Last Night on Earth

Their bodies joined twice more that evening leaving the couple tangled in Beth's bed sheets happy and sated. Beth rested comfortably on her back one arm stretched above her head and the other draped protectively across her body. Mick laid beside her the thu-mp thu-mp thu-mp of his human heart no longer a lullaby but a cruel reminder of everything that was slipping away from him.

He watched her sleep; watched her chest rise and fall with each breath she took. He smiled at the way her lips pursed and her nostrils flared as she exhaled softly. He studied her face illuminated by the lights from cars passing by outside, so serene so peaceful; her pale skin flushed from their lovemaking a contrast to the yellow sheets they were wrapped in. Her hair a golden halo against the pillow.

Thu-mp thu-mp thu-mp.

His heart beat was becoming more irregular now, beating faster then slower, slower then faster.

The last time they had made love Beth had taken notice. Mick was quick to kiss her softly assuring her that he was fine. The truth was he was not fine. He was far from fine. But he wasn't about to let Beth know that. Not when they were wrapped in each other's arms experiencing perfect bliss.

He could feel their dinner rising in his throat. He could feel his erratic pulse throughout his whole body. His body temperature had changed significantly in the past few minutes, a cold sweat breaking out over his torso. The vampire was claiming his body again.

Mick disentangled himself from the bed sheets careful not to disturb the blonde angel beside him. He slid out of the bed and rose to his feet, the room spinning around him making him dizzy. His heart thundered in his ears. He knew he needed to get dressed and leave immediately without waking Beth.

Mick moved to the floor swallowing hard. With each passing moment his nausea grew worse. He gathered his discarded clothes and snuck out of Beth' s bedroom. He dressed quickly and grabbed the keys to Beth's car, his wallet and phone from the kitchen table. He hurried out the front door just in time to spill the contents of his stomach on the sidewalk in front of Beth's mom's house. There were some things about being mortal he would not miss. Regaining his composure, Mick made his way to Beth's car hoping his mortality would last until he returned from his vital errands.

He drove in silence to the Riverside Community Clinic, trying hard not to think about the woman he had left at her home, the woman who could possibly wake up any moment in a panic wondering where he had gone off to. She deserved her pleasant dreams, not the nightmare Mick was once again descending into.

Mick met up with Ruben, Guillermo's contact, who was more than happy to supply him with what he needed. He paid him for his purchases and left the clinic with all the A Positive Ruben had in stock. Maybe he was overreacting, but he thought it best that precautions were taken. He was unsure of what the transformation would do to his appetite. He remembered what it felt like the first time he was turned. The insistent hunger, the pain. Consuming whatever blood his undead body needed would be the only way to keep the urges at bay; the only way to keep people around him safe. It wasn't like he could just go home back to LA. He was needed there in Riverside. Beth needed him.

As Mick left the clinic he felt his body temperature rapidly increasing. He needed to get himself into the coldest temperature available as soon as possible. Since going back to his freezer at home wasn't an option and he highly doubted Beth's mother had an industrial freezer he could sleep in, Mick determined that he would be sleeping in Beth's mother's bathtub for the remainder of their stay in Riverside. He just hoped that he could find somewhere that was not only open this late at night, but would also be willing to sell him ice in large quantities.

Mick drove back towards Beth's mother's house. He was certain there was a gas station or a convenience store nearby. He scanned the area around him a bright neon sign in the window of one store that advertised they had ice catching his eye. He pulled into the parking lot of Jake's Quick Stop Convenience, took the keys out of the ignition and got out of the car. He stumbled as he made his way to the entrance of the store his stomach beginning to turn again. He prayed that there wouldn't be a repeat of earlier. Mick took a deep breaths, rubbed his face with his hand and walked into the store. He quickly moved through the building searching for a freezer that held the ice he desperately needed.

After finding it along the back wall beside the beverage cooler, Mick opened the freezer door and grabbed as many bags as he could carry ignoring the pain it caused him. He then brought them over to the storefront where a young man who appeared to be college age was listening to his ipod. Mick knew that his appearance was probably somewhat alarming with the sweat that that was soaking the shirt he wore, his pale skin and reddened eyes, but he didn't care. His only concerns were purchasing the ice, getting it to the car and getting back to Beth's mom's before his body fully vamped out. Mick set the bags of ice he was holding on the counter and looked up at the cashier.

The cashier whose nametag read Tom pulled his headphones from his ears and looked at Mick.

"Can I help you man?" he asked his voice giving Mick the impression that he had been doing drugs before his shift.

"I'd like to buy 50 bags of ice." Mick informed him breathing heavily.

Tom laughed and leaned over the counter so he was closer to Mick.
"I'm not really sposed to sell that much ice at once unless its an emergency man but a keggar is an emergency right?"

Mick nodded. "Yeah a keggar... emergency. " he replied going along with what the cashier had said.

"Say no more dude. I've been there." Tom insisted. "I could help you carry it out to your car or something..."

" No. Thank you." Mick responded quickly.

Turning down Tom's offer probably wasn't the best idea at the moment. There was no way Mick would be able to carry it all himself. He was going to have to make quite a few trips to his car, but it was necessary for Tom and everyone else's safety.

"How much do I owe you?"

Tom sighed heavily and moved over to the register. "Okay a bag of ice costs a dollar I think so all that ice.."

Mick didn't even give the kid a chance to answer. Instead, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet and retrieved two fifty dollar bills from it. He dropped them on the counter, put his wallet away and grabbed the ice.

"That should cover it." Mick stated before he walked out the door with the ice making the first of many trips to the car.

Tom just stared at the money on the counter dumbfounded as Mick left the store.

"Um… we can't accept bills larger than twenty dollars. I don't know how to make change for this..."

