Vamp.0
Deborah Krider, Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 by Deborah Krider
“Get out of my way punk!”
I felt a rough shove on my back and I clattered to the ground. Books flew out of my arms and my chin bounced off the concrete floor.
Laughter echoed around me. Hurt and humiliated, I gathered my belongings, keeping my eyes cast down. I didn’t need to see who pushed me or even hear the harsh voice that spoke. I knew who it was by the familiar shove. Kyle Walker.
“Have a nice trip, freak-boy?” More laughter followed.
When I finally looked up, I saw the back of that big lummox and his Neanderthal friends walking away. Kids that flooded the hall resumed retrieving their things from their lockers and clanked them shut. So used to seeing this sort of spectacle, they’d already grown bored of me and I became invisible for the time being as I balanced my books in the crook of my arm and stood.
My name is Ethan Ennis, and being called names like, Eatin’ Penis, and Eat More Anus, for the last three years by The Bullies has made me popular in the most undesirable way.
Once Kyle called me Beatin’ Penis in front of Mr. Carter in history class. Instead of reprimanding him, the teacher turned his attention to the chalkboard to stifle a cough-snort that was a poorly disguised laugh. I guess it didn’t help that Mr. Carter was also the football coach so teasing like that to him wasn’t only normal, but perhaps expected.
My mom called me Lucky yet I have no idea why. With all of the freak accidents and bad fortune I sure didn’t feel very lucky. Perhaps it was because I survived it all that she felt I was lucky. I guess it depends on how you look at things.
Mom found out I was allergic to peanuts when I was ten months old. I don’t remember it, but after one bite of a peanut butter cracker, I swelled up and began gasping for breath. We barely made it to the hospital before anaphylactic shock completely closed my throat.
At seven I was hit by a car while dashing out to retrieve my basketball. I lay in the hospital for three weeks after receiving a blood transfusion and some fifteen hundred stitches to my head, arm and hip.
At twelve I learned about tapeworms the hard way. Pretending to live off the land like Daniel Boone, I caught a fish from a small river that runs through my back yard. I cleaned it, built a small fire, and cooked it. Evidently not well enough. It took almost three months to get the correct diagnosis. Three months of intermittent diarrhea, stomach pain, and vomiting. And although extremely rare to develop anemia from a tapeworm, I did.
I spent another three days in the hospital after getting struck by lightening when I was fourteen. Well, struck isn’t quite correct. I got zapped a good one through the ground. Enough to melt my shoes and produce second and third degree burns on my feet and ankles.
“Lucky, you are lucky to be alive!” My mother told me as I lay in the hospital bed.
Uncle Dan, the clown and joker of my mom’s siblings said, “You won’t be calling him that if he gets fried again!”
I didn’t get hit by lightening again but the next year while screwing in a light bulb, I got a sharp electric shock. I lost my balance on the ladder and crashed to the ground. Back to the hospital for a broken arm.
In addition to the accidents both great and small, I had to deal with roughly four colds a year, the flu every year without fail, and my multitude of allergies.
Maybe all that wouldn’t have been so bad if I were good looking and popular or at least athletic. I was tall and lanky. Skinny really. A hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. And I was clumsy. If Kyle wasn’t humiliating me, I managed to do it to myself by tripping up the stairs or walking into doors.
Zack Dibeck transferred to our school from Texas in the middle of my sophomore year. For a week or so, I felt hopeful that his presence would take the attention off me. Zack was the only Goth in school and because of that I believed he would be a prime target for Kyle and his buddies. His black hair, eyeliner, and painted nails, and his extremely pale skin made him stand out in a crowd worse than me. And I loved it! Finally, I could fade into the background and let Zack take center stage.
But my hope was a fleeting thing.
Kyle completely ignored Zack. In fact, I think Kyle was afraid of Zack.
I heard about something that happened from my friend Jeremy (a guy Kyle called pizza-face for obvious reasons). Jeremy said he was in one of the first floor bathrooms washing his hands when Zack came in. Zack was nice enough to say hello, then went to the urinals. A half a minute later Kyle and a couple of his buddies came strutting in the bathroom, all loud and laughing.
