Flesheaters and Bloodsuckers Anonymous: A Dark Humor Read online

  After turning off the light to her station she slid an arm around Harold’s, real old fashioned. Harold loved that about her. She could always make him feel like the man, the one wearing the pants in the family, the king of the castle. All that feminism stuff during the seventies confused his inborn beliefs and even a vampire needed some ego stroking.

  Maria stopped at the receptionist’s desk to check her schedule for the next day.

  “Kelly, can you call and cancel this one?” She asked pointing to an appointment.

  The girl gaped, “Right now?”

  “I told Bethany I don’t like this woman and didn’t want her anymore. You must not have gotten the message.” She coos this, making Harold squirm a little even though he wasn’t the focus of her attention.

  “It’s so late,” Kelly stammers, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to reach her.”

  Maria taps the pencil she’s holding on the book and the seconds stretch out.

  “But I’ll try.”

  Maria sets the pencil down. “Thanks, and if you can’t do anything about it I guess I’ll take her this time,” she sighs, “Don’t schedule her with me again.”

  Kelly nods. Then, Harold held the door for Maria as they left, her arm once again ensnared in his elbow.

  Arm-in-arm they wandered down the concrete and ice covered street with the other people. Harold saw no G-men or Bills following them. His mind now at ease. The way in front of them parts by magic. Individuals willingly acquiesce to the normalcy of two people in coupledom. They are a force to be reckoned with, symbols of young love and they carried a special immunity against all of reality’s slings and arrows. No one dared to block their way or throw them dirty looks, not even the guilty conscience following Harold.

  Chapter Five

  His seventh group meeting and three weeks into his stay at the halfway house, no sign of anything stranger than usual and no further inquiries by the feds, Harold was starting to get a little bored.

  Approximately twenty or so zombs, vamps, weres and other creatures of the night sat staring at each other. Harold noticed the zombies assembled in the same section as usual, one meeting after the other. The new lady zombie from his first group meeting looked pretty good; she retouched some of her skin with liquid powder and a makeup mirror. Since her “death” she’d lost a little color. She now wore a wig to cover the exposed section of her brains. Donald applauded her on her new changes last week, taking it as a sign she was adjusting well and working towards being a regular human being again. He neglected to ask her what exactly she’d been eating, but Harold thought he saw her picking small pieces of stringy meat out of her teeth.

  Next to Harold, Zork the slug kept grumbling under its breath, although Harold wasn’t certain Zork breathed through its mouth the way humans did. A line of small holes running down the sides of Zork’s body closed and opened every minute or so. Harold felt oddly tempted to stick a finger in one just to see what would happen. More than likely he’d lose that finger to one pissed off slug.

  Zork wasn’t in a good mood tonight. On arrival, Harold found it on the snack table, face buried in a tray of gingersnap cookies and growling at any who reached in to try and grab one for themselves. Not that there were a lot of takers for food in this group.

  Harold could number the individuals in group who were actually able eat food without it being rejected on one hand. Zork, of course, ate just about anything, up to and including people. Its system didn’t tolerate salt. Harold learned after someone brought a container of salt for the kitchen table last week only to have it thrown out by Zork, but it seemed to tolerate salt in small amounts in food products. Harold guessed the slug lived in almost constant irritation from the sodium it encountered on a daily basis.

  After Zork were the werewolves. Rufus nearly ate him at the first group meeting, then missed group entirely the second, third and fourth meetings during a full moon. When the clean cut, dark haired, business suited man walked up to him at the snack table during their fifth group meeting Harold didn’t even recognize Rufus. He’d undergone such a complete transformation, both in body and mind. Rufus apologized in a slick English accent for throwing a benny and they shook hands. He said, Harold caught him at a bad moment… A very bad series of moments.

  Even more surprising, Harold learned Rufus and Zork went to the same weekly game of poker, barring full moons. The werewolf invited him to drop in the game sometime. The encounter left Harold with a slightly revised view of Rufus.

