Give Me That Body (Oneshots)

Quinn (February, 2015) - He Is Keeping Me Alive

(This is, obviously, only the second oneshot so far that takes place completely after the events of "The Story of the Vampire, L", which ends in Winter 2013. The other one, Iovita, contains very mild spoilers. These ones are slightly more direct, not that it says exactly what happens, but a fair bit of what folks are up to after. So take care if you don't want to get spoiled.)

He tells me, the man I love, to go to Myrtle Beach on my own. He calls me up and says, "Birdie, come soon because I am waiting for you on the boardwalk. I will be there by the Skywheel," which means nothing to me because I have never been there. 

"Skywheel?" I say, to my son.

"It's a big light up ferris wheel," he says, tapping it out in morse on his desk with his pencil as he speaks. He is always learning something to keep his mind occupied. 

"Is it far from here?"

"Myrtle Beach? Good few hours. Why do you ask?" He cants his laptop screen down so that it isn't shining into my eyes.

"Your Leis is in a manic spell. He's excited about Myrtle Beach."

"Well take your sunglasses. It's bright there even at night. Brighter, even."

I wish that he would just come home. I so rarely see him. Since Laurent died, things have been so strange, and Leis plotting out the world all over, unable to sit still. Whenever he is home, he is always chainsmoking, which makes his eyes red-rimmed. He is not able to listen to the world. I think that sometimes he gets into fights, and I have found marks around his ribs sometimes, that look like the clever knife of his doctor's, needing to cut him in order to re-inflate his faulty right lung. When he is down and I ask him questions, it is as if he cannot hear me. 

Jackie taps in morse, his head down near his desk to hear the little rejoining vibrations made by the tap of the pencil, his eyes closed.

"Are you seeing anyone?" I ask him, because I cannot bear the silence.

"I can't trust anyone after what happened to Laurent," he says. "I think about it all the time. There are too many undead like that. I will stay alone awhile, until I am stronger. I am too young yet to take so many risks, especially now."

"I would like to see you engaging with the world."

"I have tried it. Let me wait awhile," he says, softly, and still not looking back at me.

I watch him a moment, his back in his well-fitted white T-shirt, trace the shape of his fine shoulder-blades through the fabric. His hair is healthy, and there are little invisible baby hairs on his neck.

"I am feeling very invisible lately," I tell him, which always he recognizes such statements from me as outbursts. Somehow he knows my rhythms.

He turns and puts his pencil down, and I am joyful to see his dark brown eyes, the whites so white. His lips are inquisitive, a little pressed together. He tries to determine my mood, but he already knows it. "Get dressed," he says. "You'll feel better."

When he was a baby, I used to wash him in the sink with my hands. Exposing my hands to so much water made them dry, course, our skin so hateful of too much water. I want to kiss him. I want to take him by his neck and bruise him, bite him with my sharp teeth, make his water my own, so that we are the same flesh as we are the same blood, for though I did not make him the same blood made me. I hope that he cannot see this in my eyes, but I feel frenzied, and I want to lie down and cover my face and breathe air so thick with humidity it makes my lungs burn. 

"Do you need help getting dressed?" he asks. "Wash your hair. It'll feel good."

"I don't want to be wet now."