Adult-FanFiction.org : Games

Memoirs of a Hybrid	By : CaraGraves Category: -Misc Video Games/RPGs > General Views: 2235 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is an OC based on my personal adventures in a MORPG called CoLA, I do not own CoLA nor am I receiving profits from these writings. The names of other Characters used have been used with owners permission.

Chapter List
- 1-Welcome to My Unlife
- 1
It’s 2038 A.D., December 1^st, 8:37 pm and I’m starving.
   The grumblings of my tummy have been ongoing for the better part of an hour and I can’t seem to find anything worth hunting. All the side street stall vendors are closed up for the night, gone home to their dilapidated and post apocalyptical hovels. I can hear the small clusters of night fiends on St. Angels below me. The flickering of the local pub’s neon advertising live nude girls sets a sickly pink glow to the main stretch of the drastically condensed size of what used to be Los Angeles, California.
     The city was reduced to rubble a couple decades ago by a massive rock that fell out of the sky and carved out the city its inhabitants now call Lost Angels. Some of the buildings on the outskirts of town still remain in piles of broken and disintegrated concrete slabs, shattered windows, and ruins. Depressing. Nothing is new or better, the buildings that were resurrected were done with scraps of leftover rubble. The few long-standing builds that seemed to have evaded extinction fill out a two by three-block radius. The streets are spotted with everything from rotten garbage clusters, foul water worthy of the sewers and potholes.
   The rooftops of the main stretch were my preferred haunts. I could see most of the city from my current location, a liquor-mart rooftop owned by the Collective. Some call them mercenaries, others called them assassins. The Collective’s business dealt with a wide assortment of jobs. Anything from messengers, hired protection, smugglers or hit men came from this small group. The liquor store served as a legitimate business on the books as well as a safe place for them to make deals that are more dangerous. I knew a few of them and I didn’t much care for almost all of them.
   The wind picked up and sent my raven colored locks over my hunched leather clad shoulders. My insides eased as a scent came to me on the breeze. My hunting companion had arrived. As she stood at my right shoulder overlooking the streetscape, I noted her distaste in the evening’s current activities.
   I nodded my affirmation, “Sucks.”
   “Maybe it’s in the water, the entire chain seems…dead.” I heard her click her tongue against the roof of her mouth with resignation.
   I cracked a smile at that. Ishtar stood a good eight inches taller than I did in her platform boots laced with silver spikes at the toes and across her delicate ankles. Some of her height had to do with a set of pitch color horns that curled like an ocean wave across the height of her hyperactive pink tendrils. It was her signature color and I hated it. Ishtar was a mixed breed by torturous black magic, choice, and bloodline. A Drow, a Succubus, a Goddess, and a Vampire. With snow white skin, perfectly pouting blood red lips, and tiny diamond like fangs she was nearly pixie thin with smallish breasts clad in a black lace corset and a perfectly apple shaped ass barely covered by a black silk ruffled thong.
   “Nice outfit.” I said.
   “Thank you. I didn’t want to have to change before work.” She winked a violet and long lashed eye at me. “Have to think ahead to stay in the game, are you joining me tonight? I want you to meet some people afterwards.”
   I was apprehensive. I had known Ish for nearly two years traveling the music circuit around the North West and not one time could I ever recall meeting people without feeling as if I had stepped into a very friendly pit of vipers. General population made my skin crawl as it was; now I had to endure a polite few hours not only hungry but on my best behavior in unfamiliar company. My social skills were fine outwardly. I could eat with the proper utensils and I wasn’t squeamish about finger food. I said thank you and please and all those other pleasantries. I excused myself when I bumped into people in the street or at the liquor mart. I preferred my own company.
   “Sure.” I said this not with holding my reservations and I felt her energy shift to a nurturing pity.
   Ish was good at heart, she really was, but she was dark. Evil. She enjoyed pain as much as pleasure; sometimes it was one in the same with her. I’ve seen this beautifully unique social butterfly gut a human like a stuck pig. I had gagged when she’d played with the intestines as if they were a wet slinky.
