Chomp
Chapter 15: Red

My eyes snapped open, my breath catching in my throat. When the air finally came, I felt like I was gasping—trying to take in as much as possible, like I hadn’t in years. Sitting up far too quickly, the room spun before my eyes.

Room?

My eyes did their best to scan my surroundings, but a sudden throbbing in the back of my skull blanched my vision. Regardless, I didn’t recall walking into any room, nor did I remember where I had been previously.

A sharp pain stabbed in behind my ear, and I let out a harsh yelp.

“Whoah, calm down there.”

I squeezed my eyes shut as a hand touched my cheek gently. “You just had a six storey building fall on you; take it easy, okay?”

Her calming, velvety voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

I tried to steady my breathing, forcing it to be less ragged as I went, before peeling my eyes open again. Jess sat on the side of the bed I was in, still holding her hand to me with a worried expression on her face.

“A… A b-building?” I croaked out. My throat felt like rust, and I tried to clear it.

Jess dropped her hand and grabbed a glass of water from the nightstand beside me. I took the glass from her greedily, gulping down as much as I could without choking. When I had drained the whole thing, I wiped around my lips, finding them dry and cracked.

She smiled and nodded, taking the empty glass from me. It felt strange to bend my fingers around it, like they were stiff from not using them for ages. “Yeah,” she breathed. “Duke was down the block from you. His protest group was hit pretty badly with a street bomb, and—”

“Is he okay?” I blurted out, my head throbbing again. So it was humans who were bombing the vampires; why did the news imply it was the other way around? My brain felt muddled, and I couldn’t quite figure it all out. No, it definitely was the vampires hurting people.

Wasn’t it?

Jess nodded again. “You know Duke; he’s no frail spring flower. He’s the one who dug you out from under that building. Or rather… your parts.”

“What?”

She looked down at the bed, her drawn-on brows burrowed. “I think Yacob would probably be the best one to explain that to you,” she whispered, still avoiding my eyes.

Huh?

She glanced at the door.

I still had no idea where I was; if I had to guess, I would have said underground due to the lack of windows, but there was no way of telling. The room was small, but not unpleasantly so; large grey stone made up the walls and floor. A small lamp with a floral shade in the corner was the only source of light; the bulb flickered in no particular pattern. The door that Jess stared at intently seemed to look like any other, so it was clear that its plain appearance wasn’t what attracted her attention.

The smell of old books and some unidentified spice suddenly hit my nostrils; it was a familiar scent, but I couldn’t place it. As if on cue, there was a soft knock at the door, and Yacob’s voice came through the gypsum. “Is he awake, Jess?”

She got to her feet and headed over to the door to let him in. He stood there, every little bit of a tiny old man that I remembered. But everything had changed since I had last seen him. His wise, watery blue eyes now seemed like they were colder, his gentle smile now condescending.

“You!” I spat out. The two turned to look at me, no doubt astonished from the unusual tone of my voice. “You said it would be peaceful!”

Jess’s eyes narrowed. “How dare you accuse—”

She stopped mid sentence after Yacob raised a firm hand. “It’s quite alright, dear. He has every right to be a little upset.”

A little upset? Half of the city was in ruins, people were dead, and this man thought I was ’a little upset.’ I felt a twinge from the back of my head again and let out a slight whimper.

Yacob seemed to float his way across the room, his footsteps barely making any sound on the stone floor. He sat down on the very spot that Jess had left and made to place a hand against my forehead.

I pulled backward, out of his grasp.

“Calm, my child. I only want to see how you’re healing,” he whispered softly. I didn’t want to believe him, but something in his calming demeanour and eyes told me he was telling the truth. His pulse certainly didn’t raise the same way most liars’ did.

“Fine.”

He placed a surprisingly warm hand to my forehead and held it there for a few seconds before removing it. “Seems like your fever is gone,” he announced, a faint smile creeping onto his ancient-looking face. “It’s tough work re-growing a skull, isn’t it?”

I blinked, unsure if I heard him correctly. “S-Sorry?”

“I… didn’t tell him, Mister Osgoode,” Jess whispered from across the room.

Yacobe nodded his head slightly and folded his hands in his lap. “Very well. Will you excuse us please? I do believe this boy will need quite a bit of space after our conversation.”

