The teenager stepped on the round ring attached to the base of the old hand-washing fountain in the boys washroom. Tiny streams of water shot out from the top of the birdbath-like apparatus and landed in the large granite sink below. That had surprised him when he first moved in. He would have thought someone would have turned the water off long ago. He doubted the old schoolhouse had been used in years.
People in Troy were undeniably stupid, he reckoned. He couldn’t’t deny though, that their little oversight would come in handy. He did like to freshen up every once and a while. The stench on his hands of recently eaten rodent burger offended him, and he needed to cleanse it off before he could do anything else. Someone had stolen the copper piping from the shower room, so the makeshift basin would have to do. It had been hard to keep clean since she kicked him out of the house. That was just one more reason to hate HER.
He looked at himself through the cracked mirror. “Gaspar BonVillaine, you are one scary dude. You used to be so handsome.” Funny how he could see his own reflection in the mirror, although no human would ever be able to do so. “I guess they see what they want to see,” he shrugged, lowering his sweaty black hair into the sink as best he could. The water was cold, but he preferred it that way.
He had found the empty building his first night away from HER. What did she really expect? Did she think he was going to be able to change his ways when those other people arrived? He was enjoying a symbiotic relationship with HER before she had answered the phone that night. Then everything changed. SHE suddenly didn’t care about him. SHE suddenly mistrusted him. As if it was his fault. Was he supposed to just flip a switch and erase everything that had happened to him and what he had become? SHE knew better than that.
“You’re like family to me,” she had once said.
“So much for that,” he said to himself. She had told him he had to get out. Well, maybe that wasn’t really what had happened. SHE had told him he couldn’t come in. Small difference, and yet a big one. He physically couldn’t come in anymore. He wondered why that rule came in to play. Was there some union somewhere that negotiated the right to trespass out of the vampire/human contract? He didn’t know. He could only accept that she had warned him it would be like that, and he had very recently found it to be true.
So he had searched for a new place to rest and came upon the deserted schoolhouse. Since no one lived there, technically he didn’t have to be invited in. Score one for the bloodsucker. And it really wasn’t so bad. There was plenty of room. He had his choice of several rooms to call his own, although he did find the furnishings a little sparse. The desks were all gone now, but a bed was still in what had been the sick room. The sick room that had no windows. It was like it had been designed to his particular taste. “Queer Eye for the Dead Guy,” he laughed.
Taste. That was the bonus. There was no one around to care whether he was eating properly or not. Eating properly bothered the humans, he knew. Here, he wasn’t going to have to remember to bury the bones. He could stockpile them like little trophies. Humans found that to be incredibly rude. They looked upon it with the same scorn they did when someone drank milk straight out of the carton. They had an odd sense of the uncouth, humans. T-bones were all fine and dandy, but leave a little rabbit head around and all hell breaks loose.
Why things like this would suddenly bother HER, did not make any sense to him. She had been the one who initially taught him how to feed. True, she didn’t participate herself, but she had gone to all that trouble to find him that book. The feeding book. It wasn’t something you could order over the internet through Barnes and Noble. SHE had taken a trip to Louisiana to get it for him. SHE had aided and abetted him.
The book had been a godsend. Ironic, that. It taught him the kinds of animals that you could take without people noticing—crows, seagulls, and squirrels. It also taught him the kinds of animal that you could take but needed to be quick about—dogs, cats, and rabbits. And it had pictures. Lots of graphic, how-to pictures of quick and easy dissections.
It also stated very clearly, that when eventually those dietary choices weren’t enough, one would have to expand the food groups to humans. SHE knew this. SHE said it was like going from strained peas to solids. He would have to cut his teeth all over again, she said, but this time the bleeding gums wouldn’t bother him.
So it wasn’t like she didn’t know it would happen sometime. Had she figured out that this was the time?
He couldn’t fully explain what had happened to him when he saw the little girl go running around the corner that night. He hadn’t planned on snatching her. Something had come over him. It had been fine until she fell and scraped her knee. Then the aroma hit him. He could taste her just by the smell of that tiny trickle of hemoglobin. It whiffed through his nostrils and sent his saliva glands into hyperdrive. He couldn’t control the drool. She became his fix, and he moved silently and stealthy towards her until she had no choice but to surrender, Dorothy.
He had started to take her back to the schoolhouse, but that had been problematic. A shadow-man and a teenaged girl, half hidden under the cover of an old bridge had come across him in his travels. He tried to run by them, but his prey had summoned some inner strength and called out to them. He had no choice but to disappear under the bridge with the girl and take the life from her.