Jeremy said he bent down closer to the sink hoping to be ignored. But of course, Kyle couldn’t resist an easy opportunity to torment. Kyle was the kind of guy that would stomp through a little kids sand castle then call him a pansy when he started to cry.
Anyway, he grabbed the back of Jeremy’s neck and tried to force his face into the sink and under the running water.
“Take a drink, jerk!” Kyle ordered while his friends laughed.
Jeremy struggled against his assailant, but it was a losing battle. His face edged slowly towards the hot running water.
“C’mon, pizza face! Wash it. Maybe it’ll help!”
“Let him go,” Zack commanded.
Kyle released his grip, and Jeremy backed up against the wall.
“What’d you say, freak?” Kyle moved closer to Zack who had zipped up. Maybe you need your face washed, punk. Wash off some of that disgusting make up. What are you? A queer?”
“The only queer in this room is you.”
Jeremy said it looked like Kyle just got slapped. His friends stood motionless behind him.
“You better watch your mouth. Do you know who you’re talking to?”
But all the power went out of Kyle’s voice. It was almost a whisper.
“Yes, I know who I’m talking to. Kyle Walker. The only nineteen-year-old student in the school. For someone as stupid as you, you’d think you’d be a little nicer to people.” Zack walked closer. “You got anything else you want to say?”
“You’d better watch it,” Kyle repeated.
“Or what?” Zack asked calmly, still advancing on Kyle.
Kyle shook his head. Jeremy said he was sweating and shaking. I found the whole thing utterly unbelievable.
“Or what?” Zack asked and hammered a pointed finger into Kyle’s chest. He crumpled a little but didn’t back off.
“Or what?” He pounded again.
“I’ll get you. When you least expect it, I’ll get you.” Kyle started to back up towards the door. His boys did the same.
“No you won’t,” Zack sounded like he was bored with the whole thing.
They left, and Zack turned to my friend.
“You okay?”
Jeremy nodded. Zack walked out. And that was that.
If it were anyone other than Jeremy telling me this, I wouldn’t have believed it. Who the heck was this guy that could scare the worst bully in Creekmore High School?
I thought about approaching Zack in hopes of becoming an acquaintance if not a friend. I wanted him on my side. But I couldn’t figure out an ‘in’. He was always alone and exuded unapproachable vibes. He moved through the halls alone. He read while he ate his lunch by himself. You’d think a guy like Zack would read something by Jack Priest or James Rollins. But I never noticed him with anything dark. Instead, the books he read in the cafeteria or study hall were Henry David Thoreau, Jack London, and Joseph Campbell. Can you picture a Goth in combat boots reading about Thoreau’s solitary life on Walden Pond or Campbell’s views on mythology?
One day in the middle of February I entered the loud cafeteria on a mission to at least introduce myself to him.
It started of terribly. After getting my tray loaded with a burrito and some sugar cookies, I paid and walked towards the tables. Kyle passed me and gave me a leg sweep. My food went flying in the air. The cookies looked like clay pigeons waiting for some cowboy with a couple of six-shooters to fill them with holes.
Once again the familiar laughter followed.
“Kyle Walker, get over here!” Anton Wright, a hall monitor, ordered, and the whole cafeteria hushed. When Mr. Wright talked, everybody listened. Even Kyle didn’t mouth off to him like he did with other teachers. He was a big, tough, black guy, whose voice when raised sounded like Burt Lancaster with a bullhorn.
I bent to scoop up my burrito that had exploded on contact.
“Ethan, leave that alone. Kyle’s going to clean that up.”
“Aw, Mr. Wright!”
“Not one word out of you.”
Mr. Wright made Kyle step into line and fetch me a fresh tray and food. He handed it to me with a smoldering look of promised pain in the future. I hate bullies. Even when they do wrong it’s not their fault. Fairness to them was blame and beat up everyone around them without any consequences for themselves.
I took the tray and turned. I wish I had it in me to just stand there and gloat while he got on his hands and knees to clean up the floor. But I was going to get my ass kicked anyway. I didn’t want to make it worse than it was already going to be.
As it turned out, there really was no other place to sit than across from Zack. I placed my tray down and kept my eyes cast on it. Any courage that I might have had to try to talk to him had vanished.
He used the paper cover of Call of the Wild to mark his place and set it aside.
