83. The Night I Killed My Parents
I headed out into fresh air for the first time after seven months of confinement underground. It was early, just after five. It was already dark, but I had the whole night ahead of me, so I stopped by the mall and spent a few hours picking out a belated Christmas gift for my mother. I really should have mailed her a card, at the minimum, weeks ago.
It’s hard being in a place with so many other people though. All I can focus on is how they smell, and how hungry I am… I find myself following one woman into the bathrooms, but then I catch sight of my red-eyed reflection in the mirrors, and I quickly break off the hunt, retreating to a private corner and holding my breath, until all temptation has passed. “I’ll eat later. Just.. get a gift and go,” I tell myself icily.
I find a set of hand-embroidered pot holders I know my mother would like. I pay with a wad of cash Antonio slipped me as he saw me walking out of the nightclub. He told me to “Be back soon.” and the innuendo I read into that made this wad of spending fuel feel like something of my long awaited payment for so eagerly prostituting myself out to him these past few months. I remember when it used to repulse me, being with multiple partners at once, letting anyone other than Luc drill me… I really have changed. My parents are going to be outraged, but I need to see them anyway, for a proper goodbye, if nothing else.
I wrap mom’s gift and exit the mall. I don’t get my father anything, and I consider what I’d do if he gets violent with me this visit. I’m so much stronger and faster as a vampire that he is hardly frightening anymore. I told myself I would have complete control of the situation. That thought made me smile, and I walked right up to their doorway at seven o’clock in the evening, holding out the wrapped present and offering casually, “Hey. Happy New Year.”
“Julian!” She hugged me like I had been gone for centuries. Dad just glared. “Why… why didn’t you tell us you were coming back? How was your flight--?”
“So you’re broke with nowhere to stay again. Correct?” my father cuts in coldly, and I shake my head.
“Only… kind of. I might have just been dumped,” I reflect back on my fight with Luc. “but I could always hook up with someone else,” I muse, and they both stare at me, horrified. It’s true though. I have been undone and remade into nothing but a tradeable fuck-boy. Luc fully expects me to take turns with anyone willing throughout the coven anyhow, and why would I resist? None of them would be as brutal as Roman. There’s a ton of good looking men down there I’ve yet to get a feel for, and I’m sure a few of them would spoil me near as much as Luc for the privilege of being the one to steal away his ‘favorite’. “All I have to do is ask, but there are dozens of beds I can crash in, for however long I--”
“Julian!”
“What? I’m just being honest. Hell, I’m being polite. I don’t have to come in. I was just giving mom her present.” I’m already turning to leave, but my mother grabs my arm.
“You… You’ve changed.”
“You’ve no idea.”
“You know what? No.”
I arch an eyebrow. “‘No’?” I repeat back questioningly.
“You are still our son, and I reject this whole… act, you are putting on. Now come inside and eat a proper meal. Right, Rodger?”
He crosses his arms. “Fine. But this is your last chance.”
I shake my head, eyeing him wearily, because he should know this visit is not about me changing or coming back for good. Nothing can go back to how it was. I’m just doing the expected thing by checking in with them from time to time.
I follow them inside to the dining room. The second I sit down, my mother instantly takes my hand, squeezing at it and searching my eyes. “Something terrible happened, didn’t it?”
My hands clench, stare fracturing with half blacked out memories of that powerful, muscled brute using me in the same way Michael did. Right in front of Luc this time, and Luc didn’t even care. I remember that clearly, and I remember walking naked through the hallway back to my rooms, soaked with blood and piss. Still, I thought it wouldn’t scar this time. This cold, dead flesh can’t retain any scarring.
“What happened?” my mother repeats in heartbreaking whisper.
“Horrific shit,” I mutter, and she doesn’t even call out the profanity. “Worse than last time. I’m really not broke, and I’m really not homeless, but that’s because I’m… Well, you can probably guess what I do for work these days--”
Dad slams his hands down on the counter. “That’s it. Get out.”
“Rodger,” she hisses.
“He is not a child anymore, Gale!” he shouts. “He’s made his decision. A disgusting, unnatural--”
“Like you’re one to talk,” I full on scoff at him. “At least I swing both ways. You’re a full on homosexual, and a cheater no less.”
His face turns straight red with fury, and he swings right for my face. I catch his hand. It’s effortless, so effortless my nails go right through the back of his hand and I break his wrist without even meaning to. He starts screaming, and the red starts flowing down his arm. My teeth are in his neck before I even realize it. Mom’s hands fly to her mouth, eyes locked with my own burning red stare. She smelled better than the man whose blood I was already drinking, so I lunge for her like a dead-eyed shark. All I see is red.
I shove aside dad, and he cracks his skull against the tile. My mother is clutching tight to her rosary, and I tear it clean from her neck to get unobstructed access to her jugular.
I keep drinking it down in ragged gulps, until her hands drop limp to her sides, her thundering heart goes still, and a shock of sudden bitterness finishes off my drink – dead blood.
I finally process what I’m doing, and I retract my fangs. My eyes fade back to a calm and calculating amber, and I stare down at the woman hanging pale and unresponsive in my hands. My own mother. I just drained my own…
I turn my eyes to my father, twitching on the tiles and staring up at me in horror with his scalp spreading a pool of red. I drop my mother’s body, and I stand over him, rigid, tempted to start sucking down that pool, but holding myself back, mostly just because… I’m already full. His eyes turn blank and fixed.
“You should have just had an abortion,” I mutter, staring down at her corpse. I shift my eyes back to my father. “You should have beaten me to death. I know you hated me. You were right to…”
I walk right out of that house. There’s not so much as a bloodstain on my clothes. I sucked it all dry and licked it clean from my hands before I even thought about what I was doing.
I’m not going back to the coven. I’m not returning to my place as Luc’s exploited tool. I wish I’d never come back after he sucked me dry. The creature walking around now is nothing but a monster, a demon. I need to be exorcised.
I head straight to our church. I walk right through those doors at 10 at night, walk right down the aisle, and plunge my head into the basin filled with holy water, screaming into the water, as my skin starts to steam and dissolve.