AnimeCon Harem 14: Outside Help pt 2 (Patreon)

   “Stay safe,” Stephanie sobbed, all but crushing Kelly and Emily in her hug this time. “Be careful, stay safe. Stay safe. Please. I love you.”

   Christine watched dispassionately as the three girls held each other and cried, each terribly broken up about the whole ordeal. The taller Kelly girl with the red hair had tears rolling down her face, Emily with her messy pixie-cut of now blue hair was ugly crying, and this Stephanie girl was practically bawling as they tried to say their final goodbyes to each other. It was impossible for Christine to not feel removed from the situation, because aside from a stiff and often confrontational history with Emily, she didn’t know or care about them at all.

   She didn’t feel upset that the pink one had punched her earlier and given her a nosebleed—that felt like it had happened to a different person. The screaming match she’d had with the red one didn’t bother her, anymore. Christine’s low opinion of Emily remained, but the vindictive malice had bled out and didn’t seem to affect her thinking, anymore.

   Why would it? Christine thought to herself, staring expressionlessly at them through the monotone silver that had descended. They’re just humans, right?

   The thought should have been frightening, but here in the moment it just seemed matter-of-fact. She was a vampire now, supposedly, or about to become one. Her throat was dry in a way that water wasn’t going to fix, and to her dismay that scorching dryness was starting to spread downwards into her chest. Whatever supernatural process she was going through made her strong and fast, if filled her with unbelievable power, but it was also beginning to desiccate her from the inside out.

   “You’re very quiet,” Rebecca observed.

   The way Rebecca was sizing her up in the periphery of her vision didn’t escape Christine’s notice. With how overwhelming her senses had become, her visual periphery might as well have been Christine closely examining Rebecca point-blank in return. Nothing escaped her, and she could likewise tell that Rebecca was wary and watchful towards her in ways the others didn’t seem capable of. If she had to put the way Rebecca made her feel into words, she would say that while the others felt like simple prey, Rebecca felt like prey to be hunted with caution.

   But, not yet. I’m not a real vampire—yet. Christine paused again to listen for her own heartbeat. It may have been her imagination, but it felt like it was getting quieter.

   Upon the arrival of Megan and Rebecca, another useless round of discourse explaining what everyone thought was going on went around—even that wasn’t particularly clear to them—and Rebecca had given Christine a brief physical examination, checking her breathing and pulse. She was still breathing, and her heart was still a weak throb in her chest. The only interesting new discovery was that Christine now had exacting, precise control over how her own eyes dilated, while normally that was just the human body’s autonomous response to light conditions.

   Megan was hanging far back from the three crying girls, but stuck to the opposite side of the waiting room as Christine in clear avoidance. The overweight girl once again smelled unpleasant, but to her heightened senses the sweat smelled off, unbalanced. A thyroid or glandular problem of some sort. Christine forced herself to stop staring across the room at the girl’s swollen neck. It was distracting.

   “Chloe?” Rebecca prompted again.

   Oh? Christine didn’t turn to face the girl. Did that warrant some kind of response? Was my REMAINING silent not just a tacit agreement that yes, my oh my Rebecca, I certainly am very gosh darned quiet?

   Her mind was processing everything much faster since the change, as if its workings had been strangled and clogged with an overgrowth of the unnecessary. Distractions of the old sort faded into a sort of ponderous irrelevance, now. Christine didn’t think herself more intelligent, simply more efficient at reaching the same admittedly midwit conclusions she would in normal circumstances. The idea wasn’t particularly humbling or shameful—it simply was what it was, and that was that. She had always known herself clever in certain ways and very much so lacking thought in other ways.

   The magical pall of self-reflection that hung over her forced her to accept that.

   “I don’t have anything to say,” Christine finally turned to Rebecca. “I don’t accept or understand what’s going on, but somehow all of… this is happening anyways. I feel like I’m waiting for someone else to make better sense of it all, but…”

   She made a small gesture towards the huddle of sobbing idiots.

   No, that wasn’t fair. They weren’t idiots, and their over-emotional display was something she actually could understand. Christine just found herself so impatient, and the sterile silver light of reflection that seemed to hang above her in turn made her eminently aware of every subconscious attempt to displace her rising anxiety about the situation onto anyone or anything else. She was growing irritable, that terrible parched sensation had crept up across the roof of her mouth, and the bullshit magically imposed constant self-awareness wasn’t helping.

   So, I’m not perfect, Christine wanted to scowl, but instead kept her face composed into a passive mask as she watched Stephanie, Kelly, and Emily hugging it out. So, I’m really, REALLY not perfect. So what if I have a few flaws? Or if my character isn’t great. Whose is? So what if I am, in fact, a deeply flawed person? Who isn’t?! Who DOESN’T have crippling psychological problems that damage all of their relationships and harm everyone around them?

   She really wanted a drink, and water wasn’t going to satisfy.

   The compulsion to drink blood had all been fanciful abstracts and whimsical yearning in the Dusk vampire drama books Christine had been obsessed with in her younger years. The reality of the thirst here was just really, really fucking unpleasant. She felt like she was experiencing sudden-onset strep throat; it even hurt to swallow, now. Whatever magical bullshit nonsense was empowering the stupid strength and speed she wasn’t even using right now was overdrawing inner reserves and sucking out all of the moisture from inside her body—it felt like she was second by second mummifying into a husk.

   Except it’s not MOISTURE, exactly, Christine grit her teeth. It’s not WATER. It’s not even BLOOD, really, I don’t think. It’s just associated with it. It’s VITALITY, it’s LIFE. The supernatural shit wasn’t like some free powerup, it’s like it’s just burning up my existence ten times as fast. Which is REALLY COOL, until it isn’t.

   “Alright,” Rebecca sighed with reluctance. “I just want you to know that I’m worried about you. We’re going to figure things out, you know? You’re going to be okay.”

   The vestigial Chloe parts of Christine’s psyche wanted to turn a sneer up at her friend’s misplaced optimism. At some point soon the constant resource drain from simply existing was sure to stop her heart, and then that was it. She wasn’t sure what would happen when she ‘died,’ or transitioned the rest of the way into becoming a vampire. But, she could easily imagine the raw NEED for blood would blot out every other thought. The need would overpower everything else, and she wasn’t sure what she would do.

   No. No, I know exactly what I’ll do, Christine admitted to herself.

   It was hard not to think about how gory that was going to be, and despite struggling not to imagine it, hunger pains cramped her stomach and that dizzying headache was beginning to appear. If her heart stopped, sheer instinct to survive would win out. Like a drowning person fighting desperately upwards for air, Christine knew she would turn these hospital halls into a slaughterhouse once she needed to.

   All she could do was hope she wouldn’t need to—time would tell, but the thirst was definitely growing.

/// Short bit today, just want to get back into regular output. Real easy to get hung up somewhere once you've scrapped and rewritten a big section twice.