Winding
There are many kinds of vampires in the world.
Steps flow down in a winding motion.
Charlie stumbles down the iron staircase with a pistol tucked into the back of his pants. He tugs on his back pack to tightly secure it on his back. The heavy bag and his dirty blonde hair bounce up and down in unison as he runs into the kitchen. He opens the refrigerator door and grabs a can of soda.
“And where are you going?” his mother says from the kitchen sink. The water coming out of the tap is steaming hot. Her eyes are red; her cheeks are puffy and flushed. She’s been crying again.
“Out… with Lucy and Jim. I’ll be back before eight, ma, promise.”
There is a slight moment of silence. “OK… as long as you have all of your homework done,” she says sniffling.
He opens the can of soda and takes a long chug from it.
“Ma.”
“Yes, Charlie.”
“You OK?”
“Of course, honey, I’m fine. Go, go have fun with your friends.”
He takes another long drink from the soda letting the bubbles burn inside of his throat. He wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his hooded sweatshirt. “Dad’s just been under a lot of pressure lately at work… that’s why he’s acting like that.”
Charlie drinks the rest of the soda and throws the can in the trash.
“Ma?”
“Go have fun with your friends, Charlie,” she says and continues to wash the dishes under scalding hot water.
Outside, Charlie feels the cold whipping his skin. He reaches back and pulls the hood on his sweatshirt over his head. He tightens down on the strings. His breath whirls in the air, white, like smoke.
Charlie gets his bike from the side of the house and goes down to the Hamburger Stand, where they agreed to meet.
* * * * *
When Bernard was ten years old he learned how to swim the hard way. His father threw him in the pool and let him drown a bit before he yanked him out by his hair. “Damn you, boy, swim!” he would scream and toss him back down into the water. After ten minutes of flopping his arms uselessly in the water he finally learned how to swim.
When Bernard was eight years old his family went on a road trip to San Felipe and spent a week there during his summer vacation. He saw sand, water, Mexicans, three tacos for a dollar, the sun, boats, fish and his very first dead body. It was a teenage boy they had dragged out of the water. He was pale, purple and stiff by the time the ambulance had arrived an hour later. He remembered the way the people crowded around the body and tried to give him CPR while his family wailed and pleaded to the Lord their Savior to please… please just let him live—’ten misericordia, Señor, por favor.’ The image of that dead boys eyes open and staring at him, saying to him, “you’re next,” was burned into his mind.
When Bernard was four years old he was molested by a clergyman from his fathers church. Amen. The clergyman’s name was Samuel Garcia. He had a beautiful wife and three wonderful children named Adrian, Maria, and Samuel, Jr. They would come over to his house on Wednesday’s for bible study. Samuel would sometimes help Bernard wipe his little butt so he wouldn’t smell like poop. Samuel would sometimes try to stick his penis in his little butt. Samuel would sometimes ejaculate all over Bernard’s face.
All of these incidents completely separate and done to different people would be normal, would be unfortunate. However, when they are accumulated into a single entity they become a cancer in the brain, they slowly grow into a tumor, and create an overpowering fear.
Bernard is now afraid of water, or any sort of liquid being splashed in his face. Bernard needs to clean his face with a warm, moist towel. Bernard needs to bathe with no more than two inches of water so that he will not lose his equilibrium and freak out. And pray to God, and get vertigo, and become a child again, and shrink into the fetal position, and whisper, “you’re next, you’re next,” over and over again until the water goes down the drain, or evaporates.
* * * * *
As he pulls the glass door open, Charlie sees Jim already sitting at ‘their’ booth eating. Jim is methodically dipping his curly fries into a tiny plastic cup of ketchup mixed with mustard. There is a faint smile on his face as if the world was amusing him somehow. He looks up from his curly fries and faintly acknowledges Charlie’s arrival.
“Hey,” Charlie says sitting down.
“What’s goin’ on?” Jim’s voice is raspy from trying to start smoking. His twelve year-old esophagus is tender and slightly swollen.
