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  “I’m not trying to be an asshole… just trying to find a way to survive.”

  “Your time here at Fulton is what you make of it, Aaron. Don’t fuck with them and they won’t fuck with you.”

  “I can’t change who I am, Frank.”

  “You are not who you say you are.”

  “Well, fuck you too.”

  Frank picked up his briefcase and glared at me. “I’m going to do what’s best for you and me.”

  “What does that mean? You can’t make decisions for me!”

  “Yes, I can. As your attorney and only advocate—since your mother has refused every single one of my phone calls—someone has to make your decisions since you’re no longer of sound mind.”

  He called for the guard and exited the room, leaving me alone, tied up and unable to fend for myself. I could not let Annie down by trying to pretend I was someone I was not. And, I couldn’t dampen my bloodlust even if I tried. Before Don slammed the door shut, I heard Frank tell Don, “Tell Director Redfield to go ahead with the procedure.”

  Chapter Five

  The smell of leather dipped in shit was gone, but all was not well.

  The headache I had developed, due to the stench, was replaced by an overwhelming wooziness I could not shake or overcome. Unable to sit up straight in my chair without assistance, I looked around the spinning room and noticed Don and Terry at my side and a large desk in front of me. Don’s large hand was on my shoulder, keeping me from sliding off my chair.

  Sunlight poured in through the only window in the office. It was glorious, as it was the first time I had experienced natural light since being locked up. Not only had God blessed me with fangs to help me access life’s most precious liquid, he’d also granted me the ability to absorb the sun, like his lesser creations.

  “Where am I?” I asked.

  “Shhh.” Terry motioned to me to seal my lips.

  “I don’t feel so good,” I said, ignoring his admonishment while slightly panting. “I don’t feel like myself.”

  Don slid a small plastic trash bin with his foot next to mine. “If you feel like you are going to heave… here you go.”

  “Gentlemen,” greeted an unfamiliar voice.

  I lifted my head. A tall and slender man slid into a high-back chair behind a desk in front of me. My vision was blurred, but I was able to make out his visage. Messiah-like would be the way I’d describe him. He had a full head of black hair and a manicured beard.

  “Mr. Parker, how are you feeling?” he asked me.

  “I don’t know. I can’t feel anything,” I replied.

  “Good,” he said. “My name is Dr. Redfield, director of this hospital.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I slurred, determined to hide my growing panic since I couldn’t lift my arms.

  “We’re disappointed by your actions,” Dr. Redfield advised. “Violently attacking our staff members is never tolerated here at Fulton.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes, I truly am.” I almost meant it.

  “So, you are aware of your actions?”

  “I believe so.”

  “You claim to be a vampire,” the doctor said, raising his eyebrow skeptically.

  “In the flesh. I’d show you my official membership card, but I’m strapped down at the moment.”

  “Quite the dubious claim.”

  “That depends on who you have been talking to,” I muttered, almost incoherently.

  “Mr. Parker, I run a tight ship,” Dr. Redfield continued. “I’m also facing severe budget cuts. Keeping you in isolation requires a tremendous amount of resources that I do not have at my disposal. At present, I have two others in solitary confinement. One, a sexual deviant who wants to screw everything that moves, and who has tried assaulting everyone—and when I say everyone, I mean everyone—including Don here, who is by no means a lustful target. No offense, Don.”

  “None taken,” Don replied.

  “I have another patient who believes he’s a werewolf and has bitten ten times the number of people you have, but he’s been here three months.”

  A werewolf? I’d be a hypocrite in saying I didn’t believe in werewolves. Of course, I didn’t believe in them. What kind of crazy fool would believe they were a werewolf? But I had to ask.

  “A werewolf? Is he hairy? Does he howl at the moon? Do you take him on walks?”

  “Shut the hell up!” Don hissed, squeezing my shoulder.

  I would’ve bitten his hand. Meanwhile, the more this Redfield fellow talked, the more arrogant he seemed. Underneath his lab coat, I glimpsed an expensive gray suit and a lavender tie. As my eyes regained focus, I noticed his hair and beard were an unnatural black.

