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Outside, Inside
By Branden Hart

Volume 1: Sucked Dry

Issue 1: That First Sweet Taste

The thing about Fence that people notice the most? He laughs a lot. And at inappropriate things. He came as my date to a dinner party at Cassie's one time, and when the steak was served, he scoffed. “You call this medium rare?” he chided the host, picking up the slab of meat with his fork and waving it through the air, spots of dripping, dark red blood splattering the white silk tablecloth.

You don't question the skills of Cassie Gambrian's personal cook.

But Fence does a lot of things that people aren't supposed to do. Like right now. The moon shines through the one window in this fifth story apartment, reflecting off his pale white forehead. I can see his pure, white teeth glowing. Hungry.

Fence is happy, and his canines are piercing his bottom lip. Small streams of blood trickle down his chin.

The girl is slumped in his arms, talking in tongues, whipping her shoulders back and forth, back and forth. It's all I can do to keep from laughing.

Fence puts his finger to his mouth, hardly able to contain himself. After he gives me a stern look, I stifle the last of my giggles. One of Fence's Golden Rules is, “Always remain in character.” But this bitch is just so melodramatic, I can't help myself.

“If,” says Fence, in a deep, gravelly, and completely fake voice, “you wish to be turned into a child of the night,” now, he's looking into the face of this girl, this poor, young girl, dressed in all black, some poor misguided kid who actually believes in vampires, “then speak. Call me by my real name.”

This poor girl, she twitches and makes her way up to make eye contact with Fence, and she says, her voice not her own, “Alexander.”

This time, I can't help it. Laughter explodes from my lungs, and in the moment before Fence silences me, the girl looks like she's about to wake up.

Now that I can't talk, laugh, or make any noise whatsoever, I sit watching Fence, holding this goth girl in his arms, promising her eternal life in some language it seems like only she knows.

“I'm here to give you the gift of the Eternal Night,” he whispers in her ear. The girl goes stiff, eyes wide open.

“I'm here to give you the gift of Eternal Life.”

There is a slight twitch.

“With these two teeth, I thee wed...”

Fence leans down and bites her neck—hard. Harder than usual. He pulls out quick, but the damage is done—two large puncture wounds on the side of the young girl's neck. Right above the jugular.

Fence stands up, silhouetted by the moonlight. His outline shifts as he wipes the blood from his mouth.

“You ought to try out for the Sandwich Theater down the street,” I say.

“Fuck you,” he chuckles.

“Seriously. You'd make a great Boo Radley.”

“Who?”

“Nevermind. Come on you fucking corny bastard. 'With these two teeth I thee wed.' Dumbest shit I've ever heard.”

“Did you see her though?” he chuckles. “She was fucking digging it.”

“Will she be ok?”

Fence looks down at the body of the goth girl. A small pool of blood has collected at the base of her neck, but it's stopped flowing from the puncture wounds Fence left her.

“She'll be a little disappointed when she wakes up and finds out she can still go out in the Sun without burning to death. But she'll never forget this night.”

I laugh as I follow him out of the apartment and down the stairs. “So are you the memory fairy? Granting people memories that will help them understand what life is really all about?”

Fence stops mid step, spins around on his heels. I almost crash into him before clamoring to find the railing.

“When have you ever known me to want to help anyone but myself?”

I have to admit, it was stupid to think that Fence's intentions were anything but selfish. After all, the guy was a fucking vampire.

By the time Fence and I finish eating breakfast at an all-night diner on Stuart's Way, the Sun is blinking over the top of the old warehouse across the street. The air is full stink; namely, sausage and maple syrup. It's all the bastard eats. Sausage. Drenched in maple syrup. He drinks it down. It's basically a maple sausage cocktail.

“Sun's up,” I say, flicking the butt of my cigarette into the dingy metal ashtray next to the syrup bottle.

“He won't give a shit,” he spits through a mouthful of the stuff. A mixture of drool and syrup drips down his stubble-spotted chin.

“No, it's in the deal. And we can't risk it.”

“He won't give a shit.”

I grab his hand, and slam the butt of my cigarette right in the middle of his palm.

“But you PROMISED me.”

He jerks his hand back, but his face remains stone. “Ok, ok. Look, sometimes I forget how important this is to you. I'll take you back. Can I finish?”

I shake my head. “You know as well as I do—check in is at 7 every morning. Not a second later. Dock 78.”

He nods, no disappointment, no surprise, barely acknowledgment. He takes up his fork in the hand I burned. On his palm, the wound slowly shrinks, sizzling occasionally as if hydrogen peroxide has been poured over it. He wolfs down three sausages at once, the syrup, viscous, dripping down his chin, a molasses that seems to take hundreds of years to slowly fall from his face.

