::the open end::

by ML Kennedy

(Author’s Note: This chapter is a tad short, but fear not: the next installment should be ready in a fortnight. I am a few chapters ahead in my brain as of now, and finished with Chinatown Wars. That is to say, chapters should be coming in fastish and furiousish.)

Read Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 if you’ve just joined.  If you’ve been here all along…

Chapter 3

After invading somebody’s home, there are worse noises to hear than the ding-dong of a doorbell; it’s just hard to come up with any of those things when it is happening to you. They, the proverbial they, call the reaction “fight or flight”. I’ve always found that rather dismissive of the lie and hide options.

I hear keys jingle.

Crap.

I start to gather my things.

In most instances like this one, lying is a great option. If you pretend that you are supposed to be there and are assertive enough, people might just believe you. If they know you aren’t supposed to be there, most people just think that you’re a confused idiot. You say, “whoops,” and leave. No one hassles you too much as long as nothing is obviously missing or destroyed.

I wedge myself under the basement stairs, having chose the hide option. Hiding under the basement stairs is a bad choice if a monster is chasing you, but good choice if you are the monster. Same thing goes for closets and the undersides of beds.

I hear the front door open. I’ve got a visitor.

Lying is a relatively safe option, for a human. Most people could pull it off after an hour’s worth of playing with an improv group. For vampires, it is a high risk venture. You see, us bloodsuckers emit some sort of chemical or hormone or lord knows what. It makes people go a little wild, some hostile, some. . . let’s say amorous, some terrified. This thing is a good thing if you are looking to increase the chances of some delicious and nutritious blood being spilled. Sucks if you want to maintain a low profile.

The door closes and I hear footsteps about where the living room should be. It gets quiet.

As a rule, homeowners don’t ring their own doorbells, nor would a house sitter. Salesmen, UPS guys and burglars usually don’t have front door keys. When squished underneath a staircase, there is enough room to think and little else.

A toilet flushes upstairs. I hear the creaking of floorboards, but no sounds I can specify to any particular action.

A maintenance man? A neighbor making sure the pipes don’t freeze? One thing is for certain: it isn’t a good time to go back to sleep. If my visitor comes down here, I should be fairly concealed by stairs and a shelf of canned soups.

So, I bide my time.

Ten minutes pass, still nothing but vague creaks and squeaks.

Sunlight creeps toward me from a window the size of a large envelope, enough sunlight so that I should be able to read. I look at that fat file with my name on it. Each page has some computer mumbo jumbo at the bottom, giving the whereabouts of the electronic copy of this thing.

In their words:

Born Buffalo, NY, February 2nd, 1954.

Third of three children.

Father was a steelworker, died of cancer in 1958.

Family relocated to low income housing in Niagara Falls.

Attended 99th street school.

Oldest child dies, unknown ailments, 1963.

Middle child dies, unknown ailments, 1974.

Mother dies, suicide, 1975.

I am interrupted by the sound of a woman screaming. Then another.

Now moaning.

And then unmistakable score to a blue movie. My mystery visitor has come here to watch porn. I guess I won’t have to worry about being really quiet down here. I go back to the file.

Mother dies, suicide 1975.

I haven’t thought about it in a long time. I prefer to keep that streak alive.

The next few pages are yearbook photos and random group shots with tiny captions, college transcripts, dental records, vaccination records, and some employment history. Apparently all prospective vampire hunters should be aware that I had a stupid haircut as a teenager, that I never understood Thomas Aquinas, that I had a filling in a baby tooth, and that I spent a summer working at Carvel’s.

After that useful information, the next two pages are PDFs of photocopies of mimeographs of a police report I filed against a guy who stole my blue jeans out of a shared dryer in 1975.

Just when I think that this file can‘t possibly get more frustrating: squiggles.

Thirty-five pages of squiggles.

Like someone drawing seagulls in the distance with a calligraphy pen. Someone, presumably Hugh, has scribbled on one of the pages “WTF?! Arabic?”

I know it isn’t Arabic. Before I can figure out what it could be, I hear footsteps. Loud footsteps. The kind made by wooden soled shoes.

I set my file down and listen. They are coming closer. I contort my body, to make the best use out of the available shadows. The basement door opens. I freeze. I breathe slowly through my nose as the stair above my head bows. Situations like this always make me feel like sneezing. I wiggle my philtrum against my septum; that seems to help.

Between two cans of sirloin burger, I see him. He’s big, around fifty years old, and has a handlebar mustache that makes him look like Stalin. He wears a satin purple teddy, black heels and a silver, y-shaped necklace. He’s sporting those high-end breast pads with fake nipples that mastectomy patients sometimes wear.

Stalin pulls at strings, turning on lights as he walks to the fridge, one foot directly in front of the other. His walk is a ridiculous exaggeration of film noir style femininity, a mime’s impersonation of Jessica Rabbit. Though, I’ve seen women do worse in heels, clomping around like lip-sticked Velociraptors.

Stalin makes it to the fridge, unearths a Rocket Pop. He fellates the freezer burn off the frozen red, white and blue corn syrup as he sways back to the stairs, pulling the strings to turn off the lights now. When I was a young man, this sort of thing was considered abnormal behavior.

That was before the internet.

A cell phone rings and Stalin makes an awful racket running up the stairs in his heels. He yells something into the phone about fixing Jack and Barb’s sump. He tells the cell phone that he loves it, and will be home as soon as he can.

He spends the next 5 hours watching porno. Even in the age of the internet, I consider tantric masturbation abnormal behavior.

Related TOE posts:

• TOE Short Story :: The Mosquito Song – Ch 2
• TOE Short Story :: The Mosquito Song – Ch 4
• TOE Short Story :: The Mosquito Song – Ch 5
• TOE Short Story :: The Mosquito Song – Ch 7
• TOE Short Story :: The Mosquito Song – Ch 6