Misty Rose: Nature
Chapter 23
Next major thing didn’t happen until the vampire social for September, so I’m going to skip to that. Started out pretty much normal, and the weird stuff the other vampires would wear didn’t seem as strange so close to Halloween. No decorations, though. Guess vampires don’t celebrate holidays.
I was over in what was definitely now my corner. No one else went there, which was fine by me because it meant I mostly didn’t have any fucked up vampires bothering me. So I was kind of surprised when a vampire came up and sat down next to me. And nervous. Vampires were weird.
This one was dressed in all black and had a long black coat. Not unusual for vampires, really, including the expensive fancy sunglasses. The difference this time was that he looked like… some kind of human-shaped rodent. Weasel or something. He had actual fur on his head, white over most of his face, black around the eyes, and sort of medium long black hair. His ears were closer to the top of his head, which was more rodent shaped than human, like with the extended nose and mouth and whiskers and everything. But his face still had human things about it so it was kind of half rodent and half human, and he was wearing a black suit with a black trench coat and black boots. And sunglasses. He actually sort of looked like something I’d seen out of a movie, but I couldn’t remember which.
But the fact that he didn’t look human probably meant he had nosferatism, and I mostly tried to avoid those vampires. Victoria said something about how… well, it sounded like a disease. I didn’t really understand it all, but I guess vampires can mutate or something. That’s where the different kinds of vampires came from, and I guess it has something to do with what kind of person the vampire is. Nosferatism is sort of like that, and it also makes vampires stop looking human in some way. There’s little changes, like animal eyes or whatever, but most of the time, the vampire will change into some kind of monster, something obviously not human. So they have to hide from humans, which makes being a vampire a lot harder. I guess vampires can… catch nosferatism from other vampires, but I wasn’t sure exactly how, which was part of why I avoided them. The other part was that they were scary looking. Not going to lie about that, I had enough to deal with without scary monsters.
The guy who sat down next to me wasn’t scary. He was weird, but… okay, he didn’t look human at all, but he also felt… more human than an awful lot of other vampires. Like in the way I could sense for some reason. So I was still nervous, but maybe not… scared, I guess. More human seemed to mean less of an asshole with vampires. Not always true, humans can be assholes too, but still.
“Hey,” the guy said. “You must be Misty Rose.”
“Um… yeah,” I said. “That’s me.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said. “I’m Ferret.”
“Um, hi,” I said. Yeah, that was it. He actually looked like a ferret. But, you know, in a coat and suit and human shaped. And that was super awkward. Didn’t feel it was right to point it out, you know?
“They call me Ferret because I ferret out information,” Ferret said, making this sort of wave like you see people in movies do when they’re talking about something big and important.
I just looked at him. What the hell was I supposed to say, you know?
Ferret looked at me seriously for a moment or two, then grinned. Which looked weird on a face shaped like his, but I could still tell it was a grin. And it seemed friendly. “Just kidding. They call me Ferret because I look like a ferret.”
I nodded, feeling relieved. Okay, I could deal with this guy. “It’s a good name,” I said.
“I know, right?” Ferret said.
“Yeah. You actually look pretty good. For a ferret, I mean,” I said, and was thinking I’d just stuck my foot in my mouth anyway. “Um… I mean, your fur… isn’t patchy like some of the others…” Which was true. Lots of the others that looked sort of like animals looked like sick animals.
Ferret nodded at me and stroked his whiskers. “Thank you. I’m quite handsome, yes. For a humanoid rodent. People just want to pick me up and cuddle me and stroke my fur.”
I couldn’t help grinning a little at him. I was starting to like him, fur face and all.
“Lotta vampires’d be offended,” I said.
“A lot of vampires have sticks up their asses,” Ferret said.
I nodded. “Big sticks. With nails and spikes all the way up.”
“Ah, you’ve met them?”
I just grinned at Ferret.
“I think this is the point that I’m supposed to hit on you,” Ferret said with a serious face. “So: come here often? I’m afraid that’s the best I can do on short notice.”