He started to feed.
It hadn’t been like he had expected, tasting human flesh for the first time. He bowed his head above her carotid artery and threw any sense of right and wrong to the wind. His incisors ached as he tore through the young girl’s flesh. He found it sweet, but tougher than he would have imagined. It was strangely sinewy like a cheaper cut of meat, pre-seasoned with the salt from her own sweat. Her blood didn’t taste much different than his own had, when he was human. She was like sucking on one big rib-eye, he told himself.
He should have been repulsed, he knew that. But it was a lot like when he used to crave salt and found himself eating far more potato chips than he should of. He just couldn’t help himself. His throat filled with her rich red syrup, and he found himself choking in his vigor, forgetting to take time to swallow.
But the girl was bigger than anything he had fed on before, and he couldn't finish her off. Not then and there. He was going to have to find a place to store her, temporarily. He opted to use the cold murky water of the creek as a makeshift refrigerator, planning to return and feed on her later.
Except then, that bald headed behemoth decided to join the party uninvited. The big boy had stumbled upon his water pantry. He lived next door to HER, with his nerdy little brother and his big, fat mama. There was a score to settle with their whole frickin’ family, but now was hardly the time.
Now he was going to have to fight for the girl. The earlier feast had left him a little tired and a little intoxicated, making it difficult to fend off the boy he had watched play football almost every Friday night for the past year. True, the jock had conveniently wound up going to jail for the crime, taking the heat off for a while, but it wasn’t a particularly proud moment for his vampire legacy.
So, the next time he prepared. He had located a proper refrigerator to store his dinner in, and he had picked a little porker boy to gnaw on. But that hadn’t worked out as planned either.
Damn that old farmer. He wasn’t supposed to have come out of the house to see the old beer fridge walking away. He wasn’t supposed to give chase. That had turned the whole thing into a messy situation that ended with the cops coming to take away his kill for a second time.
He had been depressed for a moment until he got a whiff of the Lachey kid, who was conveniently all alone in the cop car. If only the police had stayed away from the cruiser for a few more moments, he could have caught the kid on the first go round, saving everyone so much frickin’ time.
He laughed. He had more frickin’ time than any of them, when you thought about it.
The monster he was becoming was not lost on him. It seemed like yesterday, he had been minding his own b
usiness, playing a little basketball in the driveway, when the fight had begun. And he knew he should be grateful that he was given another chance at life—or a reasonable facsimile of one—but darn it all to hell, he just wasn’t feeling very appreciative today.
He was feeling particularly unloved. SHE didn’t miss him. No one missed him. He had only lived in the stupid town a short time before his humanity ended. It had been a truly bad move, landing in that neighborhood. His mother was dead. No one had offered her another life. And come to think of it, SHE could have.
“Things could have been so different,” he lamented. He might have even been a friend of the behemoth, Ryan. He could see himself riding around in that beat-up car with him and the guy with the perfect hair. He might have been able to make things right for the British girl, the one with all the secrets. But none of that was going to happen now.
“You bet your Mrs. Harbinger it’s not,” he sighed. He glanced over to the spot his eyes had been avoiding for the past few hours—the corner where his latest prey was lying limp like a wet doormat. Just before he had knocked her out earlier, he had felt something he hadn’t felt for a long time. Emotion.
“It makes me want to throw up,” he said, heading towards the bathroom stall. He went through the motions of retching, even though he knew damn well it wasn’t going to happen. He had always had a solid constitution.
He sat on the cold toilet and hung his head, trying not to think about the girl. He wasn’t ready for her, but she mustn't stumble upon that tidbit of information.
Ellie lay semi-conscious on the cold, hard, cement floor. She opened her eyes and waited for her sight to adjust to the dim light around her.
Her head was pounding from the blow she had taken earlier, and just opening her eyes gave her migraine-like pain. But being awake and hurting, she knew, was better than being dead. She tried to stop her world from spinning. “Earth to Ellie,” she told herself. “Come in Ellie.”
There was no one in her direct line of sight, but she had the sense she was not alone. “Where did that rat bastard go?” she wondered, peering into the unknown surroundings. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the dimly lit room and she was able to see things more clearly.
The walls surrounding her were painted an industrial shade of green that was starting to flake off in spots. There was graffiti on the wall beside her. Whoever Mary Ann Martin was, she was evidently a girl of many talents, as noted by the likes of “Bad Bobby Braun” and someone named “The Whip.”
“Why can they never spell?” she commented, wondering how anyone could get the word penis wrong.
