Excerpt: Drowning Sirens

You look for therapists like most people look for groceries. You have a list up in your head of things that you’d like them to be. They have to take Blue Cross Blue Shield, though what network they’re in isn’t a matter of much fuss since you have coast to coast coverage because your father is a police officer. They have to know what you’re talking about, or at least understand somewhat when you explain yourself to them, because blank stares lead to awkwardness and your life is awkward enough without adding to it in therapy. They have to be open to the idea of you living off of lithium, because you’re too damned stubborn to ever touch that shit again and, somewhere deep down inside of you, you are relatively certain that it wasn’t going to help you anyhow. In fact, you may just be a smart ass who thinks she knows better than everyone else, but you think that medication is like hypnosis and that only those who are suggestible or amenable to them working will be able to get anything from them. Modern psychiatry suggests that there is no magic pill and that work must be done for any patient to get therapeutic effects. You think adding their pills is a waste of time, but then again you’re high half the time anyhow.

Orion comes on Saturday afternoon. You’ve been smoking since you woke up at 12:30 because your boyfriend isn’t there and won’t be until later. You relish in whole days that you can spend high without thinking too much about consequences. You cruise around the internet for cartoons and movies and other mindless programming that will simultaneously trip you out with humor and funny visuals and pull you out of the world you’re supposed to be living in. You know you should be spending the time trying a little harder to connect with the world instead of evaporating, but evaporating is soothing and you don’t particularly feel like fighting it.

Orion doesn’t judge, exactly, but you know he doesn’t like it. “Your blood smells bitter,” he says, gracefully making his way up onto your mattress. He settles in behind you like one of those big, hard pillows with the arms that people prop up on.

You lean back into him. “It’s not bitter. It’s herbal. I used to think it was bitter, before I got to know it better.”

He laughs. “I think I know it well enough.”

You ask if he’s ever smoked and he tells you about how he’s been alive for millennia. How he’s seen more than modern humans can even fathom. How he is ancient and well-traveled and how he used to tease Jesus Christ on the playground when they were both kids in the desert. You ask if he liked pot and he laughs again.

“Vampires don’t get high like humans do. At least, not from drugs.”

“Not even… like… heroin?”

“Especially not heroin.”