UNDERDEAD - Opening chapters

part 9

Ooh, even better. Two ogres. I closed my aching, bloodshot eyes for a moment and regrouped, trying to ignore the dizziness that suddenly swamped me. When the room stopped spinning, I rubbed my eyes and tried again, squinting a little against the fuzziness.

I was all that was lovely. I looked like a carrot-topped banshee. My face was flushed, my hair was a tangled mess and my neck was throbbing. Will’s kiss—and its creepy denouement—came rushing back. How had I forgotten that? What else had I forgotten? I began to panic. It had finally occurred to me that I didn’t even remember coming home. I looked down at myself. I was still dressed in the clothes I had worn to dinner.

How many margaritas had I had? It was hard to gauge—Becky had kept our glasses filled from the pitcher, but I thought it had probably been only two, maybe three. Surely not enough to cause a blackout! I shoved my hair aside and craned my neck to inspect the spot between my ear and collarbone where that jerk had bitten me. I could swear he’d left teeth marks. I probed the area gently with one finger. It came away wet. The wound was seeping a bit—he’d actually broken skin.

Eew! Eew! Eew! I did a little gross-out dance, the sort until then I’d only seen women in cartoons do when they encountered a mouse, and reached for my first-aid kit. Soaking a cotton ball with antiseptic, I scrubbed furiously at my neck and thought about Will. I had joked with Becky and Carol about good-looking men having drawbacks in other areas, but come on! I wasn’t sure if I had been a victim of kinky S&M foreplay or some sort of Goth thing run amok. What kind of weirdo bites a girl during their first kiss? Who did he think he was? Dracula?

I threw the cotton ball in the trash and gave another cry of disgust. The hair near my wound was matted and sticky with blood and his saliva – a minuscule amount, maybe, but as a trained biologist, I am fully able to gross myself out on a microscopic level. I had to get myself to the emergency room immediately. Right. And spend the next four hours hung over in a cramped and crowded waiting room only to have a doctor laugh at me for being paranoid. I could see it right now. They’d send me home with a teensy-weensy adhesive bandage and tell me not to kiss strangers in bars.

I pulled off my clothes instead, threw every item into the wicker hamper and showered, washing my hair obsessively three times. When I got out, I felt much better. I put a cheerful yellow bandage strip over the wound on my neck (so I wouldn’t have to look at it) and dressed in my oldest, comfiest sweats. Coffee, I decided firmly. Lots of it. And maybe pancakes. And bacon—ooh, maybe a steak! Nice and rare. Thinking of food cheered me up a little. Was it odd that I wanted a bacon cheeseburger, hung over as I was? No. That was the one thing normal about today. I always wanted food. Yawning, I padded down the short hallway to the living room, opened the connecting door and screamed.