She turned her head and noticed the large wash basin beside her. Behind that, was a y-shaped pipe leading down to a low, ten-foot long trough. “Good God,” she surmised. “I’m in the boys washroom in St. Mary’s Shrine of the Little Hellhole High.” The only thing missing was a crucifix.
She tried to sit up, and was startled by the sound of a chain dragging across the floor. A chain that was attached to her right leg and then to the ring pedestal of the fountain.
“What the hell?” she wondered.
“Poppet,” she heard the voice sneer, “you’ve come to your senses. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“I am not your PUPPET,” she hissed at him, turning her body towards the voice. She recognized her captor as the vampire in her dream and the thug that had hit her at the police station.
“I said Poppet,” he insisted. “But really it means almost the same thing. It’s my pet name for you. I heard that English girl call your little next door neighbor that once. I like it. Makes my lips pop when I say it. Pop-pet,” he smacked.
“Then learn to ENUNCIATE through those drooling fangs of yours.”
“Now, now, Poppet,” he sighed. “Why can’t you just sit chained in the corner like a good little girl and leave me alone to think?”
She struggled to her feet. “Maybe because I’m not a little girl, you sorry excuse for a freak of nature. Come out where I can see you.” She gritted her teeth and looked for him in the shadows.
The vampire was amused by her bravado. He emerged from behind one of the stalls and crept towards her, licking his lips as he did so. “Look at the little girl trying to be all big and scary,” he laughed. “Oooh, I’m shaking.”
“Try this little one on for size,” she said, making a fist and daring him to come nearer. “Look at the vampire trying to be all big and scary,” she said, throwing a punch towards his face. “Shake this.”
“Nice try,” he said, catching her wrist with his left hand and pulling it behind her back before she had time to think twice. “No more wrestling channel for you, unless of course you’d like a cage match.” He gave her a good look. “That would probably be more fun when you’re older.”
“Ow!” she cried.
“Hurts, huh?” he taunted. “And they say wrestling is fake. Say uncle, Poppet.”
“Uncle,” she said reluctantly. “Uncle Poppet.”
The vampire released her. “Always with the sarcasm. Now you see why I don’t need to tie down all of your extremities. Only the one. But I will, if you keep it up. Your choice.”
He took his long, bony finger and gave her shoulder a little push, causing her to fall back to the floor. “Amateur,” he said.
She defied him and stood back up, this time a little quicker. “Leech.”
He smiled. “Synonym for a dark blood-sucking creature. I like it. You’ve got spunk, I’ll give you that.” He pushed her back to the floor “You don’t really want to play teeter-totter all day, do you? It gets kind of boring. The heavy kid always wins in the end.”
“I’m getting the hell out of here,” Ellie said, getting up once more.
“Noohoo you’re not. You’re getting maybe three feet away from that wall. That’s where the chain ends. And if you don’t shut up and be quiet, it’ll be shortened the next time you have the nerve to doze off in front of your host. Bad manners, girlfriend.”
“You knock me out, kidnap me, and chain me to an ancient form of water torture, and you have the nerve to question my politeness? And I am so not your girlfriend, sister.”
Gaspar smacked her hard in the face, his fingers stinging her in the eye.
“What did you do that for?” she asked.
“Because I can, little girl cry-baby,” he taunted, noticing she was tearing up. “I didn’t ask you to enter my world. But you did. Three times. First with Willie and then with HER, and then with your pro-ball friend.”
“You hit me again, and you’ll be sorry.”
“Why? What are you going to do to me?” Gaspar laughed at her. “Seriously, what exactly do I have to be afraid of?”
Ellie mulled this over. He had a point. Hurting his feelings wouldn’t work. Pain probably wasn’t an issue with him, but there had to be another way to get to him. She only hoped she had enough time to figure out his weakness. “Who’s Willie?” she asked, stalling for time. “One of your sabre-tooth pals?”
“The man you were with on the bridge.”
“Shadowman? You know the Shadowman?”
“His name’s Willie. Trust HER not to tell you.”
“Who’s HER? I mean, who is SHE?”
“Don’t play stupid with me.
“I’m not playing anything.”
“You’re pretty bitchy for someone in chains, Alice.”
“Look. I don’t know who these people are that you’re talking about,” Ellie said, exasperated. “Are they your stand-ins for some ‘Spawn of the Dead’ play you’re rehearsing?”
“Liar. You came to live with HER. You and that other woman.”
“HER is my grandmother?” she asked. “Helena?”
