VAMPIRES

Dancing with the Sandman (Excerpt)

 Dena Kay liked to take me to the movies when she didn’t have anyone else to ask. I liked going; actually, I’d go about anywhere. After all, it wasn’t a whole lotta fun and also rather tricky, playing dodge ball by yourself.

Dena Kay just loved scary movies. She liked to watch me squirm and sometimes scream, so she took me to see Count Yorga Vampire at the local movie palace. That movie made a mark on my existence to say the least. Yep, there’s always that one movie that reaches out to me now, well beyond the years, and the more horrific the scenes . . . the better. At this time in my life, way before the Twilight Saga, I discovered just how dangerous and deceitful these vampire creatures could be. Here I had been walking around for nearly ten years, and I didn’t have a clue that all of mankind was in vast danger. If only I had known, I might have been less concerned with rattlesnakes. They both had fangs, but the undead presented a whole new set of problems. Had I known, I would have taken precautions at night and gathered up some crosses and garlic and never ever would I have raised my window. I would’ve been especially careful about covering up my neck at dark and about sleeping completely under the covers. Because after all, nobody would want to look up and see one of those creatures staring back at you from the closet door behind your sister’s old pink prom dress.

Count Yorga was crafty. By this, I mean his house was way out in the boonies and all that so he could go around relatively unnoticed. In the Count’s massive dining room, he had a nice big dinner table set for guests, but, of course, he had more plans in store for them. The Count liked the main character’s girlfriend, Erica. You know, of course, it was because she looked like his long, lost love. After dinner, the unsuspecting guests’ van had to get stuck out there in a heavily wooded area. Like those movie scenes where the girl just has to go down into the basement although all the electricity is off and the Portal of Hell is exploding down there. Plus, I doubt that unsuspecting girl in the movie knows a thing about electrical wiring and couldn’t fix anything if she wanted to. Anyway, after dinner was over, the guests had to spend the night out there stranded in the woods not far from Count Yorga’s mansion.

Well, I knew things weren’t looking good and let me tell you that Erica, yep, she was a goner all right. Count Yorga went out looking for them and smacked Erica’s fiance´ over the head with a log after the poor fool got out to check a “noise.” Then the Count went up to the van, and there was poor Erica, knowing full well that something wasn’t right. She made the mistake of looking out the van’s little, tiny window. There was the Count, all fangs with a green, distorted face staring back at her through the window. Man, I almost jumped out of that chair, but not Dena Kay. There was no moving Miss Nerves of Steel. I would’ve left if my legs hadn’t turned to Jell-OTM, not to mention I didn’t know how to drive either.

So, of course, the Count’s Long Lost Love had to be bitten. The next day they acted like nothing had happened. On the screen, Erica started acting strange after her encounter with the Count. Her poor fiance´ didn’t have a clue. Then Erica got sicker; she needed some rest. BUT WAIT! Something wasn’t quite right. Next thing you know, her friends see two holes in her neck and notice how Erica keeps trying to get away from them. Then they have to leave her ALONE, and just why I don’t know. While she was unsupervised, Erica ate . . . GASP . . . a KITTEN! This was the last straw and just about killed me. I had violent nightmares and an upset stomach for days after that movie. Mother called it a “nervous stomach.” All this didn’t faze Dena Kay; she kept watching and shoveling down the popcorn during that whole darn bloodbath of a movie while I couldn’t even look at my WhoppersTM after that.

If that stupid movie wasn’t bad enough, we had a Peeping Tom in town and guess what . . . he liked to dress up as a VAMPIRE. I had overheard my mother talking to one of her friends about him.

“It’s old Luther Collins,” said Mother.

“Do tell!” gasped her friend Ava.

“Well, you know he’s a little different, just a little on the strange side,” confided Mother.

“Oh no!” said Ava. “Who is he watching . . . men or women?”

“Well, I’m not sure about which ones he likes,” said Mother as she frowned and gave Ava “that” certain look.

I was absolutely confused. Was Luther a real vampire or a pretend one? What did it matter if he was watching men or women? For heaven’s sake, was he watching KIDS? Even more importantly, what would happen to him if he was out there peeping in somebody’s window and ran into Count Yorga or that Cat Eating Woman?

As if my vampire discoveries were not bad enough, my Cousin Tandy had informed me of a new threat to humankind: a bloodsucking goat called a Chupacabra. No wonder the coyotes howled at dusk. I knew there were all sorts of things hiding out there on Granddad’s farm at night, and this new stuff just wasn’t good. It was almost more than I could bear, imagining a demonic goat along with some crazy, redneck vampire running loose at night, playing dominoes down at the VFW club, eating chicken wings with his shirt off, and chewing Prince Albert while all the old men in town just thought he was a little “different.” Somebody needed to do something. They needed to set old Luther straight or drive a stake 

through his heart. I wasn’t sure what could be done about the bloodsucking goat. I sure didn’t think Daddy would want to go out and catch it.