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The Incredibly Boring Un-Life of
Benjamin Barker
The following is intended as a humour
piece and no copyright infringement of others characters is intended.
The mocking is also intended in a friendly nature.
This Document Copyright ©2014 By Laura Morrigan All Rights Reserved except for the names Lestat, Louis, 'Bunny', the 'sparkly vampire', Benjamin Barker and Sweeney Todd, who belong to their respective authors and are used for parody.
I
Benjamin Barker shuffled the papers on
his desk, as frustrated frown on his face. The paper-cut on his hand
still throbbed, though it had already healed. It was a typical wound
in the life of a paper pusher, but still, a frustrating one.
Frustrating because the dull ache and the sight of the crimson liquor
brought back so many memories.
Memories from before he was born to the
blood, but had already felt its siren song. Barker had been a simple
barber by trade, then, when an accidental slip of the blade had sent
him into the killing trade. The sight of the blood welling from his
customer's throat had changed him irrevocably. He craved it. He could
not resist it. Throat after throat he slit with his slender blade.
Eventually, a citywide outcry arose. Barker was caught and hanged.
But that was not the end of his story.
A few days before he was caught, a man
had sat down for a shave and Barker had slit him from ear to ear,
only to watch the cut heal itself and the man stand up and smile at
him. It was a scary smile, the smile of a predator. The man's teeth
had gleamed in the dim light of the barber shop.
Of course, Barker had accepted the
vampire's offer to join their ranks, looking forward to an eternity
of bloodlust. The night after his hanging, Jack had cut him down, and
Barker had woken from his death into new un-life. Things had been
good under Jack's reign, but then Amelia had taken over as Vampire
Commissioner, and things changed. All the rules. All the paperwork
you were supposed to fill out before you even bit anyone! And now he
was supposed to work and be a 'benefit to the community!'
Now Barker found himself working in an
office, pushing paper, over seventy years in an office, it was enough
to almost make one want to walk into the sun!
The cut had already healed but he
realised he had his finger in his mouth, sucking desperately at it,
even though the taste of his own blood would barely sate him. His
fang teeth were extending, ready to chomp down on his own finger when
Audrey knocked on the door
Quickly, he removed his finger from his
mouth and greeted her with a stern frown, careful not to show his
fangs.
'A new file's arrived, Ben. They want
you to go investigate,' she handed him a file. He nodded curtly, not
wanting to speak around his elongated teeth, and she left the room.
Barker opened the file. After all these
years, he still could not get used to these machines that you somehow
read things on, it all seemed like some kind of vile sorcery to him,
so he still insisted that Audrey 'print off' the files on real paper.
As if to humour his attempts to cling to the past, she used the
'font' that looked a bit like handwriting, and this only served to
annoy him more.
Barker read over the file and snorted.
Young ones these days! It seemed that there was a young vampire in a
small town near Washington who had not only revealed himself to a
human but who sparkled of all
things! This was disgusting! The length these young ones would go to
to get a little neck!'
Barker
picked up his bags from where he had stashed them behind the filing
cabinet a few days ago. He checked that his beloved box was in his
carry on. With his diplomatic passport, no one even dared ask why he
was carrying a box full of straight razors.
Audrey
had come by again. 'Shall I send someone to your house for your
bags?' She stopped, confused, as Barker gestured to the bags on the
floor in front of him.
'Mina
kicked you out again?' she blurted, putting a hand over her mouth too
late.
Barker
shrugged. 'It's complicated.' Audrey didn't need to know that Mina
had caught him with that crazy Bunny or whatever her name was.
Really, he had no idea why people called that girl a vampire slayer,
she seemed to kiss more vamps than she killed!
'Where
are you sleeping?' Audrey asked. Really, for someone brought up by
vampires, that girl had no sense of decorum! Barker gestured to the
coat rack. 'I hang upside down like a bat. It's very comfy, actually,
and the block out shutters and 24 hour guards make this the safest
place in the world to be, really.'
He
could tell Audrey was trying to decide whether to believe him or not.
Perhaps her vampire parents really had been the theatrical kind that
sleep hanging up or in coffins. He tried to picture Audrey, with her
neat blonde hair and designer suits sleeping in a coffin, and nearly
burst out laughing. He forced the laughter back down. You couldn't be
too cruel to Audrey, after all her circumstances were not to be
envied.
Audrey
had been an orphan, adopted by vampire parents who died before she
grew old enough to turn. Vampire adoption of human children was
actually smiled upon by the Commissioner. It was a good way to
initiate loyal followers into their ranks, instead of the usual
sycophants and power hungry lurkers who tried to get vampires to turn
them. Good help was hard to find these days. The other vampires
tolerated Audrey, pitied her, even, but not enough to turn her. She
wasn't their problem. She was a bit like the Moneypenny to his James
Bond, faithfully serving him, never getting anything out of him. But
what she wanted wasn't a relationship, it was for him to turn her.
