Here's a story that I wrote for the 2012 National Novel Writing Month challenge. It "failed" the challenge, as it is just shy of 30,000 words (50,000 is a winning "novel"), but it succeeded in being a lot of fun. So, yay me.
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| Not my story. Fan fic, if you will. |
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| Who you callin' Mary Sue? |
Enjoy, kids! Comments welcome, but as this is just for funny-fun, no need to beat yourself, or me, up over it.
And so, I give you...
“The Demented Non-Life of Jefferson Davis”
By L. L. Heberlein
(Copyright 2012 by L.L. Heberlein, published 2015, all rights reserved)
CHAPTER ONE:
My therapist said I should write this.
So, here I am, writing this down, not knowing what to say to you or where I’m going with this.
I don’t know if this is therapy, really. Or really if I need therapy. I mean, really. But I know I’ve got this thud in my heart and a rock in my belly, and if I don’t get it out somehow, I’ll die. Well maybe not die.
And see, that’s the thing right there. I don’t die. Everyone around me seems to go at some point, even the strange supernatural creatures that claim to be immortal. I’ve never claimed that; I know through these many years that there is no immortal anything. Rocks crumble, suns collapse in on themselves. Everything eventually goes back to nothing.
But then there’s me. Still around after all these years.
I suppose I should take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Davis. Just freakin’ Davis. Please, no Mr. Davis, and don’t ask “Davis what?” My given name, at birth was Jefferson Davis. No, not THAT Jefferson Davis, but twist my arm and I’ll admit that I was named after that ill-fated president of those ill-fated Confederates, back at a time and in a place that such a thing was popular. And now it seems to me that I can’t quite remember if we were actually related to the man, or just sort-of related, or maybe not at all, and it was just my mother’s attempt to gain some social recognition for our family.
And here is where I’ll admit that the year was 1862, we lived on a small plantation of sorts, and we thought we owned it all. The land, the house, the sun and sky above, and the people. Turns out you don’t really own anything, especially not people. My father returned from the war a broken man. Everything had gone. The land, the house, the people, and my dad’s left arm, which worked out for him, because he was right handed, and could still use his right arm to plow a field and smack my mother and sister…
Damn this is all so depressing. I wasn’t supposed to start out this way. I just wanted to tell you, I’m just Davis. I’m my own man, and have been for some time. I’m shy of five-foot-ten, but when you ask I’ll round it up. I have that dark, wavy hair that’s just this side of pitch black, and eyes that are that azure blue color of the sky.
I am thin. Scrawny looking. Pale, too, but don’t let any of that fool you. I was sick as a kid, but I’m strong now. Supernaturally strong. There are bigger, stronger creatures out there, sure, but don’t underestimate me for my thin build.
I threw down my pen and stopped writing. “Dammit, George. This is all boring bullshit. No one wants to know all this.”
George grabbed the pen before it rolled off the edge of the bar. “Davis, I told you. No one has to read it. Just write it.”
“And say what?” I asked.
“Say anything.” George shrugged a bit as he wiped the bar in front of me. He was always doing that, though honestly the bar was never that wet or dirty. It was just something to do during the boring parts of the night, the three a.m. parts, when the alcohol has stopped but the lights are still on.
George Babbitt, the bartender, is my therapist, or closest thing thereto. I talk to him every day, about everything, and couldn’t imagine telling my problems to anyone else, especially some clinical person in thick glasses with a pad of paper and a leather couch asking me about my mother.
George is also my source of employment. I do odd jobs for people at odd hours. It’s hard for me to hold a day job when I can’t even move during daylight hours. And stop right there before you start thinking I have sparkly fangs or a taste for blood. I’m not a vampire.
I don’t know what I am. I used to be a man, that much I know. And from all I can figure, I still am. But I don’t age. I don’t get hot, or cold, or hungry. I do get tired, dead tired, when the sun comes up, and I’m just about powerless to move. I wake up when the sun goes down, get up, shave and take a shower and head on over to George’s to see what’s available for work.
I don’t eat, but I do drink coffee. Lots of coffee. Sometimes I think that might be what keeps me alive. I tried once going off caffeine for a week, and I lasted about a day before the demon inside me threw a fit and demanded a double espresso or else he’d tear the place apart. I haven’t gone off the stuff since.
Is there something else I could feed on? Yes. But that always seems to get me in trouble, so let’s not talk about that right now.
