Chapter V - Plan

Although the world had been very cruel to me, or that was how I saw it, it finally gave me some relief. Charlie left me at the bathroom door with a bundle of clothes and a cheery smile. She also explained which shampoos and conditioners and such I could use, but the words went over my head.

I wouldn’t be able to read the labels on the bottles anyway. It would have been much more useful if she referenced which colour these names were printed in, or which shape of bottle they were put on, but the door closed before I could say anything.

There was a small bolt on it. Before doing anything, I put the clothes on the closed toilet seat and drew across the bolt, locking myself in.

‘Locking’ seemed like a harsh term for it. It almost made it seem like I was about to do something awful, like drugs or something like that. But in a house full of vampires, I needed the privacy, and I needed some secure knowledge of that privacy. The bolt was just personified security.

Well, I guess it was physical security as well. If Sai decided to try and break into the bathroom, somehow getting past the dozens of vampires roaming around the house, then the bolt… The bolt probably wouldn’t do much, actually.

How could a little bar of metal stop a ‘second generation’ vampire breaking down a simple wooden door?

I didn’t need to think about any of that. Shaking my head, I turned around and faced the bathroom. It was a small room, almost cramped, with a bath/shower combination taking up most of the room. A toilet sat next to it, with a tiny frosted window in the wall above it giving the room some light. Moonlight, I guessed, although the perpetually electric-lit house made knowing the time difficult without a phone, watch or clock.

I had none of those. Idly, I wondered if they covered the small window during the day. It was only the size of a letterbox and didn’t even appear to open. Maybe the frosted glass meant that the light which filtered through it wasn’t deadly—there was so much that I didn’t know about vampires, so it could’ve been true.

There was a lot that I was afraid to learn about vampires, as well, but I knew I’d have to face everything eventually. At that point in time, though, even looking at my red eyes in the mirror was terrifying.

They weren’t mine. Yet, they had to be. Seeing the endless plaits which Charlie put in my hair brought a slight smile to my face, but it dropped immediately.

The smile revealed two prominent fangs which someone had stuck in my teeth. They had to be someone else’s doing. I’d never had canines like that before.

Giant, sharp, pointed things. The teeth of a hunter, or a killer. Not me. Not a pasty-faced teenager who didn’t belong anywhere. I just drifted around and tried to survive. I didn’t kill people! I didn’t kill anything!

I might’ve killed a few flies. Accidentally. But that didn’t matter. It especially didn’t matter when I myself had been killed, which must’ve made up for any of my sins.

Ha, sins. I was talking like a person who held onto religion for longer than one cold night when I would’ve believed in anything. Sometimes, I wished I could believe in something consistently. It would be nice to blame everything that went wrong in my life on someone else.

No, no, I was being serious. Some sort of greater being could’ve brought me comfort, if I didn’t have the knowledge that vampires and ghouls and who knew what else roamed around the world. The higher being would probably turn out to be a blood-sucking monster.

Just like the blood-sucking monster I’d been turned into.

Shaking my head, I looked away from the mirror and towards the controls for the shower. Suddenly, they appeared to be very complicated. There were three different dials on a white plastic box, then some buttons at both the bottom and the top of the dials.

How many different settings did you need for a stream of water coming out of a shower head? I wanted to roll my eyes, but I at once didn’t see the point in it and didn’t want to use my new, monstrous eyes.

That was a little ridiculous, since I was using them at that very moment to survey the stupidly-complicated shower controls, but the thought remained in my mind. I was building up a thick pit of dark sludge in there. It was filled with ideas and thoughts which I didn’t want to consciously think about, but couldn’t help holding onto.

Most of them related to my new state as a supernatural being. I still wanted it to all be a horrific nightmare. Some sort of fever dream. I’d take a coma, to be honest.

But it couldn’t be. I knew what reality felt like. Reaching over and fiddling with the dials, I took the time to feel the plastic with my fingers. Real. Crisp and vivid. This couldn’t be a dream.

Plastic may have been boring, and feeling it may have had no point to it, but the sensation reminded me of real life. Unfortunately, as crazy as it had become, this was my new reality.

