Short story in three parts, detailing a vampire's Christmas preparation. Next instalment will be out 25th. Dec.
Part I
As this story started, Charlotte Walsh was fast asleep. It was Saturday, and ever since she became a bloodthirsty (well, not that bloodthirsty) creature of the night, she had seized every opportunity to sleep in. Vampires are nocturnal by nature, but everything in Charlotte's busy schedule happened at daytime. Sadly, schools only provide special treatment for sanguine students in Japanese animation and poorly written wannabe gothic novels.
Her dream was a strange one. She was flying in the garden, floating around the oak tree. She landed on a thick, bare branch, heard it creak under her weight and then took off again. Flying was fun. It felt so natural.
t was snowing, but it wasn't cold. Even in her dream she could remember the day before, the first snow day. She had been on her way home from school when the first snowflakes fell. Her sister had caught up with her instead of hanging out with her much cooler friends, and in their glee they had ended up building a mini snowman in the garden. It was the most fun the siblings had had together in a long time.
As Charlotte soared, there was a flash of light from somewhere. Before her dream ego could process it, the dream was gone and Charlotte was in her bed, awake and somewhat confused.
She blinked as another flash penetrated the closed blinds and reached her eyes. She cursed, muttering darkly about the crazy DIY-guy next door, and shielded her eyes, reaching underneath her pillow to find her phone. The time read 12:46. She groaned and fell back underneath the covers for just another minute.
She was dangerously close to falling asleep again when there was yet another flash. This time it was accompanied with a loud bang. Charlotte immediately sat up, and tried to peek out the window to see what was happening. She saw nothing extraordinarily next door, and the rest of the street looked exceptionally like it normally did, except that Mr and Mrs Swansong were out for a walk, and today they weren't quarrelling.
The Walsh family lived surrounded by crazy people. The neighbourhood was already exciting before Cornelius Reading moved into the third house down across the road. Charlotte didn't mind the weirdoes, as her mom called them. Her own family was far from normal, and Charlotte herself was not one to speak of normality. They fit in.
As for the commotion, maybe someone was remodelling. Like most suburbanites they always seemed to be in need of the newest bathroom or kitchen, preferably both if they could afford to get another mortgage on their house.
Just before she drew back from the window, Charlotte noticed that the kids across the street had made a snow man of their own. It was bigger than that of her and her sister's. Charlotte felt the animalistic beast that resided in every vampire, guiding their bloodlust and ferocity, rise at the sight. Instinct told her to maim and hurt and kill. However she decided she would coax her sister into helping her make one that was even bigger. While she didn't have the conscience to have an accident arranged for the kids across the street, there was no way she and her sister were going to be outdone by two seven-year-olds.
Dragging herself out of bed was better than her mom getting her sister to do it. Like every little sister should be, Victoria was the embodiment of annoying, doubly so when Charlotte was trying to sleep.
When Charlotte staggered into the kitchen, she felt a tad bit more like a zombie than a vampire. She yawned as she opened the cupboard to hunt for something she could pretend to eat. It took her a moment to realise the cupboard was filled with glasses. Charlotte's mouldy brain took a moment to realise glass wasn't edible, and she continued her search. Her mom would rearrange the kitchen with random intervals, leaving the rest of the family confused for a week.
At last our heroine sat down with a bowl of Choculas - she remembered her sister insisting they should buy the cereal last Halloween, so it was probably bad by now and she wouldn't have to feel guilty about wasting perfectly edible food when people was dying of hunger all around the world. Really, being forced to live off human blood was bad enough, she didn't need more guilt.
Charlotte dipped her spoon in the milk, and slowly realised there was no one around to watch her pretend to eat.
There were voices coming from the living room. Charlotte's mom sounded upset, so her daughter got up and went to see what the fuss about. She made sure to bring her cereal with her so her mom would see her with food and probably assume her eldest daughter wasn't about to succumb to anorexia anytime soon.
