Our Lonesome Nights Together, page 1
Our
Lonesome
Nights
Together
Book One
Copyright © 2021 O. S. Smith
All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
I guess I’ll start by telling you a bit about myself, since it won’t take long. My name is Analise and I have zero friends. I don’t know how that’s possible in a day and age where just about everyone has an internet connection and even the saddest of us can find a chatroom to hang out in, but somehow I managed it. I lived with my parents until I was eighteen, and then after I flunked out of the state university I lived in the house they bought for me. I’m not particularly intelligent, I have zilch in terms of artistic talent, and I don’t really do anything interesting aside from spend way too much time on the internet and sometimes read, if I’m not too drunk to follow the words. To put it simply, I suck all around.
Days move quickly once you’ve given up. I’m twenty-two now, three years after I dropped out. I’m legit dreading my birthday next month, and I don’t think you’re supposed to dread your birthday when you’re in your twenties.
People who come into the store while I’m working tell me that I look like a zombie. Which honestly, yeah, a bit. I work a night shift, so I already have that haggard “I work a night shift” look. Also I eat like shit and don’t exercise, so, yeah. Have I mentioned that I fucking suck?
Oh, yeah, I work a night shift. That’s important, because that’s why I was awake and alone at night when I found that vampire. You probably want me to get to the part with the vampire.
Anyway I work at a MetroMart, specifically the 9PM-6AM shift. I genuinely have no idea why the store is even open 24 hours. I see, at most, three customers on an average night, and usually two-thirds of those customers are too piss-drunk or stoned to actually buy anything. The MetroMart greater franchise probably earns like five dollars for the hundred-odd they pay me for the shift. And I’m not bringing this up to act like some kind of math genius, I just have a lot of time to think about it because my manager doesn’t let me use my phone, and she always threatens to check the security cameras to see if I’m slacking off during work hours (when I’m supposed to stand behind the register and wait for a customer, but not while looking at my phone, just while looking the wall, the floor, or the “50% Off on Ribeye Steaks!” sign). I’m sure she’ll fire me if she sees me doing anything but waiting.
My manager is the single most blackhearted, evil woman I’ve ever met. Even worse than the vampire I found. And I’m getting to that, I promise.
Actually, fuck it. The vampire. I got off work at 6 AM, like I usually do. I was walking home, earpods in, blasting the same Maximum the Hormone albums I listened to when I was fourteen and I keep expecting to grow out of, but it turns out that you can’t outgrow Maximum the Hormone no matter how hard you try. My walk home is short, just ten minutes from the MetroMart. I usually head along the back roads, which are safer, and they take me past an old park that used to be a Civil War cemetery. There aren’t many graves, just a few crumbling headstones overgrown with weeds and littered with cans and candy wrappers. But it’s a dense place, a peaceful place, and sometimes I like to sit under the trees and wait for the sun to rise. For whatever reason, I decided I’d like to spend the morning in the graveyard before I went home and collapsed into bed.
I walked down the path that led into the cemetery’s center. I sat on a bench in the cool pocket of darkness cast by the trees. And that’s when I saw her.
At first I thought she was just a passed-out junkie, curled up between the headstones for shelter. But I’d never seen a junkie wearing a full Victorian gown, poofy and swimming in lacy trim. Her dress was tattered, but it was still enough to catch my eye. I’d like to say that I jumped up and ran to her side, a proper heroine, ready to rescue this poor suffering creature. But of course I didn’t. I sat there, wishing I had filched a can or two of Steel Reserve from work, and waited to see if she would get up.
She didn’t.
The sun was rising though. I could see the first pinkish rays of morning light filtering through the branches up above.
As the light fell over her, the woman on the ground began to move. Her legs twitched first, sticking out from beneath her dress like the broken limbs of an old doll. I realized that her feet were bare and filthy. I still didn’t get up.
Then she started to groan. As the morning brightened, she started to whimper. And I just couldn’t take it.
I stood slowly though. I wasn’t really sure what to do. Because you gotta be really careful around the kind of people who pass out in graveyards. But she was hurting. I’d like to pretend I was worried about her, but I was really just curious. Who the hell was this woman, dressed like a Celtic princess and tweaking out in the middle of a cemetery?
“Hey,” I asked, not that loudly. “You okay?”
She mumbled something, in between her gasps of pain.
“You, uh, want me to call you an ambulance?” I said, a bit louder.
“The sun… please, no…”
I looked up. Morning was maybe thirty minutes off. Then, because I couldn’t resist, I took a few steps closer. I looked down.
She was pale, almost paper-white, but her hair was a fiery copper-red. It was twisted and knotted, full of tiny bits of twigs and leaves. Her eyes were shut, but her mouth opened slightly as she spoke. And that’s when I saw the fangs, gleaming and sharp. Her fingernails were black claws. And there, on her neck, were two small puncture scars.
Vampire. I mean, how much more obvious could you be?
