Legend of the Virgin Vampire

Thunk

My heart started to pound and I sat up in bed, listening.

"We should have waited until tomorrow to get you released," said a woman. A mother?

"I didn't want to be there anymore," said Emily. "Being in the hospital makes me feel like I'm going to die."

I noticed that no one mentioned how close she had come to dying. Instead, a man laughed and said, "Emmy gets what she wants." Her dad. His voice was tense, but he was playing it off pretty well.

Emily. She was home. I had to be with her. I had to see with my own eyes, feel with my own hands that I hadn't hurt her.

I put my shirt back on and headed downstairs. I was all the way to the front door before it occurred to me to stop and wonder what the hell I was doing. Was I about to march down there and demand to see the woman I'd tried to kill? Emily would scream her head off when she got a good look at me. Then she'd call the cops and it would all be over.

And, yet, shouldn't she have called the cops already? And if she had called them, why hadn't they come for me?

I was still debating this as I stepped out on the porch and closed the door behind me. My body had forgotten that my brain was supposed to tell it what to do. I would go to her even if I got caught or killed. Obsession. There was no other word for it. I was obsessed with Emily Harding.

Look, I was sixteen years old and male, and except for that unwanted kiss from Parva I was as pure as the driven snow. I'd done my fair share of obsessing over the opposite sex. But my obsession with other girls made me dry-mouthed and clumsy. Emily was different. My obsession with her woke me up. It turned me on, and not like in a horny way. My nerves felt bright and aware. There was no static in the transmission.

I crept through the front yard and across the next-door neighbor's property. I could hear Emily and her family walking through their house and talking to each other. Emily was getting ready for bed. I heard her tell her family she was so tired and she just wanted to go to bed right away, and could they please not disturb her until the morning because the nurses had kept disturbing her in the hospital and all she really wanted was a chance to rest uninterrupted.

Then the light came on in the upstairs room I knew to be hers. I scanned the side of the house, looking for some way to climb the outside wall to her room. I already knew there wouldn't be anything. If there had been a way up I wouldn't have had to throw myself out of the guest room like a flying squirrel. But I couldn't help but hope something had magically appeared in the last twenty-four hours.

I realized I was panting and I made myself take several deep breaths. I had to calm down. I needed to be with Emily, but I also needed to maintain some self-control or I was going to get caught. If I could just manage to wait until everyone went to sleep I could find some way into the house. How hard could it be? There was that window Brick had bashed in. They wouldn't have replaced it yet, right?

I slipped into the yard and flattened myself against Emily's fence. A shadow moved behind her curtain and then the light went off. Her bed creaked as she lay down. I was torn between the need to get to her and the need to stay hidden, and the inner struggle kept my body frozen against the fence. Her parents stood in the kitchen talking, cleaning up, worrying aloud about her. Cold air crept into my t-shirt. A spider crawled across the back of my hand. I kept waiting for someone to mention me, or make a reference to an attack. It didn't happen.