Tuesday morning was markedly better than Monday morning for Ty. He awoke refreshed, feeling vital and well-rested, having slept through most of the previous day. Also, it helps to have been spared any nightmare creatures visiting him in the dead of night. He was able to get up, and get his coveralls on without vomiting anywhere, a marked improvement in his book.
"If you got sick again, I
don't
want to hear about it!" Mal's sing-song voice carried in from the hallway, accompanied by a cackle from Bek.
Ty sighed. Despite one of them being a vampire now, his sisters clearly weren't having any trouble falling back into their normal routine. He moved to unlock his bedroom door, but found it already ajar.
The message from Bek was clear:
Locks can't stop me.
He rubbed his temple-
or perhaps I never locked it at all?
He certainly hadn't eaten or drank anything, judging by the growling in his stomach, and the dryness of his mouth.
Just because vampires are real, it doesn't mean everything is beyond explanation.
He mused.
The house was small, veritably cramped. He and his father both had small solo rooms, but the girls shared the former master bedroom when Bek was in-town. They shared a single bathroom, although Abraham occasionally brushed his teeth in the kitchen sink on the floor below (if only to escape the mess his children created).
"You stink!" Mal brushed past him, a book bag slung over her shoulder. "Try brushing your teeth sometime, it'll help." She quipped, ducking into his room as though it were her own, a clear endorsement of his tendency to lock his door.
Ty sidled into the bathroom, finding Bek seated on the tank of the toilet in a two-piece pyjama set, feet on the lid, flossing.
"She's right, dental care is essential." She winked, baring her teeth and letting her fangs extend for the barest moment before withdrawing back to their normal length.
"Don't do that!" Ty hissed, peering out the bathroom door. "Dad would be a lot less understanding than me!" He opened the mirrored medicine cabinet to withdraw his toothbrush, noting Bek's lack of reflection, the floss seemingly floating in mid-air above the toilet. The sight unsettled him, and he quickly closed it.
"Oh ye of little faith." Bek snickered. "I think he'd be overjoyed to hear it." Her voice was slightly muffled as she attempted to reach her rear incisors.
"Overjoyed to hear what?" Abraham stuck his head into the bathroom, causing Ty to almost fumble his toothpaste in surprise. The grizzled older man was at just too obtuse an angle to get a reflection, or lack thereof, from Bek- but a few degrees more and he'd spot the issue.
"I'm thinking about joining a sorority." Bek lied smoothly, withdrawing the floss from her mouth, and hooking a thumbnail under an incisor as if to pick at a speck of food she hadn't been able to dislodge. Ty forced himself to focus on his own oral hygiene, stifling his laughter at the thought of Bek hanging out with sorority girls. "You know, make connections and all that stuff." She shrugged.
"I think it's a fine idea-" Abraham began.
"Terrible idea!" Mal called over his shoulder, before taking the stairs downward three at a time in search of coffee. Their father sighed.
"I think it's a fine idea, it'll give you an opportunity to learn to work well with others." Abraham adopted a fatherly, mentoring cadence, like a preacher attending to his pulpit. "And of course, to build friendships to last a lifetime, why, I remember in my day-" He started into a sermon regarding the importance of building connections, but was again interrupted by one of his daughters.
"Why, back in my day you could buy a whole house for two nickels and a bucket of clams, pulled fresh from the river!" Bek adopted an exaggerated 'crazy old man' accent, comically miming using a cane, even in her seated position. She'd always been the one to take the wind out of her father's sails just as he got into one of his famed speeches.
"Remind me why I pay your tuition?" Abraham gave her a mock scowl, but his twinkling eyes belied his true feelings. Ty knew that at his core, his father was a family man, and doubtless enjoyed having all three kids under one roof.
"Something about putting my smart mouth to good use?" His older sister quipped as she hopped down from the tank, dropping her floss into the trash and scooting past her father, giving him a peck on the cheek for his troubles. Ty almost choked as he rinsed, thinking about how she'd been using her mouth the previous day. Abraham grumbled something noncommittal in response, distracted by the pinging of his phone. Despite his childrens' best attempts to drag him into the modern day, he insisted on keeping notifications on at full volume.
