You will not believe what happened this weekend.
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| The real reason I go home. |
So I went home, right? Get to my house, almost trip over my nine-month old niece who’s happily gnawing on a teething toy shaped exactly like a severed human leg. And, most likely, flavored to match. Adorable. So I swing her up into my arms and am all, “Hiiii baby. Did you miss your favorite auntie?!” She gurgles at me and grabs my hair. It totally breaks my heart to think that sweet little toothless mouth will, at any minute, be filled with her first set of fangs.
What happens next is totally creepy. My mother’s voice comes out of a cloud of flour like the Wizard of Oz. “You’re her only aunt.” Thanks a lot, Mom. Fortunately, I’m way cuter than Dorothy.
“All the more reason to be her favorite,” I retort, covering Audie’s chubby cheeks with kisses. She squeals joyously and closes her mouth on my shoulder. I’m telling you, the child is precocious. “Where is everybody?” See, in my delusional mind, when I come home, everyone should be excited and waiting for me with open arms. Sigh. It’s a nice daydream. One with sparkling blood punch.
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| Two female vamps on Black Tuesday. Nothing scarier. |
“Your sister’s downstairs, Al’s working a shift at Chili’s—I really don’t know how he does it, always surrounded by fat people and steak—and Andy’s being a pain,” Mom recites glibly, pounding away at her mound of blood bread dough (look it up), which I’m sure will then be made into blood bread pudding. “I don’t know where your father is. What are you doing here?”
“Well, hello to you too,” I put the baby back down on the dining room floor to play and drag a stool into the kitchen, “I’m bored! Entertain me!”
“Get a summer job!”
“I can’t find one.”
My mom is what you might call…relentless. “Go back to school.” I want to curl up and die at the thought. Four and a half years of paper-writing slavery and a bachelor’s degree was all right, but a master’s in English will ultimately destroy me. The idea of more school is worse than garlic, worse than a wooden stake, worse than decapitation, worse than fire.
“Nooooo!”
“Don’t you have any friends?” Did I mention that my mom is the worst at comforting? She’s being more loving towards the bread dough than me.
“Yes, Mother, I have friends,” I grumble. “But they’re all guys! Human guys. Who want to go out and eat burgers and wings every other day of the week.”
“Delicious.” I’m pretty sure she’s talking about the friends. Not the burgers. “So what’s the problem?” Now she’s forming loaves and slapping them into greased bread pans to rise.
“So it’s hard,” I wail in frustration. “I have to pretend that I can’t even finish one burger so that they think I’m dainty and lady-like, when the truth is I could eat my burger and all of theirs AND top it off with a milkshake made with the blood of all of their families put together. I am HUNGRY all the time!” Seriously. Like horrendous munchies at three in the morning. But that is not what this story is about.
“Hey, I’m hungry all the time too!” My father comes in and kisses me on the cheek. “Welcome home, honey.”
“Daaaaad?” I wheedle. He narrows his eyes. I smile angelically. “Will you make me a red milkshake? Pretty please?” Dad rolls his eyes, but five minutes and some vanilla ice-cream, a heavy dose of A-positive syrup and Oreo bits later, I’m slurping down the first decent meal I’ve had in days.
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| Grandpa, wrapped around Audie's little finger. |
“So why are you here?” Dad asks pointedly. I clank my half-empty glass down on the counter. Like I said, it’s a nice daydream where my parents are like Uncle Henry and Auntie Em, welcoming me home and putting a cool cloth on my burning forehead. Or at least, that’s what I imagine having a burning forehead would be like. My skin is rarely anything but cold. You lucky humans. Your parents care.
“What, can’t I come home just because I love you guys?” It’s outrageous they don’t already assume so. This is the last straw. My parents are the worst.
“You can…but you don’t,” my father says, matter-of-factly. Mom snorts. Dad is cuddling my niece and laughing madly as she lunges at his fingers to chew on them. Oh that baby. She will do great things.
Mom sets the last loaf into its pan to rise. “She’s here because it’s so incredibly boring hanging out with guys all the time and not being able to beat them at eating.”
“They make fun of me and call me a coward,” I mumble sadly. “And I can’t prove them wrong, because if I started, I wouldn’t be able to stop, and I’d eat everybody in the restaurant.”
“I have an idea: Bring them home sometime for dinner,” Dad says slyly, licking his lips. I gasp, horrified. He’s like the Wicked Witch of the West. Except a pasty white instead of Kelly green. But they both dress only in black (except on vacation) and have butt-chins. And we are all of his flying monkey slaves.
“Dad, no! I actually like my friends. I respect them too much to introduce them to my family.” My dad puts Audie down again and comes back into the kitchen.
“Well fine. You have such a terrible life,” he says sarcastically. “Please, tell me more.”
I embark on a verbal journey, just to spite him. About how I had to pretend to walk with my friends on a four-mile hike to the top of a stupid mountain, even though I can fly, and how my garlic allergies flared up like crazy when those idiots wanted post-hike pizza, and how we had to go and buy me Kleenex for my runny nose, and it was everything I could do not to snatch up those cute Walmart greeters and eat them like a handful of trail mix, but without the delicious nuts or chocolate chunks. Because that adds a delightful salty and sweet crunch that you just can’t get from blood. Don’t tell me I can’t tell a five-minute story in half an hour. I will prove you wrong.
