Sucks to Suck – Chapter 9

The ceiling lamps were out, and the blackout curtains were pulled over the window, blocking out any luminosity from pouring from the outside. Only a pair of shaded lamps on the low cabinet at the end of the dining table provided any light in the dim room. With their back to the lamps, the only person to speak did so in a way that sounded near ceremonious, witnessed in reverential silence by those sitting on either side.

“The blood drips on the cracked tiles of the filthy bus station bathroom, and in the rush of feeding, Pandora forgets to pace herself, and only as she feels through the flow that the mortal’s heart has ceased to beat, she let go. That teenage runaway will not be making it back home.”

“Wait, she’s dead?” Sam asked.

Logan simply nodded from behind the paper screen she had placed in front of herself, to conceal her person and, more importantly, notes and rolls of dice from her friends.

“Okay… I think I fucked up, guys,” Sam said as Logan finished her narration.

“You think!?”

The sarcastic comment came from the girl sitting to Logan’s right, and it took Marion a moment to recall her name; Isabella was short and had light brown hair and big brown eyes that were incredibly expressive. That only made her exasperation at the development in that strange story, that they were all telling together but also not really, even more telegraphed.

“Hey, blame the dice.” Sam pointed to the strange dice she had rolled at Logan’s request, which had landed a bad result.

“I told you not to try to feed here,” Isabella remarked.

“I’m stuck on one blood point. One more night and I’ll start taking damage.”

Marion found the whole theatre a little bizarre, but she couldn’t help but relate to Sam’s predicament a little bit. Or would it be Pandora’s predicament? From what she gathered since they began and from Logan’s very brief introduction, each of them was in charge of controlling the fate of one character in that story, though not entirely, except for Logan who had control over every other character and every vagary of fate and environmental hazard.

“Can’t you guys just go back?” Marion asked.

The question was made with candid curiosity but the reaction of the rest of the group to it ranged from utter confusion to subtle indignation. In particular, the girl named Sam looked at Marion not too unlike someone who might gaze into a weird type of animal they were struggling to identify.

“Go back?” Logan asked, patiently.

“I mean, if the thing didn’t work,” Marion said, and with a slight pause, she corrected course, “if the feeding didn’t work.” She pointed at the dice still laying on the table between them.

“Oh.” Realisation dawned on Logan’s face. “I see. No, yeah, as a rule, there are no retcons. Once your character does something, you have to stick with it and face the consequences.”

“Retcons?”

“Going back on something you already said your character would do.”

“Take-backsies,” Sam volunteered a translation.

“I mean, I sometimes allow it, immediately after. But not after the dice were rolled. There would be no fun in that.”

She explained with more patience than the question deserved if the faces the rest of the group made were anything to go by, and Marion dipped her head to indicate understanding. There was a lot she didn’t understand still, but she was there strictly to watch, and she felt her seemingly stupid question might’ve already taken enough time off the game. Logan cleared her throat and returned to her role as the narrator and architect of that shared reality. Marion noticed how her voice got just a notch deeper whenever she was addressing her friends in that role, compared to her normal self; she also spoke a little slower and more deliberately, imposing a solemn air over what she said:

“Pandora finds herself coming off the feeding frenzy with a dead girl in her arms. Eva,” Logan said, looking at Isabella. “And Boris,” she added, her head turning to the only boy in the room, “are outside the bus station bathroom watching the comings and goings of the late-night stragglers. There are no signs of the Butcher’s men around, but you feel a chill down your spine, sensing something might’ve gone wrong.”

“Well, Boris is unaware of the feeding mishap, right?” Alex asked.

“That is correct.”

Alex, which if Marion understood correctly was Sam’s boyfriend, was a rangy guy, with shaggy and long dark hair, wearing flannel over a black shirt with faded prints of dragons, swords and lightning bolts on it; Marion wasn’t on the loop of the current culture enough to know if that was the cover of an album of some metal band or a reference to some fantasy novel or game. But she was savvy enough to know it was likely one of those things. His character, Boris, seemed to be the most reasonable of the group, from what Marion could gather in her couple of hours watching a story she caught in the middle, developing entirely within their minds. Alex did a passable eastern European accent whenever he lent his voice to Boris. It made it a little easier to know what was said by the character versus the player, compared to Isabella and Sam, who mostly used their normal voices.

