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She ran to the bar and poured herself another drink. Staring at the glass in her hand, thoughts flooded her mind again. “Do you have a drinking problem, Geraldine?” “Good God, no, Beatrice. It just relaxes me.” “But why blood?” “Because it’s my fountain of youth.” She opened her eyes and a muted cry rose in her throat. “I must stop,” she told herself. “I must give up blood. I must give up being a vampire once and for all. It does terrible things to me. It makes me feel alone!” Cursing, she threw the glass against the wall. She knew there was only one way to break the addiction and get her life back now; or was there…? She went into the kitchen, opened the drawer by the sink, and took out a wooden rolling pin and bashed it against the side of the counter. The pin splintered in two, leaving one very sharp end. She was about to stake herself, when she said, “I—I just can’t!” She couldn’t believe what she was doing; she was never suicidal. Had her addiction really managed to throw her thinking off that much? Finally, she dropped the stake and said: “I know. I’ll get rid of the blood—all of it! I’ll throw it down the incinerator. Then I’ll lock myself in the bedroom. All weekend—no telephone, no social contact—cold turkey!” She had to reclaim what human part might still be lurking inside of her. Forty-eight hours later she found herself fighting violent jerks from her own body, as if she were being yanked up savagely from some strange darkness to a blinding light she could not face. For a moment she lay terrified among the bed sheets, her eyes wide and staring at the ceiling, all of her displaced, her soul wandering outside her body, her brain as dark and vacant as a tomb. Had she been a full vampire, the rehabilitation she was undergoing might have been far more terrible and different. Then a shudder went through her, its movement bringing her together again. Her terror subsided. But now, all at once, she became conscious of her bodily misery. Small hot slivers of pain slashed down behind her eyeballs, and there was a terrible shaking in her gut. Oh, Christ, she thought, wincing against even the early morning light filtering through her curtains. Oh, God in heaven, what did I do? She thought the sun’s afterglow would surely rip through her. She closed her eyes. In a dark backwash of memory, the image swam into her mind?herself sitting in the living room after coming home from work on Friday, a tall glass of red in one hand, the refillable bottle in the other. How much blood had she drunk? Had she consumed anything else? She couldn’t remember. But the appetite, at least, wasn’t there anymore. Now it was only the memory of her addiction that scraped and tore at her. A deep depression settled on what was left of her spirit and would not lift; all the dark thoughts with which she had ended the weekend had collected on the surface of her mind like a festering sore. It would be a relief to cry. And with the coming of the tears, in a way that surprised and confused her because it was all so different to be free, so very different from what she had imagined, she could glimpse, yes, she could almost see?like the first glimmer of unexpected light at the end of a dark winding tunnel?what freedom was all about. Still weak and unsteady a few minutes later, she entered the bathroom, clicked on the light and closed the door. Averting her eyes from the mirror?she dared not look, for fear her reflection might still not be there?she turned on the water, reached for the soap, and began washing her hands and arms, a fever of joy and excitement in her veins. It seemed incredible to her now that vampirism and addiction burned so incandescently in her mind these past two years. Now the image had receded, floated off into limbo like some pale, tired ghost who no longer had the power to haunt. She splashed cold water on her face, reached blindly for a towel, and patted it dry. Her hands, holding the towel, dropped; her head lifted. Something inside her hushed. A strange woman looked back at her, a woman she could barely remember. Suddenly she looked middle-aged again. The pale mouth was soft and newly eased from pain, of course, but the eyes clear and at rest. She wasn’t pretty anymore, but there was still a gentleness in her face. It was a face from which all the looseness of youth had gone. And while now it was tauter and sagged, it was still the faint sweet sag of release. Geraldine could not move. A few seconds went by. Then she leaned closer to the glass, hardly breathing. Her lips moved. “I’m free,” she whispered. In
that moment, staring into the eyes of the woman who was herself,
the thing that was once her soul finally straightened itself out,
the pain went away and she ceased to be an addict. *** THE END ***
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