“It’ll do for now,” I said, grinning again. “Fifth time at one of these things, actually.”
“Practically a regular then.”
“I guess. I try to keep away from other vampires, though.”
“We can be pretty weird.”
“Yeah. And it seems like whenever I open my mouth at these things, I offend someone.”
“Or you meet someone like Violet.”
I shuddered a little. “Yeah. Or that.”
“Speaking of our little dear, have you seen her this month?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Not sure I want to.”
“Oh, she’s priceless,” Ferret said. “Come see.”
I nodded, and Ferret led me over to one side of the throne room with a lot of the pretty people. We sort of lurked over to one side where we were kind of blocked by a pillar. And Violet was… she’d changed her whole look. Clothes, hair, how she was acting, everything. But she was acting more like a twelve year old girl character on some kids channel than any twelve year old I’d met. And she was… well, the only people I knew of that thought twelve year old girls flirted with people how she was doing were twelve year old boys. And pedophiles. So, yeah, she still didn’t get it. And her outfit… jailbait is probably the nicest thing I could say about it. My mom would have freaked out if I’d tried to leave the house dressed like that when I was twelve, which was why I had to change clothes before and after going to parties, and hide my party clothes from my mom when I wasn’t wearing them.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s just bad.”
“Yeah,” Ferret said. “And no one wants to tell her how bad she is.”
“Makes me think of a twelve year old boy pretendin’ to be a twelve year old girl in a chat room or somethin’,” I said. “She’s that kinda bad.”
Ferret laughed. “Yeah, that fits her pretty well. Sad, but it fits.”
We grinned at each other, then Ferret slapped his forehead. “D’oh, I forgot. Pops said to tell you he’s not a savage. He also said you were a hugger,” Ferret grinned at me. “I don’t mind.”
I nodded and grinned, relaxing. If Ferret was one of Pops’ friends, I liked him even more.
“Glad to hear it,” I said.
“That I’m one of Pops’ friends?” Ferret asked. “Or that I don’t mind being hugged?”
“Both,” I said. “But I don’t pet until I get to know a guy better.”
“Fair enough,” Ferret said, then looked around. “Curious why we haven’t been spotted yet?”
I looked around as well. We weren’t all that close to the group of pretty people, but we weren’t exactly hiding either. If someone had looked our way, they would have seen us. But no one was looking our direction, or even seemed to realize we were there. I thought about it a moment.
“I figure you’re makin’ us invisible,” I said. “Pops did somethin’ like that once.”
“Yep,” Ferret said, grinning at me. “And I’m better at it than Pops.”
“Uh huh,” I said, grinning back. Normally I’m not really into being a stalker, but I’ve had to deal with a couple, and… well, knowing I was invisible and I guess immune to being judged by the bitchy types most vampires seemed to be sort of made me feel stalkerish. Or at least wanting to… I don’t know, see the kind of stuff you see when perfect people don’t think anyone is looking. As in, they’re not so perfect after all. And Ferret didn’t seem as serious as Pops, so he might be more into the idea, right? Figured I’d at least ask. “So… we gonna spy on the others?”[KH1]
“Nah. They’re boring, and some of them might see me.”
“Really?” I raised an eyebrow at him. “How? I thought you made us invisible.”
“Vampire senses.” Ferret shrugged. “It’s possible. We could also all decide to take up ballroom dancing or get run over by a tanker truck full of squid. Not likely, but possible.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “So they’re unlikely to see you, but they might.”
“Pretty much,” Ferret said. “I’m very sneaky.”
I grinned at him again. Okay, he looked like some kind of weird half rodent, but Ferret was one of the more friendly and… well, charming vampires I’d met. I could deal with that. He looked around and wrinkled his nose, which looked really rodent-like, but somehow… natural on him? Don’t how to explain it, but he actually didn’t seem all that weird when you got used to how he looked. He actually kind of looked like a real life version of some of the anime animal people I’d seen online. Well, okay, he had a human body and I didn’t know if he had a tail, but still.
