I am a Vampire Who Works Night Shift (Part 2)

Sorry for the late update. A lot has happened since that traumatic night a couple of days ago, and it was hard to put to paper.

The next morning was difficult. I got up around noon. Sunlight trickled in through the window and between the curtains next to my bed. Its warmth encompassed the blanket I had wrapped myself inside of. As my arm emerged from under the covers, the skin of my forearm made brief contact with the light that came in from the window. It burned.

The sensation was like a million needles all taken out of a four-hundred-degree oven and pushed into my arm. I winced, a scream caught in my throat, and rolled off the bed, hitting the floor with a thud.

My eyes were shut tight from the pain, but I peeled them open and looked down at my arm. The skin was charred black. It smelled like burnt pork. The blackening receded until it vanished entirely, replaced by its normal pale shade. My mom opened the door to my room.

“Alex? You okay?” she said, then she looked down at my pathetic form on the floor. “Whatcha’ doin’ down there, bud?” She put her hands on her hips and gave me that look I have assumed all mothers have perfected, somewhere between concern and amusement.

“Rough morning,” I said, looking up at her.

“Rough noon, more like. I got lunch ready. I figure it’ll be the last time we get to share lunch in a while, with you working nights and all now.”

I smelled the food coming from the dining room. She’d made her church famous casserole, something worth crawling out of bed, for sure. In my case, however, I’d be crawling off the floor.

I stood up, cautious of the light that had threatened to tear me apart only moments before and walked out of my room. The cross on the wall sent terror through me just as it did the night previous, but I was able to force those feelings down and push through.

Mom had crosses everywhere. I had grown up in the church. Dad was actually a pretty important member of our congregation, always organizing events and meeting with the pastor. He went missing ten years ago. I was only nine, but the damage was irreversible. Mom grew closer to God, and I slowly stopped believing that there was anyone up there to hear my prayers. I wanted to believe but just couldn’t. I couldn’t rightfully call myself an atheist anymore though, with the symbols of Christ having such a traumatic physical and emotional effect on me. I didn’t know how or if I could tell mom.

She sat at the end of the table across from the empty chair which had served as a reminder of the thing that had made my faith wither and die. I sat on the long side near my room. Casserole was on the center of the table with a serving spoon inside the porcelain container. She held my hand to say grace. I toned the words out. After she finished, we both took a helping onto our plates.

It was good but lacking in a way that was difficult to explain. My mind flashed to the previous night, of being baptized in my own blood, of slurping up the crimson fluid, of the taste…

“You okay there, kiddo? You’ve been staring at your fork for a minute,” mom said, eyebrows raised in concern.

“Y-yeah I’m fine, just spacing out.” She shrugged her shoulders and went back to the food.

I spent the day researching about my current condition on my laptop, a cheap crappy thing that I’ve exchanged more than a few harsh words with. I have no doubt that it is vampirism I’m suffering from. Trying to find concrete information on a condition that the world at large believes to be fiction is more than a little difficult.

The top search was on whether or not vampires have blood. I checked my pulse once more. It was very faint but had returned to me. The general consensus was that vampires have the blood of their victims flowing through their veins. How that blood passes from the stomach to the veins is beyond me.

 “Do vampires have a sensitivity to sunlight?” was one of the things I typed just for posterity. I knew the answer to that one. “A largely 20^th century invention,” it said. My formerly charred arm would disagree with that.

I had read sometime prior that vampires wouldn’t need to feed regularly because of the richness of blood, or some crud like that. I hoped that was true. I googled that as well, and the answers, to my dismay, varied greatly. “Lovely,” I said to no one but myself. Someone in the comments of my last post suggested I try animal blood. I’m not terribly fond of that idea, but neither am I fond of having to do to another human being what the old man did to me.

I shut the laptop with a clack. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was eight at night, an hour before my shift. I sighed, grabbed my work vest, and walked past my mom on the couch and towards the entryway.

