by Mac Flynn
Rose reared back her head and let loose a roar that I never expected her tiny lungs could produce. She disappeared, and the park world around us began to fade into black. I stepped towards Roland and looked around with wide eyes.
"What's happening?" I asked him.
"The park was Rose's imagination. Now that she's left, the imagined leaves, too," he explained.
"And us?" I wondered.
He smiled and grasped my hands in both of his. "I believe your threat to make her into a zoo exhibit will keep her out of your mind."
I grinned and shrugged. "She's always reminded me of a little monkey, anyway. Well, with sharp teeth. And she's probably one of those ones that throws her own poop."
Roland chuckled. "Your sense of humor never ceases to amuse me."
I stepped close to him so our shoulders brushed and looked around at the growing darkness. "A good laugh would be worth a lot right now."
"There's nothing to worry about. We'll awaken about-"
"-now."
Roland's last word came out of his mouth. His real one, not the one in my dream world. I looked around and saw we were back in the diner. The box sat on the counter, and all the glow was gone.
"This is the real diner, isn't it?" I spoke up.
Roland smiled. "I promise I won't ask you to let me in anywhere."
I rolled my eyes. "I must be in reality. Rose doesn't have enough humor to be as evil as you." I jerked my thumb at the dark box. "But what happened with that? It glowed and we were in my head."
Roland glanced at his soul box and furrowed his brow. "It seems my soul reacted to some sort of stimulant and allowed both of us to enter your dreams without actually being asleep."
"It can do that?" I wondered.
"I'd be hard pressed to argue the point after it doing just that," he quipped.
I picked it up and tilted in over in my hands. "So you think we can tap into more power and have it sweep the floors-hey!"
The soul's box response to my little, itsy-bitsy request was to let off some steam. Some acid smog steam. I yelped and dropped the box over the counter and onto the floor. The mist floated out of its lid and onto the floor where it made a nice little melted spot on the aged linoleum. I leaned over the counter and winced.
"That's gonna leave a mark. . ." I murmured.
"What's going on out there? Something on fire?" Ralph called.
The color drained from my face. "Nothing!" I called back.
"Then it ain't nothing!" he argued. I heard his feet shuffle towards the doors, and I turned to Roland.
I whipped my head to Roland. "Grab the box and get out of here!" I hissed at him.
"But what about-"
I rushed around the counter, and pushed him out of his stool and to the box. "I'll deal with it! You just get out of here!" I insisted.
Roland picked up the box and hurried to the door. He paused and glanced over his shoulder at me. There was a smile on his face.
"You did well today," he complimented me.
I waved my hands at him. "That's nice, now shoo!"
Roland shooed, and I grabbed the chili bowl and dumped it and its acidic contents on the floor. Ralph strode out of the kitchen and noticed that the linoleum was doing a good impersonation of white tar.
"What happened to my floor!" he shrieked.
"The last customer accidentally dropped a bowl of your chili," I told him.
Ralph growled and looked around the diner. "Where is he? Where's that rascal that owes me a new floor!"
"He ran out before I could grab him," I explained.
Ralph pushed past me and over to the doors. He stuck his head out, looked around, and stuck his head back inside. "You ever see that guy again you tell him he's dead! You here me? Dead!"
"I'll tell him that," I promised.
"Good! Now get this mess cleaned up and throw out the rest of the chili! I don't want any more messes with that stuff!" Ralph ordered me as he stomped back into the kitchen.
I cleaned up the mess as well as I could which was as easy as cleaning up a nuclear waste dump. The chili did leave its mark with a reddish stain above the melted linoleum. Tales would be told by future generations of the infamous 'Ralph's Chili Episode.' I hoped they'd get my name right.
I lugged the pot of chili outside to the dumpster. A shadow flitted over me. I slid to a stop and stiffened my legs, ready to throw the chili at my attacker. Roland made his appearance beside the trash with his box in hand.
"I can't apologize enough for the trouble I've caused you tonight," he told me.
I slumped my shoulders and glared at him. "It's fine, really. It's not like he's taking it out of my paycheck."
The door to the diner behind us opened and Ralph peeked his head out. Roland stepped into the shadow of the tall dumpster to avoid being seen.
"And I'm taking that spill out of your paycheck!" Ralph yelled before he slammed the door behind him.
I snorted. "Good ol' Ralph."
"Perhaps I can-" I held up a hand, but just long enough to realize the pot couldn't be held in one. I regained control and looked to Roland.
"You saved me from Rose. Without you I would have let her inside the apartment and she would've grabbed your box somehow. That's a lot worse than me not eating for a week," I argued.
"But-" I put the pot down and walked over to him.
I set a hand on his shoulder and smiled into his eyes. "It's all right. All's well that ends well, as they say."
Roland returned my smile, and there was a twinkle in his eyes. "Until our next adventure."
I sighed and returned to my pot of industrial waste. "You just had to remind me. Maybe next time you can be the damsel and I-" I turned to find the back lot was empty. I rolled my eyes, walked over to the trash, and dumped the chili inside. "Vampires."
Little did I know that vampires would soon be the least of my problems.