Action
movies without quite enough blood were another part of this endless
eternity of boring that Barker now found himself a part of. Barker
had actually known Ian Fleming in his last days, a paunchy, emphysema
ridden man who had longed for an exciting life, and become immortal
though his pulpy books. Better, perhaps, then the lingering life of
boredom that Barker was now doomed to. Barker, of course, had left
behind his own literary shadow, Sweeney Todd. The subject of books,
and even a musical. He had seen the musical many times at the
theatre, and thought it a great joke that, when a movie was finally
made, he was played by Johny Depp. How many people would actually
have believed, if he told them, that before he faked his death all
those times, Depp had been known as Atilla that Hun, HH Holmes and,
most confusingly, Lucretia Borgia? Of course, he was a movie star,
now, worshipped for his vampiric youth and beauty. Most people would
never have guessed that it took over three hours of makeup to even
make him look human. Before that, he looked quite like Murnau's
creeping nosferatu horror. Barker had been lucky to be one of the
vampires who retained his fairly youthful looks. Unfortunately, that
was not a rule. The blood affected everyone differently.
Barker
realised he had been lost in his thoughts. 'How's it going with
Louis,' he asked, to change the subject.
Audrey
shrugged. 'We're going out to dinner again tonight, I really don't
feel like it's going anywhere.'
'You'll
never get Louis to turn you, Audrey, he isn't the type to turn
someone. You would have better luck with Lestat. Would have', he
amended. 'Did you tell Louis I'm very sorry about what happened to
him?'
Audrey
shrugged. 'Lestat was attracting too much attention. It was
inevitable really, that someone would have to take him down. It
wasn't your fault.' Barker nodded. He still felt bad. In the old days
of Jack's reign, he would never have had to take down Lestat. His
gloomy mood followed him into the limo to the airport with its UV
tinted windows. The airport itself had special windows, as did the
plane. At least Amelia made sure that her agents travelled in safety.
II
Barker
arrived in Washington slightly jet-lagged. He spent the day in a
hotel room with the block out shutters down, feverishly swigging a
bottle of O Neg cold from his suitcase and eyeing the maid’s neck
hungrily. Damn biting restrictions! The paperwork he would have to
fill out before
he could even take a sip of her! He sighed and watched her walk away.
He turned on the TV and flicked through the channels. All the shows
were dull and bloodless. He switched off the TV and stared at the
blank screen.
The
night was clear and cold. Barker made his way to the girl's house,
where is was documented that the vampire lurked at night to creepily
watch the girl sleep. He caught the creature by the neck, where it
wandered and drooled outside the girl's window, putting his hand over
its unpleasantly slobbery mouth to stifle its cries and dragged it
into the woods. Barker was surprised that it did not fight harder or
try to bite him. It must be a very young and weak vampire, indeed.
Finally,
deep in the woods, Barker released the young one. Unexpectedly, it
fell to the ground, sobbing, 'please don't kill me!' in a pathetic
tone.
'Excuse
me,' Barker began, his old fashioned good manners always seemed to
kick in when someone was in distress, 'what seems to be the matter?'
'Look,
just tell Biff I'll have the money for him Tuesday, ok?' the
pathetic thing sobbed.
'What
on earth is going on?' Barker sighed, exasperated.
The
boy looked up,' you're not here to collect the money for Biff?' he
asked.
'What
money?'
The
boy gave him a hard look. 'Wait, are you a real vampire? I always
knew they were real! Have you come here to really turn me?'
Barker
looked more closely at the boy. Oh hell, he must be slipping, how
could he have not realised at once that the kid was human? He should
have known at once! A vampire's skin was never that hot, not even
after feeding, and that boy had been too weak to even fight him. And
only a human boy would moon over a girl in such a pathetic fashion!
This was merely a human, who was, oddly enough, covered in glitter.
Barker
ended up taking the snivelling boy back to his hotel room to elicit
the rest of the story from him. As he had expected, the boy felt
safer in the bright surroundings and it didn't take too much
encouragement to get him to tell Barker his story.
It
was a relatively short one. The boy was a small time drug dealer at
his school who, having gone on a bender with the drugs he was
supposed to sell, had begun selling vials of his own blood as
'vampire blood' to try and make the money back before Biff, the local
drug lord thereabouts, came for revenge.
The
girl wasn't very smart and thought she had discovered the boy was a
vampire. She was hot and so he led her on. She wanted proof, so he
told her that vampires sparkle in the sun and then covered himself in
glitter.
