Toward the end of my first meeting with Turner Done, he told me that being attacked by vampires wasn’t the worst thing that happened to him during his ordeal. It was not being believed by regular old humans that really got to him. “The way you’re looking at me right now,” he had said. “As though I’m crazy, when I know that I’m not.”
And now I can relate, as I sit here in the hospital, being watched over with dutiful indifference, as though I’m some lonely senior in a nursing home. But I digress, and I don’t have time to digress. I have to get out of here. I need to get back to G______________________ with garlic and stakes, like I should have done the first time. I just need to allow the sedation to wear off, and in the meantime write this out so everyone knows what is going on.
As I was saying before I drifted off, I had escaped from Stephanie Daniel’s house, and was leaving her and her vampy skele-baby behind when I saw the police cruiser turn the corner. Gunshots blasted against the cruiser from one of the boarded up houses, but everyone knows guns have no effect on vampires. All it did was help to slow down the cruiser some and give me hope that the town had not yet turned 100%.
Across the street I could see the priest walking about, carrying his own right hand as though it were a mallet. The white band of his Roman collar was now stained a deep shade of scarlet. I was walking about in some sort of stupor, my nose bleeding and my legs failing from my fall down the cellar stairs. Behind me, Stephanie Daniels appeared on her front porch, skele-baby still in its carrier, holding its blood bottle close, as a mantis does its decapitated lover.
My body writhed in panicked fear. Hopeless, hopeless.
“Counselor,” the jaundiced cop said, stepping out of his parked cruiser. “It would appear you’ve been breaking some of our laws.” He took out a citation book, as though he were a Statie about to nail me for speeding.
Whoever was shooting from the boarded up house lit the officer up with a spray of bullets, but no blood was forthcoming from the cop, who merely shook like a wet dog.
“Old Lady Wilcox,” he told Stephanie, as though they were ordering an office lunch. “We’ll take care of her next.”
I looked up at the magnificent sun as it descended behind the surrounding hills, and cast its final rays of dying light upon the desecrated mountain town. I was surrounded. Surrounded, and much too tired and slow to make another run for it.
I would have to use the only tool I’ve ever had: the power of persuasion.
“Listen, I’m only here because I’m Turner Done’s court-appointed public defender,” I said. “He was saying some crazy shit about this place, so I wanted to investigate. But now I know he was lying,” I continued. “Because obviously this place is far more fucked up than he let on!”
“The Master was a barrister once,” the officer said in an even tone. “In a former life, so to speak. London.”
I sat down on the curb, allowed my new companions hungry eyes to take me in. I saw them lick their chops at the sight of the blood still dripping from my nose. Maybe it was broken after all. I awaited the onslaught, saying a silent prayer to a God I only half believed in.
“What is it you want,” I asked. “World domination? To simply be left alone? Clean air, fresh food, so to speak?” (This was negotiation 101: attempt to see the matter from the other side’s point of view. It was really no different from negotiating with a district attorney.) As I spoke, I tried my best to not shake in desperate fear. I felt that at any moment one of the unearthed ones might snap at me like a hungry animal, tear at my soft lawyer skin and rip out my vocal cords.
But they didn’t.
They explained that all they really wanted was a tiny town they could fully control, one that allowed them to not be hunted, and provided decent “food options” from local metro areas. They didn’t want there to be too many vampires, mind you, because that lead to competition. But they needed full control of a town so that it could appear to function normally. G_______________ just fit the bill. They were tired of living the shadows, so to speak.
“We’re really close to Pittsburgh here, to Scranton, to Philadelphia,” the Priest explained. “And if somebody goes missing from one of those places, then nobody really notices. It’s just a statistic, not a big deal.”
“Understood,” I said, as though I were a worldly realtor weighing the pros and cons of purchasing a new condo. “Never shit where you eat, right? Makes perfect sense.”
Next, I decided to find their negotiating ‘pain points.’
