My Favorite Fangs: The Story of the Von Trapp Family Vampires

by Alan Goldsher

  “I heard that,” Major Hassler said. “It came from the courtyard! Squad, advance!”

  The von Trapps heard the gate crash in, followed by the sound of quick, well-organized, shiny-booted footsteps. One of the voices said, “Major, I smell them! They’re to your left!”

  Friedrich asked Liesl, “They can smell us?”

  “Apparently so,” Liesl answered.

  “Did Rolfe smell you?”

  “Not the way I wanted him to, brother dear. Not the way I wanted him to.”

  Another scream from about ten meters away: “Found them, Major! Behind that fence.”

  “Good work, Schmitt,” the Major said. “Men, take your positions!” More shiny-booted footsteps, then silence. “Okay, Vampires,” the Major continued, “there are two ways we can do this: You can walk out of here undead, or you can get carried out of here dead-dead. Your choice.”

  Friedrich yelled, “You’ll never take us, you fascists ficks!”

  “I’ll give you until the count of three to come out with your hands up, your mouths closed, and your fangs hidden. If we don’t see you at three, we’ll engage, and I don’t believe you want that. One…”

  No movement.

  “Two…”

  No movement.

  “Three!…”

  And then, movement. And lots of it.

  Friedrich ripped a wide hole in the fence, wide enough so all the brats could file out two at a time. The two boys, Farta, and Gretl went left, and the other three girls went right. Captain von Trapp tried to follow, but Maria shoved him onto his backside. “Stay here, Georg. This isn’t your fight. Stay put.”

  “But this is my family…”

  “I said stay put!” Knowing better than to argue with a Vampire preparing for battle, the Captain stayed put. “No matter what happens,” Maria said, “I love you more than the sound of music that comes from my saxophone.” She kissed him on the cheek, then added, “I also sure as Hölle love you more than I do my new husband, Handsy McGrabbington.” She then entered our battle, already in progress.

  There were twenty Squad members situated in a half-circle, each holding a jerry-rigged machine gun that would slow down even the strongest, oldest, most experienced Vampire … but only if they managed to land a shot. When the von Trapps burst from the fence, the Nazis opened fire, but Maria and the brats could move. They dodged the bullets with relative ease, and in seconds, were face-to-face with Hitler’s finest.

  Maria lashed out at a Squad member, fingernails first. She faked right, fooling him for a split second, and in that split second, she was able to tear off his ear, break six of his ribs with her left index finger, and bite his neck into gristle; she looked as if she were a starving German shepherd, and he were a piece of schnitzel. She then yanked off his left arm, threw it at the approaching Squad member, and yelled, “If you don’t get your Major to call off your men, you’ll suffer the same fate! Or worse!”

  The Squad member called, “Major, I need back-up! I never saw anything like this in basic training!”

  Maria smiled, her fangs a veritable blood factory. “You most certainly have not, young man. You most certainly have not.” And then she attacked.

  It was gruesome.

  On the left side of the yard, Kurt, occupied with two Squad members, wasn’t faring as well as his creator. He had taken a bayonet to the thigh, and even though the bleeding stopped seconds after the blade ripped through his leg, he was still in unimaginable pain. But when he saw Maria tear off her second Nazi arm of the battle, he felt a surge of strength unlike anything he had ever felt in his life. I’m incorrigible, he thought, and nobody can beat me! I’m doeraymeefahsolateedoe! He then jumped straight into the air, did a half turn, and landed on one of the Squad members’ heads. When the Squadder fell to the ground, Kurt snapped his neck as if it were a twig, then, for good measure, bit off his ear and took a satisfying suck of blood.

  A second Squadder backed off in order to refill the magazine of his gun, but he backed right into Friedrich, who pulled him into a headlock, then cracked his skull open with his elbow. Pointing at the man’s exposed brain, Friedrich bellowed, “Food for the Zombies! The Zombies shall feast tonight!”

  The Major then sent seven of his Squad members to take Farta, Brigitta, and Gretl, a questionable strategy, because one would think that was overkill, that three well-trained soldiers could take out three little girls. It turned out the strategy was indeed bad.

  The Major should have deployed more men.

