My dad has to be brain damaged. That man can sit in front of a computer for fourteen hours straight—barring bathroom and meal breaks—and it doesn’t bother him. I could never do that even playing games, and he’s not even having fun, just staring at a screen full of letters. Sierra is the same way. She can play video games all damn day and still grumble when the parents pull her away from the PlayStation. Going into computer programming for me could be a mistake, even if I have no sincere need to make any sort of living at it.
Guess it’s technically kinda hard for me to make a living at anything.
Great. I’ve reached an advanced stage of undeath: I’m thinking in dad jokes.
There are two main reasons my butt warms a seat in a college classroom, and neither one of them is the desire to obtain a career that will support me. One, I’d spent the last year or so of my life stressing out over getting into college. While Seattle Central isn’t exactly sunny California—big upside for my new vampire self—it gave me a scrap of normality that I craved, as if I could pretend none of this weird crap happened. Nope. Nothing to see here. No such thing as vampires. I’m just an ordinary girl still going to college who happens to have a severe allergic reaction to daylight.
Somehow, I doubt claiming to be Irish would’ve explained away that sunburn. Besides, SCC doesn’t allow smoking in the hallways.
The second reason I’m going to school despite these theoretical claims of my evident status as a powerful—relatively speaking—immortal being, is my parents. They wanted and expected me to go. Perhaps in the same way I tried to cling to normality, it lets them pretend that our new normal isn’t anywhere near as messed up as it is.
Though, that probably went out the window the moment my mother played Wak-a-Rat with her cast iron skillet during the great imp invasion. If Dad ever convinces her to try D&D, she should totally go with a two-handed-weapon using barbarian. Knowing Dad, he’d even give her character an enchanted skillet with a damage bonus on minor demons.
Alas, Mom will never play D&D. She’s far too serious for that. Weird, though, since she loves books and movies. Maybe it’s the roleplaying part. Yeah, she’s a lawyer and has to speak in front of people all the time. But, that’s all super serious. I don’t think she can handle being a humorous focus of attention. I had to get my social anxiety from somewhere. Thanks, Mom.
I type out ‘The Evolution of Digital Information Storage by Sarah Wright for Computer Science 101 – Professor Garcia’ and proceed to stare at it for ten minutes.
It’s not too late to change my major. Only problem is, I have no idea what I’d change it to. I could go with English, maybe. Not like I’m going to need to build a career off a degree. Maybe I’m wasting time with college. Whenever I’m sitting in class, it’s time I could be spending with my siblings or parents. The littles won’t stay tweens long. Though, our family clinginess in the wake of my almost death has eased off a bit. I no longer have this desperate need to spend every waking moment surrounded by my family. Not that being around them bothers me at all. Clinging to them still feels awesome, but it’s not an overriding demand. Everyone’s finally accepted that I didn’t die for keeps.
Fortunately, the arguing and rivalry has stayed gone. On that note, I shouldn’t smother the littles or they might start resenting me. That means I can’t use inflated guilt over family time as a reason to shirk off college. Can’t even use time in general. Four years isn’t anything at all to me now.
After a few more minutes staring at a blank screen, I come to the astute conclusion that this report won’t write itself. See, I have keen vampire senses. Unfortunately, none of my immortal powers comes with a pre-written boring-ass paper on digital storage. I’m going to have to write this paper the usual way.
Four years might not mean much to an immortal, but at the moment, it sure does feel like an eternity.
2
Our Worst Fears
Throughout my life, I’ve had several strange relationships.
In eighth grade, I briefly dated this kid Tommy Quinones. Before our first date, I had to sit before the council of judgement. That being his grandmother, mother, aunt, and older sister. They apparently didn’t disapprove of me, but at least one of them stayed in eyesight of us the whole trip to the mall, the movie, and the restaurant after. Yeah, awkward.
I have a new strange relationship, and no, not with Hunter… with sleep.
