Me: Do you like long walks on the beach at sunset?
Her: Yes but after sunset.
So began my whirlwind romance with Evelyn. We met online, obviously, I admired her classic sense of style- she seemed to favour long flowing dresses and wearing her hair long. I liked that about her, like she was really making an effort in her appearance. She’s great, she’s funny, she smiles all the time and when she gets nervous, she twiddles her raven black hair and looks at me all coy.
It’s great, she’s the best girlfriend I’ve ever had.
But…she is a bit weird.
For one thing, she sleeps during the day. I mean, I’m not against it or anything but it kind of makes our schedules clash, you know?
It’s great, she says. I get more time to watch you sleep.
She says that her consulting job requires her to be awake during East Asian business hours. Which I kind of get. Look, I’m supportive of her career, don’t get me wrong. But I have found myself adjusting to her schedule and I’ve become more a night owl. So most of our dates happen during the nighttime…which has turned out to be kind of fun actually. Prowling the city streets, wandering into dark alley ways…not something my nerdy self would have done before I met Evelyn.
And our relationship was going great for about six months but then I started to notice a pattern: once every month Evelyn would have to, in her own words, “be somewhere really important for business”.
Wouldn’t say what. Wouldn’t say where. Couldn’t contact her if I needed to. Despite all the smiles, snuggles, and smooches…I started to get suspicious. I suppose it was partly her unusual sleep pattern, her flawless pale skin, her classic sense of manners and fashion, the secret meetings at night…I was starting to think…she was too good for me.
She had to be having an affair.
So, the night she said she was off to her secret nocturnal meeting…I followed her.
I won’t lie, I wasn’t exactly James Bond with my super sleuth skills that night. Almost lost her a few times going around some corners. Honestly, it’s harder than the movies make it out to be.
Eventually though, I tracked her and then watched as she stopped and got out of the car at some house in the sticks.
Some business meeting location…
I parked the car around the corner and sneaked behind some bushes at the end of the street to watch her exit her Honda Civic. Evelyn walked up to this rundown house with broken patio steps and a half-painted front exterior. I thought I even saw some sneakers hanging off the power lines in front.
Drugs? Drugs were the first thought in my mind. In my six months I’d been with her, I hadn’t seen any inkling that she was abusing anything. Not even something benign like chocolate. But on the other hand, there was always this invisible wall around her. Like there was a small part of her life she wasn’t telling me. There were times when her smile faded, her usual boisterous personality receded and she would become cold and walled off.
Maybe that Eveyln was the one I was witnessing now with the moonlight shining off her flowing raven black hair.
I tried to sneak closer without being seen. But as I reached the yard two houses away, I stepped on a squeaking toy.
SQUEAK!
Commando roll. Like a man possessed by an eighties action hero, I rolled to my right and under the bushes next to the house. I just caught her turning her head to my direction. My stake out was going to end before it even began.
Then I heard the creaking of a door opening.
“Hey babe. I thought you would never arrive.” Said a strange man in earshot.
“Yeah stud, I wouldn’t miss this.” Said Evelyn in a bubbly tone.
It felt like a vice was compressing my entire chest. I tried to bury my face in the dirt beneath me, hoping this was all just a bad, sick dream. I wish I just died then and there, at least my corpse would be useful as a fertiliser for the bush I was hiding under.
“Come on in, let’s get the party started.” Said the strange man.
“With you? It would be a party to die for!” Replied Evelyn, somehow even more enthusiastic.
And with that, I could hear her step inside and the front door slam behind her.
I couldn’t believe it. I pathetically rolled out from under my hiding bush and lay flat on my back and just stared up at the stars. Granted, I couldn’t see any because of light pollution, but I imagined how many stars were in the sky. The thought of billions and billions of stars I couldn’t see, put in perspective just how insignificant my predicament really was.