RECIPE FOR DISASTER
CHAPTER 1
"So what happened to the floor?"
I rolled my eyes, slapped a smile on my face, and turned to the diner stools behind me. The questioner was a trucker, and the question was about the melted tiles on the floor. They had a reddish hue to them that no amount of bleach could get up.
"An accident with the chili," I told the trucker.
It'd been a few weeks since my adventure with Rose the child vampire and her curse. My dreams had been curse-free that whole time, and it looked like I'd live out the rest of my days without her in my head, though judging by how dangerous it was living with Roland the vampire, the rest of my days wasn't going to go much beyond the year.
The trucker frowned and looked down at the spot again. "What'd the cook put in that stuff?"
"Every chili known to man, and a few that weren't," I quipped.
I slid a coffee mug in front of him. He eyed it suspiciously.
"This ain't gonna kill me, is it?" he wondered.
"Only if you let it sit for a few minutes," I warned him.
The man started chugging, and I glanced at my watch. I still had a few more hours left on my shift, and then it'd be three whole days without staring at food that stared back at me. Ralph's greatest passion, aside from poisoning people with his cooking, was fishing. The next three days was his yearly fishing trip out into the boonies where he'd try to catch fish and a fever in knee-deep river water.
The bell above the door rang and in sauntered Ned. He took his usual place at the stools and glanced at the melted tiles.
"Ralph's soup finally get one of us?" Ned quipped.
"The chili," the other trucker told him.
"I guess Charlie's not missing much, then," Ned commented.
That perked up everyone's ears, mine included.
"Where's Charlie been, anyway?" one of the other regulars spoke up.
"Didn't you hear?" Ned asked him.
"Hear what?" another wondered.
"Charlie's changed his route. He won't take a step on this side of the river," Ned told the
m. "His route's north of Northton now."
"He's not good enough for us?" one of the men growled.
Ned shook his head. "Nope. Says he won't go where there's vampires. Swears that pale guy he saw a while back was one of the bloodsuckers." He turned to me. "I'll take some pancakes, but hold the coffee with the sludge."
"Right up," I told him.
I turned away and pursed my lips. It sounded like Charlie was still telling his stories around to anyone who'd listen, and him changing his trucking path was a major blow to his income. Bosses didn't like free-lance truckers who wouldn't go everywhere. I'd have to look into this mess.
My shift ended a few hours later and I walked out the back door to the lot. The only car was Ralph's old beat-up truck near the door. I glanced at my watch. It was ten minutes after the end of my shift.
"Where is he?" I whispered.
"Behind you."
I yelped and spun around to find Roland standing behind me. He had a mischievous smile on his face and a twinkle in his demonic eyes. In his hands was his soul box and a thick blanket.
"Do I need to put squeaky balls in your shoes?" I growled.
"I would rather you didn't," he replied.
"Then stop being so quiet, or you're getting a bell around your neck," I warned him. "And don't think I won't put one around your neck while you're sleeping."
Roland was so terrified by my threat that he smiled. "I promise to be louder the next night, but are you ready to leave?"
I snorted and took the blanket from his hands. "I was ready to leave before I got here," I told him as I wrapped the blanket around me.
Roland handed me the box, scooped me, blanket and all, into his arms and we jumped into the air. We flew above the diner and over the countryside towards home. The wind whipped past me, but the thick blanket kept me warm.
Believe it or not, but the Vampire Airlines idea was mine. I was saving a ton of money by not driving, and Roland had an excuse to get out of the apartment. Apart from getting his usual to-go blood meal, that is. I thought of it as quality time out of his self-imposed immortal safe space.
I looked down at the box in my hands. "So you figured out how to get your box to roll over on command?" I asked him.
He shook his head. "It won't respond to anything I try."
"Have you tried saying 'please?'" I teased.
Roland smiled. "Perhaps not as nicely as it wants."
"I guess we could put ourselves into another undeath-or-death situation," I suggested. "That might get it going."
"I would rather avoid a similar situation," he commented.
"So would I. That last fun was a close enough shave that I swear I felt Rose's fangs on my neck," I quipped. I rubbed my smooth neck and frowned. "So how would that work, anyway? Being turned into a vampire? Are the movies true or is my entire life a lie?"
"Modern literature and film have some truths," he confirmed.
"Please tell me the sparkles aren't true."
"Not at all."
"Thank god," I breathed. "What about that whole three-bites-you're-out deal?"
"It's less a matter of how many bites and more the transfusion of blood from vampire to victim, and the total blood loss of that same victim," he told me.
"Come again?" I returned.
"A human must die by the hands-"
"Fangs," I corrected him.
"By the fangs of a vampire," he agreed. "And the vampire must also transfer some of their tainted blood to the human."
"So if a vampire doesn't give their blood, then the human dies?" I guessed.
"Exactly."
"So it's a blood transfusion," I commented.
"In a way, yes," he replied. "The vampire must give and take to ensure they create progeny."
I wrinkled my nose. "So if I would take your blood and be drained dry by Rose, would that mean I had two vampire parents?"
"Yes, but you would remain with the vampire who sacrificed their blood to you," he told me.
