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  “I think it’s time I ate,” he said congenially. “So what’s it going to be? You want to do this the quick way or the slow way?”

  She hated the way he phrased her options. “The slow way,” she whispered.

  Damn that taste.

  "Yeah, I was pretty sure that's what you'd say," he smirked. "You didn't seem too keen on the back room earlier."

  It was subtle, but Richard's appearance had changed over the past two days. Pale to begin with, he seemed positively white at this point, an unflattering contrast to the bags that had formed beneath his eyes. He looked hungry.

  “I’m not sure how to ask you this, but I need to know. The other night, Paul grew teeth. I know it sounds nuts, but I swear I looked at him and he grew teeth. Do you do that? I’m—I’m not sure what’s real anymore.” Good. She was finally going to get to the bottom of this.

  “You want to know if I have fangs. Is that it?”

  “Yeah, I think that‘s what I‘m asking. Was that all in my head?”

  “No, ma’am. Paul and I have fangs. Feel better now?”

  “Can you…do you think you could grow them? I need to see it again.” In the future, Lenore would replay this conversation in her head and wonder what would have possessed her to press the point.

  Richard seemed taken aback. “Are you serious?”

  “I think so. I have to know what I’m dealing with here. I think that’s fair.”

  He shook his head. “Okay I guess it’s fair, but I need you to understand something. In the future—well, in the future if it’s just you and me, and you know I’m hungry, asking me to grow fangs probably isn’t a smart move, understand?”

  She nodded. With that, Richard’s lips curled back into what might be interpreted as a snarl or menacing grin, and Lenore watched in awe as his canines extended into sharp protrusions.

  "Thanks, I appreciate it." She ogled his mouth in total fascination, feeling a bit reminiscent of second grade, watching her best friend pop her eyes out of their sockets.

  Richard was actually smiling now, fangs exposed. “My pleasure.” He closed his lips, and when he opened them again, his teeth were back to normal. Then he stood up and, offering Lenore a helping hand, brought her to her feet as well. He studied her upright figure with a bemused expression, exclaiming, “Nice outfit. I see you found Angie’s favorite shirt.”

  Was she still wearing that you-call-me-a-bitch-like-it’s-a-bad-thing shirt? “It’s growing on me.”

  He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment and then said, "We might as well get this over with". Lenore's entire body tensed as if she were anticipating a particularly unpleasant procedure at the doctor's office. She shut her eyes tightly and gritted her teeth.

  “What are you doing?”

  She opened one eye to see Richard standing in front of her, clearing reveling in her confusion. “Aren’t you going to bite me?”

  He shook his head. “Not unless you want to wind up like that guy on my carpet. If I start biting you I probably won’t be able to stop. Not to mention, it wouldn’t leave you with two neat little pinpricks like you see in the movies. I‘ll rip you apart.” Lenore gulped. “Walk with me to the kitchen, okay? We’re going to have to go over some rules.”

  Lenore once again grew nervous as they approached the slaughter room down the hall. She slowed her pace and waited for Richard to enter the kitchen first before following behind. He stood in front of the sink, arms crossed, waiting for her to catch up.

  “I’m not trying to trick you, you know. If I were going to take you to the other room, I’d just do it.” He furrowed his brow and eyed Lenore with suspicion. “Something doesn’t sound right about you. Your heartbeat‘s all fucked up. Do you have some sort of condition I should know about?”

  “No.” None that were any of his business, anyway.

  She walked to where Richard stood and leaned weakly against the counter. He pulled a small plastic tube from his pocket and washed it with antibacterial soap in the sink. When he finished, he dangled it in front of Lenore.

  “Do you know what this is?” he asked.

  “No,” she replied.

  It looked like a catheter; something that might be hooked up to an IV bag. The sight of the tube brought back memories of her mother being treated for breast cancer.

