Brian Bit Matt

Brian

Brian has been dead for eleven days, and somehow still has an electric bill due Friday.

He stands barefoot in the kitchen with the envelope bent between his fingers and his phone pressed against his ear. Kelly has been yapping for close to a minute, and he only knows that because the clock over the stove changed numbers since she started.

Someone upstairs drags a chair across the floor, water shudders through pipes, and a dog starts barking somewhere down the road.

Under all of it, Brian hears the couple arguing on the sidewalk below. Their voices are muffled through the window, but their heartbeats aren’t. One beats fast while the other keeps skipping whenever the woman raises her voice.

“Brian?” Kelly’s voice snaps him out of it. “Did you hear a single word I said?”

He closes his eyes, then opens them again. “You said Mom’s mad, you’re also mad, and one of you is threatening to come over. I got the important part.”

She lets out an annoyed huff. “I said Mom’s worried. I’m the mad one.”

“Right.. Right, very different.”

“It isss different, Bri.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” Brian rubs his thumb over the torn edge of the envelope. “I’m sick, Kel. That’s usually a good excuse not to come around.”

He tries to make it sound normal, but it comes out thinner and weaker than he wanted.

There’s a pause on her end, followed by a small inhale. “You’ve been sick for almost two weeks, and you won’t tell us anything! Carl said you haven’t been to work since Tuesday…”

Brian stops dead in his tracks, his fingers still on the envelope. “Why are you talking to Carl?”

“Because I called the print shop after you ignored me all day. It was that, or I call welfare.”

A huff escapes his lips, disbelief settling in his chest. “Right. That’s completely sane behavior.”

“Don’t be an asshole because I’m worried about you.”

Brian leans against the counter and looks at the clock. It’s 9:47 at night. His shift started at nine this morning, and Carl has already left three voicemails.

The first sounded concerned. The second didn’t. Brian hasn’t listened to the third enough to find out where he landed because the lights now feel like somebody driving ice picks through both his eyes.

“I’m not trying to be— just the medicine is messing with me. I sleep at weird times. I get dizzy, and the lights...” He looks toward the dark window over the sink. “The doctor said it might take a while.”

There is no doctor. The man who changed him didn’t even stay a full day. He paced between the fridge and the sink. Rambling like a madman about things Brian still hadn’t been convinced were real.

Then the man left for ‘blood’.

Apparently, even vampires have their version of going out for milk. Because ten days later, Brian is still waiting for him to come back.

“What medicine, Brian.”

His gaze lands on the two orange medicine bottles beside the toaster. He washed the labels off and filled them with vitamins days ago in case his mother or Kelyl decided to use their spare key.

At the time it seemed a lot smarter.

“I told you I don’t remember the name.”

“Then read the bottle,” she says, her tone stern.

“They’re in the bathroom, and I’m not getting up.”

“You’re terrible at this.”

He shrugs, not that she’ll see it anyway. “I’m sick.”

“You keep mentioning that.”

“Because you keep interrogating me.” He pushes one of the fake bottles a little farther behind the toaster. “I just need to sleep, okay?”

Kelly goes quiet long enough for Brian to hear a car door shut somewhere outside.

Then she says, “Mom wants to come over tonight.”

“No—” he catches the wrongness of it. “No… Sorry. Not tonight. The place is a mess.”

“Your place is always a mess.” She sounds genuinely offended that he tried that excuse on her.

Brian looks around the kitchen. The sink is full of dishes, unopened mail covers the counter, a shirt is on top of the microwave.

“Exactly, so if I’m admitting it, picture how bad it must be right now.”

“Brian, this isn’t funny,” she says softer now.

His next joke never quite makes it out. Night has turned the window over the sink into a dark mirror. His messy hair still looks like his, so does the tired face and the tattoos running down both arms.

Then his eyes catch the kitchen light.

Amber.

They used to be brown, a normal brown; boring enough that nobody ever commented on them.

Brian looks away, lost for a second.

“Tell Mom the contacts are irritating my eyes,” he mutters. “And the new pills knocked me out.”

He blinks, realizing what he’s said, but doesn’t bother to take it back.

“Oh. My. God.” She squeals, and something thumps faintly on her end. “You bought contacts while you’re sick?”

“I wanted a change,” he offers.

Brian looks down and realizes he’s folded the electric bill in half.

Kelly goes quiet for a second. “You hate touching your eyes; I had to hold you down as a kid!”

“People change, Kel.”

“That isn’t the point.”

“It feels like part of the point.”

“Jesus, Brian.” Still annoyed, but her voice softens.

Brian unfolds the envelope as she asks, “Are you in trouble?”

“No.”

“Did someone hurt you?”

Brick flashes through his head.

A hand over his mouth.

Teeth.

Cold pavement.

Blood against his lips when he couldn’t breathe.

Then the stranger’s voice close to his ear. Stop fighting.

