Flesheaters and Bloodsuckers Anonymous: A Dark Humor (16 page)

            “What are you
doing in this part of town?  Group is in the warehouse.  You playing hooky?”

            “It doesn’t
matter where the damned meeting is,” said Harold, “because I’m not going
tonight.  Last time I checked, I didn’t have tell you about everywhere I go.”

            “Of course not,
because we follow you.”

            He hissed and
pushed away from the car.  To hell with the burns, he was ready for it to go
down.  If a fight they were looking for, a fight they would get.  Harold
already had one hell of a bad day and had no problem with making it worse.

            “Whoa there,
sport,” said Agent Potts, who stood up from the car.  His phantom cracked as it
bounced back into place.  “No need to get yer back up.  You’re working with us,
son.”  The man slapped Harold on the back, almost knocking him over despite his
firm stance and frankly, superhuman strength.  The slap certainly knocked the
wind out of him.  

            “Yeah, sports,”
replied Agent Bergstrom again with his lazy grin and another long pull from the
cigarette.  “We’re here to check in with you.”

            Harold could
easily enough figure out the man’s lazy lingo.  He only wished he had a quicker
wit at the moment and a less bulbous, burnt nose to go with it.  This time he
did give into the urge to look down, but resisted touching his face in trying
to figure out whether not his wound was weeping again.  Let them look at it in
all of its hideous glory.  Didn’t matter to him, no, it didn’t.  Not when his
whole life seemed to be falling down around his ears at the moment.  His job
was under threat.  Daily, he dealt with the possibility of being grabbed by the
cops or worse.  He had just endured a visit with a tiny woman from hell.  And
finally, but certainly not least, these assholes were tailing him when they
weren’t guarding the slug.

            “Well not much
has happened.  Unless you enjoy nude portraits of ogres, which I have a ton of
back in my room, I’d like to get back to sulking,” Harold muttered.  Not that
he needed any more attention paid to him.  With David’s help at work he had
more than enough light turned glaringly on his lifestyle.  God, why hadn’t he
noticed David was also stealing blood from the bank?  Not to mention his
gambling addictions.  Now, he had to figure out how to deal with everyone
else’s problems.

            Bergstrom
chuckled, scratching his chin with his middle finger, the lit cigarette coming
dangerously close to burning his cheek.

            “We know about
that,” Bergstrom said, “I meant more along the lines of the next group member’s
graduation plans.”

            “Huh.  I don’t
know anything about them.”

            Bergstrom flicked
the end of his cigarette, sending a scattering of ashes into the car through
the open window.  Harold watched the ashes as they floated in and landed on his
pristine leather seats.  The gee man uttered the usual shallow apology.  He
turned more fully to Harold.

            “I’d suggest you
get focused on that.”

            Harold shook his
head.  “He doesn’t know me.  You want information.  Talk to Zork. They’re
buds.” 

            Bergstrom flicked
his cigarette, half-smoked, away, leaned into Harold and placed an arm on the
car’s hood behind him.  It made for a rather intimidating gesture from this
taller fed.  He wasn’t entirely afraid of Potts, but this one, this one
bothered him and not just because of his nice, shiny white teeth. 

            “We‘re not asking
the slug.  We’re asking you,” he muttered, pulling down those shades to stare
at Harold with those blank, black pupils.  Intimidating indeed, but Harold
stood his ground. 

            “Look,” Harold
said, swallowing at the unintended word play, “We’re all just trying to get
along here.  You help me and I’ll help you.  I have to leave and you lose your
inside man with Donald.” 

            Harold exhaled
his words in a rush, all while eyeing the two G-men and trying to grow eyes in
the back of his head to see exactly what the agent’s hand was doing on the hood
of his car.  He’d never acted so stupidly in his life, or felt this sick. 
Great, a little greenish skin to go with his boiled nose and fangs.  Might as
well throw in a couple of really nasty warts to complete the picture.

            Decades worth of
silent conversation passed between Bergstrom and Potts.  It must have been
about Harold and the outcome must have been in his favor because Bergstrom
stood up and away from Harold without even sparing him a threatening look or
snarl.  He straightened his shoulders.

