Sucks to Suck – Chapter 2

With her excursion into the Donjon being a bust, Marion found herself wandering the city streets. The night was still cold but the drizzle had stopped, and the chill weather seemed to help with her headache, or perhaps simply distracted her from it. She had poured the beer out in a gutter near the Donjon and then tossed out the bottle as soon as she found a bin, and now she had both hands tucked in her front pocket. Her idle walking had taken her to the park, casually walking through the paved pathways guarded on both sides by rows of lamp posts, making the area very well-lit. Yet, the two few people that crossed paths with her walked at a brisk pace, with tense and resolute steps as they cut through the park to get elsewhere. While she didn’t feel the same apprehension as them from walking at night, she understood it. While the city wasn’t one of the most violent places to live, there was still some violent crime, and the park was big enough that shit could go down without anyone being the wiser.

It was ironic, then, in her mind, that she only found trouble when she emerged on the street on the other side and finally turned back to start walking to the apartment. It was past three in the morning and the city was coming to its peak of quietness, between then and five AM, when the very early birds would start taking to the streets once more. It was one of her favourite periods as sometimes she could catch small moments where there wasn’t a single siren, car engine or alarm in earshot and she could almost hear the wind or, on rainy days, the drops impacting the pavement. But as she was southbound once again, slowly making her way back home, she heard the engine of a car approaching and slowing down to a crawl until it caught up with her and began to slide at the same pace she walked. Deliberately. Internally, she tensed, but she kept moving.

The window of the red pickup rolled down and a slightly slurred, obnoxiously loud voice blared from within.

“Hey… Where are you going?”

She didn’t respond and tried not to turn her head, but she looked from the corner of her eye. It was weird that the driver was alone. Usually, men engaging in that sort of annoying behaviour were showing off to friends. That one was by himself, leaning over the passenger seat to get closer to the open window facing her.

“I’m talking to you, girl. Where are you going?” he insisted and, in the absence of a response, continued, “I could give you a ride!”

Marion frowned and moved her hands to tuck her hood further over her head as if trying to conceal herself more from him and simply not engage. The throbbing ache in her temple and forehead made her easy to anger and she had to fight herself not to tell him to fuck off loudly. Getting a reaction out of her was exactly what he was after, most likely.

“Hey, bitch, don’t ignore me. I know you can hear me. You’re not deaf…” he said.

Then he honked. And the sudden loud sound startled her, causing her to jump slightly. Her anger grew to a near-boiling point inside her immediately which was not helped by the fact he laughed emphatically right after.

“Ha! I knew it. You can hear fine… So why don’t you tell me where you’re going, hm?” he continued to insist. “Come on, I’m just trying to be nice.”

And that broke her composure. He had only been shouting at her for the past ninety feet but it felt like a mile, and she still had a long way to go before she could turn away somewhere and shake him. She turned and delivered a kick with the sole of her boot to his car's door and roared.

“Why don’t you fuck off!”

But just as she did it, she realised her mistake, as his mocking, jeering expression shifted to anger. Her foot had left a small dent on the door of the pickup and he stopped the car to slide over to the passenger seat and begin opening the door.

“What the fuck did you do!”

As he began opening the door, Marion took off running. She had managed to put some distance between them as a head start because, just as she anticipated, seeing the dented door got the driver even more furious than her words had. And he was clearly in a mood to start shit, else he wouldn’t be harassing girls on the sidewalk. She heard the engine revving up as he drove down faster to catch up with her again, and she knew she couldn’t beat a car in terms of speed. She spotted the opening of a narrow alley between two buildings a few feet ahead and dashed to take a sharp left and enter it, hoping she could move across the block and shake him out there. But just as she entered the alley, she spotted the gated fence cutting it in half, twelve feet tall and with curled barbed wire on top. Black trash bags were piled by it behind a green dumpster. She continued to run, hoping the gate would be unlocked, and it wasn’t until she gave it three firm tugs that she realised there was a heavy chain and padlock there cutting access to the rest of the alley, that likely led to some yard behind the buildings.

By then, the man had stepped out of the car, leaving the passenger door open as he slid over the seat in his rush to get to her. Marion turned around, back pressed against the fence as she took a measure of the guy barreling down towards her. 'Fuck. Why does it have to come to this', she wondered even as she tried to assess his intentions. Was he going to intimidate her? Threaten her? Beat her? Something worse? His posture was aggressive, but he didn’t seem to be out of his mind with murderous rage. Maybe she could still talk her way out of it without things turning ugly, she wondered. But that was a vain hope and, deep inside, she knew that there were only a few ways things were going to realistically unfold from that point on, and she didn’t like any of them.

