Red Medicine

    ©2005 Gayle Broadbent Ferris

www.skyglass.com

 

    Frank had a cough. He just could not sleep. He finally got up off his futon and staggered into the tiny bathroom and pawed feebly at the medicine cabinet until it came open.

    Where was the cough syrup? Where the hell was the goddamn cough syrup?! Was it this stuff in the bottle?

Frank surveyed the grimy bottle dubiously. A sludgy thick fluid swirled within it. Maybe it was cough syrup. Probably it was cough syrup. Frank fumbled the top off and took a hearty gulp.

Blaaagh! It wasn’t cough syrup! It was blood! Gross! That goddamn vampire! Dammit! Frank decided he needed a new roommate—this was the last fucking straw, absolutely.

    The next morning Frank deliberately dragged his roommate out of his pine coffin and onto the apartment balcony into the wholesome summer sunshine, which of course caused the speedy dissolution into dust of the vampire roommate. Nothing was left but a few smoking bone fragments. At least he had already given Frank a check for his part of the utility bill.

    Frank chucked the cape and the p.j.s and the coffin into the back yard and advertised for a new roommate.

 

    Poor Frank, he has no luck with roommates. The next one was a werewolf, which Frank didn’t discover until after it had jumped on him and bitten him six or seven times.

 

                                   THE END