Give Me That Body (Oneshots)

Shark Week (Cuca - May 18, 2003)

Leechtin (6000 year old vampire) and his human ward, Cuca (38 year old human), May 18, 2003

"What are you doing, Saumana?" Leechtin asked, coming to sit by me on the couch.

"Are you still trying to change my name?" I asked him, taking his offered arm. He was wearing a long silk robe, red, and his long black hair pinned back. As he settled by me, he licked his lips, kohl-winged green eyes half-lidded with sleep.

"If you will be my own it will be your name for all time, Cuca," he said. He casually pressed his hand to my thigh and gestured at the television. "Tell me about TV. Please turn on the sharks. I want to see them."

"It's not Shark Week now, Leechtin."

He rested his old vampire head against mine, and I puffed his black hair out of my face. His long fingers stroked the collar of my sweater. "Child, do not protest me. Do as you are asked," he said, gently, cool body stealing the heat from mine.

"That's not how it works."

"Press button, sharks come out," he said, gesturing.

"Nope. Televisions get their pictures from satellites, Leechtin. If there's no shark show on the satellite, there isn't one to turn on."

He tapped my thigh impatiently.

"Stop hitting me."

"Find something," he said. "I want to see something I have never seen."

He had once opined to me at length about how fortunate we new humans are, that we see so much of the earth before our short lives are over. He had said that when he was human, all he knew was horses, sand, and endless wars. I haven't forgotten. 

"I saw this episode of CSI last night," I said, "where the woman was all cut in pieces and all they had was her head and her bra and they had to find out where the rest of the parts were, and it turned out they were buried at the four cardinal points of the city, and the killer was totally living at the North point, and they collared the guy. How dumb. Like, he must have wanted to be caught. It's the worst place to hide out he could possibly hide out at."

"Saumana, stop talking about the television."

"Don't you think that's dumb though?"

"I do not think anything about the television, Saumana. Only, I watch it." Then suddenly, he was leaning his full weight on me, slowly pushing me over.

"You're heavy. Get off me."

He leaned. 

"Get off of me."

When he had me all the way over, lying on my side, he turned me over onto my back and sighed, resting his head against my belly. 

"Where's your lover?"

He made some noises and waved his hand, "Oh yes, around. Yes. Near."

"I saw him eating a sandwich around two o'clock."

"Then probably he is vomiting. Look, there's sharks there." He struck me in the arm.

"Quit flailing," I moaned.

"Look," he cooed. "What kind is it?"

"That's a tiger shark, Leechtin."

"What's tiger about it?"

"That's my stomache you're burrowing in, not a pillow."

For awhile, he watched the television, peaceful. I stroked his hair. I said, "Do you even like commercials?"

"Quiet, my blossom, my flower. I am listening to your heartbeat."

I picked at his red silk robe and rubbed it between my fingers at the shoulder. I found a gold hair pin in his hair and traced its length. He told me once that he had been to India, and that maybe he had spoken to my ancestors, and that when he was living,  we were of a color, the same shade, and that he felt dearly of me, and couldn't stand the thought of my eventual loss, because he had raised me from a child and become attached to me by accident. To me, he is like a parent, and yet not like one at all.

"Be my Saumana," he murmured. "Don't die, Cuca."

I shook my head and sighed.

"I will make it very easy for you," he whispered, stroking my shirt gently, as if dusting me. He spoke privately, only for my ears, blurring the words together. "You will grow old and you will leave me. You are growing old already. I blink my eyes and you are gone. Cuca, come with me. It will be alright. Please. I can't understand."

I shook my head. He had been asking me since I was fifteen, a few times a week. "Look, now, your show is back."

For awhile, he continued to stroke my shirt, fingering the buttons, but then, his memory being so poor, he forgot what he had been asking me. And we watched the television together in the long afternoon.‏