I shut the car door behind me. I couldn’t help but hurry toward the door. Was Mac home yet? I jiggled the knob of the door-- locked (not a good sign). I unlocked the door to our tiny apartment and looked around. The stained sofa was empty. All the lights were off.

“Mac!” I called.

Nothing.

I shut the door and turned on the light in the dining room and slumped into a seat. I took out my phone and called Mac for the fifth time.

Please leave a message after the beep! I sighed,

“Mac, it’s me again. I’m really worried about you, please come home. I’m not mad anymore.”

I hit end and put my head on the table. Mac and I had gotten in a fight three nights ago and Mac stormed out. Miami was dangerous, and Mac didn’t have money for a place to spend the night. He didn’t have money to buy any food.

That was my fault. I shamed myself once again for being an absolute piece of shit and spending almost all our money on cigarettes and beer. I probably was an alcoholic.

I’d already driven around the city for hours, looking in all the familiar places I could think of. There was only one thing to do. Call the cops. I stared at the keypad. I hated the cops. I really didn’t want to bring them into this. It would bring up the records of traumatic shit, especially for Mac. Plus if I wasn’t careful, they might find out that I was an underage drinker. I just didn’t want them fucking up our lives any more than they were already. Besides, it was possible that Mac was fine and he just didn’t want to talk to me. I tried not to think about that too much. Mac was all I had.

My phone rang; it was Mac! I smacked the answer button,

“Mac! Where are you?! Are you okay?”

“I’m at the seven eleven. I need you to pick me up. Hurry. I’m not okay; They’re coming for me.”

I scrambled to the door. I stopped short and locked it. I didn’t want whoever was coming for him waiting for us inside when we got back.

“What? Who? What happened?”

I started the car and headed for seven eleven.

There was a pause on the other line.

“You won’t believe me until you see me. Just hurry up.”

I sighed. I realized this was probably because Mac hadn’t taken his medication in three days. He was always really paranoid without it. But it was implied that I would believe him after I saw him. Why? What did that mean?

“Uh, okay. I’m almost there.”

“Wait! Don’t hang up,” he paused, “I think we need to move to a different country.”

“What? Mac, you’re being crazy. Our bank account is more depressed than I am, which is really fucking bad.”

“ I know… but I don’t think we have another choice. We’ll have to make it work somehow. I don’t know. The police won’t be able to help. We certainly can’t handle Them ourselves.”

I pulled into the gas station, “I’m here, where are you?”

Mac hung up and stumbled out of the store, his gait uneven as if he was dizzy. His freckled skin was normally pretty light, but he looked even paler and grayish. The bags under his eyes were darker than ever. He was covered and bruises and cuts. When he made it into the car, I discovered how out of breath he was. Mac was wheezing just from walking from the store to the car. Strangest of all, I noticed there were two puncture wounds on his neck two or three inches apart. They couldn’t have been knife wounds, the marks weren’t made by anything flat. They looked carefully placed. Maybe it was some sort of signature of the offender? “Mac… fucking hell, what happened to you?”

I turned around to head back to the apartment. Mac pulled his legs to his chest in the car seat. He was blinking continuously, something he did when he was stressed.

“You’ve been my best friend since middle school,” he said after he’d caught his breath.

His voice wobbled a little with each word, “It’s true. But no one-- not even you-- has ever understood what I go through. What’s really wrong with me. But now, Howie, we’re both in huge danger. You need to believe me.”

I felt bad for not being able to understand. I’d done all the research, asked him questions, and tried to make him feel as normal and content as possible. I’d also tried to steer him right when he lost touch with reality. What more could I do? My heart skipped a beat. What if this really was serious? That wasn’t likely, They probably weren’t real.

“Okay okay, just tell me what’s going on.”

Mac’s eyes started to collect tears, but he began anyway,

“I can’t believe im doing this… I was walking home, and I saw one of Them sitting on a bench waiting for the bus. I acted as ordinary as I could, but she could tell I was terrified. Next thing I know there are three of Them, and They jammed me in the trunk of a black jaguar. They took me to this concrete building in a swamp and locked me in the basement.”

“Who are ‘They’?”

I spoke gently for Mac. I didn’t know what to expect. He’d always been real vague about it when he talked about Them. I didn’t know if he would answer me or not. In the past, he’d insisted on keeping Them a secret, but he seemed pretty serious.

Tears ran down his cheeks as his blinking forced them out of his eyes. I felt for him, but I didn’t know how to help right now. After a few more seconds, he finally answered,

“V-Vampires…”

Mac looked me in the eyes, waiting for my response. One wrong look and I was sure it would set him off.

