A Strange Vampire
Chapter One:
Morning Conversation and Night Hunt
It was over a year since the First had been destroyed. Over a year since the destruction of Sunnydale and the Hellmouth that the town sat upon. Buffy and Dawn had gone from place to place and from country to country. They had stopped in Rome once, which is where Buffy had had a short fling with the Immortal.
Now the two were back in the United States of America. New York state to be exact. They weren't alone, either. Andrew had been with them the whole way. His annoying character was something that they couldn't bear to part with now. They didn't know why.
So, now living in Falconer, New York, they had begun to rebuild their lives. Buffy was still trying to forget about Angel, trying to move on. Dawn was trying to get a normal life again. She was about to enter her senior year at high school. Andrew was just walking around. An annoying and sci-fi obsessed entity in their house who brought home a minimum-wage paycheck every week from a video store.
Every now and then they'd get a call from an old friend. Alexander Harris, Willow Rosenberg, and Rupert Giles were all in different places in the world. Xander was in Australia working at a McDonald's somewhere in the southern part of the island. He had become a sort of Watcher in this post-Council of Watchers world. He had located a Slayer who didn't know who or what she was and took her under his wing. Giles was in England, doing what he had been doing in the two years since he left. Willow was in Africa, trying to continue getting her power under control and trying to get it to grow. Those calls were far and in between. They were all busy. Too busy.
Now that summer was ending Dawn was dreading going to school, remembering all of the horrible incidences from her last couple of years at high school. Not just the vampires and demons that plagued Sunnydale High, but the jocks and assholes.
Buffy reassured her continuously that things would be different at Falconer Central School (not High School because it contained both Middle and High schools). It was supposed to be a much better school than most in the area. Not as large as Jamestown High (Falconer was a village encircled by the much larger Jamestown, the birthplace of Lucille Ball and Roger Tory Peterson) and not so largely populated by asshole teenagers who thought they knew everything when they knew damn near nothing.
Buffy began to patrol the village night after night. Since this village didn't sit on a Hellmouth the demon count was drastically reduced from what it had been in Sunnydale and Buffy had yet to stake a single vamp. Not only that but the cemetery was small and unfenced. She needed to walk all the way to the cemetery in Jamestown to even stand a chance of encountering a vampire. It was new ground that she was covering now, and this new ground was much more constricted than the old ground. She was grateful for the break from her Slayer duties at the same time that she was despising it. She wanted to hunt and to kill. It was her nature. But there was nothing to hunt and nothing to kill. It was infuriating as much as it was relaxing.
Since the school had all of its positions filled, Buffy needed to find another place to work. She briefly considered working at the McDonald's right at the border that separated Jamestown and Falconer, but then remembered her history at fast food restaurants. No way was she gonna go to work for another fast food corporation.
Then came Dawn's first day at the new school. It was seven in the morning--this was forty short minutes before the school day began--and Dawn was eating some Honeycombs after taking a shower and getting dressed. What she was wearing was a red T-shirt (Old Man Winter had not yet arrived, and she wanted to get as much use out of the new shirt as she could) and faded blue jeans.
"Morning," Buffy greeted her from the sink. They were living in a two-story house on East Elmwood. Their house was close to a trail that led over a footbridge and through a very small, dirt road to the school. It was a walk that would take less than ten minutes to finish. Dawn would need to hurry out the door if she was going to make it to the school, to her locker to put away her backpack, and to the classroom on time. Hopefully the time schedule wasn't very strict on the first day, why would it be?
"Good morning," Dawn replied. She was still a quarter asleep. Her eyes were narrow slits as she emotionlessly ate her bowl of cereal. "Can't wait to go through Hell today." Buffy looked at Dawn, who was smiling to show that she wasn't serious. Apparently Dawn had finally realized that after enduring Evil Willow and battling the First, school was nothing. Good thing, too; her attitude was getting annoying. Not annoying in a good way like Andrew, but annoying in a bad way like a mosquito bite.
