Mnemonie

The Beginning

2008-09-11T20:23:00.000-07:00

My life, I have to admit, was going pretty well. My classes were easier, somehow, and I’d regained the strength somewhere to paint. It was as if I’d been carrying around this heavy thing so long and I’d suddenly been able to put it down. I could even pinpoint when the change had happened; a few blurry weeks in early March, and then I’d bloomed with the spring. People around me kept commenting that I seemed to be happier, and I was. Even the blurriness of those weeks was okay. It was as if I were aware that I’d be happier not knowing what had happened.

It’s true. I would have been happier not knowing.

In the summer, after school was over and grades had been submitted, I flung myself full fledged into my art. A friend of mine from university, who I’d only just reconnected with, had offered to share her studio space with me for a little while. It was a lovely place, one of those huge attic rooms, full of windows and sunlight. I couldn’t even bring myself to hate the heat. I loved so much about that place; the whiteness of the canvases, the smell of the paints, even the scritching of the brushes and pencils. Linda and I seemed in total agreement about everything. We even decided to go haves on the hiring for models. Our first model was a gay man, elegant and slender, who flaunted his genitals at us and moped when we asked him to cover it over with a swath of red velvet. We had decided to go Greek as a lark. He received a head dress of plastic ivy and a golden goblet Linda had found somewhere.

“Bacchus!” she giggled. But when she went to work she did it seriously. Her painting was much more splendid than mine was. Even when we painted the same thing our paintings came out so different. Linda claimed she as finding the God in everything, which meant all her paintings were radiant and beautiful, no matter how ridiculous the subject. If that were true I guess I were finding the human in everything. I never forgot to find the cracks in the vases, or the flaws in the plastic flowers. I never missed the wrinkles or the dirt.

The differences, in fact, were so startling( though Linda claimed that she couldn’t tell which was better, which was a lie, since her paintings were far superior to mine) that Linda proposed we do a show and call it human/angel. The idea was that we’d show pairs of paintings, each pair of the same subject but demonstrating our stylistic differences – maybe not an original idea, but it was still interesting to us. Since we’d been working together for a while we already had a number of potential paintings. Linda set it up with a gallery owner friend of hers.

She decided we should do a few more of people to reinforce the title, so we called the model agency and they sent us a young woman with odd white hair. I wondered if Linda told us the agency the title of our upcoming show, because she was as angelic as a human being can get. Her shining white skin glowed in the sunlight and her deep black eyes seemed to look into our souls.

She came in dressed like a goth, in black shorts and black and white striped leggings, clunky black boots and a black (of course) corset. Linda clapped her hands and said ‘perfect’, then directed her to sit languidly in one of our easy chairs.

“How are you going to make her an angel like that?” I asked Linda, laughing.

“Wait and see,” Linda replied, beginning her sketches.

When I paint I tend to break everything down into patches of light. After I’ve fixed on a scene I often don’t see it as a picture at all. So when I’m painting a person I often forget I’m painting a person. But I didn’t forget I was painting Mnemonie. Her pose meant she was looking straight at me with those black eyes, and it was telling when I looked down at my sketch pad only to find that I’d painted all of her but her eyes, leaving gaps in the image where they should be.

Mnemonie left after two hours and Linda came around to see what I’d done.

“That’s wonderful,” she said, referring to the holes. “Her eyes kind of make you feel like that, don’t they?”

In her own drawing, Mnemonie’s skin glowed, shining against the darkness around her. Her eyes had reflections in them, like stars glowing in space.

I found myself thinking of Mnemonie at odd times after that, of her goth clothing and her obviously fake name. I wondered if she dyed her hair, to get it so white, and wore contacts for the black eyes. In short, I found that I was trying to convince myself she was utterly fake.

But there was that about her which wasn’t fake. She had been quiet and thoughtful, in the studio, obviously engrossing herself in deep reflection. It wasn’t easy to model– I’d tried it before myself. The instant you tell your body not to move it wants to, it needs to, it can’t stay still another moment. But Mnemonie hadn’t moved at all, hadn’t even pulsed with breath. She’d been as still as a manikin or a statue.

No, there was something deeper to her than just superficial trends, and whatever it was had captivated me. I found myself thinking of her at odd times, of sketching her profile or mouth or nose. In the studio I kept at my painting, continuing it from photographs when she wasn’t there. I was amazed to see the expression of love that I cast on her fact, painted with oils, although there were still holes where the eyes should have been. Eventually I filled them over, painted her as if she had no eyes at all.

Our show was a success, I think. I actually sold two paintings at the opening, and one of them was the painting of Mnemonie, which didn’t really surprise me, since there was something... arresting about it. The portrait seems to be staring at you even though she doesn’t have any eyes. The offer wasn’t amazingly high, but it was higher than I’d ever expected to get.

And yet I walked home feeling empty, as if something had been drained out of me. My thoughts kept returning to Mnemonie. I had thought she’d come– after all the paintings of her were the best in the show, and she would have her pick of job offers– but she’d never shown up. As far as I knew I’d never run into her again, that is, unless I begged her number from Linda and called her. But I was hardly able to admit my infatuation with her to myself, much less to Linda.

And after that, life somehow spiraled downhill. I kept painting, but my paints seemed repetitive. I could see Mnemonie in every curve of every line, and it only made her miss her more. I longed for her, but in an abstract way, like how one longs for fall, or the sight of mountains. My life became empty again, hollow. I suffered from periods of existential lethargy and then dropped into depression.

It was exactly at that point when I got the call. I had called into school sick that day because I just couldn’t get the energy up to get out of bed. If the phone hadn’t been close enough to reach from my pillow I wouldn’t have answered.

“Miss Luce,” a man’s voice said. “My name is Drake Howard. I purchased your painting, The Souless?”

“Yes?” I replied, surprised.

“I would like to commission you to paint another using the same model. I have already contacted the model and she has agreed.”

“I...”

“I will also provide you with a workspace. The subject of the painting is up to you. If this all sounds amenable to you, I will send you a letter detailing the specifics. Trust me, you will find the compensation well worth the trouble. I understand you are busy, but I am willing to wait while you work around your schedule.”

“I...” how could I do anything but say yes?

I walked into the provided studio a few days later and found it well stocked. Who was this man? I had looked for him on the internet and he seemed to be independently wealthy and a bit of a playboy. Bruce Wayne. I thought ironically to myself. Linda wasn’t surprised by the offer. She’d done a few commissions herself, and said that rich benefactors can be very rewarding. She said it could make my career. Funny, I thought. I hadn’t considered it a career.

When Mnemonie came I ignored the way my heart thumped. I had her change into a black corseted dress, then sat her on the floor, looking as if she were carelessly playing with a lapful of white roses, one red rose a few feet from her. (All this had been suggested by the patron.)

Then I began to sketch.

When the time was over I watched her go with an odd feeling of relief, then looked at the sketches. All without eyes.

I began to live for those sittings, but at least I was living.

Let us make this matter clear once and for all; I have never been attracted to women. If anyone is straight I am. My obsession with Mnemonie couldn’t have disturbed me more. Well, it would have disturbed me, only I wouldn’t admit it. Denial, I think, is the word for it. I was in denial about my addiction to Mnemonie. If I flushed when I thought of her it was because I was hot. If I needed to see her, it was because I was anxious about my painting. If I couldn’t stop staring at her it was because I needed to know her figure to draw her lines. If I admitted I was heartsick over her, I would have had to open a can of worms I didn’t want to open.

So I painted her and listened to her talk, telling me various little, inconsequential things. Her dreams, the things that had happened during the day. She was wonderful at talk of the smallest kind. I never learned anything about her, herself. Mnemonie was a compulsive watcher of people, it seemed. She was full of stories about people she’d seen on subways, in coffee shops. She recited conversations she’d overheard. She had nothing to say about her actual life.

Then, one day, I looked down at the painting and realized it was finished. I told Mnemonie and for the first time she walked over to the other side of the canvas.

She looked at the painting and shivered.

“I don’t like it,” she whispered. “It’s creepy.”

She was talking, of course, of the fact that I had neglected to paint her eyes.

“Didn’t you see the other one I did?” I asked, surprised.

She shook her head. “I never got over there. Was it similar?”

“Just the same,” I said, “except for your positioning and dress. That’s what Mr. Greaves asked for.”

“Well I wouldn’t want it in my house.” She peered closely at it. “What’s that?”

Her proximity was making me dizzy. I wiped my forehead with my hand. “It’s just shadow,” I said.

“No, there’s more.” She traced her finger lightly over the canvas. “It’s like a creature or something, huddling in the corner there.”

I looked closely at the painting. “I didn’t paint that,” I whispered.

“I was afraid of this,” Mnemonie said, scraping her white hair from her face.

“Afraid of what?” I asked, tentatively.

“It’s not what it seems.” She looked around the room. “Let’s go get coffee to celebrate,” she said loudly.

“I... what?”

“C’mon,” she pleaded, pulling my arm. “It’s going to be the last time we see each other. Let’s get coffee. I’ll buy.” Don’t ask, her dark eyes said. Say yes.

I picked up my bag and turned off the lights. “Ok.”

When we had reached the street, Mnemonie took a black handkerchief from her sleeve and, licking it delicately, like a cat, wiped my forehead with it.

“What?” I asked batting her hand away.

“You’ve got paint on your face.” She grabbed my chin and scrubbed harder. “There.”

For a moment we were looking into each other’s eyes, inches apart.

Then she stepped back, breaking the tension, and I wondered why I felt so... lost.

“C’mon.” She turned and walked away.

Therianthropy

2008-08-26T11:36:00.000-07:00

The others talked a little while longer, but I was to sleepy to pay attention to what they were saying. I drifted through a discussion of which vampire lords I should make an effort to meet, and finally fell asleep while they were talking about whether and when I should be introduced to the Grand Master herself.

I woke to the delicious smell of cooking. I was still sitting in the armchair I had fallen asleep on, though someone had draped a blanket over me, and I was stiff all over. I pulled the bottle of ibuprofen from my pocket and swallowed three pills, my arms aching the whole time.

At the sound of my groan, a woman emerged from the kitchen. She was short and chubby, with a sweet heart-shaped face and old fashioned dress with a lace apron and a bell like skirt. She was easily the least intimidating person I had ever seen.

“Milady,” she said, curtsying. “I am Jenna. Mr. Cloudbright hired me to be your maid, if you wish.”

My first thought was to wonder what on Earth I’d need a maid for, but then remembered that if I didn’t have one I’d have to cook all my meals and wash all my clothes myself. Also, I considered, there had to be some perks to being a baroness.

I looked closely at Jenna. She didn’t have the pallor of a vampire, but there was something not quite human about her. Her eyes were too big and her mouth too wide for her small face.

“What are you?” I asked her.

“I’m a were-frog, milady,” she said, curtsying again.

A were-frog? “It’s good to meet you,” I told her. “I could use your help.”

“Thank you, milady.” She curtsied a third time.

“Only, do you think you could keep from curtsying so much?” I asked. “You’re kind of making me seasick.”

“Yes, milady,” she said, barely preventing herself from bobbing. “I’ve drawn you a bath. Mr. Cloudbright said you’d probably be quite sore. If you like, I can give you a massage when you’re done.”

“That would be lovely.” I stood up, painfully. Jenna hopped over to my side and tried to help me. “It’s okay.” I pushed her off gently. “I think I can make it.” Jenna led me to the bathroom and began to help undress me. I would have protested, except my muscles were screaming and my garments were a little too complicated for my current state of mind. Once I was naked I slipped into the bath, sighing with relief as the hot water lapped against my skin. “Can you bring me a cup of coffee?” I asked. “Black?”

Jenna scampered off, jumping slightly with every step. I wondered how such an adorable creature had survived in Darkside. She seemed too fragile and vulnerable to live among vampires and more dangerous were-creatures. And to be hired by Cloudbright! Wouldn’t his cat nature get the better of him?

Jenna came back, balancing the tray against her plumb stomach. I sipped at the coffee, then nibbled at the hot muffin she’d brought me.

“Shall I wash your back?” she answered, picking up a washcloth.

“That’s okay,” I replied. “Thank you for the muffin. I’ll call you when I’m done with my bath.” She nodded, forgot to keep from curtsying, and left the room.

I laid back in the bath, pondering the luxury of having someone to bring me breakfast in the bath and, later, to massage my bath. Someone, perhaps, who turned into an amphibian when there was a full moon, but nobody’s perfect. Maybe, I thought, staring up at the ceiling, which was painted with a mural of clouds and birds, this whole Baroness business wasn’t so bad.

I woke up in cold water, and, yelping, jumped out of the tub, wrapping a towel around me. Jenna came to see what the fuss was about and promptly scolded me for falling asleep in the tub. She steered me over to a long bench set against the wall and directed me to lie on it so she could massage my back, during which I fell asleep yet again.

“More coffee, milady?” she asked, waking me up with what I suspected was a bit of humor.

“Please,” I said, pulling myself up and walking to my dressing room.

“Let me help you!” she cried, racing me there. She told me to sit down on the chair inside of it, and assembled an outfit for me, then attempted to dress me in it.

“Are nobility not supposed to be able to do anything themselves?” I asked, taking the shirt she was trying to pull over my head and slipping it on. “I am perfectly able to dress myself.”

She held up a pair of stockings and a garter belt.

“Okay,” I conceded, “I might need some help with those.” We shortly came to an agreement according to what I needed help with and what I didn’t. Once the clothing was donned, she did my hair in an amazingly complex style, then did my makeup with what seemed like an actual paint set. I looked in the mirror, amazed to find that the result was much better than when I had done it myself. I looked unusually put together. I belted my sword on and followed Jenna to the courtyard where she served me my second cup of coffee while I sunned Prominence the sword and paged through the books Rudyard had given me.

The Newcomer’s Guide to Darkside listed all the places, people and tribes of Darkside. I thumbed through it until I came to the section on weres.

Weres, it read, are creatures inflicted with a curse that tears them from the form they are born with and remakes them as the form their spirit takes. This generally happens around the full moon, although weres with more control over their energy can change anytime.

In mythology, the first were is said to have been one of the children of Selene, the moon, and her mortal husband. Although the other children are said to have become the stars, this one, it is told, desired to embrace it’s human half. When it came to Earth it took the form of a human, except for when it’s mother’s pull on it was too strong and it reverted to its other nature.

The myth does not explain why it is that therianthropy, the condition of changing from human to animal and vice-versa, is transmitted through biting, specifically through the mixing of the saliva of the therianthrope and the victim, but this is the most common form of transmission. Blood to blood contact can also cause transmission, although, while approximately 90% of bite victims where blood is drawn are transmuted, only 50% of blood/blood contact causes transmission, while only 2% of sexual contact, in which fluids are exchanged, causes transmission. That said, sexual contact with weres is not suggested, as many of them tend to bite during intercourse.

The were-form of the therianthrope is determined by the natural form of the therianthrope’s spirit. All human beings have a distinct animal (or, in rare cases, vegetable) form, predictable in some part by their human features and their nature, and masters in the art of observation can predict the animal form easily.

Weres change form, unless they are beings of superior control, at the full moon and during periods of severe stress. Even the most strong-willed were is in danger of losing control of his or her form whenever they experience strong surges of emotion, and it is very inconvenient for those weres whose forms have special requirements, for example those who have aquatic or overlarge animal forms.

When in animal form weres are more susceptible to animal instincts, with the result that often mild, pacific humans are transformed to blood-thirsty creatures. Beware of weres who repress their emotions, for they will emerge at full force once the transformation has occurred. For this reason, therianthropes are encouraged to practice therapeutic exercises in order to expose and come to terms with their hidden emotions. (See the author’s book So you’ve been bitten; a guide to living a full life as a were without becoming a monstrous killing machine) Of course, if the were form is a harmless creature, like a butterfly or a minnow, these concerns are less poignant.

Weres traditionally belong to guilds within Darkside. Because they are less susceptible to sunlight, garlic, religious icons, and moving water than vampires, they are often employed as assistants. Many weres live in the world above, appearing in Darkside only occasionally, as their guild requires them to. The guilds are not normally allied with vampire tribes, but enjoy a neutral position in their cities. The two major were guilds of Darkside are Darktooth and Goldenflower. While Darktooth pulls its influence from the danger of it’s members, who are often hired as mercenaries and guards, Goldenflower is much more powerful, as its members hold influential positions in the workforce of Darkside, as well as important positions in the world above. Those who harm members of Goldenflower quickly find themselves ostracized by their tribes.

“Are you a member of Goldenflower?” I asked Jenna, who was sitting near me, quietly sewing one of my garments.

“Yes, milady,” she said.

I turned back to the book.

Weres are traditionally hard to kill, with a lengthened life-span which can be calculated by multiplying the typical human life span by that of the were’s animal form. Therefore, weres may live from the eighty so years of a may-fly were, to the indefinite lifespan of the rare redwood tree-were. Methods for killing a were are purely limited to use of silver. Any weapon made of silver may be used in the traditional manner, but, when no silver is on hand, only an event which entirely decimates the body will be effective, such as burning him to ash, blowing him apart, or cutting him into small pieces and feeding him to animals. Any method which does not similarly damage the vast majority of his body will be ineffective, though it will be painful. Weres have been known to regenerate large parts of their bodies, including their heads. It is not advisable to seriously injure a were but not kill him entirely; the were will almost always precede to hunt you down and murder your in the most painful way possible.

It amused me to think of Rudyard spending time at his desk coming up with ways to kills weres. He was such a mild mannered man, soft spoken and seemingly harmless. The passage also reminded me of something else; I turned to my sword, which was lying on a blanket in the sunlight.

“Prominence,” I said, “you said you were made of radiance, but Cloudbright said you were made of silver.”

“I’m made of an alloy of radiance and silver,” the sword replied. “Radiance was too precious for Hephaestus to make an entire sword out of it.”

