A Night Meeting
By T. A. Staver
Copyright 2011 T. A. Staver
A Night Meeting
“Will the owner of the black truck with Illinois plates Wrigley Field please move their vehicle?”
I was exiting the grocery store when I heard the announcement. As I turned to see if anyone responded to the unique license plates, the back of my pants and my neck were roughly grabbed from behind. My toes barely scraped the ground as I was propelled into the open rear of a black truck with a topper, double parked and running at the curb. Dumped unceremoniously onto the floor, the tailgate crashed shut behind me.
Almost before I finished rolling to a complete stop, the driver’s door opened and shut. A large figure yanked the shift into drive and floored the gas. No headlights, we roared out of the parking lot and careened down the highway.
“Where are you taking me? What are you doing? Who are you?” I yelled.
“Thut up”.
“What?”
“I thaid, thut up!”
“What?” To say I was a little freaked out would have been an understatement. Not only kidnapped, but by someone with a lisp. Combined with the roar of the truck, communication was impossible it seemed.
“Oh for the love of…I said shut up!”
“Okay, better, now I can understand you. Where are we going? I don’t have any money for a ransom.” My line of questioning was limited and hokey, but I didn’t know what else to say. How often is one kidnapped? I don’t think anyone has enough experience with kidnappers to become conversant with them.
“I’m not kidnapping you, you moron. I’m a vampire and I need to eat.” my captor said.
“WHAT!”
“You happened to be the lucky one coming out of the door as I waited. Um, actually there was a drunk that came out before you, but I didn’t know how that would work out”.
“WHAT?”
“You’re getting monotonous: how about an expanded vocabulary?”
“WHA…I mean, are you serious?”
“Um yeah, I’m serious. Now, if you would be so kind as to lay there and let me drive, we’ll get this over with.”
I couldn’t believe the direction this conversation had taken. I was with a nut-job who thought he was a vampire. Correction, I was with a nut-job kidnapper who thought he was a vampire.
“Hey, you might want to turn on your headlights.” I advised him.
“I can see fine. I told you, I’m a vampire.”
“Oh yeah, right, right.” I was going to be killed, I just knew it. Car accident, kidnapper, vampire, whatever. Why, oh why, did I go out for a quart of ice cream?
While I tried to get a handle on the very recent events of my life, we barely slowed for an exit and shot down a dark, deserted road. My situation did not seem to be getting better. We took the first turn, and bumped down a weed-choked lane. The truck stopped in a crunch of gravel.
“Okey-dokey, here we go”, my kidnapper sang as he exited and rounded the vehicle. He opened the back gate, and reached in to grab me. I scrambled out of his reach.
“Hey now, thath not nithe.”
“WHAT?” I couldn’t believe this was happening
“Oh for the love of…I said, ‘That’s not nice’”.
“I think we are having some communication issues here.”
With that, my captor turned and sagged onto the tailgate, causing the backend to lurch towards the ground. Did I mention he was large?
“Crap. This is not what I expected,” he said.
I was still trying to cram my body into the back of the cab. I sneaked a look towards the tailgate, and saw him hunched over, chin in his hands, elbows on his knees. Although it didn’t appear as if grabbing me was his prime concern right now, I didn’t intend to get close enough to remind him.
“’Immortal being’, he said. ‘Be a lion among lambs’, he said. ‘Watch dynasties rise and fall’, he said. Crap,” my large captor mumbled to himself. “Okay, come on up here. I’m not going to bite you.”
“Why don’t I stay here for now? I just got comfortable.”
“Suit yourself.”
We sat in silence for a while. My captor scuffed the ground with his toe; I tried furiously to come up with an idea to escape this lunatic. The big guy sighed.
I was starting to think that perhaps I wouldn’t be killed any time in the immediate future. Maybe talking to him would make him see me as a person; make it harder for him to kill me. Hey, it works in the movies.
“So, is something bothering you? Maybe talking it out would help. You know, like a second opinion.”
“It couldn’t hurt. Nothing else is going right. But if we’re going to talk, I’d like you up here. Talking to the back of my truck is just weird.”
I didn’t ask if kidnapping someone and saying you’re a vampire didn’t count as weird.
