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I lay in the simulation pod, the lid closing over me, and the panel lighting up at all the shows and movies which, now, seemed nostalgic for the days of Netflix . I ran my finger over the screen, seeing the blood bag and the words True Blood , and then I was clicking it, and my choice could be no surprise, and I set the slider a little prior from season 1, not wanting to immediately engulf myself in all the chaos that would set my future choices. In the little box, I typed, “I don’t want to know what happens. Only the briefest memory of who I am and family etc”. I clicked submit, and then seemed to fall through the floor when the steam had completely filled the pod…
I could hear the humming of Adele Stackhouse, and on the bed in which I stirred, I woke with blonde hair stirring around my shoulders, the outfit which was not difficult to choose from the wardrobe, and there in the mirror saw everything I was not, and the white teeth and tan skin could perhaps reflect light. A little self-consciously, I went downstairs, and there found my grandmother, and she was smiling to serve breakfast.
“Get this on your bones! You’re far too thin, S u kie.”
I smiled and ate obediently, suppressing a belch, and then I was outside, smiling and closing my eyes in the sunlight, the little yellow car nearby which I roused into submission, and all around me that smelled of summer, and felt as hot.
I arrived at Merlotte’s, and the lunch rush was starting, with the bar a mile long, the tables where Mrs Thortenberry was gossiping with her neighbor, and Hoyt playing pool with Jason. Arlene came bustling by, in the uniform which she was quick to point out to me, I was not wearing.
“Well, alright!” I said, rolling my eyes, hurrying into the back. Arlene found this odd, and there followed me, and I glanced up as I was tying on my apron. “What?”
“I’ve met someone,” Arlene gushed, nodding. “Well, we’re going on a date this weekend. Oh, and I can’t wait to introduce him to the keeds … “
I smiled and nodding, enacting that face necessary for those outside, to hide that I didn’t really care, yet patting her on the shoulder as I left all the same. I delivered pitchers, took orders, handled plates, and felt a brief sense of exhaustion, at barely a half dozen people in the place.
“Lord,” I thought, “I don’t know how she does it!”
I peered at the roster, saw my name down for the night, and bit my lip, turning into the office after a couple hours’ work. I stood in the doorway, where Sam was on the phone, and by some grace of god, before he had saw me, he turned to stand and bend over to fetch something out of his wastepaper basket.
“Sookie!” said he, when he turned, and had apparently finished his call.
“Hi, um, Sam,” I shook my head, trying to remember. “Listen, I can’t do tonight’s shift, I have some - “
Catching his eye, his earnestness that I could see, I was a little off balance, and worried my stopping would catch at once his suspicion, for my formulated script was awry.
“Women’s problems,” I blurted out, and needed no temptation to hold my stomach, for digestion had always been an issue.
“Oh,” said Sam, and more of his vigour disappeared from his face than I would like, “Of course. We’ll be short staffed but we’ll make it.”
I did not like his tone and my face said as much, but if I figured he interpreted that as another cramp, I could not hate him less. I turned, seeing Tara yell at a customer, and then I was out in the parking lot as the owls began to hoot, and to reach my yellow car, I looked in my pockets, and by glancing up, as did the person I bumped into, we both yowled and then stammered at each other, his accent thicker than mine and almost indecipherable.
“Sorry,” said he, his eyes limpid but not quite, the little mustache over his lip, and his ruffled brown hair, disheveled appearance, and something exotic . “Sookie, huh?”
“Oh?” I was surprised, and then saw the logo on his shirt. “Oh, you work with my brother?”
“He’s a crazy boy, just a thing,” he replied, or possibly said something similar. “We met a couple times, homie heard?”
I wasn’t sure of half of it, but I nodded. “Yes, I’m just having trouble pronouncing it… “
“Rene.”
“Oh, well that’s easy. Ha-ha.”
I rubbed my neck, and then I got into my car. I gasped to see Rene poke his head in, and hand me my keys.
“You dropped this, ah.”
“Oh, that’s good,” I smiled, and upon his walking away, he was forced by civility to return, on account of the noises of the vehicle which rendered it immobile. “Um.”
“Car trouble, see?”
“No fucking shit,” I thought, and smiled wide.
“I can give you a leeft , mmm?”
I nodded gratefully, and joined him in the passenger seat of his truck, where he reversed with his arm around my seat, and glancing back. During then, and the drive, I could smell the musk of him, and as he tapped the steering wheel driving at a faster pace than I ever allowed, with the sort of gung-ho some men drive at, I watched the little hairs over his lip, and the bodily way which his eyes moved and settled as pupils, and the exotic way his whole being seemed to be, merely because his accent was so difficult for me to understand.
“By all accounts,” thought I, “He is taking me out for ice cream, and a bank loan.”
My address we arrived at easily, on account of my having giving it without hesitation, and then when we pulled to a stop, I took stock of all that I had done, said, and acted, and knew within myself, and likely nothing of him, and then I placed my hand on his leg.
“Won’t you come in,” I said, relying on the certain intelligence my grandmother had given me earlier that day to stick like pudding pie, “We’ll have the house to ourselves till at least nine.”
His look could have spread my legs right there, were it not for the logistics which could render any attempt zilch, even as I panted when I got out from my side, and clutched my stomach.
“Women’s problems, indeed,” I muttered to myself, needing to get the words out, needing to get this feeling, so constrained inside and allowed in here , that as my hands shook to unlock the door, I dropped the keys again, and when he stooped to retrieve them, his eyes upon mine when he was both lower than, and towering over me, I knew to what art I must direct him.
Inside, the refrigerator with its low hum, and everything in its place, and I saw on him sweat that must appear from somewhere, and surely it would be criminal not to appear on me already, and when he picked me up, a gasp that he did not secure with a kiss, left in me a void which begged to be filled, and then with a quick correction, he scooped me onto the bed of the right room, and his lips on mine were fire, and if his movements were ordinary they were made exotic by when he said “Sookie… “ and peeled off my clothes, for his were not such an errand.
When, as directed, as went lower between my legs, and inbetween squirming I saw his head peek up, and that mustache just above my own, and I told him in as explicit detail what should proceed, and then he took it in his hand, and there I felt, alongside the moments of thudding clarity, a kind of gentle warmth over my head, a tingling, and then I heard him, in such a banal accent as to ruin my ardor, despite the pumping which gave my headboard a worn in look.
“Oh, better than anything, more than when I strangled her, the fang-fucker… “
It was difficult to know what was more pleasant, the spreading over my thighs and loins of what must block it out, or the animal courage which must follow from such a knowledge of survival, that I could be a victim, and so thoroughly enjoy it for those few seconds, before the pumping desisted, he looked hazily at me, and I at him, and I breathed out, knowing what was necessary must ruin my end of it.
“I don’t why girls go for vampires,” I said, forcing myself into his sweaty embrace which must precede snoring, “Nothing can be better than this.”
Only until I was sure could I extricate from his grip, and there wrung my hands, that I could be so fooled .
THE END