“Then, in that case, Boris has no reason to think anything has gone wrong, he’ll tell Eva to stay put and will take a long walk around the station, looking for anything suspicious,” Alex said, reaching for his own dice as if expecting Logan to ask him to roll them for something.

She did, indeed, and for the next hour, Marion found herself picturing the scenes that were being described but as if she was reading a book, or perhaps, listening to a soap opera on the radio. They didn’t make those anymore, and they had stopped being popular before Logan was born, but she had a sense that otherwise, the girl might have enjoyed it.

The pretend vampires struggled with hiding the body of Pandora’s accidental victim, having to smuggle it through a bus station full of people to try and ditch her in a ravine before a van full of armed goons stopped by the roadside and jumped their characters, armed with machetes and thick leather outfits. When the fight started, the narration became less dense, and the dice rolled much more often. The tension was palpable across the table as seemingly Eva was useless in a fight, and Boris and Pandora struggled with the superior numbers. By the end of it, they prevailed, but judging by the reactions around the table, it was by the skin of their teeth. And just as the last of them went down, Logan made a long-winded, dramatic description of another car stopping with its lights pointing towards the ravine where the girl's body was tossed, now littered with dead goons, and a mysterious silhouette approaching, concluding it with:

“…As the form steps out of the car and walks with its back to the headlights, you begin to recognise the familiar contours of a well-known figure. The glow in their eyes and the lack of a heartbeat makes it clear it’s no mortal, but only as it comes closer where the lights are more diffuse, can you make out their identity; Cassius.”

That name had not popped up in the narrative yet, but the dramatic pause before Logan mentioned it, and the way everyone baulked or gasped for a brief second, impressed on her that that was a dramatic twist, for some reason. And then Logan smirked, mischief abundant as she narrowed her eyes and clicked a button, which stopped the dark ambient music playing in low volume in the background, and she reached out to flick back the main light switch.

“And this is where we leave things today,” she spoke, no longer in her narrative voice.

“What, no!” Sam protested.

“Oh, we are toast,” Alex said, looking at the piece of paper which contained a lot of information about his character. “Like… I can’t take a hit right now.”

“I don’t think he’s going to attack us,” Isabella offered with a shrug.

“We just killed, like, a bunch of people in his territory!”

As they continued to argue about the hypotheticals for what would happen next, Logan looked across the table and her eyes found Marion’s. Immediately, Marion felt a light tingle on the back of her neck, as she caught the amusement and devilry in the narrator’s expression. She wanted all that speculation, and to leave them hanging.

“So… We can try to schedule the same time for next week, yeah?” Logan proposed once the post-game chatter had cooled a smidge.

“I mean, we can try for the same day, I think,” Alex voiced.

Marion had less interest in their schedule arrangements that started once the session had ended, with the turning of the lights, as if an ancient ritual to indicate a separation between the time spent in that strange shared dream, and reality. But being around that many humans for that long with the windows closed made a very subtle tingle across her chest and forearms, down to the tip of her fingers. Barely there, unnoticeable unless she paid attention to it. She shouldn’t be hungry. She had visited Dave the day before and spent the last of her money on two bags. But that meant her senses were sharper than normal, and the smell of the young humans was making her tense up.

She got up, in part to get away from them, but also to try and remedy her condition. As Logan, Sam, Alex and Isabella discussed when they could meet next, she walked into the kitchen and fetched the thermos she kept inside the fridge. Dave had told her the blood should keep for a while if she kept it between thirty-seven to forty-two degrees. And according to a cheap pharmacy thermometer, the only one she had and thus one she’d need to trust, Logan’s fridge was a neat and constant forty. It was a bit risky drinking with humans in the house, but they seemed very caught in their conversation, and Marion decided to try something Dave had mentioned in their brief meeting the previous night. She filled a large soup bowl with water and put it in Logan’s microwave for a minute, while she poured the thermos' contents into a mug. That powerful scent of iron rose from the bottom of the mug and Marion's nostrils flared, her tongue licked across her lips, the back of her neck prickled and yet, her neck tightened and she near gagged in revulsion. She watched the slow pour, teasing herself with it as the timer in the microwave continued to tick down and it hummed its constant low drone.

