Part of me is telling me not to ask questions and just slowly back away from this whole thing, but even I must admit that this whole shebang is picking my curiosity, not the least is what I can assume is Okayden, sitting across from me, loudly munching pickles straight from the jar. 

And not breaking eye contact even once. 

The atmosphere is as thick and cold as a bowl of jelly some idiot kid puts on a freezer to make ice cream popsicles with daddy's "special nose sugar" that he sells to his kindergarten buddies, only to end up with three fractures, a kid stuck in an anthill, and one 4-year-old girl who now thinks she can go down the toilet like like that Italian plumber video game fuck. That was a weird Tuesday. 

On one end, the pickle muncher, on the other, the depressive soft-boy, and on the stove, sausage McGee. This is not what I thought my sleepover would turn out to be. I mean, I knew this was going to be a sausage fest, but I didn't mean it literally. 

Speaking of, the silence is finally broken when Hayden places a plate of steaming, hot, juicy sausages in front of Okayden, which begins to devour them one by one. 

"Uh...you okay there, buddy?" I ask Hayden. 

He, on the other hand, looks like he had just seen his parents being murdered in an alley behind the theater, and the perpetrator definitely pulled his mom's pearl necklace while doing it — a mixture of hot vengeance, shame, and sadness. And yes, I did a Batman reference. That doesn't count as recent pop culture though. You can't take two steps before stumbling into the corpse of a Wayne parent. Sue me. 

"Brother, do I look okay?" says Hayden, looking perfectly okay, all things considered. "This...beast, this brute, this animal, has forced my hand into making a sin! Sausages are not to be boiled, but roasted! I told him that my sausages are big, thick, and juicy, and they would melt in his mouth. But no, he demanded them to be boiled. I refuse to give him any more of my sausages after this!" 

"hayden's sausages do melt in your mouth," whispers Brayden, who, having lost the will to live, is planking face-first on the table, mostly trying to catch some exotic disease from them, I'm sure. These tables look like they haven't been cleaned since humans collectively decided that asbestos wasn't as cash money as they thought it was. 

That doesn't deter Okayden who continues to gobble the sausages like a cheerleader—you know what? Maybe I won't finish that sentence. He does stop for a second, taking a deep breath before opening his mouth snout thingy wide open to reveal a set of serrated teeth. All of them, from front to back, were jagged and serrated. 

"I have bad teeth, see?
Vampire and werewolf, all mixed
Make for sore, soft gums."

I get where he's getting from. Those teeth look like murder, with no molars in sight. Also, what the fuck?

"That's no excuse to boil a sausage!" says Hayden, smashing his palm on the table and making everything in it — Brayden included — to shift afoot to the right. "You apologize to the pig for doing his funky fresh taste a disfavor." 

But he doesn't. He just continues to gobble sausages, boiled and all. 

"At least have some relish..." Hayden whispers, to no avail. 

And silence falls again. This is maybe time to address the elephant in the room. 

"So, you're not gonna eat us? Drink our blood?" I ask. 

"munch our butts?" asks Brayden, who, seeing that his eventual viral death is not coming as fast as he would like, is now licking the table. "i wouldn't mind you munching my butt a little."

I might have to revisit that straight twink theory a bit later. For now, maybe not making any sudden movements is the way to go. 

It is only after finishing his plate of limp sausages that Okayden speaks up. 

"I get peckish today
Full moon activates my blood
But human tastes bad." 

Well, that's surprising. Aren't vampires attracted to blood and shit? Well, not literally shit. You get what I mean.

Almost as if he is reading my mind, he takes out a bottle of...Flintstone vitamin tablets? Wait, can you read my mind? Cuz I've been saying some weird shit. Can vampires read minds? 

"Vampires used to drink,
Only to get vitamin D,
But Flintstones work well."

"vampires can't get any sun," says Brayden, who now is resulting in chewing old gum he finds under the table. "they need that sweet vitamin d that we usually get from the sun. they just have to pop in a vitamin d or two to get enough. clever. i wish a cleaver would cut me in half." 

Well, that makes sense. 

"Human meat is tough,
Tastes like pork, but with sugar,
And blood is icky, yuck." 

Then...this is just awkward. 

"Hey, we humans are delicious!" says Hayden, being the pettiest person ever. "You clearly have poor taste in good food. No wonder you're a poor vampire/werewolf. You need beef! Human beef! If you had, maybe you would've won our little battle today." 

"You're as good a cook,
As you are an athlete, so,
Mediocre at best."

Is this what's all about? Just a dick-measuring contest between two of the biggest dicks around? This is stupid. We have bigger fish to fry. Dicks to fry. See? Dumb stuff. I hope he can't read my mind. 

"So...a vampire/werewolf. How does that work?" I ask in an attempt to defuse the situation. 

Okayden cleans his puffy snout with the grace of anything but an oversized poodle and leans back on the chair. It's hard plastic, and yet he is so big that he bends it like it's nothing. 

"When a vampire mom,
And a werewolf Alpha dad,
Love each other very much-"

"Okay, that's not what I'm asking," I say. I don't need to hear the paranormal version of the bees and the bats, for fuck's sake. "I mean, how does it work, in practice? Instincts and all." 

"Can't go out in day,
Can't go out during the night,
I'm stuck in this hell." 

As a vampire, he can't go outside during the day due to the sun...and also, he can't go in either without being invited. And as a werewolf, he can't go out, unless he goes haywire. He is truly the edgiest bad-boy around. 

That might spell doom for us. 

"Well, if you would excuse me," says Hayden, picking up the sausage tray and dumping it on the kitchen sink, "I believe we are done here." 

"What were you doing here making sausages anyway?" I ask. 

Okayden stands up and burps so loud that everything on the table — Brayden included — shifts back to their original position. It smells of cucumber and pork. 

"I get quite peckish, 
More so during full moons, yes
Either that, or starving." 

"You don't deserve my cooking, you oversized lap dog," says Hayden with venom in his mouth. "Now, I'll go back to the vent, and we can continue our sleepover, without mangy mutts!" 

Hayden picks up Brayden in the same way I did before, but with considerably less effort, when I remember why we were in such a hurry in the first place. 

"Wait!" I say, but a second too late. 

As soon as he opens the cafeteria door, he and Brayden get snatched away by a dark figure passing by, followed by a burst of maniacal laughter. 

"I got your friend now, Okayden!" says a disembodied voice that sounds so generically female that I thought I was in a supermarket when an employee says the discounts of the day. "If you want them alive, come fight me like a man! Or marry me, whichever goes first." 

Oh, shit. The vampire/werewolf lady got them both! 

"You let Leigh-Leigh in?
She's my PCL, you big fool,
They are fucked! Fucked! Fucked!"

There should be a rule against repeating words in a haiku, but I don't care about that. I forgot to mention that on the get-go. I keep fucking things up. I knew I should've taken that weird foreshadowing a few chapters earlier and just gone home. Now I have to go all the way and save both of them. 

I really need to stop hanging out with these idiots. 

"What do we do now?" I ask Okayden. 

He closes his eyes for a moment, swaying back and forth, almost as if in a trance. Finally, after a few seconds, he opens his snout to lay some wisdom on me. 

"Hayden can fuck off,
Brayden, I don't know him well,
But fuck him as well."

Oh boy. This is gonna be a long night.