Once I’ve stopped sniffling I only have to wait an hour or so for the school to go dark and quiet, but I stay perched on the closed toilet, hugging my knees to my chest. Even though my hoodie is still wet I don't move for the toilet paper. It’s almost out so it wouldn’t be much help anyway.

In the darkness I can’t tell what the time is but nobody has come into the men’s toilet for a while so it must be past eighteen. Just a little more and I can go home. Those guys usually don’t stick around the school past seventeen but I didn’t want to risk it. While the minutes tick by in slow motion, I count the seconds on my fingers, up to five on one hand and then flipping up one finger on the other before beginning again on the first. One, two, three, four, five, flip. Again.

Right as my hand was about to get to the ring finger, the door creaks open, letting a stream of light arch across the tiled floor visible from below the door. I shut my mouth. A shadow moves in the centre of the light and with the flip of a switch, light floods the bathroom again.

I glance at the door to the stall I’m hiding in. It’s locked. Good.

The elderly janitor outside moves across the floor slowly, checking the stalls as he goes. His hand finally falls on the knob of mine and it turns with a plastic clatter. He makes a small sound of confusion before sighing.

“Luis, is that you in there?” he calls. I press my legs closer to me and he sighs again. “You can’t keep doing this,” he says tiredly. “I swear, if I catch you in here again I’ll call Mr Freighthold and make you clean that stall, you hear me?”

But I don’t answer, and with yet another redundant sigh, he turns away. He begins cleaning the other toilers and despite his threat I know he won’t call dad. He hasn’t yet, and although he isn’t especially trustworthy otherwise, I know he pities me too much to say anything to anyone. The thought makes my stomach churn.

The janitor cleans the toilets for around ten minutes before exiting, leaving the lights on. I wait an hour or so before sneaking out of the stall, angling my ears toward the door to see if I can hear anyone. Edging closer to the door, I press the right side of my face against it, drawing and holding a breath as I spy for any sound. Nothing.

Relieving my breath, I push the door open and slip outside and into the dark, freshly mopped corridor. Other people would probably find it a bit eerie at this time of day and the realisation that I don’t makes something in my chest cramp.

The janitor has clearly already moved to the other side of the school so I feel little apprehension at padding down the hallway and towards the front entrance. On days when the janitor doesn’t notice my presence the front door will usually be locked, but today it isn’t and I easily press it open and escape into the lukewarm summer evening. Even though the spring recently ended, the moon stands almost high. It shouldn’t have been that late, but a glance at the darkened school clock tells me that it’s already been too long. Dad would probably have been worried if I hadn’t done this so many times before.

Keeping my ears perked for the slightest hint of a sound, I half-jog away from the dim lights of the school, onto a small man-treaded path and through a few bushes until I emerge onto the streets heading home.

The air is damp and sweaty with the gross smells of the newly constructed sugar plant just outside the city limits. I’m glad dad doesn’t work there or he’d come home smelling like a sewer every night. Thinking about my dad is making my heart sink a little. I hope he got himself something to eat. He’s not much of a cook so I usually have to make everything for him—not that I mind. Working as a line cook in the future wouldn’t be so bad. I’d love to get a better profession so dad won’t have to grind his spine to dust anymore, but anything will be good so long as it pays.

I wish I took after more of him so my body would be strong, too. Strong and big and tough. Like Jake, or Marcus. Dad says I take after mum and he seems to think it’s a compliment, but why would I ever want to take after someone who’d abandon her own son? I don’t get it.

I bet I got my height from her, and my stupid waxy skin. Maybe she even had pointed, sloping, pig-like ears. It would serve her right.

At least Jake and all of those haven’t found that insecurity to point out yet. Only a matter of time, I guess. Soon enough ‘pig-ear’ will be all they call me. I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than ‘Gurb’. I’m sure to find out eventually.

My feet hurt. Today Jake and his goonies laughed at my shoes. I was proud that dad finally let me wear his old sneakers because my last shoes got all ragged trying to keep up with Jake and them playing basketball. Why did I even try? It always goes the same way. They only invite me as a joke, to make me remember just how small I am compared to them. Sometimes I wish I had wings so I could beat them effortlessly at the game. Show them that height isn’t all that matters.

