Ebon Oleander Wenham: Glad to see you finally caught up... plus you put me over two hundred reviews, and therefore you, m'dear, are awesome.

Nfinity Nite Monaghan: My dying over and over? All a result of that one anonymous person who said self-insertion is boring. And I turned it into a running joke. A bad one, but a running joke nonetheless. Hah. Eat my dust, anonymous person who didn't like me!

Spaztic Arwen: no, I can't. Apparently.

Aradia-Hornbeam: I think I knew that about the streets, actually, but I just had to slip "Forty-Two" in there somewhere... and please tell me you know what that means or I shall wonder about your claim to be English...

Terreis: Had to put the Argument Clinic in, and I was so glad somebody recognized it! Python is my comedy Mecca!

Nikoru Sanzo: I dunno, I just don't like squirrels very much. It was either that or a duck. (thinks about it) Maybe it'll be a duck next time...

Katter: leprechauns? okay!

MindGame: hey, are you following me? Ah, I love having drastically loyal readers—

Carnicirthial: I'm not really suicidal... really... I promise... well, maybe sometimes... but not really... and no I didn't think "Deadly Abandon" was confusing, but then, I am the person who doesn't do plot...

RogueCajunOzsgrl: You are great at summing up things:) Carl is crazy and I am a squirrel! Hah, life in a nutshell! or acornshell—

A/N: THERE IS NO MENTION OF GERARD BUTLER IN THIS CHAPTER!

(pause)

(Random looks at the capital sentence above)

Crap!

Chapter Twenty: The Squirrel Is Dead

Carl stared at the bundle of fur that used to be a squirrel.

"Would you stop doing that, Van Helsing? That makes the second time you've killed the Writer!"

Van Helsing was still gritting his teeth, a wild look in his eye. "That wasn't the bloody Writer, Carl, that was a squirrel! And squirrels are evil!"

"It was the Writer! She was talking to me!"

"Evil!" shouted Van Helsing.

Dracula stared at the little friar and shook a finger at him. "My friend, you must get out more often. You are beginning to hallucinate." He smiled. "It is quite fun, actually, these fantasies about a squirrel—"

"I was not fantasizing!"

Dracula chuckled. "You sound a bit defensive there, holy man."

"I am not getting defensive!"

"Evil!" shouted Van Helsing again, just to make his point.

"Fronk!" bellowed Carl at him. Van Helsing shrieked out a high-pitched giggle, instantly distracted back onto his favourite topic. Carl rolled his eyes. A leprechaun popped his head out of a nearby gutterway and giggled.

"Look," he said, nudging the squirrel's body out of the walkway, "can't we just go find your brides and get out of here, Dracula? I am getting increasingly incensed with Van Helsing's stupidity, and if it escalates any further I'll take a stake to his heart myself."

"Why so grim?" said Dracula facetiously. "Just because the squirrel is dead, friar—"

"FROOOOOONK!" bellowed Van Helsing.

"—still, life must go on for the rest of us."

"FROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK!"

Dracula winced and glared at the giggling monster hunter. "Do you know, that is getting really annoying."

"Took the words out of my mouth," agreed Carl, glaring daggers at Van Helsing, who completely ignored all this, having returned to the world he now inhabited almost exclusively— a world of pink fluffy clouds, endless GameBoys, lemon cream pies, about one half of the French language, and a complete and notable absence of all things squirrelly.

Heaving identical sighs of irritation, Carl and Dracula took Van Helsing by the arms and led him into the night club called Night Club.

There they were accosted by a man in a dress, but Carl didn't think this at all odd, as he himself had been wearing a robe up until that morning. The man in the dress was also wearing makeup that RuPaul would have been ashamed to be seen out in public in, and this was a bit more worrying to the visitors from another century.

"You boys here for the show?"

"Depends," said Carl.

The man blinked at him. "You mean, like the hygiene products or something?"

Carl stared at him with his mouth open, utterly unable to think of anything to reply. Dracula took over—

"Are you a Goth?" he inquired.

"No, I'm a Baptist," said the man.

—and was quickly shot down. Both of the intelligent members of the trio being put out of commission, as it were, Van Helsing now found it a good time to head-butt the transvestite, which he did.

Carl was, in a word, shocked.

"Van Helsing, didn't your mother ever teach you not to hit— well— someone in a dress?"

"If she did," said Van Helsing, "I don't remember it." And he punched the man three times, for good measure. What he hadn't expected was that the man would fight back— the two of them went down in a tangle of limbs and teeth, and a crowd of onlookers gathered, cheering them on.

"Get 'im, Harry!"

"I thought his name was Marleen?"

"Its Marleen onstage, Harry off."

"Harry off? Is that supposed to be some sort of joke?"

"Get 'im, Harry!"

"Get 'im, Marleen!"

"Is that Hugh Jackman who just got knocked out?"

Carl hung around and tried to pull the combatants apart— Dracula was wiser and, after giggling to himself quietly for a few moments, he went further on into the dubious establishment.

It was his kind of place.

Other than Harry, and/or Marleen, who was apparently a trick act, and a leprechaun or two, most of the other people looked relatively normal— at least, they did to Dracula, who was, admittedly, probably not the best judge. He swept his eyes from side to side, seeking, searching for his brides—

They were nowhere to be seen, but somewhere deep inside he had expected that.

