“Whatever happened to the man I married? The man I was going to spend my afterlife with? The man who could just look at a woman and she would melt and give him all her blood?” Sabrina glared down at Matt, stretched out on the couch. The moonlight shone through the window, illuminating only his eyes, which were closed. She sighed and shifted her gaze to the floor and the supine feline form that lay there. “Matt! The Derfman’s cat! They love this thing. Well, used to love it, anyway.” She kicked the inert body. “If you were hungry, why didn’t you go out and eat?”
“Sabrina, you don’t understand.” The voice rose from the body. His mouth didn’t seem to have moved, and he certainly didn’t. “I was so tired, and that cat always makes noise during the day when I’m trying to sleep. When he wandered past the window.
“You decided to skip the whole going out into the night and feeding on an innocent victim and grabbed the neighbor’s cat as a quick snack?”
He shook his head slowly. “Not everyone has to go out at night you know.”
“No, only vampires who want a decent meal.” Her fangs started to extend, and she raised a hand to block them from his view. Damn blood lust. Whenever she got mad, it was so hard to keep it a secret. And being mad at Matt wasn’t helping any right now. If anything, he got him more despondent, more hurt. “Matt –” she was going to apologize, going to try to make things right. But she felt the warmth of the rising sun in her bones. “Downstairs. Coffins.”
She grabbed his arm, not giving him a chance to complain or delay, and pulled him down the stairs and into the storage room. Their coffins lay on two raised platforms — red for her, black for him — each filled with dirt. He flipped open his ebony and she her polished rosewood, and they climbed in. The last thing she saw as she pulled her coffin shut was Matt staring blankly in front of him, not even reaching towards the inside latch.
“Close it,” she called as the door slammed on her.
#
“Close it,” Sabrina said again, not realizing at first that she had fallen asleep. She could still feel the heat in her bones, but she could tell it was evening now, not morning. She couldn’t open her coffin — she had to wait for the heat to fade entirely before she could chance it — so she waited, ticking off the seconds in her head, counting first to 100, then to 1,000, then to 10,000 while she felt the heat slowly fading and the blood in her veins getting quiet. Was Matt alive — well, undead? There was no sense of his being there, but there normally wasn’t, not lately. He had gotten so lethargic, so uncaring. All he did was lie on that couch, not even complaining most of the time. What was wrong with him? Sure, there was always a bit of a comedown when the seasons changed. When summer came and the nights got shorter, it was normal to feel a bit of depression. There was less time to get things done, less darkness to enjoy. But this wasn’t simply a little depression.
The sun gone, Sabrina popped the coffin open and swept out. Matt’s coffin was closed. She held her breath, or would have if she breathed, and opened the casket.
Matt lay there, eyes closed, hands folded.
“Matt?”
Silence.
“Matt?” She reached out to poke him. His hand came up and intercepted hers before she could touch him.
“Yes?”
“Matt, I thought you hadn’t made it. Now come on out of there.” She shook his hand from hers and took a step back.
“No.”
“Matt!”
“I don’t want to. I’m happy in here.” His eyes were still closed.
“This is getting ridiculous, Matt. You’re going to waste away if you don’t get out of that coffin and find some food.”
“I’m fine in here. Not hungry at all. You go on.”
“Fine.” Sabrina stamped her foot. “I’ll go. You stay here and turn into dust. But don’t expect me to sprinkle any of my blood over you to bring you back!” She turned on her heel and left.
#
It wasn’t until the muggy night air hit Sabrina’s face like a wet towel that she calmed down and began thinking. It really wasn’t like Matt to act like this. He was normally the first one on the hunt, ready and rearing to take down some mugger in an alleyway or an innocent waif returning to her dorm room a few hours later than she should be. Why was he like this now?
She found an open all night cyber cafe, ordered a mocha — for the smell — and settled down in front of one of the heavily pawed computers after paying her hourly fee. It didn’t take long for her search to come up on Seasonal Affective Disorder. Inability to concentrate. Sadness. Loss of interest in usual activities. Withdrawl from social activities. Increased need for sleep. Lack of energy. It sounded like someone had typed Matt’s behavior into the computer in catalog form. The more she read, the more convinced she became. But it made no sense to Sabrina. How could a vampire suffer from seasonal affective disorder? It wasn’t like they wanted light. They needed the dark. The dark, she realized, that was slowly decreasing because of the long summer days.