  “Mr. Parker, when I look at you, I don’t see someone severely ill or handicapped by his condition. We’ve assessed that you might be suffering from a milder condition, an identity crisis of sorts. Similar to those suffering from homosexuality.”

  “Oh, you’re one of those guys. You’ll be happy to know I am as straight as they come, but it wasn’t for me giving it the old college try for a wild weekend or two. Just saying, never go to a college theater party without a ride home. If you know what I’m getting at.” And I gave him a big wink.

  I’d had a gay friend in tenth grade. He’d never told me he was gay, but he was the most effeminate young man I’ve ever met. Nice guy too, and he never made a move on me. I mean, who would? I wasn’t sexy. I had the build and posture of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. But he accepted me for who I was, fangs and all, and because of that, I thought he was a cool dude, and nowhere near the mental case Dr. Redfield insinuated he might have been.

  Redfield’s choice of a colorful tie seemed odd, in light of his prejudices. I noticed a pendant hanging over it. I couldn’t make it out as it was too small to decipher, especially in my drugged state. I had been hanging out with goths over the past year, and its shape and inscription seemed almost occult-like. Perhaps he belonged to some kind of secret cult.

  “Mr. Parker,” he said, calling for my attention as I leaned forward, squinting at his pendant. “Mr. Parker?”

  “Yes?”

  “Have you involved yourself in any activities one might consider satanic in nature?”

  “No, sir. I’m a man of God.”

  “Really? I’ve always thought a man of God wouldn’t go around killing young women and biting their necks without their consent.”

  “God would not have created me this way if He didn’t have a plan for me.”

  Dr. Redfield sat back in his chair, absently stroking his beard. “Mr. Parker, I am a man of faith myself. However, this is 1998, two years before the new millennium begins. I’m also a well-read man who trusts in the tenets of science. I believe your physiology... and that your teeth are a result of a rare genetic occurrence.”

  “So be it,” I said. “It remains God’s will.”

  “Regardless… while you are here in this hospital, your teeth are a dangerous weapon that must be neutralized for the protection of my staff and the patients we serve.”

  Perhaps this was a chance to make a deal. After all, he didn’t think I was as mentally ill as his other patients. Maybe he felt I was coherent enough for compromise.

  “Mr. Redbull,” I slurred.

  “Redfield...”

  “Right, Redfeel. Look, all I want is a little blood. No one gets hurt if I am given some every once in a while. I promise to be your best patient.”

  “Mr. Parker, feeding a human being with blood is a health hazard. End of story.”

  I shrugged my shoulders and nodded. The more I tried negotiating, the more the realization set in that I faced two decades of being muzzled and starved into submission.

  Dr. Redfield opened a file sitting on his desk. My file. Even with my fuzzy brain, I could tell it contained medical records, notes, and photographs of my fangs and x-rays I didn’t remember taking.

  He put on a pair of reading glasses and studie
d the folder’s contents while bird songs from outside traveled through the window, bringing life to the sterile and quiet office. I missed those serene sounds that I had once taken for granted.

  Dr. Redfield placed the contents back inside the folder, closed it, and pushed it aside. He ordered Don and Terry to pick me up. Standing without saying a word, he walked out into the hallway with Don and Terry holding me up in tow by my arms.

  The hospital halls and offices were all painted an off-white that hadn’t been reapplied in years. Everywhere I looked, I saw cracks and smudges.

  We followed Redfield down a staircase and into what appeared to be the hospital’s basement. He walked a few steps down another narrow hallway and into a dark room. Don, Terry, and I waited just outside the door. Fluorescent lights revealed a single chair in the center of the room with an attached lamp above it.

  It looked like a setup from a dentist’s office.

  “What is this?” I asked warily.

  “What does it look like, Mr. Parker?” Dr. Redfield picked up a corded phone hanging on the wall.

  Everything felt wrong… Something bad was about to happen. What were they going to do? Were they going to destroy my teeth? I tried unsuccessfully to slip from Don and Terry’s grasp, but I was still restrained by both strong men.