She knew humans did not have senses as keen as hers, but she struggled to believe they couldn’t smell it as she did. It was so strong, overwhelming even. In its cold state, it was revolting and disgusting. And yet delicious. She might've been gagging, but she’d lick it off the floor if it happened to spill, cold and all. She knew that much. There was no pretending there was any dignity in that. And then her mind went back to the games and Logan’s fanciful descriptions of the ‘hunger’. They were weirdly both very relatable and yet just off the mark. In some parts, Logan seemed to overestimate the despair and irrational drive that it provoked. But in others, she undersold it. Marion, of course, had made no comments at any point. Not about how her friend and roommate narrated the denizens of her fictional world and the sensations experienced by her players, and not about how the players themselves directed their characters.

However, strangely, the thing that felt most familiar to her, was that Logan would inform them of how hungry they were. She’d remind them of their need to feed, she’d impress on them the urgency. No, the characters themselves. In that, Marion recognised something she had struggled to put into words before. That hunger was hers, sure. But very often, it felt like a dialogue. It felt like a voice inside her; sometimes informing her, sometimes demanding and sometimes simply going on and on, relentlessly, about what it wanted.

The microwave dinged and Marion pulled out the bowl full of warm water. Carefully placing it on the counter and then she placed the mug she had filled with blood inside it until the waterline almost reached the edge. Dave had suggested heating the blood directly in the microwave, but Marion had a feeling that wouldn’t work. But then a more elegant solution came to mind. Bain-marie. It worked for chocolate, helping it warm up and melting it without it burning or losing its properties, according to late-night reruns of old cooking shows; why would it not work for blood?

In truth, it was experimental, but she reckoned she might as well try. As the conversation continued in the living room, she watched the mug sit idly in the centre of the bowl, and she could imagine, if she had a steady supply of blood bags, making that a ritual. The idea of always having a cup of warm blood, just a little bit, every night; well, wouldn't that be swell? It would take a few moments for it to heat up properly so she closed the thermos and placed it back in the fridge. Logan had shown no curiosity or interest in it, so she felt safe keeping it there, but just for insurance, she made sure to tuck it far against the back of the shelf. Out of sight, out of mind, after all.

And then she turned back to her slow-warming sanguine beverage, pulling a spoon and stirring it softly. As the smell rose stronger and stronger, she felt that warm and wet click, and the release of pressure that came with relief. Like taking off a really tight shoe, when her fangs pushed out. Her cheeks were still capable of blushing and she felt them warm up at the same time a single drop of cold fear dripped down her spine. She was being very irresponsible, but, again, she could still hear them talking. Now they had moved on from scheduling to talk about the absence of Kevin – or Mortimer, as they seemed to use the player and the character name interchangeably a lot – and how it impacted the game moving forward. As long as they were there, in the dining room area, talking, she didn’t have to worry about them spotting her fangs or her drink. Why even take such a risk though, she asked herself. The answer, of course, was that she had been teased about the idea and the pleasures of feeding, romanticized and delusional as they were, for the last four hours. And the dose she got the previous night wasn’t enough to get through that without that thirst coming back stronger. Or maybe it wasn’t that. Maybe she just knew the blood was there waiting. And having it so easily accessible and not consuming it was just too hard. Maybe she was just weak-willed. Maybe she was just hungry. Maybe she…

“Hey, watcha having there?”

The single drop of fear that she felt before was now replaced by an ice-cold bucket of it flowing down across the whole of her spine and engulfing her insides. The cold panic did indeed feel liquid in how it spread as if someone had poured it in a hole in the back of her skull and she was hollow, quickly filling up as it sloshed around her. She turned to find Isabella leaning on the counter separating the living room and dining area from the kitchen. She had broken off from the group while they continued to talk, and Marion's senses should’ve been keen enough to hear her steps, but she was so focused on the blood that she had simply tuned off the rest. She didn’t respond immediately, and what was an innocent question seemed to become something else as Isabella’s eyebrow slowly raised in an increasingly suspicious look.

