Tuesday June 23, 1998

Vicky was feeling so good about her interview that she almost forgot why the trip to the tissue center had upset her. But at the front of the building, the sun beaming in through the windows bitch slapped her to jog her memory.

Fumbling her glasses out of her bag, she pulled them on and squinted as she walked outside, almost running right into a cop.

Blinded, she didn’t know it was a cop. She backed up at the same time that he did and blurted, “I’m—”

“I’m—” the cop also said, laughing before he noticed Vicky’s odd skin color. “Oh, Miss, are you okay? You don’t look so good.”

“Yes, I’m okay. Believe it or not, this is a healthy tan for me.” Vicky smiled weakly, but the smile fell when she heard the CB on the cop’s hip squawk. Then the combination of the scent of gun oil and the following radio chatter clued her in that this was not a guard, but a police officer.

Waving toward the street, she said, “I’m just taking the bus after a job interview.”

“Night security?” the cop asked.

Vicky wished she could see to know whether he was grinning or not.

She nodded, and said, “Yes, and I just finished the interview. The manager still has to run my paperwork through, but I feel good.”

“I wish you luck. Oh, I’m Greg, by the way. Greg Baxter.”

“I’m Vicky.” She assumed he held out his hand, and she glanced down, trying to find his hand through the blurry haloes of color. Her hand waved through empty space twice, and then a blur moved to intercept it. Vicky saw nothing because sunlight beamed up from the sidewalk to wipe out her vision even with the black lenses on.

Greg laughed as he took her hand to shake it loosely. “You don’t see so well during the day?”

“I can barely see my hand in front of my face.” Vicky sighed as she heard a bus engine on the street. The engine grew louder as the bus picked up speed, and at the same time the rumble became lower as the engine moved farther away. “Please, tell me that bus wasn’t headed downtown?”

“Oh sorry, was that your bus? The 92?”

“Hell.” Vicky’s shoulders slumped. Enduring the sunlight was hard enough if she could get on the bus, where the windows were tinted to block out some of the harsher UV rays. But now she would have to sit and bake under the sun until the next bus arrived.

Seeming to understand, Greg said, “I’m sorry about that. I’ll let you go so you don’t miss the next one. I’ll see you around.”

“Nice to meet you,” Vicky said.

As she walked away, she wondered why she was being so honest with everyone. Even her attempts at lying were pretty close to the truth. She decided that perhaps she was just being more honest with herself. It was true that she couldn’t lie about being blinded by sunlight and expect it to work.

She couldn’t really blend in either, not sporting a dark blue tan. It hadn’t worked on the bus, and she was only light blue then. Now she was so dark that people had to be staring. She couldn’t see a damn thing, but she could feel hundreds of eyes bearing down upon her.

Being honest with the cop would be a problem if she got the job, since she was working illegally. It wouldn’t be a good idea for people to know that, and yet she’d just blurted it out.

While she made her way to the bus stop, she pondered on her reasons for being so open. Surely Amber had a part to play in it, but then she’d been honest with many people in the past. Most were patrons of goth clubs, other “creatures of the night” who she didn’t feel strange around.

Once she got to the bus stop, she lost the train of thought because all she could think about was the sun baking her. Even with her high threshold for pain, she was having trouble not whimpering while she hunched over on the bench.

When the bus arrived, she thought, One down, and one to go.

***

The second interview had not gone so well. In fact, it never went at all.

She explained that she was arriving to apply for the job, and she was told by a manager that there were no such positions at the branch. It was a lie, but Vicky didn’t bother arguing. She nodded, apologized for her mistake, and returned to the bus stop to bake again.

The  late afternoon sun was hotter, and with her skin already burnt, the pain of waiting outside was excruciating. The further exposure gave her blisters, and these irregularly-shaped swells were lighter in color, giving her skin a spotted appearance.

Other people at the bus stop muttered, and one little girl squealed, “Leopard lady!” Her mother shushed her daughter and pulled her up the block to the next bus stop. A few people followed them.

Vicky was lucky enough to make her connecting bus back home without waiting outside long. Handing the transfer to the driver, she was surprised when he said, “Jeez, lady, you look awful.”

“You’re the same driver from this morning?” Vicky asked.

“Yep, sure am.” The driver laughed as he shut the door. “So how did the interviews go?”

“The first one is looking good, but the second, I didn’t even get to apply. They took one look at me and decided that I wasn’t what they wanted.”

“Well you do look more than a little odd being blue and spotted like that.”

Vicky grimaced and nodded. “Yeah, that’s true.” Shuffling a few steps away, she dropped into a handicapped seat and sighed.