George refilled the mug in front of me with the thick brown sludge that passes for drip coffee when Petro is gone. Petro makes the espresso at George’s. Petro is the only one who knows how to use the fancy machine from Italy. He’s also a werewolf and tonight happens to be the full moon, so Petro has the night off.
“This shit is… shit,” I said, drinking it down. “But, goddammit, it’s good. So bad, it’s good. What’s up with that, George? Why is some shit so bad, it’s good?”
George shrugged again and nodded toward my notebook. “Why don’t you try writing that down? Ask yourself that question and see if you can’t get an answer back from the deep recesses of that undead brain of yours?”
I glared at George. Undead usually means vampire, or zombie, and being that I’m neither, it makes me angry when I’m mistaken for either. George also recommended that I write about that, too. But I was sick of writing. It was, after all, three a.m., and George still hadn’t told me about the great thing he had lined up for me.
“It’s… well, it’s just that it’s a strange deal. I mean, it’s a good deal, it’s just I don’t like it,” he said.
I laughed. “You mean this time it’s so good, it’s bad?”
George didn’t laugh. He sighed, then leaned over the bar, putting his face right over my hot mug of coffee. The steam rose up and covered his glasses, giving him an eyeless appearance as he spoke. “I mean, some things are too good to be true.”
He removed his round, gold-rimmed glasses and wiped up the condensation with a bar towel. George is almost bald on top, with salt and pepper hair shaved short on the sides. He wears black shirts and jeans, and looks as skinny as I do. But don’t underestimate George, either. He’s a powerful wizard. Retired now, he says, and just keeps the bar because he likes the people. The undead, the demons, the weres and the witches. He takes them all, so long as no one causes trouble and everyone pays for something. There’s a quiet group of low-key vampires who come in and order Bloody Marys as a joke. Their team dominates at the pool tournaments.
“Just tell me,” I said, taking a swig of coffee before it had the audacity to turn cold.
George leaned back and crossed his arms. “It’s like this, there’s this dame. And she needs you to pick up a package for her.”
“A dame?” I said. “Who are you, Phillip Marlow?”
“That’s the only way I can describe her. She looks like a movie star, right out of the Thirties.”
“Vampire?”
“’Fraid so,” George said. “And she’s got money, from what I can tell. She even left a retainer.”
“How much?” I asked, almost drooling. I was down to my last twenty, folded tightly in the front pocked of my jeans, and I needed that plus more to pay rent for November. And a few months before that, come to think of it. I wasn’t too far from getting kicked out of my basement apartment, though the landlord’s a friend of mine. A very kind, understanding guy who needed the money just as much as I did, if not more. I owed him more than just the rent, and I was under enormous pressure to come up with the cash this month. I had to come through, no matter if it meant working for a vampire.
George sighed. “There’s five hundred, right now, and another thousand when the job is done.”
“Fifteen-hundred? What the hell kind of package is this, a piano?”
He shook his head. “I have no idea, and that’s what scares me. The dame was short on specifics, and big on the payout. Which means it’s either something valuable, or something dangerous. Probably both.”
“So give it to me,” I said. “I’ll take it!”
“I don’t like it though,” he said. “I don’t even know this dame. Clara-something, she said her name was, but I’ve got the feeling she just made that up. I’m not sure what she’s after, man. Could be the package, could be she just wants a hot meat-treat delivered to her door for five-hundred.”
“And you thought of me,” I said. “Because I’m neither hot, nor a meat-treat?”
He nodded. “Yep. If she’s after a supernatural snack, you’re the only one I know who isn’t edible.”
I shivered. Thinking of bloody-mawed vampires snacking on the living always turns my stomach. “You don’t trust them, do you?”
“Not at all. They’re greedy, empty sonofabitches. Never satisfied. Always looking for the next fix, never full. I don’t like taking jobs from them, and the only reason I mentioned it to you is I know you need it. And I know she won’t drink from you.” He wiped the bar in nervous swipes. “But I still don’t like it, and the more I think about it, the more I think you should just walk away.”
That made me stop and think. I trusted George more than just about anyone I knew, and if he didn’t think it was a good idea, it probably wasn’t. I shouldn’t do it, I thought. I should walk away from this one.
But desperation makes idiots of us all.
“You got anything else?” I asked.
George pursed his lips, looked down at his shoes, and shook his head.
“Then give it to me,” I said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
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