The Giver

I’m one of the last around my area.

Humans that is.

Yep, the vampires have taken over the Earth and there’s nothing that could be done about it.  Hunters like me simply gave up or were killed for trying.

The First found out who we were, where we lived and put tracking devices on us.  These damned things aren’t easy to remove either.  They were markers in our blood… and seeing it’s the 1970’s it’s not easy to find a scientist who isn’t a vamp now, who won’t go back to their Sire to dob us in.

So, the few humans who are left are turned into Givers.  We are paid to allow the vampires to chow down on us. 

Sometimes they’re good.

Most times, they’re not.

I have plenty of dead man’s blood in my car and on my person in case they get rude and take more than they’re allowed.  I also have a whopping big knife on me in case that doesn’t stop the bastard; and I end up chopping their damned head off.

Yeah, the Hunter in me is still hot and burning.

I hate the arseholes; probably as much as they hate me… why?

Well, by trade, I’m the absolute bitch of Vampire Hunters… I’m the one and only true blood line of Van Helsing; and they know it.

My name?  Tessa Van Helsing.

Tonight, I’m driving my Datsun Sunny to a place rife with vampires.  But I’m only there to feed one.  I hope I don’t get jumped on the way into their place; as they can hear our heartbeat from miles away.

I try to keep my nerves from being frayed, but it’s hard as the neighbourhood looks like it’s all hands on deck.  They’re walking around as though it’s daytime… as though this is all normal.

Some of them just want to be left alone to lead their lives as normal as possible, while others are just absolute dicks and will kill anything with a pulse and human DNA…and they’re the most dangerous ones around because you don’t know how rabid they are, not until they run at you.  Because it’s the calm ones that really do all the damage… they are too quiet.

I pull into a driveway where there’s a gate.  Before I get the window down, it opens from the middle just enough for my car to get in, and closes immediately to keep out anyone.  The walls are immensely high… I wonder if I’m getting outa here as the rest of the world is shut out.

Pulling up outside the front doors of the house, I get out of the car, feel for the three large syringes of dead man’s blood in the secret compartments in my jacket and the knife in hidden around near the small of my back and then pull my long jacket down, lock up the car and pocket my keys in my blue jeans. 

The front door opens and I climb the two or three steps to walk inside where He is waiting for me with his back to me staring at the blazing fireplace.

“So, you’re the Giver.” His voice is almost a whisper, “Could swear you’re a Hunter …”

“You’re the First.” I said.

He turns from it smiling, showing his hunger, “How smart you are.”

I want to kill him.  It’s in my blood after all, but I don’t, “Well, you called me here.”

Within a few quick strides, he had me against the wall, “Yes.  And nothing you do to me will rid me of this world.” Closing his eyes, he inhaled, “Not even those three syringes of dead man’s blood will help you Tessa.” His hand reached around my body and disarmed me of my weapon, showing it to me, “Or this.”

“What do you want?”

“You’re a relative of Van Helsing, you figure it out.” He stepped away as he handed my weapon back to me.

I didn’t know… honestly I didn’t.

“And don’t say you don’t know… you do.” He turned and looked at me, “You have the knowledge that I do, Tessa.  Where do you think your bloodline came from?”

“Germany.”

“No.”

“Holland.”

He smiled, almost laughing, “Nowhere near it.  Why do you think you’re the last one left?”

“I’m not the last one left.”

“Yes you are.” He nodded, “You have all the weapons and imagination to kill us off, and yet you don’t.” he offered me a seat by the fire and I took it, “Why is that?”

“I was trying to find you.”

“And instead it was I who found you.” He sat down across from me, “You don’t understand why nobody had tried to kill you lately?”

I was stunned as I started to think over what had happened over the recent weeks.  I had been a Hunter all my life.  All my friends and family were dead.  Every person outside my house were vampires and I had killed over two hundred in the last year, and still they kept on coming, and yet nobody had contacted me via mail or telephone… I looked at him, “Why am I the last one left?”

He smiled, “Because there are none left to kill for any humans.”

My gut turned, “What?”

“Where do you get the dead man’s blood?”

