Alicia and the Vampslayer

"I am fucking bored!"

It was a Saturday afternoon. Usually, on the weekends, I spent my mornings out and around the campus, so that I wouldn't disturb my roommate, Sally, who could never wake up before noon on a weekend and usually not before 2 p.m. Now, that it was the afternoon, so I had dared to return to my dorm room where I found Sally out of bed, but still in her pajamas. She had a lit cigarette in one hand, and an open bottle of Jack Daniels in the other.

I am so fucking bored!" she announced for the second time as I dropped my bookbag on my bed and turned to look at her.

"Now, really, Sally," I said in as cheerful a voice as I could muster, "how bored can you be? You were out late last night and didn't get home until I was fast asleep."

"That was okay," she admitted. "I was at the party in the Southside apartments. There were three kegs, and this so-so looking guy started making out with me. We ended up going into his bedroom. When he reached for a condom, I told him not to bother."

Er. . .There were two ways of interpreting that, and I wasn't sure which one she meant. "Do you mean," I asked, "that you decided not to have sex with him?"

"Nah, I mean I've already had sex with enough guys who wear condoms, and it's boring, so I thought I'd try it the other way."

That's what I was afraid of. "Sally, that was dangerous!" I didn't particularly like the idea of Sally reproducing herself.

"Yeah. well. Don't worry. I'll probably never do it again. It's boring."

Now, I felt a little sorry for her. Sally had been my roommate since the start of my Junior year. She was only a Freshman, and I had mixed feelings about Freshmen. Like many Freshmen, Sally had begun the year looking like one of those sweet girls that I would have been best friends with in High School (Actually, one of those sweet girls that I had been in High School), but now she seemed to have fallen into the habit of smoking, drinking, and having sex without much regard for the consequences.

"You know what you could do," I said still cheerful, "if you're really bored?"

"What?"

"You could study."

She was incredulous. "Study?"

"Sure. After all, this is a college. They actually have these things called classes that most of us take. You could open your books and learn fascinating things that would keep you from being bored."

"Yeah. Right." She put out her cigarette. "Have you got any pot?"

I sighed. "Since when do you do pot?"

"I tried it a few weeks ago." She paused. "Actually," she admitted, "it was kind of boring too."

I couldn't resist gently putting my arm on her shoulder and smiling. She was just so helpless.

It made her smile for the first time that day. "You know," she said, "I actually did learn something interesting in class the other day."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. In Psyhology, they told us that according to one theory, completely straight people only account for 10 percent of the population. And completely gay people account for only another 10 percent of the population.

I remembered hearing about that theory, and while I agreed that it was interesting, I wasn't sure that I believed it. I asked the obvious question, "so where does that leave the other 80 percent."

"They're all bi," she said. "They just don't own up to it." She sighed again. "You know, I used to think that lesbians were gross, but since I got to this college, I see all these lesbians who are pretty and fun, but I still want to date guys, do you think that makes me bi?"

What a question to ask your roommate on a Saturday afternoon! "I don't know," I answered honestly. "Only you can figure that out for sure."

"Do you think you're bi?"

That did it. "Sally, I really think that this conversation is getting creepy."

She persisted. "If I were bi and you were bi, would you fuck me?"

I couldn't help smiling, because she almost looked like she was imploring me to do it. I put my arm around her and pulled her close to me in a sort of friendly hug. "First," I said with a gentle chide, "you would have to shower and brush your teeth. You reek of booze and tobacco."

That made her smile too. "I could do that," she said and moved closer into the hug.

* * *

The next evening, I was at my desk studying when Sally came rushing into the room. "Hey, Alicia! Guess what I found today!"

She was holding a piece of paper that might have been a flyer, so I shrugged and guessed, "You heard about some new club?" That wasn't exactly something to get excited about. New clubs were being formed on campus almost every day.

"Yeah," said Sally. She placed the flyer on my desk. It read:

Want to help protect humanity from ancient supernatural threats?
Want to have a lot of fun doing it too?
Then Join the Slayers. Strong males and attractive females encouraged to apply.

This was was a new one all right.

"I'd like to protect humanity," said Sally idealistically.

"Good for you! But 'ancient supernatural threats'? What do you think that is?"

"I don't know, but that's what makes it so exciting." Sally was definitely changed. She didn't look bored at all now.

I shrugged. "This is probably another one of those Role Playing Games that happen on this campus."