   I lulled into her hand when she reached up and gave my black catlike ear a tender scratching, attempting to comfort me in my awkward loneliness. “How about we catch some breakfast first?” She was tempting me. Trying to give me the indulgence I needed to be right in the head as she whispered, “You need to feed.”
   Rising from my crouch on the rooftop, I stretched to my full height of five foot eight and shook the ends of my jeans over the heels of my broken in biker boots. I looked to the street below and didn’t see anything worth hunting nor did I see anyone I wanted or needed to converse with. I was pretty new to LA, had just moved into Ish’s domain a month prior from what was left of Florida. Might as well have been southern Alabama with all that sugar in their damned iced teas. Christ.
   A few minutes later, the two of us strode down the main street never having to weave amongst the small crowds of those that were visiting or living with in LA. Mostly people parted like a sea to allow Ishtar a wide birth of room. They respected but feared her. Between the soft smiles of acknowledgment and brief casual waves of greeting, whispers would fall at our backs and I’d catch her perfect mouth shift into a gentle repressed smirk. She gloated quietly at the reputation that seemed to manifest with in LA. She was Coven.
   When humanity was failing in this broken City, there came an unexpected savior most still claim to be the epic evil. Vampires rose from their secrets, created a new LA. They formed a mafia like group known in the city as a faction and called themselves The Coven. Rulers and creators of Lost Angels, a place for all races to be welcome. Welcome to live, breed, survive, hunt, and die. In the City of Lost Angels, if you were Coven, you were revered, feared, loved and hated. Some saw you as power hungry; some saw you as pillaging murders. Others saw you as worthy adversaries, and most considered you untouchable.
   I never paid much attention to the factions in the City; they each had their own little dealings. Played their own parts. Since I was roaming with Ishtar, my name was whispered. People wondered if I too was Coven. If I was involved. If I was political. For the most part, I was left alone in or out of her presence. I was always lonely. Even in a crowd.
   As I walked at her side my eyes roamed, rolling over the faces of those lingering in the night attempting to select my food source quickly, which is difficult when you are depressed into disillusion. You are not exactly focused but the body has needs and it forces you to get creative. There was no need to waste energy on selecting something flirty from the small crowds outside the bar or at the corners of the streets. I glanced down the last alley which lead from the back of the bar directly to the entrance of a large fenced in junkyard attached to another one of the City’s many warehouse type buildings.
   I was at home in the dark, I could see exceptionally well, better than even Ishtar could, and I could smell things she could not. I was skilled in many things pertaining to my breed. I was a feline-human, a Neko, which had been embraced. I was hybrid. I was Nekopire. Four ears, two human, two cat like, both with exceptional sound tuning. My sense of smell was more acute than most beings able to walk the earth, I could smell disease in a single drop of blood, trails of queries that had been stale for several months, and I could even smell emotions. Fear and lies were my forte. My eyesight was three times that of the naked human eye. I saw colors more vividly, longer distances over the horizon and just as well in the darkness as if it were midday. True to the nature of cats, I had exceptional agility and could jump longer graceful distances than your average human. All of these qualities amplified by the heightened senses of the Neko in me. Though some would argue the point I am about to make, the drawbacks to being a hybrid come in the form of my embrace.
   I can no longer walk during the day for I would blister, burn and peel into ash. I am very sensitive to changes in temperatures, almost always wearing a jacket of some kind. I require a steady diet of blood, feeding every evening. Though I did not require the use of my lungs, I could breath, my heart could beat, and blood could circulate. I do not know exactly how my anatomy works, but paper cuts sure do hurt. Good thing I can heal fairly quickly. I can even, for instance, go out and grab a cup of coffee at an all night diner, eat a slice of pie and then excuse myself to use the ladies room. However, I tend to eat these types of food simply because they seem to make me feel better, comfort me in some small way, and Pizza tastes pretty good.
   If I go to long without feeding, I become a very unreasonable person. Some call it losing your humanity. The problem is, once you lose bits and pieces of this thing humans cling to so dearly, someone like myself can never get it back. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Moreover, you are nothing more than a shell containing a beast that wants to feed and feed and feed until there’s nothing left to consume. So you could say that the weaknesses within were brought on by some part of me either dying or evolving. Soured milk, chocolate, MSG, and the sun could actually kill me. And people think they have allergies. Eat some fucking Benadryl you fops. As it stands, there is no treatment for my so-called disease, though it is rumored that horrific testing is currently being done to find a “cure”.