“How did he get it from the sun?” I asked.

“Hephaestus built the Helios’ chariot, the one that contained the sun. In return, Helios gave him a small quantity of radiance, which he incorporated into some of his objects, and a large portion of which he mixed with the silver of which it made me. He put tiny pieces in the heads of the men he made of metal, that they might come alive to assist him.”

“So it is the radiance that makes you sentient?” I asked.

“Partly, with his godly powers. And the radiance also makes me hard; silver is a very weak metal for making weapons with.”

“Do you wish you had been made into a robot instead of a sword?” I asked.

“I do not know,” the sword replied. “As a robot I probably would have fallen to pieces eventually, but I would have had a larger role to play in my own life. As a sword I am subject to my wielder’s whims and cannot choose much of anything in my life, although only a powerful swordsman could wield me against my will. I have turned back on many a weak wielder who sought to use me for evil purposes.

“In the end,” it continued thoughtfully, “I wonder how much power any has over their own lives. You, I think, are as much a puppet as I have ever been.”

“You certainly pulled my strings yesterday,” I said, remembering how it had been the sword’s advice which had given me the upper hand in the council meeting of vampires.

“But not against your will,” the sword countered. “I acted only thinking to help you. I will do nothing to enslave you to a future you do not wish. If you want to leave this place I will help you do so, to the best of my ability. You are not a creature of the darkness. This underground world is not for you. That hole up there is only a reminder of the world you belong to. I fear that down here, in the darkness, your light will fade and die, and you will turn, eventually, into a creature you are not. Not many are born evil, child, but many become it.”

“You are as much a creature of the light as I,” I countered. “You come from the sun!”

“Ah, but I contain the sun as well. And I am eternal. Only the fires from which I was forged, the hearth of Mount Aetna, can destroy me.”

“Ah,” I said. “Like Sauron’s ring.”

“I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

“It’s a book; these hobbits have to go to this volcano to destroy a ring because it could only be destroyed where it was forged.”

“It is similar, then, I suppose,” the sword conceded. “What are hobbits?”

“Little people, like dwarves, only different somehow. Are there dwarves?”

“All things people have dreamed of have lived in one way or another,” the sword said, after a pause. “It is similar to what I told you about truth yesterday. From some view points dwarves do not exist and have never existed. And from some viewpoints they do.”

I still hadn’t come to terms with this theory. I couldn’t really comprehend the idea that truth is flexible. “Will I come across them?” I asked.

“Dwarves and vampires rarely mix,” the sword said. “Although there have been a few dwarven vampires. But now, that the Angel of Truth is the Grand Master I don’t know what is happening. She has an odd following.”

“Who is the Angel of Truth?” I asked.

“She’s... a kind of goddess, I guess. An anthropomorphization, you would say, of a natural law. She doesn’t guard the truth, or tell the truth, she is the truth.”

“But you told me that truth changed with your perspective.”

“And so does Althea. From your point of view she is just truth, not a person at all. To some people she’s an angel, to others a goddess, to others a natural force. To herself... that’s probably the most interesting view of all. She’s eternal, though, older than the gods themselves, older than the Earth, older than anything but time. But she’s young as well. She doesn’t age, mentally. She doesn’t have wisdom as you would think of it.”

“Rudyard said she got mad and killed the Master of the Vampires.”

“That’s probably an exaggeration,” the sword said. “Althea tends not to kill people as much as make them mythical.”

“She can make people mythical?”

“That’s what happened to the Gods,” the sword explained.

“Did they piss her off?”

“People stopped believing in them and they got angry and went to Althea and demanded that she make them ‘true gods’ and she closed her eyes and they became stories instead.”

“But you didn’t become a mythological character.”

“That’s because I’m not a god, so she didn’t change me.”

“So why doesn’t she make herself not the master vampire?”

“I don’t know,” the sword admitted. “Maybe it doesn’t work that day.”

“Nothing here works the way it’s supposed to,” I complained. “What do you think actually happened to the old Master Vampire?”

“Her temple is heavily guarded. He probably just got caught by a trap.”

“And that made her the Master Vampire? That’s kind of round about.”

“The same way you became Baroness. If a vampire aristocrat managed to fall off a mountain it would give the mountain the title. I’m actually a Duke.”

“You are?”

The sword chuckled. “Yeah, but when swords and mountains are given titles they just change the title.”

“I think you’d make a pretty good vampire lord,” I said.

“I don’t fulfill the physical requirements?”

“There are physical requirements?” I asked, suddenly alarmed.

“Didn’t you know?” the sword asked. “You have to be able to lead the vampire hunt.”

“I what!” I almost fell off my chair and Jenna looked up at me alarmed.

The sword laughed so hard he might have suffocated himself, had he lungs. As it was, it took a few moments before he stopped laughing.

“I take it you were joking,” I said finally.

“Hey,” the sword said. “Someone wrote gullible on the ceiling.”

“I’d look,” I replied dryly, “only there is no ceiling.”

“The physical requirement,” the sword told me, soberly, “is that you have to be able to die.”

2008-08-23T07:33:00.000-07:00

Practicing sword fighting was even more brutal than I’d imagined. Not that I got to any actual swordfighting. First I had to practice all the basic moves without my sword, because Aliana was afraid I’d hurt myself. Even if I had a magical healing sword, she said, incurring damage wasn’t suggested. So she had found me a wooden stick and, to be honest, I did hit myself a few times with it. I had a feeling that the next time we practiced she would have come up with a practice stick wrapped in cloth.

I was just as bad at sword fighting as anyone, knowing me, might have guessed. But Aliana seemed to have infinite patience.

“We’re going to keep practicing until you get it right,” she told me, defeating my usual strategy of doing things I didn’t like so badly people would give up on me. And we did, practicing the same stupid move again and again until I felt like I could do it in my sleep and (even then I wouldn’t get it right.) It wasn’t just that though. She made me do push-ups and crunches and all sorts of other horrible exercises as well. I was hoping there would be inspiring music and a short montage later I would be a swordswoman to rival Xena, but the montage was slow in coming, perhaps because magic is always quick to screw you over and slow to help you out.

An eternity later Aliana told me I was done for the day and I collapsed onto one of the armchairs in the living room, where Rudyard was happily chatting with the sword.

“Good job!” Rudyard said. “You’ll be capable in no time.”

“If I don’t die first,” I replied. “If my enemies don’t get me, Aliana will.” I got up and began to stagger across the room. “Goodnight.

“Goodnight!?” Rudyard exclaimed. “You’re not going to bed?”

“I’m wiped,” I replied.

“There’s a council meeting in half an hour! You can’t go to sleep.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I... what?” he gaped.

“I mean, you’re joking. There is no way I’m going to make it through a meeting.”

“Take a bath and I’ll make you coffee and something you eat. You’ll see, you’ll revive in no time. Oh, yeah...” he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small vial. “Take one of these pills. It should help with the pain.”

I looked at the bottle. “Some magic potion?” I asked.

“It’s some kind of human medication,” he explained. “I-bupro? Something like that.”

“Ibuprofen?”

“Yeah. That’s it. These modern medicines are so amazing, aren’t they.”

“Yeah.” I took the bottle and hobbled to the bathroom.

If it hadn’t been for the smell of coffee and dinner I’m not sure I would have ever gotten out of the bath. It was the size of a small swimming pool and full of deliciously scented hot water. The old baron sure knew how to live, I thought, swimming around in it. I could feel my muscles relaxing. Eventually, though, the hunger got to be too much for me and I climbed out, drying myself off with a wonderfully fluffy towel, and squeezing into a costume just as lascivious as the last. I braided my hair and pinned it up, sticking the hair stick that Cloudbright had said contained a knife into the center of it. I even found some kohl and lipstick in the dressingroom and painted my face until I was convinced that I could have been the goddess of a goth club, should I have ever had that peculiar desire.

Rudyard was bent over his notebook, scribbling away when I walked in. A familiar blush crept over his cheeks. “Dinner is on the table,” he said, quickly looking down. There was one place set at the table, which could have comfortably seated twelve. The placemat sat with it’s shining dishes, lonely, before my high backed chair, a small covered dish, and coffee pot.

“Aren’t you eating?” I asked him.

“It isn’t proper for the staff to eat with the...”

“I don’t care, Rudyard,” I interrupted. “About what’s proper if I have to eat alone for the rest of my indeterminately long life.”

“I already ate,” he replied.

“You can sit with me at least. There’s nothing more lonely than eating alone.”

I waited until he had sat down before opening the covered dish and heaping my plate with spagetti.

“Are you lonely?” he asked surprised.

“Not lonely,” I said, between bites. “Not yet, anyways. But the thought of living here for the rest of my life, not seeing my friends or family again...” my nose began to itch, the way it did before I cried. I opened my eyes really wide so tears wouldn’t be able to collect at the corners of them. “And never being able to have a relationship again. The idea is lonely.” I took a piece of bread from a basket and chewed on it for a minute.

“The thing is,” I continued, “I’ve been too scared and nervous and anxious and tired too be lonely. But I think I will be, once the shock wears off.”

“I think I understand,” he said, taking a piece of bread and chewing on it idly. “I should have died hundreds of years ago. All my family, my childhood friends... everyone has passed on long ago. My entry into this world wasn’t as sudden as yours was, but it still wasn’t very... comfortable. You’ll find, once you get old enough, that the years seem to pass by you without consequence. You spend so much time lonely that you forget it’s anything special. One of the problems with Darkside is that it isn’t easy to make friends who you can trust not to betray you. Even the people you trust don’t always tend to be people you like.”

“Why did you come here?” I asked, curiously.

“The tale is too long to tell now, but let me say that, like you, it wasn’t entirely of my own volition. I did it to save the life of someone I loved. The irony is that she’s still dead and I’m stuck here... No, I don’t mean that. I don’t mind my life here. I’ve created a niche for myself, it’s fascinating at times... but it does sometimes seem like something is missing, and when you mention loneliness I can’t help but think that that’s what it is.”

“What about the young woman you mentioned earlier, the one who has your alibi?” I asked.

Rudyard blushed again. “It’s not what you obviously think it is,” he said. “The personal part of the personal problem is all on her side she needs my academic knowledge to help her with her problem. That’s all. She’s a vampire. Not someone I’d...” he blushed again.

“In all the time you’ve been here, you’ve never had a lover?”

“I’ve remained faithful to the woman I’m promised to,” he replied, stiffly. “In my day we didn’t take sexuality as lightly as you young people do now.”

“Okay, grandpa,” I snorted. It was funny that Rudyard spoke as if he were ancient because he didn’t look as if he were more than twenty-five, thin and bookish, with brown curls that almost touched his neck, and grayish blue eyes, wire-frame spectacles perched his nose.

“Drink up your coffee,” he ordered. “The council is coming.” He began to clear away my dishes, and his alarm was such that I didn’t protest, even though I wasn’t quite finished. I chugged my coffee, then poured and drank another cup before allowing him to pry it from my fingers.

A heavy knock sounded on the door and Aliana opened it.

A parade of elaborately dressed vampires swept in. I knew they were vampires, because despite their haughty poise and elegant dress, their skin was gray and dead looking, their expressions haggard. It hit me, suddenly, that I was surrounded by dead things, animated corpses without heartbeats or breath or anything that makes living things living things. It hit me too, amazingly for the first time, that I was surrounded by creatures that considered me food.

Below my right hand my sword began vibrating slightly, somehow comfortingly. I touched the hilt and was surprised to find it warm.

“Steady,” the sword whispered to me, and somehow I knew I was the only one who could hear it. “Act as composed as you can. They can’t read your mind. Unless you show your fear they won’t be able to tell. Remember that you’re more powerful than they are. Look each one in the eye as they are introduced and nod. If you can, imagine you’re pretending to be a queen. Picture yourself the Queen, nodding and smiling to everyone. You’re infinitely high above them, deigning to meet them."

The vampires took places around the table, standing beside their chairs, looking at me curiously, grinning with their sharp teeth, but I tried to follow the sword’s advice, meeting their gazes with a smile of my own. At the end of the crowd Cloudbright came in, taking the chair at my left.

“Stand” the sword said, so I stood, and immediately, all the people in the room bowed or curtsied to me, even Rudyard and Aliana, who were siting in the corner. One by one, Cloudbright introduced each of the vampires to me, and one by one I stared them down smiling, thinking, absurdly, of the Wild Things book, where Max tames the wild things with his stare.

Finally, the introductions were over and the sword told me to sit, so I sat, all the vampires following a few seconds later.

I followed the sword’s instructions all through the meeting, saying the things he told me to say, smiling and frowning as he told me to. Cloudbright seemed to make most of the decisions, looking at me as he did so, for my approval or disapproval. On one or two points, following the sword’s advice, I did disapprove, an action which, the sword told me, would give me the appearance of thinking for myself. Finally the meeting was over. I walked to the door and said my goodbyes to each of the vampire in turn, making some small comment about something they had said during the meeting, if they had said anything. I caught not a few of the males and some of the females trying to take a peak down my corset and wondered if the costume did, in fact, give me the authority the others had thought it would convey, or if it merely made me look like a fetish-whore.

Finally they were all gone. I collapsed in an armchair.

“Can I go to bed now?” I whined.

Rudyard laughed. “You were spectacular, lady!” he said. “I had no idea you had it in you.”

“I didn’t,” I admitted. “It was all the sword. It told me what to do.”

Cloudbright gaped at me for a moment before regaining his composure and beginning to laugh with Rudyard.

“The sword!” he gasped. “It blew my mind! I couldn’t figure out how under Earth you acted so perfectly! I thought you were possessed. I thought the sword would make a decent weapon; I had no idea it would be the perfect councilor. Imagine!” he was laughing so hard he had to spit the words out. “They came in there thinking they would find a quivering human they could eat alive and they found her! Lady, I have never seen anyone face ten vampire lords and look so non-plussed. Even Lord Ask would have quivered when they turned those black eyes on you. Follow my advice, lady, and never lose that sword.” The were-cat sobered up a little, staring at the sword. “But how did the sword....”

“I was forged of sun radiance by the God Hephaestus himself, for the great warrior Anynon, in order that he might destroy the monsters who threatened Olympus itself!” the sword bellowed in a great voice. “Anynon swung me and smote them all in one great strike and was carried to Olympus in the sun’s own chariot. He was later kicked out by trying to sleep with Aphrodite,” the sword continued in a less grand voice. “But I have still been forged by a God. Giving counsel to a scared girl is hardly stretching my abilities.”

“If you are so great, why aren’t you doing great deeds?” Cloudbright answered, awed by the sword, which was now gleaming brightly.

“This one held me up to the sun, and apologized when she almost dropped me. The great heros all forgot that the greatest of deeds is to help those in need. That is why they all failed in the end. And I sense a story in this. I have a feeling that this will become much more than a mere vampire court. I think we will all, before this ends, know what it is like to be a hero.”

And with that the sword fell quiet and would not answer their questions anymore.

Sex ed in the underworld

2008-08-22T19:15:00.000-07:00

Rudyard smiled approvingly at Aliana. “You should always listen to her, Lady,” he said. “She’s a Guardian Vampire. They don’t usually say much, unless they think it’s important.”

“Don’t usually say much,” Prominence interjected. “I knew one once who wouldn’t stop talking. I finally had to kill him to shut him up?”

“Do you normally kill people you don’t like?” I asked nervously.

“Only Dark creatures,” it reassured me. “It’s not like you need any help finding yourself in danger.”

“Speaking of danger,” I said, looking around. “You all talk as if I’m on the verge of death, and yet there have been no attacks on my life, as of yet.”

“That you know of,” Rudyard said cheerfully. “You have chosen your friends wisely. There have been at least five I have heard of. One I foiled myself,” he added proudly.

Aliana nodded. “I have already had to kill four people in your service, lady. It has been a good day for my sword.”

“When did these attacks happen?” I asked, my mouth dry.

“While you were unconscious,” the sword said.

“You didn’t take care of any of them?” I asked nervously, afraid the sword might be capable of wielding itself.

“Sadly, no,” the sword sighed. “I heard them happen, though. Your fortress is quite secure. Your predecessor acquired an impressive battery of shielding spells.”

“Too bad it didn’t work.”

“We believe that he might have been drunk when he attacked you,” Rudyard said. “He shouldn’t have been that stupid. Someone he trusted must have slipped some alcohol into his drink...”

“So there is a traitor you don’t know about?” I asked.

“Don’t be concerned,” Aliana said, narrowing her eyes. “I will find and punish whoever it was.”

“Aliana is the only one not suspect,” Rudyard explained. “Guardian Vampires don’t do things like that. I’m not suspect either; I have an alibi.” He reddened.

Aliana nodded. “I have asked the young lady in question and she verifies your story. Although what you were doing with her in the first place, I can’t imagine.”

Rudyard reddened even further. “It was in a purely medical context,” he said.

Aliana narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t realize you served a medical function. That will be useful knowledge.”

“A very limited function,” Rudyard corrected, staring at the carpet.

I covered my mouth with my hand so I wouldn’t laugh.

“It will be dark soon,” Aliana observed, lifting her dark eyes to the windowss, where the light was fading. “And we can begin practice.”

“Do I really need to learn swordfighting?” I whined. “Can’t the sword protect me?”

“I may be magic,” the sword said, “but I am not that magic.”

“This is going to be painful, isn’t it?” I muttered.

“Death would be more painful,” Aliana said.

“Should I change?”

“If those are the clothes you are going to be wearing, those are the clothes you should become used to fighting in.”

I looked down at my outfit. “I don’t really like these clothes, but Cloudbright said I’d get more respect if I wore them.

Rudyard chuckled.

“What?”