He wipes his mouth, but not the table. I can't help but laugh. “Fence,” I say. “You can get some more syrup later on. You know I have to be back before...”

We both look out at the pink shades highlighting the sky.

“Cool,” he says, pulling a twenty from his pocket and slamming it on the table. “Let's roll.”

“You're late,” says Warden Ponchus as he hurries down the concrete ramp we parked next to. “You shouldn't be late.”

Ponchus is standing in the shadow of the Lot 26 Warehouse at Cerbus Prison for Women. My home.

“Come on Dana, let's go.” Ponchus shuffles over to me, taking my arm tenderly, his old man smell drifting in the breeze. “We need to make it in quick, before the guards get into your block.” His breath tussles the long hair of his unkempt gray moustache.

“See you tomorrow Fence!” I say as Ponchus leads me into the warehouse.

“Tomorrow Dana. Try not to fall asleep.”

The night is cool and still. There's no sound until Ponchus raises up the metal door of the warehouse with an offensive clamor. Inside, I jump to grab the handle for the old man, and pull it down myself.

“Are you still having problems staying awake?” he says as he locks the door.

“Are you still having problems staying away from young boys?” I say, prodding his chest with my finger.

“Touche.”

We both turn around to look at the emptiness. Football fields worth of concrete. Flickering fluorescent lamps hang from the ceiling. Five minutes walk away, there's a door, and behind it, the hallway that will lead me back to captivity.

“We're lucky,” Ponchus says, “that this place is still here. They wanted to make it into a sex offenders quarters. Said it would be better for the whole population.”

He hands me a gym bag. “Thanks,” I say, unzipping it and beginning to undress.

“But, as you can see, that plan fell through.”

“What happened?” I say, pulling my bright orange jump suit from the bag.

“Fence Ranier happened.”

“And you still say he did it for me?”

Ponchus laughs. “Hell Dana—who else would he do it for?”

“Himself. Same guy he's always doing shit for.”

They know—the other inmates—about me going out at night. But nobody questions me. Even my cellmate, Cleo. She knows the drill. People have asked questions before. People that got hurt later.

“Missed meatloaf,” says Cleo as Ponchus slams the gate shut behind me.

“Yeah?” I ask as I heave myself up onto the top bunk. A cloud of dust swirls around me. Fucking place is full of it. Dust. Dead matter.

“Yeah, it was pretty gross.”

Cleo stands up and stretches, her tattooed arms extending from the long sleeves of her jumpsuit. A crying tiger. A yin yang colored red as blood. And my favorite, a perfect sphere. Two dimensional, no doubt, but that thing was a fucking optical illusion. No matter what angle you stared at it, it seemed to float above her rippling forearms.

“I'm gonna hit it,” says Cleo, twirling her long, black hair around her slender neck. “You staying up?”

“Nah,” I say, rolling over. “Good night Cleo.”

“Night D. Sleep well.”

Cleo knows a lot of things. She doesn't know that the last thing I need is sleep.

The first night I met Fence I was drunk and pissed off.

Right now, I couldn't tell you why I was drunk and pissed off, but I was. So pissed off, in fact, that I left the party of people who actually wanted to keep me from running in front of a bus.

But the streets were empty, and the park across the street from Tad's Place was huge. The perfect place to go be alone with the bottle of vodka I snagged from the bar.

I think...I think it was this guy hitting on me. I vaguely remember someone saying, “Your tits aren't saggy, they're natural,” and someone else saying, “Yeah! Naturally saggy!”

Fucking frat boys.

In the park, I find refuge in a large, spacious bush. My plan: drink until I pass out. Make sure bottle is capped. Wake up. Drink rest of bottle, go home, kill myself.

The leaves of the bush brush my face. I tilt the bottle back and take a careful gulp. I have to make sure there's at least something left for when I wake up.

“You deserve this...”

But that sentiment doesn't last long. There are two people, no less than six feet away from me.

“This is it, Ranier,” says the one wearing a leather jacket over a white shirt. Jeans. Doc Martens. And he's carrying a crossbow.

The other one—the one dressed in one long black trench coat and black everything else?--he just laughs.

The sounds are all variations of crushes. There are crushes that seem to form a melody. Crushes that offer legitimate counterpoint to the harmony of the screams. Crushes that seem to be orchestrated by someone beforehand.

Fuck it, I think. I can get more booze tomorrow.

I'm about to finish drinking the last of my bottle when the thick foliage parts before my eyes, the leaves and branches perfectly divided by long, moon-white fingers.

“Moses,” is the first word out of my mouth.

“No, Fence,” he says to me, mouth gleaming black in the moonlight. “Fence Ranier. Wanna live forever?”

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