Red Streaks

Three men are sitting at a table. It’s a gloomy night, threads of lightning are shooting across the sky through the clouds and connecting like spiderwebs, but there is not thunderclap that follows. Instead, the silence lingers like a bad taste in someone’s mouth. The man on the southern end of the table would compare it to dead fish, a commodity where he comes from, yet he doesn’t understand why the hell that is. It’s a place that makes people look at him in the same way somebody would look at a middle-eastern man who runs a convenience store, like they’re all the same and the TV shows they’d gallivant around once their small tinfoil TV dinners were placed out were as accurate as William Tell. Dumb grins on their faces, ignorant to what people like the southern man really were. There’d be no point in arguing, even with the other two men on opposing sides of the wicker/pine table, a single .45 in the middle, picking up as much of the lightning as it wants, and shooting it back to them like a gun is supposed to do. Light flashes, and then it doesn’t.

The man on northeastern end, well he sees that lightning, and feels a shudder of fear move down his spine. The parka is keeping him warm, but it isn’t a question of suddenly feeling the wind on his skin, as it’s feeling vulnerable in a situation that already makes him shit his pants. He should be sitting at home, a bottle of Gin or a can of Tab in his hand, with a ticket stub about to be in his hand.

It’s smooth. The drinks that he likes are smooth, and run down his chin because he’s a disgusting bugger. It was a word his mom liked to use, but why should her words matter? Did they all end up leading him to this table, with that gun, with these men? That’s a bingo, bitches.

Then there was the third man.

Five sets of eyes were on him, as far as he knew, and he was one of them. His ass was planted on the northwestern side, making all three form a perfect triangle. A triangle in the dark, lit purely by a dim spotlight shot into the ceiling, and the lightning moving into the dining room from the bay window, moving through stripes cut into the gaps of curtains. Each fingernail was painted a sickly yellow, dirt dug up against the skin. There could’ve been blood, but that was their whole predicament.

That gun looked warm to the touch, scolding to the northwestern man. He and S watched through each others eyes. The beard on S’s face was clean, but continued grabbing grime the further down it got. And NE hadn’t even looked at the gun yet. The man was a wuss, a cowardly bitch, as S had described him the first night they met. Discoloration under his fingernails, crooked teeth, and a hairline that could touch the sky with its palm. None of them were the same.

“How about another drink. Partner.”

S’s words lingered for a minute. NE stayed out of it, everything was for western over, fully cloaked in caliginosity and a stench of rot.

“I’m good for now. How about some Tab instead? I’ve got a few cans.”

“I’d like—” NE’s words were cut off with a smack to the face from the cloaked direction. “You shut your damn mouth. We’ll get to you later.”

Back to S and NW. They were both built like boxers, in fact, one of them had been a boxer in their previous lives before moving to where they nowhere. Their father was a heavyweight in the Commonwealth Games for three decades before passing from pneumonia. He had been a huge advocate against the Queensberry Rules, since bare-knuckle fighting had always been his speed. Each night, he’d come home from bar fights covered in gashes and bruises, with both hands cherry red. The little boy that used to see that only looked with wonder, and followed in his footsteps the best he could, eventually winding up in four international championships in the span of ten years until his leg broke walking down the stairs wrong. After that, he moved over to Utah to help his uncle with the family business. Eventually he met a woman, then he got into the town’s good graces, now he was sitting at a table with a man and something.

“I’m not a big fan of soda.”

NW looked like he was gonna grab a candlestick, he just itched his leg. “What would you like then? My house has a lot of stuff to drink.”

“Like blood?”

He scoffed at him, S’s face stayed stern. “You’re a funny man, really. Who would’ve thought? Not me, that’s for sure. What about you—”

“Don’t talk to him. And don’t call me funny.”

“I feel like I should be able to. It’s my home. How do we know this stuff isn’t all your fault?”

