vampire next door - chapter 3

I used to think that there was only one kind of vampire that could possibly exist. I was wrong. Vampires do exist and there’s more than one kind of vampire in the world. There are vampires who can walk in the daylight and vampires who only lurk around at night; vampires who are allergic to garlic and vampires who aren’t; vampires who can turn into bats and vampires who cannot; etc.

My name is Quentin Sanders, by the way, and this is the story of how I got bitten by a vampire who only drank warm blood from her lovers.

I am not a vampire now because the vampire who bit me was one of those vampires who can only pass on their “disease” by giving their blood to others to ingest, and I did not ingest any of her blood.

For that, I am grateful to her because, even though she drank about a liter of my blood, she spared me my mortal life, free of blood-thirst. I don’t even want to think of what it would be like to be a vampire, having to go out and hunt for human blood in order to satisfy an immortal craving. Yes, I’ve heard about how some vampires make do without human blood by feeding off animals, but hey, why take the risk? And some vampires can only drink human blood and nothing else!

I first laid eyes on this vampire two months ago. She had just moved to our street and into the house next door to the one I lived in….

I wake up one Saturday morning and realize that I’ve been woken up from my sleep by this annoying scraping sound coming from outside my bedroom window. I look outside and I see this little woman pulling a large box behind her, making her way to the front door of the house next door. Damn! I think to myself, that must be very stressful on her small physique. What do I do? I rush out of my bedroom and out of my house, wasting only enough time to put on a pair of work shorts and a t-shirt.

I come up behind her and say, “Need a hand with that?” She turns around to see me and she smiles. She says, “I can manage, but if it will make you feel better, then sure, I could use a hand.” I smile back and lift the box from the bottom end, while she lifts it from the top end. We’re both able to carry the box into the front door of the house and set it down in the kitchen, without making any more of that annoying scraping sound.

“What’s in this box?” I ask her. She answers, “My refrigerator.” “Oh, do you need help taking it out of the box and setting it in the right place in the kitchen here? I don’t mind, really.” She thinks for a while, weighing factors that are unknown to me, then she looks straight into my eyes and I’m hit by some strange…thing, I don’t know what, but she seems to have probed past my defenses and it’s like she can see all my hidden motives and intentions. She finally says, “As long as you don’t go telling everyone about my refrigerator, I will let you help me.” I sigh, then shrug and say, “Pshh. It’s just a refrigerator. Why would I want to tell other people about some household appliance, unless it can do something really cool like teleport you into another dimension?” She laughs and seems to relax a bit.

I tell her, “By the way, you look Asian, but I don’t know which country you come from.” She tells me, “I’m from the Philippines. I came to this country when I was a teenager.” Figures, I think to myself. She’s got the height, or the lack of it; the facial structure, and long, shiny, black hair. As we open the box and slide the refrigerator out, I ask her how old she is and she tells me that she’s thirty. I think and tell her that she looks as if she were only in her early twenties. She blushes and says thank you. We both move the large refrigerator to the corner of the kitchen, near the entrance to the dinning room.

“What’s your name?” she asks me. I say, “Quentin Sanders. What’s yours?” She says, “June Santiago. How old would you be?” “Thirty two.” “Cool.” Then I notice the refrigerator and say, “Wow! This doesn’t look like a refrigerator. It looks more like a big luxurious… casket for something, I don’t know.” The refrigerator is a rich maroon in color, with gold plating on the edges of the doors. It looks so polished and new. June has a worried look on her face. I notice it and say, “But, it’s just a refrigerator after all, and I guess it can’t beam me up to the mothership, now can it?” She relaxes again and says, “No, but it’s really nice inside. Sometimes I just want to get inside, shut the door behind me, and just sleep in the cold. I don’t do that, really, it’s just a fantasy of mine.” She smiles nervously. “Right,” I say, trying not to sound suspicious. “Well, is there anything else that you need my help in moving?” “No,” she says, “I’ll have everything inside before eight o’clock tonight. I work better in the night, for some reason.” “Okay,” I say and wish her a good day and tell her that it was nice meeting her. Then I leave for my place.

I live alone. Most of the time, I am at my desk in the corner of the living room, on the internet because that’s where I work. I’m an online worker. I’m like an electronic salesman. I don’t work for any one company; different companies pay me a commission for the customers who buy their (the companies’) merchandise through me.

I’m chatting with a customer about the superiority of the GNS brand of car batteries to the HandyDuke’s brand, when the customer interrupts my stream of persuation with, “Thanks for helping me with the refrigerator this morning. Could I come over to your place for dinner? I’ll pay you for cooking. Oh, and sure, I’ll purchase a GNS battery for my car. Put the order in for me, please.” I reply with, “Uh, wow! What a surprise! It would be my honor to have you over for dinner tonight, and you don’t have to pay for it. It would be my pleasure. What time? And, no problemo; I’ll put in the order for you. You should have the package delivered to your doorstep by Tuesday next week. I can have a mechanic replace your batteries for you, no extra fees applied.” “Sweet! How about nine? And, thanks for offering mechanical assistance, but I should be able to handle that. I’ve spent a lot of time with my car so I know it inside-out and back-to-front.” “Nine sounds fine! And thanks for purchasing. I feel like I’m definitely going to get a raise in my commission. Recently, I’ve been selling stuff like hot cakes.” “Awesome! It’s no surprise to me because you’re really good at what you do. Have a nice day, Quentin, and see you at nine this evening.” “Thanks, June. I’ll have something really good whipped up for us.”

