Velma the Vegan Vampire Chapter Three

Chapter Three: Little Bat Teeth

For the story so far, click here

Tom popped his head around the door. “Lisa’s here.”

Velma nodded at him and continued sweeping the empty cafe, but he didn’t leave. He seemed to want a verbal response. “Okay,” she said.

“Just thought you’d want to speak to her, you know, after last week.”

Velma sighed. She had no clue what he meant. “What about last week?”

“You must remember – she said someone had made a complaint about you.”

She was still clueless. “What complaint? Why would anyone make a complaint about me?”

Tom shrugged. “I don’t know – you’re great!” he grinned, “but that’s why I thought you’d want to talk to her. To straighten it out.”

Velma resumed sweeping. There was less than an hour left of her shift and she still had the mopping to do. She couldn’t afford to be out late today. “Well, Lisa knows where I am if she wants to talk to me,” she said as she lifted another chair to sweep under it. “I haven’t got t-” she looked back at Tom and discovered he had left the conversation and was retreating through Menswear. “Why do I keep talking to that guy?!” she asked herself with exasperation.

Lisa, the area manager, was rarely seen and never there long. The store managers had always seemed happy with her work so the thought that they had complained about her was disappointing. Hurtful even. But she couldn’t think about that now, she had more important things on her mind.

Muriel was having a bad night. “No one else turned up,” she told Velma sadly. “I’ve been here for three hours on my own.”

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” Velma knew how hard it was, trying to appeal to people’s better nature in a location where most didn’t have one. Having to do it alone was even harder. “I got here as soon as I could. Who else were you expecting?”

“I don’t know. I put a call out on Facebook.” She looked over her shoulder at the diners behind the window. “How can they not care?” Muriel’s frustration was exacerbated by the fact that she’d felt it so many times before. “How can they go in there, choose a live animal from the tank, and say I pick him. I’ll eat him tonight. Go – boil him to death!?’”

Velma shook her head. “I know. It’s like that episode of Angel when the baddies try to eat the live werewolf and they call it a delicacy!”

“But worse.” Muriel hadn’t seen that one, “coz this is real!”

“It’s good you came,” Velma told her, “but there’s nothing more you can do right now.”

A small group of men in suits left the restaurant and walked past them. Their conversation paused briefly as they looked at Muriel and laughed.

She shouted after them, “What’s the matter with you? Those animals have feelings you know!”

“But they taste so good,” one of them shouted back.

Velma had been facing the other way, memorising the faces of the diners through the restaurant’s window. She turned back when she heard the juvenile jeer to see four men walking backwards away from them, amusing each other with their stupid banter. “Which one said that?”

“The slimy one,” her friend told her.

Velma studied the group of men and frowned, “could you be more specific?”

“Red shirt, black tie,” Muriel whispered before lifting her voice to yell at him again. “Why don’t you go-”

“Don’t waste your breath,” Velma said softly. “Come on, you’re cold. You need to get out of these wet clothes.”

While Muriel slowly struggled to her feet and picked up her banners, Velma became the mist and disappeared for a moment.

“Velma?” Muriel turned 360º “Where did you go?”

“Nowhere,” said Velma with a smile and a tap on her shoulder, “I’m right here.”

The two women walked slowly to Muriel’s flat two streets away. Muriel said she was going to have a shower and an early night and Velma said goodnight.

*

Transforming into the mist again, Velma returned swiftly to the restaurant where she entered through the kitchen air vent. Three busy members of staff, wearing bandanas, aprons and sensible shoes, stopped suddenly when they were startled by a dark-haired woman wearing a stern frown. The head chef was angry and would have shouted at her to get out of his kitchen had he been able to speak. He would have grabbed her arm and dragged her out of his kitchen had he been able to move. The vampire’s hypnotic powers were strong.