'Why
sparkle?' Barker asked, amused as well as disgusted.
'I
was very high at the time,' the boy admitted.
Case
closed. The boy wasn't a vampire, so Barker couldn't kill him without
filling out a lot of paperwork, but he couldn't have the boy going
around letting people know that vampires were real. Barker left the
boy locked in his hotel suite and told him to order anything he
wanted from the room service menu, then rang home and asked Audrey to
find out the number of a local drug lord called Biff. He let Biff
know his little flunkey's whereabouts, and what he had been up to,
then headed back to the airport. The little brat would be dead by
morning, and, after all, it wasn't Barker's responsibility to kill
non-vampires.
III
When
Barker got back to the office the next night, the building was in an
uproar. It seemed that Lestat had come back from the dead again
and wanted revenge on Barker for killing him. Barker took Lestat out
for drinks, and, as it was an 'emergency' Amelia had grudgingly
agreed to fax over permission slips. Sipping at the necks of a drunk,
wealthy couple, the fine wine the two had imbibed humming in their
blood, Barker and Lestat soon made up.
Lestat
laughed 'til he cried blood tears as Barker told him about the little
drug dealer who had passed himself off as a sparkly vampire.
Barker
was having a great time when his mobile phone started ringing. It was
Audrey.
'TV
Execs just green-lighted a reality show with vampires', she said,
'you need to go deal with this at once!'
'Does
the show have lots of sex and violence in it?' Barker slurred. He
could almost hear Audrey's pulse rise over the phone as the blood
rushed to her cheeks. 'Yes,' she whispered.
'Good,'
Barker laughed drunkenly. 'Let it happen. I'm sick of all this fake
blood and censorship! Who actually believes that reality shows are
real anymore, anyway? I'm looking forward to something a little more
bloody on my TV schedule!' Giggling, he chucked his phone on the
ground and stamped on it. He would catch hell from Amelia when he
finally returned, but right now, he didn't care.
'Was
that your pathetic secretary?' Lestat asked, 'is she still waiting
for Louis to turn her?'
'For
anyone to turn her, ' Barker shrugged.
'Does
she not realise the reason that no one will turn her is that we just
don't like her?' Lestat asked. 'Even Louis can't stand her, but he's
too polite to tell her so. He bitches about her behind her back. I
mean, the woman things Britney Spears is classical music! Do any of
us want to have to listen to that for all eternity?'
Barker
shuddered. 'How a woman brought up by vampires turned out so dumb, I
will never know!'
Laughing,
the two old friends made their way back to Lestat's house for a
'daycap'. They made it inside and lowered the block out blinds just
as the sun started to rise, painting the streets red as blood.
Un-life,
Barker reflected, as he sat in the parlour, a glass of blood and
sherry in his hand, really wasn't that bad at all, sometimes.
A rare photograph of Jonny Depp without makeup.
The thought of an un-life of paperwork made me laugh.
ReplyDeleteHa ha!! Lovely!!!
ReplyDeleteFavourite line: "The length these young ones would go to to get a little neck!'" :D
ReplyDeleteLoved your vampy tale! So glad you joined the soiree!
This was a good read. I too snickered at the thought of all that undead paperwork! *wave*
ReplyDeleteBwahahahahahahaha....absolutely LOVED that story!!! Read it out loud to my hubby and we laughed "tears of blood".... Will never be able to look at JD the same way again, though somehow he now seems even sexier :D XXX
ReplyDeleteHa ha - perfect! I sat and read with my cup of te....er...um....blood.
ReplyDeleteI'm thoroughly enjoying this soiree :)
I have that movie Nosferatu ! Well the gang was all there! What a tale indeed!
ReplyDeleteWe must meet up again in just a few short months! xoDebi
Very good!!! LOL! Johnny, you have never looked so good! LOL! I feel sorry for the girl they won't change! I don't blame them, who would want to listen to Britiany Spears forever! LOL!
ReplyDeleteLove, So clever! <3 Smiling.
ReplyDeleteHa ha, oh so many of my fav characters you resurrected to take part in this witty and well thought out 'bite' of fiction, yes, fun fun fun :)
ReplyDeleteI think your piece proved that we're more scared of paperwork and mindless bureaucracy than we are of blood sucking monsters. Beautifully researched; I had fun going through and spotting the references and yes, I agree completely. Real vampires don't glitter!
ReplyDeleteHahaha! "She seemed to kiss more vamps than she killed!" This made giggle in all kinds of ways.
ReplyDeleteBenjamin's un-life was quite the opposite of boring. This made me lol a lot!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for joining the soiree!
Thank you for your comments everyone! I was so happy that everyone loved my story! :)
ReplyDelete