When he realized his customer didn't care for the change he slipped the money into his pocket and went right back to listening to his Ipod watching as Mick moved in and out of the store carrying the ice he had just sold him.

By the time Mick had gotten all the ice into the car and driven home, his heart beat had slowed considerably. He could feel his organs beginning to shut down. Somehow, he managed to remove most of the bags of ice from Beth's car, bring them into the house and empty them into the bathtub. The last bag slipped from Mick's hands as he was pouring it, leaving half its contents on the floor around the tub. Mick groaned and made a mental note to clean it up later.

He quickly stripped out of his clothing and stepped into the tub lowering himself into the ice. He hissed as the cold ice made contact with his flesh. Being human, even for a short time had significantly changed his reaction to temperature. He leaned back against the porcelain tub, tears stinging his eyes. His last involuntary breath caught in his throat. His heart beat it's very last beat. Mick closed his eyes feeling the last remnants of his humanity spill down his cheeks. His fangs elongated painfully in his mouth, his eyes frosted their vampire silver-blue and all his senses instantly heightened. And then the phone rang.

The sound of the ringing phone echoed throughout the entire house ripping Beth from the happy place that was her current dream. She sat up clutching the sheet to her body with one hand and in the darkness reached across the night stand with the other. Somehow she managed to ignore the fact that Mick was no longer beside her and lifted the ringing phone to her ear.

Mick listened to the sounds around him every noise assaulting his senses. The drip-drip-drip of the faucet in the kitchen, the tick-tick-tick of the clock on the table in the living room, Beth's sobs...

"No!" He heard her desperate cry from her bedroom just a few doors down.

He knew immediately who had called. Beth's mother was gone.

"No-o!" she was sobbing hard.

Mick tried to summon the strength to rise up from the tub and go to her. But his newly transformed body had other plans. He heard her end the call and shuffle around her bedroom, her footfalls echoing against his ears. Mick prayed she would understand when she came into the bathroom looking for him. The last thing he wanted to do was upset her any further. He was supposed to be there for her. He was supposed to be helping her through her mother's death not causing her more pain.

Beth sat, in the middle of her bedroom, sobbing clutching the sheet around her. She had tried to gather her clothes from the floor but somehow ended up on her knees in front of the pile of clothes. The phone call had been a shock to her system. She knew her mother was dying, but she didn't think it'd be so soon. She tried to think about how she looked when she saw her earlier that evening. She tried to think about how she acted. Did her mother know it was going to be her last night when Beth told her she'd see her tomorrow? Did Mick know?

Beth rose from the floor, hot tears streaming down her cheeks. She walked over to the chair in the corner of her room and grabbed her bathrobe. She quickly put it on, wrapping it around her and knotting the belt securely. She then left her bedroom in search of Mick. Her mother was dead. All she wanted was Mick. She needed to feel his arms around her. She needed Mick to make everything better.

Beth moved through the darkness, fear coursing though her body. Hearing about her mother's death had left her feeling alone. But she wasn't alone. Mick was somewhere in the house. Wasn't he? So why was she so afraid? Why was she so scared of walking through her own house? It was just dark and the darkness couldn't hurt her. Could it? Beth didn't like the dark. She knew what kind of things happened in the dark.

The hallway was pitch black. She relied solely on her senses as she walked. The only source of light was the glow from the moon as it streamed through the kitchen window. Her instincts told her to walk through the darkness towards the bathroom door at the end of the hall. Beth stumbled, her foot catching on the runner at the end of the hallway. She fell against the bathroom door causing it to open under her weight. She grabbed the doorframe steadying herself and stepped into the bathroom.

Mick stayed completely still and silent where he laid in Beth's mother's tub. He wasn't yet sure how he was going to explain what had happened and the last thing Beth needed right now was more shocking news.

Beth could hardly see anything through the blackness but immediately noticed the moonlight from the window glistening against the tile floor. It was almost as if it were wet. She looked down at the floor; beneath her feet were small marble sized pieces of what appeared to be glass. But glass wouldn't make the floor wet. Her mind, already on overload tried to decipher the clues in front of her.

Ice?

Her heart sank when the only possible reason why there was ice on the floor of her mother's bathroom entered her thoughts. Bathroom...Ice..? Mick?

Beth recalled the day she had saved Mick from near death in the desert. After receiving a phone call from Leni Hayes, the young woman Mick had been protecting, Beth drove to one of the most run down looking motels she had ever seen, only to find him lying in a tub full of ice, pale wet and shaking. It was the day her blood had saved him. The one and only time he had fed from her.

But now Mick was human. The cure had made him human. her mind screamed at her. Humans didn't need to lay in bathtubs full of ice. Beth 's breath caught in her throat as she approached the large tub in the middle of the room. There Mick lay naked, pale and so still that if she didn't know he was vampire she'd have thought he was dead.

Beth lowered herself to the floor beside the bathtub, a strangled cry escaping her lips. She leaned back against the tub and pulled her robe tighter around her. She cried silently allowing the tears to fall.

Mick couldn't bear to see or hear Beth in pain. He opened his eyes and sat up slowly against his body's protests. He leaned over the side of the bathtub and lifted his arms bringing his hands to Beth's shoulders. She didn't even startle or move at the feeling of his hands on her body. Concerned she may be in shock, Mick spoke her name.

"Beth?" He asked.

Beth didn't respond.

"Beth." Mick said a little more forcefully.

"Do-n't Mick." she finally answered, her voice shaking. "Please. Don't say anything." She stared off into the darkness. "Ju-st... hold me?" she asked, her voice sounding small and scared.

Mick wrapped his arms around her, doing just what she asked. He felt her relax in his embrace, her breathing becoming soft and even after only a few minutes. Soon her tears had stopped completely and she had fallen asleep on the floor of her mother's bathroom in the arms of the vampire she loved.