“I got it.”
“Good, just keep it wherever you got it ’till we go—” he coughs a couple of times, inhales quickly and grabs at his throat, “—outside. Got to wait for Lucy, she should be along any—Hey, what’s goin’ on?”
Charlie turns around to see Lucy standing right behind him. She places her hand on his shoulder and gives it a gentle squeeze. Tingles run up his neck to the very tips of his scraggly, dirty blonde hair. Charlie opens his mouth to say hello but nothing comes out.
“Hello, hello, how are you guys holding up? So far so good? Did you get it Charlie?” Charlie manages to nod his head. She smiles back at him with approval.
“Good, good.”
* * * * *
Frederick Jones reaches over and hits the snooze button on his alarm. His eyes refuse to open, his legs refuse to move, his brain refuses to escape the land of big tits and juicy vagina. He falls back into the lap of Novembers Playmate of the Year and continues to lick at her skin.
He opens his mouth wide and tries to devour the entire breast. He fails and she giggles at him. She looks deep into his eyes and says, “We’re looking at a record low of forty-seven degrees for Dunaway River today. Expect it to drop to at least forty-two degrees later this evening. That’s your weather and this is from Nirvana’s In Utero album… Rape Me.”
Frederick sits upright suddenly and is wide awake. He glances over to his alarm: 6:09. He turns the little knob on the side to raise the volume. He begins to bob his head to the music and sing along.
Today is the first day on the job, he remembers. His first day as a real police officer. Excitement builds up in his groin. It makes his penis hard just thinking of all the power he will have—of all the women in this little shit town he will get to have his way with just because he’s wearing a uniform.
He leaps out of bed and goes into the bathroom. He brushes his teeth, he gargles mouth wash, and he lathers his face with shaving cream… he does all of these things while masturbating, without missing a beat. He begins to shave his face using his right hand to glide the blade against his left cheek, and his left hand to keep up with the rhythm of self gratification.
As he switches the blade to the other hand he accidentally nicks himself on the neck. The blood excites him and he begins to pump harder and faster while finishing shaving. He drops the razor in the sink just as he reaches orgasm and his semen intermixes with the tiny hairs, the lather, the toothpaste, the mouthwash, the hot water, and the blood.
He washes off the cut with warm water and dabs at it with a piece of toilet tissue. “That’s pretty deep,” he says to his reflection. He opens up the medicine cabinet and yanks out a piece of gauze and some tape from his first aid kit.
He places the gauze on his neck and tapes it down.
His penis is soft and resting on the sink by the time he is done. He glances down at it and smirks at it awkwardly. “Don’t worry, pal,” he says, “we’ll be getting some soon… promise.”
* * * * *
“Let’s run through this one more time,” Jim says eating the last of his curly fries.
His rim wire glasses are constantly being pushed into place by his dirty fingers. He places his bag underneath the table. “Maybe it’s just our imagination.”
“We’ve been through this a hundred times, Jim,” Lucy says. “There is definitely something going on in this little town and I want to get to the bottom of it.”
“Yeah, but… but vampires?” Jim looks around the restaurant to make sure no one is listening. He lowers his voice to a whisper, “Werewolves? That’s going a little out there, don’t you think?”
They had come to this conclusion a while back, in the beginning of the school year, when Dirk, the local bum, had disappeared. His little nook underneath Grace Bridge was splattered with blood and with what appeared to be animal hair. The sheriff said the wolves had gotten him, yet the story never added up to them. Dirk had a revolver with him… Dirk was an ex-Marine that saw two years of combat in Vietnam. Dirk slaughtered a whole Vietcong village once with an automatic rifle and three grenades, all by himself. He had two purple hearts and the coveted Navy Cross.
How could a pack of wolves take him down when a whole jungle of Vietnamese couldn’t even scratch him? After Dirk disappeared there were more and more signs of evil appearing in their town.