"According to what? The time-honored laws of the pointy-teethed people?" I quipped.
"According to the demand of your blood," he explained. "A new vampire attaches to their blood kin the way a newborn attaches to its mother."
I looked him up and down. "You're kind of cute, but you would make one ugly mother."
He smiled. "I fortunately have never taken up the duties of parenthood."
"So no little baby vampires for you?" I guessed.
"I prefer not to pass on this curse," he insisted.
I glanced down at the box. "So if you manage to get your soul back could you still make little vampires?"
"That is a question to which I don't have an answer," he replied.
We approached the apartment building and Roland set us down at the front doors. He took the box back and made to fly over the apartment building like he insisted on doing. Something about remaining an enigmatic creature of the night or some supernatural cow manure.
"You know, you could walk through the front doors," I suggested.
"I would rather remain a silent partner in your apartment," he insisted.
"And I'd rather be a plus-sized model with legs worth a million dollars a piece, but that doesn't stop me from using doors like normal people," I quipped.
"You forget I'm not a normal person," he pointed out.
I folded my arms across my chest. "You could be if you interacted more with them instead of lurking in the darkness waiting to scare them into their next life."
"I will wait for that day when I'm reunited with my soul, and then join them," he persisted. He jumped up and flew over the rooftop.
My face fell and I glared after his shadow. "Maybe if I threatened him with a bulb of garlic. . ." I muttered as I went inside.
I walked through the lobby and found a familiar face waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs.
"Good night. Or should I say good morning?" the handsome Owen Alston asked me.
"Can't an attorney convince people it's both?" I teased.
"Perhaps, but only if they don't have as dazzling a beauty as yours," he returned.
"Flattery might get you somewhere if you pair it with some shiny rocks," I quipped. "Something with enough carats to make Bugs Bunny set for life."
He chuckled. "Your wit never rests, does it?"
"Only when it runs out of fuel," I told him.
"Speaking of fuel, I had meant to repeat my offer for dinner earlier than this," he apologized.
I waved away his worry. "That's okay. I don't like reruns. Now that's it's been long enough you can call it a new season."
"Or at least a new start. How does tomorrow night sound?" he suggested.
I grinned. "You're lucky. I've got the next three nights off."
"So that's a yes?" he wondered.
I slid past him and up the first two steps. "I didn't say that. But if I did agree, where would we go?"
"The Casa Rojo," he told me.
"So you're into the ridiculously over-priced Spanish food?" I guessed. Casa Rojo was one of the top restaurants in the area in terms of elite clientele and prices. A normal person would have to sell their first-born for a seat, and their second-born for a look at the menu. You'd need a dozen kids to get through half the courses.
"You're not fond of spicy foods?" he returned.
"At a joint like that I'm guaranteed to be pleasantly surprised by the taste and unpleasantly disappointed with the portions," I quipped.
"I can guarantee both. I am a rich lawyer," he reminded me.
"Good, because I'm old-fashioned and not a rich waitress," I informed him.
"Shall we say seven o'clock?" he suggested.
My face fell. "Only if you want me to say no."
"Six?"
I looked from his left to his right arm. "Which one's your dominate hand?"
"My left. Why?"
"Six o'clock is doable, but I might have a small snack of attorney on the drive there. I just didn't you to have to make any serious life
changes," I explained.
"Then how about five-thirty?" he asked me.
"Five-thirty sounds great," I agreed.
"Good. I'll pick you up here," he told me.
"I'll be here," I promised.
"Even better. Dress in something slinky and preferably transparent," he suggested.
"Only if you do the same," I returned.
"Or maybe a simple dress," he corrected himself.
"Sounds great. See you tomorrow."
I climbed up the stairs to my apartment. The hint of a sun peeked over the eastern horizon. I found a warm stew on the stove, a gift left by my shy roommate who lay in state beneath my table coasters. With a warm bowl of soup in one hand and a hot drink in the other, I plopped myself down on the couch and sighed. I looked around at the clean apartment. Roland was nothing if tidy, and my home's natural state of decay was now a pristine mausoleum for we two night owls.
I stretched my feet out and set my heels on top of his coffin. "Now if only I could get you to go to work for me," I commented.
"I would rather not," came the mumbled reply.
I started and spilled half the bowl on the couch and myself. "God damn it, Roland! Are you trying to cut short my life?"
"I hardly doubt spilled soup is fatal," he commented.
"Remember Ralph's chili?" I argued.
"A matter. . .of my. . .soul. . .box. . ."
I frowned and knocked my fist against the lid of his coffin. "Don't you dare go to sleep before I get my chance to argue the point!" I knocked again. "Roland?" No reply.
I threw up my hands, and what was left in the bowl spilled on me and the remaining clean spots on the couch cushions. "Brilliant, Misty. Why don't you just dunk yourself in the pot. . ." I mumbled as I stood to clean myself off.
CHAPTER 2
I had enough stew for that night and hit the hay early after cleaning up the evidence of my stupidity. I woke up early and got on some street clothes. This was my day off, but I had a special chore to do, namely go visit Charlie. I hadn't seen him since the night after we were both scared silly by Roland's flash cards.
