Since Jonah's story runs parallel to Mallory's, and Mal has a better sense of time and place because his brain isn't Swiss cheese, I've also been writing the first draft of volume two.
In essence, I've been multi-tasking. BIG TIME. (Sleep? Who needs sleep? HA!)
I don’t know how he found me. It’s been over a year.
I moved to Montana, tried to get back to my career but…all I could think about was him. Worried. Not sleeping or eating well. I felt lost. Empty. But I knew I had to go. I couldn’t break my contract with my employers. They would be…consequences. I wasn’t mentally strong enough to deal with that yet.
They knew I was grieving. No one said it, but I could see it on their faces. They felt bad, an awkward sympathy towards an emotionally wrecked man. I could feel my life fray at the edges, slowly continuing to unravel, as though someone found the main thread holding me together and was yanking it, the very fabric of my being was pulling apart, stitch by stitch.
My underlings respected me, and I know that they covered for my mistakes constantly, but even with my screwing up the data entries, we were seeing positive results. My bosses were pleased. I was…barely satisfied.
I used stimulants to stay awake. I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t want to dream, to see him running just out of reach, covered in blood, screaming at me to let him die.
If I had known then, what I know now, I would’ve paid more attention to my nightmares. I would’ve slept more fully, would’ve kept a dream journal. Maybe then I…
It doesn’t matter.
Jonah.
Jonah is all that matters.
And he visited me last night.
I went home to clean up and sleep. I was so tired, I nodded off in the shower. Woke up before I smacked my head into the tiled wall. I shook my head, rubbed my face, felt how scruffy I was, and grimaced. Jonah was one of those guys that liked beards. I never cared for them, but I let myself go. I was in sore need of a haircut and a shave.
I got out, wrapped a towel around my waist and noticed just how skinny I had gotten. I’d lost too much weight. My ribs were showing. No doubt I was malnourished by this point.
Grief can do that to you.
I trimmed my hair, shaved off the beard, and cut myself shaving. Shaking hands and a new razor blade are a bad combination.
I barely recognized myself in the mirror. Sunken cheeks, black circles under my eyes. I couldn’t remember the last time I smiled. Not that it mattered. I wasn’t planning on dating and charming the pants off of anyone anytime soon. That is what caused all this mess to begin with.
I didn’t want to be with anyone ever again. I didn’t think that my heart could take it. No. No way I was going to date again. I had no appetite for hooking up with strange men for one night stands anymore. It was my fault. It was all my fault.
I finished off a bottle of whiskey and drunkenly collapsed on my bed, face down. I didn’t even bother crawling under the covers, or taking the towel off.
I didn’t care.
I left the bedroom window open. The cold breeze felt nice. It was winter, and I didn’t care if I got frostbite or froze to death. Maybe I wanted to die. I was having passive suicidal thoughts. And I didn’t care. Maybe that was why I didn’t wake up when the window was opened all the way from the outside. My apartment is on the third floor.
I just stayed there. Face down on my bed, waiting as the screen was ripped open and someone crawled inside.
They smelled rank, like rotting flesh and old blood.
My heart skipped a beat, I was excited.
This was it. The end.
I didn’t even have to do anything. I imagined that whatever killed Jonah had come to kill me, to end it all. It made me sad and happy to know that I would be with him soon. I could apologize. Beg him to forgive me for being so selfish, so full of myself. Maybe he’d even take me back.
The person who crawled through my window was filthy. I turned my head to look out of the corner of my eye. Light from the bathroom filtered down the hall into the bedroom,illuminating the figure. Dark dried blood spattered down a white torn shirt. It had soaked in the collar, spread in a circle from a bite on the neck. Filthy bare feet. Khaki shorts. A broken wristwatch.
I gave him that watch for a birthday present. I thought it was dumb, no one wore a watch anymore, everyone used their phone to tell the time. But, I got him one anyway. Something expensive- a leather band, diamonds on the face. Something he would love. And he did. That was a good night. The last date we went on before I started…
And then I messed everything up.
I could see his face. It was him.
Jonah came back to me.