  A couple of others were werewolves. Many he didn’t recognize from his first meeting and whom were also drinking coffee and eating small snack items. One ate continuously from a box of doggy biscuits in his lap.

  One very thin almost skeletal creature sat by the zombies. He’d noticed it around the halfway house a couple times but Harold never got close enough to tell if it was an anorexic zombie or gulp, an actual skeleton wandering around the house in clothing and a hat. It crept him out in the worst way.

  Harold’s thoughts were interrupted when Donald came in and found his usual spot at the center of group. “Today we’re going to try art therapy to release our inner demons and find out who we really are inside,” he said. A pile of art supplies with a couple of canvases and large paper rolls lay next to him. Harold even noted deluxe boxes of crayons. Snazzy.

  “Everyone come and grab some art supplies.” When no one moved Donald picked up a box of cheap oil pastels and some newsprint, handing it to the vampire beside himself. “Come on now. Don’t be shy. We’re all at the same level here.” Members of the group moved forward reluctantly to pick odds and ends from the pile of supplies. Harold hung back waiting for the crowd to clear.

  Zork snorted, “This is so friggin’ stupid.”

  Harold grumbled along with him, but overall group didn’t seem quite as stupid as he thought when he first joined under pressure. Life in the dark wasn’t so great. Donald just seemed to be giving everyone here a little hope for some light. “You want me to grab supplies for you?”

  “Knock yourself out, I’m not going up there.”

  Harold meandered up to the art supply pile. Most of the good stuff had been picked over. He squatted down to look through it. Donald smiled down at him and the others who were still pawing through it, a demented father overlooking his brood. It left Harold with a sour taste in his mouth not unlike the taste of blood, tangy and metallic.

  Avoiding Donald’s gaze, he got away with a short easel, a set of bucket paints, a flat canvassette, large sheet of drawing paper and some chunky graphite sticks. Harold sat down with the stuff. He’d picked up the easel for Zork since he figured the slug wouldn’t have an easy time holding a drawing board. After the slug told him off for it, Zork proceeded to tell him to set up the darn thing since the crap was designed by humans anyway.

  Meanwhile, a large bald man with olive green skin hulked into the center of the group, an ogre.

  Everyone stilled in fiddling with their supplies to watch wide eyed when Donald directed the ogre to pull off his robe, the only piece of clothing he was wearing. The cloth hit the ground and suddenly they all found reason to look everywhere but at the naked creature. Zork screamed dramatically and pressed eyes against each other.

  “I’m not looking, I’m not painting it,” Zork repeated. “My eyes,” it groaned.

  The slug’s drama queen antics did nothing to deter the ogre or Donald, both of whom ignored the group’s discomfort. He directed the ogre to a platform in the middle of the area and spent several minutes arranging lights and positioning the creature, finally settling on “thinker” position with the lights creating a long shadow across the floor, over a row of members and melding into the darkness of the warehouse beyond.

  “Okay everyone,” Donald clapped his hands together, disrupting several bunches of discussion the group had fallen into while he was distracted. A zombie jumped from her chair and promptly fell apart on the floor. Donald sighed and waited several more moments while those next to her helpe
d her body parts back into the chair again.

  “Okay group, this is Mort. He’s kindly offered to be our model for tonight. I’d like you all to use your chosen supplies to draw or paint a picture. This picture can be in any style or theme you’d like, as long as it is your own. Let your own inner self show through. We’ll all show off our work and explain what inspired us about the subject, our tools or what we felt while working.”

  “Everyone ready? Great, let’s get started,” Donald said, signaling the start of a race to draw while simultaneously avoiding laying eyes on the man’s dick.

  And right off the mark several turned to their work. Zork straightened in its chair beside Harold, wrapped eyestalks around each other and unwrapped them. It deftly picked up the paintbrush and began to work.

  Off to Harold’s right a couple of women, one a zombie, spoke softly while sketching. One asked another if they were supposed to draw it as well and received only a shrug in return.

