It was the kind of night that slithered down your throat and sank its claws in like an overly affectionate cat.
Fog drifted under the street lights and frost crusted on every smooth surface it could reach. Dogtrot had finally entered that joyless part of winter where colored lights still decorated porch awnings and shop windows like festive cobwebs, but the carols no longer played on the radio and there were no more photo opportunities with Santa. January.
The holiday bells clinging to the door of Allan's bar jingled confidently as it opened. Chances were, they would remain there until at least Valentine's Day. A man stepped out into the night. Eyes on his phone, he thumbed sweet nothings to his honey with one hand and let the wall guide him down the block. This is not who our story is about.
Our story is about the creature watching him from the roof. Shrouded in night, red eyes and wild hair, Maurice Hutch perched on the edge of the building like a gargoyle in a puffy camo jacket. His breath did not fog as he crept along in heavy boots whose metal buckles had been taped down. The man, who Maurice had begun mentally referring to as Breakfast in order to create a degree of separation, stopped at the corner and looked both ways.
With his tongue caught between teeth like steak knives, Maurice crouched like a panther and gauged the angle and distance for the jump. He took a breath. He'd done it before, he could do it again. A 280 pound pounce, a little blunt force trauma, then duck away into an alley and open Breakfast up like a Capri Sun.
It wasn't the best method, but Charlie wouldn't let Horas teach him how to use The Eyes yet. Something something responsibility, something something self control. In Maurice's opinion, mugging people for their vitals was not going to help the Dogtrot Murder stay any more hidden than him being bad at, what was it, hypnosis? He was pretty sure it was hypnosis. He dared them to get mad at him for blowing their cover.
Headlights flooded the street. Maurice ducked down in time for an old pickup to sputter past. Gospel warbled from the radio. As soon as the red tail lights disappeared around the corner, Breakfast moved to cross. It was time to make the move.
Fate had other things in mind for Maurice.
"Some day, love will find you! Break those chains that bind you! One night will remind you how we touched and went our separate ways," sang Journey from Maurice's back pocket.
Breakfast jerked and wheeled around at the sound. He looked both ways, then up, up, up to the top of the building where Maurice was crouching with wide, worried eyes. In those precious half seconds, Maurice thought that maybe, if he stayed still enough, Breakfast wouldn't see him.
"If he ever hurts you, true love won’t desert you! You know I still love you!" Journey kept on singing.
"Aaaah!" The would-be victim shouted and skittered backward into the empty road, one unsteady foot after the other. He gaped at the figure on the roof. "What the hell are you doing? Freakin—shit! Freak!"
Phantom sweat beaded on Maurice's brow as he kept pretending to be a part of the scenery while Breakfast yelled at him. He regretted not putting his phone on silent. He didn’t think anybody would call. Nobody ever called! Who called Maurice Hutch?
The tinny recording got louder and louder, begging for Maurice to answer. Finally, he gave up and stood, cutting an admittedly imposing silhouette against the billboard lights behind him. Like a spooked deer, Breakfast took off into the night. Maurice groaned. That was two hours of his afterlife he would never get back.
His fingers were so cold and stiff from gripping the roof's edge that he fumbled his phone after fishing it out of his pocket. The phone tumbled from his hands and only barely avoided smashing on the concrete roof as Maurice caught it.
Maurice's hackles lowered instantly and a fond, sympathetic smile crossed his face. He answered softly, "Hey, Meranda. Still not any better, huh?"
"No…" Meranda, who was swaddled in blankets on her living room sofa, coughed into the cordless phone. The location of her glasses was currently unknown and it was by the grace of God that she managed to dial his number correctly first try. "I just woke up. What year is it?"
"It’s the year two thousand and nine." Maurice told her.
"Tha'd many…" Meranda trailed off. Maurice waited. After a bit, she sucked in a loud, wet sniff and continued. "I hate to bother you—" And here, Maurice knew for sure Meranda was sick because the Meranda he knew had no problem asserting herself anywhere. "—would you pick up some NyQuil for me? I can pay you back when you get here."