“What’s up, E?”
He said it like we went way back. E? Did he call me E? I thought it was pretty cool.
“Hey,” I answered suppressing a grin.
He folded his hands in front of him and leaned closer to me over the table.
“Why do you let him do that to you?”
The special feeling I had when he called me E fled. Once again I was what I always was - a loser that couldn’t stand up for myself. But Zack didn’t look at me like a loser. He just sat there patiently waiting for me to answer.
The volume of voices in the cafeteria went back up to its normal rambunctious level.
“What else am I going to do?” I pushed my tray away. I wasn’t hungry.
Zack looked at me until I felt uncomfortable.
“What?”
“What if I told you we could change all that?”
“Change what?”
“Change how people treat you.”
“How?”
“After spending some time with me - no, no not sexual!” He laughed at my horrified expression. “After spending some time with me, all those jerks would leave you alone. In fact, you could be the bully if you want.”
Over Zack’s shoulder, I saw Kyle coming. He was looking right at me with a mean, bulldog expression. That beating was going to come sooner than I expected.
Zack was speaking to me, but I didn’t hear. I was too busy watching the big brute head my way.
“All right, punk!” He reached for me.
Zack’s hand went out and grasped onto his forearm hard enough to make Kyle cry out. He hadn’t seen whom I was sitting with, but once he realized it, the look on his face filled with dread and fear. What an enjoyable transformation to witness.
People at nearby tables turned to check out what was happening.
Zack’s grip must have tightened even more, because Kyle whimpered and buckled to his knees. As he did, his hand hit my tray and my food once again tumbled to the floor. Good thing I was no longer hungry.
“You’re going to clean that up,” Zack told him.
I looked around. Kids were watching. Mr. Wright stood near the double doors that led out into the hallway. For a second I made eye contact with him. I’m sure he saw what was going on, but instead of coming over, yelling at them with his bellowing voice, he simply looked away. This was too good to be true.
“Clean it up,” Zack firmly ordered. Kyle blubbered and reached for it with his free hand. “Not with your hand. With your mouth. Eat it off the floor.”
Oh my God.
I swear it was like Zack had everyone under a spell. A slow wave of quietness fell over the cafeteria. The lunch staff busied themselves behind the sneeze guards seemingly unaware of the still, soundless behavior of the student body. Mr. Wright continued to look away as if he were checking out some beautiful sunset.
“Eat it.”
Kyle’s mouth opened over the gray tortilla as I watched with chilling unease. He bit into it and brown meat squeezed out from the corners of his mouth. With his face two inches off the floor and Zack’s grip still on his arm, he chewed and swallowed. I wanted to throw up.
I looked away as Zack made him eat every last bite, then incredibly said. “Now lick the floor.”
I didn’t watch, but I heard it, that’s how quiet the lunchroom had become. His slimy tongue scraped the floor clean, then Zack pulled him up. “Go, now.”
Kyle stumbled away.
Again the volume in the cafeteria increased. But slowly, like everyone was waking up. Mr. Wright gave his head a quick shake, and glanced around, confused.
“What the hell just happened?” I asked.
“Meet me after school and I’ll tell you.”
What Zack told me was unbelievable. Incredible.
Vampires drinking blood. Unstoppable strength. Partying all the time. Living a lawless life. Living an eternal life.
“I’m over five hundred years old. I’ve seen wars. Even fought in some. I’ve seen the inventions of just about everything except the wheel.”
“What about your eyes?” I asked mostly to humor him. “I thought the sunlight killed you guys.”
We were in an old, abandoned warehouse. Alone except for a few moldy crates. Thick dirt and grime covered the windows. Some were broken, allowing in shafts of dusty sunlight.
I was sitting on an old desk someone left behind.
Zack leaned closer to me, and using his forefinger, pulled down the bottom lid of his right eye.
“Contacts.” He backed off. “We’ve assimilated. We had to.”
Still not convinced, yet wanting to believe, I said, “How do I know what you say is true?”
And suddenly, very terrifyingly, Zack changed. His brown eyes turned black. Not just the irises, but the entire eyeballs. They glistened like pools of oil. He opened his mouth, and continued to stretch it until it looked as if his jaws would unhinge. Fangs grew two inches long, and small tendrils of smoke streamed out of his nose.
