Chomp

It was still dark by the time I snuck through the door. Other than the hum of the fridge, water moving through the pipes, and the odd car passing by, the house was filled with a stagnant silence.

The kitchen had been scrubbed down with Bryan’s favourite lemon cleaner mere hours ago, but I could still smell the faint remnants of some sort of pasta dish. My stomach clenched angrily, reminding me just how hungry I was, but my eyelids seemed to feel like they weighed a ton.

The constant struggle of a teenager: should I eat, or should I sleep?

In the morning, Tanya and Bryan bustled about the kitchen, getting ready to start the day as I descended the stairs. The smell of bacon hung about the air, salty mixing with the sweet smell of maple from both the sausage and pancakes that Bryan was minding on the stove.

He had his breakfast apron on, the one with the happy cartoon bacon with a ridiculous smile on its face. Tanya wore one of her pinstripe suits in place of her usual blouse and pencil skirt; she probably had a meeting.

“Morning, sweetie! How was your sleep?” she chirped merrily, looking over the newspaper she was reading. The headline read ’Mayor in Dispose’ with an equally unnerving cutline that explained; ’Schizophrenic diagnosis of raving man unconfirmed by doctors, strongly urged by family.’

“Hopefully better than the mayor’s…” I murmured cautiously.

She snickered and went back to looking at the paper. “I should hope so!”

Her happy tone made me uncomfortable; it made me feel ill. I looked at Bryan to see if he was equally unfazed. He winked at me as he tossed a perfectly round pancake up in the air with a spatula.

Neither of them wanted to bring up yesterday; they knew the behaviour was inexcusable, but they were too afraid to say anything.

It was like their anniversary when I was eight all over again.

I had only been with them for a year, so I was still picking up on general etiquette, and they were still learning how to cope with a child with ’special needs.’ They had referred to it like that for the first while, hoping that what I had—what I was—was easily explained like Asperger’s or some sort of psychosis.

The only one thing they were thankful for was my independence. Despite my age, Tanya and Bryan had felt comfortable leaving me alone for long periods of time. They knew I understood not to open the doors for strangers, to use the stove while they weren’t home, and to never let anyone know I was alone.

So it seemed like an easy decision to leave me alone for the night while they celebrated their anniversary. It was longer than they had ever left me before, but not by much; if I got lonely, there was always Bosco.

Despite being a German Shepard raised on a farm, Bosco was more family pet and protector than work-dog. His deep barks were enough to prevent curious thieves, but he was a ferocious cuddle-buddy.

As requested, I had stayed inside the whole day, though it wasn’t really necessary; back then, the daylight was still insufferable. Hours went by, and I kept myself as busy as I could with watching a little bit of TV, colouring, even playing fetch with Bosco.

The hours crept by, and I remember feeling like they would never return. I would have had to live in the house by myself until I starved to death.

When noon turned to eleven o’clock, the front door finally opened to reveal a laughing Tanya and a giddy Bryan. I watched them through the crack of the pantry door, my heart pounding and my eyes stinging, threatening tears.

“Sammy!” Tanya called, still breathless from her mirth. “Where are you, Baby?”

They searched the main floor, crying out my name as they moved the couch and checked the laundry room in an attempt to find me.

My jaw trembled, and I tried to muffle a whimper. It must have escaped though, because the pantry door was whipped open by a frantic Tanya.

Her eyes bulged, and her face blanched. The pounding of her heart stopped for almost a full second, and I had to look away from her. My eyes felt hot and wet as she and Bryan looked at me in horror.

“W-Whose blood…?” Tanya whispered, finally breaking the deathly silence. I stared at the floor; I couldn’t answer. “Sam?”

I shook my head furiously, too ashamed of my full stomach to look her in the eye.

“Sam!” she demanded, raising her voice. “Whose—”

“Pookie-Bean… W-Where’s Bosco?” Bryan had whispered it as though he already knew the answer.

I gasped, breaking down in tears. “I-I-I’m sorry! I c-couldn’t… and… It was l-lunch, and then… dinner… but I…” My voice trailed off as they exchanged some sort of look.