"We've got to roll in a little early, Ty." The older man quietly observed his son for a moment. "Are you feeling okay? It seemed like you were at death's door this time yesterday." Ty slapped his toothbrush back into its holder, thinking guiltily about his supernatural regeneration.
"I'm good, it must've just been a stomach bug or something." Ty met his father's gaze. He hadn't realized that they were almost the same height -Abraham had always loomed so massively in his life that he'd seemed taller- but in that moment, they were equal. Abraham regarded him for a moment, his face impassive.
"If you do end up feeling poorly, don't push yourself." He paused, as if considering launching into another sermon, but he kept his voice low, keeping their conversation private. "Being part of a team means you have to know your own limits. I won't be disappointed if you have to tap out, I'll be
mad
if you don't, and end up hurting yourself." The mood was momentarily dour, the air heavy with expectations, a father's dream for his son.
*Ding!*
Abraham's phone exclaimed, breaking into their silent moment.
"I won't let you down." Ty gave his father a weak, awkward smile.
Abraham returned the smile, with much more warmth and reassurance, before turning back out into the hallway.
Ty's phone buzzed as he followed his father, down the hall, and to the top of the stairs.
Bek: don't be so serious ;)
Ty: Things will get a lot more serious if you get caught.
Bek: don't you mean if 'we' get caught?
Ty: Well, I won't be getting staked if we get caught.
Bek: I guess we'd better be super duper sneaky
Ty: Can you just try to not get in trouble while we're out? Just like, stay home, don't take risks.
Bek: tell you what, I'll be here when you get home
Bek: waiting for you
Bek: so we can do the thing
Bek: you know, like the blood drinking thing?
Ty: I know what you're talking about, you don't have to keep bringing it up.
Bek: okay grumpy, have a good day and such <3
Ty grimaced as he stepped out the front door of their house, towards the '01 Ford Abraham kept running with string, sweat, and duct tape. Despite his reservations, he couldn't deny that one part of the creature his older sister had become was still the same old Bek: her fundamental inability to take anything seriously.
They drove into work in a terse silence. The wider Philadelphia metro was changing, gentrifying, putting up giant apartment blocks for the wealthy and privileged. But regardless of where you go, some streets and neighborhoods are just resistant to the passage of time, stubbornly holding onto decade-old slatted siding and dilapidated front porches. Residents remain destitute despite living at the theoretical intersection of commerce, holding out until retirement would allow them to abandon the factory floor (or until they died there).
The correct term for a steel plant depends on its precise purpose- production of iron from ore, refinement of iron into steel, casting, scrapping, rolling and roughing of all kinds. But the residents south of Philly didn't particularly care for the minutia of such distinction, and simply referred to it as "the plant", "the mill" or "the factory" interchangeably. From Ty's experience, it was a lot more rolling and scrapping than casting and production, those dirty and energy-intensive processes having been long shipped to Pittsburgh, or more recently, overseas, leaving only the looming smokestacks to remind the city that it used to make things.
Ty stared up at them as he and his father trudged up towards the employee entrance. He'd been relegated to paperwork for six months, barely getting out of the office to tour the labyrinthine production floor. Doing it this way allowed him (as Abraham had insisted) to know the inputs and outflows of each process, and to assign a hazy approximation of a number to each day's production quota.
Ty caught himself as he clocked in, almost returning his timecard to the section reserved for office workers. He grinned at his father as he slipped it down a row, alongside the rest of the crew. He wasn't about to get stuck doing paperwork for the rest of his life.
They donned their PPE, and set out across Two-West, the most familiar area to Ty, cluttered with welders, jawing away to one another, heedless of their flaring acetylene torches. A dizzying maze of corridors followed, cobbled together throughout over a hundred years of operation.
Three-West, full of jumping sparks and an acrid black smoke, workers wearing hoods waved to them through the plastic of a hastily-constructed, seemingly-temporary fume tunnel.
Then Two-East, with marching conveyor belts covered in jagged, glittering bits of metal, totally uninhabited by humans but bustling with robotic arms snatching and spinning with an unerring speed and alacrity.
