AuthorPalt
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Needletonge, Carrotcake Ch.4
🕑 Added 2022-06-15 20:14:40 +0000 UTCAs they say, the night is young. Vernon Hell-whatever won’t tell me what I can and can’t do? Fine. I’ll just find out on my own. How hard can it be?
I take a deep breath. The cold against my gums and the nauseating smell of the sugar plant take me by surprise and I stumble away from the window. I poke my fingers inside my mouth again. No sign of any new teeth growing in. But that can’t really be it. Cool, sharp teeth are the signature of every vampire. Who ever heard of a toothless vampire?
My feet go cold and I remember her red lips and her rubbery gums.
No teeth. None at all.
For some reason, I laugh a little. What’s the time? Has dad eaten yet? Is it too late to go home? I clench my lips shut, prepared to grind my teeth, only to find soft gums hitting soft gums. The sensation is horrible and slimy and I instinctually throw my mouth open. In the moonlit front of a broken window I spot my own face, my horrible toothless mouth and it makes me instantly shut it again. Apparently, if I just keep my lips closed and neutral, it isn’t too noticeable.
Slowly, I creep up to the window, looking at myself. I chance a smile but it looks weird, like my lips are just folding on themselves. Fake. I return it to neutrality but for some reason I look upset. I don’t feel all that upset. Maybe a little—well, a lot, actually—but not as much as the mirror suggests.
I turn away again. Neutral. Neutral. Neutral…
Pressing my fingers into my tense cheeks, I massage slowly, trying to consciously get used to the boneless feeling in there. Just flesh. Only flesh.
I slap both my cheeks.
Enough about that! I’m a vampire, aren’t I? Teeth or no teeth, a vampire is a vampire! If she could present herself as a full vampire, why can’t I? She was, she had…
…That tongue. That’s what she had. That… tongue.
I touch my right hand to my lips. For a few seconds, I just stand there, staring blankly at the wall, my fingers imprisoning my tongue. I swallow. My tongue feels normal in my mouth. Human. I don’t feel any needle-like spikes or bony protrusions. So why can’t I bring myself to prove it?
My left hand balls itself into a fist and I frown again. Get yourself together. Isn’t this what I always wanted?
Trembling only a little, I feel my tongue slip out from between my lips. And then through my hand, pressing itself between my middle-finger and index. I stare at it with ever widening eyes as it snakes out further, further. Like a serpent, or a worm, or a maggot. Writhing.
Like hers.
Violently, I grip the tongue with both hands, like I’m afraid it’s going to slip away like a salted eel. It hurts. My grip hurts but I can’t stop myself. I’m not thinking straight anymore. Was I ever? I can’t think at all. I don’t see my own tongue, I see hers. She’s there. Is she inside me? If I look in a mirror, if I look inside my mouth, will I see her face, her lips, her eyes?
I pull. It hurts. I pull more. I need it out. I need it gone. Pull, pull, pull, until I feel something rip and my mouth starts filling with blood. Metal. Salt.
My lips quiver and I feel something warm and wet slip out between them, trickling down my neck and onto my shirt.
I let go of my tongue and it slinks back inside my lips, over my gums, into the pit of my mouth, nestling in the small pool of blood that formed.
“A-, aughh…!” Gacking, groaning, I buckle over and let the rest of the blood spill out, down on the concrete floor, joining the pile of teeth still lying there. My breathing is warm and hot and my nose is filled with the scent of her breath. I snarl and spit on the floor again, and then when I right myself, I turn around and run. If I’d been braver I might have jumped out of the window to try and test my endurance, or if I could fly at all. But I’m starting to doubt I can do anything like that.
I’m running. I don’t know where I’m going. The world is blurry, but I can’t tell if that’s because of how fast I’m going or if I’m crying again.
I feel weak. But that can’t be right, can it? Vampires are strong, and fast, and can scare the pants off anybody. Vampires chase puny mortals through alleyways, they don’t run aimlessly like they’re afraid, because vampires can’t be afraid. I’ve read the books. Sure, some of them get afraid sometimes, but they always get out of it. Vampires are feared, not afraid.
Something here has to be wrong. She must have been a fake-,
The world whirls around me and I tumble and fall, crashing into something soft but scratching. I open my eyes. The world is still blurry, so I wipe at them, bringing the bush around me into clarity. That, and a very startled spider dangling just in front of my nose. Our eyes meet.
My lips are so tightly pressed together that I can’t feel them. I prepare to squeal and throw myself away when I suddenly hear a familiar voice shearing through the darkness.
“As I told you last night, finding her pupil will be-,”
Another voice, rumbling like the heart of a volcano, “I don’t need her alive.”
