Teeth_ Vampire Tales - Ellen Datlow [26]
When they pulled up to her house, Retta said, “I wonder if I could feel someone else’s? What if you were right? What if I’m like you and just don’t know it? What if I’m a vampire, only I can’t feel my own feelings?”
“I guess anything is possible,” said Trevor.
“If I was like that,” said Retta, “would you let me have some of yours?”
“Who? Me?” said Trevor, pointing at his chest, eyebrows rising higher on the slope of his shiny forehead.
“Yeah,” said Retta. “Is there anyone else in the car?”
“Sure,” said Trevor, shrugging. “Yeah, you bet.”
“Can we try then?” said Retta.
“You mean now?”
“Yeah,” said Retta. “Now. Why do you keep answering my questions with questions?”
“Sorry,” he said. “I guess . . . I just wasn’t prepared for this.”
“Because you came to feed on me, didn’t you?” said Retta. “Not the other way around.”
“Um . . . ,” said Trevor. “I guess?”
“Don’t worry,” said Retta. “If you’re right and I have more feelings than even I’m aware of, there should be plenty. There should be more than enough for both of us.”
Back at her house, they sat down on the floor of her room, guru-style again, where Trevor showed Retta how to hold his hands properly, how to push forward, he explained, into someone else. “If you’re a vampire,” he said, “you’ll be able to do it. It’s not a trick. You’ll just be inside me with the slightest effort. Then, well, you’ll know what to do. Trust me.”
Retta touched her fingertips against the palms of his hands and pushed forward, as he’d instructed. Immediately the room went dark and she couldn’t even see the outlines of sunlight around the blind covering her window. She was inside him. And when she pushed a little further, she found them, his feelings, all tied up in the most intricate of knots. She took hold of one, unraveled it, slipped it inside her mouth, and started chewing. It was glorious between her teeth, bittersweet, like her mother’s expensive chocolate, soft and sticky as marzipan. It was the way she’d always imagined feeling should be. Visceral. Something she could sink her teeth into.
She untied another, and another, and another, until finally she felt herself lifting up, up, up.
Then—out of him.
She opened her eyes. Light hit her in the face, so much light she felt she might go blind like that street musician downtown. Is that what this did to him? A moment of blinding brilliance after his first taste of something wonderful? Then things began to readjust and her room was her room again, its peach walls surrounding her, and Trevor sat in front of her, sniffing, wiping the backs of his hands against his eyes like the greasy-haired kid had done at the assembly.
“That was hard,” he said.
“Then take some from me,” said Retta. “Take all of them. Just let me take some back when you’re finished.”
He stared at her for a long moment. The ridge of his fauxhawk looked like it was wilting. Finally he said, “Lo, this could be the start of something beautiful.”
She grinned, all teeth, and nodded.
In the morning, she rose with the first coos of the doves and thought about how symbolic all her actions were, how quickly everything she did now took on sudden significance. It was almost as if she could see everything, even herself, as if she were a benign witness to the actions of others and to the ones she herself was taking, as if she were someone else altogether different from the girl she had been. It was as if she floated above the town where she’d spent the first eighteen years of her life wondering how she’d gotten there, where she was, where she was going. Now she could see everything, as if it were no more than a map she’d hung on her wall, sticking bright red tacks into the places she wanted to visit.
Trevor was passed out on her bed. She’d drained him a few hours earlier, taken what he had and what she’d given, untied all but one of those bright little knots in his stomach, and left him empty. As she stepped carefully down the stairs with his keys in one hand and a bag of clothes in the other,