Fifty Shades of Twilight

  Fifty

  Shades

  of

  Twilight

  A.P. Wayne

  One

  The girl he’d met in Bunk’s sat in the passenger seat of his Ford. She was hot as hell but he was starting to think there was something wrong with her. All self-deprecation aside, there had to be something wrong with her just to get in the car with him. For one thing, he was way too drunk to be driving. Chet usually did okay at Bunk’s and a few of the redneck bars in Dayton, but this girl was way out of his league, not to mention his age bracket. Chet was just over forty and this girl didn’t look like she could be out of college yet. He probably had kids running around somewhere older than her.

  He started talking and realized the radio was up way too loud.

  He took it down a few notches.

  “Where did you say we was goin again?”

  Her eyes were almost closed. Her head rested against the window.

  She opened her eyes wider and looked at him. “I thought we were going back to your place.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not going to work.” He still lived with his parents and this was a sore point with him and problematic to a lot of the girls he picked up. “I’m having my house fumigated.”

  “Are you staying in a hotel?”

  A motel would have been a really good idea and he would have actually tried to pay for a nicer one than he was used to, seeing this girl was nicer looking than ones he was used to, but after picking up both bar tabs, he was broke. He barely had enough for another pack of cigarettes. Hopefully, they’d think of something soon so he wouldn’t have to put any more gas in the truck to get home.

  “I’m staying tonight with a friend. He’s got a wife and kids. Probably wouldn’t like me bringing strangers around them.”

  Her eyes were closed again. She probably wasn’t even listening to him. Maybe he should just pull off onto one of the mostly abandoned roads and tell her she could fuck him or walk home. Nah. She wouldn’t have to fuck him, but she’d at least have to give him a blowjob.

  “What about you?” he asked. “You got a place around here?”

  She didn’t answer. Probably passed out. That might make his plans that much easier. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d mistaken rape for a night of passion.

  He reached his hand out and tapped her knee.

  “Hey.”

  He wasn’t really sure he wanted her to wake up. His backup plan was starting to seem more appealing anyway.

  He tapped her knee again. This time it wasn’t so much of a tap as just contact. He left his hand there. Her jeans were skin tight. Ever since first seeing her in the bar he’d fantasized about pulling them off her. Hadn’t thought it would actually happen, though. Her tits could have been bigger but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Not that he had to beg. Unless buying five shots of watermelon patch was considered begging. He almost smiled. No wonder she was having trouble keeping her eyes open. He let his hand travel up her thigh. It didn’t have far to travel. Her thigh wasn’t much bigger than his hand.

  Headed for the promised land, he thought.

  He was already heading away from town, deeper into farm country. He turned off the Lawrence-Dayton Pike. A couple more turns and he would be where he wanted to be. Suchling Road. It was one of those areas nobody wanted anything to do with, just some abandoned farmhouses and woods and worthless rocky fields left to go fallow. Consequently, it had given rise to the usual rumors about Satan worshippers and vampires and all that shit.

  Of course, around here, it was all blamed on the Fangs.

  Even just this far from the street lamps seemed more secluded.

  And that made Chet feel braver.

  He found the button to her jeans and popped it, wondered if she was wearing underwear. He didn’t see how they could fit between her jeans and her skin.

  No underwear.

  He unzipped her jeans to give his hand some room to move.

  He didn’t feel any hair, either. That was always a turn on.

  “You like that?”

  Her voice startled him. He didn’t pull his hand away. He found what he was looking for and slid his finger against her clitoris. She was pretty wet. Enough booze seemed to have that effect on a lot of girls.

  “Do you?” he said.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  Booze also made a lot of otherwise rational females overly susceptible to the power of suggestion. “Babe, I’m thinking I should just pull this truck over and fuck you right here.”

  He moved his middle finger down, into her. She was tight. He didn’t want to loosen her up too much. She scooted down a little on the seat, moved her hips against his hand.

  “Keep doing that and you won’t need to.”

  He laughed. “Oh, baby, believe me, I’ll need to.”

  “We could just go to my place.”

  He thought they’d already had this conversation but remembered that she had been unconscious. Luckily, the booze made him more patient. “Hmmm, and where do you live at, baby?” He wouldn’t have to keep calling her baby if he could remember her name. He didn’t know if she’d told him.

  “It’s around here. You know where Suchling Road is?”

  His finger stopped mid-thrust. “Uh, yeah. You sure your house is on Suchling?” Maybe it was a longer road than he knew. Maybe people actually lived there in some other town.

  “Just moved there.” She pushed her hips against his hand. He resumed thrusting. “It’s a fixer upper.”

  Now he knew something was wrong with her. No one would live on Suchling Road. It would be easier to tear any houses that were there down and rebuild over them. It also occurred to him that this girl wasn’t old enough to own a house, regardless of the price. Suddenly, there were a lot of questions he wanted to ask her but probably wouldn’t. He tried to return his focus to the road and her pussy. It wasn’t really all that hard.