They say that people with higher intelligence or who are intensely creative always have trouble falling asleep at night, often spending long periods staring at the ceiling. That used to be me. I still think the most awesome part of becoming a vampire is being able to fly, but it is damn nice to be able to go to sleep in an instant.
Though, sometimes that can be inconvenient depending on where I happen to be when the sun comes up. I’ve ended up sleeping draped over my computer desk a few times. Once, I even collapsed on the floor while trying to walk to bed. My new semi-underground room doesn’t have any windows, so if I’m really absorbed in something like schoolwork or a video game and not looking at the clock, sunrise can sorta sneak up on me. In my new reality, once those feelings of drowsiness start up, there is no ‘aww mom, just a few more minutes.’ The instant the sun peeks over the horizon, I’m out cold no matter where I am.
Except if I’m outside or near a window. Being exposed to daylight prevents instant unconsciousness, though it has other complications… like spontaneous combustion, temporary feral insanity, involuntary murder of anyone between me and a dark place to hide—so yeah, best to avoid ending up outside near dawn.
I did manage to get a few pages into that research paper before the nag of approaching sunlight tugged at my bones. As far as my brain wants to tell me, my body isn’t crashed on the floor or draped over my desk. Seems as though I made it to bed. Vampire sleep comes in two varieties: either it feels instantaneous or brings bizarre dreams. Given how close to the wire last night pushed it and that it barely feels as if I even blinked, my guess is option one today. That is, after all, the far more common mode of sleep.
Another minor nitpicky complaint about being a vampire: I no longer wake up feeling energized by a good night’s sleep unless my ass got kicked the night before. It’s more like I’m some kind of robot being turned off for a few hours then back on. And yeah, that’s a tiny thing to grumble about. However, it is still possible for me to be lazy and lie here after regaining consciousness, enjoying my soft bed.
Know what’s kinda creepy and weird? Consciously being aware of an utter lack of body heat gradually warming up. It’s kinda cold for a moment or two until my insane metabolism furnace kicks back on.
Sophia’s soft whispery voice breaks the silence on my right, low to the ground. She’s probably sitting on the floor. From the sound of her muttering, she’s playing with dolls. Okay, that is a little strange. Yeah, she’s girly as heck but she’s been more into reading or drawing lately than having a doll tea party. Maybe we’re spending too much time around Aurélie? No, that woman doesn’t play with her dolls, merely collects them. But the woman does speak to them. Can’t blame her for that though—most of them answer her.
Again, shudder.
Yanno, I really should stop being freaked out by that stuff. What are haunted dolls going to do, kill me?
My kid sister does voices for her various dolls having court with royalty. Not until she addresses ‘Duchess Sierra’ do my alarm bells go off. The older of my two kid sisters hates dolls. She’s no tomboy, more like a small adult woman… totally not into the frilly, girly stuff. Also, not into outdoorsy activities or whatnot. The girl likes her video games and science fiction.
But, for some reason, she’s playing dolls.
Danger Wilhelmina Robinson.
I sit up, open my eyes, and almost faint back asleep when my brain processes the scene.
Sophia, in a puffy, iridescent black-and-red gown, sits at the head of an imaginary table of creepy dolls, having a tea party with Sierra—who is balanced st
iff as a board on a small plastic chair. Too many things are wrong with this image.
Sophia has fangs.
Sierra’s skin is grey and sunken, as if dead for a long time.
Sophia does not own a dress that extra. She’s halfway between a French noble and one of Aurélie’s dolls.
Oh, and the dolls are moving, sipping blood from tiny teacups.
It’s too much for me to even think of words. Next to seeing Sophia with fangs and Sierra dead, living dolls barely register… at least until they all turn their heads to look at me.
“Gah what the hell!” I rasp.
“Hi!” chirps Sophia. “I saved you a spot.” She pats the rug beside her. “You can sit between me and Princess Isabella.”
A blonde porcelain-faced doll waves at me and emits the creepiest giggle I’ve ever heard in my life.
