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First, it'd been holy water. Flinging a cup of liquid at your host face was just preposterous. Then, she'd slipped half a dozen garlic cloves in their evening soup. Her drawing holy symbols on her bedroom's door had infuriated him. Permanent marker. On century old oak wook. There was no way to get rid of it.
"Look, Julie, for the very last time. None of this is working, and none of this will ever work. I am a vampire, yes. I am immortal, yes. Think of me as a soulless spawn of some demented evil if want, I don't care! But for the love of whatever you believe in, stop making my life a living hell and just stay put! These things you hear about holy water, sunlight and such are the stuff of myths. I, on the other hand, am real. You are my only guest, so please behave as a guest should!"
She was firmly standing on the other side of the room, her bed between them, arms crossed agains her chest, her eyebrows locked into a resentful frown. "I still think a stake to the heart would kill you".
His face turned from pale to paler. He flung his arms upward in a gesture of earnest desperation and slapped his cheeks with both his hands.
"A stake to the heart would kill anyone!"
- "I don't know that. I've never tried before. Maybe you should be my first" She went around the bed, reducing the distance between them to a mere couple of inches and poked his chest with her finger.
"I don't see any reason to grant you anything. You advertize your place as a guest house but you put me in a room with a leaking roof where the layer of dust on the bed is thicker than the blanket, then you tell me there is no phone coverage, then you tell me that I have to stay because you 'chose' me to be your 'helper'?"
- "Look, vampires have to drink blood, alright? Not much be we do. Soup is not enough. I just need you here for a couple of month, let me take an ounce of your blood every two days, and I won't bother anyone for the next century. We don't kill anymore, you know." He gave her what looked to be an apologetic smile. Showing a set of pearly white teeth. Perfectly healthy. Perfectly normal.
- "And why should I? And what can you do? You can't even bite me!"
- "See it as a favor"
- "No. That's final. You're going too far. Now stop that or I'll…"
She hadn't finished her sentence when the blow landed, sligthly pushing her liver in. She folded in half then dropped to her knees, nauseated, unable to catch her breath. The count's composure had changed. He wasn't a frail middle aged man. His hardened gaze was penetrating, boding for unpleasant moments to come.
"I have had enough of you, lady. Akin to the others, you believe that your innocent looks and likable features are a fate shaping tool, but I see further than a mere envelope. You are denying the meager pittance I am so gently asking. You will be punished". Even his speech had changed.
Julie couln't help but stare. Pain was giving way to surprise.
She had come to almost like the old man.
A month earlier, looking for some quiet holidays, she'd found the manor on an Internet listing.
Past the first day of her stay, she hadn't felt completely comfortable in the Count's presence.
The huge house, though, was too remote to leave immediately. A shuttle bus would only come once a week; she had to wait several more days.
The Count was clumsy and comically ill tempered. She'd seen him as a quirky, armless loner in need for someone to talk to. His rambling about being a vampire had come to amuse her and, to kill time, she'd entered his game, hoping to entertain them both.
Her tricks and their disputes were supposed to be fake. Role plays.
And there she was, on all four, gasping for air.
The Count briskly took hold of her wrist and started pulling her out of the bedroom. Down the corridor leading to the dining room, they took an impromptu left down a spiralling stairwell to enter an underground tunnel, forking every now and then.
She wasn't figthing back. He found her stoicism rather practical. Resisting was no use anyway, the feeding room's heavy lock would bar any attempted escape. He was feeling thirsty.
After they reached the place, he unlocked the heavy, metal coated door and sent her sprawling on the floor. "I am coming back very soon. Then, we will enjoy a very special kind of drink, you and I." He locked the door shut. The room was brightly lit by a common lightbulb. She had expected a chandelier and a fireplace. What she hadn't expected, though, was the operating table and the surgical paraphernalia in a stainless still tray by its side. And the handsaw.
A pin board was hung on the wall in front of her, displaying locks of hair carefully tied in a ribbon-like manner, each one labeled from one to seventeen. A label marked eighteen was pinned alone in the lower right corner. She heard a key turn in the lock. Before she did anything, the Count was holding a damp, acrid smelling cloth to her mouth. She went limp. When she opened her eyes again she was on the table, wrapped in heavy transparent plastic sheets from the neck down.
The count was leaning over her, looking satisfied and slightly extatic. "See, dear little thing, it would have been wiser to let me have some of your blood. I would have let you go back to your daily life, mind your irrelevant problems and work your irrelevant job… but no. Just like the others, you had to refuse. They all refuse. Nonetheless, I would like the express my gratitude, you will keep me well fed for quite a while."
His right hand, holding a razor sharp scalpel, steadily advanced toward her throat.
"Now now, stay still, it wont hurt much if you…"
He stopped mid-sentence.
Julie's left arm had darted from under the sheet, effortlessly piercing through them, grabbed his wrist and brought it to her mouth. The shock was so brutal it sent the scalpel bounce against a wall.
The Count could clearly feel her two canines puncturing his skin.
Still holding her bite, she sat on the edge of the table, completely unhindered by her bounds, before the nonplussed expression of her captor. Letting go of his wrist, she wiped her sleeve to her mouth, smearing a dark red drop of blood across her cheek.
"Oh my, I haven't drank in ages. Feels good, doesn't it? Just my luck, too. I've always liked eccentrics thinking themselves as vampires. Usually I just stick around for a couple of days and get out of their way. Most of the time they just like wearing ruffles and drink wine while pretending to be evil. Having said that, you're my first real psychopath.
So, you try to lure them into thinking you're just an crazy old man, and add them to your collection a la 'Dexter' as soon as they get tired of your nonsense… that's pretty sick."
The Count's eyes widened as he backed up in a corner.
"I must commend your knowledge, though. Garlic, sunlight… ", she scoffed, "Holy symbols! None of this works. It's no more than pop culture. But that scalpel, that was bad news, well played.
Still, there is one fact you got completely wrong. Do you know which one?"
He silently shook his head from side to side, still staring.
"We still kill, sometimes"
She rolled her eyes and added, to herself, "Mostly for fun".
She leapt.
The End.
This story is based upon a request from Julie (Keywords: Vampire, Funny... I just couldn't keep the funny part on this one, got pretty carried away. Julie is a badass though, and I'll hope she'll forgive me :p )
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Hostel - Another Vampire Story by Danny Hefer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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