“Cloudbright said that?” he laughed a little more. “My lady, you can trust Cloudbright with almost anything, as long as you treat him well. But don’t trust him with this, please. You do cut an imposing figure, it’s true, and I’m sure people will treat you wonderfully if you wear it, but... let’s just say that Cloudbright’s hormones might have had a little influence in this matter.”

“He told me I should wear these clothes so he could ogle me!?” I spluttered.

“You do look pretty hot though,” the sword commented. “I think you should stick with it. You win more flies with honey, after all, and there will be quite a few who will decide to follow you once they see you. Let’s face it; vampires are pretty shallow, and the lady vampires... well, let’s just say they’re not all that. Begging your pardon, Guardian.”

“But I thought that vampires were supposed to be the ultimate seducers,” I said.

“It’s all glamour,” Rudyard explained. “Underneath they’re... well, corpses. They’re cold and clammy and their skin has the most unpleasant texture. The glamour doesn’t work on other vampires. And, part of their lust for you will be the fact that you’re food. Untouchable food, of course, unless some of them get a hankering to share the same fate as Lord Ask. By the way, I took the liberty of procuring you a coffeemaker, grinder and quite a supply of beans. You’ll want to continue your coffee consumption. It’s a useful precaution, just in case someone get’s inside Aliana’s guard.”

“Will they be able to use their glamour on me?” I asked.

“I shouldn’t think so. One of the things you’ve probably inherited from Lord Ask would be protection from that. How did the vampire who came to get you look?”

“Like a potato.” I shuttered.

Rudyard laughed. “I’ve always thought so too. If her glamour had worked on you she’d probably have looked like a movie star to you. Anyways, my point is, the clothes aren’t necessary, but they’ll be an asset. And... don’t fault Cloudbright for thinking with his... reproductive organs. Weres are often like that. Just try to avoid copulating with him, because he’ll have an urge to bite you... most mammals do, actually, and, let’s say, you don’t want to add that to your other problems.”

His face was flaming red. I could tell that the subject really embarrassed him (those Victorian sensibilities) but he had told me anyways because he had thought it important. “What would happen if I got bitten?” I had to ask.

The sword snorted. “You’ll turn into a were-creature,” it replied. “Not necessarily a were-cat, though. You’ll turn into whatever your totem animal is.”

“My totem animal?” I asked, confused.

“Ever noticed how people kind of resemble animals?” Rudyard explained. “You see someone and can’t help thinking that they look, just a little bit like a rabbit? Everyone has some type of animal they have affinity with. Mine is a mongoose. Yours...” he tilted his head to the side and squinted.

“Salmon,” the sword said. “I can feel it in her mind.”

“You must be joking,” I said. “If I got bitten by a were I would turn into a salmon?”

“See?” the sword asked. “You don’t want that to happen. For one thing, you’d drown if you weren’t near water when a full moon happened. For another thing, you’d constantly have urges to swim upstream.”

“It could be worse,” Rudyard said. “I knew a were-tree. That was inconvenient.”

“Now I know you’re putting me on,” I said. “How could someone’s totem animal be a tree?”

“It’s rare,” Rudyard admitted. “It’s because he was a Buddhist monk, I think. Actually, his monkness made it better than it sounds. Even as a tree he could float through the air. An amazing sight, all those roots hovering over you...”

“This world gets wackier and wackier,” I sighed. “Is there anyone else I should beware of having sex with.”

“Actually,” Rudyard said, thoughtfully, “you probably shouldn’t have sex with anyone. And if you feel tempted, read up on them first in the book I gave you. Remember that as inconvenient as pregnancy is when you’re both human, it’s significantly more inconvenient when your partner isn’t.”

“Well, I’m glad we had this talk,” I said, somewhat sarcastically. “I’ll certainly be careful who I shag in the future. Why, exactly, did we have this talk?”

“We were discussing your wardrobe,” Aliana said. “If you have come to a conclusion, we could start our practice...”

I looked outside and was surprised to discover it was almost completely dark.

“You think my clothes are a good idea?” I asked Rudyard, “And not just because you like looking at me in them?”

He blushed and nodded.

“Well, I guess I’m going to have to learn to fight without unintentionally flashing my breasts at everyone.”

“Actually,” the sword interjected, “that might be a useful strategy.”

The talking sword

2008-08-22T16:31:00.000-07:00

{Author's note: Sorry I haven't updated in half a year. I honestly didn't think anyone read this. (I guess no one reads it now) Also, my house burned down and there were all sorts of complications in my life and then I forgot. But now I'm going to try to post regularly. (Of course, the more comments I get the more regularly I will post.) Until, that is,some other major disaster happens in my life.}

It took me three seconds to figure out where I was when I woke up and thirty more seconds to pull myself together after that. I dragged myself up from the black curtained bed and pulled on another ridiculously tight black outfit (which looked as if I’d shoplifted it out of a r-rated version of Hot Topic), and belted my sword around my waist. Sunlight was streaming through from the courtyard through the red curtains that surrounded it, and I opened one of the big glass doors and walked into the light.

It felt like more than just heat and light; it felt like a blessing. I never believed in God, but if there were vampires and all sorts of things like that, it wouldn’t be fair if there wasn’t one, just to balance things out. Then again, if there were a God, why would it let vampires run around? I let the question go– theistic metaphysics isn’t really my thing– and, closing my eyes, turned my face to the sun. I felt strong, full of life. Strange; when did I become photosynthetic? I wondered. Then I felt a tingling at my hip. I looked down at the sword. It was shining much too brightly for a mere reflection. I unsheathed it so the light could fall directly on the raw metal. It vibrated in my hands, almost like a purr. Of course a vampire baroness would have a sword for a pet. I thought, sarcastically. I patted the sword absently. The courtyard was nice, although the patches of earth were bare. I briefly fantasized about growing a garden. Not many vampires would come to get me when I was gardening. Of course, I was popping out of my corset enough without bending over... I looked down at my breasts to see if there was any nippilage showing and almost dropped the sword.

“Sorry!” I said, cutting myself as I grabbed onto it.

“That’s okay,” the sword replied. “Sorry about that.” The cuts on my hand began to heal.

My mind would have been blown away by the fact that my sword talked if I hadn’t just become a vampire baroness and moved to an undead haunted suburb called Darkside. Plus, when you think about it, talking swords are pretty cliche.

“You can heal things?” I asked.

“Only cuts I’ve made myself,” the sword admitted. “It’s useful when your owners are clumsy.”

I couldn’t think of anything to reply to that– I am pretty clumsy– so I asked if the sword wanted to bask in the sun for a while.

“Better not, it’s not safe for you to wander around without me. Where are you going anyways?”

“I’m hoping I’ll be able to find some food somewhere around here.”

“Another human came in a little while ago,” the sword replied. “He’s got muffins and coffee and a bag of groceries. He’s watching you through the window.”

“How did you know that?” I asked, a little amazed.

“What good would I be if I didn’t have amazing sensory capabilities?”

“You’re a magical sword,” I replied. “That sounds pretty useful to me. Do you mind if I sheathe you?”

“Nah, go ahead. Sheathing won’t hurt me. It’s actually a very comfortable sheathe. Like a sleeping bag.”

Great I thought. Not only do I have a talking magical sword, but it’s a talkative one as well. But I was only complaining. The truth was that it was nice to have someone to talk to, even if it was only a sword. (Wow. How pathetic is that?)

I returned to the house, blinking in the sudden dark.

Rudyard Greeble sitting was there looking very proper and English. He smiled at me and asked if I didn’t mind that he’d come over.

“No, it’s okay. Thanks for the food. Um, how did you get in?”

“Aliana let me in.”

Aliana? Then I remembered; the vampire bodyguard. I looked around and barely made her out, sitting stiffly in the darkest corner of the living room. It probably wasn’t a good idea, I reflected, to trust a complete stranger, but she hadn’t murdered me in my sleep– none of them had– and they’d had ample opportunity. I had to trust someone after all; why not the person who’d brought me coffee and his friends.

“How did you know about the food, Lady?” Rudyard asked, offering me a styrofoam cup and a muffin.

“My sword told me,” I explained.

Rudyard didn’t even blink at that. “The famed sword of the Sunlight Slayer,” he mused. “I’m sorry, good sword, but I never learned your name. You were fast asleep when I found you.”

“The baroness woke me up with sunlight,” the sword replied. “My name is Prominence.”

“Sunlight Slayer?” I asked. “Do I want to know?”

“He was a minor vampire slayer with delusions of grandeur,” the sword explained. “He stole me from the tomb of my last master, Reed the Exorcist. Now he was a class act. Took down four major vampire clans singlehandedly before finally being conquered by the Grand Master.”

“Which Grand Master was that?” Rudyard asked, pulling out a notebook.

“Volxander,” the sword said. “That was during the Necro-revolution. He wouldn’t have been able to take down the clans otherwise.”

“Ah. I always wondered about Reed the Exorcist. If you wouldn’t mind, can I ask who made you? And what of? It would be very useful in my studies.” Rudyard leaned over, looking intently at the sword, ignoring the fact that it was slung on my hip.

“I would go into it in detail,” the sword replied, “only I’m afraid the lady here would become quite bored and confused. Although it would benefit her to learn something of our history, seeing as she has murdered her way into the aristocracy.”

“Murdered!” I exclaimed.

“Man-slaughtered, then,” the sword corrected.

“I would love to learn all about it,” I replied. “Only I have to convince myself it’s real first.”

“I’m not sure that will be hard,” the sword predicted darkly. “The difficulty is staying alive that long.”

“I love how optimistic people are at my survival,” I muttered.

“Don’t worry about it,” Rudyard said. “You’ll enjoy your life more if you save the worrying until after you’re dead.”

“What about you?” I asked. “How did you survive this long?”

He shrugged. “I’m just useful to have around. Plus who ever kills me will wish they killed themself instead.”

“How’s that?”

“I have... you may call it a curse upon me. If someone kills me they will suffer a million years without dying.”

“Are you a wizard or something?”

Rudyard chuckled. “Oh, no,” he replied. “I’m a chemist. But I once did a favor for the Grand Master and he gave me this curse as a token of his esteem. Unfortunately, he later had cause to regret it, but that’s not my fault.”

“Who is the Grand Master?” I asked.

“You would call her the king of the vampires. She’s the most powerful, most, um, badass, of all the vampires. And one of the oldest, actually.”

“But you just called her a him,” I pointed out.

“The Grand Master who gave me the curse was the old one,” Rudyard explained. “I’m afraid we’re going through them at quite a fast rate at the moment.”

“Who is the Grand Master at the moment, if I may inquire?” I jumped; I had forgotten I was wearing a talking sword at my waist.

“Lady Althea,” Rudyard said.

The sword made a whistling sound. I wondered how it managed to whistle, since it didn’t have a mouth. Curious that I hadn’t had the same question about it talking. “The Angel of Truth?” the sword continued. “I never would have thought that she’d emerge from her crypt.”

“It’s the old Grand Master’s fault,” Rudyard explained. “Lord Racquel. He stole the cup of truth from her temple and she was so vexed she went ahead and killed him without stopping to think of the consequences. Now, of course, she’s stuck with the mastership.”

“Whoa,” I said. “The Angel of Truth? The Cup of Truth? This is starting to sound like an Indiana Jones flick.”

“I don’t know of what you speak,” the sword said. “If you want it can be explained to you, but it will take quite a long time. You will not disbelieve me when I tell you that our history goes back ten thousand years.”

“Ten thousand years?” I choked.

“Immortals, by their very nature, are much better at keeping track of things that humans are,” the sword continued. “I myself can remember back about three thousand years, though, admittedly, I have been asleep for a good portion of it.”

“You can’t be that old,” I said. “They didn’t know how to forge steel that long ago.”

“I am not made of steel,” Prominence said, with great dignity. “I am forged of radiance, the metal of the sun, by the god Hephaestus himself.”

“The sun isn’t made of metal,” I said. “It’s made of hydrogen and helium.” I was proud of my very small amount of astronomical knowledge.

The sword laughed, a rather nasty sound, almost like metal being ground against glass. “Next you’re going to tell me that space isn’t composed of ether, and everything is not made out of the four elements.”

“It’s not,” I told it. “Space is a vacuum, with nothing in it, and everything is made out of atoms, electrons and protons.”

“They have quite a few newfangled ideas these days,” Rudyard told the sword. “I suppose vampires also do not exist, Lady?” he said to me.

“They don’t! That is, they didn’t.” I stopped, confused.

“It’s quite simple,” Rudyard explained, smiling. “Both are true. Vampires do and do not exist. The sun is both made solely out of hydrogen and helium and is also made out of other things, including the metal radiance. There are more than one correct views of the world, you’ll find. It is as if you had spent your whole life sitting and looking through a window in one particular direction, and then one day were brought to a new window and all the things you had been looking at before looked completely different when looked on from another direction. Like a sculpture that looks like a pillar from one side and a tree from another. Both views are correct, though they are completely different.”

“No!” I exclaimed. “It isn’t similar! Reality isn’t like a sculpture you can look at from different angles! It doesn’t change! It’s one thing or another. The sun can’t be both things.”

“That’s a very human view,” said Aliana, sitting in a corner. “You won’t survive here long unless you begin to think like us. To the people of Darkside, reality is a very flexible thing indeed.”

On the edges

2008-02-19T20:26:00.000-08:00

Cloudbright spent hours explaining the intricacies of the position to me. Midoria wasn’t a place as much as a tribe... or a gang; the people of Darkside and other underground communities traditionally banded together into tribes for protection. The deal was if you messed with a Midorian you messed with all Midorians. Cloudbright showed me the listing of members, the deals Midoria had with other tribes. Lord Ask had written everything down in his meticulous handwriting.

“He was preparing for his successor,” Cloudbright told me. “When he gained the Baronet, also by accident, actually, he didn’t have any clues showing him what to do, so he wanted to help the next unfortunate. He brought the tribe across from Britain two hundred years ago and they were the first ones to start living under this city. Now the Astorians are here too– that’s who the snakes belong to– and they want the territory the Midorians built. So Lord Ask– you– and Lord Gloom are constantly fighting for supremacy.”

“Gods, I’ve walked into the middle of a gang war?”

“Technically, we’re at peace, but be rest assured that Lord Gloom will try to take advantage of your weakness.”

“Why did the potato bring me here? Was she planning on double crossing me?”

“The snakes are... trouble makers. For everyone, really. Lord Gloom keeps them in check. I think they just wanted power over you so they could join Midoria and be safe from Gloom’s influence. Now, the first thing you’re going to need to do is to address the Midorians so they’ll know you’re not soft.”

I dropped onto a sofa. “I am soft,” I complained.

“Then you’re going to have to pretend not to be soft.” He sat down beside me. “Listen, milady, I can help you up to a certain point, but you’re going to have to do the rest. You’re going to have to rise to the occasion. Midoria needs a strong leader, and I think it could do worse than you.”

“Why do you think that? You don’t even know me.”

“I have a feeling about it. Cats have very good instincts, believe me. There are a few people I think you should meet. If you don’t mind, I’ll call them and invite them over.” He stood up.

“Do it,” I said.

“Meanwhile, if you look in the blue room you might find a wardrobe more... fitting.”

More tight-fitting he should have said. Most of the clothes seemed to be made of pleather or velvet. But once I had dressed, I did feel more... vampire lord-ish. Or perhaps just vamp. A corset hiked my breasts up while squeezing my stomach, a velvet skirt spilling out beneath it. I draped a cloak across my shoulders, admiring my refection in the mirror. Some black makeup and I’d be the perfect goth queen. I found some eyeliner in the bag I’d taken with me and, well, lined my eyes with it.

The cat nodded when I re-entered the room. “Those clothes belonged to Lord Ask’s daughter.” He told me.

“How could Lord Ask have a daughter, if he was a vampire?” I asked.

“She was, ah, a blood-daughter,” Cloudbright explained. “The person who makes you... what you are... is often considered your parent.”

“Your new parents are the people who killed you?”

“In a way, yes. It is rather messed up, perhaps. But when you’re new you need someone to show you the ropes, so to speak. A mentor.”

“Do all vampires dress like this?” I asked. Running my hands down the corset.

“Many do. Of course, you’re of a high position, so it’s important for you to.” He walked over to a bookcase and, reaching his hand behind a row of books, opened it so it swung out like a door. Behind it shining weapons lay in rows, swords, daggers, bows and crossbows, as well as scary sharp things I couldn’t identify, curves of glimmering blades that reminded me faintly of Klingons.

Cloudbright took out a thin, long object. “Yana used to stick this in her hair.” He twisted it and a bright blade slid out of the ornamental sheath. “In case of emergencies”.

“What happened to Yana?” I asked.

“Dolores caught her and exposed her to the sunlight,” the cat said, taking a long, sheathed, dagger, and giving it to me. “Tie this at your belt,” he instructed, showing me the loop for it.

“I don’t know how to use a weapon,” I told him.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll learn. Now this one,” he gestured to a sword hung high on the wall, “you’ll have to take down yourself. It’s made of silver– well a silver alloy– and not many of us here would willingly touch it.”

I reached up to the long sword.

“How did it get here then?” I asked, unhooking it from the wall, and taking it down.

“A vampire hunter,” Cloudbright explained. “Lord Ask killed him. We had to get a human to put it up there.”

“Are there other humans?” I asked.

“A few. Ones with special... things... about them. One of them is coming here.”

I unsheathed the sword. Bright light spilled across the room.

“It’s a sun-sword,” the cat whispered. “Fatal to any vampire allergic to the sun. You don’t even need to stake them; just a small cut and they’ll burn to death. This is your power. Even the light of it will hurt a vampire. None will threaten you with that in your hand. Never take your hands off it. Sleep with it, bathe with it.” The doorbell rang. “Never give it away.”

The cat pressed a button beside the door and a window opened in it showing the people there. Quickly he undid the locks, opening the portal, and let them in, looking around the edge of the door before closing it and relocking it quickly. Two of the newcomers hissed and turned away from the shining sword. I sheathed it.