I edged my way to the back of the truck, watching his back for any sudden movements. As I slid over the tailgate, he grabbed my arm. His hand was pudgy, but incredibly strong, his fingers viselike.
“That’s far enough”, he said. His breath was horrible. It smelled like rancid meat.
“I AM a vampire”, he said, “but I didn’t mention that I’m brand new at it. This is only my third night as a creature of the night. You’re actually the first human that I’ve tried to drink blood from.”
“Yeah, um…right.” I could tell I was going to have a hard time with this conversation.
He hunched his shoulders and clenched his fists. He appeared to be getting upset.
“I thee you don’t believe me. That pithth me off!”
I glanced at him, and nearly screamed. Sharp, glistening fangs protruded from his lips.
He closed his eyes, and drawing a deep, shuddering breath, calmed himself.
“Whenever I get excited or angry, these fangs pop out. I haven’t quite got the hang of them yet. As you might guess, there isn’t a Vampires for Dummies book. I’m working things out on my own.”
“Uh, uh, uh, uh…” was my witty response to that.
“The vampire that created me was called away by HIS master, so he wasn’t able to give me any pointers on how to survive. I mean, I KNOW I have to drink blood, duh. But exactly how do I do that? Have you ever given that any thought? I was sort of expecting it to be a natural thing, like a bird flying. Not so much.”
“Uh, uh, uh, uh…” I wasn’t contributing much to the conversation.
“I’ve found that I have great eyesight. And eye-hand coordination? Let me tell you, I can snatch a fly out of midair! Never could do that back in the day.” At that, he grabbed his immense belly. “No, I wasn’t very athletically gifted.
“So far, I’ve kept out of the sunlight by sleeping under a blanket in my basement. No windows. And I’ve handled my hunger with some bags of blood I stole from the Red Cross. But they aren’t… filling, for want of better word. So I figured I could try drinking from a human; get some living blood, so to speak.
“Oops, were are my manners? I haven’t introduced myself.” He extended his hand. “My name is Chuck.”
“Chuck. Your name is Chuck? Not Dracula, or, or, Baron something European?”
“Ith thomething wrong with Thuck?” Just my luck; a touchy vampire.
“No, no. Chuck’s a great name. Some of my best friends are named Chuck. My name is Rodger, pleased to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, Rodger. You know, talking this over with you has seemed to help. It’s nice to be able to get things off of my chest.”
“Great. Glad to hear that. So, about that drinking my blood thing…”
“Oh, that. I don’t think I could drink the blood of someone I knew, and it appears that we now know each other.” Chuck smiled, thankfully without fan
gs.
“Um, have you tried to drink from an animal? I mean, you could get live blood, and practice on a non-human. Maybe the techniques are the same.”
“Well, I did think of that. But I thought it sounded weird. Not very, uh, vampiry. You don’t think that sounds, well, stupid?”
“No, no, I think it would be a logical step to work your way into the…normal… vampire drinking habits, seeing as how your master didn’t do a very good job of training you.”
“That ass, I hope I never see him again.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing.
“So Rodger, how about if I drive you back to your car?”
“That would be great! Uh, I don’t have to ride in the back, do I?”
“No, I think you could ride up front with me. Quite frankly, it’s been a little lonely the last couple of nights. It would be nice to talk to someone for a little while.”
So, I climbed into the cab of the truck and fastened my seatbelt. As we drove back, we spoke sparingly; Chuck seemed deep in thought, and I wasn’t sure what topics a vampire would want to discuss.
As Chuck pulled into the parking lot, he seemed to come to a decision.
“Rodger, would it be alright if we talked more. In the future, that is. I’m guessing you have had enough of me for one night,” Chuck said with a laugh in his voice.
“Well, Chuck, I think that would be okay, as long as we set some conditions on the blood drinking. I don’t believe I’d like to lose any of mine.” Then I had a thought, and smiled. “By the way, what’s up with the Wrigley Field license plates? They’re pretty distinctive.”
“Oh that? I had those before I turned into a vampire. I’m a huge Cubs fan.” Then Chuck smiled. “Actually, now that I’m immortal, maybe I can see them win a World Series.”
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About the author:
T.A. Staver lives in Illinois, is starting out writing, and hasn’t yet met any vampires. But his children consider the cat evil.
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