Better off Red – Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

Lysette did not wake up until she smelled the blood. It was a familiar smell, too familiar, perhaps. It was her own. She could feel it, dried and crusted all over her face. How long had she been out? Her eyes were blurry, but there were lights, and that startled her. At first she thought it was the sun. It had been a long time since she had seen the sun.

It had been weeks since she had seen a light of any kind, even the overworked bulb hanging above her head. That buzzing. So loud. Couldn’t anybody hear it?

She tried to move, but could not. They’d taken everything from her, these people. Even the ones, like the mother and daughter, who didn’t even know what they were doing. Who thought they were having no part in it, but were only making things worse through their silence.

Yes, it was the father, the grand patriarch Thurston Redding who had organized everything. But they were all a part of it, and the boy—

Oh God.

She remembered. She remembered what the boy had done to her, all alone down there in the dark with a creature he didn’t even believe was human. That’s what he’d said, wasn’t it? He wore plastic gloves because he didn’t want to catch anything. Told her that this was no different to him than burning an ant with a magnifying glass or pulling wings off of a fly, both activities that she was sure he excelled at.

Lysette could not move. In part, because she was restrained. The straps on her wrists were leather. She could still smell the stink of the cow they came from. They were weaker because she was weaker. The blood they’d been feeding her had been animal blood, not human. Enough to keep her alive, but not good for much of anything else. The vampire body was designed to take human blood. With everything else, it extracted only the vital nutrients it could use, forcing the vampire to throw up everything else in a pulpy, clotted mess.

And there were some people, she heard, that did that by choice.

“You have to talk to the boy.”

That was what snapped her back to the present. That was what woke her up. The sternness in that woman’s voice. Lysette hadn’t heard anything like that come from her in the time that she had been captive in this house.

She forced her eyes to adjust. She was tied to a chair in the dining room. Old. Rustic. Very much the dining room of a quaint privileged white family trying to prove to the outside world and to themselves that they civilized. Because deep down she was sure they all knew the truth was anything but.

Thurston Redding gave his wife a sheepish grin. “I really think you’re making too big a deal out of this.”

She stared, but he ignored it.

“Really, honey, he was just curious.”

“Curious?”

“You know how things are, you know the kinds of things that boys get up to.”

She froze.

“Oh, come on. Fine. I’ll talk to him, but you mustn’t get so worked up about it. He didn’t mean any harm.”

But Lysette could see that both she and the boy’s mother knew that was not true. All the boy meant was harm. Harm, she could see, was all that he knew. With these parents, how could he have ever learned anything else?

Before either woman could reply, the door opened and Eve hurried inside.

“Eve,” her father beamed. “You’re just in time for dinner.”

“I’m not feeling very well, I’m sorry.” She wouldn’t even look him in the eye. Instead, she just made a bee-line for the stairs. Once she reached the bannister, she stopped, feeling his eyes drilling into the back of her neck. “I’m sorry, father,” she said again, turning to look at him.

“That’s better,” he said.

She began to move up the stairs, but Redding wasn’t finished.

“Are you sure everything’s all right?” He asked.

“Yes, father.”

“It’s not… woman’s troubles, is it?”

“No, sir.”

“Then you’ll be able to join us for dinner. Your mother has already set you a place.”

Eve froze.

“Don’t make me tell you twice, sweetie.”

She began back down the stairs. Her whole body was shaking. But as she stepped into the kitchen, she could see that Eve’s father had reason to be suspicious. The girl was not sick. Not that she was going to say anything about it, of course.

“Where’s Patrick? Tell him it’s time for dinner.”

“He’s not eating with us, he’s grounded,” said Evelyn. Off of her husband’s look, she said more plainly, “I don’t want him here.”

“I’m inclined to agree with that,” said Lysette.

“You don’t discipline the children,” Redding said calmly, to his wife. “And you,” he pointed an accusatory finger at Lysette. “You speak when you are spoken to.”

Lysette silenced herself, but she almost wanted to smile. This family was falling apart and she could see it just as plainly as they could. They’d wounded her, but they were limping along just as badly. Helpless, frightened animals.

Redding sat down at the table and gestured for Eve to do the same, while Evelyn stepped into the kitchen to begin bringing out the food. Lysette watched these things, but couldn’t think about any of them. Things had changed, both with everything she had gone through last night and with what she was seeing in front of her now.

Now, she saw them as animals, just the way they saw her. She felt hungry in a way she had not let herself feel in a long, long time. Long before this oppressive repressor had come into her life, she had been repressing herself. Trying to be human. Trying to play by their rules.

These were their rules. This was humanity, patriarchy, in action and she wanted no part in it. Through decades, lives, whole societies and civilizations, she had been holding herself back because she wanted to fit in, to at least appear as though she were a part of normal life. She’d ignored her instincts. She’d ignored her bloodlust, and where had that led her? Here she was, thousands of years later in the exact same place she had started out in; voiceless slave to a male oppressor.

She’d been granted power and elected to do nothing with it but pretend it didn’t exist. Now she had let herself become a slave, allowed her voice and her identity to be stripped away from her.

No more.