  “It’s called a PICC line, but modified. So what we do is insert this into your arm and tape it there. And then it‘s there permanently…for the rest of your life, anyway. There’s a spigot at the end of the line. You pour blood out of that when I tell you to, and you don’t stop until I tell you to. Understand?” Lenore nodded and Richard continued. “Once I start drinking, stay away from me until I’m finished. We can go over the other rules when I’m done.”

  Richard grabbed a needle from the counter, attached it to the line, and passed the combination to Lenore. “Do you know how to insert this?” he asked. She shook her head. “You need to find a vein—the one in the middle of your arm will do—and you insert the needle. Then, you push the catheter through, detach the needle, and we bandage you up”. He pulled some medical tape from his back pocket.

  This was insane. Lenore did not want to put that thing in her arm and was particularly repulsed by the idea that it was not intended to come out. Where had that thing been, anyway?

  “Is this sanitary? Did Angela have one of these?” Rinsing THAT THING in the sink moments beforehand could not possibly be medical procedure. Wouldn’t they need to boil it? She turned the device over in her hands with skepticism.

  “This was Angela’s, as a matter of fact, and she would have had it in her arm by now,” he replied. “Is there a problem?”

  Ugh. What about AIDS? What else could you catch from contaminated blood? Probably several things. What did Richard care? Lenore did not want to upset him. “There‘s no problem. I‘ve never had an IV before. That‘s basically what this is, right? Does it hurt?”

  Richard grinned. “Compared to what we could be doing? No. Now get to it”

  Lenore had no trouble locating the vein on the underside of her arm, but her hands shook too violently to properly aim the needle. After several unsteady attempts, she had pierced her skin in numerous places but had not managed to hit the vein.

  Richard approached her, rolling his eyes. He grabbed the line. “Am I seriously going to have to do this for you?” he asked. He fingered the wounds on her arm. “I don’t think you have any idea how dangerous this is. It’s a good thing I’m not all that hungry or you’d probably be dead by now.”

  With one swift motion, he inserted the line and detached the catheter, which immediately began leaking blood all over the kitchen floor. He pulled out the tape and wrapped it around Lenore’s arm to secure the device in place. Then he retreated to the other side of the room, saying, “Goddammit squeeze the end of the tube so that you don’t waste more blood! Raise your arm up, for Christ’s sake!” Lenore raised her arm and tightened the spigot at the end of the line, preventing additional spillage.

  “Now, go and get a glass from the cabinet. Not that cabinet. Two to the left. You got it. Fill up the glass and go sit at the table. Got it?”

  Lenore grabbed a class from the cabinet and, despite the violent tremors in her arm, managed to set it down on the counter without shattering it all over the floor. Richard had inserted the catheter so quickly that she had only felt a slight pinch, but now as she attempted to manipulate the line, she noticed how sore the pierced area actually was, especially when she bent her arm toward the glass in front of her. After awkwardly positioning herself into a stance that did not aggravate the wound, Lenore released the tap and watched with disgust as her blood dripped into the container.

  Richard looked on from afar and gave her a thumbs up when the glass was full. “Now go,” he said, shooing her away as if she were a cockroach. Lenore went to sit at the kitchen table and watched as he drained the glass. When he was finished, he signaled her for a refill. How much blood could she stand to lose? They repeated the p
rocess twice more before Richard was finally sated.

  Richard rinsed and dried the glass before putting it back in the cabinet. He then walked over to the pantry and grabbed a bottle of Gatorade, which he placed in front of Lenore before taking a seat at the opposite end of the table.

  “Drink up,” he said.

  She looked at the bottle with total lack of enthusiasm. “I’m not a big fan of Gatorade.”

  “Suit yourself, but you need to get some fluids back into your system, and I don’t have many other options besides water.”

  Lenore closed her eyes and nodded. She was tired now and feeling a bit light headed. She grabbed the bottle in front of her with shaking hands and drank deeply. Somehow, Gatorade was not quite as disgusting as she remembered from her childhood, and the bottle was three-quarters empty the next time it landed on the table.

  “Feeling better?”

  “Yeah, actually.”

