Page 10 of Blood Lust

I don’t mean to frighten him. Nor do I want him to crush his skull against the window. Blood smears against the glass, while I yell through my door slot for help.

Don and Terry sprint down the hallway to the man’s cell. As soon as Don unlatches the key ring from his belt, the mandisappears from view. They open his cell room door, revealing the man lying on the floor, twitching from a seizure. Don radios for help while Terry turns to me with a worried look in his puffy eyes.

“What the fuck just happened?” he asks me.

“I have no idea… I just wanted to say hello. I sure as hell didn’t ask him to eat his tongue for breakfast.”

Don crouches next to the man. He reaches into his pocket for a mouth guard, but before he can insert it into the man’s mouth, blood sprays out from the man’s lips like a geyser.

“He just sliced his tongue in half!” Don springs up and away from the crimson spray.

Three blue-gloved members of the emergency medical staff, wearing face shields and smocks, rush in to try to stabilize the inmate. Don and Terry make room for them as they step out of the cell and into the hallway. I notice small specks of blood spray on Don’s left cheek and nose.

“You showed him your teeth?”

“Does that mean I can’t smile now?” I deadpan, giving him a toothy grin and showing off my large incisors.

“I got this motherfucker’s diseased blood all over me ’cause you couldn’t keep to your sorry self!” Don barks at me as he reaches for his key ring and looks as if he’s going to enter my cell and pummel my ass. “You’re such a fucking asshole!”

“Just trying to be friendly,” I smirk.

Terry pulls the larger security guard back from my cell door, shaking his head disgustedly. “Don’t. He’s a biter, Don.”

“I’m gonna come back with a muzzle and then I’m going to pile-drive your ass into the ground!”

“Whatever gets you off, big guy.” I wink and blow him a kiss.

Don’s words lose their impact as I’m instead mesmerized by his neck. The meaty stalk is reddened by the Missouri summer heat. His vein pulses and hardens with anger. A manhis size, age, and temperament probably suffers from high blood pressure. One little prick from one of my fangs at the right spot would yield a bounty, for sure. I have to play the long con. I’m small and scrawny compared to these behemoths. They’d punch holes in me with their large fists. I have to wait for the right moment.

“I’m sorry,” I say, trying to sound sincere.

My apology appeases Don for the moment, and he turns away from me while pulling a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiping the blood from his face.

“I’ll try not to smile next time. I just have so much to be happy about and want to share the joy that’s pushing up out of my soul.”

“It’ll suit you well if you keep that trap of yours shut,” Terry says.

“What do you mean?” I ask, not worried by his ominous tone.

Meanwhile, the bloodied man, now passed out or dead, is then picked up and rolled out of his cell on a stretcher.

I continue staring through my window for the next half hour. Surprisingly, no one ever comes to clean up the pool of blood left behind in the man’s cell, but the smell of bleach persists. I’m in a dirty, unkempt Clorox hell. And if I stay here long, I’ll eventually stop being who I know I am. I don’t plan on spending the rest of my life being a medicated stiff who can only look forward to being pounded like a piece of meat.

No way in hell will I let that happen.

Chapter Ten

I curl up on my aluminum bed and try using my own body warmth to repel the cold surface as best I can.

I begin counting the small holes in the white cinder blocks in front of me. There are 157 of them, and only 98 on the oneabove. I wonder how the holes got there. Air bubbles most likely, trapped when the manufacturer molded them with concrete. They’re slight imperfections in an otherwise impenetrable cement barrier, preventing me from escaping to the outside world. Yet the holes give the blocks a sense of vulnerability. If I could somehow find a way to poke them with something sharp, over, and over, and over again, then perhaps the blocks would lose their strength.

Who am I kidding? That wouldn’t work… would it?

You’d think being in isolation for as long as I’ve been that my mind would slow into a state of semi-hibernation, but no, it races like never before. I cannot stop thinking. About stupid shit too. Like poking holes through cement blocks, one at a time, for months on end, until the wall has the consistency of Swiss cheese.

Five days have passed, and I’ve lost the ability to know when I’m awake and when I’m dreaming. They’ve broken me down. Is that their intention, or did they forget about me? No, they couldn’t have forgotten about me… I just ate lunch. I turn over on my other side and see the orange-colored plastic food tray with the crumbs left over from my chocolate chip cookie, and an apple core.

Then I hear a female voice say, “Aaron.” It trails off and sounds like Annie too, the sweet goth girl who I murdered because I lost control in more ways than one.

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