Parasite Life

by Victoria Dalpe

  Dr. Blake has started giving Jane transfusions every other week, to give me a break. She responds well. The day after the transfusion she’s almost always a bundle of energy. Dr. Blake makes notes, does tests on us both. We’ve become something of his hobby. His wife died years ago, and his grown children have moved away. So we fill the empty spaces in each other’s lives, I guess. He gives me sanity, and as sad as it is to write, he’s a stand-in for Dad. And I think he sees Jane and me as something like family. He’s affectionate with her, which I’m grateful for. I try to be like him with Jane, I really do, but more often than not, when I put her to my breast and she hungrily slurps up my blood, it takes all I have to not drop her to the ground on purpose.

  In darker moments, late at night, when I’m lonely and sleep deprived, I look at Jane sleeping and think of doing something. Something terrible: a pillow over her face, drowning her in the tub. It’s so, so awful. And I do love her, I’m pretty sure I love her, because it’s my job to love her, it’s my obligation. It’s also my fault she exists.

  Because Jane is also a thing. A monster that wears a human face. And it’s convincing from afar. But when we go to the store, or the park, and people peek into her stroller, they recoil. She puts them off, as if they have natural radar warning them to fear her, to avoid her. She’s a beautiful child. Her thick dark hair, olive complexion, and big brown eyes. All so like her father. She does seem to have my dimples, at least, and my chin. Hugh had a large square chin. My face is more heart-shaped. So, I’m in Jane, somewhere. Which makes it hurt all the more that deep down I loathe my own child.

  XII.

  I stared at the last page of my mother’s journal for some time. The word “loathe” appeared bolder on the page the longer I stared. I pinched the bridge of my nose, sending stars skittering across my vision. I yearned for this to simply be the ravings of a seriously disturbed woman. A woman who shouldn’t have been a parent, who probably would’ve done the world a favor by dropping that baby in a hospital bin. But the bites were real, and me hurting Sabrina the other night was real. I scrubbed at my eyes, fighting the tears.

  This couldn’t be true, none of it could be true. It was sick and delusional. It was fiction. I looked at the journal, tempted to throw it in the trash. I turned the worn leather in my hands, trying to summon an image of my mother, young and isolated, frantically scribbling on the pages.

  I thought I’d read the last entry, but as I shakily fanned through the blank pages, I found another page of writing. It was undated and the script had lost a lot of legibility. The scrawl was shaky and unsteady on the page. My heart was in my throat, but my own curiosity made me read on. I’d said I wanted the truth—and I did.

  XIII.

  undated

  I’d nearly forgotten about this old journal, hiding away up here. It’s like meeting an old war buddy again after many years. Makes me want to root around and find my old sketchbooks, from when I was a teenager, a carefree girl who just wanted to get out of her redneck town and paint. God, I miss her. I miss city lights, and espresso, I miss handsome boys buying you a drink from down the bar. I miss my youth, my beauty. I didn’t treasure it, and had no idea of how fleeting it would be. I think I miss my humanity most of all. I need to write this out, because I need to confess some things. I can’t kill myself without laying it out somewhere and I’m too much a coward to tell someone. I want to turn the gas on while we’re sleeping or burn the house down. Kill us both. She’s guilty, but I’m guiltier. I’m the enabler, I’m the adult, hell, I’m the fucking Renfield.

  Let me go back a bit, since last time I wrote anything, Jane was still a baby. And when Dr. Blake got sick a few months before Jane’s sixth birthday . . . things took a turn. He was our angel, he gave the transfusions so that I could get a break, but then he had a stroke while driving on another of his house visits. Not totally unexpected, he was in his eighties. The stroke damaged his speech center, and the accident took his mobility. Poor Dr. Blake ended up in a nursing home. We went to visit him a few times, and seeing him so frail was almost too much to bear. And then he died. I wept as loudly and pitifully at his funeral as I did at Dad’s.

