Author's private rant: I don't own Dracula. Still. I know. It sucks.
Knnyphph - I'm glad you liked it. There will be more. Btw, I went to your page and found out that … you invented the BOAUK! I love that fic! More, more! Also the VH comic thingey was quite possibly the single most funny thing I have ever seen in my life. Gives me ideas…
Nikoru Sanzo – Oh you'd be surprised at what really happened in Van Helsing. It all depends on your point of view. Drac and I are really hung up on the fact that Van Helsing is a child murderer.
Sango-2099 – I'm convinced that VH must have been set in New South Wales. Are there any non-Australians in it?….well…the corset Barbie, I guess. Thanks for the review!
And now we resume…..
Shot of wavy-haired man in a duster and hat that he bought off of the Costume Auction from Man From Snowy River. Strangely enough, he is waving an Australian flag in one hand and singing 'There Was A Red-Back On the Toilet Seat When I Was There Last Night.' He also has a crossbow slung over his shoulder in a heroic fashion, and several inflatable crosses and silver stakes attached to his belt.
"No mate, me name is Gabriel, even Blind Freddy could see ut." He is protesting desperately to an unsympathetic bottle of absinthe.
"This is why Australians normally only drink beer." The handy camera-men comment as they are overrun by the lynch mob.
"Oi didn't see 'im in the dark but boy I felt 'is bite" Van Helsing sings in his best 'oh what a beautiful morning' voice.
Several of the lynch mob are shocked that the Wolverine could display such culture as to obtain the leading role in Oklahoma. They pause in their headlong pursuit for a moment, but soon the rallying cry of 'Dracula's children!' cause them to regain their senses and rejoin the group.
"Death's too good for him!"
"Take away his knockout spray!"
"Don't anyone try to stab him with a hypodermic!"
"Death's too good for him!"
Van Helsing is dragged into the studio summarily placed next to Our Hero and is forced to sit down and slapped around until he is reasonably sober. Several fans rejoice at the slapping bit.
Dracula pulls his head out of his hands and looks balefully at Van Helsing, "Can't you just leave me alone."
Van Helsing looks surprised, "G'day mate, got the wog?" He says in what is meant to be an extremely hip American accent.
Dracula groans.
"Oh yeah, you're that Dracula guy. I thought I killed you."
"Easy to forget a guy like me." Dracula glowers. "What, were you busy fighting off the paparazzi?"
Van Helsing primps his hair, "Actually…"
Dracula jumps to his feet and shrieks, "You can't primp you hair like that! That's my line!" He then calms down and appears to be listening to something.
"What now?" Van Helsing searches around inside the pockets of his Australian Oilskin Duster ™ until he finds another bottle of absinthe.
Dracula is busy doing the handclapping version of the cha-cha. "Just how much of that stuff have you drunk?"
Van Helsing frowns, shrugs and downs the entire bottle.
Dracula's handclapping gets faster and loses all sense of rhythm.
Van Helsing takes a bow.
The cameramen/lynch mob, having nothing to do and no purpose now that Dracula has an onstage foil, go on strike and begin learning Portuguese.
Dracula grabs the absinthe bottle, "You know there is a label on the bottom that says 'Rat Poison/Paint Thinner' don't you?"
Van Helsing slurps a strand of drool happily.
"You see, that's your problem!" Dracula stands in his rant pose and lighning goes off in the distance, "You just don't care about anyone do you! You didn't care about my kids did you! Huh? Did you!" Dracula does the finger-under-chin thing and tosses Van Helsing across the room. "Bot."
Van Helsing wipes his mouth heroic-ly, "Galah."
"Wowser."
"Winge-er."
"Blow-in."
"Bludge."
"Jackeroo."
"Earbasher."
"Drongo." Dracula finishes and smirks, "It much be such a curse to be the left-hand of God."
Van Helsing pounds his fists into the ground and curses the fact that as an angelic being on a mission from God he can only use five curse words a day.
