You run your mouth
your tongue fell out
It's right there on the ground
But now, you'll never drown
You can't, you got no mouth
So it ain't all bad now

What doesn't kill you
Makes you ugly
Life gives you lemons
At least it gave you something

So if I break my face, and I don't look so great
My face is just my face
I'm okay

- AJR, "Break My Face"

The evening of September 2nd, 2017 didn't start out unusually. Still sleepy, his burgundy velvet robe hanging off his shoulder and his hair falling in his face, Vladislav emerged from his cave-like bedroom and ambled downstairs. He picked up the utility bill from the credenza, which was laid out conspicuously for him, diagonal across an otherwise straight pile of incoming mail. He ripped open the letter, leaving the torn envelope askew on the pile, and plopped down on the couch next to the landline, knocking the slipcover loose. Vladislav fiddled with the edge of it, revealing the old brown blood stains underneath as he called the first phone number he saw on the bill. After an excessive time on hold, he connected to a representative with a tone completely devoid of emotion. "This is Martin at Wellington Power and Light. How may I help you."

"Yes, I need to pay a bill."

"Can I get your account number."

Vladislav repeated a long string of numbers from the sheet. When the robotic sounding young man responded with their address, Vladislav responded, "Yes… we've already paid the bill."

"I thought you were calling to pay it."

"Well… yes, but…" He lowered his voice another octave and pressed on his consonants—that usually did the trick. Just a bit of concentration. After all, he was still waking up. "There has been a missstake… wwwe paid the bill."

The young man sighed deeply. "Sir, I don't have any record of payment. Did you get a confirmation code or—"

"No, no… no confirmation… we, um, simply paid it."

"When?"

"… The other day."

"You should have gotten a confirmation email."

Vladislav held the phone away for a second. This was annoying today. Why was it so annoying? Had the call center employees received some sort of resilience training? He cleared his throat and hissed into the phone, "When you look into your system, you will see we have paid the bill. There was a technical error. You have fixed it. We no longer owe any money."

"Listen, dude, I've done I.T. too. There's no bug in this part of the system. Maybe you're thinking of a different company?" This last question showed a shadow of emotion. But it wasn't the acquiescing apologetic tone Vladislav was used to.

He tried one more time, now feeling a strain in his neck muscles. "There is no existing bill. We paid for this month already. Apologize for your mistake and clear the charges from the system."

"Dude, I'm not seeing anything… do you want me to go get my supervisor?"

Vladislav hung up the phone and tossed it on to the table with a clunk, then regretted the noise. No need for anyone to come in and see him post-strain. And since when did he strain to use a power anyway? Especially hypnosis? He rubbed his face, willing himself to finish waking up. He touched something wet. Even stranger—since when did he sweat?

He pulled his hand away from his face. Dark blood was on it. He touched his nose again. It was coming from his nose, a slow drip down his chin.

He jumped up, pushing his robe to his face. He looked down the hallway, making sure no one was around to catch this embarrassment. Surely everything would be fine soon—he would wake up some more, drink some blood, stimulate himself with some ancient erotica, and try the number again in a couple hours, when the hypnotism would be no problem. No reason for any of his flatmates to know about this little early evening failure.

But sure enough, when he turned back around, Viago was waiting, a handkerchief in his outstretched hand. In his other hand, a leather-bound checkbook. He waited a few seconds for Vladislav to take the handkerchief, too polite to make eye contact. "If you leave that robe in front of your bedroom door later, I'll take it to the dry cleaners."

When he finally snatched the handkerchief, Viago didn't flinch, just reached for the phone and the bill. "I'll give them a call later."

Vladislav flopped into the chair and pushed the cloth into his face, refusing to look up at his flatmate. "While you're at it, ask them why the fuck it went up this month."

Viago still hadn't learned how to type on the laptop faster than one letter at a time, and it was quite annoying that after finally typing "credit card application" on Google, he didn't get any answers he liked. All these websites were talking about unfamiliar things—credit scores? APR? Balance transfers? With a pang in his stomach, he wished Stu were still around to explain this stuff. He remembered once Stu offered to set up some sort of online bill pay system for them. They should have taken him up on it. Viago sighed and got up, straightening out his paisley coat as he went into his study.