Maurice winced. Poor Meranda! While he often wished he were still alive, he didn't envy the living for their ability to catch nasty colds. "Of course I will. Don't even worry about paying me back, it's fine."
"Than’gs, Maurice." Another wet sniff. "You’re my favorite vampire. Bye-bye."
"Bye-bye." Maurice listened for her to hang up, but when all he heard was the television and his friend's haggard coughing, he shook his head and pocketed his phone.
So no one would see him, Maurice went to the backside of the building and crawled head-first down the wall like a lizard. Then, he was en-route to the local pharmacy.
The building squatted at the end of the street with no cars parked in front of it, its only company an old out-of-commission chicken place and a laundromat. The P on the sign had recently gone out, leaving the it with a new, more sinister name: Harmacy. It was a funny little oxymoron that brought a smile to Maurice's face.
Instead of selling you Band-Aids at the Harmacy, they beat you up, Maurice thought with a snicker. Get your ass whipped at the Harmacy today!
As he walked and laughed under his breath, hands in his pockets, Maurice anticipated how maybe, when he got to Meranda’s trailer with the precious medicine in-hand, she would be so grateful that she’d actually agree to watch his VHS proshot of CATS. And if he was really lucky, she wouldn't make fun of him for liking it the whole time. He’d sat through her favorite movie, Dune, without making a single peep. Mostly because it was incomprehensible. Sting was there.
A glass door interrupted his thoughts with a thump.
Maurice rubbed his forehead, took a quick glance around to make sure nobody saw, and tugged on the handle. It didn't budge. Cupping his hands around his eyes, he peered through the glass. The store’s lights were on. Soft rock played from a speaker. The very edge of a check-out counter peeked out from behind a display of first aid kits.
"Sure looks like it’s open…" The glass was thick and returned a hollow thunk when he knocked on it. "Are you open?"
Maurice backed away and momentarily considered going somewhere else. Dogtrot might not have been big enough to have a Walmart, but it was big enough to have more than one pharmacy. Surely.
It happened that Maurice gave the Harmacy one last mystified look and when he did, he thought to look above the door. The motion sensor with its singular tiny red light stared blindly through him.
A glance through the glass doors into the tube-lit world he could not reach reminded him that there was no scruffy reflection staring back at him. There was no shadow stretching out into the street behind him. It was his curse.
"Seriously?" Maurice groaned. How had he not noticed this until now? Had he really been into so few stores with automatic doors that it simply didn't come up? Had he managed to drift in and out of the grocery store on the coattails of people visible to the sensors? Did other doors have pressure plates instead? Maurice had not been a vampire for very long, but it was long enough for him to be fed up with it. "Oh my God…"
His claws grazed his skin as he pinched the bridge of his nose. Now of all times? His friend's health was riding on this. CATS was riding on this. Maurice looked at his options. He could wait for somebody to happen by on a chilly Tuesday and just go in after them. He could wait and try to get the attention of an employee. He could use his incredible vampire strength and smash the door.
A part of him perked up at that last idea, but Maurice could imagine the trouble he'd make for the poor employee. He’d worked late nights behind a counter, he knew how it was. If you were lucky, it was boring. No, he couldn't do that to them.
Maurice sat on the decorative cement ash tray situated on the corner beneath a telephone pole and waited. The night traffic crawled by one car at a time. The droning hum of the street lights overhead would have made him doze off if it weren’t for his stomach gnawing at itself.
The rifle-shot of a backfiring truck echoed off the low brick walls flanking the street. Maurice kept his eyes trained on the inside of the Harmacy as he listened to it screech to a halt down the way where a single stoplight hung. The engine snarled and the tires squealed as the light turned green. Something tumbled out of the truck bed and clattered onto the asphalt. Maurice turned his head in time to see the old green Ford weave off into the night and leave a neat little pile of scrap lumber for the next poor asshole that arrived at that particular light to navigate around. He shook his head. Maurice was glad he was parked on the other side of town. Some of those boards had to be as long as his own arm, surely full of nails.
