Promise PG-13 (Challenge #103)
Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 8:01 pm
Disclaimer: The usual, don't own anything.
My take on Champagne Challenge #103 "He's a vampire!"
Promise
I shot a man three days ago. Shot and killed him. I’d never shot at a human being before. It was probably an accident that I hit him at all—I certainly wasn’t aiming for his neck. I just knew I had to stop him, before he killed Mick.
It was awful, more awful than I could have imagined. I’d seen bodies before, after all, I’ve been doing reports from crime scenes for a long time now. And I guess I knew how much blood there is in a body, but somehow it’s different when you see it spraying out from a fresh wound, and you know you caused it. It wasn’t self-defense, exactly, but they’ll say it was justifiable. Lee Jay was standing over Mick—holding a blowtorch just inches away from his face...I had to do something. So I squeezed the trigger, like the instructor at the shooting range always said, and the gun went off.
It’s not like I was voted “Most likely to shoot a man” in my high school yearbook, or anything.
And you’d think, really, that killing a homicidal ex-con to save someone’s life might be the most stunning thing that would happen in the space of one night. I thought I’d get a chance to wrap my brain around that, before anything else happened.
But I was worried about Mick. I knew he’d been hurt, and somehow in all the confusion once the police got there, he slipped away. I should have gone to him as soon as Lee Jay went down, and I meant to, but I was standing there, and I had the oddest flashes of what happened to me when I was four. I could see the woman in white, and the fire, and the man who saved me, and it was like all those dreams I’d had over the years. Maybe it was Mick, lying on the floor, cringing away from that flame. Maybe it was the trauma of the whole thing. But for awhile, after the gun went off, I just stood and stared stupidly at Lee Jay’s body, and Mick—poor wounded Mick—crawled away and disappeared.
Later, when my consciousness started functioning again, I knew I had to find him, I had to make sure he was all right. Why? Hey, if I’m willing to shoot someone to save their life, I’m interested enough to want to check up on them afterward.
I didn’t really expect to find him at his loft, but it seemed like the place to start. And then, when I got there, I could see from the elevator that his door was standing open. That was another surprise, and it scared me a little. From what I’d seen, Mick was anything but careless.
I got really worried when I saw that, and before I could stop and think about it, I was running for the doorway. I remember skidding to a stop just inside the door.
He was there, huddled on the floor, back to me…I could see the holes in the shoulder of his coat, the fabric shiny with blood around them. Yet he didn’t act somehow like I expected, either. There had been so many things that didn’t add up, so many oddities. When he heard me in the door, he hunched down further, and when I asked if he was all right, all he said was “Please leave.” He wouldn’t look at me.
I babbled something…I forget what, exactly, and circled around, trying to get a good look at him. He tried to hide, tried to keep me from seeing him. His hair was hanging in greasy strings, and he was almost unrecognizable. He was twitching and clutching a bag of something, some liquid. I’d done a story once that involved going into one of the worst parts of town, talking to strung-out junkies, and this reminded me of that.
“Please don’t look at me.” There was so much pain and shame in his voice, and he was still trying to hide. Maybe I should have listened, maybe I should have walked away like he wanted me to. Then again, he probably should have known me better than that. I remember thinking, what is he trying to hide, why is he trying to hide from me? It hadn’t been that long since we parted at the warehouse. What could have happened to him, to cause this?
That’s when he looked up, and I saw those silver eyes for the first time, saw the blood drying on his chin, realized what was in the plastic bag he was clutching like a lifeline. And before the pain in those eyes could register, the words just tumbled out of my mouth. Words I regretted before they were completely spoken.
“What are you?”
I don’t think I can ever forget the look on his face when he replied.
“I’m a vampire.”
I’M A VAMPIRE!? Just stop and let that one sink in for a minute. And if that’s not enough to make a girl run screaming into the morning light, I don’t know what is.
I didn’t, though. I stood there in shock, hand still over my mouth. I could almost feel the questions start forming in my brain, packs of them jostling to get to my tongue and be first out the gate. Ready to go live with camera and lights, on a story I could never tell. But I didn’t start asking questions, not then. For once, I guess shock was a good thing.
My feet really turned into the first response team. They moved me toward the door, and as I went, my brain clicked into motion again. So when I got to the door, instead of going on through it, and back into the reality I used to know, I stopped. Closed it softly. I didn’t think he wanted anyone else wandering in and discovering what he’d obviously been keeping very secret.
Meanwhile, little odds and ends of pieces were falling together in my head. All the stuff that didn’t add up. The picture in Julia’s book, the way he seemed to be able to get places faster than he should be, Bobby Desmond’s statements that contradicted what Mick had told me. And all the things Mick had been reluctant to tell me….it was all making, not sense, there’s no way someone tells you they’re a fictional monster and it makes sense, but nevertheless, it did.