“Gonna leave without saying bye to your mom?” I heard her voice from behind me. I turned around to see her standing there. A gold cross hung around her neck, a gift from my dad years before I was born. She had worn it every day since his disappearance.

As the dread of the object built its way up from my stomach and into my chest, I focused as much attention as I could on her face and away from the necklace. She saw my expression and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Don’t worry, kiddo. You’ll do just fine.” She must have thought I was nervous about my promotion to night shift. Small comfort, but comfort all the same.

I hugged her, the cross burning against my chest, but I didn’t care. I felt tears form in my eyes, but held them in. “I love you mom,” is all I could say, and all I will say. She doesn’t need to know.

“Hey, what’s all this about? I love you too, kiddo.”

“It’s… it’s nothing. Just nervous.”

“Don’t be. You got this. I’ll be praying for you.”

Little comfort given what I took to be God’s current feelings toward me. I took a deep breath and let go. “See you in the morning, mom.”

“See you, kiddo. It’ll be fine. Trust me.” I nodded, then left out the door.

The sun was down. The moonlight stung a little on my skin as I walked down the stairs and to where I normally parked my car, where I saw that it was missing. I never drove home from work. It’s probably still there.

I sighed. “Crap,” I muttered. It wasn’t too far. I could walk. I could… I could try out my limits. If I really was a vampire, I should be able to do a lot of things. I looked around at the empty lot, making sure there were no observers. I looked up at a tree and jumped. I went twenty feet into the air, my head smashing into a branch. I landed back down with a tremendous thud. My head throbbed. I saw spots. I stood up. “Guess I’m walking.”

It was a thirty-minute journey. My headache cleared far faster than it should have. As I approached the lot of the Super-Mart, I scanned the parking spaces for the white van. It wasn’t there. I also saw my old beater parked a couple spaces closer to the store than employees were supposed to, as you do.

I stepped across the lot and into the store. I saw Carrie by the door. She was wearing a shirt with a pentagram and “Atreyu” on the front of it. She wore a long sleave undershirt beneath it. “Hey, Alex! Looks like we’re working together today.”

My undead heart caught in my chest. “Y—yeah! Looking forward to it.” I smiled and quietly wondered if vampires sweat. I hoped not, because I was certain I would be otherwise.

“Yo, before we start, I had something I wanted to ask you.” She walked closer to me. I tensed up like the corpse that I was.

Before she could elaborate, Greg walked up. “Hey, man! How are you doing? You forgot to clock out yesterday.” Greg made for a terrible wingman.

“Yeah, I’ll adjust it later.”

Carrie poked my shoulder. “I’ll tell you later. I want to grab a coffee from the break room before we get started.”

I turned to Greg and couldn’t hold back my scowl. “Dude, bad timing.”

“Sorry. Crap were you about to—”

“No. She was going to… you know, I don’t actually know.”

Greg gave me a look like you might give to someone who is mentally unwell, which in all fairness was one way I could have been described in that moment.

“So… a bat flew in earlier,” Greg said, switching the subject. “He never left. You might still see him.”

“Did you run around asking the customers if you saw where he went, like last time?”

“No. I didn’t incite panic a second time, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Right… well, I’m going to go to the back. I’ll see you around Greg,”

“Yeah. See you bud!”

As I walked towards the back, I saw Bill berating Rachel, probably for something wildly outside her control. If I was to feast on any singular person in this store, it would be Bill. Rachel stormed off towards the back, crying and smacking her side. I imagined myself ripping out Bill’s throat and drinking up what poured out. I tried to put that thought back where it came from, but it grew louder in my head with every passing second.

“Hey, you one of my newbies?” I heard a voice, deep and commanding, coming from behind me. I turned around. There was a dark-skinned old man with thick stubble. It was Dave, the recently promoted night shift manager.

“Yeah,” I said, breaking out of my violent trance. “I just transferred from another department. Dave, right?”

“I prefer David but call me whatever. See you back there.”

