miss the memo about pissing off vampires tonight?” He muttered to Bergstrom, choosing to ignore Potts while he rubbed his great gut and looked daggers at Harold.
Bergstrom smiled his perfect pearly whites, even in the darkness they shone bright and iridescent. It made him feel a little self-conscious about his own fangs, which were frankly stained with what else, blood, and in need of a whitening.
“Another nasty looking burn Mr. Blank,” he responded, “You do know the sun is bad for you? Or have you just been feeling a little suicidal?”
Ah crap fuck, he’d forgotten about his nose. Harold fought the urge to duck his head and returned the man’s stare. The fed skillfully diffused the tension by pulling out a pack of cigarettes and patting the bottom a couple times until one reluctantly slid out. Bergstrom plucked it between two thin fingers and wrapped his thin lips around the filter. He held out the pack to Harold in question, but Harold shook his head. It wasn’t the cigarette, but the man offering them.
“I know, these things will kill me right?” Bergstrom laughed, grinning those pearly white teeth. “But, considering my job, who wouldn’t succeed first?”
Harold didn’t know what to make of that. He still had no idea what condition the man had. Although, he wasn’t exactly racking his brains to solve the mystery.
Potts recovered enough to lean his side against the car and get too close to Harold for comfort. What a way to end the night, crammed between number one and number two.
Harold’s car protested under the second man’s weight. The metal groaned, dented inwards and the door frame clicked loudly and shifted behind Harold. He didn’t want to pick a fight with this one, but Potts was rapidly making it hard for Harold to ignore the transgressions against himself and his beloved phantom.
“What are you to doing here anyway?” He glared at the fat man. He just smiled back, pleased with himself and his place in the world. Agent Bergstrom exhaled from a longer drag on his cigarette. He took another, glanced both ways up and down the street.
“What are you doing in this part of town? Group is in the warehouse. You playing hooky?”
“It doesn’t matter where the damned meeting is,” said Harold, “because I’m not going tonight. Last time I checked, I didn’t have tell you about everywhere I go.”
“Of course not, because we follow you.”
He hissed and pushed away from the car. To hell with the burns, he was ready for it to go down. If a fight they were looking for, a fight they would get. Harold already had one hell of a bad day and had no problem with making it worse.
“Whoa there, sport,” said Agent Potts, who stood up from the car. His phantom cracked as it bounced back into place. “No need to get yer back up. You’re working with us, son.” The man slapped Harold on the back, almost knocking him over despite his firm stance and frankly, superhuman strength. The slap certainly knocked the wind out of him.
“Yeah, sports,” replied Agent Bergstrom again with his lazy grin and another long pull from the cigarette. “We’re here to check in with you.”
Harold could easily enough figure out the man’s lazy lingo. He only wished he had a quicker wit at the moment and a less bulbous, burnt nose to go with it. This time he did give into the urge to look down, but resisted touching his face in trying to figure out whether not his wound was weeping again. Let them look at it in all of its hideous glory. Didn’t matter to him, no, it didn’t. Not when his whole life seemed to be falling down around his ears at the moment. His job was under threat. Daily, he dealt with the possibility of being grabbed by the cops or worse. He had just endured a visit with a tiny woman from hell. And finally, but certainly not least, these assholes were tailing him when they weren’t guarding the slug.
“Well not much has happened. Unless you enjoy nude portraits of ogres, which I have a ton of back in my room, I’d like to get back to sulking,” Harold muttered. Not that he needed any more attention paid to him. With David’s help at work he had more than enough light turned glaringly on his lifestyle. God, why hadn’t he noticed David was also stealing blood from the bank? Not to mention his gambling addictions. Now, he had to figure out how to deal with everyone else’s problems.
Bergstrom chuckled, scratching his chin with his middle finger, the lit cigarette coming dangerously close to burning his cheek.
“We know about that,” Bergstrom said, “I meant more along the lines of the next group member’s graduation plans.”
“Huh. I don’t know anything about them.”
Bergstrom flicked the end of his cigarette, sending a scattering of ashes into the car through the open window. Harold watched the ashes as they floated in and landed on his pristine leather seats. The gee man uttered the usual shallow apology. He turned more fully to Harold.
“I’d suggest you get focused on that.”
Harold shook his head. “He doesn’t know me. You want information. Talk to Zork. They’re buds.”