            “Alright Mr. Blank,
we’ll back off.  Make sure you pay attention in group and… stay at the house.”

Chapter Nine

Harold
rubbed his newly healed nose once more to make sure it was the normal pink,
fleshy skin it should be.  He’d been rubbing it all evening to make sure it
hadn’t suddenly reverted to burnt flesh again, an old habit he’d thought he’d
managed to overcome decades ago.  Something about the vampiric ability to heal
during the day didn’t quite translate to the mind.  When he was younger his
brain had a hard time accepting the whole regenerative ability thing.  It had
even gone so far as to create phantom pains in previously burnt areas and long
healed bones for weeks after the injury.  Stress brought back this sensation.

            These days it
didn’t take very much at all for him to revert to old habits.  Harold felt like
a yo-yo yanked back and forth in the hands of fate or the hands of a malicious
child.  He tried once more to focus on the poker hand before him. 

            Harold sat a
table surrounded by other misanthropic creatures, one of which included the
still irritated, Zork.  The two of them hadn’t done more than rumble at each
other since meeting up for the poker game.  Harold didn’t know how to approach
a conversation with Zork without starting another round of fang comparison.

            He almost had
enough for a straight flush, not a bad hand in five card poker.  He tried to
remember if jokers were still wild.  Harold didn’t ask for fear of letting
anyone know his hand.

            To his left sat
the dealer, one dry and dusty zombie, whose skin looked as if it might crumble
at the slightest touch, and whose bones would probably fall apart on him at any
moment or movement for that matter.  Considering the state of his desiccated
muscles, which creaked disturbingly every time he dealt a hand, he didn’t have
all that much time left. 

            To Harold’s
extreme left sat the wolf man, back in human form after a week’s worth of wild
rampant mood swings and escapades.  He lazily chewed on a cigar, smiled into
his poker hand and wore an unpleasant Hawaiian tee shirt with authentic hand
carved coconut buttons.  He was responsible for getting Harold in on the game
by way of apologizing for being such an ass when they first met, blaming it on
the werewolfism, but having now seen both sides of Rufus the wolf man, Harold
reached the conclusion he was more of an asshole as a human.  To Harold’s right
sat Zork and Harold himself made four in the group. 

            He agreed to this
game as part of his bargain in playing the true mole for the feds.  Do a little
poking around.  Get to know the other group members.  Find out what’s going on
here.  The only thing, he was also starting to get a little curious himself
about what kept happening to all of these graduates of the program.  The more
he thought about it, the stranger it seemed that Donald kept touting them as
shining examples his perfect self-improvement group that they all should strive
to emulate, but never actually invited to talk to the group or mentioned what
they were doing now.  It seemed out of character for Donald to not take every
opportunity he could to show off these graduates.  Harold didn’t know much
about group therapy or any twelve step programs but it seemed to him, it made
sense to bring a couple of people back that dealt with their previous problems
and succeeded.  You could certainly call vampirism a problem, but Harold didn‘t
think this group had the cure.  Yet, here was Donald claiming he, of all
people, had figured out a way to bring these monsters back, bring them back
from the brink of their darkest, despairing days and most grotesque forms with
a simple group therapy program designed to purge the thoughts and retrain the
body.  Donald, amongst all the people who had been trying for hundreds,
possibly thousands of years to develop a cure for Abeos, was the one who
succeeded?  Life was not just ironic, it was unfair.

            Then, that claim
he was once a vampire himself and by his own efforts to come back into the
light, that he managed to overcome his urges to drink blood and his violent
reaction to UV rays and in essence, remove all traces of the vampirism from his
body through strength of will.  It was a lot for Harold to swallow.

            Harold had a
fantastic hand.  He threw a couple of chips into the pot to meet the zombie
dealer’s rise.  Zork’s discerning eyestalks swiveled towards Harold. 
Incredibly flexible and nimble, Zork managed to hold its entire hand of cards
with one eyestalk and still succeeded in looking at the same hand with the same
eyestalk by holding it in a unique figure eight pattern.  The other eyestalk
remained free to roam and it tried at every opportunity to sneak peeks at
Harold’s and the wolfman’s cards.  Yet, the slug’s cards remained miraculously
folded away from all viewer’s prying eyes.