“Yeah. See you.” David walked away at a pace that spoke of purpose. My own pace was less enthusiastic. As I moved past the clothing section, something tucked on a hangar between the jeans caught my eye. It was the bat.

I stopped for a moment and looked up at it. It stared back at me, tilting its head. It was perched upright, which I found unusual. I had always thought that bats hung upside down.

I walked away from the weird little bat, feeling its eyes on me as I stepped to the time clock in the back. I looked at the time clock. I still had a couple minutes. Rachel was sobbing in the breakroom. I sighed and walked in.

 “What did that idiot say this time?” I asked.

“I don’t want to— screw off! — talk about it,” she replied. I pulled up a chair and sat at the table with her. “I’m quitting. I have to.” Her physical tic, where she hit herself on the side, worsened. It looked painful and she winced with every blow.

I thought about the old man. If he found out where she lived, and if she was there all the time, that could be bad. There was nothing keeping him from doing that now. He could come in while she was sleeping at her house and… A weird idea popped into my head.

“You could work nights with us. They’re still hiring. I know that we’ll be short tonight, so it’s not like they’ll say no.”

“I’ll—frickin’ stupid— think about it. Thanks, Alex. You’re a— terrible— good friend.”

I smiled and sat up. “Hopefully I’ll see you on shift soon.” I walked back to the time clock. Three minutes late. “Crap.”

I clocked in and met up with everyone in receiving. David was going over all the specifics on how to use the equipment and pallet jacks.

“Who has stocked shelves before?” David asked. A few people raised their hands. Carrie, to my surprise, was one of them. “Alright, take one or two of these guys and show them the ropes. We got a few pallets up and down the aisles that stocking crew left us and a truck coming in a couple of hours. Let’s get to work!”

 To my surprise and elation, Carrie chose to show me the ropes. We powered through some pallets, stocking shelves and putting away overstock. I was so focused on Carrie that I almost didn’t notice that feeling I had when I came in, when I saw that bat. I looked up, and sure enough, it was perched on a support on the ceiling, watching me.

The truck came and went. Boxes were far lighter than I expected, probably more to do with my newfound power than any hard-earned muscle. We finished putting some toilet paper on the shelf when lunch break came.

“Hey, about that thing I wanted to talk about,” Carrie said as we sat at the table in the breakroom together. She looked down at the empty spot in front of me. “You going to go all shift without eating?”

Something I neglected to mention was how badly my stomach reacted to mom’s casserole. I can eat regular food as a vampire in the same way that someone with lactose intolerance can enjoy ice cream, so for now I was choosing not to.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. You were saying?” I was aware that my voice may have been more than a little over enthusiastic.

“So, before Mark broke up with me I got these tickets to a concert. It’s an underground band, real heavy stuff. I have two, and I’m obviously not going with him anymore, and you seem cool, so I was wondering if maybe—”

“Sure!” I said, once more aware of my over eagerness but helpless to stop myself.

“Are you sure? It’s this Saturday.” Her expression was pleasant, one of relief.

“Yeah, I actually have that day off. Crazy coincidence!” I wanted to follow up with asking whether or not this was a date, but decided that if I hadn’t scared her off yet with my awkwardness, now wasn’t the time to push my luck.

We spent the rest of lunch talking about bands and music. It was pleasant. My anxiety around her started to settle some. The rest of the night went by quickly. There was always work to do, and since the only one with experience working nights was David, we really spent most of the night learning the job.

I clocked out, waved goodbye to everyone, exchanged a smile with Carrie, and made my way towards the front door. My spirits were higher than I expected. For a moment I believed that the worst of it was all behind me, that last night was the end of it and, somehow, I would figure it all out.

As I walked out into the cool night air of the parking lot, I felt a gust of air blow in from behind me, followed by tiny paws on my shoulder. It was the bat. It put its head up to my ear. “Alex,” it said. “You need to leave.”

I ran to my car and sped home.

I’m off tonight, so I don’t suspect much more will happen. I haven’t seen the bat or the old man since. I don’t want to see either.