Maria relaxed a bit. “Speak about what?” she asked suspiciously.
“This. And that. And the other thing.”
“Baroness, I most certainly don’t love you most of all.”
“Georg seems to love you most of all.”
Maria looked away. “What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, come now, Vampire. We’re both women. We’re both otherworldly creatures. We’re both immortal. We have both been there and done that. Let’s not pretend we don’t notice when a man notices us.”
“Frankly, Baroness, I don’t notice when a man notices me.”
“Well I do, and I notice when a man notices somebody else other than me, and I’ve noticed on more than one occasion the Captain noticing you.”
“The Captain notices everything and everybody. I don’t stand apart.”
“A pale, slender female with legs up to here, perky breasts, and the sharpest fangs in Austria? You stand apart, Maria, whether you like it or not.” The Baroness walked across the room. “Come on, let me help you disrobe.” Before Maria could say a word, the Succubus removed the Vampire’s dress in six seconds flat, then gave Maria’s backside an unabashed gawk. “I know Georg notices that derriere of yours, and I can’t say that I blame him. It’s quite a sight.”
“You can credit that to the Pilates.”
“Credit that to the what?”
“Nothing. And for the record, I haven’t done a thing to attract the Captain’s attention.”
“You don’t necessarily have to, my dear. Men like women who like them.” She stole another glace at Maria’s rump and shook her head appreciatively. “Plus he probably likes that thing.”
“Wait,” Maria said, turning back around, “you think he’s in love with me?”
“Surely you have noticed the way he looks at your face. And your teeth. And your chest.” The Baroness leered at Maria’s bare breasts. “And I can’t say that I blame him there, either. For a lady who’s many, many centuries old, you are tight as fick.”
“Pilates.”
“What?”
“Forget it.” Maria went to her closet and put on her nightgown, rerunning that evening’s interaction with the Captain in her head. Maybe the Baroness is right, she thought. Maybe he’s interested in me.
As if the Baroness had read Maria’s mind—which she wasn’t able to do; despite many centuries of research and development, Succubi have no extrasensory perception—Elsa said, “Maybe he is interested in you, but I wouldn’t take it too seriously. Like all men, he has a wandering eye. He’ll move on to another soon enough. Familiarity breeds contempt.” She stepped toward Maria and whispered into her ear, “But maybe to play it safe, you should go back from whence you came.” She then took a nibble of Maria’s earlobe and breathed into her ear in a manner that few beings—be they Vampire or mortal, be they male or female—could resist. “Pack now,” she added, moving her hand under Maria’s robe and tweaking her left nipple.
Maria’s breath quickened. “I should go back from whence I came,” she said in a Zombie-like tone. “I should pack now.”
The Baroness licked Maria’s neck, then said, “Return to the Abbey.”
“I shall return to the Abbey.”
The Baroness rubbed her thigh against Maria’s lady-parts. “Leave immediately.”
“I shall leave immediately.”
The Baroness gently pulled Maria’s hair. “You love me most of all.”
“I love you most of all.”
The Baroness ran a finger down the center of Maria’s backside. “Don’t say goodbye to the Captain or the brats.”
“I shall not say goodbye to the Captain or the brats.”
The baroness ran her lips along Maria’s neck. “Write a goodbye note and leave it on the table.”
“I shall write a goodbye note and leave it on the table.”
The Baroness then put her hand on Maria’s neck and pulled her into a kiss. Defenseless at this point, Maria opened her mouth wide and let Elsa’s tongue explore her fangs. The kiss intensified, and their intermingled saliva created a scent that would have brought a eunuch to orgasm. The Baroness broke off their embrace and said, “Nice meeting you, Maria. Climb every mountain.”
“Nice meeting you, Baroness. I shall climb every mountain.”
“Oh, also, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
“I shall not let the door hit me on the way out.”
After she left the dazed Vampire’s room, Baroness Schrader walked down the stairs and into the drawing room, head held high, a broad grin plastered on her stunning face. She blew a kiss at the Captain and said, “Hello, darling,” then nodded at Detweiler and sneered, “Max.”