  “So I think this went pretty well, all things considered. Now that you have the line in your arm this should be a piece of cake the next time.”

  “How often do we do this?” she asked.

  “Well, the short answer to that question is whenever I feel like it, and that’s about every few days, but it depends. Here’s the problem, though: you’re not producing blood at a fast enough rate to keep up with that schedule. If I do this every few days you’re going to bleed to death. So I supplement. You get to take breaks.”

  Lenore was not encouraged by this information. “How often can you supplement? Can you do it with animals?”

  “What? No. It’s with people. If I could drink the blood of animals don’t you think I would? Christ. Why would I go to all this trouble? And I supplement whenever I can.”

  “Does Paul do this?” She gestured toward the tube running out of her arm. “Does he have this arrangement with someone?”

  “Like the arrangement I had with Angela and now have with you? No. Paul does something totally different.”

  “He said the other night that he doesn’t kill people-”

  Richard laughed and shook his head. “Paul’s so full of shit. And I think that guy he let bleed all over my floor would probably disagree with him. He tells himself he doesn’t kill people, though. And I guess for the most part that’s true. Paul is all into this vampire club scene, and it‘s fucking weird. He goes out to these clubs and there are all these people there and they‘re dressed in black and shit and they think they‘re vampires—drives me crazy. Anyway, some think they‘re vampires and the other ones—they just want to be victims. The ones that want to be victims cut themselves in the back room and it‘s like an all you can eat buffet.”

  “You don’t do that?”

  “So there are a ton of problems with doing that, and what happened on Tuesday is a case in point. Paul’s hungry, and then all of a sudden the victim guy who’s just cutting himself for fun or whatever—well, all of a sudden it’s not so fun and he’s all over the floor. Paul has to go to these clubs constantly because he wouldn’t want to show up hungry. Not to mention he’s hanging out with these people, who are obviously bat-shit insane, all the time and pretending to be their friend so he can take them into a filthy back room and bleed them for a while.” Richard clearly had strong opinions on this topic. “I think it’s just a lot of work is what I’m saying—and I’m not saying that I haven’t done it, because I have—but it gets old real quick.”

  Richard looked at Lenore now and smiled. “And I have to admit, the big reason I’m not into the club scene is because I like finishing people off all the way. I know it’s awful, but I do.” Lenore said nothing. What was there to say?

  Richard clapped his hands as if to signal the end of uncomfortable silence. "Rules," he said. "Let's go over rules. The house is open to you, but don't go into my bedroom. There's a guest room across from Angela's room. I'd appreciate it if you stay out of there as well. Okay?"

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  He cocked his head to the side and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t believe you, so I’m going to make both of our lives a little easier and tell you this right off the bat: I’ll know if you go on those rooms. I can smell you. I knew you opened my computer the other day, for instance; it had your scent.”

  Lenore’s eyes grew wide. She opened her mouth to speak, but Richard lifted his hand to stop her.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “I’m not mad about it. I would have done the same thing. But you know better now, right?” She nodded. “Angela’s room is your room now, so please keep it clean—especially the bathroom. No mess.”

  “So you have a bedroom? You sleep?” she asked.

  “Of course I sleep.”

  “Do you sleep in a coffin?”

  Richard snorted. “I sleep in a bed. This isn‘t Nosferatu." He paused for a moment and looked at the ceiling. "What else should I tell you? Oh, this is important—when I'm hungry, stay away from me. Don't make any sudden moves or I'll start chasing you all over the apartment. You haven't seen me really hungry yet, but you‘ll know when it happens."

  Lenore was beginning to feel very strange and had some measure of difficulty keeping up with the conversation. She picked up the bottle of Gatorade and started drinking in an effort to combat her lightheadedness. Richard kept going.

  “We can put together a list of things you’ll need for your stay here like food, medications…” Why would he say medications? Why would he say medications unless he knew about the withdrawal? Lenore snapped back to attention and quickly attempted to change the subject.

  “What is there to do around here?” she asked.

