A/N: OMG! I could not believe the overwhelming response to the tiny snippet I put out for this story. I loved seeing so many of my "regulars" (y'all know who you are) as well as the new people who alerted the story. Some of you favorited it and I haven't even started! That just warms my heart… and puts me in an unbelievably tough spot! Holy cow! I have to deliver now, don't I? Well, here goes…
Oh… and no Bill-bashing which is very unlike me, I know. But he's central to the story, in a way. Let's remember Bill in his better moments, K?
P.S.: I'm adding just a couple of words strategically to make this chapter flow better. I understand there was some confusion with the timeline from what Sookie was doing in the present, to her memories, and then back to the present. Hopefully it's a bit clearer now. But, as always, reviews are the only way I know if something isn't clear, so please review if you find that is the case. Y'all are my editors. I don't use a Beta because I'm pretty sure a Beta would fire me...
LIFE'S LITTLE LEDGE
For the imagination of some men is so vivid that they think they see actual figures and appearances which are but the reflection of their thoughts…
Malleus Maleficarum
I was allowed one short walk outside per day, and it was pretty much whenever my jailers felt up to watching me. That day I looked up at the sky, dark, even for the time of day. It was raining, and I let the warm rain soak me. At least it felt real, unlike everything else inside the building looming in the too near distance. My tears mingled with the drops of rain, and when I licked my lips I could taste both: the sweet rain and the salty tears.
Several other people stood nearby, people who were there because of me. Nobody ever spoke to me. They weren't mad. They were dejected, just like me. I'd put them here with the curse of what my mind could do and a very convincing argument: if I didn't tell them who was a supe and who was plain human, they would harm my loved ones. Lately they had Jason, my older brother. Before him they'd had my Gran, and when I refused to help, they'd let her die by simply withholding care. They'd let me see her, see her decay right in front of me. She'd been adamant. With the little bit of strength she had left she had forbidden me to use my gift for such a purpose.
I'd broken in the end, and all I could hope for was that tonight, during the full moon, one or all of the people around me would turn on me and send me to a better place.
It had all started innocently enough. It was June, the month before my twenty-fifth birthday, and the vampires had announced that they were real and came out of the coffin, so to speak. This had come about thanks to a new technology developed by the Japanese, whereas blood could be synthesized. Obviously the human potential was great: no need for donors, there would never be a shortage of blood, it could be easily stored and transported, cheap to produce, and easy to procure. The vampires found this a good substitute for real human blood, good enough to come forward and show themselves.
I'd been so excited that I talked my friend Amelia into going to Fangtasia, a brand new vampire bar in Shreveport, for my birthday. She had readily agreed, as curious as me to see what a real vampire looked like.
I didn't need to wait as long as a month. A real vampire came to the bar where I worked, Merlotte's. Thankfully Sam, the owner, had stocked some of that blood substitute, just in case. It was ultra-pasteurized and kept for a long time in the fridge. The vampire sat at one of my tables, and I was all kinds of excited.
"Hello, I'm Sookie and I'll be your server. What can I get you, mister?" I said to him, giving him my friendliest smile. Several things happened in quick succession before the man answered. First I noticed a subtle glow to his skin; that was clearly not human. Second, I couldn't hear his thoughts, nary a one. My evening was complete when he smiled up at me and his fangs started to lengthen. I almost jumped for joy.
"Would you be Sookie Stackhouse?" he asked with a fangy smile.
How did he know my name? "Yes! That's me. Have we had the pleasure?" I asked, waiting for him to elaborate on how he knew my name.
"I've just moved back into the Compton estate. We are neighbors. I am Bill Compton," he said and nodded at me politely. "I've had the pleasure of meeting your grandmother, Mrs. Stackhouse. She came to the house this evening to welcome me to the neighborhood."
That explained so much. Leave it up to Gran to be a little nosy. She must have seen lights on at the old Compton estate and went to investigate. She was known for walking through the cemetery at all hours. She said the dead were not to be feared. And now the dead were really walking among us!
Bill Compton had ordered a True Blood, the brand of synthetic blood we carried at Merlotte's, and he became an instant sensation. From that night on he was part of the community. He would play pool with everyone, though when he played alone one could truly see how accurate his shots were. He simply wanted to be. Just be. He'd built the Compton house and now he had returned to claim it when his great-great-grandson had passed away. We all called him Vampire Bill and he became a fixture at the bar, just like me, like Sam, like everybody who lived in Bon Temps, a tiny town smack dab in the middle between Shreveport and Monroe in the state of Louisiana.
One evening, as Sam and I were tending to the last chores and closed the bar, the Reverend Steven Newlin appeared on the TV above the bar and delivered the speech that told me not all was well with the vampires' great revelation. That rainy night, looking up at the darkening sky, I remembered every single word that Newlin had spewed.