"Morning, mom," Charlotte said, automatically prepped for her mom's usual comments about late sleepers and how she should be in bed earlier.
They didn't come. Neither her mom nor sister noticed Charlotte. They were plastered to the front window, looking at something outside.
Charlotte had a bad feeling about this, and dreaded to ask. She made her voice neutral and asked anyway. "What's happening?"
Her mother huffed. "It's that neighbour again."
And so, Charlotte's plans for a calm day were killed on the spot. The Walsh family had plenty of strange neighbours that her mother enjoyed complaining about, especially old Mrs Spitznogle, who liked to sunbathe topless on her front porch, but there was only one that neighbour.
Oh dear, Charlotte thought the moment she looked out and saw what the fuss was about. Cornelius had really outdone himself. She absent-mindedly shoved a spoonful of cereal into her mouth while taking in the spectacle, and chewed for a while. Then, as the awful taste registered, she immediately spat it out back in the bowl, much to her sister's disgust. The cereal was alright, but any kind of food except meat would turn a vampire's stomach.
"You're disgusting," Victoria complained, in that whiny voice only a fourteen year old can produce. In response Charlotte only stuck her tongue out at her, making sure her sis got a proper view of every tiny icky crumble left on her tongue. The tween mumbled eww and disappeared from the room, slightly green. Even though Charlotte was the older one, she was still the more childish sister. She also liked to think she was the smarter one.
There was another flash. Charlotte cursed and covered her sensitive eyes, and her mother gasped - but not at her daughter's language. Charlotte had to see what was going on and looked outside again, afraid she would see Cornelius in mortal danger. There was the sound of car brakes skidding on ice-covered asphalt.
Their neighbour next door, the DIY-guy, had been driving home when the flash blinded him. Charlotte and her mom stared, wide-eyed, as his car swerved to the side of the road and hit one of Cornelius' garbage bins, spilling the contents over his snow-covered lawn.
Cornelius popped his head out of his kitchen window to see what the ruckus was about. Even at this distance, Charlotte could see he wasn't pleased about the mess. Worse, Mr Porter in the car looked just as angry.
Charlotte ran upstairs in the blink of a mortal eye, leaving the cereal bowl in her dresser as she was in a hurry, changed clothes in less than a minute and was downstairs again. There were perks to being a vampire even though she would stay barely seventeen forever.
There were faint, angry voices coming from outside. She had to hurry. Charlotte was about to sneak out the kitchen door when her mom walked in.
"Where are you going?"
Charlotte blurted the first thing she could think of and ran for it. "Oh gosh I'm late for choir practice! Love-you-gotta-go!"
"That's not today, honey! Honey!"
Her mom got the slam of the door in reply. Oh well, she thought, the girl would find out.
Charlotte's mother felt at ease as she made herself another cup of tea. It was nice to see her oldest daughter start to take interest in something else than brutal fighting and martial arts. Her mom had worried. The teen barely ate anything.
When her tea was brewed, the mom returned to the living room to catch the latest instalment of what that neighbour was up to.
Meanwhile, Charlotte tore through their neighbours' back yards, aiming to keep her parents from knowing where she really went. She ducked under a bush when she noticed movement behind one of the windows in the house which garden she was hiding in. In the process she got her hair caught in the branches, and had to tug it loose.
Her hair finally free, she happened to look back the way came and felt her heart sink. Her tracks were clearly visible in the snow, all the way back to her own house. Damn.
She grumbled silently, waiting for the person in the house to go away and do something worthwhile instead of gawking out of their windows. She glared at her own footprints and muttered under her breath. While she had speed and strength, she also had the grace of a drunken ninja. At least that was how Cornelius had put it. Stealth wasn't in her arsenal. Brash actions and fighting, on the other hand, flinging people across rooms - no problem, during her first five months as a vampire, she had discovered that she had a knack for violence.
