SUMMARY: A little girl gets a clarification on monsters in the closet when Kai is the babysitter...
Kelly Dillon was already dreading tonight. She couldn't help but think that this wasn't fair to the twelve-year-old girl. All her friends were out having fun while she was stuck in her house alone because her parents decided to go to a friend's costume party and she was grounded. It wasn't her fault the school toilets were easy to clog up. Kelly shuddered at the memory of her mother showing her the costume she planned on wearing. Her mother was dressing up like Brittany Spears like she was in that 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' video.
It was very awkward for her daughter to see something like that.
Kelly just didn't like seeing her mother in that type of clothing. It was very uncomfortable. Her father's costume wasn't so bad since he was dressing up as a simple pirate. But to make things even worse was the fact her parents hired a babysitter to watch her until the morning like she was a baby. Kelly might not have minded having a babysitter to hang out with tonight if the guy they hired wasn't super creepy. This Kai person was a new friend or something with her distant cousin Jay and they were roommates.
Or so she had been told by her parents. Kelly seriously doubted that Jay would ever associate with anyone as weird as Kai.
She had only met him once, briefly, but Kelly could already tell something was very wrong with this man. Just the way he stared at her and his smirk creeped her out. Once she could swear she saw a red glow in his eyes and the flash of fangs in his grinning mouth.
"Kelly! The babysitter's here!" Her father called, but there was no way in hell she was going down to greet that creature.
"I'm upstairs!" She exclaimed from her room. She heard her mother sigh in frustration and went to answer the door for her daughter.
"Hello again, Mr. Smith! Why don't you come in?" Her mother smiled at the brunette teen, moving aside to let him in. It took all of Kelly's courage to make her legs move her from her room to hide behind the corner to the stairs. Cautiously, she poked her head around and saw Kai talking with her parents, who were both already in the costumes and about to leave.
"We'll be back by one in the morning at the latest; emergency numbers are on the fridge, I have a casserole for you both ready in the oven, Kelly must be in bed by ten at the latest." Her mother reminded the teen sternly.
"I understand, don't worry, Kelly's safe with me," Kai promised and while this seemed to satisfy her parents, it caused a shiver of fear to run down Kelly's spine.
"Alright then, you two have fun!" Her father smiled before he and his wife left for their party. As soon as the front door closed, Kai whipped around to face Kelly so suddenly to almost caused the girl to scream. Instead, as soon as their eyes made contact, Kelly scrambled away from the stairs and back into her bedroom. Back downstairs, Kai chuckled lightly as he licked his fangs in anticipation. He could already tell this was going to be a fun night...
It had been over an hour since Kai had arrived at her home and her parents left and Kelly knew that there was something more strange about this babysitter than she first suspected. Earlier, while he was finishing the casserole her mother had left, Kelly could hear him calling the blood bank a few blocks down the road and asking if they delivered. To make things even worse, Kelly had just seen him walk by the mirror in the hallway, but she didn't see his reflection.
It didn't take a genius to connect the dots about who, or more accurately what, this new babysitter was.
It didn't help when Kelly had nowhere to run, not with that thing downstairs waiting for her. Once she was certain of her theory about Kai, Kelly locked her bedroom door and opened up her laptop for some last-minute research. Everybody knew they come to suck a human dry of blood. They could also hypnotize her with their eyes. Kelly had seen the Twilight movies, and you better believe that they had left an impression.
"Kelly! Dinner's ready!" Kai called up to her from the kitchen and Kelly felt her insides turn to ice. Reluctantly, Kelly slowly descended the stairs and found Kai waiting for her in the dining room. The casserole was finished and the table was set for two people. Swallowing the heavy lump in her throat, Kelly took her seat opposite of Kai and began to eat, her eyes staying focused on the brunette. Kai also kept his gaze on the young girl, allowing her to get a good, detailed look at him.
His fingernails were sharp as kitchen knives and his teeth were pointed too.
Those sharp fangs kept flashing tauntingly at her across the dinner table as Kai smirked at her. He made no move to eat, but Kelly felt like she could see the hunger in his eyes. Her parents left her alone with him and now she didn't know what she was going to do. The babysitter was a vampire and he was looking at her like she was dinner. Kelly was going to need a wooden stake and a garlic milkshake to keep herself alive...
As soon as she had finished dinner, even though she hardly touched the food, Kelly quickly excused herself and all but ran up the stairs and locked herself in the bathroom. But she knew she couldn't stay in there forever. The next few hours were sort of like a game between Kelly and Kai. A game of cat and mouse. Of predator and prey. Kelly would sneak as quietly and quickly into a room as she could, hide for about ten minutes, and hear Kai go into a room not too close to her.
Then when it was quiet she would sneak into the next room and repeat the process.