That made her face fall and I felt bad, but she put her chin up and said, "They're having a meeting tomorrow night. We should go, just to see what it's like."

I groaned. My first thought was to tell her that she could go by herself, but then I couldn't help worrying that she might get into trouble without me, so I agreed.

* * *

The meeting was held in a room in the Lecture Center. The thing didn't get as large a turnout as I had expected. Maybe that was because even at New Paltz this whole idea sounded a little bit geeky. The thing that disturbed me about it, though was that there were some things displayed on the front table. They appeared to be a crossbow, a hammer, and some wooden pegs. This was getting disturbing.

“Greetings!” said a tall boy in black. “I am happy to see you all here. Tonight, I am going to talk about something which by now, I’m sure you all have heard of. . .Vampires.”

A murmur passed through the room. I had my own reasons for being nervous. I quickly scanned the room, but I saw that I was the only person in the room who was a vampire.

The boy went on to talk about vampires and how they had caused the human race so much pain and suffering throughout all of history. “But,” he went on, “there has always been hope, there still is hope, and there always will be hope.” His rhetoric was a little bit wasted on the crowd, but he continued. “For centuries, there have been brave groups of people called vampire slayers. Perhaps the most famous was the Dutchman, Van Helsing. Either him or Buffy.” This caused a bit of laughter. “Either way, these people are trained in the art of vampire slaying and continue to make the world a safer place. And now, you can become one. That’s right. We are vampire slayers and we wish to form our own team here on this campus. Sign up now, and we will teach you to fire wooden stakes into hearts to handle crosses in a way that repels vampires, and to survive against vampire attacks.”

The crowd was really puzzled. I was puzzled too. I had only met one vampire slayer in my life, and he had been unimpressive, although certainly violent. One boy in the front row asked the question which was on everyone’s mind. “Are you serious?”

“Of course, I’m serious,” said the boy. “Sign up, if you don’t believe me.”

“Are you going to sign up?” whispered Sally to me.

That was a dumb question, but I couldn’t tell her why. Instead, I raised my hand and said, “Excuse me. Learning to kill vampires sounds all good and well, but I was wondering how one goes about finding vampires in the first place.”

The boy smiled uncomfortably. I got the strange feeling that he wasn’t too sure about the answer, but he said, “We have ways. They take some training to understand completely.”

How evasive! “Look at it this way,” I said. “Supposing there’s a vampire right here in this very room. How would you tell?”

The question caused a giggle to pass through the crowd, but the boy just smiled, confident this time, and said, “I think it’s a safe bet that there are no vampires in this room right now, but thank you for your concern.”

The crowd tittered again. But I wasn’t laughing. It was all I needed to hear. This guy didn’t know the first thing about real vampires.
After the meeting, I said good-bye to Sally, who was very excited about signing up for the slayers, but sounded a little disappointed that I wasn’t.

* * *

During the next few weeks, Sally kept going to those meetings and the funny thing was that a change came over her. She stopped moping and smoking cigarettes. She had a cheerful almost empowered quality. I decided that maybe being a vampire slayer was doing her some good, so I didn’t judge.

It was one evening while she was out at the meeting that I heard a tap on my window. I looked outside to see a familiar bat there. “Open the window!” said a voice in my head.

“Go away!” I said.

“You know better then to defy me,” said the voice. “Open the window.” It wasn’t so much a demand as a simple statement about what I had to do. So, I sighed and opened the window. The bat flew in, there was a flash of light, and Miss Valentina was standing before me with her full black dress. “Thank you,” she said, “It has been a while since you and I had a talk.”

“Not long enough,” I said coldly.

“Perhaps not, but we need to have a discussion. I have heard about this roommate of yours. Really? You’re rooming with a vampire slayer?”

I couldn’t help smiling. “I wouldn’t say that, Miss Valentina. Have you seen how pathetic that group she hangs out with is? They’ll never slay a vampire.”

“You overlook two things. The first is that while these vampire slayers may be amateurish now, there is no guarantee, they’ll stay that way. Even Van Helsing had to start somewhere. It would be better if they were destroyed now while they were still weak.”

“I’m not destroying anyone.”

“Second, just because they can’t slay vampires at this stage doesn’t mean that they can’t cause damage. Do you remember that slayer we dealt with last summer, Arthur.”

