Destined

Day Two

I didn't realize just how much my run in with the suicidal vampire had affected me until I'd come home, headed straight for the bathroom only to find my cutting razor completely MIA. Apparently, I'd dropped it on the roof during my angry soliloquy, so I contented myself by curling up on the couch in a sweatpants and a tank top with a pint of Belgian chocolate Haagen Dazs ice cream and re-runs of Sex in the City while my black cat, Anubis, curled up on my lap and his crazy ginger counterpart, Mufasa, watched from the opposite end of the couch. There I'd stayed for much of the day drifting in and out of a fitful sleep, wondering in my moments of delirium when I could expect the side affects of my terminal leukemia to begin rearing it's ugly head again. 

Over the last few months, I'd put up with the throwing up from the chemo (my thick, black curls had remained stubbornly rooted in my scalp, not that I'm complaining) and the uncomfortable feeling like my insides had been burned raw by the radiation. I'd been groggy and tired, fighting the side effects of medication after medication with each and every surgery I'd been given in the hopes of saving me. It seems, looking back, that the treatment had put more stress on my body than the cancer. At least before I'd only gotten weak, unexplainable bruises, and the occasional throwing up of blood; I find myself, oddly looking forward to going back to those days, which, I suppose, is a true testament to how fucked up I really am and brings meaning to the term 'a rock and a hard place'. I just wondered where death fit in to my acceptance of side effects. Was it with the rock or the hard place? 

Joey Garnett smiles at me when I enter Sound Bites, the music store that I've worked at since I escaped from my mother's grasp and begun my young adult life. Joey is the co-owner along with his sister Gina, a one-year-old vampire who apparently left running the business up to Joey when she'd gone to live in Tennessee with the vampire who'd turned her. Both him and Gina look like they stepped straight out of a Motley Crue video, covered head to toe in tattoos and piercings. Joey had a baby face decorated with a nose ring, angel bite piercings, and a bar through his eyebrow while he'd dyed his short hair deep black and spiked it up mercilessly. Despite looking like he could kick ass, he's possibly the sweetest person I've ever met and plays base guitar in a band called Cryptic. 

"Hey, Lane, how's it hanging?" Joey asks as I walk into the store. 

I shrug, "Good enough, I guess." I stow my duffel bag containing my clothes for Hotel Camilla under the counter as I tie my wayward curls up into a high ponytail, blowing a stray strand out of my eyes. Sound Bites has a ridiculously relaxed dress code; I wear practically the same thing to work everyday: skinny jeans, Converse, and a baggy tank top with a bitchy phrase on it. My phrase of the day just happens to be: Come to the Dark Side, We Have Cookies. 

"Bad night?" Joey asks sympathetically. 

"Bad morning," I correct. "I met a suicidal, 2000 year old vamp." 

Joey raises an eyebrow curiously, "Really? Did he kill himself?" 

"I don't know," I roll my eyes at his morbid fascination. "I didn't exactly want to stay and watch him burst into flames or whatever." I bite my tongue before I finish with 'since I'm going to die soon too'. Joey is one of the few people that knows about my cancer; what he doesn't know is how bad it is, which is something I never intend to tell him. 

"Ajax will freak when he hears this." 

I snort, "No doubt. Ajax is a freak." 

Ajax is a seventy-five-year-old rocker vamp that plays rhythm guitar in Cryptic. He's also, coincidentally, Joey's roommate and Gina's vampire brother, oddly enough. As much as I love Ajax, it's hard not to be creeped out around him, of his two obsessions there's music (not so creepy, right?) but then there's his weird obsession with death in all its forms, a hobby that the show 1000 ways to die only enforces.