Misty Rose: Nature
Chapter 19
Not much else happened that month, so I’m just going to jump ahead to the next vampire social because… well, it sort of shows one of the things wrong with vampires. One of many, many things wrong with vampires. But I’m just going to get right into it.
I hadn’t really been paying attention to all the formal stuff because it was boring and didn’t have anything to do with me. Just messing with my phone in what I was starting to think of as my corner of the throne room thing. So I didn’t notice someone had walked up to me until she spoke.
“Hello,” the person said. I looked up. She was… well, I’m just going to say Gothic Lolita. Her dress was black, with lots of ruffles and lace, black heeled boots, lace gloves, black ribbons in her hair, everything. Except her hair wasn’t in pigtails, and… I don’t know, the accents were off. Like… well, if you look up Gothic Lolita style and then maybe Victorian girls’ dresses, it’s not quite the same. Lot of similar things, but the girl reminded me more of Alice than some kind of anime fetish character. And she was a girl. Even with the goth makeup and stuff, she looked twelve, maybe thirteen. At first I thought she was a really light blond, but no, her hair was white. And her eyes were red, and she was super pale, more than even white people who become vampires get. You’d think an albino vampire wouldn’t have red eyes, though, because I looked it up and the red eyes is because of blood vessels in the eyes and vampires didn’t have blood in their skin unless they forced it there. So their eyes would be… gray or something. But she had red eyes. And she was one of the less human vampires. Anyway, yeah. Albino twelve year old Gothic Lolita vampire. Not exactly something you see every day. Because of her color and being one of the less human vampires, she actually looked like a living doll. Which was creepy.
“Um, hi,” I said. I really didn’t have anything smarter to say.
“My name’s Violeta,” the girl said. “What’s yours?”
“Misty Rose,” I said. She even sounded like a twelve year old, except maybe a twelve year old from a long time ago. Which was possible. I mean, she was a vampire, right? No clue how old she actually was. And I gotta say it… only a sick fuck would turn a kid into a vampire. I don’t care what justification they have, doing that kind of thing is just twisted, turning a child into a monster. I mean… ugh. They should just… look at a bunch of Lolita porn if they have those kind of urges, the legal stuff is all girls who are actually legal age, even if they look young. I mean, it’s still twisted, but at least it wouldn’t create a twelve year old monster girl, you know? Anyway, all that’s going through my head while I’m looking at Violet. I felt… sorry for her. And creeped out. Majorly creeped out.
“That’s a pretty name,” she said, and even her smile was sort of wrong and creepy.
“You have a pretty name too,” I said. Still trying to be nice.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling at me. “My friends call me Violet. Do you want to be my friend as well? Oh, please, do say yes.” She clapped her hands and looked at me.
“Uh…” I said. Creepy little doll vampire wants to be my friend. Great.
“What’s that you’re wearing?” she asked, pointing at me. Guess it didn’t really matter if I wanted to be her friend or not.
I looked down. “Um… it’s called a hoodie,” I said. How did she not know that?
“It’s very nice,” Violet said.
It really wasn’t. I hadn’t fixed the holes from when that fat fuck shot me, but I figured she was just being nice. “Um… thanks,” I said. “You have a very pretty dress.” If you’re into that sort of thing.
“Thank you,” Violet said, smiling. Yeah, creep factor again.
“Is this your first time here?” she asked.
“No, um… this is my fourth time at one of these things.”
Violet put her head on one side, ramping up the creepy doll effect. “Really? I don’t remember seeing you here. Are you sure?”
Was I sure? What, did she think I was delusional? “Um… I’m sure,” I said. “I remember seein’ you. Over with the other… pretty people.”
“You think I’m pretty? Thank you!” Violet said, hugging me quickly like a little girl. I think vampire skin isn’t supposed to crawl, but I swear mine did when she touched me. “I’m so glad you think I’m pretty, and that you’d remember me.”
“Well, you’re kinda distinctive,” I said. “I mean, that’s not bad, but…”
“You’re right,” Violet said. “Most of these people are pretty boring.”
“That’s… not really what I meant. But yeah, I guess.”
“What did you mean?” she asked, doing the creepy doll head tilt thing again. She sat down next to me, and I felt like my skin was going to crawl off me and run away.
“Um…” I stared at her. “Everyone else just seems so… serious.”
“Oh, yes,” she said smiling. “Boring, like I said.”
“I just thought there’d be more… I dunno… glamor? I guess?”
