In the quiet hours of the morning, Father Anderson sipped at his mug of tea, his eyes on his student's quizzes as his stomach debated about what to eat for breakfast. Forty minutes until class starts. His stomach and his mind competed for his attention as Anderson sat peacefully behind his desk. Suddenly a third suitor appeared, which cast breakfast and quizzes out of the priest's thoughts entirely.
Father Anderson sat with his warm mug in his hands, interrupted in the act of blowing on his tea, as his blank green eyes stared at the creature that had just pushed a hideously yellow cleaning cart through his wall. Bob the antagonizer, the pretender, the monster, gave the dumbfounded teacher a sharp smirk, and deliberately parked his cart ten feet from Mr. Anderson's desk.
As he unloaded a bottle of Simple Green and a fresh blue rag from his cart, Bob heard the distinct tap of the mug being placed on a coaster, followed by the rolling of wheels, and the squeaking of a chair being vacated. As Bob stood before one of the tables in the front row, he felt the tongues of righteous hellfire flicker against the back of his neck. It was the priest's breath, hot with hatred.
Bob the janitor spoke in simple terms as he sought out the graphite and ink smudges the children had left on the table. "I believe you are violating my personal space, Mr. Anderson. I ask that you give me enough room to do my job-"
"What are you doing here, Demon?" Father Anderson did not grant the janitor an inch as he loomed over the indifferent back.
"I'm here to clean this classroom."
"You cannot clean, Vampire. You only sully and ruin what you touch." Father Anderson took a step back as this Bob the vampiric janitor turned to face him. It was the smirk that repulsed Anderson, and pushed him away.
Wearing his persona quite loosely, Alucard cocked his head thoughtfully, running through all the glorious, blood bathed possibilities that might stem from such favorable circumstances. But the voice of Integra Hellsing popped each of his fantasies with needle sharpness, and he settled for less than he truly desired.
Alucard waved the spray bottle to ward off the disruptive Catholic, and while Father Anderson glared at him with an indignant frown, the vampire set to work dusting the dirty table with his Simple Green. Jerking sharply to the right, Alucard kept the bottle out of the priest's reach when Anderson lunged for his arm and got between the table and the undead janitor. Anderson growled while Alucard's blue, latex covered finger tapped the trigger of his spray bottle patiently.
"Mr. Anderson, do you mean to say that you do not care about your students' needs? Do they not have the right to a clean table?"
"Yes, they have the right to a clean table. But all you can offer them is a defiled one," Father Anderson snarled, and then reached out and shoved the yellow cart away. It bumped against the wall, jostling the bottles and other equipment Bob the janitor had loaded less than an hour ago. Father Anderson showed no remorse for his harshness towards the innocent cart, as his low voice grew more threatening. "I will destroy you, and purify this classroom if I have too. But my students will be arriving soon… and I won't stand to let you, or any sort of battle, endanger their lives."
Alucard sighed like a tired janitor, and twirled his spray bottle expertly, with no apparent effort. "I am endangering no one, Mr. Anderson. I mop. I dust. I clean, and I polish. Let me do my job, and you will not hear from Bob again, until tomorrow."
Father Anderson snorted, nearly humored by the lame proposal. "Oh, I won't see you tomorrow, Hell Spawn, if you choose not to leave my classroom within the next thirty seconds. Because I'll have killed you and swept you up with your own broom." Father Anderson pointed to the yellow cleaning cart, to the empty black trash bag. "And that will serve as your coffin."
"Hm," Alucard, or Bob, grunted, viewing the unglamorous end to his 500+ year existence. "That's a pretty story, Mr. Anderson, but you are registered here as a substitute teacher, and I am a janitor. A well-liked janitor, hired by the school. And if anyone were to suspect you had a hand in my disappearance, the Vatican might have to deal with more than just Hellsing and the Council of Twelve – which somehow fails to daunt you." Alucard smiled slightly as the priest fully ignored his words, and stepped forward to make true on his threats. "You rarely disappoint me."
A girl opened the door, and then stared at the two men who obviously did not mind invading one another's personal space. They watched as she shyly shut the door again, and it was quiet for a time. Father Anderson left the vampire, and walked towards his desk, his hands tugging at fistfuls of his hair. Then he stopped and looked at his clean blackboard, pursing his lips and breathing in deeply as his fingers knitted together behind his head. He clucked his tongue in mild disappointment, exhaustion, and resignation, while Bob the vampire/janitor went about wiping away the smudges on the students' tables.
The two were still occupied with the same tasks when a female teacher opened the door. She was usually quite happy to see Alexander, but when she found Bob hard at work, she showed a special kind of excitement that had her clapping joyfully and 'giggling.' Father Anderson turned towards her slowly, without unknitting or lowering his hands from his head, and he gazed at her with an oddly empty, uncomprehending expression.
