Short Story: "In The Dead of Night"

I know this is a little different that what I normally post here on the blog, but I recently edited this short story that I wrote for my creative writing course last semester, and I just thought I'd share!

In The Dead of Night

The fluorescent lights in the gas station are blinding at this hour. Well, blinding at any hour, but they seem particularly worse after the night I’ve had. I stare mindlessly at the products in front of me, exhaling through my mouth and squinting as I try to remember the saying I heard once in passing. They say bleach for blood, but the odor is too strong. Better to take it out with hydrogen peroxide. Then again, it looks strange buying thirty bottles of hydrogen peroxide at three in the morning, and so far, I’ve only been able to count nine bottles on the shelf, and I suppose it would be rather suspicious (well, more so) of me to ask if they have any more in the back, so I settle for a couple gallons of bleach.


Chase is waiting in the car. I told him he couldn’t come in with me for fear that he would say something he couldn’t take back. The guilt was already eating away at him, and even from here I could see how pale he was in the passenger seat of the faded red pickup beneath the fluorescent gas station lights. One of us had to remain level-headed, and apparently, it had to be me.


“It’ll be $4.96.” I hear the gas station attendant say, but it sounds muffled through my ears, even though I’m standing right in front of him. He really should be more concerned about my appearance, as my clothes are muddy and worn and there’s literal dirt on my face, not to mention the bags under my eyes. Is there blood? God, I hope there isn’t any blood on me. Moreover, he should be concerned about the fact that I’ve only come into this shop to purchase a few gallons of bleach at three o’clock in the morning, but I suppose when you work the night shift at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, you’ve seen some pretty weird things.


At this point, my guilt is setting in, so I grab a pack of mint gum and put it on the counter as well. “And, uh, this too please.” He scans it without a single change in facial expression, then reads me my new total, only a dollar more. I dig six dollars out of my back pocket and tell him to keep the change, before stuffing the pack of gum into my pocket and balancing the gallons of bleach in my arms as I make my way to the car.


As soon as the driver door slams shut behind me, Chase is rattling off questions at one million miles per hour. “Did he ask you any questions? Was he suspicious? Were there any cameras in there? I thought I saw one outside of the building, and I was trying to look and see if there were any inside, but I didn’t want it to get my face and I didn’t want to look too suspicious, so I ―”


“Chase!” “I’m sorry, but I’m freaking out!” I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose, reaching down to start the truck, gritting my teeth as the old red Ford grumbled underneath us. Finally, the truck reverberated and started, shooting a nasty smog out of the exhaust pipe. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief and shifted, wanting to get as far away from the gas station as possible.


I turned right and headed west, the exact direction we had come almost fifteen minutes before. The night was nearly pitch black, and the fact that we were in the middle of nowhere did nothing to quell the anxiety bubbling inside of me. Neither of us had even thought of turning on the radio, so the only sound was the low hum from the truck and the sound of the wheels against the broken pavement.


“Do you think they’ll find us?” Chase asked quietly, his head tilted to look at me. My arms stiffened and I cleared my throat. “I’m going to do everything in my power to ensure that we don’t get caught, but either way, you’re going to be fine. I’ll make sure of that.” His lack of a response unsettled me, so I glanced away from the road to look him in the eye.


“Chase, look at me. Nothing is going to happen to you, okay? This wasn’t even your fault, and if they ever ask you any questions, you blame everything on me, okay? Tell them I kidnapped you or something. I don’t care, but you blame it all on me, alright?” I held his gaze firmly before glancing back at the flat highway.


The forest was in sight now. We’d be there in a few more minutes.

○○○○○○

I rolled up my sleeves and squatted down next to the beast that I had killed only an hour before. My gut instinct was to try and drag the body closer to where Chase and I could dig a ditch to bury it in, but after haplessly trying to pull it across the forest floor with all of my effort multiple times, I realized that I would probably have to consider a different course of action. After all, the man, thing, (I still hadn’t figured out what pronouns to refer to them with), was nearly twice the size of me. I huffed out a breath angrily, staring down at the vampire as though he had personally offended me, when in reality, I was the one who had caused him needless harm, not the other way around. I winced and tilted my head towards my right shoulder, causing my neck to let out a sickening crack as the air was expelled from between my muscles. Chase always hated it when I did that. I turned around, grinning sheepishly and muttering a “sorry”. He wasn’t even paying attention.


Well, I guess I’m going to have to take care of him right here. I leaned to my left and grabbed a bottle of bleach, using my elbow grease to twist the cap off and haphazardly throw it over my shoulder. As the nearly translucent, gelatinous liquid began to flow out of the large white container and over the body, I remembered back to when I was a kid, when the world was normal, and to when the population wasn’t overrun by supernatural creatures As a kid, I used to dream about becoming a veterinarian. Never in a million years would my five year old self believe what was to come of me. I chuckled mirthlessly under my breath, watching as the skin of the creature in front of me began to degrade due to chemical burns. I don’t think many kids grow up with the goal of becoming a freelance vampire assassin (though I preferred the term “bounty hunter”, because I thought it made me sound cooler and less like a murderer).