“You bitch, you dented my fucking car,” he roared.

He was much taller than her and had very broad shoulders. Tucked into a tight white shirt, light blond hair cut in a very short buzz and moving with an aggressive wide stance as he advanced in strides. He would be upon her in seconds. His hand moved in a flourish, and that was when she saw the glint of metal in his hand. A butterfly knife. What sort of fucking psycho would draw a knife on a stranger over a car dent? But the way he handled the knife, the way of someone who practised with it a lot, she guessed that he likely had a hair-trigger excuse to pull it out on people he wanted to intimidate. And his size alone should’ve worked for that with a girl her size. The knife was just overkill.

She considered ducking to try and run past him, but the alley was narrow and he was broad, and with very little motion he could easily block her way out so she stood there against the fence until he was upon her. Stopping a foot away, the knife was brought to face level to make his threat clear. His free hand moved to grab her left arm and prevent her from escaping.

“You are paying for that.” His head made a gesture back to where his red pickup waited and the dented door was opened.

“S-sure.” Marion tried her best to diffuse the situation. “I didn’t mean to actually…”

“I don’t fucking care! I was trying to be nice to you and you kicked my car, bitch…” he barked, the smell of beer wafting over her face.

That phrase caused her to frown again, ‘trying to be nice’. She quietly wished he’d stop repeating it. Her headache was getting worse, and she never thought she'd feel her mouth as dry as it was then. Her eyes traced his jaw to where it connected with his neck and she could swear that she could see a throbbing vein in his fit of rage.

“I said I’ll pay… Just let me go and…” She moved her hand to try to grab the wrist of his hand squeezing her arm.

He shook her, aggressively, to prevent her from trying to break the grapple, slamming her back against the fence. And something switched inside her near immediately.

“Let go,” she said dryly, emotionless.

His hand opened and released her arm immediately and he seemed rather confused about what had happened. Marion in turn seemed startled once she took inventory of the situation herself. His eyes went from his hand to the knife, and then her, and he shifted to grab the front of her hoodie, near the neck, instead of her shoulder. Shaking his head as if hoping to defuse the confusion for his involuntary release of her arm.

“That’s right you’ll pay! You’ll pay right now when I teach you how to treat a m-…”

There was a sound, not too different from the clicking of a pen when the tip was released but wetter and more muffled. For a fraction of a second, her attacker was rather confused about the source of it, as it seemed to have come from Marion’s face. And then she sneered and displayed the two sets of fangs that had just popped free inside her mouth. A long pair in her upper canines and a shorter, more stubby pair on her lower row of teeth. He was still mid-sentence when her mouth closed the gap between it and his neck, sinking and seeking that pulsing vein. He was interrupted by his own scream of pain as Marion bit down and broke his skin.

To his credit, most people when faced with what he had just faced, would freeze in panic or flee in horror. The overwhelming majority of people, when facing a fight-or-flight-or-freeze response, gravitated towards the latter two, in her experience. So it was just her luck that that brute seemed to go instinctively towards ‘fight’, she realised as she felt the ferrous and salty taste flood her mouth. The shudder of pleasure that came with finally tasting blood after almost a week of going without was interrupted by the blunt sensation of a punch against her stomach. It didn’t hurt, but the impact rippled inside of her as he recoiled his hand in pain, feeling as if he had punched a wall. Her instincts called to her, and she bit down on his neck again, in a nearly uncontrollable craving to ignore the attack and feed further. But his next blow came with the point of the knife, and that one hurt. It was a slashing motion that cut through her side just beneath the ribs.

Due to the height difference, she was almost suspended on his chest by her arms and mouth in order to bite his neck, and as he cut her, her knee-jerk reaction to the pain was to push him away. He went stumbling back almost seven feet, before falling on his ass on the wet floor of the alley, as she pushed herself back against the fence, blood dripping down across her chin. She whimpered in frustration, less angry about the pain and more realising that she had not drunk nearly enough. But while she was still hungry, at least the headache was dulling quickly. Her body metabolised the couple of mouthfuls of his blood she had drunk as he pressed his hand against his neck, and a red stain expanded across his tight shirt.

Only then did he seem to fully realise what had transpired, as Marion raised to her feet and licked the blood on her lips before wiping the leftover on the black sleeves of her hoodie. He raised the knife to point at her as if threatening to keep her away, and tried to get up without using his hands, as one held the weapon and the other his neck.

“S-stay back!... You… What… What are you?”

