Adventures of a Vegan Vamp: A Paranormal Cozy Mystery (2 page)

W
hy did
my mouth feel like it had been stuffed with cotton balls? I tried to swallow and almost puked in my mouth. I held my breath and fought the urge to swallow again…tried not to throw up. I needed to be absolutely still—because I would never make it to the bathroom.

Even the thought of moving made my head pound with a vicious rhythm. An eyelid cracked of its own volition and the pain at the base of my skull and behind my eyes ratcheted up. I carefully shut my eyes and lay very, very still. Finally, after counting backward from a hundred, I started to feel myself drift away.

* * *

A
desert surrounded me
. A cool desert. A cool, dry desert. Slowly, I became aware of the feel of the sheets against my skin, the pillow under my head. And then the parched, cottony feel of my mouth. I almost groaned—almost. But then I remembered the gut-piercing, brain-pounding pain from earlier. The feeling that my head would explode into a billion tiny pieces. So I didn’t make a sound.

I lay in my bed—still, in pain, and afraid—for I don’t know how long…but then I realized I was thirsty. Wandering-the-desert, no-water-for-days thirsty. I opened my mouth a little and experimented with moving my lips. The pulling sensation that forewarned of cracking skin stopped me. Water had
never
sounded so glorious. I could feel it slipping past my lips, moistening my mouth… And then I did groan, because there was no water. And my head exploded in pain, followed by a black nothingness.

* * *

S
omeone had superglued
my eyelids shut. Somewhere in the back of my brain, I realized that wasn’t okay. Kidnapping, home invasion, a
Criminals Minds
-type serial killer—scenarios flashed through my mind. But I wasn’t afraid. I experienced, in fact, a complete absence of fear. I was simply too tired to feel any strong emotion.

I must have drifted off to sleep again, because when I woke up I vaguely remembered thoughts of superglue and kidnapping, but this time I realized how insane that was, mostly because I could open my eyes—just. It took some delicate prying. I’d had allergy attacks that left my eyes crunchy—I lived in allergy central, a.k.a. Austin, Texas—but the crud in my eyes was something entirely different.

Whatever the funky goo was, the effort of unsticking my eyelashes from it had wiped me out. I lay on my bed and tried to summon up sufficient energy to move, but it wasn’t happening. Lying there with my mind awake and my body incapacitated, I couldn’t help but dwell on my drier-than-dirt mouth. I tried to lick my lips, but it didn’t help. There was no spit in my mouth to moisten my lips.

I needed a drink.
Water
. I almost shivered, I was so excited. The thought of water was finally enough to make me think about getting up.

At least the gnarly headache that I’d been sporting the last time I woke up was gone. But I had crystal-clear memories of that pain, and it was those memories that made me cautious. I slowly rolled onto my side. My muscles protested. The deep muscle aches made me wonder if I’d come down with the flu.

Headache, nausea, aching muscles—I stopped inventorying my symptoms and lifted the back of my hand to my forehead and then my cheek. Dry and cool to the touch; no fever. A feverless flu? I added one item to the list: a weird feeling that I hadn’t moved since I’d fallen asleep. And I
never
slept on my back; I was a side sleeper.

Flu or no flu, that water wasn’t getting any closer. In one quick motion, I rolled off my bed and onto my feet—and collapsed onto the floor. Abstract thoughts of superglued eyes and kidnapping hadn’t done it, but now I was worried. I needed a drink. How long had I been asleep? And I still didn’t feel like I needed to pee. I
always
had to pee as soon as I woke up. I had to be dangerously dehydrated.

Where was my phone? I usually left it plugged in next to my bed, and it was hard to believe I’d slept through my alarm. Mustering up enough energy to crawl, I inched my way to the bedside table where my phone was plugged in. With what seemed a monumental effort, I grabbed the phone. I propped myself up against my bed and tapped the screen.

Nuts. Fourteen missed calls, twenty texts…how…? It was late and I’d missed work, but fourteen missed calls. A nasty feeling washed over me. The wallpaper on my phone had a large digital clock that read nine fifty-three—but there was no date. I flicked the screen down. My eyes didn’t want to focus. Or my mind was playing tricks. Friday the twentieth. That simply wasn’t possible; I’d gone for happy hour drinks on Tuesday. I couldn’t have been in bed for three days. Someone would have checked on me—wouldn’t they?