"Luckily this school isn't sitting on the mouth to it," Buffy said with a smile. Dawn smiled, too. Ever since they had moved to Falconer, things had been much better.
Andrew came into the kitchen in his blue bathrobe at that point. He looked a bit irritated.
"Whoever leaves the toilet seat down next gets my foot up her ass." Then he went back up the stairs.
Buffy and Dawn burst into laughter.
Patrol
Buffy was whistling as she walked through the Lakeview Cemetery. The gates had closed three hours before and she had crawled under the plastic, mesh fence to get inside. A stake was dangling from her gloved hand. She was bored. Once again there had not been a single vampire in the cemetery.
She walked past a couple of mausoleums and James Prendergast's grave. Jame Prendergast was the founder of Jamestown, the town that encircled Falconer. The mausoleums in this cemetery were much stronger than the ones in Sunnydale. They were locked and chained with metal doors. No flimsy wood that could be kicked in.
What Buffy was whistling was the song "Where is My Mind" by the Pixies. Soon she started singing it under her breath.
" 'Try this trick and spin it. Yeah. You're head'll collapse 'cause there's nothing in it and you'll ask yourself 'where is my mind?' " Then she stopped singing. Joseph Remalk had been in the newspaper a few days before. She had passed over his name quickly in the obituaries. She had passed him off as having died in a car accident or from a heart attack or something else. She had been wrong.
His grave, which had been dug a couple days before and then filled in, was now dug out again. Just a hole in the new ground was sufficient enough to let her know that Joseph was a vampire.
There was finally something to do! Buffy clutched her stake tighter and headed off in the direction that the foot prints of fresh dirt and mud led, not wanting to lose the vampire.
In the distance she could hear semi-trucks and cars driving up and down the road that connected to the highway that could lead you to Niagara Falls or down to Pennsylvania or wherever you wanted to go.
Other than those engines the night was silent. Crickets chirped and the wind blew. Buffy listened closely, hoping to hear the footsteps of Joseph. Unfortunately, all she could hear was her own footsteps. She neared the gate at the northern part of the cemetery. It was busted open. That would cost some money to repair.
The footprints were easier to see now on the pavement, but the quantity of dirt being left behind was decreasing. She'd need to hurry even more. So she did.
At the end of the street, just when the footsteps were becoming almost invisible, she saw Joseph.
She was too late.
The vampire looked up from its victim. Its victim was a young, skinny woman. Probably in her late teens or early twenties.
Joseph himself was at least mid-thirties. She could tell because his face wasn't vamped at that point. Blood was running down his chin and he looked scared. Very scared. The vampire began to back up from its victim. Buffy could hear it muttering something.
She didn't care.
Sprinting towards the immobile vampire she readied her stake. She hit the vamp at the top of her
speed and they both went sprawling, Buffy on top of the vampire.
She lifted her stake up and plunged down with it.
The stake hovered an inch above Joseph's chest. Buffy was looking at the vampire's chest, her eyes squinted in concentration, trying to figure out exactly what was going on. Then she realized what had caught her eye.
The vampire was breathing. Joseph was breathing. He was warm, too. Far above room temperature.
She lowered her stake and looked into Joseph's eyes. He was crying. Buffy couldn't hear the sobs, though. She couldn't hear anything at that point. She had seen the man's face in the obituaries. He wasn't alive. Science had proven that. But… he was alive.
"Help me," Joseph breathed in a voice that was slurred. He sounded like his IQ was far below average. "Help me help me help me help me help me. God God God God God." "What's this?"
Buffy asked, her eyes still squinted.
And then Buffy was flying through the air and slamming into the street fifteen feet away from the man who couldn't be alive but was.
She looked up at him and saw his face.
It was more terrible than even the Master's face. It looked a thousand years old. Wrinkles all over it. The eyes were blood red and the teeth were all fangs. There was no more breathing, but there was growling.
Then Joseph was back and screaming in a high-pitched voice. Almost a shriek. He fell to his knees and the horrific vampire came back. The blood was coagulating on its chin.
