“Boy, say grace!” Charles demanded.
“Dad, you crazy,” Deshawn protested.
“I’ll knock you upside the head again,” Charles threatened.
“Say grace!” Dolores hissed at her son.
“Yah, Deshawn,” LaTonya agreed, “don’t be slowin’ dad down.”
“Alright, alright,” Deshawn consented. He shook his head and said guiltily, “Lord, thank you for the food we are about to receive. Please watch over us and protect us and keep us...in the name of our Lord...” He broke off his prayer and cursed under his breath. “I can’t say it, dad.”
“You better say it, boy!”
“Dad, I ain’t lying. I can’t!”
Charles grunted and finished his son’s sentence, “...in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.”
The family winced at the words. But it wasn’t long before they were smacking their lips at their dinner spread: a syringe, an animal corpse blood-drain funnel connected to a clear plastic medical bag, connected to tubes, leading to three cups, one before each family member, except Charles.
Charles had a cleaver, a modified long-handled tool of his trade as a butcher, with a sharpened shaft end. He stood up and held it high, just below the blade, then arched it down through the air. It stuck with an echo in the center of the table.
“If I wake up as one a you, you gonna spend eternity as pieces. Understand?”
Charles looked at each member of his family, waiting for consent. Yes, they nodded, one by one. He began.
Charles jimmied the syringe to the blood drainer. With all else connected and ready to go, Charles jammed the syringe into his arm. Blood leapt into the bag and, with the squeeze of the bag with his free hand, oozed into the tubes. His family watched each others’ tubes like balls in a tennis game, bouncing back and forth between the lines to see which of them would score first. They couldn’t help but bare their fangs. They couldn’t help but lose their civility once that first drop of blood hit Deshawn’s porcelain. The plan had been to wait for the cups to fill. But LaTonya grabbed at her tube and punched it through the circle of her lips. Deshawn let the drop in his cup wait for later and grabbed for his tube as well. Even Dolores, unwilling to waste time chastising her children, went for her share. The bag was quickly emptied. The family was soon sucking the life directly out of its father.
“Ain’t gonna be like you,” Charles cursed.
Although dizzy, he moved as quickly as them to pull the syringe out of his arm, ripping flesh and spraying blood across the table. When family eyes widened at the spray, Charles tucked his spurting arm into his body and squeezed it with all his remaining strength...which started to ebb...as his dizziness grew...from the blood drained from his body.
It took all he had left to pull the shirt from his body and tie it into a tourniquet over the wound. He sagged from the effort, too tired to lift himself, then squinted, too tired to even lift his eyes. The little he could see began to shimmer, especially the metal of that cleaver, stuck in the table between Charles and his approaching family.
They were licking the table, finding every bit of blood in a trail that led to him. he could feel his head falling forward towards them and the tabletop as he began to lose consciousness...
Charles was covered in blood as he often is. Trafficking in meat at Chuck’s Chop Shop is messy business. But prideful. Charles created the business in 1985. It was the culmination of over a decade of toil that included jobs at K-Mart, Get Your Liquor, the Sunrise Sanitation Company, and countless years at the Slab, a backbreaking slaughterhouse that injured as many workers as cows. Charles was no fool. He’d been suffering those years to save up for something of his own, something he’d enjoy, something he’d be good at. Charles could chop meat.
The evidence was hidden behind pink and yellow window signs touting: “Fresh Beef 30 cents/pound,” “Whole Chickens,” “Full Deli,” and more; on top of blue reflective film that kept out the sun and invited customers in from it. Those that ventured inside would see huge sections of meat hung like art over refrigerator displays of cold cuts surrounding shelves of marinades, sauces and seasonings.
But on this day, Charles had decided to take a break from the cool humid stench of his butcher shop and step outside into the day’s searing heat. That’s when he saw her. The second Charles saw Dolores, he knew she was too good for him. She was a striking six-foot-tall woman made taller with a head wrap and made, well...more striking with hip hugging booty-framing jeans and a tight, umm...uplifting green blouse; green on black sun-shining skin: Damn, you fine, Charles thought, I mean fuh-ine!
But what he said was, “Good afternoon, ma’am.”
She smiled and kept on.
But Charles kept on too, watching as she made her way down the street, past brothas who had a lot more to say than him, down to a beauty salon where she worked helping other women be like her.
So the next day, around the same time, Charles found himself out in the sun again.
“Baby, you lookin’ good today,” he tried.
She smiled.
And the next day, “My name is Charles.”
Another smile.
And the next day, “I own this place.”
Another smile. But this time, he didn’t let it go at that. “You like ribs, right?, he added, “Let me get your family some ribs? Okay? Come on, what do you say? Can I?”
She paused and tossed back her head in coy surprise, smiling wider before turning it into a sly smirk. She looked down the street at the other men watching them both. The wide smile came again. Then she looked back at Charles and said, “Yes.” She said yes! She...she actually said yes! Charles was happy she said yes. He was so happy she said yes that he didn’t question it. On another day, when he asked her out on a date and she said yes, he didn’t question it, even though she had claimed to be busy three times before. On another day, when she let him kiss her after turning her cheek four times, he didn’t question it. When she let him make love to her, after saying she wasn’t attracted to him, he didn’t question it. When she said she would marry him, but cried afterwards, he didn’t question it. He was so happy. Because from the day he met Dolores, he knew she was too good for him.