  “Relax,” Don said. “You’re not going to feel a thing.”

  I had to somehow snap out of my stupor. There had to be some way to stop the doctor from entering and violating my mouth and taking the only things that identified me and confirmed who I was. Unfortunately, they had drugged me up so thoroughly that my awareness wasn’t trustworthy. Even Don and Terry’s large claws seemingly wrapped around the entirety of my noodle arms felt dulled and phantom-like.

  Sounds in the room were muted. I heard Dr. Redfield talking on the phone, but what he said sounded unintelligible, foreign. I closed my eyes and after I had opened them, I had lost track of time, horrified to find myself on my back and with a goggled man forcing a metallic instrument into my mouth.

  I tried speaking but my tongue felt as if it was sinking toward the back of my throat, tickling my gag reflex. I felt warm chunks of food and sputum on my chin; apparently, I had vomited.

  Rubber gloves, blue masks, eyeglasses, a pair of thick eyebrows, and yellow-handled pliers hovered over me, and then I disappeared—into darkness. Not a sensation was felt, but I knew as soon as I went into a slumber that I would no longer be able to call myself a vampire.

  Annie had died in vain.

  Chapter Six

  A week had passed and without my fangs, I had become as malleable as clay, and docile as a three-legged cat. I was just a scrawny kid whose only defense was his fingernails, and even those were now trimmed down to the point where the ends of my digits were as sore as the gums in my mouth.

  I hadn’t had the will to eat. Two days before, Dr. Finnegan had come into my room and given me another evaluation, worried that I had begun a hunger strike. I nodded slightly in response to his questions as I lay on my bed with my back turned.

  He determined I was no longer a threat and decided to let me venture out of my room in hopes that I would eat.

  It was my second morning sitting at a table in the mess hall. They’d said if I ate my breakfast, I would be rewarded with going outside into the yard. I still couldn’t eat. I wasn’t hungry and withering away seemed to be my fate.

  I had become acquainted with this fellow named Bruce the morning before, who took a liking to me for some reason. I didn’t mind his presence, and he sat next to me during breakfast as he had done the other morning.

  “Eat up, my man,” he said. “You don’t want to get too slim around here. Gives off the wrong message. I don’t think you’re ready to be someone’s boyfriend.”

  I didn’t reply and refused to lift my head and make eye contact with Bruce. The oatmeal looked gross and the sprinkled raisins resembled roach eggs.

  “Kid, you need to eat. You’re disappearing before our eyes. The staff’s gonna force-feed you with tubes and IVs,” he advised. “You want them poking and prodding you some more?”

  I picked up the spoon and rubbed my tongue across my teeth, stopping at the sore gaps in my gums where my canines had once been. I felt emasculated... cheated... mutilated.

  “Don’t give up,” Bruce said. “Enjoy the bit of freedom you have now.”

  Bruce had been here two decades. He had an easygoing disposition, despite being locked up longer than I had been alive. He was also a supremely talented artist who was chosen to teach an art class every week as a reward for patients with good behavior. His soft eyes, graying beard, and pleasant smile made him seem more like a benevolent philosopher than the drug-addled schizophrenic he claimed to be. And just like me, he had a depressing tale to tell that helped keep things in perspective.

  “See these,” he said, lifting his hands, showing me his crooked and bent fingers. One of them almost at a 90-degree angle and another on his other hand that looked as if it should’ve been put out of its misery with amputation. “I still can draw, paint, and sculpt better than anyone in this hell-hole.”

  I looked at his hands and shook my head. “How’d it happen?” I asked.

  “How do you think?”

  “I don’t know. It happened here?”

  Bruce raised one of his ratty eyebrows.

  “Who did it?” I asked.

  He then nodded toward Don, who stood watch by the main door leading to the recreation area outside.

  “Don?”

  “Kinda,” Bruce said. “It was his father, Clive. The most brutal motherfucker to ever roam this hospital. Let’s just say I’m lucky I even have any fingers left.”

