Flesheaters and Bloodsuckers Anonymous: A Dark Humor (4 page)

            It landed solidly
on Harold’s back, collapsing him to the floor, screaming still as its teeth
shredded his ear.  Harold grabbed at slippery, wet flesh and squeezed.  A low
gurgling cry escaped from his attacker.  It slide away and smacked onto the
floor.  Harold got up in a hurry and set his foot above the creature writhing
around on the concrete. 

            “Uncle, uncle!” 

            Harold paused and
set his foot down on the floor.  The slug kept crying and flopping around. 
Jesus, he thought, it’s dying.  Harold toed the squirming creature.  Faster
than he could see, the slug straightened and leapt at Harold’s chest. 
Together, they crashed back into a tower of pallets.  Harold’s arms
instinctively covered his face from the oncoming attack.  Between parted
fingers he got his first good look at Zork.

            Two curving
eyestalks peered down into Harold’s face.  No eyelids, just two beady black
eyes on the ends of the eyestalks.  They ended at the top of the slug’s head or
what Harold could assume was a head.  He really couldn’t tell.  What should
have been a face was smooth and featureless, except for two smaller fleshy
horns, wet with mucous.  Down the slope of this empty face, the flesh bowed
into a mouth, open wide to reveal a rim of sharp backwards-pointing,
needle-like teeth. At the base of the creature’s head sat a thick collar with
blinking red light, some sort of tracking device.  Harold screamed as the slug
struggled and wriggled to get closer to his face, presumably to plant those
very sharp teeth deep into his flesh. 

            It was twice in
the same night now, someone wanted to turn him into vampire tartar.  Weren’t
they all supposed to be on the same side here?  

            To save his own
skin, he pressed his hands into the Jello of the slug’s neck and squeezed. 
Mucous covered flesh and pitch black blood oozed out between his fingers.  Zork
squealed and slipped from his grasp onto the floor where it did a repeat of the
earlier foil.

            He wouldn’t fall
for it again.  Instead, Harold jumped onto the writhing creature and pulled it
into a headlock or tried too.  It emitted more squeals and squirmed around in
his grip, but Harold managed to grab the two eyestalks in one hand.  He’d pop
the eyeballs out of this sucker before letting it get at his face again. 

            “Arrggh!  Uncle,
fucking Uncle!”

            Harold smashed
the creature’s empty face into the concrete floor where the cries became
muffled and pulled on the ends of its eyestalks.  Zork turned into lightening
under Harold’s other hand, twisting round to bite it.  Harold shrieked, but he
didn’t let go of the slug’s eyestalks.  For a few seconds it became a battle of
which could withstand the most pain.  Harold tugging on the eyestalks or the
slug biting further and deeper into his hand with its needle teeth.  Harold and
Zork both screamed in higher and higher octaves.  Finally, Harold couldn’t take
it anymore.

            “Stop it, stop
it!” He yelled at the slug, trying to rip his hand from its mouth. 

            “Leggommyeyslls,”
it muttered around Harold’s hand.  Harold let go of the now well stretched
eyestalks and got his hand back from the creature’s bloody maw. 

            His hand was a
bloody mess oozing with a mix of saliva and black goop Harold could only assume
came from inside Zork.  It seemed to be the slug’s blood, but he couldn’t tell
for certain.  It didn’t smell right, didn’t smell like blood to him.  Whatever,
it was probably bad for his hand and ripe with whatever bacteria the slug carried. 
Harold tenderly wiped his hand on the bottom edge of his black trench coat.  By
tomorrow evening it would be completely healed, but for now it hurt to hell.

            Next to him, the
slug groaned, rubbing its eyestalks against each other.  Large patches of the
slug’s skin now oozed the same black goop.  He could also see it coming out of
the slug’s mouth.  Definitely blood or something akin to blood.  Lucky for the
slug, he hadn’t managed to pop off those eyes.  Tough little thing, he thought.

            “Why did you jump
me?”

            The slug looked
at Harold with one eyestalk.  The other, it jammed into its mouth and sucked
on.  If it could have glared at Harold, he was pretty sure the slug would
have.  Its other eyestalk came out its mouth and looked at Harold too. 

            “Why were you
following me?” 

            They eyed each
other for a few moments as two cowboys in a classic western showdown might
before the final showdown.  Perhaps he should give the slug a few swift kicks
and run for it.