"Now, Van Halen." Dracula sits back and looks superior, "I have several charges to bring against you in this improvised court of law."
Van Helsing looks hurt, "That's Van Johnson."
"No, I'm sure the second one started with an H." Dracula waves the matter away with both five-fingered hands, "I charge you with the murder of twelve thousand eight hundred and twenty two of my children, three of my… vampire mental patients."
"If they were your mental patients how did you have twelve thousand eight hundred and twenty two children?"
Dracula looks uncomfortable, "You really don't remember the history we had together, do you."
Van Helsing looks ill.
"Anyways, that and you killed Velkan Valerius, and you punched Anna Valerius in the face, and then sprayed her with knockout gas for take two, and then you killed her too. And you killed several villagers."
"But I saved the cow!" Van Helsing protests.
Dracula shakes his head, "I don't want to hear it. For all I know, you killed Doc Robbin. I charge you with murder in the first degree! What defense can you give!"
Lighning crashes.
Van Helsing shrugs, "I was under the influence of alcohol at the time."
Dracula's hair is starting to look frazzled. He walks to the nearest wall and walks up it to stand on the ceiling, back to Van Helsing, then he crosses his arms, "That's no excuse."
"I get way cooler parts in movies too." Van Helsing laughs and hiccups a little.
"No you don't. I got to be Professor Moriarty!"
"Wolverine."
"And I got that cool part in Mission Impossible Two!"
"Wolverine."
"And I got to be Sherlock Holmes too!"
"Duke Leopold Alexis Elijah Walker Gareth Thomas Mountbatten."
Dracula is so weirded out that he falls from the ceiling and hits his head on the floor, "And you're proud of that?"
Van Helsing nods his head rapidly, "I even got to play 'Modern Major General' on the piano. I'm a triple-threat. And you have absolutely no sense of rhythm."
"Do too." Dracula does a slow circle waltz thing to prove it.
"At least I don't lose a limb in every single stinking movie I'm in."
Dracula looks nervous. "Eeeee. You're right."
"That one bit in MI2 with the cigar snip is my number one cringe moment for all movies anywhere." The author's voice wafts down from the sky. Apparently h/s/I has regained h/s/I's chair.
"Ignore her." Dracula says, "Really, it's for the best."
Van Helsing fires his crossbow up at the ceiling just to make sure.
Several lights go out. Some cameramen stop learning Portuguese to watch.
"Yeah, that cigar thing was harsh." Van Helsing shudders. "So with that, and the fact that I cut off your ring finger, how many do you have left….lets see…ten minus two…or was it eleven minus two….argg…I'm a theater major I have no time for math."
Dracula holds up his hands.
"NO. Don't show me that's just gross!" Van Helsing screams, "Oh, hey, actually it doesn't look all that bad."
"That's because I'm not actually missing any."
"Oh." Van Helsing scratches his head, "It's because vampires have twice the regenerative healing powers of Wolverine, right?"
"No, it's sleight of hand. They didn't even have to do special effects." Dracula flips a finger down. "See?"
Van Helsing shrieks, "OH the HORROR!"
"And if I flip them all down but this one, do you know what it means?"
"He's lost ALL HIS FINGERS BUT THE MIDDLE ONE! Ahhh I can't take it anymore."
Dracula rolls his eyes. "My adoring public, members of the jury, I think I have proved my point. This sorry excuse for a vampire hunter doesn't even have the right to call himself an Aussie. He's just about as Australian as the author for crying out loud!"
Van Helsing stands up and puts his hands on his hips. He is wearing boots so he's about, what, six foot seven? Anyways, Dracula's nose is smashed into his chest, "Care to repeat that, mate?"
"Don't you ever use deodorant?"
Van Helsing takes a deep breath, "Just what type of a new mug do you want, dingo?"
"And I think the fact that you're wearing four-inch heels is ridiculous."
Van Helsing takes another deep breath, "Now if you don't want a blue, you square off now."
"And your parents are Pommies."
Van Helsing takes yet another deep breath, "Are you sure you don't want to apologize?"