It roared a roar that Buffy had never heard before then but would hear numerous times after. Joseph came back. This time he was shrieking. Buffy sat there, stupefied.
Only when Joseph ran into the collection of conifer trees beside the road did she snap out of the daze she had been in. She took chase. It was futile, though. Joseph, the vampire, whatever he or it was, was gone.
She had lost Joseph.
After another fifteen minutes of fruitlessly chasing whatever Joseph had become, Buffy went home, defeated. Dawn was watching a movie edited for TV. Buffy didn't catch what it was but heard a lot of gun shots and explosions and shouting.
Her head was spinning. She had let it go. Dawn asked her if she was okay and Buffy said she was. Andrew was in the bathroom and Buffy was forced to puke into the garbage can in the kitchen. After the fact she noted quite dully that there hadn't been a garbage bag in the can. It had been garbage night and Dawn had forgotten to replace the bag like usual.
Dawn insisted that she get some rest and inquired if she should call a doctor. Buffy said yes to the statement and no to the question. She went into the bedroom that she shared with Dawn--there were only two bedrooms and neither of them were about to sleep in the same room with Andrew--and collapsed on the bed. Five minutes later she was sleeping soundly.
She dreaded the next time she would flip to the obituaries. That thing, Joseph, was going to kill and she had let it go. She was at fault for so many deaths that would take place after that night.
But for the moment, she slept.
Hey, MorbidMan here. I hope you enjoyed this beginning chapter. Give me constructive criticism please. I'm not a perfect writer and never will be, but I want to be a really good writer and I don't believe I am yet. Well, I guess I am for just being fifteen (most of those in my class can only write comedy, and not that well at that.
Anyway, please review. I feel narcissistic for placing this story in my home town. So, I'm gonna go hire hookers and kill innocent people and cops and SWAT in my new "GTA" games. See you next chapter.
"Charlie: I've written myself into my own screenplay.
Donald: Kinda confusing?
Charlie: It's narcissistic." - conversation "Adaptation"
Chapter One:
Morning Conversation and Night Hunt
It was over a year since the First had been destroyed. Over a year since the destruction of Sunnydale and the Hellmouth that the town sat upon. Buffy and Dawn had gone from place to place and from country to country. They had stopped in Rome once, which is where Buffy had had a short fling with the Immortal.
Now the two were back in the United States of America. New York state to be exact. They weren't alone, either. Andrew had been with them the whole way. His annoying character was something that they couldn't bear to part with now. They didn't know why.
So, now living in Falconer, New York, they had begun to rebuild their lives. Buffy was still trying to forget about Angel, trying to move on. Dawn was trying to get a normal life again. She was about to enter her senior year at high school. Andrew was just walking around. An annoying and sci-fi obsessed entity in their house who brought home a minimum-wage paycheck every week from a video store.
Every now and then they'd get a call from an old friend. Alexander Harris, Willow Rosenberg, and Rupert Giles were all in different places in the world. Xander was in Australia working at a McDonald's somewhere in the southern part of the island. He had become a sort of Watcher in this post-Council of Watchers world. He had located a Slayer who didn't know who or what she was and took her under his wing. Giles was in England, doing what he had been doing in the two years since he left. Willow was in Africa, trying to continue getting her power under control and trying to get it to grow. Those calls were far and in between. They were all busy. Too busy.
Now that summer was ending Dawn was dreading going to school, remembering all of the horrible incidences from her last couple of years at high school. Not just the vampires and demons that plagued Sunnydale High, but the jocks and assholes.
Buffy reassured her continuously that things would be different at Falconer Central School (not High School because it contained both Middle and High schools). It was supposed to be a much better school than most in the area. Not as large as Jamestown High (Falconer was a village encircled by the much larger Jamestown, the birthplace of Lucille Ball and Roger Tory Peterson) and not so largely populated by asshole teenagers who thought they knew everything when they knew damn near nothing.