“Oh… This? It’s tea,” Marion finally answered, deliberately pursing her lips hoping Isabella couldn’t spot a glimpse of fangs as she talked.

She couldn’t retract them at will. Not when there was a meal on the horizon. Stupid risk, she repeated, in her head, in an angry mantra. She pulled the spoon out of the cup and licked it clean, with some hope that she had done it close enough that the dark red liquid wasn’t noticeable. It was a bad idea. The taste of blood touching her tongue, and even with that chemical taint of anticoagulant, it was worthy of a shudder. It took Marion a monumental effort to prevent herself from visibly squirming at the sensation.

“Oh, at this hour?”

“Yeah… It’s, uh… I’m mostly awake all night. This is basically noon for me.”

“Really?” Isabella asked, moving across the counter and seemingly aiming to enter the kitchen.

Marion pulled the cup of lukewarm blood from the bowl where it had been in a bain-marie and held it close to her, with both hands. The cup was very warm, but the discomfort from the heat was easily durable.

“Yeah… I thought Logan would’ve mentioned.”

“Mentioned your schedule? Why?”

“Oh, not that. Mentioned that I… I have a skin condition. I can’t go out in the sun, even for a second. I’d blister up and, like… Probably super susceptible to skin cancer if I push my luck.”

Mortals never liked to hear about cancer, it was often a good way to deflect them away from that particular conversation. It brought bad associations and bad memories, and they flinched away from it. But Isabella seemed unaware as she walked into the kitchen. Marion took a sip of her drink. The temperature was almost perfect. The blood flowed down her throat. It tasted feminine, intensely so, with a certain flowery property. A florist? Maybe a gardener. The earthiness of it reminded her of wet soil. She could’ve lost herself in that sip and gulped the whole thing if Isabella had not continued the conversation:

“Photophobia then?”

“Not phobia. Just… Extreme sensitivity.”

“So, you’re a vampire?”

There was no jocose tone in Isabella’s voice as she asked, point-blank. Marion was paralyzed holding her cup of blood and being acutely aware of the fangs in her mouth. Dave knew. Some mortals knew. Maybe Isabella knew too. But Dave was a contact who knew very little about her. Isabella was friends with her roommate. It wouldn’t be something she could disentangle with easily. Marion didn’t respond, at first simply because she had no idea how to respond, but as the seconds passed, it became more of a deliberate reaction. She couldn’t tell if Isabella was seriously asking it or not.

Marion found herself trying to get a measure of the short girl wearing a white off-shoulder shirt under a black overall. Around her neck was a choker with a crescent moon and a couple of deeper necklaces with a pentagram and small black crystal. Her nails alternated between black and white, and she had perhaps three or four rings on each hand and a bracelet on top of it on her left.

Marion wasn’t sure what to make of that. A lot of mundane humans styled themselves with references to the occult. Which didn’t necessarily mean they knew anything about anything. And with the smell of blood right under her nose, it was just too difficult to concentrate. Too tempting to just drink and figure it out later. She took another large gulp of her alleged tea. The strange girly floral flavour ran down her throat. She couldn’t fully repress the shudder that it brought her body as the heat began to spread from her stomach and outwards. Her senses felt sharper, but it was always a little bit of a surprise remembering just how much crispier they could be. The cup was near empty. Just one more sip and she’d be done with the evidence.

“I guess I am. Kinda,” she finally responded.

Isabella chuckled and smiled with complicity.

“Sorry about your skin thing. It sounds like it sucks.”

“It does, sometimes,” Marion said in heartfelt agreement and then took the final sip of her warm blood; now she just needed to resist the temptation to lick the rim.

“So, how did you meet Logan?”

“Kind of stumbled upon her when I was going through something difficult.”

“I see.”

