The gaggle was back and squawking their frilly little hearts out. Alucard was lying face down on his comforter, like a floating corpse – senseless, stationary, indifferent to his inconsequential surroundings as he merely floated upon the voices in the dorm room. But they didn't mind him, and continued to chatter. Their toe paint smelled foul. But that was nothing compared to the searing stench that turned the dead head of the floating corpse towards them, when the cap of some nail polish remover was unscrewed. After glowering at the gaggle itself, the vampire picked out the Police Girl, astounded by her indifference to the fumes that were billowing up around her. She was giggling like a little chicken, thrown in with a group of honking geese.
She'd learned to be quieter around him. He'd whittled the goose out of her when she'd started to relax, and 'honk' a little too much. Now she was a chicken, just a little chicken, and that he could find tolerable. Goose? Never.
He'd sooner roast them all over a spit (no of course he'd take them raw).
They were somehow talking about their calculus lesson, while they lathered their toes with offensive colors – as if they'd chosen the exact shades that would annoy the vampire most.
"Ahahaha! Yeah, I know. For once I'm actually interested in the class. Oh my god, is the new teacher hot."
"Fwahaha! And we're so used to old men or middle-aged, balding-"
No one seemed to notice Seras had stopped working on her toes, and was looking at them, gaping as the others chimed in… and the topic actually developed into a full blown debate.
Is Mr. Anderson hot? According to teenage girls.
My, oh my. The nosferatu 's toothy smirk was hidden within the comforter, as he listened.
"But he's got scars on his face, and he's too old," Harriet complained. "Old men, really? That's what you consider to be hot? What is he, like in his forties? Anyway, one of you has a boyfriend. You think Mr. Anderson is more attractive than Mark? Hmm?"
"No, no definitely not. I'm not giving Mark away for anything."
Alucard assumed this was the dutiful girlfriend speaking.
"I think the scars aren't so bad. I'd like to hear about how he got them."
All of the girls (with the exception of Seras) agreed with that.
Finally Alucard heard his little chicken pipe in: "But don't you think he's sorta…big and… scary?"
The girls seemed to pause, but only Harriet welcomed Seras' statement with bubbly excitement. "Yeah, he's too big. He's just-"
"Don't you know Father Anderson personally?"
The voice from the bed broke down the invisible wall that had hidden Alucard from the girls. Harriet was staring at him, irked by the sudden disclosure.
"Who?" Someone asked.
Another said, "Mr. Anderson's a priest? I didn't know that. Can you be a priest and a teacher at the same time?"
"Oh, I'm sure you can." Someone said, quite sure of herself. "I mean, you have to make a living somehow."
Harriet sighed and went to work on decorating her big toe. "Yeah, I also can't think he's attractive because of that. So, who knows, I just don't see him that way."
The girls put the disjointed conversation together, and then resumed. "Where do you know him from?"
"I spent some time in an orphanage, remember?"
There was a chorus of Oh's, and some sympathetic nods Harriet didn't really appreciate. But she ignored them. Seras said nothing, but was reminded as to why she liked the girl, despite the contrasts between their characters.
Another added a bit later, "So is it weird if I still think he's-?"
"It's not any of my business. You want to seduce him? Go ahead and try!" Harriet laughed at this, and the vampire on the bed was also amused – the girl was obviously trying to turn the whole thing into a "hilarious" joke. Yes, the idea of her Father Anderson, being tempted by teenage girls. Ha! Not in this lifetime! "I don't think you can seduce a priest like him! But I was surprised when he showed up out of the blue. I knew he went out a lot, on trips, for work he'd said. But I never knew he was a teacher. He might as well have stayed at the orphanage to teach the kids there. I've got no clue why he'd come out here to work, even temporarily. It's not like this is even a Catholic school. I mean, Catholics are the minority here, right?"
There was a lull that continued as the girls painted or stared at their toes. Then someone decided to break the silence. "So you can't think he's hot because he's like a dad of some sort- a father-figure or whatever. But Seras~" Alucard could hear the mischief in the girl's voice, and he could picture the stricken expression that must be on the chicken's face.
"Seras, you don't have any excuse."
"Come on~ You've never told us what kind of guy you're into. You're pretty tall. Does the guy have to be taller than you?"
Immature little girls- the floating corpse's foot twitched on the bed.
"Um." Seras really didn't have any interest in high schoolers, and she hadn't had much interest in anyone period. Definitely not the French pervert – for the most part…though she was getting used to him, and he sorta had a charm, being the way he was-
"You're 18 right? You've never had a boyfriend, but that doesn't mean you can't pick out an attractive guy. Riiight~?"
Alucard winced for his fledgling, for being so close to the assaulting pitch, tone- the voice was just abhorrent.
Oh my god, the mortified Police Girl was covering her face now, which the girls assumed was out of shyness. In front of her Master. Making her seem like a little girl, talking about boys, of all things. Who could think about boys when you had to deal with vampires and ghouls and deranged Iscariots? Ugh, really… "Um…" She mumbled.
"You can tell us, right? Come on~"
"Tell us! Tell us! Tell us!" Someone established a chant only one of her friends joined.