“Well,” von Trapp said, rising from the sofa, “you seem a lot more chipper.”
“I feel a lot more chipper, my dear. Almost as if I lived through a silver-white winter that melted into spring.”
Max said, “You always struck me as being impervious to weather.”
The Baroness’s grin grew wider, and she said, “Oh, Max, I love you least of all!” She turned to the Captain. “And speaking of your Governess, dear, it’s lovely having her around, just lovely. It would be a shame if she disappeared.”
“Why would she disappear?” the Captain asked.
Giggling, the Baroness said, “Never mind.” She cupped her hands over her mouth and yelled, “Alfredddddd! Champaaaaaaaagne! Nowwwwwwwwww!”
“Shh,” the Captain hissed. “Inside voice. You’ll wake the children. And Malia.”
“Maria,” Max corrected.
“Right. Maria. She has worked hard this week, and she deserves a good night’s sleep.”
The Baroness nodded. “She works hard for the money, that Governess of yours.”
“She does,” Max agreed. “So you’d better treat her right.” He asked the Baroness, “Was that even in a musical?”
“No. It was on plenty of soundtracks, though.”
Von Trapp asked, “What’s a soundtrack?”
Before she could answer, Alfred arrived with a bottle of champagne and three glasses. Elsa took the tray from the butler’s hand and placed it on the table, then filled all three glasses, and chugged straight from the bottle until it was empty. She belched lightly, then said, “Hmm, what’s this?”
“What’s what?” the Captain asked, eyes raised to the ceiling.
She cuffed him on the back of his head, then pointed to an envelope that had materialized on the marble table at the front of the room, the Baroness said, “That, dummy, that.”
The Captain staggered over to the table, opened the envelope, and read aloud:
Dear Captain von Trapp: This is to inform you that I’m taking leave of you and your family. You’re lovely people, but the Untersberg beckons me, and I can’t ignore its pull. I must climb every mountain, so it’s with much regret that I say so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good night. If you wish to contact me, you know where to find me. Yours, Vampire Sister Maria of the Zombie Abbey. P.S.: Tell Friedrich I shall find him in exactly one hundred years, and I will teach him about doeraydoeraydoeraydoeray. He’ll know what I’m talking about.
The Captain dropped the note on the table, speechless, clearly in shock.
Max said, “Scheisse. She was the only one who could whip the brats into performing shape. I guess my chances of winning the Gala rest on the shoulders of Glockenspiel the Clown.”
The Captain said, “And my chances of love rest on the shoulders of…”
The Baroness said, “Me!” She downed all three glasses of champagne, then ran across the room, took the Captain’s hand, and said, “Join me in bed, Georg. I believe it’s high time we sowed some more of your seed.”
As was always the case, Georg couldn’t resist.
After yet another bout of satisfying seed-sowing that shall not be described here—because let’s be honest, how many seed-sowing scenes does one really need?—the Captain tottered back downstairs and fixed himself a drink. And th
en another. And then another. With each minute that passed, he became drunker and sadder, and this cycle of seed-sowing and drinking went on for a week after the Governess’s departure.
This was arguably the Captain’s longest, most intense sex-and-booze bender to date, although some von Trapp aficionados would claim that the March, 1935, alcohol-and-fick onslaught was worse. Depressed about his lack of female attention, the Captain spent a week having only liquid breakfasts, liquid lunches, liquid dinners, and liquid ladies of the night. The only thing that enabled him to (sort of) function was that he didn’t mix his drinks—it was an all-gin-and-prostitute rampage.
The post-Maria drinking festival, conversely, was a mix-and-match affair. The Captain enjoyed whatever booze or babe he could get his hands on: Gin, Baroness, lager, champagne, hooker, lager, Baroness, scotch, lager, vermouth, Baroness, hooker, hooker, lager, red wine, lager, white wine, hooker, Baroness, hooker, lager, lager, and lager. (The explanation for all the lager? The Captain believed that the heaviness of the drink matched the heaviness of his heart.) This all led to epic hangovers, which led to epic headaches, which led to more drinking, which led to more epic hangovers, et cetera.
