SWNOVELS Chapter CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
THE LEVEL OF DECOMPOSITION was increasing. Keith and the bear were deep in the forest, stalking a family of four when the bear’s nose fell off. The vampire’s insane brain pretended not to notice. There was a man, a woman, and two 10-year-old twin girls. The man was repeatedly cracking his knuckles. The woman repeatedly told him to stop cracking his knuckles and asked if her floral dress looked good. Only what he was stalking were four large tree stumps. He had the rotting bear propped up against a tree to observe. The stench of the bear was as foul as it gets.
“Are you going to eat them or not?” said the bear.
“Be quiet. You’ll scare them away. I’m much faster than humans, but if they all run in different directions, it would be a pain in the ass to chase them down.” Keith was naked, and he got closer and closer to the juicy humans. An old man drove through on his Harley Davidson and gave him a thumbs up, which he did find peculiar since he was in the middle of the forest; he acknowledged the thumbs up with a nod. He pounced on the most enormous stump, which he thought was the father, and sunk his fangs into it. He sucked and sucked. “Not much blood in this guy. What the hell was he eating?”
“Not much at all,” said the bear. “My back is itchy. Scratch it for me, will ya?”
Keith pulled his fangs out of the tree stump, went over, and scratched the dead bear’s back. He followed the bear’s directions, a little to the left, then down. They enjoyed one another’s company and had become good friends, but the black bear clutched his chest and then fell to the ground. “Are you okay?”
“Nope,” said the bear. “I just had a fatal heart attack.”
“You’re my only friend! Don’t die on me.” Keith pumped the bear’s chest for several minutes and tried to give him mouth-to-mouth, but his jaw came off in his hand. “You really are dead?”
“That’s right, I’m a goner. You should probably bury me, or some other animal will come and scatter my bones.”
“Okay.” Tears ran down Keith’s cheeks as he dug a hole with his hands like a dog, and the earth flew all over the place. The fact that he was naked wasn’t a pretty sight. Things jiggled. When the hole was large enough and didn’t take long with his strength and speed, he gently laid the bear in the ground. He considered saying a prayer but didn’t know any. “I hope you go to bear heaven where there are probably lots of other bears running around, maybe eating people, perhaps not.” He then filled in the hole and patted it down gently. “I’ll never forget you.”
“Help!” the bear screamed. “I can’t breathe! Get me out of here!”
In a panic, Keith dug the bear out of the hole, but it wasn’t pretty. He pulled out pieces of him. He shook the dirt off the bear as best he could. “Are you okay? Talk to me! Are you all right? Can you breathe now?”
The black bear laughed and laughed. “Keith, I was just teasing you. I’m still dead. You can bury me again. You should have seen the look on your face, man.”
Keith’s emotions were slightly confused, and now he was annoyed. “That wasn’t very nice. Don’t do that again because I’m only burying you one more time, and that’s it.”
The bear gestured to Keith with his paw for him to get a little closer. “I was talking to a worm down there, and guess what he said.”
“I don’t know.”
“He said it’s tough to be a worm.”
Keith looked puzzled. He put the animal back into the ground and covered him with dirt. “I suppose it is tough to be a worm. Probably tough to be a deer freezing your ass off in the winter. There, how’s that?”
“That’s good. The worm and I are going to be best friends down here. I’ll see you when you get to heaven. Bye now.”
“Okay.” Keith sounded defeated as he walked away with his head down, slower than a human. He felt as if he was the only vampire remaining on the planet. He wiped the tears from his cheeks but didn’t look back.