“Help…” she croaked. Her eyes still weren’t open, but she turned her face toward me. “Not the… sun, please… hurts…”
Okay, so, it’s really hard to describe what this all felt like. On the one hand, vampire. Obvious vampire. And she wasn’t even the sexy kind! Or the scary kind. Just kinda dirty and… sad. Should I have freaked out? Maybe, but after you’ve spent three years working night shifts in a grocery store, calling the police once a week on a stewbum who wants to piss on the sweet potato display, you start to become numb to a lot of what the world can throw at you. A vampire’s lying by my feet. Okay.
What should I do?
There are two parts to me: selfish and lazy. The lazy part wants to just leave her here. The selfish part wants to find a nice, pointy stick and stake her. Because then I’d be a vampire slayer! Maybe I’d even get to join some kind of secret club with big guns and flashy leather outfits.
But I don’t do either of those.
She squirms around on the ground. The light overhead is getting brighter, and I know what happens to vampires in the sunlight. Doesn’t everyone?
“It hurts… please…” she groans.
And, well, it’s hard to describe everything that went through my head. I felt bad for her, of course, but mostly because I felt bad for myself. Somehow I’d found something even more helpless than me, and that felt great. So, hey, why not take care of her?
“Alright. Just… hold on a second,” I said to her. She didn’t respond, and I don’t know if she heard me.
I wrapped one arm under her legs, the other under her shoulders. I’m in really bad shape, but I could still lift her. She was light. Her body almost felt like some weird doll made out of paper and wood. Carrying her was awkward though. She was taller than me by at least a foot, so I had to sort of sling her over my back in a half-piggyback carry.
I have no idea how I made it home without being stopped. But I did, shutting the door just as the sun was really starting to shine. My house was cool and dark.
I dropped the vampire unceremoniously on my couch. She muttered something, shivered, then went perfectly still. I leaned in. No heartbeat, no breathing. But that was good, I thought, because vampires are already dead. Or are they? The rules always change, but I thought she seemed okay. She looked peaceful now, maybe even a bit pretty.
I shook my head. I was starting to worry that I might be really sleep-deprived, and maybe I’d just dragged some random woman’s body back into my house because I thought she was a vampire. But she looked really, really vampire-ish. So whatever, I decided to just go to sleep and see what happens. Sometimes the lazy part of me has pretty good ideas. I locked the door before I fell into bed though, just in case the vampire woke up and decided she was thirsty. Though, can’t vampires magically force doors to open in like every horror movie?
I passed out quickly, half-convinced that when I woke up this whole thing would turn out to be some really weird dream.
It wasn’t though. Because when I woke up the next night, she woke up too.
Chapter 2
I woke up just as the sun was setting and sat up in bed, still exhausted, but my head was weirdly clear. I could hear movement out in the living room, and I knew that the vampire was awake. Thinking about last night, I obviously wondered if I’d made some awful mistake. A thirsty vampire, and I’d dragged her into my house. And I was the closest target. Maybe she’d be one of the nice ones though, who only takes a little and leaves you alive? Or maybe she’d lose control and make me into a vampire myself. Honestly I wasn’t that far off already…
Just in case she turned out to be the rip-your-face-off kind, I grabbed my home-security baseball bat up from the ground near my bed and tiptoed out of my room towards the living room.
The first thing I heard as I got closer was the Simpsons theme song. I poked my head through the doorway.
The vampire was sprawled out on my c
This undead psycho raided my dresser while I was sleeping! Somehow that was worse than stealing my blood.
Without looking over, she spoke. “You don’t have to stare. You wanna come sit down?” She patted the spot next to her.
“W-wha… that’s my couch! You can’t invite me to sit on my couch.”
“Whoa, alright, chill. I was just being polite.”
“Polite? You’re wearing my stuff!”
“Oh yeah, thanks for that by the way. Super comfy.”
“You…” I rubbed my eyes. Now I was really hoping this was all some awful dream. A vampire in my home? Badass, exactly the way I wanna go out. But a shitty, lazy, ungrateful houseguest? End me. I couldn’t even think of what to say. “Please at least tell me you’re not wearing any of my underwear, too.”
“Oh, nah. I’m going commando under here,” she said.
“Wonderful. Now, can you maybe answer a few questions.” I shook the baseball bat, even though I probably didn’t look all that intimidating. “Like, who the hell are you? And why the hell are you in my house?”
“I’m here because you brought me here,” the vampire said. She gave me a look like I was an idiot.
“Okay, right. But why are you still here.”
“Just woke up. Don’t really have anywhere else to go. I was gonna say thank you if you hadn’t come in here with your bad vibes.”
“My… my bad vibes? Oh my god. I’m such an idiot. You’re not a vampire at all. You’re some weird cosplayer.”
“Oh, no.” The vampire turned to me, and her eyes locked onto mine. They were the purest crimson red, like bloody gemstones. For a second I thought they were contacts. She stood slowly. Her shadow extended like bat wings behind her, and her eyes blazed with hellish nightmare-light. The air in the room was suddenly freezing. My legs buckled under me. I fell hard on my ass and still couldn’t move. The baseball bat slipped out of my hand and clattered on the floor.