On the eighth day after Maria’s departure, von Trapp, Max, and the Baroness sat on the veranda overlooking the lake, Elsa and Detweiler sipping some smoothies, the Captain drooling into a tumbler filled with a mixture of gin, scotch, vermouth, and goat’s milk. The children were nearby, playing some sort of ball game that involved a lot of bouncing and counting, and each bounce and subsequent utterance was like a chisel in the center of the Captain’s brain. He roared, “Brats, can you please take that to the other side of the house?”
“Sorry, Father,” Friedrich said. “The lay of the land by the water is more conducive to our game.” Then, whispering, he added, “Plus if the ball gets away from us, there’s always the chance we can knock the Baroness’s skull into the lake.”
“What was that son?”
“I said, um, if you all come and play with us, there’s always the chance we can dock the Baroness’s hull in the lake!”
The Baroness turned to the Captain and said, “Tell that brat I don’t have a boat, Georg.”
Louisa then wound up and whipped the ball at the Baroness’s head. Kurt yelled, “Think fast, Schrader!”
Schrader thought fast. But not fast enough.
It turned out that Louisa had not only magnificent aim, but an arm with a whip action similar to that of American baseball legend Cy Young, which enabled her to hurl a ball at 61 kilometers per hour with pinpoint accuracy. Had a baseball talent scout seen what Louisa could do with the ol’ horsehide, he would have signed her in a heartbeat. (If Max Detweiler had more than half a brain, he would have made Louisa a solo entrant for the Graz Gala of Gaiety.) Long story short, Louisa von Trapp nailed Baroness Elsa Schrader right in the side of her noggin.
Succubi’s heads are as hard as diamonds, so the Baroness was more thrown by the surprise of the blow than the blow itself. After rubbing her temple to make certain everything was where it was supposed to be, she picked up the ball and yelled, “This looks like fun, kids! May I join in?”
In unison, the brats said, “No! Fick off!”
She turned at the Captain and said, “Georg, are you going to let your children use that sort of language?”
The now-unconscious Captain didn’t answer.
The Baroness shook her head and told Max, “Keep an eye on Georg. Make sure he doesn’t choke on his own sick. I’m going to show these brats who’s the real ballplayer in this house.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea, Elsa?” Max asked.
“No. No, I don’t think it’s a good idea. I think it’s a great idea.”
“Do you not recall the performance after the puppet show last week? They’re a, shall we say, talented bunch. The kind of talent that even the likes of you can’t compete with.”
With a dismissive wave, the Baroness said, “I have age and experience on my side.”
“If you say so.”
Farta called, “Are you going to give us our ball back, Baroness?”
“Not only am I going to return your ball, but I’m going to join the game.”
The children all groaned. “We already told you to fick off.” Brigitta said.
“I will not fick off. Trust me, this’ll be fun.”
Liesl nodded thoughtfully, then said to her siblings, “You know what? I think she’s correct. I think it will be fun. Baroness, please throw me the ball.”
Elsa wound up and awkwardly tossed the sphere across the lawn. She got some giddy-up on the ball—she was otherworldly, after all, and what she lacked in technique, she made up for in sheer strength—and had it smacked an unsuspecting mortal on the side of the head, it would have caused significant damage. But Liesl was a Vampire, with Vampire strength, Vampire quickness, and Vampire cunning, so she knew where the Baroness was going to throw the ball before the ball even left the Baroness’s hand. All of which was why Liesl was able to, in a single, blurry-fast motion, catch the ball with one hand then heave it back toward the Baroness, who never saw it coming.
KLONK!
The blood jetted from the Baroness’s broken nose in a single stream, and the kids all ran toward it as if it were a sprinkler on a hot summer day, mouths open, tongues a-wagging. They drank—or ate, depending on how one looks at it—every drop of the Baroness’s hemoglobin, including those drops that fell onto the lawn. Benevolent Vampires, the brats shared with one another, and by the time the Baroness got the bleeding under control, all seven were equally sated.
Her white dress splattered red, the Baroness sat down beside Max, who stared off at the lake and said, “Ah, the country is so restful this time of year.” He pushed a glass toward her. “Here, have another smoothie. Fresh mango. Yummy, yummy, yummy.”
