Cyri Newton scooched another increment closer to her father to avoid the moist arm of the gentleman to her left. “I can’t believe we’re going to be here for a week,” she said. What she really couldn’t believe was that her mother hadn’t vetoed her attendance.
“I know. Who has the best dad ever?”
Cyri thought it might be some girl whose father hadn’t just sprayed saliva on the back of a stranger’s head while chanting, “Eradicate!” Cyri overlooked the spit and offered her father a smile because he did try hard, but her dad’s attention had gone right back to the vampire host.
“Being elite beings, we like to stay elite,” Chaz was saying. “That’s the purpose of this show: we give people who might be worthy a chance to prove it. To the judges. To the world. And, much less importantly, to you. One of the twelve contestants you’re about to meet will be the newest chosen one. The other eleven, well, they’ve gotten their affairs in order. But the winner! The winner will be transformed into an infinitely superior being, and you get to watch every step of the journey. And I do mean every step. Remember to take a peek at the contestants when they’re in the house. They’ve waived their right to privacy.”
“Bathroom cam! Bathroom cam! Bathroom cam!”
Chaz shook his head at the audience. There were times when he was charmed by humans, but they were rare, and when exposed to them in large groups, he ended up fighting the desire to drain every last one of them.
Finally, the catcalls and whistles dwindled, and Chaz could continue. “You and everyone watching at home can vote for any contestant at any time. Those votes will be tallied after each challenge, and you will have the opportunity to participate in a poll clarifying the results. That is, you’ll have a chance to vote on why you hate a contestant so much you elected to ruin their dream. Then the judges will assess the contestants and make their decision. They may, or may not choose to honor viewer votes.”
Chaz paused for more cheering, although he noted it shrank from ear splitting to a reasonable din a few seconds faster than the initial roar had. No stamina. Humans were such pussies.
“Are you guys ready to meet our judges?” Chaz cupped a beautiful hand around an equally beautiful ear and leaned forward. “I can’t hear you!” It was a lie. Vampires in the next state could hear them, but the crowd tried harder. Chaz nodded in satisfaction.
“Everybody ready?” Delia asked as she adjusted herself in her corset for maximum effect. Nodin nodded. Edmund bared his fangs in one last practice hiss.
Vampires, being the showy fuckers that they were when not in hiding, couldn’t just pull up a few stools. An altar rose above the audience and on it sat three thrones. Each was composed of human bones and overlaid with gold. They gleamed in the studio lights as they waited for their occupants. Like office cubicles, the thrones had once been identical but had since been individualized for their users.
One was adorned simply with only the top half of a skull on each arm positioned to serve as a handrest. Another had been enhanced by an abstract iron rendering that suggested wings unfolding from its back, and the throne in the middle sported ornately embroidered cushions on its seat, back, and arms that looked old but were memory foam. And pink.
Chaz was halfway through the judges’ introduction. “Look to the altar, and you’ll see our distinguished and beautiful panel, all returned from wherever they scatter when we’re not filming just for you. Let’s meet them now.” The altar was empty, and then it wasn’t. The judges appeared as though they were one, all in the same instant, and it was like The Beatles and the Super Bowl all rolled into one.
It always was.
Two males and one female now occupied the thrones. All eyes turned to the female. Wherever she was, no matter the company, all eyes were drawn to this female first. As always, Chaz bowed to the inevitable. “Please welcome the mesmerizing Delia. Men want her; women want to be her. Except for the women who want her.”
“I believe, dear Chaz, that you forget about the men who want to be me,” Delia said. The crowd cheered her wit. They were, of course, really cheering her beauty.
“Oh my god,” Cyri said. Her seat was so good it was hard to miss a single word no matter how she might long to.
Her father was too busy wanting Delia to answer.
Chaz bowed. “In addition to welcoming Delia back to the show, let’s congratulate her on her newlywed status!”
Delia inclined her regal head. “Thank you, Chaz. Thank you all. My beloved husband and I appreciate the support.”
“Lucky number, let me think, it’s only eleven, isn’t it?” The judge to Delia’s left raised a lip to sneer, letting a fang slip out.
“He is lucky, yes,” Delia agreed. She was resplendent and unflappable. “And you are correct; he is only my eleventh husband. Of course, I try not to marry more than once a century or so. But Marco is not to be resisted, and he is doing very well. Thank you for asking. He brought home a lovely little model for us to share just last evening.”
“Your human mother spat you out in 1971,” Chaz said to Delia. “What is this ‘centuries’ nonsense?”
“I just like the sound of it,” Delia shot back, managing to imbue her mental tone with shades of Nicholson.
“Don’t be a tease, Delia,” Chaz said aloud. “This model, was she good eating?”
“He was not for eating, only for nibbling and, of course, sex. Marco is adventurous. But please, enough about me. I think you better introduce him, Chaz.” Delia indicated a Norse-god type to her left. “He’s feeling unappreciated.”