  One-handed, he pulled the truck onto Suchling.

  Woods lined each side of the road and he slowed down a little, not wanting to hit a deer. Then he figured to hell with it and accelerated. The girl’s scent was starting to fill the cab, not at all unpleasing, his dick was rock hard in his pants, and he wanted to get there before this bitch figured out what a loser he was.

  Up on the right was a narrow driveway that had at one time probably been gravel but was now more grass and weeds. He slowed down.

  “This one?” he asked.

  “Uh, yeah.”

  He pulled his finger from between her legs and put it in his mouth, sucked her moisture off, smelled her even more strongly.

  “You don’t sound too sure of yourself.”

  “It is. Okay so I don’t really own it. I’m not really fixing it up. But it’s a good place to come and party with the other kids from the school.”

  The school? he thought. It was possible she was talking about Dunham College but it was a really small, really prestigious school and, having lived in Lawrence his entire life, he hadn’t really heard about the students being known for their partying.

  She zipped up her pants, not bothering to button them. A good sign, he thought.

  “The school, huh?” He turned his high beams on and navigated the driveway slowly, not wanting a pothole or something else to knock out one of his tires.

  She smiled and it looked kind of evil. “Yeah,” she laughed. “The high school. That doesn’t bother you, does it?”

  He thought about this, but not a lot. He thought the age of consent was sixteen, but he didn’t know for sure. If that was the case, he would be in more trouble for buying her booze than he would be for fucking her. And he’d already touched her in ways that were not exactly appropriate.

  He threw his arms up and
laughed. “It doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  He pulled the truck to a stop in front of the house. The girl didn’t seem nearly as wasted as she did before. And now it seemed like she was the aggressor. Chet found it all hot as hell. She opened the door and hopped out.

  He opened his door and she told him to leave the lights on. He started to tell her it would run the battery down until he realized why she probably wanted him to leave the lights on. He hopped out and slammed the door. She stood on the sagging porch, bathed in the bright halogen glow.

  He puffed out his chest, sucked in his gut, and walked toward her.

  His dick was still hard. He could still smell her in his nostrils. He could hear his breathing and his heart pounding in his ears. Despite all this, along with the fact that he was well over 200 pounds and the very definition of ‘red-blooded male’, he felt uneasy as he drew closer to the house. Maybe it was just the booze catching up to him. That would have been strange. He hadn’t gotten sick from drinking since he’d been in high school and he was sure to let the girl outpace him at the bar. Maybe it was the chicken wings from Chef Uncle’s ...

  Still, in the truck on the way out here, he had fantasized about taking slow advantage of this wasted teenager. Now he felt like he just wanted to get it over with. Fuck her and go.

  He reached the porch, wishing he didn’t feel the way he did. He didn’t even feel like asking her if he could film a bit of it with his phone.

  He grabbed her around the hips and pulled her toward him. Her hand went to his cock. She moved in to whisper into his ear. “I really do like sex. I really do.”

  He reached a hand up and closed it around her breast.

  “But I’m saving myself for the right person.”

  Huh? he thought.

  “I’m sure maybe you had someone who you thought was the right person at one time. But maybe things went bad.”

  He pulled away from her and tried to study her expression to see if she was serious.

  He heard a door to the house open and more than one set of footsteps.

  The bitch smiled.

  He heard laughter and he tried to scream but couldn’t. He looked down and saw that the front of his shirt was red. He coughed and a spray of blood covered the bitch’s face. Her smiling white teeth, droplets clinging to her hair. He turned to run but his whole body felt numb and he tumbled down the stairs, landing in a rubbery heap. He looked up and tried to find the moon but the black sky was filled with young, smiling faces.

  Two

  Walker opened the door on what he had started calling simply, “The Offering.” A bucket of blood with a note that said: FOR YOU in goopy-looking letters probably written in the blood from the bucket. This was the third such offering and he’d grown a little more nervous with each one.

  It meant someone besides he and Jordan knew. Which was saying a lot since they weren’t even sure what they knew.

  The suspicion had been there ever since the disappearance of Walker’s parents a little over a year ago. Of course it wasn’t a disappearance and Walker had been as honest with the police as he could without telling them the whole truth. And what did it matter? The truth was even more unbelievable than the thought that his parents had just dropped off the face of the planet.

  But unbelievable seemed to go hand in hand with daily life in Lawrence.

  It was nearly sundown. Walker found himself sleeping later and later these days.

  He shut the door on the offering and went back into the house. There wasn’t anything he could do about it. He and Jordan had developed sort of a protocol for this. He didn’t have a working phone. So he waited until she came over when she got off from her job at Fink’s grocery store. Then she would call Chief Bowsman with her cell. He’d come over and claim the bucket and note as “evidence” and they’d never hear anything about it again.