The third visitor strode up to me, offering his hand. “Milady,” he said, bowing over it. “Tis good to meet you. I am Dr. Rudyard Greeble, scientist and studier of vampires.”

“You’re human?” I asked.

“Indeed I am. I have come into possession of certain artifacts that have extended my life indefinitely and have endowed upon me talents which make it possible to live safely in this environment.”

“But why do you want to live here? Why not in the...”

“World above? I am a studier of vampires, as I said.” He presented me a thick, leather bound book. “Allow me to present you with the latest edition of my Vampire guide. I think you should find it very useful.” He handed me another, smaller book. “This is merely a compendium of the different types of beings who live here. You will find it very useful when you’re trying to deal with them all.”

“Are there many different types? I know about vampires, weres...”

“Well, of course, there are the elves, fallen stars, orc, ghouls, ghosts, invaders... the list goes on and on. Of course, not all those types are represented in Midoria.” Rudyard looked around. “But of course I am monopolizing you, milady. You should meet your other guests. These are two of the finest vampires in Midoria, Aliana and Rhett. Aliana is the best fighter in the whole baronet, and I believe that Cloudbright has conscripted her into your service, as bodyguard and teacher. Is that right, Aliana?”

The vampiress bowed her head, then looked directly at me and smiled, or, rather, bared her sharp teeth. “I’ll do my best,” she said, as if suggesting that even her best probably wouldn’t be enough to teach me someone like me.

“And Rhett is one of the master vampires, of course. He’s the perfect man to have on your side... because you wouldn’t want him not on your side, would you?”

The tall, strange... being?... bowed slightly. He seemed slightly disapproving.

“Er... nice to meet you all.” I said. Master vampire? I did not ask. Bodyguard? Fallen stars!?!?

I looked down at the sword in my hand. The books in the other. A Spotter’s Guide to Vampires I read. So You’re New To Darkside; The People You’re Likely to Meet and What You Should Know About Them. The script was rather small; it would have to be, to fit all that on the spine.

Now, I reminded myself, would be a very bad time to go hysterical. Nonetheless, the edges of my vision were beginning to fade to white. Was this what it was like to go mad? I wondered idly. Small things seemed to be skittering around in my brain; little repair bots off to fix the holes in my perceived reality, perhaps.

Rudyard looked at me uncertainly, then at the others. “Perhaps the Baroness is a little tired,” he suggested. “Why don’t we leave her to get some peace?”

I nodded in appreciation of this plan, then fell over.

Advisers

2008-02-12T14:08:00.000-08:00

I had been expecting Halloween style decorations; dark, foreboding furniture inset with bats, stone archways, darkness barely lit with candles. I expected cobwebs everywhere, a hunchbacked servant named igor, a coffin instead of a bed.

Instead, as I climbed the stairs to my new house (for as long as I survived, I supposed) I was shocked to find decor such as you might see in a home improvements magazine (not titled Goths at Home).

Five spacy rooms, outfitted with comfortable furniture and colorful rugs and pillows (the house, happily, had electricity), composed the house, all surrounding a central courtyard which actually opened up onto the sky. The walls were almost all lined with books, the occasional knick-knack dotted here and there. It looked more like the home of an upper middle-class book worm than a vampire.

“It’s lovely,” I gushed, plumping an embroidered pillow. “This is all mine?”

“You can redecorate if you want,” the potato sniffed. “Lord Ask didn’t have the best taste, in my opinion.”

“No– it’s perfect. All I could ask for is a kitchen.”

“You humans and your cooking,” the potato said disparagingly. “I suppose you can acquire all the things you need from the surface during the daylight hours. There’s a boat in the boat shed which is yours as well. You can use that to go to the surface.”

“But isn’t the surface right up there?” I gestured towards the courtyard.

“Inaccessible.” Potato replied off-hand. “There’s a spell on it.”

“What do I do?” I asked. “I mean, what is my role as baroness? Do I have to give instructions or fill out paperwork or what?”

“The Darkside is a little short on paperwork,” the potato’s companion said, grinning. He had removed his hood and face covering and revealed a visage so hideous that it made me feel vaguely nauseous. It appeared to be half rotted, unhealed knife cuts scoring it several times over. His hair was lanky and brownish gray, and his teeth were several shades of yellow and pointing in various opposing directions.

“You’ll be receiving taxes from the citizenry. It is nominally your job to keep the peace and see that everything is happening as it should, but there are several different people who can take care of things for you. You will have to make many decisions, but with your advisers to help you, you really won’t have much work to do at all.”

The word advisors made me start. I looked over to see the potato’s companion leering at me. So that was their game, I thought. I knew that people were unlikely to help each other out for no reason, here. Wherever here really was.

A loud noise resounding through the walls made the potato start. She looked in the direction of the sound, then back at me.

“I’ll come back next sunrise. Remember this well; do NOT let anyone in.”

Her companion wrapped himself up in the thick garments again and they left.

I wrapped my arms around myself. As much as I was trying to convince myself that it was all a dream, it wasn’t working. This was real– vampires, the potato, the fact that I appeared to have inherited a very dangerous position. The fact that I probably wouldn’t manage to survive very long and if I did it would be because of Dolores and company and I had a sinking feeling that they weren’t the type of people I should trust. Worse, I had the feeling that there wasn’t anyone trustworthy in my new baronet. Unless there actually was honor among thieves. Which I highly doubted.

I wandered over to the bookshelves, hoping there’d be something to help me out. Darkside for Dummies or something like that. But all the books that were in English– and there weren’t many– were about ferrets. Perhaps the old Baron had had pet ferrets or something. Not being particularly interested in the little animals, I favored collapsing on one of the couches instead. Well, maybe I’d die quickly and my next life would be better. I’d come back as someone who never ever got entangled in anything not mundane and live a happy boring life. I was thinking, dreamily, of all the not vampire-related things I would do when I reincarnated, when a long, sharp noise, like a fingernail being dragged across a chalkboard, bifurcated my daydream.

I followed the origin of the noise to a door I hadn’t noticed before. Maybe it was the ferrets, I thought opening the heavy latches.

It was a cat, sleek and white and Siamese. As soon as the door was opened a crack it slithered in, running to the center of the room and running about, it’s nose to the ground.

“Hello, kitty,” I said, a bit self consciously. “Do you live here too?” The cat looked at me for a moment as if trying to understand what I was saying, then... how do I describe it? It compressed and elongated and grew and de-furred and in less than a second a man was standing there, instead of a cat.

I was surprised, but not as surprised as if this had happened to me four days before.

“You’re a were-cat?” I asked. Hadn’t the potato mentioned something about weres?

“Who’s been here?” he demanded.

I opened my mouth to tell him, then thought the better of it. Don’t let strangers in, potato had said. I suddenly got an inkling of what Snow White must have felt. What if everyone is a stranger? How could you live without inviting at least someone in?

“Who are you?” I shot back.

For a moment he bridled, his muscles shifting visible underneath his white t-shirt. I gulped– if he attacked me I’d have no chance. But then he relaxed and bowed, sweeping one hand gracefully towards the floor.

“Forgive me for being so abrupt, Milady,”he said, smiling down at me. “I am Cloudbright, who worked for Lord Ask. I came to declare my fealty to you, and to assist you in any way you need assistance.”

“How do I know you won’t kill me and take the baronet?” I asked, more out of curiosity than defense.

Cloudbright laughed, if it’s possible to laugh and hiss at the same time. “I don’t want the baronet,” he replied. “Power comes at a price, Milady, and sometimes that price is too steep to pay.”

“So I’ve discovered,” I muttered. “What did you do, for Lord...”

“Ask, Milady. His longer name is quite unpronounceable for us non-vampires. I assisted him.” He shrugged. “Kept track of certain things, saw that things got done, went where he couldn’t go. Things like that.”

“How long was Lord Ask Baron?”

“About four hundred years.” Cloudbright shrugged again. “Longer than I’d like to do it. I’m not sure he’s all that upset about being dead. He was looking forward to retirement. Trying to convince me to do it, but I wouldn’t bite.” He hissed-laughed again. “Literally.”

“And now you want to help me in the same regard.”

“Why not? I need a job, you don’t have a clue. Frankly, I’ll take care of you better than the Snakes.”

“The Snakes?” I asked.

“The ones who brought you here. If you want my advice, steer clear of them from now on. They’re bad news, Milady, you can be sure of that.”

“And you’re good news.”

Clearbright grinned, revealing all his sharp, white teeth. “The best news you’ve had all day.”

Darkend

2008-02-08T13:24:00.000-08:00

Let’s just say I wasn’t feeling the greatest that day. I supplemented my usual caffeine-impregnated blood with a healthy supply of chocolate. My head was pounding like a blacksmith’s hammer and all of my muscles were as sore and aching as if I had run a marathon the day before. I fell asleep during my first lecture even though I had drunk enough coffee to make my limbs twitch.

After half an hour of slipping in and out of sleep, I tried to surreptitiously sneak out of class. I trip on someone’s bag and fell on top of someone else while the entire contents of my bag flew everywhere. Surreptitiousness has never worked very well for me.

I crawled home and had just slipped into my bed when someone knocked on the door. I pulled the blankets higher over my head, praying that they’d give up, but it continued, thud, thud, thud, thud, rhythmically, as if someone were imitating a metronome. I’m not sure how long this state of affairs continued. I wasn’t exactly lucid and there was no way I was going to get up. After a while the sound began to fade into the background, the way sounds do, and either was starting to drift off into sleep or there really were pastel pink and blue tutued fairies out to get me. When I woke up a few moment later it was because someone had shaken me roughly. I forced my eyes open and stared upwards in horror.

I must be dreaming again, I thought. There’s no way this exists in real life.

The only way I can think of to describe Dolores is that she looked like Mrs. Potato head. She was lumpy, like a potato, a great blonde bee-hive wig (which had seen better days) perched on top of her head. She didn’t have any eyebrows; they were drawn in, too high and too thin, the way some old ladies do it. Excessive amounts of make-up only enhanced the horridness of her features. Too top it all off, she wore a ragged ball gown two sizes too small for her. Someone had sewn sequins indiscriminately all over in, then hot-glued on tinsel.

Needless to say, I screamed.

She smiled, which only made her more terrifying, and dropped a hand across my mouth. “No need for that, dearie. I’m not going to hurt you.” This failed to reassure me. She removed her hand and stepped back as I lifted myself from my bed.

“I’m Dolores De Miter, your ladyship.” She curtsied.

“Ladyship?” I asked, reeling. “I’m not a lady? What...?”

“Not a lady!” she cackled. “Why you’re the Baroness of Midoria.”

“I’m the what of what?”I demanded, wondering if she was possibly an escapee from the gamer wing of some mental hospital. That would have explained the gown.

“The Baroness of Midoria,” she repeated slowly, as if explaining things to a child. She plopped herself down in my armchair, which creaked disturbingly.

“This is America,” I needlessly pointed out. “We don’t have titles.”

“You, or should I say, they don’t have titles. But we do.” She fiddled with her wig.

“And who, exactly are they and we? Because I’m not sure I can realistically be included in the same subset as you.” Yes, I do talk like this when I’m half-asleep. One of my charming personality traits.

The potato smiled again, as if I was saying exactly what she wanted to hear. “They are humans. And we aren’t.”

I smiled, relieved. So that’s where her mistake was made. She obviously thought I was someone else. The back of my mind said ‘someone who isn’t human’ but I ignored that. “But I’m human,” I told her. “So, no titles.”

This information did not affect her expression at all. “Well, dear, you’re partly right. You’re human and non-human all at the same time. Confusing, yes, but it’s not entirely unusual. Weres, for example, fit into that category. We usually call your particular group meta-humans. Greater than human... but still human. Still killable.”

Something about the way she said ‘killable’ made me gulp. There was a glint in her eyes. I don’t normally think of potatoes as killing machines, except when combined with hot fat and already clogged arteries, but then they’re also not usually six feet tall. She could probably kill me just by falling on me.

“What do you mean, I’m more than human?” I asked, pulling my blanket tighter around me. “I’m not...”

“Perhaps you remember a night, oh, three nights ago, when you were stumbling home, full of coffee?” My hand went to my neck. “That’s right, those bites don’t seem to be healing, do they? Do you know what happened?”

I swallowed. “Something bit me...”

“And?” she prompted.

“I can see in the dark.”

“Seeing in the dark isn’t all you can do.” She stood up and raised her lumpy arms dramatically. “You didn’t just get bitten. You got bitten and poisoned your biter. When he died you inherited his powers. And his property.”

“I inherited his stuff because I killed him? Who came up with your system? Doesn’t that just make people go around killing people more?”

She grinned, this time opening her garishly red lips wide enough that I could see how sharp her teeth were. “I hope so.”

“So what do I inherit, exactly? I can see in the dark and people are going to go around calling me Baroness of... where?”

“Midoria. You’ll probably be unusually strong and fast, possibly harder to kill than previously...” She sighed. “Too bad we’ll never get a chance to find out.”

“Too bad?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Well, after tonight the point will be pretty much moot. It’s going to get dark soon... and then they’ll come.”

“Who will come?”

“The vampires.”

“Who want... what I’ve inherited.” I gulped. “And even though I might be harder to kill than previously, it still won’t be too hard, right?”

“Exactly.”

“And you’re going to offer me help in return for what?”

“You know the storyline pretty well, it appears.” She stood up. “It doesn’t matter, because anything’s better than being dead. I promise you no one in my clan will try to kill you. And that’s all the promise you’re getting. Gather your most precious possessions. Bring some food if you have any that will keep. Where we’re going there’s not that much accommodation for humans.”

I should have picked more carefully. But exhausted + panicked ≠ sensible. Instead I grabbed a variety of clothes and stuffed them into my bag. Precious possession? I shoved my laptop in it’s bag, remembering its power cord at the last moment. I dumped in a box of granola bars and some cans of soup. An apple or too. A few other random things. Then I faced her and took a deep breath.

“I’m ready,” I said.

She looked questioningly at my pajamas.

Is it a trick of the Darkenders (don’t blame me; I didn’t make up the name) to be able to find doors in places where doors should not be, or is there something transferred to you when you enter one, that you’re able to see them ever after that? Dolores went down a dark alley with no exit, pressed on the filthy brick wall and suddenly there was an archway there, just a deeper puddle of black in the growing shadows at the end of the street.

“Follow closely,” Dolores ordered. “And do everything I tell you do. You can ask questions later. For now, please remember that it’s your mortal life that’s on the line. Got it?”

I nodded, dumbly.

“Good,” she replied. “I don’t think they’ve caught onto your trail yet, so we shouldn’t have any problem. We’re going to your mansion. Yes, you’ve got a mansion. You’ll be safe there. There are... protections... afforded to the Baroness in her own house. It’s quite nice, very comfortable, although I deplore the old Baron’s sense of style.”

All this time we had been descending a stone spiral staircase. Now we had reached a boat on a type of underground canal. The boat looked like those ones you get in Venice, complete with a man in the back holding a long pole. He was swathed so completely in black that his eyes and the strip of face between them were visible. The potato pulled a similar garment from the boat and draped it over me.

“Anonymity is a gift,” she muttered, arranging the complex folds around me.

“You reek of sunlight!” he complained as we climbed in. “Bad enough you had to go up there when you did, but coming back with its taint on you...”

“Hush,” the potato said, and we continued our trip in silence.

It’s hard for me to describe my first trip through the Darkend. I’m so used to it now. It’s not without it’s beauty; phosphorescent flowers bloom along the sides of the canal, giant blind fish swim through it. Mostly we poled through narrow walls, but from time to time we entered enormous caverns, deserted this time of day. There seemed to be a myriad of canals leading from these places. I had never thought of vampires as boating types, but they certainly seemed to be. We passed one or two people, dressed in the same encompassing garb as we were. They didn’t acknowledge us as we scraped past them. Finally we reached a grand set of gates half submerged in the water.

“This is it,” the potato whispered. “Open the door. Just press your hands against it. The house should recognize you as the master.”

I reached out and gingerly touched the cold wet metal. Instantly the gates swung inwards, and the boatman poled us through. Behind us the gates swung shut, their clank upsetting the heavy silence.

The boat man pushed us against a wooden dock and tied the boat up.

The potato turned towards me, grinning widely. “Welcome home!”

(12) Part 2: The Saving Grace of Coffee

2008-02-06T14:52:00.000-08:00

Don’t worry– this isn’t the end of the story. But, dear readers, let us put my story on hiatus while we turn to another tale of dark creatures... this is the tale of Jennifer Park, who will appear in my story later on. It is a gruesome and harrowing tale, not for the feint of heart.

Note; I’m reproducing this story pretty much as Jennifer told it to me, so don’t blame me if it gets a little odd. She’s an odd person and, coming from me, that’s saying something.

Imagine a dark alley, the shadows hanging heavy between the brick tenements. One young college student dares to brave the darkness before her door. I would have moved, I really would have, only the rent was so cheap and money so scarce. And I had a secret thing for my roommate, Teddy. When he said ‘hi’ to me my heart fluttered like a butterfly. I was tempted to save his rubbish and make a voodoo doll from it to make him fall in love with me. I secretly cleaned up his messes for the thrill that I got from doing something for him. You know what it’s like to be young and in love. It’s synonymous with ‘insane’.

Anyways, Teddy began going out with a girl who was uglier, stupider and even more servile than I was, so, broken hearted, I abandoned him to his dark apartment and found a beautiful well-lit loft unfortunately out of my price range. I took a second part time job at a coffee shop, and found that a combination of coffee, sugar and panic was enough to replace most of my sleep. Sure my grades took a slight dip, and my friends began to comment on how loopy I was getting, and began leaving literature about the side-effects of over-use of coffee and exhaustion where they knew I’d find it, but the brilliance of the sunlight pouring through my windows in the morning and the lack of Teddy were worth it.