During the rest of that day, I sell a boat, three tool sets, a short science fiction story, a Shrek movie characters figurine set, and a box of innovative sex toys. All in all, business is good.

Late in the afternoon, I leave my desk to go put on some clothes that would be proper for walking around in the outside world. I exit the house, get in the car, and drive to the supermarket to buy some groceries for the night’s dinner.

It’s nine in the evening and someone knocks on my door. I have dinner prepared on time and am glad that June is on time as well. I open the door and oggle her sexy, curvy body. She’s wearing a nice tight-fitting white dress that hangs low on her breasts, revealing a lot of cleavage, and only reaches down as far as her mid-thighs. Her hair is in a neat bun and she has make-up that makes her face look somewhat paler, or is that really make-up, I ask myself? I tell her, “You look so extremely beautiful, I was about to ask you if you had shown up at the wrong house. I don’t get a lot of gorgeous women knocking on my door.” She smiles and says, “Thank you, Quentin. May I come in?” “Of course, please!” I open the door wider so she can enter.

We sit down at the dinner table and eat a delicious pork and vegetable dinner, which recipe I downloaded the other day from the internet. We sip some red wine once the meal has been finished, and retire to the sofa. We talk about all sorts of things such as my work, my leisure, my beliefs and ideals, and basically, my whole life. After a while, I notice that she now knows a lot about me and I still don’t know anything about her, other than what she told me that morning. I say, “Well, June, I feel like you know everything there is to know about me, and I hardly know anything about you. It seems rude on my part that I haven’t asked you a question about yourself. Plus, I also feel a bit vulnerable now that you have all this information about me and I don’t have any on you. Heck, we’re not enemy spies or anything like that; it’s just that I want to be fair.”

She nods her head and tells me, “I understand how you feel. After everything you’ve told me, I think I can trust you. How about I make myself vulnerable to you, and at the same time, give you a lot of information about me? I can’t do that now, but if you’ll stop by my place, tomorrow at noon, you will have something of me to think about. Just come on over. The door will be unlocked. Go into the living room and there will be some things there for you to inspect. And don’t forget to bring a sharpened stake and a mallet.” With that said, she puts a pale hand over mine and leans close to press her lips against mine. She gets up from the sofa and says, “Thank you for the wonderful dinner, Quentin. See you tomorrow or…” She smiles with a hint of sadness in her voice and turns, making her way to the door. I follow her and open the door for her. She goes down the steps and makes the turn to her house, looking back at me for the last time that night, smiling and crossing over to her front lawn.

The next morning, I wake up at my normal time, around the seventh hour. The day proceeds normally, with me busy on my computer, selling things and making a living. Then noon approaches, and something bothers me. What is it? I remember, and I quickly sell whatever it is I am trying to sell – I think I just broke my own record for the fastest sell.

I go down into my basement and open a box that is clearly very old and hasn’t been opened in almost a decade. Inside this box is a bunch of old stuff I used to collect and play with when I was a kid. I take out two things from the box: a wooden stake and a mallet. Taking these, I go up to my bedroom, change into black trousers, a red shirt, and put on my grey shoes. I leave my house and walk over to June’s place.

The door is unlocked, just like she said it would be. I enter her house and close the door behind me. Walking into the living room, I see picture frames on the walls and tables. There are a lot of them. After looking at eight of the pictures, I notice that the time between the taking of these pictures is long, too long for a thirty-year-old woman like June, however, there she is in every one of them. Her style of clothing also changes with the time periods the pictures were taken in. She’s been around the world, not just the Philippines and my country, but also in other places such as Africa, Europe, other parts of Asia, South America, and the Poles, North and South. Not all the pictures are photographs; many of them are hand-drawn, and all these ones seem to have been done before the time of photography.

All these pictures, whether photographed or drawn, are dated, and the oldest date on these pictures is found on that of a woman – June, most likely – on a hill, on the outskirts of a village, sitting under a tree and posing in a way that the right side of her neck is exposed to the viewer. And on her neck is the unmistakable mark that would’ve been made by a pair of fangs. “Oh, shit!” I whisper to myself. On the floor, I see a message written with a thick black marker, on a white A4 sheet of paper, that reads, “Come into the kitchen, open the refrigerator, and brace yourself for whatever you may see.”

My legs are weak now for some reason, but I will them to move as I make my way into the kitchen. There in the corner of the room is the maroon refrigerator. I steady myself, grip the mallet in my right hand and the stake in my left hand. I go to stand in front of the refrigerator, an arms length of distance between me and the household appliance. With my left hand, still holding the stake, I open the refrigerator door and quickly take a step back, with stake and mallet ready for action. I gasp at the sight of what is inside.

Cold, white air pours out of the interior of the refrigerator. Frost has encrusted the entire inner walls, but what sends a great shiver throughout my entire body is seeing June, standing upright and stiff, legs together, arms crossed over her upper torso, hands over her shoulders, head bowed down. Her hair and entire body (she’s naked) is white as a sheet of paper, covered in frost. She seems to be in a sleep so deep that her chest isn’t rising and falling from breathing. She could be dead! Then I think to myself, why did she ask me to bring the mallet and stake along? Did she want me to kill her, on finding out that she was a vampire? No. Last night, She had told me that she would be seeing me again. But she had ended that statement with the word “or.” What am I to do now?

Then I remember something else she had said the other night. The whole reason for this, for me being here today at this time was so that I could learn some things about her and she would be vulnerable to me. This is what she meant. Now that I know her secret, I know a lot more about her than any normal person should know. She is also, right now, very vulnerable in this state of hibernation or whatever condition she is in. The question is, again, what should I do, now that I know?