Sudden Dark (Chapter Three)

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The more things change, the more they remain... insane.
-Michael Fry and T. Lewis1

2

A couple of weeks later, my mom told me I was moving. I didn’t fail to notice she was talking about me singularly. I was the one moving, not her. My mom still owned a small place further in the city. I packed my stuff alone and silent.3

The place was old and little worn out, but nice. The windows had wood shutters on them that blocked out all light. I guess mom had thought of that because I doubted it was a standard feature in any home. The floors were all wood and a new alarm had been installed. “Not that you’ll need it,” Mom said. My room was spacious with a four poster bed and armoire. The living room had a large T.V. and DVD player. There was a room adjacent to it, full of books. The fridge was empty, Mom still wasn’t sure if I ate, so the kitchen had all the modern conveniences. The bathroom had no mirror and when I looked in the medicine cabinet my mom asked me if I still got my period. “No,” I said and looked at a bottle of sunscreen. “Well that must be nice,” she said with false cheerfulness. I put the bottle back. I began unpacking my stuff – everything but my novels and horror movies. I began putting away my sweaters, but thought better of it. I no longer really felt the cold. When I was finished, I wandered up to the second floor, which had three more bedrooms and another full bath. This place was big for just me, but I guess in the long run it was better than renting. Leave it to Mom to always think about good investments. There was lots of old furniture and dusty boxes. Some more books were stacked against the wall in one of the rooms. While I was walking around, Mom walked up. “What’s up?” I asked. “Sorry. Did you like your room?” She seemed too happy, too fake. “Yeah.” She looked at her watch. “I have to go to work.” I glanced at her. “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Victoria.”
She left.4

Awhile later, there was a knock at the door. When I opened it, Heath was at my doorstep. “I’m staying with you, Victoria.” I paused and then moved out of the doorway to let him in. “What about your mom?” I had to ask. He laughed. “That wasn’t really my mom. That was another vampire.” I didn’t comment. I looked around. “It’s nice,” he said. “There’s no phone or internet,” I replied. I thought of a million things in our awkward silence. I thought about painting the place and decorating.
“Why are you going to stay here?”
“To help you.”
He stared at me, I turned away.
“I’m not evil you know,” he said. “I’m not going to come in your room at night and rape you. Believe me – I have better things to do.”
“I don’t think you’re evil.”
“Know what?”
“What?”
“Don’t worry.”
“I know.”
I felt an odd sense of relief overtake me. My mother left me here. She didn’t want anything to do with me. But Heath did. “Thank you, Heath. Thank you for coming.” He stared at me again. Finally he nodded. “No problem, Victoria. I’m sorry.” I shook my head, I may have wanted him around, but I didn’t need his pity. “I’ll be right back,” he walked back out the door. I went to my new room. Moments later, I heard him trudging back into the house. When I came out he was setting down a load of luggage. “The other rooms are upstairs.” He nodded to my comment and headed back out before bringing in more bags. “Need help?” I offered. He shook his head and went up the stairs. I went back in my room and pulled out my cell phone, dialing my mom. “What is it, Victoria?” She was irritated. “I’m in the middle of something.”
“As usual, but this will only take a minute.”
“What?”
“I want to fix this place up nicer, so I want money to do that and I want the internet installed.”
“Fine. Let me go.”
“Bye.”
We hung up.5