And as evidence, she spared him reminders. She dutifully brushed off the attentions of the men along his street. She gave Charles three healthy children: Deshawn, LaTonya and baby Precious. She quit her job at the salon to raise those children so that Charles could concentrate on his Chop Shop. She settled for sweatpants over summer dresses and traded in mortgage dreams for rental realities. And she had food ready for him when he came home from work; and energy to put the kids down for bed and ready the next day’s school lunches while Charles complained of tiredness, soaked his feet, and played with the remote.
So when Dolores asked to spend a few hours out Thursday night having drinks with a friend, he didn’t question it; even though he didn’t know who the friend was. The request was strange, but she deserved so much more than a night free of lunches and bottle feedings. For she had given him so man yeses, how could he not return the favor?
The time alone felt awkward, but he felt better about his decision when she returned home soon enough to rub his back before bed, tuck him in, and make love to him. And despite the smell of alcohol, she still smelled good.
But when she asked again the following Thursday, he felt himself tested. He thought to ask, “with who?” And he considered other accusative questions like, “You ain’t gonna be doin’ this every week, are you?” And he must have worn those questions of his face. Because Dolores held his cheeks in her hands and said, “Baby, it’s just with Lena, an old friend from the salon.” And she smiled. And Charles felt a fool.
But Charles wasn’t a fool. Or so he repeated to himself as he lay up in bed that night waiting for her to return. And said again when he awoke alone in bed the next morning, her side unused. “I ain’t no fool,” he said to Dolores, when he found her in the kitchen, cooking breakfast.
“Baby, I’m sorry,” Dolores began right away. “I was feelin’ sick last night and went to sleep on the couch. I didn’t want you to catch what I got,” she explained. It was hard not to take her seriously. She looked pale, like white on black, except in the circles around her eyes. Her smile was a painful frown that looked like nausea. And her eyes were raw-hamburger red.
“Baby, you okay?” Charles asked, genuinely concerned.
“I don’t know, sugar. But I plan on takin’ it easy.”
“No more going out?” Charles checked.
“I might even call you to get the groceries,” she added.
“Whatever you need, baby,” Charles assured her, moving close for a hug.
She shook her head, no.
Charles took her “no” graciously, but noted it, and still felt it long after he had left the house for work.
Dolores didn’t call. But Charles still came home late from work with groceries.
An upset LaTonya opened the door. “There you are!” she complained.
“What? Is mom okay?”
“I came home to the baby cryin’ and all the windows drawn and mom back in her room, lookin’ like she ain’t moved all day.”
“Is she alright?” Charles asked.
“I’m alright,” Dolores answered as she stepped into the room. She actually looked much better. Although still in her nightgown, hair clipped, without make-up, her eyes were clear and her frown was gone.
“Has the sickness gone away?”
“Seems to.”
“You still look a little pale.”
“That’s nothing.”
“What’s LaTonya complainin’ for?”
“I don’t know,” Dolores answered.
“Whatever,” LaTonya huffed.
“Where’s Deshawn?” Charles asked.
“He ain’t been here,” LaTonya argued. “He don’t know. He just got in.”
“Alright.” Charles looked between his daughter and wife as if judging a contest between them. “Everything’s cool,” Charles stated.
Dolores nodded. She gave a weak smile.
The following day, it was still daylight when Charles arrived home.
Again, LaTonya met Charles at the door, this time with a self-righteous smile of her own.
Charles guessed at its origin. “Where’s mom?” he asked.
“Back in her room,” she said smugly.
Charles stepped in and turned right for it. The baby cried in the background. Charles wondered if LaTonya had left Precious crying for his benefit. At the door, Charles turned the knob and broke in on darkness.
“Told you,” LaTonya called behind him.
“What’s going on?!” Charles called at blackness. “Uggh,” he heard a groan of complaint. He stepped in and started pulling shades anyway.
“No, no, no, NO!” Dolores protested with such vehemence that he stopped after the first window. He was further stopped when he turned to look at his wife.
She lay half-covered in the sheets on her bed, cowering from the daylight. In her same nightgown, she now looked sick as ever.
“What have you been doin’ all day?!” Charles asked, incredulous.
“I need sleep,” Dolores complained. “Close that shade. CLOSE IT!”
Charles closed it.
“You need to get to a hospital! That’s what you need.”
“No, Charles. Please. Just let me sleep. Please.”
“The baby’s crying.”
“Take care of her for me, will you, honey?” she pleaded.
“Dolores, this ain’t right.”
“Honey, PLEASE?!”
A wail from the baby led Charles out of the room. He corralled LaTonya ahead of him, pushing her into the room she shared with Precious.
“I ain’t takin’ care of that baby,” LaTonya argued. “I don’t care it it’s in my room. I ain’t its momma.”
“Shut up, girl! I’ll do it!”
Despite sun-yellow walls and forest-green trim, the room stank of feces. The baby’s cries were intercut with whimpers. Charles was afraid until he saw the baby’s flush red cheeks and felt its solid grip on his comforting hand.
“Get some formula,” Charles told LaTonya.
“I ain’t no...”
“I said get some formula!” Charles commanded.
LaTonya left.