Isabella sounded unconvinced, or at least not satisfied with the answer, and she walked towards Marion, closing the previous comfortable gap between them to step much closer. Marion pursed her lips tight, as if to make sure her fangs would not show through them, and swallowed dry. The aftertaste of anticoagulant lingered in her mouth, and with Isabella that close, her eyes went immediately to the girl’s neck. Through the brown strands of her hair, she could spot those pulsing veins. She tilted her head from side to side as if making a point of displaying it as her eyes swept around Marion’s shoulders, and face. Eventually, she extended her hand, palm up. Marion’s eyes were drawn to that spot a few inches above her wrist. Marion wondered if the girl was teasing her, taunting her by making a display of her most vulnerable spots.

“Can I see your hand?”

“What? Why?”

“I’d love to read your palm,” Isabella explained with a brief smile. “Well… Not a proper reading, that’s not something we can do here but at least give it a skim.”

“I am not sure I believe in that stuff,” Marion pointed out.

“It’s okay. It works even if you don’t believe in it.”

She was flushed with blood from her feeding the day before and her recent dose. Her body was warm enough that she didn’t have to worry about being touched so, hesitantly, she placed her hand on Isabella’s, which remained extended to receive it. She hummed and raised it, squinting as one of her black nails traced lines across the other girl’s palm. The way she hummed in surprise and frowned in confusion a few times was a rather convincing performance of someone reading something, though Marion was quite confident that was all bullshit.

“Well, that’s kind of odd,” Isabella said.

“What’s odd?”

“You’re a little on the shy side for someone with air hands like these. Though it does help to explain how anxious you are.” The palm reader let go of the other's hand and smiled again.

“Sounds like you could’ve known that without looking at my hand.”

“Yeah, sounds like. As I said, it’s not a proper reading. And I’m not really good at it, to be honest. You know what I’m good at?”

“No.” Marion shifted her weight from one foot to another.

“Auras,” Isabella said conclusively, without showing any signs of doubt or self-consciousness about her beliefs. “Got it from my grandmother.”

“Huh.” Marion had no idea what to say to that.

“And that’s the weirdest thing… Your aura is just black.”

“Black?”

“Yeah. Not just dark. Pitch black. Never saw anything like it.”

“What does that mean?”

“Not fucking idea, chica. But I doubt it’s good.”

“Well… Hope you don’t take issue if I ask for a second opinion,” Marion retorted, shifting weight again but trying to smile. “Can you recommend me another aura doctor?”

Isabella’s eyes narrowed and locked eyes with Marion's with an intense expression of scrutiny, and for a fraction of a second, the vampire could almost believe the new-age freak might be able to read her soul through her eyes. ‘Good fucking luck trying to find a soul in there,’ Marion thought when she realised the silliness of that belief. And then Isabella laughed.

“Good one… Aura doctor,” Isabella echoed with another snickering after. “You’re alright, uh… Marion, right?”

“That’s right.”

Marion breathed out in relief, and thankfully her lungs were filled with air in her current state of feeding. She headed to the sink to wash off the remains of blood from the mug. It struck her as wasteful to pour even that smidge down the drain but better than waiting for someone to see what was inside.

“Hey, Isa, you’re spooking my roommate, aren't you?” Logan asked as she entered the kitchen.

Marion turned from the sink to spot Alex and Sam putting on their coats and getting ready to brave the cold Seattle night outside. Alex tossed his backpack on too while Sam was busy typing something on her phone.

“What? Of course not. I was just giving her a palm reading,” Isabella responded.

“M-hm.” Logan was sceptical. “That’s exactly what I meant.”

“Come on, I’m not that mean.”

“You can be,” Logan said in a tone that was more a reminder than an accusation.

Whatever the pink-haired girl was referring to seemed to have been understood plainly by Isabella, as the girl lightly blushed and dipped her head in concession.

“No more fortune readings… Unless she asks for it.”

Logan looked briefly back at Marion and then turned to her friend.

“Yes, unless she asks. Now, Alex and Sam are heading out. Isn’t he your ride?”

“Oh. Yep, that’s right,” Isabella said, suddenly looking back at the couple already heading for the front door. “Well, was nice meeting you, Marion.”

“Same, really, Isabella,” Marion said out of politeness, with the best cordial smile she could muster.