Who cares if she was having an affair? There’s plenty more women out there. No big deal, I pick myself up, remind myself I have dignity and a lot to offer women. I’ll find another great, loving, funny, beautiful, cheery, bubbly, adoring…who was I kidding?
I’d been single for nearly five years before I met Evelyn. I was almost prepared to die alone. I had never met a woman as great, loving, funny, beautiful, cheery, bubbly, adoring as her in my entire life. I was out here practically stalking her for goodness sake, there was no way I wasn’t obsessed with her.
So, in possibly the worst decision of my life, I decided to see if I could catch Evelyn in the act with her mystery man.
Seeing that there were no lights on at the front of the house, I casually walked to the house and then silently sidled down its side. I could see a faint glow emanating from the backyard, it was obvious they were in a back room. I quietly approached the backyard, slowly and silently opening and closing the side gate but almost kicking a loose wooden panel along the ground. I looked down to find a gaping hole underneath the house where the wooden panel had been. Upon bending down to inspect the hole, I was met with the worst stench I’ve ever experienced.
Seriously, I thought it was like a dozen family of possums had died down there. It was that bad.
After stopping myself from retching, I continued towards the light where I stopped at the corner of the house. It was there that I heard the sound of someone else, a woman.
“I can’t believe we found someone so big…” said the strange woman.
I became lightheaded. I became even more lightheaded when I heard a strange sucking sound. I’m not going to elaborate where my imagination ran off to.
But I had to be sure. Looking around the corner I could see rays of light shining out from high windows, high enough that I couldn’t see through it at ground level. I should have taken the hint there but I didn’t. Whether it was some perverted voyeuristic impulse or what I believe was a compulsion to unequivocally know to be true: that Evelyn was having an affair, I made the decision to look.
So I found a wheelie bin, pulled it under the window, and before I could step on it I overheard even more of the conversation.
“So how’s your boyfriend going?” Said the strange woman with a certain contemptuous tone to boyfriend.
The sucking sound stopped.
“I love him. I think we’re meant to be together.” Evelyn said in her soft tone. If only I could have believed her.
The strange woman chortled. “Love him? Really? Have you told him about this at all? Do you really think he would love you after he knows about this?”
Evelyn snapped back. “Shut it! You don’t know him like I do…but…I haven’t found the right time.”
The sucking sound started again.
It was all too much to bear. How could I continue to believe her lies when it was obvious what she was doing behind my back? The seedy nighttime life, her closed off professional life, I just had to see it with my own two eyes. Only then, I told myself, could I move on from my broken heart.
Oh God how I wish I didn’t.
Slowly, slowly I climbed on top of the bin, placed my fingers on the windowsill, and pulled my eyes into view of the window.
She wasn’t eating him out.
She was eating him.
There was blood everywhere. Red splattered just everywhere. It was a kitchen, like any other, but there was Evelyn, kneeling on the floor, her raven black hair stained dark red, her mouth chewing on the neck of who I presume was the man from before. She was biting, licking, slurping all the corpse’s flowing blood, feasting upon his innards.
For a second, I took my eyes off her, my beautiful monstrous Evelyn and noticed the strange woman, a tall brunette, leaning back against a kitchen bench with her arms folded and looking bored.
Then she spoke, “Don’t finish him, leave some for me. I found him after all.”
Evelyn stopped sucking down on the dead man’s neck. “You’re right. Sorry. I just got a little greedy.”
For the briefest of moments she looked up to the window, startling me, causing me to lose my balance where I then crashed onto the ground with a large thud.
“What was that?” Said a startled Evelyn.
I was laying still for only half a second before I heard heavy footsteps approaching the back door, not wanting to end up eviscerated, I scrambled onto my feet and around the corner, just quickly enough to avoid the opening of the back door as signalled by it slamming against the house.
My heart was practically beating out of its chest by that point. If there was anything that was going to give me away, it was the sound of my own heart beating against my ribs.
