Chapter 6: Jesus, Take the Squeal!
"Quick, we must go," she said.
I followed Leah Clearwater through the dank hallways underneath the office floor. They connected us with the other office rooms and buildings, but were too dank to be used with regularity. Instead, cobwebs dominated the scene, full of mystery and foreboding. The little spider faces looked out at us as we passed. A rubber rat lay discarded on the floor, an artifact from a different age.
"Leah Clearwater," I whispered insistently, but it was too late.
SQUEAK! the rat squealed.
Leah stumbled back into the wall, her face a wolf-mask of angry fury. The tunnel smelled like the taste of copper.
"This wouldn't have happened if you had listened to me!" I angered. "Listen!" said I, "where are we going? I have the right to know!" I covered my nose with my long sweater sleeve.
My other hand was a clamp on her shawl, holding her in place- anger still lay reminiscent on her facial structure, like a tempest fading into her face. So much anger. A cold anger, thousands of years in the making.
"Why should I tell you?" Leah Clearwater haughtily asked, her pride constricting around her throat.
"Because! Without me, you would not have a Vampire Reduction Device! Don't you see?" I held my hands up in despair, grasping at the air, pulling the heavens down to earth as a sad and desperate plea to God, "I genetically engineered the Asparagus Fern! It was I! It was I who was the one who made it, in my home laboratory named The Better Science Bureau! I was always a great scientist, and now my creation has been misused!" The hall was cold and desolate. You could only hear our breaths and our voices. Leah Clearwater breathed heavily, like a wolf.
"Have you more to say for thine self?" Leah Clearwater insisted wolfishly. She scratched her eyebrow with her paw-like foot. Her wolf flexibility would intimidate me, she thought.
"Listen, werewoman, I have no patience for tomfools! You must tell me our common destination, or I shall not move one quarter inch, or more!" I looked around. The cement floor lay perpendicular to the likewise walls, smooth right angles held in place by a common desire- the hope for a better world. This building had been built many years hence, and still the free love of the 1960s poured through, even though it was at least 2032 by now. Though the paint had chipped, you could still see some flowers and rainbows decorating the abode.
"I shall inform you of thine request." Leah Clearwater then laid out the plans, her canine words flowing like a waterfall into my eustachian tubing. She spoke of a Grand Fair at the Long Beach Convention Center, near the old Pike. The Fair was conventional: a Vampire Convention, complete with panel speakers and rooms for the panel speakers. The cost was fifty dollars, "a hefty fee," Leah Clearwater explained, "because Vampires are often Dukes and Counts, which are very expensive positions."
"We go there," Leah Clearwater barked, "to defeat the Vampires together. And I know just the man to help me do it."
From deep in his shadow lair, the face of a strange Mongolian came prowling. His brow curved downward into his eyes, which were situated on either side of his nose and were rather far apart. His left side face, which would be on my right, was deeply scarred and the shadows perpetuated his aesthetic inequities. His nose lay mushed up and smashed on his face, right above his lips. He had comparatively no upper lip and a pouting, smooth lower lip which glistened with sweat and other perspirations. His eyes were huge and grey, like his skin. His lower lip trembled, then opened like the maw of some granitic beast.
Leah Clearwater nodded her snout at him. Then, she opened her anthropomorphized muzzle and howled, "Janisa De'Loreal, meet this man. Genghis Van Helsing... meet Janisa De'Loreal."
"Pleased to meet you," said he.
"Enchanted," I said, and curtsied.
To be continued...
AN: Guys leave reviews! I want to know how I can better myself, lol! Cause soon I won't be ThisClosetoPerfect, haha, jk. Only Jesus is.