Yet, here we are. Improvise, adapt, overcome.


I muttered a curse as the last of the bleach flowed out of the container. I had forgotten to take out the stake, and now it was drenched in bleach. When I first started as a vampire assassin, I had minimal concept of the job and virtually no resources. I had to be scrappy, as most young people do, and figure it all out on my own. I had a little bit of help along the way, a few people who set me up with connections to the wealthier part of the city, the ones who really wanted the vampires dead, and soon thereafter, I had no shortage of vampires on my list to tend to. Lately, I had been so busy that I’d become careless, leaving the stakes behind either still in the body or somewhere near it, and I didn’t have any time to make new ones.


I gripped the stake in my right hand, jiggling it slightly to see if it would give. It barely even moved. Makes sense, the stronger and more stubborn the vampire, the harder it is to remove the stake. I gritted my teeth, twisting the stake in the creature’s chest, wanting to gag at the squelching sound it made. Finally, with a bit more struggling, the stake gave and came flying out of the creature’s chest cavity. I sighed in relief, dropping it down next to me. I couldn’t help but stare at the man, the creature (I need to stop doing that) before me. His skin was so pale in the faint moonlight. I shook myself from my reverie and reached into my pocket to grab a vial.


This was my least favorite part.


I suppose that I should hate the actual killing more than the gathering of blood, but something about the act of gathering a vial full of blood out of a vampire’s chest after you’ve put a stake through their heart just feels like an extreme invasion and violation of their body.


After filling the vial (without gagging, a rarity for me), I glanced over my shoulder at my friend once more. Ah, Chase. Chase wasn’t supposed to be involved in this at all. Of course, he knew what I did for a living, and he accepted it as best he could, but he never wanted to know any details, much less be present for one of my, er, assignments. He wasn’t supposed to be with me tonight, but Chase was stubborn and had identified my strange behavior over the past few weeks, and like any good friend, he was worried. 

What do good friends do, you may be wondering? Follow me on foot into the woods, where I was about to kill a vampire in the dead of night (no pun intended).


For this particular assignment, I had been hired by a wealthy CEO who lived down in the heart of the city. Generally, I don’t have any contact with those that hire me, and this one was no exception. I barely knew anything about the man, other than the fact that he as an individual was worth more than my entire hometown was. Did this make me slightly irritated at the wealth gap in the world? Yes, but I digress. I was used to working with wealthy individuals, as they were typically the only ones who had the funds to pay for my work.


Oh yeah, you may be wondering why the wealthy are so hell-bent on killing the vampires of the world.


I can’t remember exactly when it started, but the wealthy had found a use for the vampires. It was somewhere around the beginning when the supernatural creatures first began showing up. I had heard rumors that the rich had signed a (metaphorical, assumingly, but you can never be too sure) deal with the devil. After that, I remember noticing that the rich never seemed to get any older, and I always wondered why.


That is, until I became a part of the business.


Traditionally, we tend to think of vampires as being the ultimate villains. They drink blood, can’t go out into the daylight, never age, yadda yadda yadda … but in reality, they don’t have a compulsion to cause harm to normal people and they’re actually pretty apt to eat whatever you cook for them. Again, I digress.


The first time I watched a rich person drink the blood of a vampire, I nearly choked on thin air. I was repulsed, disgusted, literally any other adjective that you could think of. Yet, I couldn’t show it. If this was going to be my job, I had to remain neutral, and that’s how I learned to be ambivalent about the entire situation. From then, I learned that the most important part of killing a vampire was gathering the blood, but you couldn’t get it until after the creature was dead.


There was something about the fact of the vampire being dead rather than still alive, I’m still not sure on the science of the whole thing. Either way, drinking their blood did something to preserve the human body in a way that was previously inconceivable. The rich were vain and they wanted to stay young for as long as possible. Now, they could quite literally freeze themselves in time for however long they were going to live for. Forever young, isn’t that what the song says? So even though these creatures were not physically doing any harm to society at large, they had to die, because the only way that they would be of use to the rich is if they’re dead.


“Chase, can you grab me the other gallon of bleach?” I asked, suddenly feeling far too tired to get up and move the three feet to grab it myself. “Hm?” Chase mumbled, blinking the cloudiness out of his eyes. Clearly he had been lost somewhere else. “Oh, yeah.” I saw him reach for the gallon, his hand trembling slightly as he wrapped his skinny fingers around the handle. He handed it to me, avoiding my eyes, before turning his back on me once again. I sighed, not quite knowing what to say to him. This is why I never wanted him to actually know what I do. It’s one thing to be aware of my occupation, but it’s a completely different ballgame to actually witness it firsthand.


I twisted off the cap of the second gallon, following the trail that I had made the first time. By now, the body was degrading pretty rapidly, and it was almost unrecognizable at this point. Again, it was something with the science of the way that bleach interacts with the skin of vampire’s, I don’t know the exact details of that either. Can you tell that my scientific knowledge is limited?


