Tara
16
The sun rose and everything fell.
Alex, who had been determinedly running down a steep hill, collapsed suddenly as his eyes dropped shut. The last thought he had concerned his hair, which had been expertly cut in the latest emo style. I hope it still looks nice when I wake up, he thought desperately.
When he awoke, a full moon blazed overhead and he had no idea where he was. His usual dark coffin had been replaced with what appeared to be a dimly lit barn, complete with the quiet sounds of sleeping chickens.
“Yo, dude, you awake?” asked an unfamiliar voice. Alex blearily looked up and saw a guy’s face. Way too close to his own.
“GAH!”
“Dude, chill, bro. You were, like, rolling down a hill and I brought you home. Welcome to my chicken palace.” He looked around proudly. As Alex’s eyes adjusted he saw that this guy had wavy blonde hair and a giant and slightly terrifying grin on his face.
“You live in a barn? I mean chicken palace?” asked Alex doubtfully. “I live in a coffin. So I’m going to go now. Thank you for taking me out of the sunlight, though.”
“My name’s Jon. Are you one of those teenage vampires? So cool.”
Alex was already tired of this conversation. “Yeah, so?”
“You don’t sparkle in the sunlight,” whispered Jon, looking more disappointed than he should have been. “What’s it like, being what you are?”
Alex sighed. The last thing he needed was some idiot surfer dude blowing his cover. Being an emo teenage vampire was hard enough as it was; he needed to find his coffin, and if he didn’t get there in time, the sun would knock him out yet again and--
Alex stood suddenly. “I have to find my coffin. It’s in a cave around here, I think.” He strode to the open barn door and wondered if the moon had started setting yet.
“Wait, I want to have a deep conversation with you, dude,” said Jon. “Are vampires structured differently from the average human being? What exactly do your internal organs look like, bro?”
Alex flipped his cool emo hair and rolled his eyes, pretending not to have been affected by the topic. But Jon had struck a nerve. He slumped heavily to the ground, looked at Jon closely, and then spit it out.
“I don’t have a heart.”
Jon covered his mouth. “Bro.”
Alex pulled out a small knife and cut the back of his hand. Nothing happened. No blood, no visible injury at all.
“Why would I have a heart when I have no blood to spill?” he asked dramatically. “I don’t even drink blood. It’s a common misconception. I eat daisies.”
“Well,” said Jon with a grin. “Let’s go find a heart, dudebro.”
Alex narrowed his eyes. “How would I know where to look? This isn’t the Wizard of Oz, dummy.”
“There’s no place like home,” said Jon reverently.
And that was how Alex found himself on the literal midnight train with a crazy surfer dude. Who apparently knew where to find Alex a heart.
Jon turned to Alex, who had brushed his hair into his eyes to look more emo/angsty.
“My mom’s a witch. She can fashion you a heart and then you can be a vampire with a heart. The first ever. Isn’t that...gnarly?”
Alex smiled a little. “Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done without your services,” he said formally.
“Bro, anytime!”
Surprisingly, Alex found himself growing fond of this loser, as the train took them downstate to New Orleans. Jon was a teenage nomad, who took refuge in different barns and bus stations as he traveled the U.S. This was probably why he talked like a typical California surfer dude, having spent almost a year on the West Coast. On the 2-hour trip, the couple discussed a variety of ethical dilemmas and bonded over their shared love for eating daisies.
Finally, the train screeched to a halt. Alex and Jon looked at each other, both displaying a fair amount of nervous energy. As they exited the train, Alex looked at the sky anxiously. The first sign of dawn had given the sky a pink glow, as the sun had begun its ascent up the horizon.
“Hey, Jon. I kind of…” Alex looked around nervously. “I need a coffin.”
“We can find shelter from the sun somewhere else, bro,” said Jon cheerily. “I think there’s an abandoned barn nearby.”
“I’m homesick,” Alex mumbled embarrassedly.
“Let’s go find a graveyard.”
New Orleans had exactly 42 cemeteries, and the duo quickly found one that suited Alex’s emotional needs. He broke into the undertaker’s little shack and found a cozy-looking coffin.
