Dracula's Story

Count Dracula shifted his blood shot eyes from the tooth in the palm of his hand to the back of the medicine bottle.  It wasn’t his fault he got tired of eating blood pudding and ate a few crackers instead. How did he know his arch-nemesis seasoned them with garlic salt? What? Did he think a vampire would die immediately after eating garlic? He sneered as he set the bottle back on the super-market shelf. No. Dracula pushed his cart to the other aisle. Instead his teeth were falling out.

This wasn’t the first time Dracula’s arch-nemesis, Callum Wilson, did something stupid and for the most part, useless.  It was a just few years ago when the renowned winner of the 2007 England Horror Writing Contest became loony and started hunting Dracula down. Eventually, after looking in Ireland for seven months, and Germany for two, he finally got the fact that Dracula resides in his very own United Kingdom. You should’ve seen his face when he found that out.

Anyway, Callum found, mostly by luck, Dracula’s wind-blown castle far out in the middle of nowhere. Dracula remembered this part particularly since he couldn’t stop laughing for the rest of the night.

He was just sitting down for another round of blood pudding when, ding dong-ong-ong; he tilted his head to a sound he hadn’t heard in centuries. Of course. It was the ancient bell used to summon the butler of the castle to open the gate. The butler was, in fact, standing right next to Dracula and raised his eyebrows in a silent question of, should I answer it? Or just let it go? Dracula rose gracefully from his meal, which he was glad to leave and, curious who the visitor was, left the dining room to answer the summons himself.

He lowered the drawbridge over the once alligator-infested moat using his new garage door opener device (he badly wanted to try it out) and opened the castle gates. Standing there, in a brown over shirt and jeans, wearing slightly round glasses and towering over even Dracula was Callum. What Callum saw was maybe a bit more intimidating: a very pale, skinny man in a vest and frock coat, black hair slicked back and two fangs slightly visible under bloodless lips. They stared at each other for a few moments. Then, before Dracula could ask who Callum was or Callum could talk himself into running away in fright, he thrust something hard against Dracula’s chest and leapt away like the devil himself was coming after him.
   
Callum had gone to the carpenters only that morning with an interesting request.  That a wooden steak be made, steak as in food, by 3 o’clock in the afternoon. 

Someone ought to tell the poor guy that it was a stake as in tent, and the food kind would only make a good bookend.
The next incident was far more, well, harmful. Just a day after the wooden steak event, Dracula was lured outside at four a.m. by the bleat of a goat in distress, and even though Dracula usually leaves goat bloodsucking to the chupacabras, he was feeling a bit adventurous.

Callum, waiting in the bushes, watched Dracula walk out into the driveway before he rushed across the drawbridge and pulled it up by the rope on the inside, not knowing that he could’ve just pressed one measly button.  He sat firmly on the ground and, panting, rested a bit before he left out the back.

Dracula was stuck in the sunrise and even more upsetting was that he found out the goat was a tape player. He waited two hours in the sun before the butler woke up and realized that the vampire was not in his coffin. He had to take a bath in five buckets of aloe vera a day for quite a long time to get rid of that sunburn. Dracula confirmed that it was the most miserable thing in all his history even worse than, he sighed, losing his teeth.

The cart squealed as Dracula walked past the produce aisles, his shoes softly click-clicking against the tiles. He stopped under the home supplies sign and his gaze swept to the glue. Superglue. Ha! He could just superglue his teeth back on and it would be as if nothing had happened. The Gorilla superglue found its way into Dracula’s empty cart and the cart found its way to the checkout counter.

“Halloween’s in October or didn’t you know?” Dracula swiveled his head from the candy bars and looked at the cashier. She was quite big, width-wise and had a very round, red face, her orange flower print shirt almost blinding Dracula’s eyes.

“Well, Madame, sometimes dressing up is very amusing. And I am very much in a hurry so…” Uh, oh. Dracula could feel another tooth wobbling around. This time it was his bottom fang. He had to get home and superglue them quick. “…chop, chop! That means faster, my good lady.”
 
She rolled her eyes and handed him his bag. “Yeah, I know what that means. I’m not that stupid.”  Dracula left his cart there and would’ve seen the lady at the checkout roll her eyes again if he wasn’t already in his car backing away.