When I turned around, he’d huddled down further on the floor. I knew he thought I’d left. The twitching in his shoulders was worse. He looked…desolate.
Maybe I should have been afraid. After all, I’d never read anything about vampires that didn’t say they were (or would be, if they existed, of course) anything but dangerous, possibly deadly. But this was Mick, for heaven’s sakes. If he was what he said…and those eyes had been really convincing…he’d had lots of chances to hurt me. And I didn’t think he would. I don’t know why, I just couldn’t see it.
Right then, he was obviously hurt, and the only question I let out of my mouth was, “Mick, how can I help?”
He didn’t turn around and look, he just fisted his hands and put them over his eyes. He still had that bag of blood in one hand, but I think he’d forgotten it. “You can’t,” he said. “No one can.”
Okay, that pissed me off. So I pointed out that he didn’t wander off and leave me, when that insane serial killer of a grad student had me. That he didn’t leave Julia to get killed by Lee Jay.
In answer, he told me to go again. “I can take care of myself,” he said. “Just leave. Please.”
“Yeah,” I told him. “Not when you’re hurt.” There was a little voice in the back of my head that kept saying it had to be a delusion, that whatever he had in those plastic bags, couldn’t be blood. The other little voice told me that with a back full of buckshot—and I’d heard the blasts as I ran into the warehouse—he wouldn’t have been able to get back to his apartment. So I walked over closer, and picked up a bag, which was clearly labeled as human blood, type A+, and knelt down beside him. “You were drinking this,” I said, “does it help?”
He peered up over his fists at me, then shot a hand out and grabbed the bag from me. I didn’t know anyone could move that fast. “Yes,” he mumbled, “it helps.” There was a long pause, like he was trying to gather his thoughts. “But I can’t drink in front of you, Beth.”
There’s not much more to tell, I guess. I hated to leave him like that, but he swore he had someone coming by to help—a friend—and he’d be okay. I offered to wait for his friend to arrive, and that sent him into more of a spin.
So I left. What else could I do? He swore he’d call me, let me know he was all right. But it’s been three days, and no word. If I don’t hear from him today, I’m going over there. Tonight. And then, we’re going to talk. That’s a promise.
My take on Champagne Challenge #103 "He's a vampire!"
Promise
I shot a man three days ago. Shot and killed him. I’d never shot at a human being before. It was probably an accident that I hit him at all—I certainly wasn’t aiming for his neck. I just knew I had to stop him, before he killed Mick.
It was awful, more awful than I could have imagined. I’d seen bodies before, after all, I’ve been doing reports from crime scenes for a long time now. And I guess I knew how much blood there is in a body, but somehow it’s different when you see it spraying out from a fresh wound, and you know you caused it. It wasn’t self-defense, exactly, but they’ll say it was justifiable. Lee Jay was standing over Mick—holding a blowtorch just inches away from his face...I had to do something. So I squeezed the trigger, like the instructor at the shooting range always said, and the gun went off.
It’s not like I was voted “Most likely to shoot a man” in my high school yearbook, or anything.
And you’d think, really, that killing a homicidal ex-con to save someone’s life might be the most stunning thing that would happen in the space of one night. I thought I’d get a chance to wrap my brain around that, before anything else happened.
But I was worried about Mick. I knew he’d been hurt, and somehow in all the confusion once the police got there, he slipped away. I should have gone to him as soon as Lee Jay went down, and I meant to, but I was standing there, and I had the oddest flashes of what happened to me when I was four. I could see the woman in white, and the fire, and the man who saved me, and it was like all those dreams I’d had over the years. Maybe it was Mick, lying on the floor, cringing away from that flame. Maybe it was the trauma of the whole thing. But for awhile, after the gun went off, I just stood and stared stupidly at Lee Jay’s body, and Mick—poor wounded Mick—crawled away and disappeared.
Later, when my consciousness started functioning again, I knew I had to find him, I had to make sure he was all right. Why? Hey, if I’m willing to shoot someone to save their life, I’m interested enough to want to check up on them afterward.
I didn’t really expect to find him at his loft, but it seemed like the place to start. And then, when I got there, I could see from the elevator that his door was standing open. That was another surprise, and it scared me a little. From what I’d seen, Mick was anything but careless.
I got really worried when I saw that, and before I could stop and think about it, I was running for the doorway. I remember skidding to a stop just inside the door.