Wings, wings, wings…

I look up again. You can’t really see the stars in this city but I still try, and sometimes I can see mars or maybe jupiter. Dad doesn’t know much about that kind of stuff but he’s always happy when I point to the signs. It isn’t often or anything, but on good days, when there’s a red day or his friends are going on strike, dad will sometimes take me on the bus and we’ll go out of the city late at night and point at stars. It’s usually pretty cloudy and the stars are mostly invisible even outside the city, but I always appreciate it. It makes me wonder if, if I could fly above all of that smog, maybe, I could actually see what gleams overhead.

Silly thoughts. Stupid, even.

It’s escapism. I know that, but I still wish I was something else. I’m already weird as I am, can’t I take another step? Jake calls me strange names sometimes. He would deserve it, whatever I had coming.

That depends on what kind, obviously. Some kinds are better than others. Most authors and showmakers try to make it really obvious that being a vampire is somehow worse than being human, because you can’t have the humans be too excited about eternal life. So you hang a bunch of weaknesses on them. Sunlight, mirrors, silver, garlic, just about anything you can think of. I don’t see why the vampire can’t just go to live in some castle and never talk to any outsider. Other people is hell, as they say.

I wouldn’t mind living forever. It always annoys me when people say ‘Oh, but immortality would suck because all your friends and family would die' or whatever, because, I mean, they’ll still die. Whether you’re immortal or not you’ll still have to mourn people, and it’s not like feelings stick around forever. Just look at happiness—gone in a flash!

Some feelings stick around more than others, I guess. Humiliation. Shame. Anger…

But when you’re an immortal bloodsucker, there’s no reason to bottle these things up. All you have to do is-,

I stop in my tracks. I don’t know what I’m looking at and I don’t really want to.

From the edge of my vision, I take in the surroundings. It’s an alleyway, both ends facing other dark streets. Dirt, rubbish and half-rotten left-overs litter the small alley. I think I spot the vague shape of a cat lying atop a black trash bag but I can’t tell if it’s alive or not. It doesn’t smell alive.

The only two exits are the one behind me and the one behind whoever (whatever?) is standing in front of me.

I think it’s a woman. Maybe. Her hunched, heaving back is framed by the light of a dim, flickering streetlamp. A rat scuttles across her feet and she doesn’t even flinch. I stare at her, my mind flashing with Stranger Danger PSAs. I think it’s a she but it’s hard to tell. The sound of laboured, hissing breathing reaches my ears and my instinctual fear is overtaken by a brief worry for her health. I open my mouth to ask her something, maybe if she’s sick, if she ate something bad, but nothing comes out.

Her right arm, thin and bony and pale like paper even in the darkness, is resting on the stained and disgusting wall of the alleyway. She takes a trembling step towards me, a high heel I only now noticed she’s wearing clicking against the dirty pavement. My gaze flashes down at it—it’s red and too high to stagger properly in—and then back up to her face. She’s beautiful. I can tell it on a purely objective basis. She looks like the girls in dad’s magazines.

…No, she looks better.

Her lips are full and red. Something must have happened because her immaculate red lipstick seems to have been smeared across her chin in a strangely wet way. I don’t want to ask her about it. I don’t want to ask her anything, actually.

She takes another step towards me and I, purely on instinct, take a step back.

Something bangs from somewhere behind her and she, with sudden vigour, snaps her head around to face it, and at the same time, spurred on by her lapse in attention, I turn around to look behind me. Could I make it? I think there’s a way to get home if I take a right turn down that street. It will be a bit of a detour, but it’s much better than facing her. The thought strikes me as odd. There’s nothing visually wrong with her. She looked sick. Why does she feel so-,

There’s another click of shoes and my head whips around just in time to gasp as she’s way closer than before, within arm’s reach, right there, her warm breath hitting me, suddenly drowning out the scent of all the rubbish and the dead cat and as I stare at her lips and inhale the smell of her breath I remember something I thought I’d forgotten, yes, I remember when dad got his entire thumb degloved, and he had to have it rebandaged twice every day, and sometimes when I changed it the bandage would be so bloody I wondered where he got it all from, and it would be crusty with pus and as I stand here staring at the woman I understand what the smell is from: blood.