“You are racked with guilt about what you’ve been doing,” Velma made eye contact with each of them in turn. “You know how wrong it is to torture and kill innocent beings and if you do it again you will endure every agony you would cause them.” She leaned in closer and whispered “In perpetuity.”

Then she took the living lobster from the still motionless hand of the head chef, and gently carried him into the dining room.

She spoke to the silent, motionless diners in the same low, commanding voice. “It is now against the law to cook or dismember live animals. Anyone participating in, or paying for, such heinous violence, will feel the full force of the law and face life in prison.” She walked slowly among the tables, making eye contact with every single one of them. Then, as she gently placed the lobster back in the salt-water tank, she concluded, “Being filled with remorse for even considering eating in a place like this, you will immediately contact your local marine animal rescue organisation and ensure that these animals are safely returned to the wild.” She opened the fire exit door and walked out calmly, transforming herself to mist before she was out of their sight.

The mist retraced its misty steps before sliding under the the black front door of a terraced house. The house was shared by two slimy tenants who worked at the bank together. Two more slimy colleagues socialised with them, one of whom wore a red shirt with a black tie. They all drank and watched unsavoury television. Loudly.

The Velma Mist became the Velma Bat and attached herself to the banister of the stairs behind them.

Velma had intended to wait for them to fall asleep before taking red-shirt-guy out of the equation. It was never a good idea to take prey if it was in company, for obvious reasons. But after twenty three minutes in this foul crowd she was ready to break her own rule. Plus, she reasoned, if she fed on all of them – all of them did deserve it – she wouldn’t have to find more prey tomorrow. She probably wouldn’t need any more prey until at least next Wednesday. So it made sense to rid the world of these odious creatures now. All in one night.

Still, she hesitated. She had rules for a reason. Four bloodless bodies in one house in one night could not easily be explained. A police investigation would be inevitable. But did that matter? She asked herself. The police won’t think Vampire. They’ll think – what? What will they think? Disease? All of these men contracted the same blood-reducing disease at once and found themselves bloodless in one night? Without so much as a spatter on the furniture? No. No one’s going to believe that. Unless – maybe they’ve all had the disease for a long time, so their blood has been reducing for a long time. Maybe they didn’t know and didn’t consult a doctor. And – excessive alcohol always makes these things worse. So they drank too much and that used up the last of their blood! Yes!

She breathed a sigh of relief. With wings outstretched she hovered close to the floor and sunk her little bat teeth into the dangling wrist of the first dozing drunk. Yuck! It tasted of booze and she dreaded the following morning’s headache. Her next stop was at the opposite end of the adjacent couch where a second sleeping beauty had just slumped forward and dropped his half-empty can. When she’d finished feeding on him she wondered if she really could stomach two more of them.

“I could go for a kebab right now!” Red-shirt guy slurred as he reached for his phone. “Kebab?” he asked the conscious guy next to him. He tapped Just Eat and found what he was looking for. “Kebab?” he asked the corpse to his right. “Kebab?” he repeated at the drained banker across from him.

“Kebabs all round!” declared the other still-breathing waste-of-space, “I’ll have a lamb doner, what are you having?” he kicked the mortal remains to his left. “Hey! Wake up! He’s getting food!”

Red-shirt was about to complete his transaction. “I’m gonna get one of each,” he told the room, “and if you don’t like it you can -“

Unfortunately, as he looked up from his phone, the bat appeared in his peripheral vision. He lunged at her, wielding the bottle in his hand and only just missed. Velma felt dizzy and it slowed her reflexes.

The second live one jumped to his feet, screaming and laughing, and threw a book at her. Then red-shirt lifted the floor lamp above his head and started swinging. The resultant smashing, crashing and shouting noises were bound to wake the neighbours and Velma couldn’t afford to hang around. She transformed back into a woman right in front of them and achieved a momentary silence.

In less than ninety seconds she had drained both men, finishing just as a loud hammering on the front door indicated the police had arrived.

Velma made a misty exit between the advancing troops and headed home to sleep it off.

****

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