The streets were littered with dead animals—bloated, smelly carcasses drained of their blood. Charlie would ride around town counting all of them, collecting all of them, arranging all of them in his backyard so he could take pictures. He would dress them up with rose petals and tie blown up condoms to their bodies. All in the name of art, all for a scrap book he had titled: Louis In Dunaway River.
“And what about Old Man Whitfield?” Lucy says after Charlie is done describing the animals.
“That’s just a story, just a damned story, Lucy,” Jim whispers harshly. “For all we know he’s just an old fart that is sensitive to light. So what if he doesn’t come out during the day, that doesn’t mean shit.”
They were told the story of Old Man Whitfield by Jim’s older brother who had heard it from a friend, who had heard it from his cousin, who had heard it from his dad and so on and so forth. The story of Old Man Whitfield had been floating around the gossip circles of Dunaway River for twenty years now.
Old Man Whitfield was a vampire, or at the very least a werewolf. Old Man Whitfield made a dog explode sometime in the mid-80′s just because it was barking at him. Old Man Whitfield hasn’t come out of his house, into the light, since he moved into Dunaway River… and even when he moved in it was as if he had just appeared there one day.
Some had seen him, some had not. Some had seen his shadow in the window and swore they saw pointy ears and rat like teeth. Old Man Whitfield was the leader of an occult religion that practiced its evil ceremonies in the woods once a month when the moon was full. Old Man Whitfield never decorated his house for Christmas… not once.
Or so the story goes.
Old Man Whitfield was different.
“OK… all right,” Jim concedes. “So, we’ve got a vampire living in the town, he’s killed a bum, who cares?”
“It’s not just about Dirk,” Lucy pounds her fist on the table, “it’s about us. We could be next… our families could be sucked dry of their blood just as easily as Dirk. For their sake, don’t you think that we should do something about this?”
“What about the police?”
“God damn it, Jim, the police are never going to believe us… we need to get some proof first.”
“Fine, all right, shit… fuck… um, OK… fuck… all right let’s do this then. But we have to prove he’s a vampire before we do anything.”
“Right, right, yeah, of course. That’s why Charlie brought the holy water,” she says standing up and grabbing her bag. “Now, let’s go you pussy!”
* * * * *
John Furr and his family spent most of the summer in sunny California. He has a nice tan now.
John Furr is the owner and CEO of the Dunaway Lint Remover company. His product is shipped from coast to coast, you can find it at any Wal-Mart in the country. It’s an adhesive strip rolled around a stick. It’s used by million’s of Americans and at least three hundred thousand Canadians on a daily basis. It serves one purpose: to remove the lint from your clothes.
John Furr is also the President of the town council. He is in charge of overseeing every modification and renovation in Dunaway River.He is more important than the mayor, some say. He is more important than God, some believe. He is crooked and his company is slowly going bankrupt, everyone knows that for a fact. John Furr is desperate… but he is driving a new car this year, as usual.
* * * * *
Charlie is standing close enough to Lucy to feel a slight warmth emanating from her. He wants to accidentally brush up against her thigh, he wants her to trip on a rock so he can catch her in his arms, and he wants her hand to bump up against his hand. He needs her to know that he has loved her since last year, in sixth grade, when she lent him thirty cents so he could buy himself a half pint of milk.
He needs her to see that the gold necklace with the butterfly pendant he bought her by using the money he had saved up mowing lawns during the summer, is more than just a gift between friends. It is a proclamation of love, it is a symbol of his undying devotion to her.
None of these things will happen.
As of last week she no longer wears the necklace. She said that she had lost it somewhere, had misplaced it. She said if he got her another she wouldn’t lose it this time, honest.
“All right,” Charlie says unzipping his bag when they reach the alley on 4th Ave. “Here’s some stakes… and I got some holy water in this Super Soaker.”
“Let’s see,” Jim unzips his bag, “Crossbow… more wooden stakes, and some garlic.”
