“Is this blood? Did you get blood on my new satin coffin lining? You’re in big trouble, mister!” she bellowed, tapping her toe impatiently and glaring at her son, hands on hips.

He shrugged noncommittally and continued playing his Xbox 360.

“You know you’re not supposed to eat in the crypt! What’s that in the corner?” She narrowed her eyes and stared past his oily black scalp. “How many times have I told you to dump your corpses OUTSIDE when you’re done with them? Listen to me when I’m talking to you!” She slapped the controller out of her son’s hands and stood in front of him.

“Would you chill out, mom? I was going to do it later,” he mumbled sullenly.

“Later? LATER?“ she shrilled. “It’s nearly sunrise, you have school tomorrow and you haven’t even STARTED your homework. Do you think you’re going to live with your father and me forever? Do you think we’re going to keep bringing you fresh kills when you’re grown? You’ve got another think coming, young man! Don’t you walk away from me!”

She followed him through the underground tunnel up to the mausoleum. “How do you think you’re going to feed yourself if you don’t learn to shapeshift into a bat? Do you suppose people will throw themselves in your path, offer you their jugulars and wait to be drained?”

He rolled his sickly red eyes at her, then slammed the massive stone door in her face. “You just wait until your father gets home!”

She received no response from inside the mausoleum, but she heard his coffin door creak shut.

“You’re not going out Friday night until you pick up all of those empty bodies and bury them in Potter’s Field. Do you hear me?” She shrieked.

“That boy is driving me crazy,” she muttered to herself. “Sometimes I could just stake him through the heart.”







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