Intervention
Lucas entered his living room to find all of his dining room chairs had been arranged in a circle. In each seat sat one of his colleagues, though he was sure they all probably referred to themselves as his friends. But friends didn’t enter your home without invitation when you weren’t even there to let them in.
The one man Lucas didn’t know, dressed in khaki pants and a brown checkered shirt, gently grabbed Lucas’s arm and led him to a chair. Lucas eyed the man the entire time and wondered who had given the permission to touch him.
Once Lucas had been seated, those in attendance wasted no time in explaining why they were there. They were worried about him. He never slept but stayed out all night. His complexion had gone beyond pale to a snowy white. And then the stranger in the khaki pants emptied his trashcan all over the carpeted floor that Lucas had just vacuumed the day before.
A bouquet of beer cans and bottles fell from the bin, clinking and clanking like rainfall on a tin roof. The majority of the garbage consisted of the alcohol containers, with a random banana peel or Kleenex here and there.
Lucas looked up from the shining pile of empty aluminum and glass to find everyone staring in his direction. It finally dawned on him that they all believed the contents of the trash had once been his. In truth, it all belonged to the previous tenant, untouched since Lucas had moved himself in. Lucas glanced out the window and stared at his backyard and the grassless patch of brown in the center. That was where Lucas disposed of his trash.
Lucas’s trance was broken when the man in the khaki pants spoke.
“I think it’s time to admit you have a drinking problem.”
His answer was only a smile, one that revealed his two-inch-long incisors. The khaki-panted stranger inhaled to scream but was cut short when Lucas sprang from his chair and sank his teeth into the moderator’s flabby neck.
The others tried to flee but Lucas drank quickly, slurping up the insides of each of their throats before moving on to the next. When he was finished, the bodies still remained in a circle, but were now splayed on the floor instead of in their chairs. A few spots of blood that Lucas failed to suck into his mouth had landed on the carpet, leaving dark stains behind in the white material. Oh, well. The carpet was already ruined by the trash spill.
A sharp pain stabbed through Lucas’s gut right before he released a tremendous belch. He had consumed far too much–six humans at once. He would feel sluggish for the rest of the night and a glutton’s guilt would haunt him for longer.
Lucas wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and licked the smear of blood that came off. He looked around at the circle of corpses and pursed his lips.
Maybe they were right. Perhaps he did have a drinking problem.