  Harold stared at his own blank page. Did he have a style? He stroked the charcoal stick with one pale bony finger, then put it down to rub it off his hands. The dry brittle piece reminded him of chalk he used to play with as a youngster, sitting in the bright sunshine with now nameless neighborhood buddies, scrawling on endless miles of sidewalk. Harold never drew anything particularly good, but it was fun drawing pictures and chicken scratch. A way of showing off the thoughts in his child’s mind.

  Harold rubbed the stick, pressing the powdery charcoal more firmly onto the pad of his finger, then pressing it to the paper to create a smiley face of fingerprints. Harold smiled at the happy face looking back at him. Using the charcoal stick, he added more to his doodle and the face became a full-fledged stick person. Harold went further, drawing classic images from childhood; a house, sidewalk and a smiling sun. So engrossed was he in his own doodle drawing that he didn’t notice Zork’s eyestalk peering over his shoulder.

  “They held you back in art class didn’t they?”

  Harold started. He pulled away from the eyestalk peering into his own eyes.

  “What?” Harold asked, straightening and rubbing his hand on his pants.

  “Looks like something a kid drew.”

  Harold curled a lip at Zork. Its painting was unbelievable, actually out of this world. If it weren’t for the subject matter, Harold might have taken this for the beginnings of a painting by a deranged, but professional artist. A dramatic view of the ogre crouched on the Earth sat over shadowed by a large, intimidating slug which looked an awful lot like the slug sitting beside him.

  “Zork, what?”

  Zork turned its eyestalk back to its own painting and spent several moments examining the line art. The slug was now the artist turned critic, examining a great work for flaws.

  “You don’t like?” Zork asked, innocently or at least as innocently as a mouth full of needle teeth could allow.

  “It comes across as self-aggrandizing to me,” Harold said. He took Zork’s brush from its place on the easel and dipped it in some black paint. “You know what this needs,” Harold said as he twirled the brush in the paint, “a handle-bar mustache.”

  Zork’s eyestalk snatched the end of the paint brush. “Watch it, kid. Don’t fuck up my art.” Harold and Zork grappled over the brush. Harold poked the offending eyestalk in the eye and Zork instantly withdrew with a growl. The hurt stalk disappeared inside Zork’s head, leaving a small stump and only one angry eye and dangerous mouth to glare at Harold.

  “Way below the belt,” Zork said.

  “Well, it’s hard to tell where below the belt is with a slug,” said Harold. “Now, where do you want me to add my own artistic contribution.”

  Zork told him to shove it up his ass.

  “You can shove it up your own alien butt when I’m finished here. I know. This ogre spends his whole life in the dark. You need a happy sun shining down on the scene,” Harold said painting the sun in the upper corner of the canvas.

  “A sun painted in black doesn’t lighten up the ogre’s life,” Zork said as Harold painted.

  Harold graced the sun with a smiling countenance and several long black rays of light, spending an overly long amount of time making sure each ray was equidistance and equally long. “Well, maybe a black sun suits us all,” Harold muttered. He dropped the paintbrush in the water can and plopped back into his seat. Suddenly, painting stick figures and images from his childhood seemed pointless. Why dwell on the past?

  Harold stared down at his own charcoal stick figures. Compared to Zork’s work it really was childish. Harold lifted up the newsprint sheet to tear it up, but felt the presence of someone behind him and nearly jumped out of his chair. He did that an awful lot with this group. Those supernatural senses needed tuning up. The presence was Donald with a creepy grin on his bespectacled face.

  “What have we here?” He asked, pulling the newsprint out of Harold’s hand. The move left Donald’s neck wide open. Harold’s eyes locked right on it. He could almost see the slight, seductive jugular pulsing under his skin.

  Harold shook himself, lips curling with faint disgust. Where the hell did that come from? He did not want to eat Donald. He did not want to eat Donald. The ruffling of paper being opened told Harold his experience was yet to end. Donald seeing his childish scrawl irked Harold even more. His teeth twanged with feeling and he clamped them together until his jaw hurt. He knew what the twinge meant and he was not hungry.