  Without Dr. Blake’s transfusions, I became Jane’s sole donor. I’ve become an excellent phlebotomist over time, and I give her my blood in glasses instead of from the vein. That way, I can do portion control as she gets older and smarter. If I want her to grow up normal, she has to eat and drink like a regular person. But she needs too much.

  Thank God she does eat food, so I give her a meat-heavy diet and lots of supplements. It helps. But I’m so tired and so delirious, my body a blood factory, and it’s really taking its toll. I’ve reached a point where I can’t give her anymore of the “red juice”—yes, that’s what we call it. Sooo fucked up. I’m so fucked up for normalizing this. But Jane asks for red juice constantly, and as she grows, she needs even more.

  I’ve tried animal blood. Dr. Blake and I experimented with a bunch of different animals, and they did nothing for her. It has to be human.

  I’m going nuts. Without Dr. Blake, I’m entirely alone. He made our secret bearable, we were a team, he was my support. But alone, I have no place to go, no one to turn to. I paint, and Jane keeps to herself enough that I can stay up here all day. She’s not sociable, but she doesn’t seem a danger to other children. So, I send her to school. She needs to be part of the world and around other people. And I need to be away from her. People give her a wide berth, children and adults alike, like they know with some predator-sensing animal part of their brain that she’s not really human. But Jane needs to learn to live in the world, like Hugh did. I’m trying to raise a vampire and shield her from the horror of it. But to do it, I’ve become more monstrous.

  Right, moving on, the confession. That’s why I’m writing in this moth-eaten book of tragedy in the first place.

  One night, I got in my car to go to the store and to get gas in the neighboring town. I hate going to the small general store down the street where they all stare at me like I’m the town witch—though they’re not that far off. We pass by and they all move closer to their loved ones, practically cross themselves like villagers in an old Hammer movie.

  Jane’s a pretty child, with her big fathomless eyes. She’s always trailing around me, silent as a shadow. She’s so hungry for hugs, for contact, and it’s draining. It’s crazy to think it, but I know it’s true, she’s feeding on me all the time. It’s not just the blood, it’s skin to skin, it’s body heat, it’s fucking lifeforce. So I avoid touching her if I can. I’ve given her too much. There’s nothing left. The only thing I have is my art. When they find my bone-dry corpse up here, like a hollowed-out caterpillar casing, at least my paintings will be my legacy.

  Anyways, I was driving, and I was so tired. Jane was in the backseat, silent as always. When I met her eyes in the mirror she smiled, small, timid, starved for attention. I sighed and returned to the road. It’s not in me. You can’t have it all. You just can’t.

  There was a young guy walking along the road, small and rangy, thumb out. My brain was whirring with ideas suddenly, misfiring, as I hit the blinker and pulled to the side of the road. I officially descended into madness, a little voice whispered as I sat idling, watching the guy in my rearview. Like a spider in a web. Even writing it out makes me shake and want to vomit. My memories of that night are a blur. I remember calling out to him, I remember offering him a ride. I was driving Dad’s giant old Cadillac and I had to manually unlock the trunk. Told him I’d give him a ride if he could change my tire. As he leaned into the trunk to pull out the spare, I reached in for the tire iron. I hit him hard, in the back of the head. There was a small explosion of blood and he dropped to his knees, hanging half in the trunk. Heart racing, running on mania and endorphins, I hit him again for good measure. It wasn’t like the movies—it was hard to knock him unconscious. My adrenaline was pumping and I managed to get his legs into the trunk. While he was still unconscious, I tied up his wrists using som
e old rope my dad always kept in the trunk for emergencies.

  Instead of going to the store, I pulled a sharp U-turn and headed home, fast, but not fast enough to get pulled over. By the time we got there, I was all sweaty and dizzy from nerves. Jane watched me in the back seat, eyes large and curious. She’s a polite child, almost unnervingly considerate, so she didn’t even question why we came home without going to the store. Or what happened to the man.

  I sent her in to watch television. She went, though it was obvious she thought I was acting weird. My heart felt like it was being torn out. WHAT ARE YOU DOING? I sat in the car, making myself breathe as I watched the lights turn on inside. I just kept repeating to myself: I made a promise to her. No matter what ring of hell it forces me into, I’ll do what I need to.