I could hear the faint sound of someone sniffing and before I knew it my wobbling knees carried me away to the side gate. But before I reached it, I stopped.
They would hear me go through the gate, so, in that brief moment, the only escape route I thought was possible was…the small hole leading underneath the house. I dropped straight to the ground and crawled through that hole, ignoring the almost unbearable stench with every fibre of my willpower.
It was dark so I was practically crawling blind, my face rubbing against the dry dust underneath the house until I bumped headfirst into something. It felt like it had a soft exterior until there was a “crunch” as my skull pressed forward. Startled, I reflexively jumped up, causing me to bump against the bottom of the floorboards. I lay there still, pondering how remarkably stupid I was when I heard voices behind me.
“I thought I heard a sound around here.” Said my dear, sweet, bloodthirsty vicious Evelyn.
“I thought I did too.” Said the voice of the strange woman.
“What if it was a Van Helsing?” Said Evelyn scared.
There was a brief pause.
“Don’t be stupid.” Mocked the strange woman. “They don’t exist. It was probably a stupid possum or something.”
“Are you sure?”
There was a loud sniffing sound coming from outside.
“I don’t smell any humans. Not any live ones anyway.” Said the strange woman.
“Well, amazeballs. I guess.”
I let out a quiet sigh of relief but almost gagged when I breathed in the foul stench from underneath the house. I wondered if all homes smelled this bad underneath.
“What are you doing?”
I held my breath in stunned fear. I looked back to the hole I crawled through and saw two pairs of shoes in the moonlight.
“I’m going to call my partner. It’s just, at times like this, it makes you appreciate the people in your life who really matter to you, you know?” Said Evelyn.
“You’re just weird.” Replied the strange woman.
I relaxed just a little. I think they stopped looking for me. But then a dread covered my entire body. She was going to call me. Me. My arms frantically flailed as I reached for my phone in my pocket when it-
RING.
I wasn’t even quick enough to swipe hang up. I covered the speaker of the phone with my hand and I pulled the phone against my stomach and pressed so hard like I was hoping the phone would go inside me.
“Did you hear that?” Said Evelyn.
“Yeah, but it was probably some bird.” Said the strange woman.
I tried to take long deep breaths to calm myself as I was lying in that dusty smelly hole.
Finally after what felt like forever, my phone stopped vibrating.
“He didn’t answer.” Said Evelyn sounding disappointed. “He must be sleeping. I’m going to go surprise at home.”
“Seriously? We only do this once a month and you want to crawl back to your pet human?”
There was a moment of silence before Evelyn spoke again.
“Good night. See you in a month.”
“Seriously? Ugh.”
With that, the side gate creaked open and shut leaving only one pair of boots visible through the hole. I stared and stared at the boots, sweat from my face poured down onto the dry dust, and the insufferable stench becoming almost overwhelming. It took every ounce of my will to not move a single muscle unless I alerted that monster out there, condemning myself to death.
But she didn’t move. She just stood still. The black leather boots shining in the moonlight seemed like they themselves were alive, judging me and inspecting me, deciding whether I live or die.
Then, without a word, those boots moved out of view, followed by the sound of the back door slamming shut.
All at once I splayed out on the dusty dry ground. My nightmare seemed to be over.
Then I remembered Evelyn said she was going back to the apartment.
Shit.
I scrambled back onto my stomach and started to crawl back to the open hole with the phone in my right hand. Deciding to make my life easier, I turned on the flashlight.
Again, curiosity is not my friend. After I turned the light on, I decided to wave the light around, just to get my bearings. Just to see what it was like underneath a house. Even with Evelyn now probably in her car and driving home, I still decided to look around. Dumbest mistake I made tonight. Since the first thing I saw with the light was a human face.
A decomposed human face, its eyes long since gouged out, the nose mostly missing, the lips curled back, and teeth fallen out, lying yellow and decayed on the dusty ground. As if it wasn’t horrifying enough, that corpse wasn’t the only one. They were almost lined in rows, men and women, some with limbs missing, all rotted and dead. I flashed the light behind me and now realise what that crunch sound was before, behind me was the corpse with its ribcage partially collapsed.