I didn’t move. I didn’t want to startle him. I didn’t want him to run off. I wanted him to stay. So I lay there, heart pounding, skin crawling, every fiber of my being screaming at me to run as he stepped up to the bed.
He licked his lips, drool plopped on my bare legs. It was thick, slimy and cold. I shivered. Goosebumps raised on my arms, raced down my legs. He breath was erratic. He sounded excited.
He slowly crawled on the bed, ran freezing hands up my back.
I shivered, slowly turned over to face him.
My God. His eyes. The whites of his eyes were black, the irises were red and glowing. Bio-luminescence. I had read about that. Couldn’t believe it could occur in human eyes, but there it was.
“Jonah,” I whispered. “Where have you been?”
“I know your smell,” he said breathing in my hair. “I know this smell.”
“Who did this to you?” I asked, sorrow lumped in my throat.
He cocked his head to the side and smiled, showing off vicious fangs. There was no denying it now. He had changed. Turned into the very thing I was hired to study and killed— a vampire.
“SHE did it.” He rubbed his neck, a scar, a patch of flesh healed over to silver flesh, where the vamp tore a huge chunk out of his neck.
He chuckled eerily. It turned into a crazed laugh. “SHE did it!”
I backed away, fell off the side of the bed. He pounced on me. Ripped off my towel.
“Unwrap you like a snack,” he said and swallowed the drool that pooled in his mouth.
My stomach sank. I froze. Terrified.
He rubbed his face on my stomach, licked up my chest and neck. His tongue was freezing cold.
“I remember your eyes. Brown. So pretty. Want to pluck them out and eat them.” He ran a finger around my left eye.
I grimaced, pulled my head back. I was so sad, and so scared. I couldn’t help it, I started to cry.
“I’m so sorry.”
“What for? You’ll taste good.”
Shivering out of fear and anticipation of the pain, I froze. I did not push him off. Not sure if I’d be strong enough to do it even if I had tried. I had gone too long without eating or sleeping, not caring if I lived or died.
“Your fear. So yummy,” he said and licked my neck. Tongue like ice. I shuddered. I was afraid. I felt the urge to piss and barely held it in. “So squirmy. Mmmm…” he grabbed me by the shoulders, tossed me back onto the bed. He jumped on me, slid up my body, like he used to, when we were getting frisky and about to fuck.
He was cold. So very cold to the touch. He was undead now. My Jonah wasn’t alive. He was a monster.
“Stop,” I cried as he went to bite my neck.
“Hmmm? Why no fight? The others scream and kick you…don’t. Why?”
“Because, I’m your…”
“You’re mine?” He perked up. “Mine?”
“Yes. I’m yours, you’re mine. We were going to get married.”
“We were?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t remember that.”
“Jonah, it’s me. It’s Mal. Please try to remember.”
I leaned forward, mouth dry, heart pounding, shivering. Pressed my forehead against his. He was so dirty and covered in dried gritty blood, excrement and who knows what else.
“Please, remember me.”
He smiled, lunged forward and kissed me. His razor sharp incisors bit into my tongue. I thought he was going to bite it off, but he let go. I pulled back. He licked his lips and shuddered.
“You taste so good.”
Blood welled in my mouth. I felt sick to my stomach.
“Here, you taste me too,” he said. He bit his own tongue and kissed me. Thick, noxious cold sludge filled my mouth, burned in my nose. I choked as he kept kissing me, shoving his tongue in deep, wrapping it around my own. I was disgusted, thrilled, and terrified, more scared than I had ever been in my life.
I struggled, and he held my nose, made me swallow his thick, blacker than death blood. It burned its way down to sear a pit in my stomach. It was so cold and yet it burned.
He pulled away. “There. Now you’ll always be mine. And I will always be yours.”
I lay there, shivering. In total shock. The burning was spreading quickly through my body. It hurt. I felt like I was dying.
“You wet the bed. Clean it up.”
I was laying in a pool of my own hot piss. He scared me so much, I peed myself. I grew lightheaded.
He said something but I didn’t quite understand it. I shook my head yes anyways. I think he wanted me to say yes. I wasn’t quite sure though.
