Exsanguination and Other Love Stories

VIII. Let Me In-A Your Window

I grabbed my cell phone off the dresser, and pressed two or three buttons on either side down very hard before I remembered the right one. 1..2...3...

Bzzz. Right button, finally. It was powering up.

"Wait, Bill!" Florian cried. He rapped on the window pane again with great concern. "Don't do that, either. I'm not a home invader. I'm trying to HELP you!"

"Oh, right!", I snapped back, just as the phone let out an ominous beep, and the screen flickered off again. No battery. "*@#$. What are you doing out there, then? Cleaning out the gutters? I told you to leave!"

"Ah, well, you see. You told me to leave the house, not the property. And thank heavens you didn't, because – NO BILL, LISTEN TO ME!"

"Fine," I said, holding the phone down, both hands out, and taking several steps back from the window. I felt the back of my legs hit the front of the chair which held my aunt's old knitting basket. "You want to talk? Talk. I'm listening."

Just don't try opening that window, you overdressed sociopath, or I'll impale you. Reaching back, I fumbled in vain for a needle, a hook, anything, casting a glance around the dark room at the same time. Where was my charger? Where? Had I – oh, god. I'd left it downstairs, hadn't I?

"Listen, Bill," said Florian from the window, sounding unusually concerned, "you musn't for any reason open that door. He isn't a cat anymore, and he really doesn't like you."

"How do you know he doesn't like me? I keep him alive! Without me he'd be six feet under!"

"Without him you'd be in the street."

"How do you know that?" I demanded, staring at him in horror. "What kind of crazy serial gold-digging stalker are you, anyway? You – you..... you killed Aunt Cordelia, didn't you? That's how you knew how she died! You killed her and now you've come to kill me so you can get the house! Well, you had better - "

"For heaven's sake, Bill, I HAVEN'T KILLED ANYONE! That's why we're in this predicament in the first place!" And he jerked his chin towards the door. "Right now the thing you need to worry about now is him."

"Who?"

"Mushi. Mowgli! Moe-moe - whatever she called him! "

And as if on cue, from the other side of the door:

Mooooommmmmmooooow!

There was no laughing at that. "Momow," I said, closing my eyes. This wasn't happening.

"Yes," said Florian impatiently. "Look, I... I bit him by accident last night. It was quite unfortunate. Quite unintentional, too."

Mooooooooowww!

"Oh, pipe down, you cross-eyed bag of bones! You know you were asking for it!"

"Don't say that! You'll make him even madder!"

"Oh, now you're attuned to the inner whims of cats, are you, Bill? You're far too attuned to them, I think. He wouldn't be half such a monster now if you'd ignored some of Cordelia's rules and treated him more like the others."

"I had to follow the rules. That was how the will was written. It wouldn't have been right! And besides - he wouldn't be a – monster at all if you hadn't made him one!"

Because that was the only way, wasn't it? In all those vampire books. You didn't just wake up one morning and realize you wanted some Type O along with your orange juice. Or, in this case, your Organic Friskies.

"It only takes one bite," Florian said sadly. "The curse of immortality. Unless you're willing to kill everyone you feed off of and I'm not, so... Forty years of fasting... down the drain. And my complexion hasn't brightened one bit from him, you know."