I did remember. He went around killing innocent children on the off-chance that they might be vampires. Valentina had put it succinctly. “Give a slayer a wooden stake and a crossbow, and he’ll kill anything that moves.” But would Sally get that way? It was hard to believe.

Valentina said what I was thinking. “If you help me destroy this group of slayers, you just might save several innocent lives.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that. Before I could, there was the sound of a key turning in the door. I gulped. “Sally’s back from the meeting. You’d better leave.”

But Valentina made no move to leave.

When, Sally stepped into the room, I was startled to see that she was carrying a crossbow and a few wooden pegs. “Hey, Alicia!” she called proudly. “Look what they gave me today--“ Then, she stopped in her tracks, because she saw Valentina in the room. Of course, there was nothing strange about either of us having guests over, but usually they weren’t elderly women dressed in black. “Who’s this?” she asked.

I decided to see if I could bluff my way out of this. “This is my Aunt. She’s in town, so she stopped by to visit.”

Valentina raised an eyebrow at me. “Indeed,” she said. “I am here to visit. In fact, I am a little shocked to learn that my niece has a roommate who walks around campus with weapons. Doesn’t the college have a rule against that sort of thing?”

“Well, yeah,” Sally admitted. At the meeting they warned us to keep it out of sight when there’s a Health and Safety Inspection.” She opened her closet and shoved the crossbow inside. “There,” she said closing the closet door. “That ought to be safe enough.”

She was right. The school had rather strict rule about what we could or could keep in our dorms, but they weren’t enforced very well.

“Well now,” said Valentina, “what did you say that crossbow was for?”

“Oh,” said Sally with a slight smile, perhaps realizing how weird she sounded, “I’m going to be a vampire slayer.”

If she was expecting Valentina to laugh, she was surprised, because Valentina stepped forward until she was very close to Sally and stared at her. “And how will you find the vampires that you slay?”

Sally looked a little intimidated, but she went on. “That’s funny. Alicia asked the same question at the first meeting before. I guess we’ll just know when we see one-“
She broke off, because Valentina had now placed her hand on Sally’s neck.

“You are a fool,” said Valentina. “There are two vampires in the room with you right now,” and Sally gasped because Valentina was showing her fangs.

“Now really,” Valentina went on, “I understand you got into this because you were bored. You should become a vampire if you are bored, right Alicia. It can still be done.”

Not if I could help it, but I wasn’t sure I could. Vampires can be like superheroes sometimes. We can jump higher and run faster than most humans, but I hadn’t had these abilities as long as Valentina. Still, I decided to try. I jumped forward and landed on Valentina’s shoulders. Then, I tried using my legs to choke hold her.

“Are you crazy?” asked Valentina. “You cannot defeat me that way.”

“I can try,” I said. We both fell to the ground, and I began wrestling Valentina on the dormitory floor. This went on for a minute or so. Then, I felt a sting. There were thing whizzing past y head.

Valentina and I stopped fighting for a moment when we realized that that these things were stakes coming from Sally who had got out her crossbow again and was firing at us. The stakes were landing just about everywhere in the room, but on us.

I got to my feet. "Stop it, Sally." I took a deep breath. "Look it's true. I'm a vampire, but I almost never drink blood from people who don't deserve it. You have to trust me on that."

Sally looked into my eyes, and I think she wanted to believe me. She pointed her crossbow at the ground. "What about her?" she indicated Valentina.

I laughed. "She's one of the most amoral vampires imaginable, and she regularly kills little girls. I wouldn't mind seeing her dead."

Valentina was not amused. "Is that any way to talk about your mentor, Alicia."

"For the last time, you never have been and never will be my mentor," I said with disgust. "Valentina, get out of here and don't ever come back, or I will help Sally slay you. It'll be two against one."

"Two silly girls against a bride," said Valentina with a sniff. "Besides, who ever heard of a vampire helping a slayer?"

"Get out and don't come back!"

For one long moment, Valentina paused and looked back and forth between us. Finally, she said, "I will grant the first request. No guarantees on the second." She turned into a bat and flew away.

Her departure had the strangest effect on Sally and me. We both seemed to melt and fall into each other's arms.

After a long hug, Sally spoke first. "Wow! All this time my roommate was a vampire and I didn't know it. Does it mean I have to kill you?"

I shrugged. "The fact that you're a slayer doesn't mean I have to kill you."

Sally smiled. "Then I guess we won't kill each other.