            Harold coughed,
“I was going to ask if you wanted to partner with me.  You know the buddy thing
Donald’s pushing.”

            The slug’s
eyestalks swiveled around each other right up to their round, black eyes. 

            “Why?”

            “Well,” Harold
glanced around the dark warehouse.  Except for the scuttling of rats and their
enemies the cats, the place had emptied out.  His right ear also told him it
hurt.  Harold reached up and gingerly touched the earlobe.  A large part of it
was ripped clean.

            “You ripped off
my ear!”

            The eyestalks
swished back away from Harold.  

            “It’ll grow
back.”  The slug muttered.  He considered trying to rip off one of the slug’s
eyes again.  An eye for an ear, since he couldn’t really see the slug’s ears. 

            It stuck its
eyestalk back in its mouth as if knowing what Harold was thinking.

            “Yeah, but if I
weren’t a vampire, it wouldn’t.”

            The slug’s skin
rippled in a shrugging motion.  It pulled the eyestalk out of its mouth long
enough to agree to be Harold’s group buddy. 

            “Let’s get the
fuck outta’ here,” said the slug, “I’ll show you the house.”

            The slug directed
Harold out of the warehouse into the dark night.  He could see a few others
from the group, retreating zombies mostly, tottering down the street ahead of
them.  They all seemed to be heading in the same direction, himself and Zork
included.  While the zombies moved unhurriedly, Harold was concerned the slug
might move even more slowly.  He almost suggested taking the car before the
slug zoomed out ahead of him and down the street on ruffling flanges.  Harold
jogged to keep up.  They moved a short distance and turned the corner into a
residential area filled with the houses of factory workers and forklift
drivers. 

            The homes were
large and striking, but not quite the beautiful painted ladies Harold knew from
his youth.  Instead of gingerbread and wedding cake trim, they featured missing
siding and particle board windows.  Yet these were family homes still filled
with children and the kind of warmth he hadn’t felt in decades.  Signs of wear
and tear on the modest homes from yesteryear reminded him how much time passed
since his last visit.  Harold tended to avoid it because of the memories, but
necessity overruled nostalgia.  Soon his slimy escort came to a stop in front
of a house, the only house on the street with the lights still on.  The small
wooden sign in front proclaimed this the “FEBS House.”  Despite the dark,
Harold could still tell the house was well maintained with freshly painted
siding and new windows through which the light shone onto a grassy lawn.  They
went inside. 

            A bright eyed and
bushy tailed Rufus greeted them at the door with soft growls.   Apparently, the
wereman still held a grudge.  Harold stopped just inside the house, heart
pounding in his chest and all of his senses coming to life.  Rufus moved in closer
and Harold was almost attacked for the third time that night, but Zork slapped
the werewolf on the shin with one of its eyestalks, snapping him out of the
state of mind. 

            “Cut out the
growling,” said Zork, “just cause you’re having that time of the month doesn’t
mean you can eat the fresh meat.”

            The werewolf’s
confidence wavered, glancing back and forth between Harold and the slug and
with a whine, disappeared back into the bowels of the house. 

            “Don’t mind him,”
Zork said, “he’s going through some changes right now.”  Harold grunted,
remembering Rufus’ first greeting for him earlier. 

            The slug led him
through the house in a cursory manner.  To the left a rec room, to the right
the kitchen with an empty fridge or so Harold thought until he into looked
inside and saw gallons of what Zork referred to as Donald’s protein shake along
with various animal organs and packages of tofu.  A bulletin board in the
kitchen displayed room assignments.  Harold got a room upstairs with a roommate
named Vlad, whom according to the slug happened to be a real douche.  The board
also displayed Donald’s rules for the house.  They were exactly what you would
expect from the halfway house, no fights, no illegal substances, no blood, no
human flesh and certainly no live unwilling guests.  On the other hand,
occupants could come and go as they pleased as long as they weren’t under house
arrest or restricted to a certain schedule and provided they attended regular
meetings. 

            The house
featured five bedrooms, each with two or more occupants.  Harold was lucky to
have just one roommate.  Zork had a plague of zombies in its room.  “They just
won’t be separated from each other.  Like living in a cult, if you can call it
living,” joked the slug. 

