Chapter 1 – Chad
Trish
wasn’t a student at Miller University. In fact, she went to Radcliffe before
women were allowed to take Harvard classes. No, she was at Miller with a
different purpose in mind, and it had nothing to do with studying. She was
sitting in some frat boy’s dorm room—Chad was his name—with her fangs deep in
his wrist, sucking on his musky skin and careful to lick up the mess of blood
that ran from the wound like water leaking from a faucet. She considered the
meal subpar; it was a little too sweet for her taste. Chad had certainly eaten
nothing but cookies and Jello shots all day, skipping protein and salt.
Luckily, human blood naturally had enough protein and salt in each sip; Chad
would sustain her for a month. Lightheaded and intertwined in gluttonous bliss,
her body swayed with delight as she took him in.
Chad
twitched at the shoulders as he lay on the extra-long twin bed, his body limp
and lacking the oxygen needed for consciousness, let alone enough to put up a
fight. Trish figured that he had been about twenty-one years old. He was tall
enough to play sports, and his build was fair with a little weight around his
middle. His face was empty of wrinkles, young and new, and his smile was
pearly. Chad had taken the time to chat her up before they headed to his room.
He said something about playing an instrument and liking computers. He
certainly told the truth about that, judging by the black trombone case leaning
against a desk with the biggest monitors she’d ever seen sitting on top of it.
The room's small size—slightly larger than a walk-in closet—made the computer
look enormous. She was surprised the tiny room possessed a closet. To keep the
conversation going, she pretended to be intrigued as she shared some lies about
herself. She couldn’t remember if she was Julie from the accounting firm or
Tiffany from the dealership. It didn’t matter. Her meals’ backstories seem to
run together anyway, making it hard for her to put hobbies, jobs, and names
with the faces of the corpses in her wake. As she and Chad stood toe to toe at
the party downstairs, the only thing she thought of was his sweaty pores; the
chemical scent of alcohol still wafted from him as he lay on his bed dying.
Trish hated the smell, but it signified easy prey, like most college boys,
truckers, or, in desperate times, a person down on their luck left to dig
through pub and restaurant dumpsters. They were all so easy to trap and drain.
Trish
caressed the edges of the lacerations on Chad’s arm with her tongue, pushing
his blood to flow into her mouth as the party raged on beneath her feet. The
attendees roared and chanted, yelled for more beer, and demanded someone to
take their shirt off. The voices were the familiar sounds of the naïve—too
drunk and high on acid or pot to notice there was a monster upstairs.
Sometimes,
Trish wondered if college students’ parents bothered to teach them the basics;
namely, not to bring strange women into their rooms. But, no matter how thin
and pale she looked in that dark dress, men always fell for her. Her lean
figure and plump lips were effective bait—irresistibly mysterious, she was
told. Still, when the police found their bodies, there was always mourning and
a sense of loss for someone so young and talented. Someone that human society
classified as potentially important. Chad believed that hype, having told her
that he was working on a chemical engineering degree and minoring in music. He
was so close to graduating and living that life. As he spoke, Trish pictured
him getting married to some nurse, buying a house, and having kids, because
that’s what humans did. But what Chad didn’t know—a tidbit that she decided to
keep to herself— was that he was doomed to become an unhappy, overworked middle
manager who flirted with the idea of sticking a barrel in his mouth. She’d seen
many people like him over the last one hundred and thirty-seven years. Chad was
a cliché; there was nothing special about his dreams because he wouldn’t live
long enough to loathe them. In fact, Chad had done Trish a favor by curing her
cramps and insufferable hunger pains, and for that, she was grateful.
Chad
stopped jerking, and her belly was full. She slowly withdrew her fangs,
allowing blood to drip onto her lap. She used one hand to get a tight grip on
his arm, forming a tourniquet. There was no pulse, just as she expected. With
her free hand, she pulled the pocketknife from her leather tote, which lay
against her thigh.
Trish
learned a long time ago that a murder could be hidden in plain sight. By the
time prey was found, their bodies would bleed out from the wrist or the neck.
It could be suicide. It could be murder. The police never really knew. Even
though she had to leave Chad in his bed for everyone to find, she preferred
getting rid of the corpse by burying it somewhere massive like the ocean, the
lake, a construction site…a dump. She’d make the authorities look for months,
years, decades, then wash her hands of the situation, because if they did find
the body, there was no DNA—the biological code they used to match a crime with
a killer.
She
pulled the blade up Chad’s wrist, along her fang marks. The knife tore his skin
in half and flooded the wound with his leftover liquids. His blood had gone
syrupy and thick, tempting her to lick it dry. But it was close to clotting; it
would taste bitter and have all the consistency of old, clumpy cottage cheese.
Trish
laid Chad’s arm on his bed and considered his pale face. He was a different
person from the man she made out with and strangled before she went in for the
kill. His eyelids were at half-mast and he seemed peaceful.
She
unclenched his fingers and dipped them into the new gash. Then she slid the
knife into his palm, staging his body.
Then
she listened. She listened hard and kicked herself for not doing so sooner. She
didn’t think straight, or at all, when she was hungry, and Chad seemed
reserved—she was sure that his room was empty and that no one knew about the
woman that he allowed upstairs. He’d even locked the door behind them. During
her quick survey upon entry, she didn’t see anything. As they huffed and made
out, swapped tongues and giggled, she didn’t hear anything alarming. And as she
subdued him and slurped his blood, she didn’t smell anyone.
But
right then was the crucial time to listen and engross herself in her
environment because she was done eating. It was time to leave unnoticed because
anything could happen around them. Them, meaning humans. Them, meaning blood
bags. Them, meaning food…
Trish
heard a young girl vomiting outside, just below the window. She imagined it
smelled like cheap vodka and tapas. The boys just beneath her feet slammed
shots of what smelled like pure ethanol. A girl bawled her eyes out just next
door as she yelled about how someone was a horrible boyfriend.
And
then Trish heard heavy breathing in the closet. The hairs on her neck rose.
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