Mercy, Delayed

Written for “It’s Story Time” with Jolene.
Our four prompts lines are shown below.

Michelle hadn’t planned on stopping. The man slumped against the pharmacy’s brick wall looked like every other shadow she usually stepped around …. except tonight, something made her pause.

“You need help?” she asked, already regretting it.

He looked up, and his eyes caught the streetlight in a weird way …. too bright, too silver. “Pills,” he rasped. “Left them inside. Can’t… go in the light.”

She almost laughed. Vampire schtick, probably a junkie’s fevered dream. But his skin was paper-white, and when he gripped her wrist, his fingers were cold as the pavement.

Not so Good Samaritan, that’s what her sister called her …. the kind who called ambulances and then left before they arrived, who gave directions but never rides. Michelle was already calculating her exit.

Instead, she went inside.

The pharmacist, half-asleep, handed over a paper bag when she mentioned the guy outside. Prescription bottles, ordinary as aspirin. She carried them out.

He tossed them down and color crept back into his face …. not a fangs-and-cape vampire, just a man with a rare blood disorder needing medication he’d forgotten in his rush to catch the train.

“Michelle?” His voice cracked on her name.

She hadn’t recognized him after seven years of silence, after their mother’s funeral when he’d vanished. The years had not been kind to her brother.

“Paul? You’re not dead,” she said, stupidly, and he laughed …. a real, human sound.

Reunited, of all places, on a sidewalk neither of them planned to be on.

Nancy’s Notes: Here are our prompts: 1. Not so Good Samaritan; 2. Vampire; 3. Reunited; 4. Pills. The only thing is, we can’t kill off our main character.

This is “Walkin’ On the Sidewalks” by Queens of the Stone Age