A pause. In the short silence, I let my eyes wander. Apparently, I’m in a bush, tangled within its branches. I can’t see much outside it, but going by the birches and the lamps, this has to be the Lark Garden, one of the few parks in this city. Why did I-,
A deep breath. “Of course. So you’ve said, but as my contract states, I don’t do those kinds of retrievals. By all means, if you want the pupil dead, you’ll need to go to a different contractor. If you want, sir, I happen to have a few business cards that you may be interested i-,”
“Earl.”
“...Yes, I’m sorry, my Earl.” I don’t dare peep through the bushes at them, but I can distinctly hear Vernon’s leather hard soles clicking against the concrete path. “There’s Westley, a bit pricey but he knows his way around a stake. I would personally recommend Harvey though, as far as I recall he has nothing against tracking and taking care of children.”
A wet rat lodges itself in my throat.
“No,” the Earl says. “It has to be you.”
Another sigh. “Just because I could find your ‘daughter’ once,” I can practically hear the citation marks, “doesn’t mean I can do the same again. And a child, too?”
“I’ll pay double.”
Silence again. “Double, is…”
“I am not forcing you, Hellbound. Have I used any vampiric tricks on you? Of course not. I could have approached you as a man, but I chose to show myself in confidence.” Far off, there’s a rustle in the trees, and the Earl pauses. After a few seconds he continues, “Whether you show me the same graciousness or not is up to you.”
“...I will continue searching, but I cannot bring you a body.”
“Good,” I can hear the smile in his voice, “I ask for nothing more.”
Questions and answers burn in the back of my head. I know exactly what I want to do but I don’t think doing it will be the right choice. At least, it wouldn’t be if I was just any mortal. But I’m not, am I? I’m a vampire. Maybe a fresh one, but a vampire nonetheless. If I was Darren Shan, what would I do?
Summoning all the courage I have, I shift myself just a little, trying to angle a gap in the branches so that I can see the face of the one who wants me dead. Just a little. Carefully, carefully…
Crack.
A branch beneath me snaps. My breath hitches.
Have you ever heard a furnace start? Or a fire being born? Sometimes it takes a long time, but other times, there’s this hissing gasp, like the fire is taking its first breath. That’s what I hear now, and that’s what it reminds me of. Fire. I can’t hear any footsteps approach, I want to think that nothing is approaching at all, but deep inside the back of my head, I know that I am now known.
Something crackles. Something burning. Heat like the midday sun steps closer. Hissing breaths that might be from the lanterns.
I press my hands against my lips, ignoring the disgusting feeling as my lip touches gums. I don’t breathe. I don’t know if vampires need to breathe or not but I know that whoever—whatever—is approaching is breathing.
The breathing is close now, just above me, with that fiery crackle just as near. In fear, I press my eyes shut. Maybe that way the transition to true darkness won’t be as bad.
“I want triple,” Vernon says, his voice cutting through the thick tension like a bullet through the air. “Otherwise, find someone else.”
The fire turns away. “With what I’ve offered you, even double would be enough to secure your future for the time being.” The voice is so close now. Rumbling. On the edge of erupting.
But Vernon isn’t stepping down. “Triple.”
The fire fades, moving away, “Fine. Have it your way, Hellbound. But I expect her alive.”
“Of course.” The click of hard soled shoes tell me he’s moving. I open my eyes again. Through a small hole in the shrubbery, I see them shake hands. My eyes glue themselves to the back of a coat. Something on the front of it must have been alight, because the shine of it illuminates the bottom half of Vernon’s face, making him look like he’s about to tell a scary story.
All I see of the Earl is his back, covered in a massive coat and a dark hat. I lean in closer to get a better look at him and something rustles. His face snaps towards me and all I see is a fire-lit ribcage surrounding a gaping, burning mouth before I throw myself out of the bush, away from Lark Garden, back onto the streets, moving faster than I thought I ever could.
Behind me, all I hear is a fire being doused as someone says, “Nothing but a stray cat.”
I run and I run and after what feels like a minute at most my breath feels cold and burning and my arms and legs are both on fire, pumping blood and acid through them at equal ferocity. I glance back. I’m not being pursued, but far away down the street, I see a small bush. The bush I came from. It’s small. Next to the park bench beside it, it’s hardly large enough to contain a child.
My face shifts into a grimace and I look back to the front just in time to see a bike crashing towards me. No, not a bike, some huge sort of monstrosity, some massive contraption that could only be called a bike in design. I freeze in terror and the bike—alongside its giant of a rider—screech around me, careening in a large arc just barely missing me.
The rider is a human, except that he’s the size of a tree. The bike and him have both fallen to the pavement. The biker isn’t saying anything, and he mostly seems startled. As he pulls up his upper body, his eyes meet mine. “...A cat?”
