Southern Comfort

Tonight, Julie's on a date with Paul and Solz is doing homework (sucker!!!) for his summer classes - he failed two units. Michael is "out with the boys", meaning he's having beer and pizza and watching soccer while bonding over manly things like burps and farts with Fred and Wes. Or this is how I imagine his boys nights to be like.
I'm at loose ends so I invited Kristy over for a night of beers and Southern Comfort. One of the great things about being a vampire/werewolf is that you can really hold your licquor (although, as said before, this puts serious restraints on your licquor budget). Also that you can drink beer nonstop without getting a beer gut. Solz is still trying to figure out how I can drink whiskey and vodka straight up now. I used to be a real squeamish queen about that - I only took my whiskey with coke and vodka with lime. Now, I sit on the fire escape of my apartment with Kristy, each of us taking occasional gulps of Southern Comfort straight from the bottle. I think she's still more comfortable just hanging out with me, than if Solz and Julie or Michael and Paul comes along. Kristy is still Kristy, werewolf or not - she's still got that antisocial thing hanging off her like a mantle.
"Still no luck with the library research on our histories?" Kristy asks me.
"Not yet." I take a swig of bourbon. "But I haven't much time to work on it. My boss keeps putting me to work shelving books. I think I'm developing biceps from lifting books off the trolley and shelving them." I look out over the street. There was a light rain earlier and the air is now thick with humidity and the warm smells of garbage. The weather's been pretty hazy lately. It's a good thing I now spend most of my days in Greenwood, where it's air-conditioned. "I've tried researching vampires before," I added. "Didn't find anything."
"I haven't found anything on werewolves either." Kristy looks up at the sky. She is nursing a beer and taking occasional swigs of Southern Comfort at the same time. She's gone a bit melancholy tonight. Streetlight glints off her blonde hair, turning it yellowish-brown, reminding me of her fur when she turns wolf. "It's weird, isn't it? This makes me feel as if we're the only one of our kind on this planet. Where's the rest of them gone?"
I shrugged. "Trying to live their lives as best as they can, like we are, I guess."
Kristy snorted. "What, you mean by biting people and passing on their curse before taking a hike?"
I pass her the Southern Comfort; she's getting a little too bitter tonight. She takes a long drink of it. I can hear the sound of the bourbon going down her throat, extra loud to my sensitive vampire ears. "By the way," I saud curiously, "whatever did go on between you and Bryce Johnson? Not to pry or anything but..."
Kristy set down the bottle with a loud thump on the concrete. "You are prying," she informed me. Her voice is a little slurred now. This is our second bottle of Southern, she's on her sixth beer, I'm on my fourth. She's been drinking more than I have and I have a sneaking suspicion I can drink better than she can.
"Yeah, okay, so I am," I admit as I grab the bourbon. "Are you going to tell me or what?"
"Yeah, all right," she said. "Might as well."
I wait as she sip her beer. "Well?" I demanded.
She rests her arm on her knee. "Bryce used to come into the hardware store where I used to work. He came in all the time. He was always trying to get me to go on a date with him." She snorted. "Jerkass. He thought he was a real charmer, trying to be all slick and everything with me. He came off sounding more like a chauvinistic little prick."
"Yeah, that sounds like Bryce," I agreed.
"He knew this other guy who worked with me at the store. Got him to pass on my contact details and everything. I should have sued that guy for breach of privacy. Or torn out his liver."
"I opt for the liver," I said helpfully.
She laughed. "Anyway, Bryce began coming over to my house all the time. He'd drop by at all hours, used to really irritate the shit out of me. I was really rude to him but that didn't seem to discourage him. He used to like it, said I had spirit." We looked at one another and started laughing.
"Where did he get that from, his mom's romance novels?" I gasped through my laughter.
Kristy snickered. "Who knows. Anyway, he showed up at my house, unannounced like usual, on a full moon night."
I raised my eyebrow.
"Yep," she affirmed, grinning. "Poor old Bryce thought I had bought a rabid dog to keep jerks like him away. It totally changed his disposition towards me. He came into the store the next day, demanding that I pay for his medical bills. I had bitten his leg, torn out a good chunk of flesh."
"Ew," I said.
"Tell me about it. He tasted like shit. Anyway, I told him flat out that I didn't know what he was talking about and that there was no way I was paying for his med bills. But I kind of hinted that I had bought some crazy bloodhound and that I'd sic it on him the next time he comes around. I must have really scared him that night because that was the last I saw of him, except on campus when he scutters away like a frightened rabbit everytime he sees me. Good riddance to bad rubbish."
"He didn't give you any problems after that?" I asked.
"No, but his cousin did, the one I worked with, and so did all the other guys at the store. They had all been friends since childhood, including Bryce. I quit my job soon after that. Wasn't much of a hassle, I didn't like it there anyway. The guys were all jerks and they didn't like me because I never tried to be friendly with any of them."
"Can't be much of a loss," I agreed. "Not if they're friends with Bryce."
"Tell me about it."

The Latest

Kristy has been hanging out a lot more with me, Julie and Solz. At first, she was more than just a little wary (and so were Julie and Solz, who couldn't understand how we had gone from being enemies to friends overnight). But I wore her down with constant invitations and now she comes out with us on an occasional night. Like usual, everyone's a little more friendly after alcohol. Eventually, I introduced her to Paul. Needless to say, they were both a little wary of one another too, but it's all worked out well now. I think it helps Kristy to meet people who are like her ... different from everyone else.
Yeah, that's me. Agatha, the Vampire Therapist. *snort*
On the human-social side, Solz has been playing more sets at different clubs, which means we've been getting better treatment at more clubs. All right, Solz!!! Julie and I have been teasing him about being a minor celebrity now. Like usual, he's been a vain old prick.
It's summer now and I've gotten a job at the Greenwood Library. It's a pretty nice place and it's a job I can more or less tolerate. Much better than waiting on bossy grandmothers at Ulliver Cafe like last summer. I walked out within the first hour. And it's useful too. I've been making use of the research and microfiche rooms to look through history - to see if I can find out anything about vampires or werewolves or even witches or any other kind of supernatural creatures in the past or even now. So far, it's been interesting but I've turned up nothing useful. It seems that real vampires and werewolves are a pretty secretive group. Still, I'm looking. I'm pretty sure I'd find something eventually.