My Roommate Was A Vampire – Part Two

An excerpt from Part Two: “My Roommate Was An Omen“.

A young partier slain on a subway ramp, her clothes and wallet seemingly undisturbed, her neck drenched in blood. A guy and his friend both stabbed outside the door of their apartment, pierced lung and heart, the largest amount of blood loss from the open wounds on their necks. A club owner beaten to death in the alleyway behind his notorious establishment, may have still been alive when he was exsanguinated. Yes, from his neck.

The news labeled them – and the others – serial killings just the Fall before. Only a few months after did authorities begin associating the murders with the Mourners.

Before then, the deaths were just depressing mentions on tv and the Mourners were a joke, people larping as creatures of the night, roaming into dimly lit rooms and shady clubs, barring entry to the “living”. You know the type: dark clothes, dark makeup, hisses at you. I never ran into one, and when it was discovered that they were behind the killings, I breathed a sigh of relief at my luck. I lived in the city, where encountering the strange is a rite of passage, and before I had a car, I was a train commuter. Just one night of overtime away from being the forbidden dinner of some lowly bored suburban kid angry his parents ‘don’t understand him’.

Even riding in the safety of my Honda wasn’t enough after I heard one or several of these crazies committed actual homicides, even along roadways. I was pressed enough to do research.

One sleepless night rummaging through memes on Instagram and hot takes on Twitter led me to not-so-funny jokes about the murders. But I got to thinking and opened my browser. Only a faintly paranoid part of me regrets this decision.

I had been wrong. The Preternatural Cultists weren’t just vampire enthusiasts; they loved every classic monster. There are subsets to the group: Cursed Ones thirst for anything werewolf and prefer meeting in forests and parks rather than largely populated locales – these aren’t the hissers; they’re the howlers. The Walking are obviously zombie maniacs, but instead of believing they themselves are zombies (mostly), they ward against the negligence of humanity and the malevolence of men in power, which inevitably leads to a lethal pandemic no government can regulate in time. They’re mostly conspiracy theorists than actual performance artists, like most of the group. Raiders insist upon adherence to ancient belief systems, much like the Respectful who affirm the existence of mythological beings and encourage we “respect” their sacred territories. But finally enters the Mourners, the beautiful living dead who’ll suck your blood and leave you an empty husk of your former self, walking about for eternity or cursed to an early grave.

Now you can imagine how pitifully I stared at August, my personal Mourner. He must have surmised a better way of attracting victims: offer room and board.

My other nervous tick took center stage, grinding enamel against enamel, paining my jaw as if I had been smiling for an hour. On second thought, had I been standing across from August for an actual 60 minutes?

Unblinking he was, a gray shadow affixed beside the wall.

I cautiously stepped to the side, desperately willing the idea I could outmaneuver him into reality, mumbling, “This was clearly a mistake.”

“Which part,” grizzled from his lips, his eyes hungrily attached to me. Maybe my fear was supposing intent. Maybe not.

“Everything. The whole thing!” My feet shimmied to the left. Instinct refused my heart’s desire to glance at my exit – not the last time my gut would overwrite the will of my emotions.

“Where are you going?”

With such an abrupt interrogation of my movements, I stopped, gulped down a massive lump of agony, and surrendered to the infinitesimal flames igniting across my skin. My heart outconned my instinct and I snuck a peek beside him, my escape from death just a few steps away, “Are you keeping me here…”

My eyes met his again. He was not a foot from me, blocking my hopes and dreams, my regrets, my unspoken confessions, my future reconciliations, my unrealized potential with his freakishly imposing frame. Sweat swelled down my sides and spine. I’d begin to smell in 5 minutes. What would he care? He’d simply wash my body if he so desired, sprinkle me with his favorite spices and drain me of my life, probably bury me with the rest of his victims in the backyard I’ve never seen because it’s where he keeps the bodies. I’d have facepalmed if my death wasn’t imminent and he wasn’t so close. Dirt piles of clearly unearthed soil is suspicious as all hell. I never questioned a thing when he didn’t let me tour behind the house.

“Macy!”

My head shot up so hard, I gave myself whiplash.

I winced, shrugging my shoulders. As soon as my hands raised from my sides, his were on my neck. All emotion flushed from my face.

So, he is going to kill me? So, they are killing people?

But then the strangest thing happened: I relaxed. Significantly. My mouth fell open, my eyes nearly rolled back, my legs hesitated to yield, and the scent he radiated wasn’t anything I had smelled before but everything I loved. He was massaging my neck and pulling me under a boundless blue veil.

“Is that better,” his voice spread over me, warding off my woes and swaddling me in unrelenting tenderness.

“Hm…” He methodically pressed and pinched tense muscle after aching tendon. Was I really that stiff?

“I’m sorry.”

“Hm?” He had stopped beguiling me by way of neck massage.

“I’m more careful than that. I dispose better.” He can’t possibly still try to kill me after this, can he?

Recognition gradually returned when solid tendrils of ice abruptly encircled my throat. My body primed to reel away, but the icy choker dissolved from my skin as August’s arms dropped. He turned and stepped away from me, but the chill remained. I rubbed my neck staring at his hands, caught up in thoughts as to what kind of medical condition he obviously suffers.

The sudden warmth of my own palms sent goosebumps along my shoulders, down my spine, across my forearms and up my neck to the back of my head. The trembles followed close after.

“It was a rough night – but that is no excuse for this… negligence.” The shakes stopped as I glanced up. He faced me. “I won’t kill you.”

He raised his palms in submission just as my foot instinctively pointed towards the exit at his right.

“You suck at filling me with confidence.” I discouraged myself from looking away from him again, then remembered the side door that leads to the driveway. Even if his car – if he had a car – was blocking mine, I’d just run. I’d run to the crack house at this point. But how to get to that door. Perhaps I could fake an exit to the front, then twist around the corner to my salvation.

“I’m not one of them. I don’t-” He broke his gaze on me to ponder at the ground. “I don’t, haven’t, killed–” he hesitated, not quite finishing his sentence, the tone leaving far too much to be desired, before looking back at me. His eyes were dark again, enveloped in sadness, guilt, regret, shredding more assurance of my triumphant escape.

I carefully anchored my hand on the counter, sliding sideways against it, “You just…drink them?”

“I do not drink people. Openly.” He huffed. “Anymore. I’d never risk exposure, so blatantly. There are places and times I just cannot be.”

He’s really believing his BS. I quietly exhaled, turning my face to the window, the time to run ticking away.

“I’m not a Mourner, Macy, but I’m… I am what they want to be.”

A pounding grew at my temples, reminding me the immeasurable discomfort had never left. But I stood erect and away from the counter, exacerbated by the absurdity of my given circumstance. I even took a step in his direction.

“Look August, I don’t need this. I have too much on my plate to entertain a vamp lover. I’m going to go now.” My courage soared higher than reasonably necessary and I took two more steps. “I can prove it.”