“What the…” I gesture at her, then Sierra. “What happened? Who…” I leap out of bed and land next to her, grasping her puffy shoulders. “Please tell me you’ve used magic to give yourself fake fangs and make Sierra look…” The word ‘dead’ won’t even come out of me.
“Duh.” Sophia rolls her eyes. “It’s still light out. Not even two-thirty yet. You know she and Sam can’t wake up until the sun goes down.”
I stare at her for a moment before looking at Sierra. She looks like a mannequin leaned against a chair, stiff as a plank. “Sam, too! What? I don’t remember… how did…”
“Wow, you must’ve had a bad night.” Sophia ‘pours’ tea into a plastic cup and hands it to me. “Sierra’s a Sybarite. She can’t wake up as early as we can.”
“What!?” I shout.
“No, doofus. She makes video games. Not like that slutty blonde. What’s wrong with you?” Sophia grins, showing off her fangs—the most unsettling thing I’ve ever seen.
“How? No… how are you three vampires?”
Sophia stares at me out from under flat eyebrows, a total look of ‘really?’ “Are you messing with me?”
“I could ask you the same question. You did some kind of illusion magic to freak me out, didn’t you? C’mon, Sierra, knock it off. Is that really her?” I grasp my ‘dead’ sister’s arm, unable to tell if it’s a real body or a high-quality fake carved out of wood and covered with silicone skin.
“Are you okay, Sare?” Sophia sets her teacup down and hugs me. “You’ve had it rough ever since Hunter threw himself into the sun.”
“Wait. What?” I stare into space. “Hunter was a vampire?”
“Wow. You seriously don’t remember?”
I glance back at the creepy person who kinda looks like Sophia, all dolled up like something out of a morbid Alice in Wonderland. “No…”
She huffs. “School shooting like twenty years ago. Got all three of us. You totally lost your mind and turned us. I’m an Innocent like you, Sierra went Sybarite, and Sam’s…”
“A Lost One,” I whisper. He would go his own way. “But… why don’t I remember any of that?”
Sophia ‘sips’ her pretend tea, shrugging.
“Blocked it out most likely,” says a brunette doll in an unfamiliar woman’s voice.
The bedroom door creaks open. Grandma pokes her head in, smiling. “Oh, you’re awake.”
“Gram?” I ask.
“Ha ha.” The seventy-something woman smirks at me. “I wish you’d stop teasing me.”
It hits me that the voice belongs to my mother, not Grandma.
Okay, there’s no way in hell I went to bed last night and slept for like thirty years.
“Shit. I’m dreaming.”
Sophia grins. “Yep. Took you long enough to realize that.”
“Wiseass,” I mutter.
She makes this ‘excuse me’ face. “You do realize I’m only a product of your unconscious mind right? You’re the wiseass.”
“Right. So how the heck do I wake up out of this incredibly depressing dream?”
Sophia pouts. “Aww, being with us forever is depressing?”
“Yes… no. I mean… you guys deserve to grow up and be normal.”
“What if I want to stay small and cute forever, and be with my favoritest sister?” She leans against me.
“Umm. Not thinking about that right now. Wake up.”
Sierra’s eyes snap open. She emits a scraping hiss and flings herself at me, mouth wide. I catch her, but she hits me with the weight of a grown adult and knocks me flat on my back. The instant my head hits the carpet, I realize I’m in bed again.
I gingerly roll my head to the right to look at my room. No super creepy tea party. No vampire little girls. No moving dolls.
“Ugh.” I rub both hands down my face. “Guess I was wrong about not having a dream. Wait.” I splay my fingers, peering between them at the room. “What are the chances I’m still dreaming and woke up for the second time in a dream?” Argh. I never should have watched Inception.
Mercifully, nothing answers me.
The alarm clock reads 2:23 p.m.
Dreaming about waking up has got to be one of the most unnerving, unsettling, weird things that’s ever happened to me. I don’t know if I’m really awake or still sleeping. Afraid to find out, I just lay there hoping I’d merely had a nightmare based on my worst fears and not some sort of undead prophetic vision of the future. The girls didn’t look older than they should be. Great. I’m going to be a paranoid wreck about something happening to them any day now.
