A Vampire in 14C

Chapter One

“Honey, where’s my slip?”

I swear my mother couldn’t find a needle in a needle stack.

“You’re holding it.”

“Oh, right, thank you,” she lifts up her only black business skirt to slip it on underneath.

“Oh God, mom! A thong? Do you think that’s appropriate?” I move back into our little apartment kitchen to remove the Eggo waffles from the toaster. I pull out plastic plates from the cabinet above and put two waffles on each. I dash them with some cinnamon for extra flavor and finish up with butter maple syrup.

“Shut up, Colin, all my other undies are dirty,” she walks into the kitchen and gives me a tight hug from behind.

“Gross, I’ll be sure to do laundry today,” I sigh rolling my eyes. I hand her a plate and she grins before plopping down at the small kitchen table. Our tabby cat Mabel hops onto the table with a little mew and my mom scratches her head and rubs noses with her. We found her in the alley next to our apartment building when she was a kitten. Actually mom found her and brought her home, though I thought it a bad idea to have a pet at first. Mabel won me over.

I take my plate to the table too with a pair of forks. Shortly after, we’re digging in and my mother chats animatedly about last night’s episode of True Blood. We only have basic cable obviously so we go across the hall to Aunt Rosie’s place to watch because she has HBO. She also isn’t really my aunt but we just call her that because she’s been so kind to us since we first moved into Avalon Apartments. Surprisingly she loves the show too and she’s nearly seventy-five.

I glance at the clock on our little stove. “You better go, mom, you don’t want to be late on your first day,” I remind her.

“Oh shit, you’re right. Thanks, sweetheart, breakfast was delicious.” She stands up immediately and scurries like a mouse into the cramped living area. I follow her. “Is Mrs. Cunningham coming?” she asks while she throws her golden blonde hair up into a bun in front of a framed mirror beside the apartment door.

“Yeah, she’ll be here around noon,” I say while I help her into her jacket and offer her purse to her. Mrs. Cunningham is my home school teacher. I did go to public school for a while but it never suited well with me. Especially when the bullying got real bad that I had to go to the emergency room.

“Great. Wish me luck,” she smiles and turns to me to plant a big kiss on my forehead. I frown at her and rub at the spot. I glance in the mirror to see a smeared pink mark. I groan but go to the door and shout down the hall where she stands by the elevator already.

“Luck!” She waves then steps into the elevator car.

I stare where she had once stood. I often feel like I am the adult, but I don’t mind so much. We are all each other has. I think we have a good relationship.

I am about to go back inside and close the door when I get a chill down my spine. It is the kind that for sure some creeper is eyeing you like a succulent steak. I look behind me in the opposite direction of the elevator to see a pale bare foot and the end of a pant leg disappear around the corner at the end of the hall. That is the direction of the stairs.

Okay, that was really weird.

I brush it off and finally go back inside.

---

I have always been kind of a neat freak even when I could barely walk. I remember having one of those toy vacuums and going all around the house with it picking up things and organizing my other toys. I loved to play house. My mother thought it was cute and she still does, but it’s more like she’s grateful she has her own personal maid.

I really don’t mind.

This reason is why I spend my time before Mrs. Cunningham is scheduled to come over cleaning dishes and doing laundry.

After the dishes and silverware are clean and drying on the dish rack, I gather up all our dirty laundry. Mine are already together in the hamper but I find my mom’s lying all over the place. Even find some silky panties hanging from her ceiling fan. Disgusting to say the least, but what I won’t do for her.

Clothes piled into a decent mound in the rectangular white laundry basket, I head out of the apartment with it resting against my hip. The hallway is silent other than the loud sound of a British soccer game going on from Mr. Murphy’s apartment. He’s a middle-aged man who works in construction with a very thick mustache and a big bald patch. Mr. Murphy is always going on about the motherland and how much better it is and so on. He is kind of funny though. He always makes me laugh even if he is trying to be serious. I think it might be his thick accent.

When I pass his apartment door, I hear him shouting expletives and slang. He talks about football a lot or footie as he calls it. He’s tried and failed many times to explain it to me but soccer and many other sports escape me. Yeah, I know I am a sad excuse for a young growing boy, at least according to Mr. Murphy.