“Oh, you just need to know where to look. Not everyone comes to these things. I try to get out of them when I can. I have much more interesting things to do. But it’s expected of me to come to these things, and honestly, I think everyone would just die of boredom if I didn’t.”
“Well, I suppose, but…”
“What did you mean?” she asked. Creepy doll head tilt. Argh.
“All the movies and TV shows and… books don’t… it’s not like this,” I said.
Violet nodded. “I’ve read some very interesting books. They’re nothing like these gatherings, even the ones that involve vampires.”
“Have you?” I didn’t really wanna keep talking to the creepy Lolita doll, but she didn’t seem willing to leave me alone yet. So I had to play along.
“Oh, yes,” Violet said. “I think I’ve read all of the classical vampire novels there are. Including Stoker’s Dracula, of course. He got a lot wrong, but it’s still an entertaining read.” This sort of thing went on for a minute or two, with Violet naming books she’d read and giving them short reviews or whatever that meant nothing to me. Only thing I could say for sure was none of them sounded like something written in the last fifty years. I started paying attention again when she lowered her voice and gave me a “just between us girls” look and said, “Of course, I’ve also read some works that are… less than proper. But I feel modern, educated women should be open to reading matter of less refined origin, even if the subject matter is a bit… licentious.”
I had no idea what that word meant, so I just nodded. “Like what?”
“Oh, well…” Violet said, leaning closer keeping her voice low. “I rather like Pierre Louÿs’ Astarte, though I suppose that is more of a collection of poems. You might be more interested in his Songs of Bilitis, however. Both collections lose a lot if not read in the original French. The Nunnery Tales; or Cruising Under False Colours is also good, if you aren’t one of those stuffy religious types. The Autobiography of a Flea is also quite good. The Lustful Turk, or Lascivious Scenes from a Harem isn’t bad, but is perhaps a bit dated unless you’ve a copy of the most recent printing.” And that’s when it hit me. She was talking about written pornography. And she was twelve. Plus however old she was as a vampire, but she was twelve. And all those books had to be from a hundred years ago at least.
“Um… aren’t those books a bit… adult for you?” I said.
“Oh,” Violet said, putting a hand over her mouth. “I don’t understand all of them, of course. But they’re very interesting, and I’m ever so curious.”
Oh my god, I was thinking. Curious about… old timey sex books? Right after that came the even worse thought that the really old twelve year old creepy doll girl might be hitting on me.
“We could retire to my library,” Violet went on. She leaned closer to me and put her hand on my thigh. “I’m sure I have a few volumes you might find extremely interesting.” And I knew I was right. Jesus. Vampires were fucked up.
“Um… no thanks,” I said, trying to not just run away. “I’m, um… not much of a reader.”
“Oh, poo,” she said, pouting at me. “Well, if you’re ever interested…”
I needed to change the subject. Or maybe beat my head against the wall until I’d knocked this whole conversation right out of my brain because this was just too fucked up. So I went with the first thing that came into my head. “Um… since you know so much… whatcha think of the others?”
“The others?” Violet said, doing that creepy doll head tilt again. She still had her hand on my leg, which was also now feeling like it wanted to run away.
“The others like us.”
“Oh, they’re mostly boring.”
“Really? Even the Baron?”
“The Baron is a scientist,” Violet said, making a face. “They’re all boring.”
“He is?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. Him and his entire group of… well, I hesitate to call them friends. But they’re all like him… stuffy and boring and not at all exciting. They can be dreadful bores.”
“Oh.”
“Did no one tell you about them?” Violet asked me. She looked concerned, but it seemed… I don’t know, like she was pretending to be concerned. Not real.
“Sorta,” I said. “There’s, um… a lot I don’t know yet. And I don’t understand a lot of what I do know. Mostly they just threaten me. Like the sword guy.”
“Which sword guy?”
“There’s more than one guy with a huge sword here?”
“Oh, him,” Violet sighed. “You’d think a Turk would be more interesting.”
“I would? Why?” I asked, then remembered. “The book. Right.”
“Yes,” she said. “But no, he’s just as boring as the rest.”
“I mostly think they’re weird,” I said before I thought about it.
“Really? How so?” Creepy doll head tilt, and I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
“I dunno, just… weird,” I said. “Thought it was a vampire thing.”
Violet turned more towards me and took both my hands in hers. Yeah, they wanted to run away now, too. If she touched anything else, I’d probably just haul ass out the door. “Do you think I’m weird, Misty?” she asked. She even gave me a sort of concerned look, like the last one and just as fake.
