I Live in the Numbness Now

“No matter how much you think you love somebody, you’ll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.” - Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters 

It had been a long time since we’d last seen Las Vegas. Brendon was calling it a homecoming. But last night, as the tour bus pulled into the dimly lit parking lot behind our hotel, I’d never felt further from that naive teenager who'd wanted nothing more than to become a rockstar and run far away from his lonely, boring life. I remembered summers with Spencer, riding around on our bikes and butchering Blink-182 songs in his garage. I remembered house parties with my girlfriend who I didn't know the first thing about. I remembered coming in to harass Brendon on his shifts because I had nothing better to do and I didn't want to be at home. I remembered the childish hope we all had when the band started to get noticed, when things started happening for real, guys. But that was a different Ryan. That Ryan was dead and buried out in the empty desert.

Things used to be so much easier, used to matter so much less. But even back then I had the sense that I was missing something important. Something Brendon had. Something he showed off everytime he bounced into our practice room, laughing at Brent's stupid jokes, smiling like he’d never run out of things to be happy about. Like I could walk up and punch him in the face and he'd just dust himself off, pat me on the shoulder, and say, Bad day, huh? Want me to cheer you up?  Everything rolled off of him. I thought he was invincible, some kind of demigod. A stark contrast to my skinny, gloomy self, with my dark circles and angsty lyrics and closed-off shyness.

Whatever he had, it was contagious. I didn’t have a lot to be happy about in my life, but I could live off the secondhand high that exposure to Brendon gave me. From the moment we met when he trailed after Brent to band practice one day, hesitantly picking up a guitar and smiling straight across the room at me like we were already best friends, and warmth laced with a hint of desperation sent my heart beating two times too fast, I knew I needed more of whatever that feeling was. Then we realized the kid could sing, too, and sing like his life depended on it. It was a performance that you didn’t look away from, that made you feel like you were part of something bigger. Like maybe things would work out for you after all. Most importantly, he had the kind of infectious confidence that made me want to follow him wherever he might go. And that’s how I ended up at that concert one warm night in May. 

It was a celebration. The band had just been signed, and we had less than a week till we’d be flying to Maryland to record our songs. MY songs. It was happening. I was getting out of Las Vegas. I wasn't the kind of person who things like that happened to. My dreams weren’t supposed to come true. But they were… And Brendon was the guardian angel God sent down to bring me to my destiny. That’s how I thought about it back then, anyway. So with the electricity of anticipation crackling in our hair and a glint in brendons eye that said tonight is gonna be a night to remember, there was no way I was telling him we wouldn’t go to that concert. It was in the basement of a goth club. Some band I’d never heard of, but from the pictures I found online, they looked like they belonged there. Something about their strange makeup and offensively frilly outfits was actually kind of magnetic. Only Brendon would choose this as our last night out in Vegas. 

How are we gonna get in? We're underage. I’d hissed as we approached the doors, dressed in the weirdest clothes we could find in both our closets. 

Trust me, I know someone. They'll let us in. 

If that was true, it didn’t matter. They barely gave us a second look as we stepped through the doors and descended the stairs into another world. Low, purple lighting, crowds of strangely dressed people with dark-lined eyes and piercing stares, and the droning, mournful voice of the singer surrounded us and drew us down into their underworld. As we took our place at the back of the room, I was entranced.

It’s probably for the best that I barely remember what happened after that. I know I swayed next to Brendon in the crowd for a while, the music like the words of a hypnotist ringing in my brain. I was so mesmerized that when an unfamiliar, spidery hand wrapped around my shoulder and guided me toward the back of the room, I went like a placid lapdog. After that I remember getting into a car. Suspiciously pale figures in the front seats. A flash of red eyes and too-sharp teeth in the rearview mirror. And then nothing. 

Nothing until I woke up shivering on the rough sand of the desert, with long dried blood coating my hands, scraped from clawing at the rocks, and leaving a black trail from the two tiny wounds in my neck.

I thought I knew what true fear, true loneliness, true hopelessness felt like. But I didn't, not until the moment when I realized my heart wasn't beating anymore. Blood wasn’t pumping through my veins. Every inch of my skin was as cold as a corpse in the morgue. I was dead.

I never did make it out of Las Vegas.

Like I said, my dreams don’t come true.

