Its eyes were bright red- That’s how I knew it wasn’t ordinary. Because a bat in the attic is about as ordinary as the school bus I missed last Monday that drove through a sitting puddle at the exact angle in which it would drench my Tommy Hilfiger sweater. It bared its fangs, saliva dripping from its shiny white points. I flicked the lights on and it shrieked. It hurled itself, ferociously toward me. Its fuzzy body engulfed my face and slathered my cheeks in soft wet wings. My hands flailed, but I kept my screaming silent in fear that it would crawl its way into my mouth. I ducked under the squealing mammal’s embrace, losing my footing and tumbling to the dusty hardwood ground. 

When I awoke, the lightbulb that hung from the ceiling was blurry. My eyes rolled around in my head, blinking, trying to adjust to the spinning room. My vision came back and was followed by a limpness coursing through my body and then a sharp pinch of my muscles. It felt as if all the blood in my body was entwining. The usual lazy river flow turned into a waterfall. My circulation quickened with every stammered breath I forced myself to take. I delicately lifted my hand to my aching shoulder, my fingernails slid down my collarbone and that’s when I felt it. Two bite marks from those oozing fangs now rested at the base of my neck. 

“Jonah! Dinner!” My Aunt Karol called hoarsely.

When I rose to my feet, it felt like jumper cables had been hooked up to my sides. A piercing zap rippled through my body. I stumbled but thankfully caught my hand on the railing that led downstairs. 

“Did you find those old reports? I told you, your father never organized that crap.” My aunt Karol hissed. She threw a dish of beans next to freshly broiled pork chops down onto the table. My brother, Eden, sat, head pressed against his palm, his legs swaying, his eyes pooled in a deep state of boredom. 

“I didn’t find anything” I whispered.

        “What’s that? Hon, you know I can’t hear you when you talk all quiet.”

I shook my head at the sound of her voice, still picturing myself stumbling down the withered attic stairs. 

        “I’m going to bed,” I sighed deeply. Pins and needles danced in the back of my throat. 

        “To bed?” My aunt Karol threw her hands to the ceiling. “I spent all damn day on these chops!”

        “I’ll take one to my room,” I grumbled.

        “You sure you’re all right, hon?”

        “Just fine.” I shuffled over to the counter and placed a pork chop onto the top paper plate, oddly enough they were decorated in a bat print. 

“Thanks.” I called to my aunt before I left the kitchen, entering the shadows that waited for me in my room. I slid the plate across my desk and pressed my hand against my forehead. My skin was deathly cold. I ran my fingers across the bite marks again and sighed, a deep moan escaped from the depth of my aching body. It was nothing a little sleep couldn’t fix and that’s when I let myself fall into my unmade bed, shoes and all, no covers or sheets. Just the weight of the mattress under me and I dozed off.

    The next morning was a haze and by the time the bell for first period set my walking into motion, I could barely remember getting out of bed. Did I eat anything? Did I sleep through the whole bus ride? It was almost like all of yesterday was a midday dream. My bones came back to life, A dash of blood zipped through my veins and I actually felt alive. My shoulders clicked back, my spine shot up straight and that’s when Terri Oclan sauntered over to me. 

        “Jonah.” My name rolled off of her tongue and into her matter-of-fact tone. 

She had her hands resting in the pockets of her tight ripped jeans and a loose off-colored orange cardigan draped over her shoulders. 

    “Jonah,” she dressed up my name again. “Would you like to go to the Halloween dance with me on Friday?”

Somewhere in the intense fight to keep my gaze at eye level, I said yes. 

“You’re funny,” Ryan threw his words at me. “You’re really fucking funny.”

        “I’m not joking.”

        “Terri Oclan! No. No, you don’t get to come in here and tell me that your childhood crush”…he rose his voice at those two words. “just asked you to a dance, you don’t even go to school dances!”

        “She does.” I shrugged. 

        “Yeah, not with you.” Ryan turned so close to me I could feel the mist of his breath. “You sure somebody didn’t pay her?”

I shrugged again and sat down with my tray at our lunch table. If Ryan’s disbelief was to be followed then this would be the cruelest joke I’d ever been the victim of. But something deep in my gut told me that the look in her green-as-summer leaves eyes told me that reality was beginning to loosen it’s painful grip. 

        “You know, maybe one of her hot friends will ask me, and we’ll go as the men in black- an excuse to wear expensive suits and then we’ll wander hopelessly over to them only to have probably-spiked punch thrown in our faces. Yeah, that sounds like the best night of my-” 

“Jonah!” A girl- I believe Angie was her name- cut Ryan’s sentence in half with her white glowing smile. 

        “Hi-” I started to say before she sat down next to me, our legs gracing the tips of each other’s knees. 

        “Terri just told me the good news! That’s so sweet of you to come with us, I just came by to drop off this invite for the afterparty we’re having. It’s at my boyfriend Landon’s house. You know Landon right?”

Her words kept spewing and my focus left her having a one-sided conversation while I watched Ryan mouth shocked phrases to me. 

        “Well, we hope to see you there.” And then she leaned down, and her lips touched the tip of my ear.

        “Hope you bring that sparkly skin with you.” 

Ryan and I relived this startling experience when we walked home from the bus stop that afternoon, where the sun seemed too bright. 

        “What weird-ass shit are these girls drinking, and can I have some of it?”