Charles undid the baby’s diaper. It was filed with a day’s worth of feces. The baby’s butt was raw red.
“You tryin’ to get C.P.S. in here!?” he called back to Dolores.
LaTonya returned with the formula while Charles wiped Precious clean and gently pulled a new diaper tight around the baby. Charles sat on LaTonya’s bed and muttered complaints to himself while feeding Precious. LaTonya stood over him, hands on hips, tapping her feet.
“You’re stayin’ home with momma tomorrow,” Charles informed her.
“Oh, hell no. That’s your kid.” She pointed at Precious.
“And your my kid. And I say you’re stayin’ home!”
“They won’t let me miss school.”
“I’ll write you a note.”
“I can’t miss another day.”
“You’re gonna.”
LaTonya stormed off, leaving Charles alone with Precious. Already done with half the bottle, the baby had been famished. Charles tucked his girl closer in against his torso and met her thankful little eyes with his own while the sun set around them.
When he finally left the room again, he was met by a refreshed Dolores, free of all sickness except for her paleness.
“I feel better now, energetic,” she assured him throughout the night until he fell asleep alone, less energetic than her after a harder day than he was used to.
He woke up with her next to him, fully asleep. He tried to elbow her awake, but she might as well have been dead. There was no waking her. He didn’t have time to keep trying. He had to get to work. Which made it particularly irritating to find Deshawn in the bathroom.
“Get outta there, boy! I’ve got to get ready for work.” “Just a sec, dad,” Charles heard through the door. “I’m feelin’ sick.”
“You been stayin’ out all night again? I told you if I hear something bad from the school, I’m gonna have to put you in check.”
“Nah, dad. It ain’t like that. I’m sick, that’s all.”
After a short wait, the door opened revealing a Deshawn as haggard as Dolores.
“You got what mom got?”
“I don’t know, dad. I just feel real bad.”
“Stay home if you need.”
“Alright.”
Charles couldn’t do much more for anybody. Except to warn LaTonya, “Don’t catch what they got.” He left for work and returned afterwards to the same: Dolores and Deshawn bedridden and LaTonya complaining.
“I ain’t watchin’ them tomorrow,” LaTonya declared.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take ‘em,” Charles volunteered. “Take ‘em to a damn hospital.”
LaTonya was happy to close the door on her family, even if she had to take Precious with her.
Charles wasn’t happy. Even after Dolores and Deshawn appeared professing their health, Charles scowled, unconvinced. Instead, he flipped his channels with conviction, frustrated by their glib recoveries and irritated at the prospect of missing the next day’s work regardless. Once he put himself to bed, restless sleep came easily. It became particularly restless when Charles was torn awake by a scream in the middle of the night. Charles leapt out of bed and to the door so fast, he barely kept his legs under him. “GET OFFA ME!” he heard LaTonya’s voice. Charles stumbled through the dark into the shadows of LaTonya’s room where a fight was going on.
Someone laid atop LaTonya, pinning her under the covers while struggling with her. But LaTonya fought back, slapping at his face, knocking back his hands and screaming as if she was losing.
Charles didn’t give her the chance. He grabbed two fists full of the attacker’s collar at the back of the neck and wrenched him free from LaTonya. With a twist of his hips, Charles directed the attacker’s momentum, with a thud, into the wall. The attacker slumped in Charles’ arms. Charles let him drop. The attacker covered his face with his arms. Charles mistook shame for defense.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” the attacker cried.
“Deshawn?”
“Dad, I’m sorry.”
Charles slapped his son atop the head. “Boy, what are you doing!?”
“He tried to bite me!” LaTonya screamed hysterically. “Look at his teeth!”
“Deshawn?” Charles threatened.
“I’m sorry, dad,” Deshawn whined.
“Show me your teeth.”
“Dad...”
“I’ll knock you stupid.”
Deshawn guiltily bared his fangs.
Charles slapped him hard. “Get to your room,” he demanded. “You’re in trouble.”
Deshawn scrambled through the door on all fours.
“You all right, LaTonya?” Charles checked.
“The baby woke me,” LaTonya explained, “right before Deshawn came in. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have seen him. He tried to bit my neck. He’s crazy.”
“He’s sick. I’m a handle this,” Charles promised.
LaTonya checked the baby then followed her father to Deshawn’s room. Charles left her behind the closed door. But LaTonya could hear the happenings inside. Charles was screaming angry. Yells were punctuated with slaps and thuds and breaking things. LaTonya whispered, “Damn,” ‘cause she’d heard dad go off on Deshawn many times, yell, hit, and throw things, but never like this. She might have worried about Deshawn if she wasn’t so scared by him and pissed at him. Shit, she should be beating him, she told herself. But then things got silent. And then she heard the belt. Smack, smack, smack. She could never do that.
When dad came out, he was sweating, exhausted from beating his son.
“He ain’t gonna hurt you no more,” he proclaimed. Satisfied, he staggered to his bedroom and closed the door. In less than a minute, he opened it again.
“Where’s mom?” Charles asked.
“I don’t know,” LaTonya answered.
She wasn’t in bed. She wasn’t home. Charles felt his exhausted body fuel with anger again. He put a hand to his belt buckle, then made it into a fist. So she’s out there, he told himself, like when she was drinking. Only she didn’t ask this time. It’s like that now. He started for the door, resolved to search the city for her and drag her home; but then stopped, knowing home was his best chance to find her. He cursed her and pleaded with her all at once in his head. And it exhausted him again. So he settled down on the couch.