Bewildered by his statement, I watched as Jess nodded abruptly and turned on her heel. “If either of you need anything, please give me a shout. I’ll just be down the hall with a few of the children.”

The door clicked as she closed it behind her, leaving me alone with this man that both intrigued and infuriated me. “She’s a wonderful woman,” Yacob remarked, looking at the spot she had been seconds ago. “Very beautiful, too.”

“I… I guess so?”

Especially now of all times, I hadn’t given much thought about it, but Jess was pretty enough. Her hair was long, black and sleek, and her dark almond eyes always seemed to be caring, if not worrying for other people. Beyond that, the age gap between us had largely prevented me from thinking any more.

“How old are you now, Samuel?” Yacob asked suddenly.

The jump in questions made me feel a little uncomfortable. I could feel the heat grow in my face slightly. “S-Sixteen…?” I replied. It shouldn’t have been a question, but it was.

“You sound unsure,” he countered, smiling knowingly. The wrinkles at the sides of his eyes increased tenfold with the smile.

“Well… I guess… I am.”

“Oh? You wouldn’t have happened to be… adopted, would you?”

“I—yeah. How did—?”

He chuckled slightly. “My mind may be old, but I’m still tarp as a shack.” He laughed again, only this time, it was at his own little lame joke. “But sometimes we old folks know things.”

I waited for him to continue, unable to tell if my confusion was well-founded or just from hitting my head. As I touched my fingertips to the back of my skull gingerly, I tried desperately to remember the last thing I was doing before waking up here. Not for the first time in my life, my memory felt like it was severely clouded.

“For one thing, I knew your parents.”

I blinked slowly, not sure what the old man was getting at. “Back in Saskatchewan, you mean? Or when they moved here?”

“Ah. You refer to the humans that took you in as your parents, too. I see. Well, I was referring to your biological ones.”

The room went frigid.

I felt rooted to the spot, fixating on his grizzled face. Gone was the faint humming of electricity from the lamp by my bed, the touch of soft cotton against my skin, and the air blowing in through the vent.

I had spent many a night in bed awake, trying to remember something—anything—about them. It was tough; the most I had ever gotten was a face with unreadable or muddled features. Beyond that, their names, where we lived==all of it–had been lost.

“M-My…?”

“We’ll get to that in a bit though, Samuel,” Yacob replied.

“But—”

“Did Miss Jess explain anything at all?” he interrupted, skimming over my protest like I hadn’t said a thing. His calm demeanour said he was used to being in charge and wasn’t going to be relinquishing power any time soon.

“Kind of. Why?” I spat back bitterly. This man knew my parents; was it possible he knew why I had no memory of them? Tanya and Bryan seemed to have a better idea of what happened than I did, and it bothered me that they had to be the ones to tell me the others were dead.

“Because what you are affected what happened,” Yacob explained simply.

“I-I’m a vampire,” I said slowly, “And that affected a building falling on me?”

He shook his head. “Your entire body was crushed. Did you truly think vampires were completely immortal?”

“Well… If I just had a building fall on me, I… I guess so?”

“Do you remember the first time we met?”

The embarrassment from that day crept back into memory, and I really wished I couldn’t remember. “…Yeah.”

“I personally remember the day quite distinctly,” Yacob continued as if I hadn’t answered at all. “I had visited about twenty-two other groups, spreading the word about the planned protest. Generally speaking, I rather enjoy reaching out to old and new vampires, getting to meet new people. But it can grow quite tiresome after a while, especially if you’ve done a handful already.

“I was half-prepared to reschedule this one, but something deep down in my gut told me I should sneak one last one in there. Imagine my surprise when I walk through the door, and I see you.”

His smile was enormous, and I couldn’t figure out why. “I don’t mean to… to wreck your story or anything, but I don’t think I look like anything… special.”

He clapped a hand onto my shoulder, and the action rattled my skull again. A small throb went through it, but it felt significantly weaker. “Let me rephrase this, then.”

Yacob reached out a hand and pulled my chin within inches of his face. His watery looked significantly different from this distance, like they had the stars themselves in them. His eyes scanned my face several times over, and a discomfort grew between us with every second.

Finally, he released my face, and I pulled as far away from him as I could without getting off the bed.

“Imagine my surprise,” he whispered softly, a slight hint of affection playing in his tone, “When I saw the face of my late brother’s child.”

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