A Little Vampire Story Page 3

for?”

  “So I could become a vampire,” I reminded condescendingly. “What did you do?”

  He shrugged. “Caught him inside of a blanket and whacked him with a hammer until he made me one.”

  “Floyd!” Bill blurted.

  “What? You’re just as bad!”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “I, uh,” Bill cleared his throat. “I caught him inside of a glass jar and wouldn’t let him out until he promised.”

  “Why didn’t you just have Sally do it?”

  “Minutio is the only one who can make vampires- at least, that we know of,” Sally explained. “Think about it. If every vampire could make vampires, the population would explode exponentially.”

  “This sucks,” I spat out, the words tasting like bitter ashes in my mouth.

  Minutio returned to a hover by my shoulder, having finished whatever stupid squeaky conversations he had been having around the room. “I trust they have not been too harsh with you, Cassandra.”

  “They suck,” I sneered at him, my temper lost along with the delusions I’d had about the vampiric life. “They suck, and you suck too.”

  “And I don’t mean suck blood,” I continued, standing up to stare down at the miniature lord of the undead. “I mean suck, as in you’re a loser, a total wastoid.”

  Minutio’s face twitched in malevolence. “How dare you! How dare you speak to me, your master, in this manner! I… I shall…”

  “What? What can you do?” I taunted, no longer caring what sort of spectacle I was making of myself.

  “Cassie…” Bill warned, but the hate and rage and disappointment in me was a festering boil, and it had to be lanced.

  “Shut up! There!” I shouted, smacking the little vampire to the ground with my open palm. “There, hunh? What do you think about that?”

  “Oh!” I continued, as he flew back up, and I swatted him back down again. “Look! I did it again!”

  I finally stopped tormenting him, as tiny, tinny sobs floated up from his prostrate form. Rage and hate and disappointment melted into shame, shame at my own meanness and brutality.

  “It’s true,” Minutio wept. “It’s all true.”

  “Oh, boy, here we go again,” Sally groaned, shaking her head.

  “You’re right, Cassandra!” he squeaked. “I am a sad joke on the lips of all vampires. I am nothing, I am nobody; just a slip of senseless, undead stupidity.”

  He rallied himself enough to fly up onto the table. “I can endure this existence no longer. This dawn I shall meet the sun, not in my cigar humidor, but in the morning air, where it will burn my freakishly small body to a cinder.”

  “No, Minutio, no!” Bill cried, standing and moving to my side. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying! She’s just a young fool- you are our lord, our master! We owe everything to you!”

  “I don’t know,” Minutio sat down on the table, hugging his knees. “She made me want to kill myself pretty bad.”

  “Only one thing can snap him out of this,” Bill told me.

  “What?”

  “Cassie?” Minutio pleaded, lying back on the table and stretching out. “Rub my belly.”

  “No… way!” I sneered. “No freakin’ w… ow!”

  Bill caught my arm in a grip that reminded me how strong we vampires are. “You listen to me, little girl,” he said icily. “He’ll kill himself if you don’t, so you will rub his belly, or you’ll find out just how much pain a vampire can take.”

  “What do you care?” I protested. “He dies, and you all become mortal again, freed from your eternal damnation.”

  “What are you smoking?” Jimmy laughed at me. “Being a vampire rules! You get to stay up all night, and live forever, and if anybody messes with you, you can totally kick their ass!”

  “That’s right,” Bill nodded. “And if having all that means we have to stroke the ego of a six-inch vampire, and rub his belly from time to time, so be it.”

  A quick look around the room and the steely eyes of my peers convinced me. “Fine.”

  “Ooo, yes,” Minutio squeaked, as I rubbed his tiny belly with the pad of my forefinger. “Up… up… yes, yes right… there… oooo…”

  I rubbed and rubbed the vampire, cursing my fate as Minutio rolled back and forth in ecstasy. At last, he rose, waving me off.

  “Very well, my children. You have dissuaded me. I will live on, deathless, into eternity.”

  “But she must leave my sight!” he pointed at me.

  “Fine by me,” Sally muttered.

  “C’mon, Cassie,” Bill said, leading me toward the double doors leading back into the night.

  “But… but…” I pleaded, unwilling to leave the only members of my tribe. There was so much I needed to know, and I didn’t want to be alone, not now…

  “No buts, young lady,” the bearded vampire said curtly, pulling open the doors with his free hand and shoving me outside. “You don’t come back until you’ve learned some manners!”

  With that, the massive oaken doors shut, sealing me off from the only social contact left to me. I simply stood and stared at them. No desperate pounding of fists on the wood, no wails or pleading for forgiveness. I was lost; I had no idea what to do, or what to think, or anything, so after a while, I sat down with my back to the doors, trying to collect my thoughts.

  Then, I heard it, picked up by my newly-enhanced senses. Laughter.

  Uproarious laughter. Gut-splitting, pee-your-pants laughter, practically shaking the cold stone beneath me.

  “Did you hear what I said?” Bill’s voice cried out chokingly, the sound muffled by the huge doors. “Don’t come back until you’ve learned some manners!”

  “That was great!” somebody else shouted.

  “I can’t believe you got her to rub your belly, Minutio!” another vampire smirked. “You are the best!”

  “I know, it was awesome!” Minutio’s tinny voice squeaked with laughter. “She bought the whole thing! What a dork!”

  The undead mirth drowned out the words then, as the true horror of my situation dawned upon me. I wasn’t a fallen angel; I was a whipping boy, a punching bag for the truly evil, and they’d tossed me aside like an empty bottle once they’d had their jollies with me.

  “Where do you think she’ll go now, Minutio?” I heard a voice ask.

  “Who the hell cares?” the tiny voice squeaked. “Bring out that wino! Let’s get piss drunk!”

  I could take no more; I reeled from the steps of the Masonic Temple, and staggered into the dark and dirty streets, searching for solace, searching for guidance, finding nothing but the chill wind. There was nothing for me, no place to turn, no avenue left to pursue.

  That wasn’t true. I came to a stop here, in mid-Suburbia, when it occurred to me.

  I still know the ritual.

  And so now, I go in search of a tennis racket and a glass jar, as evil plans congeal in the back of my undead mind. Plans involving garlic, and blood… and a tiny little stake.