            Eventually, they
wandered up to Harold’s room where he got to meet his roommate. Vlad the
vampire had some sort of molting skin condition that crept even Harold out. 
Other than a cursory glance on entry, stick figure Vlad ignored him and the
slug while Zork talked at length about the man. 

            Their bedroom
could have been in a monastery for all the decor it featured.  Two twin beds
covered with the same heavy green blankets, a single lamp between them and two
dressers on the opposing wall.  Harold doubted he’d spend much time here.  Although
his own apartment didn’t feature much better quality furniture, his other
roommate was certainly more friendly. 

            Zork left him to
get settled in, something about a hot poker game in the rec room, but Harold
couldn’t relax enough to sit or lie down on the bed.  Vlad glared from behind a
copy of
Blue Blood
magazine, adding to Harold’s discomfort.  He didn’t
want to play games or attempt to sample the “food” Donald so kindly provided. 
After a few moments of inspecting their shared bathroom and the rickety old
water heater against the wall, he decided to head back to his apartment under
the guise of picking up some of his things for the room and gladly vaulted
downstairs and out of the house.

Chapter Three

            As soon as Harold
walked in the door he knew something was wrong.  It may have been the strange
noises greeting him or the bizarre smells wafting out to the living room from
the kitchen.  It may have been the way things were rearranged in the apartment
or the way the dishes were laid out on the dining room table.  Mostly though,
it was the way Maria kissed him. 

            She smiled a
greeting and sauntered slowly towards him.  Pressed her body against his mucous
and blood covered coat and pulled him to her mouth.  Her lips did things to his
that should be illegal.  Perhaps they were.  He hadn’t really been paying
attention to the law changes lately.  When Maria finally slipped out of his
arms Harold felt wobbly.   

            “I made dinner,
baby,” Maria smiled at him and Harold’s spidey-sense kicked in.  Maria only
acted this nice when she had something up her sleeve. 

            Harold’s sharp
hearing picked up the smooth rhythms of some R&B.  The strange smells,
those of food in the kitchen.  She’d even cleaned the apartment, they only had
a little to clean up, but he liked his stuff scattered about the way he was
used to it being scattered.

            Harold’s stomach
bulged from an impromptu meal snatched on the way home.  A drunk in an alley
with 110 proof running in his veins.  Still alive, but perhaps less prone to
drinking in the future.  Harold even felt little tipsy. 

            “What is on your
coat?”  Maria’s pretty face froze halfway between disgust and horror.  Harold
called it her what-the-fuck face. 

            “I think it’s
blood.” He eased off his trench coat and dropped it on the floor by the door
with a mental note to burn it the next chance he got.  Maria’s eyebrows notched
up about ten centimeters as she stared at the coat.  “I didn’t bite him,”
Harold said defensively, choosing not to mention his dinner. “I could have, but
I really didn’t want too.”

            “Your ear.”
Maria’s voice came out in a high-pitched squeak.  Absentmindedly, Harold
touched it with his punctured hand.  “Your hand.”  Harold stopped, looked at
his hand, and looked at her. 

            “I had a
misunderstanding.”

            “I’ll bet,” Maria
said and stalked into the kitchen.  He stared at her round bottom stuffed into
a tight white dress. 

            “So you made
food?”  He called after her. 

            Maria popped out
of the kitchen with a ladle in her hand.  She pointed it at him.  “Get cleaned
up,” she said and popped back into the kitchen. 

            “You know I’m not
eating right?”  He called again, to no reply.  Harold did as he was told and
headed upstairs to the bathroom. 

            After a regular
shower with thorough checking to make sure his hand didn’t have any broken
needle teeth in it and a thorough brushing of his own teeth, Harold emerged a
new man.  He felt practically human again.  The smells were much stronger now
and he found the table laid out with the “good” china, candles and even red
wine. 

            “Feeling
better?”  Maria asked.  She stepped out of the kitchen with a bowl of salad in
her hands.  She’d recovered her kitten attitude. 

            “Now that you’re
here,” he said, eyes locked not on the salad, but her biscuits.  Maria set the
bowl down and turned to him.  She reached up and straightened his shirt
collar.      

            “You must be
starved, poor baby.”

            “I’m fine,”
Harold said, still distracted by Maria’s low cut dress, “you look delicious
though.”  Harold’s teeth actually tightened. 