One uneventful elevator ride later, I find myself in the laundry room downstairs on the lobby floor.

The room isn’t too big but large enough to hold about six washer and dryers each. The walls are an awful pea-soup green that’s molded and chipped in some spots. The tile floors are scuffed and chipped with a suspicious looking brownish crimson stain in one corner beside the faulty washer. There is a poorly stocked vending machine, a few chairs, and a change machine that I’ve had to kick a time or two so it would give me my quarters.

There is a large woman leaving with a sack of clean laundry as I enter. We smile faintly at each other, a sort of awkward grin between two strangers. I’ve seen her but she definitely isn’t on my floor. I don’t know everyone in my building except those on my floor and a few others.

I move to one washer, the one I often use. Isn’t it kind of funny how people naturally go with what they are comfortable with? Like sitting on the same seat on the bus or always taking the same route to the dollar theater on 5th. I always automatically go to this washer and then the same dryer unless it’s already in use. If it is I always feel strange. Maybe I’m just weird and totally OCD or other people do the same thing, but I can’t help but think about the overlooked or the little things sometimes.

I put the whites in first and set the washer. As water starts to fill up I add the detergent. There is a bookshelf with all sorts of detergents and soaps on it but I always bring our own. There has been a case or two where I have forgotten. I would use more than one washer to get the darks done at the same time but there is this small list of rules on the bulletin board in the room and one of the rules is not using more than one washer even if there isn’t anyone else in there. I think it a little absurd but I’m not the sort to take risks or break rules despite my opinions.

All is quiet except for the washer when I take a seat in a slightly uncomfortable tweed chair to the right of the machine. I brought a novel to read while I wait and flip open the paperback to where the bookmark has held my place. It’s a receipt for groceries I bought last week with money from when I babysat the Lincoln twins who live just above us. My mother got laid off from her previous job and so I supported the both of us for a little while doing random things for the other tenants and the landlady. Luckily, she had an interview the past Saturday and managed to convince them she was at all organized enough for a reception job at a huge technology company in the center of the city. I hope she can keep this one for longer than a month.

I tend to get really absorbed when I’m reading and completely tune out the reality all around me in favor of a fictional world. I suppose since I can’t really have far away adventures like the characters in these novels I escape in my head when I read them. I can sail across seas, fight horrible beats, explore alien planets, or fall in love. None of these I know I could never do while I’m stuck in an apartment building and a ten block radius. It’s not like I couldn’t just walk out the door and never return but I could never leave my mother like that. What would she do without me? Probably collapse in her own filth.

There is also the fact that I have a poor immune system and add asthmatic on top of that. So for a fear of dying and my mother falling apart I’ll stick to literature for my epic adventures. Besides, Avalon has its own adventure sometimes if you call constant gossip adventure.

A sharp clack sound causes me to nearly jump out of my skin. Instead of course I fall off the chair and my book slides across the linoleum floor.

As I lay there pondering the possibility that what I heard had been the washing machine and not some mutant supernatural being out to eat me, I watch sparkly blue painted fingernails attached to ring adorned fingers pick up my book. “Dark Blood? Didn’t realize you were into vampires, Colin,” says an amused familiar voice.

I sigh and sit up, “Hey, Joanna.”

Joanna lives on the floor above mom and me but in a way she’s kind of my best friend even though she’s twenty-three and I’ll be seventeen next week. We met the day after mom and I moved in here four years ago when Joanna was a college student. There is this small room in the lobby with a few game and vending machines. I was playing on the only pinball one when she came in to get something from the vending machine before she left for school. I was having difficulty with the game and in my frustration—I didn’t know she was there—I kicked it. It felt like I just kicked a bowling ball and I started to hop up and down holding my foot. I actually almost cried but suddenly I heard laughing and there was Joanna cracking up at my expense. It was a bad first impression I guess but we didn’t really see each other again till Halloween a few weeks later when mom forced me to go trick or treating around the apartment building.

I was dressed like a ninja just using some dark clothes I already had. I ended up on her floor and she was the second door I knocked on. She had opened the door dressed up like a sexy zombie witch, her words not mine. Joanna squealed at the sight of me and made me come in to not only shower me with candy but made me play Halloween games with her and watch horror movies. In the end it was kind of fun and my opinion of her as total bitch changed. I didn’t get home till nearly midnight. I probably would have stayed the night if mom hadn’t sent Hank the security guy to look for me because she was worried half to death.