NE continued to stay quiet. He quietly combed over the thin hair on his dirty head. The two men in front of him, behemoths over his pudgy body. Nothing in his life prepared him for what he was now dealing with, and nothing would for the years to come after he left that dining room and went home to his parents so he could continue working at the airport as a baggage boy in his 60s. No wife to wander about town with, no collections of anything, jack-shit, that he could take pride in. Maybe if he did, he wouldn’t have been at the Kingston, waiting on those two. It made him miss his childhood, playing baseball while his pops was fighting The Great War. Cold pop running down his face. Gritty teeth, gross sticky sugar caking his lips and cheeks. Why was he a suspect?

S started it up again. “Should we just start from the beginning? I’d rather get this done quick. That .45 isn’t the most pleasant sight.”

“Whose is it?” NW finally let NE speak, his voice annoyed him, it was too nasally for his taste. “It’s mine.” S this time.

NW finally did pull out a cig, nothing surprising to the others. The man was a chimney when they all saw him. A Fleetwood Mac shirt, cowboy boots, long dark torn jeans, and shaggy blond hair down to his shoulders. The man looked like a buccaneer, or a pirate from times way before their own; his twirled mustache and goatee made it seem too obvious.

“It’s a nice piece.” NW leaned back a bit into his chair, further into the dark.

“Thanks. My father gave it to me after he got back from Okinawa. A damn fine man, he was. What about yours partner?”

“My father was a working man, did things here and there. Wasn’t home much for the most part. If he wasn’t at work, he’d be on the water, fishing with his best mates. Once came home with a bass around three meters long.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Ha, no sir. That thing hung on our wall for years. My mother was furious that we could never cook and eat it. Especially with how hungry we were.”

“Depression?”

“Yep.”

S leaned forward into the table, a ray of the spotlight hit him straight on. “My family grew up on the other side during that time. My father fought in Iwo Jima, died, but the rest of my family and me were up and gone before we even got the news. Bombs everywhere, stress eating us alive. We ended up in Mongolia for shelter, and left to the states around ‘52. Shitty move, that’s for sure.”

NW felt a tense strain in his rest, veins pulling back and forth. Every word that S said filled his stomach with unease, boiling bile. He was talking on and on, letting his shit-for-brains language just come spilling out onto the table like, and then there was the other man, sitting. Waiting. Enjoying the spectacle. “What about you?”

NE perked up, out of his slump and back in. The fear he felt from the other two was enough to put a grown man down in the dirt. “Me?”

“Yeah. What was your father like?”

“I uh—I don’t know really. He wasn’t around that much. My mother and I were the only ones until she died in around ‘34, and now it’s just me.”

“Ain’t that a damn sob story.”

He gave a small smile, and kept looking at the table. He was probably just looking at the knots, giving the names, other dumb things to keep his mind occupied. “It’s better than yours.” Both eyes glued on NW, then to the gun, and finally back at him with more intuition. Lightning stripped through the crystaline backdrop of stars and the Milky Way. Clouds blocked the rest, and the smell of booze and moldy wallpaper took the rest. Two men, a creature, and a gun. That’s all they were. Held together by. . . Oh right, nothing.

“You trying to say something poncho?”

Confidence was building like energy in a microwave, and boy oh boy was he ready to blow. Every bit of NE’s body was sore and fatigued. They’d been at the table for five hours, and getting up meant getting shot. “Yeah. How old are you?”

“I’m fifty-two.”

“Bullshit buddy. I don’t see a wrinkle on you, and I can guarantee that you don’t even have a depression year on your license.” Now it was S in the background, a goofy grin crossing his face, teeth looking like axeheads.

“Just because I take care of my health doesn’t mean I’m a blood-sucker.”

“Seems like your own fault.”

“Oh, so I’m suspect number one because I eat veggies with every cigarette?”

“You’re suspect number one because you smoke more than anybody I’ve ever seen, and yet your skin could be compared to a baby’s ass.” S’s hands were getting a little closer to the gun. Only three bullets were in the chamber, all silver plated.

NE’s voice was getting shallow.

“Why do you even care this much all of the sudden? It’s like all of the sudden, you just decided that playtime is over and that you wanted to finally put your little devilish schemes in order.”

“I care because I want to go home. I’m tired.”

