Greetings, fellow Let Me In fans. I thought it'd been a long time since anything new was posted on the board, so I was able to get this out in a couple of hours after I got home from work.
It's a humorous little bit I've had tumbling around in mind for a while now. I hope everyone gets a chuckle out of it. I also know this is a lot shorter than usual, but it just works that way so I Makokamed the chapter. :-D
Again...I do love reviews. :-D
And awayyyyy we go. :-)
Cold Creek, Montana; June 2003
Abby looked up from her laptop screen as she closed the file she was working on, and looked across the desk at Owen, who was completely involved in his own work.
"Are you about done?" She asked. Owen had spent the first part of the evening working doing administrative work required for their roles as the Vampire King and Queen of Montana. Once that was completed, he'd set about taking care of correspondence for the sheep ranch.
"Just about" Owen replied as he clicked a few buttons and then sighed with satisfaction as he completed his work. He clicked the mouse and the printer began to dispense hard copies of what he'd just been working on. "And I'm done. I'll just leave these on the breakfast table so Grandpa can sign them tomorrow. You're all done?"
"The books are done for the month." Abby said with satisfaction. "We had a good lambing season again this year."
"Grandpa will be pleased." Owen said as he took his mate's hand and they left the ranch's office, turning off the light behind them.
As they stepped out into the hallway, Abby made a face. "What's that smell?"
Owen sniffed the air and smiled. "That's AXE. I guess Johnny put some on before he went on his date tonight."
"Put some on? It smells like he bathed in it!" Abby said as the heavily scent of the body spray assaulted her vampire senses.
"Really?" Owen sniffed the air. "I don't think it's that bad."
Abby shook her head in disbelief. Over the twenty years she and Owen had lived here with his grandfather and then his little brother, Abby had come to realize that for whatever reason, the men in his family seemed to think that there was no such thing as too much cologne. Even after he was turned, Owen still didn't seem to be bothered by the copious amounts of cologne used in the house.
"He must think that the commercials are real, where women just flock to him because of the body spray." Abby said with a roll of her eyes.
"Come on…You've got to admit that you missed the body spray smell this last year." Owen said putting his arm around his eternal lover's shoulder and pulled her close to him. Abby smiled.
"Yeah…I admit it. It's nice to have the smell of tacky body spray around the house again." She said. She had missed it, and Johnny, very much the last year while Johnny was away at his freshman year at Montana State University in Bozeman. He'd been home for the summer for two weeks now…and was apparently keeping himself busy between his summer job and a VERY active social life.
"Well, it's about all we've seen of him, except for when he gets home at night." Owen said. The late-setting June sun generally meant that his little brother –who was now 6'2 and recipient of a full track scholarship- was usually out and about by the time he and Abby arose for the night. Owen didn't begrudge his brother his active social life at all though. In fact, he was glad that Johnny never had the problems fitting in that he'd had in his human life in Los Alamos so long ago.
The two vampires crept silently through the darkened ranch house. From upstairs, they could hear the sound of a television as Grandpa Oscar was apparently enjoying watching David Letterman in his bedroom.
"So, what's there to do tonight?" Owen asked as he and Abby stepped out onto the porch and took in the night sky. He looked up at the myriad of stars and admired their beauty. In the twenty years he'd lived at the ranch –as both a human and as a vampire- he still found the stars that shone in the clear Rocky Mountain air to be beautiful beyond words. About the only thing he thought was more beautiful was Abby.
"Let's go down to the river." Abby said with a smile. That was her favourite place on the entire Alfredson ranch, and Owen knew it.
"Race you" He said with a smile and was –literally- gone in the blink of an eye. Abby giggled and took off after him.
Seconds later, the two vampires were down by the river. It had always been a place they loved. Two decades before, it was where Abby first began to tell Owen of her past when they were still adjusting to their new life together. A year after that, it was where Owen first attempted to fly during his first night as a vampire. Now, they just sat down in their usual spot and Abby put her bare legs in the water.
"I read online that Gary Oldman is going to be in the new Harry Potter movie." Owen said as he sat down next to Abby on the riverbank.
"Who's he going to play?"
"Sirius Black"
"I can't get over the way people have gone nuts for those films." Abby said with amazement.
"Yeah, and now they're going to have to wait a whole year until the next film."
"It'll be weird this year with no Harry Potter film out at Thanksgiving."
"Yeah…But we'll get Return of the King instead."
"I can't wait." Abby said with a smile. They were both completely enraptured fans of Peter Jackson's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy.
"I wonder who'll be remembered longer: J.K Rowling or Tolkien?" Owen mused.
"Well, Tolkien's work has had a much bigger impact for longer. I mean, George Lucas borrowed heavily from him when he did Star Wars. Even the title of the third piece of the trilogy is the same: Return of the King and Return of the Jedi. But, I have to admit that Rowling has really accomplished something. She created a whole world, just like Tolkien and Lucas did and she's drawn people into it and made them want to read."