After emptying the gallon, I stood and began kicking the brush with my feet, using it to cover what was left of the creature. It was starting to get light now, and I knew that Chase and I would have to head back to the city soon. I glanced at the body one more time, silently bowing my head and saying a prayer for the creature. No being should ever have to suffer. I let out a breath and turned around to face Chase, “Ready to go?” He just nodded, once again refusing to meet my eyes.

○○○○○○

As the old Ford cruised off of the highway and into the city, the sun was just about to come up. This was my favorite time of day; when the sky is a vibrant orange near where the sun is about to make its appearance, and the way that the sky fades to a dusty pink, reminding us of the last moments of nighttime.


The entire ride home, Chase and I were silent. He hadn’t said a word to me since I had asked him to hand me the bleach back in the woods, and quite frankly, I had no idea how to broach the subject with him, so I had also chosen to be quiet during the ride home. I huffed and scratched my head and I eased my foot on the brake to stop for a red light. Once the pickup came to a stop, I turned to face Chase.

“Please say something. You can ask me whatever you want, just, please say something.” I sounded desperate and I hated it, but Chase was my best friend and I needed him to say anything in order to make myself feel better. The silence was deafening.


After a moment’s hesitation, he turned to me, his eyebrows furrowed. “Does Steve know?” I breathed a sigh of relief, this conversation would be easier than I expected. Of course he wanted to know about how my boyfriend felt. Chase was always concerned about other people. “Yes, of course he knows.” I wanted to tread carefully, not wanting to upset him more than he already was. “And … he’s okay with it?” This was the question that I had expected, but once it was asked, all of the answers that I had prepared in my head seemed to be inadequate. Finally, I sighed, releasing the brake once I realized that the light had turned green once again. “He understands that everyone needs to make a living.” I decided that this would be the most truthful answer.


Chase let out a quiet, “huh”, before falling silent in the passenger seat once again. Before he could ask me anything else, I eased the truck onto the side of the road next to the curb. “Well, here we are.” I said quietly, stupidly gesturing to Chase’s apartment building. His eyes seemed fixed upon something in the distance, and after a moment he spoke without looking at me. “I don’t judge you for who you are, I hope you know that. I just,” he paused, perhaps trying to find the right words. “I guess I just sometimes wonder how you live with yourself.” There it was, and it hurt more than I anticipated it to. I nodded, not really knowing how to respond to his admission, after all, I knew he was right. I often found myself wondering the same thing, especially on nights where I couldn’t sleep, which was becoming more and more frequent. I had assumed that he was done, but he spoke again. “And how Steve lives with it. Aren’t you ever afraid that he’ll be dragged into the mess?” I remained silent.


Of course I was afraid he would be dragged into it, how could I not be? But I had a job to do, and so I tried to keep him as safe and protected from it as I possibly could.


Finally, he relieved me of the responsibility of responding and opened the passenger side door. “I just think that maybe you should consider a different method of protecting him, that’s all I’m saying.” There was a pregnant pause once again, before he spoke. “So, I’ll, uh, see you for breakfast tomorrow then?” He forced a smile at me, and I could see him willing our relationship to go back to the way it had been. I nodded, “yeah, of course.” But I knew that he could sense that my smile was forced too. I waited until he was inside of the building, and then sat there for an extra thirty seconds just to be sure, before pulling away from the curb.


My apartment was just down the street, and before I could even make it, I could practically feel my bed calling my name. The sun was up now, and the city was waking up with the rest of the world. I turned my blinker on, abruptly entering the darkness of the parking garage. After parking and locking the pickup, I decided to take the long way up to the apartment, walking all the way out and into the sunlight, rather than taking the stairs from the garage to the building. The sun felt warm on my skin and always seemed to make me feel better after I had completed an assignment. Every day was a fresh start, I try to remember that.


I entered the apartment building, nodding in acknowledgement to the doorman who was nearly asleep at his post. I opted to take the stairs instead of the elevator. After all, we were only on the third floor. The stairwell was dimly lit and grimy, and I was astonished at the fact that I seemed to be a little out of breath by the time I made it to my floor. I made a mental note to start running again. Our floor was painted a baby blue, making it stand out against the other floors, which were an awful institution grey. Apartment 8 came up on my right, and I dug my keys out of my pocket, the reality of my exhaustion finally setting in. The door opened to reveal the familiar, comforting setting of my home, the only place in this world that I truly felt safe.


I deposited my keys in the dish by the door, kicked off my shoes, and hung up my jacket, before heading to the kitchen. I was trying to decide whether I wanted to sleep immediately, or if I should have a cup of coffee and just chug through the day when I saw Steve standing at the stovetop. His back was to me and I approached him, immediately wrapping my arms around his torso and pressing my cheek into his back, reveling in the warmth that he provided. He chuckled, “Good morning.” I merely grumbled in response. He turned in my arms to face me and gave me a grin.
I couldn’t help but smile up at the pearly white fangs that I had come to love so much, and the only thing I could think of was maybe Chase was right.