Garlic Is For Vampires (#Wattys2016)

Chapter 2: "It's My New Case"

Angie and Bennett were giving me wadded up balls of blue napkins from the ambulance we were sitting outside of. The paramedics were inside checking up on the girls that fainted. We were sitting outside trying to wipe the blood off my back. I shivered and wiped at the blood caught between my fingers. It was already drying up. I rubbed harder, as if getting the blood off my hands would also banish the image of the head falling to the ground from my mind.

"Where's Brendon?" Angie asked me. She was scrubbing at the blood on my shoulders with a wet napkin. She had a cold pitcher of water next to her feet on the ground. She borrowed it from the club. I stared down at the pink water and thought of the blood erupting from the stump. I trembled harder. I left my jacket inside and my bag as well. My burgundy knee-length dress clung to my figure with blood. It had such beautiful knot work on the back. There were roses running down my spine. Curtesy of Rosemary, the lady and my boss, who ran the sewing shop a few blocks from where I lived. I worked there, and the dress had been a graduation gift from her.

Now what was I going to say? She had worked hard to make such a beautiful dress and it was covered in blood. No. It could be washed. I'd wash it as soon as I got home. Angie asked me again where Brendon was but I simply shrugged and mumbled some sort of answer. But it sounded more like "he's in the blood home". I had meant to say he's in the club and that I also wanted to go home but it didn't come out right.

"He's inside," Bennett said for my benefit. I crouched down and dumped my hands into the freezing cold water in the pitcher. I sighed in relief as the blood began to clear off my skin. I glanced up just as the coroner came out from the alley with a zipped up body bag. There was a plastic bag in his free hand. It had the head inside. Blood smeared the plastic but I could see the opened mouth and the eyes that were staring straight at me. I looked away as the coroner rolled the body towards his black van.

I didn't want any more memories of this night but staring at the body sent a different shiver down my spine. Like someone was breathing on me, but not directly at me. I squirmed. This feeling felt dangerous, but at the same time not all that dangerous. A part of me liked it and another part wondered what was going on. Why was I enjoying this?

I stood up, no longer minding the shivers or the cold. I walked towards the coroner's van, knocking over the pitcher of water. Angie and Bennett reached for me-told me to stop-but I couldn't hear their voices. I could only hear my heartbeat increasing in my ears. Bennett grabbed my wrist. I stopped with my arm extended. Then I slowly turned to look at him with deadpan eyes. He stared at me in confusion but then cried out. He pulled back his freshly burned hand and stumbled against an empty police car.

Nobody else noticed me standing next to the body bag. The coroner wasn't paying attention as he rummaged through papers. I lifted up my arms and grabbed the zipper. Then I slowly began to unzip the body bag. I was looking down at the headless body. The man was wearing a black suit with blood staining the fabric of his clothes. There was dry blood around the stump of its neck. I stared down at the gore with fascination. Then I reached out to prod the inside of the stump with my fingers. I wanted to feel the blood that was still fresh.

A hand flew up and grabbed my wrist. I looked down at it. The headless body began to sit up, its bones popping. Cold, stiff fingers tightened around my wrist. I gasped and began to pull back, tugging on my wrist. What happened? Why was I suddenly over here? I made a noise and tugged harder. The second hand grabbed my forearm this time, pulling me towards the body. I screamed and suddenly broke free from the body's hands. I walked backwards just as the body began to thrash with more blood running down the stump-

Beep beep!

I snapped out of it. A car was in front of me. The headlights blinded me, and suddenly I was falling. I heard Angie calling my name. But I was too far out of reach to call back to her...