            Maria glared at
Harold.  “You’ve been at it again.”  Harold nodded dumbly.  Maria pushed Harold
back with an small grunt, and then smacked him in the chest. 

            “What?  What did
I do?”  Harold asked stupidly. 

            “I bust my butt
working for money to bail you out, so you can go to meetings.”

            “You didn’t
actually pay…”

            Maria turned
cutting him off.  She ran a hand through her dark salon treated hair and wailed
in frustration at him.  “Harold, what am I going to do with you?” 

            “Me?  Look, I
agreed to go to the meetings.  I didn’t say I was going to stop drinking
blood.”

            “What do think I
stayed up until 3a.m. in the morning for?”  Maria gestured at the table of
food.  “I cooked this romantic meal, so we could sit down together, eat and
celebrate you turning over a new leaf.”

            He was not going
to feel guilty.  She was not going to make him feel guilty.  He was a vampire,
damn it.  He had to eat.

            “One meeting
doesn’t cure a vampire, Maria.”

            Maria crossed her
arms.  “That is all food the program recommends you start eating,” She said, nodding
towards the table. 

            “I can’t eat
that.”  Harold looked at the table in horror.  She seemed to think he could
just make the choice to sit down to dinner.

            “Well, you
better,” Maria said.  She looked up at him from under sculpted raised eyebrows
and parted lips.  It was the you-are-going-to-do-this face, which usually
indicated he’d do something she wanted or else there would be no living with
her for a couple days. 

            Harold turned
back to the table.  He tried to imagine himself sitting down to a meal like he
used to before the whole vampire thing took over.  Putting salad greens on his
plate.  Putting them in his mouth.  Chewing the food.  Swallowing the food. 

            It really was too
much.  If she wanted him to eat then she was going to be the one to clean up
the sea-green puke results when his stomach rejected the meal. 

            “I can’t digest
food Maria,” Harold said slowly.  He crossed the short distance to her and
lightly brushed her upper arm with the knuckles of his good hand.  “I know this
is important to you, but I can’t.”

            Maria uncrossed
her arms and halted the soft brush of his hand by covering it with her own. 
“Harold, you can’t pull that hypnotizing stuff on me now.  We should talk about
this.”

            Harold sighed. 
“Okay,” he backed off, “how about this?  I’m doing what everyone wants and
going to meetings.  I’ve been to one meeting and so far, it is literally
pulling my balls through a meat grinder.  Do you know I’ve got to live in some
halfway house?”  Harold pressed his hand against his chest.     

            “I’ve had my hand
bitten into by a giant slug who is now my ‘group buddy.’  Look at it.  Look!” 
He raised his shredded digits for her to examine.  

            “I’ve had a bad
night and I got hungry, so I ate someone.  If it’s so wrong, then I apologize
for offending thee,” Harold swept out his hands and bowed grandly to Maria
before continuing on.  “I go to sleep in a few hours and I’m going to be asleep
for a good day or more because of my injuries.  If you’d want to have sex
before then, great.  If not, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go lie down and
contemplate my shitbag life.  Thanks for dinner, I appreciate the thought.”

            Harold strode out
of the dining room, leaving Maria by the table. That scene was a little more
put off than he felt, but Harold considered it taking a page out of Maria’s
book.  His behavior might even pay off if it kept Maria from storming out of
the apartment.  It did.  Just a few minutes later Maria came into the bedroom,
peeling off her tiny white dress.

            The next evening
he gradually worked his way up out of the fog of his daily slumber.  It took
several long minutes to become fully awake.  He was able to open his eyes
first, but it took longer for his body to follow suit.  One of the symptoms of
being a vampire, always dredging himself up from a long hibernation.  Always,
each and every night. 

            He flexed his
hands and arms and was pleased to see his hand completely restored.  Harold
glanced at the alarm clock and saw it past eight.  He was up late today. 
Harold reached for his ear to find it also grown back.  He thought it would
grow back.  The slug said it would grow back, but he wasn’t really certain. 
After all, this was probably the first time he’d actually lost a body part. 
Harold didn’t instigate fights when he didn’t have too.  Injuries still hurt
and wounds took extra energy to heal, meaning more blood.

