Free Fall

: Chapter 8: "Hunting vampires?"

(Unedited)

When Christian sends me a text in the morning, my nervous system immediately sends me to high alert as a neverending corroding confusion sets in, making me feel like a marshmallow peep among mountains of confusion. The boldness he possesses, the swede answers chewing me up physically and sometimes mentally. He was confident, breaking me down inch by inch as I saw the lavender dyed hair curled up, a hoodie proclaiming vampires suck, the sparkly eyeshadow, the evanescent nail polish that persuaded the signature confidence pictured in the text.

***

"Morning," I look up as Christian walks towards me, his voice interrupting my thinking as he stands as he had in his text this morning. His colours showed a more lively vibe than he did in the picture, now that he stands within arm's reach. It left me wondering if my parents were watching us from the house; if they were, I wished they weren't praying to the cross. They are likely to see Christian as unqualified, whereas I see him as a puzzle I'm elicited to figure out.

"Hunting vampires?" I ask in a tone relaying the fact that I had not known how to reply. My Twilight poster still hangs in my bedroom, confessing its victory of not being taken down for the sake of middle school memories.

"I work for Angeles," he replies confidently as he steps closer, making the impression of staking me to the ground with a wooden stake. It took me a few seconds to get it; then, I faked my death, remaining still until Vampire Hunter Christian realises his training failed him.

I couldn't believe it. Christian had mentioned the vampire from Buffyverse that had changed a lot of things for me. My perspective on hot demonic vampires for one. Angeles, was and still remains a vampire King to me, despite how Joss Whedon declared the ending to both of the series in themselves. Sorry Cullens, Lestat and Count Dracula, my first fictional vampire boyfriend, was and still will be Angeles.

The famous cries of Branta canadensis interfere the moment we had been in as they continue on their trek to Florida or Canada. Breaking us from whatever moment we lived in made our mission to get to school a reality.

 Shivering as I do, I demonstrate my bleak reaction to the drop in autumnal temperatures.

"I'm using the camera," I tell him as he sets yet another soundtrack for our journey. Until now, I hadn't considered using it for the art assignment in question. "For art," I finished, though how I had added it made it seem more melancholy than optimistic as I began to wonder what art in black and white would look like.

"Then add a smile to that face, Hemsworth," he tells me happily as I start to place my head on his window but stop short. "A camera needs a smiling face," he adds as we continue our commute as a catchy pop song plays beside us. Without notice, he starts to sing off-key to it, adding a fun rhythm to it.

While I take in his shadow of bright and pastel colours, my thumb and index finger form a camera shape, and my insides fusion as I wish I were as brave as him. I want to say, "you're freakin' gorgeous," but my saliva freezes inside my throat instead; I was confident that it would only make things awkward between us. If this was just a one-sided crush or a crush at all, I did not want to continue being awkward between us.

"Some cameras were meant to have sad faces," I told him. As a child, I remember watching the misguided media depictions of being LGBTQIA. The victims' faces as their world collapsed around them, as they became poster children of a misguided label upon coming out; God help them. It was portrayed as a cult instead of a reality, especially among news media outlets. All that changed when my mother introduced me to the world of Olivia Benson after watching an episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, who was the Queen of finding justice when victims needed justice. Her disgust with the show's real-life politics led her to remove the show from our home.