Thursday, 03:14 AM, July 5th 2012
I woke up ravenous and ready to eat an entire loaf of bread by myself. It was the hottest night of the entire summer and my hair was completely dry, despite having gone to bed right after taking a shower.
The first thing I noticed was the blinking clock. 3:14 AM, the same hour and minute I had been woken up since the start of the week by that damned song. I was hardly sleeping six hours, barely getting enough protein and my mood was all over the place.
That Thursday was different though. I wanted to throw up the stomach ache, but I knew I’d come up empty. Despite Max’s and now Owen’s protests, my instincts disagreed.
Why was I the only one who saw past his charming face?
If that was even his face.
But what was he? A vampire? A ghost? An evil fairy? Is there even such a thing as evil fairies?
I sat up on my bed, gritting my teeth as wheels screeched to a halt outside on the road. “I’ve had enough of it.” I said to nobody. “I am taking the matter into my own hands and I don’t care what they think at all!”
I stood like that for a moment, waiting for some type of response. Maybe he would try and stop me? But the room stayed as dull as ever, taunting me.
What if I was wrong and they both lost their chance of becoming wizards or something?
But I wasn’t wrong. I was on the Honor Roll and I was rarely wrong about anything. If I thought he was bad news, then he was very obviously bad news. I just needed some evidence to back it up.
The family computer in the office was an ancient beast surrounded by mom’s legal paperwork. Her shelves, carpeted floor and even her chair were all a bright shade of lemon and covered top to bottom with folders, pens and every stationary item known to the 21st century.
We were in the height of a nasty legal dispute with uncles abroad, which had cumulated in hundreds of rapports of land appraisal, property files, forged signatures and hearsay. Of course, that hadn’t stopped them from building the skeleton of a three-story house over the farmland and my mother from screaming at the phone in Albanian.
I sat in front of the computer, biting at my lower lip as it whirred to life. The screen lit up and I tapped the sticky keys with the first thing that came to mind.
Fairies. Fae. Irish fairies. Ice cream truck at night. Late night cravings. Late Night Cravings Company.
I found nothing. Not a company, not a link, not even the ice cream truck name had any reachable site. I tried the ice cream names next, but it was a bust. They had no online footprint that I could find.
The face on the monitor made me jump so hard that the chair and all its contents tipped over. A small pool of paper scattered on the ground, making way too much noise.
There was nothing behind me, I checked. The thing on the screen vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Its blue skin and lack of nose scared me more than the teeth and claws; at least those made sense, a predator needed to hunt his food down, but what was the point of looking like Papa Smurf and Voldemort had an ugly baby?
That was it. I couldn’t take it anymore. Taking a huge breath and mustering up the courage, I shouted: “Daaaad!”
I ran to the bedroom, swinging open the door. “Dad! There’s someone on the lawn! There’s someone parked on the lawn! Dad, he’s creeping me out!”
There was no answer from my parents’ bed. I was expecting anger, confusion, for my dad to shoot up his bed and start yelling over the damn grass and how he part of the home owner association and would not stand up for this, but there was no sound. His snoring, usually a good indicator that he was passed out cold, wasn’t audible.
“Dad?”
I shook his shoulder, but he didn’t even stir.
“Mom? Mom, please wake up, I’m scared. I think he’s in the house!”
Her face was slack and remained that way. Tears pricked my eyes and my sight went blurry. I wiped off the tear and started to beg with a trembling voice. “Please, mom, he even messed with your fridge magnets! Come on, now! This isn’t funny.”
The wooden floor of the hallway creaked with a footstep. My blood went cold. Without even thinking, I crawled over my dad and got under the covers, pulling them over my head.
The footsteps got closer and closer until it was in the same room. I could feel it stopping at the edge of the bed, looking at the three lumps on the mattress. My eyes were squeezed shut and I gripped the sheets like they were an iron shield instead of coarse linen cloth.
I didn’t dare move.
A clock ticked away slowly. We didn’t have one in the house; mom liked the digital ones better, so where was the sound coming from?
“I will return,” he whispered. His voice was sweet and sticky like honey. The tone was almost soothing, like he was reassuring me that that would be a good thing. “Tomorrow.”
--- ---
“Can I take Max with me today?” I asked him.
