The Last Meal of Rennie Grey
Nestled between a whimsical forest and a babbling brook, the hospice center stood like a quirky haven for souls on the cusp of their next adventure. ***
Lee Vogelbach enjoyed his job. It wasn’t the stench of cleaning products or the low hum of air purifiers, and it wasn’t the stained sheets or the industrial washing machines, or the endless noise of wheelchairs on vinyl flooring, or the long shelves of quality drugs, or the vast forest outside the center’s walls. Lee tolerated all of that.
What kept him coming back were the people.
Modern society had built a bulwark against death: buildings with tall walls, with industrial windows, prisons for the dying. Compassionate, but somewhere else, far from polite society. It was easy for people in Lee’s normal life to forget about death, about its constant march, but it was always there in the back of his mind.
He was like a guide. That’s how he saw himself as he clocked in each morning and began his rounds. He would lose all these patients—that was the point—but he could take them from this mortal shell to whatever’s beyond with as little pain as possible. Emotionally, this wasn’t easy, and he tried his best to close himself off each time a new patient came in, but sometimes they slipped past his defenses.
Like Rennie Grey. Only fifty-three. Her family visited often, but they couldn’t be there all day and night. When they left, Lee sat with her and they talked, and she told him about growing up in Mishawaka, about driving down the flat streets with her high school boyfriend to get a burger at that vintage greasy spoon, and how the second she could get out of that backwards, dead-end place, she did. Then college, then husband, then three kids and a decent job working for the local school district as an administrator. Then the cancer diagnosis, the GoFundMe, the drugs, the scans, the bad news.
“It’s like an avalanche. When the bad stuff hits, it keeps on coming and you can’t stop it.” Her face was gaunt and wrinkled, her head covered by a scarf.
“I know what you mean. Sometimes, it just doesn’t get better.”
“You have to learn to live with it.” She smiled at him, bright and cheery despite all the reasons not to be. “Until you’re not alive anymore.”
“That’s the spirit.” Lee assessed her pain and gave her the good drugs, mostly because he liked her, and also because she needed them. Rennie softened and was barely there when he lifted her hand up to his lips.
“I came a long way, you know,” she whispered, floating somewhere else. Lee waited for the drugs to take her as far as they could as he smelled her skin and stared at the pulse in her wrist. “I think Georgie’s not going to let me go.”
“They always do,” Lee murmured as his fangs sank deep into her skin. Sweet blood welled up. “They can’t do anything else.”
***
The more mobile residents were wheeled out to the atrium most days and left near the large windows overlooking the forest. Rennie Grey was among them. Lee did his rounds, checking on patients, taking vitals and handing out the good drugs, fluffing pillows and fixing blankets, and when he approached the little wheelchair hoard of the dying, Rennie stared at him with a confused smile. Her hand brushed against her opposite wrist. Two small, red dots stood in relief against her pale, papery skin.
“How are you feeling today?” Lee asked, crouching next to her.
She tilted her head side to side. “I’m okay. Good as I can be.” Her smile faltered and she opened her mouth to say something. If she remembered Lee biting down as gently as he could and drinking her blood, she must’ve been chiding herself already. A silly dream. A dying woman’s drug-induced fantasy. Lee kept on smiling at her.
“Actually, I wanted to ask you something,” she said and seemed to gather herself. “What’s a young man like you doing working in a hospice center? Isn’t it awful? Isn’t it hard?”
“Someone’s got to do it. I guess I decided that death doesn’t scare me like it scares other people, and maybe I can do some good here.”
“That’s a really nice way to think about it. But do you ever take it home?”
He shook his head. That was one of his cardinal rules: meals stay where they are. “Never. Not once.”
“Good for you then.” She moved to touch his arm, but she stopped midway there, hand hanging in the air, before she let it drop down into her lap. Her smile went away again, replaced by a confused frown, like she couldn’t quite remember something important.
Lee patted her back and moved on.