I could change it, though.

That thought was a little unsettling. I looked up at the shower head, trying out different dials and buttons. One button lit up a red light and prompted freezing cold water to jet out of the shower head. Content with that discovery, I automatically looked for the temperature settings.

Some water splashed against my hand. Shocked, I left my arm in that exact position, feeling the jet against my skin. I could feel the water. I felt the pressure on my flesh, although it seemed hardened and new and somewhat unknown to me.

The temperature, however, was another story. I remembered cold showers. I remembered flinching from the frozen streams of water and nearly crying at the prospect of standing there with goosebumps on my arms and lukewarm at best water running down my body for even five minutes.

This couldn’t be the same cold. I knew it was cold, but it didn’t feel cruel like the cold showers of my childhood. There was something which wasn’t entirely warm about it, but definitely not cold either.

I was rambling. I removed my hand from the water and began to pull my clothes off, sadness entering my mind as I realised how the woman had ruined them. She’d torn at them like a mad thing—like a wild animal.

Could vampires not feel temperature? No, no, that couldn’t be it. I knew the water was cold. As I turned back to the shower and messed with the dials again, I could sense the slowly warming up water. It wasn’t an issue of detection.

Instead, temperature appeared to have no negative effect on me. Letting my arm glide into the stream of now-hot water, I enjoyed the heat. It still felt good to have hot water… but it didn’t feel bad to have cold water either. I could choose comfort, but the other side of comfort wasn’t discomfort. It was just neutrality.

Odd. Not the most startling discovery I’d made recently, but it was up there. Disregarding it, I stepped into the shower and closed my eyes, soaking up the comforting heat. An image on the back of my eyes revealed itself to me: various red strings, curling around. I paid them no mind.

The shower’s pressure on my shoulders and back felt like the hug of a friend, although I’d never known its touch before.

I was romanticising shower water. That probably meant that it was about time to stop thinking. Trying to enter a blank state of mind, I let my head lean back in the water and suddenly remembered the intricate braids which Charlie had laboured over.

A pink shower cap winked at me from the side of the sink.

Fate cannot be concrete, destiny cannot be stone

“I’m really sorry, Charlie.”

“It’s fine, Kass! Honest!”

I’d been saying the same thing for the past five minutes. Charlie’s never-ending optimism made it worse, if I was being honest, because I’d spoiled the hairdo which she spent so long on but she just smiled at me. Like a friend.

Was I having more issues with humanising them?

No, this was just plain-old human guilt. She did a nice thing for me. No matter if she was a vampire or not, it was a nice gesture.

Sat on her sofa in the room I now shared with Charlie and Skye, I tried not to flinch as Charlie took my hand. She sat next to me, while Skye sprawled across her own sofa, eyes focused on a phone screen. In another life, envy might’ve bit at my brain at the sight of the casual use of technology which I’d never been able to experience.

Smartphones cost money. Money was something neither me nor my mum had ever had. Well, my mum must’ve got some money from somewhere, but it wasn’t spent on luxuries like phones.

“I can redo them, or we can try a different style,” Charlie offered, squeezing my hand. If I had to sum up the two girls with only one word for each of them, Charlie would be ‘friendly’ and Skye would be ‘calm’.

It was like the difference between a dog and a cat, I realised, needing to suppress a chuckle at that thought. I disguised it as a smile and a sound of agreement, which didn’t really work for a question which gave me two different options to choose from.

“The same? That’s fine!” Apparently, though, my intent didn’t matter. Charlie could take any response and run with it. “Your hair’ll be super curly when we take them out, too!”

“Won’t that make them harder to braid again?” Skye asked sceptically from the other side of the room. “And she’ll look ridiculous if Teddy wants to take her out hunting when you’re in the middle of doing fancy plaits. Half her hair will be up and half of it will be down.”

“They’re not that fancy!” Charlie protested. “I bet I can do them really quickly.”

“You can undo them,” Skye said slowly, “and then redo them, ‘quickly’?”