“We all are asshole.”

The table ruptured, the small cloth on the surface flew up and the thunder finally clapped outside. Their eardrums shook and their hearts finally started beating once again, moving blood through their veins. And adrenaline. Northeastern was holding the gun in his hand, glowing like neon. Reeking gunpowder moved into his nose, down his gullet, and into those tar filled lungs thanks to years and years of smoking under the thick atmosphere people used to call the British Invasion.

He held the gun high, reflecting lightning onto his balding head. The weight of bullets and steel wasn’t what he expected, he was so tired. “I’m tired. And I know it’s you, piece of shit. A man dies, pale as a goddamn ghost at the bar, you invite us back to your home for drinks, and then just out of the blue start talking about how one of us is a killer? That’s some textbook psychopathic behavior right there. Want me to recap more for you to help my case.”

S was staring right into the soul, or lack there of, of Mr. Northwestern. The shape and personality he had taken was getting sicker. Darker.

S looked at NE, his strong demeanor, and straight back. “Please do. I’m craving my bed sheets.”

“Okay. You—you—you start this night, with ordering us drinks. We don’t come to you. To be fair, not even me and this chap over here are talking, but you want us to. You said, and I quote, ‘community creates adrenaline.’ Now what the hell does that mean. I’ve been a damn good lawyer for awhile, and I know what crap you’re pulling. You want to put it on us. Oh, and we’re both forgetting the big ol’ detail in this. You wouldn’t drink the water. You utterly refused if I recall. Why? Was it because Jared the bartender was a priest back in his young days? Was the water blessed? Would it have burned you from the inside out?”

NW stayed silent. Another strip of twine-like-lightning fell to the ground, struck it, and put them back in silence. Symphonies of hand movements, and NE’s quick uneven breathing made NW feel more calm, but at the same time, at a point of near lunging into one of them. “I’m not the vampire.”

“Nothing so far seems to be on your side. Why didn’t you take the water?”

“This is ridiculous—”

“Why didn’t you take the water?”

“It doesn’t matter, look at this guy over here, now he’s quiet, now what—”

“Why didn’t you take the water?”

“Stop asking me that. Question the other guy.” NW leaned forward. His teeth radiating, gums a thick maroon. Meanwhile, S sat in the corner, the bottom of the table, with a straight face. Now he was the one irradiating a lack of suave.

“I’ll stop when you answer me.”

“You’re in my house.”

S butt in. “It’s my gun.”

“Thank you for that by the way. Why did you have it?” Five sets of eyes moved over to him finally.

The dining room in Northwestern’s house matched the rest of the interior he had taken pride in, it seemed. The place still had fresh paint from being built, each rivet still holding air in between itself and the metal. It began construction in December of 1978, the same month that The Deer Hunter came out. Northwestern had made it a rush job, and decided to do the rest of the inside himself. All he wanted done quickly was the foundation and actual structure. Everything else would just take time, something the other two thought he had too much of. S looked disgusting under the light. Their eyes had adjusted better with it. Finally, he stood up.

NE cocked the gun, and extended his arm out, right at his head. “Sit—sit—”

“Oh shut up, I’m getting a god damn drink. And water at that, you asshole.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t drink water.”

“No, you said I was the vampire.”

“Screw you man. You said one of us was. You said that one of us was a vampire. All of it started with you. Then you called out buddy-boo right here. ”

The gun lowered a little bit, and the tension lessened for the most part, they stopped talking completely for a small bit. Nobody wanted to move, including S. Southern liked to consider himself a man of class when he could. He liked the look of his gun in the hand of Northeastern, it fit the wuss well. Fridge light finally filled in the especially dark splotches throughout the newly painted dining room, and they both looked over, gun up, at Northwestern holding a jug of milk and a glass. He smiled and began:

“I want to tell both of you a story. And don’t interrupt or I will make sure you shoot me.”

Both stayed quiet, but Northeastern never even thought about dropping the gun. A quiver was waiting in his throat. It had been the first time in his life that he held a gun of that size, it almost made NW shadier. Bigger. More encompassed and one with the home he invited them too.