“I think we’re all done with the serious stuff,” Ferret said. “You want to get out of here?”
“Why Mr. Ferret, are you askin’ me out?” I said. I couldn’t help myself.
“Out of here? Yes,” Ferret said. “But you don’t pet on the first date, so no pressure.”
I laughed and we started heading towards the door. If he was going to walk me home… I was okay with that. If he kept making us invisible, it meant I wouldn’t have to worry about anything happening that I didn’t want to deal with. And I was right. We actually walked past someone lurking in an alley like muggers did and he didn’t even see us. It was early enough that there were still some people on the streets we took, and they walked around us, but didn’t seem to see us either. I turned around at one point to watch some guy who looked like he’d have just run me over if I didn’t get out of his way. If he’d known we were there. Ferret saw me looking and nodded.
“We aren’t actually invisible,” he said. “They just don’t see us.”
“Huh,” I said. “So it’s like… you’re messin’ with their heads.”
“Pretty much,” Ferret nodded. “They’ll walk around us and not remember doing it. But if I did something that made it obvious someone was here, they’d see us just fine.”
“Oh,” I said. “So you still gotta be sneaky even if you’re invisible.”
“Yep. So I still have to know how to hide and be quiet.”
Which was true. Ferret was wearing boots, but I still had to listen hard to hear him walking. Okay, there were still some cars going by, but even when there wasn’t any noise, I could barely hear him at all. Mostly just that coat he was wearing.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” I asked.
“Online manual,” Ferret said. When I just looked at him, he went on. “Not kidding. You can find tutorials online for all kinds of things now. Wasn’t always like that, but times change.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. Used to just be all newsgroups and BBS logins,” Ferret said. “No web sites and browsers like they have now. Then it all exploded in the early nineties, and now we have things like smartphones. More powerful than the computers I grew up with, right in your pocket.”
“Huh,” I said. “Don’t really know the history of the internet.”
“Oh, well…” Ferret said and then… well, to be honest, I sort of stopped being able to follow it after the second block. Ferret was clearly really into computers and the internet and stuff, and not just like me and Kaitlyn who just used it for information. And looking at videos. But at one point he got really… technical, talking about… TCP-something. And I just stopped being able to make sense of it. But I honestly didn’t mind. It felt… kind of good, just walking and talking with someone. Even if he was a huge nerd. Vampires didn’t really do that. And I could put up with Ferret being a nerd.
After a few blocks, Ferret got back to smartphones and stuff I could recognize, so I started nodding and commenting again. “Sounds like you really like this stuff,” I said.
“Yep,” Ferret nodded. He didn’t seem to have noticed me tuning out. “It’s why I got vampired, actually. That and what I knew about technology. And it’s still something I’m into.”
“Vampired?” I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Turned into a vampire. Most of the names vampires use for it are silly.”
“Really?” I said. “Um… if you don’t mind me askin’…”
“I don’t mind,” Ferret said and shrugged. “Not a lot to tell. My sire was a really old vampire. She’d just woken up after a few decades and didn’t understand anything that’d happened from about nineteen ten onward. So she went looking for someone who did understand and found me. Knocked me out, hauled me away, and I woke up a vampire.”
Sire is one of the names vampires call the one that turned them into a vampire. One of the nicer ones, anyway. And yeah, older vampires don’t usually just ask some human to explain things. The ones that can steal memories do that, the ones that can make people forget stuff grab some human, then demand a bunch of answers, then make the humans forget, and the ones that can’t do either grab humans and turn them because turning a human into a vampire means they’re less likely to tell anyone about vampires. And they get a useful servant or slave or whatever, at least until the human they victimized gets pissed off enough to rebel. None of them think about just going to the library.
“Jeez, I’m sorry,” I said. “That musta sucked.”
“It did, for a while,” Ferret said, looking at the sidewalk. “But it got better.”
“Really?”
“Mmmhmm. My sire got staked and left for the sun, and I was free of her.”
“Why?”
