Thirsty - M. T. Anderson [61]
I am ready to pounce. Her neck is spread out, her arms, her chest — I want to feed on her. I want to kill her. I back away. I run back toward the fairground, screaming petulantly, “No! No! No! Oh, thit, thit, thit, thit, thit!”
Back through the crowds of screaming teens, back through the teeming maze of stalls.
“Chris!” she calls.
But I am all alone; I know that now. I am all alone with the Forces of Darkness ranged against me.
I lope down the littered aisles, wild with longings.
Lolli — I am thirsty; and she is evil. Kill two birds with one stone. That is my plan: Kill two birds with one stone. Drink Lolli’s blood. I will drink Lolli’s blood to stay alive.
As I run on, the thoroughfares are empty, the fairground air dank with chill. Something has happened. Now no one smiles in the sweet-smelling stable decay of the tents and tarps; a few fat faces gawk as I stumble past stalls; and they turn and talk.
I notice now that grandparents grimly grab their sticky charges as I hurtle past and on and on, past the narrowed eyes of lone fair-folk, leaning against their machines — the ferris wheel deserted, the teacups drained to the dregs — past a gaggle of girls, their limbs ripe and red; past a cluster of couples holding babies (sacks of blood as succulent as grapes) — I am thirsty; she is evil — kill two birds with one stone — I tear through the fair, gasping for breath, greedy for gore, I sprint across the lawn to the Rigozzis’, stumble up the steps, almost crowing for the kill . . .
And silence greets me.
The house blares with light, but there is no sound. There is no sound but the agitation of crickets that have seen things.
The door is ajar.
I slip in.
The music is off. Overturned beer cups drool on the carpeted stairs.
Something is wrong.
I step gingerly into the living room. The stereo is on, but the CD player mute. No one is there to listen. Paul’s camcorder lies crumpled and kicked on the floor. Chairs are overturned; the table where Lolli danced and bucked is broken; and I look up and see, splattered across the wall, the stains where a head with blood-wet hair slammed down and slid.
Carefully, I approach the blotch. It is already beginning to dry.
The beer keg drips in the silence.
Plick. Plick. Plick. Plick.
I examine the first impact where the head must have hit, the trail where it smeared down to the baseboard.
Plick. Plick. Plick.
The sprinkled droplets are drying to black.
Plick. Plick.
“This is not a good party.”
I whip around; I stagger backward. The voice is coming from the other side of a sofa turned away from me. Carefully, I approach. Some sophomore stoner sits there, staring vacantly away from me. I can tell at a glance that he is baked. He looks tiny slumped on the sofa, lost in a pool of his own huge clothes.
“Who is that there?” he asks. “Knock-knock. Knock-knock!”
“No one,” I whisper. “No one thpecial.”
I back away to the wall.
I draw my lips together. I crouch down so I’m below his line of sight. I’m hunkered next to the wall, ready to sprint.
“Man,” he says. “Ma-ha-ha-ha-han.” He sighs. “Ma-ha-ha-ha-han.”
“What happened?” I ask, almost in a whisper.
For a minute, he just sits there, still staring in the opposite direction. I can no longer see him over the back of the sofa. “This . . . She didn’t show up on film. She. Pete Gallagher. He. You know Pete?”
I want to get him talking. “I know Pete,” I say. “What happened?”
Carefully, watching the back of the sofa, I lean and put my cheek against the wall. I stick my tongue out and begin licking the blood.
“Man, ma-ha-ha-ha-han.” I hear him shift slightly. “He was taking this video, you know. There was this, and it, this guy with her. He started to. You know. Beat out of, I mean, the crap out of Pete. The crap.”
I’m crazed and nervous in the quiet, just listening to the monotone of his idiot voice over the distant crickets through the open door. I press my cheek closer to the wall and keep lapping silently at the salty scum.
“They started to punch at first. Then it turned into this whole big fight.