“Garlic?” Lucy smacks her lips, “What are we in Romania or something? Throw that shit away.”
“But I read in Vampyr Slayer that garlic works.”
“Yeah, so they don’t come near you, but it doesn’t hurt them… ” Lucy pulls out a box from her book bag and takes the lid off. She pulls out a single silver bullet and holds it in the air between two fingers. “We’re not trying to repel them, Jim, we’re trying to kill them.”
The word ‘kill’ is a signal for Charlie to display the last item. He reaches back and pulls out the pistol. They all pause to look at it. Flat black. Sitting there on his hand like a metallic God. Clean, perfect. Beautiful and pure.
They snap into reality as Lucy snatches the gun away from Charlie.
“I’ve got fifteen bullets,” she says taking out the clip from the pistol, “I used all the stuff we stole from our parents, this is it, this all we have.” She puts one bullet in at a time, slowly. She is biting her lip, squinting her eyes, occasionally whispering to the pistol—for it to aim true, aim steady.
She finishes loading the bullets and snaps the clip into place. She holds the pistol in front of her, aimed towards the ground, and closes one eye, focus’ down the barrel at a pebble. Her palms begin to perspire, her little finger curls in and out, in and out—matching the fast rhythm of her heart. She grips tightly and looks up at the boys staring at her as if she were a ghost.
“Let’s go,” she says stuffing the pistol into her book bag. She zips it up quickly. Her mouth opens to say something else but the words are lost in the silence.
* * * * *
Bernard turns the dish washer off, turns the lights in the kitchen off, goes into the living room of the old house on Sycamore Street, and finally sits down for the evening. He breathes in deeply, he exhales and relaxes every muscle in his body. He allows his limbs to go limp, his eyelids to droop down and his mind to stop working for a brief moment.
His thoughts begin to wander to a hot day in July, thirty six years ago. He is looking at the eyes of a dead boy which are speaking to him, saying to him, “you’re next, you’re next.” His mind suddenly yanks him underwater, his arms are flailing, splashing, struggling to keep him afloat. And someone pulls him out of the water, dunks him back in, pulls him out, dunks him back in until his mind finally takes him to a cold winter night, forty years ago. It smells of walnuts and cinnamon, hot cocoa and a familiar cologne. It tastes like sugar, like candy, like salty wet Jell-O. It feels like a penis rubbing on his eyes, his cheeks, and his lips—it feels like a penis spitting on his face.
Bernard opens his eyes at the sound of the bell in the distance and sucks in air as if he were suffocating. His knuckles are white from gripping on the arms of the leather chair. He wipes sweat off of his brow as the bell rings again.
“Yes, sir,” he yells upstairs, “I’m here, sorry, must have dozed off, I’ll be right up.” He composes himself quickly and goes up the stairs, turns left, and heads down the hall to where Kenneth Whitfield III is laying in bed. His old body is covered by a thick blanket, a soft sheet, and spots where the sun, the cancer is eating away at his skin.
“Bernard,” he says as the door opens, “Would you be so kind as to get me a glass of water?”
“Of course, sir,” Bernard says walking towards him, “Oh. Hmmm… there’s no more water up here, is there? I’ll have to go down and bring up a fresh pitcher for you, Mr. Whitfield.”
“Thank you, Bernard, thank you.”
Bernard grabs the glass pitcher from the night stand, he pivots on his left foot and walks out of the room. He goes down the hall, turns right, and heads down the stairs to the kitchen.
He puts ice cubes in the pitcher and holds it under the tap. He closes his eyes and turns his head before he let’s his hand open the faucet. He can hear the water pouring into the pitcher, making the ice cubes fight and climb over each other. He shuts the water off and opens his eyes slowly—lets his mind adjust to the presence of so much water accumulated in front of him.
He hears a tapping at the front door.
He places the pitcher on the counter. Tap, tap, tap, harder this time.
He walks to the front door and puts his eyes to the peep hole. He can see a boy, around twelve or thirteen years old with dirty blonde hair wearing a navy blue hooded sweatshirt.