After dialing voicemail, I tapped the speaker button and then started to scroll through my texts. After five minutes it was clear: no one had thought to check on me. I’d been berated for not calling in, for missing appointments, and for failing to attend meetings. By my boss and my coworkers. By voicemail and text. I’d made a mistake, and they’d reveled in it.

The effort of retrieving my phone had so depleted my strength that I couldn’t do more than lie on the floor. So I curled up and wallowed in self-pity. To be so alone that no one suspected I was unwell or injured after I’d been missing for three days? Miserable. Pathetic. A desolate existence. I realized as I cried that no tears fell; I hacked out dry sobs that burned my throat—because I’d never made it to the bathroom for that drink of water.

I
was broken
. Something was wrong about me, my body, what was happening. And I had two days to find out what it was. Two days, and even then I’d probably be begging to keep my job, if those texts and voicemails were any indication. I definitely needed some kind of believable excuse explaining away my three days off the grid.

Last night I’d eventually managed to make it to the bathroom, consume an unbelievable quantity of water, and fall asleep again. Here it was, ten a.m. on Saturday, and I still hadn’t peed. What person goes four days without peeing? After googling, I discovered people did go four days and even longer without urinating—but none of the scenarios I’d found seemed likely to apply to me.

Going to the doctor seemed wise, imperative even…except for the part where I had to get out of bed, get dressed, and actually get there. I rolled over in bed. Then I rolled again and sat up. The soreness was gone. I was exhausted, yes, but the deep muscle aches had vanished.

Tired I could manage. I’d pulled a few all-nighters in business school and knew some tricks. Group projects still left a nasty taste in my mouth. There was always one underachiever who didn’t do their part, and never in a predictable, manageable way. I had never been one to let my work suffer from someone else’s failure—hence the all-nighters. Determination was key, but caffeine and a shower should follow closely behind.

After I’d put the kettle on to boil and ground some fresh beans, I sat down with my laptop at the kitchen table. I drafted a quick note to my boss that I’d come down with a terrible flu, hadn’t left my bed in days, and I’d be back to work on Monday. I groveled as best I could, reread it to make sure I sounded sincerely apologetic without tumbling into desperation, and then clicked send. It all sounded reasonable enough but for one small detail: my boss had actually met me. Anyone that had spent more than a few minutes with me would know that I’d call in in between puking bouts. The only thing that could keep me from calling in was a coma. Or death. The piercing whistle of the kettle distracted me from pursuing that morbid thought.

Five minutes later, I marched into my bathroom with my French-pressed coffee in hand, ready to tick off the next item on my list. A shower should be a nice pick-me-up. Although—oddly enough—I didn’t feel like I’d spent the last four days in bed sick. And I hadn’t noticed any weird odors. If you didn’t shower for four days, you smelled. A simple fact of life every woman past puberty understands. But what would I tell my doctor? I’m fresh as a daisy even when I don’t shower—isn’t that weird? I shook my head and turned to flip the water on.

Hot coffee splashed my thighs as my mug fell from nerveless fingers.

The sound of shattering ceramic echoed in my ears as if from a great distance.

The gaunt-faced image across from me jumped, and I yelped in surprise.

Her mouth moved as if yelping in surprise.

I took a cautious step away from her…and she did the same in reverse.

“Oh, no. Nononono.” I lifted my hand to my shockingly thin face. “No.”

My knees ceased supporting my weight, and I sank down to perch on the lip of the tub. And for the first time since I’d gained consciousness the previous evening, I looked closely at my hands. Long, elegant fingers. Too thin to be my fingers. I inspected my right hand and found no age spot just below the knuckle of my index finger. No blemishes at all. The fine lines that had become invisible to me over the last few years were marked now by their absence.

My forearms had become a series of interconnected freckles more years ago than I could remember. Since my mid-twenties, maybe? A light, even tan now covered my forearms.

I dropped my head into my hands, but that was a mistake. My own flesh felt alien. My face had once had a pleasant roundness to it that I’d become accustomed to. The new sharpness of my chin and the definition of my cheekbones felt foreign under my fingertips.