An ember of divine inspiration flickered to life in his skull. The vampire’s brows drifted upwards as he looked at the boards. They were long as his arm and made of solid, detectable matter!
"Yes!" Maurice hopped off the garbage can and hurried down the sidewalk.
"No!" A big navy blue monster with four wheel drive pulled up to the light, stopping right over the pile of wood. Whatever nails littered the boards would barely be a pinprick in those tires. If it passed over them, they’d crush to bits.
He hesitated at the corner and tried not to panic. Lights didn’t stay red forever. The big truck would leave. A chime from down the street caught his ear and Maurice dared to peel his eyes away from the scattered wood long enough to see the Harmacy doors slide open to accept a little old man who was so bundled up he looked like a turtle.
"Yes–yes!" Abandoning his wooden plank idea, Maurice hauled ass back down the street. His grin warped itself into an enormous frown as the doors slammed closed like a steel trap inches from his face. "No—nooooo!"
With a howl of anguish, he banged his fists against the glass—hard enough to make a racket but softly enough as not to shatter them. It was a delicate process.
"Hey! Hey! Sir! Hey!" Maurice pawed at the glass and left shallow grooves with his claws. The little old man turned and looked back at Maurice, blinking behind his enormous coke bottle frames.
"Oh, thank God. Hi!" Maurice heaved a huge sigh and waved frantically. "Come back! I can’t—the door is stuck. It won’t open from the outside. I need you to stand in front of it from that side."
The old man licked his lips and seemed to think for several seconds. Then, he waved with a crinkly smile. It did his heart good to see today’s youth being so friendly. With that, he disappeared behind a shelf of electric blankets.
Maurice stared after him. Okay. Miscommunication. It happened sometimes. Maybe the man didn’t speak English. Maybe he was in a hurry or hard of hearing. All these reasons made sense to Maurice and he was willing to believe any one of them so that he wouldn’t have to fall back on the idea that the world was picking on him.
"You’ve gotta come outta there sometime, Grandpa…" Maurice muttered with his nose flat against the glass.
A staccato grumble announced that the big truck was finally leaving the red light. The pile of wood was exposed once again. Maurice gave one last look into the store before jogging back towards the red light. He didn’t need to breathe, but he huffed and puffed all the same. It was chilly and all this exercise was draining him of precious blood energy.
As soon as his boots left the sidewalk, the hiss of automatic doors yanked him right back around. The little old man was shuffling out of the Harmacy with a plastic sack in his arms.
Maurice raced like a hare. Forty feet, twenty feet, five feet.
The old man stalled on the narrow sidewalk between the parked cars lining the road and the solid brick facade of the store, making an obstacle of himself as he counted his change. By the time Maurice managed to politely-as-possible squeeze past him, the automatic doors had shut once again, barring him from the land of over-the-counter medications and overpriced candy.
Tears prickled the corners of Maurice’s eyes and threatened to rush forth in a waterfall as he gazed through the glass. Was this going to be forever? Why had nobody told him about this? Why tonight?
All he wanted was to do good by his friend. And maybe earn a little praise. And have someone to watch CATS with. He let his forehead fall forward and thunk against the thick glass and sighed.
The boards were still there. He still had a plan. It was stupid that he had to resort to such a thing, but it was better than nothing. Maurice gathered himself up and turned to make yet another trudge to the red light when a shadow stretched over him.
Inside the Harmacy, a zit-faced youth in a red vest was stooping over to pick up a fallen birthday card only inches out of the door’s range. Her ponytail was falling down and great dark circles to rival his surrounded her eyes.
Maurice knew he would not get a better chance.
"HEY!" He didn’t mean to holler.
The poor girl jumped a foot and whirled around to face the man on the other side of the door. In the gloom, she saw his werewolf-chewed army coat, his long black nails scraping against the glass, and his lengthy, seemingly unkempt hair. She was not from the 1980’s and did not understand how much hairspray Maurice had to use to achieve such a look. What stood out to her the most was his wide and desperate eyes. Were they…red? In the glare from the left-over Christmas lights, they looked red.