Dracula smiles. "Pretty sure."
"Ok then. I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion."
"Right then." Dracula says, "Back to my rant. As I was saying, this sorry excuse for a living being showed up on my doorstep one night with that corset Barbie chick."
"What was her name again, I forgot." Van Helsing says with all the passion of the lover eternally separated from his soulmate.
"Anna Valerius." Dracula says in a frazzled voice, "Don't interrupt me. And they went went immediately to the new baby nursery that I had set up in the room across the hallway from mine. You know, so I could hear them if they woke up from a bad dream." Dracula shoots Van Helsing the patented 'look of death' "Anyway, this jerk and the corset walk up and start ripping into the special cribs that I special ordered from Ralph Lauren only a week before. They were great, you know, had this special heating liquid quilted…thing that was ergonomic and had an interior heating system. Nothing but the best for my precious children. Anyways, he mistakes the electrical cords for the electric waterbed for some kind of evil plot to bring them alive. Like I would buy cribs for dead children."
"They were all still and unmoving and stuff. How could I know?" Van Helsing looks hurt.
"Well what did you think they were?"
Van Helsing shrugs, "Well they looked like gross sticky womb kind of things that had been attached to electricity in order to bring the monsters to life."
Dracula shakes his head, "You see, that is where you go wrong mate. You are such a pessimist. Use some logic. If they were gigantic womb things did it ever occur to you that the birthing process would have been not only extremely graphic and painful, but also fatal? And then how would I have fathered five thousand children?"
"Ten thousand."
"No I only fathered half." Dracula makes a cutting motion across his neck and gives Van Helsing another patented 'look of death.' "Can we discuss this later?"
"And with that we will leave the audience to make their own conclusions." The author says, but no one is listening anyway.
Van Helsing goes pale. "Only half."
"You know."
"No, I really don't."
"That summer in Paris….you know."
Van Helsing swallows a large lump in his throat and his voice goes up a few octaves, "Oh that summer in Paris."
Dracula nods slowly.
"So how about the rest of that story. I thought you were on a rant you know. You haven't been talking much, so I guess you'd better get back to telling the story and all." Van Helsing tries to find something for his hands to do.
Dracula sighs, "So the fearless vampire hunters run around and start maiming my kids and blowing their heads off. And then while Van Helsing goes off to find me and murder my children in front of my face, Anna Valerius goes off and tries to kill her brother. Yeah." Dracula shakes his head, "Messed up family. She runs right in when I'm giving him that shock treatment for SSM, or more precisely the sub-category of the disease that leaves the victim completely hairless and predisposed to Clinique body oil. I was giving him very precise and controlled treatments."
"You were laughing like a supervillain, how was I to know?"
"You're interrupting again."
"Well you were walking all over the walls and making supervillain faces and laughing and dancing in circles and generally reveling in the thunderstorm."
"Did it ever occur to you that I am merely eccentric? I'm old and rich. I have a right. When five hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not. I have to be eccentric, I'm gorgeous." Dracula gives his hair the patented 'poof' "Enough about me. Anyways, this child murderer walks in, and starts killing my children." Dracula's lower lip starts trembling, "I'll kill you for that later, but now on with my story. So I walk in very angry, as you would imagine any father to be at this moment. I thought I did a rather good job of controlling my temper, though. I didn't even maim him. I always thought that was rather magnanimous of me."
"So did the author." The author says from the sky.
Dracula picks up a chair and throws it up off the camera screen. There is a squeak that is cut off short and a series of muffled thuds.
"I think you killed her." Van Helsing points out as blood starts dripping down like rain.
Dracula smiles, "You know, I think I actually did!" He stands under the blood with his mouth open and starts humming 'Singing in the Rain.'
Van Helsing starts to do some soft-shoe.
Then Dracula reaches over and……
The chapter ended because the author died.
Will the story continue? With a ghost author? Will Van Helsing ever realize his true past?
Find out next time in: An Australian in Transylvania, or How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?