Marion knew she had fucked up, and she knew what she should do then, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it as he got up and backed away towards his car, first walking backwards, slowly, as if afraid to turn his back to her, and then turning to run. She ran after him then, a predatorial instinct triggering inside her to pursue fleeing prey, but he managed to get into the car and close the passenger door before she caught him. He backed away from it, leaning his back against the driver's door and once more raising his knife just as she stuck her head through the passenger window. He had dropped the knife and was reaching for his phone in his jeans. That was trouble. She knew what she had to do… But she knew she wasn’t going to do it. And then they locked eyes, briefly, and that time intentionally as she fixed her eyes on him and spoke in the same dry, deadpan tone of before:

“Don’t tell.”

He babbled something incoherent and she backed away. There was still panic in his eyes but he dropped his phone and instead shifted his efforts to get back onto the driver's seat and drive away as fast as he could. She could feel the lingering alcohol in his blood as, in her near-starved state, even that low concentration made her a little drunk. That was nice, actually, she didn’t experience a buzz that often.

“Fucker,” she cursed, spitting on the sidewalk.

A flash of pain on her side brought her hand there, and she took notice of the large gash on the side of her hoodie, and the bleeding wound just beneath her ribs. If she was fully fed, that would seal up in minutes. And it wouldn’t even be a scar in an hour. But in her current state, her body had eschewed its regenerative abilities to focus on using all available energy to just keep her alive. She would need to take care of that in a more mundane way.

The walk from the alley to the nearest convenience store felt like one of the longest walks of her life even though it was actually no more than a half-mile. Each step made her ribs hurt, and she was constantly looking over her shoulders, as if expecting police sirens to emerge from any corner, coming for her. Or maybe something worse than the police. She had no idea how effective her command for the jerk in the pickup truck not to tell anyone would be, and how long it would last. There were parts of her condition that she felt she should’ve been instructed on, but she never really was. And part of that was how to hunt. Getting mortals alone to have a chance to feed was something that others like her should know how to do from the moment they were created, or ‘born’ as some would say. Yet, she had somehow missed that lesson. She was bitterly reflecting on that when she walked through the empty area in front of the convenience store, saturated in the pale white light coming from the gas station canopy above as she made her way across the pumps and pushed the glass doors with her shoulders. A small automated alarm rang, but she saw no clerk behind the counter. She squinted, as the interior seemed far too bright, and in that brightness, her black hoodie wasn’t as good at hiding the blood. On her sleeve and near her cut.

She studied the counter near the till, as most times, if a store carried first aid supplies, they would be there. Sure enough, she spotted the see-through plastic bag of bandages and grabbed two. In the absence of the cashier, she briefly considered simply leaving with it, as she made sure not to look into any security cameras. But before she could decide whether or not she would wait for the clerk, a door to the back opened and a young woman appeared, walking towards her with an apologetic smile on her face:

“Sorry! Hope I didn’t leave you waiting for long.”

“It’s fine…” Marion replied with a shrug that hurt a little as she leaned on the counter and hoped to obstruct the clerk's view of her wounds to not invite too many awkward questions. “It’s just these, please.”

“Sure, just a sec,” the girl said, picking up the two bandage packages with a mild frown of concern realising what they were.

Her frown grew deeper and she noticed the small specks of smeared dried blood on the plastic. But while she was worried, she was not fazed, seemingly having seen similar in her work on the night shift.

“That will be six-seventy-eight,” the girl said after ringing both items. “Do you need… Help?”

As she asked, she was leaning over the counter trying to get a better view of Marion just as she moved backwards to try and put a shelf of gum and snacks in between her and the cashier’s line of sight. The girl had snake bite piercings on her lower lip and one across the bridge of her nose, and the only makeup she wore was dark thick lines around her eyes. Her hair must’ve been a really light colour before it was dyed pale pink, and she wore a large, baggy jacket with an urban camo pattern covering it, and several button pins attached to the front which clinked and jingled as she leaned over the counter. She reached such an aggressive lean that, at some point, Marion could see her feet rising in the air as her hands held the edge of the counter and the girl was almost laying on the countertop.

“N-no, thank you,” Marion finally responded to try and shy away undue curiosity.

“You sure? Because your face is, like, hella white.”

“Yeah, no. I’m fine. Just the bandages,” Marion insisted, reaching into her hoodie to take her wallet and produce a slightly crumbled ten dollars bill.

“A’ight.” The girl went back to standing properly to accept the bill and proceed with the purchase.

