Twenty minutes and a free mini-fridge later, complete with lock and key, I was driving through the tidy neighborhoods of Bartlett looking for my new home. I followed Sue’s directions past a large park and golf course and turned into a tree-lined subdivision of modest, but neat homes. Sycamore, Juniper, Evergreen, Cedar. How lame. Everything was named after trees in this subdivision. I took a left on Cedar and pulled into the drive of number 680. It was a brown and white tri-level home, with a large picture window looking out over the tidy front lawn. Being November, the trees were nearly bare, but it probably looked nice in the summer. One large maple rose over the side of the house and a row of bushes stood at attention under the front window.
I pulled out the key and went to the door. I looked down at it in my hand. Maybe I should just forget about this. Go find a house and mind-trick someone into thinking I’ve purchased it. Pretend I’m emancipated from my parents and rich or whatever. This key was the key to this woman’s life. I didn’t even know her. Maybe I wouldn’t even like her. I shifted from one foot to the other. But I knew one thing—I didn’t want to be alone.
I was so alone right now as it was. I couldn’t tell anyone the truth. There is no way a normal human could begin to comprehend what it was like to carry this around. This knowledge that at any moment, I could, and without a second thought, kill someone because they smelled like food. Because they were food. MY food.
I could keep them all safe and stay away, be like the creepy vampires in the movies and live in some secluded house in the woods. Was I really willing to risk this woman’s, this stranger’s life because I didn’t want to be alone?
Yes. Yes I was.
Because I wanted to go back to high school and go to prom and have a boyfriend and do all the normal things I was supposed to do before I died. Before all of it was taken away from me. Maybe this was my second chance to really embrace life, even though I was dead, and live it to its fullest.
I stuck the key in the lock and turned it, throwing open the door to my new home, my new life.