"I really don't know yet. I guess a nice guy with a good job and all that. But I mean, people really don't have 'types' anyway." Seras offered, but the girls were undeterred.
"But, come on. You can tell us something as general as height, right? You like tall guys, or a guy around your height? I mean, it's sorta hard to kiss a really tall guy."
"It's not hard at all," Harriet disagreed.
"So Seras~"
"No." Seras tried to look like she was concentrating on her bright blue toes now. "Not going to talk about this. I don't have any preferences, really. I don't."
"Seras~"
A girl's face was inches from hers, as Seras tried not to look at the girl. She was starting to get annoyed, but she refused to show it.
"Come on, Seras. All the boys like you."
Oh how wonderful. A bunch of teenage boys. Aren't I just the luckiest girl in the world? Yeah right… Why do people like to assume… stupid things… Despite these thoughts, Sera's cheeks burned pink as she shook her head at the nonsense that was being thrown at her. "No they don't." She shook her head more vigorously, after having denied the claim, nearly causing herself to mess up her little toe.
"Yes they do."
"Really?" She looked doubtfully into the brown eyes that wouldn't leave her alone. "Really? All the boys. All of them. Every last one?"
"For god's sake Seras, people could probably suffocate in your boobs! I mean, I thought managing C's was hard. How do you find bras that can actually provide enough support? Do you have to layer them or something?"
Girls laughed and Seras realized that it was, sadly, impossible to die of embarrassment (it didn't help that she wasn't technically alive, either). "Oh my god, no- let's talk about something else, please. I really mean it."
They giggled some more, but had enough mercy to divert their conversation to their own stories. "It's hard to find a good bra." Said the voice that was a C-cup – Alucard noted, though he did so without much interest.
"I want my boobs to grow! Grow, damn you! Grow!" The girl seemed to be abusing her chest, as if to punish her breasts for not being satisfactory. "You don't even have to wear push up bras, like, ever." – unsatisfied girl said to C-cup girl, the vampire tracked the voices.
"But some stuff just doesn't look good with big boobs. Makes me look fat and dumpy."
"Nooo! No, never!"
"No way. You look great in everything."
"I look fat." She insisted.
(Alucard couldn't help but hear the conversation as a series of "Honk! Honk! Honnnk! Big boobs, honk!" and then an overlapping deluge of honks, as more girls participated.)
"No, you're so pretty." Honk. "And you run marathons-" Honk, honk. "-how in the world can you call yourself fat? If you say it again, I'll hate you forever, got it? Never even think it." Honk, honk, honkity honk honk honk. Ugghhh. Alucard's brain melted into slop.
"So it goes, Seras – biggest by a mile – then Jenifer, and then…well, the rest of us I guess." The girl suddenly didn't want to judge who had the smallest.
But the "smallest" piped in, "You can keep your big ol' titties, ladies! When you're old and saggy, I'm gonna be just as perky-"
"What, as a twelve year old?"
Laughter erupted and buried the chicken somewhere in the midst of it. Alucard imagined blackened skies, the sun blotted out by swarming carrier pigeons as they finished digesting their last meal, and the rain of- well…it was not quite as terrible as the depiction his mind conjured, of Chicago drowning in white slime, coated skyscrapers slick and glistening in the returning sunlight, people and cars washed away or sunken in the depths of the vile substance, likely to become preserved in one way or another, like the remnants of Pompeii.
Of course, Harriet had been biding her time, and now she looked back – as if extending a gesture of friendship. She wore a not altogether wholesome smile.
"Alucard, what size bra do you wear?"
The other girls didn't know how to respond to the new question, though they all looked at Alucard and Harriet, without wanting to interrupt – should Alucard surface from the comforter.
Seras wasn't so sure anymore if she couldn't die of embarrassment. She definitely felt like she was dying. She was in agony. I don't want to know! I don't want to know! Walter-! Why aren't you here? Save me! Somebody, save me already! Mentally, Seras was in tears, wallowing in self-pity.
"Hm." The pale face actually surfaced, much to their surprise. And the red eyes watched them with some amusement, though the boredom was still evident. "I've got those, I guess."
"You don't wear one, do you?"
Red irises flicked to Harriet's lightly freckled face. "No. I'm more of a 'nothing,' so it'd be sort of 'overly optimistic' to pretend like there was actually something there."
"You've still got time. They'll come in eventually." A sympathetic voice offered.
An image made Seras' head spin and her stomach executed a perfect summersault. No no no no no no no no-
Alucard only laughed and then returned his face to the comforter. Soon he had dozed off. Oddly, he dreamt about the Judas Priest suddenly developing breasts that prevented him from throwing his bayonets. Then they were so large he was tripping over them, flailing his arms, dropping his bayonets and wobbling. Finally he fell over and suffocated beneath them.
Alucard felt a bit better when he woke up and the moon had risen. And he wasn't as angry as he had been before Anderson was killed by oversized breasts. What a perfectly appropriate dream – which would never be retold to any living or undead soul.
…
It was far too open to Freudian misinterpretation.