My body seizes up and I can’t move anymore.

Not until she, with a half-hearted moan, collapses in my arms. I don’t know why I don’t let her go on the spot. Her body is warm. I don’t know why this surprises me. Her eyes flutter in a way I’m sure might be charming but I don’t feel anything. She’s so light. Like a little girl. My arms are trembling.

Her lips part and a puff of her bloody breath hits me and I restrain the urge to choke.

“I’m sorry about this, girl,” she says in a husky whisper. Her flesh feels bony in my hands. I’m no strongman, but I feel like even I could snap her in half. As I stare at her with something like dawning horror, she reaches out her thin, blue-bruised arms and hooks them around my neck. The asphalt beneath my feet seems alive, pulsing, throbbing. I’m frozen like a stone statue and can do nothing as she snakes her head towards me, lips parting. She doesn’t have any teeth. In there, there are only rubbery gums. Gums, and a needle-tipped tongue that I briefly mistake for a worm, or a slick snake.

I try to move my head away but her arms are stronger than they seem and I can only stare in wordless distress as a tongue far longer than that of a snake's slithers out, the tip of it crowned by a long, sharp tooth, or maybe a nail; it makes me think of those long, clawed and painted nails that some of my classmates have started to wear, they always scared me a little, but never like this.

In dumb terror, I neither say nor do anything as the tongue slips in between my lips, through my teeth and then down my throat like a one-toothed eel. I gag, feeling bile rising as it presses through my oesophagus but my attention is diverted when she presses her lips against mine, forcing me to taste the blood on them, to feel her hard but soft gums rub against my teeth and her tongue move around, left to right, up and down.

Then, with stunning force, she bites off her own tongue.

The squirming and twitching limb slips down my throat and she forces me to swallow which I somehow do without retching. She doesn’t bleed. Then, as quickly as she had bit it off, she collapses again, warmth draining out of her so fast I wonder if she was ever warm to begin with. And for just a few seconds, I stand there with her in my arms, chest heaving, my mind tingling with fear, maybe disgust.

A pair of approaching footsteps—fast, in pursuit, but dragging one foot—echo down the nearby street, the one she came from, and I quickly drop her (body? corpse?) and duck down behind a dumpster. I hold up my hand to my face. I want to sob into them but the smell of her sticky perfume clings to them and I don’t want to think about anything anymore. Instead I try to hold it in, hold it all in, which doesn’t work so well as the world begins to blur in front of me. The footsteps draw near, pass the corner into the alley and slow down.

A few more steps. I can practically hear their owner bend down. It almost sounds like heels, but with the weight behind them, I’m starting to think they’re just wearing hard leather shoes.

There’s a huff of annoyance(?). Risking everything, I peek out behind the dumpster, blinking the tears from my eyes. Yeah, it’s a man. He’s wearing a simple, almost formal shirt and suit pants, crouched down beside her, holding up one of her pale, bruised arms with a pen. It’s hard to see his face from this angle but it’s angular, well-defined but somehow plain. If you showed me a picture of him and asked me to put a name to his face, I’d say ‘John Smith’.

He shifts where he stays hunched, hissing slightly as he moves his leg. There’s a dark blotch pressing out against the light-brown pant leg but there’s no hint of a gunshot. He lets go of her arm and it flops down limply, hitting the ground with a meaty slap.

Grabbing her face with a gloved hand, he angles it towards him before pulling open her mouth with that same pen, letting the severed stump of the tongue loll out between her bloodied gums. He grunts. “Must’ve chosen a pupil…”

Letting go of her face, he begins scanning the nearby area, looking around from behind a pair of yellow, almost orange glasses. His eyes are sharp and, when they fall on me, predatory. They widen.

Chest convulsing with panic I scramble out from behind the rubbish bin, out of the alleyway, ignoring his cries of “Hey, lassie, wait!” and the way my feet almost fall out of my dad’s old but still oversized shoes as I whirl them, internally begging them to move just a little faster. My lungs draw in damp air and all I can think about is blood and needletongues and who was that woman and who was that man?

He was limping. I can’t hear anything over the beating of my heart and the churning of my suddenly sick stomach but I think he was limping before. I should be okay.

