Cigarette Butts of Contention

 The way she was drinking blood was very unique. Almost a type of art, because her thirst was of a different kind. She was not an ordinary vampire as you might find in folklore or modern tales. It was a thirst like a stranded in the desert needing water. You know, the sensation when your throat gets parched and you find yourself dreaming of just one slice of orange. That was her kind of bloodthirst. 

She was an ordinary office clerk, with her ordinary way of dressing. Taking her latte on her way to work, always on time. She was never late. Going back home to the same dreary apartment. Everything was ordinary about her. No special looks. No remarkable intelligence. She was not a boss as one might expect for a vampire. She was an ordinary office clerk.

The thirst began in her teens, and what was remarkable was that she never watched Nosferatu or any other such genre. She`d never cared for movies or curated films. In fact, she didn't even like music. However, she was reliable in every sense of the word. Loyal friend and co-worker. She could smell sweet blood with the precision of a summer female mosquito. It did happen one summer holiday at a youth camp. That`s when she started observing other children`s weaknesses. The major one was ignorance of how to preserve your essence from being scanned by a vampire.

She had always felt she was different since a child, but she could not put her finger on it. She adored beetroot, unlike her siblings. Then raw meat. It was quite strange. Luckily her parents never noticed anything because they were always busy with their work or house chores, and usually, you could find their noses buried in books or computer screens. So ignorant they were about their own children. Always too busy to notice the slightest shades of their character traits.

Her way of blood-drinking never required any special circumstances like full moons or midnights or howling wolves in the distance. Nothing like that. She was just equipped with this special kind of talent that she discovered at a youth camp; if we might call it a talent. She started acting on it only in her forties. She never knew why then, and why not sooner. Maybe it was because her parents never taught her how to truly love herself as they never noticed any particular talents that their children had. 

They were taught to go to school and have excellent grades. The pursuit of excellence was so impressed upon them that they not only had to excel at maths but the guitar, piano, tennis lessons, and learning languages. She seemed not to have the time to think about anything else. No one asked her who she really was let alone what she really wanted. Even if they did ask her she would not know what to say. She didn't truly know herself. Her own true identity was hidden from her.

It started emerging ever so slowly as she entered into the world of adulthood and interaction with other human beings. Her experiences convinced her strongly that the adult world is overrated at the most, if not corrupt, ugly and dissatisfying. She was dissatisfied with her life, with her choices, with her friends. Nothing meant freedom. She needed freedom but she failed to grasp the concept of it in full. 

There was always something missing that she was after. This is why she never had any long-term friendships or relationships. It was not that she hated people or shied away from them. Nothing of the sort. Simply, there was something missing. It seems what was missing was her true self. Her true self was most certainly not a beetroot-thirsty soul. It was more than that. When you are a simple ordinary clerk you realize how simple and unimaginative a life can be. She needed something creative.

The creativity revealed itself to her one unexpected day. Like, when you really want to meet the love of your life and you give up all hope and it just drops into your lap. That's how these things happen and no one can know how or why. They just do. So she met her talent or the talent simply presented itself when she realized that she had the ability to negate everything anyone said. It was as simple as that. They call it gaslighting. There are other names for that talent. It does not matter what you call it. In her eyes, she was a true vampire thirsting for other people's souls. The souls had to be crushed to pieces - that was her new aim. Had she been a boss it would have been called mobbing. 

These are just words people like to give to things so they can sleep better at night. Naming things the right way is comforting. To her, it was beside the point. She was happy to finally discover her true talent and she was now using it to the fullest. How strange a talent. Talents are supposed to be shared with other people for their benefit, not to their detriment. But she never thought of it as anything damaging. On the contrary, she saw it as a cure for apathy, loneliness, and misery. Her own and of others. What better way to serve society. Couple it with the compulsion to keep everything in perfect order - the sky's the limit.

People just don't know how to arrange or organize anything, from their cupboards to their lives. They don't know what they want and it was not her purpose to tell them. Her purpose was to arrange her own life to her own content and screw everyone else. Did she have a conscience? Of course, she did, but most of the time she couldn't care less for it. Her other special ability was good memory where she archived, as a good clerk that she was, all the wrongs ever done to her. She could pull the information and facts out coldly merely to show the other party how ignorant, small and insignificant they are. Especially how low intelligence they had since they could not remember what they ate yesterday. It was so easy to play with people's minds. 

Being a vampire is a long-term job and it is fun up to a point. Then things get boring. Given her incredible intelligence and the fact-mongering mind, she could not entertain one fool for so long. To her, the world was filled with fools. Some of them she did like. Some were repulsive. After all, she had some feelings but not quite a range. 

She liked to go to piano recitals. That is when she met the love of her life. They were sitting next to each other. The funny and annoying thing was that he started snoring in the middle of some Bach concerto. How rude, she thought. She had an urge to nudge him in the ribs or kick him out of his seat but that would be even ruder which she would not care had it been different circumstances. She couldn't care less what other people think but she was careful not to draw too much attention to herself because that was not a smart thing to do at times. Most of the time she was an expert in revealing her virtues by negating them. An odd thing to do. But that's the trait of covert vampires. And she was too smart to draw attention to herself in such a coarse manner, though she was capable of coarseness. That seemed to be the accessory talent to her blood-sucking one. 