  The girls worked as a three-headed monster, moving so quickly that the Squadders couldn’t get a bead on them, let alone hit them with a fist, a knife, or a gunshot. When two of the men crashed into each other and fell to the ground, Farta leapt into the air and landed feet-first onto their heads, destroying both of their faces. A still-hungry Kurt appeared out of nowhere, and drained both of their bodies.

  By the time the dust settled, the entire Squad was dead, and Louisa was the only von Trapp girl who had suffered an injury, and it was a minor one at that: A Squadder, in the throes of death, had pulled off her both of her earlobes. As the family caught their breath, Maria put an arm around her daughter and said, “No earrings for you, I guess.” Louisa just laughed, and buried her head in Maria’s chest.

  Right when they were ready to call it a night, in came the reinforcements. Or, more accurately, the reinforcement. Just one.

  Rolfe.

  “I know you’re there, Liesl,” he called from the front gate. “I can smell you!”

  Liesl yelled, “We killed twenty of your men. One more won’t bother us a bit. But we won the Gala, and we offed a whole lot of your compatriots, thus I’m in an exceedingly good mood, so I’ll let you walk away.”

  “Never,” he said, stepping over the threshold and rushing to the battleground.

  Liesl met him halfway. “Ah, Rolfe, Rolfe, Rolfe, we meet again. Does this bring back memories? Remember the gazebo? Remember my body?” She ripped off her cat suit, and the second she saw his eyes fall to her breasts, she made her move, a move so swift, and cunning, and nimble, that it can’t be described in mere words. All you need to know, dear reader, is that it took Liesl von Trapp six seconds to dismember Private Mueller.

  Raising both of Rolfe’s legs to the sky, Liesl cried, “I have confidence in me!” She turned to her brothers, her sisters, her Father, and her Mother, and, even louder, roared, “I have confidence in me! Do you hear me, world: I HAVE CONFIDENCE IN ME!”

  Beaming, Maria said, “On that note, let’s make our way to the United States.”

  Gazing at the Nazi body parts strewn about the floor, Captain von Trapp said, “On that note, I could use a drink.”

  The next morning, the von Trapp family learned that at the very top of the Alps, the sky is bluer, the air is crisper, and the birds sing louder. They also learned that Vampires who have recently engaged in an intense battle despise blue skies, crisp air, and loud birds.

  Glaring sullenly (and hungrily) at the picaresque tableau, Kurt said, “Golly gee, this sure is swell, fording every stream, following every rainbow, and climbing every mountain. Most fun I’ve ever had.”

  Gretl said, “This is no mere mountain, dear brother; this is the Untersberg, a mountain massif of the Berchtesgaten Alps that straddles the borders of Berchtesgaten, Germany, and our very own town of Salzburg. The Berchtesgaten Alps are popular with tourists and Austrian Vampires alike because it’s a mere sixteen kilometers to Salzburg. The first recorded ascent of the Berchtesgaten Alps was in the first half of the twelfth century by Eberwein, a member of the Augustinian Hydra Monastery at Berchtesgaten. As you may recall, the mountain lent its name to an 1829 opera by Johann Nepomuk, Baron of Poissl.”

  After a moment of silence, the entire von Trapp family said, “Do shut up, Gretl.”

  Gretl glared at her siblings and her parents, then—just before transforming herself into a bat and flying toward the sun—she said, “I do hate you so. All of you. Very, very much. You,” she
said, pointing at Liesl, “you’re, simply put, a whore. And don’t tell me that you behave that way because you’re sixteen going on seventeen thousand. You’re old enough to know better. And you,” she said, pointing at Friedrich. “I’d like to take a doeraymee and jam it up your fasola, then turn it sideways so you’ll never teedoeray again. And you,” she said, pointing at her Father, “always drinking beer with the foam afloat…”

  “Gin,” the Captain said.

  “Shut up!” she roared. “And you three,” she said, pointing at Brigitta, Louisa, and Farta, “every morning you greet me, and you look happy to meet me, but I know the truth. I know that given the opportunity, you would jam a stake through my heart while I sleep. And you,” she said, pointing at Kurt, “somewhere in your youth or childhood, you must have done something good, but I can’t think of it. And you,” she said, pointing at Maria, “are the worst of all. You know what my favorite thing is?”

