The bar called to Arlo, it was the beer, more than the place. He had been off duty for an hour and all he wanted was a drink or two.
Kane pressed his finger against his neck beneath the collar of his shirt and hid the seven darts marks. His eyes in the mirror are cold and calculating. He didn't recognize himself any more. The pale sight gazing into what he had of blue shade greeted him with sympathy. He needed a drink or two.
Stepping into the bar, the lights were dim and a shadow of every person slithered across the floor. On Monday night's country music wasn't allowed to be played and it was everything Arlo needed. He took a seat at the bar and ordered whiskey with beer chasers and for them to keep coming.
Out in the alley, Kane bleeds into the shadows becoming one with the darkness. His hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans and shoulders slumped with a light gray hoodie upon his head. Rain began to fall. A drizzle upon the cold city.
The windows by the ceiling in the basement of the bar concealed the moonlight into drops of rain splattering against the glass. Arlo watched the drops form puddles before they broke beneath the weight and cascaded into the unknown.
The radio played Comedown by Bush and Arlo took another shot.
Kane rounded the corner of the alley and onto a sidewalk with busted lamp lights along the side. A car parked on the side of the street blared music. He recognized it. Comedown by Bush. He remembered when he enjoyed listening to music, high on blood, high on love and living life as close as a human could be. That was until the cage…
Arlo cupped his hand around the glass of beer and held it close to him as his other hand rubbed his forehead. Remembering the last time he had heard this song. A teenager and at a friend's house. She had black sheen curtains as a door to her room. The room before it was dark. Everyone was drunk and high, including him. Bodies laid upon the floor and across the couch, one underneath the coffee table and all he had in mind was crossing that room to get to the black curtains to her room. Every movement from a body lying on the floor appeared to be moving in slow motion.
At the end of the sidewalk, the music in downtown L.A. still could be heard from the speakers of the car as he stepped off to enter the next alleyway. Invading memories of the cage almost knocked him off of his feet, blue rusty iron bars ahead of him. His wrists clasped in metal cuffs and chains behind him. A familiar feeling, as it were, being caged during a blood moon except his captors had kept him for years. The rawness of starvation and weak muscles had been new and a feeling he never wanted to experience again. Yet, in the alley his head lingered on the dirty brick wall behind him and he felt weak again during the memory. As soon as it had started, it had ended, and Kane kicked off of the wall to find a victim.
The bass of the song and drums rolled on inside and outside of Arlos brain. The memory fading in and out as people sat down to order drinks. In each moment of silence of voices, the curtains came back into view in his mind. The door with one lamp light shining through the space allowed and splayed across the opposite wall. In a silhouette, she stood between the black curtains, long brown hair past her shoulders and hands slowly going up to hold onto the curtains. Another drink of beer, another shot of whiskey to drown it out, increased its power. The memory of her face looking at him through the slit of the curtains.
A man leaned up against a gray link chain fence and Kane smelled him before he saw him. He lunged forward, grabbing the male in his grasp, hand over his mouth and drug him back into the darkness with him. His fangs protrude and he sunk them into his buttery soft flesh and into the vein. Kane felt him struggle and bit harder, long drawls of warm life sliding down his parched throat and electrifying his nerves.
A woman sat down next to Arlo and bumped into his shoulder. He quickly glanced over. Shirley smiled at him with a slurred Howdy Cowboy. He nodded once and took his last shot of whiskey before rising from the stool and replied "Ma'am." With a tip of his hat he left the bar. He wasn't in the mood for the town's middle aged drunk.
To be continued...
