Page 101 of By the Pint

But nothing I’d ever experienced had prepared me for the physical pain of heartbreak. It had started in the hotel when Dima and I were watching wingball. Nothing more than slight discomfort. Like indigestion, or like somebody was poking me in the chest with a stiff finger. I guessed my body understood what was going to happen before my brain did.

Since then, the pain had built and built until I felt as though the easiest way through it, would be to lie down and pass out again.

It wasn’t a finger anymore, or a needle. It was an anvil. Crushing me. Flattening me to the turning facility’s waiting couch.

My appointment was at twelve-fifteen, but Killian insisted we got there six hours early because,“For the love of everything sacred, we need to get this fucking man wiped from your memories. I can’t stand the moping any longer.”

We’d been checked in by a human, or part-human, receptionist. A miserable looking woman with overly pink cheeks and plastic daisies dangling from her ears. There were waivers to sign. More waivers to sign. A video of me reciting the waivers to film. The pain in my chest had grown to such phenomenal levels it was near impossible to concentrate on the four-point cursive font of the six-foot long scroll.

He looks drugged, one of the filming technicians thought. They turned to a colleague and whispered, “Is he high?”

“Bloods will come back soon,” the colleague replied. “But I doubt it. He doesn’t look high to me. He looks more—”

But I didn’t hear the end of that sentence because that was the moment my nearly empty stomach decided to turn itself inside out. I grabbed the closest wastepaper bin and heaved into it. Vomiting until there was nothing left inside me. Vomiting until I was sure my organs were likely to climb up my throat and throw themselves into the bucket, too.

Once the dry heaving had mostly stopped, a technician passed me a rag, and another took the pail from me. I wiped the cold sweat from my face and tried to look into theirs. Both technicians were human, both wore deep-set frowns.

The closest of the technicians removed the cloth from my grip and gingerly pushed my collar down on either side of my neck, shrugging at their colleague.What the fuck?they thought.

The other thought,It’s not possible, this shouldn’t be happening yet.

“Let’s get him to his room. It’ll be his bowels next,” said one of them — I couldn’t tell which one.

“Good plan. I’ll call Nina. I’m not taking the risk,” said the other.

A tentative arm looped around my waist. “Hey friend, we’re going to take you through now. Okay? Get you ready for your big change.” Their voice was soothing. The kind you’d adopt to talk a toddler out of a violent tantrum, or a hostage-taker out of massacring all their hostages.

I nodded and stood. My legs still shook from the copious barfing. It really was an impossible amount. I mean, I hadn’t even eaten anything in five days, despite Killian urging me to try every variety of human food one last time.

They marched me out into the hall, where Killian joined us again, and took us to a windowless door that displayed a vinyl printed sign.

TURNING SUITEF

ASSEMBLY MEMBERS

AND PERMITTED

GUESTS ONLY

NO HUMANS

BEYOND THIS POINT

“Gracious! Sorry I’m late. You must be Mr Freckleman,” said a vampire rushing up to us outside the door. She wore pristine white surgical scrubs, and had her black hair tied up into a high ponytail. Her lanyard swung around her neck, but I couldn’t draw my focus enough to read her name. “I’m Dr Nina the Wrecker. It’s good to meet you. You must be”—she turned to Killian and peered down at her notes—“Mr Black?”

“Ah, no. That’s, um … He’s on his way,” Killian said, giving Nina a very weird, very out of place theatrical wink. “He should be here in time for the turning.”

Nina the Wrecker cocked her head to the side and brought the tip of her pen to her lips. “Uh …”Oh, shit, they don’t know what’s happening,she said in her head.

She unlocked the door with a huge drama-queen of a key and slid the iron lock across in a melodramatic clank. Inside that door was a tiny vestibule type area with another two locked doors. Charts and graphs were fastened to the walls with clip boards. They already bore my name, but nothing else made the slightest bit of sense to me.

Inside the second door lay a series of small, but comfortable rooms. The first a living — or unliving — room, with a leather couch, a TV stand and flatscreen TV, and a few bookshelves. In the far corner of the room was a small kitchenette. A sink and drying rack, a set of beige polyvinyl cupboards, and a fridge. The room was carpeted and plush, the sofa expensive looking, and framed art prints hung on the walls. Yet, I noticed thick metal bars across the tiny windows. And the same again for the interior window which led to … a private corridor? I wasn’t sure. It looked like a narrow passageway for zoo-visitors to stare in at the animals.

“This will be your home for the next …” Nina blew out a breath. “Few years. Possibly decades.”

I nodded. My stomach still too wobbly, and the pain in my chest too great to answer verbally.

“This is the den.” Of course they called it a den, not a living room. “Through there is your bathroom.” She indicated to the left. I spied the edge of a roll top bath and pub-green subway tiles. “And through here is your bedroom-slash-coffin-room.”

---