  So I dragged the hitchhiker out of the trunk. He was still unconscious, the wound deeper than I initially thought and bleeding quite badly. I was weak and he was heavy. It took a long time to drag him around to the back of the house, but I finally managed it. I opened the bulkhead to the basement and then very ungently dragged him down, cringing as his bloodied head bumped along every dusty step leaving a spot. It took all my strength. Dad had started to build a rec room in the basement when I was young. He didn’t get past enclosing the room in sheetrock and rough-plumbing the half bath, and that’s where I took the unconscious guy. There was a sofa and a dartboard. There was a door and a dingy wire-covered window that was sealed and faced the side yard.

  I dragged him into the room. I got him onto the sofa. He was still unconscious, and a dead weight, so none of this was easy. I retied his wrists and ankles, and once he was secure, I dealt with his head wound. The guy was woozy, but came around as the hydrogen peroxide touched his skin. He bucked and screamed, so I gagged him.

  His eyes rolled wildly, the gag soaking with his drool as he pled and moaned. I explained that it would be as painless as possible. I even thanked him for his contribution! I looked like a scarred-up old junkie more and more each day, and I was so glad to get a break from the constant bloodletting. Once I’d filled two mason jars and he was weak and gray from blood loss, I undid his wrist restraints, and he immediately lunged at me. He got in one good punch, splitting my lip, but was too weak to do much else. I retied him, watching him the whole time. I learned I’d need to be much more careful.

  He woke up later night and started to scream, scaring Jane. He’d managed to loosen his gag. I gave him options: duct tape over his mouth or sleeping pills. I’d gotten a prescription a few years back in a moment of weakness when I’d gone to the doctor. I’d never liked to take them though, too scared of Jane being up and around without me to watch her. I snuck the pills crushed up into his food. When he was more lucid, he begged. But I learned to ignore it, I needed his blood. I know what I’ve done is wrong. I understood he had dreams and a name. Though I never asked him what it was.

  I’m not a monster. I’m a mother. I tell myself over and over, to try to make what I’ve done okay.

  It’s not our fault. It was nature that created Jane. But it wore on me. Terribly. I’d come up and see Jane, working on a puzzle, or a book. Slurping away at her “red drink,” a blood mustache on her young mouth. I’d sit in the bathroom for hours staring at my reflection.

  I have Dad’s old straight razor. I’ve sharpened it. I push it against my scarred wrists. Trace the blade along my throat, whisper coward at myself when I can’t push it in. Because I am a coward.

  Jane grows older every day. She was in third grade, then, able to read. How could I continue this way? How old would she be before she realizes what I’m doing? How long could the hitchhiker survive? These questions weighed on me every day.

  And worse still, I got good at being a jailer. I bought feet of chain and wrapped them around the pillar in the basement, secured him with padlocks. I made caring for him my routine, changing his toilet bucket, bringing his food on trays, filling my jars. Day in, day motherfucking out.

  Miraculously, he lasted for six months. By the end, he was a shell. He tried to go on hunger strikes, he tried to kill himself by wrapping the chain around his neck. I found him just in time. In the end, he died of exsanguination, a fancy word that I wouldn’t know in another life. I’m no doctor, but I think it’s a fair guess. The idea that I’m a murderer is . . . surreal.

  But I learned, and I got better at keeping them after the first. Silent, cleaner, less blood. But then you reach a point where you can’t do this any longer . . . at least, I can’t.

  There are three bodies in my garden.

  I can’t even look at Jane anymore. I hate what she’s turned me into. She’s a clever girl in most things, but in this she’s oblivious. She has her red drink, never questions it. I watch her drink it. And it’s almost mechanical, almost like she slips into a trance.

  God, she’s a frightful thing now. She’s tall, her brown hair long, nearly to her bottom, and the spitting image of her goddamn father. She’s starting to develop, and she’ll be beautiful. A terrible beauty.