“Just go to your room and watch the baby,” he told LaTonya.
And he waited.
Dolores got home at 5:18 and 23 seconds in the morning. She turned the key and tumbled the lock slowly, just like a criminal. It gave Charles time for his eyes to moisten and his jaw to clench tight, as he pre-played the words.
“Where have you been?”
Dolores slid in just as the words hit her, caught in a motion she would reverse if she could. She hung her head as if a spotlight was upon her. Had one been, it would have illuminated a black evening dress, high-heel shoes, and make-up. Charles hadn’t seen her dressed like that in years.
“Where have you been!?”
“Out,” she whispered.
“Out!? Out where?!”
She turned her head away from his at first, then decisively brought it back and lifted it to face his spotlight. Charles searched her face for defiance or remorse, but found nothing there. Meanwhile, he huffed and grimaced, giving her plenty to react to. She might as well have been blind.
“Who you been with?!” Charles demanded. He stepped forward and clamped her arm, trying to grab her attention along with it.
“I can smell him on you,” he said with disgust, throwing her arm down to her side. “Who is it? Tell me!? Who got you sick!?”
She solemnly replied, “I don’t feel sick.”
Then she looked at him. She let her top fangs peek below her upper lip. “I feel alive!” she yelled, then turned and stomped towards their bedroom.
Charles rushed to meet her at the door. He held an arm in the way and the other at his belt buckle. What was he going to do? Beat her like he beat Deshawn? Would that make her stay home?
“Get out of my way!” Dolores demanded. The sun was coming out soon.
“Mom? Dad?” LaTonya asked from her doorway.
“Get in your room and mind your own business!” Dolores commanded.
“I don’t want you going out anymore,” Charles demanded Dolores in turn.
Dolores cocked her arm back near her waist, as if there was a belt there.
“You let me in there!” she screamed.
“No.”
She looked at the windows, then at Charles, then LaTonya, then back into the house. She sprinted for Deshawn’s room and tossed open the door to darkness.
But she didn’t enter. She stood there then jerked around.
“How dare you,” she called with an angry chill in her voice.
Behind her, Deshawn lay beaten and tied to the bed with sheets.
Dolores screamed back to Charles and LaTonya, “You expect me to stay locked up in here all day and night. At least you’ve got a job or school to get you outta here. I’ve got a baby for company all day. You feel me? And now that I’m gettin’ mine, you both cryin’ ’bout the same thing. Well, you can spend some time makin’ up for the time I’ve served in this house...in this prison!
She leapt into the room and worked at the bed. “Go son!” she declared. “Get some quick!”
Deshawn broke through the window of his room out into the diminishing night.
Dolores stomped out of the room triumphantly and pushed past her husband into her own bedroom and slammed the door. What could he have done? Beat her like Deshawn? Would that have made her stay home? Charles ran out of gas, exhausted again, before the answers came. When Deshawn jumped back into his room, covered in blood and eyes wide with delight. Charles let him slam his own door without protest. He let LaTonya slink back into her bedroom without comment.
Charles fell back onto the couch. He sat there kneading his brow, trying to massage the tissue past his skull, which was equally exhausted by the thoughts that flipped through his mind as he struggled with the change, the loss of stability in his relationship with Dolores. He went through all the phases of grief. DENIAL: “This can’t be happening,” he told himself. “Vampires aren’t real. But losing Dolores is. Vampire or not, she’s changing, leavin’ him, choosin’ someone else.” ANGER: He was so mad at her condition. He rose from the couch with the sun.
He opened the door on a dark bedroom, drapes drawn. First, he drew back her covers. She slept coffin-style, arms and legs stiff straight. Then the drapes. Light flashed onto her, igniting her skin, which popped and steamed like chicken breast in a microwave. Dolores woke to it, screaming and hissing in pain. “Feel like I feel,” Charles thought to himself. “Burn.”
“Charles!” she pleaded, “you’re killing me!”
“What am I doing? I am killing her,” he agreed. He snapped the drapes shut and stepped away from the window like a soldier dropping his gun. He followed the rising steam to her blistered body. Dolores moaned and writhed in agony. GUILT: “What have I done? What have I been doing? Why are we here? Maybe it’s me. If I could have been home more... If I talked to Dolores to make sure she was happy... Maybe she wouldn’t be a burning vampire. Damn!” Charles cursed. “It don’t matter why we’re here!” Charles reached out to Dolores, but didn’t touch her. He grabbed the covers and pulled them over her. “I gotta fix this! But I can’t fix this.” DESPAIR: “This is bigger than me, much bigger than me.” Charles went to his dresser and opened the bottom drawer. Even in the darkness, he could make out the shapes of its contents: the Bible and crucifix his mom had given him for his wedding day. He pulled out the crucifix and spoke aloud to the man nailed to it. “Jesus, what am I gonna do? Ain’t no amount of cheek turnin’ gonna solve this one. Damn, they’d bite my cheek if I turned it at ’em.” He looked at the wooden figurine as if it might reply. Getting none, he tossed it back into the drawer and kicked it shut.