In the past, getting sick would almost always give me bad dreams. Not all of them woke me up in the night screaming, but every single time I had a cold or something, I’d have a nightmare. Suppose death isn’t much different to my body. Every dream I’ve had thus far since becoming an undead has been freaky and scary. While ‘sparkle goth vampire Sophia’ did have a certain degree of cute, I could never get past the idea of her having to die first. Thinking of any of my siblings as vampires is way too damn depressing.
“Am I really awake?” I look around again. “Okay, it’s been ten minutes and nothing has happened. Guess this is reality.”
Though my new vampire body is incapable of waking up groggy—in the absence of a severe beating the prior night—I still yawn, stretch, and wipe my eyes out of habit. After a dream like that, it seems proper not to be well rested. Also, with the memory of tween vampires in my head, focusing on finishing that paper isn’t happening. Worry eats at me until I can’t take it anymore and head out my door, and left to the basement bathroom.
It’s small, with a toilet and Plexiglas shower stall, no tub. However, it does have a mirror.
At least with the kids going to school now, Sophia doesn’t have the time to paint my face before I’m awake. Like some eighth grader about to dare Bloody Mary, I lean on the sink and stare into the mirror.
“Coralie? Are you out there?”
No idea why I’m talking to a mirror. Pretty sure it would be absolutely solid if I tapped it. I’m a vampire, not a warper of reality. But, having been drawn into an otherworld, it feels like talking to a mirror might let ghosts hear me more easily.
“Coralie? If you’re not too busy, can I ask you a question?”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up as the sense I’m no longer alone becomes quite distinct.
“Sarah,” says Coralie from behind me.
Hooray for amplified senses. Knowing she’d appeared—if only a split second before she spoke—stops me from shrieking and breaking my face on the sink while falling to the floor. Still, I twitch before releasing my grip on the porcelain and turning.
Coralie Hall stands between me and the door out, still in the same black dress she’d worn the day she died in 1849. It’s hard to think of a woman her age being married—she’d been twenty—but that far back, people often married quite young. She tilts her head in curiosity. “What is it you wish to ask? Forgive me if I startled you.”
“It’s fine. Kinda surprised calling for you worked.” I let out a deep breath. “So, I just had this weird dream…”
She
listens as I explain the details of the dream, her expression giving away no hint of worry… or much of any emotion, really. I’m sure she’s used to questions like what I’m about to ask. That order of mystics she’d belonged to in life, the Aurora Aurea, the same people who’d kept her mummified remains in their vault, referred to her as an oracle. Something about a magical ritual that had been conducted—and led to her death—gave her the ability to see the future.
It didn’t work out like her former husband had hoped. While she did gain the ability to receive random, nonspecific glimpses of the future, she ended up dead with no way for him to benefit from her foresight. Eventually, he worked out how to communicate with spirits, but died soon after himself.
“Anyway, my question is… did I have a vision or just a nightmare?”
Coralie stands there like a three-dimensional oil painting. It shouldn’t creep me out that a ghost isn’t breathing, but her total stillness unnerves me even more than her partial transparency. A few minutes of silence later, she reanimates and offers a weak smile.
“Umm?” I ask.
“You had a nightmare, not a prophetic vision.”
“Whew.” I nearly collapse into a puddle with relief. “Awesome. So, I’m not gonna make them vampires?”
She shakes her head. “I cannot see that one way or the other. However, I feel strongly that they will not perish at their school as you—and Sierra—fear.” She glances off into space. “I do think her first relationship will end poorly.”
“Ack. Not as poorly as mine I hope.”
“Scott was not your first.” She flashes a wan smile. “I know what you meant even though it is not what you said. For Sierra, I don’t think there will be anything worse than tears.”
Ordinary Problems of a College Vampire (Vampire Innocent Book 7) Page 2
