You leave town the next day, don't bother to look back in the rearview mirror with your tear-filled eyes. You failed in more ways than one. The cases go unsolved, the vampire unkilled, a town left to suffer without an answer. You go and find a new vampire, a baby who hasn't quite figured out how to cover their tracks. You drown out any thoughts of Wilbur by distracting yourself with work and things less savory in the form of alcohol that leaves your sleep mostly dreamless.
Each kill is unsatisfactory, tinged with the guilt of murder, of wondering. There are so many instances of cleaning ash from your shaking hands only to look into the mirror and see an unfamiliar face. There was no you looking back, only something left to be desired in the reflection.
You keep going, keep finding new cases to numb yourself with. Drinking only gets easier once you've gotten used to the feeling of fuzz at night and a pounding headache when you wake.
You tell yourself it's better this way and months go by with your clothes haunted by the ashes of dead vampires that will never be the right one. You allow yourself to be self-righteous and claim that you are helping people. You ignore the headlines when the disappearances continue in that small familiar town. You try not to think back to people you met then abandoned. It's not your fault when you notice that the disappearances dwindle, make themselves scarce, weeks between each kill when it had been just days.
Instead, you get drunk and miss a cold hand guiding you home. Your nightmares and dreams are filled with the features of the same face, cursed with teeth in your skin, pain and pleasure. Your hands intertwined themselves in locks of dark curly hair. You wake with your skin sticky with sweat and a hand reaching up to your neck to run flat fingertips across the absence of a bite wound. Days become a soup of jumbled memories as nights grow sharper, pain that can not be adequately eased with pills nor dulled with alcohol.
You make a fool of yourself, you get drunk and sloppy. Your hands shake even while holding a stake, and each kill brings a heavy blanket of guilt you had never experienced before, when vampires were just monsters.
You push down the urge to return until you can't anymore.
"Sweetheart, I never expected you back," the woman at the front desk says with a soft smile. You never really expected anyone here to remember you, but you find it in yourself to be glad she's alive of all people.
"Never really thought I would be," you hum with a polite smile. You try to act less like what you assume you look like, a walking corpse with how severe your eye bags have become.
"Would you like the same room?" she asks and you find the idea to be cruel even though you are quick to nod, eager to agree.
"That'd be great," you say and when you find yourself standing in front of that door you feel breathless. The keyhole is marked with scratches, something that for a brief moment you allow yourself to indulge the idea that you caused them in your drunk attempt to unlock the door. You brush your hand down the door frame before entering that hallowed space.
It's the same impersonal room, familiar corners that garner no memories. You wander the space with a lingering hand yet find yourself glued to the door, to the memory of a kiss and breathlessness. It's hard to shake even as exhaustion begs you to let it go. You move hesitantly to pull the heavy maroon curtains in front of that parking lot view window. It bathes the room in red, sunlight turned crimson. You collapse onto the bed, and, for once, you fall into a dreamless sleep.
When you wake the space is dark, shadows that move the longer you stare up at the popcorn ceiling. You dress carefully, meticulous actions that bloom into a myriad of crosses and a too-tight turtleneck. It's your own armor even if it was lacking chainmail.