He was there, huddled on the floor, back to me…I could see the holes in the shoulder of his coat, the fabric shiny with blood around them. Yet he didn’t act somehow like I expected, either. There had been so many things that didn’t add up, so many oddities. When he heard me in the door, he hunched down further, and when I asked if he was all right, all he said was “Please leave.” He wouldn’t look at me.
I babbled something…I forget what, exactly, and circled around, trying to get a good look at him. He tried to hide, tried to keep me from seeing him. His hair was hanging in greasy strings, and he was almost unrecognizable. He was twitching and clutching a bag of something, some liquid. I’d done a story once that involved going into one of the worst parts of town, talking to strung-out junkies, and this reminded me of that.
“Please don’t look at me.” There was so much pain and shame in his voice, and he was still trying to hide. Maybe I should have listened, maybe I should have walked away like he wanted me to. Then again, he probably should have known me better than that. I remember thinking, what is he trying to hide, why is he trying to hide from me? It hadn’t been that long since we parted at the warehouse. What could have happened to him, to cause this?
That’s when he looked up, and I saw those silver eyes for the first time, saw the blood drying on his chin, realized what was in the plastic bag he was clutching like a lifeline. And before the pain in those eyes could register, the words just tumbled out of my mouth. Words I regretted before they were completely spoken.
“What are you?”
I don’t think I can ever forget the look on his face when he replied.
“I’m a vampire.”
I’M A VAMPIRE!? Just stop and let that one sink in for a minute. And if that’s not enough to make a girl run screaming into the morning light, I don’t know what is.
I didn’t, though. I stood there in shock, hand still over my mouth. I could almost feel the questions start forming in my brain, packs of them jostling to get to my tongue and be first out the gate. Ready to go live with camera and lights, on a story I could never tell. But I didn’t start asking questions, not then. For once, I guess shock was a good thing.
My feet really turned into the first response team. They moved me toward the door, and as I went, my brain clicked into motion again. So when I got to the door, instead of going on through it, and back into the reality I used to know, I stopped. Closed it softly. I didn’t think he wanted anyone else wandering in and discovering what he’d obviously been keeping very secret.
Meanwhile, little odds and ends of pieces were falling together in my head. All the stuff that didn’t add up. The picture in Julia’s book, the way he seemed to be able to get places faster than he should be, Bobby Desmond’s statements that contradicted what Mick had told me. And all the things Mick had been reluctant to tell me….it was all making, not sense, there’s no way someone tells you they’re a fictional monster and it makes sense, but nevertheless, it did.
When I turned around, he’d huddled down further on the floor. I knew he thought I’d left. The twitching in his shoulders was worse. He looked…desolate.
Maybe I should have been afraid. After all, I’d never read anything about vampires that didn’t say they were (or would be, if they existed, of course) anything but dangerous, possibly deadly. But this was Mick, for heaven’s sakes. If he was what he said…and those eyes had been really convincing…he’d had lots of chances to hurt me. And I didn’t think he would. I don’t know why, I just couldn’t see it.
Right then, he was obviously hurt, and the only question I let out of my mouth was, “Mick, how can I help?”
He didn’t turn around and look, he just fisted his hands and put them over his eyes. He still had that bag of blood in one hand, but I think he’d forgotten it. “You can’t,” he said. “No one can.”
Okay, that pissed me off. So I pointed out that he didn’t wander off and leave me, when that insane serial killer of a grad student had me. That he didn’t leave Julia to get killed by Lee Jay.
In answer, he told me to go again. “I can take care of myself,” he said. “Just leave. Please.”
“Yeah,” I told him. “Not when you’re hurt.” There was a little voice in the back of my head that kept saying it had to be a delusion, that whatever he had in those plastic bags, couldn’t be blood. The other little voice told me that with a back full of buckshot—and I’d heard the blasts as I ran into the warehouse—he wouldn’t have been able to get back to his apartment. So I walked over closer, and picked up a bag, which was clearly labeled as human blood, type A+, and knelt down beside him. “You were drinking this,” I said, “does it help?”
He peered up over his fists at me, then shot a hand out and grabbed the bag from me. I didn’t know anyone could move that fast. “Yes,” he mumbled, “it helps.” There was a long pause, like he was trying to gather his thoughts. “But I can’t drink in front of you, Beth.”
There’s not much more to tell, I guess. I hated to leave him like that, but he swore he had someone coming by to help—a friend—and he’d be okay. I offered to wait for his friend to arrive, and that sent him into more of a spin.
So I left. What else could I do? He swore he’d call me, let me know he was all right. But it’s been three days, and no word. If I don’t hear from him today, I’m going over there. Tonight. And then, we’re going to talk. That’s a promise.