  “Kittens?” Maria asked.

  “No! Not kittens, or raindrops, or kettles, or snowflakes, or white dresses, or ponies, or brown paper packages—get it through your thick skull that nobody’s favorite thing is a brown paper package. My favorite thing is the thought of never seeing any of you arschlochs again. So so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye. Adieu, adieu, to you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you.”

  And that, dear reader, is the right musical.

  EPILOGUE

  UTILIZING THEIR VAMPIRE ingenuity—as well as several well-placed bribes—the entire von Trapp family made it to the United States safe and sound … save for Kurt. The chunkiest von Trapp child was concerned that American food wouldn’t be to his liking, so much so that he stayed put. He avoided the Nazi Undeath Squads without much problem—it’s considerably easier to hide when you don’t have six irksome siblings, a sax-playing Vampire, and a semi-recovering alcoholic in tow—by remaining deep in the bowels of the Untersberg. Over the intervening decades, he became a master Vampire chef, so skilled that undead of all shapes and sizes—Vampires and Zombies alike—would come from kilometers around to sample his blood orange blood soup, his blood sausages, and his offal in blood sauce, as well as dozens of other blood-soaked delicacies. In early 2012, the BBC got wind of this phenomenon, and, knowing that in this age of Twilight, anything involving Vampires was a guarantee for killer ratings, offered Kurt his own cooking show, which, according to sources within the network, will begin production in 2014.

  After what her siblings came to call The Meltdown on the Mount, Gretl von Trapp wasn’t heard from for some seven years—even now, we can’t account for her whereabouts during this disappearance—before resurfacing in New York City, where her pretentiousness wasn’t only tolerated, but encouraged. In 1951, she and four of her pretentious Vampire friends started a pretentious group called, pretentiously enough, the Algonquin Vampire Triangular Table. The A.V.T.T. was written up in several pretentious periodicals, and there was talk of a book deal, but it soon became clear to the entire group that there was no way five pretentious Vampires could coexist as a cohesive unit for a significant amount of time, so they pulled the plug. In 1984, Gretl launched a pretentious magazine called Blitzkrieg Bop, which—much to the chagrin of music fans who bought it expecting articles about the burgeoning punk rock scene—was a monthly examination of how World War II affects contemporary paranormal creatures. Today, with her magazine thriving among WWII and Vampire obsessives, Gretl lives in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn with her paramour, a pretentious rapper/Vampire fetishist who goes by the name of Undead Orville.

  Soon after landing in America, Friedrich von Trapp became bored with Maria and infatuated with baseball, so after he divorced her—leaving her free to tie the knot with the Captain … which is what should’ve happened in the first place, but somebody who shall remain nameless made me change who married who in the eighth draft (Editor’s note: Jesus Christ, Alan, let it go. The switcheroo at the altar was funnier anyhow.)—he spent his every waking hour learning the history and fundamentals of the sport. In the winter of 1952, he migrated to the Midwest, where he managed to land a workout with the St. Louis Browns. When the team got a gander of the curveball he had been working on for the past decade-plus, they decided to overlook both his lack of documentation and his fangs, and ink him to a contract. He had a wonderful rookie season, going 19–6 with an ERA of 2.56, but in spring training of 1953—after a winter that saw him drink a mere three pints of blood—he went on a rampage that literally killed the Browns entire minor league system, so the team cut him, and he never played professionally again. Today, Friedrich runs a Vampire softball league, as well as a website called VampireBaseballNerds.com, geared toward, you guessed it, Vampire baseball nerds. He has only five subscribers, but the membership fee is exorbitant, so he has enough money to pay for his studio apartment in suburban St. Louis. Most impressively, since he arrived in the U.S., he has murdered and/or Vampire’d over six thousand mortals, yet has not raised suspicion within the law enforcement community.