   I stopped. Listening. Smelling. It was a familiar scent, like my own but not exactly my own. Certainly close, it was not a friend I knew for sure. Just then, I heard then saw what I thought was a can of tuna roll from behind a stack of empty cardboard boxes marked Jack Daniels and Yuk Lager.
   At first, I crept down the alley leaving her at its entrance ignoring the fact she had selected her tasty treat and was working her succubus magic on the poor woman as I neared my own mark. My booted foot crunched a shard of glass, probably a broken beer bottle, ending my silent approach. I was more curious than hungry at this point, the scent was interesting, I couldn’t quite place it but it was familiar in a way I can only describe as something like my own kind.
   Suddenly I was struck in the forehead with what I swore was one of those huge gallon sized burgundy wine jugs. Stumbling back as my nose screamed in agony I crouched against the side of the brick wall and groaned.
   “Who’s there?” came from behind the stack of boxes, a gruff whisper.
   I couldn’t help but hiss at this; if someone wanted to know who the hell you were usually, the greeting went a little more gently. A smile, a handshake, even a hello maybe and only then might one dispense with the random attack via bottle brutality. “Fuck!” My boot stomped furiously into a puddle most likely filled with nasty things I’d rather not mention and managed to splash up nearly to my thighs. “If this is how you always start a conversation, screw it.” My lips curled back exposing the length of my ivory colored fangs letting out an animalistic growl. Like lightening I was behind the boxes, my hands stretched out to drag the soon to be dead thing from its hiding spot.
   I was met with a few swift evasive motions, we were in a ball of contempt and I was the aggressor this time. My boots slipped on the damp pavement and I dropped painfully onto my knee in time to catch a jab to my jaw. I retaliated with a fist to the shadow’s ribs and herd it grunt as it stumbled back into the brick wall. This was my opening; I launched myself at the throat open-mouthed ready to take what I needed. My assault was momentarily deterred when my ribs were racked by a thick kneecap. I recovered quickly to my assailant’s dismay and sprung forward in furry. This time my hands found the throat with ease and squeezed, I was sending shots to the ribs with my knees as we scuffled and fell into a heap crashing through the stack of boxes. An overhead light flicked on and then we were still.
   My ass was stuck in one of the small wine boxes, hands gripped ruthlessly around the thick throat; I could hear the rapid heartbeat and my eyes had registered his face. We sat there for what seemed like an uncomfortably long moment, in fact, it was long enough for me to become distracted with embarrassment that I was trying to kill the bottle abuser and my ass was stuck in a cardboard box. Nothing like a grotesque slight on the "can’t fight your way out of a wet paper sack" reference. I could feel his breath on my face as we stared at each other and my grip loosened, I was mesmerized by his friendly eyes still in the heat of the battle. They were the color of blue skies I had not seen in over three decades. They were comforting and honest looking. Something about the way his dark brows were narrowed framing his blue gaze made my lips pucker slightly and I would have gone rosy in the cheeks if I had recently fed.
   I then began to notice where his hands had landed on my frame, one was planted firmly around my extended left wrist near his throat, and the other was pressed tightly to my left breast. Awkward. I took a quick scan of the situation and narrowed my eyes, bared my fangs and growled at him. “Off!” It also took him a moment to assess the situation and when the light bulb clicked I was almost annoyed that it actually had. The hand to my breast was suddenly ripped away and his face contorted into a look of horror. Before I knew it he was a few feet away from me, leaning against the opposite bricked wall and breathing heavily.
   I struggled in the boxes and climbed to my feet with the grace of a drunken elephant. It was a natural reaction for me to be presumably acting pissed off when I was embarrassed. I straightened out my jacket and made a yuck sound when I flicked a roach off the shin of my blue jeans. When I finally looked up he was leaning with arms folded against the wall watching me in my desperate struggle to maintain my appearance. I think his eyes were smiling at me, but his lips were void of emotion. Or was that a sneer of contempt?