As he drove in to his castle driveway, he saw a big white van blocking the entrance to his drawbridge. A man in overalls carrying a clipboard walked over to Dracula’s car and waited for him to get out.

“You live here?” He asked, mustache quivering as he talked.

“Why, yes, I do. And who are you, may I ask?” Dracula responded, now noticing a few other guys in overalls standing by the van.

The mustached guy looked down at his clipboard. “So you’re not Callum Wilson who ordered a full bat infestation treatment be made at nine tonight?”

“Ah, he’s at it again.” He mumbled.

“What was that, sir?”

“Sorry, just a small mistake, you can leave now.” The guy looked confused for a second then rounded up his crew into the van (which on the other side said “Exterminators-R-us”) and drove off into the hills.

Dracula finally made it inside the dark, shadowy hallways of the castle, and strode up the spiral staircase, past six armor displays and across his butler’s room (tiptoeing to not wake him up) to finally reach his chambers.

His chambers were round, his bedroom through the door on his left and his bathroom through the door on his right. Dracula turned right. And stopped. A feeling of dread rushed through his body starting with his ears. He couldn’t go any further. Dracula tried to reach for his bathroom door handle but his hand wouldn’t obey him. Then he caught sight of it. Below the end table, peering out from beneath a book titled Diary of an Undead Ninja-Pirate was a cross. A bronze cross about the size of Dracula’s hand.

There was one on his couch, on his TV, and by the door to his bedroom. Dracula suddenly knew what happened. Callum got into his castle, how? He didn’t know, and scattered bronze crosses everywhere. He left for the supermarket not that long ago… Dracula gulped, that meant…

He was still here.

Dracula took some time to carefully superglue his tooth back on and reinforce the bottom fang then left to find Callum.
There were quite some obvious clues that led Dracula to Callum. For example, the life size statue of Dracula in the drawing room had its head dismembered from its shoulders, and by the dining room door, a silver bullet gleamed in the moonlight. Callum probably didn’t know he left a nice trail of silver bullets for Dracula to follow. It led right under the huge, rectangular dining room table where he was crouched.

“Aha! I found you!” Callum jumped and hit his head on the table. But Dracula could not go under there and capture him since Callum was covered head to toe in crosses. There were crosses on rings, necklaces, key chains, even earrings hanging on his glasses.

Dracula felt the feeling of dread wash though him and wondered what to do. He could call the butler down, or act nice and civilized and invite him for tea. Right, never mind the second one; this lunatic wants to kill him!

“That’s enough of your schemes to kill me,” Dracula said and watched Callum scuttle away holding out a large medallion of a cross, “You might as well leave me alone since I have never done anything to you,” He thought for a moment, “unless that was your cat I drunk last weekend.”

Callum looked confused, then scared again. “B-but you are D-D-Dracula!” He stammered. “You are a monster! You must die!” He nearly screamed. He swung a gun (that Dracula hadn’t noticed before) around and pulled the trigger.

The shot echoed around the torch-lit room and Dracula staggered gripping his stomach. There was no blood, of course, but he could feel a weird lump inside him. Callum stared.

The dining room doors burst open and the butler rushed in gasping for breath. He woke up when he heard the shot and ran all the way, still in his pajamas, to the sound. He saw Dracula start to laugh, and straightened out, pulling the bullet from his stomach.

“I think you need to tell whoever the company was who made these that you want your money back,” Dracula looked under the table where Callum was frozen in disbelief, “These are silver-plated, not solid silver.” Suddenly tired, Dracula sat down in one of the wooden, carved chairs and the butler led Callum (rather forcefully) out of the castle.

The gentlemen from the insane asylum were waiting for him when he arrived home.

Nearly a week later, Dracula visited the dentist for his yearly checkup. The garlic salt had made all his teeth fall out, but he was sure to superglue each of them back on in the right spot.

The dentist looked at him in horror. “You mean you super-glued them on?”

Dracula nodded. “Yes, didn’t I do a wonderful job? They’re even straighter than before.”

Dracula left that day with a very numb mouth and a whole set of fake teeth.