“Well…” Ferret put on an innocent expression. “Seems someone went and sold all the jewelry and gold she had laying around in her haven and invested the money. So it wasn’t available to… shall we say… pay off some debts she’d racked up. And vampires in Chicago can be charmingly old fashioned about how they deal with vampires who owe them money and can’t pay.”
“Old fashioned?”
“The other option was being given concrete overshoes and sent to sleep with the fishes. But vampires don’t drown and older ones can be sneaky, so they decided to be sure.”
I just looked at Ferret. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or serious. But honestly, I didn’t really care. His story fit, and I liked the idea anyway.
“Okay,” I said. “Then you came here?”
Ferret nodded. “I felt it was a good time to broaden my horizons.”
“Without seein’ the sunrise.”
“Exactly. So I… acquired a suitably fast vehicle and drove here.”
That… was actually something. Victoria said that most vampires didn’t really leave whatever city they got turned in. Too much risk of being caught outside at dawn, and… I guess there’s stuff vampires can’t really deal with that tends to live in the wilds between cities. And it was a long way from Chicago to here. Ferret really must have thought staying would be bad. Speaking of Victoria…
“Huh,” I said. “You’ve met Victoria, yeah?”
Ferret grinned at me. “She’s a real taste of home, yes. Keeps me from being homesick.”
I grinned back.
We’d actually more or less gotten home by this point, not that I’d noticed until right then. Talking to Ferret was a lot more fun than just walking by myself. I looked at my front door, then back at Ferret. “Hey, you wanna come in and meet Kaitlyn?”
“Is she going to pet me?” Ferret grinned at me.
I grinned back. “She just might. She’s a more… affectionate than I am.”
Ferret just raised an eyebrow, and yes, he had eyebrows. They were a darker color and longer than his face fur, so you could still see them.
“Um…” I said, clearing my throat and getting serious again. “She’s… also a human. And she’s never been to a vampire social and hasn’t really seen many vampires at all, so…”
“I understand,” Ferret nodded. “I’ll wait to come in until you say so.”
“Thanks for understanding,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll like you. She’s just never seen any of the people like us that don’t look totally human.”
“Not a problem.”
I walked over to the door, and Ferret stayed back a little, out of the light. I stopped and looked at the door. What the hell was I going to say? Hey, Kaitlyn, this is my friend the ferret? I couldn’t introduce Ferret as one of the monster vampires. And I didn’t think Kaitlyn would just instantly accept how Ferret looked, even if she’d eventually get to like him. So I had to come up with something. I realized I’d been standing in front of the door for a minute or two when Ferret pulled his phone out and looked at it. Not in a mean way, I’d heard the alert noise. Which for some reason was this canned computer voice saying, “You’ve got mail!” I looked back at the door and decided fuck it, Kaitlyn had been messing with me a lot recently, so I got to do it to her. I undid the locks and opened the door and just walked right in like everything was totally normal.
“Hey, Kaitlyn!” I said, using my cheerful face, which is sort of like my resting dumb face, but a lot happier. “Guess what? I brought home a guy!”
I hadn’t startled Kaitlyn because of all the locks, but I could tell she didn’t quite know what to think about my having brought a guy home. “Um… is he from the… thing?” she asked.
“Yep,” I said, grinning at her. “Come on in,” I called out the door. I heard Ferret coming in, but I was watching Kaitlyn’s face. She was looking past me, and I got to see her eyes get really wide and her face go blank and sort of white. She didn’t scream or try to run away, probably because she was too surprised to react. In any case, it was worth it. Like I said, she’d been messing with me.
Ferret seemed to take it in stride. I heard him stop, and after a moment, he closed the door. “Hi Kaitlyn,” he said cheerfully, then nudged me. “She’s taking it well.”
“Usually it’s me making that face,” I said, grinning at Ferret. Kaitlyn was staring at Ferret with really wide eyes and didn’t seem to be breathing.
Ferret nodded at me. “Let’s give her a minute to find her brain.”
“What?” said Kaitlyn, blinking a few times.
“And that face,” I said.
“Two minutes maybe?” Ferret asked.