“Your grandmother? Well then, that’s even better. SHE’s really going to miss you, now that I’ve got you. You’re not just some stray she took in from the street. SHE does have a habit of doing that, you know. Waif adoptions. The orphanage on Maple Street, a.k.a. the LaRose Naturopathic Clinic.” He sighed. “A rose
by any other name...”
“You took me and you don’t even know who I am? Thanks for making me feel special.”
“Get over yourself. The ‘you’ wasn’t important. I just wanted to re-stock my pantry for the winter with someone SHE’d chase. I didn’t know you were related to HER.”
“Look, I don’t know what your problem is, but I’m sure there’s a self-help book out there that covers this. Why don’t we just go to the local bookstore and find one for you?” she quipped. “I’ll buy.”
“SHUT UP!” he demanded.
He studied her face. It was young and it was pretty, and oddly familiar. “You know I should have figured it out earlier. You look like HER. Those same green eyes that try to look right through you. I knew I had seen eyes like that before. That same coal colored hair that would grow back even longer if one were to rip it from your head by the roots.”
Ellie felt around her scalp. Thankfully, all of her locks seemed to be in place. “You’re still into tugging girls’ hair? Isn’t that kind of grade three?”
“I love HER and I hate HER. How can that be possible, Poppet?” he asked a hint of despair in his voice.
Ellie paused. His face was inches from her own, and yet he had held back from further confrontation, preferring to wait for her to answer. Did he really expect her to offer advice under these circumstances? “You suffer from heterochromia,” she finally said.
“I don’t suffer from anything,” he told her, but she could see he was troubled by her remark. “That’s a pretty big word for someone your age. What’s my eye color got to do with it?”
“Colors. Plural.” She glanced again at his irises. It was odd enough that they were different colors, but if she wasn’t mistaken, they were the same two colors the mangy dog’s had been. The dog that had trapped her in the van her first night in Troy. “Woof,” she said, expecting a reaction from him. “You’re genetically mixed up.”
The vampire remained ominously quiet.
“You’re a deranged sociopath, you know that? “Why did you kill those two kids? What did they ever do to you?” she asked.
“They didn’t have to do anything to me. I’m a vampire. Why don’t you humans get that we are not nice people? We’re not people at all.”
Ellie stared at him blankly. For her, it was one of those moments when there really was nothing you could say to make things better.
“What? I’m not all bad. I let one get away. That Lachey kid. I could have kept you both, but I didn’t. That should count for something, shouldn’t it?”
“Ryan?”
The vampire laughed. “Ryan? What the hell would I want with Ryan? I had the nerdy one. And just to make you happy, I left him where they’ll find him. I think. If it’s not too late.”
“What’s wrong with Ryan? What’s wrong with Stan for that matter? He’s not nerdy. He’s just a kid.”
“Let me explain this to you,” The vampire began. “You know how sometimes you open a bottle of wine and it’s corked? Of course you don’t. You’re just a child. Well, take my word for it. Stan’s corked. It was pour him down the drain or let him go,” he shrugged. “You should be happy I chose the second option. I poured him down something.”
Ellie’s hand grabbed near her heart. “I’m truly touched. Not.”
“I broke his seal, took a couple of sips, and something wasn’t quite right. He went all melanoma on me. I had to spit him out. I hate it when that happens.”
“I think you mean melalactic, you idiot,” Ellie challenged. “I’ve seen those wine shows on PBS. And it’s not always considered a bad thing.”
“Whatever,” the vampire replied. “I thought he was going to be a bottle I could keep in the cellar to age for a few months. But I was wrong. He started to coagulate. I HATE THAT.” He paused and studied his prey. “You really don’t know what happened, do you?”
“No.”
“Your friends. They betrayed you,” he whispered vindictively, mimicking her and clutching his hands to his own heart. “How does that feel?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Pro-boy wanted to trade your life for his brother’s. Pretty-boy’s two-timing you, and the one with the perfect lips? Well, she’s got the biggest mouth on the planet—don’t tell the Helens, don’t tell the Helens—and as for your grandmother…”
“Let me try to explain this to you,” Ellie snarled. “SHE never has loved you. SHE never will never love you. SHE will always hate you, because you have no redeeming qualities.” She rose the middle finger of her right hand and gave him an F-salute.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Poppet,” he said sincerely. “I have one big redeeming quality. No one will feel the need to cry for me when I’m dead, dead. It’s too bad we can’t say the same about you.”
He stormed out of the washroom, leaving Ellie to imagine all kinds of atrocities that might become of her. She broke down and wept.