Honestly, Kelly could have kept that up all night. While she wanted nothing more than to put a stake in that monster's chest, she preferred to live to see another day. What she didn't know was that Kai was having the time of his life. It was fun messing with the kid but he knew that if he didn't get her to bed soon there would be trouble. Her parents would be home soon and if they saw their daughter still awake and hysterical about the brunette being a vampire he wouldn't get paid.
Then this would all be for nothing and he would go home empty-handed.
"It's getting late Kelly, time for you to go to bed now." Kai suddenly called out to her in a very playful tone. It was almost as if to him they were merely playing a little game of hide-and-seek. Not life and death like it felt for her. But Kelly had other plans than dying tonight. She was thinking it was time to call it a night and that Kai could put a stake in his heart instead. Kelly wasn't just hiding, she had grabbed a small log next to the basket by her parents' fireplace and knife from the kitchen.
While she was hiding she had been sharpened the log into a makeshift stake.
She was onto Kai. She knew why his tanned skin was as cold as ice and why he stared like she was a piece of medium-rare meat. Kelly was certain he was ready to take a bite out of her neck and drain her dry like she was a bloody smoothie. People might think she was paranoid but everybody knew that vampires come to suck innocent people's blood. They could hypnotize people with their glowing eyes so their prey had nowhere to run or escape their fates.
Despite being certain that she was right about this, Kelly knew her parents would never believe her now unless she got some proof.
But when their daughter was flying around the house with fangs they would know it was true. From now on she was wearing turtle necks made of silver and carrying a water gun loaded with a garlic milkshake. Kelly prayed to every God she could think of that she made it through the night and did not end up a vampire snack. She was now huddled in her closet, clutching the stake, the knife, and a few cloves of garlic. She thought about trying to call her parents, or the police, or pest control, but the problem was that the house phone was down the creaky stairs and next to the locked front door.
Even if Kelly did manage to call someone, that vampire would hear her and kill her.
"Kelly... Oh, Kelly..." A terrifying voice suddenly echoed from the corners of her mind.
"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" She screeched as she desperately covered her ears to block out the voices, but that just made them louder.
"I want to suck your blood..."
"I KNOW! GETAWAY YOU BLOOD-SUCKING FREAK!" She cried as scared tears welled up in her eyes, wishing for her parents to come home. Just then Kelly was almost overwhelmed by the sudden feeling that she needed to look up. Listening to her gut, Kelly slowly looked up and all her blood turned to ice. Painted across the roof was a pitch-black shadow. The only features she could make out were a pair of glowing blood-red eyes and razor-sharp fangs.
Kelly didn't even get a chance to scream before the shadow lunged at her...
By the time Mr. and Mrs. Dillon arrived back at their home, it was just after midnight. They were both a little tipsy after the party but not drunk enough to get arrested if a cop pulled them over. When they got home they found Kai sitting on the couch reading a magazine he had found on the coffee table. Kelly wasn't anywhere in sight and they couldn't hear anything so they both assumed she was in bed asleep. But her mother made a mental note to check in on her when they went to bed.
As the couple looked around the downstairs of their home they were surprised by how clean everything was except for a few dirty dishes in the sink.
They had been worried that leaving a kid and a teenager alone would all but destroy the house. Or at least some empty chip wrappers scattered around the living room. When Kai saw them he gave them a warm smile as he stood up and tossed the magazine back where he found it.
"I trust everything went well?" Kelly's father asked as he gave Kai a once over.
"Yeah, I gave her some of that casserole but she only picked at it and then went to bed; I think she was feeling a bit sick." He explained with a sympathetic wince.
"Was the food cooked right?" Mrs. Dillon asked in worry that her food had made her daughter.
"Yeah, I ate a whole plate of the casserole and I feel completely fine," Kai reassured her and that did ease her worry. That had been a lie, but he couldn't tell them that he burnt the casserole to ash.
"Are you sure that Kelly is alright?" Her father asked suspiciously.
"Well, I checked on her about... an hour ago and she was falling asleep while watching Twilight." The brunette shrugged.
"What happened to your hand, lad?" Mr. Dillon asked when he noticed the long, thing cut on Kai's left palm, and the brunette mentally cursed when he saw it. That little brat had managed to catch him with the stake when he scared her before he put her to sleep. Kai knew he would be picking splinters out of his hand for a week, even though he did kinda deserve it. He gave them some half-baked excuse about an accident when he was cutting up the casserole.
They bought it and dropped the subject after Mrs. Dillon made Kai put on a plaster.
After a few more minutes of the small talk Mr. Dillon handed Kai the cash he was owed and his wife went to check on Kelly. She peeked into her daughter's room and smiled when she saw Kelly fast asleep and snoring lightly, the menu from the Twilight DVD lighting up the room. After Kai had taken his cash and flown off into the night, the couple had gotten into their pajamas and headed to bed, falling asleep. Neither of them noticed their daughter's growing nightmare.
Nor did they realize their own when they would see how much the therapy bills would cost them over the next few years...
