by Chuck Dixon
“I feel like I’m dying,” I said. It came out a croak. My throat was painfully dry all of a sudden.
Nancy helped her get the pressure cuff in place and pumped it up. They glanced at one another as it hissed itself empty. Cheryl bent to place the stethoscope drum on my arm. My eyes followed the vein in her neck to where it vanished under the collar of her sweatshirt. I breathed in through my nostrils, filling my nose with her rich scent of dewy sweat and shampoo. My ears filled with the sound of her heartbeat and the whoosh-whoosh of blood moving through her veins. I opened my eyes to find Nancy looking at me with narrowed eyes.
“Something wrong with this cuff,” Cheryl said. She left it in place and held the scope against my chest. She sat back and exchanged a look with her roommate.
“You’re dead, Jason,” she said. Her head was lowered and tilted to one side to look me in the eyes.
“That’s what I told you. I’m dying,” I said.
“Died. Past tense. You have no blood pressure and no pulse. Not one I can find anyway,” Cheryl said.
“Bullshit. You did it wrong,” Nancy said.
“Excuse me?” Cheryl said.
Nancy took the scope from her and put the drum on my back.
“Take a deep breath and let it out,” she said.
I did as she told me. Four times.
“Shit,” Nancy said. She backed away to stand against the kitchen counter.
“I told you. No vitals,” Cheryl said.
“We need to call 911. Or take him to the ER ourselves,” Nancy said.
“No. No. No. No doctors. No hospital,” I said. I climbed down off the stool and waved them back.
“Hold on . . .” Cheryl began. But I was already to their door and opening it. Both girls followed me. They tried to hold the door closed. I easily yanked it open with one hand and staggered down the hall to my door.
I made it to my own sofa to face plant in the cushions.
The burning in my guts was a five-alarm tire fire now. I curled up on the sofa clutching my stomach with clawed fingers. I still had the girls’ scent in my nostrils, sweet and musky. A longing was taking over me, a desire greater than sexual. I wanted something that I couldn’t have; couldn’t even understand or name.
The stereo was on. The display face glowed electric green. A jazz station. Someone whisking a drum while someone else played a plaintive trumpet. I knew I didn’t leave it on. I hate jazz.
A husky voice spoke from the dark.
“You got it bad, mon petit.”
I sat up to look over the back of the couch.
Roxanne lounged back in my favorite chair, her face lit by the red glow of a cigarette in her slim fingers.
“Why don’t you let Mama help?”
• 5 •
I was over the back of the couch in a vault that surprised both of us.
Roxanne was out of the chair and backing down the hall that led to the bedrooms at the back of the condo.
“You—bitch! What did you do to me?” I said. I stalked toward her.
“What did I do for you, stupid,” she said. The easy manner I recalled from the night before came back to her. A tilted smile on her face, her eyelids dropping over the blackest eyes I’d ever seen. I’d forgotten her eyes. Like ebony glass.
“What the hell does that mean?” I was stammering. I’d have been spitting but my mouth was dry as sand.
She moved backwards toward the bedrooms, eyes on me, her lush lips cooing words I couldn’t hear through my rage. I made a leap for her, reaching for her wrists. We both crashed down on the foot of my bed. She drove a knee into my chest, knocking me tumbling.
I came back up off the carpet to find her spider walking up the mattress toward the head of the bed.
“I’ve got what you want, mon sucre,” she said. I’d forgotten the trace of an accent. It would be sexy as hell under other circumstances. Right now I just wanted to cause her pain.
I launched for the bed. She rolled out from under me. I raised up to make a grab for her. From somewhere under a t-shirt for a band called Kreator she produced something that shone in the moonlight coming through drapes.
A razor blade. I grabbed a calf and pulled her closer, making a reach for the hand that held the blade. She drew closer only to head butt me. I fell back seeing flashes of iridescent stars dancing across the ceiling.
