The Wonderful Mr. Vampire

The Wonderful Mr. Vampire

The cobblestones were warm with the day’s red sunset.

The black suitcase the vampire was carrying swooped in a pendulum’s arc alongside striding legs clad in dark, Armani pants.
He was walking toward the bloody sunset, his keen eyes searching for a number seventy-four. The vampire licked his lips, feeling the sharp curve of his fangs as he did so.
A whiff of smoke drifted up from his mouth in the process.

Frowning, the vampire stopped walking and placed his suitcase neatly down on the cobblestone sidewalk. He unclasped the case and pulled out a bottle. It was filled with lamb’s blood.
He gingerly unscrewed the cap off and downed half the bottle at once. The vampire winced at the off taste. Lamb’s blood was a poor substitute for fresh human blood – but it would have to do for now. He lazily pivoted on the sidewalk, taking in his calm surroundings. He was on Tottenham Road, he was sure of it. The London Streetfinder had identified this quiet road as a short blue squiggle feeding off the main road (which was a fat black squiggle), added on almost as an afterthought.

The aftertaste of the lamb’s blood was disgusting, but at least it hydrated the vampire. Content, he recapped the bottle and placed it neatly back into his dark suitcase. The bottle settled back into its pouch snugly.
The vampire lifted his suitcase off the sidewalk and continued with his journey – suitcase swinging, eyes keen.

Seventy, now. A silver car cruised onto Tottenham Road. From the slow and careful driving, the vampire deducted that the driver must be lost.

There was the sound of a power window winding down.

‘Excuse me!’ The driver yelled to the vampire.
‘Hey, excuse me!’

The vampire, looking quite out of place with his expensive three piece suit, looked toward the car. He sniffed subtly. Judging from the smells, the driver was in his mid twenties, and healthy. The perfume of human flesh mixed with the smell of carbon dioxide and petroleum was very attractive.

The vampire found himself walking toward the car, his polished black shoes clicking expensively on the gravel he was now stepping on.

‘Yes? Can I be of any assistance?’ The vampire gave a closed-mouth smile, careful to conceal any traces of his fangs.

‘Yeah, you can. I’m lost – is this Wilhelm Avenue? I don’t live in these parts of London… be damned if I can find my way around,’ he shrugged.

The vampire shook his head.

‘No, no. This is Tottenham Road, if memory serves me correctly. Wilhelm is further down this road.’

Of course it wasn’t, but the vampire wasn’t concerned about him giving the driver bad directions. The young man wasn’t going to live long enough to care.

‘Ah… you sure? Listen, you got some kind of map or something I can maybe take a look at? It'll just take a minute.’

‘I do. One second.’

The vampire produced the London Streetfinder from his suitcase. He flipped to the correct page, and leaned into the driver’s car. His index finger traced the thin road.

The driver noticeably jerked away as he saw the vampire’s claw-like finger.

‘Jesus! What the hell’s wrong with your h-’

The vampire dropped the map and clutched the driver’s head with both hands. His eyes, with a seasoned vampire’s precision, pinpointed the jugular vein which was clad in fair, stubbled skin. He lunged forward and dug both pearly fangs into the familiar soft skin.

The birds in nearby trees flew away in a hurry as the screams began.

+++

‘When’s he supposed to come?’

Joey looked at his watch.

‘Six thirty? Seven? Somewhere around there.’

‘What time is it now?’

‘Quarter of six,’ Joey replied.

William nodded. ‘We can wait.’ He glanced worriedly at Maria, who was looking out the window lifelessly. The red sunset gave her pale skin a red tinge. ‘Mare?’

‘Yes?’

‘He’ll come soon.’

‘I know.’

He nodded, then continued to wait.
Nine bags of fresh donated blood lay in a large wooden box in the parlour.

+++

The pendulum’s arc of the swinging suitcase was a little higher now, as the vampire approached number seventy-four. His appetite was satiated – at least for the time being – and he was looking forward to meeting his new client.