In company with Cornelius she had happened to come by a wild array of strange people. Not all of them were friendly. Not two weeks after Charlotte was turned, they happened to come across a group of non-humans who were out to nom humans. Even as a four-hundred-and-something-young-lady-it's-rude-to-ask-a-gentleman's-age year old vampire, Cornelius wasn't sure of what the three men were. Nothing seemed wrong with them, except for the fact that they threatened to eat Charlotte till she flung one of the men over her shoulder, did very nasty hurtful things which are too graphic to be put down in writing to the second, and then simply scared the third off by hissing.
Oh, the adventures they would have. Oh, the shopping sprees Cornelius would force her to come along on. Oh, the weird people he would introduce her to. Oh, the amount of drunken ninja sneakiness Charlotte had to do to simply slip across the road to Cornelius' house. Oh, the horror movie marathons they would laugh their way through...
The coast was clear and Charlotte darted from her hiding spot, trying not to leave too many footprints in her wake.
When she was sure she couldn't be seen from her parents' house, she crossed the street, not even trying to avoid being seen (because now she pretended to be a normal person crossing the street), before disappearing into a back yard again.
Mr Porter and Cornelius were still at it when she entered Cornelius' garden, neither of them willing to give in to the other. But Mr Porter was on the brink of breakdown. Charlotte recognised it. The man was close to wavering, he just didn't know it yet. Cornelius had the ability to rant on, almost without taking breath, and that usually made other people back off.
"... and you could have crushed my garden gnome! It's an antique!" he finished the three-minute-long monologue, berating Mr Porter's driving skills and morals, and throwing in a sentence or two about his poor haircut.
At the mention of the garden gnome, Charlotte, hiding behind the corner of the house, resisted hissing at the unholy thing.
Cornelius had insisted on bringing one of them with him from his magnificent schloss, and sadly nothing Charlotte said - insisting they were dangerous for vampires, Lord Nightstalker himself had ended his sad excuse for a life on this very gnome! - had helped. She'd even rallied for the neighbouring kids to steal it, but they had delivered it back the next day, saying it was wrong to steal - newfound morals, as they never bothered to give back the candy they would snatch at the closest store while their ignorant mother's attention was engaged elsewhere.
It was just a temporary setback. Sooner or later the gnome would be history. At the present moment Charlotte was pleased to see it partially covered in snow.
Mr Porter blinked as Cornelius finished his rant. The sheer amount of words crammed into the speech had been staggering. He was still angry but he couldn't think of anything to say.
So he gave up. His car wasn't damaged, and Reading couldn't make him pick up the trash, so he just left with an exasperated sigh. First when he got home he stopped to consider something his neighbour had said, and went into his living room to ask his wife: "Is there anything wrong with my hair?"
Cornelius looked graver than usual as he watched Mr Porter get into the car and drive away. He had actually become angry, which didn't happen often, but the nerve of the man had really aggravated him.
He didn't understand it, really. The neighbours weren't friends, but he had spoken to Porter several times before and deemed the man a decent human. So what made the man think he could blame Cornelius for his bad driving? Cornelius hadn't been the one who lost control over his car and drove across a neighbour's front yard. No, Cornelius had been in the living room, trying to find the Magical Mister Mistoffeles, who had been missing since his morning meal, in other words doing nothing car-related.
The very ordinary-looking vampire sighed. Impossible humans.
He walked over to the garbage and picked up the empty blood-bags that had fallen out. Luckily Mr Porter had been too angry to notice what had spilled out of the garbage bin. Cornelius decided he'd have to disguise the empty bags, just in case Porter made a habit of spreading trash all over the lawn, or someone found reason to go through his garbage. It would end in disaster. Cornelius wouldn't be found out as a real vampire, only nutters believed in creatures of that kind, but the police would be interested in knowing what he did with all the blood. Best case scenario was that he was outed as a blood drinker and then he would have to move. Un-life wouldn't be much fun without Charlotte.
