Safe at Home

There were very few things that rattled Shane’s cage. He could handle Tanya’s mood swings with ease, he didn’t bat an eye when Viola or Carmichael went too far into their respective deep ends, and he even managed interruptions to his show with relative grace (or so HE thought). There was only one thing that really got under his skin and ate at his bones, and that was the outside world. Though, looking at it now, that probably counts as more than only one thing. He wasn’t sure why it scared him as much as it did, but the idea of leaving the safety of his home and entering the unknown petrified him.

The outside world was so unstable. People behaved erratically, accidents happened all the time, and it was never a good idea to get him started on public transit. He felt that it was just much safer, staying in the safety of his own home. For the most part, he had worked it out so that he would never have to leave the apartment. He worked as a telemarketer, the house had its groceries delivered to the front door, and streaming services had been a godsend for him. There really was only one thing that he couldn’t prevent, and that was the outside world finding its way in.

Which is why, on this lovely August night, he was in hysterics over a mugging that had nothing to do with him.

“I just don’t understand how you can all be so calm about this, it literally happened less than a block from the house.”

Shane was on the edge of his seat, panting and picking at the loose fibers of his jeans. He had been on the verge of tears since Carmichael had come home and told them all. The other three just watched him from their respective locations. Viola in her chair, with her feet propped up on her ever-doting ottoman (affectionately named Otto, for obvious reasons); Tanya on the couch, devouring a falafel; and Carmichael leaning against the doorjamb of the kitchen. While they were used to their own individual eccentricities, this was the first time they had really been subjected to his. Which was impressive considering they had all lived together for close to a year at this point.

But oh, were they seeing it now.

He had started out rocking back and forth in his chair, then escalated to pacing back and forth and gesturing wildly, to finally collapsing into the safety of his chair and muttering incoherently while he tore at the holes in his jeans.

“Well,” Tanya said through a mouthful of food, “it’s not that we don’t care, we’re just not sure why it’s affecting you as much as it is, dude.”

“Carmichael got mugged!” He shouted, wildly swinging his arm toward the kitchen. His eyes were wide with fear and a healthy dose of outrage.

Carmichael furrowed his brow and cocked back his head. Like always, he was struck with confusion.

“I disagree with that statement. I did not get mugged,” he said as he crossed his arms like a petulant child, “A man ATTEMPTED to mug me, and I ate him.”

It was true. Earlier in the night, a strange man had attempted to mug Carmichael, not knowing that he had targeted a vampire with almost complete disregard for human life. It had not ended well for the mugger, but Carmichael had at least gotten a free meal out of it. Most of the house thought it was an amusing enough story: Tanya laughed, it got a smirk out of Viola, but for Shane it had been a real-life tale of terror and woe. How could something so dangerous happen so close to the place he called home? If it could happen there, why couldn’t it happen in the apartment? Why was he the only person who understood the severity of the situation? He was filled with an overwhelming number of questions and seemingly no answers.

Shane had turned his face to the floor. He bounced the tips of his feet against the carpet in tune with the rapid fire of his heartbeat. It felt like a boulder was resting on his chest, pushing the life out of him. His breaths were quick and shallow and brought no air into his lungs. Viola had kept out of the conversation thus far and had just watched the situation unfold. But while Tanya and Carmichael had found his paranoia amusing, she knew that if he kept it up, he’d eventually pass out or start screaming. She stood up from her seat and shooed Carmichael out of her way to the kitchen.

Carmichael came and sat beside Tanya on the couch in a tizzy. Out of all of them, he was the least understanding of the current situation. He could count on one hand the number of times someone had tried to mug him, and all those times had ended with him leaving perfectly intact, very full, and once with a nicer watch than before. The women of the house had seemed to better understand why Shane was so panicky, but he didn’t understand that either. He watched as Viola rifled through the drawers and cabinets. She was probably looking for some misplaced vial of dust or potion that Shane could take that would soothe his nerves. Or Valium, maybe she was looking for Valium.

Eventually, the banging and clamoring stopped, and Viola came from out of the kitchen with a tightly closed fist. She walked straight to Shane and crouched beside him. He had wound his fingers firmly woven into his hair and was bouncing his knees so quickly that his heels left tiny little indentions in the carpet. She rested her open hand on his foot to catch his attention. He glanced up to see her opening her hand and then sudden flash of white. Both Carmichael and Tanya (with her mouth still full of half chewed falafel) peered around Viola’s shoulders to try and see what mysterious charm she held in her palm. They were both very confused and disappointed by what they saw.

