Blood Doll (14)

            Mother and Father have long since returned from shopping when I arrive home. Supper has been made; scents of spices and herbs consume the house, I notice the second the front door is opened. The rug-and-painting-lined hallway light is on but vacant; my mother perches in the middle of the living room. Clangs of silverware, plates, pans, and the like ensue from the kitchen, inferring that Father has busied himself with cooking yet again.

           “What are you doing?” I wonder, kneeling just outside the circumference of papers sorted around my mother. “Grading more papers?”

            “Mm-hm,” Mother replies absentmindedly. Shuffling another stack of students’ works then setting it aside, she pushes out of her face a few locks of hair that her ponytail has relinquished. “I guess this is what happens when you procrastinate the whole weekend away. How was shopping? What did you get?”

            “A few books, is all,” I reply. “I didn’t have time to go anywhere else.” This is moreover true; after meeting Mason, I had stopped by a bookstore to clear my head before returning home. “Do you need any help?”

            “No, no, I’ve got it, sweetie. I’m almost done anyway.”

            “Okay. I’ll let you know when dinner’s ready.” Leaving her to peace, I make my way into the kitchen.

            “Dinner’s up,” Father announces. He hands a plate piled to toppling with various entrees. “Take this to your mom, will you?” Unsurprisingly, Mother hardly notices my presence, much less the food I settle just outside of her halo of paper.

Father and I find ourselves together at the rickety dinner table. Speech is minimal; mostly, we share bits of information of random things that happen to be thought of. Supper depletes relatively quickly this way. After clearing the table and sink of lukewarm food, Father allows me to slip into my room.

Mercifully, neither he nor Mother has noticed the unfamiliarity of the trench coat enveloping my bones.

Not immediately do I perform much more than falling onto my bed and staring at the blackened sky from my skylights. The ability to process this afternoon’s proceedings has been nonexistent, and now seems the perfect time to dissect every thought, every feeling and uncertainty.

            It had been considerably easier to accept…Sanguinarians when with Mason. The concept alone would have been unreal had I not attended Drac’s Lair, had my blood not been taken while handcuffed on a stage. As Mason had been the one to drink my blood, had anyone but him explained Sanguins to me period, I likely would have disregarded the information as absurd.

            Even so, that I believe Mason in general is mostly because of the happenings on that stage and in his apartment.

            Curling into a ball in the center of my bed, I drop my boots to the floor before tugging the trench coat more firmly around my body and burying my face inside of it. The becoming-familiar scent tickles my nose. (PP?) My thoughts are utterly jumbled towards him, though my actions may portray differently. More than obvious is his attraction to me. Likely just as obvious is mine to him, even through my extreme hesitancy due to Drac’s Lair.

            Such an idiotic thing to do, having these feelings for him, regardless of his appearance, interests, habits. His age alone should repel me, as I am a minor, and he, evidently, is not. This is something I deduce I must inform him of our next meeting. Disappointment threads into my mind at this. I do not prefer to scare him away.

            Being an admittedly infatuated teenager, I wonder at the circumstances under which Mason and I will meet again.

            Not long afterward, the sun having since folded beneath the rolling, cow-filled landscape, I change into pajamas, brush my teeth, then crawl into bed for the night.