He smiled, flashed his fangs at me, and then dashed out the window.
My heart pounded in my ears. My vision dimmed. My body weak, cold and naked.
I shivered, curled up into a ball on the bed, gasping in pain.
The last thing I remember thinking was that I was going into shock and I needed to get help.
Everything went black and red. Insects crawled in my ears and scuttled around in my head. Scratching, scratching, scratching.
Jonah’s voice echoed in my head,“You’ll always be mine. And I will always be yours.”
Everything burned, my body was on fire. It hurt so much, I passed out.
I sat up, screaming.
Daylight filtered into the room. I was laying on the bed, naked. Black blood dried up and flaked on my chest and chin. Disoriented, I panicked and ran to the bathroom and tried to throw up, but nothing came up. I had the dry heaves.
I stuck my toothbrush handle down my throat to induce vomiting. I had to do it several times before anything came up.
Black clotted gel plopped into the toilet. Vampire blood. I made myself puke until green bile came up. Then I rinsed out my mouth and washed off the dried blood. My tongue was sore, it had punctured holes on either side. The wounds hurt, bad. He damn near sliced my tongue off.
I rinsed my mouth out with hydrogen peroxide solution and examined my body thoroughly.
There were no other bite marks on me.
I closed the window, pulled the sheets off the bed. Cleaned the piss out of the mattress, did laundry.
All the while, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was still there, watching me.
I searched the whole damn place. He wasn’t hiding anywhere. I…wasn’t sure what he meant when he said that I was his now. I was afraid to find out.
I drew some of my blood and examined it in the portable electron microscope—courtesy of my employers— there was no discernible change. Not yet at any rate.
I knew what markers to look for. It sometimes takes up to 72 hours for them to develop.
I called in to work, gave orders, said I was taking a few days off to rest, and I waited.
I had horrible dreams. Nightmares. Scenes of death and carnage, like war zones. People dying horribly. Body parts everywhere. Blood. So much blood.
I decided to keep looking for the markers in my red blood cells. He did something to me. I could feel it. A nagging, unsettled feeling of fear, a pit of ice in my stomach.
What did you do to me Jonah?
What did you do?
Here's a small peek at what I've been working on!
Addicted to the Abyss Volume 2 Mallory's Thirst Chapter 4
Jonah visited me last night.I don’t know how he found me. It’s been over a year.
I moved to Montana, tried to get back to my career but…all I could think about was him. Worried. Not sleeping or eating well. I felt lost. Empty. But I knew I had to go. I couldn’t break my contract with my employers. They would be…consequences. I wasn’t mentally strong enough to deal with that yet.
They knew I was grieving. No one said it, but I could see it on their faces. They felt bad, an awkward sympathy towards an emotionally wrecked man. I could feel my life fray at the edges, slowly continuing to unravel, as though someone found the main thread holding me together and was yanking it, the very fabric of my being was pulling apart, stitch by stitch.
My underlings respected me, and I know that they covered for my mistakes constantly, but even with my screwing up the data entries, we were seeing positive results. My bosses were pleased. I was…barely satisfied.
I used stimulants to stay awake. I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t want to dream, to see him running just out of reach, covered in blood, screaming at me to let him die.
If I had known then, what I know now, I would’ve paid more attention to my nightmares. I would’ve slept more fully, would’ve kept a dream journal. Maybe then I…
It doesn’t matter.
Jonah.
Jonah is all that matters.
And he visited me last night.
I went home to clean up and sleep. I was so tired, I nodded off in the shower. Woke up before I smacked my head into the tiled wall. I shook my head, rubbed my face, felt how scruffy I was, and grimaced. Jonah was one of those guys that liked beards. I never cared for them, but I let myself go. I was in sore need of a haircut and a shave.
I got out, wrapped a towel around my waist and noticed just how skinny I had gotten. I’d lost too much weight. My ribs were showing. No doubt I was malnourished by this point.
Grief can do that to you.
I trimmed my hair, shaved off the beard, and cut myself shaving. Shaking hands and a new razor blade are a bad combination.