She was on top of me then, straddling my hips and holding me down with a hand to my chest. I had a good forty pounds on her but she pressed me down on the bed like I was a child.
“I’ve got what you need,” she said. With a corner of the razor blade she sliced across the front of her t-shirt and tore the fabric aside to expose one of her breasts. The one with the Egyptian eye tattooed on it.
I rocked back and forth snarling but couldn’t free myself from under her.
With a single deft stroke she made a slice across the mound of her breast above the nipple. Dark blood thick as gelatin seeped out of the wound. I stared at it, transfixed. My body went limp, all will to fight flushed out of me at the sight of the red-black stream dripping off the curve of her breast. She bent the arm that was restraining me to bend at the waist, bringing her closer to me. We lay belly to belly. She placed her hand on the back of my head and pulled my face to her chest.
“That’s it, baby. Take what you need,” she said. Her voice a whisper.
That urge came over me, something primal, drawing me up toward her. My nose filled with the sweet tang coming off the blood. With a wordless animal sound I clamped my lips over the wound and sucked the irresistible nectar.
I lay back on the bed staring at the ceiling. My body was warm in the afterglow of feeding and wrapped in a cocoon of utter contentment. That blaze in my guts was gone. In its place was pleasant radiance.
Roxanne sat propped against the head of the bed, lighting a cigarette. The wound was closed. It looked like a papercut now. Her breast was clean of every drop of blood. I’d made sure of that.
“You need to learn to hunt on your own,” she said. She let twin streams of creamy smoke drift from her nostrils.
“What?” I said. I was trying the free myself from the lazy feeling washing over me.
“You can’t be looking at me to be your mama. You’ll be on your own from here.”
I turned on an elbow to look at her. Her dark eyes regarded me without warmth through a blue haze of smoke. The strangeness of this woman in my bed, and what we’d just done together, was sinking in.
“What is this? Is this some kind of kinky shit? What are you into? What am I into?” I was sitting up now. Her tilted smile returned. Her eyes remained cold.
“You think this was sex? Maybe love, mon petit?” A dry chuckle in her throat as she said it.
“Then what is it?”
“I did not find something that was already in you. Some unrealized kink you were ignorant of before yesterday. I changed you. You are not who you were. Not what you were.”
“It’s not sex? What’s that mean?”
“Is your cock hard?”
It was not. I’d just participated in what would normally be the ultimate wet dream; a strange exotic woman in my condo with whom I wound up rolling in bed with her tits exposed. But I was satisfied with sucking a pint of blood out of her, more satisfied than I’d ever known I could feel. And sex, actual intercourse or any of its variations, never occurred to me. I was still fully clothed.
“I am sorry,” she said. Her mouth turned down. There was mock sympathy in her words. The eyes were still lifeless as a doll’s.
“What is this? What did you do to me? Are you dying and wanted to infect someone with whatever you have?”
She laughed then, a throaty laugh that expelled a cloud of smoke.
“I died long ago. You died last night.”
I rose to my knees to crawl closer to her. I touched my hand to her flesh, my palm between her breasts. There was no pulse.
“The others are going to be very unhappy with me,” she said. She close
d her eyes, black lashes joining. Her hand atop mine.
Others?
• 6 •
“Crosses?”
She snorted.
“Wooden stakes.”
“No,” she said.
“Do I get to turn into a bat?”
“Don’t be silly,” she said.
“What about Dracula? Is that a real thing?”
“Enough questions. Just drive,” Roxanne said.
I was driving us along the interstate. She convinced me that I couldn’t stay in my condo. I had to leave it behind. Leave my whole life up till now behind me. She told me not to take anything with me.
“Not even a change of clothes?”
“There will be plenty of clothes where we’re going,” she said. She waved at an exit sign and I pulled off the highway onto a surface road.
She pointed left and I turned to drive into the darkness under a double overpass. Traffic boomed by overhead.
“You know this isn’t the best neighborhood,” I said.
“Are you afraid?” That tilted smile again.