Tap, tap, tap, the boy looks over at someone and shrugs, looks back up into the peep hole, takes short breaths into the sleeve of his sweatshirt.
Probably wagered a dollar he wouldn’t come up and knock on the door of “Old Man Whitfield’s” house, Bernard thinks to himself. I wonder how much he’ll get for standing there until I open the door? Ah, might as well… And Bernard unlocks the door.
He turns the knob and opens it trying to look as scary as possible. “Yes,” he says, “may I help—”
But Bernard is unable to finish his sentence. A neon colored water gun is pointed at his face. His left eye begins to twitch.
“Do it,” Bernard hears from behind the boy with the water gun.
A stream of water is sprayed into Bernard’s face.
Bernard throws his hands up and covers his face as an ear splitting shriek escapes from his lips… He inhales and another cry of anguish comes out of his mouth as if the water were burning at his skin, as if the water were drilling holes in to every single inch of his face.
“He’s one of them,” a young female voice says, “he’s a vampire, Charlie, kill him, see, Jim, kill him, kill him!”
The first wooden stake that is driven into his body is not felt by Bernard because of the fear that has blocked out the physical world. However, after the second one pierces the left side of his chest and causes him to spin and collapse face first onto the floor, the pain finally explodes larger than the fear that was controlling him and pushes it aside.
And one stake after another is plunged into his body. One after another breaks the skin, rips his flesh, and makes his blood want to find some other host to inhabit—it runs down the front steps, crawls into the carpet, and hides between the cracks of the house.
He feels small hands tugging at his body, wanting to turn him around. His breath is shallow, weak.
Bernard’s body is finally turned to lay on its back after a few moments. By the time the last and final stake is driven into his heart, he is already dead, he is already laying next to a pale, teenage body. The ghost-body in front of his ethereal vision is purple and waxy—wet, as if it has just been pulled out of the sea. The dead boys eyes are empty and gazing at him, saying to him, “you’re next, you’re next, you knew it would always end this way…”
* * * * *
Jim loosens his grip on the stake and looks down at the bloody mess before him. The butler is unrecognizable in the mangled flesh which was once his body. He stares at his hands. Red, wet. He looks from one friends face to the other… all with the same empty look in their eyes—the same look of disbelief.
“Bernard,” a voice calls from upstairs. The ring of a tiny bell is heard. “Bernard,” it cries again, “What’s happened? Bernard?”
“Come on,” Lucy says. “We’ve got to finish it, there’s no turning back now.”
There are tears falling down Jim’s cheeks. They create a path of cleanliness on the soiled skin. He is sobbing the way five year old children sob when they are afraid. His hands are shaking, clenching, unclenching, covered with the blood of Bernard.
A hand slaps Jim on the face, his tears are flung into the air. He looks up to see Lucy standing in front of him, clutching his shirt, and shaking him. “Jim, we’ve got to finish this. We were right, damn it, we were right and now we have to finish it!”
Lucy releases Jim and pulls the gun out of her book bag. “Fuck!” she spits, “Jim, are you with us or not?”
“Y-yes,” he manages to say.
Lucy signals the others to follow her and begins to climb the stairs. Left, right, left foot, right with the heaviness of terror crawling in her veins. One after another, the steps are conquered, her fear begins to subside.
She turns left and heads down the hall where a light is making shadows shift and jump inside of a room. The boys are close behind her, she hears them breathing heavily.
Suddenly, as if a pang of adrenaline has hit her, she rushes forward and kicks the door wide open.
Old Man Whitfield is sitting on his bed, the sheets are barely covering his diseased body. He drops the telephone receiver on the floor and his eyes go wide as if he has seen the devil. There is a tiny voice coming from the receiver, “hello,” it says, “are you still there?”
Lucy raises the gun, aims it dead center at his chest. She moves the gun slightly to the right, puts the area where his heart should be between the front sights.