        “Oh man, you wanna go to the dance with me too?” I gave a slight laugh, rubbing a red spot on the back of my neck. Ryan shoved me almost off the sidewalk before his hands returned to behind the straps of his bag. 

        “I hope you know I’m serious about that men in black idea. Even more serious now because I'm not expecting coke-laced punch to be poured all over me.”

    “I’ll see if I have a tux lying around,” were my final words to him before I trotted up the concrete stairs that led to my doorstep. 

    The creak of the front door led into my living room layered in darkness. Usually, I’d flick the light switch connected to Aunt Karol’s creepy dead grandmother’s lamp but, I found I liked it better this way. Down the hall, I turned down the thermostat, my bony fingers shook as the dial turned. 70 degrees, 60, 50… I settled on 40 and then journeyed to the stairs which led me to think about the bite marks on my neck. I brushed my hand over them again and the soft hairs on my neck rose sending Angie’s words from earlier to the center of my thoughts. 

“Hope you bring your sparkly skin with you.”

As I traveled up the attic stairs my finger snagged on a loose splinter of wood sticking out of the railing. It pinched only a little and I told myself not to look. I thought back to that time in fourth grade when Isaac Carington punched me in the nose at recess and the sight of my own blood made me pass out instantly. 

Blood.

The stairs let out moaning creaks under the weight of my muddy sneakers and my ears followed each one. I kept thinking about my finger dripping, staining the wood, and the floor below me. 

Blood. 

    When I reached the top, I saw it immediately and my hand involuntarily embraced my neck. The creature stared at me but its beaming devil eyes didn’t scare me anymore. We stood at both ends of the room wondering what the next move would be. My spine tingled once again but it wasn’t a chill, it was something I hadn’t felt before. It was strength. 

    The bat flew over to me and my arm carefully lifted itself to let it land. Its wings tucked inward and its deep eyes gave its soul to mine. 

    The bat went everywhere I went now, and within a matter of a few days, it felt like we’d known each other since our time on this earth began. He hid in my locker throughout school and though he never spoke, I knew he never felt lonely- he liked the shadows. It was hard to feed him the mice I stole from the science lab because now, every day, Terri Oclan walked with me to every. Single. Class. That was the most confusing thing I couldn’t wrap my head around. I didn’t understand why not just Terri or Angie but all these girls who’d previously ignored me were now eyeing me up like I was a movie star passing through for a visit. 

    “What’s your costume?” Terri asked me. Her hand made its way to mine and I gripped it tightly. 

    “I don’t know yet,” I told her, her eyes staring at me like I was the most gorgeous being in the world. 

    “We should match, I was thinking of being, like, a sexy mermaid, you think I could pull it off?”

Before, if I had ever been lucky enough to stand in the atmosphere that existed around Terri Oclan, I would’ve froze. My blood would’ve rearranged itself and my throat would’ve become a desert. But my shoulders unhunched, my heart rate stayed calm and I told her in a buttery voice. 

    “Absolutely.”

The week ended with the dance which seemed to show up in just the blink of an eye. I woke up that morning in a sweat that ran down my red-stained hands that certainly weren’t there the night before. My head pounded with dreams that lingered in fragments of my memory but I still rose and drew the shades to block the sun coming through the window. When I got to school the halls were decorated in Halloween spirit. Black and orange streamers hung across the lockers. Bats and swirled candy cardboard cutouts hung from the ceilings, ceilings that held the overhead lights that were just. Too. Bright. The bat must’ve agreed with me because he squealed from inside my backpack. Terri Oclan found me in the midst of girls thinking they were edgy by wearing black lipstick on the one day that warranted it. She was wearing pumpkin-patterned leggings that revealed the shape of her legs. 

    “I’ve decided.” Her voice carried her smile. 

    “We should be vampires, I just got this costume from party city and it looks amazing on me.” 

In this new universe that built itself around me, Terri Oclan was my queen, and I had no objections to the thought of seeing her in a short black and red Victorian dress. So later that night, I followed the bat to the attic where he sat, perched on a coat hanger that held a black cape. He nodded his head at me and I held my index finger out to him, I felt in debt to him, all the power I seemed to possess he felt it in his minuscule fingertips too, and he knew what I knew.

I dusted off the cape and flung it over onto my shoulders. It felt as normal as a Saturday night spent sitting in my room, but I knew those days were long gone. I felt a chill’s whisper and the bat watched as I carried myself to the window. I felt weightless. Like my feet weren’t touching the ground. I heard a car horn sound on the other side of my house and I knew Terri had arrived. I knew that one step down the stairs was the start to a night that wouldn’t ever be lost in my memory. But I couldn’t stop.

My feet moved in small choreographed motions that led me to the window that rested where the roof meets the wall. The bat squeaked sporadically but with purpose, yet I didn’t hear his squeals anymore. My hand lifted the screen that kept me from a glimmering moon meeting my eyes. The car horn sounded again but was lost in the wind chill that surrounded me. All I could feel was power but all I had was questions and nothing that had happened to me in the last week could measure up to this moment. I had vivid flashes of my dreams from last night that every nerve in my body told me weren’t just dreams.

Running. 

In The Forest. 

There’s A Fox. 

Now There’s Blood.

Why Do You Lust For Blood? 

Terri Oclan’s voice cut through the vision as I leaped off the windowsill.