“I was thinking about you.”
“Pull over here.” She pointed to the deep shadows behind a row of concrete pylons.
I killed the motor and she climbed out. She tapped a ring on the glass and motioned for me to follow.
I walked behind her toward a collection of tents slung up in the shelter of the southbound overpass. The little tent city spread up onto a grassy slope where the highway split. There was a barrel fire going. Some of the tents glowed with lantern light. One pulsed with the bluish hues of a television screen.
Roxanne dropped to a crouch on a patch of gravel and pulled my sleeve to bring me down by her.
“We’re staying here?” I said.
“We’re hunting.” Her eyes were locked on the tents. Nothing moved there.
“I’m not sure about this,” I said.
“I need blood. You took a lot of mine. You need more yourself. And you need to learn how to make it out here on your own.” She glanced at me once. The moon was reflected in her eyes making them glow pewter.
“You want us to kill someone?” I tried to stand up. She yanked me back down to my knees.
“Do you know what this place is?” she said. It was a hiss.
“Sure. Homeless people.”
“Criminals. Pedophiles. Sick bastards who rape children.”
“All of them?”
“Registered sex offenders. They can’t live anywhere near where children might gather. Schools, playgrounds, daycares. This is the only place they can live and meet their parole requirements.”
“I think I saw something on TV about this place.”
“Did you ever see anything on TV about men from this place disappearing?”
“No,” I said.
She smiled. And this time the smile went all the way to her eyes. It was not a nice smile.
Someone coughed then grunted by one of the tents. A man came out of a bright yellow tent, a flashlight in his hand. Chubby guy in an aloha shirt and cargo shorts. He came down the grassy slope and crossed the surface road toward a porta potty sitting at the curb.
Roxanne was up and moving. Her hand was clamped on my wrist to pull me along. We angled across the surface road toward a porta potty and arrived just as the chubby guy was pulling the door open. Roxanne gripped the door, holding it open. The chubby guy goggled at her at first. His face twisted into an ugly sneer and he entered the toilet, trying to pull the door closed behind him. Roxanne slapped his arm aside and joined him inside the potty. The door banged closed behind her.
I was left outside to listen to a complaint from the chubby guy followed by a short yelp. A gurgling sound came through the vents then silence. I looked to the tent village. Nothing moved. The only sound was tinny music from the television.
The door banged open and Roxanne hissed for me to come in.
She had chubby pinned to the back wall of the closet-sized room. A bloody razor blade between her fingers. She’d made a slash across the guy’s neck and blood spurted from it in time with his slowing pulse. The guy’s eyes were moving and his jaw was working. No sound came out and the eyes were unfocused. His legs quivered feebly.
“Come on. Don’t waste any,” Roxanne said. Her mouth glistened crimson. She grabbed the lapel of my blazer and tugged me closer.
I tried to brace my feet but they slid on the slick metal surface of the potty floor. She took me by the back of the head and shoved me against the dying man. My nose and mouth filled with the rich scent of the blood running down to stain the guy’s hideous shirt. That fire was stoked up in my belly. I fell into a world of delirium where the only thing that existed was the stream of sweet red wine spilling from the narrow wound.
And hunger.
A hunger such as I’d never felt before.
I was feeding on the guy before I knew it.
“That’s it, mon petit. Take it all. The dregs are always the most delicious,” Roxanne said. Her fingers were still in my hair.
• 7 •
With Roxanne’s directions I drove us onto the empty lot of a suburban mall. I pulled up behind a Macy’s and parked. Roxanne was out of the car and climbing steel steps up to a loading dock. I chased after. She walked down the row of sealed garage doors to a steel entry door.
“What’s here?” I said.
“Shopping,” she said. She touched a buzzer by the door.
“You know someone inside?”
She squinted at me, annoyed.
The loading dock was quiet. The only sound was the ticking from the Impala’s engine block as it cooled. The parking lot was a barren asphalt landscape dotted with pools of artificial light.