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Whitfield says looking straight into her eyes, “Thank you.”
Her finger squeezes the trigger, the hammer strikes the primer, and the bullet is sent flying down the barrel. The bullet whistles through the air for a millisecond and finally touches the old skin, the cancer skin, and tears through. The bullet begins to tumble inside of him, slightly slowing down. But the momentum carries the bullet through. It exits through the flesh, splinters a wooden post of the bed frame, and finally comes to a grinding halt in the wall.
* * * * *
“So, he hit you,” Frederick Jones says to the woman sitting on the bed.
“Several times, this isn’t the first time, you know, I’ve called you guys before… nothing ever happens, nothing ever changes,” she is puffing on a cigarette, letting the smoke sit in her lungs less than a second before it is spat out.
Fred looks around the cramped trailer at the clear evidence of a struggle. Every piece of furniture is turned over, every inch of the floor is covered with some sort of debris. Shattered glass, hamburger wrappers, condom wrappers, soda cans, cigarette butts.
His eyes move from the litter to her legs, up her legs to the shadow in between her thighs. The sweat pants she is wearing are loose, but he imagines her legs to be muscular, smooth, and pale. He moves his stare to her breasts, 34C’s. He tries to guess at the size of her nipples. He finally makes his way to her soft, bruised lips. Then her eyes, they are fixed on his, there is lust behind them.
“Well, you let me know if he comes back,” he says smiling at her. “Or, you let me know if he doesn’t. You want things to change? You want something different in your life?”
She straightens her back making her breasts perk up. She takes a long drag from the cigarette, and exhales the smoke with enough force to reach Frederick’s face before it disappears.
She opens her mouth to say, “yes,” to say that she wants his cock inside of him now, to say that she wants him to shoot her boyfriend…
But before she is able to speak there is a crackle from his walkie-talkie, a beep and a rush, and then, “All officers this net, all officers this net, shooting at 47 Sycamore Street, I repeat, shooting at four seven Sycamore Street.”
Frederick Jones immediately breaks her gaze. He presses the button on the walkie-talkie, “Roger, Solid Copy,” he says into the receiver. “I got to go,” he says to her and walks out of the room, passes the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room, and the dining room in four strides. He opens the door, looks back at her for a brief second, tries to memorize her curves, and then abruptly leaves the trailer.
Frederick Jones arrives at the old house on Sycamore Street and pulls into the driveway.
There are three bikes laying in the yard.
He walks up to the house with his hand on his holster, ready for anything. There are figures in the upstairs window moving around.
“Where’s my back up?” he says into the walkie-talkie.
“Units will arrive in five, over.”
“Roger, Solid Copy.”
A few feet from the house he pauses in mid step. The front door swings open, three kids covered in blood appear from inside of the house. They stare at him terrified.
One of the kids is holding a stake that is dripping with blood. The kid looks down at the stake as if it were the first time he had seen it.
They begin to whisper to each other.
* * * * *
“Who’s that,” Charlie whispers to Lucy.
“I’ve never seen him before,” she says reaching into her book bag, “Check out his neck.”
Charlie notices the bloody piece of gauze sloppily taped on the officers neck. He whispers to Jim to take notice, and he says what they are all thinking, “He’s one of them. They must’ve just ‘turned’ him.”
“All right,” the officer says, “We got a report of a shooting. Now, I need you three to just stand still, put your hands up and spread your legs… slowly.”
But they do not listen. They continue to walk forward, they begin to span out away from each other. The officer pulls out his gun and waives it from one kid to the other.
“Freeze, just fucking freeze!” he yells but the kid with the dirty blonde hair in the sweatshirt moves farther and farther away from the rest of his friends. He clutches the stake in his hand tightly.
“Drop it!” the officer orders. Charlie gives the officer the middle finger.
As the officer is distracted with what Charlie will do next, Lucy pulls out the pistol and aims it at the officers chest.