At that moment, covered head to toe in dog blood as I stood in the pantry, my worst fear had been that they would kick me out of the house. A terrible pit in my stomach told me they would throw me, blind, into the sun, and that they would abandon me right then and there for eating their—our—cherished family pet.

Looking back on that time now, it was a stupid fear. The opposite was far more dangerous; they stood to lose a lot more if they kept me, especially if they let their fear control their parenting style.

“So are we walking or taking the bus?”

I had been in a daze all day, ever since breakfast; Agnes’ words had hit my ears, but it took me eons to actually process them. “Huh?”

She cast a glance over her shoulder to see if anyone was around, then frowned. “It’s okay; there’s no one around to see you talking with me,” she said icily. “You can cancel our plans if you’d like without being persecuted by the it-crowd.”

I shook myself, hopefully sending a bit of much needed blood to my poorly functioning brain. “Sorry, I’m just distracted. I had planned on walking… Is that okay?”

A small twitch at the corner of her lips told me that Agnes was fighting the urge to smile. “So be it,” she replied snootily. “Buses are too crowded, anyway.”

“Thankfully, I haven’t had the pleasure of taking one. They didn’t even have a public transportation system where I’m from.”

Agnes looked at me like I had two heads. “You serious?”

“Yeah. You wanted to go to the store or something, you either drove, biked, or walked. Winters were… fun,” I replied, smiling at her slowly crinkling nose. Evidently, crowded buses were preferable than being in the middle of nowhere.

When I opened the front door, Agnes pushed past me, whipping her head around like she was expecting something pop out. “All clear, I guess,” she announced, placing her hands on her hips.

“Yeah, I made sure all the zombies we had over last week cleared out before you came,” I answered, locking the door behind me. “Boy, were they ever messy. Forgotten body parts everywhere.”

She rolled her eyes and groaned. “Please.”

“Sam, is that you?” Bryan called groggily from upstairs. It was just past four o’clock; after prepping for dinner and reading one of his illicit romance novels, his schedule dictated he was most likely having a nap.

There was a padding of feet, and he emerged at the top of the stairs holding Robin; the bald cat’s face looked like she was plotting a murder most foul, despite the wide grin that spread across my dad’s.

“Oh, hello. I’m Bryan,” he said, curiously waving at Agnes.

She waved back at him as he practically flew down the stairs. “Hi,” she replied awkwardly. “I’m Agnes. Is… Is your cat okay?”

“Afraid not,” he admitted, holding the cat up higher. Her back legs and skin folds wobbled as he swung her back and forth playfully. “Robin here’s a bit in denial. She doesn’t realize that she can get sunburns if she sits by the window. Unfortunately, she also doesn’t like sunscreen. Do you Rob—”

He leaned in to plant a kiss on the cat’s head but pulled away instantly when she let out an angry yowl. “Here,” Bryan said quickly, shoving her into my hands. “You slap some on her. She doesn’t bite you.” He pulled the sunscreen from out of his back pocket.

It was a safe bet saying we were the only family in the city that had to lube up our cat on a daily basis. Crossing my legs and taking a spot on the floor, I placed Robin down and put on her sunscreen.

“Sam didn’t tell me we were having guests,” Bryan continued, his chipper tone returned. “Thankfully, I made enough.”

I stopped dead, midway through smearing sunscreen on my cat’s belly. The last thing I needed was Agnes seeing me eat my usual entree. “She’s—uhh—we’re actually going out for dinner.”

“We are?” Agnes asked, cocking an eyebrow.

A small squeal escaped Bryan’s lips, and his exuberant eyes lit up; no doubt, he’d be gushing to Tanya later on about it.

“Yes,” I confirmed, getting to my feet. With a venturous yowl, Robin took the opportunity to dive under the couch for safety. “We are. I was thinking… Korean barbecue?”

I had only ever heard of the term once from a cooking show on TV, so it was odd that it was the first thing that came to mind. Licking my lips nervously, I glanced at Bryan who looked at me curiously.

