Not a drop to drink

He was woken up by the smell of decay and rotten everything. The weight of the stinking mass on top of him. He was bruised, scratched, and his leg twisted beneath him, lost in more rubble. Some distant sounding noise fell through the mound of trash. A rhythmic rustling, then clanking, then falling down the mountain. He tried to move. Nothing. The sound got closer and closer.

A flash of cold on his ankle. Then a warm hand. Just something about the way he was touched, something that made him feel less than human made him yell. The hand withdrew in surprise. It pushed some more garbage off of him, leaving him exposed in a crater of filth, wrapped up in a once-white sheet.

A girl kneeled above him, sinking into the towering waste. Her modest old-fashioned clothes had once been beautiful but would never be able to be worn in public again, covered in coffee grounds and half eaten fruit. It was no loss. They were a tether on her dark beauty. She looked like a tamed Amazon. But defeated and tired.

“Shoot, you’re up,” she said, sounding exhausted.

“Nithe to theee you too.” Damn. A lisp. He couldn’t seem to spit out a word around something stuck to the roof of his mouth. There was something there. He couldn’t say what. Two glass smooth long fangs, clutching the bony, edged skin there. Attached by two muscular masses that hid just behind his teeth. They were lethal, elegant. He didn’t mention them, but he ran his tongue over them again and again. All he had on were boxers and a sheet.

She pushed the hair out of her green eyes and sighed. She held out her hand absently, “Hi, I’m Pyrite. Nice to meet you. What’s your name?” She said in the same tone she had charmed many a socialite with.

“Jathper.”

“Jasper?”

“Yeah.”

“Well we’d better get moving before dawn,” she looked anxiously up at the sky. “Not long now.”

She pulled him up, offering up her jacket in the cold late September wind and her shoulder for his broken leg. They trudged along the little used road for three miles. Cars passed, but nobody did anything more than look at them curiously. Nothing wrong with a two filthy young folk hobbling down the street in next to nothing in the cold.

Pyrite yawned loudly as the seventh unhelpful car rolled past. Something glittered ominously at the roof of her mouth. Something that made Jasper run his tongue along the roof of his. Her own set of fangs.

Just as Jasper was about to ask where they were going, she turned a corner. Dawn broke. The sun was unnaturally bright; as if god himself held a giant magnify glass up to it. Even the dim, gray light of daybreak burned his skin, making his bruises and scratched throb to the beat of his heart. Another mile of untrusting stares from the few cars at the early hour.

The houses got smaller and small as they neared the highway, and just before they reached the wide, industrial street, Pyrite walked across the unkempt yard of a clearly abandoned house. A boarded up window had been knocked in only that noon.

Pyrite climbed in, leaving Jasper leaned against the wall. Clumsily, she dropped him as she helped him in. Despite himself, he felt a quick tear roll down a cheek.

“You have to set the bone,” he whispered hoarsely, afraid to disturb the ghosts of the ancient house.

Pyrite shook her head “no” and helped him up. “We have to go upstairs. The floorboards are all rotten down here.”

Jasper didn’t trust the railing. He demanded her constant support. For all he could tell, the house was completely empty, guarded tirelessly by spiders. The only embellishment upstairs was a bed of rags which was apparently Pyrite’s. An empty, hungry fireplace yawned huge and black.

Pyrite left him on the bed and went outside for kindling and firewood leaving Jasper alone and baffled to collect his thoughts.

He had questions for her when she came back. Her strong arms pushed kindling into where the fire ought to be.

“Why am I following you?” he asked clumsily. He was getting accustomed to the things.

“What else would you be doing?” she asked absently.

That was true. He could remember no family, friends, home, and, he smiled at this, responsibility. He was free in every respect. But he didn’t show it to Pyrite.

“How did I wind up in the dump?”

“I was hiding you in a dumpster, and while I was trying to find some better place to stay, the garbage truck came around.”

“How come you’re taking care of me?”

She sighed, and without reason, her shoulders sunk more, her muscular arms seemed a heavier burden, the match in her hand seemed like it would never light, “That can wait ‘til tomorrow. Go to sleep.”

“Ith there anything to eat? I’m starving.”

“In the morning.” After that she became mute, tired of speaking, tired of thinking. She shook one more command out of herself, “Go to sleep.”

The fire gave off a shred of heat, and she tried to feed it, cracking insults at her to coerce her to give it more. He fell asleep to its depressing song.