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| You couldn't tell from their fun-loving faces, but these two are vicious, VICIOUS killers. |
My sister, Lee, and my brother, Andy race up the stairs and wrinkle their noses when they see me. “What are you doing here?” Why am I here? Why am I so unpopular? Doesn’t anybody love me? What was Dorothy thinking when she said there was no place like home? These were the questions that were racing through my mind, but this story is not about finding answers.
Anyway, Lee drains the rest of my milkshake and asks me if I can watch Audie for a few hours, because she and Andy got hired for a little summer job involving some escaped criminals up north.
“Oh?” I ask curiously. You don’t have to ask me twice to babysit.
“Yeah, we get to ‘stop’ their escape, as long as we leave their bodies where the cops can find ‘em,” Andy chimes in, a feral gleam in his brown eyes. “I can’t wait. I hope they’re lost high up in the mountains where there’s still snow. Haven’t had a popsicle in forever.” Mmmm. That’s worth it. All of our fangs flash at the thought of that scrumptious icy treat.
The bonding moment is mutilated when Andy and Lee turn to leave. “Stop right there. You think you’re gonna leave dressed like that?” Dad asks sternly. My brother and sister look at each other, confused.
“Dad!” Andy protests. “It’s like a hundred degrees out there!”
“They’re short-sleeved!”
“Well, DUH!” Andy bellows furiously. “They’re T-SHIRTS!!!” Mom has quietly slipped out of the kitchen to avoid the confrontation. I’m just enjoying the show. Minus my milkshake. Did I mention my sister is the worst? She is.
“They’re short-sleeved!”
“At least they have sleeves,” Andy’s arguing. And Dad’s growling some nonsense about how showing elbow cleavage is worse than showing your boxers. How his children will not be running around while entire layers of skin fall off within seconds of seeing the sun. (Redheads got nothing on us vamps.) And how humans will inevitable lose their appetite if they see it, and then we’ll all starve. Dad pretends to care about humans to be funny. He loves their phrase “bloody hell,” because it’s a total oxymoron. Which is why he likes to yell, “Bloody heaven!” That reminds me, my sister stole my milkshake. But that’s not what happened this weekend. I’m getting there.
Anyway, Lee’s is all, “Oh my gosh! Nobody’s underwear is showing and we put VSPF 3000 on. Worst case scenario—we’ll get a light tan.”
“You can tan with VSPF 3000?!” I ask excitedly. I should not have interrupted. It was a mistake.
“Seriously, Dad, don’t worry. Things are different than when you were a kid. Like, you are sooo behind the times.”
“Oh, let them go,” Mom says, coming back in to load the loaves into the oven. “They’ll be fine, and it means I don’t have to make dinner!” She cheers victoriously. Did I mention she was the only one cheering? She was.
“Fine, but only if you’ve cleaned your rooms and made up your coffins!!” Dad shouts at Andy and Lee’s rapidly retreating backs. “You have responsibilities!!”
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| Al's just another hot vamp with crazy hair. |
I shake my head. “Still haven’t given them real beds yet, Dad? Lee was right, you are old-fashioned.” He glowers at me. At that moment, my brother Al’s puppy—why he has one, I’ll never know—bolts into the room and starts playfully running in circles around the baby, who is giggling and trying to grab her wagging tail. Ugh. I do not like that puppy. We all turn back to the kitchen.
“You know,” Mom says cheerfully. “There are a lot of very nice boys around here who are little more like you than the guys you hang out with. They like the same food you do, and they can travel the same way.” Jeez Mom, way to flip a conversational one-eighty. I mean, what? Where did that come from? We were talking about coffins and Vampire Sun Protection Factor. Right?
“Yes, but they’re boooring,” I whine, gesturing wildly. “Plus, you’ve seen Audie. I gotta marry a human, if I’m going to have beautiful half-vampire babies like that.” Anyway, that’s not the point. This is about what happened this weekend. To make a long story short, suddenly there’s all this barking and screeching, and then…utter silence.
Mom, Dad, and I slowly turn around and gape at the sight in front of us. Audie’s new baby fangs are gleaming in the late afternoon sunshine and Dad coughs uncomfortably.
“Speaking of responsibility,” he says nervously. “Who wants to have the responsibility of telling Al he no longer has a dog?”
Judges Comments:
"Just another family having another tired family conversation, only not quite. I like the twist on this, how you casually bring in the vamp elements while maintaining a relative sense of human normalcy in the setting and dilemmas being faced. Very entertaining."
Random Girl, from Random Girl Blog
"I will be a little bit of a Simon on this one in that it was a drawn out post. After a certain point I was wondering when it would end. You could probably combine a few paragraphs or header them off.
As for the assignment though, great job giving us exactly what I expected. THis has been a great assignment to read the entries on. And I think this one hit the assignment dead on (no pun intended) okay yeah, (pun intended) BADUM CHING!"
The Dude, from The DaddyYo Blog
"I liked the way that you worded this - as a real conversation between family members. I could definitely get a feel for the emotions of each character and felt that it was very well written.
But, at the same time, it was very long and drawn out. Not saying that that's necessarily a bad thing, just that when I'm reading something for a blogging competition, I expect something a little shorter.
Good job! "
Amy, from Non-Stop Mom