Fortunately, coffee ended up saving my life.

As you know, or perhaps you don’t know, as people are sadly uninformed about these things, vampires are allergic to coffee. Now there are hundreds of different kinds of vampires, and so hundreds of exceptions to every rule covering them (almost all are covered in “A Spotter’s Guide To Vampires” by my friend Rudyard Greeble, you really should get a copy if you don’t have one) but, according to Ruddy, about 95% of all vampires are allergic to coffee. Just a little bit is okay; gives them a bit of a rush, but too much and they just explode. Ruddy has some kind of complicated explanation for this, but all I really understood was that it had something to do with them not having metabolisms.

The introduction of coffee to Europe was a great blow to them, and it’s popularity in recent times is pretty much why there aren’t many of them around today. That’s all changing though. People are realizing how important sleep is to their mental processes. Now everyone is drinking green tea and decaffeinated non-fat spiced mocha chai lattes. Vampires like the taste of decaffeinated non-fat spiced mocha chai lattes as much as everyone else and the fact that they come diluted in blood and don’t cost seven dollars is a big plus.

Now the reason that coffee is such a danger to vampires and the reason that drinking it won’t save you from getting bitten is that it’s one of the only things they can’t smell. They can smell fear a thousand miles away and chocolate (which does go as well with blood as everyone says) five thousand, but even if you were standing there with a cup of coffee in your hand they would be completely clueless. Which is ridiculous, but there you go. If you were going to cut all of the ridiculousness out of vampires you wouldn’t have much less at all. I mean crimson satin lined cloaks? Living in dark moldy basements? No thank you.

So there I was walking along (or should I say wobbling) down the dark street, drunk as a very drunk person, and the next thing I know a cloaked figure is one minute trying to give me the hickey from hell and the next moment is a thousand little squishy bits, many of which are unpleasantly clinging to my skin. I meant the exploding thing literally.

Somehow I managed to make it back to my apartment and to have a good wash before collapsing on my bed. I had only the haziest memories of the incident, and I would have written it all off as a crazy drunken blackout and would probably have come up with a good explanation for the fang marks in my neck and the disgusting stuff that was covering the clothes I had gone to the party in, if a few other side effects hadn’t started kicking in.

It was one of my rare days off. I didn’t have any classes, didn’t have any work, and damned if I was going to study. That’s why I had let myself get so drunk; I had been planning on hanging around my apartment all day in my pajamas eating junk food and watching movies. No half-hearted attempts at meditation or yoga. Not even a glimpse of my books. A hellish hangover fitted perfectly in the scheme of things.

When you think about it, vampires must have some amazing abilities. Seeing in the dark, yeah, okay, but they must also have some amazing regenerative powers that keep their dead bodies from rotting and falling to pieces (the truth is that they do sell a bit like rotting corpses and I’ve known them to spit out maggots from time to time, but most of them are in pretty good shape for upteen-year-old dead folk.) And then there are all those things about them being able to turn into bats (about 15%), to turn into smoke (3%, thank god), to fly (about 50%), and be extraordinarily fast (87%). Vampires are, pretty much, magical creatures, although they don’t like to admit it. The truth is that when most people think of magical creatures they think of watered down children’s stories and Disney movies. Now me, I don’t like magic. Why? Because, like the story of the monkey’s paw, it gives you everything you want, in a way which makes you really not want it anymore. Magic isn’t very Harry Potter, but it does have an awful lot of Lord Voldemort in it.

Breaking News, brought to you only by the Vampire News Network
Dress up fancy today, boys and girls. Vampire lord Ask-kah-nali-sha, commonly known as Lord Ask has bitten the big one. That’s right; death by caffeine. So now the baronage of Midoria is up for grabs... more on the possible candidates later. Meanwhile, stay out of the sun and don’t forget to check your food for poison.

When I woke up, around two in the afternoon, the room was shockingly, disturbingly bright. It was like someone was shining a flashlight in my face. I slapped a hand over my eyes and bumbled around my room looking for my sunglasses.

Damn it, I thought. I’ve never had a hangover like this before.

It was miserable. I felt dizzy and woozy and I wanted to kill something but, unfortunately was too sick to face the prospect of eating chocolate which is my normal recourse when I am desperately homicidal (the normal result of dealing with male stupidity). I turned the tv on but couldn’t deal with the inanity of the programming, the mind-dulling idiocy which I normally enjoy, as it helps to turn off my brain. I trolled the internet but found it to be a repeat of the same. Finally I decided to snuggle into my couch and brood. Within a few minutes I was asleep again.

When I woke up it was dark. I pulled off my sunglasses and looked around the room in amazement. I could tell it was dark because all the colors were washed out of the world; my room was a sea of monotonous laundry (which I had been planning on getting around to doing all week). But I could see everything clearly. The realization made me sit up suddenly (oh, the dizziness). I could see in the dark!

Immediately the fuzzy recollection of the night before came back to me. Something swooping... pain... And then there were the marks on my neck– god it hurts. Hope it’s not infected– ... I put two and two together and got five. Vampires don’t exist.

I lay on the couch and brooded some more.

In my dream I was flying over a city, brilliantly lit up with lights. I could feel the warmth of the living rising from the buildings below, the sweet scent of their beating hearts drifting towards the moon like delicious perfume. I breathed in the fragrant air. Soon, I thought. I swooped lower to the city, dropped into a park, a blot of darkness in the sea of lights...

When I woke (again) my heart was racing as if trying to reassure itself that I was still alive. I gasped as I fought my way to consciousness, hurtling up from my bed. In a second I was on my feet, braced as if preparing for an attack.

Its true. I’m turning into a vampire. I looked at myself in the mirror for reassurance but the mirror reflected nothing but blackness, a reminder of my new magical abilities, a reminder that I would never be normal again.

This time when I lay down again to brood I didn’t fall asleep. Horrible thoughts about what might lie in the future– and the fear that if I fell asleep again I might wake as something worse– kept me awake until morning. When I saw the colors began to seep back into the world I knew that it was dawn. I walked over to the place where the first light of the morning seeped into my windows and stood there as the sunlight began to pour through the cracks between the buildings and... didn’t burn to death. I stood there and remained human.

Breaking News, brought to you only by the Vampire News Network
Well, fangers, the report from Midoria indicates new problems on the Lord front. Because succession traditionally follows death by contest, it has been ruled by general consensus in Midoria that only the vamp who manages to kill Lord Ask’s killer will be rewarded with the baronage. VNN has been unable to discover any leads, but you can be rest assured that the human responsible will be found and taken out shortly. Just remember, competitors, that a human with a caffeine content potent enough to take out Lord Ask isn’t someone you want to be digging your teeth into. Next, up, on the weather...

Meanwhile, in Astoria..

Dolores peered in the real-mirror and patted her hair. “Just think about it for a moment, Roms; old Asky getting knocked off by an accidental encounter with a caffeine head? Doesn’t it seem kind of fishy to you?”

“Shit happens to everyone, Dolores. Stop primping– we’re late already.” Roms shot his cuffs and straightened his collar, gazing at his reflection over her shoulder.

Dolores turned away from the mirror and slung her stole around her neck. “But Ask was a cagey old bastard, that’s all that I’m saying. You had to get up pretty damn early to pull one over on that sly fox.”

“No,” another voice replied. “You had to not have gone to sleep at all.”

Roms waved his hand, annoyed in the direction of the voice. “We don’t have time for your tricks, St. Evens. We’re late for dinner.”

“Going to Old Gloom’s banquet, are we?” the mirror covered with mist.

“You know he suspects us already, Eve.” Dolores said, baring her fangs. “We can’t blow it this time.”

“I don’t know why you pander to the mob bosses, really I don’t.” An invisible hand drew a question mark on the mirror.

“Because, unlike some people, we’re quite easily done away with,” Roms slung his coat over his shoulder.

“Who’s the current ruler of Midoria?” the invisible man asked.

“There isn’t one.” Dolores frowned.

“Wrong my dear. So often wrong. Ah...” St. Evens lifted Roms hat from the hat stand and whirled it around the room. “The baron– or should I say baroness– of Midoria is the human who kill– inadvertently– the last baron. Imagine a human with the baron’s powers. Imagine if the ruler of Midoria were a pawn in your hands. If that were the case, what would you have to fear from Astoria?”

“Why not just kill the girl and become the ruler of Midoria ourselves?” Roms asked.

“Because if one of your little coven had power far in excess of another it would destroy you all. You know that as well as I do. That’s why you never tried before.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Dolores grabbed the hat from the poltergeist and set it on Roms head. “The human is probably already dead.”

“Not dead. Not yet anyways. You have two advantages over the others, my friends. You can go into the sunlight.”

“And the other?”

“I just happen to know where the girl is.”

(11)The perfect day

2008-02-04T09:20:00.002-08:00

Lyra grabbed Kiera’s clothes and bundled them up, then walked towards my car.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, following her.

“If her clothes are gone, the police will think she’s left,” she explained.

“The police?”

“Who her father will call when she’s not home when he gets back,” Lyra said, patiently. “They’ll come to the conclusion that she’s ran away. Her father will tell them of her odd habits and they’ll think she’s on drugs and that she ran away. That will be that. Her father will never stop looking for her, maybe. He’ll hire private detectives. He’ll blame himself for her loss. He’ll have nightmares about her being kidnapped. Maybe he’ll start doing drugs or drinking. Maybe he’ll kill himself.”

“You know an awful lot about this.”

“It’s not the first time it’s happened. I know a lot about nightmares. Children disappearing is a pretty popular one.”

“We could do something. We could tell him.”

“That she was killed by vampires and we exposed her body to the sunlight to keep her from turning into one?” Lyra asked sarcastically.

“I don’t know.” I slumped against the car. “We just can’t let him think she’s disappeared. We can’t let him lie awake every night imagining the worst.” The happenings of the day washed over me. “Lyra, do you have any other magical powers?”

“Powers?”

“In that room you showed us what the vampire looked like.”

“I was only imaging the memory of the ether.”

“Can you do anything else like that? Can you convince people of things that aren’t true? Make them imagine things?”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure.”

“Try,” I persisted. “Make me imagine that there’s a dragon standing in the street.”

She lightly put her hands against my head and concentrated. I felt heat beneath her hands, greater than the heat people usually give you. In the road the air shimmered, formed...

I gasped. There was a dragon there, a more ferocious, horrifying than any I’d ever been able to imagine. It was the dragon of nightmares, the dragon of fucking horrible dreams.

“Stop,” I pleaded. “Stop.”

She took her hands away and the vision faded, but its memory burned brightly behind my eyes.

“Now make me believe something... make me believe that on Valentines’ day I ate chocolate.”

She put her hands against my temple and, more easily it seemed, more quickly, I was presented with the memory of being given a box of chocolates, I remembered the taste of them, the most delicious chocolates I’ve ever eaten.

“Stop,” I said again. My mouth was watering with desire. When she took her hands from my temple a second time, I could have been convinced that I had gotten, eaten those chocolates, if I didn’t have the conflicting memory of asking her to give the memory to me.

“You want to give her father a false memory? Convince him that it’s okay not to worry about her?”

“We can’t tell him the truth. That’s the same as lying, isn’t it? Not telling someone what they need to know. We’d just be taking it to another level. We’d be telling him the truth; that he doesn’t need to worry about her.”

“What do you want to tell him?”

“That she’s gone but she’s okay. She’s in a better place.”

“That’s not a memory, that’s an impression.”

“Can you do it?”

Lyra thought for a moment. “I think so.” She brushed her white hair out of her face. “Actually, it will probably be easier. How will we reach her father?”

“He has a part-time job working at a shop,” I explained. “To make ends meet.”

Lyra threw the clothes in the back of the car and slipped in the front.

We didn’t speak much of the ride there. There was a lot to think about; visions of that bright light danced before my eyes. What could it mean? What had really happened to Kiera? I felt weird; numb, careless. I began to feel like it would be the easiest thing just to let it all go. Swerve the car and crash into a building. End this mental madness. I felt my hands begin to slip on the steering wheel. No more confusion. No more craziness.

And then I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I sat up and blinked. The world had seemed so dark for a second, so hopeless. I glanced at Lyra.

“Those are the nightmares trying to get to you,” she said softly. “Don’t let them slip in.”

“What was the light?” I asked her. “When Kiera die...disappeared, just now when you touched me?”

“That was her soul– your soul. They’re trapped in your body, hidden by all the thinking you do, but when there aren’t any barriers they shine like suns.”

“But I don’t usually see it.”

“That’s because you think too much.”

I parked my car I front of the hardware store Kiera’s dad had worked in. “Do you have a soul as well?”

“Of course I do. Everything has a soul.”

“Does that mean that God exists?”

“Souls can exist without God theoretically, but yes, God exists. Just nothing like you imagine.”

She stepped out of the car and followed me into the shop. There was Mr. McGill, standing behind the register. Lyra didn’t even need me to point him out to her. She merely walked up to him, dressed in her odd fashion, smiling strangely, and put her hand on his. His expression went from perplexed to calm in a few seconds, then she lifted her hand and walked away.

“Did you do it?” I asked.

“I gave him a wonderful dream,” she replied. She turned to me on the sidewalk outside the hardware store. “I can do that for you, too, if you want. You can forget all about vampires, all about everything that’s happened today, and just go back to living your live the way it used to be.”

“But what about you? Where will you go?”

“Don’t worry.” She smiled. “I have means.”

Of course a woman with the ability to make people believe whatever she wants them to would have resources.

Did I want to forget? Kiera dying, the urge I had had to kill myself, Lyra popping out of nowhere? The vampires? The terrible reality of vampires?

Yes. It was bad enough living in a world where nightmares were insubstantial. Living in one where they were real?

“Yes,” I said. “Erase my memory.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yes. Just do it.”

She put her hands to my forehead and...

I don’t know why, but that Saturday was particularly wonderful. I woke from an amazing dream, had a delicious morning, and felt like my life had somehow changed for the better. Even the odd feeling that I was missing something couldn’t disrupt the happiness.

It was the perfect day.

(10) Sunshine

2008-01-31T15:58:00.000-08:00

Unconscious, Kiera looked young; too young to believe in vampires, too young to be prey. Lyra bent over her and rested her hand on Kiera’s forehead.

“I didn’t realize it would be this bad,” she whispered.

“She needs medical attention,” I said. “I should call the ambulance.”

“She doesn’t need medical attention,” Lyra corrected. “Medical attention doesn’t know about vampires. Medical attention can’t do anything to help her.”

“All she needs is blood, right? They can give her blood at the hospital.”

“No.” Lyra looked up at me, her black eyes narrowing. “She doesn’t need blood.”

“But I thought... you said...” She had said that all that would happen to Kiera was that she would die. Of blood loss.

“If she died in the old days like this they would bury her with a stake in her heart and a cross around her neck. They would bury her deep.”

“She’s turning into a vampire?” I asked, staring down at the pale face. What did that entail? Her heart would stop beating, her cells would die, but she would still be walking around? How did that work? I realized at that moment that I had always put all my faith in science. When the body died it stopped moving.

But girls didn’t live for thousands of years in dreamlands and then appear out of nowhere, naked in your bed. Vampires didn’t sneak into girls houses, with their dream-given permission, and drink their blood. Except metaphorically, of course.

Metaphorically. My life was a metaphor. I had the sudden urge to go home and go to sleep and not wake up until I could pretend this had all been a dream. Nightmare. I could write of it later as an allegory. Monsters don’t really exist. The true evils of the world are things you can’t fight with a sword. Except now it seemed that they did.

Lyra didn’t respond to my question. She stroked Kiera’s cheek as if reassuring her.

“Isn’t there some antidote?” I demanded. “Some cure?”

“There’s always a cure,” Lyra whispered. “The fountain of youth, the Holy Grail, the Philosopher’s Stone, the apple of knowledge... anything that will ensure eternal life can save her.”

“Those don’t sound like accessible things.”

Lyra sat back on her heels, looked up at me again. “I know where they are. The fountain of youth has been paved over; it’s in the middle of a parking lot in Florida. The Holy Grail was melted down and now exists as 327 separate pieces of jewelry. The Philosopher’s Stone is at the bottom of the ocean, sunk with a passenger ship when it was attacked by pirates. The apple of knowledge disappeared years ago. I don’t know where it is. Possibly someone ate it and is never suffering the eternal torment of life.”

“Eternal life doesn’t sound like torment,” I said.

“You’ve never read All Men Are Mortal apparently.”

“So there’s no cure.” I looked at the unconscious girl. “Why did you lie to her?”

“I didn’t think that she was that far gone. Would you like to hear that there was a possibility that you could become a life-less, evil creature who could only stay alive by killing others?”

“No, I guess not.” I admitted. “Will she really become evil? Are all vampires evil?”

Lyra thought about it for a moment. “I guess evil is a bad choice of words. Lions kill to eat. Are they evil? Vampires don’t kill people and suck their blood because they’re evil, they do it because that’s what allows them to stay alive. But there’s something... twisted about them. As if the lives they lead destroy their goodness. Think about it this way; if you had to kill people to stay alive would you? Or would you kill yourself.”

“I’d like to think I’d kill myself.”

“But you’d have to think about it, wouldn’t you? Becoming a vampire means that it’s no longer hard to make that choice. You kill.”

“So what do we do?” I looked down at the still body. Her chest lifted gently, slowly, with breath. Our bodies are continuously moving. The heart is a muscle that never stops, the brain is always alight, and even when we wish we could just stop we can’t. Not until we die, and then there’s decomposition. Unless you become a vampire. Stuck in a place between life and death. Stopped.

Lyra stood up, looked down at the girl.

“It’s hard to kill a vampire,” she said.

“And easy to kill a child?” I supplied. “No.”

“I don’t want to do it either,” Lyra told me.