Normally, I wouldn’t push it. His mood had been horrible since he woke up; we were late, we skipped breakfast and now the car wasn’t working.
“Who?” he snapped back, agitated.
“The boy across from us.” I pointed in his direction. “He’s… my new friend.”
He waved me off dismissingly. I didn’t wait for him to explain whether that was a yes or a no, so I booked it all the way to the Mulligan’s front door.
I rang the doorbell impatiently, urging the door open in between my teeth. A woman with tight ginger curls cracked it open, cigarette in mouth. Before she could say hello, the words were already out of my mouth. “Hi, is Max home?”
“Jesus! Christ, of course he is. It’s eight in the morning. Who are you again?”
“My name is Olivia, we’re neighbors. I wanted to ask if he could come with to the Sport’s Centre. Owen’s coming too.”
“Owen? Sport’s Centre?”
I nodded, impatiently. I turned my head to see my dad behind the wheel, looking out disapprovingly. He tapped watch. “My dad is waiting. Can you call for him, please?”
“MAX!” she yelled, disappearing back into the house. Less than a second later, a very confused and sleepy preteen walked out, holding a breakfast croissant. I really wanted a croissant at that moment. “Hey, do you want to hang out?”
“Me?”
“Who else lives here?”
“Ok. Should I change..?”
“No, you’re fine! Let’s go!” I grabbed him by the hand and low key dragged him back to the car. “Get in.”
“Am I being kidnapped?”
“No, man, we need to talk about Him.”
He nodded. He got in the back and I was about to follow him, when dad ordered me upfront.
“So, Max, was it?”
“Yes, mister… um…”
“Smith.” He replied. “You moved here from Las Vegas, if I remember correctly.”
“Yes. It’s very different around here. Much quieter.”
“Indeed.” Dad replied. He watched Max from the rear-view mirror, silently judging the croissant flakes on his creased shirt. “I’m sure you’ll like it here. The Sport’s Centre is open from 7 to 7, you should find yourself there more often from now on.”
I swallowed, mortified. I took a quick glance at Max, but he was nodding and shoving his remaining breakfast into his mouth. More flakes fell on the car seat and I struggled not to reach out and brush it off. Dad pursed his lips, his eyes cruising from the boy to the road.
The traffic was terrible. A car accident slowed everyone down as they had to maneuver around the police vehicles and the ambulance. The radio and AC were off, the heat building up from the unforgiving sun beating down the windows.
Max scratched his throat. “Sooo, how long until we get there?”
“Depends whether the retard in front of us suddenly learns how to drive.”
“Ten more minutes, at best.”
Ten long, endless minutes under the thick blanket of dad’s anger. I knew his mood was only going to get worse and worse, but for the first time in- for the first time ever, I had bigger things to worry about.
We couldn’t find a parking space, so he left us close to the Centre and took off. I swallowed a nervous lump and turned to Max with a dismissing handwave. “Sorry about that. He gets stingy on Thursdays.”
He nodded. “No, I. I understand. You have to apologize, really.”
“Let me buy you a drink first. We have to talk. For real this time.”
He nodded again. His cheeks were red with acne that he’d clearly picked on and, now that I was looking at him closely, his eyes were fidgety and unfocused. His hoodie hung a little too loose, his nails were bit too far and his shoes… Well, he wasn’t wearing socks so running was only going to make him chafe.
We sat in the spot, him holding a Dr. Pepper and me biting into one of the three slightly soggy sandwiches I bought for ‘breakfast’. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d eaten since that damned ice cream.
“I tried everything,” he said. “Knocking, twisting the handle, even attempted to climb it, but he just didn’t set shop for the night. No one was around and I was starting to feel ridiculous, so I went home and cr- went to bed. But he was inside; I could hear him walk around and mutter to himself. I swear I heard something shatter, maybe he got hurt and needed help, but he was gone in the morning.”
“He was in my house.”
“What??”
“HE WAS IN MY FUCKING HOUSE.”
I spilled the whole thing. The chair, the magnets, the phone, the face in the computer. My parents being completely knocked out.
He paled visibly at that, hands shaking too much to hold the can upright. He set it down and started to scratch his face up. No wonder it looked like that. “Same happened to my mom on Tuesday. I tried to wake her up but… I thought she was… I tried calling an ambulance, anybody, but my phone was dead. Then suddenly it wasn’t and it was 6 AM and she just, jolted awake. And freaked out on me for looming above her while she slept.”