 

When I ran out of tears to cry and the terror lessened into a cold numbness, I picked myself up on shaky legs and stared down the long desert road, wondering how the hell I was going to get back. In the end I walked. When you lose the ability to feel tired, ten miles on worn out flats isn’t so bad. My feet were still blistered and scraped raw by the time I got back to the suburbs, of course, but I could barely feel it. Now there was the problem of finding a place to hide. I couldn't go home, no one there wanted to see my face. Especially not covered in enough blood to be a stabbing victim. My friends’ numbers sat untouched in my phone. I don’t think I could have strung a coherent sentence together even if I did call them. So I laid alone on the cold, hard floor of our practice space, watching spiders build webs on the ceiling until I slipped into a black and dreamless sleep.

The next few days were… difficult. The sun streaming in through the windows the next morning pricked at my skin like needles, so I crawled into a corner to think. The cold acceptance of what happened never really hit me at any specific moment. I just knew. How else could I explain the twin pinpricks on my throat, or the inexplicable, mind-numbing hunger that was beginning to claw at my insides, a monster wanting out of its cage. At first I thought I could ignore it. But by the 3rd day, it had worked its little gnawing teeth into every bone in my body, leaving me doubled over the hardwood, retching, mind hazy to the point of hallucination with the thirst for blood.

When Brendon finally realized I wasn’t going to pick up my phone, he came to find me. Maybe I wish he hadn’t. Then he wouldn’t have seen me, curled in front of the door like a sleeping lion, clutching the bloodless body of the neighbor’s cat. 

Surprisingly, he didn’t call the police and have me committed right there and then. He never doubted me for a second. He helped me bury the body, helped me decipher the hazy events of that night. When I used the word vampire, he didn't give me a worried look and ask me if I was seeing anyone else in the room with us right now. He just nodded wisely, like it was completely normal for your best friend to turn into a bloodsucking creature of the night, and swore to me that he’d never tell a soul, that he’d make sure I had a never-ending supply of cute fluffy animals to maul. That part he said through mischievious laughter. How could he still be so unbothered? Have so much faith in me? The glint in his eye never went out. That was the first time I felt truly jealous of him. Before, I loved the energy that radiated off of him because I thought if I hung around him long enough, he’d bring me up into his light. But there was never any saving me. I would never feel that. I could only leech off of him, a rat living in the shadows, feeding on crumbs. The hunger for what he had hurt more than any bloodlust could. 

He brought blankets and pillows that night, building me a nest in the corner. I wouldn’t have asked him to stay, but he offered. Of course he did. He let me curl my cold, stiff body around his, let me spread my hands against his chest to feel his beating heart, didn’t even flinch when I pressed my lips into the soft hollow of his throat, his pulse jumping steadily under my cheek. 

You can … bite me, if you want. Just drink a little bit. It might make you feel better.

The thought of spilling his red, fresh blood was appealing enough to send a shudder down my spine. But the thought of going too far, of stealing that magical light from his eyes, of losing him to whatever this was, was too horrifying to even consider. So I did the next best thing.

We’d kissed before, on late nights when brendon stayed behind after practice to work on a melody. Joking in hushed whispers, our shoulders pressed together, him leaning just a bit closer than he had to to see my laptop screen. That rush when I realized what he wanted, that he saw something in me, of all people, was like nothing else. I was happy to accept the childish fumbling of our mouths pressed together, a little taste of the life he was overflowing with. I just wanted to see what it’s like, he would tell me with that same infectious laugh. Don’t take it seriously. Afterwards we’d pull apart awkwardly. I’d look away and tell him he should probably go. Then we’d act like nothing happened and he’d pretend it didn’t bother him.

But there was no room to be ashamed anymore. He’d already seen the most repulsive and disgusting side of me, I thought. So I knew he wouldn’t mind when I turned his head to face me and warmed my cold, brittle lips with his. He shivered. I couldn’t imagine it was a pleasant feeling for him, and I tried not to hate myself for doing this. For taking what I didn't deserve. Something too pure and good for the rotting corpse that I was now. But for his part, he didn’t complain. Just closed his eyes and took one of my hands, sighing as he relaxed into it. His hair fell around his head like a halo. His chest rose and fell softly. With him breathing warm air into my empty lungs, I could almost pretend it was real, that I was alive, that there were two hearts beating in this bed instead of one.