Mom had the things I wanted done quickly. Within days I received a credit card for buying paint and décor. A week later, the internet was installed. “Victoria.” Heath knocked at the door. I opened it to him and Blake. “Blake would like to stay here. If that’s alright?” In a way, I wasn’t surprised. He was holding a duffel bag and had a rolling carrier as well. Very hippie traveler of him. He stepped forward. “Hey, Victoria.” Blake seemed extremely reserved. It wasn’t earning him any brownie points with me either. He didn’t look at me at all, just down at his feet. “Hey.” I waved my hand as if brushing something aside. “The least you could is look at me.” He mumbled something and raised his eyes to mine. “Sorry, I just…”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m sorry.”
Sure.
“So is it cool?” Blake asked. He started rocking on his heels, I almost expected him to start whistling. This seemed almost surreal. Blake asking to live in my house – the one my mom abandoned me in – as a fellow vampire and possibly as a friend. “Well, okay. Did you get kicked out? Finally tell your parents what you are?” I asked in a bored tone. I didn’t really see that as the reason, but I had to ask. “No.” Blake gestured to his ‘look’. “This was what got kicked me out. They didn’t want me looking like this and they thought I was on drugs, too.”
“I bet. Probably the vampire thing being hidden, right? I’m sorry. You want to talk about it?” I touched his arm. “No.” He pulled his arm away.
“Sorry. Just trying to be nice.”
“Well, it’s fine. I didn’t help you much when you wanted to talk, did I? Thanks for asking, but I would just rather let it go.”
“Fine, okay, sorry.” He was starting to piss me off, but I wasn’t going to kick Blake out. “Well, if you ever need to.”
“Thanks, but no. I don’t want to.”
He pushed his bags out of the way and sat in the living room. Heath watched us, like he was waiting for a physical fight to start. He cleared his throat a little and gave me a meaningful look. I chose to ignore him. “So, you have nowhere else to go?” I asked. I wasn’t prying. I knew the answer, but I just couldn’t help asking. I sat down and looked him in the eyes. “Not really. I could find somewhere else, but I’d rather stay with my own kind.”
“I never thought of it that way.” I thought I sounded stupid saying that. Normally, I assume people would want that.
“You wouldn’t. We don’t think the same.”
“Right.” Ass. “Whatever.”
I shifted in my seat. “What has Heath told you about here?”
“He said your mom gave you this place so you could be on your own. You must be happy about that.”
Be on my own. More like ditched me here. “Did he mention anything else?” Now it was Blake’s turn to shift in his seat. “No. Was there something else?” I shook my head. “She ditched me here, Blake. That’s what she really did.” Blake’s eyebrows shot up, but he stayed quiet.
“Seriously. First off, do you really think any parent would give their teenage kid a house? She couldn’t deal. Or rather she chose not to deal. Those are the bad things. The good stuff is this place is definitely mine. I can do what I want with it. I should be happy except for the fact my mom left me, saw what I turned into and ran for the hills.” I stopped. Blake didn’t say anything, just stared like he had that one night. Like I had gone insane. Finally he said, “Are you shitting me?”
Shitting him? Really? “Why would I?”
“I just can’t believe it was like that. I mean she knew what was wrong. It’s not like she thought you were on drugs or prostituting yourself out.” He stood up, feeling his own brand of anger. “No. It’s okay. Things are as they are.” I looked up at him. “Heath understands. Can’t you tell how calm he is?” I reached out to Blake. Heath gave me a roll of his eyes, but I shrugged and he did as well. “So chill out.” I rolled up the sleeves of my shirt and Blake touched my shoulder. He stayed there for a second, but then pulled back. “Alright. Cool. If that’s how you feel.”
“I do. No problems.” I turned away. “I’m surprised you can’t tell.”
“Well, you know…”
“Yes. I do.”
“So, is the offer open? Can I stay here? I won’t cause any problems.”
“Fine, but you both will have to contribute to this – our – household in order for you to live here. Make it more a home because I’m tired of living in an emotionally sterile environment. I want to learn and love – even if we are vampires.” They laughed at that. “We’re okay with that,” they replied together. “Good,” I said. “Now that’s out of the way, you can begin moving your things into a room, Blake.”
“So, we’re cool?”
“Yes. You’re the first besides Heath I’ve talked to in months. I’m happy to have you.”
Blake nodded. “I want to live here. I was actually worried you might say no, but I had nowhere else to go really.” He put his hand out. “Here’s to being housemates, Victoria.”
“Welcome home, Blake.” I shook his hand and nodded at his smiling face.6