Logan gave Marion an apologetic look and then moved to see her friends out. Marion decided to play the good roommate and help organise the pile of books, notes and dice left behind on the dining table. But as she approached the cardboard screen with detailed illustrations of vampires feeding, fighting and generally looking good, Logan suddenly rushed from the door, after closing it behind Isabella, Alex and Sam, to intercept her and push down that screen over her notes.

“Don’t look at that!” she chided.

“What? No, I wasn’t going to… But also, what’s in there?”

“Campaign notes. All the secrets yet to be revealed,” Logan explained as Marion moved away and she began to stick her own notes within the plastic sheets inside a binder.

“That’s… Okay. It’s not like I was going to spill those to your friends.”

“Well, I don’t want you to be spoiled either,” Logan continued.

“Why? I’m not participating in it…”

“Yet.” Logan lifted her head and smirked, closing the binder, folding the screen and, with that, feeling confident she had hidden the more sensitive material.

“Yet?”

“I was low-key watching you during the game. Admit you had fun watching it.”

“I mean, it was interesting.”

“M-hm… That’s how it starts.”

Marion chuckled at Logan’s confidence. If she had a third of that, she would have no problem feeding at all, she was sure. And the way she basically slipped into several different characters as the story demanded, was impressive. Marion took a couple of books from the table, the same ones she had been reading on the last few days, and placed them in their proper slot on Logan’s shelves. Logan stuck her binder and screen neatly in place, on the shelf right beside it.

“You know… You’re really impressive as the… Narrator, I suppose?”

Logan turned her head, a quizzical expression as if she had not heard it well.

“I mean, in the game today. You were great. The voices, the story… Improvising on the spot. It was pretty impressive,” Marion clarified the compliment.

Logan's cheeks took to a shade of pink and then a deeper shade of red as she suddenly coyly looked away from Marion and said in a lower tone than usual:

“Shush… But thanks.” Tucking a little bit of her hair behind her own ear, she turned to look at Marion again. “Does that mean you’ll join our group then? Since you like my stories so much.”

“Means I’ll consider,” Marion compromised.

And something about the way Logan looked at her caused her heart to race. And she smiled. Only then did she realise she still had her fangs out when she saw the confused look on Logan’s face. Immediately she pursed her lips. The blood thirst had subsided enough that she could retract them, and Logan furrowed her brow and focused on Marion. She opened her mouth as if to ask a question. Marion made a point of forcing a smile, now displaying a perfect row of teeth, without extra sharp predatorial canines protruding where they shouldn’t.

“What?” Marion asked, her own heart racing, wondering how much Logan had noticed, and how sure of it she was.

“Uh… Nothing, nothing, just…”

Logan never concluded her thought, shaking her head instead and moving away from the shelf. She still seemed partially confused but, like waking from a dream, in a matter of seconds, that thought would vanish into nothing. The Veil acted in strange ways, but humans would very often ignore things that went against the way they knew the world to work. Even when they saw it with their own eyes, their minds would rationalize it, explain it away, or outright block it. Until they witnessed something they couldn’t possibly deny. Once the Veil was perceived, there was no turning back. But Logan wasn’t there yet. After turning off the two shaded lamps she was using for the atmosphere, she faced Marion again.

“I’m exhausted… But I guess the night’s just starting for you, huh?”

Marion nodded.

“What do you even do all night?” Logan inquired, “it’s not like there are as many things to do now as there are during the day.”

“Read. Walk. Work. Think. Sometimes I just sit there and exist for a while before going to sleep.” Marion deliberately omitted the part where she desperately hunted for the blood of humans.

“Hm. Mood,” Logan responded.

There was a moment where they just looked at each other from half a room away, in silence, and then Logan broke it to say:

“I’m glad we have our night out planned then. That’s going to be fun.”

Marion felt her own cheeks turning red now as she remembered the context in which she had proposed they did it. And she remembered that picture of the two girls enlaced against a dirty bathroom wall. Predator and prey but both in ecstasy. If only.

“It’s going to be fun,” Marion agreed, wishing she could think of more to say.

Another moment of silence, and then Logan simply smiled and disappeared into the corridor towards her room with a wave of her hand. Marion looked out towards the front door. And feeling her cheeks remained red and her heart, barely used to beating, racing faster, she decided she needed to go for a night walk.