*****I wrote this story for a magazine then added the steamy parts so it takes a little while to get to the good stuff. Hope you like it.--caitlin****
It was crazy to be going back. He knew it as he felt the wind in his face, thinking of anything but his destination. Anything but the reason for going back. There was little else. He passed a rest stop. He had stopped there once.
"Pull over." Kerry had laughed. "Jayna has got to pee. Look at the poor thing." Jayna looked up and frowned, biting her lip as if in fierce concentration. "Oh no, dad." Gabe said, "I think she's gonna go in your car." Paul laughed, watching Kerry's horrified expression. Jayna hadn't had an accident in over two years.
Kerry was beautiful. Paul had always thought so. His dad thought so too. So much so that he hadn't had a drink in almost three weeks. It wasn't that he was an alcoholic. It was that he tended to get both violent and extremely forgetful when he was drunk. He wouldn't hurt anyone. He'd never hurt anyone, but he had been known to smash the occasional mirror and pick up the occasional prostitute. He had a thing for prostitutes. But he also had a thing for Kerry and Kerry meant business. She told him she would leave if he so much as looked at an alcoholic drink. Paul wondered if she would actually do it. He would find out soon enough he was sure. As far as he knew, his dad had never went more than three weeks without a drink, and it was starting to show. He wanted a drink, but it could cost him Kerry. And Kerry was really something. Even Gabe liked her. Gabe didn't like much of anyone. Not since his mother died. At school he was quiet and distant. His teachers worried. At home, he spent all his time with Jayna. But something was changing in him the more time he spent around Kerry. Something in him was healing. He was almost happy lately. It didn't make much difference to him, taking off on this spontaneous adventure. After all, it was Kerry's idea.
"She's not going to go in the car." Their dad said, "Don't be silly, Gabe." But it was nice to see Gabe being silly about anything. It was nice to see him acting like a kid for the first time since their mother died. Paul felt tears in his eyes just thinking about her. She had been so wonderful. And, at the same time, so unlike Kerry. For Kerry, this trip, this spontaneity, was a last measure. Paul could see that if no one else could. She was trying, in so many ways, to make them a family. Maybe they all could have tried harder.
Paul shook his head, shaking off the memories and the pain that came with them. Sometimes there was a sort of pleasure that came with the memories, but here, so close to where it had all happened, there was only sadness. Sadness and a feeling not too far from terror.
The sun was still high in the sky, giving a faint shimmer to the road far ahead of him. A mirage. It had been raining the last time he was here, or perhaps, that was also a mirage. A mirage in the memory. Perhaps there was a better word for it. He had never been good with words. Gabe had been the one with the gift for words. Gabe, sitting in the back seat of the car, complaining that he could not see to write because of the rain. Of course, it had been raining. No mirage. No slip of the mind. He felt his mind was slipping a lot lately.
There was nothing ominous about the rest stop as he pulled into it. A young girl standing with her dog gave him a wary glance. He rubbed his chin, feeling the stubble that had begun to grow soft. He looked a bit rough when he didn't shave. Throw in the his long dark hair and he could understand a child's wary look. He nodded to her in a way that was polite but not quite friendly. He already looked rough. He didn't need anyone getting the wrong idea.
The place was the same. No different, really, from any other rest stop. But, there had been a difference. Inside.
"What do you think it is?" Gabe had asked, staring down at the toilet.
"Someone threw up. What's it look like?" Like someone had literally puked their guts up. That's what it looked like. Like pieces of stomach mixed in with the blood and puke.
"It's scary. Can't we just go outside?" Paul was getting sick from the smell. Smell of puke and rot.
"We really shouldn't." His stomach lurched. Oh God! The stench! He watched around the side of the building so that Gabe could relieve himself, then took his own turn.
"Do you think they died?" Gabe asked as they walked to the car. "I don't know." Paul answered. They must have been really sick.
"Who's sick?" Kerry asked, looking worried again. She worried a lot.
"In the bathroom." Paul answered. "They're not here now. Someone puked blood all over the bathroom."
"Blood and pieces." Gabe informed them.
"Pieces of what?" Jayna asked.
"Their stomach." Gabe told her. "Huge chunks of it with blood and puke all over the bathroom."
"Ewww!" Jayna said, "Don't say stuff like that. Dad, don't let him say stuff like that."
Gabe shrugged. "She asked."
The blood was long gone. He hadn't really expected to see it. And at the same time he had. Had expected it so that he could almost smell it now. Could hear his father yelling from another room. "Oh God, Paul. I think I'm going to die!" And in the same room, Gabe puking his own stomach out onto the floor in little chunks. Bits of flesh and blood and puke.
"Hey, man, you okay?" The world came back to him with the summer heat. So many memories.
"Yeah. I'm fine."
"Had me worried for a minute there. You were just standing there, like you were going to be sick."
"If I'm lucky." Paul muttered, "Perhaps she will kill me too." He was speaking madness again. He was mad they said. Crazy.
"You don't really believe the things you are telling me, do you, Mr. Ryan?"
The last psychiatrist he went to called him Mr. Ryan. It shouldn't have been patronizing, but it was. "Call me Paul." He said. "Yes sir." She wrote something in her little notebook. "You understand that such a creature couldn't possibly exist."
"And why couldn't it?"
"Do you believe in vampires, Mr. Ryan?"
"She wasn't a vampire."