He couldn't wait for her to see the big surprise. He felt like a little kid again, or at least how he imagined small kids would feel if very excited about something. He couldn't really remember his own childhood, as it was very long ago, but he was assured it had been a good one. His parents had at least imprinted nice manners in him.
He started singing as he walked into the house, quickly forgetting about that obnoxious Mr Porter.
Charlotte had entered through the kitchen window and waited for him in his living room. As usual the room was bombarded with stuff for his latest project. Cornelius had a hard time sitting still and didn't cope well with boredom. Sadly, except for weekends, Charlotte was swamped with homework and studying. So he had taken up a dozen hobbies, or so, to keep occupied. Right now there were light bulbs and wires scattered everywhere.
She heard him come in, singing.
"Jingle bells, Batman smells... Robin tra-la-la..."
It was far from as bad as the first time she had heard him sing. One day he was bored, he had started taking voice lessons. Now he was one of the lead singers in the local but very well known church choir that actually mostly consisted of people who could sing. They had released a Christmas CD two weeks ago. Charlotte's mom had bought it, unaware that the silky deep voice she was in love with, belonged to that neighbour.
"Hi," Charlotte said.
"Good morning," replied Cornelius. "Sleep well?"
Charlotte frowned. "How do you know I just got up?"
"Your hair is trying to eat your head."
Putting a tentative hand on top of her head, Charlotte realised what she had forgotten while dressing. On the way over she had a nagging suspicion she had forgotten something. At least she hadn't forgotten to put on pants. That was a relief.
She forgot about her messy hair as there was a wailing meow from one of the boxes on the floor. When she lifted it, Magical Mister Mistoffeles came out. The small black cat gave another meow in thanks for freedom and ran from his prison.
"There you are, you little rascal," Cornelius cooed. "Only coming out now that Charlotte's here? I should feel insulted, but I'm not, you're so impossibly cute. Who's adorable? Yes, you are, you are."
Usually a sucker for Cornelius' verbal purple prose, Magical Mister Mistoffeles only looked around in a manner that said he clearly disagreed with the state of the living room. Charlotte decided to save him from the floor and sat him down on the couch armrest (as the rest of the sofa was occupied by stuff). When she started to scratch him behind his silky ears, he immediately started purring and licked her hand affectionately. The Magical Mister Mistoffeles wasn't that magical to be frank, but the vampires loved the small rescue. Cornelius had valiantly saved the starving cat off the streets, and spoiled it rotten. He was rewarded with a faithful companion who even snuck into his coffin at daytime to sleep on his legs. Cornelius had yet to figure out how the cat got in. Charlotte had suggested the cat might be a bit magical after all.
Cornelius grinned wide at both fledgling and cat. "I assume you came over to see the house?"
"Sort of," Charlotte mumbled, realising she was about to burst Cornelius' bubble of happiness. Again. It was never fun to convince him to be normal.
"Well then come on! I'll give you a tour!" He was already out of the door when Charlotte rose. "And," he called from outside, "maybe you could help me with the last thingies? They're a bit high up and I get dizzy."
On her way out she grabbed one of Cornelius' jackets, the one she usually borrowed when going out incognito, and pulled the hood up so her hair wouldn't show. Just in case her mom was still watching.
Up close, Charlotte couldn't find the words to describe the spectacle that met her eyes.
For starters, Cornelius' house looked pretty much like the other suburban homes lining the street. It was large, wooden, with two floors, three bedrooms and a basement for all the stuff you didn't need but still bought at the mall that was just a five minute drive away. They had painted the house a lovely dark blue just two weeks after Cornelius moved in, just because he had realised he was four-hundred-and-something-oh-gosh-I-really-am-old-aren't-I, and during that time, he had never done anything as mundane as painting a house.
Charlotte had helped, under cover of being paid to do it. But now their amateur, yet superb paintjob was hidden by what can best be described as a Las Vegas light show on speed. It would seem Cornelius had discovered the joy of decorating with Christmas lights.
"Oh dear," mumbled Charlotte.
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