A technologically challenged vampire was not what she saw.
She mouthed something Maurice could not hear.
"The door is broken! The sensor thingy it—wait!" She backed away from the door. Maurice’s face blanched and he pounded against the glass like Keith Moon on the drums. "Wait wait wait wait wait! Come back!"
Not taking her eyes off him, the clerk retreated back into the safety of the shelves and disappeared around the corner.
Maurice bit his lip. This couldn’t be happening. Maybe she was going to turn the doors back on. She could have been locking up for the night—no! This place didn’t close!
The forces of the universe simply did not want him to enter this Harmacy through these doors. Maurice wasn’t going to let something like universal forces stop him from getting Meranda’s medicine though. It wasn’t even about watching CATS anymore.
"Fine. Have it your way."
There had to be a back door.
After clambering over a fence and nearly smacking his head on the corner of an old air conditioner sagging out one of the windows of the building next door, Maurice found it. The employee entrance looked exactly how he thought it would: a metal rolling shutter with peeling paint.
He tried the first sensible thing,:shoving his claws under the door and pulling upward. The door shuddered and groaned and rose about two inches before some mechanism on the inside snagged and stopped all progress.
Maurice observed this quietly. He had no doubt that with a hard enough yank, even with his dwindling blood supply, he could peel the door back like the lid of a sardine can. He sighed. That was illegal.
Just then, a small brown shape darted through the gap under the door. A rat! Maurice let out a squeak and hopped backwards on one foot. He turned and followed it with his eyes until it disappeared up a gutter pipe on the other side of the alley.
“Yuck!” He shuddered.
Maurice almost fell prey to rising doubts about this store’s cleanliness and gave up all together when an idea came to him. If the rat could squeeze through that gap…so could he.
Of course! It was so simple!
Determined, Maurice applied his supernatural gift of transformation. He shut his eyes (because he never wanted to see exactly how it happened) and focused. He could feel his fingers and toes tingling as the change took hold. His skin prickled as fur pushed its way to the surface. His bones warped like hot plastic and his clothes melted away into nothing. Small! Smaller! Even smaller!
When Maurice opened his eyes, he was a little yellow bat. His huge ears swiveled to pick up the night traffic and the hum of the power lines overhead. It was a different world now, enormous and daunting, but he was capable of navigating it.
He shuffled in place, turning to face the gap under the door. The light that streamed from beneath it hurt his eyes, but it would only be for a few moments. He flattened himself out as much as he could and scuttled into the gap. The metal scraped his furry back and held him in place for only a moment.
Maurice squirmed and dug his little thumb claws into the concrete to pull himself forward. With a few squeaks and a burning determination, he popped free and found himself in the back storage room of the Harmacy.
“Ha! Aha ha ha ha! I did it!” He chattered to himself, drunk from the victory.
Maurice transformed back into his normal shape. It happened in a rush, like a sneeze, and he nearly tipped over from the force of expanding so rapidly.
With his hand propped against the rolling door, Maurice swayed on the spot. His head buzzed with static and his vision was muddy around the edges. Maurice’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth as he tried to swallow. Something was wrong.
He drew in a deep breath and tried to steady himself. The boxes, the dollies, the brooms and mops in the back room all left trails after one another as they swayed in his vision. One step. Another step. He tumbled and fell to his knees.
Oh, no, Maurice thought with mounting, dizzying panic. That was the last of it, wasn’t it?
Transforming had taken the last of his blood reserves. Maurice was all dried out.
Meanwhile, the cashier was still thinking of him.
Mona carefully peered around the first aid kit stand. The wild-eyed stranger was no longer haunting the door. Her blood was still rushing in her ears as her heart threw itself against her ribs. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen a rough character during the night shift, but something about the man had set her on edge like nothing she’d ever felt before. Mona pressed the heel of her palm against one eye and let out a breath.
“It’s fine. It’s just a crackhead,” she whispered to herself. “You’re fine, girl, get a grip.”