I swallowed. “You haven’t been in this world a day and already you’re contemplating killing someone.”

“You haven’t seen what they can do,” Lyra whispered. “You haven’t seen their black, twisted dreams.”

“We’ll contact the vampire hunters,” I decided. “We’ll see what they say.”

“I know what they’ll say,” Lyra argued. “They’ll say ‘kill it’ and if we hesitate they’ll come over here and kill it themselves. They’re so used to killing they won’t even flinch.”

“Is destroying a vampire killing?” I asked.

“It looks human and sounds human and when it’s about to lose it pleads for mercy like a human. In the end it screams like a human. If it isn’t killing its so close to it that it’s hard to see the difference.”

“And yet you’re saying we should kill her...”

“We should kill her before she becomes something she would never have wanted to be. If we kill her her soul will be free. Light as a feather, it will float to it’s next life. What are the alternatives? She’ll live as a vampire and eventually she’ll die with her soul so heavy it will sink down to hell, down to the torture of memory.”

“A mercy killing, then? Are you certain she’ll become a vampire? You thought before she’d live.”

“Look at her. She’s stopped breathing.”

I looked down. Even the faint breath was gone. Her still eyes hung open.

“She looks dead,” I whispered.

“She’s not-dead.”

“Undead,” I corrected.

Lyra nodded. “Dead but not-dead.” We stared down at the still body.

“I think I know what I’d answer,” I told her.

She looked at me, not understanding.

“To whether I’d kill myself before killing others.” I swallowed. “I’d kill myself.” I said. “It’s not because I’m noble or anything. I’m a coward. I don’t give blood because I’m afraid of needles and I didn’t apply for that job in the inner city because I’m afraid of kids with guns and I’m not even in a relationship because I’m afraid of relationships, and if I had to kill myself or kill someone else I choose death because I’m more afraid of being a killer than I am of dying. I can’t kill her. She’s just a child and even if she is already dead and she’s going to turn into a monster, I can’t believe that killing her is the best way to get rid of the problem.”

Lyra nodded. She reached across the dead body, grabbed my hand. “I can’t kill her either,” she said, “softly.”

“What’s going to happen?” I asked.

“We’re going to leave and hope that she doesn’t remember us.”

“And she’s going to kill people?”

“Probably. She could get killed by other vampires, or she could get picked up by the vampire hunters. But she’ll probably kill people.”

“Which makes it our fault.” I dropped and put my hand on her chest. It didn’t move. Her heart didn’t beat. No warm breath rose from her parted lips. “How do you kill a vampire?”

“Sunlight,” Lyra whispered. We looked towards the window. It was burning bright out, the sun reflected off the sparkling snow, as if the world was covered in sequins.

I lifted the light body, a feather in my arms and carried it down the stairs.

“If she isn’t a vampire, this won’t hurt her,” I reasoned. “We’ll know.”

Lyra opened the door for me and I walked into the light. I placed her gently on the snow and stepped back.

“Nothing's happening,” I told Lyra. “She’s human.”

“Look.”

I looked back at the body. Steam was beginning to arise around it, the snow melting. Kiera’s skin was as white as the snow now, shining like the snow. She seemed to glow brighter and brighter until I had to look away. When I looked back her body was gone, her clothes collapsed into the melted snow.

(8)Kiera's Special Friend

2008-01-25T12:51:00.000-08:00

I told Kiera to sit tight and Lyra and I speeded over there. I figured that Lyra might be of some help– after all, it’s not as if I knew what I was doing– and she didn’t have anywhere else to go. She was a little apprehensive about riding in the car with me, which found a little rude until I discovered that it was riding in cars at all that disturbed her. I guess car crashes are a little too common in dream-land.

Kiera was in a worse state than I had expected.

She opened the door as soon as we knocked, her face almost as pale as Lyra’s, which is saying something.

“Are you okay?” I asked, without thinking. As if I would be okay if I had just discovered that a vampire was visiting me nightly, treating me like the local blood bank. I took a moment out of the surreal situation to wonder if the red cross could be a valuable source for keeping down vampire-related deaths.

“I don’t feel very well,” she admitted. She was swaying on her feet.

“You should drink something with sugar,” I suggested. I walked past her into the house. It was a little messy and shabby; what you’d expect when the only parent was a working dad. “This is Lyra,” I gestured to the oddly dressed woman who followed me into the house.

Lyra smiled at Kiera and offered her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Lyra’s... knows some things about vampires,” I explained. “Why don’t you show us the video?”

Kiera led us to her room.

“I actually didn’t get a picture of the vampire. I guess you can’t take their picture.”

She clicked a few buttons on her laptop and a video screen popped up. An image of Kiera’s bed room appeared, the window and her bed both clearly visible.

“Look,” she pointed at the screen. The window was opening, slowly. Once it was fully open, the curtains billowed inwards. After a few minutes, in which, Kiera moaned in her sleep, the window closed again.

“What do you think?” she asked anxiously. Lyra walked to the side of her head and held out her hand. A figure began to emerge in front of her, thin and see through, like holographs in science fiction movies. A man, white-skinned, black haired, dressed in a black t-shirt and black jeans.

Kiera flinched back at the sight.

“It’s just an image,”Lyra assured her. She lifted her hands and the image faded. “There are many different kinds of vampires.”

“Why?” Kiera demanded.

Lyra paused. “Because different people have different nightmares.”

“Vampires are made from nightmares?”

“Not really. But kind of. It’s much more complicated, I think.” She sat down on the bed and picked up the stuffed animal that had been lain there. It was a blue fox, well worn and going bald. “Does this have a name?” she asked.

“Yeah. That’s Bluefield.”

“It’s kind of like that. People make blue fox toys and name them and think they’re real.”

“But toys don’t drink your blood.”

“And that’s where it’s not really a good explanation.”

“That’s nice,” I said, “but do we do about this vampire?”

Lyra smiled at me. “Well, as I said, there’s lots of different kinds of vampires. This kind is a... actually, it doesn’t work in your language. Let’s call them Sleeper vampires.”

“Why?” Kiera, ever eager to question everything, asked.

“Because they don’t kill people as much as make them sleep more.”

“So I won’t die from this?”

Lyra paused. “If it continues, you’ll eventually die. The point is, you’re not dead yet. Sleeper vampires are also the only ones who come into houses. They, well, they invade your dreams first. They have to get permission before they come in.”

“They have my permission?”

“People do all sorts if crazy things when they’re dreaming. Believe me. Things like vampires have to ask your permission before they come in. That’s why you all haven’t been killed in your sleep.”

“Why?” Kiera demanded.

“It’s kind of like a territory thing. This is your territory so they can’t come in without permission.”

“So vampires read no trespassing signs?” I asked sarcastically. “This is all very interesting, but what do we do about the vampires? How do we get rid of them before they kill Kiera?”

Lyra smoothed down Bluefield’s worn fur and frowned.

“They’re pretty traditional, for vampires,” she replied. “They’re allergic to garlic, sunlight, and holy symbols. They can be killed by beheading, a stake in the heart, exposure to sunlight.”

“Great.” I said. “I’ll just break out my vampire hunting skills and spike the sucker, shall I?”

“Your despair is not warranted,” Lyra said mildly. “It will not be necessary to kill this vampire. All that’s needed is to discourage him. He will go after easier prey if he finds that Kiera is well guarded. It is unlikely that he is seriously committed to drinking of her blood.” She looked around the room pensively. “Here’s what we should do; rub raw garlic on the outside and inside of your window sill and door, sprinkle your room with holy water, wrap your neck in a cloth, attaching a holy symbol to the place where you are normally bitten, and to make certain, eat four cloves of raw garlic before you go to bed.”

“I’ve got garlic,” Kiera replied, “but I don’t have any holy water. I don’t go to church.”

“That’s okay,” Lyra said. “It doesn’t have to be blessed by a priest. Just someone who believes in God. Any God will do.” She looked at me.

“Hey,” I raised my hands. “Don’t look at me. I don’t believe in anything.”

“I believe in God,” Kiera said. “What do I do?”

“Well you need a container of water. This will do.” She picked up Kiera’s nalgene and handed it to her. “Now you have to imagine that God is inhabiting every particle in the water, that it’s infused with divine light. Now say a prayer asking God to bless the water.”

Kiera closed her eyes. “Dear God, please make this water holy so the vampires don’t get me.” She opened her eyes and looked at Lyra. “Is that good?”

“Perfect.” Lyra said. She touched the Nalgene with her and and smiled. “Yep, nice and holy. It would probably be best if you sprinkled this around your room just before you go to sleep. You don’t have to pour it on the floor; just a few drops here and there would be good. Now, for a holy symbol, you can just draw something that has meaning to you. It’s your belief that’s important, not any one else’s.”

“That’s it then?” Kiera asked. “Just garlic and some water?”

“Your vampire isn’t one of the difficult ones,” Lyra said. “But I’ll write down all of my suggestions just to make sure you know what do.” She sat down at Kiera’s desk and started writing on a notebook paper she found there.”

“What about the harder ones?” Kiera persisted. “How do you kill them?”

“You don’t,” Lyra said. “You call people who can help you.”

“Vampire hunters? Really?” Kiera looked excited. “Are they like witches, like in the Amelia Atwater-Rose books?”

“I don’t know what those are,” Lyra replied, writing while she spoke in a swooping cursive. “There are witches as well, of course, but they’re mostly just people with training. A little bit of magic never goes amiss though.”

“Do you know how to contact them? Just in case this vampire isn’t assuaged?”

“Assuaged?” I asked, amused.

“It was a vocabulary word,” Kiera defended. “You said it means...”

“People don’t often use it out loud, though.”

“Then what’s the point of teaching it to us? God, I don’t know why all you teachers teach us things which are never going to be useful.”

I ignored this comment.

“I do know how to contact the vampire hunters,” Lyra said, looking up from her writing. “And I’m not going to tell you. You don’t want to get mixed up in that kind of thing. Just follow these directions and then forget all about vampires existing.”

“But what if I’m attacked by a vampire someday?!”

“You chances of being attacked by a vampire someday are smaller than your chances of...” she paused, making face as if she were mentally calculating the statistical probability of different types of death. “...dying by something very rare.” She finished lamely.

We both looked at her for a moment.

“I couldn’t think of anything, okay?”

“Dying by heart attack, dying in a plane crash, dying of spontaneous combustion.”

“I thought of those things, but they’re really very common,” Lyra defended.

“Spontaneous combustion?” Kiera questioned.

“The government covers it up.”

“Does the government cover up the vampires as well?”

Lyra considered. “Most of them don’t know about it,” she said finally. “The FBI has a special bureau of vampire affairs, but it’s top secret and all that. The truth is they’re more concerned about trying to figure out how to make vampires into a weapon than do anything about them.”

“This is beginning to sound more and more surreal,” Kiera said. “And I’m not feeling very well.” She stood up from the bed, took one step and fell flat on her face.

Lyra and I looked at each other. “God dammit,’ I said.

(7)In which pancakes are, in fact, not made

2008-01-19T21:50:00.001-08:00

I mean I tried to make pancakes.

I poured her a cup of coffee, placing the cup down in the space I had cleared for it. She tasted it and grimaced.

“It’s very... strong...” she said, her eyes popping open.

I passed her the jar of sugar.

“You can put some sugar in it. I’m sorry I don’t have any milk.”

She looked confused for a moment.

“Milk?” she asked finally. “Like... lactation?”

How does a person know the word ‘lactation’ but not ‘breakfast’?

“Yes. From cows.”

“You drink that?”

I looked down at the eggs I was just about to break into the pancake mix.

“You don’t drink milk?” I asked.

She grimaced, the way someone might if you asked them if they ate squid.

“Do you eat eggs?”

“You mean from birds?”

“Chickens.”

“Uh.... no.”

I put the eggs back in the box.

“We’ll just have toast,” I suggested. I grabbed a few slices from the loaf in the freezer. “Do you eat meat?”

“Animal flesh?” she clarified. I winced. I don’t like to go around thinking of my food as flesh... although, of course, it was. “No. Nothing from animals.”

“Where are you from?” I asked, popping the toast in the toaster.

She shrugged.

“You don’t know?”

“It didn’t have a name. We were just a group of people, wandering across the plains... The plains were all that existed. We were all that existed. We didn’t need names, then. The place doesn’t exist anymore, either. It is forest or desert... I lost track of it a long time ago.”

“So you were like a hunter-gather?” I looked at her closely. She looked fairly normal, except for excessive paleness.

“Back then. That was a long time ago. Things have changed. I watched the world change from where I was.”

“Where were you?”

“In dreams, I think.” She narrowed her eyes, frowned. “I’m not sure, really. I don’t even know how I got there. It was a very strange place. Peoples dreams are weird, twisting things. It wasn’t easy to see the world through them.”

“But you used to eat meat?” I asked. “If you were a hunter-gatherer.”

“Yes, I did... but animals dream too, you know? Everything dreams. The dreams of trees take decades, warm slow silences. The dreams of whales are massive and blue. Bees dream of slow, sweet sunshine. Animals dream of the weather, of their children, of sensation. But the ones in farms dream of cages and pain.”

“So one day you found yourself in dreams...”

“And I never woke up. Right.”

I slid the toast onto plates and gave her the only flavor of jam I had.

“Do you know about vampires?” I asked. “Are the real?”

“Vampires?” Her eyes widened. “Yes. They’re real.”

“What do they dream of?”

“Fear. Pain. Rivers of blood. Their dreams are terrible. Monstrous.” She shook her head. “I would not like to meet a vampire.”

We sat (or stood, in my case) for a while, eating our toast. Finally I put my plate down in the sink and brushed the crumbs off my palms.

“I’m going to get dressed,” I said, walking back to the bedroom.

“Oh, um...” she stood up. “Thank you for the food and the clothing. And rescuing me, even if it was unintentional.”

“You’re welcome.” I replied. She’s just a person, I told myself. Imagine if I were in her place.

I turned around and walked back across the room to her.

“I’m Clair,” I said, extending my hand.

“It’s nice to meet you. I’m Lyra.”

“Nice to meet you.” I left her standing there, and went to get showered and dressed.

When I came back Lyra had her nose buried in an encyclopedia.

She looked up, shutting the book.

“I’m sorry to touch your things...” she began.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “You can read any of the books you want.” I yawned. “But I have to run some errands in town.”

“Errands?” she asked.

“You know– I have to go to the bank, go shopping, things like that. You want to come?”

“Yeah.” She jumped up, excited. “I”ve always wanted to go shopping.”

“It’s not to exciting. It’s food shopping.” I frowned, finally considering the implications of a woman appearing out of nowhere after three thousand years of being stuck in dream land. “You don’t have any money do you?” I asked.

“No... I don’t have anything, actually.” She put her hands in her pockets– my pockets– and dropped her shoulders, affecting a rather hang-dog expression.

Right, I thought. No money, no identity, nothing. I tried not to think mean things about this. We’d figure something out. Right?

“I’ve just got to go,” I began, but then the phone rang.

Lyra jumped and looked around wildly. I answered the phone, praying it wasn’t anything difficult.

“Ms Luce? It’s Kiera.”

Oh God, I thought.

Her voice shook on the other end of the phone. “The vampires? They’re real.”

(6) In which pancakes are made for the naked visitor

2008-01-16T17:59:00.000-08:00

That night I had the weirdest dream of all. I was walking along a ridge and as I walked the world flickered before me, scenes of horror and desolation appearing and disappearing like the montage of a World Vision ad. Wars, genocides, poverty, starvation, rape, murder, torture, telemarketing, all the terrible things people afflict upon each other with, were shown to me, one scene following another. You know when you watch awful things on TV and it doesn't really affect you? This wasn't like that. I could feel my brain trying to escape my skull, my eyes burning with the sights, the sounds cut threw me, and if I had been allowed a reaction I would have torn at my eyes, or vomited, or jumped off the cliffs. But like in so many dreams I had no control. I continued walking, involuntarily.

Eventually- it seemed like an eternity- the scenes dispersed leaving only the gorgeous landscape of the natural world below me. Mountains rising high in the distances, rivers winding gently through the valleys, the half moon rising through the blue sky, I couldn't take it in. The agony of my eyes and ringing of my ears faded as the sky darkened and stars began to appear in the massive heavens. Then the landscape began to shift beneath me. Trees grew up and died, mountains grew then receded, the river writhed in its course, created an oxbow and cut it off, dried up for a while, then flowed again. Through this the sky stayed the same, the stars whirling slowly.

Then, with a flash, the forests disappeared, houses grew, roads extended. The air grew thick and black, the river browned. The world bloomed with lights. And suddenly I recognized the scene; my city. It rippled outward, invading that had been farm land. Houses grew higher, turned into skyscrapers. Slowly the green disappeared, eaten up by the ugly brown of the city. The pollution was so thick and the lights so bright that the stars had faded until the brilliant milky way was no longer visible, and through the hazy orange glow, without the light of the stars or the moon, darkness was even darker than it had been before.

Then all of that faded and I was in the snow field again, and the girl was still walking towards me, was right before me. She opened her mouth and spoke.

"save me."

She reached out and touched my arm with her white hand and I screamed.

And screamed.

And screamed.

And woke.

And then I screamed again, this time because a naked woman was lying on top of me in bed.

She covered my mouth with her hands and I stopped.

"Screaming won't help," she said. Her voice was as smooth as velvet, an analogy I never understood until this moment. It was as if all of the words were expelled on one breath. There was a slight accent as well, an unfamiliarity with English, a way her words didn't exactly fill the spaces words are expected to.

My mind reeled for the appropriate behavior in this situation. She was right, screaming wouldn't help, except for the way it clearly demonstrated that this was not a position I had intentionally gotten myself into.

I never expected to end up in bed with a naked woman. For the record, that's not the way I usually go.