The clicking of his shoes turned hollow as the vampire stepped onto the wooden porch of number seventy-four. He pressed the grey button that was the doorbell. The vampire produced an ivory comb from the inner pocket of his Armani suit. He carefully combed back his slick, black hair.

Flat footsteps started, and grew louder. The vampire slipped the comb back into its pocket.
The doorknob twisted and a well-built man opened the main door. The strong scent of creamy human flesh climbed into the vampire’s nostrils again, but this time did not awaken the need to feed.
The man, who was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and grey shorts, paused for a while.

‘Oh! Are you mister…’ his eyebrows knitted together as he read the name off a crumpled business card. ‘Mister… Vampire?’

He looked at the vampire, expecting him to have a more sinister name. He was a child of Hollywood movies so he had expected names like… Dracula, perhaps.

The vampire smiled, mouth shut.

‘That is me. I believe I am expected?’

‘Oh yes. You are. Please, come in.’

‘Thank you.’

He stepped into the hallway of a luxurious-looking house. The vampire looked around. There was a large TV in the parlour, stereos and old paintings. He didn’t much have a care for modern technology (maybe except for the wonderful TV). One thing he noted immediately was the playthings strewn carelessly around the hallway and parlour.

The vampire breathed in sharply, the sweets and sours of the house vacuumed into twin, thin nostrils.

No children – at least not anymore. This house had the faint tang of a child – a boy, most likely – but it was childless now. The well-built man had locked the door and now led the vampire into the parlour. There waited a woman who smelled of grief and bitterness and a man who had his arms crossed.

‘This is Maria and William – Maria and Will, this is Mr. Vampire.’ The Hawaiian shirt man, Joey, introduced the small crowd of two.

‘It was kind of you to come,’ the woman extended a hand to the vampire, her eyes red rimmed and belying a well-composed and griefless woman.
The vampire did not accept her hand.

‘Better not.’ He showed off his claw-like hands for them all to see.

As expected, his audience cringed; the suddenly vinegar smell in the atmosphere a telltale sign of an abrupt rise in adrenalin.

The vampire was used to this sort of stuff – the grief-stricken clients, the sour smell of fright because of a single vampire’s presence. This was his job.

‘Well let us not waste time. I have a clear idea why you’ve asked for me – the best in the business.’

The woman standing opposite the darkly dressed vampire nodded. She motioned for him to sit. He did.

Joey threw some more wood into the fireplace.
The woman cleared her throat.

‘My… my son, who was six, died last month. I tried all the counselling and psychological bullshit available out there,’ her eyes crimped, tears glistening in them. ‘But – I can’t let him just go like this! He was my son, you know? And he was just six! No boy should duh - die when he - he’s six!’

The man whose arms had been folded now dropped to his knees and hugged her. The vampire presumed this was the husband. His hair was salt-and-pepper grey, the shade not of a man who is aging, but of a man who is morally drained and robbed untimely of happiness.

‘There there. I’ve seen many like you and I understand what you desire but cannot speak of.’
He gave a look of counterfeit pity for the melted couple in front of him. Joey had disappeared into the kitchen. ‘You would like your son resurrected.’

The couple nodded in unison.

‘Very well. Bring me your finest payments of blood and the corpse, and you shall have your son back.’

The woman smiled through her tears.

‘Good… how soon?’

‘In a jiffy.’

+++

When the bloody sunset had turned into a bruised purple, Hawaiian shirt Joey, husband William and Mr. Vampire were already staring at the slightly greyish and decayed corpse of Malcolm, a six year old boy. Maria had opted to stay home.

William was the first to break down. He weakly cried out ‘Malcolm!’ and crouched on the green grass, bawling into his dirty hands.

‘Quiet! We don’t need unnecessary attention.’
The vampire had quietly sucked the juice out of the cemetery guard (quiet a fat one, too) and now felt quiet woozy. ‘Load the boy into the truck.’