I run. I run and I run and after maybe two minutes at most my breath runs out and I have to stop by a suburban street to catch my breath. I think Jake lives on this street. He invited me to his home once but I knew he was just doing it to mess with me. Ragged breaths rattle through my throat and I remember I never was that good at running. Just one more thing to make fun of me for. Slower-than-a-hippo-Luis. No good trying to correct people by saying hippos are actually very fast, they obviously meant that I was even slower than Charles, who happens to be called ‘Hippo’ whenever the situation calls for humiliating nicknames.

I groan to myself. Some spot below my right ribs hurts and I hope it isn’t a heart attack. My stomach churns weirdly and the only option I have to distract myself is to keep walking down the street.

I think, if I take a turn here, I should be able to get back on the right track. Hopefully.

Even though I would like nothing better than to stop here to catch my breath, I force myself to keep moving, albeit slower than before. I can’t name a single body part or organ that doesn’t hurt. Worst of all is my brain. It keeps pounding and jolting and squirming inside the cavity of my skull, like it’s trying to get out of there. Irrationally, I press my hands against my temples in some vague attempt to confine what is essentially myself. I can’t tell if it’s working or not, but in my effort, I watch as a string of saliva descends from my shivering lips before hitting the swinging, thumping pavement.

I blink down at the ground. A hole gapes up at me, black and taunting. A worm slithers out of it.

“...Aaah!” Stumbling, delirious, I start running again, drawing a large arc around the hole, looking back at it with increasingly superstitious panic, eventually running face-first into a street lamp because of it. Groaning and clutching at my nose, I bring my finger into the light, expecting blood. Instead I see maggots. Red, squirming maggots, some clinging to my finger, others uselessly falling to the pavement in big drops. I scream again, trying desperately to wipe them off, but wherever they go they keep spreading and squirming.

I start running again. I don’t even know where I’m going but it feels like running is all I can do. My stomach is squirming. My organs are squirming. My brain is squirming. If you cut me up, what would you find?

My feet stop running and I don’t know why until I look up and realise I’m standing in front of our apartment building. It looks like it’s swaying in the wind, like a big tree in a summer storm, but I can’t bring myself to care anymore as I pull open the door and lumber inside. For once, I’m happy that there’s no one in the lobby. I don’t think I’d recognise them. Would they recognise me? I don’t know.

The elevator is broken down as usual and I don’t like the way it glares at me so I take the stairs. My mind writhes and then I’m suddenly at the right floor, the sixth floor, and I exit. The corridor doesn’t feel real. Are the walls grey or blue or eggshell or bone? I blink at them. I want to stop and stare for a few minutes, to understand the pallor, but I feel like if I stop I won’t be able to move again.

I put my hand on the knob of our apartment. The door slides open easily and I feel a surge of gratefulness for my dad’s compassion but I try not to cry since there might be maggots in my eyes. I step inside.

“Don’t forget to lock the door,” dad says.

I pause just inside the door for a second. I can hear the hum of the television, playing a rerun of some movie my dad and I once watched together. I don’t remember the name of it and I don’t think I liked it very much, but the fact that I watched it with dad makes it feel inviting. “Okay,” I say, turning around and closing the door. Twisting the lock and sliding on the extra lock I hear a satisfying click as everything falls into place.

I take off my shoes and move over to the living room. Calling it the living room might be a bit much since it’s the same room as the kitchen and dining room, but my dad and I sometimes joke about how we should move to the dining hall or the study or the lounge.

Sitting down on the couch, I look at the TV for a little. I was wrong before, I don’t recognise the movie at all. As I’m staring at the screen, he reaches out to the remote and lowers the volume a bit.

“Have fun at school today?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I lie.

He doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, but the volume remains low so I know he still has things to say. Clearing his throat, he says, “If you’re hungry, there’s some oatmeal in the microwave. There’s a sliced banana in the fridge, too.”

“I’m not really hungry,” I say, pressing a hand to my stomach. “I… already ate.”