Inhale, two, three. Exhale, two, three. Inhale, two, three. Exhale, two, three.

That therapist had been good for something after all, because when I opened my eyes I had a plan. I stood up and stripped off all of my clothes. I was taking a shower, because that had been the plan before I’d found some alien person’s body had replaced my own.

I tried not to think too much as I scrubbed myself down in the shower. I was about to wash my hair when I realized that it was clean. I usually had to shampoo daily. “Not thinking, Mallory. Just showering.” And I rinsed my hair really well without shampooing it. On a whim, I went ahead and conditioned it so I’d have the perfumed illusion of having washed my hair.

When I stepped out of the shower and wrapped myself in a towel, I found the hem, as always, just above my knee, but my towel wrapped much further around than it should. Without pausing to acknowledge the gaunt, dark-headed woman in the mirror, I left the bathroom for my walk-in closet.

Smacking the light switch on gave me an odd sense of satisfaction. Maybe if I slammed a door, I’d feel even better. I steeled myself, then let the towel drop. Turning to the full-length mirror, I tried to examine the woman standing there dispassionately. The eyes were mine. So much larger in my now too-thin face, but the shape, color, and the thick lashes were all me. A glimmer of hope pushed past the panic. I was still in there. The shape of my face had changed significantly, but the flare of my eyebrows was the same, as was the shape of my nose. As I tilted my head to the side, I realized it was really my jaw line that had changed the most.

My gaze slipped lower to prominent collarbones and—

“No way.” I could see my ribs, barely, but I could see them. And my D cups had diminished to a less voluptuous A or B. I wasn’t sure which, because I couldn’t remember having ever been an A or B. I had starved, literally, in four days. No one lost that much body mass that fast.

That’s why I was so tired. And also why my brain had ceased to function properly. If I hadn’t eaten in four days, of course I was tired. And my blood sugar was low. I threw on some yoga pants and a T-shirt—nothing else would fit—and hopped on the scales in my bathroom. I’d lost twenty-five pounds. How was that possible?

I stepped away from the scales and tried to decide if I was actually hungry—and I wasn’t. What was happening to me? I didn’t even know what I would tell my doctor. He was a stuffy old guy who barely spoke ten words to me during any visit. He’d think I’d starved myself, but I would never. I
liked
food. And while I’d been a little overweight, I didn’t have a serious problem with the way I looked before. Sure, I envied more glamorous women—who didn’t? I squeezed my eyes shut. Looking so different, feeling so alien in my own body, I missed being a little overweight, because that was
me.

Food—that was my next step. I needed to eat something.

En route to the kitchen, I contemplated my two biggest dilemmas: what story could I tell my coworkers to explain my rapid weight loss? And how could I convince my doctor I hadn’t developed an eating disorder? Otherwise, he wouldn’t bother to figure out what was going on with me. Or I just needed a new doctor who would believe me when I said I wasn’t starving myself.

A knock on the front startled me. Those questions would have to wait for now. I detoured from the kitchen and went to open the front door.

Looking at the shocked face of my neighbor, it occurred to me that interacting with people who knew me as twenty-five pounds heavier might not be advisable.

“Hi, Mrs. A. How have you been?”

“My, but you certainly look different, don’t you, Mallory? Have you been ill? Not that you look, uh… You look just fine.” She pursed her lips together.

I scrambled to think of an excuse, any excuse, for my appearance. “Diet pills from Mexico…” I shrugged, leaving the rest to her imagination.

“I see.” She frowned, clearly disapproving of such newfangled methods. She’d told me not long after I moved in that she enjoyed a brisk walk twice daily and ate salad for dinner every night. From the context of the conversation, it had been a not-so-subtle hint that I should consider doing the same. Mrs. A’s face cleared and she leaned forward. “Well, it’s just that I’ve been knocking and knocking. I didn’t want to use my key, just in case…in case you might have
company
.” She whispered the last word like it was a secret she was hiding from nosy neighbors. Except she was the only nosy neighbor on this side of the fourth floor.