   “Feel better?” I watched him brush a smudge of mud off his rounded shoulder and noted the spatter of red on his dingy grey t-shirt. Surveying him with my dagger like gaze, still pretending, still covering up my flounder act, I realized he wasn’t cut anywhere. About this time my body started to do the calm down routine and assess its damage. It was official, I hurt and I knew it because I wanted to cry.
   My poor nose, it was bleeding and it felt like Mike Tyson’s Mr. Hyde had been the culprit. My eyes stung and were watering, I blinked away some of the blurry vision and discovered a white dishrag had been hanging in front of my broken face.
   “Sorry, if I had known you weren’t one of them I would have shown some better manners.” His voice was suddenly comforting, gentle and rich. His shadowy frame was lean muscle and only an inch or so taller than my own.
   “Right.” I snatched the offered rag and attempted to blot the blood from my upper lip.
   He regarded me with a slight slump to his posture, he’d felt bad about making a massacre of my face and I let it drag on for a bit continuing to glare at him.
   “Honestly." He was holding his hands up to signal regret in the manner of astonishment. “I’d never be violent with a female.” The bastard, he was sounding very sincere but the Texas sized knot to my forehead and the burning mark his glass missal had left told me otherwise.
   I was trying to think of some nasty retort to drive back at him but nothing was coming as I blotted at my bleeding orifice. Thankfully, I was rescued from embarrassment at that very moment.
   “You will apologize to her properly.”
   It was Ishtar. She stood with her hands on her hips looking haughty and only a little pink in her pale cheeks. Obviously she’s had breakfast, I glanced around her still as stone frame and couldn’t see a body laying or dangling anywhere and assumed she’d not killed the poor girl.
   The Coven’s train of thought was that anything non-vampire was simply food, like cattle. No need to drive away or kill off your source of food, it is better instead that the killing is done in a seemingly indiscriminant manner and sparingly. If you killed regularly you were part of the problem but could not be faulted for your nature and there for had your own set of tiny rules. Stash the bodies most of the time, only once in a while should you allow one of your victims to be discovered cold and without life in an alley or a dumpster. The Coven believes this is a gentle reminder of who runs this city and how dangerous it can be to anyone opposing them.
   The man took in a long look of Ish.
   I wondered if he was sizing her up for a fuck fest or determining if it was a good idea to protest the demand for an apology. In the end he turned and walked to me and I watched him like a hawk.
   That irritated expression making my desire to crush up against him and feel the heat coming from his body. To feel his hands caress my hips and roam over my thighs, I wanted this man to take me slow under the dim twinkle of night. Easing my strain, giving me nourishment and release. I wanted him to resurrect me from my bored disillusion status.
   “She a friend of yours?” his tone was gone from apologetic to annoyance now and I felt like I’d been dunked in a tub of miserable ice water emotionally. He stopped at my side and took up a backpack that seemed to be half full of things like a can opener, a scratched up iPod and a wadded tank top stuffed somewhere into the bottom. When he stood waiting for my answer to his question I was still glaring at him.
   My knee started to throb and its insistence that I take a load off sometime in the very near future made me over look the delay in his apology in the form of compensation for my acquired injuries. Instead I launched the rag at his ruined shirt, pelting him like a squishy baseball in the chest emitting a hiss from between my lips. “Asshat.” With that I strode past him and walked with my friend back into the throng of people never once owning up to my leg that felt like it would buckle at any second.
   I gave Ish some crap about having a night in and headed for home after a parent like lecture. For the next twenty-four hours, the lazy boy in front of the boob tube and delivery were my friends.
   Ishtar and I met again the next evening outside the local pub called the Zodiac. She was dressed in a similar outfit as the night before with the exception that it was a silky turquoise color, which looked really awesome against the white skinned flesh of my fiendish friend with popping pink hair. I flicked the butt of my nearly finished smoke into a puddle of stagnant water and gave the woman a nod in greeting attempting to refrain from exhaling a cloud of smoke directly in her face. My hand flapped between us as if it helped matters, not like either of us would die from cancer.
   Seriously.