I turned back to the open hole, doing my best to ignore this nightmare all around me.
I was definitely breaking up with Evelyn later.
--
There were no lights on in my apartment when I got there. It seemed like I got there before she did even with her head start. I was so disorientated with what happened at that house of death I didn’t even think about what to do while driving.
How do you actually kill…a vampire? Can’t be like the movies. Is that what she is? No normal human just drains the blood from somebody. What if I just dumped her? There would be a distinct possibility that she would turn and suck my blood.
I started to panic, thought maybe I could call the police but they would probably laugh at me.
Your girlfriend is a vampire? Yeah, okay, Trevor Belmont is on his way so just hang tight.
No, this was on me. I was so stupid for not seeing this for the six months I’d been with her. It was up to me as a mere mortal to put an end to this horror on Earth. So I went to my kitchen, picked up a wooden chair and snapped one of its legs off to make a makeshift stake.
Then I heard the front door open.
“Honey? Are you awake?”
Evelyn slowly approached the kitchen doorway, her footsteps echoing in the hallway. I stood there in the middle of the kitchen, with the chair leg in my hand, and in a complete state of confusion.
Just before she entered the kitchen, I quickly held the stake behind my back and watched as she walked in holding a box of Turkish Delights.
She smiled at me and cocked her head at an angle.
“I didn’t forget. Happy six-month anniversary!”
Won’t lie, it felt like she drove a stake through my heart. I thought about the idea of killing her, but the reality is, she was the best girlfriend I’ve ever had.
“Lost for words huh? I’ll fix that…” Evelyn skipped towards me and wrapped her arms around my neck and we embraced lips. I made sure I carefully hugged her without touching her with the chair leg.
We stopped kissing and just tightly embraced. She then pressed her face against my chest for just a moment…before she pulled her head back in disgust and retched violently.
“Why do you stink?” She said as she backed away while smothering her nose with both hands. In a nasally tone she continued, “…and why is the chair broken?”
My mind froze, it’s true, after what happened earlier in the night I thought about killing her…but I just can’t. I mean, maybe I was just imagining things? That’s silly, I couldn’t have been, unless I was having some sort of fully lucid psychotic breakdown. But vampires? Really? They couldn’t be real. They’re not, they’re just monster from gothic horror and over glorified props in teen romance novels. Would a wooden stake even work? That’s just a movie myth isn’t it? Nobody would actually know what an honest to God actual vampire is really like.
All those questions, all those conjectures, swirling around in my head as Evelyn looked on, her face changing from an expression of disgust to downright confusion. In an actually concerned tone she asked, “Are you okay? Like actually, okay?”
Her question pulled me out of my self-inflicted existential conundrum. I decided in that instant that I would just go on as normal. Pretend my girlfriend wasn’t some bloodsucking demon from folklore and Anne Rice novels but just a sweet innocent woman. So I lied as I stared straight into her green eyes.
“I was leaning against it and it broke. Clumsy me”
“Oh babe…” She pulled her hands away from her face and stretched out to hug me. But quickly caught a whiff of me again and returned her hands back to her nose.
“But why do you stink? Like really, really bad?”
I paused for a moment. I’m not a good liar. I’m a terrible liar in fact. When I lie, I get nervous and smile like an idiot. Too honest for my own good I guess.
But this was the first time in my life that I had to lie to save my own life. Not only that, the woman who could kill me knows me better than possibly anybody else. So, trying to play the best cool, laidback guy that I absolutely never will be, I twirled the broken chair leg in my hand and I nonchalantly replied, “I just went for a jog.”
“In the middle of the night?” She said with a blank stare and no hint of emotion whatsoever.
