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I’m off prompt today, trying to catch up on stories I’ve written but not edited. This week I’m posting my Undead New Year’s story and earlier this week I posted 4 and 20 Clowns (Part 1), which really goes with this week’s theme, but part 2 won’t be ready until next week. -W.J. Howard
I don’t know what I was thinking when I agreed to harvest all the blood donors for Dracula’s New Year’s Eve celebration. This might have been an easy job if it weren’t for the frigid temperatures in Time Square, one of the coldest in recorded history in fact.
Do you have any idea what fifteen below zero does to a vampire? I mean our blood is cold to begin with and when it’s this cold we’re sluggish unless we’re constantly feeding on warm blood.
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W. J. Howard is a contributor and administrator here at the Vamplit blog. She writes horror, fantasy and sci-fi with a bit of comedy thrown in at times. In addition, she is the author of the award winning novel, The Courier, a satirical, good vs. evil fantasy novel about Barry, who takes a job that seems too good to be true and soon finds out it pays to read the fine print. Vamplit Publishing will publish The Courier in quarterly serialized episodes starting this month. Many of Wendy’s short stories are featured here in the blog.
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I guess I should back up and mention I volunteered to gather six hundred and sixty six donors for a New Year’s Eve Celebration hosted by Dracula’s clan every hundred years. Considering our life span, I suppose the holiday is only worthy to celebrating that often. Vampires from all around the world attend the event, which is more of an orgy and gluttonous feast.
Anyways, I wasn’t invited to the last bash despite my five hundred years as a vampire. You see, I’m a bit of a fuck up. I’ve never been considered worthy of Dracula’s close circle let alone an attendee at a social event, at least until I volunteered for this mission. If all goes well, I’ll be painting the party red with the best of the community in just a few short hours. If I can’t prove my devotion to Dracula, I have no idea what they’ll do to me.
Now, I stand on the rooftop, overlooking Time Square and a crowd of unsuspecting blood donors waiting for the ball to drop. My only hope is I can pull this off.
My original plan was to fly in and pluck a donor at a time out of the crowd like an apple off a tree. That way no one would notice what I was doing, considering my ability to move faster than the human eye can see, and even faster than most other vampires. It’s my gift. But the frigid cold has slowed me down, and I’ve only collected a hundred so far. In fact, my body is stiffening so fast that I have to warm myself by draining two out of every ten I lift to the rooftop.
“What the hell is going on up here?”
It’s Ingrid, the event planner for the celebration, and the only one willing to give me this chance. Wicked vamp but a real tight ass.
“It’s the cold. It’s slowing me down.”
“You’re sucking up all the blood for the party.” Ingrid swept her hands over a nearby pile of dead bodies, already frosting over from the cold.
“What did you not understand about the cold slowing–”
“I don’t want to hear your excuses. You promised me you could do this.”
“I need help.”
“Help?” Ingrid sighed and put her hands on her curvy hips. “How about you help me explain to Dracula why we have to cancel tonight’s blood orgy.”
Ingrid’s the biggest bitch in the New York Vampire community and I knew she’d have me staked if I didn’t follow through. So I lied. “I’ll get it done. Come back in an hour.”
The sound of Ingrid’s heals faded while I glanced back down on the crowd below. I figured I had two choices, grab five at a time and risk being noticed or get staked. So I went with Plan A.
I descended upon the crowd in a flash and was able to grab three donors. Again and again I swooped down increasing my load to capacity. Gathering up more people was tricky, still it was going faster and the more times I dived the easier it was to juggle donors.
By the twentieth dip I took a break and sucked down the blood of two young, corn fed blondes I could tell were from out of town. That’s when I heard panic from the streets below. No one suspected a vampire though. They were screaming out, “terrorists.”
The threat spread like a wave over the crowd and two-hundred-thousand people scattered like ants with no regard for who they stepped over.
Shit! It was one thing to snatch up donors, standing still, but they were all in motion now. It didn’t stop me though. I collected as many as I could as fast as I could until I was forced to take another break.
This time I fed on locals until my gut would take in no more and blood regurgitated back up my throat and out my nose. The problem was it didn’t warm me nearly enough to get me back to max speed, and I was only half way to my quota.
As I swooped back down on the crowd, I was surprised by how quickly the crowd had disbursed. There were hundreds of humans, trampled and lying on the ground begging for help though. Easy pickings, I thought.
“Look!” A man in the crowd on the ground pointed upward.
He saw me, so I swooped in and grabbed him next along with three motionless bodies beside him and a lost child sobbing to his right. Upward I flew, struggling to reach the rooftop, but my momentum slowed. Just three floors short of the rooftop, my grip stiffened and paralyzed, and I dropped my load. The more I struggled to fly upward and save myself, the colder I grew until I shattered like glass into millions of shards that rained down on Time Square.
I had ruined Dracula’s New Year’s Eve celebration.
While I expected I was dead and gone forever, Dracula had other plans. He sent Ingrid out to sweep up the shards of me and place them in a lava lamp where surprisingly my awareness remains along with an eternal desire for blood. Ingrid’s in here too, nagging and picking at me as I float in slow motion around the nastiest blood sucking bitch, a fate worse than Hell.
© Copyright 2012 W.J. Howard
978 words
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