Gut Reaction (Challenge #138) -- PG-13
Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2012 8:54 pm
Thanks as always to my wonderful betas. You make everything better! This one is for Champagne Challenge #138, “Still Human…So Human.”
Gut Reaction
“Blood orange juice must be particularly confusing.” –Josef, What’s Left Behind
My best friend Josef can be downright scary, sometimes. And no, I’m not talking about the whole bloodsucking monster thing. He has a habit of making these off the cuff comments that hit you like a stake through the heart. Call it wisdom, call it insight, call it 400 years’ worth of backed up smart-assery. I don’t know where he gets it, but sometimes I just have to stop and let a comment sink in. Or save it to think about later.
When he made the crack about blood orange juice, it could have been another bad vampire pun. He’s certainly not above that, although you’d think at his age, he’d have made every possible joke on the subject. Apparently not.
And I don’t know how he knew—he told me emphatically that he had no interest in going back to human, and that he firmly believed there was no way back. Which made me think he’d never run across the cure that Coraline brought me. Or at least that he hadn’t used it. So—how would he know how hard it was for me, that first morning after I was cured?
Yeah, I’d gone out the night before and gotten a sample of everything I hadn’t eaten in over fifty years. And a lot of stuff I’d only heard about. Food has gotten a lot more diverse than I remember. I ate myself sick, or almost, and, trust me, there are things about that night that you don’t want to know.
But in the morning, when I woke up, I felt…I can’t even describe it. Sore and bruised, from the beating Lance had laid on me, yeah. After fifty-five years of even major injuries healing immediately, and pain being a passing inconvenience, the fact that I’d be carrying cuts and scrapes with me for days or weeks was disconcerting. Still, I was alive again. I could look in the mirror and cherish that split lip, the bruises on my face, and see them as signs that I was human. Being a vampire is like a high, of sorts, but I’ve got to tell you that nothing beats the high of a vampire becoming human again. Nothing.
And I thought, what was my favorite way to start the day, back when I was breathing? Okay, first choice isn’t possible, at the moment, but my second choice was a tall, frosty glass of fresh orange juice. I guess it’s not so uncommon now, but back in the day, one of the perks of living in California was all the fresh citrus. My folks had an orange tree in the back yard, and Mom used to send me out to pick half a dozen big ones to juice for breakfast on Saturdays.
Suddenly, I had to have orange juice, and there was no way it was coming out of a carton. Fresh-squeezed or nothing. I headed off to the nearest convenience store, looking for oranges, and damned if the only thing they had that morning were blood oranges. Seriously. The irony was not lost, but I bought a few, thinking they’d do for the moment.
So, I found myself a little later, staring at a glass full of a muddy, reddish liquid that, I’ve got to say, looked nothing like blood. Smelled nothing like it, either, even to my newly-dulled senses. Which I wasn’t complaining about, right then.
Still, despite my late-night junk food orgy, picking up that glass of orange juice, and contemplating drinking it, was odd. For so long, my body had rejected—violently—everything except blood. My hand was shaking a little, and my mouth flooded with spit. I had to swallow hard, and tell myself I could do this, that I could drink this.
How hard could it be, right? Fifty-five years of blood, and now I get to drink orange juice again.
I put the glass down and picked it up, twice, before I got it to my mouth. I finally had to close my eyes, before I could take that first swallow.
It hit me like a train. I’d never tasted anything so good, since that first drink of blood I’d had as a vamp.
And the rest of that short time I had as a human, before I gave it up, I had orange juice every morning. Fresh squeezed, and tasting like it did in my Mom’s kitchen all those years ago. But after the first morning, I avoided blood oranges.
I don’t know how he knew, but Josef was right. Some things are just too confusing.
Gut Reaction
“Blood orange juice must be particularly confusing.” –Josef, What’s Left Behind
My best friend Josef can be downright scary, sometimes. And no, I’m not talking about the whole bloodsucking monster thing. He has a habit of making these off the cuff comments that hit you like a stake through the heart. Call it wisdom, call it insight, call it 400 years’ worth of backed up smart-assery. I don’t know where he gets it, but sometimes I just have to stop and let a comment sink in. Or save it to think about later.
When he made the crack about blood orange juice, it could have been another bad vampire pun. He’s certainly not above that, although you’d think at his age, he’d have made every possible joke on the subject. Apparently not.
And I don’t know how he knew—he told me emphatically that he had no interest in going back to human, and that he firmly believed there was no way back. Which made me think he’d never run across the cure that Coraline brought me. Or at least that he hadn’t used it. So—how would he know how hard it was for me, that first morning after I was cured?
Yeah, I’d gone out the night before and gotten a sample of everything I hadn’t eaten in over fifty years. And a lot of stuff I’d only heard about. Food has gotten a lot more diverse than I remember. I ate myself sick, or almost, and, trust me, there are things about that night that you don’t want to know.
But in the morning, when I woke up, I felt…I can’t even describe it. Sore and bruised, from the beating Lance had laid on me, yeah. After fifty-five years of even major injuries healing immediately, and pain being a passing inconvenience, the fact that I’d be carrying cuts and scrapes with me for days or weeks was disconcerting. Still, I was alive again. I could look in the mirror and cherish that split lip, the bruises on my face, and see them as signs that I was human. Being a vampire is like a high, of sorts, but I’ve got to tell you that nothing beats the high of a vampire becoming human again. Nothing.
And I thought, what was my favorite way to start the day, back when I was breathing? Okay, first choice isn’t possible, at the moment, but my second choice was a tall, frosty glass of fresh orange juice. I guess it’s not so uncommon now, but back in the day, one of the perks of living in California was all the fresh citrus. My folks had an orange tree in the back yard, and Mom used to send me out to pick half a dozen big ones to juice for breakfast on Saturdays.
Suddenly, I had to have orange juice, and there was no way it was coming out of a carton. Fresh-squeezed or nothing. I headed off to the nearest convenience store, looking for oranges, and damned if the only thing they had that morning were blood oranges. Seriously. The irony was not lost, but I bought a few, thinking they’d do for the moment.
So, I found myself a little later, staring at a glass full of a muddy, reddish liquid that, I’ve got to say, looked nothing like blood. Smelled nothing like it, either, even to my newly-dulled senses. Which I wasn’t complaining about, right then.
Still, despite my late-night junk food orgy, picking up that glass of orange juice, and contemplating drinking it, was odd. For so long, my body had rejected—violently—everything except blood. My hand was shaking a little, and my mouth flooded with spit. I had to swallow hard, and tell myself I could do this, that I could drink this.
How hard could it be, right? Fifty-five years of blood, and now I get to drink orange juice again.
I put the glass down and picked it up, twice, before I got it to my mouth. I finally had to close my eyes, before I could take that first swallow.
It hit me like a train. I’d never tasted anything so good, since that first drink of blood I’d had as a vamp.
And the rest of that short time I had as a human, before I gave it up, I had orange juice every morning. Fresh squeezed, and tasting like it did in my Mom’s kitchen all those years ago. But after the first morning, I avoided blood oranges.
I don’t know how he knew, but Josef was right. Some things are just too confusing.
Mick's taste of humanity had a little of all. Relief, pain, a little trip down memory lane, excitement and hope...I am so happy he didn't even waste one thought to how long the cure would last!
at that one!
You write a fantastic Mick! 
