Puppylove

Chapter 3

The farmers market they had visited the first time they met was in town again. Apparently, it got set up every weekend, and Alejandro hadn't missed a single one while he slept.

Alejandro pointed further into the fair. "I can smell blood. I think a butcher has a stand in that direction."

"Do you want to visit it?" Tilly looked at him with confusion. Alejandro brought a hand up to the bite on his shoulder. He had reused the army green and zombie-torn shirt into a sling for that arm, and had switched to a short sleeve lime green flannel. The only thing the hand could do without pain was hold his umbrella, and even that required him to balance it against his chest and shoulder.

"Yeah." He lowered his voice cautiously, "I think I could ask for a drink."

Following the scent of blood, they navigated through the fair to a chicken butchering station in the shade. Two men worked on a segmented production line. One slit the throats of the awaiting animals, to provide a painless death. He then bled them by hanging them upside-down on a strange metal structure, where the chicken was put into a cone until it ran dry. After that, the second man took the chicken and fed it to a feather-plucking contraption, and then removed their organs before and placing them in a cooled display to be sold. Alejandro had not seen such contraptions used before, although he hadn't exactly kept a close eye on human food production systems, either.

Tilly noticed his frown, and smirked. "Are they being too lazy?" she teased.

Alejandro raised an eyebrow. "How come you ask that?"

Tilly laughed. "Stop glaring at the plucker drum, you luddite!"

He quickly realized she was right; it did look like he was angry at the machine for taking a job a person could have done. He looked up and smiled. "Right."

The cooled display was now full, and the man who had been using the "plucking drum" started tending to it. The other man closed the chicken cage door and looked up to see the two following him from the sidelines. His eyes immediately went to Alejandro's umbrella.

Tilly stepped closer to the guy. "What do you do with the blood?" she inquired, with a friendly lilt to her voice.

"We make it into bloodmeal."

"That's a thing?" Tilly's eyes went wide. "I have heard only about bonemeal before."

"You can mix it with that, makes for a good fertiliser for the garden." The man smiled politely. Then, he looked to Alejandro again. "Are you the new vamp in town?"

Alejandro nodded. His eyes went to the bucket the butcher had been draining the chickens into. Such a waste of good food.

"You want some?" the man offered. "Grab a cup and I'll get ya some."

"I can drink the whole bucket if you let me," Alejandro smirked.

"I want to see that!" Tilly announced excitedly.

The other butcher, and the elderly woman that he had been conversing with over the display, turned to follow the proceedings. The man grabbed the handle of the plastic bucket and heaved it up. The large, but flimsy, thing and its fragile metal wire handle strained under the weight of the large amount of blood. Alejandro stepped into the shadow provided by the tent roof to set down his umbrella to retrieve his meal. It didn't feel heavy to him, but it was awkward as hell to hold and he had to support the bottom with his weaker hand. Nevertheless, he heaved the bottom up and gulped down. Now, a human of any kind would need to breathe or otherwise take drinking slowly. Vampires have no such weaknesses. Like a drunkard on a mission, Alejandro downed over a liter in one long swig. When he lowered the lid of the bucket, he met the wide eyes of a rather impressed man, Tilly, and two other onlookers.