There was, however, a short, pudgy girl onstage, singing at the top of her voice.

"Aaaaaan' they say even cowgirls get the bluuuuues—"

Dracula paused a moment to take this spectacle in. The girl did not look in the least like a cowgirl. She suddenly switched songs, however, going straight into "No Rain," followed by "When I'm Sixty-Four," and then, in quick succession without pause for breath, "All I Need is the Air That I Breathe," "Everybody Hurts," and the theme song to "Friends," which she didn't seem to know the words to. She was in the midst of a medley from Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's greatest hits— which did not, incidentally, include anything from "Cats"— and was doing her best Michael Crawford impression when the fight that had been escalating in the background suddenly burst into the main room with a vengeance.

In the midst of the tumult of flying fists and artfully tangled bodies, Dracula perceived the small blond figure of Carl the Comic Relief Friar, shamelessly egging people on.

The girl onstage stopped singing.

"I've had a request," she said loudly. "Nonetheless, here is another song."

This got everyone's attention as it was the funniest thing they'd heard all chapter, and the fight quickly came to a stop, and people returned to their chairs. Carl smashed one last man over the head with a beer bottle, and came, panting and with a bloody nose, to Dracula's side.

"I thought you were a man of peace, friar," said the vampire.

"I am a man of vengeance!" spat Carl, fire in his eyes. Dracula edged away from him very slowly. "You don't mess around with the fronk! Oh, curse and bugger it to bloody'ell, now he's got me doing it again!"

"Shut up and vatch the show," Dracula advised.

"Its time for an old favourite," said the singer. "And I'd advise you to sing along. We have guards posted around the perimeter in order to ensure one hundred percent participation by the audience. You think I'm kidding. I'm not. Okay." She shook herself and took a deep breath. "One—two— one two three—"

A few of the band members struck up a plain and simple tune, and she started to sing:

"A baby fell out of a window/ you'd think that its head would be split/ but good luck was with her that morning/ she fell right in a barrel of—"

"SHAVING CREAM!" howled the audience. "Be nice and clean! Shave every day and you'll always look keen!"

"That's right!" shouted the singer, with more enjoyment than the occasion warranted. "Next verse! Grandma was always an odd one/ one day she fell dead of a fit/ and in accord with her wishes/ she was buried in six feet of—"

"SHAVING CREAM! Be nice and clean! Shave every day and you'll always look keen!"

"Right on! One day I was walking our Fido/ he was barking and just wouldn't quit/ so I went over where he was standin'/ and stepped right in a pile of—"

"SHAVING CREAM! Be nice and clean! Shave every day and—"

By this point Carl, Dracula, and Van Helsing had all been observed by the bouncers, and were now captive. Dracula thought about biting them, but on seeing how huge and impossibly dirty they were, decided that even vampires have standards.

The bouncers propelled them forcefully up onstage.

"What's all this?" said the singer. She wore a name-tag that proclaimed her to be named, somewhat confusingly, Thomas.

"They wasn't singing," grunted one of the bouncers.

"Weren't singing, eh?" Thomas squinted at them. "Well, we have ways of making you sing. Hey listen, everybody! We've got some delinquents up here— what do you say we ought to do with 'em?"

Various suggestions were roared back— Carl didn't like the sound of them at all.

He kicked Van Helsing nervously on the ankle.

"Ow!" yelled Van Helsing, and dropped like a stone.

So he kicked Dracula nervously on the ankle, and Dracula kicked him back, harder, and significantly further up.

"Oooooow!" yelped Carl, and bent double.

"Please, er, Thomas," said Dracula, giving the singer his best smile. "Ve haff just come to ascertain the vhereabouts of my brides, whose names I appear to haff forgotten. Ve vere told they vould be singing here— they are vampires, as I am, and vould be easily recognizable by their incredible beauty, their scanty clothing, and their frequent habit of turning into huge flying bat-beasts."

Thomas stared at him.

"You mean the Original Vampire Brides?" she said.

Dracula thought about it for a moment.

"I suppose anything is possible," he said at last.

"Ooooh," said Carl from the ground.

"Frooonk," said Van Helsing, also from the ground, and giggled to himself until one of the bouncer kicked him, whereupon he grabbed the man's leg and sank his teeth into his ankle.

"The OVBs were here last night," said Thomas. "Its Thomas tonight. Me, that is." She shook her head. "You're still going to have to pay a forfeit, sorry."

"You don't look sorry," groaned Carl from the floor. Thomas shrugged.

"They vere here last night?" said Dracula. "Vhere vere they going next? Tell me." He bent close to Thomas' head and widened his eyes, trying to enthrall her. But the singer shook her head.

"Your Vegan mind tricks won't work on me," she said chirpily. "Now get ready to dance."

"Dance?" said Dracula, as Carl and Van Helsing were hauled bodily up from the floor.

Thomas grinned at them as she signaled to the disc jockey. "Dance, yes. Dance."

"Oooooo—" came a voice through the speakers, and then the drums started.

Being as they weren't even from this century, the trio on the stage had never heard of Britney Spears, and they didn't know the dance moves to "Baby One More Time." However, they learned surprisingly quickly to loathe it.