            “Got something up
your sleeve?”  Grumped Zork, as its eyestalk stretched and strained to peer
over the cards which Harold held tightly to his chest.  Harold smacked the
eyestalk with a free hand and Zork withdrew with a sharp inhalation and a
dangerous chopping of its teeth around the cigar it also held in mouth.  The
slug held back, still stinging from its last encounter with Harold and the
memory of that had subdued it.  For all Harold knew, a couple of G-men were on
the other side of the door to the back room, monitoring their communication. 

            “Oiy, don’t mind
him.”  The wolfman turned human in the absence of a full moon, pointed at
Harold with his cigar.  “Zork always does that and you can bet he’s got a
couple of cards hidden up his, well, I don’t know what to call it but he’s got
them there you can bet on it.”

            Zork snorted and
said something inappropriate about the wolfman, but he just laughed in response
and chomped back on his cigar.  Turning back to Harold, Rufus said, “See what I
mean.  We can always tell when he’s been cheating because the cards come back
slimy.”

            Harold quietly
thanked whatever god was watching over this poker game he hadn’t yet gotten a
slimy hand of cards from the dealer.  He’s had enough of Zork’s excretions to
last a while.

            “A least you’re
better than the last guy,” Rufus said as Harold upped the ante once more.  “He
was a real downer.  And couldn’t play a good hand to save his life.”  The wolf
man snickered, pushing his chair on to the two back legs, coming perilously
close to falling over.  “Get it, couldn’t save his life!  ’Cause he was dead.”

            The zombie dealer
groaned, but the wolf man continued to laugh.  Of course, Harold had learned a
little bit about how this guy got infected.  He wasn’t the most self-aware
person on the planet. 

            “The last guy?” 
Asked Harold.

            The werewolf
nodded and called.  Zork had already folded, but Harold, the zombie and the
wolf all put down their cards.  Rufus slapped the table, cursing, and caused
the chips to bounce.  Harold had won the third round in a row.  One thing about
having an eternity of night, was having a lot of time to practice playing
cards.  Harold did get pretty damned good at the game in his decades of free
time.

            “Yeah, another
zombie like this guy,” said the wolf man gesturing toward the dealer who was
gathering the cards.  “A real chatterbox, if you know what I mean.”

            “No you blinking
idiot, none of us has a clue what you mean,” Zork ground out around its cigar. 
The werewolf looked askance at the slug.  Awe, the poor wolfie had his feelings
hurt, thought Harold. 

            The zombie dealt
another hand with his creepy, creaking muscles.  Harold cringed on each croak. 

            “Come on,” the
wolf man said with a little laugh, “the guy wouldn’t shut up.”  He picked up
the cards as the zombie dealt them out.  “Kept going on about how much Donald
was helping him.  You remember the time he came shuffling in all excited.  I
got new skin!  I got new skin! And it turned out to be peach colored mold.  The
poor sap.”

            Zork snorted, “I
think you’re talking about yourself there, Wolfie.”

            “Nah mate, not
anymore.” The werewolf shook his head.  He sighed, “I don’t even know anymore. 
It’s been, getting worse.”

            The zombie
groaned in agreement over his own hand of cards.  They all enjoyed a silent
moment.  Rufus rubbed a hand across his chin, a half a day’s stubble had
appeared since they started playing cards.

            “I mean.  I’m
eating raw meat all the time now,” the wolf man muttered.  “He promised.”  The
last word turned into a whine.  Rufus had that half-disgusted, half-shocked
look some guys get when they’re about to cry.  A ripple of male angst slid
through the group.  Already somewhat awkward, the poker game threatened to grow
downright unbearable.  Harold wasn’t prepared to feel empathy for the wolf
man. 

            He hadn’t liked
Rufus.  He wasn’t comfortable in the man’s presence since their unpleasant
first meeting.  He didn’t think he would be up to comforting Rufus when he
broke out in to man tears.

            “I’ve told you
that guy was full of it,” Zork spoke of Donald and the group, “You should leave. 
Don’t invest so much effort into this group.  It’s not going to get you
anywhere.”