“Thanks...dude,” said Alex, in a very un-emo-like fashion. “I appreciate your assistance.” Jon smiled so hugely that his face almost broke in half. He slept under a desk in the shack while Alex got cozy in his wooden coffin.
They slept peacefully that day, until a scratching sound abruptly made its way into Alex’s consciousness. He slowly awoke, and realized someone, or something was attempting to enter the shack. Fortunately, the sun had begun to set, and Alex was able to exit his coffin without passing out.
“What’s that noise?” he whispered nervously. Jon twitched a little and stared up at Alex from his alcove, the whites of his eyeballs glowing in the darkness.
“Dudebro. Cemeteries are creepy; we should leave. I saw this great ditch nearby, and--”
“--but do you hear that?”
Jon listened. The scratching grew louder, until the entire place was covered with the sound of dry fingers scraping the walls.
“Alex…” said Jon nervously.
“Hold on,” whispered Alex and slowly approached the creaky wooden door.
He pried it open without thinking and was suddenly overwhelmed by a barrage of hands, desperately grasping at him and attempting to mess up his beautiful hair. Jon shrieked slightly and hid behind the coffin. Alex slammed the door shut and hurriedly fixed his hair.
“Jon, we need to leave.”
“You go on without me, I’ll catch up.”
“Liar. Come on, you milksop.”
“Huh?”
Alex went behind the coffin and found Jon with his eyes nearly bugging out of his head. He sighed and then lifted him up and ran out the door.
“You’re too heavy!” yelled Alex as the corpses continued to attack them.
“Nice corpsie,” babbled Jon. “Pretty corpsie won’t hurt the baby. Jimmy, hide the kids.”
Alex groaned and finally managed to arrive at the gate of the graveyard, which he kicked open, still desperately trying not to drop Jon. A noise suddenly split the night air: “This is my swamp. Which fool has been moronic enough to enter my domain?”
Alex foolishly turned around while Jon sang a useless nursery rhyme about a bowl of porridge. A tall, menacing woman stood a few feet away. Her long, black hair carried a strange blue tint and her face appeared to be naturally sad-looking. She approached them slowly and then suddenly froze, staring intently at Jon, who was still singing sadly.
“Jonny!”
Jon stopped singing and slowly looked up, his eyes widening. “Mommy? Is that you?”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“I brought Alex,” he said smiling up at Alex, who immediately dropped him.
“Sorry,” Alex said sheepishly and hauled Jon to his feet. He turned to Jon’s “Mommy”. “I was told that you could create for me a heart. I want to be able to feel true emotions.”
Jon’s mom tilted her head at him, studying him closely. “I might be able to manage that. But first, you must make a choice.”
“Pepsi or Coke?” asked Jon with a small smile. His mom petted his hair and dismissed the still at-attention corpses, who reburied themselves with ease.
They followed Jon’s mom to an unmarked tomb. “This is where I currently practice my business,” she said as an explanation. “Everything’s about business, kid. You can’t be a witch without being a damn good businesswoman.”
Alex nodded dumbly and followed her into the tomb. Jon was left above, and gave Alex a reassuring nod as he followed his last hope down a narrow set of stairs. She turned to him at the bottom, where there wasn’t a corpse. Thank god, thought Alex. He was a vampire, sure, but corpses were his natural enemy.
“I’ll get straight to the point, like any good businessperson, son. You must make a choice.”
Alex nodded putting his hand to his chest, where no heartbeat reassured him.
“You don’t need a heart to feel emotions, you know.”
“But...I’d feel more whole if I had one, you know?”
“Please! Stupid teenager. You don’t feel whole or whatever purely because you’re a friendless loser. Most teenagers have approximately 425 Facebook friends, you know.”
Alex winced. “Who wants to be friends with an emo teenage vampire?”
She slowly looked up to the tomb entrance, where Jon waited patiently on the other side. Alex followed her eyes, and understood at last, what he had been missing.
She shook her head. “Should have charged you at least fifty bucks for that piece of wisdom.”
He smiled widely at her. “Thank you.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just go away.” Alex walked up the stairs to the small door and turned back to Jon’s mom. She nodded at him and rolled her eyes. “You want an Oscar, kid?”
Alex stared at the door handle and slowly turned the knob.