“Night jogging. It’s a thing. Something about cortisol levels at night and weight loss. I don’t know, I’m not a doctor.”
A moment of silence between us. My skull was pounding internally, my thoughts were racing, as I was trying frantically to think of any possible response to any possible question she might ask. One wrong answer could spell my death. Every muscle in my body tightened all in unison to maintain my thin veneer of calm.
She smiled and tilted her head.
“Wow. You’re really dedicated. Who knew doing something so good could make you smell so bad? But seriously honey, you’re not coming to bed until you wash that stink off.”
It was like all the muscles in my body relaxed all at once. For now, I was out of trouble…I think.
--
It took half an hour for me to scrub off that stink. Maybe soap isn’t enough to escape the lingering stench of death. Something I never wanted to confirm in my lifetime.
I may have fooled Evelyn for the time being but I still couldn’t remove the image of that dead man out of my head. Of seeing Evelyn with a mouth full of blood and human flesh, crouched over like some ghoulish creature from a Christopher Lee horror film. Figuring that Evelyn would be asleep after my half hour shower, I grabbed a blanket from the linen closet and laid naked on the couch, too afraid to step into my bedroom to retrieve even a pair of underwear.
As I laid down on the couch I reflected on what just happened. Watching a person being eaten, the pile of corpses underneath the house, Evelyn’s smile…was it real? Did she really believe me?
Almost on cue, I felt a soft fingertip run up against my naked arm. In shock, I jumped up and fell off the couch onto the floor.
“I’m not that scary…” I looked up and saw Evelyn standing behind the couch, illuminated by the light emanating from the bedroom, revealing her pouting as she looked down on me.
“Why haven’t you come to bed?” She rested both her arms against the back of the couch creating a silhouette resembling a large vampire bat. Roosting, perching, waiting for its prey to make a move.
“I still stink.”
Without saying a word, Evelyn slinked over the back of the couch, her stomach slithering onto the seat cushions until we were face to face. She then gently caressed the back of my head with her slender fingers as she sniffed the side of my neck where my carotid artery was. Like a pig hunting for truffles, she made loud snuffling noises as her nose dug into my neck. I simply laid still. Hoping desperately that she wouldn’t chomp down.
“Nope. Smell fine.” She sat up and knelt on the couch. “Come on. Come back to bed.”
I couldn’t move. It felt like there was a lead weight tied to my back and holding me down. All I could think about as she was sniffing me was her teeth sinking into the corpse of that man. The blood. All that blood. It could’ve been my blood. Who’s to say that it couldn’t be my blood? If I go to bed with her, lying next to her, unsuspecting, vulnerable, if Evelyn suddenly catches the whim to go for a midnight snack and nibble my neck…
The possibility was too much for me. But I couldn’t just run out of the apartment. She still doesn’t know that I know. Escaping would surely prompt her to kill me to keep her secret.
Another lie was in order.
“My legs can get restless after a jog. I don’t want to disturb you.”
“You never have before.” She snapped back. She was frowning now. Whatever playfulness she had was gone now. She was really starting to make me nervous.
“I just, I just want to sleep out here tonight. I still got to work tomorrow.”
Evelyn closed her eyes and breathed deeply. When her eyes opened, they welled with tears. Without saying a word, she climbed back over the couch and trudged back to the bedroom. Before she reached the doorway she looked back at me. Her tears were glistening from the light in the bedroom and with a soft quiver in her voice she said, “Well, when you feel like it. The door will be open.”
--
I didn’t sleep at all for the rest of the night. I just stared up at the ceiling and listened for the softest of footsteps. Every time I thought I heard her approaching I sat straight up, only to find myself alone in the dark. I was starting to get the impression I was paranoid and only imagining her stalking me, ready to pounce, ready to kill me…
But if she was the vicious killer that I thought she was, why hadn’t she killed me already? I spent the rest of the early morning hours running over that same question. Over and over. It’s possible she doesn’t like my type…to eat. Could be I’m too stringy or my blood’s too sour or something. I just had to bide my time until daybreak, when I had an excuse to leave the apartment and go to work.