ACCEPTANCE: Charles walked over to the bed and slipped into the covers. He touched Dolores’ cold skin at the waist and caressed it like he would to signal he wanted to make love to her. There was no response. He brought his hand up to her neck and found two healing puncture wounds. He followed the contour of her pale blistered arm down to her wrist and felt for a pulse. She was dead to him.
LaTonya woke Charles a few hours later. “I fed the baby. I’m going to school,” she informed.
Charles moaned in response and tossed himself back to sleep. He would sleep in with the rest of the family, confident their sleep will be at least as deep as his. He failed to take into account the baby, who woke him with her cries before 10am. Charles changed her diaper then slept a little longer on LaTonya’s bed. Precious woke him again for food an hour later. He was stuck away then, with nothing to do but check on Precious until LaTonya returned after school. He didn’t mind. He was even thankful. If not for Precious, his only company would be the dead.
When LaTonya stepped through the door, both she and Charles greeted each other with, “We’ve gotta talk.”
But Charles did most of the talking. “They sick. Someone got your mother sick and she passed it to Deshawn. And if we don’t keep an eye on them, they gonna pass it onto someone else or even us.”
“What are we gonna do?” LaTonya asked.
“I don’t know but we gotta be together on this. I need you. You might complain a lot and all but I could always count on your more than Deshawn. I ain’t never needed you more than now, ain’t ever needed anyone as much as this.”
“Alright, dad.”
Charles hugged LaTonya. “Thank you.
“Here’s the plan. I need to talk to Deshawn. I need you to watch mom.”
“I ain’t going in there.”
“Watch her from the door.”
“Okay.”
So Charles stepped into Deshawn’s room and waited for the sun to set so his son would rise. The smell in there was different from his bedroom’s. Sweat mixed with bad breath. Maybe there was some humanity left in Deshawn. Maybe it was the absence of the smell of burnt flesh.
“Dad?”
“Son.”
“I need blood, dad.”
Charles sat next to his son at the edge of the bed. He held his hands together as if in prayer and spoke softly. “I know...but I need you to...I can’t let you get it. You’re gonna hurt somebody to get it. I can’t have any son of mine hurting anybody. There’s too many kids wrapped up in gang life and bad things. I didn’t make it this far by stepping on anyone’s toes. I made mine by doing good. And you’re supposed to take over for me, not end up in some jail somewhere wasting a life.”
“Dad, it hurts. This is different.”
“No, son. It’s not.”
“I need it dad.”
“No, boy.”
“I’m getting stronger than you, dad,” Deshawn said plainly.
Charles stopped the conversation and gave his son the look he’d given him the night before. Deshawn returned the defiant look he learned from his mother.
Charles got up and left the room.
Deshawn hopped from his bed, nodding to himself in congratulations, until his father burst back into the room.
“Get your ass back on that bed!” Charles ordered.
“You gonna make me?” Deshawn challenged his father. Charles remembered the defining moment in his life, when he stood up to his father’s whoopin’s, turned back his father’s hand and threatened him with his own. Ever since Charles bean beating Deshawn, he knew the day would come when Deshawn would do the same, when Deshawn would prove himself a man ready to live by his own rules. Today wasn’t that day.
“I don’t have to,” Charles answered. “I brought someone else with me, gonna kick your ass just fine.”
“I don’t see your army,” Deshawn mocked.
“When a man got Jesus,” Charles announced, pulling his crucifix from behind him, “he don’t need no army.”
Deshawn recoiled from the cross.
Charles stepped to him, and slapped aside Deshawn’s arms with the object. “Gonna knock you upside the head with Jesus,” Charles announced. He brought the flat back of the cross down hard against Deshawn’s skull. Deshawn hissed. “Jesus just bopped you upside the head.” The next blow landed with a sharper edge. “Oh, there he goes again!” Deshawn screamed. “Go Jesus!” Charles was relentless now, landing blow after blow, adding a fist, then a kick, until Deshawn lay atop his bed moaning surrender. “What’s it like to get yo’ ass whooped by Jesus, huh?” Charles asked. “I said HUH!?”
“Ohhhh,” Deshawn responded.
“You gonna get some blood?” Charles asked.
“No,” Deshawn grumbled.
“I said, you gonna leave this room!?”
“No,” Deshawn relented.
“Damn right.”
Charles didn’t take the chance. He tied his son up again, as he had the night before. Delores ain’t letting him free this time, he told himself. Time to take charge of this family.
When he returned to the living room, Dolores stood in its open doorway to the outside. Charles stood startled.
“Hey darling?” Dolores greeted him with a flash of her fangs. “Who you got on your side now?”
She closed the door behind her, faster than Charles could react. She was gone. But she had left the bedroom door open. “LaTonya?” Charles called. There was no response. Charles stepped towards it with cautious trepidation. In the dark room, laid in Dolores’ place on the bed was LaTonya, stiff and pale, ripped open at the throat, bloodless.
“NOOOOO!” Charles’ scream ripped through the night. “NO! NO! NO! NO!” he continued, refusing to relinquish his denials. There would be no acceptance of this grief, whatever the cost. “Deshawawawn!” Charles invoked in a long drawn-out call-to-arms as he dashed to Deshawn’s room.
