Now Vampires? Part 3

         At two thirty in the morning, Jess woke Brandon up.

“Vampires?” Brandon asked instinctively, and his heart started thumping in his chest.

“I’m sick,” Jess said.

“What’s going on?” Brandon said.

Jess got up and rushed to the bathroom and he heard the tell tale sound of vomit hitting the water in the toilet and Jess retching. 

“Do you need me to call out of work?” Brandon asked.

There was more vomiting.

Brandon got up and pulled his laptop out of his bag and began the process for his school to find a replacement for the day. He went back to sleep and didn’t get up until six in the morning. Jess stayed in bed. Brandon hoped she would get better. Rebe was up at 6:30 and sat on Brandon’s lap while she drank chocolate milk. Gwen and Abby got up later. It started to rain, and then it started to storm. The rain violently battered against the house making it seem like they were inside a giant washing machine, or a car wash. Jess stayed in bed, and the girls ate breakfast and complained. Jess woke up and started watching Little House of the Prairie. She ate and tried to keep food down, but she wasn’t successful. The girls watched television in the den and Brandon tried to get his work done. 

Brandon mused that he was subbing for his wife while someone subbed for him. He hoped his substitute was doing a better job than him, because the girls usually didn’t spend an entire day in front of the television. They were homeschooled and usually they had lessons, but the only lesson they had today was whatever the lesson was on their cartoons. 

Lunch was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches except Gwen who had butter and Jam. Brandon put broccoli out on the table too for some reason, but no one ate it not even Brandon. He just had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the girls. Abby decided she didn’t want to eat her sandwich. Brandon just stuck it in the fridge for later. 

The girls wanted to watch television again but Brandon made them play until their nap. They thought he was the meanest daddy in the world, and maybe he was, but they forgot all about television for a little bit and the three little girls all rolled around on the carpet together in the den and pretended to be animals or tigers or something. 

By the time the girls were all done with their naps, Jess was trying to sit on the couch and sip ginger ale, but she kept throwing up and Brandon was getting stir crazy. When the children finally finished their quiet time, Brandon ran around like a crazy person trying to get their double stroller together with snacks and water so they could head to a local playground at a nearby church. They had gone to that church a long time ago when Jess and Brandon first became Christian, but now they just used the playground and went to another local church for services. Gwen had her own little double stroller that she ran around with, and Brandon got that two. It didn’t take them that long to get ready, just 30 minutes and they were out the door. Gwen was merrily walking two baby dolls in her own stroller, while Brandon pushed Abby and Rebekah. Rebekah munched on a snack cup full of fudge cookies and made happy noises. 

“It’s a monster!” Abby yelled.

“Where?” Brandon said and he instinctively went for his bag to get his gun or his Bible. 

“It’s a pretend monster,” Gwen said.

“Oh, good,” Brandon said. He felt foolish for a moment, but then again there were actual monster in the world. 

They worked their way up the sidewalk, and Brandon enjoyed the time outside. It wasn’t sunny, it was cloudy, but Brandon really lived to be outside and moving around. He didn’t like being stuffed inside. Even if he was a school teacher. 

Rebe sad back in her seat and munched her cookies. Abby kept laughing and pointing and saying, “there’s a monster.”

The park was deserted except for them. It always was. No one really took their kids to playgrounds anymore. They were all in school, or somewhere else. On the weekends, Brandon saw bored parents hover over their children as they awkwardly managed them. Brandon called them weekend parents. He thought he was probably a weekend parent to, but he knew exactly what his children were capable of and what they couldn’t do. He didn’t feel like a weekend parent. 

He pushed them on the swings, except for Gwen who was old enough to swing herself. They put a few cans of food in the little charity pantry the church had. It looked like a little red house on a pole or maybe a giant bird house. He saw them all over town and they were either for food to give away or they were tiny little libraries. He put a can of beans and two cans of soup in and said a little prayer. They walked home and Brandon felt a little more human having gotten out of the house. Abby and Gwen walked home in front of Brandon. They pushed their toy stroller together and splashed in the puddles as they walked by them on the sidewalk. 

Jess was still sitting on the couch when they got back. 

“If I can make it through the night and get a good night’s rest, I’ll be okay,” she said. 

She then ran to the kitchen sink and threw up. He didn’t think he was going to be going to work the next day if she kept throwing up like this. It was most likely food poisoning. He remembered exactly what had made her sick too. Jess had cleaned out the fridge a day before and found some weird looking pepperoni. 

“Does this look weird to you,” she had said.

“Yes,” I answered.

It was the wrong color, a weird dark orange. He wasn’t going to eat it. Jess put one in her mouth and ate it.

“It tastes a little weird,” Jess said. “Try one.”

“Nope,” Brandon said.

Now she was sick. 

The smell of cooking food sent Jess back to the bedroom before she gagged. They weren’t having anything weird. Brandon couldn’t muster the energy to make anything complicated, so they had frozen pizza, chicken nuggets and tater tots for dinner. It was strangely silent in the house as the children ate. It was strange, because they were silent. They had gotten too hungary, so instead of laughing, playing, joking and getting into trouble, they were just stuffing their faces with frozen pizza. 

Chores came next. They were definitely more of a chore when Jess was sick or if Brandon was sick. You always got interrupted. The children were picking up, well they were supposed to be picking up, but they were probably really just playing. Jess laid on the couch and felt miserable. Brandon felt like he had a free moment, so he grabbed the full trash bag from the can under the kitchen sink and headed out the door to the big trash can outside. It was dark, and it was muddy, so Brandon walked carefully out into the darkness of the back yard. The grass and mud squished under his feet. He threw the bag in the trash and examined the backyard. When he turned around he was surprised to see a man standing in the driveway looking at him. He was partially illuminated by the side-door light. HGe looked like an evil uncle Sam complete with a top hat, but instead of red, white and blue, it was gray, black and white and he had a forked black goatee. 

“It’s the teacher,” the vampire said. “Hello teacher.”

Brandon froze. He didn’t have his Bible or his gun, or a knife, or a Bible passage ready on the tip of his tongue. He was in a pair of old sweat pants and whatever he could get out of his brain.

“You hurt one of my girls,” the vampire said and then he lunged at Brandon.

Now Vampires? Part 4