Hunting?

Hunting? Oh, fuck!  Creepy dude is a vampire! I have to be hallucinating. That cunt waitress spiked my drink…that’s it. I will just go to my hotel room and sleep this off. With swift assurance, he confronted the creature of darkness, transforming fear into fierce defiance just in time to save me from becoming another fleeting memory in this city's web of mysterious night terrors. "You can’t protect her forever, mutt," the creepy guy said before he disappeared. 

“Frank, what the fuck!” I yelled as I trembled and tried to walk towards my hotel.

“You won’t believe me if I told you.” As he said that, my knees started to buckle, and my vision began to swim. “Whoa, I got you.” He picked me up as if I were a feather. I felt oddly warm and comforted in the arms of this stranger. “Pineview, which room is yours?”

“Six.” He carried me to the front desk, and the clerk on duty just nodded as if this happened every day. Frank sits me in front of my door as he props me up. I fish out my key and open the door. “I am fine from here,” I say. I take two steps from him and grab for the door to keep me from falling, but what I grab onto is him.

“Sugar, let me help.” That was all he said before my world went black.

I woke up in my hotel room with my head spinning like a top at a carnival. To add to the mystery, I wasn’t even wearing the dress from last night. What on earth happened? I rubbed my face, and when my hand brushed against my neck, I felt a bandage. Great, just what I needed—a souvenir from a night I couldn’t quite remember.

With a Herculean effort, I dragged myself to the bedside table where my phone lay, like a lifeline in this chaotic sea of confusion. I turned on the front-facing camera, and the reflection staring back at me looked like I had just emerged from a battlefield. My hair resembled a bird’s nest after a tornado, my makeup was smeared like a Picasso painting gone wrong, and I was draped in an oversized t-shirt that seemed to swallow me whole. But the real kicker? A pristine white bandage snugly wrapped around my neck.

Curiosity got the better of me, and I pulled back the bandage, gasping at the sight. Two evenly spaced holes stared back at me, like tiny reminders of a night gone awry. I poked them gingerly with my finger; they weren’t deep, but boy, did they throb. I dropped my phone onto the bed beside me, my mind racing to piece together the puzzle of the previous night.

Suddenly, flashes of memory began to surface: the creepy guy with fangs, and then—bam!—Frank swooping in like a knight in shining armor, yanking the guy away from me. Frank saved my life! Who knew my night would end with a dramatic rescue? Now, if only I could remember how it all started…

My phone started buzzing with notifications from Tinder Vibes. I opened the app and Frank’s picture stared back at me with the following messages attached, “Hey, why aren’t you up yet? Come on, get ready. We have to go.”

Just what is he talking about? I typed my reply, “Go where? Why?” I need to figure out why this guy is so invested. We don’t even know each other. Hell, I barely remember anything from last night.

“Go open your door.”

I open my door, and Frank is standing there. He comes in as if he owns the place and looks around. “Why haven’t you packed?”

I go and sit on my bed and wrap the blanket around me. “First, I am not going anywhere. Second, what the fuck happened last night? I want the truth not some sugar-coated bullshit. No fucking riddles either.”

He hands me a cup of coffee before he sits in the chair opposite me. I wait for him to take a drink first before I sniff my cup. ‘It isn’t poisoned. Sugar, I mean no harm. I want you safe.”