Charles threw open the door and stood in quaking silhouette. “I’ve got a deal for you son, a deal you better take quick because I don’t like giving it to you...”
Deshawn returned hours later, splattered with patches of blood. He was a messy eater. He smiled at his father, revived and thankful, and eager to show it. “I found her, dad. I found her.”
“Where, son?”
“The Apple’s Worm. It’s a bar.”
“I know it.”
“Um, dad? You ain’t gonna like what you see there.”
“I know.”
The Apple’s Worm hid at the end of an alley burrowed into the core of the city’s center. The narrowness of the alley prepared Charles for the sight past the dark wood and clear-and-stained-glass-paned doors into the Worm. The view down the length of the bar backed by a tight walkway showed little room for the stools between. Dolores filled the view, sitting a few seats in from the door, laughing preoccupied by whoever sat on her other side, blocked from view. Charles fought the furious urge to bust in through the door and engage whoever that might be until restraint reminded him that “whoever” could be two people, three, four, or more. And a fight in the bar would add to the police to the mix too.
So he seethed patiently until Dolores finally rose to leave, taking the arm of her barmate and moving towards Charles. Her disease-spreading, bar-hopping, home-wrecking, partner was a beanstalk-tall, skeleton-skinny, black-leather-wearing, beak-nosed, dorky-lookin’ white dude.
“Oh haaaaayl naw!” Charles cursed. Charles would have beat him right then if he hadn’t imagined doing worse.
So he exited the alley and stuck to the shadows to follow the couple to a warehouse just down the road. They entered. He left them there for later.
The Chop Shop glowed florescent refrigerator-light blue around its pink and green posters. Charles saw the stark light set against its dead neighbors as the store’s protest at having been kept closed. I’m comin’ to open you now, baby, Charles thought as he parked in front of its door. Once inside, he made an apologetic frown as he passed all the work he had to do and went for the ax on the wall behind the counter. He took it to the back room where he found its twin outside the meat locker. Then, with cleavers, a hammer, rope and nails, he went to work atop the cop block table in the center of the room. He soon had a floor covered in chiseled wood shavings and two axes with cleaver blades attached to the other sides of their shafts. Charles lifted both high. He smiled at the ax handles sticking out below each hand, whittled into the sharp points of wooden stakes. And Charles howled, “Whoooo-hraaah!,” a visceral savage warrior’s tribute to the blood about to be spilt.
Charles strode into the warehouse as if it was his own. He greeted the perturbed heavy-metal-rockstar-lookin’ man at the door with an indignant swipe of his cleaver ax, which separated his left from his right sides at the shoulder. The accompanying shriek sounded alarm to the other in the building, who began to pour into the corridor before Charles. A school marm, an old man, a 10-year-old boy, an Asian woman, all vampires, but not one of them the same. All came to meet Cleft and Twain, Charles’ newly named twin bringers of pain. Those that stayed intact enough to keep fighting were soon stung by an ax handle stake to the heart and permanently dispatched. Any other man might have tired after the fifth, sixth, or seventh vampire. But Charles’ arms rippled with the muscles of a meat-chopping master. “Charles the Butcher:” sounded like an infamous title. Naw, just a job, and a handy one for a vampire killer. Charles was soon awash in red with a cannibal’s feast in a trail behind him. At thirteen vampires dead, he sliced past the corridor into the ghastly chamber beyond.
The chamber might as well have been Charles’ Chop Shop. For it was lined with freshly hung meat, in this case, bodies, strung up on hooks at the end of long chains hung from the ceiling. Below each body sat a tub with ladles and red plastic beer cups. This was a vampire party. Charles had crashed it.
But now, atop the rafters, boxes, and walkways that lined the side walls, perched vampires prepared to crash down on Charles. They awaited orders from the familiar vampire that sat atop a poorman’s throne made from a recliner draped with red velour at the far side of the chamber. It was that skeleton-skinny, home-wreckin’ mother fucker that Charles was lookin’ for! Dolores sat atop his lap with an arm draped over his shoulder.
“Charles!” Dolores shrieked.
“So this is Charles,” the vampire spoke. “No eternal life for you, Charles.”
“Give me my eternal wife, bitch!” Charles demanded.
“Come and get her,” the vampire beckoned with an inviting finger.
As soon as Charles stepped forward, the other vampires were upon him, throwing themselves towards his whirring blades. He tossed their pale thin bodies, or pieces of their pale thin bodies, about him with explosions of gore, dispatching all comers in a cuisinart frenzy.
When he had finished them, he faced Dolores. She had one hand on her hip, the other pointing a claw-like finger. “STOP IT!” she demanded. “You leave him alone! Put down those things and leave us! I’m through with you! We’re over! Done!”
Charles pushed her aside and lifted Cleft high in the air above the now terrified vampire. The vampire’s skinny white arms did little to slow the sharp end of Cleft from driving deep into his diseased heart. The vampire gasped and clutched at the shaft. He died quick. Charles left Cleft there.
Charles turned to Dolores with rouge-rimmed eyes. “We’re not done. We’ve only just begun,” he promised.
Charles whipped Dolores around him to throw her into the house. “He’s dead now. This is all you got.”
They entered the house to a screaming baby, LaTonya and Deshawn.
“Aw, shit,” Charles swore. “Sun risin’ soon,” he called back to Dolores. “You better get yo’self to bed.”