The officer turns to see Lucy, his eyes widen as she pulls the trigger and the bang of the pistol vibrates in his ears. He falls to the ground, he tries to suck in air, but his lung is being filled with blood.
“Let’s get out of here,” Lucy screams.
But the boys don’t listen. Instead of fleeing they walk over to the dying man and stare at him struggling to breathe, struggling to live. After a few minutes the man stops moving, even his twitching suddenly ends. He is dead, they have killed him.
“He’s one of them,” Lucy says, “what’re you guys doing?”
“There’s something wrong here, Lucy,” Jim says.
“What, what’s the matter?”
“None of these vampires have turned into ash. In Vampyr Slayer, the vampires… they are supposed to turn into ash when they die.”
“So, the fucking book was wrong. Maybe… maybe it’s because we haven’t killed the main vampire yet.”
“We killed Old Man Whitfield,” Charlie says.
“Well, he’s obviously not the main vampire if this guy was still walking around after we killed the Old Man.”
They look up from the body and look at Lucy perplexed. Jim scratches the back of his head. “But,” he says, “if he’s not the main vampire, then who is?”
They hear sirens in the distance coming closer to them. They immediately run to their bikes and mount them, ride them west towards town, the long way, through the woods.
“Where are we going,” Jim asks.
Lucy wipes her nose with her arm and says, “my house.”
* * * * *
John Furr is sipping a rum and coke. The ice cubes make soft tinkling sounds as they shift within the glass when he raises it to his lips.
The television is on the nature channel, walrus’ fight over who has the right to mate with the females. The large one has taken down two opponents with his long ivory tusks, he will win this battle. John has seen this episode before.
His telephone rings and he places his drink down on the coffee table in front of him.
“Hello,” he says into the receiver.
“John?”
“Yeah. How ya doing, Keith?”
“Not so good, hard day at work.”
“Sorry I couldn’t make it in today, but I trust you handled everything perfectly. Going home to the wife and kid?”
“Yeah… yeah. Um, John, I was wondering if we could make another transaction?”
“Sure, not right now though, maybe tomorrow night.”
“Oh… yeah, sure. Tomorrow then. Same price?”
“Depends on what you want, you know the rules, Keith.”
“Yeah, um, OK. I’ll talk to you tomorrow then.”
“Right, right, goodnight.”
The smile on John’s face is wide and lurid. He picks up his rum and coke and takes another sip. He begins to think of what he will do with the next sum of money he will receive. New tires, jewelry, a new suit to wear to the office?
His thoughts are suddenly interrupted by a knock on the door.
* * * * *
“What do you mean, you think you’re father is the main vampire,” Jim says as they stop their bikes in front of Lucy’s house.
“It’s quite obvious,” she says unzipping her book bag. “He’s got this whole town under control financially, he owns most of the land, provides most of the jobs. He’s got the power to cover up anything that goes on in this little shit town.”
The adrenaline is pumping through their veins, they are quick to agree.
They storm up the steps with Lucy leading them with the pistol in her hand. She knocks on the door. Tap, tap, tap. She looks behind her at the boys, “It has to be done. It couldn’t keep going like this. It has to end… now.”
The door opens, John Furr is standing in the doorway.
“Since when do you knock?” he says. He glances down and sees the pistol in her hand. The pistol moves up towards his face, greets him with a hollow barrel.
“Get inside,” she screams.
John walks backwards into the house. They follow him in and shut the door behind them.
“Lucy,” he begins but she thumps him in the chest with the pistol and he quickly shuts his mouth.
“Thought you’d get away with it, huh? You thought nobody would ever find out, nobody would ever do anything about it?”
The gun begins to shake in her hand. The boys circle John like a pack of wolves eager to spill blood. Her palms begin to sweat as she tightens her grip on the handle.
“Why’d you do it? Why’d you have to be so fucking evil?” she shrieks the last word as if it hurts her. Evil.