So, for those dark quiet hours of the morning I waited, waited until dawn where I sneaked into the bedroom and watched the misshapen lump of sheets covering Evelyn (who snoring loudly I may add) and retrieved a fresh change of clothes and headed out without breakfast.
I barely got any work done. I searched everything I could about vampires and how to kill them. Or at least control them.
Turned out to be pretty hard. For one thing, I was so nervous all day that I didn’t have an impulse to eat. Not to mention that I should have been doing work so it seemed like my supervisor was checking up on me every ten minutes. But the amount of complete garbage about vampires is unreal.
We all know they don’t exist right? Right? I didn’t use to believe in vampires either until I saw my girlfriend drinking someone’s blood like they were a six-foot milkshake. So the origins and folklore is all over the place. In Southern European folklore, you can kill them by driving a wooden stake through their heart, decapitating them, or burning them alive. But really, that will kill normal people so what’s the point? Most of them were supposed to be plump corpses but Evelyn’s actually pretty toned…
Then at some point they got the Romance novel treatment followed by a Hollywood makeover. They went from blood-sucking corpse to suave seducers that could do anything from superhuman strength, hypnotism, turning people into ghouls, turning into a bat and you get the point. I don’t think Evelyn did any of those things.
Then there were the LARPers. People who pretended to be vampires for some reason. They would go to small meetups and drink each other’s blood, draw sigils, and pray to some weird made-up deities. They were just straight up losers to be honest. But I lurked their forums for hours on end, hoping for some desperate sign, some impossible way to prove once and for all that Evelyn wasn’t a vampire. Or if need be…
After a full day of not working, I just sat outside my apartment and made up my mind. If Evelyn was really this supernatural creature, I would have to continue pretending like everything was normal. Until I found a solution.
Lest I become her next victim.
But there was still a faint hope in the back of my mind, that the woman I loved and wanted to spend the rest of my life with was still there. A faint lingering hope that she would never harm me, that we could continue living our lives just as before.
But only if I could pretend everything was normal.
Just before twilight I finally gained the courage to open the door to our apartment. Trying not to make a sound, I painstakingly opened the front door without making a sound.
Only to find Evelyn standing at the end of the hallway, standing there, and staring at me…wearing a cute pink apron and oven mitts, holding a freshly baked apple pie that wafted all the way to the front door.
“Wow! Someone’s late.” She half-skipped towards, awkwardly holding the pie with straight arms. “Hard day at work?” She said with a beaming smile accentuated by her red full lips.
“Yeah, it was a full day of work. Didn’t stop-“
“I baked you pie!” She said with the awkwardness of a teenage girl.
In my confusion, I reached out to grab the hot tin but she reflexively pulled it towards her.
“It’s still hot silly. You’re just going to have to wait for it to cool down.”
Now, be me. I saw this woman eating a human being yesterday at a house with corpses underneath the floorboards. I’ve just spent all day trying to learn all I could about these mythical vampires.
And she bakes me apple pie.
And she was worried I might burn myself.
Does that seem like a bloodthirsty vampire to you?
So I thanked her for the pie and in a daze walked over to and plopped myself on the couch. Didn’t even turn the TV on. Evelyn must have put the pie somewhere because she daintily sat herself next to me and started stroking my neck with her long slender fingers.
You can probably imagine I wasn’t in the mood. I just sat there unresponsive, contemplating what the hell was going on in my life. Eventually Evelyn stopped, she pouted at me, her lower lip trembling and said, “What happened at work today sweetie?”
I spent all day discovering that the woman I thought I loved is a blood sucking monster and there was nothing I could do about it.
“Nothing. Boring work stuff.”
She leaned and nibbled on my ear.