   “How’s your facials?’ Ish cracked a grin at me and I noted how the pearly white fang tips seemed to glow brighter under the flickering pink of the neon advertisement.
   Shrugging my shoulders and ignoring her jab at my embarrassment the night before. Ass stuck in a box and all that jazz. “Facials are fine.” Which was the truth. My forehead wasn’t even bruised and the knot was completely gone, my nose was its usual gentle slope. I was unmarred outwardly, but inside I was still disillusioned with everything happening around me.
   “There’s a friend of mine spinning tonight I thought we could sit and have a few drinks while we wait.”
   Wait for what, I wondered as I watched her spin around on her heel and saunter in with the thin willowy length of her legs. I took a moment’s pause to put on my polite and not anti-social hat before striding in behind her. By the time I slid into a cushioned bench next to her she’d introduced me to three or four to her people she knew, all vampires and I remembered none of their names or their faces. I had only offered a smile and a handshake to say hello.
   A waitress dressed in a red silky dancing slave outfit neared us and I noted she had a collar strapped to her throat. Just above the collar’s edge she was marked by two fang imprints. Puncture wounds. This denoted that she was not simply a waitress taking drink orders, but that she was someone’s house entertainment, someone’s pet.
   This made me wrinkle my nose at the girl as she neared us, closing in for the appropriate measure of “What can I get for you two lovely ladies?”
   The bond between Ishtar and myself flexed which drew my attention towards my friend, and immediately fixed my expression of revulsion. And like a mother scolding her child, Ishtar’s face read loud and clear that manners were expected regardless of my personal views of slavery.
   “How about a sampler platter, it’s our house specialty to…”
   “SoCo with a splash of lime.” I cut the girl off abruptly just wanting her to shut up and go away as if her weakness were contagious.
   I could feel Ishtar’s eyes linger on mine while I pretended to look out across the dance floor, distracted by the crowd of bodies and thunderous music.
   “I’ll have my usual Ruby.” Ishtar’s clove scented cigarette lingered in the air shortly followed by the click of her Zippo as the waitress whore’s belled ankles vanished under the noise of the bar’s occupants.
   Bi-Lingual was playing loud over the speakers and the poles were being worked. Couples in dark corners were busy doing a little more than making out. This was common, people had basically lost their damn minds when the big rock hit. Most of everyone’s inhibitions were tossed out the window around that time and those that had kept their secrets were now openly exploring them or exploiting them.
   My eyes caught on one couple in particular a few tables down. I watched a dark haired woman riding a man’s cock with a vengeance and swiftly adverted my eyes when I noted he’d winked at me.
   Blah, I thought, imagining she was whispering the words against his ears with a thick accent, “Papi, you fucking me makes me bi-lingual.”
   The tink tink tink of slave bells drew my attention back to the table. Ruby, the waitress Ishtar had known by name, set my drink down on top of a black napkin, and I had to snicker at Ishtar’s girl like excitement when she clapped her hands in glee seeing the sugar cube, matches, and a filtering spoon had been provided alongside her absinthe.
   We talked over the loud music briefly and I sucked back the Comfort like I was dry to the bone. A few people stopped by our table to greet Ish and meet her Nekopire friend.
   That was me, with my velvety raven colored ears tipped with silver barbs and rings. My slightly fluffy pitch colored tail with its base poking out of my low cut jeans. Another drink hit the table and it was round two when I heard the voice over the speakers.
   I tried to hear what was being said but it was loud and the crowd was screaming after every few syllables, even Ishtar tucked a set of very dainty fingers between her lips and wolf whistled to whatever was discussed. I shifted in my seat trying to look past people towards the DJ booth, alas all I could see was a cluster of races and some bastard’s green wings obscured most of it. Typical.
   The beginnings of a familiar song made its way to my ears and I finally understood what had been then DJ’s topic of discussion. The crowd slinked and slithered against each other on the floor; a few girls had jumped onto the bar and were popping shaken bottles of beer spraying the warm collection of bodies. Then every mouth not occupied in this tiny shithole roared in union.
   “UNDEAD!”