  “Well, is this your interpretation of the ogre, Harold?” Donald asked.

  “Not really.” Harold trained his eyes on the ground. “Just warming up.”

  “Warming up?”

  “Right-O.”

  Zork, the asshole slug yawned at him and Donald. It stretched eyestalks up to stare at the picture Donald now examined.

  “What do these doodles remind you of, Harold?” Donald asked.

  “Nothing much, sun, house, basic stuff.”

  Zork grinned at Harold and turned to Donald. “It reminds me of the ravings of a truly evil and psychotic mind,” Zork said.

  Harold growled at Zork, surprising himself. “If anything is psychotic, it’s your painting.”

  Donald glanced at Zork’s work as if seeing it for the first time. Maybe he was. Harold had noticed Donald purposely cultivated an ignorance of Zork and the slug’s behavior in group.

  “Zork, I’ll be discussing that painting with your handlers,” Donald muttered. He turned his attention back to Harold and Harold tried very hard not to look away.

  “Stuff you don’t have perhaps?”

  For some goddamned reason Harold’s face burned, threatening to turn bright red in front of this man. He very carefully shook his head.

  “Are you sure Harold? Many of my FEBs members express a longing for those days when they were kids. A time when they could safely make believe about monsters and vampires, yet, at the end of playtime go running back to their normal, happy lives.”

  Donald sighed, handing the painting back. Worry lines appeared on the man’s face. It didn’t pique the vampire’s sympathy, but it did make him curious. This look belied Donald’s overly cheerful manner.

  “You can’t run home Harold. You can’t go back while you are still a vampire.”

  On that note Donald left, excusing himself to get a breath of fresh air or maybe have a good cry. Harold ignored the slug until he had a sure grip on his emotions. He hadn’t expected Donald’s interpretation to cut so close to the bone. Group continued for a few minutes, but work petered off as people realized Donald had left the building. They stared at each other uncertain what to do without Donald’s supervision. Eventually, protocol broke and clusters of conversation started up, a few pulled out cigarettes for a smoke and even the ogre lumbered over to bum a cig off a very nervous vampire.

  Things continued in this manner until nearly the end of group when Donald returned, his smile set in place. Donald asked for volunteers and a few members stood to explain their work, most took the assignment quite literally and
Harold had to endure several crudely drawn naked ogres before Donald mercifully ended group.

  “Thanks be the light that’s over,” Zork muttered, “I don’t feel like heading back yet.”

  Harold led Zork to his Phantom parked by the warehouse. Since learning about the car, Zork didn’t let Harold go anywhere group-related without a ride along. Harold hated what its slime did to his upholstery and tried to refuse, but after figuring out Zork had no intention of taking no for an answer, he finally broke down and got the creature a fluffy bath towel to sit on.

  Feeling disinclined to head back to the halfway house himself, Harold drove to his apartment, besides he was started to feel hungry and had a stash hidden in the freezer.

  “I’m finally meeting the missus huh?” Zork asked as they pulled into a parking space.

  “You are,” Harold turned to the slug, “A few rules though. No touching, stay off the carpet and none of those comments about my girlfriend’s breasts…or me.”

  “So no fun at all?” Zork slammed the car door with an eyestalk. “You’re almost as bad as the government.”

  “How was group?” Maria asked as Harold and Zork walked in the front door. He couldn’t tell if she was still up from the night before or had gotten up extra early this morning. Harold didn’t want to risk asking her, he couldn’t remember whether she’d worn same white track suit when he visited yesterday or not. It looked a little rumpled, but she had a tendency to let her day off sweats fall to the bottom of the closet. Besides, Harold was still trying to wrap his mind around what Donald said to him.

  “It went okay,” Harold said. He pulled off his jacket and tossed it on the sofa, eased off his steel toed boots, highly useful for kicking unsuspecting prey in the chest and wandered into the kitchen to pull a pint of AB positive out of the freezer. A rare blood type, but Harold felt he deserved a treat after the debacle known as art therapy.