“Um…” I said. “I don’t think I should answer that. Don’t wanna be rude.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Violet said. “I don’t mind a little rudeness if you tell the truth.”
Well, shit. Now I had to either lie, or tell the truth, which might piss off a vampire that was a hell of a lot older than me. Not something that seemed like a good idea if I wanted to live. But I’d seen Pops earlier, and this was neutral ground, right? So maybe I could at least get away and hide.
“Well… yes,” I said. “You are kinda weird. To me. Maybe not to anyone else, but…”
“Really?” she said, and sort of looked like she might cry.
“Um… well… I know you aren’t twelve.”
“Silly. Yes I am.”
“No you’re not. You might look twelve, but you’re a lot older. As a vampire.”
“Hmm. Well, that’s true. How could you tell?”
“Um…” I thought for a moment. “How you act. What you talk about. It’s like… you’re pretendin’ to be twelve, but… that’s not like twelve year olds act today. Y’know?”
“Okay…” Creepy doll head tilt, and her hands tightened around mine. Shit.
“I’m… really not tryin’ to be rude. Or hurt your feelin’s. Please don’t be mad at me.”
Now Violet’s face had gone completely blank. “How am I weird? Tell me.”
“Um, well… twelve year old girls these days… try to look older, not younger. Like they’re… tryin’ to be more grown up, but they don’t really understand what that means, so they try too hard.” I remembered my own life at twelve and winced. “Way too hard. And they don’t… act like sorta grown up little girls, or wear frilly dresses. Usually.”
“Is there something wrong with this dress?” Now her hands were tight enough to hurt.
“No!” I said, talkin’ faster now to try to get out of all this. “It’s very pretty. I like it. But when I was twelve, me and my friends… we’d get yelled at by our parents to put on more clothes. So our parents woulda liked your dress too, but it’s not what twelve year olds wear today. That’s all.”
“Oh,” Violet said. Her hands relaxed a little, which was probably a good sign. “Okay. How else do twelve year old girls act today?”
“Um…” I said. “It’s… been like a decade since I was twelve, so maybe things have changed.” Then I got an idea. “I don’t really know exactly for, like, really current girls. But you could look it up. You, um… know what the internet is, right?”
Violet smiled at me, which was at least better than the blank face, even if it was still a creepy doll smile. “Of course, silly. Will the internet tell me what I want to know?”
“Prob’ly,” I said. “Um… I’d look up… preteen fashion magazines. There’s a lot. They’ll have… articles about boy bands and stuff. Makeup tips, prob’ly. Lotsa information ‘bout how twelve year olds think about stuff these days.”
Violet nodded seriously at me. “I will,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Um… you might also…” I paused, then took a deep breath. “Might also wanna look up somethin’ called… um… a Gothic Lolita. Might… help explain any… weird ways modern people have been reactin’ to you. Um, if they have, that is.”
“I’ve noticed some oddness in others, yes,” Violet said. “Gothic Lolita, you said?”
“Um, yes. I’d explain but… I think you should see for yourself.”
“I will.”
“Good,” I said. “I wasn’t sure I could explain. I mean, I know it’s kinda hard for older vampires to… keep up with things. Sometimes.”
Apparently, that wasn’t a good thing to say. Violet’s face went blank again. “Exactly what do you mean by that?” she said.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean…”
“Explain.” Her hands got tighter again.
Shit, I thought. I was going to have to explain this. “I’m really sorry. It’s just that Pops said…”
Violet seemed to freeze. “You know Pops?”
“Um…” I said. Well, that’d be one way to deal with all this. “Yeah. He’s… kinda my friend, I guess. We’ve talked a few times. He’s been really nice. Looks out for me.”
“Oh,” Violet said, then suddenly sort of… came alive again suddenly. “Well, thank you for the advice, Misty Rose. Do take care, will you?” And she leaned forward and gave me a kiss on the cheek. Yes, my cheek tried to get away too. Then Violet stood up and arranged her dress.
“Um… okay,” I said. “It’s been nice talkin’ to you, and like I said, I’m sorry if…”
“Oh, it’s not a problem,” Violet said, smiling at me again, though there was just a hint of her being nervous mixed in with the creepy doll vibes. “Until we meet again.” Then she whirled around and almost ran back to the other side of the room and vanished into the group of pretty people. Or that’s what it looked like. Maybe she actually did vanish, I don’t know. Vampires are weird. A few other people watched Violet… walk quickly away, then glanced at me. I didn’t really like the looks on their faces, but none of them seemed… angry, I guess. But no one else came over to bug me, so I was able to calm down some. Enough that parts of my body didn’t feel like they were going to run away. Once I was sure I could just walk out like things were normal, I got up and went home.