Brian’s fingers go numb around the envelope.

His whole body remembers what happened next better than his mind does. Everything had stopped. His arms. His legs. Even the useless fight he’d been putting up while panic tore through him.

“Brian?”

He realizes Kelly has said his name more than once; he sets the mangled bill on the counter.

“Nobody’s here.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“I know.”

“Then answer me.”

He opens his mouth.

Nothing he can say will make this better.

Kelly breathes quietly on the other end.

“I love you,” Brian says.

“Brian, wait.”

“Tell Mom I love her too.”

“Brian.”

He hangs up before his voice can do anything embarrassing.

The phone starts ringing almost immediately. KELLY fills the screen.

Brian turns it face down.

Before the ringing can end, pain tears through his ribs and punches hard enough that his knees buckle. He catches the counter too late, slamming his hip into a drawer handle as he folds over.

His mouth floods with spit and both canines slide longer until one nicks his lower lip. A sick feeling settles in the pit of his stomach.

“I fed yesterday.. I did,” he presses the heel of his hand against his mouth.

Calling it feeding is generous. He found a butcher willing to sell him a plastic container of pig blood after claiming he was making sausage. The first mouthful almost came back up, but he done it.

Three websites and an old library book said animal blood works and could keep the hunger down. But now Brian is starting to believe that none of the authors actually asked a real vampire.

He yanks open the fridge. Eggs, mustard, half a pizza, three beers, milk that smells sour despite being in date, and the last container of blood sit beneath the pesky bright bulb.

Hr grabs the blood and downs it before he can think too much about it. He swallows the dreadful penny taste twice; the third time it nearly comes back up again. He coughs and slams the container onto the counter, splashing blood across his fingers and onto the surrounding area.

“Jesus.”

The pain loosens enough for him to straighten. Outside, the couple has stopped arguing, and the woman is now crying. He can hear the hitch in her breathing, then the quick beat of her heart.

The pulse feels close. Too close. He grips the edge of the sink, the metal giving faintly beneath his fingers.

He jerks his hands away and stares at the shallow dents he left behind. A snort leaves his body before he means it to. “Fucking great.”

His phone buzzes across the counter.

KELLY: If you dont call Mom by noon, were both coming over.

Brian glances over the blood on his hand, the fake pill bottles, the sunglasses by his keys, the newly dented sink.

He can picture them coming through the door. His mother will start cleaning before she even finishes taking ehr coat off. Kelly will find the pill bottles because she always finds everything.

Then someone will open the fridge.

His stomach cramps again and his gaze snaps toward the window as the crying woman’s heart pounds against his ears faster. He knows it without saying it.

He needs real blood. He needs the man who made him come back and explain everything that he’s supposed to know. How to survive.

But mostly, he’d like to go back to eleven days ago when his biggest problem could’ve been a hangover and no memory of getting home.

He shoves the container of pigs blood aside, the apartment simply too loud. The pipes, loud TVs, footsteps, laughing. The woman outside.

Before he knows it, he’s shoved the container back into the fridge, wearing jeans, boots, a black hoodie, and sunglasses even though it’s completely dark outside.

Brian grabs his keys from the hook, gets as far as the door, then stops. Driving while dizzy and hungry is stupid enough on its own. Driving when every pedestrian comes with a heartbeat can make it worse.

He leaves the keys behind, grabs his sunglasses, and walks.

The night air helps for almost half a block, then a man passes him at the corner. A woman steps out of the laundromat; two teenagers come toward him laughing. The heart beats, warm skin, and the blood beneath it.

“Don’t be weird,” Brian mutters to himself.

The woman passing him grabs her purse tighter.

Brian glances over. “Wasn’t talking to you.”

She speeds up.

He winces and keeps walking. Three blocks from his apartment, music comes through the open door of a bar. A group of people smoking outside blocks half the sidewalk, so Brian crosses the street before he reaches them.

Someone shouts behind him through the bar door, a goodbye to someone inside. Brian gets three steps before a different smell stops him in his tracks. It cuts through the human smells around the bar and makes his gums ache.

Brian turns before he decides to. A man is walking toward the side lot alone. Tall, broad shoulders, dirty-blond hair, an old jacket hangs over a faded t-shirt, and one hand rests in his pocket as he crosses the pavement.

The man reaches the edge of the parking lot, and Brian finds himself listening for a heartbeat, but what he hears isn’t right. Something about this person doesn’t smell human.

He takes one step back, then glances over and for half a second, their eyes meet through the tinted lenses of his sunglasses.

The man looks away and keeps walking. Brian should leave; he knows that much.

He should go home, call Kelly, lock himself in the bathroom, and spend the rest of the night choking down pig blood while searching the internet for answers he’ll probably never get.

Then the stranger disappears around the side of the building, and Brian watches the empty corner for one second too long.

Then he follows.