"Vyvyan! You utter BASTARD! You're using my ketchup on your cornflakes again!" Rick shouted angrily, pointing at Vyvyan with a pale, shaking finger. Vyvyan, who was sat at the kitchen table, rolled his eyes and turned in his seat to glare at Rick.
"Why does it matter? Why do you even have ketchup in the first place? You don't even eat human food!" Vyvyan shouted back.
"He does have a point there, Rick," Mike said coolly. He was sat at the end of the kitchen table, reading a newspaper. Rick's pale face contorted through a mixture of emotions: rage, sadness, confusion, until it finally settled on his usual angry, childish pout.
"Well…maybe sometimes I like to feel human. I wasn't always dead y'know," Rick said awkwardly, shuffling on the spot and picking at his nails. Vyvyan didn't know however, so he aggressively threw the bottle of ketchup at Rick's head. Luckily for Rick, being a vampire meant that he had ridiculously quick reflexes, so quick that he could duck under the ketchup that had been thrown by a ridiculously strong werewolf. The bottle whizzed over his head at lightning speed and shattered against the far wall, splattering ketchup all over the wallpaper. Mike sighed.
"Now look what you've done. Rick! It's your ketchup, you clean the wall," Mike ordered, glancing up briefly from his newspaper with yellow eyes. Vyvyan snickered.
"WHAT?!"
"Yeah, Rick! Your ketchup, your mess!" Vyvyan said, a smug grin on his acne-covered face as he stuck up two fingers at Rick.
"But that's not fair! I wasn't the one who threw it!" Rick cried. He stomped his foot on the floor in anger, his hands clenched into tight fists and his arms pinned to his sides; behaving like a stroppy toddler. Mike looked up from his paper again to fix Rick with a stern stare. Rick tried to hold his nerve, his eyes flickering with a crimson spark, but he eventually buckled under the tiefling's glare and sheepishly went to find a cloth and some soap.
At that moment, they heard the familiar sound of cloven hooves rushing down the stairs. Mike sighed once more and rolled his eyes, waiting for the satyr to start telling them about something that was apparently important. Vyvyan began to tuck into his ketchup-covered cornflakes and Rick started to grumpily mop up the ketchup on the wall.
"Guys! Guys!" Neil said, waving his arms about as he clopped into the kitchen. None of them seemed to notice him, but he continued anyway. "My guitar has gone missing!". Mike looked up from his paper and turned his yellow eyes on Neil, who was standing in the middle of the room. He looked like he was about to cry.
"What was that, Neil?"
"My guitar has vanished," Neil moaned. At this comment, Vyvyan perked up.
"Oh yeah, I remember now. Rick hit me over the head with it after I called him a poof," Vyvyan said calmly, with a mouthful of cornflakes. Neil frowned in confusion, turning around to face Rick, who stopped cleaning the wall and spun round to glare wide-eyed at Vyvyan.
"That's not true! You hit me over the head with it yesterday during one of your 'pre-full moon mood swings'," Rick spat, pointing at himself and bending forwards slightly when he referred to himself. Neil's expression turned into one of confusion.
"Is that tonight Vyv?" Neil asked, turning back to Vyvyan who nodded. "But still, man, breaking my guitar is really uncool and heavy. It helped me communicate with nature." Vyvyan rolled his eyes.
"God, you satyrs, you lot are such hippies. You have this dumb thing about talking to trees and nature," Vyvyan sneered, turning his attention back to his cornflakes.
"Yeah Neil, you weirdo!" Rick added, trying to turn the attention back to himself and grinning smugly. Neil pouted and took a seat on a sofa in the living room miserably. Once seated, he lifted a leg up and preoccupied himself with checking his hooves. Vyvyan's head snapped up after Rick made his comment and glared at him.
"Shut up Rick! It's still your fault, you bumbag!" Vyvyan yelled. Rick's grin was quickly wiped off his face and replaced with a mixture of shock and fury.
"How is it my fault? You hit me with it!" Rick protested, taken by surprise.
"You were in the way to get hit! If you hadn't have been standing there I wouldn't have broken it on your head!" Vyvyan argued back. Rick was visibly shaking with anger, the childish pout returning to his face and his eyes once again flashing with a crimson spark.
"But YOU made the decision to pick up Neil's guitar! You could have hit me with anything else in this house!" Rick shouted, throwing his hands up in the air.
"There was nothing else around to break! Except your virginity, but I'm not touching that with a 10ft barge pole!" Vyvyan said, standing up from the table and trying to hide his smirk. He loved winding Rick up, and to get him to the point that his eyes were turning red, Vyvyan knew that he was ready to explode. At the 'virgin' comment, Rick had just about had it with the annoying punk; Mike saw what was going to happen and calmly stood up and took his newspaper outside into the back garden, making an exasperated sigh as he went. Neil also hastily vanished from the room by dashing upstairs…he expected things to turn violent and this time he didn't fancy being picked up.