  Walker was mainly baffled by the offering. Sure, he could use the blood. Had developed quite a taste for it. But it had to be living blood. A bucket of old stale blood wasn’t going to do anything for him. So whoever thought they were helping him wasn’t really helping him at all. That meant they didn’t know what they were doing. That proved his initial theory of entrapment incorrect. He still felt hunted by the Fangs, probably always would. Maybe hunted wasn’t the right word since he was practically a Fang himself now. So it definitely wasn’t one of them trying to draw him out. He’d never really suspected them anyway. No, he’d originally thought it was either law enforcement or one of the few rogue “vampire hunters” who had decided to start practicing in the area. But he’d ruled this out, as well. The law enforcement, i.e. people like Chief Bowsman, were far too lazy to deal with this kind of thing. It was something they didn’t understand and to start investigating it would lead to a never ending trail of paperwork. Not to mention the fact that they were probably as susceptible to whatever thought control the Fangs had over the town as everyone. How else could anyone decide Lawrence was a good place to raise a family despite all the disappearances, rumors, and blatant violence?

  Which meant it was probably teenagers. Walker was only a couple years out of high school himself so it wasn’t like there was some generation gap he didn’t understand but if it were teenagers he didn’t see the point. Jordan said they were kids who wanted him to turn them. Walker thought it was probably jocks taunting him. In the end, given the fact Jordan was still in high school, he chose to believe her.

  That’s why they decided to call it an offering.

  It still didn’t mean Walker understood it.

  And it still didn’t quench his need for blood.

  He didn’t need much.

  Just a little.

  He glanced at the clock, one of the few household things he hadn’t given Jordan to list online. She wouldn’t be there for at least another three hours.

  His stomach growled.

  There wasn’t any food in the house.

  There never was.

  Three

  Hunter Jenkins pulled into Lawrence just after sundown. Seemed appropriate. It was a nice summer evening. He was hoping to get to the b and b before sundown so he could walk around and reacquaint himself with the scant downtown. Not that it really mattered. Going for a walk in the dark was probably more fitting.

  He parked his car on the street, left his bags in the trunk, and went to check in. The clerk, who was probably also the owner, didn’t exclaim, “Oh, you’re Hunter Jenkins! You wrote Vampires Drink Blood!” At this point, no one ever had. He didn’t think they ever would. The last time he’d heard from his publisher, a reclusive dick currently on safari in Africa, he’d been told his book had sold under a hundred copies although the digital version was picking up steam ... priced at the never-going-to-retire-on-this price of 99 cents.

  Hence the depression.

  Probably hence the divorce.

  Hence here he was back in Lawrence.

  He was hoping Illinois would be far enough away but it wasn’t. He wondered if everyone who left Lawrence had their lives become flaming wrecks when they left.

  “Any place where I can grab a bite to eat?” It was nearly ten. Most things in Lawrence closed early.

  The clerk looked like one giant wrinkle wearing a thinning gray perm. Hunter didn’t think this question seemed wacky, but it took her a really long time to come up with anything. He felt like grabbing and shaking her. He wanted to listen to the sweet harmony of her slapping jowls.

  “There’s Chef Uncle’s.”

  “Always has been.”

  Now she was actually pulling out the slender phonebook.

  Hunter pulled out his phone. Contrary to his author biography, he did own a phone ... and a television and he loved and used both of them with great frequency. Well, he used to own a TV. Now he didn’t really own much of anything.

  Before she had even made it to the restaurant section he’d already scrolled through the listings on his phone.

  The cl
erk was pulling on reading glasses when he leaned across the counter and said, “No. No there are not any other places besides Chef Uncle’s unless I’d like to get a pizza delivered.”

  The woman closed the phonebook and took a deep breath. She looked like she was ready to cry. She silently pointed to a placard on the desk that said: WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE.

  “What?” Hunter said. “What’s that mean?” He pulled his wallet out and put his Visa on the counter.

  The woman looked at it and shook her head.

  “Are you fucking serious?” he asked.

  She picked up the phone and, for a second, Hunter thought she was calling the police but then he figured it was probably just her husband or son or something.

  “We’ve got a problem customer.”

  Hunter snatched the phone out of her hand. “No,” he said. “No we don’t. The problem customer’s leaving.”

  He fought the urge to bludgeon the woman with the phone and simply placed it on the counter. He smiled broadly, tipped the brim of a hat he wasn’t wearing, and said, “G’day, ma’am,” before kicking the door open and bursting out into the warm night.

  He wanted blood.

  Maybe he would go see his parents after all.

  Four

  Walker was a reader. And he enjoyed just sitting around and thinking about things. Most people would have said he seemed perpetually bored. He used to have quite a few books, records, CDs, and comic books, only some of which had been left behind by his parents. Those had long ago been given to Jordan to sell. After his initial purge, he’d bought an e-reader. Now Jordan pirated things for him and put them on a thumb drive. He couldn’t afford an internet connection and so couldn’t really see the point in owning a computer.

  He heard the front door and hoped it was Jordan.

  “Hellooo!” she called.

  “In here.”

  He lay on the couch where he spent a good amount of time. He’d gone for another short walk today, venturing a little farther out, but had ended up right back on the couch.