  And speaking of the law enforcement community, Liesl von Trapp changed sides, if you will, and became a do-gooder, a decision she made in 1961 after reading about the infamous Tijuana Undead Slaughter. So appalled was she by the 3,958 needless murders committed by a gang of Mexican Vampires who went by the overlong moniker of Los Mercaderes de la Muerte Unmuerte (that’s The Undead Death Merchants to you and me) that she moved South of the border and became the country’s most feared Vampire bounty hunter. The American government learned of her work in 1964, but waited ten years to invite her into the fold, an invitation that she declined … and declined again the following year … and the year after that … and the year after that. Finally, in 2009, she moved to Washington, D.C., after accepting an offer to head up her own division within the Central Intelligence Agency. Her current whereabouts are unknown, but one can assume she’s scouring the United States, kicking some paranormal booty.

  When telling a story either via film or book, it’s often said that unless one wants to lose and/or confuse one’s audience, one has to be careful not to have too many main characters; thus in an ensemble piece, everybody can’t carry equal weight, and some folks have to take a backseat. Well aware that their parts in our tale were considerably smaller than those of their siblings—and also well aware that their personalities were nowhere near as developed as the rest of the cast—Louisa, Brigitta, and Farta von Trapp decided to team up for all eternity in hopes that the three of them as a unit could create a single entity that was as interesting, if not more interesting, than Liesl, Friedrich, Kurt, and Gretl. Unfortunately, their efforts didn’t pan out. Their attempts to establish a folk band, a rock band, a jazz trio, a theater troupe, a traveling circus, a street-corner puppet team, and a think tank all failed miserably. So in 2003, they went back to doing what they do best: Being supporting players in a Vampire dramedy, which meant moving back to Austria, taking up residence in Salzburg, and engaging in the kind of wacky, bloody hijinks that will make My Favorite Fangs a darling of readers, critics, and Vampire book clubs alike.

  And Maria? Well, when Maria wasn’t blowing the Captain von Trapp’s, er, mind, she was blowing her tenor saxophone. And blowing. And blowing some more. In 1963, she had gained enough “confidence in me” to track down her old spiritual advisor, John Coltrane; the following year, the two of them took to the studio and recorded an album called Coltrane and von Trapp Swing the Classics, a collection of jazzed-up Austrian folk songs that sold exactly seventy-eight copies. Despite the unimpressive sales of that and the fifteen follow-up records—not to mention the 1974 passing of her beloved Georg from complications due to (surprise, surprise) cirrhosis—today, the former Governess is a happy, cat suit–wearing Vampire. Unless she’s really, really hungry—an event that only comes about once or twice a decade—she doesn’t want to murder you, or maim you, or torture you. She just wants to sit you down, cook you a tasty meal, play you a couple tunes on her tenor, and tell you a few war stories. />
  Why? Because Maria von Trapp loves you most of all.

  READER’S GUIDE

  Chapter 1

  • If you were the lone male Zombie in an Abbey filled with female Zombies, would you take Viagara, Cialis, or Levitra? Can male Zombies get erectile dysfunction? Can male Zombies get erections? Oh, really? Is that right? Well how the hell do you know that? Are you some sort of Zombie fetishist or something? You’re nasty.

  • According to both Maria and Mother Zombie, killing and/or eating children is a worthwhile endeavor. Taking that into consideration, would you rather hire a Vampire or a Zombie to be your babysitter?

  • It’s clear that Maria must be punished for her transgressions, but it’s also clear that Maria enjoys being punished. How would you punish her? How do you like being punished? Because if you beg us just right, we’ll dish out punishment in the manner with which you desire. Oh yes, we will.

  Chapter 2

  • Who would make for a better afterlife bandleader: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, or Kenny G.? As of this writing, Kenny G. isn’t dead; that being the case, how would you kill him?

  • How would you describe the stench of vomit that originated from the stomach of a horny female Vampire? How would you describe the stench of vomit that originated from the stomach of a mortal male alcoholic? How would you describe the stench of vomit that originated from the stomach of a non-gender-specific alcoholic Vampire?

  • Why do composers from Broadway’s golden era have such atrocious grammar? Is it worth sacrificing syntax for pentameter?

  • If your youngest child is a pretentious know-it-all snot, how would you get her to cease said snottiness? Is duct tape the best way to quiet a child?

  • Throughout the chapter, Friedrich experiences several erections. Approximately how many erections do you experience when in the presence of an attractive Vampire?