Have you ever gotten blackout drunk? And I don't mean just for a night, but for an extended period where when you finally wake up, for a while you have no idea who or when you are and all you know is that you're sober and you don't like it one little bit. Yeah, that was me, and my waking up was problematic, to say the least.

See, there's waking up from a blackout and then there's waking up from a blackout, slumped in a chair in a darkened club and realizing that Harry the motherfucking vampire, has been waiting for you to wake the fuck up. And then you realize that for the first time in what feels like forever, you're 100% sober.

"Fuck," I said, as eloquent as ever.

Harry was seated in a large leather-bound chair that looked like someone had dragged it from the corner specifically for this conversation. It was large and heavy and awkward and moving it had involved a certain level of difficulty that pisses off the person moving it, because they know that they're going to have to be the one to put it back where it came from. It was that kind of chair. I would call it a throne, but let's not and say that we didn't, okay?

You know what clued me into the fact that I was possibly in the worst kind of trouble? There was nobody else around in the club. We were completely alone. Okay, that wasn't the one thing. It was scary as hell since it was so quiet and dim, most of the light having been turned off and it had that heavy, boomy feel that only deserted buildings tend to have. It's almost as if the building itself has gone to sleep and is just waiting for people to come back so it can be alive again. You know the feeling, right? Well, that was bad enough, especially with the impending headache and slight panic attack I was having as I was struggling with an existential crisis and the fact that I couldn't remember how I had gotten there, yet there was an indefinite sense that a lot of time had passed.

I really knew I was in trouble when Harry slowly unwrapped a piece of gum, ever so delicately.

Just so you know, there is never any situation that can be termed as "good" when you have a dangerous guy like Harry sitting alone in a room with a guy like me. When said dangerous guy is about to eat something, somebody is getting hurt. I was actually glad it wasn't an apple because according to movie rules that would mean I was about to be a dead man.

"There's a saying my da was always proud of trotting out whenever he wanted to be a complete ass," Harry said after a long moment. "I don't remember very much about my da you see, because it's been such a very long time, but this one thing always stuck with me over the decades and then the centuries. 'If you give a man enough rope, he will eventually hang himself.'" Harry paused to look at me, the gum unwrapped, letting the weight of that statement sink in properly. He continued after a moment. "I always hated when he said it, but it's been proven to be true time and time again. I meet someone new, I give them the benefit of the doubt and wait to see how long before they fuck it up."

Harry popped the gum into his mouth now and chewed very deliberately, intent on letting me know that it was me who had fucked up, and heavily implying that he had given me as much rope as he was willing to give.

I gathered myself, desperately trying to remember anything I had done, trying to remember just how bad I had screwed up. All I could remember was how sweet Meredith had been, how good her blood had tasted. There was a flash of a memory of sex in a bathroom, Meredith gasping in orgasm, but with the way my mind was I could have just been making shit up.

"I'm drawing a blank here, but is there any chance I can get a do-over?"

Harry stared at me over steepled fingertips and exhaled slowly.

"What the fuck are we going to do with you Bob? You're an addict—"

"Of course I'm an addict! Remember the bag of drugs that got me shot in the face?"

Harry waved it off and he may have shuddered a little. It was weird to see that I was having this much of an effect on him.

"From what I've seen of you, you were a terrible human being," he fairly spat at me, "and I think you might actually be a worse vampire!"

"Hello? Addict over here?"

"Your actions over the past couple of days have put us all at risk--"

"At risk of what exactly? From what I understand, you can just about shut down anything or anyone with the snap of your fingers... so exactly what risk can I pose? I'm just an addict, remember? And I seriously doubt I'm the first addict you've ever had to deal with, so respectfully speaking: fuck you."

That was definitely one step too far.

Harry blurred and the next thing I was aware of, my head was ringing and there were dark spots in front of my eyes. I was also twenty feet from where I had been sitting and apparently had made friends with the glass wall in front of the balcony. I had made friends really hard from the way the glass had dented and starred from the impact, the shatterproof coating the only thing that was stopping me from being covered in a rain of glass. Harry was on his feet and my chair was overturned, so apparently, I had been hit really hard.

I tried to move and pain spiked through my chest, the bones and muscles screaming at me. At least I knew where Harry had hit me.

"We're going to play a little game Bob. I hit you every time you tell me 'fuck you.' Simple rules."

"At least I know how much I ruined your carefully prepared speech," I said and dragged myself to my feet. "What exactly did you expect from me Harry? Huh? It's obvious that you don't like me and as much as you'd like to try fooling yourself and me, this was never about giving me a chance to do shit. You dragged me to this fucked up place after I'd gone through a traumatic, and not to mention normally life-ending event of a bullet to the head, which I survived only because I'm a vampire. Then you shove me in a room full of vampires and without so much as a warning, you introduce me, the addict, to the one substance on earth that you know vampires are massively addicted to. That's not an act of kindness or even waiting for me to fuck up. That's literally shoving the fucking needle in my arm and yelling at me because there's a fucking needle in my arm!"

I flexed my sore muscles, keeping an eye on Harry, wondering just how much I was pissing him off. I'd actually surprised myself at the sudden clarity of thought about just how much Harry was setting me up and truthfully, it scared the shit out of me. Usually, coming out of a blackout leaves my head seriously fucked up for days, but this wasn't an ordinary sobering up process. Once again Harry was playing a one-sided game and I was damned if he wasn't playing for keeps.

"I was going to have you killed you know," Harry finally said after a long moment.

"That's a little drastic, don't you think?"

"But then I thought that might be a little drastic. Times have changed Bob. It's not like it was a hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago. Even twenty years ago... but here's the thing: I have to think about what kind of message I'm sending. I've spent years changing how we vampires think. How we fit into the world. We can't keep on making the same mistakes, and believe me, a lot of mistakes have been made. So I'm going to make an example of you Bob. All of us have personally witnessed your personal brand of assholery and debauchery over the past three days and none of it has been pretty. You are now a prime example of exactly why we don't allow accidentals, so I have to thank you personally for being such a brilliant fuck-up. They all know who you are and they don't like you, because you remind them of what they could have been."

Well, fuck you too Harry. I made sure not to say that one out loud.

"Okay, that's a little harsh," I said instead. "A lot harsh really, but that only makes me want to ask one question. Do I still get free drinks?"

"Throw him off the roof," Harry said.

I have no idea where they even came from, but suddenly the bouncers Ryan and Ryan were there on both sides of me and had grabbed my arms and hoisted me into the air.

"I thought you said you weren't going to kill me!" I yelled at Harry's retreating back.

"It's not going to kill you," Harry called back.

"It's just going to hurt a lot," Ryan added.

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

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