   For me it was hard not to sit bobbing my head to the beat of the Hollywood Undead, along with everyone else. The drinks were still coming as the tunes rolled on and I was comfortably alone in the crowd with the exception of Ishtar. We did not have much conversation other than the occasional “want another drink?” yelled over the music.
   At one point, when I’d firmly made it through what I gathered had been close to a bottle of bourbon, Ish had left the table to tinkle I presumed. But the parting time was long enough for a couple males to stop by the table and make the attempt to sit down. They were met with a look of disdain and pointblank conversation that went along the lines of, fuck off.
   When Ishtar returned she flashed me a smile and set down a tray of assorted shots. Two of each kind, there had to be at least 10 glasses there between the two of us and I looked to her in question with a thin dark brow raised before I leaned across the table to shout, “what’s this?”
   I caught a whiff of the absinthe on her breath as she leaned in to advise me it was a “sampler platter.” It took me a moment to register that she’d meant for them to be all for just the tow of us.
   My friend slid one of the shot glasses across the table toward me saying, “bottom’s up!”
   Mine was a green liquorish smelling liquor, absinthe, ugh. I hated that black liquorish and Sabucca taste, it vaguely reminded me of Jaeger. And Jaeger hadn’t been a friend of mine for years. But it would be rude to refuse, so I took the glass with a grimace and more than a little reluctance, clinked it against her offered shot before dropping it down the hatch.
   Which was immediately followed by a pained expression stuck to my face that had Ishtar laughing.
   “You have that, pissed off because I’m wet cat look.” Her hand reached out and smoothed back one of my ears that had folded back in annoyed dislike.
   Let me point out one more downfall of my embrace. Since I’ve become a hybrid, my liquor bill has increased about four fold. The vampire’s ability to heal fairly quickly makes it harder to poison myself into a state of drunkenness. So while a human could drink a bottle of bourbon and be to drunk to stand and probably pass out in his own vomit, I’m just getting a little toasty. It’s kind of annoying, it makes me have to pee a lot and I hate public bathrooms.
   Halfway through the 2^nd sampler platter I was absolutely feeling the buzz. Because I was on the dance floor with my friend and doing more than just the emo-nonconformist shuffle. It was warm and the bodies around me crushed up close absently in the throng of lyrics and smoke. I was letting my hair down. Way down.
   For some reason, or no reason at all, I felt the need to allow a male I didn’t know select me as a dancing partner. He wasn’t bad at all that I could tell, not overly sexual but playful. I felt him crush up against me and rock with my hips; he smoothed his hands slowly down my thighs, which felt nice. I leaned back against him with one arm draped across the back of his neck, drawing him in closer, inviting his want to explore me to continue. I was wrapped up in his arms as we moved together and then I woke up to the smell of bacon frying.
   I cracked open an eyelid and stared at a glass vase filled with red marbles and eucalyptus sprigs. Realizing I was on my couch wrapped up in a blanket, the scent of bacon making me hungry, and more alert. Someone was here with me…and it wasn’t Ishtar.
   I bolted up right from the couch and stared into the fire pit like area I’d considered my kitchen with a gasp. The scraping of a fork beating eggs in a metal bowl ceased and the crouching figure turned over a rounded shoulder and flashed me a gorgeous smile.
   “Morning!”
   I blinked, wondering if I’d woken up in the twilight zone. My mouth was hanging open, better to make use of it.
   “What the fuck are you doing in my house?’
   I hadn’t realized he’d been a Neko, the tell tale sign was the way his white tipped ears drooped at my reaction. “We’re back to hating each other again huh.” One of the smooth tips was pierced by a silver hoop and glittered in the firelight. Attractive, I liked my men heavily inked and lightly pierced.
   In less than a second the blanket was ripped off me. I was in his face and marching him into the stony wall with my lips peeled back to expose the vampire fangs that protruded from my mouth. “I should kill you just out of principal!”
   His blue eyes fixed on my greens and softened their surprise with a smile. “But then you’d be having burnt bacon for breakfast.”
   Well, come to think of it, I was very hungry after my night out with Ishtar, and if not having to cook my own breakfast was my reward for killing the intruder later, it would do just fine.