I looked down at my shirt front. It was black with blood. My blazer too, smeared where I’d wiped my sticky hands.
Roxanne touched the buzzer again. Through the door I could hear the harsh ringing of a bell.
“Won’t they see us?” I said. I glanced up at a surveillance camera mounted over the door. It was trained down on us.
Roxanne shrugged.
Footsteps approached the door from inside. A jingle of key rings. The locks turned and the door came open. A balding black guy poked his head out. He wore a dark blue uniform shirt dotted with cookie crumbs.
He was surprised to see Roxanne smiling at him. Even more surprised when she latched onto his throat and shoved him inside.
The guard’s feet left the floor and he slid along the tiles in a narrow hallway lined with doors. Roxanne stepped inside and stormed toward him. The guard went for a gun in a holster on his belt. He only made it as far as unsnapping the catch. Roxanne drove the heel of a boot into his face. Once. Twice. The guard lay still.
She grabbed a fistful of his collar and dragged him deeper into the building. I trotted behind.
“What are we doing with him?” I said.
“We?”
“You’re going to cut his throat?”
“No. Too messy.”
We reached the security office. A desk and a bank of monitors shifting between views of various interior and exterior shots all around the mall. A cooling mug of coffee and an open bag of Mrs. Fieldings sat by an open copy of a car magazine. Roxanne plopped the guard into a chair. She plucked tie-wraps from his belt and secured his wrists behind the post of the back rest. Another pair of wraps around his ankles held them unmoving against the chair legs. She undid his gun belt and threw it across the room. She tore off her own t-shirt and balled part of it up to stick in his mouth. He sagged in the chair, breath whistling from his nostrils.
“The place is ours,” she said. She stepped to a panel on the wall and pressed a series of buttons. Each was marked with the name of a store.
The gates of the stores were all wide open.
We hit Macy’s, Wilson Leather, and Abercrombie & Fitch. Roxanne picked out a tank top, jeans and motorcycle jacket. All in black, of course. She stripped naked at the racks to put them on. I bagged up some t-shirts
, jeans, a hoodie and underwear. She slapped the bags from my hands.
“Only take what you can wear,” she said.
I stripped down and put on fresh clothes, leaving my bloody shirt, slacks and Handley-Barker blazer on the floor. I walked barefoot down to the Foot Locker and snagged socks and a pair of K-Swiss high tops. I rejoined Roxanne seated on the edge of the fountain in the mall’s center court.
“How do I look?” I said.
“Like an asshole.” But she smiled when she said it.
“What now? I guess the food court’s out.”
“We need to roost,” she said. She glanced up at the wide atrium dome above us. The sky was lightening to a pale violet streaked with dark clouds.
“Where do we go?”
“We’re already here,” she said. She took my hand.
We climbed up to a utility room on the roof and lay down on the top of a broad exchange vent. There was just enough clearance between the top of the vent and the ceiling to lay supine. The room had no windows. Roxanne had a pair of thick comforters taken from Macy’s linen department. We spread them out and lay side by side.
Roxanne lit a cigarette and took a long drag. She blew out a stream that billowed against the steel plates of the ceiling inches above us.
“Is this smart? Staying here?” I said.
“No one will think to look for us here,” she said.
“We just stay here all day?”
“And join the shoppers when the sun goes down.”
“That camera. It couldn’t see us. Like the empty mirror image.”
“That’s right, mon petit. We are invisible. None of the cameras saw us.”
“I almost feel sorry for the cops who have to investigate this,” I said.
She made a huffing sound that expelled a fresh plume of blue smoke. The police. What were the police to her?
We lay quiet a few moments.
“They’ll find my car,” I said.
“And so?”
“Right. I’m dead.”
I listened to the whump of a transformer kicking on and the whoosh of air moving through the vent below us for a few moments. I felt warm all over, a heat spreading from my belly. It sloshed with the blood of the pedophile.