You Can Suck My Blood

Sarah was bored. She had been stuck in her damned coffee shop all day, working two shifts so that her boss, Pat, could have the night off. He did this to her every freaking Friday night, and that shit was getting old. If she didn’t need the money so badly she would have cut out of her job months ago, as it was she barely made the rent, and she managed to swipe all of her food from the store. If she quit she’d starve.

The only bonus of working at Bloody Starrs was that they didn’t care how she dressed, and Sarah liked to show off her assets. Today she was wearing a nearly see through shear black dress that had a v-neck that fell all the way to her navel. The dress was very form fitting and went down to just below her knees, with a slit up her right leg. The sleeves extended her wrists, with a small hole that she extended her thumb through. She wore an silver ankh on a chain around her neck that dropped into her cleavage. It was plain to see that she had no bra or panties on beneath. She loved to tantalize the customers.

There were about ten people in the café, and they were engrossed with their computers or phones. Bloody Starrs had free Wi-Fi for its customers, and they took complete advantage of it. She was considering sneaking into the back and grabbing herself a Bloody Mocha Surprise when four people walked into the shop.

They were wearing dark robes, with the hoods up. The biggest fellow in the group stopped at the door and locked it behind him. Sarah could see outside and saw that the sky was growing dark even though it was four in the afternoon. She thought that she could hear screams in the distance, but was more concerned with the fact that each of the people who just walked in didn’t look like they wanted some coffee.

A frail hooded figure stepped from their group and spoke, “Fellow travelers, rejoice. Rejoice, for this is the day of the great coming. He has been called, and he has answered. You have been chosen to serve as sacrifices in the name of the one who must not be . . .uh. . . named.” The voice of the speaker was that of a woman, but it rasped and gurgled at points when she spoke making her sound inhuman.

The word sacrifices made everyone look up from their devices. Moments ago they couldn’t have cared that a group of strangers dressed in black hooded robes just walked in and locked the door, but as soon as mention was made of them being sacrifices they forgot all about their InstaSPam, Gibber, and Lifebook. All except for one guy in the back corner; he was still watching wrestling on his phone.

The speaker pointed to a chubby man with a white beard who had earbuds in and had been listening to an audiobook or a podcast. He threw his phone at her, but two of her companions grabbed the man’s arms and slammed his face into the table. The speaker produced a wavy blade that Sarah recognized as a Kris, and drove it into the base of the man’s skull as he struggled. One of the figures holding the first sacrifice looked to the leader and said, “I thought we were supposed to be chanting when you did that or the great overlord didn’t get to devour his soul.”

The leader screamed, “Dammit! You’re right. Our Nameless Lord just missed out on a snack.” She spun around and looked at the rest of the crowd nearly cutting the other hooded man beside her with the bloody Kris. “Watch it, Methany! You don’t know what bloodborne pathogens that guy might’ve had. You could have given me any number of infectious diseases if youd’ve cut me with that.”

“Imbecile,” she screamed, “This is the end of the world. There will only be three types of people left in a few hours; the transformed, the dead, or us cultists. The Dark Lord will eliminate all disease and all mortal suffering when he arrives.”

The figure nodded his hood, “Well, that’s all well and good. That doesn’t mean you get to go around waving that knife like it was a sparkler on the fourth of July. You could’ve put my eye out.”

Methany, the cult leader, shuddered with anger but kept her rage in check. Sarah could see that she was barely keeping herself from stabbing the man in front of her. She decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to quietly slip away to the back, and make her escape from these crazies down the alley. Once she was clear, she’d call the cops, but she had to get out first. She started to back away from the cash register when a great meaty paw grabbed her shoulder and squeezed. The pain caused her to inhale sharply, and she turned her head to see the man who had blocked the front door now was holding her in a vise like grip. “Don’t even think it, missy.”

She looked back at the people at the tables and saw that they had grabbed a woman who was dressed like she was an attorney. Her briefcase was on the floor and papers were scattered all around her. She was struggling, but the cultists held her firmly. Their leader stepped forward and held the knife above her heart. Just as she was about to drive the blade home when a nasally voice came from the guy who had been watching wrestling, “You guys forgot to chant!”

Methany stopped the blade inches above the woman’s sternum. “I swear to the Dark Lord, you two are complete idiots. We just talked about this.”

The man who had realized their mistake the first time around spoke up, “Yes, well you didn’t even notice. Your bloodlust is so great that all you want to do is kill. That’s all you talk about. We need to kill him, we ought to kill her, Oh, let’s kill that dog he just peed on my lawn. It’s bad enough that you won’t even let us drink the blood we spill because that belongs to the Unmentionable Occult Overlord. I will not, however, be treated like an idiot because you aren’t paying any more attention to what you are doing then we are.”

The leader gurgled and spat. “I have enough to do here. Do you want to stab them? Do you have any idea of how hard it is to drive a blade through somebody’s breastbone? Let me tell you it isn’t as easy as it looks.”

The other man, the one who had been concerned with her stabbing him said, “Well, you really don’t make it look all that easy.” He looked at his partner, “You remember last week when we were sacrificing that family in Idaho? Methany must’ve stabbed that one guy twenty times before he bled out. I was thinking, geez, I thought those old Aztec fellas were able to cut still beating heart out of their victims with a single swipe of their blade, and Methany can’t even make a cut deep enough to pierce a vital organ.”

The cult leader snapped, “Start chanting right now, or I know two other people who will be counted among those whose souls are delivered to our Dark Lord.”

“Technically, you can’t send either one of to the Dark Lord unless one of use is chanting, and who’s going to do that if you’re killing us? Not me.” Sarah couldn’t tell who had said that until the man on the left shook his head, “Me neither,” he said emphatically.

“I will,” said the wrestling fan.

Methany drove the dagger down into the woman’s throat, and stepped back as a gout of blood sprayed upwards. “Hey, we didn’t get to chant,” her helpers said in unison. Methany pointed at the wrestling fan, “Take him, and start chanting.”

Outside the sky blackened and the air was filled with screams, crashing cars, and gunfire. She swore that she saw a great hulking shadow run by the shop window, but she couldn’t make out what it was for certain. All she knew was that just seeing its shadow made her woozy. She heard them chanting and the sickening thunk of a blade piercing skin, and an agonized scream. Things were not going well, and she wondered why the other customers were just letting themselves be killed, they just sat there as if waiting for their turn under Methany’s blade when the power went out and darkness filled her mind.