Read Online You Suck by Christopher Moore - Free Book Online Page A

was still thinking about the kids at the drugstore. It was the first time since tenth grade that he’d used his knowledge of Romantic poetry. For a while he’d tried molding himself into the tragic Romantic hero, brooding and staring clench-jawed off into space as he composed dark verse in his head. But it turned out that trying to appear tragic in Incontinence, Indiana, was redundant, and his mother kept shouting at him and making him forget his rhymes. “Tommy, if you keep grinding your teeth like that, they’ll wear away and you’ll have to have dentures like Aunt Ester.” Tommy only wished his beard was as heavy as Aunt Ester’s—then he could stare out over the moors while he stroked it pensively.
    “Yeah,” Jody said, “because I need to make it more obvious that I’m an undead creature that feeds on the blood of the living.”
    “You make it sound so sordid.”
    “No, I meant it in a nice way.”
    “Oh.”
    “Because it’s not like people wouldn’t understand if they found out we were vampires, because we slipped up and, oh, I don’t know, UNSHEATHED OUR FANGS IN THE FUCKING DRUGSTORE!”
    Tommy almost dropped his packages. She hadn’t said a word about that all night. He’d hoped she hadn’t noticed. “It was an accident.”
    “You called that girl ‘milady.’”
    “She was impressed with my Byron.”
    “Yeah, well, your Byron was probably sticking out a little, too, wasn’t he?”
    “It wasn’t like that.”
    “You drooled.” Jody paused at their security door and dug into her jacket for her key.
    Tommy stepped around her. “I’m still new at this. I think I’m doing pretty well. My ghastly pallor obviously impressed the lady at the needle exchange.” He reached into his bag and fanned out a handful of sterile-wrapped and capped syringes.
    “Congratulations, you can now pass as an HIV-positive heroin addict.”
    “Très chic.” He grinned like he imagined a sexy Italian man-whore might.
    “Who drools in public,” Jody said.
    Damn, she’s immune to my sexy Italian man-whore grin, Tommy thought. He said, “Be nice, I’m new. My lips don’t fit together right when my fangs are out.”
    She turned the key and swung the door open. There,passed out on the landing, was William the huge cat guy and sleeping on his chest, Chet the huge cat.
    “I told you it would work,” Tommy said.
    Jody stepped into the stairwell and closed the door behind her. “You go first.”
     
    F ifteen minutes later, as he placed five syringes full of blood in their refrigerator, Tommy said, “This vampire thing is going to be great.”
    He’d had a moment when he’d bitten William—not just getting over the idea of being that close someone who smelled that nasty, but also being close to another man period. But after cleaning William’s neck with an alcohol swab they’d gotten from the drugstore, and consoling himself that most literary vampires seemed sexually ambivalent anyway, the blood hunger pushed him through.
    He was feeling more relaxed, now that they had the food problem solved—for a while, anyway. If his friends didn’t kill them in the next couple of days, he might even enjoy life as a vampire. Then he turned to Jody and frowned. “But I can’t help but think that it may be wrong, taking advantage of a homeless alcoholic.”
    “We could just hunt and kill people,” Jody said cheerfully. She had a little crust of William’s blood in the corner of her mouth. Tommy licked his thumb and wiped it away.
    “We did give him a nice sweater for his huge shaved cat,” Tommy said.
    “I loved that sweater,” Jody said. “And we are giving him a warm landing to sleep on,” she added, diving onto Tommy’s rationalization dog pile.
    “And if we only take a little bit each day, he’ll actually feel better. I know I did.”
    “And we won’t become alcoholics ourselves.”
    “How are you feeling, by the way?” Tommy said.
    “Better. Hair of the dog. You?”
    “Two-beer buzz, max.