“Listen,” I explained. My colleagues know that I’m here. If I go missing, then two people like me are going to show up. And then four, then eight; and that might make for easy meals for a little while, but eventually it’s going to draw a giant fucking X on this place. But if you let me go, then I promise I’ll never say a word about this town’s little secret. I get to live, you get to live in peace in your beautiful little town. It’s a win-win deal.”
“And you’ll plead your client to insanity, I presume?” asked a new voice. The Head Honcho himself. Dracula, or whatever our modern-day equivalent of Dracula is…
George Clooney???
This dude wasn’t wearing a cape or anything, he just looked timelessly awesome. He walked with a crystal vanity cane and he was wearing one of those ‘50’s style hats, though I’m not sure which century’s ‘50’s, exactly. He was sipping a ‘Manhattan’ made out of fresh blood from a gold-rimmed martini glass. Somebody’s blue eyeball was floating in it as a garnish. Oh, and he had the coolest pair of vintage sunglasses you’d ever hope to see in the wild. This was a vampire who understood both style, and irony.
“Master,” said the others in unison. Well, except the skele-baby. Skele-baby was incapable of doing anything more than hissing or cooing, though it apparently far preferred the former.
“The Barrister,” I said, mock bowing.
He explained that he had heard my proposal, and that he found my predicament most interesting. “But what assurances do we have, that you wouldn’t open your flabby mouth?”
I sat down, shaking in fear, my mind sharp with thought. And then it came to me, an idea so stupid, so lawyerly, that it might just work.
“I’ll sign you all up as clients,” I said. “Then I can’t repeat what I saw because of the attorney-client privilege.”
“I don’t think that’s quite how it works,” the Barrister said, but then he admitted it had been more than a century since he’d last practiced law. Apparently, he mostly dabbled in real estate and mayhem these days.
In time, I had drawn up a contract and we all signed it in counterpart, as us lawyers say, though they wouldn’t let me have my copy. The Barrister promised me that if I reneged on the offer at all, he would have me and everyone I cared about murdered in the most grim manner possible. I joked that as a lawyer I only really cared about myself. “We’ll see, perhaps,” the Barrister said. “We’ll see if that’s so true.”
“Sorry about your truck,” the Priest said, after the contract had been executed. By then, the vampies were all drinking the blood of Wilcox, and they had given me some boxed wine. (I had insisted on white, for obvious reasons.)
“No worries,” I told the Priest. “And uh, sorry about your hand getting severed.”
“The good news is it doesn’t hurt,” the Priest said. “Not one bit.” After that, everyone was in a much better mood. We spent the night playing Pinnacle while the vampies debated global warming, proper skincare, and whether doe or buck blood tasted closer to human when they were hard up for food. I mostly focused on my card hands.
That’s not to say either side passed the evening without trepidations, there was more side-eying and paranoia than a Tarantino film. They loved to discuss heretical topics, and seemed ready to fly into a frenzy at any moment my blood pushed forth fresh blood. With all that said, considering the company I generally keep is other lawyers, I’ve had worse evenings.
Before sunrise, the friendly local (vampire) mechanic had repaired my truck and I was sent on my way home. Where I immediately checked into a hospital and ranted and raved about all that I had seen.
(You really didn’t think I was going to honor my attorney-client pact with that village of bloodsuckers, did you?)
But though I’ve tried to take a light tone in this retelling, earlier today I heard some sad and discomfiting news: Turner Done had apparently hung himself with his bedsheets last night in prison. And I can’t help but think it was an inside job, if you catch my morphine-dripped drift.
Nobody believed Turner until it was too late.
What’s wrong with our species? We never believe anything or anyone until it’s
too
late…
There’s a nurse now, knocking at my curtain. Can one knock at a curtain? You know what I mean. She’s letting in the County Sheriff. He has a wolf-like face and surprisingly large incisors.
He’s telling me he wants a minute alone to talk. He says I need to put down my laptop. Now.
To talk.
He says to trust him; says this will take but a minute……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..