How Not to Vampire - Season 1

12. So I Might Be a Vampire

Pro-Tip for Humans #98: Be more human.

I was alive, and goddamn it felt good.

I opened my eyes and realized that for the first time in what felt like forever, I wasn't wishing for death. Let's be absolutely clear on this: I didn't jerk awake and gasp all dramatically and shit, so get that out of your head right now.

Stop it.

I had somehow ended up in the undersized bathtub, shower turned on, water spraying down on my sprawled out and unconscious body, and I realized three things at once: I was alive; I was wet; and I was cold.

Oh, wait, I was wrong: four things. There was someone banging on the front door.

I clambered to my feet, my legs not trembling like I had expected them to, and looked down at my body, surprised to find it intact, no scars on my side from a stolen kidney or anything fun like a weird and utterly shameful tattoo. That's about how it goes when you have a story about waking up in a strange motel. There had been a crazy dream about Louise and some scary vampire dudes, but surely that had been fever-induced.

Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!

Right: the door.

I pushed aside the Dollar Store shower curtain and instantly regretted it. My nose, traitor that it was, should have warned me about the reality that was waiting for me on the other side of the curtain, but it might have been a firm believer in the 'seeing is believing' principle. I had possibly been sitting in the bathtub for a long time, so my nose and sense of smell had fucked off, and now I had this shit to deal with. Literally.

The floor, walls and toilet were smeared and sprayed with a disgusting and utterly foul mixture of blood, shit and vomit. Seeing the mess seemed to serve as a reminder to my olfactory senses that they had work to do and all at once there was this wall of stink that collapsed over me, triggering my gag reflex. I shoved my finger against my nose, trying to breathe through my mouth, but I could taste it, oh gods I could taste it—

I dry heaved, but that was about it. There was nothing in my stomach to eject and only saliva dripped out of my mouth, no matter how hard my stomach muscles clenched.

I almost stepped out of the shower in an attempt to escape the stench but then realized that I would have been stepping directly onto the mess on the floor. Where had all of that filth had even come from? There was no way that one person could have had that much shit and vomit inside them. There were no clean spots on the floor, and there was absolutely no fucking way I was stepping into that.

Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!

"Open up! I know you're in there!" a woman's voice yelled, muffled through the doors.

Out of sheer desperation and due to the lack of clean towels, I ripped the shower curtain off the rails and threw it out onto the floor, ignoring the black spots of obvious mildew at the lower edges.

There was something written on the mirror in a shade of bright pink lipstick that seemed oddly familiar. The handwriting was uneven, verging on artistic, and had a heart drawn at the end of it as some type of weird flourish.

THREE DAYS

I would have paused to think about the enormity of that simple statement, that I had been locked in this shitpit of a bathroom for three days, but my need to escape took priority.

Still breathing through my mouth, I carefully stepped out onto the curtain, feeling as my foot pushed the plastic down onto something squishy. Then, trying not to think about it, I took another cautious step, water dripping onto the hideous yellow flowers. One more step and I could reach the door enough to open it, but I did have to balance somewhat precariously as it swung inward. With one mighty push, I lunged out into the relative safety of the room, stumbling and somehow managing not to faceplant into the floor.