Dinner & Blood

Despite Rachel having told me several times that the gathering would be informal, with only a few friends of hers, I couldn’t help myself and looked for something in my wardrobe that made me feel confident, sexy, and Christmas-y. The truth was that I had no idea of which kind of friends would be around, but she had mentioned there would be at least a couple of guys, and I couldn’t stop myself, not because I was desperate to get some, but because I didn’t want anyone to think I had no other options but to spend Christmas with a coworker.

I had not dated anyone in a long time. My days revolved around work and a few shy attempts to have a social life on weekends. I had a gym subscription that I didn’t use, a tremendous TV package that I didn’t take advantage of, and a pile of books to read that was way too big to feel proud of. Apart from work dinners and a few occasions when I had gone out with Rachel, I had little interaction with people outside the office, and the best way I had found to release steam was online shopping. That’s why the wardrobe was full, and I was ready for whatever occasion might arise. It took me two hours to show my black bedazzled dress and a pair of red high-heeled shoes that could have made Santa Claus turn his head. I was looking awesome, and my outfit was my way of saying, “I’m here because I want to.” However, I have to admit that the super-high heels I chose might have said something like, “I’m high maintenance.” As usual, I only noticed that much later, when I saw myself as a tower among the rest of the guests— a tall and shiny one.

I arrived at Rachel’s at six in the evening, as she had texted me to do, with a store-bought cake in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. Yet, she did not seem to be expecting anyone at that time because when she opened the door, she was still wearing her pyjamas.

“Am I too early?” I asked as I saw her scratching her head when she opened the door of her studio.

“Yes, sure,” she replied, “I’ve been trying to assemble the table I got delivered last week, but I think parts are missing… or maybe there are too many. Can you help me?”

I glanced at the living room. It seemed something had exploded in there.

“Sure, I’m an engineer, after all; how difficult can this be…” I replied, kicking my heels out, handing her the bottle and the cake, and analysing the floor situation

That turned out to be a terrible thing to say. If my title had depended on my assembling performance that day, I would have failed miserably.

“Are you sure you didn’t throw parts away?” I asked her.

“I vacuumed an hour ago,” replied Rachel as she looked for a couple of screws we needed for the next step.

I stared at her, and for the first time, I believe she saw me as her boss. She ran to the kitchen and, a couple of minutes later, handed me two dusty screws, smiling at me.

“I should have remembered before,” she said, and before I could reply, someone knocked at the door. It was seven o’clock, the table was not ready, I hadn’t seen any food around, and the rest of the guests were arriving. I wanted a different holiday, something informal, and that’s precisely what I got.

“I need to change!” she yelled, looking at the door in panic, “You can open the door; I will be back in less than a minute!” she continued as she ran to her bedroom and closed the door behind her.

I could have told her I didn’t feel comfortable letting in people I didn’t know, but considering her state of mind, I was sure I wouldn’t be helping, so I walked to the door with my bare feet and dusty hands, still holding the screws Rachel had given me. When I opened the door, I saw three people, two men and a woman, carrying shopping bags and a couple of boxes.

“You must be Vega! Said the woman, an enthusiastic, petite brunette with a smile that was too big for her small face. She passed her bag and a box to one of the guys beside her and jumped into my arms. She caught me by surprise. When she leaned her face over my chest and her arms around my waist, my arms sprang like I had received an electric shock, and I opened my hands. The screws fell to the floor and frolicked— as if those metallic parts could feel happiness by running away from me— between one of the guys’ legs and jumped into the abyss of the building’s staircase.

“No!” I yelled as I saw the parts disappear and, with them, the opportunity to eat whatever Rachel had in mind at the table; we still had to assemble.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I am so happy to meet you finally! My sister cannot stop talking about you! I’m your biggest fan!”

“And you are…?” I replied, trying to free myself from her hug in the most polite way possible.

“I’m Celeste; they are Bruno and Andreas,” she replied, and the other two waved at me as much as they could. They were carrying too many things to do anything else.

I took a step backwards and smiled at them, “Please come in; Rachel is getting ready,” I said, and they followed me inside.

Their reaction to the poor attempt to assemble the dinner table was similar to mine, but this time, they looked at me as if I was responsible for it, which I was, but only partially. I never liked to be bad at anything, and being seen as such, even if the table wasn’t mine, was not my favourite moment of the evening.

“Do you need help with that? said Andreas, the tallest of the two men.

“There’s no point without the screws,” I replied, showing my empty and dirty hands, and he smiled at me.

At that very moment, Rachel emerged from her room wearing one of those ugly sweaters she had been wearing in the previous two weeks. It was her way to remind the whole company that her favourite holiday was about to start, even when for some of us, the only thing it meant was that end-of-year reviews were near and her taste in fashion was questionable.

“We brought dinner!” said Celeste, as she ran to her sister’s arms.

“And drinks, as requested, said Bruno, showing one of the bottles he was carrying in one of the bags.”

“Sure, perfect,” replied Rachel. “You can put it all in the kitchen while we finish the table. What happened with the table?” she asked, looking at me, and I couldn’t help noticing that Andreas found the moment funny because he tried to hide it, but he was giggling like a kid.

“I lost the screws again,” I replied. “I’m clumsy. Sorry.”

“Oh… so now, what can we do?”

“I can help her look for them; they must be somewhere on the staircase. I guess no one picked them,” said Andreas.

“That would be awesome!” replied Rachel, way too fast for me to say anything.

I wore my shoes, put on my best face, and smiled at the guy. Out we went, looking for the parts that stood between us and a proper table.

“Are you sure you want to wear those?” Asked Andreas as I struggled to walk down the stairs and look for something shiny.

