October 3: LADY VAMPIRE

I was kindly referred to the Dractober Facebook Group.  I’ll see if I can find something more specific than that if they let me join 🙂

You’ll note the difference between the title and the assignment…I didn’t want to deal with copyright issues over the character.  The parody song lyrics should be okay, though.

 

Oct 3: LADY VAMPIRE

It was Halloween because of course it was, and Justine had put on her full regalia—black evening gown with low décolleté, black wig, spiky fingernails, three-inch heels, pointed teeth.  She’d even done her makeup, giving herself pearly white skin, a double-fanged scar on her neck, and eyebrows that swooped upward, then down in a pair of winged vees.

Then it was time to go out.  She whistled the tune to “Tiny Dancer” as she walked past the graveyard.  Little kids ogled at her and she smiled her pointed smile at them, hissing and holding out her claws.  They shrieked and ran. Their parents laughed nervously at her.

“Headed to the haunted house?”

“I go on in half an hour.”

They nodded sagely to themselves.

She passed the haunted house—the lines stretched around the block—and walked deeper into the dark.

The kid stepped out of an alleyway, the kind where raccoons rifle through trash cans and students jam sixteen cars in a back gravel lot.  He was wearing a red and white letterman’s jacket with a T over the left breast.  And he held a wooden stake in one hand.

“Vampire!” he growled.

She hissed at him.  She was game.

He raised the stake and stalked toward her.  She laughed and hissed again.  Then took a step backward as he kept coming.  The streetlight was directly overhead and all she could see in his eyes were shadows.

He was going to do it.  He was seriously going to stake her.

He must be on something.

She turned and ran.

Footsteps behind her made her run faster.  The heels came off, black Cinderella slippers on the side of the road.  Luckily the dress was slit up the thigh.  Once he got close enough to rip the wig off her head, leaving her pinned-up curls and a straggling mesh cap behind.

Outside the graveyard he grabbed the back of the dress and she lost her balance.  He swung her around and tossed her into the low stone wall.  Her head hit the wrought iron railing along the top and bounced.

She screamed now but it came in gasps.

“Vampire!”

“Look, look!”  She grabbed at her fake teeth and popped them out.  “It’s fake, I’m human, I’m human!”

The stake rose and fell.  After the fourth or fifth grinding, crushing blow, her screams cut off.  He dragged her body around the corner, leaving a trail of blood.

It was Halloween because of course it was, and Justine had put on her full regalia.  Past the graveyard she started to sing, making up words as she went along.  Hold me closer, Lady Vampire…count the ghosts along the highway…

A little kid in a cheap superhero costume threw a rock at her.

“Don’t throw rocks at monsters, kid,” she growled.

“You’re just a fake!”

“If I’m a fake, why are you throwing rocks at me?”

And then she let him see.

She laughed as he fled.  Humans.  They always thought they knew the rules of the games they played.

Lay me down in alleys past the graveyard…big ol’ stake is your loving wa-hay…

If you liked this post, check out my short story “Something Borrowed, Something Blue,” a tale of supernatural suspense.

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