"I guess." Owen said thoughtfully. "It's too bad people can't write books about vampires that people want to read."
"There's Anne Rice."
"Please. Her books put me to sleep faster than the cycle does at dawn. And then they got Tom Cruise to play Lestat"
"I know…The vampires down in Louisiana still mock her because of that." Abby giggled as she recalled the last time the annual meeting of vampire monarchs was actually held in Louisiana. Apparently, the local vampires enjoyed nothing more than mocking Anne Rice.
"Yeah, but I still wonder…If someone wrote a book with vampires as the main characters, would anyone read it?"
"I'll bet teenage girls would." Abby said thoughtfully.
"Seriously?"
"Owen, you should see the types of no-brains required series that they market for teenage girls nowadays. I see it whenever we go to the bookstores in Missoula or Wolf Creek. They're all about girls meeting these 'dangerous' and 'angsty' boys. They're all aimed at the same crowds that watch One Tree Hill and are all about as deep."
"I'll bet someone who could write something that teenage girls would read could make a fortune."
"Totally. It wouldn't have to be deep, or have really well written characters. It would just have to have a girl pining over some cute but dangerous boy and they'd probably have to hire guards to keep the crowds in line at Barnes & Noble." Abby said, as she pondered it over in her mind. She looked up at the bright, almost full moon. It shone down on the water, with its reflection shimmering on the water. Abby admired its beauty. In their bedroom, she and Owen had a large framed picture of this very same place taken in the daytime. There, the sunlight reflected beautifully on the water with a million sparkles.
Something clicked in her mind then. Sparkles…She thought to herself as a smile crossed her face. What if, the sunlight, instead of burning a vampire caused…Her smile grew wider as an idea fell into place.
A short while later, Owen and Abby were back at the ranch house. Owen had settled down to play a game on his laptop. Abby, however, was sitting, looking at a blank Word screen. She sighed to herself. She needed to begin with something really pretentious and fraught with self-important angst.
She began to type…"I'd never given much thought to how I would die…"
Months Later
Owen closed the cover of the galley proof and looked up. Abby was looking at him with anxious eyes.
"Vampires…that sparkle?" Owen asked with a perplexed look.
"He had to be able to walk around in daylight. It was the only way to let them go to high school. The sparkling part...just came to me."
Owen shuddered at the thought of eternity in high school. He still had flashes of terror when a memory of his tortured middle-school existence came to the foreground of his mind.
"Aside from that gorilla shit about vampires sparkling like beautiful diamonds when the sun hits them, what do you think?"
"It's…"
"Terrible characters…self-righteous moralizing…an uninspired, always victimized heroine?" Abby said with a knowing smile. "Not to mention that it makes being a vampire seem like the greatest thing in the world to be?"
"How'd you know…?"
"That's how I wrote it. I got about a chapter in and realized that the only way to write it was to make Bella a spineless damsel who will essentially jump off a cliff if Edward wanted her to."
"You should do that in a sequel."
"I'm thinking about it." Abby said with a smirk. "Do you think it'll sell?"
"I've been looking through some of the books they have for teenage girls when we've been to town…and you're right. This is the type of stuff they'll eat up."
"That's what the publishers are betting on."
"What happens if they want to meet the author?"
"They've taken care of that. They found a sanctimonious hack who'll be officially credited as the author. She'll make all public appearances and essentially be the face of the book, in exchange for 30% of the royalties."
"I like your face better." Owen said giving Abby a kiss.
"Thanks" Abby giggled. "But, it's either that or open up a lot of questions we don't want people asking. Besides, I'm sure we'll make some good money with our percentage of the royalties."
"How much do you think we'll make?"
"I don't know. I mean, I can't see people going as crazy for this as they do for Harry Potter. My publisher wants me to start on a sequel though, just in case this sells well."
"What would you do in a sequel; more about their little hobby of playing old-timey baseball in thunderstorms?" Seriously, he thought to himself, the Cullens are dull vampires if that's the best type of activity they can come up with.
"I don't know…Maybe I'll have Bella become so lame she'll jump off a cliff just because she misses Edward, or something completely pathetic like that."
"That would work. Oh…I've got something."
"What?"
"How about this Jacob Black guy…You said he's a werewolf?"
"Yes"
Owen snapped his fingers. "I've got it. You know how in Top Gun, Maverick and Ice Man acted like competitors to cover their attraction to one another?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, have the same type of tension between Edward and Jacob. He and Edward TOTALLY want one another…but they cover for it by both pretending they want Bella!"
"Oh my God, Owen…That's brilliant. It practically writes itself." Abby said with a gleeful smile as she powered up her laptop to begin her sequel.