‘Yes, what could go wrong?” I replied. And in that very moment, I knew I would be in trouble, because no one ever dared to make such a statement without receiving a sound response from the universe. In my case, such communication arrived two levels down, when I saw one of the screws, rushed to pick it, and managed to twist my ankle and tackle Andreas, who softened my fall as we slid a full flight of stairs.

Wounded, both physically and mentally, I looked at him below me. He had hit his eyebrow during the fall, and he was bleeding.

“Are you okay?” he asked, more worried about me than about what was going on with his face, but I could not reply because the sight of the red had hypnotized me.

He tapped my arms and continued talking, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I felt like a mosquito flying towards a bright light at night, completely unaware of what was happening around me, but then suddenly, he managed to change his position, move away from me, and grab my face with his hands.

“Can you hear me? Are you hurt? Vega?”

I snapped out of my state and looked at him, at his green eyes. I had not realised before that he had such big and bright eyes.

“I’m okay,” I said, but then I saw my tights had a hole in the knee, and a red spot in my leg was turning white quickly before my eyes. I covered it with my hand and wondered if he would find it funny to see blood in my tight, but not a wound, which I knew was healing at a supernatural speed. That had been one of the few advantages after the promotion: I always looked nice. I was fitter than ever; my hair looked awesome, and I had no dark spots around my eyes, pimples, or any other skin marks, despite my clumsiness. I was used to having bruises on my legs because I had a weird tendency to hit things around me since I was a kid, but since the change, not only had my reflexes improved, but the healing was fast. Creepy fast.

“Can you stand?” asked Andreas as he moved his hands to my elbows and tried to move me, but my body did not react, and before I could say anything, he was back on his feet and swept me out of mine. He took me in his arms, and I felt ridiculous, with my legs dangling and my arms around his neck. We looked like one of the covers of those cheesy romances Rachel had told me she liked to read.

“You don’t need to do this,” I told him as he climbed the stairs. “I’m okay, I can walk! And we still have to find the second screw!” I said, showing him the little metallic part in my hand.

“There’s no way I’ll let you walk these stairs with those heels anymore… and I found the second one when my face landed over it,” he replied.

So he knew he was hurting, but he had said nothing. He had only asked about me. He only worried about me. I, on the other side, could only think about the red ruby pearl going down his cheek and the terrible urge I was feeling running from my belly to my teeth.

I closed my eyes and pressed my face against his neck, wishing the weird energy taking over my body would finish soon. Still, every step he took seemed to make things worse; my fingers started tingling, and the only thing I could think about was burying my finger under his skin and my teeth… my whole mouth was hurting, even though I wasn’t supposed to feel pain. Why was I hurting?

I took a deep breath and looked at him as he was taking on the last flight of stairs. I bit my lip and focused on each step. We’ll be there soon, I’ll be over, I told myself.

He stopped and knocked at the door, and almost immediately, Celeste opened the door.

“What happened? Why are you bleeding? Why are you holding her?”

“We had a little accident,” he replied. He smiled down at me, and I couldn’t stay there anymore. I wiggled and asked him to let me go. Despite my legs feeling as though they were about to give out when my heels touched the floor, I managed to maintain my posture as I walked into the apartment.

“We need to clean that cut,” I told him as I extended my arm to him, and before the astonished expression on Celeste’s face, he held my hand and walked inside with me.

We walked into the bathroom, and I rushed to take one of the small face towels from a woven basket and placed it by the running water in the tap. Once it was soaked, I cleaned the cut with it. It was small, but the bleeding did not stop, so I put some pressure on it. Andreas closed her eyes.

“Does it look bad?” he asked.

“Keep the pressure, it should stop in a bit,” I said, and, making sure he was holding the towel, I rushed out of there, bumping against the door. My head was pounding, not only because I had hit my head while trying to escape the room, but also because my jaw was hurting. It suddenly felt like someone was trying to pull all my teeth at once, and when I held my face, something felt wrong, so much so that I turned back and looked at myself in the mirror. There was nothing different, or, at least, it was not so evident as I felt. I walked into the room and approached the mirror. I stared at my image and then at Andreas, who looked at me like he had seen a ghost.

“Are you okay? Are you going to faint?”

My head hurt. My jaws were killing me. My teeth…

“It’s nothing,” I said, as my eyes fixed on a little blood drop running down his face.

“You look weird. Are you sure you did not hurt yourself in the fall?

I extended my hand toward his face and touched the little red runner. I felt electricity running down my arm. My heart started beating furiously. For a second, I thought I was having a heart attack, but that wasn’t it. All my fears turned real in that moment I touched his blood: it was hunger, the kind Amir had told me about, and I had refused to believe in. It was kicking in, as he said it would, in the worst, most inconvenient moment ever. He was not even a work colleague, and my success did not depend on whatever he could do, which, by the way, I knew nothing about. Feeding was supposed to be a work thing, not something I should carry along to family and friend reunions. Would I feel the same way at the next family gathering? Would I need to sink my teeth into my cousins’ necks? Was I about to do that to this poor guy standing in front of me, wondering why I was staring at my bloody fingers?

“Vega? Girl, you’re freaking me out. Are you sure you didn’t hit your head?”

I took a deep breath. You’re stronger than this, I told myself.

“Let’s go out of here, maybe Rachel has a band-aid we can put in there.”

“And you?”

“Just go, don’t worry, I will wash my hands and will be right back with you guys in less than a minute,” I replied, smiling at him and showing my hands.

“I’m clean, no illness or something you should worry about!” said Andreas, as he walked out of the bathroom, and as soon as he was in the corridor, I closed the door, throwing my weight over it, like there was a monster coming for me.

But this time, the monster was me.