“She catches on eventually,” I said.
“Hey!” Kaitlyn said, glaring at me.
“And that’s usually the next face,” I said, grinning at Kaitlyn.
“You two must be good friends,” Ferret said.
“Is he real?” Kaitlyn asked me.
“Yep,” I said. “Ferret, this is Kaitlyn. Roommate, best friend. Pain in the ass. Kaitlyn, Ferret. He’s a nosferatu. I told you about them.”
Ferret winced. “I’d prefer you didn’t actually call me a nosferatu,” he said.
“Why?” I asked. Didn’t want to be rude, you know.
“Nosferatism is a condition,” Ferret told me. “It’s like… well, how would you like it if I called you a measle?” Then he grinned, so I knew he wasn’t angry, but still.
“Um… you gotta point,” I said. “Okay. Let me try that again. Kaitlyn, this is Ferret. He’s… one of the vampires that don’t look completely human. One of the best looking ones you’ll see.”
“It’s true,” Ferret said, nodding. “I’m adorable.”
“I thought you said the…” Kaitlyn started, then winced.
“Differently normal vampires,” Ferret said, a little too seriously to be actually serious.
“Yeah, that. I thought you said they were scary,” Kaitlyn said to me.
“They are,” I said, shrugging. “Ferret isn’t.”
“Most of the other vampires with nosferatism are sort of nasty,” Ferret told her. “They tend to end up being part of the Quick.” He looked at both of us for a moment. “No? The Quick and the Dead?” Neither of us were getting the reference, so Ferret sighed. “Philistines.”
“That’s, um…” I thought for a moment. “Oh, right. The Quick are what I called Savages, Kaitlyn. The Dead are Corpses. So, um… I guess nosferatism sort of makes vampires angry.”
“It can,” Ferret shrugged. “Monsters inside and outside.”[KH2]
“He doesn’t look like a monster,” Kaitlyn said.
I winced and was about to apologize for her, but Ferret bowed before I could say anything. “Thank you,” he said. “But I’m afraid I’m cursed all the same.”
“Really?” Kaitlyn said.
“Oh, yes,” Ferret said. “Any time I go out in public, I get mobbed by women wanting to pick me up and cuddle me and take me home. It’s such a difficult life. Some nights I just don’t know what to do.” Ferret let that hang there a moment, then he grinned and winked at Kaitlyn.
“Really?” Kaitlyn said, then looked at me. “Have you been cuddling with this guy?”
“Sadly, no,” Ferret said before I could talk. “Your friend said she doesn’t pet on the first date, and I respect her boundaries as a woman. So I must wait until Misty decides otherwise.”
“Great,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Now I know two smartasses.” Then I grinned too.
“Well, he’s a lot nicer than your other visitors have been,” Kaitlyn said. “Except Pops.”
“Ferret is one of Pops’ friends,” I told Kaitlyn. She nodded, then suddenly laughed.
“Yes, we have Nosferatu!” she said. “We have Nosferatu today!”
I put my hand over my face. Figured she’d bring up that awful movie, and it wasn’t quite calling Ferret a measle again, but it wasn’t all that far away, either. But I was worrying too much.
“You’ve seen Dracula: Dead and Loving It?” Ferret asked. He actually sounded pleased.
“We own it,” Kaitlyn said, starting to dig through our pile of DVDs.
“Oh god, no,” I said. “Don’t get her started.”
“I knew I’d like you two,” Ferret said. “Hey, let’s watch!” And he plopped down on my bed facing towards our tiny TV and DVD player. Kaitlyn found the DVD and got up to put it on.
“Not you too?” I sighed at Ferret. But in the end I was overruled and the evening became watching that shitty movie. Then Kaitlyn and Ferret talking about other awful vampire movies, and Ferret promising to bring over more and… that was pretty much what we did until Ferret needed to go home because it was going to be dawn soon. But it was a good night anyway. And when Kaitlyn got over how Ferret looked, they got along really well. So, yeah, maybe I could put up with them both being smartasses. The movies were still going to be a problem, though.
