Joe Vampire (5 page)

"You have no idea," I told him, and I left it at that.

POST 7

Business as Usual

I thought things around the office would be different now that I’m a vampire, but it seems like my transformation did not exactly rock the status quo. It’s very unlike the button-pecking drones around me to not pick up the scent of someone who doesn’t return to the mothercube in the same condition as when they left – especially when it's something small and inconsequential. Change your hairdo and people flock to your desk like you’re a goddamned rock star to check your wig. Pierce something visible through tight clothing or get a new over-the-crack tattoo and the whole operation shuts down for the rest of the morning while everyone gets up in your junk. One morning I wore a tie with a piano key pattern down the front; people just lost their shit. Fist bumps and high-fives came all day long from co-workers who had never so much as acknowledged my existence in the seven years I’ve worked here.

But becoming a card-carrying member of the Undead Elite? 

Well, that will go practically unnoticed.

Sure, after I smoothed everything over with HR and made my return from Crap Fest 2011, there was a generous outpouring of
glad you’re feeling better!
and
we sure missed you around here!
There was also a sticky note stuck to my monitor, reminding me to sneeze into my elbow and use hand sanitizer, which I didn’t appreciate. But despite the fact that I looked more like a boiled sock than a human being, everything just went back to the way it was before. And that is pretty much how things have stayed, which is fine with me since I’m not all that eager to be noticed… not that I ever had been before. Now, though? I’d rather just blend in as much as possible.

It’s easier than I would have thought for someone in my condition.

I will say that I expected a little more from the people in my small-but-nonetheless-existent work circle. Funny how you can flip out when a stranger walks by in a novelty tie but sit next to someone every day and never really see them for what they are. Maybe it’s just because you’re trying not to stare at their cold sore or overgrown nose hairs, but still. A tiny moment of closer examination would help you discern who was a hardcore porn addict, who might hold down a second job as an underwear-only stripper or who would potentially beat the shit out of you if you moved their snacks. In this case, it would be harder to guess my secret, I suppose. But wouldn’t you at least wonder why someone has turned the color of kindergarten paste and doesn’t generate any body heat whatsoever? Or notice that someone’s energy level has dropped from slightly overly caffeinated to almost perpetually napping? Fat chance these dipshits would. I came back from lunch the other day, my skin bubbling like a Papa John’s Three Cheese from sun exposure and no one said a thing. I shrank, for crying out loud –
shrank!
– and it didn’t even register. Everyone around me was a solid three inches shorter than me before
This
happened, and now I can make eye contact with all of them without having to drop my head. Doesn’t that seem even the slightest bit odd? Not to them. I can’t rag them too hard, I guess… they’re still likable folks – even the snack psycho – and maybe they don't want to make me feel bad by bringing it up. But it really feels more like my change from
just barely living
to
not-quite-all-the-way dead
has thoroughly escaped their notice. 

It totally lowers the probability that I’ll be bringing chicken enchiladas to their weaksauce pot luck next week to zero. 

I don’t care what I wrote on the sign-up sheet.

As difficult as it’s been, I’ve kept my distance from Chloe, knowing that she isn’t like the drones and would be likely to spot the difference as soon as she saw me. If I were to push through like I’d planned I might scare her away with my ghostly gray flesh, and it would all be finished without even having started. So for now, until I figure out the best way to rock my roll, a low profile is the best profile where Girl No. 3 is concerned.

I really miss our flirts, though.

Hube was the only one who realized something was still off even after I should have gotten over it. Makes sense; we’ve been hanging since third grade. He’d be the most likely to recognize a change, even though he's stuck in the mail room and we don't interact all that much during work time. But when he saw that I still looked like a hell zone long after my symptoms were gone, he started throwing out more health care advice than Dr. Oz. I still wasn’t clear on what had really happened, so I brushed off his suggestion to see a doctor as an overreaction. I told him I was slamming Vitamin Water and had just started a new workout plan I’d found online – P90Z, which was a huge alphabetic improvement over P90X. Imagine how quickly the results will show, I said; I should be back to my old self in no time, but with rock-hard abs and six inches added to my vertical jump. Hube wasn’t convinced. I’m pretty sure I didn’t believe it myself. “Have you noticed that no one else around here has caught this mysterious flu of yours?” he pointed out. “Maybe it’s something more serious.” He was right; the one thing that spreads through this place quicker than fake boob gossip is a communicable disease. There was no way I’d be able to pass it off as something so innocent with him. And, being way too humiliated to confess how my “date” really turned out, I hadn’t told him what I’d learned from Michelle about the bite. So I gave in and agreed that if I didn’t feel back to normal by the end of the week, I’d see someone. At worst, I figured I could score a Z Pack to help put the spring back in my step.

Put the spring back in my step? Who am I, Tony Bennett?

Anyway, I’m not sure why I didn’t tell him about what happened, as much as I was obsessing over it. He probably would have dialed it down and made me laugh at how stupid it was. Instead, I kept mum and made up fictitious hygiene film titles in my head for the experience, things like
How to Deal with Dude-On-Dude Neck Rape (Without Having to Tell Your Closest Friends)
and
What You Should Know About Unprovoked Dental Assault
. But I didn’t know if it really had happened like that. I prefer to consider it an unfortunate misunderstanding, and having been outrageously intoxicated at the time, I had to allow that I might have consented to things I didn’t realize I was saying “yes” to. Also, I may have thought I was actually gettin’ jiggy with Dawn, not Don, so there was a slim yet definite possibility that I had initiated some of it. Maybe all of it.

I should really hold off on the sake from now on.