As she pressed buttons, a car drove by, which was nothing odd but was infrequent at that time of the night. Marion briefly recoiled, taken by an unreasonable fear that it would be the red pickup truck, and maybe the driver would now have a shotgun with him, or a squad car would be driving along. As the headlights shone inside the store, she flinched before they continued to drive right past them. Much to Marion’s chagrin though, the nosy cashier was peeking over the counter again and had caught her reaction to the car. She didn’t say anything that time, but her expression of concern grew.

Marion tried to ignore it, and as she looked around to avoid looking into the girl’s face, she spotted the discount burner phones hanging above her head. She would need one in her search for a new apartment as it was the best way to be able to be contacted by prospective roommates without having anything that later could be tied to her. She fished her wallet out and counted the money.

“Uh… Can I also have one of those… Yeah, the black ones,” she said, pointing to the row of phones as the girl reached to pick one from the middle row.

Instead of immediately placing it down on the counter next to the bandages though, she took a look at the cheap disposable phone. Her eyebrows arched as if she expected it to suddenly come to life and clarify a few things for her. And then she finally ran it through.

“With taxes, it’s going to be nineteen-si-…”

“Here… Don’t need change,” Marion said, placing twenty dollars on the counter.

“I... Uh…” The girl accepted it, typing in the new purchase and putting it into the till drawer before closing it.

She then looked around briefly before tossing one leg over the counter, then another, and sliding down to drop on the other side. She was wearing black, deliberated torn-up tights under a plaid skirt, and her feet were stuck into boots that seemed two sizes too big and held in place only by the laces. After jumping over, she tossed herself over the counter again, reaching to grab something from beneath it, before emerging once again holding a bottle of alcohol.

“You're gonna need this,” she said.

“I don’t…”

“I’m not going to charge you. This is like… The previous guy doing this job got shot. Boss keeps a first aid kit under the counter.”

Marion stepped back as the girl took a step closer to her, and the cashier stopped, with a face that she had suddenly realised her own pushiness, and apologetically shook her head:

“Sorry, I’m… Not gonna touch you or anything if you don’t want me to but… It’s gonna be easier for someone else to patch you.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Phew… Yeah, no doubt. I can see that,” she said but there was no hint of sarcasm on her face. “First time getting out?”

“Uh?”

“Getting ahead of myself again, sorry. I’m Logan. You?”

“Marion.”

“Marian.”

“Marion.”

“Oh, neat. So, I don’t want to be all up in your business but it kind of seems like you’re running from some shit…”

“I am not-…”

“You don’t need to tell me anything. I won’t rat you out. Let me help you patch up and then if you wanna dash, that’s all, okay? Not gonna chase you or anything.”

Marion would sigh if there was breath in her lungs. She didn’t appreciate strangers being all up in her business. She could see why the girl had ideas about her being in a dire situation, with her showing up with a cut on her side at three in the morning, looking over her shoulders and buying a burner phone. Marion should’ve considered the optics of it beforehand. But it was still her business. Yet, she felt that Logan needed to get her kind deed for the day out of her system and it would be easier to let the girl exercise her naïve altruistic muscles than resist her.

“Fine.”

And just as she conceded, the girl took to one knee in front of her, using her teeth to open the bag of bandages and then soaking them in alcohol. She then reached out to lift Marion’s hoodie and shirt, exposing her taut stomach and pushing it further up, until the base of her sports bra was showing, so she could see the slash across her ribs. And then Marion felt the contact of a warm hand against her skin and froze. Logan frowned slightly and looked at her with concern:

“Gosh, you are freezing. Have you been… Out there all night?

That made things a bit easier, Marion decided as she nodded in agreement and watched the girl use light dabs to clean her wounds before picking some clean bandages to wrap around. She didn’t need to worry about infections, but it was best not to bring that up to the girl, as it would only invite more questions. So instead she let her work.

“That’s a… Pretty bad cut.”

“Yeah, I got caught on something jumping over a fence,” Marion explained.

“M-hm.” Logan didn’t seem to buy it, but she offered no follow-up questions.

After a few moments, she was done tending to the wound, which in other circumstances would have healed by itself in moments. But Marion had barely gotten enough blood to sustain herself for another night and, until she was properly fed, her body wouldn't do a lot of what she knew it could do.

“Look, uh… Do you have a place to go from here?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry.”

Logan rose to her feet again, wiping the alcohol and blood on her jacket, which, now Marion could see, was worn over a black shirt with white Japanese kanji stamped over the face of a character she couldn’t recognise.

“Too late for that.”