I blink at him. I open my mouth to snarkily say, ‘A human?’ but instead I hear myself say, “Me-meow?”
I have never before wanted to punch myself as much as now. Then again, the cat impression was stunningly life-like, so maybe this is as good a reason as any to get into the voice-acting business.
He starts trying to get up but his bike is on top of him. Moving purely by instinct, I approach and reach out in an attempt to help him, but instead of grabbing hold of the bike, a black cat’s paw falls on top of it. “Are you trying to help me?” the biker says in the kind of voice you use to talk to animals and stupid people. “Heh, no worries kitty, I can take care of myself.”
And with that, pushes the bike off himself and stands up to his full height of dad-when-you-were-four. He genuinely dwarfs me, and not in the normal way. I barely reach up to his ankle.
He reaches down and before I can unfreeze myself enough to react he drags his hand across my head and down my back. Something that… doesn’t actually feel… all that bad…
“Purrrr…”
He smiles down at me. “You like that, don’cha? Sorry for almost running you over, guess you’ve got eight lives left now, huh?” And then he picks me up. One hand under my chest, the other pressing my back, like I’m a damn cat. Like I’m a…
He holds me up to his face and checks my neck. “No collar. A stray, then? But your pelt is so soft… Did you run away from home?”
What the hell is he even saying? My mind is whirling enough as it is, and with a horrible realisation dawning in the back of my head, I decide that the best idea right now is probably to get the hell away from this guy. And so, I struggle and squirm. But his grip is like a vice and my movement does nothing but irritate him. “Didn’t like me asking invasive questions, didja? Well, alright, just stop struggling and…”
His grip relaxes slightly and I kick myself away from him, down what feels like a twenty foot drop, only to fetter it with my hands and then my feet, running away from the giant as though I didn’t just basically fall from the roof of a house.
What the hell, what the hell, what the hell.
I’m running again, but not along the streets anymore. I’m jumping onto walls that should be impossible to climb, over housetops and across roads at impossible speeds.
Something here is very wrong.
I only stop once I’m outside my apartment building. As expected, it is the size of a skyscraper. Just absolutely massive. Even the door is immense, and I can’t open it no matter how much I push against it. Crying out for help does nothing but make cat’s meows erupt from my throat.
I pace outside the door for at least ten minutes before finally deciding to accept reality.
I pad over to a nearby brushery and take a seat on the grass. I hold up my hand to my face.
It’s a fucking paw.
Black in colour, smooth and shiny, almost silk-like. A cat’s paw. If I turn my head around, I can see that the rest of my body is similarly furry. Like a cat. If I touch my face I find it elongated. My ears are pointed and…
Hey, my teeth are back!
They’re sharper, though. As might be expected from cat teeth.
After all, I am, somehow, for whatever reason, a cat. I want to bury my face in my hands but the anatomy of a cat doesn’t allow it. My elbows aren’t quite mobile enough for that. I’m left to just kind of sigh longingly and unhappily.
Why not a bat? I like bats. Bats can fly, which is cool. Most people who see a bat are startled, some are even afraid. Instant spook-a-bitch. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone get genuinely afraid of a cat outside of television. Except if the cat is acting like a feral, rabid animal, which I am nowhere near psychopathic enough to do. Biting people is…
Well, if it’s to suck blood, then I can do it, but not if it’s just to scare people. Too primitive.
Back to the matter at hand: I am a cat. I have the body of a cat.
Pets aren’t allowed in our apartment. Fish? No. Insects? Not a chance. Dogs? Absolutely impossible. I swear Mister Flyby has a sixth sense about these things.
The chances of a cat sneaking inside are close to zero. In other words, I’d probably do best to turn back into my, uh, human form. Saying vampire form would be weird, but… Anyways.
Turn back, turn back… Shouldn’t this process be, I dunno, instinctual? I didn’t even notice transforming into a cat, shouldn’t the turning-back process be similarily unconcious? Maybe if I just think it hard enough?
‘I no longer want to be a cat!’
…
Yeah, that did nothing. Maybe I need to say it aloud?
“Meo-meow meow meow!”
…I want to die? Wow. That was actually horrible. I genuinely-,
“Hmm?” The bushes behind me part. “Poor little meow-meow?”
I know that voice. I know that voice very well. The voice of the pet-hating man I have ruefully known all my life. Trembling, staring in terror, I turn around to view my dad’s landlord and the owner of the apartment building: Mister Flyby. His doughy face, complete with awful thick-rimmed 70’s style glasses and an ill-fitting mullet (on a man well over sixty) makes my meek sense of style quiver in fear, but right now I have more than that to fear.