“Now, I am not a vampire. I feel like I need to say that, despite what you guys say to me. Did you not seen the cross of Saint Dismas around my neck? And for the record, this whole thing about me calling one of you a vampire, that never happened. And yet, you started to believe me. It started with Jared the bartender. I come into that bar, maybe, once in a blue moon, but Jared always remembers me. Never saw y’all there. It’s the Kingston, what can I say, it’s a god damn delicious bar. Now, Jared was a priest, as we have previously established, but he was also in Vietnam. I can see it in his eyes when he talks about it, fear I mean. The movement of his words, slurs under his tongue, haunting. I feel for the guy. I was in Korea myself, but who is here to confirm that, not you two assholes. All you think is kill kill kill, when in reality, there is no vampire. I said that there could be one amongst us at the bar, and then the further down the bottle we got, the more you believed it. Jared started it you stupid bastards. A hammered PTSD ridden bartender tells me; ‘Hey, did you know that vampires exist? Swear to shit. Those bitches run rampant through the streets once the lights go out, I tell ya. I guarantee that one of my patrons did it. Some have got true death in there eyes’. He says that to me. And then I say it to you. You know, like how conversations go god dammit. And then, buddy boy over here whips out his trusty forty-five. Three shots only in it, almost like how many shots were in us when you took it out. Now, here we are. How is that for a recap pal?”

Northeastern was still shaking. Silence corrupted him, kept him from safety. As long as he talked, kept a big game, then the lightning would keep hitting the dirt with no sound. If he was silent, it was loud, it took the chance to create white noise, keeping the tension in his bones heavy. He combed over his hair, holding it down with his sweat. “You—”

“I’m not done yet.” NW finally poured the milk, a little spilling, and came up with a nearly full glass of the stuff, before looking back at the gentlemen. He wouldn’t take a sip, the barrel on his skull made him on edge. At least, as much on the edge as he could get with a man like Northeastern holding it.

“Now, there’s the recap. But why do you believe me with this? Why do you believe Jared?”

“I don’t know. It just makes sense I guess. Vampires aren’t too far fetched for us—”

He slammed the glass down spilling glass. “Aha! There we go. It isn’t too far fetched, but it is a little bit, you can admit that. We are three men, sitting at a table, with a gun in the middle, trying to choose which one of us is a god damn bloodsucker, because it isn’t too far fetched. Sure, we live in a time when it isn’t that weird. Who knows why. Nobody has ever seen one, but it sure as hell seems plausible. Bodies popping up left and right, like the man at the bar, drained of blood, some of which even carrying fingerprints of men that have been died for decades!”

Northeastern’s lip was quivering, and a moment of clarity might have been what make him finally break.

His thumb stayed on the hammer.

His index finger touched the thick steel trigger, movement up and down feeling its details.

And his eyes stayed locked on the man on the counter, lit by fluorescent light and a cold tendril moved and was clinging onto him.

In frame, his entire body was visible. Heart, lungs, head, and liver. The four vitals it seemed for firing.

He felt its weight.

The pistol cluttered onto the table from his shivering hand, and strings of lightning reached onto his face, and retreated back into the sky, bellowing a noise from the clouds. Northeastern looked into the knots of the table again, panting and hyperventilating.

NW spoke. “Thanks, it feels good to not have that pointed at me.”

He didn’t respond. Neither did Southern.

“Why did you bring a gun to the bar?”

“Does it matter? He didn’t die from a gunshot.”

Northeastern sighed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He combed his hair, and NW took a sip of his milk. Southern tasted it in his mouth. He tasted the milk washing through his teeth, a creamy texture, and then curdling once it hit the back of his throat and started moving down like a chunky waterfall. The gun was in free range again. His own.

And then outside, the weather crashed.

Light entered, and the table shuffled again.

Southern grabbed the gun, stuck it into the gut of Northeastern, and fired. A momentary flash of light touched the room, as lightning crashed outside, and the sky looked like the Fourth of July for a brief moment. Colors bursting. In particular, red.

—

Three men are sitting at a bar. It’s dusk.