            Rufus let his
cards fall forgotten to the table.  It wasn’t a good hand anyway.  Harold’s own
pair of Queens beat the pair of threes any day. 

            “It was getting
better for little while, it is getting better.” Rufus ran his hands through his
hair. 

            Zork spit out its
cigar with a growl.  “Nothing is going to change what you are, you might as
well get used to it.”

            That started it. 
Rather than rallying Rufus’ spirits it only served to further depress them.  He
sobbed, face down on the card table, one open palm slapping the table so cards
and chips flew in wild arcs across the room.  The zombie stood creakingly to
pat Rufus on the shoulder as he sobbed.  Creak, pat, creak, pat, creak, pat.

            Zork blew through
its air holes and hopped up on the table.  Faster than greased lighting with a
mucous trail, it slimed over to Rufus and grabbed him by the hair with an
eyestalk.  With strength that belied the creature’s diminutive size, Zork
lifted the man’s head up and began slapping him in the face with the other
eyestalk. 

            “Shut up,” slap.
“You stupid,” slap. “Ignorant,” slap. “Sack of blood.” 

            The three carried
on their interplay, leaving Harold to watch, poker cards in hand, dazed
expression on his face.  Creak, pat, slap, creak, pat, slap, creak, pat, slap. 
Slippery tears, sweat and mucous splattered across the walls and ceiling in
some horrific work of violence.  Rufus cried, whined and disturbingly… started
to howl in great long, hiccupping vowels.  Before Harold’s eyes, the wolf man
began to change. 

            Zork and the slow
moving or slow-witted zombie appeared not to notice the darkening of his eyes,
the rapid spread of sandy hair along the jaw, across the cheek, over the nose
and even from his receding hairline down his forehead and over his eyebrows. 
It grew long and coarse with amazing rapidity.  The face elongated, pulled up,
and only then did Zork stop slapping, only then did the zombie stop acting
sympathetic.  Harold stood as Rufus let out one long, high howl.  He tore at
his clothing with hairy, clawed hands, scratched at his chest as hair grew up
from the sternum down to the abdomen and around his back.

            His blue, glossy
eyes glared out from two thick, bushy brows at Zork.  Harold imagined,
intimidating even the slug and it seemed to back up just the slightest bit.  He
pushed the zombie backwards into the floor with a creaking crash.  Rufus ran
around the side of the table, his movements crazy, desperate with something
wild.  He ran to the thick backroom door and tore it off the hinges, a feat
impressing even Harold with his own modest super strength. 

            Howling defeat,
the wolf man tore out of the room and into the back alley behind the club where
Harold had met Zork earlier.  In the aftermath of their bizarre encounter,
Zork, the zombie and Harold stared after the retreating figure until it
disappeared into the darkness. 

            Ever practical,
the zombie stooped to pick up a chair.  Harold followed suit, picking up his own
chair and setting it before the table.  Zork slithered back to its seat, hopped
onto it and then moved to the floor.  The zombie cleared up the cards while
Zork urged Harold to divvy up the chips three ways instead of four.  Their
meager room now straightened of the recent mess, the three of them went out the
broken door.  Harold set the door in place where it tilted angrily to the left
of the portal.

            “Come on,” urged
the slug to Harold.  “Let’s cash these out at Mephisto’s.”

            Harold stilled,
recognizing the name from David’s conversation with Orlen.

            Harold took one
last look at the small dark room and the door tilting crazily over it before
turning to follow Zork and the zombie into the night.  It took a series of
sharp turns into various alleys and across empty roads to Harold knew not
where.  He’d only heard from Zork during the phone call about the card game
that it would involve real cash stakes and when Harold showed up he was asked
to put down cash in exchange for chips.  They traversed several blocks of
darkened alleys.  Harold was certain they passed others in the night, perhaps
others who were just as skilled as he in seeking the camouflage of the night,
for Harold didn’t get a good look at any of them.  Frankly, Harold was lost. 
If his companions hadn’t been slow enough to keep up with Harold would have had
a hard time finding his way back to his car.