March 7th, 2987

Weather: fair Mood: freaked out Music: The Paupers - Cairo Hotel

I woke up. The room was flooded with daylight, like it always is on March 7th, when the sun shines right through the mouth of my cave. Only an inch of shadow lay between the sunbeam and my face.

I'd actually managed to sleep a few hours, at night, no less. I felt like I'd hit the bed like a meteor, but at least I'm not dying of fatigue today. So it was a decent start to the day. Or it would be if I managed to move without burning myself in that sunbeam. Rats, here was another problem-Leaf was on top of me.

Fuck, what did we do last night?

I couldn't answer the question myself, so I decided to ask her.

"Fuck, what did we do last night?"

She didn't wake up. At least she hadn't turned into a plant or something on top of me. Two things bubbled up from my unconscious:

Thing one: If you don't get up, Marcy, you're going to burn to a crisp.

Thing two: The warm being on top of you is full of blood warm blood warm warm warm warm warm red rushing warm rushing red KILL BITE KILLLLL

My Glob, I almost did it.

Instead, I took a breath and counted to ten. The sunlight was an quarter-inch closer to me now. I counted again, because I was still thinking of blood. I guess I must have counted to thirty or forty before I was quite in control.

I asked her again, louder.

"Wha?"

"Leaf, what. did. we do. last night?!"

She came to her senses in a couple of seconds.

"Ugh, you invited me over. We ate some junk food, I drank a bunch of Smarty Juice and you drank some... blue. Like, off the oil painting over there, off a cereal box, out of the TV screen."

"Wait, you said I drank blue."

"Yeah. It just came out of whatever you stuck your teeth into."

Your first vampire, huh? I thought. "No shit. But I've been sober for like, four hundred years."

"Well-"

"Leaf," I said, louder than maybe I should have.

"Yeah?"

"If you don't get off me in like, ten seconds, I'm going to get burnt to
death by a sunbeam."

"Woah, really?" she said. She jumped up and I managed to roll over and off the bed and into the deep shadow on the floor. Sunlight grazed my hand, but it healed decently well. I guess that little bit of sleep was enough to give me most of my healing factor back. I could have probably survived much worse, in fact.

"Leaf, I'm sure it's been great, but I have, like, more than two praerblems right now. Thanks for telling me what I did last night."

"I'll... get out of your hair," she said, looking put-off.

She ran downstairs and out of my house. I wondered how badly I'd janked up my latest interpersonal relationship. Then the word "blue" hit me like an icicle in the stomach. Well, it's like this: everything has an opposite. Blue is the opposite of red. Nobody really has to tell you that, you just kind of know when you're born. Well, red, especially real iron red from blood cells, makes me less hungry and more sober, while blue... well, it's like negative red. It causes a mild-feeding frenzy-I don't go totally off the handle, but I guess I would if I drank enough of it. In small doses, it's more like being really drunk and really hungry.

The last time I even touched the stuff was thirty years ago, regardless of what I told Leaf. I'd been capital-L Low, like some disgraced cosmonaut. I'd just broken up with Bonnie, for good this time. I went about my business, but everywhere I went, I saw blue, like all the other colours had turned grey and it stood out.

Wasn't there a movie Mom and Dad used to watch where the little girl's red dress did that? They only watched that movie when they thought I was in bed. They forgot I'm a twilight animal, I guess. But all I remember was that the girl died somehow, and you saw her dress in a pile of clothes, and all the other colours were kinda washed out to dirty grey but her dress was still dark red... it made me feel like all the colours were washed out in real life too. It was really sad and I can only half-remember why.

Well, if an ex-junkie starts seeing the stuff everywhere, what would you think would happen?

I fought it, but I couldn't really fight it. How can you put up a fight when you know you're going to lose? What did Dad use to say? "It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks?" What are "the pricks," anyways? I mean, I know what a prick is... Dad being one of them, in fact.

I came to nine days later, in my kitchen, with my foot burnt clean off where a sunbeam touched it. It took an hour to regrow. I took blue a couple more times, with suitably disastrous results, and then, for a while, it didn't call to me. It was like I'd gotten sick of it. Well, here I am, 30 years later, and I have a problem with blue again.

Man, hump that: I have a problem with blue, a problem with red, and problems that have nothing to do with bright, primary colours. Insomnia, sunlight, adorable fascist dictators, any girl with green hair, Dad, that guy Billy who has a vendetta for me... I'm just problems all the way down, I guess. I don't have a soul, courtesy of my father, so what, then? Am I just problems and problems and problems like rubber bands in a rubber band ball with nothing in the middle?

I put some stuff together in my head this morning. I need to grow up, for real, or I'm going to hurt myself where it doesn't grow back one of these days. I'm like a diabetic in the Candy Kingdom, Simon always said, whatever that means.

And so here I am, diary. I'm going north and I'm taking you with me. I've decided to find that place and see if they can make me mature there. Grod help me.