***
Evening, post-dinner, Rennie Grey stared out her meager window at the banks of scrubby trees on the edge of the property, tears streaming down her face. This happened a lot. Lee watched her crying and wished he could do something to help, but there wasn’t anything he could say. He’d learned the hard way over the last few hundred years. Humans came and they went, they were born and they expired, and no matter how many times the world reminded them of their inevitable decay, they continued to struggle. The world was constant change, and hope was designed to fight against that change. Life was beautiful, and it was loss. Lee felt it all the time, but he’d learned a while back to let the waves wash over him. Time sloughed along his skin and drained away, and he was left behind. He continued on.
“How are you feeling tonight?” he asked after Rennie had finally calmed down.
The center was dark and quiet. Lee had the night shift: his favorite.
“Tired,” she said, wiping her eyes. “How many people are crying in here right now?”
“Fewer than you’d think.” He busied himself straightening her little room and adjusting her blankets.
“I don’t know what Mike’s going to do when I’m gone. I keep thinking about it. We’ve been married for twenty-three years and once I’m dead, he’s going to wake up alone in that big house.”
“He’ll find a way.” Lee sat beside her bed with the good drugs, but he didn’t administer them. Not just yet. “They always find a way.”
“He’ll move on.” She stared ahead, not looking at him. “I told him to remarry. I gave him permission, and I hated it. I really, really hated it, because I don’t want that. I want him to stay married to me. But there won’t be a me anymore.”
“You did the right thing.” Lee leaned in closer. His voice was gentle from a thousand similar conversations. Rennie looked at him, head tilted and frowning, eyes swimming. “The world always moves in. That’s what it does. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth, and your husband can either stay in one place and never get to live again, or he can move along with it. You gave him a gift when you said that.”
She nodded and took a deep breath. “Did you bite me last night?”
Lee showed nothing. Her question was a surprise, but not unprecedented. It meant the drugs hadn’t been enough. “Yes, I did.”
Her eyes widened. Whether in fear or shock, he wasn’t sure, and didn’t care. Lee raised the needle toward her IV line and Rennie tried to shuffle away, but she was much too weak. He plunged the fentanyl into her tubes, and she groaned as it hit her bloodstream, and she slowed.
“You were supposed to deny it,” she whispered as her body relaxed. “You have big, sharp teeth. And you drank, didn’t you?”
“Yes, Rennie. I did.”
“Are you going to do it again, Mr. Biteyface?” She laughed, sounding lighter.
Lee smiled too. “Yes, Rennie. I am.”
He waited for her to fall deeper into the drugs, until she was barely there, hardly awake, and he took her wrist and fed.
***
Lee avoided Rennie for a few nights after that, even though she was his favorite meal. Something about her: the bite of blood, almost lemon-ish, citrusy and sour. The drugs left a bitter aftertaste. Maybe that was her cancer.
But he didn’t mind. There were plenty of other patients in the center and plenty of other wrists to drink from, but only after a few days he found himself by her bedside, legs crossed ankle-over-knee, hands folded in his lap.
“You’re back,” she said and sounded bright. She stared into his eyes and there was a strange, coy smile on her lips.
Lee didn’t like it.
“I’m back. It’s my shift tonight. How are you feeling?” He reached for the needle on the bedside table. “Are you ready for your evening dose?”
“Not just yet.” She cleared her throat. “I didn’t tell anyone, you know. I mean, what you did. What I think you are. It could be the drugs, but I know—“ She stopped herself, breathing hard, cheeks flushed. Lee could smell the blood rushing through the carotid artery in her neck, flooding her brain, rushing back down into her heart.
This had happened before, too.
“Do you want me to skip the drugs tonight, Rennie?”
Widened eyes. She hesitated, but shook her head. “Maybe just a little less.”
“If that’s what you prefer.” Three-quarters of the dose went into her line. Enough to numb, but not to addle. She sank back into her bed and watched as Lee lifted her wrist to his mouth. “You’re not afraid.”
“Terrified, actually. But you’re so handsome.”