And no, you perverts, I didn't take advantage of the circumstances.

The girl rolled off of me, out of the bed, smoothly onto her feet.

"It's cold," she said, hugging her arms around her thin body.

"There are some clothes in the drawers," I gestured, "help yourself."

I pulled myself out of bed as well, wrapping my bathrobe around me, trying not to look as the naked girl rummaged through my clothes. It didn't seem polite, but the sudden intrusion had rattled me enough that I couldn't stop staring. For example: where did she come from? How was any of this actually possible?

As a child I had dreamed of magic. The ability to fly, to make things out of nothing, to shape shift into animals... it would have been so wonderful, I thought. Magic would have made life easy.

But as I got older I began to wonder. I began to be happy magic didn't exist. People destroyed things so easily with what they had, how much worse would the world be if there was magic. Or to put it another way; life contains too much horror for anyone to wish for monsters.

And now, falling out of nowhere was proof; of magic and quite probably of monsters. And me, the most unlikely heroine. I have no secret powers, I have no mysterious roots. I'm white bread middle class, ordinary. Really really ordinary.

The girl seemed to be rather unfamiliar with the manner of clothing. I'm not going to help her. I thought. Instead I began to leave the room.

"Do you want coffee?" I asked. "Breakfast?"

She looked at me uncertainly for a moment. "Yes?" she replied hopefully.

Great. I've been saddled with a person who doesn't know about breakfast. I swung into the kitchen area and began clattering about pots and pans. Exhaustion, my constant friend, had numbed my brain to anything but that which might cause me annoyance; hence my lack of sympathy for the poor creature who seemed to have given up in confusion and just grabbed an armful of clothes, and was now wearing a short semi-formal dress over my painting jeans, and a long sleeved shirt. She'd tied a blue scarf around her waist and was wearing some fluffy slippers my mom had given me for Christmas.

I'm not a fluffy slipper person. That's the horrible truth.

Now that she was dressed I felt free to take a good look at her. Before, when she was naked, I had felt too embarrassed. Now I was shocked. Her skin was almost white, only the flush of blood beneath giving her color. Her hair was white-blonde, so fine it almost appeared transparent. Her eyes were black orbs, the iris blending into the pupil indiscriminately. At least now the whites were white. At least now there were no stars spinning in the depths. For all of their odd color they were human eyes. Mortal eyes.

She sat down uncertainly at the rickety table. As usual, it was covered with junk; papers to grade, mail, discarded wrappers which had never made their way to the trash. She picked up a valentine's day card curiously, peering at the pink heart.

"I love you beary much," she read with difficulty.

"It's from my dad," I explained, pouring coffee into the machine and flicking it on. "He sends me one every year. It's like a tradition."

She nodded uncertainly, sniffing the air. "That's nice. What's that smell?"

"Coffee. You've never had coffee?"

She shook her head. "I haven't eaten in... four thousand years?"

"You haven't..." I stopped, dead still, the mug I was washing slipping out of my hands to clatter into the sink. Four thousand... I began to consider how any of this might be possible. But if this wasn't possible, how would my dreams have been? The implication of this whole thing being a set up seemed, momentarily, worse than hosting a four thousand year old girl for early breakfast.

I picked up the mug, priding myself on my self-control, and began washing it again.

"You must be hungry then," I said carefully.

"Did I say something that startled you?" she asked, sounding concerned.

As if she wasn't aware how much this entire thing freaked me out.

Okay, so she probably wasn't.

"People generally don't live longer than a hundred years," I replied, beginning to wash another mug. "And they generally don't live at all if they don't eat."

"I wasn't exactly living," she said, slowly. "I was stuck in this other place; the place where you found me."

"I didn't find you," I corrected. "You just started appearing in my dreams."

"Your psyche was seeking me out. "

"So this is all my fault?!" I demanded. I was on the verge of tears, trying to remind myself not to act like a spoiled child.

"Fault?" she asked, confused. "You saved me."

"But I didn't even know..." I trailed off, a few more stupid protestations dying on my lips. If you had to know what you were doing to do anything there would be significantly less pregnant teenagers wandering around. I took a deep breath, congratulated myself again on my self-control, and asked her what she wanted for breakfast. She said she didn't know what breakfast was, so I just made pancakes.

(5) In which vampires are finally mentioned

2008-01-14T08:59:00.000-08:00

Dryad’s words kept ringing in my ears. My life was about to change, she had said, drastically. I began imagining all the horrible things which could happen to me. Cancer. Unemployment. Life held terrible, unstoppable things. My life began seeming better and better. So what if my job was exhausting and seemingly useless? At least I had a job, and I was doing something. And, after all, maybe I helped the kids more than I thought I did. Maybe I inspired a few to lead lives they wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. After all, wasn’t it better to save one life than none at all?

I didn’t want to go on a quest with– what was it? A scientist, a magician and a warrior. I wanted to live my suddenly, blissfully, dream-free life.

“You seem to be doing a bit better,” Alden commented the next time he saw me. “You’re painting again.” He gestured to the canvas which sat, prepared, propped up on my desk.

“Yes, and no,” I answered, clearing the table so I could set it, a mismatch of dishes I had inherited from former tenants. “I want to paint, more than I have in a long time, but I can’t think of anything to paint.”

“Why don’t you paint your dreams?” Alden suggested, peeling the tinfoil from the garlic bread. “You told me you were having some weird ones.”

“They’ve stopped. I went to see Michelle and she gave me some herbs for them.”

“Herbs for dreams? How does that work? Aromatherapy?”

“Well, no. You can’t actually smell them. Maybe it’s the plant auras or something.”

“That’s so Michelle.”

“What is?”

“Plant auras. Plants to save you from bad dreams. As if they have a source, besides your brain. As if there was something evil out there that wanted to cause you fear.”

“Don’t you believe there’s something out there?” I asked Alden, spooning peas onto plates.

“Yeah,” he replied sitting down. “There’s a whole universe out there. Atoms, solar systems, orbs spinning in the void. But nothing that sends your dreams, good or bad. No plant auras, no people auras even. Just physics.”

I thought a moment of arguing, then changed my mind. People like Alden can be convinced as easily of the fallacies of science as people like Dryad can be of the truth of it. The truth is, I think somewhere in between. Things exist... but not everything. Some magic might, but Harry Potter certainly doesn’t (although there certainly is enough Voldemort in the world.) The truth is that we walk the middle road between those things. The road neither of them would consider.

Alden left after doing the dishes and I sat down before the prepared canvas, thinking. There was nothing inherently scary about a black figure walking on a snow field, after all, but something very dramatic about it. And the dreams had gone away. It wasn’t like she was some demon out to get me. I might think there was something in Dryad’s philosophy, but I didn’t believe in demons.

My fingers got tired of the internal debate and picked up the pencil, outlining the image in sweeping lines. Her face would just peer out of the blackness, so and her hair sweep out from under the hood. And the horizon would cut the world in half.

My fingers remembered what to do. They drew and painted as if there had been no period of years when I hadn’t held a brush. I remembered how addictive art was.

I didn’t go to bed on time.

That night the dreams return. That is to say, not the some dreams, but the same sense of terror. Instead I dreamed of another, human girl, who slept soundly in her bed and every night was visited by a man dressed all in black who reached down and touched his lips to her neck and left her whiter than before.

Normally when you think of men sneaking into the bedrooms of teenage girls you think of... other things. But there was, oddly enough, nothing sexual in this blood-letting. Instead it put me in mind altars, of blessed sacrifices. The man had the expression of someone who was drinking holy wine– the girl was a vestal virgin, a sacrifice which could not continue a sacrifice if it was not innocent.

Then the scene changed and I viewed a room full of black garbed people, lolling around, and, sitting above them, on a kind of throne, was the girl I had seen before. She pulled her black cloak around her more tightly, then looked at me, directly at me, the only person in that room of non-persons.

I woke with a start, aware of a strange burning smell. Something fell on my pillow. I looked up. Above my bed the dreamcatcher was burning, the yarn smoking as it disintegrated, the beads falling from their strings. Stupefied, I stared at it until the smoke died down and all that was left was the metal hoop I had woven the strings around and the marks the fire had inscribed on the wall, which looked oddly like a rose.

Still half-asleep, I touched the pattern lightly with my fingers, wondering at the fact that the dream catcher seemed to work; it must have just encountered a dream it couldn’t hold, poor thing. Maybe a dream catcher made of metal would work. Dark things hated iron, didn’t they? Or was that silver? An iron hoop strung with silver wire and iron beads, I thought, might work. And garlic. Somehow garlic might work as well.

Then the alarm clock rang, jolting me back into reality. In the kitchen area my coffee machine had began bubbling. Another day, another chance to forget I had ever dreamed. From my desk the half-painted face of the girl stared at me. I wasn’t scared of her, I realized. I was scared at whatever she was trying to tell me.

The next few days passed without incidence. Day do, generally. That’s why I don’t keep journals; so often I’d end up just writing “got up, brushed my teeth, had toast for breakfast...”

The next time something happened it was on a Friday. I was exhausted at the beginning of the day, which doesn’t exactly bode well for how I was going to be at the end of it. My first class of the day is, of course, homeroom. The first student in my class room, usually there before me, sitting on the ground outside of it waiting, is Kiera, the daughter of Mr. Earling, the chemistry teacher. She comes to school with her father, claiming that she leaves the same time as she would if she took the bus, but arriving half and hour sooner. Kiera is a reader. She’s always got her nose in a book. I’ve noticed she doesn’t have many friends, which is probably why she talks to me so eagerly.

She was sitting next to the door, as usual, that Friday. I was trying to juggle a stack of books, folders of papers and my beloved cup of coffee when I approached the door.

“Do you think you could take the key from me, and open the door?” I asked, her, dropping the key beside her. She took it and surged to her feet, stumbling beneath the weight of her enormous backpack.

“How are you, Ms Luce?” she asked as she unlocked the door.

“I’m tired, Kiera.”

“Good thing tomorrow is the weekend, huh?”

Kiera always sat in the front, in the corner. I figured that this limited the amount of peers she would have in her view, possibly following the out-of-sight, out-of-mind way of thinking. I empathized a lot with Kiera. I had been a lot like her, once. She sighed as she dumped her bag next to her desk, and dropped into her chair.

“Are you okay?” I asked her. She looked so white...

“I don’t know, Ms Luce,” she replied, rubbing absently at her neck. “I’ve been so tired lately, like I don’t have any energy. I don’t know why. I sleep so much... when I go to bed I fall asleep like a stone has been tied around my conscious, weighing me down into sleep. And dad says it gets increasingly hard to wake me up. Today he had to practically pour water on me, he said.”

“Do you have dreams?” I asked, thinking of my own. A man drinking the blood from a young girl...

“It’s strange, but I don’t. I used to always; every night I’d have these really vivid dreams. It used to be really hard to get up because I’d always want to go back to sleep to find out what was going to happen... but now I don’t dream at all. It’s just hard to wake up.”

“What’s that on your neck?” I asked. Beneath her rubbing hands it seemed very red.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “A bite, I think. It won’t go away.”

“Let me see.” I walked over to her, bent down to peer at the marks. A bite...

Two bites. About an inch apart. I felt the tips of my canines. That was about right.

“You’re very white suddenly, Ms Luce,” Kiera said.

“I read a story once,” I said, slowly, straightening up and staring out the window. The sun was rising over the mountains. “...about a young girl who gets weak... every day she’s weaker and weaker.”

“What was it?” Kiera asked.

“Vampires,” I whispered. “A vampire... I think he was actually their houseguest... slipped through her window every night and sucked some of her blood.”

“I thought that vampires just drank all of your blood. I thought they had to be invited into your house.”

“All the stories are contradictory. Sometimes they can’t cross running water, sometimes they’re allergic to garlic, sometimes they’re allergic to sunlight... and sometimes they’re not. No two sources agree.”

“So it’s actually impossible to know anything about them, then?” she asked. “Because if you think I have vampires, well, it would be pretty hard to find out, wouldn’t it? If you can’t really say anything about them.”

“It seems like a ridiculous idea. But you do have those marks...” A vision of the girl flashed before my eyes. “And I’ve been having these dreams...”

“Vampires don’t reflect, right? I mean in mirrors.”

“Traditionally, no,” I agreed. The clatter of arriving students began to echo down the hall.

“Do you think you’d be able to catch them on video then?”

“Why?”

“I’ve got a webcam on my laptop. I can set it to motion detection. If anything moves in my room then it will start recording. I could set it up and see if it got anything.”

“I guess you could try.” I shook my head. “This is so insane. Vampires don’t exist.”

“Unless they do. Ms Luce?” Kiera looked up at me. “If it is a vampire, what will we do?”

“I have no idea.”

(4 )Of dreams and dreamcatchers

2008-01-12T10:57:00.000-08:00

That night was the first night I had the dream. Nightmares are often indescribably awful. What I mean is that you wake up drenched in sweat and with the horrible feeling that your waffle iron is about to attack you and the next day your friends all have a good laugh when you try to describe how scary waffle irons can be. The second worst dream I ever had featured a ghost which was wearing a drop cloth with a mop for a wig and I couldn’t sleep with the light off for a week.

When I woke from the dream I had that night I was positive that I would never be able to sleep with the light off again.

It started out normal. I was teaching, just going on my normal day, when I got called into the principal’s office. Only, it wasn’t the office the principal normally had. It was massive, so large you couldn’t see the walls, and blindingly white. I think my brain stole the image from a weird movie I once saw, where the characters were wandering around in this white space.

In the middle of the space was a desk. It was white as well, almost luminous, and bent over it was a young woman, dressed entirely in white, her white-blonde hair falling into her pale face, and that’s why it was so frightful when she looked at me with eyes as black as night, not just the iris and pupil, but the whole eye, so that she looked as if there was nothing where her eyes should be, just the blackness, the cold, impenetrable blackness of space.

She opened her mouth as if she was about to say something, but before she could I fell into a pit as black as her eyes.

I fell for a long time, and had stopped worrying about what would happen when I hit the ground, and had, just like Alice falling down the rabbit hole (in the Disney movie at least) had found a few articles of food and even a cup of tea during the fall.

Okay, so the last part wasn’t scary at all, but when I woke up, at around one in the morning, all I could see were those eyes before me, seriously scary eyes. I rummaged around my shelves until I found my favorite book and started reading, blinking against sleepiness, determined not to sleep until the saving light of dawn, the light which no creature of the night could stand, crept through the window.

You have, I’m sure, dear reader, given the title of this memoir, and previous hints, figured out that the black-dressed people in the pizza shop were vampires, as odd as that might be, and also that the strange dream I had just had, also somehow relates to that, the revelation of how hopefully coming in a startling and amazing way. But please remember that I, at this time, have no idea of vampires at all. The thought hadn’t even snuck into my head. So why was I waiting for sunlight, reading Terry Pratchett for all I was worth, certain that nothing else could save me? All I can say is that it must have been some strange intuition. The way dreams can imbue you with a slight prognostication of what’s too come.

It didn’t work; I slipped asleep between the words and found myself in a field of snow, a field so vast that the horizon was merely a circle around the edges. The sky above was black, glowing with stars. Now the girl was walking, dressed in black from the hood cloak which covered her head and half her face, to her star-spangled boots. She was walking slowly, determinedly across the plain– towards me– step by step crossing the impossible distance. Under the hood her face gleamed as white as the snow except for the black eyes which looked up, stared right at me, even though I was somehow conscious of not being there. This time she did not speak, just smiled. I looked up at the shining heavens, a mass of stars, a milky stream of stars. Somehow my fear had subsumed. As if knowing death was inevitable made it okay.

When I woke the sunlight was pouring through my window and birds were twittering as if I had slept through the winter and had arrived magically in the midst of spring. I was exhausted but I knew further sleep was impossible. Instead I got up and began cleaning my apartment, sorting through a mess which had been piling up a little too long. I chipped away at the dishes left in the sink and wondered how long it had been since I actually, really cooked anything, rather than just eating scraps of ready-made meals. In a corner were the piles of art supplies, the brushes and paints I had once never been able to leave along and now hardly touched. Was this what being an adult was, giving in to life? Turning into an ant, becoming one of them? It wasn’t because I was too tired for it; I had painted exhausted in college, painted when I hadn’t slept for days, when I had to go to work, when I had to study. It was that the place in my head which had once burst with creativity was dry. It was because there were no pictures left.

I cleaned in a half-hearted way until the apartment was in some semblance of order, then collapsed on the couch, trying to figure out what to do with the day. The problem with days off, I thought to myself, was that there was no one to tell you what to do. If I was asked about my hobbies I would list ten things or so, but I didn’t have the energy, the creativity for any of them. It was too cold to go hiking, I didn’t feel like reading... I didn’t feel like living. That was the problem. I was an adult, all strings attached, and couldn’t really figure out the point of living any more. At least before I could think that the future, the bright sparkling future was headed towards me, but now it had arrived and it was duller than I could ever have expected.

God, this is depressing, isn’t it? This is the point where a good author would use ellipses. ... and then the next day... But I think it’s important. At some point in the narrative I’m going to complain about how exciting my life has gotten and you’re going to be able to look back to this point and smile knowingly to yourself.

This is because the readers all ways know more than the characters. They say hindsight is 20/20; what’s side-sight? 20/10?

Well, you’ve gotten the idea, anyways. Let’s skip ahead a little.

Life passed. I made it through the weekend without managing to do too much correcting and stumbled into work bleary on Monday. Everytime I slept I dreamt about that girl, that mysteriously terrifying girl, and because of that I had been putting off sleep, watching stupid YouTube videos late into the night.

I managed to make my way through my classes without incident. As much as I complain about teaching, the truth is that it is a bit of a pick me up. I can’t stumble, half asleep in front of a classful of teenagers and make it out alive, so everytime I’m right about to stumble into a class I can feel my mind shake itself out a little, mustering stores of energy I didn’t know I had, and illuminating brain cells which see no other use. I’m not a bad teacher. In fact, I’m probably a bit of a good one. At least I seem to get good reviews and the students don’t seem to hate me.

