Bete Noire

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Hush now; you’ll need your strength. The hard part is over. You will live. You did a great job.”

The doctor took one hand off of the metal handle and laid it on my forehead. His palm was ice cold.

I flinched but felt surprisingly constricted. I looked down at my arms. They were strapped in place by heavy, thick leather.

“You were a great donor,” he added. His eyes went across the stretcher. I was suddenly conscious of someone else beside me. Shocked, I turned my head the other way to see who he was talking to.

Her dreads were swept up underneath a white cap, but it was the weird girl from the other night at the concert. She had a mask on, covering up those terrible, sharp teeth, but her red, predator eyes were the same.

“Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie,” she whispered. A low cackle erupted from her throat. “Oh, you had no idea, did you sweetie?”

What, I tried to say but my lips were too dry.

The movement suddenly stopped and the stretcher was still . The doctor and weird girl left my side abruptly, and I was alone, strapped down, facing a door at the end of the hallway.

“Hello?” I cried out.

I lifted my head and shoulders up as much as they could go and looked around me. There was an old man sitting on a chair outside the door, hands resting on a cane, his eyes concentrated on his feet. There was no one else around. I looked down at my legs. I was still in my black skinny jeans, Cream vest. There was a sticky, wet sensation on my vest when I shifted, especially around back With whatever happened to me, I wondered if I had peed my pants in fright and wet the stretcher.

A weird walking sound,came from my right, from the ground. I turned and looked to see a shadow standing beside me,looking as i tried to move my weak body.

My breath stuck to my lungs and I was unable to let it out until the shadow skittered past the old man and around the corner. The old man, his attention stil at his feet, paid the giant shadow no attention.

What the fucking fuck was going on? This had to be another dream. I had to still be on the floor in the office at work, that bat still on my head. Even though what happened earlier was terrible, it was still preferable to what was happening here.

A low, steady creak came from the front of me.

The door I was parked in front of opened and who stepped out of it but Drew. He was holding a bundle of something in a large brown envelope.

Seeing Drew’s face both scared and calmed me. He looked much like he did the last time I saw him. Handsome in a rough, dark way. Eyes like mahogany-glazed coal. It would have filled me with hatred so frighteningly uncontrollable, but I couldn’t feel anything but confusion and fear.

“I didn’t think you’d make it,” he said in his gravelly voice. He was talking to me, I think, but looking at whatever he was holding in his hand. “Thank you, Ronnie, for doing this for us.”

“What are you talking about,” I whispered. I tried to get a better look at him but was distracted by a redness that was spreading on the sheet beneath me. I hadn’t peed my pants – that was blood that covered my lower half.

“Oh, God. What happened to me?” I squeaked. I tried to break free of the restraints but I was held firmly in place.

The leather cut into my skin as I struggled, but I didn’t care.

“Relax, Ronnie” came a voice from behind. I tilted my head up to see Abby standing over me. Abby, Drew’s ex- girlfriend. Dead ex-girlfriend.

Unlike the last time I saw her, she wasn’t mangled into a million bloody pieces. She looked like a normal, pretty college student. Straight hair with a purple tint. A pink dress that flared out from the waist. She looked completely normal.