Bergstrom flicked his cigarette, half-smoked, away, leaned into Harold and placed an arm on the car’s hood behind him. It made for a rather intimidating gestu
re from this taller fed. He wasn’t entirely afraid of Potts, but this one, this one bothered him and not just because of his nice, shiny white teeth.
“We‘re not asking the slug. We’re asking you,” he muttered, pulling down those shades to stare at Harold with those blank, black pupils. Intimidating indeed, but Harold stood his ground.
“Look,” Harold said, swallowing at the unintended word play, “We’re all just trying to get along here. You help me and I’ll help you. I have to leave and you lose your inside man with Donald.”
Harold exhaled his words in a rush, all while eyeing the two G-men and trying to grow eyes in the back of his head to see exactly what the agent’s hand was doing on the hood of his car. He’d never acted so stupidly in his life, or felt this sick. Great, a little greenish skin to go with his boiled nose and fangs. Might as well throw in a couple of really nasty warts to complete the picture.
Decades worth of silent conversation passed between Bergstrom and Potts. It must have been about Harold and the outcome must have been in his favor because Bergstrom stood up and away from Harold without even sparing him a threatening look or snarl. He straightened his shoulders.
“Alright Mr. Blank, we’ll back off. Make sure you pay attention in group and… stay at the house.”
Chapter Nine
Harold rubbed his newly healed nose once more to make sure it was the normal pink, fleshy skin it should be. He’d been rubbing it all evening to make sure it hadn’t suddenly reverted to burnt flesh again, an old habit he’d thought he’d managed to overcome decades ago. Something about the vampiric ability to heal during the day didn’t quite translate to the mind. When he was younger his brain had a hard time accepting the whole regenerative ability thing. It had even gone so far as to create phantom pains in previously burnt areas and long healed bones for weeks after the injury. Stress brought back this sensation.
These days it didn’t take very much at all for him to revert to old habits. Harold felt like a yo-yo yanked back and forth in the hands of fate or the hands of a malicious child. He tried once more to focus on the poker hand before him.
Harold sat a table surrounded by other misanthropic creatures, one of which included the still irritated, Zork. The two of them hadn’t done more than rumble at each other since meeting up for the poker game. Harold didn’t know how to approach a conversation with Zork without starting another round of fang comparison.
He almost had enough for a straight flush, not a bad hand in five card poker. He tried to remember if jokers were still wild. Harold didn’t ask for fear of letting anyone know his hand.
To his left sat the dealer, one dry and dusty zombie, whose skin looked as if it might crumble at the slightest touch, and whose bones would probably fall apart on him at any moment or movement for that matter. Considering the state of his desiccated muscles, which creaked disturbingly every time he dealt a hand, he didn’t have all that much time left.
To Harold’s extreme left sat the wolf man, back in human form after a week’s worth of wild rampant mood swings and escapades. He lazily chewed on a cigar, smiled into his poker hand and wore an unpleasant Hawaiian tee shirt with authentic hand carved coconut buttons. He was responsible for getting Harold in on the game by way of apologizing for being such an ass when they first met, blaming it on the werewolfism, but having now seen both sides of Rufus the wolf man, Harold reached the conclusion he was more of an asshole as a human. To Harold’s right sat Zork and Harold himself made four in the group.
He agreed to this game as part of his bargain in playing the true mole for the feds. Do a little poking around. Get to know the other group members. Find out what’s going on here. The only thing, he was also starting to get a little curious himself about what kept happening to all of these graduates of the program. The more he thought about it, the stranger it seemed that Donald kept touting them as shining examples his perfect self-improvement group that they all should strive to emulate, but never actually invited to talk to the group or mentioned what they were doing now. It seemed out of character for Donald to not take every opportunity he could to show off these graduates. Harold didn’t know much about group therapy or any twelve step programs but it seemed to him, it made sense to bring a couple of people back that dealt with their previous problems and succeeded. You could certainly call vampirism a problem, but Harold didn‘t think this group had the cure. Yet, here was Donald claiming he, of all people, had figured out a way to bring these monsters back, bring them back from the brink of their darkest, despairing days and most grotesque forms with a simple group therapy program designed to purge the thoughts and retrain the body. Donald, amongst all the people who had been trying for hundreds, possibly thousands of years to develop a cure for Abeos, was the one who succeeded? Life was not just ironic, it was unfair.
Then, that claim he was once a vampire himself and by his own efforts to come back into the light, that he managed to overcome his urges to drink blood and his violent reaction to UV rays and in essence, remove all traces of the vampirism from his body through strength of will. It was a lot for Harold to swallow.