Dustin, her shift replacement, could not come soon enough. She wasn’t even supposed to be here right now anyway. When Becky had hit her with those big wet eyes and told her that the guy she was going to go on a date with tonight really was the one this time, she’d had no choice. If Becky’s date wasn’t the one, she decided then and there, she was going to strangle her favorite coworker.
Mona made her way back to the register and grabbed her phone. Fifteen minutes. Dustin would be there in fifteen minutes.
Suddenly there was a loud crash from the back of the store.
It sounded like the thermoses she’d stocked earlier raining down onto the linoleum. Mona gasped and clutched her phone to her chest. How had he gotten in? She would have heard the door chimes!
Mona peered around the shelves and spied a shaggy shape shuffling through the dry goods. He was bigger than she remembered. Screaming internally, Mona withdrew around the corner. She wanted to call the cops, but he would hear her and might try and stop her. She wished you could text the cops.
Could you?
“Man…” Maurice groaned.
He picked himself up for the third time and wobbled in place. He’d tripped over his own boots and right into the display of thermoses, soup mugs, and potholders.
Now that he was dry, he knew there was a ticking clock hanging over his head. It was heavy on his heart to see the mess he’d made. He cursed himself for not just attacking Breakfast and dragging him into the alley. He’d been stunned enough by the sight of him. Another missed opportunity. He really was the worst vampire in Dogtrot. And now there were broken mugs all over the floor.
Focus, he scolded himself. Get the medicine.
Navigating to the cold remedy aisle was like dragging a pair of anvils behind him. All the products on the shelves wobbled in his vision. The world had a dark muddy halo around it and only in the center could he really see what he was looking at.
Heated blankets. Birthday cards. As-seen-on-tv kitchen gadgets.
“Ugh, where is it…” he hissed through his fangs.
Mona stole another peek around the corner. All she saw was the chaos the stranger had left in his wake. A burst of rage that surprised her exploded in her chest. Broken glass! This was going to be a huge pain in the ass to clean up! And so close to clocking out. She knew Dustin would refuse to clean it up, even if there had been a scary guy in the store. And she couldn’t clean it up until he left because sweeping would leave her back exposed!
Then, a sound drifted through the air from one of the other aisles and brought Mona back into the present. It was humming. The guy was humming! Like he owned the place!
Mona forgot she was only four eleven and saw red.
Maurice’s ringtone wormed its way into his murky thoughts as he searched like a mole in daylight for the NyQuil. The humming felt nice in his throat. Sensations. Shapes. His head swam. A bottle full of colored clear liquid. Orange or blue. One of the two. He sang a little under his breath.
“Troubled times…” sang Maurice quietly. “Troubled times…” He forgot the rest of the words.
Suddenly, like a beam from heaven, the tube lights above illuminated a shelf stocked with antihistamines. It took Maurice a second to realize what he was looking at, but when things came back into focus, he pumped a fist.
“Yes.”
Maurice grabbed the blueish green bottle with the moon and stars on it. He did it. He found the NyQuil. Now he just had to get out of the store. Which meant finding the clerk and having an awkward interaction because he was so zonked and also because he knew that she knew that he knew that he’d been the only one in the store to make the huge mess back by the storage room entrance.
He groaned again. Life was full of hard decisions. He didn’t want to steal, even in this blurry state. Maurice reached into his back pocket for his wallet so he could have it ready at the register. Maybe if he made the transaction as quickly as possible, he could avoid talking about the mess. Accidents happened!
It would be fine. It would be fine…
Bright stars burst into Maurice’s vision, lighting up the whole Harmacy before him like a lightning flash.
“Get the fuck out!” screamed a voice.
The light receded, followed by pain. He’d been struck! In the head! By what?
Maurice turned, owl-eyed, and found an army of angry clerks standing behind him gripping holiday-patterned walking canes so tightly their knuckles glowed white. The girls swirled and shimmered and finally condensed into one furious clerk. Her eyes bored into his.
