The Break-Up
“One last time?” My hands were trembling, palms sweaty, and yet, somehow, I gripped the phone so tightly my knuckles were turning white.
“We can’t—I can’t do this anymore. It’s not right.”
“Please Laura. If you still care about me…if you ever cared about me, you’ll do this for me one last time, then I’ll never ask again.” I knew I wasn’t being fair, but my condition was deteriorating fast and just thinking about my alternative option caused bile to creep up my throat and hot tears to sting my eyes.
There was a distressed, ragged sigh on the other end of the call. Then, “I’ll come over tomorrow morning. But it really is the last time, ok? Never again.” She hung up without waiting for a response and I stood in the silence for several moments afterward. Nausea, chest pains, and general hopelessness bore down on me in the cold, dark kitchen of what, only days ago, had been our home.
*******
It wasn’t easy waiting for morning to come when sleep never did. I tried lying in our bed but only lasted a few moments before falling apart, my body racked by sobs. I cried and cried, until my throat was raw from screaming and my head felt like a spike had been driven into my frontal lobe.
After that I wandered the house. I didn’t turn any lights on, instead enjoying the feeling of being a ghost in the night, not real. I stepped lightly down the halls, avoiding the occasional creaky floorboard though there would’ve been no one but myself to hear them. The silence and solitude were my safety.
I ran my hand over the carved backs of wooden chairs as I tiptoed through the dining room and twirled around on the plush carpet of the living room before chancing a peek through the tall, rectangular window that was next to the front door. It was taller than me, and when I stood in front of it I got an incredibly eerie feeling that someone else would appear in the frame of black any minute so I only looked for a few seconds, squinting into the darkness until I could make out the trees and fountain in the front yard, then I scurried away.
I was on edge, nerves shot, and beginning to feel extremely claustrophobic, but I couldn’t go outside, not until Laura showed up to help me. She’d scrape me off the floor and put me back together like she always did. So, I lit a candle, curled up on the couch with one of her books, and waited.
*******
There she was, as promised, the next morning. I saw her, through the window, walking up the front steps. She didn’t see me. There was a pit in my stomach as I watched her hesitate in front of the door, standing still with an anguished look in her eyes before slowly raising her fist and knocking. The chasm that had opened up in my heart days ago, when she’d presented me with divorce papers, ripped open even wider. I wondered sadly, why didn’t she just use her key?
I was at the door in seconds, but turned the knob ever so slowly, suddenly nervous. I wouldn’t be able to stand it if she looked at me in that way that meant she was disappointed, or perhaps worse, that she didn’t love me anymore. I opened it cautiously, not wanting to alarm her.
“Hey.” That’s all she said. She seemed tired, or stressed, probably both. I wanted desperately to throw my arms around her and never let go but I forced some restraint.
“Hey,” I echoed. “Thank you for doing this. You’re really saving me.” I was being genuine, but she raised her eyebrows.
“I’m saving someone else too, right?” She looked at me fiercely then, and I saw her being strong, being brave, traits I’d always admired her for. Now, mingled with that admiration, I felt fear.
She’d been telling me for months to get a handle on things and, in my selfishness, I’d never realized that was her way of warning me I’d be on my own soon. I should’ve known our arrangement would eventually become too much for her. She was the best person I’d ever met, after all, and I’d been asking her to steal and lie for so long. I guess I thought, naively, that she’d stick with me through anything, on account of our marriage vows.
If she was really leaving me, if this was really it, I must have pushed her to a point of no return.
The worst part was, as much as I wanted to stop, as much as I wanted to make things right, I needed what was inside the small blue cooler she gingerly held at her side. I needed it so bad that I was about to trade everything I held dear for it.
“I love you,” Laura said, although it sounded more like ‘goodbye.’
“I love you more,” I said automatically, like I had a thousand times before, but we both realized now that it probably wasn’t true.
“Did you sign them?” She asked, and I knew she meant the divorce papers.
I had signed them, not because I also wanted to end our relationship but because Laura deserved to be happy and I deserved to be condemned to an eternity of misery for everything I’d done. I looked at her and nodded, holding her gaze for a moment, waiting to see even a glimmer of indecision in her eyes, but there wasn’t one. Defeated, I left her there, retrieved the stapled stack of papers from where I’d been holding them hostage in my desk drawer, then returned to the foyer, death sentence in hand.
Laura held out the cooler and her other, empty hand, ready to receive the document. I placed the papers gingerly in her open palm then snatched the cooler, holding my temporary salvation close to my chest.
“I really wish you would’ve found another way,” she said, voice shaky. “Things could’ve been so different.”
“There is no other way for me,” I answered, wishing to be wrong.
*******
After Laura left, headed back to an 18-hour shift at the hospital, I sped to the kitchen, covered the marble countertop with the ClingWrap I kept under the sink, then placed the cooler on the plastic. I opened it, my heart beating out of my chest with excitement. My hands were clumsy and shaking, I could barely remove the precious packages from the cooler without dropping them.
There were four small, thick plastic bags in total, each bulging with garnet-colored liquid. They were all labeled “AB+,” my favorite. I smiled sadly, appreciating Laura’s consideration. I placed three of the bloodbags in the fridge, since she would need her cooler back before too long, but left the fourth on the counter.