"Vyvyan…we've had this discussion before…I am NOT A VIRGIN!" Rick's voice was at first calm and quiet, but by the end of the sentence he was screaming at the top of his voice. With this shout, Rick dropped the ketchup-stained cloth and leaped forwards at Vyvyan, large, dark wings sprouting from his back, the whites of his eyes turning black and his iris' turning dark red. Vyvyan grinned menacingly, and casually stepped to the side of the furious vampire, causing Rick to crash face-first onto the kitchen floor. Vyvyan looked down at Rick, his grin turning smug.
"Yeah, and at the end of that discussion, you ended up agreeing with me. You even had a sign round your neck!" Vyvyan said. Rick jumped up from the floor, his large black wings curled round slightly, turning his furious red and black eyes to the grinning Vyvyan.
"That was only to make you shut up! You had a large gun pointed at my head!" Rick spat, wide eyed and shaking slightly. Vyvyan thought back on the memory fondly, before turning his attention back to the grumpy vampire, a sly smile creeping up his face.
"Ah HA! So you're saying that you are a virgin, eh Rick?" Vyvyan crowed.
"Uh? Wha-a NO! That's not what I'm saying at all!" Rick spluttered, before jumping forward once more to lunge at Vyvyan's self-satisfied face. Vyvyan caught Rick by the shoulders and shoved him back down to the floor and Rick landed painfully on his tail-bone.
"Ow! My bottom!" Rick said, whimpering, his black wings shrinking away. His eyes were still the angry colours of black and red as Rick looked up at Vyvyan with a pout and tears beginning to form in his eyes. When Rick saw Vyvyan, he knew that he was in big trouble.
Vyvyan had begun to change into his werewolf form, as it often happened when Vyvyan wanted to have the upper hand in a fight or an argument. The fur came first, sprouting from his skin and growing at a rapid rate. Then his body began to contort as his legs and arms stretched, and he could only comfortably stand on the balls of his feet. Nails lengthened into tapering claws and teeth enlarged and sharpened. Vyv's jaw jutted out into a snout as his ears stretched backwards and became more wolf-like. Soon Rick was looking up at a nearly 7ft tall, chestnut-coloured and yellow-eyed werewolf, which amusingly still had Vyvyan's signature haircut and silver forehead studs. The werewolf grinned, showing many long and pointed teeth. Rick cried in fear and scrambled to his feet before quickly sprinting out the door. Vyvyan roared loudly and chased after the frightened vampire.
"Someone help me! I'm about to be eaten alive by this werewolf!" Rick screamed as he sprinted at a human pace down the road. Passers-by took a short glance at the commotion before ignoring it completely. This happened all the time, one would be chasing the other, the only difference being what form they were in. Sometimes a werewolf would be chasing a vampire, other times it would be a human chasing another human. Whatever form Rick and Vyvyan had chosen for their daily arguments, the surrounding neighbours didn't care about their petty quarrels, just as long as they ended them quickly and didn't cause too much damage.
After realising that, once again, nobody was going to help him, Rick picked up the pace into superhuman speed and spied the graveyard where they had nearly buried Harry the Bastard. His face lit up as he leapt over the fence and landed face-first in the mud, rolling to an uncomfortable halt. He quickly staggered back to his feet and scrambled up a tree, black wings once again sprouting from his back. Rick giggled childishly as he watched Vyvyan leap over the fence and land with ease and proceed to look around, appearing to have lost the vampire. A chestnut ear twitched in the direction of Rick's giggling and the angry wolf head soon followed, snapping its head towards the direction of the sound.
"Come back and face me you virgin!" Vyvyan growled, his normal voice now distorted and gravely as he glared up at the frightened vampire with sharp yellow eyes, mouth spreading into a wide monstrous grin. Rick squealed and flapped his wings, leaping away to the top of another tree in the graveyard. He flapped about clumsily, rustling and shaking just about every branch he came into contact with as Vyvyan watched on in amusement as Rick struggled to become airborne. Rick was fairly new to this whole vampire business and he still hadn't quite got the hang of his new superhuman abilities yet.
Vyvyan, somehow in all of the commotion, lost sight of Rick in the thick foliage of the trees but he could still hear him crashing about. Pointing his ears in the direction of the racket, the werewolf followed, hopping over graves and around tombstones with very little effort. Suddenly there was a loud crash, a thud and a cry of pain. Vyvyan chuckled to himself as he made a beeline towards Rick, who was lying face first on the floor, limbs spread out like a starfish.
The werewolf reached a clawed hand to grab the scruff of the vampire's neck when something caused him to hesitate, maniacal grin fading. Rick hadn't made any effort to move or to stand up and was still spread out on the floor. He was sobbing, face pressed into the muddy earth.