  I decided to stop feeding her. No more red drink, no more basement feedbags. I bleached the floors, cleaned out the space. I pushed a workbench over the door and plan to never go in there again. We’ll do something else, find another way to survive. That’s what I told myself, anyway.

  Soon after, Jane got sick. Thirteen years old and she was dying. Her body was skeletal. It was summer vacation and I told myself: if she dies, I’ll bury her out back with our victims, and we’ll all be free.

  But then one day, things changed. Jane seemed alert, her cheeks fuller, her eyes sharper. And later, in the bath, to my dawning horror, I found it. A bite, discreetly behind my knee. It didn’t hurt until I noticed it, like the old days, like Hugh. It filled me with such rage and horror that I nearly passed out.

  It took everything I had to not get a knife out of the drawer and stab her while she sat in her room, reading. I stormed in and asked her if she came in my room that night? She seemed confused. I know my kid: I would know if she’s lying. And she wasn’t. She just got better, she doesn’t know why. But I do. The monster in her wants to survive, and in my sheltering her, I’ve cut her in two. A day Jane, and a night Jane. I’ve been trying not to sleep, trying to barricade the door at night, but at some point between dusk and dawn she gets in, and a new bite appears.

  I finally figured out why I never felt the bite, hers or Hugh’s. It’s in their saliva, like a mosquito, or a tick, or a fucking bedbug. Any of the filthy creatures that steal blood while the victim slumbers away. It anesthetizes the skin, numbs it.

  I woke the other night to a suckling sound, pulling back the covers, found Jane sucking at my wrist. Asleep. Her eyes shut, her throat swallowing robotically. I screamed in horror, weak from the blood loss. She woke up suddenly, confused. I slapped her hard across the face. I hit her again, this time with a closed fist. She fell back cupping her cheek, her strange sleep state dissolving as she stared at me. Her eyes filled with tears.

  Oh God, she had no idea! She’s still so young and innocent, this horrible creature. Hugh was right. She’ll be my undoing. I can’t starve her to death, and I’m too much of a coward to just kill her. And after all, I made her a promise, a life—that I would give her a life. I had no idea that life would be mine. Oh Hugh, I wish I’d believed you all those years ago.

  PART II : Imago

  Or words she murmured while she leaned!

  Witch-words, she holds me softly by,—

  The spell that binds me to a fiend

  Until I die.

  —Madison Julius Cawein, “The Vampire”

  XIV.

  I dropped the journal in breathless terror. My mind raced. How could this terrible retelling of my childhood be real? I was there. Surely, I’d remember if this was true.

  But you know it is, a voice whispered at the back of my mind.

  No. It was impossible. I was dizzy when I stood, moving just to move, no place to go. Nothing seemed solid. This was all one long terrible dre
am. An addled fantasy world created by a half-mad shut-in. Surely, I’d remember my mother feeding me glasses of blood. I’d remember men screaming in the fucking basement! I vaguely remembered an elderly doctor when I was a kid . . . but he wasn’t some terrible accomplice. This was her version of the story, nothing more.

  But as much as I desperately wanted to believe it was all a lie, I knew, deep down, that something in there was true. I wasn’t right—something in me wasn’t like other people.

  And I’d made my mother into that thing in the other room. Her dogged maternal instinct to care for me, this horrible bloodsucking thing, had cost her life, her sanity, her body, and her identity. I bit into my knuckle, trying to keep myself from screaming. It all made horrible sense. She was dying, the nightly feedings depleting her to nothing.

  And then Sabrina, I lured her to me, to my home, to my bed. Who the hell was I? I felt like someone was sharing my body with me, possessing me.

  I yanked the door to my room open, running down the hallway, down the stairs, stumbling through the kitchen as if drunk, down, down, down, the rickety basement stairs. I spun in a circle, finding the washer in the corner, the water heater and a tool bench, all where I’d left them, all familiar. I was in the basement daily; I knew every inch . . . didn’t I? I couldn’t have overlooked a fucking torture chamber down here after all these years. I followed the corners of the room to the tool bench and the small door behind it. Fear sweat dripped into my eyes and gathered on my upper lip.