She took a look at this snoring man. She started imagining herself beside him in bed as an old couple and him snoring into waking her up. The romantic vision disappeared as soon as she touched his hand ever so gently. He woke up and looked her way. Their eyes met and the lighting bolt of strange familiarity stroke. It was not love at first sight. She pointed out to him he had a drool in the corner of his mouth and handed her handkerchief to him. She was disgusted, of course, but she never let on. It was a chance glance and it never promised anything beyond the handkerchief.

She was wrong. Soon they started going out. First for long walks, then sitting at cafes. It turned out they both liked coffee. They never talked about their work or complained about know-it-all bossy co-workers or nosy parents asking “when will you get married and settle down”. Everything was like in a dream. They didn't like the same type of music or read the same type of books, but it was not a bone of contention like it would be for immature adults. They simply enjoyed each other's souls. 

She could see his soul under his skin and he was not able to remember the color of her eyes. Anyway, there was something that made them stick together for a long time, like some invisible transparent glue. Maybe it was just the oddity of life. She could not tell and she didn't care. The less she analyzed the better. She didn't even mind his messiness. That was strange given her knack for detail and perfect arrangement of everything. She didn't smoke but never minded his leaving cigarette butts all over the place. Even the most disgusting thing like stubbing them on plates after dinner did not bother her - strangely.

She went to see her therapist one day. She got worried there was something wrong with her. She started to see her freedom leaving her and was appalled. His cigarette stubs were just an indication that things were not going where they were supposed to be going. She was not supposed to be changing for anyone. And yet there she was or at least it seemed she was becoming a different person. The therapist assured her that she wasn`t and she should stay the way she had always been. The therapist`s motto was “never change yourself for anyone”, “just be yourself and who you truly are and everything will go back to normal”.

But nothing changed, The dirty, smelly cigarette stubs just failed to bother her. Even the dirty dishes, and knives, especially. She had a particular loathing for dirty knives. She once snapped at her co-worker when she left a dirty uncleaned unwashed knife on the desk and started peeling an apple. Disgusting! Peeling an apple with a filthy knife. It made her raise hell and a few eyebrows. She couldn't care less. 

Her friends noticed the change, who were friends with her either because they were lonely and could not find a better friend, or were using her for their different needs. She also had a few friends from work and some so-called friends that she met online. Overall she had 2000 followers on Facebook. She was pretty annoyed at the number of people on that social app that was actually pretty much useless in real-time, but she needed that number to give her a false sense of importance.

Some of those suckers were ready to help her with money issues or tight schedules. Anyway, even the internet “friends” noticed the change. Some were annoyed, some were appreciative and some were at a loss. No one could really figure her out. To some she was the best and honest person ever; to others, she was a spoiled almost autistic lying bitch. However they put it, they were always back for more of their blood to be sucked. Some people are so masochistic.

“The cigarette butts, the cigarette butts, the cigarette butts" were the words ringing in her head and she could not even get any rest at night. She was losing sleep over losing her identity. Her blood-sucking abilities did not vane, on the contrary. She was into the guy not only because he was good in bed but because he made her feel special. He seemed to enjoy having his blood sucked on a daily basis. He would get annoyed with her for sure, and he displayed mad bouts and would smash things around the house, especially against the walls. But she did not mind. The constant supply of her thirst was there ready to be grabbed. 

The cigarette butts of contention. One day she woke up deciding to dump him. She was just fed up with the nonsense. She was fed up with living in ignorance, in the dark of not knowing who she really was and what was the fluid connecting them. Why would she remain? There is plenty of other fish in the sea. In reality, it was a pond but dumping a guy was not the smartest thing to do given she was not getting any younger and guys do prefer younger girls. That's a fact. 

The final straw that made her decision to dump him was his favorite song “I would do anything for love”. I mean, who can love that ridiculous song with ridiculous lyrics? That was it. It made her almost buy rat poison. She was contemplating burying him in the backyard. What stopped her were her mixed feelings. She learned she had mixed feelings. That was remarkable progress. Finally, she got the best idea she could. She would drink his blood so hard that he would just up and leave. 

Little did she know that even the best of plans fail. He seemed not to mind at all and seemed to have so many deposits of blood in his body. Probably because he was much younger than her. She got so bored of him. She needed new blood. Even her co-workers bored her but she could not change her job that easily due to the financial crisis. The only thing left for her was rat poison. Why rat poison? Simply because they had a rat problem in the house. So she bought it and put it in a cereal box. She liked cats but he had a severe allergy to cat fur, so the rat poison was the best option. 

She later told the police that she put it in the cereal box and mixed it with its content because she thought that rats would smell the food and eat it and finally be eliminated. Instead, her fiancee was eliminated. She cried and tried to convince the judge of her innocence. The jury took pity on her by one vote and she went home free. She learned her lesson the hard way to never trust men ever, especially those with the talent to change her ways.