Buffy began to patrol the village night after night. Since this village didn't sit on a Hellmouth the demon count was drastically reduced from what it had been in Sunnydale and Buffy had yet to stake a single vamp. Not only that but the cemetery was small and unfenced. She needed to walk all the way to the cemetery in Jamestown to even stand a chance of encountering a vampire. It was new ground that she was covering now, and this new ground was much more constricted than the old ground. She was grateful for the break from her Slayer duties at the same time that she was despising it. She wanted to hunt and to kill. It was her nature. But there was nothing to hunt and nothing to kill. It was infuriating as much as it was relaxing.
Since the school had all of its positions filled, Buffy needed to find another place to work. She briefly considered working at the McDonald's right at the border that separated Jamestown and Falconer, but then remembered her history at fast food restaurants. No way was she gonna go to work for another fast food corporation.
Then came Dawn's first day at the new school. It was seven in the morning--this was forty short minutes before the school day began--and Dawn was eating some Honeycombs after taking a shower and getting dressed. What she was wearing was a red T-shirt (Old Man Winter had not yet arrived, and she wanted to get as much use out of the new shirt as she could) and faded blue jeans.
"Morning," Buffy greeted her from the sink. They were living in a two-story house on East Elmwood. Their house was close to a trail that led over a footbridge and through a very small, dirt road to the school. It was a walk that would take less than ten minutes to finish. Dawn would need to hurry out the door if she was going to make it to the school, to her locker to put away her backpack, and to the classroom on time. Hopefully the time schedule wasn't very strict on the first day, why would it be?
"Good morning," Dawn replied. She was still a quarter asleep. Her eyes were narrow slits as she emotionlessly ate her bowl of cereal. "Can't wait to go through Hell today." Buffy looked at Dawn, who was smiling to show that she wasn't serious. Apparently Dawn had finally realized that after enduring Evil Willow and battling the First, school was nothing. Good thing, too; her attitude was getting annoying. Not annoying in a good way like Andrew, but annoying in a bad way like a mosquito bite.
"Luckily this school isn't sitting on the mouth to it," Buffy said with a smile. Dawn smiled, too. Ever since they had moved to Falconer, things had been much better.
Andrew came into the kitchen in his blue bathrobe at that point. He looked a bit irritated.
"Whoever leaves the toilet seat down next gets my foot up her ass." Then he went back up the stairs.
Buffy and Dawn burst into laughter.
Patrol
Buffy was whistling as she walked through the Lakeview Cemetery. The gates had closed three hours before and she had crawled under the plastic, mesh fence to get inside. A stake was dangling from her gloved hand. She was bored. Once again there had not been a single vampire in the cemetery.
She walked past a couple of mausoleums and James Prendergast's grave. Jame Prendergast was the founder of Jamestown, the town that encircled Falconer. The mausoleums in this cemetery were much stronger than the ones in Sunnydale. They were locked and chained with metal doors. No flimsy wood that could be kicked in.
What Buffy was whistling was the song "Where is My Mind" by the Pixies. Soon she started singing it under her breath.
" 'Try this trick and spin it. Yeah. You're head'll collapse 'cause there's nothing in it and you'll ask yourself 'where is my mind?' " Then she stopped singing. Joseph Remalk had been in the newspaper a few days before. She had passed over his name quickly in the obituaries. She had passed him off as having died in a car accident or from a heart attack or something else. She had been wrong.
His grave, which had been dug a couple days before and then filled in, was now dug out again. Just a hole in the new ground was sufficient enough to let her know that Joseph was a vampire.
There was finally something to do! Buffy clutched her stake tighter and headed off in the direction that the foot prints of fresh dirt and mud led, not wanting to lose the vampire.
In the distance she could hear semi-trucks and cars driving up and down the road that connected to the highway that could lead you to Niagara Falls or down to Pennsylvania or wherever you wanted to go.
Other than those engines the night was silent. Crickets chirped and the wind blew. Buffy listened closely, hoping to hear the footsteps of Joseph. Unfortunately, all she could hear was her own footsteps. She neared the gate at the northern part of the cemetery. It was busted open. That would cost some money to repair.