She was about to say something else to the driver when she caught a familiar sent and glanced around. “I’m having the strangest sense of déjà vu now.”

The girl sitting beside her laughed. “I wonder why?”

It was the same voice, and Vicky smiled in spite of her pain. “Have you been riding the bus all day?”

“Nope, I’m just coming back from a movie. I’m Bethany.”

“I’m Victoria, or Vicky to my friends.”

“If you don’t think it’s too forward, I’ll call you Vicky, okay?”

“Sure, that’s fine.” Leaning over, Vicky slipped her fingers under her glasses to rub her eyes and block out the sun. She couldn’t rub too vigorously without stinging her cheeks, and when she inevitably did, her fingers also helped to dry her tears.

She was exhausted from being out during the day, and only the pain of the sun was keeping her awake. She was planning out the next few hours as a bottled lunch before she went to sleep off some of the horrid sunburn in a bathtub filled with cold water and a bottle of blood. By the time she woke up, perhaps she would be light blue and feel only mild heat across her skin.

Bethany asked, “Would aloe work for you?”

Vicky shrugged, dropping her hands to her lap. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried it.”

“Can I ask you something personal?”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you expose yourself like this?”

Vicky thought about the cab, but of course she could have called another cab company. She thought of giving the same answer she’d given to Ramona, that she was longing for something to do. That was partially true, but it wasn’t the real reason either.

“With all these other mystical creatures showing up, it’s going to happen sooner or later. I prefer it to be sooner, before you’re all so mad that you won’t believe that we aren’t responsible for this.”

“So, whose side are you on?” Bethany waited for several seconds before she said, “It’s all right to be honest.”

“I’m on my side,” Vicky said. “If I had a lot of choices about what I could eat, I’d go for variety and try to avoid snacking on people.” This caused Bethany to giggle, and several other people to gasp.

Vicky wasn’t sure how to react, so she looked down. “Someday soon, people are going to get mad and they won’t leave this sort of thing up to the police. There will be mobs with pitchforks and torches, and if I was still hiding, there wouldn’t be time to explain myself.”

“But you aren’t really a monster?”

Vicky nodded. “Yes, I am. I’m just one of the things that go bump in the night, and when people get mad, they won’t spend much time sorting out which monster is which. I’ve been very good recently, but that’s not always been the case.”

“Then why are you trying to be good now?”

“Because the older I get without turning into a wrinkly hag, the more I realize that I might just be immortal, if I can figure out how not to get killed by the dominant race on this planet.”

“Yeah, I can relate,” Bethany said.

“What? Oh, right, you’re not—”

“Not one of them, or not fully, no.”

Vicky dropped her voice. “What do you do? Can you read thoughts?”

“No, only emotions. But I can also project emotions.”

Vicky gasped, sitting up. “It was you—?”

Bethany settled a hand on Vicky’s arm, calming her down at the same time with an empathic impulse. “Yes, that’s why everyone is reacting so calmly, and it’s why you’re being so honest. It’s a complicated trick, but I can manipulate your emotions to make you honest. My brother Blake has all the abilities, so he could just compel you to tell him what he wants to know.”

Vicky scowled, her eyes filling with irritation. “You know, you made me so honest, I confessed to a cop.”

Bethany hissed in a soft gasp. “Sorry about that.”

“I’m just glad to know it wasn’t me being stupid.” Vicky sighed. “You can knock it off any time. Just back off with the good vibrations, okay?”

“Sorry. I’m just trying to help. You’re burnt really bad now. Your skin is blistering.”

Vicky nodded. “I know. Going for the first interview was bad enough, but that second trip was just stupid. By the time I get home, I’ll be nearing blue-black and my eyes will be blood shot, making them blue.”

“Um, yeah…about that.” Bethany sighed. “I’m keeping people calm, because right now, you look like a monster.”

“I’m sure I do. I feel like a slice of bacon.” Vicky smiled in spite of her pain when Bethany tittered. The happy sound was too infectious. “Crisp bacon at that. I can’t wait to get home and soak in a tub until I pass out.”

“Aw, no coffin?”

Vicky laughed, huffing while her shoulders shook. “It’s funny you should mention that. I used to own a coffin, but I had to give it up.”

Bethany gasped again, this time sounding afraid. “Did you? And, did you leave that behind along with a truck?”

The feeling of calm returned, and Vicky fought against it. “Please, don’t make me do this. What happened, happened because those men shot me.”

Bethany’s breath sped up. “Oh my god, it was you.” She spoke in a whisper so soft that Vicky barely heard her over the hum of the bus motor. “You don’t just take sips.”