Harold had a fantastic hand. He threw a couple of chips into the pot to meet the zombie dealer’s rise. Zork’s discerning eyestalks swiveled towards Harold. Incredibly flexible and nimble, Zork managed to hold its entire hand of cards with one eyestalk and still succeeded in looking at the same hand with the same eyestalk by holding it in a unique figure eight pattern. The other eyestalk remained free to roam and it tried at every opportunity to sneak peeks at Harold’s and the wolfman’s cards. Yet, the slug’s cards remained miraculously folded away from all viewer’s prying eyes.
“Got something up your sleeve?” Grumped Zork, as its eyestalk stretched and strained to peer over the cards which Harold held tightly to his chest. Harold smacked the eyestalk with a free hand and Zork withdrew with a sharp inhalation and a dangerous chopping of its teeth around the cigar it also held in mouth. The slug held back, still stinging from its last encounter with Harold and the memory of that had subdued it. For all Harold knew, a couple of G-men were on the other side of the door to the back room, monitoring their communication.
“Oiy, don’t mind him.” The wolfman turned human in the absence of a full moon, pointed at Harold with his cigar. “Zork always does that and you can bet he’s got a couple of cards hidden up his, well, I don’t know what to call it but he’s got them there you can bet on it.”
Zork snorted and said something inappropriate about the wolfman, but he just laughed in response and chomped back on his cigar. Turning back to Harold, Rufus said, “See what I mean. We can always tell when he’s been cheating because the cards come back slimy.”
Harold quietly thanked whatever god was watching over this poker game he hadn’t yet gotten a slimy hand of cards from the dealer. He’s had enough of Zork’s excretions to last a while.
“A least you’re better than the last guy,” Rufus said as Harold upped the ante once more. “He was a real downer. And couldn’t play a good hand to save his life.” The wolf man snickered, pushing his chair on to the two back legs, coming perilously close to falling over. “Get it, couldn’t save his life! ’Cause he was dead.”
The zombie dealer groaned, but the wolf man continued to laugh. Of course, Harold had learned a little bit about how this guy got infected. He wasn’t the most self-aware person on the planet.
“The last guy?” Asked Harold.
The werewolf nodded and called. Zork had already folded, but Harold, the zombie and the wolf all put down their cards. Rufus slapped the table, cursing, and caused the chips to bounce. Harold had won the third round in a row. One thing about having an eternity of night, was having a lot of time to practice playing cards. Harold did get pretty damned good at the game in his decades of free time.
“Yeah, another zombie like this guy,” said the wolf man gesturing toward the dealer who was gathering the cards. “A real chatterbox, if you know what I mean.”
“No you blinking i
diot, none of us has a clue what you mean,” Zork ground out around its cigar. The werewolf looked askance at the slug. Awe, the poor wolfie had his feelings hurt, thought Harold.
The zombie dealt another hand with his creepy, creaking muscles. Harold cringed on each croak.
“Come on,” the wolf man said with a little laugh, “the guy wouldn’t shut up.” He picked up the cards as the zombie dealt them out. “Kept going on about how much Donald was helping him. You remember the time he came shuffling in all excited. I got new skin! I got new skin! And it turned out to be peach colored mold. The poor sap.”
Zork snorted, “I think you’re talking about yourself there, Wolfie.”
“Nah mate, not anymore.” The werewolf shook his head. He sighed, “I don’t even know anymore. It’s been, getting worse.”
The zombie groaned in agreement over his own hand of cards. They all enjoyed a silent moment. Rufus rubbed a hand across his chin, a half a day’s stubble had appeared since they started playing cards.
“I mean. I’m eating raw meat all the time now,” the wolf man muttered. “He promised.” The last word turned into a whine. Rufus had that half-disgusted, half-shocked look some guys get when they’re about to cry. A ripple of male angst slid through the group. Already somewhat awkward, the poker game threatened to grow downright unbearable. Harold wasn’t prepared to feel empathy for the wolf man.
He hadn’t liked Rufus. He wasn’t comfortable in the man’s presence since their unpleasant first meeting. He didn’t think he would be up to comforting Rufus when he broke out in to man tears.
“I’ve told you that guy was full of it,” Zork spoke of Donald and the group, “You should leave. Don’t invest so much effort into this group. It’s not going to get you anywhere.”
Rufus let his cards fall forgotten to the table. It wasn’t a good hand anyway. Harold’s own pair of Queens beat the pair of threes any day.