Not that such a thing happens. Heinrich is waiting for me on a bench, in the one spot where a little light from a streetlamp shines through the gnarly trees.
When he stands up to greet me, like a perfect gentleman, I see that he is big. My head doesn’t even come to his shoulders. He is broad-shouldered, like two or three linebackers crammed into one body, and I can see that he’s one of these guys whose face is always hairy no matter how many times he shaves, but maybe my senses are getting sharper from hanging around vampires so much, because I can smell him in a good way, not BO but an alive odor that excites me more than I can understand, and when he takes my hand in his and his grip is firm and so hard it almost breaks my hand, but warm, I’m instantly in love! Before we even say a word, we fall into each other’s arms, on the ground, rolling in the leaves, heaving with such passion that a decent girl like me (ahem!) will have to leave out some of the details.
Later we talk quite a lot, and I pour my heart out to him, the whole story, and he is so understanding. He has seen and experienced strange things, too, he says. He believes me. He knows I am telling the truth.
I look into his eyes. I may never look anywhere else again.
“You have to get away,” he says.
“But I don’t want to hurt Momma’s feelings.”
“She’s a minion of evil, a blood-drinking demon of darkness.”
“I know, but she’s my mom. Besides, one tries not to be judgmental about alternate lifestyles.”
“That’s the college girl talking, not the real you,” he says, and takes me in his arms again and once more we are rolling on the ground, making hay in the dead leaves, if you will pardon the expression, and oh! I have never felt anything like this and oh! goes on and on, and oh! I don’t care what Mom and Dad think, I just want to be with Heinrich.
“I might have a few deep, dark secrets of my own,” he says afterwards. “I am glad you are not judgmental.”
Then I suggest that maybe we should take the silver nails and nail my parents back into their coffins. It won’t be such an inconvenience for them because they’re immortal, so we could live out our lives and maybe let them loose again when we’re eighty or so-but at the first mention of silver, Heinrich hisses and recoils as if I’d handed him a live snake.
Which is very odd. But do you expect me to have a normal boyfriend?
Then Heinrich has to leave. He leaves, quickly.
“I love you!” I shout after him, but he’s vanished into the darkness.
There is indeed hell to pay when I get home, close to dawn, about the same time Momma and Poppa do, and even Poppa is beside himself with rage, his eyes burning red, his fangs dripping. He’s gotten his bat-tie repaired. Both wings are flapping furiously.
“You are one disobedient minion!” Momma screams as she oozes toward me in that odd, rolly-polly slink that is so hard to describe. Her eyes are all fire, too, and her fangs are out.
“Damn it, Mother! I’m not a minion! I’m your daughter!”
Just then Max shambles into the room, a gigantic, live cockroach wriggling between his teeth. His back has been broken in several places, almost tied into a pretzel, though he doesn’t seem to feel any pain. Vampires really do have powers science can’t understand. Max is now a genuine hunchback of the finest quality, two-humped like a dromedary.
“Now that’s a minion!” I shout.
Momma shouts, too, orders to Max, who is surprisingly agile despite his condition, and surprisingly strong, not to mention horrible smelling, as he grabs me and drags me up the front stairs like a sack of laundry, while both of my parents are hovering over me, their faces hideous masks with red eyes and gleaming fangs, like something seen in a dream, and the cockroach in Max’s teeth seems to be saying, “You’re a naughty, naughty girl and you’re grounded for life!”
Maybe they’ve put the whammy on me, because there is a gap in my memory, and when I wake up I am on my bed in my bedroom. The first thing I do is put my hand to my throat to see if I feel warm, and I do. That calms me a little, but I get up woozily and only gradually discover, to my increasing rage, that the door to my room has been nailed shut, and there are boards nailed over all the windows.
My little prison consists of the bedroom and the adjoining bathroom. Someone or something (probably Max, who seems to have razor-sharp teeth these days) has gnawed a bit of the bottom of the door away, enough to make a slot where food can be slid in to the prisoner.
There’s a bowl of soggy Cheerios on a plate, but there’s a bug swimming in it and I push it back out.
So that’s how it is.
Yes, it is. I can’t go to college anymore. I can’t go anywhere. I am held prisoner, starving, occasionally able to nibble on the less disgusting things Max provides. (The lunch meat isn’t too bad. I can even manage the stale doughnuts.)
Every evening I hear my parents rise from their coffins. I hear everything. I think my senses are heightened beyond what is normal. The lids creak, I think, because they like it that way. They could oil the hinges, but it would be against proper vampire style. They go out. They come in a little before dawn, exchanging a few pleasantries. “Did you have a good time, Morris?” “Yes, Honey Love.” Sometimes I overhear a few words about “What are we going to do with our daughter? What can we do?” followed by assurances (from Poppa) that all parents go through this with teenaged daughters and things will work out.
Yes, they will. Thank God for the Internet. Max is too addled and I don’t think my parents ever quite understood what computers are for, particularly a wireless connection through a laptop. (They’ve ripped out my phone.) If I am typing away, they think I am doing my homework.
(“Could we let her go back to school?” Poppa asks. “She’s still working so hard.” Momma just hisses like a snake and that settles that.)
I type away, day and night. By day, idiot Max the hunchback is there to make sure I don’t escape. At night, my old friend Sylvie still hovers outside the window like a Halloween version of Tinkerbell in a trailing shroud, tapping her skeletal fingers on the windows, asking me to let her in. I don’t, but she’s still out there, certain to make sure I can’t go out.
Where did she get the shroud, anyway? She was wearing jeans and a top when we buried her. But I can’t bring myself to care anymore.
I type and type. I find Heinrich again, and we exchange e-mails fast and furious.
I too am a creature of darkness, he types. You might not be happy with me. I have a terrible secret.
Yeah, yeah. I DON’T CARE!
You sure?
YES I AM SURE. COME AND GET ME!
I shall rescue you, then, as a knight would rescue a maiden imprisoned in a tower. It’s very romantic, really.
Yes, it is, and I spend my days and nights dreaming of him, imagining that I am with him, that he is in my bed, doing things a nice girl like me doesn’t talk about. I spend hours before my mirror trying to make myself presentable for him. We talk over the Internet every day, sometimes all day, but the one thing I can’t understand is why I have to wait. Why can’t he come and get me right now?
These things have to be done right, for the sake of romance, he types.
I don’t care!
But you should, my sweet. There is, too, the matter that my power will not be at its greatest until the end of the month.
I have experienced enough of his power to last me a lifetime and I want more, but I do, ultimately, have to wait. The routine goes on. I listen to what Mom and Dad say to each other every morning after they come back from terrorizing the countryside. I can even hear the soundtrack of the movies Poppa plays inside his coffin.