  “Where’s Clive now?” I asked.

  “Dead, dead as my left ring finger.”

  Bruce’s eyes froze as he dipped his spoon for a giant scoop of oatmeal with his mangled digits. I could still see the fear in his eyes. Even though he said Clive was deceased, it was as if his ghost still haunted the dining hall we were in.

  “Well, I hope for your sake he didn’t go out peacefully,” I added.

  “You got that right; something got him. Something got him real good.”

  “Something got him?”

  Bruce didn’t answer and froze for a second at the table. He cleared his throat and moved his eyes away and toward Don, who was now approaching our table.

  Don strutted behind me like a peacock and I heard his large hand grip the leather handle of his baton as he passed by.

  “How’s Bitey doing?” Don asked Bruce. “Is he finally eating?”

  Bruce glanced at me before turning over his shoulder and saying, “I’ve seen him take a couple of hearty spoonsful.”

  I hadn’t, but it was nice having him vouch for me so I could head outside, too, for a bit of sunlight.

  “Perfect. I think a little bit of sunshine would do the kid good.”

  Bruce looked at me and nodded before reaching for his spoon.

  In line with the bully he was, Don abruptly changed the topic of our conversation to prod us a little more as he asked Bruce, “Doesn’t that thing get in the way?”

  “What thing?” he asked in a slightly perturbed tone.

  “That mangled-up worm you call a finger.”

  I could see the anger in Bruce’s eyes as he kept quiet and continued to eat.

  “You know, I can order that removed for you,” Don said.

  Bruce was used to the abuse. He showed a tremendous amount of restraint—more than I ever could. I took someone’s life in the heat of passion, and I couldn’t imagine what I’d do to Don if I were in Bruce’s shoes. I’d probably be dead by now.

  Don plodded around the end of our table and crept up on Bruce, who still worked on his bowl of oatmeal. He then caught my glance.

  “What?” he asked me. “You think I’m gonna hurt your new friend or something?”

  I gave Don another quick and cold glance before lowering my stare toward my bowl of oatmeal, which I b
egan to stir.

  Don then reached into his back pocket and pulled out a 4” by 6” photograph and laid it out on the table in front of Bruce.

  Bruce then said, “Nice boy.”

  “Thank you. He looks exactly like Pop when he was Tyler’s age.”

  “Very nice. I had no idea you had a son,” Bruce said.

  “He’s three. Drives his momma crazy. He took her lipstick the other day and scribbled it over every door upstairs and then gave himself a pair of devil horns too.”

  “Boys will be boys,” Bruce said as he caught my stare.

  There was a sudden awkwardness to Bruce. Gone was the meek submissiveness I saw him display around Don. He apparently didn’t know what to make of Don’s sudden bout of humanity after showing him a photograph of his young son.

  “I know I’ve given you shit,” Don said, his brows easing into a tranquil flatness, “but since you’re the best artist I’ve ever seen and all, you think you can stencil something out of this photo? For a tattoo? I wanna get some ink of my son Tyler’s mug on my chest.”

  “Yeah. Sure. I think I can make this work,” Bruce said. “When do you need it by?”

  “Take your time. No rush. Bring it to me when it’s done. I want to make sure it’s your best work.”

  “A couple of days is probably all I’ll need.”

  Don nodded and looked up out over the dining hall and caught a couple of patients arguing over a biscuit. He hurried over to them and that left me alone with Bruce to discuss what had just transpired.

  “So, he treats you like scum and then he wants you to work like a slave to draw a pic of his kid?” I said quietly.

  Bruce shrugged and said, “You think it’d be wise if I held a grudge and said no?”

  “I guess not. But you could’ve made a deal with him or something. Right?”

  “A deal for what? My freedom?” Bruce laughed.

  “I dunno. Maybe some more time outside this place? A better cell? More biscuits?”

  “It’s better that I do good work and then ask for something in return as time comes along. Say I ask something from him now and then, when I’m done, he ain’t satisfied with my work. That could be bad.”