The Afters

"It's mine, and you ... can't .. have it!"

The cup of blood slipped from Mystic's hands and hurled itself into the air. It was one of those moments that's freeze-framed. Record-scratched. Suddenly I was no longer wrestling her for it. In this extended scene in my mind, I'm able to walk up to the two of us dueling it out on the linoleum, Mystic's arm outstretched to choke me while I bat her away. I push my own arm to the side and move hers so that it looks like she's going to town on some giant booger. Idiot. I easily grab the suspended cup and collect each airborne drop of liquid gold so that the cup is a full vessel. Too bad time doesn't work like that.

As the cup hurtles into the air I catch the shimmer spots in the brownish liquid bouncing off the walls. It's almost beautiful. Blood. This morsel I don't even need. Some currency, more like. Blood was never mine to drink but it keeps me alive, for now. Master was weak. He needed that sweet, sweet O+ to get by until the next shipment arrives from Canada. Who knew, all that snow and ice would make for the perfect body-preserving freezer when the rest of the world had gone up in flames. Hard to preserve blood when all the humans end up engulfed in someone's Gender Reveal explosion. What a stupid way to end up in this mess.

A cracking sound explodes beside my right ear and my vision goes black-white-and-sparkly. "Do I see unicorns?" I thought, "Mama? That you?" Mystic pulled her fist back for another punch as I realized she'd hit me, hard. That was going to sting later. I rolled to my left and sprang to my feet, then ran to hide behind a column. The blood was spattered across the floor.

"You. IDIOT." Mystic hissed from the center of the room.

"I know you know what this means. For both of us."

Well, I had some idea but... why not play dumb? Mystic knew I hadn't been under Master's care for long. Maybe she doesn't even realize I'm still entirely human. If I downplay my knowledge of this world, I thought, maybe she'll let me off easy this time.

Mystic was a Corporal. That's what they called half-human half-vampire underlings. They're also half-dumbass militia half-egg-headed apprentices as far as I'm concerned. Mystic would say she's had the great honor of apprenticing for Master Meegs since the early-Afters. This either means after the first nuclear detonation or after the fall of South America - they aren't that far apart so most of us don't waste time differentiating any more. Either way, it's taken ten years for her to be chosen. To half-transform into this stinky, sniveling vampir'yes'man who loves blood but gets sick from it. "Oh such an honor, my liege." I imagine her saying in his chambers the one time per month he allows her to remove her armor. When he feeds just enough venom into her veins to keep her alive, but not quite enough to change her. It's a bit like how a bird feeds its babies, except the mother bird is a 768-year-old pervert who suddenly thinks he should rule the world since the sun's rays can no longer penetrate the atmosphere. The rest of the time, Mystic is a bodyguard, a gopher, and a rat. It's gross. And I ain't jealous. I'm just here to stay alive.

I tell her this from the shadows.

"Mystic - listen. Gurl. You know it was an accident. Ain't there more blood in the storage cellar? There's always more blood in the storage cellar. Why were we even fighting in the first place?"

Play it up. New Girl is dumb as all hell. New Girl doesn't know how any of this works. We need New Girl because our numbers are dwindling n' it don't matter if she boasts the intelligence of a toothpick.

"It's the end of the month, Iris. There is no more blood in storage. If you're lucky, Master will decide to mount a caravan and pluck a girl from the town over but I dare say -- he hasn't known you long. And he may not feel up to such an expedition."

I could hear her clicking her long nails.

"He may just decide to leech your blood instead since you're still human."

Aggghh she can smell me. Shit man, I always forget the halfsies get the sniffs sometimes. So much for that.

I peer around the column slowly, trying to look as small as possible. "What if we find a way to collect it from the floor?"

Her eyes bore into me and a shiver escaped down my spine.

"Or.. not."

"Come with me. Enough of this foolishness." She turned on her heels and waltzed away down the hall. "He's expecting us."

I have this hazy memory of giving blood before the Afters. I've been strapped into the vinyl chair and a nurse is telling me to squeeze a ball in my palm while a blood pressure cuff tightens around my arm. She doesn't count down before inserting the needle into my vein, and I appreciate that. I've never liked needles or the sight of blood. Across the room, two men sit in their own respective vinyl chairs - one for two hours for a platelet donation, and another for about 30 minutes of red blood cell. My vision goes hazy and spotty. Like air is rushing out my eyelids from my brain. I am a human air conditioner. A nurse notices how pale I am and rushes over to elevate my feet and place an ice pack behind my head. The cold relieves the intense pressure and my vision begins to clear. If that girl could see this one wrestling a cup of blood from a half-vampire to gain favor with a vampire overlord so that she isn't invited to dinner as the meal... I don't think that ice pack would have helped much.

I cradled the side of my face as I mumbled my apologies. The swelling had already begun and I knew I would have a nasty bruise by daylight. That's when I'd be expected to mop the wasted blood off the tile if I made it through the night. Another freeze-frame, but in this Mystic is frozen mid-step, completely unaware that I'm able to waltz in the opposite direction, towards the main doors. She can't know that outside, there aren't piles of rubble where our homes used to be. Instead, I wander home. There I find my parents and my sister. My brother. They're waving at me from inside as I walk up the driveway. Mom's flowers smell delectable. They wink at me from their garden beds. Except none of that is real. It never was. These are borrowed memories I know I don't deserve. Not after everything I've done.

With that, I lurched after her into the darkness to await my punishment.