At the end of the day I called friend from college. I had to tell someone about my dreams before I fell apart. She sounded oddly muffled on the phone, but told me to come over, reciting her address hesitantly, as if she was not quite sure about it. I mapquested it, then followed the printed directions, getting more and more nervous as the streets became more narrow and the vagrants seemed increasingly drugged out. Finally I stopped before a dingy shop, the window boarded over with a sheet of tired cardboard with “tarot readings” written badly across it in blue marker. I knocked on the door uncertainly, unwilling to leave my car alone on the street, as dingy as it might be.

Michelle opened the door, peering out suspiciously until she saw me, then grabbing my wrist with her long, bony fingers, tugging me into the room. She shut the door and locked it a few times, before wrapping me in her incense-scented arms.

“Clair!” She exclaimed. “It has been far too long.”

“I’m happy to see you too, Michelle,” I replied, looking around the room. It wasn’t at all what I expected from the outside; bean bags and pillows lay around on the shining hardwood floor and tapestries baticked with arcane symbols covered the walls. It looked like a comfortable, if new age, apartment.

“Everyone calls me Dryad now, my dear,” she corrected me. “Can I make you some mate? I have some lovely mocha flavored.” I accepted out of politeness, wondering when fusion was going to go out of fashion. Probably when people stopped using the term ‘global village’.

“Just plop yourself down,” she directed. “I’ll put the water on.”

I sat down on a suspiciously shifting bean-bag and looked with interest at the small table beside me. An enormous exploding sun was circled by the elliptical orbits of planets, beside which were strings of numbers. I looked at them closely, trying to figure out what they were. Cycle distances? Orbit durations? Distance from other celestial bodies? Then I realized they were dates. Of course, I thought, sagging back into the bean bag, astrology, not astronomy. Michelle– that is, Dryad– had never been very fond of science. I always wondered if it were fear that science would disprove her beliefs or annoyance because science never took her beliefs seriously enough to attempt to disprove them. She sailed back into the room, her long brown hair streaming out behind her, two delicate cups, a teapot and a plate of wafers held carefully on a beautiful tray.

“My grandmother’s china,” she said, as she placed it on the solar system I had been inspecting. “She left it to me when she died.”

“It’s beautiful,” I admired, picking up on thin cup and tracing my finger along the painted flowers.

Dryad poured the tea, informing me that the wafers were made out of rice and flavored with seaweed, as if these were delicacies far exceeding chocolate and such. She smelled her tea, sighing with gusto, before putting it down with a gentle click.

“Now, what’s bothering you, dear? There’s something odd about your aura...”

“I’ve been having these odd dreams,” I began.

“Oh!” She interrupted. “Don’t tell me! You should never tell anyone about your dreams!”

“Really?” I asked. “I though that there were dream interpreters...”

“No. It’s like wishes. If you tell people about them they won’t come true.”

“But I don’t want them to come true. They’re nightmeres.”

“Okay, so they’re not exactly like wishes. The point is that it’s a private communication between you and your subconscious. Only you know what they can mean because only you understand the language spoken by your subconsciousness. Like, for example, if you saw a teddy bear in your dream. A dream analyst might say that it represents longing for childhood, but if you had a bad experience in your childhood– let’s say a dog tore your teddy bear too bits in front of you– than it’s got a different meaning, doesn’t it.”

“But what if it isn’t me? What if something else is sending me the dreams?”

“Same thing. It’s a private message for you.” She shook her head. “Bad karma, telling people your dreams,” she pronounced, with the air of a person who isn’t aware that karma isn’t exactly a substitute for luck.

“Tell you what, though,” she added, after a moment of deliberation. “I’ll read your tarot cards.” She reached behind her and pulled a purple velvet bag off a shelf, lifting the tea tray onto the floor, and placing the cards on it, expertly shuffling them. She gave me the deck to cut, then began laying the cards out, one by one.

“Hmmm...” she said, thoughtfully.

“I don’t like the look of that one,” I said, pointing to a skeleton.

“What, Death? Don’t worry; it just means change. You have a lot of cards here indicating change. It looks like your life is going to make a drastic change in direction really soon.” She tapped another card. “You’re going to acquire some companions. A... hmmm... scientist? Someone who discovered things, anyways. A magician, or someone who uses power. And a warrior, someone who fights. But, this is odd, everyone be the opposite from what you expect. The scientist will be locked in time, the magician will be powerless, the warrior will be weak. And the person you least expect will turn out to be your biggest ally. And you yourself are the foci of all this change. You’re the one who everything will revolve around.” Dryad smiled, self-consciously. “I’m sorry, it sounds like you’re going on some kind of quest or something. Maybe it could be a business venture or something? There are quite a number of reasonable analogies...” she rubbed her hands together, almost muttering, “but that’s what the cards say. They think it’s a quest for some sort. They think you’ve lost something that you’re trying to find. Or maybe that you need to find something you’ve never had. I’m sorry I can’t be more clear. Usually... but this is so strange. I feel like the cards are trying to tell me something that I can’t quite understand.”

She looked thoughtfully down at them for a while, then back up at me again. “You came here because you wanted to know something about you dreams?”

I shook my head. “Because I want to know how I can stop them. Because I’m afraid to fall asleep.”

“Do you think your dreams could be coming from somewhere else?” she asked. “Like some outside force?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Have you ever seen a dream catcher?”

“Like the Indians make?”

“It’s just a circle with string wound through it, like a kind of net. You could buy one, but I think things like that work best if you make them yourself. String good thoughts and maybe put a few beads on it. Or...” she rummaged in a cabinet, pulling out a small cloth bag. “Put this artemisia under your pillow. It’s supposed to help.”

I thanked her, taking the herbs and ideas, and promising that we’d get together for dinner sometime. We had a little chat about the good old days and then I left, my car still mysteriously intact.

When I got home I made a hoop out of some old wire, then strung a web of yarn over it, even stringing beads and entwining some feathers in it before hanging the ugly thing above my bed.

Whether it was the dream catcher, the artemisia or sheer exhaustion, but didn’t have a dream at all that night. I closed my eyes and slept until my alarm clock woke me and it was time to return to my waking life.

(3) In which the pizza place is over-run with mysterious people dressed in black

2008-01-07T09:55:00.001-08:00

I bet you’re wondering when we’re going to get to the vampires. Patience, dear readers, patience.

Alden was right. The place was full of losers.

I stomped over to a greasy table and collapsed on the cold bench. “Get me something.” I waved my hand at the counter.

“Yes, your majesty. Your wish is my command. He mockingly bowed and skipped happily over to the counter. Perhaps I should mention that Alden is a freelance programmer. Generally he spends a week straight– no food, no sleep– on a project then does nothing else for the rest of the month. This means that he has all the time in the world to practice his hobbies, among them sitting around eating pizza. An unfortunate side effect is that he’s completely out of shape and more than a little pudgy. But the world appears to have more sympathy for fat men than fat women and, as he would say, he’s in perfect shape for what he does best. Or, in other words, the thicker your butt padding the more comfortable it is sitting in a chair sixteen hours a day.

I used to be a little chubby– not fat, but little love handles sticking out– until I began my teaching career and found myself too tired to eat half of the time. So for the first time in my life I’m a size six– and too exhausted to enjoy it. Seriously, I need a new career.

Alden comes back bearing paper plates of pizza– three slices for him and two for me. The sight of the cheese shining with grease turned my stomach a little, but I took my plate I bravely anyways.

Seriously, is there anything better than pizza?

I had began nibbling on the edge of my slice when I began aware of an odd feeling, the kind you get when walking down a dark alley at three in the morning. What I like to call an ‘ohshit’ feeling. A rather ridiculous feeling to get in a pizza shop, even on Valentine’s day. I looked around surreptitiously. That’s when I noticed that the population seemed to have shifted from what it had been only moments ago. Instead of nerds in stained t-shirts and sagging women with nicotine stained fingers, most of the people there were suave, dressed in neat black outfits, with unusually pale skin. And, oddly enough, were not eating pizza.

My first thought, of course, was that the place had become over-run with goths. But while they had the same aesthetic in attire and showed the same signs of photophobia, there was something very not-goth about them. For one thing, none of them appeared to be wearing make-up. Their white skin bore no traces of foundation, and their black eyes no lining of kohl. And there was a certain edginess about them, as if any of them might be capable of killing at any moment. No matter what the media might say about goths, they are certainly not all homicidal maniacs. I wondered wildly for a moment if I had been dreaming and just hadn’t noticed, then realized with the startling clarity generally only gotten by plunging into ice-cold water that I desperately needed to leave.

Alden, of course, half-way through his second slice, was completely oblivious. He had the perceptiveness of a stone when it came to real life, no matter how quick-witted he might be when it came to playing World of Warcraft.

“Alden,” I hissed. “I need to leave. Now.”

He looked at me in surprise. “But you haven’t even eaten,” he protested.

“I’ll take it with me,” I replied. “I’ve got...” a brilliant idea came to me. What was the subject most able to motivate men, out of sheer embarrassment? Yeah. “... feminine troubles.”

His face blanched. “Oh.”

Amazingly quick, for a fat man, he grabbed a pizza box, stuffed the remaining slices inside and was hustling us out the door. The creepy people didn’t give any sign of looking at us as we left, but I knew their attention had been on us.

“Did you see those people?” Alden asked. “They were kinda weird.”

“Why did you think I wanted to leave?” I replied.

“I thought you said... Oh. What do you think they were?”

“I don’t want to know. Let’s go to my house and watch a movie.”

Alden hugged the pizza box in his lap. “Okay.”

(2) In which romance is recalled, and Valentine's day is abused

2008-01-05T15:20:00.000-08:00

My only saving grace is my ex-boyfriend, surprising to say. That’s misleading, actually. My ex-boyfriend-turned-best-friend might be more accurate. We went out for a few years in college before discovering that as a couple we were an absolute train wreck. I’d like to say that it ended well and we stayed on good terms, but when I say train-wreck I mean train-wreck. We hated each other with a passion usually reserved for divorcing couples. In the course of the disaster that was our relationship we had managed to forget everything we liked about each other and retain only the things that we hated. When we explosively broke up we each vowed we would never ever even think about each other again.

Ah... how immature we were then.

The problem with relationships is how much power to hurt other people it gives you. Even gentle, kind, compassionate individuals can turn into hideous monsters once someone confesses that they love them. And it’s completely unintentional. That’s the worst part. A few years down the line and when you look back you realize that everything they did was probably completely unintended. Well, there were probably a few moments of spite here and there, but for the most part, they never wanted to hurt you. That’s when you forgive them for things they didn’t do, and begin to hope that they will someday forgive you.

Anyways, long story short, Alden and I both happened to be visiting a mutual friend of ours from university at the same time (sound suspicious? I thought so too) and in the course of the visit rediscovered all the reasons we had been friends in the beginning (while vowing to never embark on another relationship again). We both, it turns out, live in the same city, and, when I’m too worn out to do anything, Alden is the one who calls me up and forces me to realize that I’m not as worn out as I thought I was. His favorite line is “inactivity breeds inactivity”, a saying which might have been hijacked straight from my mother. And, come to think of it, probably was.

Okay, enough back story.

Our narrative begins in one of the most unappealing months of the year; February. February has no saving graces except it’s shortness. For one thing, why the hell does it have two ‘r’s? Secondly, there are very few people in this world who are actually happy about Valentine’s day and most of them are the proprietors of commercial enterprises. The rest of us; single people, children who are forced to give Valentine’s cards to everyone in class, children who don’t get any Valentine’s cards despite the fact that they were supposed to be given to everyone in class, non-single people who have to worry about presents, rose-growers in third world countries who are forced to work like slaves while their health and their water are ruined by pesticide applications... the list of people who don’t like Valentine’s day go on and on. Thirdly, it’s so bloody cold that even your nads freeze and it’s pretty bloody cold when it’s cold enough to freeze body parts you don’t have. And fourthly, and most annoyingly, as if it wasn’t annoying enough that it’s cold, people have to keep reminding you of it. Just like how everyone says “happy Valentine’s day” when they know damn well that it isn’t.

Okay, okay, I’ll admit it. I made the mistake of assigning Valentine’s day essay to my students. I thought it would be interesting. I thought they might have something original to say. I mean the meaning of ‘love’ is different for everyone, isn’t it? Unfortunately 25% of my students decided that ‘love’ is a euphemism for ‘sex’, 20% seem to still believe in Disney, 20% are already disillusioned and a whopping 35% decided that the assignment wasn’t important enough to give up texting long enough to complete.

I went home dejected, tired, and the fact that my pile of papers to correct was much thinner than I reasonably had anticipated didn’t cause the glee I would have anticipated it causing, given other circumstances. I flopped down on my couch, too depressed even to heat up a microwave dinner, and reached for the clicker.

I picked up the phone instead.

“Have you eaten yet?” Somehow Alden has cottoned onto the fact that I don’t have any other friends and has stopped introducing himself.

“I don’t need to eat,” I replied. “I live off of misery.”

“Okay, creature of the night. But I need to eat and I don’t fancy spending Valentine’s day alone. Let’s get pizza.”

“I’m your pity date for Valentine’s day? I can’t think of anything sadder than that.”

“No, I’m your pity date. Anyways, there are worse things than hanging out with your friends on Valentine’s day. You could just stay home and rot.”

“I like rotting, thank you,” I replied.

“Except that all the sitcoms are going to have happy couples. You don’t want to see that.”

“And the pizza shop isn’t?”

“They’re having a ‘I hate Valentine’s day’ special. Replace love with food, that’s their motto. So get off your couch and get over here.”

“I can’t,” I said.

“Why?” Alden demanded.

“I can’t move, not to mention taking and shower and getting changed...”

“Clair, it’s a ‘I hate Valentine’s day’ special. It’s going to be all losers. Dress in your sweat pants; I don’t think anyone will notice.”

“Why would I want to go to a place full of losers?” I demanded.

“Clair if you’re not over here in fifteen minutes I’m calling your mother and telling her you’ve finally met the boy of her dreams and he wants to meet her.”

“Oh, God. If you did that she’d be here on the next flight.”

Alden chuckled. “And wouldn’t that ruin your Valentine’s Day.”

“I hate you, you know,” I muttered.

“I know,” he said, happily.

“Someday the mother threat isn’t going to work anymore.”

“I know.”

“See you in fifteen.” I hung up and pulled myself off the couch, groaning. I didn’t want to do it, but I knew he was right. Life didn’t happen on T.V.

(1) In which the beginnings of imagination is discussed and the author's sad life is revealed.

2008-01-05T10:30:00.000-08:00

It’s hard to say when it all began. That’s because there aren’t any real beginnings, unless you count the big bang, and even then there’s some dispute, people who think that there was something before the creation of the universe. I usually duck out of the discussion before then because thinking about things like that usually give me a headache. But I digress– as I was saying, there aren’t any real beginnings. This whole mess goes back centuries... millennia. Back to the point where you could, with fancy genetics equipment, begin to distinguish Homo sapiens from their predecessors. Maybe even further back; until you reach the place where what really makes human beings human develop. Imagination. The ability to fear not just what exists, but what doesn’t exist. What can be made to exist.

Not many people think of fear when they think of imagination, which is how you can tell that they don’t have much of it. Those of us who are cursed with the ability to create monsters know that it involves more creepy thinks slinking out of the darkness than happy fairy unicorns dancing on rainbows. Those of us with really good imaginations still have problems sometimes sleeping in the dark. And it’s worse when we get old enough to realize that imagination happens in our heads. There is no real protection against the things that go bump in our brains. No protection against ourselves.

Now you’re beginning to wonder; are the vampires in the title real or metaphorical? Is this going to be the fluffy Anne Rice type novel I signed up for, or am I headed for some One Flew Over the Cockoo Nestesque excursion? Neither. The vampires are real and metaphorical. Nothing that happens in the world can avoid happening in our heads.

So when those creatures, a bit smaller, a bit more hairy than modern-day man (although with nair and growth hormone it might be hard to tell) began grunting their stories of the nasty slithering things that go bump in the night, something heard. Imagination, belief, all those things follow the laws of physics. Equal and opposite reactions happen. Things that are dreamed come into being. An odd type of being, a type of being that depends on belief, but a type of being nonetheless.

Maybe they started out as human, the strange things that were created. The people who lived on the edge of the tribe and were already strange. The people who are already twisted were twisted some more. They grew wings, tails, fangs, immortality. A beautiful, haughty, hated girl becomes a fairy queen. A deformed baby born will gills grows into a mermaid. An albino child becomes a vampire.

Of course, this is speculation. These things were the things of legend. I studied their roots in college, the way people twisted fact into fantasy, fantasy into fact. I loved learning about vampire lore, reading dusty books in the tower library, writing papers on them. The highlight of my college career was the thesis I wrote on modern-day vampirism; the way vampires could be seen as an analogy for the big bad things that were sucking life out of the world. Almost a hundred pages and I never even believed they existed, the vampires. Never even dreamed they might have existed.

Flash forward two years. Now I’m a high school English teacher. The lowest of the low, teaching remedial students to write sentences. I thought teaching would be rewarding. I thought I would be opening doors for students to being to experience the joys of literature. Instead I’m gratified when someone remembers what a noun is. I’m overjoyed if a student understands pronoun. I’m never going to see my way to hoping for gerund. I’m beginning to think that vampire is a metaphor for the way that the students seem to suck all of the intelligence from my brain. At the end of the day it’s all I can do to drive home, pop an instant dinner in the microwave, and lay down in front of the boob-tube. I don’t even have enough energy to waste on the internet.

And that’s sad. Very, very sad.