You could say that Blake and I bonded over buckets of paint during the next few weeks. We order décor as well because I was serious about making this place into a home. Chairs, sofa, and a low coffee table were shipped to us. It was pretty nice watching the guys move furniture under my pointing finger. 7

I asked Blake about him and Heath. “What about us?” he said. “We’re good friends.”
“That’s not exactly what it looks like. There’s something different about it.”
“We’re vampires, everything is different about us.”
I told him about what I’d seen between him and Heath, which wasn’t much. Even though he denied what I insinuated, I think he was hiding something else behind his eyes. “When are you going to put these books away?” He pointed to a box of novels. I picked up a book from it, Dracula. “You think I should? They’re kind of strange to have.” Blake shrugged, “Who cares. They’re interesting. They may turn out to have some fact in them, you never know.” I turned the book over in my hand. The days and weeks went by; eventually I put the books away on a shelf. I found a way into the attic and liked to spend my time up there. I’d sit up there for hours on the dusty floor, sometimes reading and other times looking out the small window. I watched people and felt like I was no longer a part of their world. I finally re-read Dracula. I know why Blade had suggested I look at it, there did seem to be some truth locked away in its pages. I sympathized with Dracula, I felt like I understood him. “That author, Bram Stoker, must have been a vampire,” I told Heath one day. That was the day he decided Blake and I should start learning about us. “He did put some fact in there,” he pointed out. “We drink blood; we can die by chopping our heads off, or a stake to the heart.”
“Wouldn’t anyone die from those?”
“Well, aren’t you smart? Yes. We are still basically people Victoria, just different.”
“That wasn’t hard to guess.” I replied in the same mocking tone. I knew that Heath was being a bit arrogant – treating me like I was an idiot, which I guess I was. Even so, I smiled, wanting to know more. I wasn’t ever a person to care about anything, but this was about my life. Maybe what I needed was the facts to get moving again. I wondered if being immortal meant my learning curve was higher now. Heath said that when a person was changed into a vampire, the senses grow stronger because we turn into pure predator. Could becoming smarter also be a part of that? I knew some dumb predators though. I mean, how smart could a lion really be? Usually I stayed in my room or the attic in the morning and we all talked in the afternoon. The sun bothered vampires because we are visually nocturnal, but we could deal with the daylight. Heath was usually up by one in the afternoon. One day, Heath hadn’t called me down from the attic and I didn’t notice until the sun was sinking behind the city’s buildings. I decided to go downstairs. “Heath! What’s up?” Blake was the one to meet me at the bottom of the stairs. “He’s out. He had to go meet someone. Won’t be back until tomorrow.”
“I guess.” I uttered a sigh.
“We can talk, if you want.”
I didn’t really want to hang out with Blake, nothing against him personally, so I chose to go hunting instead. When I came back I got on the internet and checked out this site I had stumbled across not too long ago. This website was fun and hosted a group of people who claimed to be vampires. So far, I hadn’t posted, but I had read some interesting blogs. I even found a guy claiming to be the ‘real’ Dracula, though he stated that he was a bit miffed at how he had been portrayed in the book. How cool would it be to find other real vampires? I looked around the website, reading some blogs and forums. I wondered if the real Dracula did this sometimes too. I wished I had found some interesting people to talk to or compare notes with, but no one was very chatty on this site.
I got bored with that after a short while and decided to check out MySpace. This side had a networking feature and a keyword search. I decided to try and see if anyone had themselves down as a vampire. I added a few more photos, descriptions, and interests. I started searching. I ended up with a ton of profiles, so I decided to randomly select. One profile had their handle as HappyLv, which seemed odd for a vampire, but maybe just crazy enough to be one. She ended up being a vampire fiction fan. I checked out a few other ones, but they didn’t turn up anything that led me to believe they were really fellow vampires. 8