Page 59 of So Thirsty

“Stop! You’ll kill him!”

Naomi lets her head back, coming up for air, letting the porter crumple. He’s a heap of limbs. There’s a crescent moon of crimson holes on his wrist. Naomi’s tooth marks. He’s bleeding out of them. He’s going to keep bleeding. Keep spilling.

“Damn,” Naomi says, licking her lips. “It tastes so fucking good.”

I can’t keep looking at the blood. I can’t keep smelling it.

It smells briny. Like the sweat on the back of a lover’s neck. Like your shoulder when you come out of the ocean, which you lick when no one’s looking. Like the lightning-charred air from a summer storm. Like the quiet moments when you feel most alive. An elusive aroma.

And he’s at my feet now. I’m above him.

If he’d bothered to look at me when he met me, would he have thought I was capable of this? I was so preoccupied lamenting my invisibility as a woman getting older, I didn’t realize it could be weaponized. I didn’t realize it’s part of our power, no one thinking we have any.

I’m in the snow, coiled up next to him. I’m thirsty.

Another decision. Another thing I can’t come back from.

His bleeding wrist so close to my lips. My teeth. My tongue.

“Have some,” Naomi says. “You don’t need much. Just enough. Just enough…”

I take my first sip. It’s even better than I remembered, than I imagined it would be. It’s better than anything. My tongue starts to dance, now fluent in joy. I flood my throat with gold and my head with sweet emptiness. There are tiny stars where my worries once were. Pretty colors in place of bad memories. I’m brand-new.

And I might stay this way forever, silly with bliss, if I couldn’t hear his heart beating. If I couldn’t hear it getting weaker as I steal what’s most precious.

Before I can change my mind, I pull away. I rip the sleeve of his uniform and wrap the scrap of fabric tightly around his wrist to stop the bleeding. I prop him up against the tree, his arm up above his head.

He looks a little pale, but it’s not dire.

“Do you think we could leave him here?” I ask Naomi. I check the pockets of his fleece. “He has his phone. He might be concussed, but…”

Naomi stands in the middle of the clearing, continuously licking her lips, breathing heavily. She’s a mess.

“Should we go get our stuff and leave and then call nine-one-one anonymously?” I ask. “Are there anonymous calls anymore? Should one of us stay with him in case he wakes up, to…I don’t know. Shit. We’re going to need the valet for my car. I think he’s the valet.”

“I’ll watch him. I’ll stay,” she says, with a zealousness that stomps out the remaining glimmers of my blood-sipping serenity. “I’ll stay with him.”

“Look at me.”

“I can stay with him. I can stay….”

“Naomi.” I snap my fingers at her like an asshole. “Look at me.”

She struggles to make eye contact. She’s not breathing right.

I walk over to her and put my hands on her shoulders. “Hey! You’re not thinking straight.”

Her tongue sneaks out to the corner of her mouth, where there’s the tiniest speck of blood. “But he’s seen us. He knows. We can’t leave him alive.”

“Do you hear yourself right now?”

“I…”

“You love people, right? This isn’t you. You aren’t a killer.”

“I…Fuck,” Naomi says, sounding like herself again. “Ah, fuck. He’s still out?”

“Yeah,” I say. “You…”