  “What is there to do? Well, to put it bluntly, you’re pretty much just here for one reason. Other than that, I don’t care what you do. What did you do beforehand?”

  Lenore thought about that question and had trouble coming up with an answer. What did she do other than work all day and watch television in the evenings? She almost never left her apartment unless it was to obtain food or prescriptions. Over the past three years, she managed to lose touch with what few friends she did have from college. She supposed this life would appear lonely to someone looking in from the outside, but the hard fact was that she was too sedated most days to recognize her isolation.

  After some deliberate thought, she said, “I guess I’ll manage. The television works in Angela’s room, right? I haven’t tried it out yet.”

  Richard nodded. “Yeah it gets some stations, but you need to keep the volume off when I’m here and just set it to use subtitles. I hear differently than you and I can tell if it’s on from anywhere in the apartment.”

  “Can I use a computer? I have a job and clients that are expecting -”

  "I'm going to stop you right there. No. You‘re dead now. That‘s all over. Welcome to the afterlife." Hell was a well-appointed kitchen.

  “I figured it was worth a shot.” The conversation was fading in and out again.

  “I can‘t fault you for trying.” Richard shot Lenore a quizzical glance. “Hey what are you doing?”

  Lenore was not sure what he was asking her. She tried to respond but found that her lips would not shape words and that her tongue was glued to the left side of her mouth. All that she was able to produce was a low moaning sound, which she was only partially aware may have been coming from her in the first place. A loud buzzing could be heard in the distance and there was also the sound of something hitting the table in front of her. Now everything was wet.

  Richard stood over her, looking down. Was she on the floor? How did that happen? Richard put something in her mouth. Where was she? Her vision was now locked on her shoulder. No blinking.

  CHAPTER 3

  Charles

  Lenore felt something being pulled out of her mouth and opened her eyes to see Richard holding a damp wooden spoon. She was back on Angela’s bed, but she was not sure how she got there. Had it gotten colder? No. She was wet. Disoriented and shivering, she looked down to see that her clothes were soaked from the waist onward.
Richard walked out and quickly returned with a towel and another bottle of Gatorade. Something was wrong.

  “What happened?”

  “You mean you don’t know? You had a seizure,” he said. His words were tinged with excitement. “I’ve been around a long time but I’ve never seen one of those before.”

  Lenore rolled her eyes. It had happened. The withdrawal seizure. Fuck. Was the dampness on her jeans urine?

  Richard unfolded the towel in his hands and passed it to Lenore, who immediately started wiping off her face. What was all over her chin? Had she been drooling? Richard then offered her the bottle of Gatorade, but she declined.

  "So you know what's funny about your reaction to all of this?" he asked rhetorically. "It's that you don't seem very surprised. So I‘m thinking to myself, you‘re either an epileptic, or you're going through a nasty withdrawal." Lenore was silent. "And you know what? I don't think you're epileptic. Am I right?"

  Lenore nodded. She had hoped it would not come to this, but if she had her way, she would be home right now.

  “So what’s your poison?” he asked smugly.

  “Xanax. Please…can you get me some more?” Lenore was disappointed to find herself waxing emotional. “It’s—it’s bad enough with everything else going on here, but I don’t want to have another seizure.”

  Richard looked her over with a pained expression on his face. "I'm starting to think you're more trouble than you're worth, here. I'm not going to shell out money to buy you drugs."

  Drugs? Xanax wasn’t crack. Although if crack were available by prescription, Lenore was fairly sure she‘d be on it.

  “I don’t mind getting you food,” Richard said, “because if you don’t eat then I don’t eat, but for everything else you’re on your own.”

  “I’m agoraphobic. I don’t have a drug problem. The Xanax is for agoraphobia. I can’t go outside without it and—“

  “Let’s get something straight: I’m not stupid. I know how much you took the other night. I could even smell it on you. So you know what’s funny, though? It’s that I didn’t put this together until you had a seizure. I thought your heart sounded funny because you stopped smoking. I was going to offer to get you Nicorette gum or something. Shows how much I know.”