 I pulled one of the syringes from my jacket, and didn’t have a clue where I had gotten it from… then I realised I did.  A corpse in my house – a human I had attacked when they …

“Jesus,” I dropped the syringe and it bounced on the rug next to the chair, “Why don’t I remember?”

“Feeding does that.” He smiled, “Sometimes when you need it so badly, you block it out.”

My eyes flicker open, and I’m on a table.

“Damn, she woke up.” He swore under his mask, “You told me the vamp was properly asleep.”

“I’m sorry… I thought she was.  They need a lot of the shit to keep them under because they’re the undead.” A voice panicked.

I look around the lab struggling to get out.  I’m so damned hungry I can smell their blood.  Their human, delicious blood…

“Trying to find out how she came to think of herself as a Hunter – as something that doesn’t exist – is beyond us.” The doctor said, “But how she got turned into this creature which doesn’t exist…”

I break the restraints easily and grab his arm, “Don’t you go anywhere until you tell me something.”

He turned to look at me as he pulled the mask down showing a clean-shaven man, “What is it?”

“Exactly what year is it?”

Sex, Lies and Video Tapes

I watched on as my doctors tried their best to save my spent shell – and failed.  There was so much they attempted, and yet, I wasn’t there to get back into my diseased body.

My life had come to an end, and there was so much for my family to organise.

I heard the doctor call the time of my death – 1:45pm – and I looked outside at the beautiful Spring day at the flowering Japanese maple outside my hospital window.  How pretty that was.

I turned and followed him out into the hall where he became most upset and sat down with my Mum and Dad, telling them that my body had given up the fight against the disease. 

“… it was a long time coming… I’m so sorry.  But she put up a good fight.” He said to them as they sobbed against each other.  My brother was there sitting on the floor in the corner; a complete mess, along with my twenty-four year old niece who looked up to me from the day she was old enough to ask the tough questions – like the day she asked me where the stars came from and what a rainbow was (and I could tell her truthfully).

The next thing I know, we are at my house.  There’s a large purple box on my dining room table, right where I had left it before being moved into the special care unit three weeks ago.  It had a fine coating of dust on it.

The fridge was empty.

My bills had been collected by my folks and paid on their credit card.

My brother unlocked all the doors and windows and let in the air and light.

My niece went outside into my garden to my art studio, unlocked the door there and went inside.  Nobody saw her for the rest of the day.

Dad made coffee.

I watched them all open the box and inside it was a briefcase Mum had given me years ago.  Dad pulled it out as my brother held the box down, and the briefcase was opened; the loud snapping of the clips being undone was almost deafening.

Inside the briefcase was my Will, my bank account details and an external hard drive nobody knew existed.

“What’s this?” Mum asked, “She’s already got one.”

My brother grabbed it and took it upstairs to my office, plugged it in, turned on my computer and opened it up. 

I stood behind him as he saw all the folders of genres that I had written.  He moved the mouse over one and clicked on it and page was filled to the brim with story and book titles – all completed and ready to be published.

Backing up to the main drive, he clicked on an arts folder and clicked on that and there were photos of every single piece of artwork I ever did in my life.

He backed up again and looked around to find one folder labelled: ‘My Life’… and he clicked on that.  The page filled with chapters about me, “It’s a journal.” He muttered, until he saw the size of each one, and realised it was about my life, who I was, what I loved, what I hated… things people knew about me, secrets about me people didn’t know… it was the sex, lies and video tapes of my life all in one book that my family didn’t bother asking me about, all here for them to read.

“Well?” Mum’s voice asked at the door.  I turned and looked at her as Gabe did, “What was on it?”

He looked around, “She’s written so many books.  There’s so much artwork on here.  And there’s also an autobiography about her life – about things we’ve tried to learn about her and she’s never told us – and, Mum… people need to know this about my sister.  I think it’s best if we publish her written works and make the money she couldn’t while she was alive.”

Mum sighed, “Do you think so?”

He nodded, “Yes.  My sister was a brilliant writer.  But nobody took her seriously in life… so why not in death?”

My funeral service was so brilliantly colourful.  I was buried as stipulated in my Will.  My whole family was there… all my friends.  And there were so many people there who showed up and yet I had forgotten I had met them.

I sat on a seat nearby watching them bury my casket when another arrived and sat next to me, “Well, are you ready?”

