Diary of a Non-Conformist Vampire Victim

Chapter 3 | Sanitation

"I thought you weren't going to punish her for Malcum," Drake said.

I glanced up from where I knelt on the floor, rubber gloves pulled all the way up past my elbows, a huge bucket of soap suds promising me sanitation on my left. "He's not punishing me," I told him. "This is my reward for good behavior."

Blake stared at me. "You've got yourself a real nutter," he said to Damien.

The three of them had been watching me scrub, rinse, and spray my way across the kitchen for over an hour. I'd found an apple in the fridge, and a few other items that didn't require touching any surface in the kitchen to eat. I'd washed them all anyway, partially to wash away pesticides, but mostly because they'd touched the refrigerator.

Blake and Drake had arrived shortly after I'd started cleaning, and had leaned up against the counter and watched in dumbfounded shock as I turned the place from a greasy, disgusting, bacteria-laiden mess into a respectable place suitable for preparing food.

"How can someone with a pet cockroach care this much about sanitation?" Damien wondered aloud.

I stopped scrubbing for a moment, and fixed my gaze on him. "Cockroaches are actually obsessive compulsive cleaners that spend almost all their time grooming themselves."

Damien put up his hands in self-defense and stepped to the side so I could scrub the floor near his feet vigorously. The tile he'd had his feet on visibly lighted under my care. Come on people. Even the undead should fear walking on that much grossness.

"So," I said casually as I poked Drake aside and got to work on his tiles. "When can I be expecting retribution from Malcum?"

"We'll probably be guarding you night and day for the next six months. By then he'll have picked up another food source and you'll be long forgotten."

Six months. They said it so casually, but I'd never considered the fact that I'd be staying here that long. This was just a dream to me. A horrible bad dream with very real side jaunts where people got killed and I got mauled by vampires who in my little book shouldn't even exist. I stopped scrubbing for a moment.

"Finished?" Blake asked.

"You wish," I snapped. "I still have the entry way, and the cabinets need washed, and then I should probably wash everything again because walking in the dirty areas has made the clean areas unsanitary again. I was just wondering. What did you do with Lilly? Does her family know she's dead?" I rubbed at a spot on the tile experimentally. "Will anyone notify my family when I die?"

I didn't bother to offer the more polite 'if'. Everyone in the room knew what my odds were.

Damien knelt tidily on my clean tiles, managing not to put his loafers or the knees of his tailored pants on a space I hadn't cleaned yet. "I assure you no one will ever notice she's gone."

His words were soft, lilting, and absolutely believable. I let those words comfort me. Damien was right. Who on earth would ever care about Lilly? I certainly didn't. She was probably some tramp pulled out of the slums, and better off dead. I dismissed her from my mind without a second thought.

"How old are you, Damien?"

Damien blinked. "That's a pretty sweeping change of subject. Why do you want to know?"

I leaned back, resting my back for a moment while I surveyed my work. So much better. "Well, until recently I believed vampires were a myth. Since I'm forced to acknowledge that vampires exist, I might as well do some research on the subject. So are you really immortal?"

Damien gave me his little lop-sided smile. "I don't know. I haven't died yet, but that doesn't mean I won't."

"If he keeps getting into fights with Malcum he's going to die for sure," Drake added.

"So then you can die, but not unless something kills you?"

"Technically we're already dead," Damien said patiently. He took my empty hand and put it on his chest. "See? No heart beat."

His body, despite being 'dead' felt warm to the touch. Extraordinarily so. I pressed my hand closer, and felt his warmth carry up his arm into me. I hastily withdrew my hand. "So then technically you wouldn't be dying, you'd just be inanimate." I dunked my scrub brush in the soap and turned my back on Damien so he wouldn't see me flush. There was something odd about the pull I'd felt when I touched him.

Blake shifted around. "Don't get any ideas now."

"This is why Malcum thinks hosts should be treated like food and not pets," Drake mumbled.

I wiped at a suspicious looking streak on the floor, and then went back to scrubbing. "You brought it up. I just wanted to know how old you were."

That's what I said aloud, but inside I was filled with glee. The more I knew about vampires, the better my chances were of finding an escape route. After all, I now knew it was possible to kill them, if not how yet, and I'd learned something else of value too. Malcum's fight with the other vampires was more than territorial. I wanted to find out more, but I couldn't scare my informants with too many suspicious questions.

I got to my feet and surveyed the floors. "This looks okay," I decided. "It still needs work, but you could probably eat something in here and not die."

"Thanks for that," Damien said dryly. "I was so concerned about dying...again."

Drake and Blake burst out laughing, and then came to an abrupt stop when they saw Malcum standing in the doorway. He surveyed the room, the scrub bucket, and the three men standing next to me. He didn't say anything, but his mood seemed to lighten the barest trace and he left without causing anyone pain or misery.

Damien clapped a hand on my shoulder. "You're smarter than you look," he said.

I hissed and batted at his hand. "That hurts! Don't touch it."

Drake grinned. "She didn't take her medicine," he tattled.

I chucked the scrub brush at him, but he dodged it and ran out the door, cackling. His twin backed away slowly and then did the same.

"Cowards," I grumbled.

Damien lifted himself away from the counter. "Taking the Tylenol was an order."