So You Used to Be Human - Book 3 (Original Version)

Chapter 8: 101 Reasons I'm an Asshole

I don't want to talk about it.

Seriously.  I really don't want to talk about how Jaime got turned into a vampire.  Seeing the process is quite a different thing than having to go through it like I had and I was unconscious for all of it, so I really had no idea.  Plus it's not something that comes up easily in conversation or just not at all, so until you have to do it yourself, you don't realize just how hard, and how fucked up of a process it is.

I had to make certain promises, compromises in order to have it done in the first place and Beatrice has promised to pull my intestines out with her bare hands and make me eat them if I go into any detail about the process. Since I really don;t want to A) have my intestines pulled out, or B) eat my own shit (she promised to make me eat my lower intestines) and C) talk about it at all, then I'm sorry, it's just something that's not going to happen.

If you want to know how to become a vampire, go out and find your own goddamn vampire and after you've eaten your own intestines and by virtue, your own shit, then maybe, just maybe you might find out.  It gives new meaning to the term eat shit and die.

Turning was the easy part anyway, compared to what came after.

***

 "I'm an asshole."

Claude grunted laughter from the other end of the phone and coughed ever-so-not-discreetly.  "You don't say?" he responded, but then again what did I expect? I had kind of abandoned him inside Beatrice's vault for the past three days while I took care of Jaime.  He had every right to call me an asshole, even if I was pre-empting him and calling myself an asshole.

"How the hell do you do it Claude? I call you and tell you I'm a vampire and you just took it in stride as if it was something people say to you all the time."

"Has it ever occurred to you that you were not the first vampire I'd met?"

I considered that for a moment then shook my head, even though Claude couldn't see me.  "I really gotta ask you what it is you get up to on those times you disappear for weeks at a time.  Did you really meet another vampire? Before me?"

"I could have.  If I had, then I was probably a little too busy running away.  How did you break the news to Jaime anyway?"

I sighed deeply and idly pushed open the door to the bathroom.

"Badly."  The smell hit me all at once, an all-out assault on my senses and gag reflex, kicking me right in the back of the throat and the brain at the same time.  

"Oh God—" I gasped, and that was a mistake as it caused me to actually breathe in that foul stench that was almost physical in it's being and goddammit, I could taste it, feel it in the back of my throat, coaxing my lunch to come back up, saying, hey there's a party up here, come and join the rest of the mess—

I have no idea how I managed to slam the door, and an even worse idea of how I didn't manage to vomit my guts out.  I could be lying right now, and you wouldn't even know it, but that's okay.  Let's just agree between you and me, right now, that I made it out of the door in a state of almost grace.

"You okay there dude?"

"I'll be fine.  I just forgot how bad it is in the bathroom."

"How bad is it?

"I don't even want to think about it!"

"Look dude, you were doomed from the start.  It doesn't matter what you had to say to Jaime.  You could have been telling her she just won all of the money in the world ever and her reaction would have been the same, and you know why!"