“You takin’ care of the kids?” Dolores asked as if she cared.
“Count on it.”
Charles had left LaTonya and Deshawn tied to their beds. They were screaming in bloodlust. Precious’ screams were all that mattered, as far as Charles was concerned. But as soon as he finished feeding and changing her, he realized he’d have to give them blood to keep them.
So once the sun rose, he returned to the Chop Shop, not to open it, for Precious would be needing his attention. It took him about an hour to squeeze the good meat enough to get a bucketful of animal’s blood and head back for home.
When Deshawn woke after sunset, Charles was there.
“Your mother and me have decided to try to work things out. You know, with everyone being sick and all.”
“LaTonya sick too?” Deshawn asked.
“Yah. But we’ll work it out. You down?”
“Yah,” Deshawn agreed.
“Got blood for ya,” Charles said cheerfully with a clap of his hands.
“Blood!” Deshawn exclaimed. “Yup! Yup!” Only then did he realize that his constraints were gone. He leapt out of bed.
At Charles instructions, Deshawn waited excitedly at the dining table while Charles freed LaTonya and Dolores. When they were all together, LaTonya looking distressed, Dolores skeptical, Charles announced, “I know, to keep us together as a family, I’m gonna have to provide for you in a way I ain’t never done before. I want you to trust that I’m gonna. And that starts tonight, right now!” Charles went to the kitchen and returned with three cups and his bucket of blood. LaTonya was instantly at ease. Dolores’ skepticism was gone.
“Awww, baby...” Dolores praised.
“Thanks, dad,” Deshawn added.
“It hurts, dad,” LaTonya informed.
“Not for long, baby,” Dolores assured her.
Charles placed the bucket in the center of the table and dipped the three cups, passing each in turn. Each was immediately emptied. By the time Charles reached to refill the first cup, the three family members were standing on either side of the table, reaching past him for the bucket. Charles stepped away, allowing them to take over. Dolores had to grab a fistful of Deshawn’s afro to keep him from sticing his head into the bucket. LaTonya grabbed between them and lost her cup in the blood. She brought wet hands to her mouth while whimpering for more. Dolores eventually settled them down enough to recover the lost cup and get them trading turns scooping cupfuls.
They had made it three-quarters of the way through the bucket before Deshawn vomited. He spurted all over the table, part of it spraying into the remaining blood. Dolores and LaTonya recoiled from the bucket, but not just because it was now tainted. They too felt the stomach pains and nausea that preceded Deshawn’s retching. Soon, they too were vomiting throughout the room, grabbing at their bellies and condemning Charles.
“What is it?!”
“It’s bad blood!”,
“I’m sick, dad.”
“Damn it, Charles!”
Charles backed away from the fetid room, his own sympathetic nausea encouraging his retreat, as did his disappointment and dread.
“Dad...” LaTonya called after him, before vomiting again.
“Dad...” Deshawn took her place.
“Charles,” Dolores added between coughs. “We need you.”
They were right, Charles thought. And he’d failed them. Perhaps even killed them in the process. He had to make right, no matter what the cost. The loss of everything he had ever worked for and cared for assailed his eyes and nostrils.
“Go ahead, boy,” Charles called into the dining room. “Go and get some, and bring some back for your mother and sister.”
Charles held open the door for Deshawn, who staggered into the night.
When Deshawn returned with the limp body of a young attractive girl in his arms, and laid her on the table, and LaTonya and Dolores leapt at either side of her neck and drained what remained of her, it was Charles turn to vomit, spewing the contents of his stomach into a corner of the room furthest away from the horrific scene.
That night, Dolores, LaTonya, and Deshawn lounged about the house as they used to. They watched television and talked happily. Seeing them that way, having them back together as a family, almost made the events of Charles night worthwhile.
For Charles’ night was far from usual. After moving the dead girl’s body into the bathroom, Charles spent hours bleaching the dining room clean of vomit and blood. He spent more hours sawing the girl into pieces so that he could wrap her and Hefty bag her so he could inconspicuously carry her back to the Chop Shop at daybreak and hide her body in his backroom meat locker. Then he had to clean up her mess in the bathroom. And then, he spent the remainder of the night, using wood scraps from the garage to seal the windows of his bedroom and move LaTonya’s and Deshawn’s beds in next to Dolores’ to create a kind of family crypt, darkest room in the house, with a crossbar lock over its door, so that Charles could sleep peacefully on the couch during the day without fear that he might oversleep into the night. And all the while he, and ONLY HE, was in charge of tending to Precious, keeping her fed and fresh and away from the rest of the family.
The next night, Dolores plainly stated, “We need blood.” And so Deshawn was off again, luring a young woman into his arms so that he could feed off her and bring left-overs home for the family. Charles spent most of the night in LaTonya’s bedroom with Precious and Jesus, resting the cross in his lap and asking for forgiveness. Until LaTonya knocked on the door.
“Dad?”
“Come in,” Charles called as he hid the cross under the covers.
LaTonya entered and stood in front of the bed and her father.
“What’s on your mind?” Charles asked.
“How come Deshawn always gets to go out and I can’t?”
“What’s the problem?”
“He’s always gettin’ some and I want some ‘a my own.”
