Thirsty - M. T. Anderson [47]
The doctor comes in again.
“Feeling chilly?” he says.
“I have no pants on,” I reply.
“That’s true,” he says. “You don’t like the tunic?”
“I feel like I’m dressed for a science fiction film,” I say. “Maybe this is why the Star Trek team always beams up with their backs to the wall.”
He stares at me, frowning, and sits down. He opens the file. For a long time, he looks over the file.
The doctor looks up. “I’ve asked for your dental records to be faxed over from Dr. Shenko’s office.”
“I had a bad accident,” I explain.
The doctor regards me coldly.
“I ran into a large object. And hurt myself.”
“Chris,” he says, “you know your parents are very concerned. They say you’re not sleeping much and you’ve become very different to them.”
I’m starting to feel uncomfortable.
He continues, “They say you’ve seemed very tired and cranky recently.”
“It’s just a phase,” I say. I’m hoping to fool him. “I was wondering if I could have some advice about what to do with my hormones and things. The confusing changes that are going on in my body.”
“Chris.” He sizes me up. He is looking at me and wondering something. I don’t know what. “Chris, has anyone approached you recently and said anything strange to you? Touched you in an unusual way?”
I stare back at him. I’ve got to move carefully. “No. Are you saying . . . ? No, I mean, I don’t think so.”
“Do you wear any religious symbols about your person?”
“No,” I answer. “I had a cross, but I lost it swimming.”
“Please think. Has anyone spoken to you recently in a language that did not seem human? Made passes in the air near your body with their hands or any kind of unusual prop? Has anyone bitten you, Christopher? Not even just on the neck. These are all avenues of inquiry I’d like to explore.”
“No. None of those.”
“Has anything happened recently that you’d like to tell me about?” He looks almost like he’s sneering. I can’t calculate what’s going on in his head, because I can’t tell what he’s like as a person. I try wildly to picture him at a cookout. I figure, if I can just picture him at a cookout, how he would smile and wave to people on a lawn and whether he would offer to work the grill, I can figure out what makes him tick, and I can give him the right answers.
I shrug. “No. What kinds of things?”
He’s just looking at me. I feel very thin and naked and realize how awkward I am hunched over on the table with my ugly feet dangling and a copy of Highlights for Children on my lap, open to Goofus and Gallant.
He rolls his chair closer. He leans in toward me. Like a threat, he says in a whisper, “If anything — anything — strange . . . If anything strange happens to you.” As he whispers low, one hand makes a sawing motion across the other. “If the slightest urge . . . If you have the slightest urge that you think might be unusual or unnatural . . . If that should happen, I want you to call me immediately. We’ll come and pick you up. Do you understand, Christopher? You won’t be hurt. It’s for your own good. For your own good.”
I’m looking at his hands. His voice says, “Do you understand? For your own good.” But his hand is sawing, and sawing, and sawing away at his fingers.
It is one week to the Sad Festival of Vampires.
In the city of Worcester, which is partially serviced by our reservoir, one day the water is turned to blood. There is no water anywhere in the northern part of the city. Faucets spit blood. Blood spatters out of spigots, splashes out of hoses to stain the bushes dark; gore begrimes stacks of greasy plates and shoots out of drinking fountains to make people gag.
Torrents of blood flow down drains and stain the gutters.
There are screams as it happens. People sobbing hysterically and grinding their bloody hands in dishtowels. People throwing up in restaurants. Sorcerers and psychics saying that it is a sign from God, an alien invasion, the anger of the Little People. I wish I could have been in Worcester.
It lasts for only an hour. Then sweet water flows. But by then, the damage is done.
The blood has clotted in the pipelines.