Marion suddenly realised that while it was true that she had a place to go, that wouldn’t be true for long. And if Logan had something she could offer or suggest in that regard, it could be a buffer solution until Marion found a more permanent situation.

“I have a roommate but I’m going to have to move out soon,” she explained, sincerely.

The pink-haired cashier still seemed not to believe it entirely, tilting her head and moving her pursed lips from side to side as she crossed her arms. And then Marion spotted a security camera from the corner of her eyes, suddenly pulling her hoodie and turning away from it, realising the risk it posed.

“What?” Logan asked before turning back and spotting it. “Oh, don’t worry, it’s not recording. It’s just to intimidate people. Nobody’s going to see you,” she assured her with a renewed touch of concern in her voice.

“That’s… Okay, that’s good to know.”

“So… Anyway, look… This is probably dumb of me but… You look like you might not want to go back to your roommate tonight, right?”

“Uh? Oh, that wasn’t them… This…”

“A fence, yeah. I got it. But… Still, if you want a place to stay for the night…”

“What, really?”

“Yeah… Not smart to invite a stranger like that, I know.”

“It’s really not. How are you alive?”

“I honestly don’t know… But you know, you’re not the first person to have problems with, uh… Roommates and fences that I know. I know people that can help. And like, someone helped me sometimes back so… Pass it forward and all that.”

Marion was dumbfounded. There were innate dangers in having strangers over, and there was no better argument for that point than the fact that Logan had literally just invited a predator up to her home. She almost wanted to refuse it and chide the young woman about the dangers of that sort of conduct. But why would she care? And more importantly, being alone with her in her home could be the perfect opportunity to feed. There was guilt that came along with that thought. She had been so helpful and concerned, and abusing that trust to feed herself made her feel like shit. But she was hungry, very much so.

“Alright. If you are sure about this.”

“Oh, yeah… As I said, it’s probably dumb, so not super sure but… Fuck, what the hell.” Logan shook her head. “My shift doesn’t end for another hour and change though. Until five AM.”

Marion took out her phone, the real one, not the burner, which she had not unpacked yet. A quick search on Google said the sun should not be rising until six-fifteen that night. One hour and fifteen minutes to spare. It was tight but doable.

“I can… Wait outside.”

“What? No… You’re freezing. Go wait in the break room.”

“Aren’t you going to get in trouble for that?”

“Only if someone finds out and…” She pointed to the camera that didn’t record.

Marion nodded slightly. Sitting down for a spell didn’t seem like a bad idea.

“You’re… Not like most people.”

“Yeah, bet.” Logan laughed, moving towards the flap that allowed her to slide behind the counter and signalling for Marion to follow her as she guided her to the door towards the back room.

Logan didn’t live too far from the store, and after her shift was over, it only took them a quarter-hour to reach her building. An old brick construction, four stories high and had no elevator. Marion preferred things that way, elevators often had mirrors, she reasoned even as she winced in pain climbing the four flights of stairs towards Logan’s apartment. A quick text was sent to Claire to explain that she wouldn’t be back that night, but she should not worry. Not that she expected Claire to notice the absence, given how incompatible their schedules were.

There was still an hour before sunrise as Logan pulled her keys from the pockets of her baggy jacket and unlocked the door to her home. As she twisted the key, she made a point of turning to Marion and warning her.

“So… Two things; first, the place is really old, it belonged to my grandmother and it’s really nothing fancy. Second is that I’m a bit of a geek, so like, don’t judge.” She chuckled, seemingly not very concerned with Marion’s judgement, as she pushed the door open and flicked on the lights.

Marion stood at the threshold for a moment, peering in but not moving.

“Come on in before my neighbour's dog starts barking and she gives me an earful later.”

Marion dipped her head and moved, crossing the threshold. She could feel how old the place was, it was a certain unnameable property in how the air touched her skin that she had only ever felt in old places. And never in places for rent. It was comforting, in a way, but as she stepped into the old apartment, finding that like many older places, it was bigger than most modern, newly built things, she froze again as her eyes scanned the walls. On the black metallic cupboards with wooden shelves bought from Ikea, she spotted a few books and her eyes were drawn to the v-word on the sides of the tomes: Vampire; the Masquerade and Vampire; Requiem were lined side by side along with several other titles. A poster of an old black and white movie entitled simply ‘Dracula’ hung above it, and if that wasn’t enough, as Logan took off her baggy jacket and tossed it over the couch, Marion recognised the same symbol that was illustrating the side of her vampire tomes tattooed on her skin next to her shoulder.

‘Fuck,’ she thought.