   I ‘d eat and then slit his throat, hang him from his ankles on the shower rod while I cleaned up in Ishtar’s bathroom. This decided I relinquished my hold, my dominant position and shifted so he could return to the bacon frying. I was still making the –I’m not a happy kitty- face.
   Sitting on my couch I surveyed the scene that lay out before me. My clothes were still on from the night before, except for my boots, which had been placed by the door neatly side by side. My jacket folded on the back of the couch and my keys were on the end table next to a bottle of aspirin and a half a glass of water. I scooped up the bottle and glared at the milligram dosages, noting I’d have to eat half the bottle for them to take any kind of effect. Fun. Tossing them back onto the small table with disgust I was reminded yet again why being a hybrid was a curse rather than a gift.
   I’d gotten drunk, had the opportunity to have a one-night stand and failed at even that simple thing. Not that I was a one-night stand kind of girl. But still, for someone to fail at being able to experience his or her first coyote ugly moment was pretty close to loser-dom. Instead I’d picked the only bastard in the bar that had honor. He’d taken me home to Ishtar’s gothic style church dwelling, into the underground, which was my part of the living quarters, taken my boots off, laid me on the couch. And then covered me with a blanket so I was comfortable and even remembered to leave water and painkillers for my hangover headache by my make shift bedside table.
   Now he was cooking me breakfast. Karma One, Cara Zero. Naturally.
   He came over with two plates and set one on the coffee table in front of me laying out a napkin and a fork. My nostrils flexed taking in the greasy scent of the bacon, he’d cooked the eggs with milk and added salt and pepper too. Genius.
   Silently, we sat side by side, eating. The silence wasn’t exactly unbearable. I simply ignored him and he was simply very hungry. But he surprised me yet again when we’d both finished and he’d taken my plate with his own to the kitchen, and washed everything he’d dirtied. Dried and put them all away in my cabinets.
   As I watched him I was less inclined to drain him, curling up on my couch I wondered how a guy that lived on the streets could be so house broken. And then, I mentally face palmed at my own stupidity as I recalled that a lot of the homeless of today hadn’t been homeless before. I still didn’t know his name. I wanted to ask but part of me didn’t want to give any information to him about myself. Quid pro quo. Yes or no?
   “Ish had to go to a meeting but left a note for you on your door.”
   Ish? Since when was he on a first name basis with my friend?
   Again I sat on the couch but this time reading the note in Ishtar’s scrawl, I took the offered handful of pills and then drank from the glass of water.
   Her note stated she’d be out of the City for the rest of the evening on business and to be sure to thank our current bacon-frying guest for getting my bike home safely and for dosing the dishes. She’d see me tomorrow.
   How did she know he’d do the dishes? Sometimes the woman just dumbfounded me.
   I read the note again, she’d named him “Mr. Case, huh?”
   I looked to him pointedly and folded the note tossing it onto the coffee table. Ugh, he’d driven my bike home because I was to drunk and Ishtar hadn’t wanted it to be stolen over night. So the guy I had danced with was him. I wondered if he had picked me because he’d known who I was in the crowd from the other night in the alley. Had he been watching me in the bar before I got trashed and pulled a Jessica Alba on the dance floor?
   “That’s me.” He plopped down on the couch next to me and grabbed up the remote, flipping on my television. Usually this was a big no-no in my book of rules for unwanted houseguests and squatters. The remote was mine; it was the control of the domain down here. And whoever had the control had the power, gah!
   “You planning on leaving anytime soon?” I almost snarled at him. He was grinning at something going on with bobby from King of the Hill. I wondered if he’d heard me so I waved a hand in front of his face to get his undivided attention.
   The sound of the TV was muted suddenly and he turned to look me over before giving me an answer. “You know, there’s not many people in this area that would make sure you got home ok without some ulterior motives. So could we just dispense with your,” his fingertips made quotations in the air, “I’m a bad ass routine, and just cut to the hanging out and enjoy a night in front of the tube?”
   My eyes almost fell out of my skull. I must have looked like a goldfish to him because he flashed me one of his gorgeous smiles and un-muted King of the Hill before kicking back again. All I could think of was Indiana Jones pretending to be a Scottish lord saying, -how dare he- before knocking the Nazi butler out.