“I could make your day a bit more eventful…”
But I pulled away and just stared absentmindedly into the corner of the room. I turned back to Evelyn and she was now sitting at the other end of the couch looking hurt.
“Okay. I guess. I forgot ice cream. Can you go to the supermarket and get me some ice cream. Please?” She said staring into my eyes intensely.
“Evelyn, really. I just got off-“
Then she did the strangest thing. Her hands danced in front of her, each finger rhythmically swaying, dancing to and fro, her cold green eyes now blazed intensely, like they were on fire, and I was captivated. There was just something about her now, something that made me watch, something that made me obey.
Her voice changed from the soft endearing Evelyn that I knew and loved into this seemingly powerful and deep timbre. It wasn’t like the voice was coming from her but it was like the sound of her voice was surrounding me, as if it were penetrating my skull and soaking my brain in its sound.
I was powerless to resist. Powerless to refuse.
“Get me ice cream.”
--
I don’t know what happened. The last thing I remember was exactly what I described. Next thing I know, I’m in my car, at an intersection, with a shopping bag with a tub of ice cream, cling wrap, baking paper, a batch of apples, a carton of milk, toothpaste…a full list of shopping items. I was caught staring at the shopping bag for so long that a car honked its horn behind me, and I hurriedly floored it and sped through the intersection.
There was only one explanation. Evelyn hypnotised me. She used her vampiric powers to hypnotise me. I felt so…used. I searched my memories, trying to think of any other time she may have hypnotised me. Any lapse of memory or some strange sense of forgetfulness. I just kept thinking of what else she could have made me do.
She could have made me…kill someone.
The thought crossed my mind but I just desperately wanted it not to be true. And like a meek puppy returning home to its human master, I pulled up into the apartment and brought the shopping in.
I found her in the kitchen slicing the apple pie into eighths, the large knife in her hand hitting the bottom of the pan like a guillotine dropping to behead its victim.
She looked up to me and smiled.
“Ice cream! I mean, you’re home!” She handed me a slice of apple pie. I handed her the shopping bag and she immediately pulled out the tub of ice cream.
“Come on. Let’s sit down.” She practically dragged me over to the couch where I despondently sat there with a plate of apple pie as she furiously dug into the ice cream with such enthusiasm that I’ve never seen before.
But I wasn’t hungry. I just sat there with my apple pie. Just staring straight ahead at nothing in particular.
I couldn’t stop thinking that she was eating the ice cream just like how she ate the neck of that man from the night before.
“It’s going to get cold if you don’t eat it.” I snapped out of my daze as she threateningly pointed the spoon at my face, with a small morsel of cookies and cream hanging off the edge of the spoon. I gazed down and noticed she had already eaten half the tub of ice cream.
I couldn’t just sit there. I had to get out. I placed the plate down on the table in front of me and stood up to her bewilderment.
“I’m going to go for a night jog.” I declared and I made my way to the front door despite her protestations that I was still wearing my work suit.
I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t do it. The lies. All the lies for the six months I knew her. It was just all happening so fast. One moment, Evelyn was a perfectly normal person without any inkling of bloodlust or hunger for human flesh and the next thing you know she’s some hypnotising, bloodsucking vampire. But maybe it wasn’t a lie. Maybe I just didn’t want to see what was right in front of me. My lifelong quest to defeat the universal human experience of loneliness led me down this path of self-delusion and wilful ignorance.
That realisation compelled me to start running. I was sprinting down the street, not stopping until I turned a corner out of sight from my apartment. Once I was around the corner I leaned against a streetlamp and started sucking in deep breaths. We live in the quieter part of the city, so at that time of the night I was the only one walking out on the streets. A few cars passed- passersby completely oblivious to my plight.
Then the sound of a trash can being overturned. Instinctively my head scanned the street. Not a single soul in sight. I was sucking in air so heavily that I didn’t get an accurate read from where it came from but a sudden cold chill ran up my spine and a nerve-wracking thought entered my brain.