I barely recognized myself in the mirror. Sunken cheeks, black circles under my eyes. I couldn’t remember the last time I smiled. Not that it mattered. I wasn’t planning on dating and charming the pants off of anyone anytime soon. That is what caused all this mess to begin with.
I didn’t want to be with anyone ever again. I didn’t think that my heart could take it. No. No way I was going to date again. I had no appetite for hooking up with strange men for one night stands anymore. It was my fault. It was all my fault.
I finished off a bottle of whiskey and drunkenly collapsed on my bed, face down. I didn’t even bother crawling under the covers, or taking the towel off.
I didn’t care.
I left the bedroom window open. The cold breeze felt nice. It was winter, and I didn’t care if I got frostbite or froze to death. Maybe I wanted to die. I was having passive suicidal thoughts. And I didn’t care. Maybe that was why I didn’t wake up when the window was opened all the way from the outside. My apartment is on the third floor.
I just stayed there. Face down on my bed, waiting as the screen was ripped open and someone crawled inside.
They smelled rank, like rotting flesh and old blood.
My heart skipped a beat, I was excited.
This was it. The end.
I didn’t even have to do anything. I imagined that whatever killed Jonah had come to kill me, to end it all. It made me sad and happy to know that I would be with him soon. I could apologize. Beg him to forgive me for being so selfish, so full of myself. Maybe he’d even take me back.
The person who crawled through my window was filthy. I turned my head to look out of the corner of my eye. Light from the bathroom filtered down the hall into the bedroom,illuminating the figure. Dark dried blood spattered down a white torn shirt. It had soaked in the collar, spread in a circle from a bite on the neck. Filthy bare feet. Khaki shorts. A broken wristwatch.
I gave him that watch for a birthday present. I thought it was dumb, no one wore a watch anymore, everyone used their phone to tell the time. But, I got him one anyway. Something expensive- a leather band, diamonds on the face. Something he would love. And he did. That was a good night. The last date we went on before I started…
And then I messed everything up.
I could see his face. It was him.
Jonah came back to me.
I didn’t move. I didn’t want to startle him. I didn’t want him to run off. I wanted him to stay. So I lay there, heart pounding, skin crawling, every fiber of my being screaming at me to run as he stepped up to the bed.
He licked his lips, drool plopped on my bare legs. It was thick, slimy and cold. I shivered. Goosebumps raised on my arms, raced down my legs. He breath was erratic. He sounded excited.
He slowly crawled on the bed, ran freezing hands up my back.
I shivered, slowly turned over to face him.
My God. His eyes. The whites of his eyes were black, the irises were red and glowing. Bio-luminescence. I had read about that. Couldn’t believe it could occur in human eyes, but there it was.
“Jonah,” I whispered. “Where have you been?”
“I know your smell,” he said breathing in my hair. “I know this smell.”
“Who did this to you?” I asked, sorrow lumped in my throat.
He cocked his head to the side and smiled, showing off vicious fangs. There was no denying it now. He had changed. Turned into the very thing I was hired to study and killed— a vampire.
“SHE did it.” He rubbed his neck, a scar, a patch of flesh healed over to silver flesh, where the vamp tore a huge chunk out of his neck.
He chuckled eerily. It turned into a crazed laugh. “SHE did it!”
I backed away, fell off the side of the bed. He pounced on me. Ripped off my towel.
“Unwrap you like a snack,” he said and swallowed the drool that pooled in his mouth.
My stomach sank. I froze. Terrified.
He rubbed his face on my stomach, licked up my chest and neck. His tongue was freezing cold.
“I remember your eyes. Brown. So pretty. Want to pluck them out and eat them.” He ran a finger around my left eye.
I grimaced, pulled my head back. I was so sad, and so scared. I couldn’t help it, I started to cry.
“I’m so sorry.”
“What for? You’ll taste good.”
Shivering out of fear and anticipation of the pain, I froze. I did not push him off. Not sure if I’d be strong enough to do it even if I had tried. I had gone too long without eating or sleeping, not caring if I lived or died.
“Your fear. So yummy,” he said and licked my neck. Tongue like ice. I shuddered. I was afraid. I felt the urge to piss and barely held it in. “So squirmy. Mmmm…” he grabbed me by the shoulders, tossed me back onto the bed. He jumped on me, slid up my body, like he used to, when we were getting frisky and about to fuck.