“How’s the floor?” she says she wanders over and decides finally to help my skinny body up. I am unfortunately lanky and thin even though I eat like a cow. Joanna says I make her feel fat but she is far from that.

“You scared me,” I glare at her as I dust myself off.

“Sorry, hun,” she pats my cheek then hands over my book before she moves towards a washer beside mine where she sat a basket of laundry. So that must be what I heard, the plastic hitting the metal machine.

Joanna is in only a pair of sleep shorts and a Pink Floyd t-shirt. In fact she doesn’t even have shoes on. Though it seems she took the time to put on eye-shadow, liner, and mascara. I think she even has pink lip-gloss on. She’s so weird but I love her. Not in a sexual way but more like if I had a sister I hope she would be like Joanna. Her hair looks cool too. All bleached blond and cut in an inverted bob with the hairs underneath a shocking bubblegum pink. She’s an artist so I guess she can afford to look like that. If she had an office job like mom she’d be in trouble I’m sure. I don’t think they’d appreciate the lip ring either.

My clothes are still spinning around in the washing machine so I sit back down but instead of opening my book again I just watch Joanna do her laundry.

“I’m not into vampires. This is just a good book,” I say going back to previous statement.

“Of course, I just didn’t think you’d be into the macabre. You look so innocent,” she says and turns around to give me what I call a “bless your heart” look. Jo’s from the south but she doesn’t always act and she doesn’t really sound like it either. Except when she’s drunk and I’ve had to witness that quite a few times.

“Stop it, I’m not that innocent,” I pout.

“Whatever you say, Colin, anyway I have some interesting news,” she starts the washer and turns around to lean against it with a big wide grin. I wonder if I should be worried.

“Okay,” I say slowly and carefully. I sit the book down beside me and pull my knees up to my chest.

She gets that glint in her light blue eyes that tell me she had been listening to the old gossip twins from 9B and it has to be something juicy for her to be this excited about it. “I heard Martha and Mary talking about a new tenant on my floor,” she finally says.

“Really?” I am genuinely surprised seeing as we haven’t had a new one in over nine months.

“Yeah, apparently he’s a young guy, maybe around my age. I wonder if he’s cute but perhaps not because the girls said he’s sort of creepy and reclusive. He doesn’t come out of his apartment much except at night and the doorman said he wears a lot of black and looks really pale,” she pauses and seems to think a moment. “Maybe he’s a goth or a drug dealer or both. How curious is that though, right?”

It is kind of curious but we do have some other weird tenants, so it can’t be that unusual. Still, only goes out at night, pale, and wears dark clothing makes him sound almost like a…no, that’s stupid. I blame this book for that train of thought. “Maybe he’s just a weirdo like the rest of us,” I say instead of mentioning what I briefly first thought.

“Hey! I am not a weirdo. I am an artist,” she says and sticks her tongue out at me before she wanders over to a stack of magazines beside me on a little table. She picks up an old issue of Vogue and starts to flip through it. “I kind of want to meet this mysterious guy.”

I roll my eyes, “Don’t you have a boyfriend?”

She scoffs, “Kyle and me broke up last week.”

“What? Are you serious?” I stare at her in shock. They’ve been together for a year and a half.

“Yeah…” She sighs and plops down beside me tossing the magazine back on the table.

“What happened, Jo?” I ask carefully.

She shakes her head and reaches over to pinch my cheeks a little roughly, “I don’t want to talk about it right now, Collie.”

I frown but after pulling her hands off me, I don’t mention it again. She’ll talk to me eventually about it I’m sure of it. Instead, the sound of the washing machine with my clothes in it buzzes and I get up to move them to the dryer. I change the subject back to the new guy and we discuss outrageous notions of his character. Still the thought of this guy being the undead never leaves the back of my mind even if it’s extremely absurd.

Author's Note: So this is my NaNoWriMo for this year. I've talked about doing a vamp story though who knows if it will end up being one or not. It's just an assumption. Hopefully this will go better than last years attempt. Cross your fingers! Anyway I hope my readers enjoy it. R&R please!