morgue. When sensing myself alone, I rematerialized.
All senses on alert. No one around, my search commenced. The morgue was quiet and stark, with steel tables and dingy, white walls. Florescent lights bathed the room in a sickly glow. Ahead, a set of double doors loomed, the stench of disinfectant from within swimming up my nostrils, making my skin crawl.
Beyond the double-doors was a narrow room with stacks of drawers on either side. Finding the correct drawer was easy; only three drawers were labeled, all right next to each other reading, "Slinsky, David - A", "Slinsky, David - B", and "Slinsky, David - C". I hastily pulled open drawer A.
"Motherless spawn of Satan," I spat, staring at the headless corpse, my whisper echoing against sterile walls. Truck's flesh was pale and chalky, rips and tears covering his thorax and abdomen - and most notably and grotesquely - from his groin. Apparently, the police did indeed find a body drained of blood, tapped from all those numerous cuts, including the jagged stump of what was left of Truck's penis. Within drawer B was a familiar face, an expression of anguish clearly visible through the plastic wrapping. I compared the scraps of skin hanging from what remained of the neck in the first drawer with the bottom of the severed head. There had been a fair degree of gnawing, and the remaining neck vertebrae were twisted far from their normal alignment.
Even if it was obvious that Truck's penis lay inside drawer C, I forced myself to open the drawer and inspect the organ wrapped in transparent plastic, forcing myself not to shut my eyes in disgust.
No human possessed the strength to inflict this kind of carnage. That was clear. My eyes slammed shut as the picture formed in my mind - a vampire, saliva-dripping fangs glowing in the moonlight, ripping Truck open one tear at a time, savoring his victim's fear, prolonging life merely to taste the terror.
Images from the past flooded my vision. A wife, her throat torn open. A vampire hovering above, face mad with feral ferocity, poised to strike, but waiting and relishing the wait. Death, then a new kind of life that finds sustenance only from the lives of others, lives taken with the brutality of one without faith or hope, a mere empty shell, mindlessly seeking fulfillment.
Until another path was found.
My fists clenched tightly as I slammed the drawers shut, caring not if anyone would hear. No one deserves to die like this. This monster must be stopped.
****
It would have been wisest to proceed immediately to my cramped abode, but despite a lightening sky, anger clouded my thoughts, as did concern for one still living. The road ahead seemed to veer, diverting my southward path.
And then my car was parked outside Nicole's house.
No lights burned inside the split-level Georgian. No matter. Within moments, my body rematerialized inside Nicole's bedroom. Posters of Emma Goldman, Che Guevara and a young, slatternly couple labeled as "Sid and Nancy" guarded her sleeping form from their spots above the triple-layered bookshelves that lined opposite walls.
Nicole lay tucked in a tight ball, her quilt pulled tightly around her, leaving patches of the mattress as well as her calves bare. She groaned loudly, tossed and pulled the quilt with her as she turned to the other side of the bed.
I spoke her name softly. No reaction but for a groan followed by a vigorous toss and turn as if she wrestled with a demon from her dreams.
The darkness that painted the walls lightened, transforming into swirling shadows. It was time to leave. Nicole groaned loudly again, and then my cells spread apart, my eyes still transfixed on her sleeping form, the image of her nearly rolling off the bed splintering in my sight.
****
Just before the funeral, the mortuary parking lot was full of cabs, but Nicole was nowhere to be seen. I had left for work two hours prior to my eight o'clock start time, at the first moment the sun was low enough in the sky for the pain to be tolerable, the rays stinging, but not burning, not searing flesh from bone white to charred black. My Muskies cap, sunglasses, a bandanna around my neck, long slacks and a long sleeved shirt provided ample protection, though no amount of covering, not even sunscreen, could provide complete protection. Not even Francois could fully explain this, except that it is the mere presence of the sun that burns our kind, more in a metaphysical than