I cried out and scrambled backwards off the desk.
Zack laughed and his wicked image shimmered back to normal. It was like a reflection hologram you hold one way and see a guppy and tilt it to reveal a great white shark exposing hundreds of teeth.
Frightened, I stood with the desk between Zack and me. My heart hammered against my breastbone.
“You asked, Ethan. I just wanted to show you.”
“That’s cool. That’s cool,” I babbled, wanting nothing more than to get the hell out of there and away from him.
“Let me show you something else.”
“No, that’s okay.”
Please don’t show me anymore. I don’t want to know.
“You’ll like this one,” he assured me.
He took a few steps back, spread his arms wide and levitated.
I watched in amazement as he rose to the sixty foot ceiling of the warehouse. He stretched out and flew from one end to the other. With speed and agility, he performed summersaults and dives, his black trench coat his cape. I caught myself laughing in joy at what I witnessed. No longer afraid of him, I couldn’t wait to become like him.
I was definitely in.
But something went wrong. Something backfired when I drank the blood.
I met the others that night. There were twelve. I was thirteen. Figures. Nine guys, including me, and four girls. They all looked to be in their teens and they all dressed like Zack - dark.
I drank the blood with zest, doing my best to ignore the thick metallic taste, and willing the wonder of whose blood it was out of my mind. Instead I pictured my soon-to-be newfound powers. I saw myself flying. I saw myself having the power and strength to put everyone under a spell. But I decided the first thing I would do would be to kick Kyle Walker’s ass.
“Be patient,” Zack told me. “Your powers won’t come at once. It takes time to build them up.”
“That’s okay,” I answered, passing the carafe of dark blood. “I’ve waited this long. I can wait a little longer.”
That night I watched all twelve of them fly and party and drink blood and wine. The fire we lit in the middle of the warehouse reflecting off their faces, making them glow red.
I was so excited. I finally felt like I fit in with something. I belonged. They laughed with me, not at me. And it was sincere. Not the “friendship” I had encountered with a jock or two where it wound up to be a trick and I became the brunt of some sort of nasty joke. They celebrated with me and shared their own tales of becoming vampires and the things they did after becoming one.
Neal (who claimed to be over three hundred years old but still looked nineteen) said he tormented the magistrates and jurors who accused then orchestrated the hangings of nineteen people after the Salem witch trials. He said he stood in front of their beds in the middle of the night until they woke up screaming. He showed them his teeth and chased them around their own houses and land. But with the events and accusations of people being witches, they suffered in silence for fear of being the next one hung. He thought that was extremely funny.
Brenda, a beautiful, petite girl said once becoming a vampire in 1973 she was written up in three different tabloids after being seen flying in the night.
Zack gave me contacts. Through them, the world was black and white. They screwed up my perception a bit, but Zack assured me I’d get used to them quickly. He also, very firmly warned me several times, that to take them out during the day would mean instant death.
“Keep them on all the time. The longer you have them on, the more they become part of your eyes. After a few weeks, they pretty much fuse to your eyes so you can’t take them off anyway.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” I answered feeling drunk and in a dream. Above me, Patrick and Marshall were in the midst of some sort of mid-air slap boxing match, laughing and egging each other on.
“Actually it’s good,” Zack told me, ignoring the mock fight taking place over his head. The rest of them stood around, looking up, whooping and hollering.
Zack continued. “About eight years ago a guy - Chris was his name, was rubbing his eyes and one of his contacts fell out. He fried instantly. We have since designed them to stay on the eyeball no matter what. But it takes some time, so be careful rubbing your eyes, or showering for the next couple weeks.”
“Fried instantly?” Whew. The image made my stomach roll.
“Yep. Nothing left.”
“How do you know it happened if there was nothing left?”
“Because I was standing right next to him when it happened,” he said matter-of-factly. Zack wasn’t the most emotional guy I ever met.
“Why are you doing this for me?” It came out sounding rude, but Zack knew I didn’t mean it that way.
“Because I was once you.” He waved at the others. “We all were. That’s the kind of exclusive club we are. We were all losers at one time.”
“And you’re not now?”
“What do you think?”