He hadn't sorted through his old banking paperwork in years, but it was still in order. Still, all the organization in the world didn't help when he realized a lot of these accounts and bonds were from banks no longer in existence. Had they transferred? Why didn't he keep track of that? Was the Cold War really such a distraction?

He found hope in one document, the least yellowed of the bunch (but still tinged), the only one without water damage or rips. It was some sort of investment paperwork, but as soon as he finished looking it over, he had a vague memory of going to a bank sometime in the nineties and exchanging it for cash—they needed new coffins at the time, after a hundred years of use, and far too many splinters (Vladislav had no problem letting his immortal skin regenerate around a splinter, but Viago hated the rough texture this tended to make in his hands).

This was worrisome. He sifted through the oldest of the documents. Maybe just the papers themselves were old enough to be worth something. When he pulled the oldest browned parchment out, he sneezed from the mildew and dust.

From the doorway, Deacon said, "When you sneeze, it sounds like I imagine a ferret would."

Viago sighed. He was in no mood for Deacon. He pushed himself up off the floor. "I'll take that as a compliment, somehow."

"Do ferrets sneeze?"

"A simple 'curse you' would do for now, Deacon. I'm a little busy."

"Doing what?"

"Reorganizing."

"No, really, what?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Why would you reorganize papers that I know you spend your whole boring life keeping organized already?"

"Alright, goodbye, Deacon." He walked over to Deacon and guided him out of the study, hands on his shoulder.

"I'm just wondering!" Deacon resisted, pushing his whole little body against Viago's hands. "Vladislav won't talk to me either. What are you two planning?"

"Maybe we are both just doing a little autumn cleaning and you should leave us alone to do that."

"Maybe I can help! You don't know!"

Viago wanted to reply that Deacon was the least helpful cleaner in the undead world, but he remembered the last time they argued about cleaning, a couple months prior, it went poorly. It started out with Viago pointing out that Deacon left a trail of congealing blood on the floor from a ripped trash bag he took out (it was overflowing, since that chore was months overdue). It ended with Deacon throwing an antique china plate from 1860 at him, and Viago hurling a crystal decanter back. Viago was in no mood to lose dishware today… they were in no place to buy more. So he stopped pushing Deacon and said, "If you want to help out, maybe you can put something out in the trap."

To this, Deacon scoffed and writhed away from Viago's gentle hand. "That useless bullshit again? Why don't you just pour blood down the drain?"

"It's not useless! It's worked before."

"It didn't WORK, he just came and took the blood and ran."

"Well, maybe you can think of something to put out besides blood. Something to get him to stay a bit longer. Just long enough so I can talk to him, perhaps—"

"Like what? Trash? Sounds like fair trade to me. Trash for trash."

"Deacon, I don't want to fight with you," Viago put on hand on his forehead and one on the door. "If you don't want to help get Nick back, that's fine. Just find some way to occupy yourself." And with that, he shut the door. He waited until he heard Deacon shuffle away, muttering something under his breath about garbage and teenagers, and went to sit by his papers again. Viago didn't bother to look anything else up. He just carefully refiled everything away.

Deacon sat in silence in the cool fall air. It was a little too cool, actually, and he was curled up in a little ball, bringing his knees inside his moth-eaten sweater. But he wasn't about to go back inside and be heard by Vladislav or Viago. Then they would ask what he was doing sitting outside, and he'd have to admit that he was where he usually was for the past few nights—staring at the trap they set in the backyard. Staring at a little mason jar of blood in the center, with a tightly fastened lid and a label with a date on it, in Viago's neat cursive. Staring at the patch of grass where they verbally shamed Nick just three years ago. Staring at nothing and no one, basically.

He was also a little mad at the other two. They hadn't even noticed he had been gone for the past few nights. Not that he was gone gone, like Nick, but just that he was sitting outside, by himself. He pulled himself tighter inside his sweater, his boots catching on the bottom hem. Why hadn't Viago told him to bring a coat or something? Not that he would do that, but it would have been nice to hear the suggestion.

"I bet ferrets do sneeze…" Deacon said to himself. "But you didn't bother to ask…"

Besides the fact that it was cold, sitting outside, waiting for that fucking dick to come steal their private blood supply was also boring. Everything was so quiet and boring lately. Deacon missed nights out on the town, trying to find a club to let them in. He missed archery practice with Vladislav and Viago's desperate attempts to teach Deacon the flute. He missed trying to mix and match outfits, then sketch them up for the others within a few minutes. He even missed bickering with Nick about what they should watch on TV during quiet nights in.