“Sure,” Agnes said slowly, her eyes narrowed as she looked between us both suspiciously.

I smiled awkwardly. Bryan must have gotten the hint, because he patted me on the shoulder and headed for the stairs. “Well, I should get a few hours in on the quilt; I’m making the centre image in Robin’s shape. You two have fun!”

If Agnes found his hobby lame—and I couldn’t blame her if she did; in addition to my school supplies, we all had matching slippers with Robin’s grouchy expression sewn into them—she didn’t say anything. Instead, she waited for him to reach the top of the stairs before turning back to me.

She smirked, her blue eyes sparking in a teasing manner. “So you guys are a cat household,” she declared. “Cute.”

She hadn’t really meant it—I knew this—but someone seemed to have forgotten to inform my blushing face.

“T-T-Thanks…” I fumbled, alarmed by the heat in my cheeks.

I had to focus on not tripping over my own feet as I walked over to the living room and invited her to sit on the couch. She obliged, plopping down on the floral print cover that Bryan had made while I took a seat in the wooden rocking chair.

“So,” she began. “Where did we leave off?”

“Something about the… what was it… ’Intricate anatomy of a vampire’?” I suggested.

She nodded curtly and crossed her legs; I dropped my eyes to the carpet, but not before seeing her bat-themed panties.

Why, god?

Reaching a small, freckled hand up to her hair, she twirled a piece. “Well, I’m sure you’ve seen movies about vampires. Practically anyone who’s anyone has seen either Dracula—any version—or Twilight, or… Well, there are a lot. But they all pretty much have the basic idea down.”

“Bloodsucking fangs?” I suggested. There was no need to play dumb with that aspect.

Agnes nodded. “Fangs indeed!” she replied wickedly. “But there’s a lot more to them than just fangs, biologically speaking. Having pointy teeth would be pretty lame, after all. Nope. Most people don’t know this, but they have their own special kind of venom.”

My stomach felt like I had missed a step, a horrible and adventurous feeling. It was becoming more and more clear that Agnes wasn’t as strange as the people at school made her out to be; she was far more informed than anyone I had ever met. Obsessive, maybe, but very informed. “Venom? You mean like a snake’s?”

She nodded proudly. “Almost exactly like a snake’s. See—that’s why they can go undetected like the infections they are. When they bite, they inject people with one shot of their venom—they have two kinds, by the way—so that the person’s paralyzed and they can keep eating without interruption. Just like an animal.”

“And… What’s the other kind do?” I whispered, almost not wanting to hear the answer. Part of me hoped she was misled completely.

“If they inject you with a drop of the second kind, you’ll die.” There was no pride in her tone, no sense of satisfaction about teaching something new.

There was a long silence between the two of us in which Agnes looked a little troubled. Her ginger eyebrows knitted together, and she poked at a hole in her fishnet stockings.

My mouth had gone dry. “I’m… sorry.”

“What’s there to be sorry for?” she spat, her lip curling. “You didn’t do it. I just really wish that this stuff was talked about more, so stupid people who get infected or changed or whatever can just do the honourable thing and just stop the continuation of those things.”

The ’honourable’ thing. Those ’things’. It struck a chord in me, made me feel even more uncomfortable in my own skin.

“But—Well if they have poison, wouldn’t… I mean, there would be a lot more unexplained deaths if they killed everyone, right? Or more people changed.”

“Even if that was the case,” Agnes replied tartly, “It still wouldn’t make them any better than leeches. The only reason they don’t kill every single person they feed on is because they’d wipe out their food supply.”

She was half right.

We weren’t any different than people who raised cows and pigs on farms. If anything, we were far more merciful; most vampires didn’t kill, and the ones who did didn’t last very long, anyway.

“Speaking of food supply, your choice of a restaurant is pretty convenient.” Her words snapped me back to reality.

“Huh?”

“Well, I mean… Korean barbecue’s all about being served raw meat that you get to cook yourself, right? Kind of funny you’d pick that of all things when we’re talking about vampires. I like your humour.”

What could I say, I was a funny guy.