Joe Vampire

POST 6



And So It Began…

Now that Michelle’s friend Don had spent an evening chewing on my neck, there was a very real possibility that I would come down with something nasty in addition to still feeling blasted from the sake. The vampire thing was creepy enough without needing a true supernatural element. I’ve seen lurid investigations on Friday night news programs about people who fill some sort of perceived leak in their energy by drinking the blood of others. They wear tiny top hats and have fang-shaped dental implants, and give themselves names like Mephistopheles Nevermore and Morticia Sucksalot.

Okay… I made those up. I don’t remember what their names were.

But it was a real news story.

I figured Don was one of these weirdos, someone who might turn up on To Catch a Predator: Vampire Edition. I also assumed that this wasn’t his first rodeo, so who knows what kinds of brain-eating microbes might be rampantly reproducing in his slobber. He hadn’t exactly looked like a testament to modern hygiene. I couldn’t help but wonder where else on my body he might have put his bacteria-laden pie hole while I was passed out. It may have been due to the gradual realization throughout the day of these and other disturbing facts about my so-called date, but I ended up feeling more and more shitty as time passed. I finally checked out early and went home to sleep, hoping it was just the remains of the hangover or an ensuing battle with bad fish from the sushi bar. Shortly afterward, I got my first taste of Vampire Shit.

That so doesn’t sound how it’s supposed to.

I took to the couch and only left to hit the bathroom, waiting until the very last minute to make the dash. Sometimes the delay didn’t pay off. My carpet paid the price on those occasions. Mind you, at the time I really thought I was only fighting off a bastard virus, something Nyquil couldn’t quite take the edges off of. All of my best intentions of heading to an urgent care kept falling by the wayside whenever the urge to shit liquid took over my body. Honestly, it was easy to mistake this sickness for something seasonal; the whole thing felt akin to the worst flu imaginable, something I would have gauged to be beyond bird flu and swine flu combined. It seemed like nature somehow skipped right over the rest of the farm and shot straight to giraffe or elephant flu, or maybe orangutan. In my soul-rotting delirium I couldn’t quite figure out how Don would have had contact with any of those creatures unless he had recently returned from an animal fetish sex safari. But my memory of the night was riddled with holes, and the guy was pretty gross, so nothing could be ruled out at that point. I never for one second thought I was actually becoming a vampire, though.

Okay… maybe I did. Just for a second, though.

But we’ve already discussed that.

Onward.

The symptoms came one by one in a spiteful, continuous parade – first the arctic nerve chills, then joint-killing body aches, followed by a roiling fever, swells of nausea, showers of sweat, and ultimately the never-ending spigot of water poop. On day two, when I realized it wasn’t going to be a short-term deal, I gave in and let it take me. With as much repulsive bathroom agony as I was in, I was sure the next day would be the pinnacle and everything would be on the upswing from there on out. But it just kept getting worse. I wondered if I wasn’t actually dying. It seemed like everything was draining from me, more than just the fluids I was trying to drink. And then visions came, nightmarish scenes featuring me burning alive, falling endlessly through blackened skies, smashing into pieces as I finally hit the ground. At one point I could have sworn that I – or some version of me – had literally climbed the wall, like my tortured soul had escaped my aching flesh and was staring back at me in pity from my popcorn ceiling. I had no fight left by then, and I figured that this must be the end of me. And my DVR was full of stuff I hadn’t watched yet.

Damn.

The doorbell woke me from my dying.

It was Hube, my boy, stopping by to make sure I was okay and rouse me from my demise. If there’s anyone in the world more eager than me to please people, it’s Hube. He makes me look like a heartless shit. To tell the truth, I was a little surprised that he hadn’t made contact earlier. “Dude, what’s the deal? You haven’t answered your phone in forever, voicemail’s full, no Facebook posts… people at work are flipping out.”

I saw through the door as he closed it that it was night. He kept a little distance, not sure if I was still contagious. And also, I smelled like an ass taco filled with burning hair. So I understood. “Sorry… didn’t mean to worry you,” I said, and told him I’d been too sick to move let alone pick up a phone or get online. He told me that Human Resources was hot to fire me for not showing up and not calling, but he begged them off by saying I had a doctor’s note that I’d fax them as soon as I could. Like I’m twelve and missed gym class. Seeing as how I’d filled in my boss on Monday before I left, I was surprised they were taking this so seriously. Three days out sick wasn’t such a big deal. Then Hube told me I had been MIA for a total of nine days.

Nine, not three.

That orangutan flu really messes with your head.

I told him I was doing much better now, though I wasn’t sure how true it was. The symptoms had died down for the most part, and I was more starving than anything at that point. Hube’s eyes seemed to see through my bullshit, as if however I looked was way more convincing than my words. “Band practice tonight,” he said cautiously, “only if you’re up for it. Lazer’s a little ripped that you’ve missed the last two, but I told him you were in pretty bad shape.” See what I mean? That’s Hube in a nutshell: always covering for me and making me look more together than I am.

Lazer, on the other hand, is just a prick.

I said I was in, and he offered to drive, so I went to wash the puke out of my hair and put on real clothes. When I caught myself in the mirror and saw what Hube must have seen, I felt the nausea return. My skin wasn’t just sallow or pale; it was gray, like all the blood in me had gone still. My eyes were sunken and lifeless, and my face was drawn, which was reasonable since apparently I hadn’t eaten in more than a week. The hickey-bite had cleared up for the most part, having mellowed down to a greenish-yellow stain. I could now see in the center what the bloody black bruise had concealed: a set of teeth marks – not two little holes like you see on TV when someone is bitten by a vampire, but a whole sloppy double horseshoe of red scabs with two super-punctures on either side of the top half, as if Don had tried to take a proper chunk out of me. Whatever disease he gave me seemed to be on its way out, though, and at least I could function again. I walked out and asked Hube how I looked. “Slightly less dead than you did a minute ago. But only slightly.” To be honest, I only felt slightly less dead, too. He pointed to the bite. “I take it your little encounter with Michelle’s friend was eventful.”

"You have no idea," I told him, and I left it at that.