In Viola’s beautiful, sienna sculpted hand, was a single white coffee straw.

“Put this in your mouth. Breathe in through your nose, then out through this straw.”

Shane dropped his hands from the tangled mop of hair on his head and let them hang on his bouncing knees. Very carefully, he took the straw from her hand and placed it in between his lips. He started with slow shaky breaths. The straw made a strange squeaking noise that sounded almost like a Halloween whistle. Viola waited there beside him, with her hand resting on his foot, until he managed to stop bouncing and his steadied his breathing. Shane wasn’t sure why, but the gentle weight of her strong hand was one of the most soothing sensations he had ever felt; it was second only to his mom tickling his back when he was a child.

“How are we feeling?”

Shane answered with a quick nod that said: Better, but I’m relying on this straw to live right now, so all I can give you is this nod.

With that, Viola squeezed his foot twice and returned to her seat.

Tanya gulped down her last bite, “V, where did you learn to do that?”

Viola responded without so much as a glance toward her, “don’t ask me questions about my past, Tanya. You know better.”

Tanya conceded that she did in fact know better and focused her attention back onto the man having an anxiety attack in her living room.

He had gotten himself under control for the most part. Now, it felt as though there was a moderately sized rock was sitting on his chest instead of a boulder. Tanya took this chance to ask him again why he was so bothered by what had happened. He stopped for a moment to collect his thoughts and put them in order.

“It’s not just that something bad happened… I know that Carmichael handled it. He got to eat somebody, and that’s great.”

He paused and looked longingly at the straw in his hand, almost like it was a cigarette. He chose his next words very carefully.

“If something like that can happen out there… so close to where we stay… I just don’t understand why it couldn’t happen in here. This is where I’m supposed to be safe, and now it’s not safe anymore.”

With that, everyone understood a little more what it was that Shane had been trying to say. It didn’t matter that it hadn’t happened directly to him, or that Carmichael had handled the situation, because there would always be another one. There was nothing that guaranteed the next time it couldn’t be at home. Everyone felt the weight of the situation a bit more so now that he had said it. Everyone, except Viola. Viola just settled down further into her green chair and snapped for Otto.

“This is a safe place, Shane,” she said as she nestled her hands in her lap and propped up her feet.

“How can you say that?” He asked her, using his fingernails to pick at the loose threads of his jeans. “How can you know that nothing bad will happen here?”

Viola said nothing for several seconds. She didn’t like to be questioned, and usually she wouldn’t stand for it. But looking into her friend’s eyes, she could see just how deep his fear ran. It would keep eating at him until it pushed him over the edge. She checked her jaw, and a gentle smile graced her face.

“Shane, I’m only going to say this once. This is a home is safe. Nothing will, or can, get in here. Ever.” She spoke with resolution. There was no uncertainty to her words; she spoke them as if they had been written in stone.

Everyone had questions. They wanted to know how she could possibly know so undoubtedly that the apartment was safe. What had she done, what had she set in place? Were there fingerprint scanners on the doorknobs? Tiny mines underneath the carpet, is that why they couldn’t wear shoes in the house? They all knew better than to ask her. Tanya nodded and went to the kitchen to throw her trash away, and to get another snack. Carmichael reached across the coffee table and snagged the remote to turn on any old western that didn’t have his Arch-nemesis: John Wayne.

Shane and Viola held each other’s gaze for a bit longer. Her face was still, but her eyes flickered like orbs of fire. Their magic rolled and threatened to eat anything it came across. He trusted that she would keep the house safe, that she would keep everyone safe. He didn’t know how she would do it, but he knew looking in her eyes that nothing bad could enter the house as long as she lived there. She was too powerful to let it.

Shane let go of the fabric of his pants and smoothed down the frays. Leaning back into his recliner, he readied himself to listen to Carmichael complain about the inaccuracies of the movie he chose to watch. His heartrate slowed and his breathing calmed. A new problem had arisen in his mind, though. Glancing around at his friends in their living room, Shane wondered if he had given away the fact that he was a human.