Sabrina sat back and sniffed her mocha. The milk was going to go sour the next day. It put her off, and she placed the cup back on the desk.
The days had been awfully long lately. She remembered the number of times she’d woken up recently, only to have to stay in her coffin, waiting for the sun to get low enough that the rays wouldn’t burn her the minute her white skin hit the air. Even in the basement, there was always a low level of light from the cracks in the walls and doorways. And she was never one to take chances with her afterlife.
Maybe that was the problem with Matt. It was about as likely as anything else. And with the summer only half over, there would be least another 44 days of short nights and long days. Luckily, the web was full of suggestions for treatment. Unluckily, most of them involved getting more sun. Not technically very helpful — sure, the problem would be cured, but the cure would be his demise.
Sabrina spent some more time searching, but when her pre-paid hour was up, the idea was barely beginning to percolate in the recesses of her brain. She needed some energy to get going. She needed a snack. Luckily, the cafe was full of snacks. Unluckily, well, for them.
#
The materials didn’t arrive for two nights. Two long, miserable, awful nights. Sabrina tried to be sympathetic; she really did. The first night, she brought home a meal for him. He barely moved from the couch. If she hadn’t restrained it with that handy pillow, it might have escaped. The second night, she brought home a stray dog. Matt couldn’t be bothered chasing him when the leash broke. The third night she spent working.
By the time she had finished her renovations, she could feel the prickling of the sun’s rays beginning on her arms. She rubbed them, trying to stave off the burning while she dragged first her stand and coffin, then his, to the workshop. Finally, knowing that time was running out, she climbed up the stairs to get him.
Matt was, of course, lying on the couch.
“Matt, get up.”
Nothing.
“Matt, I’m not kidding. Get off the couch and come downstairs with me to the coffins, or I will pick you up and carry you down there.”
“You wouldn’t dare.” He still didn’t stir.
“I’ll give you to the count of three. Then you’ll see about daring.”
“But Sabrina, I thought you liked the traditional roles — the male protector, the female–“
“One.”
“Okay, okay, I’m getting.” He slumped into a seated position. “See, here I come.”
“Two.”
He got to his feet and shambled towards the basement stairs. She knew he had to be tired and weak from lack of nutrition. Going one night was hard on her, and this was his second night. He managed the stairs slowly. Sabrina thought her head would explode from the pressure of the rising sun. The heat was in her bones now, and she feared they wouldn’t make it in time.
When he turned towards the storage room, she grabbed his hand.
“Oh no, honey. Not there.”
“What?”
She pulled him in the other direction, towards what used to be the workshop. The door was open, and the coffins were in their new places. Sabrina entered, dragging Matt behind her, wondering if he was completely immune to the effects of the sun’s rising. She was sure feeling it.
“What is–” Matt began to ask.
“No time,” she stuttered. It was bad, really bad. “In your coffin. I’ll tell you in the morning.”
“But–“
She cut him off, shoving him towards his coffin while she slammed the door behind her. Then she dove into the safety of her coffin, barely conscious, her mind shutting off as the coffin door closed.
#
“Sa-brin-a,” Matt’s voice was teasing her. “Sa-brin-a…”
She came awake instantly, startled.
“Matt?”
Her coffin door opened from the outside. Matt stood in front of her.
“You…you…” He grabbed her from the coffin and held her up in front of him. “You made me a darkroom?”
She nodded.
“For me, really?”
She nodded again. He looked so happy.
“Do you know what this means?” He asked. “No more light coming through the cracks. No more sitting in coffins while we wait for the fading rays of light to stop.” He twirled her around. “No more seasonal affective disorder!”
“What?” She stared at him. “You knew?”
“Of course I knew. I’d had it before, but I’d always managed to hide it. But what with this global warming, and all the El Nino problems, I didn’t think it would ever go away. But this darkroom –
– it’s the answer to all my prayers!”
Sabrina blanched a little at the mention of the p-word, but she couldn’t stop herself from smiling.
Matt kissed her. “So what are we going to do with all this extra time?” He smiled at her, looking more like the guy who had once seduced the entire cheerleading squad of the top-ranked NBA team to give him their blood then he had in quite a while.
“Oh, I’m sure we’ll think of something.”