I lowered my head onto the table top, suddenly exhausted and tried not to think of my broken leg. Claude was deep in thought, obviously vexed that he didn't have any answers for me. He liked to have answers to everything. It made coming up with an escape plan a lot easier when you knew exactly where you stood.

"I hate to break it to you dude, but I think you need Louise, or at least another vampire, to figure this out."

"And here I was hoping I could learn my vampire powers and be an instant badass so I could go and rescue Louise..."

"We don't even know where she is Dude. I'm sorry, but I'm officially out of ideas."

We were quiet for a long moment and I just stared out the window, trying not to let the sounds of Louise's screams echo through my head too much. The thing is, they were already fading in my memory and that was the worst of it all, the guilt that I wasn't panicking anymore, somehow getting used to the memory, which should have cut me deep for a very long time. When Judy came to take my order, I barely noticed, so she just refilled my Pepsi and walked away.

I felt a wave of depression coming in the way that it always did, slow-building and inevitable, sucking all of the air out of the room and making even the simplest task seem impossible. I grinned haplessly in the face of it, tried to not go under.

"Maybe there is a guidebook or something on its way in the mail right now..."

Claude looked a little uncomfortable and placed his phone down onto the table, face down. Uh oh, this was going to be bad news...

"I've got one more bit of bad news..."

See?

"Let me have it."

"I have this job-type thing that I've been setting up for a couple of weeks. Which means I'm going to have to fly out to New York in the morning."

Panic. Don't panic. Don't react. Damn, it was hard not to react at all, and Claude could see the look on my face, could see me trying to deal with it like my world wasn't coming to an end. Until that point, I hadn't realized just how much I was depending on Claude to be my sanity and help me through this whole vampire experience. It was useful to have him to talk to and try to figure things out, to avoid the insanity of the situation. We were a team, unstoppable once we got rolling and once I finally started listening to him, but now how the hell was I going to figure things out on my own? I knew myself and how much I managed to fuck things up without even trying.

I tried to smile again, tried to make a joke out of it, but I wasn't buying it and neither was Claude.

"You're abandoning me? At a time like this? Hashtag what the fuck?"

"Unfortunately yes. It's kind of a big deal, otherwise I'd bail on it... what are you doing? You look constipated."

I had my fingers to my temples again and I had been concentrating super hard at Claude, enough to give me an instant headache.

"I'm compelling you to stay."

"Look, you can stay at my place while I'm gone. There's plenty of food and fast internet—"

"And great big windows to let the sunshine in on mornings."

Claude looked like someone had punched him in the gut.

"Oh. I kinda forgot about the sunlight thing."

I smiled.

"Don't worry about it, dude. I'll figure it out. I'm a big boy."

***

I didn't let Claude help me inside when he dropped me off at my place. I insisted on hobbling in and asked him if he was going to also kiss me goodnight and he allowed me to escape and pretend to be tough.

I was trying to not be an asshole about him leaving since I was mainly freaking out. Besides you don't want to be an asshole to your friends, not really anyway, especially if you want them to stay friends. Yes the occasional mean jab happens, is in fact practically required, but you don't cross the line into asshole behaviour.

Claude had to leave and that was that. It had nothing to do with me and I couldn't take it personally. Besides, it was only for a couple of days, right? What could possibly go wrong in that time?

This is of course where Julio "everything that could possibly go wrong" Hernandes, enters the picture.

Julio was the drug dealer who lived in my complex. He was coming back from a car across the street as I hobbled away from Claude. The car sped off the same time as Claude and Julio kept a careful eye on me until he recognized that it was me. Then he broke out into a huge shit-eating grin and some more swagger instantly entered into his walk.

"Hey Roberto, mi amigo. What the hell happened to your foot, man?"

I shrugged and looked down at the boot on my itchy foot.

"Stylish right? All the kids are wearing them these days," I joked. I jerked a thumb at my building. "I fell off the roof earlier. Broke my foot."

"Oh that's harsh man. Better to hurt a los pies than la cabeza, yeah?"

It took my brain a second to catch up. I spent 99% of my time speaking English unless I was around other Spanish speakers, and I still had to switch gears. When you're thinking in one language it's hard to stop translating everything and to just think the words.

"Damn straight, " I said and fell into step with Julio, more hobbling than anything as we walked back towards my unit.

To call it a complex is a bit of an overstatement. The original owners had purchased a huge lot and had built 10 semi-detached houses with a shared courtyard in the middle. They had then sectioned off the basements to have their own entrance and small sunken balcony in the back and had rented them out as separate units. Some of the houses were divided even further with an upstairs and downstairs apartment as well. I lived in the basement since that was cheapest and since I wasn't home at night, I didn't have to listen to people walking around above me all the time.

Julio lived in one of the other upstairs apartments with his girlfriend Sheila and a constant revolving cast of colourful and potentially dangerous characters. When I had showed up, I think he had been glad to see another Latino in the neighbourhood. I had been happy to know where the drug dealer was, so we had become instant bros despite the fact that we had nothing else in common.

"I don't owe you any money do I?" I asked him cautiously, and he just laughed and shook his head.

"Nah man, you're good, you're good. Got a little opportunity if you'd like to earn some cash though."

"How illegal is it?"

"Same deal as last time yo. Technically it's not illegal if you don't get caught, so just don't get caught, alright?"

I considered and shrugged. Why the hell not? It's always a good idea to be on the "nicer" side of your neighbourhood drug dealer, especially if you could score some drugs out of it... Besides, all I had to do was stash whatever bag he was going to give me and make sure he got it back. Easy money all around.

"Throw in a little something extra for me and you got a deal."

Ten minutes later I was inside my apartment and was seriously considering taking my boot off to see how my foot was doing. The big black bag Julio had left in my questionable care was open on the floor in front of me, full of clear-wrapped bricks of drugs that I was not to touch under any circumstances.

"I'll cut off your fucking balls and feed them to you," Julio had threatened, and he hadn't been kidding.

I had given an enthusiastic thumbs up, especially since he had provided a special brick just for my own entertainment.

What are you looking at me like that for? I already said I had a substance abuse problem, so none of this should surprise you. Did you think I was kidding?

I'm not ashamed to say that I prepared to shoot up and I was really looking forward to it, but even as I waited for the drugs to flow through my veins, waited for that feeling of euphoria, I had time to wonder what my new vampire senses were going to make of the experience. I had every reason at the time to expect the ultimate high.

What I didn't expect was a sudden rush of numbness and then... nothing.

I shot up again, thinking that maybe the drugs were defective, that maybe I was doing something wrong, but there was nothing doing, just the inescapable feeling of definitely not being high. The third needle had the same effect, the same desperate lack of anything at all. Thinking that Julio had somehow duped me, I did the unthinkable and opened one of the other bricks in the bag, the ones which I was never to touch on pain of death, but I was desperate dammit. It was only after I had injected twice from that new batch that I was finally convinced of the awful truth sticking out of my veins.

Drugs no longer had any effect on me.

Fuck.

******** AUTHOR'S NOTE **********

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