At times, when I’d been in better spirits, I’d prepared inventive recipes, trying to make the blood consumption more appetizing. I’d made Sanguine Smoothies, Plasma Pasta, and even Ichor Ice-cream, but I’d been without my vital sustenance for over a week by then and felt so weak and ill that I reverted back to basics and grabbed a metal straw from the silverware drawer, used it to impale the bloodbag, then drank like my life depended on it, because it did.
As the color returned to my cheeks, my sanity, whatever was left of it, began to resurface as well. While I sucked down the salty ambrosia, filling my stomach for the first time in too long, I began making a mental checklist of everything I needed to do.
I’d been calling out sick from work, but I’d be fine to return now. Actually, I hadn’t been outside at all since the night Laura left me. I’d been too afraid of what I might do in such an emotional and thirsty state. Consequently, I would need to empty the probably overflowing mailbox, tend the garden, go grocery shopping, and contact my sister, whose texts I’d been ignoring.
When I’d drained the bloodbag until it shrank up like a raisin, I threw it back down on the counter, wrapped it up in the ClingWrap, then threw the bundle in the garbage. If Laura were still here, she would’ve taken the discarded bag back to the hospital and disposed of it less riskily, but I was on my own now and it’s not like I was under any investigation, so I decided it would be safe just that once.
With renewed vitality, I set to work performing my chores and running my errands. The heat was record-breaking that summer, so hot that you could hear the sun singing along with the screaming chorus of frogs and insects outside. That didn’t bother me. Ever since that fateful night when I’d become something…more…or was it less…. I’d been pretty cold-blooded. As long as I covered myself in swathes of flowy fabric and wore my enormous, floppy sunhat to protect my very sensitive skin from sunburn, I’d never had an issue going out in the daytime.
I wasn’t allergic to garlic either, for the record, but I truly hoped not to ever find myself shish-kebabbed by a wooden stake. That would suck.
I called my sister, Ren, while I was at the store, feeling so lonely surrounded by happy strangers that I needed to hear a familiar voice.
“Where have you been?” She asked me frantically.
“Laura and I are getting a divorce,” I said bluntly, hoping that would be enough to not only answer her question, but also dissuade any follow-ups.
She was shocked, but anyone who knew us would be. I’d met Laura in college, and we’d been inseparable ever since. I was there for her while she slogged through med school and she was there for me when I became a bloodthirsty monster. Now here we were. I’d pushed her away with the very nature of my being and destroyed all that made me happy.
After agreeing to weekly dinners with Ren, his idea, I was off the phone and once again left alone. So alone, with no one to sew up the gaping hole in my chest except myself.
*******
Several weeks passed by, slowly and painfully, each moment bringing with it a new agonizing thought to ruminate over, such as ‘I’m going to be alone forever,’ ‘I’m going to run out of blood soon,’ or ‘I’m a freak and a loser.’ I tried to get to know myself again, watching movies I loved, meditating for hours, going for walks around the small coastal town I lived in and had always been fond of. I went to work and participated in small talk over cups of instant coffee.
It wasn’t easy, but I knew Laura wasn’t coming back. I couldn’t keep relying on her.
As my independence strengthened, my bloody supply dwindled. My feelings towards Laura began to bitter. Why had she been holding me back for so long? She had insisted at first on me drinking blood the “humane” way, but as time went on and I became reliant on her for a blood supply, she clearly started to hate stealing blood from the hospital where she worked. It was dangerous, wrong, and put her job, maybe even freedom, on the line. She must have started resenting me. Now I sort of resented her.
I didn’t want to hurt anyone, that much was sure, but I was thirsty. So thirsty that water no longer satisfied me and every beating heart that passed me on the street sang out to me in a throbbing melody. I was becoming less and less convinced that drinking blood straight from the source would be so wrong. Why deny what I knew I needed?
*******
It was after a dinner with Ren when I made the decision. She’d brought her husband and they’d been chipper as hell, but I’d been nauseous the whole time, gagging through conversations, barely present. I’d run out of blood a few days prior and the smell of it seeping from their pores was far too much for me to handle.
I’d made up some lame excuse about needing to hit the hay early and ushered them out the door. Then I’d gotten ready, truly ready, for the first time in ages. I painted on some makeup and practically burned my hair into ringlets. I slithered into a little black dress and put on my tallest pumps. I slipped a pair of nylon gloves into my rhinestoned purse and got in my car. I drove to a nightclub a few towns over, almost in a trance for the twenty minutes it took. As I walked up to the club, I tried to boost my own confidence. You can do this, I muttered under my breath.
Music was blaring through the speakers inside, the bass notes shaking the ground. Colorful lights blinded me as I paid the bouncer at the door to let me in. Immediately I rushed to the bar to get a few drinks in me. If I was going to take someone home tonight, I would need some liquid courage.
As I sat on the uncomfortable metal barstool, sipping a sour pomegranate martini, I surveyed the crowd. That night, I’d decided, I would forget Laura, pick some poor, unsuspecting soul, and drink their blood to keep myself alive.
It was time to be self-sufficient.