The footprints were easier to see now on the pavement, but the quantity of dirt being left behind was decreasing. She'd need to hurry even more. So she did.
At the end of the street, just when the footsteps were becoming almost invisible, she saw Joseph.
She was too late.
The vampire looked up from its victim. Its victim was a young, skinny woman. Probably in her late teens or early twenties.
Joseph himself was at least mid-thirties. She could tell because his face wasn't vamped at that point. Blood was running down his chin and he looked scared. Very scared. The vampire began to back up from its victim. Buffy could hear it muttering something.
She didn't care.
Sprinting towards the immobile vampire she readied her stake. She hit the vamp at the top of her
speed and they both went sprawling, Buffy on top of the vampire.
She lifted her stake up and plunged down with it.
The stake hovered an inch above Joseph's chest. Buffy was looking at the vampire's chest, her eyes squinted in concentration, trying to figure out exactly what was going on. Then she realized what had caught her eye.
The vampire was breathing. Joseph was breathing. He was warm, too. Far above room temperature.
She lowered her stake and looked into Joseph's eyes. He was crying. Buffy couldn't hear the sobs, though. She couldn't hear anything at that point. She had seen the man's face in the obituaries. He wasn't alive. Science had proven that. But… he was alive.
"Help me," Joseph breathed in a voice that was slurred. He sounded like his IQ was far below average. "Help me help me help me help me help me. God God God God God." "What's this?"
Buffy asked, her eyes still squinted.
And then Buffy was flying through the air and slamming into the street fifteen feet away from the man who couldn't be alive but was.
She looked up at him and saw his face.
It was more terrible than even the Master's face. It looked a thousand years old. Wrinkles all over it. The eyes were blood red and the teeth were all fangs. There was no more breathing, but there was growling.
Then Joseph was back and screaming in a high-pitched voice. Almost a shriek. He fell to his knees and the horrific vampire came back. The blood was coagulating on its chin.
It roared a roar that Buffy had never heard before then but would hear numerous times after. Joseph came back. This time he was shrieking. Buffy sat there, stupefied.
Only when Joseph ran into the collection of conifer trees beside the road did she snap out of the daze she had been in. She took chase. It was futile, though. Joseph, the vampire, whatever he or it was, was gone.
She had lost Joseph.
After another fifteen minutes of fruitlessly chasing whatever Joseph had become, Buffy went home, defeated. Dawn was watching a movie edited for TV. Buffy didn't catch what it was but heard a lot of gun shots and explosions and shouting.
Her head was spinning. She had let it go. Dawn asked her if she was okay and Buffy said she was. Andrew was in the bathroom and Buffy was forced to puke into the garbage can in the kitchen. After the fact she noted quite dully that there hadn't been a garbage bag in the can. It had been garbage night and Dawn had forgotten to replace the bag like usual.
Dawn insisted that she get some rest and inquired if she should call a doctor. Buffy said yes to the statement and no to the question. She went into the bedroom that she shared with Dawn--there were only two bedrooms and neither of them were about to sleep in the same room with Andrew--and collapsed on the bed. Five minutes later she was sleeping soundly.
She dreaded the next time she would flip to the obituaries. That thing, Joseph, was going to kill and she had let it go. She was at fault for so many deaths that would take place after that night.
But for the moment, she slept.
Hey, MorbidMan here. I hope you enjoyed this beginning chapter. Give me constructive criticism please. I'm not a perfect writer and never will be, but I want to be a really good writer and I don't believe I am yet. Well, I guess I am for just being fifteen (most of those in my class can only write comedy, and not that well at that.
Anyway, please review. I feel narcissistic for placing this story in my home town. So, I'm gonna go hire hookers and kill innocent people and cops and SWAT in my new "GTA" games. See you next chapter.
"Charlie: I've written myself into my own screenplay.
Donald: Kinda confusing?
Charlie: It's narcissistic." - conversation "Adaptation"