I thought of the fearless way he handled Kyle in the lunchroom. How he walked around dressed like a character out of Tim Burton’s, The Corpse Bride, yet no one said one word to him about it.
“No, you’re not.” A question occurred to me. “Why do you go to school? I doubt I’ll ever go back again. Who needs it?”
Zack looked into the fire, his face awash with golden light.
“I’m five hundred years old. It’s fun to do something different. I go for a few years when I get bored. Sometimes I go to a college.”
“How do you get in when you have no legitimate academic background?”
“I have my ways.”
I knew he used the same powers he used on Mr. Wright. Just got him to look away. Just got the administrators to sign him up for high school or college classes without past records or any form of I.D. Just look away.
Suddenly pain stabbed my stomach. I doubled over and fell to my knees.
“Hey, you all right?”
His voice sounded far away. Dimly, I felt a hand on my back. The searing pain in my gut grew until it felt like it would explode and splatter my other organs with bile and blood. I wrapped my arms around my midsection and squeezed as tight as I could, thinking the compression would stop the intense agony.
“Is he all right?”
“What’s the matter?”
“What happened?”
I heard their voices around me. I opened my eyes and stared at the dirty cement floor I had collapsed on. The smell of ancient gas and oil seeped into my nostrils. Fine. Anything to take my mind off the pain.
“Hey, E. Are you all right?” Zack shook my shoulder.
“I don’t know,” I gasped. “My stomach. Something’s wrong.”
A peculiar silence fell over all of them, but I didn’t think much of it then. I was too busy trying to breath through the pain. I learned later that it was suspicion that quieted them up. They knew something I didn’t.
Slowly, very slowly the pain began to dissipate. I could finally catch my breath. My stomach settled down and with shaky arms I pushed myself up to a seated position.
“Better?” Brenda asked, putting a cool hand on my cheek. I looked at her young face and into her lovely light blue eyes and tried not to remember that she drank blood to stay alive. Tried not to think that I did now too.
“Yes,” I answered. “Whew! What the hell was that all about?” I asked no one in particular.
“C’mon, man,” Zack helped me up. “It’ll be dawn soon. You should get some rest.”
Bed actually sounded pretty good. The painful episode stole all my energy and a tiredness crashed down on me.
We parted ways and agreed to meet at the warehouse at midnight the next night.
For a week I watched the rest of the group fly and laugh and party while I got sick every night. I had to drink the blood to survive, but I spent the next six hours with the shakes and stomach ripping pain. The symptoms seemed to get worse every night. Zack had claimed I would still be able to enjoy all my favorite foods, but on the fourth day, I couldn’t eat anymore. Anything that went down felt like sandpaper in my throat and acid in my gut. The contacts hurt my eyes. They, too, felt like orbs of sandpaper in their sockets. I suffered night and day. The worst of it all was I never gained the ability to fly.
“What’s going on with me, Zack?” I finally asked. He became oddly quiet over the course of that week, and I knew he knew something.
“Tell me,” I said when he wouldn’t answer. We sat by the fire alone. Everyone else flew above us.
“It’s not good.”
“No shit it’s not good. I feel like I’m dying.”
Zack looked at me with a blank expression.
“Am I? Am I dying?” Funny that the thought didn’t fill me with fear.
“I knew only one other person this happened to. A kid named Michael. The only thing we could figure is it was from some sort of blood disorder he had. I’m not sure that was it, but that was the closest thing we could think of.”
I thought of the blood transfusion I had when I was seven. Could that be it? The anemia from the tapeworm? Could that be it?
“What happened to him?”
Zack stared into the fire as if he hadn’t heard. I repeated my question and he finally looked me in the eye.
“He died within two weeks.”
“Is there anything I can do to stop it?”
His silence was answer enough.
So now I sit on a bluff that overlooks the mighty Mississippi river. It’s autumn so I know the leaves of all those trees are blazing in reds, oranges and yellows. But it all looks gray to me.
This pain is unbearable.
Maybe I’ll take these retched contacts out. Maybe I’ll get a glimpse of those trees before I die.
I can only hope my luck changes in the afterlife.
***
Thank you for reading my story, Vamp.0. If interested, check out my other stories on Smashwords and check out my website, www.deborahkrider.com
Thanks, and happy reading.