   That started to sound like a good plan.
   I could see it now, bathroom door hanging wide open…oh hey Ish…someone’s boots strapped to the shower rod,…hope you don’t mind but that guy you left in my apartment last night,…bucket on the floor…decided to stay for dinner…filling with blood.
   “You’re not staying here.”
   His head tipped towards me slightly as a commercial ran through some jingle about Yuk Lager, “yes I am, so are you.”
   I scowled, “Excuse me?”
   “Ish said to take it under advisement that the City wasn’t safe tonight.” He sounded very matter of fact, as if no amount of arguing was going to sway him. I wondered if he’d actually try and stop me if I decided to go out and hunt.
   “She say why?”
   Mr. Case shook his head, eyes never leaving the boobtube, as he spoke with me, “not really, something about civil unrest.”
   I wasn’t sure what that really meant but if Ishtar said that I was not safe in the city, she meant it. And I would not be traveling for the night. I was still tired as the breakfast of bacon and eggs and a handful of pain meds sat like a comfortable rock in my gut. The blanket was warm and inviting and the lull of the television was constant and familiar, I settled further down on the couch and curled up to stare aimlessly at whatever colors were on the screen.
   When my eyes started to flutter a bit he scooped up my bend knees and gently pulled me further down the couch, I was about to protest but suddenly his palms, warm and strong were on my feet. Massaging them.
   I was grateful for the extra room so my neck wouldn’t kink and even better if he was going to treat this inconvenience like it was my day at the spa, I could bleed him dry later.
   I passed out half way through the second episode of King of the Hill and woke up to the sounds of Dethklok just starting. A scent had my stomach growling a bit, I didn’t need to eat this food, but it smelled so good. I stretched out on the couch more fully taking in the luxurious scent of a fresh out of the oven Italian sub.
   Someone smacked the bottoms of my heels and then I remembered my guest. I cracked an eyelid open to make sure he wasn’t just a weird nightmare I’d been having, nope. There he was grumbling about long legs and being kicked off the couch so many times he’d rather traverse the wilds than share the furniture.
   “Cattle Car delivery?” I asked sleepily.
   “Tribe Tracks take out.” He tapped the bag on the coffee table and I sat up slowly. “I had to take some money out of your icebox for it though, hope you don’t mind.”
   Part of me wanted to glare at him. He’d made me pay for our meal. He’d found my meager stash of around two grand sealed in foil in my frozen sushi box in the back of the freezer. And then it dawned on me, “you went into South gate?” That was along walk if he didn’t cut through the City.
   “Yeah.” I watched his lips curl around the tip of his straw as he sucked down something that smelled like Mountain Dew.
   I picked up the rolled sub and unwrapped it. Still warm.
   “You took my BIKE?”
   I saw his profile pause for a moment and his mouth stop in mid chew before he continued to eat. “It would have been cold and soggy if I hadn’t.”
   Soggy? He was using the excuse to not feed me a soggy sub to take a joy ride on my only possession worth any amount of anything to me. Again came the Scottish accent of Mr. Jones in my head, how dare he.
   After a moment I felt complaining about fresh hot food sitting in front of me was bad form and I wasn’t going to sink to his level of rudeness. Instead I muttered a thanks and took up what was meant to be my soda. I popped the lid to see if it was iced tea or Coke. Coke. Great. Should I tell him I’m allergic to it? Would that seem ungrateful? Instead I pressed the top back on and se it aside with a grimace. I’d get a bottle of water from the fridge if I were thirsty. The bag of bleedies I was jonesing for might disturb him. On second thought.
   “What’s wrong?” He was watching me with a scary kind of in-depth interest, he was studying me. I felt like an ant on a farm suddenly.
   Shaking my had to not seem ungrateful I murmured out an, “no, it’s ok.”
   His brow lifted at me and I saw a bit of concern smear across his boyish face that was hidden under a day’s growth of scruff, “to much ice?”
   “No.”
   “Bug in it?”
   I laughed and continued to push the wrapper around on my sub, “no.”
   He set his drink aside and leaned across the table saying, “that happened to me once.”
- 1
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Memoirs of a Hybrid