They did.

+++

Everyone was in the parlour.

The shades were drawn shut, the lights dimmed. The smell was sickening – the vampire knew the boy had a lot of potential for stench, but never this much. Maria didn’t seem to mind, so she never once suggested using the air refresher located within her reach.

So the vampire strode irritably to depress the button himself before performing the ritual.

‘Now.’

He cracked his knuckles, stretched. He removed the pair of scissors from the suitcase. With a swift movement he opened his suit to reveal a very complete set of different coloured ointments Velcro-strapped to the soft hide of his Armani suit.

His long fingers abducted a blue ointment. He uncapped it and carelessly tipped out the content on the boy’s face. Maria yelped. Malcolm was still dressed in his best black suit, moth-eaten and decayed as it was.

The vampire placed the empty bottle onto the edge of the clothed coffee table he was performing on.

His fingers took out another bottle. Then another.

He tipped both bottles onto Malcolm’s face.

‘What are you doing…?’ Maria asked, her voice small against her husband’s chest.

‘Preserving the face, dear woman. His body may quickly adopt a smell of the earth and need to be washed regularly, but as long as the face is alright, he’ll pass off as a normal boy.’

‘Can’t you preserve the whole body?’

‘No. It's too expensive.’ He held up an empty bottle with illegible inscriptions on it. ‘Do you know how much these juices cost me?’

‘…no.’

‘I thought so.’ The vampire continued to work, irritated at human dumbness. Only two things were infinite – human stupidity and his own life. And he wasn’t so sure about the latter.

The scissors cut the boy’s suit and the vampire extracted a glob of yellowness into a syringe. He quickly plunged the fat needle into the boy.

‘This ensures his organs will work come dawn.’ He pulled out the syringe, gave the greyish Malcolm two quick pats and grinned. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen - we’re done.’

+++

They thanked him and paid him the nine bags of blood, as promised.

‘Thank you. Now all you have to do is bury him in your garden. Bury the boy deep. Do that and he’ll find his way into the house by morning.’

He tipped the rest of the lamb blood in the white bottle into his mouth. ‘I have to warn you, though. Your boy is never going to be the same. He’ll begin to stink very rapidly, and he will most likely be less intelligent. But that’s a petty cost for a son who is living again, no?’

‘Yes… yes, I suppose so.’ Maria didn’t care if her son smelled or was a little dull. At least he’ll be breathing and living under her roof instead of some cold, air-tight coffin.

‘Well all the best, then. Good day.’

The vampire was off in a hurry, grateful that his job for the day was done. Now he could go back to his cold, stony castle and watch reruns of Double Jeopardy while dreamily sipping on goblet-fulls of fresh, human blood.

He stepped off the wooden porch and onto the cobblestone sidewalk which would lead him to the railway station and take him back to Transylvania. Home, sweet home.

+++

Early the next morning Maria was up in the kitchen, a cup of hot chocolate in her hands. The sun was just emerging, casting a gloomy glow across a foggy London morning. The two men – her brother Joey and her husband – were still upstairs, sleeping.

Maria blew ripples across the surface of the hot chocolate. The steam made her face moist, but she didn’t mind.

Any minute now, her boy, Malcolm, her sweet, sweet boy, would be back. Back from what ever place had mistakenly taken him.

She was about to take a tentative sip when she heard the porch door bang open. Looks like he wasn’t bright enough to figure out to come in through the back door.

Maria didn’t turn around, but instead sipped her hot chocolate.

Shuffling sounds approached.

‘Mmmummy,’ it said.

Clumps of soil from the garden fell onto the kitchen’s linoleum.

Maria’s eyes filled with joyful tears. Cold fingers clutched her pyjamas and hugged her dumbly, dirt and tufts of grass falling onto Maria’s clothes.

The cup of hot chocolate was left forgotten.