“We had to survive somehow,” John says falling to his knees. “Don’t kill me, Lucy, not like this, I’m sorry… Please.” Tears begin to run down Johns face as it contorts into a sobbing mess. He covers his face with his hands.
“You turned this whole town into your slaves, you turned them into you, into monsters! Well, it stops here, it stops now, father!”
“No!” he begs one last time.
“You left me no other choice,” she says and squeezes the trigger once, twice.
John’s face is destroyed by the searing silver which butchers its way into the flesh.
Lucy continues to shoot him in the chest, over and over, until there are no more bullet’s in the gun, until her fathers body is full of hole’s and the room is splattered with blood.
The boys stare at Lucy, at the rage in her face, the satisfaction in her eyes.
They all look down at the clump of flesh and bones and wish for it turn into ash, but it only bleeds and releases steam from the open stomach.
“Go,” she whispers. “Go.”
But they stand there, eyes fixed on the body.
“He’s not turning into ash,” Jim’s voice cracks.
“I said go! Get out of here, all of you! I’ll explain it all to the police. I’ll make sure you guys don’t get in trouble, I’ll make sure the truth is told.”
The two boys look at each other, back at the body, at Lucy standing there with the gun, back at each other, and then at the door. They run out of the house, grab their bikes from the lawn, and jump on them.
They look at each other once more before they peddle away towards different directions, towards home.
* * * * *
Charlie pauses outside of his house. He looks down at himself, at the dried blood on his hands and his clothes. He walks around to the side of the house and turns a spigot on.
As he splashes water on himself he tries to recall the entire evening, every single detail. But his memory is blurry, the adrenaline and the fear has caused the sequence of events to become faint impressions of what they truly were.
He pulls his sweater over his head, yanks his arms out of the sleeves, balls it up, and places it in his back pack. The blood is stubborn. It clings on to every skin cell, battling to stay on the surface. After a few minutes, Charlie is able to get most of it off. He even manages to clean his shoes of all the evidence.
He picks up his back pack and throws it on his back, he pulls on the straps, tightens it down on his back.
As he enters his house he hears his mother crying in the kitchen. The door creaks open and the crying suddenly stops, it becomes a faint sniffling, heavy breathing.
“Ma,” he says into the dark but no one responds.
He turns on lights as he makes his way to the kitchen. “Ma,” he says again.
“Yes, honey, I’m in here.”
He walks into the kitchen to see his mother still standing over the sink with the scalding hot water running over her hands. She grabs the bar of soap and begins to lather for what Charlie knows is not the first time this evening.
“Ma, I’m back, I’m home.”
“Good, Charlie, that’s good, are you going to bed now?” she says washing the soap off her hands.
“I think so,” he says and walks to the refrigerator. He takes out a can of soda and opens it, takes a long drink from it, the bubbles burn his esophagus.
He sits at the dinner table, stares at his mother lathering her hands again.
Sip.
“Ma.”
Sip.
“Yes, honey.”
“I’m sure he isn’t cheating on you, it’s just stress, Ma, he’s not cheating on you.”
She is silent. The sound of the water running down the drain seems to be drowning out every thought in his head. She begins to cry, for the first time, in front of him. He is frozen in his seat, unable to figure out what he should be doing.
His mother takes her right hand out of the running hot water, reaches to the side of the kitchen sink, and clutches an object in her small, delicate hand. Without looking back she tosses it on the table. It slides for a second before it stops in front of Charlie’s hand.
It is a gold necklace. He picks it up and holds it in the air. A small golden butterfly on the necklace swings in mid air like a pendulum, side to side, twirling, destroying him.
They hear the front door slam. “Honey,” they hear from the living room, “sorry I’m late… Had to catch up on some paper work. And… I just got off the phone with Mr. Furr a little while ago, looks like I’ll be working real late tomorrow night so don’t—”
He walks into the kitchen, sees his son holding the necklace with the butterfly pendant. He takes one quick breath, drops his suitcase, stands frozen, and then begins to cry.