He wasn't as dumb as the other two thought; he knew the reason they had been distant was because there were money troubles. Viago used to talk about getting new wallpaper for every room in the house, but now he just quietly spent time every week pasting up the curling edges of what they already had. Deacon didn't have a solution to this because his only real skill was selling wares, and he hadn't done that in almost two hundred years, and he didn't have any wares.

But there was one thing he could do, and at least it would get his blood pumping, in a strictly metaphorical sense.

He picked up the mason jar, careful not to set off the rest of the trap Vladislav had painstakingly laid out months prior, and set off down the path in front of their house toward the bus stop.

He got on the bus, vaguely aware of what he must have looked like—a knit sweater, leather pants, leather boots, a jar of blood in his hand—and decided that it was a cool look he should be proud of. When the bus driver said, "'Scuse me, your fare?" Deacon didn't stop walking past him, just looked him in the eye and snarled, "This bus costs nothing for the rest of the night."

The bus driver nodded as Deacon went to the back of the otherwise empty bus. He also nodded to a group of young men who came on after him.

Deacon slouched in his seat, content to glare out the window, somewhat annoyed at the amount of noise the young men were making. He didn't pay attention until one of them said, "Thanks for getting us a free ride, man. That was awesome!" Deacon didn't respond, so the guy continued, "Hey, dude. I'm talking to you. Hey!"

Deacon wanted to snarl, but decided it was just a touch early in the night for questions about his fangs, so he just kept his eyes on the window. "What."

"Is that blood in that thing?"

One of his friends said, "It's not blood, Frank. Why would he have blood on a bus?"

"I don't know. Why wouldn't he? Maybe that's how they do it in New Zealand."

Now Deacon could hear their American accents. He looked at them. The guy addressing him was wild-eyed, with a deep undercut and tattoos all up and down his arms. He couldn't have been any taller than Deacon. Decidedly not a threat. Deacon sat up straight. "Maybe it is blood. What are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing, bro. That's fucking cool. Why do you have blood?"

"Maybe I drink it."

"Bullshit!"

"Maybe vampires are real out here," said one of the other men, a bleached blonde guy, looking a little too excited at the thought.

"Maybe they are," Deacon said, practically able to hear Vladislav scolding him in the back of his head for calling unnecessary attention to himself. But hey, it was Vladislav who chose to stay behind and be boring and stressed. No point in listening to him.

"Yeah, right. Lemme see." When Deacon handed over the jar, Frank wasted no time opening it and smelling it. "DUDE! This totally smells like blood!" He passed it around the circle. They all sniffed it, taking turns recoiling and saying word "Bro" many times.

When the jar eventually made its way back to Deacon, he tucked it under his arm protectively. The young Americans were whispering amongst each other and looking back to Deacon every few seconds.

The guy with bleached blonde hair and smudged eyeliner around his eyes leaned over to speak to Deacon. "Hey, are you headed anywhere in particular?"

Deacon said "Yes," decisively, though he knew in his dead heart he had no idea where Nick was, and no plan past wandering around trying to pick up that familiar scent.

"Oh, bummer. We're headed to something pretty cool. We actually came all the way here from the U.S. just to go to this."

"New Jersey," Frank clarified.

I didn't ask, Deacon wanted to say, but he couldn't resist: "What is it you're going to?"

"It's kind of hard to describe."

Deacon wanted know what it was so bad his white fingers itched. He knew it was the right decision to go out that night. "I could make a detour, if this party or whatever is so cool."

"You definitely should. You could always leave if it's not your scene. Something tells me it will be, though." This last line, the leader directed at Deacon's jar of blood.

Deacon nodded, crossing his arms and directing his stare back out the window. He cracked open the jar and chugged it, trying not to smile at their gasps and a couple "Oh, fuck, dude!"s. He kept his pale eyes on the window as much as he could for the rest of their bus ride. When he did look over again, the men were silent, now focused on each other, and Frank was tying bandages tightly around his wrists. Deacon heard another voice in the back of his head, this time Viago's, saying he should get off at a different stop, to lose these guys as soon as possible.

But Viago wasn't there, was he?