Chapter 5 #3
“Human women are different,” Mark murmured, absently tracing his finger along her back.
“I should think so,” Crystal said. “Not to be prejudiced. But it does seem that way.”
“Vampyren women can be soft. Sort of. Mostly they’re hard like us,” Mark said thoughtfully. “But human women can be soft and hard at the same time somehow. It’s fascinating.”
“Not sure what you mean,” Crystal said, chuckling. “But I believe you.”
They would have to get up soon enough. They would eat and then Mark would probably need to get back to his unit.
Then it would happen all over again. Mark would come visit for a night only to leave.
Everything felt so temporary, like some stopgap.
At the end of the stopgap, what was there?
Either death or a future. But what was the future?
“What do you think the future will be like?” Crystal said. She felt silly asking questions like that. It was easier to pretend to be apathetic. But she’d never been great at it. She could make jokes and trick people into thinking she didn’t care as much as she did. They were never fooled for long.
“The future?” Mark said.
The room was already too warm. The breeding pit had pretty consistent electricity but the old air conditioner rarely worked.
Sometimes it brought to mind a Southern flophouse from an old movie where the prostitutes were slicked with sweat and walking around in lacy little rompers, sipping low budget mint juleps.
She’d never actually seen a movie like that, but she had a clear mental image of it.
“I mean something has to change, right?” She hated how plaintive she sounded.
She hated that tears were welling up in her eyes.
Somehow getting close to someone made everything better and harder all at the same time.
“We can’t always be at war. And if the Lucian come, that will change things.
So, truce? Coexistence? Everybody just kills each other? ”
“I’m hoping for coexistence,” Mark said, sounding all too casual about it. “Truce, I suppose. I don’t know if it’s possible, Crystal if I’m going to be absolutely honest. But if it is, I want to be there with you when the dust settles.”
Crystal sat up a little, shifting to lean on her elbow and look in his eyes. “As in, have a life together?”
“That’s right.”
It wasn’t surprising that he would say so and yet she had an urge to laugh. “You, me, and a white picket fence. Sure.” She kissed his chin. He was an odd duck among the Vampyren alright. It was pretty endearing.
“What’s a white picket fence?” Mark said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Crystal said, and she kissed him again.
* * *
“You need something?” Crystal asked, leaning in the doorway of her dorm, as she liked to call it. There was something perverse about calling that room she shared with the other girls a dormitory. It implied schooling and camaraderie and a normal life for a young woman. It was blasphemous, alright.
Alex was lying on her side with cramps and she rubbed her stomach and grimaced at Crystal. “Is there something like a hot water bottle? That’s what I used to use. I miss that.”
“Did you take Ibuprofen?” Crystal said. “I just got some in.”
“I took one,” Alex murmured. “I’m saving the second. We always run out.”
“Take the second,” Crystal said firmly. “I have a regular supplier now. We have rice and cloth bags. That kind of functions like a hot water bottle if you microwave it? And I’ll get you some tea.”
“Thanks, Crys.”
“Yeah, sure.”
It had been like that for a while. The matrons had been both pleased and surprised to see how easily and efficiently Crystal slipped into her new role as a kind of quartermaster. But more than procuring the supplies she also distributed them and kept track of inventory.
Now she went to find one of the little cloth baggies that the matrons had sewn for a thousand different uses.
They didn’t have zippers, they closed with a drawstring.
She would just have to make sure it was knotted up tight so the rice wouldn’t fall out.
A Ziploc wouldn’t work. It would just melt in the microwave.
Crystal found one of the small barrels of rice and scooped some into a bag.
She knotted it and headed to the break room where she found Gail, drinking coffee and reading a Cosmopolitan from six years ago.
The break room was only called that because it had clearly been the break room for the office that used to populate the floor.
It had a fridge and a microwave that everyone used, but only the matrons hung out in there most of the time.
The room had a weird feeling, to Crystal’s mind, as if at any moment someone would ask her to work on a spreadsheet.
It was too normal for what the floor had become.
But now she tossed the bag in the microwave and zapped it for two minutes.
“Oh my God, that’s so much better.” Alex sighed in relief when she slipped the warm bag under her shirt and Crystal nodded.
There was something satisfying about making someone feel better if only for a moment.
Maybe it was because the world was so fucked up now; any respite was an accomplishment. “Do you get cramps?”