He sniffed the healed-over wounds. “I get that a lot.” When he bit down, she barely reacted.
***
Rennie waited for him every night after that. Sometimes too eager, sometimes afraid. “I’m sure I’m losing my mind,” she whispered to him about a week after their affair began. “Are there more of you?”
“Hundreds,” Lee admitted, brushing her palm against his face. “Thousands, maybe. I don’t know.”
“And what about others? Like werewolves, ghosts, all that stuff?”
He nibbled on her middle finger. An appetizer to the feast that was Rennie. “Some are real and some aren’t.”
“And what about—“ She stopped as he lifted her arm to his lips. They didn’t bother with the morphine anymore, which was all the better. Now he could taste the pure Rennie, untainted and lovely.
He bit down before she could ask. He’d been waiting for that one question since the night she’d accepted him, and now they were finally at that point. They always asked, and could Lee blame them? Humanity suffers, it’s all they’ve ever known. But the chance to be something else?
Rennie didn’t have much time left. His favorite meal was going to expire soon, and he wanted to feast as much as he could before that happened.
She closed her eyes, breathing fast through the pain, but soon settled. Her lids fluttered, and Lee considered drinking her dry, but that would cause a lot of problems. He had a good thing going at the center. No reason to ruin it just because this meal was better than most.
Once he finished, he stood and gingerly wiped at his mouth with a cloth. Rennie watched him, looking exhausted. He doubted she’d survive another feeding or two. He’d have to be careful.
“How were you made?” she whispered as he moved away to the door, already thinking about the rest of his night. More of the same.
He paused before leaving. How much did he owe this woman? Not much, he decided. “I was born,” he said and looked back over his shoulder. “Just like you.”
***
Rennie Grey was barely there when Lee sat down at her bedside. She stirred and her head turned in his direction. A delicious woman, a rare aftertaste, the sort of treat he didn’t often find in this place. It was a shame she had to die.
“You’re here.” Her voice was a croak. Barely a throaty whisper. “Where have you been?”
“I have other patients.” Other humans, other meals. None as sweet as Rennie Grey, but they’d keep him going. “Are you ready?”
“I need you.” She tilted her head toward him. One bone-claw hand reached into the air. “I need to be like you. Please, I let you drink, but I don’t have anything left.”
“I’m sorry.” He took her hand in his. She was so cold compared to him. “But I already told you.”
“That can’t be true. You live forever. I don’t want to leave Mike behind. I don’t want to go.”
He squeezed. “That isn’t how it works. I meant what I said. I was born Rennie, to parents just like you were. I wasn’t made. I can’t turn you into what I am.”
Her eyes fluttered. Confusion, then understanding, and she tried to pull her hand away. Poor Rennie Grey had given herself to Lee thinking he might pay her back in the end, but the stories were all wrong. There was no turning into what he was. There was no eternal life. Only humanity and whatever he was.
Lee held on tight as he leaned over to her IV and prepared the fentanyl, a full dose this time. Definitely her last. He’d have to be careful—he could only take a little bit—but it would be enough.
“I let you drink from me,” she said and Lee doubted she had enough strength left to cry. “I let you do that to me.”
“And I appreciate your sacrifice. Good luck to you, Rennie Grey. I want you to know that I enjoyed our time together.”
He lowered the plunger. She stilled, breathing shallow, eyes searching for something on the ceiling, her hand trying to pull away but there wasn’t enough strength in her anymore to matter. Lee waited, and waited, until the drugs took her completely. He savored her as best he could. A fitting last meal.
*** The first sentence of this story was from the Lyttle Lyton contest, which can be found here. It’s a contest for the worst first sentence that could plausibly start a novel. Lee and Rennie’s story spun out from there. Despite the rough start, I hope it was entertaining.
At least I’m on-theme, since Halloween is tomorrow. If you celebrate, enjoy! I’ll be out with my 7yo and 5yo knocking on doors. Take a second to hit the heart button and let me know you read this far—it really does mean a lot to me.