"Why can't you just leave me alone Vyvyan? It's hard enough trying to learn how vampires work without your constant prodding and poking! Can't you just leave me alone and bother someone else for once?!" Rick cried, still facing the ground and taking deep shuddering breaths in between sentences.
Vyvyan couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt. He wanted to tease Rick and say something snarky like, haha! Look at you crying like a girl! Did you hurt yourself? Aww! or maybe kick him, or pick him up and throw him into the fence…but he couldn't bring himself to do it.
Suddenly something cold tapped Vyvyan on the shoulder. The werewolf let out a yelp and spun round, swiping the clawed hand he previously had outstretched to Rick. He came face to face with a ghost and the claws passed straight through it, whistling through the middle of its pale and transparent abdomen. Vyvyan's wide yellow eyes stared at the ghost in shock, frozen in place. Rick sniffed and stood up, wiping away tears and wondering why Vyvyan hadn't begun to beat him up. He too froze with wide eyes staring at the ghost when he saw it. The ghost seemed like he had been dead a long time, for he was wearing formal Victorian-era attire, complete with top hat and extravagant moustache.
"Excuse me lads, but could you maybe keep it down? Or maybe go somewhere else? We're trying to have our annual tea party here," the ghost said as he gestured behind him, where a large, round and transparent table was set up. Around the table there were three other ghosts, all wearing similar clothes to the one who was standing in front of the nervous monsters. On the table, there were tea cups and a teapot, all matching in colour and pattern, some posh-looking silver cutlery, as well as cake stands complete with ghost cakes, scones, a jar of jam. A large Victoria sponge sat, untouched, in the centre of the table. The vampire and the werewolf stood stunned and frozen out of sheer terror…before they both screamed and ran away.
"Did we interrupt something, do you think?" One ghost with round spectacles said, sounding slightly confused. He was sat at the table and in the middle of putting jam on his scone, holding a jam-covered knife over half of a plain scone. The one with the moustache turned and returned to his seat at the table shrugging.
"I don't know Henry, I hope they come to an agreement with their argument," He said, picking up a knife and the jam jar and proceeding to cut his scone in half.
"Yes, I hope so too, because I thought they did make a lovely couple," Henry said, adjusting his spectacles and continuing to spread jam on his scone.
"Are you mad?! A vampire and a werewolf?! That can never work out," a third ghost piped up before taking a bite into his already prepared scone.
"Oh, I don't know, I believe they would be rather cute together," Gabriel said, smiling warmly at the thought before spreading jam onto his scone.
Mike and Neil had since returned to the living room once they were certain that the raging monsters had left. Mike had returned to his seat at the table, feet up and reading his newspaper. Neil was pottering around the kitchen trying to find some lentils to cook for the students' lunch. Just as Neil picked up the open box of lentils from a cupboard, the front door crashed open and the terrified vampire and werewolf flooded into the living room, causing Neil to leap in fright. With a shriek Neil jumped and dropped the box of uncooked lentils all over the kitchen floor. Once recovered, Neil looked sadly down at the floor, his shoulders slumping forwards in defeat.
"Honesty guys, I don't know why I bother sometimes when all you do is treat me badly. I do all of the work in this house and I would actually like some appreciation for everything I do for you," Neil said, grabbing a large saucepan, getting down on his hands and knees and proceeding to scoop up the spilt lentils. Vyvyan and Rick both briefly forgot their terror and turned to face Neil.
"Shut up, Neil!" Their fanged mouths spat in unison, Rick's voice with a slight hissing quality and Vyvyan's still distorted and guttural. Both turned back to face each other and they suddenly recollected why they had returned to the house.
"Vyvyan! I don't know how I feel with ghosts living in the graveyard so close to our house!" Rick said, his voice high and shaky.
"I don't like it Rick! Ghosts make me feel funny," Vyvyan replied, hunching his shoulders slightly. Mike now looked up from his newspaper, an eyebrow raised in bewilderment.
"Really boys? You don't need to worry about anythin'! Rick, you're already dead and Vyvyan they're probably more scared of you than you of them. Plus…you're surprised that there are ghosts…living in the graveyard?" Mike questioned. Rick realised what Mike was saying and looked a little sheepish, whereas Vyvyan's wolfy face was scrunched in thought.
"Now that you put it like that, Mike…it all makes sense," Vyvyan said, his features beginning to morph back into a human. None of them noticed this until Vyvyan was back to human form and standing stark naked in the middle of the living room.
"AH! VYVYAN! PUT SOME BLOODY CLOTHES ON!" Rick screamed, staring wide eyed at Vyvyan. The werewolf casually looked down at himself and grinned. Rick scampered away upstairs, Neil shielded his eyes with a hand and Mike raised his newspaper a little higher in front of his face. Vyvyan looked up at a wall as if there was a camera there.
"Oops."
*end credits music plays*