2Trishana looked over at her parents snuggling and rolled her eyes. Those two were embarrassing. It was weekly movie night, and Trish had invited two of her girl friends over to watch a movie at her house. Her parents always paid for the movie, but it meant that she and whoever she invited would have to put up with the two of them. At least they no longer made out during movie night. They'd done that when she was a toddler.
Tonight's movie of choice was a vampire movie. She'd tried and tried to avoid this, but her friends had insisted on a horror movie, and the most popular one out right now happened to be "Vampires!" (or some lame title like that). Meaning that she, on the same side of the living room as her parents, had to endure hearing their comments to one another.
The vampire bit his first victim. Her friends screamed. She winced and held her hands in front of her face at the gore. If she weren't so squeamish about gore she'd have rolled her eyes at the weirdness of adding chunky-looking pink stuff to the piercing of someone's throat. It was stupid.
She could hear her parents whispering to each other sultrily and felt lucky that her friends couldn't hear them.
"See?" her mom whispered, "It's sexy."
"I'm not going to bite you," her dad replied with a laugh.
"Awww…"
Her dad leaned closer to speak directly into her mother' s ear, "Not while the girls are over." Her mom smiled with a twinkle in her eye and snuggled closer to him.
Ugh. She hadn't needed to hear that. It wasn't as if her father was the vampire, anyway. Her mom was. It was just that her strange and eccentric mother liked being bitten as much as she liked doing the biting. Not that she drank his blood that way. How she actually got blood was far creepier. She remembered the first time she'd seen it.
"Ma-ma-" five-year-old "Trishie" called, walking into the kitchen from the backyard, covered in dirt. "I wanna sna-ck."
"Just a minute, hon," her dad replied, smiling at her from where he was sitting. He was in one of the kitchen chairs, the one with arms. He had his elbow resting on one of the arms, wrist facing up. She heard the sound of plastic being ripped open and looked up to see her mom standing beside him. Trishana's eyes widened as big as they could go. Her mom was holding a needle.
Trishie ran and grabbed her father's leg, trying to hide behind him. Her mother gave a little laugh and set the needle down on the table, walking around and scooping Trishie up. The little girl kicked and wriggled, crying loudly until she was very suddenly plopped onto the cushion of one of the other kitchen chairs.
"Shh, shh, the needle's not for you, sweetie, just sit here for a minute, okay?" her mom looked straight into her frightened light brown eyes, holding a hand on one of her shoulders. Trishie blinked, but couldn't manage to say anything. Her mom patted her on the shoulder and stood, leaving her there in the kitchen chair and picking up the needle again, decapping it.
It was one of those scary big needles that they used to take your blood when they did tests. She watched, horrified, as her mom tapped her dad's arm, tied a thick rubber band above where she'd tapped, and, as he sat there nonchalantly, pulled part of the skin taut with her thumb, pushing the needle into it.
Trishie cried out, "Mama! Mama! Why're you sticking daddy?"
"Shh, honey, it's fine," her dad reassured. Trishie didn't believe him. It didn't look fine to her.
Blood rushed into the clear plastic part and her mother stuck a vial on one end, piercing the lid with the small point on the side of the needle opposite where it was stuck in her dad's arm. The blood filled the vial, and three more after that. The whole time Trishie was yelling and screaming at her mom to take the needle out of her dad's arm. Her father tried to reassure her, but it didn't help. Only the fear of the needle kept Trishie in her seat.
Her mom's hand was shaking as she put the final vial down, holding a piece of cotton over the end of the needle as she pulled it out, pressing down to stop the bleeding. After it had stopped she wrapped gauze around it as easily as if she'd been a nurse. She looked away, eyes jumping back and forth between the vials of blood and Trishie.
"It's worthless to you if it's not warm," her dad commented to her mom.
"I know…" her mom's eyes kept flitting from the blood to the girl, "But Trishie…"
"Go ahead," he stood, walking over to Trishie and squatting down to meet her at eye level, "Do you want to go outside and play some, honey?" He pulled her off the chair and began guiding her to the door.
"No," Trishie turned around and tried to go back, but her father was pushing her inexorably towards the exit, "I wanna snack…" She tried to get past, back to the kitchen, and her father picked her up, carrying her away. Over his shoulder she saw the lid of one of the vials unscrewed, her mother at the kitchen table drinking from it tremblingly. "Mama!" she shouted as her dad turned the knob and brought her outside and away from the sight.
That was how she'd found out. And hell if her parents had helped her in understanding what was going on, they'd just said "momma has needs" and left it at that. Of course, over time, she'd figured it out, and finally three years after she had it all in order in her head they'd come and explained it to her. "A genetic disease", her father had said. Her mother had assured her that if she had any of the symptoms, she could just talk to them, no problem.
Ugh. She was lucky she didn't have it. After all, what would she do? Tell them and get a monthly dose of her father's blood? She shuddered, a convenient time in the movie to do so.
Hazarding another glance at her parents, Trishana saw them snuggling more than ever. As always, disgusting cuteness, but by now she was used to it. She looked at her father, at his veins, and at her mother, cheerfully nuzzling into the crook of his neck.
What was it like? She got – well got – that her mother loved her father. What was it like, doing that to the man you loved? And him, she got that he loved her mother, but how could he let her do that?