Whatever I chose to call it, I knew there was a possibility of lasting damage. Not to my psyche – that had been fully damaged by my family a long time ago. I was more worried about my physical well-being, and the impact of a possible chronic illness on the social life I had just started to rebuild. In the span between Aretha’s walk out and the hermit-inducing onslaught of
This
, I had been slowly working my way toward a comeback even LL Cool J couldn’t deny; contracting some debilitating disease would very likely send me back under the coffee table, maybe for good this time. It was for these reasons that I resisted seeing a doctor. Mind over matter, I figured: if no one confirmed what I didn’t already know, then it couldn’t possibly come true. I’d just go on with my life and put the whole biting episode behind me. That was the plan, anyway. I could always head to the clinic sometime down the line, if things got worse.

Sort of like they did later that night. 

I was feeling a little peckish, rooting through my fridge when the neighbor’s cat Buttons passed by outside. Something kind of animalistic sprang to life in me. I tore through the screen door and chased him around the neighborhood until I'd cornered him in a dumpster. Then I planted my teeth into his back. Before I hit flesh, he twisted fully backward and escaped, leaving me with a mouthful of ticks and fur, and a sense that maybe sooner would be better than later for that appointment.

I’m guessing even House would have trouble figuring out what to do about something like that.

POST 8

Cold Hands, No Heart

I never seem to realize how little I go to the doctor until I actually need one and can’t remember where the office is. It’s probably that way for most people – especially guys. We can be suffering through a severe bout of Stabbed in the Thigh with a Butcher’s Knife, and somehow just knowing there’s a chance we’ll get our sac squeezed and checked for lumps if we see a doctor will keep us locked in a bathroom, safe and warm and whimpering while we bleed to death. We’d rather just let it work itself out, thanks.

But that cat biting thing kind of got to me.

I figured maybe this one wasn’t going to work itself out.

It was easier to find the clinic than it was to update my paperwork once there, especially after getting stuck behind a girl who couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t take her Groupon for sixty-two percent off a Brazilian as a discount on her vitamin B prescription. When she asked if she could cover her bill using PayPal, the receptionist made her pay cash and gave her a pamphlet explaining the dangers of inhaling propellants. I think it might have fallen on deaf nostrils. 

I sat for twenty minutes, refusing to touch the wrinkly magazines on the table and running through every possible ending for this appointment. No matter how I boiled it down, I couldn’t find a valid explanation for what was happening. I had no choice; I would leave it to group-insured medical science to sort out the reasons why I tried to eat a house cat. I read somewhere online that they can make a penis out of a toe.

Something like this should have been a slam dunk. 

The nurse called me back in the middle of my mental excuse making. She was a small, round woman who was way happier than her profession was supposed to allow, all smiles and goofy chatter as we walked. She called me “mister” and giggled after everything she said even though none of it was funny, like a living LOL to end her sentences. That sort of unprompted happiness was irritating as hell in light of my disturbing condition, and her My Little Pony scrubs only made matters worse. For a minute I thought I‘d ended up in a pediatrician’s office by mistake. I was so relieved when I saw the exam room was filled with adult sized furniture and literature explaining the causes of erectile dysfunction. She had me change into a gown made out of paper towels and shoelaces, giggling at least four times as she explained which side was the front… and I’m pretty sure she was checking me out through the little window in the door while I changed. Something about her demeanor gave me the distinct feeling that she might be showing me more attention than she showed other patients. Sounds a little conceited, maybe, but that’s what it felt like. I hopped on the table and tucked my nuts when she came back in, because I was in no mood to be cupped or squeezed or checked for lumps, especially by Giggly Nurse Ponypants. 

Every word out of her mouth from that point on was a compliment, and every compliment ended in a giggle. She slid her hands over my forearm as she secured the blood pressure cuff. “You have nice arms. You must work out a lot!” A total lie, since I know I have the all the muscle tone of a microwaved octopus. She squeezed the pump about a thousand times, let go and watched the needle fall all the way down to the bottom of the dial. Then she repeated it all twice more, but nothing registered. She figured it was a faulty machine, giggled, then moved on to my pulse. “Such smooth skin,” she said, and I squirmed, wishing I could tuck more than just my nuts. When she couldn’t find a pulse in my left wrist, she switched to the right one, giggled again like it was helping her concentrate, and still found nothing. “Well, someone isn’t very cooperative today! A little cold, too.” She swabbed my arm and ripped open a new syringe to take a blood sample. “Yeah,” I told her, “it’s kind of chilly in this room… especially when you’re wearing nothing but socks and a dress made out of Brawny.” She giggled, of course, just as the needle plunged into my flesh. I
'll keep you warm, honey, like sweatpants at a bonfire
, I heard her say. Only her lips didn’t move.

And it didn’t come through my ears.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I said you seem cold," she told me. And giggled.
Give me three seconds to drop these scrubs and me and my ladyshapes will snuggle the chill right out of you.
I heard it clearly, but there were no lips moving, no giggle. And no blood in the vial, either. “This just isn't your day, mister. Maybe we should bring the doctor in now to see what he makes of this… you just sit tight.” She patted my knee too many times, and I flinched, waiting for another creepy come-on and trying to process the fact that I had no blood pressure, no blood flow and no pulse. And apparently I could read minds. When she was out of the room, I grabbed a stethoscope from the counter and listened to my own heartbeat, needing some reassurance that I was still healthy on at least some level. There was nothing. So I moved the scope left and right, and up against my neck. Still nothing. 

This made the cat-eating thing look like a hang nail. 

Suddenly, I had no desire to share my declining medical state with anyone else. I tore off the gown, untucked my nuts and threw on my clothes while making a dash for my car. Then I sped home and just sat still with my hand on my chest, listening for my heart to beat in my ears like you do sometimes when you’re falling asleep. Just like before, there was no heartbeat. And after that, there was no real falling asleep, either.