Hollywood Nights
Part Six
For someone who was usually squeamish about blood I couldn’t look away. I wasn’t mad, I was scared shitless. Your entire half of our king size was coated except for the pillows which only showed a smear or two, everything else was absolute disaster. The sheets, blanket, comforter, all of it was soaked through with blood and bits of human tissue. Your pajamas were wadded up in the middle of it all, soaked as well and still slick with so much blood. I could smell the stuff in the air there was so much of it.
Someone died on that bed, no one could have got back up out of all that only to wrap themselves in a night gown and smile sweetly at people. You should have been there still, laid out in it all, a victim of the mother of all aneurisms for hemophiliacs. I was still staring at the mess when you came out of the bathroom, the sink and mirror behind you a mess of pink and rose-colored smears and water splats.
“I’m a bleeder, babe. You know how I get that time of the month. Quit worrying. You worry too much.”
I barely heard your paper-thin excuse but I did take notice of your waxy, nearly ethereal hand as it slipped into mine. I wanted to push that hand away, instinct kept telling me to pull away in disgust but I turned and the face I had always loved was there to greet me. You were still pink around your mouth and throat and pale as you would be from then on but you still had that smile meant only for me. When I tried to turn away, to look back at the bed still soaked with every bit of your essence, I felt that waxy hand wrap around my chin and I felt the undeniable strength as you forced my head to turn back to you. “The night is still young and I feel perfectly fine, better than ever actually. What I need you to do for me is stop looking at that mess, stop thinking about Dan and what he did, and start focusing on having a good night with me. Okay?”
I nodded, not because I wanted to or because I believed I could focus on anything besides that death scene. I nodded because I was honestly afraid you would yank just a little bit harder and snap my neck like a twig. I was afraid of you then and that was a first. I didn’t know what to make of it all or that I could even trust myself or my senses but I did know right then and there that for whatever future there was for us, I was going to be in the passenger seat.
The three of us spent the rest of that night in a pale pantomime of our usual party revelry. The television was a distraction for a time until the stations started signing off. You were blazing through all our works and only just barely seeming to catch a buzz. Howie tried to keep up with you for a while until he wound up loud snoring and pretzeled up at the foot of the sofa mattress as you pushed him out of the way to pull it out for us. I couldn’t even enjoy the first drink I made much less the fourth or fifth. I kept thinking about that bed, how fucking awful and carnivorous you looked as you leaned over our coffee table in nothing but that sheer nightgown.
You made sure to point out your purse and remind me to go out and buy us a new bed to be delivered as soon as possible, you also made sure to point out that Howie was still in the room and completely gonzo as you crawled on top of me and pressed your tits in my face.
I loved you so much.
I loved you enough to forget that there was something very, very wrong with you. Enough to ignore how cool you felt and how you had to go into the slaughter house that was our bedroom in order to fetch the lube that we only ever needed for that kind of sex before then. I loved you enough to sleep with what you had so obviously become even as Howie sawed down a forest while we went at it, again, and again, and again.
Your thirst was insatiable but it couldn’t be quenched, not like that. Later on, of course, I understood that impossible itch. Later on, I learned for myself what it meant to be thirsty and not know or want to realize what was required to sate it. At the time though, well, rode hard and put up wet was as good a way to explain it as any. You finally seemed to fall asleep just before the sun came up and I fell asleep too. You were nested in the crook of my arm, half of you on the thin sofa mattress, half of you resting on my chest but it was nothing like before. There was no heat to you, no weight. I laid there staring at the popcorn ceiling feeling you breathe in tiny, shallow breaths. You sounded just like you did when you really managed to tie one on but you seemed hardly phased before sleep found you. I laid there and looked at the small window beyond the black out curtains and watched the dawn begin to come up around the outlines of the curtains.
I laid there and tried to imagine what life would be like for us from there on. I laid there and let pure exhaustion overcome the terror I felt as I looked down at the mop of your blonde hair trying to sort out exactly what the fuck you were or had become.