For an instant, his feelings were hurt. Sure he made a mess, but she didn’t have to hit him! Then, he heard it.
Ka-thump! Ka-thump! Ka-thump!
Her heart was racing. She was only a few feet away and her blood was pumping so loudly that it drowned out any ringing in his ears from the blow. Blackness flooded his eyes as he trained himself on Mona, turning fully, slowly, still clutching the bottle of medicine.
She was small. She was alone. She was soft and pink and full of life-giving blood. Maurice’s mouth filled with drool.
He took an unsteady step, then another, and lurched toward her, one clawed hand outstretched. The lights in the store were so bright, but he could see her clear as crystal. Her veins almost seemed to glow through her flesh like Christmas lights.
Mona had never seen anything like it. His blood-red eyes, his ghoulishly gray-blue skin, his steak knife teeth! Holy shit, his teeth! Fear surged through her, mixing with the anger, and bid her hands to move without her willing them to.
She hit him in the head again and he barely flinched. Mona backed up and Maurice followed her step for step. She hit him a third time. This time he cried out and covered his head with his clawed hands.
The world rippled before Maurice. He saw that they were in a different part of the store now, so close to the register. So close to the door. So close to freedom. Panic. Hunger.
He shook himself and snatched for the tip of the cane she brandished. Mona was too slow. He caught it. Yanked it to him. She came with it.
In an instant they were face to face and he was snarling. She was shaking. Crying maybe. It would be so easy. It would be so, so easy. He could take her neck in his jaws, give her one hard shake, and it would be all over. Maurice pushed against this thought. She was just a kid! And also a girl! He couldn’t bite a girl!
Guys, is it gay to only want to bite men?
But it’d be so easy, the hunger insisted. If the door sensor couldn’t see him, the security cameras couldn’t either. They were alone.
No, no, no, no! Maurice forced himself to look at her, to look at how human and afraid she was. She probably only got paid seven dollars an hour if that.
And now that he was really looking, he could see that her wide doe eyes were lost and drowning in his own. She couldn’t look away from him. The connection between them rippled as Maurice came to a realization.
He was doing it—Maurice was using The Eyes! Maurice thought fast, before he lost his grip on both himself and her.
“Open the door,” said Maurice in the steadiest voice he could.
Mona felt something wash over her. She felt like…she might…want to open the door. Why would she want to open the door?
“Open the door, pretty please,” begged Maurice at the end of his wits. He walked them, like dancers, toward the Harmacy exit.
“I will…open the door…” said Mona in an empty voice. She released her grip on the cane, leaving Maurice with it.
Dream-like, she walked over to the sliding glass doors. The sensor perceived her earthly form and the doors hissed open, ushering in a burst of bitter January air.
Maurice broke eye-contact with her only long enough to glance at the opened way, all at once joyful and weak. With numb fingers, he fished a few bills out of his wallet and pressed them into Mona’s hand.
“Take my money,” he ordered. She took it without a word.
Maurice took a moment to collect himself, satisfied with the transaction. He crossed the threshold. Then, Maurice was outside in the world again. He turned back to see Mona standing by the door in a daze. She brought a hand to the side of her head and moaned softly.
Maurice instantly felt guilty.
What kind of effect did The Eyes leave on a person? Had it hurt her? Would she remember what happened? And what if he did it wrong? What then?
He didn’t have long to wonder because she shook herself out and snapped to attention. Mona pinned her gaze on him and puffed herself up big and scary.
“You are banned from the store!” she yelled at him, then retreated back into the Harmacy.
Maurice sighed and looked at the bottle of NyQuil in his hand. Well, the hard part was over now, he guessed. There hadn’t even supposed to have even been a hard part.
Someone bumped against his shoulder on their way into the store and paused only long enough to utter an apology.
“Sorry, I’m late for work,” said Dustin.
He watched the doors open and close happily for the other man and shook his head. Maurice shoved the bottle into his coat pocket and started down the street in the direction of his truck. He sang to himself under his breath.
“One night will remind you how we touched and went our separate ways…”