She knocked the glass off the table. Even when it shattered loudly on the floor of the veranda, the Captain didn’t stir. The Baroness said, “There must be an easier way to make this one big, happy family. I can see it Max: Me, Georg, the kids, happy, rich, and ruling the world.”
“The thought of you being their mother is hi-fickin-larious.” Max smiled beatifically. “Elsa Schrader taking care of seven angry Vampire brats. I love it. How do you plan to raise these kids by yourself?”
“Two words: Boarding school. They’ll leave in September and return in June. I can handle them for three months out of the year.”
Max shook his head. “As demonstrated just now, you can’t even handle them for three minutes out of the day. Besides, Georg would never let you send them away, not now that they’re incrementally nicer than they have ever been. Face it, Elsa: You can be your most devious self, but if you manage to get Georg to marry you, those brats are yours.”
All five of the von Trapp girls wandered over. Brigitta asked, “Uncle Max, when do you think Father will regain consciousness?”
Max leaned over his friend, said, “Now,” then backhanded him across his right cheek.
The Captain popped up, blinked, and got a gander of Elsa’s swollen nose. “What the Hölle happened to you?”
Pointing at the kids, she said, “Them. They happened to me.”
“Hmm,” he hmm’d with a tiny smile, then took the smoothie from the Baroness and asked, “What is this?” He sniffed at the drink and made a disgusted face. “It smells spoilt.”
“That,” the Baroness said, “is because your nose is out of whack, as the only thing you have smelled this week is libations. This is a smoothie, with real fruit in it. So drink it up, because you’ll need your strength for tonight.”
“What’s tonight?” he asked.
She cleared her throat and hocked up some red and yellow sputum, then wiped some drying blood from her upper lip and said, “You and me. Alone together. In your bedroom. With candles. And I have a new item of clothing I think you’ll enjoy.” And then she spat again.
He looked at the two globs of mucus on the ground and curled h
is upper lip in disgust. “I think I’ll take the night off, Elsa.”
Brigitta repeated, “Father, I don’t think our Governess is coming back.”
Still staring at the Baroness’s gloppy discharge, “What, you mean McMillan?”
“Maria.”
“Right. Maria.” He gave his daughter a sad, sad look, and said, “Yes, I suppose it’s true, yes. She shall not return.”
Brigitta said, “I can’t believe it, Father. Why would she go?”
The Baroness said, “Can we stop talking about her? She bores me.”
Louisa said, “She didn’t even say goodbye.”
“Can we stop talking about her?” the Baroness repeated. “She bores me.”
“She did in her letter,” the Captain said.
“What letter?” Farta asked.
“There was no letter,” the Baroness screeched, “Now can we stop talking about her? She bores me.”
“She wrote something about climbing every mountain, and teaching Friedrich about doeraydoeraydoeraydoeray…”
Liesl said, “Gross.”
“… and that we would know where to find her.”
“Alright,” the Baroness said, “now that that’s out of the way, CAN WE STOP TALKING ABOUT HER! SHE BORES ME!”
Gretl said, “I have a question, Father. Who will take care of us now?”
The Captain ran his hand over his mouth, and said, “Well, darling, you’re not going to have a minder…”
“Thank Gott,” Louisa said.
“… but you’ll have a new munder. Er, I mean mother.”
“We will?” Liesl asked.
“We will?” Friedrich asked.
“They will?” the Baroness asked.
The Captain draped his arm over Elsa’s shoulders. “Yes, darling, they will. You’ve made it clear that you want to be married to me, and I don’t think I’ll be able to do any better than you…”
“Gosh, thanks.”
“… so what the Hölle, let’s tie the knot.”
The Baroness pumped her fist and shouted, “Yes! That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout! In your face, Lillith! How ya like me now, bitches?!” Then she cleared her throat and calmly said, “It would be my honor, Captain Georg von Trapp, to be your wife. Forever. And ever. And ever. Until the end of time.”
My Favorite Fangs: The Story of the Von Trapp Family Vampires Page 16