As she chittered away happily with the unresponsive Bob, Father Anderson's mouth took on a (brilliant) mind of its own: "Beatrice?"
"Mhmm?" Beatrice gave an excited reply, her necklace and gold crucifix swinging as she pivoted back to the calculus teacher.
"Do you by chance have any work that needs to be done in your room?" Father Anderson very calmly explained himself to the blinking, confused girl/woman. "I mean… For him." Father Anderson gestured to Bob, and Beatrice watched Bob finish cleaning another table. The janitor was both fast and thorough.
"OH! Oh, oh, oh- YES. I do." Beatrice's response caught Bob the janitor's attention, and he inadvertently met her gaze. She frolicked over to the yellow cart, not questioning why it was so oddly angled against the wall, and her happy little hands rapped on the side of the cart as she looked at all the cleaning supplies. "I think I have an egg salad sandwich wedged behind a cabinet. The kids aren't really supposed to eat in my room, but they do it anyway. As you'd expect."
She reached out and simultaneously asked permission to borrow one of Bob's spray bottles, a pink one that looked interesting, but a sudden jolt of alarm surged through her nerves. Beatrice stared timidly at the large, blue-gloved hand that encircled her wrist and pulled her hand away from the pink bottle. She couldn't help but acknowledge that Bob's hand was frigid, and unnaturally stiff. Very… dead-ish. At the thought, Beatrice broke out in goosebumps for no reason that she could identify.
Father Anderson was immediately near at hand, coming within reach of the demon before he released the female teacher's wrist, and explained that the pink cleaner was meant for the bathroom, for blood and such other things, sporting text that claimed the cleaner could 'disinfect' HIV. "Not for areas where there will be food in the near future," Bob explained coolly.
"Oh," Beatrice rubbed her chilled wrist in order to warm it. She had lost her giddiness, and it would take a moment for her to reclaim it.
Father Anderson frowned disapprovingly in the background, but then he sighed a little, relieved when Beatrice got Bob to accept the additional task of cleaning up her egg salad problem (immediately), given that she wanted to be rid of it before class started.
"The kids are already complaining."
Bob cared little for the teens' complaints, but he followed the girl/woman out of the classroom all the same.
Father Anderson settled into his chair, and scanned his papers again, to see where he had left off. His hand idly tested his mug to see whether his tea had grown cold. … Exactly what he had just done to Miss Beatrice Fletcher dawned on the priest as he took a sip of his disappointingly cold tea. He set down the mug and leaned on his desk, holding his head as his mind went silent for a brief moment of disbelief. Then, acting quickly, Father Anderson pulled out a drawer and snapped up two packets of instant oatmeal he then ripped open and poured into a second mug he drew from the same drawer. Then he strode out the door without bothering to lock it.
When Father Anderson opened the door to Beatrice's classroom, he half expected to find her thrown across her desk, with the demon wretch upon her, his fangs buried in her bloody neck. Instead a much calmer scene greeted him. Beatrice was perched happily on the edge of her desk, smiling at him and welcoming him in, soon spotting his mug and offering to let him use her little electric tea kettle. The tea kettle was not more than five yards away from where the Vampire Bob was stretched over the cabinet with a yard stick in hand, attempting to fish out a baggy containing a smelly sandwich, which could be heard but had yet to be seen.
Eyeing the vampire distrustfully, Father Anderson checked the kettle, and found that it had more than enough water in it, so he flicked it on, and leaned against the cabinets, his hands gripping the edge. He watched undead Bob work for a time, but eventually Beatrice demanded his attention as she wanted to tell him a delightful anecdote originating from a class that took place the week before. She laughed and he offered a smile to make it seem like he'd enjoyed her story, and then he glanced back at the vampire… who seemed to be unable to retrieve the smelly sandwich, so long as he was prevented from phasing through the cabinet, which would've given him direct access to the olfactory nuisance.
Beatrice leaned to the side to see how Bob was doing. "Still can't get it out?"
A very flat voice replied, "No."
On the desk, Beatrice began to hum and kicked her feet cheerfully. Father Anderson's water boiled, so the priest poured it into his mug of oats. He mixed the oatmeal with a spoon he'd brought with him, and then rested his back against the cabinets so that he could continue to watch Bob's fruitless and increasingly frustrating venture.
When the bell rang and Anderson had finished his oatmeal, he left to return to his classroom, much more confident about Beatrice's safety, since, from what he had seen, it was clear that every last drop of the vampire's bloodlust was currently reserved for the elusive, smelly sandwich.
Sorry for the delay. I had computer issues (sent it in to get repaired), and then I decided that the chapter was no good, so I scrapped it and wrote a new one.