The vampire slowly opened her mouth, baring her fangs. In that instance, I wanted nothing more than to feel those two points in my neck. I’d have gotten on my hands and knees and begged for them, if I could move…
And then suddenly the moment passed. She was back to looking like some lazy college student, sitting cross-legged on the couch and watching TV in her (my!) pajamas.
I stood up, shaky and sweating.
“Okay. What the hell was that?”
“Vampire stuff,” she said, shrugging.
I felt too weak to stand much longer and I flopped onto the couch, sitting as far from the vampire as possible.
“My second question,” I said. I found it hard to avoid staring at her now. Maybe some of her power was still affecting me. “Who are you?”
She turned, leaning against the armrest. “My name is Anastasia von Dracula the Second. I come from the noble houses of darkest Transylvania…”
I could see the barely contained smile on her lips. “You’re fucking with me,” I said. “What’s your actual name?”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re no fun. I’m Brianna Stroude. Of the noble house of Stroude, if that makes it sound cooler.”
“And… how old are you?”
Brianna’s eyes glimmered. “One-hundred and eighty-six.”
“You don’t talk like you’re a hundred and eighty-six.”
“You should have heard me back when I still had my Irish accent.”
“You’re Irish?”
“I’m dead, is what I am. But when I was alive, I lived in Ireland. And then in lots of other places too. It would take fuckin’ forever to tell you though, and honestly The Simpsons is more interesting.”
She started turning the volume back up, but I grabbed for the remote. I wasn’t done talking to her yet.
There was a blur and a rush of air. And then Brianna was sitting on the armrest to my left, dangling the remote out of reach.
“Too slow,” she said, smirking.
“You’re really obnoxious, you know that? Most vampires are like, noble, aren’t they?”
“Most vampires are pricks,” Brianna said with a shrug.
“Ah, yeah. I noticed that.” I grabbed for the remote again, but Brianna almost lazily slipped out of my reach and collapsed back onto the couch in her original position. She cranked up the volume just in time for me to watch a softball careen off Homer’s forehead. “You know, you’re not acting very grateful, considering I just saved your life. Or, uh, unlife, or whatever you want to call it.”
“I didn’t drain you dry while you were asleep.”
“Oh, right. How kind of you. All you did was steal my clothes.”
“I’m gonna give ‘em back. But if you really need your dorky pajama pants, like, right now...” She started slipping them off, but I turned away.
“Just keep them, fine, fine.” I said, covering my eyes. Brianna cackled. When I lowered my hand, she was back where she was, watching the next Simpsons episode start playing. I had another question, and at first I was holding off on it, but I decided I was done being polite. “Last night, in the park. What happened to you?”
“Pulling no punches with the questions, huh?” Brianna said.
“You’re staying here. I have a right to know.”
“Fine. I’m not the only vampire in this city. And vampires, uh, aren’t always the friendliest to each other. Especially when you’re not in their Pact. They couldn’t outright kill me without breaking some really old-ass vampire covenants, but they could try and make it look like an accident, you know? If you hadn’t found me, I’d be ash by now. So, yeah, thank you so much, Analise. That what you wanted to hear?”
“It is, and… wait, how do you know my name?”
“Oh, I went through your wallet.”
“You bitch!”
“Hey, I didn’t take anything. Just wanted to know your name. In case you get weird on me, it’ll make you easier to mind-control.”
I froze. It was only now dawning on me just what was currently sitting in my pajamas, on my couch, watching my TV. I’d brought home an actual monster. Not a cute, sad, dreamy vampire like I read about when I was a teenager. This vampire was a fucking jerk. And not just that, she was actually dangerous. I could almost feel serpentine tendrils of evil radiating off of her.
I might have made a really, really big mistake.
Chapter 3
For a little while, the two of us watched The Simpsons in silence. I cast occasional glances at Brianna’s face, hoping to see what she was thinking. But her pale, angular features remained passive, and her eyes were glassy and distant. What are the chances she’ll try and feed on me? If she does, is there anything I can do to stop her? A cross, maybe, but do I even have a cross? There’s probably garlic in the fridge, but it’s definitely sprouted and nasty by now because I’m too lazy to cook. Maybe holy water? How do you make holy water…
“None of those are going to work,” Brianna said. I jumped.
“Mind-reading? Are you serious?”
“Mhmm. But it helps if the thoughts are loud. And you’re screaming in your head right now. Calm down. Why the hell would I kill you? I need you.”
“Wait, since when—ah, yes. Of course. I could report you to, like, the vampire hunters or whatever.”
“Don’t try to negotiate. I can just mind-control you to make you do whatever I want. I just haven’t yet because controlling people gives me a headache.” She’s facing me now, and those brilliant blood-ruby eyes are locked on mine. I want to look away, just in case Brianna tries something. But I can’t. “I need a place to hide though. For like… a while. The Pact vampires are going to get really nasty if they learn I’m still around. So like… just let me crash here, okay?”
“And what, are you gonna pay rent?”
“I can pay not-eating-you rent.”