I let myself in the door, and Kaitlyn looked up from her phone. Then her eyes seemed to focus on the side of my face. “Well, you seem to have made a friend,” she said. I stared at her for a moment, then went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. On the side of my face was a kiss mark in deep red lipstick, the same shade Violet was wearing. Where she’d kissed me.
“Oh, gross!” I said and I wiped the lipstick off. But that wasn’t enough. I still felt like the skin on my face was crawling so I ended up scrubbing my face with soap and a washcloth. For a few minutes. Okay, maybe that was too much, but the idea that the creepy doll had… left her mark on me was bugging me too much to do anything less. I looked into the mirror to make sure it was all gone, and saw Kaitlyn leaning against the door frame reflected in the mirror. Her voice had sounded a little weird when she pointed it out. Was she jealous? I looked at her in the mirror for a moment. Nope. I was just being weird because I was creeped out.
“Ugh…” I said. “Can’t believe I had that on my face all the way home.”
“Sounds like you got a story to tell,” Kaitlyn said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Lemme just… gimme a moment.” I went back out into the main room and laid down on my bed, then put my pillow over my face. I heard Kaitlyn sit down on her bed, but I waited for a few moments before moving the pillow. Then I told her about what had happened.
By the time I was done, Kaitlyn had a look on her face that said she at least felt kind of like I did about Violet. “Ew,” she said. “Vampires’re fucked up.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I keep tellin’ you that.”
“You’re not. Pops isn’t. The rest… what kinda sick fuck turns a twelve year old girl into a vampire? And she turned out… ugh.”
“A savage, I think,” I said. Kaitlyn raised an eyebrow at me. “Um… slang word for one of the two major types of vampire. They’re… emotional. Seducers and artists and thugs and… depraved and violent, mostly. They get mad really easy and freak out like I did. And they’re pretty much everything that’s wrong with the sorta people that spend their time chasin’ sex or a fight or the next high.”
“Oh,” Kaitlyn said after a moment. “Kinda like us. But without the fighting.”
I looked at her. “No. We don’t rape someone ’cause we think they’re hot.”
Kaitlyn made a face. “That kinda party people. Ugh.”
“Some of ’em, yeah. The worst ones.”
Kaitlyn was quiet for a bit. “So…” she said. “Are you a savage?”
“Prob’ly, yeah,” I said, and sighed. I’d been half expectin’ her ask. “’Cause I freak out, like at the party when those guys…” I trailed off, then shrugged. “But a lot of ’em are s’posed to… have some kinda vampire superpower that makes ’em more attractive. Helps ’em lure people. Only thing like that I have seems to be the power to attract weirdos and sick fucks.”
Kaitlyn giggled a little over that. I didn’t think it was funny, ’cause it was me havin’ to deal with the weirdos. “Any other clues?”
I shook my head. “Nope, just that, but it’s a pretty good clue. After that, it’s all… vampire families and where you’re from and shit. And if you’re nosferatu.”
“Nosferatu?” Kaitlyn asked. “That’s actually a kind of vampire?”
“Yep. Some kinda disease, but the scary lady didn’t go into a lotta detail.”
Kaitlyn paused a moment, then said: “Yes, you have Nosferatu. You have Nosferatu today!”
“Oh, god…” I said and put my pillow over my face again. That was from that stupid Dracula movie Kaitlyn made me watch a while back. I had to look up why that was s’posed t’be funny at all, and it pretty much ruined the joke. Which wasn’t really funny to begin with. “I don’t have Nosferatu, Kaitlyn. They’re a thing. But they aren’t my thing. And shut up,” I said before she could make that into some kind of sex joke. Just wasn’t in the mood.
“Oh, fine,” Kaitlyn said, sulking a little.
We didn’t do too much else after that. The vampire socials can drag on for a while, and it was late enough that Kaitlyn had to get sleep. Once she’d gone to bed, I went for a walk, but I guess my attract weirdos superpower wasn’t working because I didn’t really see anyone else. I went back home, curled up in my closet, and fell asleep about dawn, and that was it for the night. Not exactly interesting but I’d had enough of… well, everything for the night because of talking to Violet. Found myself hoping that my knowing Pops would scare her away from me for good. Some kinds of creepy you just want as far away from you as possible, you know?