“No, LaTonya. I ain’t gonna have no girl ‘a mine runnin’ about in the night doin’ what Deshawn is doin’. It’s bad enough you and mom doin’ what you’ve already done.”
“Mom says that by the time we get it, the best is gone. Mom says I can handle myself and get my own. She says I’m old enough.”
“Girl, you get outta here before I give you somethin’ else Deshawn gets that you don’t.”
LaTonya grunted in defiance, but left quickly.
Charles went right back to praying.
But it didn’t help. The next night, all three of them stood at the front door dressed in street clothes when Dolores announced, “We need blood.” Dolores had an arm around Deshawn. LaTonya, wearing make-up and a skirt that ended halfway to the knee, held onto Dolores’ jacket.
Charles stewed at the defiance. He wished he had Jesus with him.
Dolores preempted his outburst. “You want us to come back?”
Charles exhaled. “Yes.”
“Then we’ll come back,” Dolores agreed as she led her children out the door.
On condition I let you leave, Charles thought to himself.
“It ain’t right,” Charles told Jesus and Precious. What’s a man willing to put up with to keep his family together? It was the first of many evenings that Charles spent alone with Jesus and Precious, talking to himself. He spent his early morning chopping corpses. At least he had convinced them to bring him back the corpses, so he could hide them in his shop. And he spent his early parts of the day visiting the Chop Shop, cleaning out the spoiled meat, dumping off the bodies parts and making a pile of the bills he found slipped through the mail-slot onto a pile inside his store’s door.
Between all that and caring for Precious, Charles wasn’t getting much sleep.
“I can’t keep this up,” he told Jesus, who he’d carried along with him into the bathroom, and set on the counter as he considered how best to start sawing the thirteen-year-old boy LaTonya had brought back with her. Charles lifted the saw in his shaking hand and put it against the boy’s broken neck, right below his fear-twisted face. He was the same age at LaTonya. He had a family too, and a father that’s lost him. How many families was Charles gonna allowed wrecked to try to save his own? It’s wrong, Jesus told him. The meat locker was almost full. I’ve become like them, he told himself.
Charles put his free hand against the boy’s sternum and began sawing. The saw slipped and ran between his thumb and forefinger. Charles pulled his hand into his mouth. Blood filled it. He clamped his teeth down to slow the blood. He shouldn’t stop it, he considered. He should let it all flow, let himself die, rather than keep up this ghastly work. He wasn’t who he was supposed to be. And this new him and his new family, wasn’t worth saving.
Charles stopped, and with his hand still in his mouth, got Twain from the trunk of the car. He’d left it there since that night he’d killed all those vampires. He took it into the family tomb and found Dolores’ bed. They’d just recently gone to sleep. He brushed the hair away from Dolores neck and lips. She used to be better than him. Now she was worse, much worse. And Deshawn too. And LaTonya. He held Twain in his right hand so that the stake hung with enough room to spare. He put a hand at the top of Dolores’ sternum and lifted Twain into the air. Tears began to well in his eyes. His hand slid down over Dolores’ dead heart. He sat down next to her and laid Twain in his lap.
“When we was a famly,” Charles said to them all, “every day was so perfect. I coulda been doin’ anythin’ with my life, and it would have been heaven as long as I had alla you. But you had to go and cheat on me, Dolores! And you done dragged everyone into it all, Deshawn with runnin’ around and LaTonya tryin’ to be like him. You can say all you want about what I did wrong and how I coulda been better. But there ain’t nothin’ I did to deserve alla this! We had good times, and a good life! You’re the one, you’re all the ones not tryin’ anymore to keep things together, doin’ bad and makin’ me a part of it in the name ‘a good. Well, I ain’t havin’ it anymore. There’s only so much that a man can stand. There’s only so much that a man can give!” Charles began to sob. “I need you all. I never imagined life without you. I can’t stand the thought of life without you. What more can a man give...?”
When Charles woke at the dinner table, shivering without his shirt, which he’d tied around his bleeding arm, the ax-cleaver Twain stuck into the tabletop reminded him of what he’d done the previous night, how he’d tapped his own blood to try and feed his family, to try and keep them from killing any more people, to try and keep them at home. He had failed. The room was empty and the door to the tomb was open. They couldn’t be in there. And with the sun almost completely risen, if they weren’t in there now, they weren’t going to make it in time. They were gone. He’d lost them.
Charles tried to stand, but sank back into his chair, weak and in pain. He felt sick. Heartsick, he told himself, at being alone. Why get up? he asked himself. Why ever get up again? He had nothing left.
A glorious cry from Precious gave him the strength to riseqzd. He stumbled and then hurried into LaTonya’s room, fearful of the reason for the baby’s cries. He found Precious in the crib, skinny and pale, shaking. He gasped at her condition and lifted her into his arms, to check her. Her neck was unhurt. She must be cold and hungry. She would be fine. Charles would make sure of that. He’d spend all the time it took, Chop Shop be damned, to make sure he did right by Precious, so she’d stay around, and they’d have be a family. Charles held her close to his chest. He could feel her warmth against him. For all the time he’d spent caring for her, in the days past, he hadn’t hugged her. He brought her up near his face and held her against his shoulder, so that her neck was near his mouth. He felt sick inside. He told himself it didn’t mean anything. And even if it did, it wouldn’t make a difference.