He was cold. So very cold to the touch. He was undead now. My Jonah wasn’t alive. He was a monster.
“Stop,” I cried as he went to bite my neck.
“Hmmm? Why no fight? The others scream and kick you…don’t. Why?”
“Because, I’m your…”
“You’re mine?” He perked up. “Mine?”
“Yes. I’m yours, you’re mine. We were going to get married.”
“We were?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t remember that.”
“Jonah, it’s me. It’s Mal. Please try to remember.”
I leaned forward, mouth dry, heart pounding, shivering. Pressed my forehead against his. He was so dirty and covered in dried gritty blood, excrement and who knows what else.
“Please, remember me.”
He smiled, lunged forward and kissed me. His razor sharp incisors bit into my tongue. I thought he was going to bite it off, but he let go. I pulled back. He licked his lips and shuddered.
“You taste so good.”
Blood welled in my mouth. I felt sick to my stomach.
“Here, you taste me too,” he said. He bit his own tongue and kissed me. Thick, noxious cold sludge filled my mouth, burned in my nose. I choked as he kept kissing me, shoving his tongue in deep, wrapping it around my own. I was disgusted, thrilled, and terrified, more scared than I had ever been in my life.
I struggled, and he held my nose, made me swallow his thick, blacker than death blood. It burned its way down to sear a pit in my stomach. It was so cold and yet it burned.
He pulled away. “There. Now you’ll always be mine. And I will always be yours.”
I lay there, shivering. In total shock. The burning was spreading quickly through my body. It hurt. I felt like I was dying.
“You wet the bed. Clean it up.”
I was laying in a pool of my own hot piss. He scared me so much, I peed myself. I grew lightheaded.
He said something but I didn’t quite understand it. I shook my head yes anyways. I think he wanted me to say yes. I wasn’t quite sure though.
He smiled, flashed his fangs at me, and then dashed out the window.
My heart pounded in my ears. My vision dimmed. My body weak, cold and naked.
I shivered, curled up into a ball on the bed, gasping in pain.
The last thing I remember thinking was that I was going into shock and I needed to get help.
Everything went black and red. Insects crawled in my ears and scuttled around in my head. Scratching, scratching, scratching.
Jonah’s voice echoed in my head,“You’ll always be mine. And I will always be yours.”
Everything burned, my body was on fire. It hurt so much, I passed out.
I sat up, screaming.
Daylight filtered into the room. I was laying on the bed, naked. Black blood dried up and flaked on my chest and chin. Disoriented, I panicked and ran to the bathroom and tried to throw up, but nothing came up. I had the dry heaves.
I stuck my toothbrush handle down my throat to induce vomiting. I had to do it several times before anything came up.
Black clotted gel plopped into the toilet. Vampire blood. I made myself puke until green bile came up. Then I rinsed out my mouth and washed off the dried blood. My tongue was sore, it had punctured holes on either side. The wounds hurt, bad. He damn near sliced my tongue off.
I rinsed my mouth out with hydrogen peroxide solution and examined my body thoroughly.
There were no other bite marks on me.
I closed the window, pulled the sheets off the bed. Cleaned the piss out of the mattress, did laundry.
All the while, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was still there, watching me.
I searched the whole damn place. He wasn’t hiding anywhere. I…wasn’t sure what he meant when he said that I was his now. I was afraid to find out.
I drew some of my blood and examined it in the portable electron microscope—courtesy of my employers— there was no discernible change. Not yet at any rate.
I knew what markers to look for. It sometimes takes up to 72 hours for them to develop.
I called in to work, gave orders, said I was taking a few days off to rest, and I waited.
I had horrible dreams. Nightmares. Scenes of death and carnage, like war zones. People dying horribly. Body parts everywhere. Blood. So much blood.
I decided to keep looking for the markers in my red blood cells. He did something to me. I could feel it. A nagging, unsettled feeling of fear, a pit of ice in my stomach.
What did you do to me Jonah?
What did you do?