“I try to, really. I’d been living on pet supplies for years, but I was dying, and I was angry. I’d been shot point blank with a rifle, and I was trying to help someone stop a series of ritual killings.” Vicky huffed, and despite Bethany’s efforts she felt annoyed that she couldn’t stop talking.

But she was being compelled into honesty, and she complained, “I was doing just fine with sipping from my pets until Wendy Stoffel showed up to ruin my life.”

Bethany leaned closer. “Do you hate her now?”

“No, I just…life was less complicated, you know? I had my friends at the nightclub, and I had my job working for the blood bank. I had a good life, and even if I’m not good, at least I wasn’t always running away.”

“Vicky, it’s…it’s very interesting that you should run into me.”

“Why is that?”

“Because Wendy is my cousin.”

Vicky’s brain disengaged on the revelation, and not even Bethany’s influence could get her over her annoyance. “Do you mean like a first cousin?”

“Yeah. Danie Davis was my aunt. I’ve never met Wendy, though. Danie wasn’t part of our family’s inner circle. She was mostly normal, so the family cut her loose.”

Vicky felt sick to her stomach. “Cut to the chase. How are you related to the McCulloughs?”

“I’m not. Some of my cousins are married into a halfling bloodline, the Collins family. But the main family had to scatter. The rest of us were advised to go into hiding and avoid the police.”

“They just cut you loose?” Vicky asked.

“No, we have a web site that we log into to leave our current address. The leaders aren’t sure when they will call us all back in, but we have our ways of keeping in touch.”

The bus driver spoke up as the bus was slowing to a stop. “Ma’am, this is the stop I picked you up from this morning.”

Nodding, Vicky got up and turned to nod to Bethany’s blurry shape. “It’s been interesting talking to you. Thanks for saving my hide.”

“See you around,” Bethany said.

It sounded like a promise, and if Vicky could have worried, she would have.

***

The bathroom light snapped on, and Vicky scrunched her face, pulling her eyelids closer together to fight in vain against the light.

She opened her eyes, and Claudia was looking down on her, a white hand covering her mouth. Rather than hiding a smile, Claudia was trying to cover her horrified reaction.

When Vicky raised her head out of the tub of bloody water, Claudia said, “You look awful.” She sat down on the rim of the tub. “Please tell me you got the job.”

“I don’t know yet.” Vicky began to wring out her hair. “I had to take the bus, and the strangest thing happened. I ran into another halfling. The crazy thing is, she’s a cousin to Wendy.”

Claudia’s white face wrinkled, her blue eyes narrowing before she said, “Mind reader?”

“No, just a powerful empathic. But she still manipulated my emotions and got me to make a full confession on the bus.” Vicky nodded at Claudia’s dismayed expression. “I was surrounded by humans, blinded and baking, and this brat had me confessing everything. But the worst part is, her mental trick stayed with me through a job interview, and a meeting with a cop outside the building.”

“Oh no. You didn’t confess anything bad, did you?”

“Not to the cop, but I told the kid everything. Everything, Claudia. She teased it out of me with her powers.” Vicky leaned over and cupped a double-handful of the cold water to splash over her face. The blast furnace in her cheeks almost hissed, and the water that dripped away from her face was much warmer.

Vicky raised her head, her mouth drawing into a frown. “I want to be mad at her, but the truth is, I set myself up to meet her. Maybe it’s time that we all stand out more. We need to make ourselves known before the humans are provoked into a frenzy and looking for targets.”

Claudia looked toward the door, her face full of concern. “I don’t want to move, Vicky. I gave up the gypsy life. Hell, aside from that one homeless guy, I haven’t even hunted since moving in with Emil.”

“I know, and I don’t want to move either.” The fire on Vicky’s chest became unbearable, and she sank back into the water. Bending her knees, she rested her head on the back of the tub to stare at the ceiling.

Raising up to break the surface again, she said, “Life is never up to us. We live at the whims of our human neighbors. They tolerate us, but have we done anything to assure them that we’re good neighbors?”

Claudia smiled. “We haven’t eaten any of them. Doesn’t that count for something?”

“I don’t know.” Vicky splashed more water over her face. “If this burning will ever stop, maybe I’ll go ask them.”

Bonus Blog Fiction: Job Interview With a Vampire - Part 3, 4.0 out of 5 based on 6 ratings

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... I write dark fiction in a variety of genres. My blog contains my rants and rambles, and some short fiction that can only be found here. I can be pretty fucking offensive, so viewer discretion is advised.

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