Page 50 of The Vampire's Thirst
When the fosters caught a boy sneaking out at night, they called the children to observe his punishment. He stood defiantly in the middle of the room while the dad ordered him to drop his pants. Chiara still saw his knobby knees and red, faded boxer shorts as he challenged the foster parents to do their best.
Chiara closed her eyes, but a smack to the back of the head warned her to watch. As the boy stood there, pants at his ankles, folded over his torn sneakers, the mom flicked a switch across his buttocks. Over and over until he was bloody. Nobody cried. Nobody defended him. The children watched. When the punishment ended, they returned to their rooms while he cleaned up the mess he had left on the floor. Show over. Lesson learned. Do not leave the home without permission.
The kids shared two bedrooms where the fosters locked them in each night. Despite the punishment, the boys continued to take off once it was dark. At least, they bragged about their exploits. The girls were too scared to try.
Bett was one of Chiara’s roomies. Ooh! That girl had a mouth straight from New Jersey. She taught Chiara the finer points of cussing or dishing out insults. Cigarettes, too, but Chiara gave those up.
With only two years until freedom, Chiara would have stayed with the family despite its cold cruelty, but the boys changed. When they broke into the girls’ room, the knobby-kneed boy held down Artha, hand over her mouth, while the other raped her. The girl’s sobs frightened the young Chiara, who tried to help but was thrown back onto the bed. She was no match for either attacker. She pulled a blanket over her head to muffle the cries.
When the girl complained to the fosters, they were all treated to various passages from the Bible, one being Proverbs 13:5. “The righteous hate what is false, but the wicked make themselves a stench and bring shame on themselves.” Following the reading, Artha got the switch. She didn’t have to drop her pants. The lashes came to the backs of her legs.
When the boys visited again, Bett willingly offered herself up. She said, “It’s time I get laid, even if by two pimply faced pencil dicks.”
One day, the taller boy cornered Chiara in the upstairs hall following room cleaning. When he made it known she would be next, she cowered in fear each night. Bett, while telling her being fucked by two ugly pencil-dicked boys hurt, helped her drag a dresser against the door. The girls took turns sleeping fully clothed. Artha wasn’t much help since she slept curled up in the closet with the light on after her experience.
After about two weeks, Chiara jolted from her sleep to see the dresser slide aside while the door slowly opened. The boys entered as she and Bett huddled together in a twin bed.
“Oh. Look,” said the taller boy. “They’re waiting for us.” He grabbed his crotch. “You’re gonna love this.”
He crept closer, his cruel eyes on Chiara. Leaping from the bed, she cringed in a corner, shaking. When he was so close she felt his breath on her hair, she threw her hand into the air. “I wish you were dead.”
With a thump, he crumpled to the floor. The teens stared as the taller boy’s chest didn’t rise and fall.
The knobby-kneed boy bent over his friend as a wide-eyed Chiara clasped a hand to her mouth.
As she hugged Chiara, Bett asked, “What’s wrong with the little asshole?”
“He’s dead,” said the boy. “She killed him.”
Bett dropped her arms, staring at her friend, fear in her wide eyes.
Chiara froze. She killed someone by wishing him dead. How? When her legs worked again, she grabbed her stuffed monkey and pried open the bedroom window, crawling out onto a tree limb. She climbed down the trunk. Running, not stopping until she reached an alley behind a restaurant, she hid on the other side of a dumpster where she fell asleep. When she awoke, it was still night, and she was hungry. Scavenging food from a trash bin, she wept, wondering what to do now.
When a man with rumpled clothes stumbled into the alley, a bottle gripped in his palm, he trapped her between the wall and the dumpster. His fingers pushed into the waistband of her jeans. She raised her hand and wished he’d die. When he fell to the ground, she didn’t bother to check for breathing. She knew she’d killed again.
Chiara charged out of the alley, running to the closest ATM, where she removed a card from her monkey. Her mother had crammed several cards, a little cash, and numerous notes inside the stuffed animal. There was also the phone number and address of a man her dad called a fixer.
With money from the ATM, she rented a room in a motel, telling the clerk her mother was in the restaurant next door getting them an early breakfast. She collapsed onto the bed not a moment too soon. Her body quaked with tremors. She couldn’t control her arms or legs as they flopped up and down, spasming. A loud buzz obliterated any thought. Finally, she stilled and slept.
That morning, she called the fixer.
He could do anything from creating a new identity to burying bodies. He taught her how to access all the funds in her numerous bank accounts and move them elsewhere. The guy shared tricks for being on the run. How to find cheap but safe lodging. How to obtain odd jobs where no one would check her ID closely. He showed her how to hang on until she was old enough to pass for an adult. The man was good. For a price, he explained how to stay off the grid.
As Chiara Flores, she bought property with a cabin outside Orofino, Idaho, on Nez Perce land. The Native Americans left her alone, almost guessing what she was.
She had no idea how she had killed the boy or the vagrant, but she knew she was dangerous. Too dangerous to live around people. In time, she learned she could heal with the same hand which murdered. She didn’t trust her powers, though.
In the early years, Chiara cried often. She was a freak, someone who murdered with no conscience. Part of her said they deserved to die. Another part regretted her actions. She wasn’t normal. What was she?
With the story finished, she hung her head. Dax reached across the seat to tip her chin with his fingers. “Those fuckers earned their fate. You did nothing wrong.”
They rode in silence for some distance, Chiara accustomed to Dax’s long periods of brooding quiet.
Once he spoke, he didn’t say what she wanted to hear.
“I’m the most dangerous monster here, but I will never hurt you.”
“I know,” whispered Chiara, a tear sliding down her cheek.