Only one of them speaks for now, since the others are too wasted and out of their own realm of understanding to comprehend the man talking. His name is Jeremiah Orlok, and people like to compare him to Bruce Lee. Despite the racist connotations, he just accepts it.

He takes a sip of the shot in front of him, it’s clean cut and dry Gin. The buccaneer in front of him looks sober, clear minded, but nothing he sees seems to make sense.

The bar still smelled like the bowling patrons it supported every weekend, booze and popcorn stuck under each barstool and jammed in the cracks between the wood panels that lined the wrapping bar itself. A sign still hung down from it, KINGSTON BAR; EST. 1891. Jeremiah looked up at it the same way he had for the past few decades since he moved to the states, taking the edge of with whoever decided to serve good tap. John was the first, then it was George, Betty Sue, and finally Jared taking up the helm now. Youth still filled his bones, but the bar didn’t seem like his kind of place anyways, saddening.

Jeremiah takes his cup and slams it down. Jared and the buccaneer are chatting up quietly, some religious bullshit.

Once he leaves, the bar is silent.

The three of them are sitting at the bar, and Jeremiah decides to break the silence.

“Do you fellas believe in vampires?”

Buccaneer was the closest, a Fleetwood Mac shirt was draped on underneath a huge leather jacket. Two pens were in the pockets; even those reeked of booze and disappointment. He slurred something about, but not anything more. Jeremiah smiles at the man, and waves his two fingers, looking right in his eyes. “Sure you do, buddy.”

“Sure I do, buddy.”

“You think that somebody in the bar got killed by one, don’t you?”

“I think that somebody in the bar got killed by one, don’t I.”

The man beside him begins peeking into the matter. He has a thin comb-over with puppy dog eyes sporting a future of throwing up and sore muscles after the hangover he wanted to meet with volition. Both puppy dog eyes stay locked on Jeremiah; he is a little more sober than the buccaneer but still thrashed past the point of coffee involved repair. Both of his hands are skeletal, throbbing and shaking while still holding the glass of Jack Daniels, and a Red Apple letting smoke hover to the ceiling in his other hand. The face didn’t match the hands, but Jeremiah could care less.

He smells fear on his clothes, an aroma of pure agitation staining his old clothes like red wine, while the same thing filled his bloodstream. His eyes stare at Jeremiah, “What are you saying?”

Both fingers keep his attention, and their eyes lock. “I’m just telling him how a vampire killed that man in the bathroom.”

“A vampire?” Slurs, not words.

“Yes sir.”

The man is entranced in Jeremiah’s existence, just like the buccaneer has been a few seconds before. In fact, the hot musky booze breath of the man is still hitting his neck. His eyes had never left Jeremiah. Finally, a damn good one. Susceptible. Vulnerable to even a crisp breeze or a light drizzle, pushable. It made Jeremiah giggle with excitement. Nobody else was in the bar, the jukebox dead quiet under the splintered support beams and hanging signs. Nobody to slip on the piss stains covering the floor, purely a domain for people to play with other people.

“Hey, buccaneer, do you have a house we could go stay at?”

He looks over with droopy eyes. “I sure do.”

“May I enter it?”

—

Northeastern slumped to the floor, head to toe he met the wood and plastic coverings with a heavy thud. Blood was pouring out onto the floor, the back of his shirt torn to shreds from the exit wound, and the front was completely maroon and getting bigger as time went on, turning him into an image kids would be steered away from. Bile was coming up from his mouth with blood, he was almost drowning, but there wasn’t enough blood to keep him steady. The white skin of his made him look like the thing they sought to kill. The chair collapsed, and Jeremiah watched with the smoking gun in his hand, and a shiny smile. The lightning continued going on outside, but nobody could hear it. The tasteful and delicious darkness fills Jeremiah with ease and a sense of freedom, despite the smell of Northwestern still filling the room like a skunk. The grip on his gun strengthens, nearly bending into the handle and cracking the leather into dust.