I pulled into our parking spot and turned the car off. Vampires… that would explain the holes in his neck. But it couldn’t be true. Could it? Mac was diagnosed with schizophrenia. When he said something crazy it was because he was. Once, Mac had slit his own wrists vertically, locked in his room. He claimed that They had done it to him, but was unable to tell anyone specifically who it was. He was furious that no one believed that it wasn’t him. He took weeks to recover from that. Could this be something similar? Could he have hurt himself so people might believe him? Not that it would make sense to try that again when it didn’t work last time, but it didn’t really have to in his case. I didn’t think Mac could stab himself like that in the neck. So… what happened?

Either way, I knew what I had to say. For Mac’s sake, and for the sake of our friendship. At least until I could think about this a little more.

“Okay, I believe you. Let’s get you inside.”

Mac’s eyes widened a little and he sniffed,

“You really believe me?”

I gulped.

“Well, yeah, I… yeah.”

Mac stared at me with tears in his eyes for a long time. I felt a knot in my stomach form. His scrutiny was making me really uncomfortable. Hopefully he didn’t see the doubts I had.

“Okay.” he said finally.

We got out of the car and went inside. This time, I put my arm under my friend’s arms to help him to the door. The lights were still on. I led Mac to the couch and sat down next to him. By this point Mac had calmed down, but he was out of breath again. He sniffed,

“Can you get me… something to eat and… some water? They didn’t feed me.”

I nodded and got up, grabbed him a big cup of water, and headed into the kitchen to get him food.

“So tell me more,” I called.

“The room was incredibly hot and had no light,” his voice was hoarse when he talked louder, “And they hit me every time I cried or spoke or made noise at all. They drained me of most of my blood to make me weak. I only escaped by chance. They forgot to lock the trap door when they left, to go do something, probably kill people. I happened to be tall enough to climb up. They intended to keep me there until I died, I’m sure. They don’t like it when people can tell, like I can when I’m not drugged. I don’t know why they care so much. Maybe they think I’m going to give them away, but I would never do that. They’ve threatened to kill me and my everyone important to me since the first time I sensed one. And I always thought no one would believe me anyway. But I had no choice this time but to tell you.”

The proof of his claims was all over him. I couldn’t think of another explanation of the holes in his neck. I still had some suspicion, though.

I brought Mac a sandwich, the quickest decent food I could make. There were no leftovers left in the fridge because I hadn’t felt like cooking since he left, even though I usually loved cooking. “How did they bite you but not turn you into a vampire?” I asked, doing my best not to sound suspicious.

Mac stared at me again as he chowed down on the sandwich. “I don’t know. You still believe me right?”

I nodded quickly, even though his answer was not very good. He grimaced. Mac wasn’t convinced I believed him.

“Don’t you see the bite? What more do you want from me?”

“I believe you, mac, its okay,” I assured. He had a point. There was no other evidence that I could ask for. He seemed to accept my answer.

“If only I had been taking my medicine. I wouldn’t have noticed her, and she wouldn’t have targeted me, and I wouldn’t have had to tell you. We wouldn’t be in this mess. I’m so sorry I ran away.”

Mac took another big bite of the sandwich.

“You didn’t know that would happen. I’m sorry for spending all our money. You have a right to be angry.”

I looked him in his reddened green eyes for a moment as he blinked several times. There was no time for questions, I had no choice but to assume the worst. “We’ll stock up on garlic and put salt it around the doors and windows, stuff like that. You do some research on what else we can do.”

“ Sure, I guess so. I don’t know, what if it doesn’t work? The great messenger told me it wouldn’t.”

“The what?”

Mac looked down. He had to know what he sounded like.

“The great messenger. It warned me this would happen a long time ago.”

Whatever. Assume the worst I told myself. What if it didn’t work? It had to work!

I swallowed, “I mean, what else can we do?”

There was a moment of silence. Mac spoke when he looked up,

“We could cut their heads off.” he took a bite of his sandwich.

“How the hell are we going to do that? We don’t have a machete!”

“I don’t know, Howie!” Mac cried with his mouth full.

“What if… we had you institutionalized? You would be safe there, there’s nothing that can hurt you there.”

Mac blinked several times and stopped chewing, “But they’re out for you too now. That’s what they said. They think you know, which, you do now. Besides, that place is miserable. I can’t spend the rest of my life there.”

I blanched. A new feeling of doom washed over me. I was possibly being hunted by vampires. I prayed They were just a delusion, but I was kind of doubting it at this point.

“O-oh. you didn’t say that.”

“I told you we were both in danger.”

“You did?”

“Yes.”

I didn’t remember that.

“Well… I don’t know then. I don’t know. But we better start preparing. We have plenty of salt and garlic. It’s good that we only have one door and one window. Let’s get the salt going and--” “Howie... she’s here,”

I turned around to face a tall, gaunt woman wearing long boots and a black blouse. She grinned at Mac and I. A chill ran down my spine and my heart dropped right out of my body. Neither one of us took a breath. Mac’s sandwich was on the ground. How had she gotten inside so quietly, found us so quick, I thought. There was no sound, no door opening! She wasn’t there and then she was!