“Yeah.” Sticking her tongue out at Skye, Charlie turned to me and smiled reassuringly. I didn’t feel very reassured.

Firstly, because I still felt bad about me ruining the plaits she did in the shower. But secondly, the mention of hunting sent a shiver up and down my spine, then up and down it again, then through every limb in my body.

Hunting meant killing.

Hunting meant murder.

Hunting meant becoming the monster which Sai turned me into.

Hunting meant joining the rest of the vampires in this house in their undead tormenting of Dreswell.

Sure, I’d never actually believed in vampires before I was forcibly turned into one. There were no news stories about dead people with holes in their necks or mass missing people reports. But they had to be having some sort of impact on the city!

They were killing people to sustain themselves. That meant that people had to die and disappear from somewhere. Even if they only chose people who wouldn’t be noticed—homeless people just like me when I was a human, I realised with a shudder—those people would run out eventually.

I didn’t understand how vampires could ever secretly live within any civilisation. They had to be discovered at some point. Death left a trail of blood and bodies, or absences. They killed must have killed children, parents, grandparents…

It made me sick to even think about it. But the sickness continued to writhe inside me as I remembered that I was part of the problem. In order to survive, I would need to ‘hunt’ at some point. I would need to kill.

I didn’t want to. But I didn’t know if I could avoid it.

To breathe live air with dead lungs

After merely half an hour, Charlie had my hair back in the plaits. I was impressed. Admiring her work in the vanity table’s mirror, I tried to enjoy this small moment of calm. But it didn’t last long. Nothing could, in this twisted world.

All of a sudden, I was struck with the desire to leave. To flee. To escape. To run and run and run and never look back. I was sure that I would’ve turned pale if I could, but the reflection which stared back at me in the mirror was already paper-white.

That wasn’t a vampire thing, though. I knew that from everyone else I’d seen so far. I guessed I must have looked horribly ill as a human, as well.

But those thoughts couldn’t distract me. The will to get out of that house filled with the undead was overpowering. It took every bit of strength in my body to keep myself still as I turned my head to face Charlie.

“Is it still dark, d’you think?” I asked, not wanting to give myself away just yet.

I needed to sound rational—desperateness was a red flag, and I had no doubt that these vampires would pick up on it immediately. Caution would guide me to whatever insane action I was going to take. I already knew it would be insane from the strength of the trembling in my veins, which could’ve been adrenaline, fear or something else entirely.

All I knew was that it wasn’t my pulse. That was in my leg at that moment, travelling slowly downwards towards my knee and then my ankle. It was like some sort of slug, dragging my blood or venom or whatever was in my veins around my body.

“It’s only two in the morning,” Skye responded helpfully, looking up from her phone. “Getting hungry?”

“No, no,” I said quickly, trying to shut down that line of thought before it could delve even deeper into my mind and poison my reason further. “Just wanted some air. Kinda ironic, I guess.”

“You want a breather, but can’t breathe,” Skye smiled. “I understand. Charlie, take her outside for a bit.”

“Why the heck am I doing everything? Not that I mind,” Charlie added hastily. “But you’re shoving a lot of responsibilities onto me, y’know.”

“I’m giving you the opportunity to bond.” Her explanation didn’t make much sense to me, but I didn’t mind. I was focused on other things.

Charlie eventually agreed to take me outside. I stood up, meekly following her to the door with a bowed head. Caution. Carefulness. I had to make sure that I appeared innocent until I… Well, I was planning to run. I didn’t know how well that would go, but it felt right.

“All the adults smoke outside the front of the house—don’t ask me, I don’t know, it seems stupid but I guess we’re dead anyway,” Charlie laughed. “We’ll just pop out with them for a few minutes.”

Other vampires would be outside. That didn’t sound good for my plans. But I had to keep going through with my plan, whether I liked it or not. Charlie opened the bedroom door and we both walked out onto the landing, leaving Skye to sit on her sofa and scroll through her phone.

I didn’t trust vampires. But as long as Charlie got me out of that house, I would follow her wherever she took me.