Northwestern has the same idea. The smoke is still burning his nostrils, and adrenaline is keeping him still and quiet for the time being. Instinct runs over him, and he takes his Saint Dismas cross, wrapping it around it knuckles until the cross is hanging, and they can’t fall unless the fingers go with.

The gun raises up above Jeremiah, and he quickly turns, getting met with a glass of milk flying into his head; the gun fires into the fridge and NW starts walking towards him while stunned. The milk is just milk, but the glass stuck to his face, getting deep in his skin.

He looks to see Northwestern, aka, Jonathan Curl. A boxer from New England. In one of his clenched fists, a cross is hanging down from a gold chain that’s wrapped around his fingers. Looking at his face, he couldn’t smell the fear.

“Come—”

Northwestern’s fist met his chin, clocking through and cracking a bone or two in the process. The chair flew back into the table, and Jeremiah ducked down as best he could. The next swing brushed his shoulder, and a burning sensation cut through his shirt. Someone else's blood came leaking out his mouth.

The room shifted. Northwestern turned to follow Jeremiah, and immediately felt his gut invert from a punch. All of his air came out, and he keeled over. Lightning crash.

Another hit. This time to the temple, kicking him down for the count, Jeremiah gripped his shoulder and watched. Both were about a yard from each other now, each taking heavy breaths, specifically Northwestern taking in as much as he could. The cross was still cutting into his fingers, blood dripping down. He looked at Jeremiah with a heavy breath, and saw him standing by the island in the kitchen, the scars in his face healed, and his fists coming up slow. Even the blood-sucker was out of breath.

Lunging, the cross missed, and an elbow came down on NW. He howled, and landed his other into the man’s gut. Once. Twice. Three times, until he lifted his head up into his chin, teeth cracked and exploding against the back of his throat, until the crossed knuckles squared him right in the face.

Shards of bone came spilling out his mouth, the bridge of his nose was steaming. Each breath looked painful. His legs were barely standing.

“Come on you bitch.” NW’s words were spaced apart, separated by breaths and wheezes. Sweat was pouring down his face. He stood up against the table. “I fought people worse than you in the circuit.”

Something that was once in Jeremiah had been gone as soon as the first shoulder hit maimed him for the time being. The cross had burned right through his shirt, and melted the flesh that connected to his bone. It was moving slowly down his arm like caramel.

“You really ought to give up.”

“You really ought to shut up.”

Jeremiah spit blood out on the floor, hitting one of the plastic tarps hung from the wall. The darkness of the room didn’t seem to exist, it simply became their boxing grounds. Northwestern’s shirt sleeves had run all the way up into his armpits, showing the biceps that had once been involved in gloved fights. Getting back to his routes seemed fun. Bar fights always just seemed like a way to get bruises. Nothing more, nothing less.

They were standing, fists raised, waiting for someone else to make a hit.

“Come on buddy.” Jeremiah shined his teeth as the sky’s reign shot down, lighting up the room. Two were sharpened to a point.

“Seems that cliches never lie.”

“Why mess with the classics?” His words were muddled out by saliva and blood, he spit again. “Bram Stoker sure knew what he was talking about.”

Northwestern smiled, his teeth were just a nice shade of ruby red. “You ever meet him?”

“Who do you think his inspiration was?”

“So sad that the real life Dracula is gonna die at the hands of a retired boxer spending his days drinking, isn’t it?”

He shrugged, fists still raised. “Sounds like an opinion.”

A foot hit his floor, and he ran toward him, dodged the one punch thrown, and landed an uppercut right into the throat. Jeremiah’s legs buckled, his fists coming down on his barrel-like back until the fall brought his head into contact with the island. Another cross handed hit squared him in the nose, breaking it in two.

—

On the outside of the house, the storm was starting to calm down along the coast, losing some heat and becoming more of a drizzle on people. The lightning and thunder had stopped completely, leaving the dawn to finally peer in with pitch blackness. Over the hill, red and blue lights smack against the sides of homes and asphalt until they eventually stopped at the dead end home on Lioncourt Drive.

In the eyes of everybody, a man is waiting inside waiting on blood. The cops are there after reports of a gunshot.