What if it was Evelyn?
Breathing heavily and lightheaded, I staggered down the sidewalk, I continued my “night jog” and whipped out my phone.
Even though I spent all day searching on the internet, I opened up my browser and typed: How to kill a vampire.
There was another crash. Another garbage can, maybe. I twisted my head back and saw nobody. Nothing. But there was someone. The primitive part of my brain impelled me to keep running. My flight instinct was firing, telling me: Run you fool! Run!
I did keep running, but I typed something else into my phone: How to escape a vampire.
Heavy footsteps thundered behind me. Pounding against the concrete pavement. I didn’t have time to look back. I didn’t want to look back. My legs became heavy. My feet were plodding. It was a struggle. An effort. Faster. Forward. Live!
I tripped over my own feet and fell face first into the pavement. It was probably the most awkward thing I’ve ever done in my life, and if it wasn’t literally a struggle for life and death I’d probably laugh about it now. But as soon as my face smashed down into the concrete, my vision turned to black and I cried out in pain. It took seconds for the first semblances of light to return to my vision. Dots of light became blotches and then patches. After what seemed like half a minute, I could clearly see my blood pooled on the concrete pavement. Sensation started returning to my face and I could feel pain stinging my lips, tongue, and nose.
“Ow.” I cried out as I lifted my head up and saw her, staring right at me.
Still wearing her cute pink apron, Evelyn stood right in front of me, gazing down at the pool of blood that collected at my feet. She bent over and reached down to the ground. I was so struck with fear that I looked up into the sky, ready for that eventual sucking sound I first heard at that house. Ready for her to make a meal out of me.
“Who were you calling?”
Evelyn had held my cracked and bloody phone right up into my face.
“Who were you calling?” Her voice trembled.
Stuck in fear, I simply stood there agape as she became frustrated and furiously fingered my phone, scrolling and swiping through my call history.
“Is work really work? Or is that code for somebody?” She accused.
“Work is really work.” I said matter of factly.
“Yeah, well…who’s the Love of My Life? Is that your mistress?”
“That’s you honey bunny.”
She blushed and nervously returned to my phone. She kept scrolling, flicking through my screens trying to find anything to incriminate me. When she found it, she stopped and looked up at me with her face all scrunched up in confusion.
“How to escape a vampire? Why are you searching for something like that?” She asked, slightly hurt.
I sighed. I genuinely thought that was the end of me. But if I was going to die that night, then I wasn’t going to go down without a fight. I still had one lie left in me. My last slim chance to live.
“I wanted to do research for a fantasy roleplay scenario. Some of my friends are really into it so I wanted to be better informed. But it’s so dorky I thought you would think less of me.”
I just stood there resigned to my fate. Surely, surely Evelyn wouldn’t believe such a flimsy bold-faced lie. I thought.
Instead, Evelyn’s eyes welled up and she started bawling loudly. Stepping into the pool of blood she rested her face against my chest and wrapped her arms around me, her cries muffled against my body.
“I thought, I seriously thought you were having an affair. The lies, those stares off into nowhere, how you were refusing to touch me.” She wiped her tears away with her forearm and stared at me with her beautiful green eyes. “You still love me, don’t you?”
For the first time that night, I told her the truth.
“I love you, Evelyn.”
We kissed. Although I have to say, it felt like she was using her tongue to slurp up some of the blood that poured out of my mouth…
--
We went back to the apartment and it seemed like our relationship began anew. She helped me shower off all my sweat and blood and dutifully wrapped me with a towel as we snuggled on the couch watching late night TV. To be honest, it didn’t really matter what we were watching, all that mattered is that we were in love.
I was finally content. Our mutual struggle, the lies, the secrets. They were nothing compared to our love for each other. I relaxed and wrapped my arms around my honey bunny.
She pressed her head against my chest and looked up to me and said, “Try to leave me again, and I’ll put you back underneath that house with the rest of my discarded food.”