“So, you’re my guide?” he smiled, “Yep.”

“Bro, it was so good that you could help me through this by being there for Mum.” I grinned, “How did you know I was there, and here?”

He looked to his hands, “Um… your reflection showed up in the pane of glass at home in your office and you show in a mirror too.” He held up a tiny make-up mirror from my old bathroom that my niece had nabbed, “I spotted you sitting here, and people think I’m talking to myself. But since you passed away, I’ve been seeing you everywhere.” He looked over to my left, “And I think it’s time you left, because over there is your pathway to leave.”

I looked over to where he was and saw the most lovely, inviting light, “I’ll miss you all.”

“I missed you immediately.”

“I know.  But don’t be ashamed of the stories… they’re just fun things I wrote.  And my life story is the absolute truth of what I think of the world.” I stood and turned from him.

“… and she’s back!”

I took in a long painful breath, opening my eyes. 

I hadn’t been sick at all. 

“Hey, Beth, are you still with us?” a nurse squeezed my hand and I squeezed back, “We lost you for a minute, but you’re back now.”

“What happened to me?”

“A drunk driver hit you and totalled his car.” The doctor said, “Damned asshole.”

“I’m gonna make it.  I have so much more to write, do and paint before anything gets me.” I muttered.

A week passes by and my family is allowed in to see me in my room.  My niece races in, and she’s so happy to see I’m okay.  She’s still fourteen years old… I’m puzzled at exactly what I had seen before.  My brother sees this and shuffles everyone out to chat.

I tell him what happened, and he’s shocked.

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” I looked at him, “Now you can see why I’m so puzzled about Jemma…”

He gently touched my hand, “Well, you’ll be okay, sis… I’ll make sure of it.”

A decade passes by and I’m packing a purple box with a briefcase filled with the last things I want my family to have.

I’m not well.

It’s the Big C… and I’m going to die.

So, I’ve made sure I’ve taken some precautions for my family. 

Inside this box is a secret hard drive filled with my life’s work, photos of all my artwork and a sex, lies and video tapes-style book of my life.

My Turntable

This week, Chuck Wendig has us doing a writing exercise instead of a flash fiction.  He wants us to pick an item from around us and to describe it in 10 sentences.  Okay, easy for me, but my sentences are long - very long - sorry about that, chief!

It’s a Sony and has two speeds on it, along with a lose piece of plastic for those 45’s with a big hole in the centre, and a hard, tinted lid – to keep the dust off.

I bought my turntable about 6 months after I bought my AWA (a sister company of Sony) Stereo system, as I love vinyls.

The one thing I love about it is that farting noise it makes when you place the stylus onto the edge of the vinyl and it crackles just a little before the music begins to play.

It’s a semi-automatic turntable – so it has a buttons for ‘start’ ‘stop’ and ‘up/down’ for those who don’t know how to pick up a turntable arm – but I never use these buttons, not unless I’m in a hurry and I press the stop button to turn off the stereo quickly.

The stylus had to be replaced just once in the 10 years since I bought it; in 2004, but the stylus wasn’t the right one for the model of the turntable, so Dad and I had to take the whole thing into the music store and they fitted one for the arm which was a different model to the turntable.

When I put the turntable together – via instructions – I found I had to follow the instructions until halfway through, then ignore them, as it was made in Taiwan and everything was designed backwards… the switch inside the turntable (for the sound to play the vinyls) had to be turned off and not on. 

I love collecting great music for my turntable – rare music – from all eras.  I have vinyls from Carlos Santana, Jethro Tull, AC/DC, INXS, U2, Eurthymics, Madonna, The Doors, P!NK and B.B. King as well as classical music of the likes of W.A. Mozart and Beethoven – I play them more than I play cds.

Yes, I’m a very proud X-Gen child who knew and saw the changeover from 8-track tapes to cassette tapes and vinyls to cds and then through to iPod… I’m a rare one to know how to type on a typewriter as well as an electric typewriter and to have learned how to use a rotary phone and I was around before mobile phones became a reality.

I’ll never throw away my turntable, and if it breaks down… I’ll just go out and buy another one.

I do love my vinyls and my turntable… they just never go out of style.