Thirsty - M. T. Anderson [13]
Jerk, Tom, and I are walking back toward the dam, silently. Tom will not forgive me. He will not even talk to me. The afternoon is getting chilly. There are more clouds now than sun. Some people who were picnicking on the banks are standing up and shaking the grass out of their blankets.
None of us says anything. It is better that way. I am picturing a scene in the future when Tom will drop by my garret to visit, when he is bored and married and has an itsy-bitsy little life. He will come by my garret and find me amidst clutter, listening to vibraphone music and papier-mâchéing pictures of apes and cosmetic supplies to my girlfriend’s nude body. I will have told her, “Once I was a vampire and saved the world.”
We pass between two small brick sheds. One says “Grady ’74.” We do not speak. Tom is walking ahead of us. He chooses which path to follow back to the dam.
We walk down beside the cataract. The water splatters on boulders and struts.
Jerk asks me, “In The Hitcher, did you see that scene where the guy finds the finger in his french fries?”
“No, Jerk,” I answer. “In the version I saw, they cut out just that scene.”
My hunger grows. At dinner, I ask for my steak rare, and my brother calls me a bloodsucker. I try to change the subject. He keeps calling me a bloodsucker. My father is silent throughout the whole meal, except once, and that is because he likes a lot of butter on his potatoes.
I dream that night of killing Tom.
I dream we are in a fight. He says that something is not blue, and I say that it is green. So we fight, and I kill him and drink his warm blood; and as I do, I go from strength to strength. Then I realize that I am going to dream about Rebecca and am horrified. I will not let that happen. I wake up.
My sheets are twisted like a winding-sheet. It is black in my room, but I can see.
I do not feel like going to sleep. I am frightened. I am thirsty.
I pad down to the bathroom. I drink water and more water out of the faucet.
I turn it on warm. I want to drink the water warm. I gulp and gulp, but am not satisfied. It runs down my face and soaks the flannel collar of my pajamas.
I straighten up. I look in the mirror, and I see what I saw in the water earlier when I tackled Tom.
I have no reflection.
I pace in my room.
I am thirsty.
In the next few weeks there is spring rain. It rains all the time, rain like little spit pellets of dirty newsprint, tapping and gumming on windows and roofs. Out in the gray rain, there are sludgy buds hanging on the trees like chrysalises.
On the few days when the sun comes out, there’s a dog-dung smell clogging the streets of town. For the people who live near cow fields, there’s a cow-dung smell. In fact, our town is a kind of dung-smell smorgasbord.
People talk about the beauty of the spring, but I can’t see it. The trees are brown and bare, slimy with rain. Some are crawling with new purple hairs. And the buds are bulging like tumorous acne, and I can tell that something wet, and soft, and cold, and misshapen is about to be born.
And I am turning into a vampire.
I receive the first vampire letter about four days after my discussion with Chet the Celestial Being.
It is on a cream card bordered in black. It says:
On the back, in fountain pen, someone has written, “Christopher! We’d love to see you! We’ll provide transport — just R.S.V.P. and we’ll set up a car pool! Hope you can make it.”
I have read it through three times when the writing fades and the paper withers to fine onionskin.
So they have found me. I ball up the letter to throw it away. This I mean to be a big gesture, showing that I will have none of them, but unfortunately the paper is so spiderweb thin and spongy by this time that I don’t get that sense of rattle and crinkle that makes balling something up and throwing it away a really a big event.