I stood up straighter and bit my lip in an effort not to laugh. Mrs. A was embarrassed that her thirty-nine-year-old neighbor might have had male company overnight. I couldn’t help but want to laugh at the absurdity. I’d been dying—literally wasting away in my apartment—and the only neighbor with a key was too embarrassed by my (wholly imagined) sexual marathon to use her key. Even my mom didn’t have a key to my place.

Biting back a laugh that was sure to be wildly misinterpreted, I said, “No, I haven’t had any company. Just a little flu bug. Thank you for checking on me.”

She gave me a sweet, grandmotherly smile, but she had a wicked glint in her eye—like she knew the
real
story. “I see. Well, if I’d known you were sick, I’d have brought over some homemade chicken soup for you.”

Mrs. A had a vivid imagination, and she did love to spy on the neighbors—but envisioning an orgy in my apartment was a level beyond anything I would have previously expected of her. She needed to get out more. I smiled and tried to look thankful—even though I’d tried her chicken soup. “That’s so kind of you, but I’m on the mend now.”

I took a step back deeper into my apartment, hoping she’d get the hint.

Mrs. A was no one’s fool. “You let me know if you change your mind about that soup. Bye for now.” She gave me a jaunty wave and headed back to her apartment just across the hall.

As I closed the door, I gauged my level of hunger. I should be starving—but I wasn’t. Time to try a little food and see if that sparked my appetite. Sometimes all it took was that first bite, and then, poof, my stomach was jumpstarted. Not that I’d gone quite this long without a meal, but in my school days, I’d definitely skipped a few.

As I wandered into the kitchen, I considered my current mental state after four days with no food. How I wasn’t lightheaded and seeing stars, I had no clue. Nothing in the pantry looked particularly appealing. The refrigerator had been practically empty before I’d fallen ill, so I wasn’t holding out much hope there. Orange juice looked good—probably because my mouth still had a cottony, dry feeling. I drank straight from the carton as I perused the rest of the contents. Sandwich meat that had been opened longer than seven days, bread for toast, a questionable tomato, and more condiments than any three people needed. Eventually I settled on peanut butter toast. Easy, filling, and about all my bare cupboards were going to yield.

It wasn’t until I loaded my toaster oven that the oddness of drinking straight from the carton hit me. Normally, I found that disgusting: backwash in the carton, the juice sitting in the fridge, and the bacteria from my mouth growing and overpopulating the previously pristine orange juice… I blinked. My scalp wasn’t crawling. I had no urge to immediately chuck the OJ into the trash or brush my teeth. Bizarre.

Not that I was OCD—not technically. I was just particular. And I didn’t like bacteria and germs. Or bugs. Or sick people. My hand was moving toward the carton of OJ for another sip when the timer on the toaster oven dinged.

Apparently I was thirsty enough not to care about bacteria, because that OJ sounded really good. I shrugged and chugged the rest of the juice.

The peanut butter melted as I spread it on the warm toast, and the nutty aroma filled the room. My mouth watered. I took a bite, and as the gooey peanut butter hit my tongue, I experienced my first pangs of hunger.

I savored the warmth of the peanut butter and the crunch of the crust. It was heavenly.

A strange sensation was the first indication that all was not well. Nothing I could pinpoint, just a notion that something wasn’t quite right. If only that feeling had persisted for more than a few seconds, I might have realized what it meant. The contents of my stomach were spread on the floor before I could even think about making it to the bathroom.

Tiptoeing around the mess, I made a dash for the sink. I rinsed my mouth as best I could, but when the acrid taste in my mouth was finally gone, I didn’t know what to do. Was it the orange juice? The bread? The peanut butter?

I had managed to keep down the water I’d drunk so far, but that was all I knew for sure.

As I rinsed my mouth a second time, I realized I still had no good story for my doctor and a nasty mess to clean up. Trawling the internet for a new doctor just moved up my to-do list. I had to sort myself out, and preferably before Monday.

And how much longer could I go without food?

I threw a mountain of towels on the floor so that there was no way I’d be contaminated by orange juice/peanut butter puke, and then chucked them all in the wash. Germs and bacteria may not be as freaky today, but puke was still disgusting. As soon as all traces of mess had been erased, I realized my short bout of activity had drained whatever energy reserves I had. I filled a pitcher with water and grabbed a cup to set on my bedside table, and then I followed the very inviting call of my bed.