A little tale to pass the time under the stars on deck.
Damned vampires. Always whining.
“Being immortal’s not all it’s cracked up to be – how would you like to live forever and watch all your loved ones dying off?”
Tell someone who cares.
I’m 400 years old, and still enjoying life. But these younger vampires – they always have to be the victim, always complaining about something or other.
Still, I wish it had worked out with Claudia. She was taken at the peak of perfection. Bitten between runway changes at a Paris fashion show. It was the hairdresser, of course. He nipped her as he was piling up those tumbling blonde curls. Irresistible.
When I met her, she was well past the use by date for a supermodel. The gossip mags endlessly speculated on how much expensive surgery it took to keep her looking like that, but all it took was the odd pint of blood, and there were any number of willing necks eager for those lovely fangs.
As soon as I saw her, propping up the bar with that fantastic body at my favorite hangout, The Coffin Club, I had to approach her. So I sidled up, and introduced myself.
“Gaylord Whimsey, at your service,” I said. That always gets a reaction. Names like that were very popular back in the 17th Century, but they cause quite a puzzled reaction now.
Claudia was very drunk on young French blood – I never cared for it myself, the bubbles get up my nose. Give me a fine old Scotch AB Positive any day.
“I’ve heard of you,” she said, focusing on me with difficulty, “You’re one of The Ancients. I’ve always wanted to meet one.”
“We tend to keep a low profile these days,” I said. “When you’ve been around for hundreds of years, people think you know everything.”
She gazed at me in horror. “Hundreds of years? How can you bear it? I’ve only been immortal for ten years and I can’t stand it any longer.”
I must admit, I was taken aback. One can’t be said to be immortal, exactly, until one has lived past the average age of death. A vampire who was sick of eternal life before the mortal life span had passed was a new one to me.
“Why?” I asked.
“It’s so boring!” she snapped. “On and on, day after day – you can’t even commit suicide! Aren’t you bored, after 400 years?”
“Certainly not,” I said. “I still pursue many interests.”
“Such as?”
“Cricket,” I said. “I’m a long standing member of the All Vampires 11, under the captainship of my dear friend, Hubert Montmorency.”
She glared at me through her French bubbly haze. “Cricket? Isn’t that a boring English game with men in hideous white clothes tossing a ball at each other?”
“It’s not boring at all, it’s the grandest game in the world. There is nothing nicer than a friendly afternoon match on the village green – or in my case, a friendly midnight match at my ancestral cemetery. I was planning to fly out tonight, actually, would you care to join me?”
She frowned. “Well, I suppose it would be a change of scene – you’ll have to give me a lift, I’m too drunk to steer.”
“My bat wings are quite strong enough for both of us,” I assured her. Within minutes we had left the club and were winging our way to my ancestral home.
All the way, she complained. She told me about her interminably unfortunate love life, how hard it was to find a good vampire who wouldn’t go sinking his teeth into any sexy young thing that crossed his path, and how she longed to find a soul mate. She whined about the meaninglessness of immortality and how hard it was to stay in shape when so much mortal blood was loaded with fat. She bitched incessantly that being immortal was supposed to be cool, and it wasn’t, not one little bit.
I was thankful when we arrived and I could put her down. She swayed on her stiletto heels and looked around my ancestral graveyard.
“Gloomy,” she said.
Hubert Montmorency and the team had already gathered for the match. Claudia gave a gasp when she saw our Montmorency carrying the stumps onto the pitch.
“What are you doing with those wooden stakes?”
“Those are the stumps,” Montmorency explained, “you drive them into the pitch, three at each end. The batsman has to defend them from the bowler.”
The game began and she perched herself on a headstone to watch. She got bored after five minutes and started treating the team to another long monologue on her wretched love life, weight problems and so on ad nauseum.
It quite disrupted the game. Finally, I threw down my bat and appealed to her.
“Claudia, dearest, we are trying to have a match here. Can’t you just forget your troubles, relax, and have a little fun?”
“Fun?” she shrieked. “If this is your idea of fun, I think I’d rather be jabbed with sharp sticks!”
As Montmorency said, anything to oblige.
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