"The threat is real. We have to rise as humans and claim the glory of God. The devils that now roam this Earth were not meant to take over. Some will assert that vampires are better because of their extraordinary powers. But this is contrary to the true faith, which teaches us that certain angels fell from heaven and are now devils, and we are bound to acknowledge that by their very nature they can do many wonderful things which we cannot do.
"There is in vampires a natural madness, a rabid lust, a wanton fancy as is seen from their spiritual sins of pride, envy, and wrath. For this reason they are the enemies of the human race: rational in mind, but reasoning without words; subtle in wickedness, eager to hurt; ever fertile in fresh deceptions, they change the perceptions and befoul the emotions of men, they confound the watchful, and in dreams disturb the sleeping; they bring diseases, stir up tempests, disguise themselves as angels of light, bear Hell always about them.
"Remember: Vampires are also named Demons, that is, Cunning over Blood, since they thirst for and procure sin with knowledge, being powerful in the subtlety of their nature, and in their age-long experience," Newlin was shouting inside the TV.
Sam and I looked at each other and shrugged. There was always someone out there who had something bad to say about what they didn't understand. I was a woman of faith, and now God had seen fit to expand my horizons. I lived in a more wonderful world than I ever realized, and I was glamoured even knowing that a vampire couldn't truly glamour me. Vampire Bill had tried one night, in jest, and hadn't succeeded.
Of course, my curse was well-known to everyone in Bon Temps. Some didn't acknowledge what I could do. Some wanted to use me to their advantage. But only Bill Compton saw me as normal, because I was an abnormal human. "Like you," I'd joked.
"Sort of like me," he had smiled. "I used to be human, now I only look it."
On my birthday, Vampire Bill had agreed to escort Amelia and me to Fangtasia. We were his dates, and we thought we were all that and a bag of chips hanging from the arm of a bona fide vampire as we entered Fangtasia. I already knew all vampires glowed, some more than others. Bill had explained that real human blood would make a vampire glow brighter. It was a type of magic. He also told me I was the only human he'd ever met who could see that. Usually only supes could see the glow.
Inside Fangtasia I saw every shade of glow. The dark interior was perfect for my eyes to see the vampires' luminescence. The two blond vampires sitting up on thrones and looking on the dance floor glowed brighter than any others. It was obvious why: they had several willing donors making a line to meet them.
"Should I go donate?" Amelia said with a wicked grin. She had her eye on the blond woman sitting stage right. She was beautiful. All the vampires were, even Bill had an ethereal handsomeness to him that was hard for a human to duplicate. The blond woman's hair was long to her waist, and shone like corn silk in the faint lights. Even from where I was standing, close to the entrance, I could tell her eyes were blue: they were that big.
The man sitting next to her was just as beautiful in a different kind of way. He was massive, tall with a slender but muscular build. His hair was blond as well, but darker than the woman's, like mine, the color of wheat. He wore it past his shoulders, which was the way he had been turned.
"A night with either of them would be very pleasurable," Bill said, encouraging Amelia to go make the line. Her smile widened and she left us.
"Why did you go tell her something like that? Now she'll be disappointed if she doesn't get picked," I said to Bill, who guided me to an empty table.
That whole night I found myself staring at the beautiful vampire man with the bored look. He never bothered to look in my direction, which was just as well. I wondered what would have happened if he did become interested. I wasn't ready to donate blood to anybody. I was… untouched… and Bill had made it plenty clear that giving blood to a vampire was equal to having sex with said vampire. Amelia did get picked by the vampire woman, whose name, I learned from Bill, was Pam. The man, Eric, seemed to have left the stage alone.
I looked around me, coming back to the present from my memories of the great revelation, when I heard the sickening sound of bones crunching together, and the gloopy sound of flesh rearranging itself over sinew, sinew over bone. The people that had been around me had all been naked in the rain before they changed into their were-animal. They wouldn't be able to jump over the tall electric fence surrounding us.
A wolf came close to me, nudging my hand. I knew his name was Alcide. He was a mountain of a man, but in wolf form he only came up to my waist. I looked down and put my hand on his head.
"Do it tonight, please. Let tonight be the night," I begged. He shook his wolf head and sat at my feet. Another animal did the same, a panther. Then another, a weretiger. I sank to the ground, surrounded by the furry forms of people who did not blame me for what I had done. I cried loudly into my hands, and the chorus of howls and deep resonating growls offered me the only comfort I was to have.
TBC
A/N: So that I'm not accused of plagiarism… most of Newlin's words were taken from the Malleus Maleficarum. Although, the book is so old that no one can come and tell me I'm committing copyright infringement… even so, there you have it.