See, I may not know the people in this complex too well, but dad tells me a lot of stories. Stories about what happens to the pets of those who keep them here. Explanations to why it is that even when the rest of the city is overrun with strays of every kind, this city block remains empty and clean. And it’s all him.
Should I run? Do I have time? If I shoot out my tongue at him, will he get scared and run away? Do I even have my tongue?
He reaches towards me. I have no time to react as his hands carefully braid themselves through my armpits and over my chest. He lifts me into the air until we are face to face. If cats can sweat, then that’s what I’m doing right now. “That’a, boy. You’re a pretty ‘un. Kinda small. Juvie, eh?”
…Needletongue sneak-attack!!
I poke out my tongue at him. It isn’t long, and there’s nothing at the tip of it.
He stares at me. Then, he turns away. With the light hitting his glasses, I can’t see his eyes. I have no idea what he’s thinking or feeling. Is this it? Is this how I die? Now, when I have finally assumed my true vampiric form? I always knew the world was cruel, but this is too much. Maybe I should plead for my life? “Mao. Meo-maw. Meow meow. Me-,”
I can’t utter another syllable before he abruptly sticks me inside his coat. It smells like fur and animal and yet another form of panic erupts through my body. I’m not the first. I won’t be the last. Oh, god.
It is at this point that I find out that cats can’t naturally cry.
Everything goes black around me and I can’t see anything. All I can hear is his footsteps as he enters inside the building and closes the door. There’s a jingle of keys. That must mean the time is midnight. He always locks it up at this time.
Ten, twenty seconds pass without him moving an inch or locking the door. I’m starting to wonder why when the door creaks open again and I hear the panting of the same woman I met earlier today. “Oh, thank you Flyby, little Sarah cut herself on a plate shard in the kitchen and we didn’t have any McQueen band-aids left, and you know how it is with kids, so I ran down to the store…”
While she’s rambling on about this or that, Flyby closes the door and twists the key in them, closing up for good. “If that’s the case then I suppose you’d do best to hurry, ‘ain’t that true?”
“Oh, yes, of course, I’d better…” He pauses, hesitates before taking another step. “Say, what’ve you got in there?”
Flyby presses me closer to his chest. “Nuthin’. I was out shopping myself earlier. Trying to keep my dinner hot. You know how it is.”
“Oh,” she says, “yes, of course. In that case, I’ll leave you to it. Thank you for holding the door, Flyby, hope you have a good night.”
“You too, Mrs Peninsula.”
Now in hindsight, if I wanted to survive, I could have tried thrashing really hard while her attention was anyways on his coat. But I didn’t want to interrupt their nice chat, and besides, what good will thrashing do? Even if I got out I’d still be stuck in the lobby, so this really just saves everyone time.
Maybe.
While I’m pondering my past and future, Flyby finishes locking up and heads up the stairs. He lives on the first floor, so the walk between the front door and his apartment is a short one. Now that I think about it, I’ve never actually seen his apartment, not that I’ve talked to him much at all. Maybe it’s filled with animal torture contraptions. Maybe the walls are covered in blood and desperate scratch-marks. Maybe it smells like rotten flesh.
The door clicks open and he steps inside, locking it behind him. My heart, probably the size of a grape, is pounding like a snare. The coat opens up.
Lights blinds me and he pulls me out. “There ya go. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
The room that meets my squinting eyes is filled with neither blood nor guts.
It’s cats. Cats and dogs. Like, dozens of them.
The dogs all rush Flyby, their tails wagging back and forth and their snouts pressing against his legs and arms—and me—with such intense curiosity that I freeze. “Now, now. Take it easy on him.” With those soft words, the dogs step off, letting the smaller cats have their turn at sniffing his feet, making sure that it’s really him.
He’s petting my absently while he talks in a calm, measured voice, “First thing in the morning is I’ll take you to the vet, have ‘em give you some vaccines, check if you need anything else, and then…” He smiles warmly. “What comes after that is up to you.”
To say that Flyby loved animals might have been a bit of an understatement. Personally, I think the word ‘obsession’ would be more fitting. From what I’ve seen by his short tour, he keeps all of the following animals: cats, dogs, birds, fishes, insects, molluscs both on land and in water, alongside a fair number of reptiles. I’d call him a hypocrite if I wasn’t so impressed. I mean, these things aren’t living in squalor or anything. The dogs love him, the cats are content in his presence, the fishes and their tanks are spotless…
It’s like a small slice of animal heaven.
He puts me on the couch. Earlier, he tried to feed me kibble, but I’m not that desperate, so he let me be. Now, I’m lying on the couch, watching him watch cartoon movies on a nice flat screen. Animals are crowding the couches, but few of them dare approach where I lay.
This is nice and all, but how am I supposed to escape?