“Is that so?” he asks. “That’s, uh, a shame.” He reaches for the remote but pauses midway there. He gives a hoarse chuckle. “You know, the strangest thing happened at work today…” As I sit half-melted on the couch, wondering if my organs are still writhing or not, dad retells a story about how Chuck, one of his work friends, successfully fooled the newbie—some young down-on-his-luck kid—into making a small but forgivable mistake. When the boss found out about it, Chuck took the fall for it. Dad thought that was the funniest part, and I don’t really get it, but I still give a half-hearted laugh just for the sake of it.

Once he’s finished his story we sit on the couch for a little while. He turns the volume back up and I stumble over to the kitchen and turn on the microwave. I stare into the dotted window, watching as the glass plate and the bowl of oatmeal turn around and around. It feels like my stomach is also turning around and around.

Suddenly I feel like puking and I buckle over the sink, gripping the cold steel edges with feverish hands and burying my head in there, my stomach convulsing and my throat filling with the smell of digestion. But nothing comes out. I dry retch and burp and try to breathe but nothing comes up. The microwave hums and I feel my mouth make a similar sound: a groan.

All that comes up is bile and something sour and I spit it into the sink, turning on the tap to wash it away, trying to ignore the way it turns the blueish steel red.

Cupping my hands below the stream, I drink directly from them, gargling and swishing around before finally spitting it out. The microwave dings.

Still hiccuping, I remove the bowl from the microwave, putting it down before it has time to burn off my fingerprints. Moving robotically, I take out the sliced banana from the fridge and put them on the oatmeal. I bring the whole feast back to the television.

For a while, just to pretend I’m okay, I sit there on the couch, watching the movie. It’s about some schitzo who thinks he’s a killer while actually being a pathetic creep. A sex scene comes on and dad changes the channel to some sort of reality show about rich Asians. It’s not the show that makes me leave, and it isn’t the oatmeal either. For some reason, a wave of nausea just washes over me and I don’t want dad to see it so I stand up and bring the slightly nibbled bowl to the sink. I consider just leaving it there, but I don’t want to pressure dad into washing it so I just scoop out the leftovers into the trash and wash the bowl lightly, putting it still wet on the dryer rack.

I move across the living room.

“You’re already going to bed?” dad asks.

I say, “Yeah.”

“Oh,” he says, giving me a worried glance. He lowers the volume on the TV again and turns to look at me. I don’t look at him. But he doesn’t say anything and after several seconds of silence, I can’t do anything but turn around and return his gaze. His brown eyes stare into mine. His face is gruff and broad, unshaved since a few weeks back. His thick eyebrows are furrowed in clear worry. “Is everything alright, Luis?”

The world starts to swim with maggots and tadpoles but I don’t dare wipe at my eyes because he might notice. “Yeah, I’m okay,” I say, my voice trembling a little, almost cracking. “I’m just a bit tired, and I didn’t do so well on the last test, so I think… I think I’m going to go to bed now.” I turn away from him before I have to watch his face turn sad. “Maybe you should, too.”

I look back just at the right time to see him turn to the TV mournfully. He usually goes to bed at 18, just after dinner. I know why he stayed up this late and I suddenly wish with all of my heart that I’d just braved the school yard for his sake. He sighs tiredly. “Yeah, I should. I guess.”

He turns off the TV and stands up. I look back to my room. “Goodnight, dad.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Sleep tight, Luis. Love you.”

“Love you too, dad.”

I enter my room. It’s cold and dark but at least the air feels dry. I turn on the lamp. I don’t have all that much everything considered. The sparse shelves are filled with books my dad got me at second hand for my birthdays and Christmases—I never asked for them, he just knew—most of them about werewolves or vampires or ghouls or dragons. For some reason, I can’t bear to look at them right now.

I also have a few posters. I got two of them at the premiere screenings of New Moon and Eclipse, and although I didn’t ask for it, dad later got me the poster for the original one at some yard sale or something. I think that one’s my favourite, even if it has a few tears here and there.

I dump my backpack on the floor. Normally at this hour, I’d usually stay up for a while, doing homework or reading, but right now the room is starting to swim again and the world doesn’t feel quite real anymore.

My teeth hurt. My feet hurt. My brain is starting to shift uncomfortably again.

With no other choice, I collapse into my bed, not even changing out of my clothes or brushing my teeth.

Hopefully… dad won’t worry… too much…