“Is that how you got that black eye?”
“Yeah, but she didn’t like, actually mean it. She never hits me.”
“My mom doesn’t either. But dads are a different story, aren’t they?”
His mouth parted slowly, then he let out a meek ‘yeah’, staring into the distance.
“You have to admit it,” I insisted. “That he’s not human.”
“I think he might be a vampire. Like Dracula.”
“I guess. But can vampires do things like this? I thought he might be some sort of ‘gogol’ or ‘xhind’ like the stories my mom tells. And he doesn’t seem very… vampirey.”
“The original Dracula is very different from all the books they’re putting out now.”
“Jack is sexy?”
I rubbed my temples. “Let’s go with he’s a vampire. How are vampires killed? Stake through the heart?”
“You’re going to kill him??”
“I DON’T KNOW! HE WAS IN MY HOUSE!”
He shrunk back and I bit my own tongue in guilt. He’d pulled his hands up in defense, like I was going to strike him over a small outburst.
“I’m so-” I didn’t get to finish. My name was yelled so loudly that everyone around turned around to stare at my father. I dropped what I was holding. A sandwich. Many sandwiches. Oh no. Oh, no no no nonono.
I tried to explain, to reason, to do anything, but he nearly ripped my arm off dragging me back to the car. My voice wavered towards the end, but it did nothing to calm down my father’s rage. The slap knocked the wind out of me, but the terror had just started.
He drove like a maniac, going way over the speed limit. Our car dove through, making several illegal passes as I clutched the seatbelt in sheer panic.
I pleaded with him to slow down through tears, but after the second strike, the car took a sharp turn to the left, almost sending us off the road.
I shut my eyes after that, not wanting to see what we were going to crash into. At some point he’d started to scream something, then he was silent again.
We halted abruptly and with my blurred vision, I had to stumble out. The cemetery. We had somehow done a fifty-minute drive in less than twenty and landed in front of a large iron gate.
“Dad?” I asked. I didn’t want to go inside, but he shoved me in. We kept walking, him leading the way until we were in an asymmetrical clearing.
“Look at that. Do you know who these people are?”
David Smith. Eloise Smith. David Junior Smith.
“Um…” I sniffled, using the corner of my shirt to wipe my nose. “Relatives?”
“This are my parents and older brother. Look at the graves around them, then back at these ones. What’s the difference?”
I looked around. Most had plastic flowers or some type of decoration and were well kept. Ours was just dusty, with empty and cracked dirt on top.
“There’s nothing on top?”
“Yeah, I didn’t like them very much. What else, Olivia?”
“They’re bigger?”
He clapped once, loudly and my body took a screenshot. His face had this weird grin on it, like he was happy I was scared out of my mind.
“Exactly. Exactly! Do you know why? It’s because I had to waste a lot of money to have THREE custom made coffins for them to fit, Livvy!
They were each 500 pounds at their time of death and needed medical assistance to walk around. Walk was a big word for them, now that I think about it.
Liver failure, heart attack and guess this, your ‘uncle’ died shitting himself. Literally. His cause of death.
And do you know why? Because they were disgusting pigs. They lived to eat. Thousands down the drain just to have soggy Big Mac’s as a midnight snack! Is this how do you want to end up as? In a hospital bed that can’t even support you.”
“No, of course not. But- ”
“Don’t but me, Liv. If I’m healthy and alive now, it’s because they were so enamored with your uncle that I escaped young. Your grandmother was even concerned that I had an eating disorder while she slobbered around, smelled like rotting food and unable to take care of herself.
And you know what? It wasn’t because they were obese that you didn’t know their names,” He got really close, forehead to forehead. My eyes darkened. I was at the edge of passing out. “It’s because they were gluttons. Selfish, entitled, throwing tantrums like children. There’s not a single breathing person in this world who had any respect for them. They were red faced laughing stocks.
I want you to be better than this, Olivia. I want you to be someone people look UP at to, not in disgust, not in ridicule, but in admiration. And that can’t happen, if you resort to being anything less than perfect, you understand?”
I went out like a nightlight without answering.
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