A “Real” Vampire Romance
This was written up very quickly, and is me poking fun at the fans of vampire romances (Twilight fans in particular).
I never understood why vampires were somehow seen to be these sexy, dangerous creatures. All right, dangerous, yes, but sexy? Unless you had a blood fetish, or perhaps had a leaning towards necrophilia (but with consent!), I just couldn’t understand it. So it boggled me when I overheard my friends discussing how Angel/Spike/Edward/Jasper/Whoever was “like, sooo hawt”.
Of course, that was before I discovered that vampires were, you know. Real.
My reaction was rather poor, I must admit. When he grabbed me, I screamed, kneed him in the crotch and ran for all I was worth. I didn’t get very far, and before I knew it, he had caught up to me. But he didn’t bite me.
He said he was impressed by the fact I hadn’t frozen. All the other girls he’d bitten - killed - had simply begged. None ever bothered to try and save themselves. Thus, I was impressive creature. Stupid, yes, weak, yes, but brave.
I intrigued him, he said. He wanted to get to know me.
Later on he wanted to really know me. In the Biblical sense.
What kind of girlfriend would I have been if I didn’t try to change him? That’s what we women do, after all. We try to change our men. My mother tried to get my father to wear something other than his sports shirts, my sister tried to get her boyfriend to shave, and I tried to get my boyfriend to stop killing people.
None of us, I am afraid to say, succeeded. But while my mother and my sister continued bravely onwards, I simply could not date a man who liked to kill people. Sure, he killed less people, now that I occassionally let him grab a bite from me, but I wanted that “less” to become “none”.
So I ended it.
He was not happy. He begged. He pleaded. He cried. But I had made up my mind. I just couldn’t continue to date a vampire. One that refused to reform, anyway.
It’s been three weeks now since I made my decision, since I told him. And every time I see him, he’s still wearing that look. Pleading with me to change my mind, to keep on loving him.
And he’s going to keep giving me that look. Until I figure out what to do with his body, at least. I need to do something fast, as he’s really starting to smell bad.
Well? What did you expect? A happy ending?
The Dead Girl
This is not my usual style at all. I wrote this after reading Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, and found that this story (which is a subset of a much larger story in my head) took on a very different tone than its parent (a more teenage drama). Anyway, here it is: The Dead Girl.
Unlike many others in her position, she did not fear death. Nor did she accept it. Instead - with a confirmed death sentence but no fixed execution date, like some Sword of Damocles hanging over her head - she swung perilously between hating it and denying its complete existence. If that dark spectre were to sweep through the open door to her bedroom right now, she would be torn between punching (and yes, it would be a punch, not a weak, clichéd slap) him then and there, or burying her face in her pillow and burrowing underneath the sheets.
But of course, while the sheets could separate her from the literal ghost in the room, in the end it would offer no protection at all from the force that would eventually wash over her, stopping her heart and her breath and her life. Indeed, it was already inside her, eating away at her like some horrible creature feeding off her, and growing. Some days she imagined that one day she would simply burst open, like one of those poor host insects she saw on a nature program once. Or perhaps like that poor man in that alien movie she had never seen.
She made a mental list to add that movie to her to-do list. It seemed that all she did these days was add things to the list, and it grew faster than she could ever accomplish things. At first it only contained the big things - turn twenty-one, see a specific band in concert, go to Disneyland, that sort of thing - until more trivial things started to make its way onto it. And then finally anything and everything was being put on it, until it turned into a list of movies to see, albums to listen to, and books to read. If she were to start right now and watch, listen or read whatever minor thing on that list was non-stop for the next few months (assuming she lived that long), she might start to make a dent in that list. If she was willing to give up her party, attend the concert, or have her photograph taken with Mickey Mouse.
So far though, only one thing was achieved. It was written on the whiteboard above her desk in permanent marker, and every morning she crossed it out with a whiteboard pen. Every night she would erase the thick black (or blue, or red, or whatever colour pen happened to be chosen) line and would once again cross it off in the morning. One day, though, and she knew this, she would not wake up to cross out the large determined LIVE ANOTHER DAY that watched her as she slept.
Perhaps then she was not denying death’s existence. She was afraid of it, and she denied her fear of it. She did not tell anyone (save the hushed silence of the room she felt certain she would die in, and the near-invisible eyes that watched her) that yes, she was afraid and no, she was not ready. Not believing in the steps that the counsellors had told her about, she preferred to things her own way. She made her own way in life, and she would do so in death.
In the end, when it, the end, when death finally came, she would not deny it. But until then, and long after, she would defy it. Or at least try.