            Harold wriggled
his toes and shifted around in the empty bed.  Maria had long since gone, up
and about doing whatever she normally did while he slept during the day.  For a
couple, they didn’t spend a lot of waking time around each other.  Harold
pondered the thought until his bladder made itself known to him.  He also
noticed he was hungry again.  Ravenous, in fact. 

            Harold would have
to grab another bite to eat for breakfast.  Maybe slip out early and grab
something at work.  The hospital usually had some extra A+ blood on hand.  He
was positively screamy for type A. 

            Harold rubbed his
eyes with a thumb and index finger to clear them of the gunk accumulated during
his sleep, eased out of bed and padded towards the bathroom.  After a long piss
and a short shower, he padded back out to the bedroom and dressed for work.  He
looked through his scrubs and settled on midnight blue. 

            Harold worked the
night shifts at the Union County Hospital.  He simply called it the blood bank,
since that was where he was stationed in the labs as a phlebotomist.  Being a
vampire gave him a definite taste and attraction for all things blood-related. 
He could actually credit the vampirism for kick-starting his career in
phlebotomy.  There weren’t a lot of people willing to work with blood, not with
the chances of infection, but he was all over it.  In fact, Harold genuinely
felt vampires were perfectly suited to hospital work.  He could identify blood
types by smell and taste alone.  He loved the color red and he even enjoyed
working in the lifeless, sterile environment.  Plenty of late night shift to go
around too.  Not to mention he’d never have to fear catching some blood-borne
disease from the donors or donations.  He was already infected.  There was the
added benefit of getting all the free blood he wanted, even though he had to be
sneaky about it. 

            Harold did
occasionally feel some guilt about taking blood needed by regular people, but
he reasoned a guy did have to eat and he was performing a valuable service, the
way a farmer takes care of his livestock. 

            Maria wasn’t
home.  Harold found a note on the refrigerator.  She went in to a late shift at
the salon and reminded him to eat something from the recommended list of foods
FEBS sent them.  Harold opened the fridge was assaulted by the smells of people
food and immediately closed the fridge again. 

            He decided to go
into work early for breakfast. 

            The trip to the
hospital was blessedly short and easy.  Past rush hour, this in this area
usually involved waiting for three or four hundred people to pull out of the
massive parking lot during shift change at the GE factory.  Harold had to drive
by the site nearly every day.  In the winter, when he was able to take earlier
shifts, he always got stuck in the traffic jam of people leaving the factory at
six on the dot.  Everyone wanted to get home as soon as possible, so no one got
anywhere for a good forty minutes.  They could stagger work times to reduce the
traffic jams during shift change.  But noooo… Companies worked three shifts a
day.  No deviations.  Things were easier when everyone walked to work.

            Harold checked in
at the time clock and slipped into the fridge to find breakfast.  He settled on
a pint of type-A plasma, puncturing the plastic with his teeth and sucking
greedily.  The bag flattened into a pancake.  After stuffing the pint bag into
his scrubs pocket to get rid of in the hazardous waste bin, he washed and
sterilized before returning to the desk he shared with everyone else who worked
the blood bank slash lab. 

            David was on duty
too, but he had run to the bathroom as soon as Harold showed up, yelling over
his shoulder about the sixty ounce big gulp he’d downed in half an hour. 

Harold shifted through the
blood drawn requests and processing orders to get an idea of the night’s work. 
They drew most of the blood during the day or the donations were taken during
the day.  It was up to the night shift to process and filter and test any blood
samples left over by the day shift with a range and variety of sampling tests
Harold had never imagined existed before he became a Phlebotomist.  Sometimes,
Harold stayed late enough to start work on the test requests for the next day. 
He didn’t look forward to that part of the job.  Waking up cranky patients at
the ass crack of morning did nothing to improve his mood. 

            He was also
responsible for drawing blood from possible infecteds, another thankless job he
didn’t enjoy at all.  Luckily, not many came through the hospital doors and
most that did were false alarms.

            Other fluids and
tissues came into the lab area to be tested as well, but they were taken care
of by other technicians.  Harold just worked with blood.  He was trained in
blood.  David was trained in blood, saliva, pooh and piss (and additional
by-products of the human body).  He took care of a lot of late night drug tests
for cops.  Harold also took care of blood-alcohol tests, but other things; weed
and drugs mostly were checked in the urine and David or someone else took care
of that one.