“Please welcome Nodin,” Chaz prodded the crowd, who had been hanging on every word of the tiff, unwisely hoping for an outright scuffle. Nodin nodded his blond head in recognition of the cheers. The sneer disappeared. Nodin had walked the earth before Christ and spent centuries hiding what he was, but the perks of being on television were sometimes undeniable.
“And last, but not least, say hello to Edmund!” The crowd greeted Edmund with only slightly less enthusiasm than it had Delia. Edmund was a traditional vampire fanatic’s vampire. Chaz had long suspected Edmund’s widow’s peak had been surgically achieved.
Chaz knew Edmund hated the show because he hated humans. Chaz had always figured Edmund had hated himself when he’d been one. He was here because he took his duties as a guard of vampiric purity seriously. Edmund waved a hand at the crowd to shut them up and thought he couldn’t possibly manage another season. Chaz shuddered at the sight of Edmund’s fingernails. They were old school pointy and disgustingly thick and yellow. Chaz had indulged in a mani/pedi that afternoon.
Undead didn’t have to mean unkempt.
“Do you know what happens next?” Chaz asked the audience. They didn’t let him down.
“Fresh blood! Fresh blood Fresh blood!”
Chaz had come up with the chant the first season. It always gave him such a tingle to hear it chanted he forgot he was, in effect, getting validation from human beings.
“That’s right!” Chaz beamed at the crowd. A teenage girl in the front row fainted. Chaz was, as vampires tend to be, gorgeous. “Time to meet this year’s contestants. Let’s start with the ladies!” The crowd expressed their love for ladies, particularly ladies who might soon be in a position to drain them dry.
“Ladies! Ladies! Ladies!”
“I love you!” someone screamed. Chaz flashed a pointy smile and waved in the direction of the shout, assuming, as always, that the outburst of affection was meant for him. Besides, the ladies had yet to appear.
Cyri slouched in her seat and let out a disgusted sigh no one heard.
Poised to step onstage to meet Chaz and be presented to the crowd, Emily let out a similar sigh. She was so absorbed in anticipation and dread that not until she’d been dragged twenty yards and bustled around a corner did she realize she had been seized by a pair of tall blonde vampires. Of course, to give them their due, her hijackers had moved quickly.
“Thank you,” Little P said to the vampires who mel
ted away without reply.
“What’s going on?” Emily said.
“Just a small adjustment to the lineup,” Little P said as though it were self–evident. “You’ll go on fourth right after the dancer. Cassie, her name is.”
“Why?”
“No reason.”
“You sent the vampire brigade to yank me over here for no reason?” Emily tried to keep her tone polite. Little P didn’t strike her as the average lackey. “Is this because I’m not crazy?”
“Absolutely not.” Little P thought all the contestants were crazy. “It’s because you’re not blatantly crazy.”
The audience was putting their hands together to welcome Madeline as she made her way across the stage to join Chaz.
“That’s what they think of meeting this season’s first Creature of the Night contestant,” Chaz said when the crowd stopped screaming. “How does it feel to know all that was for you, Madeleine?”
“It’s a dream come true, Chaz.” In spite of her excitement, Madeline was a little appalled to be standing in front of so many people. She kept her focus on Chaz. She thought she might just fall into his eyes; they were so deep and dark. All those people, the ones who said vampires don't have souls, had never looked where she was looking. Madeline was ashamed to be standing before him in a cardigan.
Chaz wasn’t showing off his soul, but he was assessing Madeline’s emotional state. There was something fanatical about the gleam in her eyes.
“A dream come true,” Chaz repeated. Like they’d never heard that before. Another season or two and things were going to get tedious. “How ridiculously fantastic, Madeline. I’m happy to be part of your dream. And so are the judges.” Madeline waved at the judges. “And so is the world!” Madeline waved at the camera. “We want to hear your story. Tell us about yourself in thirty seconds or less.”
“Why must they tell us about themselves as though they are not all the same?” Edmund said, trying to entrench himself in character.
“They are not alike in every way,” Delia said.
“The show is for humans,” Nodin said, “and they think of themselves as unique.”
Madeline had seen the show and had prepared for this part. She didn’t have words to describe herself in all her complexity, but someone else had. Madeline ran her tongue over her lips to moisten them and found them still sticky and moist with gloss. It was her mouth that was dry. You can do this, she told herself. You were born to be one with the night; this is just to make it official. Her recitation started out as a croak, but gradually, she worked it out and produced a steady if not inspiring rhythm.
“Speak Mary–words into our pillow. Take me the gangling twelve-year-old into your sunken lap. Whisper like a buttercup. Eat me. Eat me up like cream pudding. Take me in. Take me. Take.”
“Are you a big fan of Sexton?” Delia pinned Madeline with her gaze. “She was an interesting woman. It was tragic, her death. I would have been happy to turn her.”
“It is possible a human, one that took her own life, would not have been interested in extending it eternally,” Nodin said. “Not to mention she was dead before you slithered from your mother’s loins.”
“I wouldn’t say immortality is the same thing as eternal life,” Delia said. “I’ve read her work, which means I know her in spirit. And I’m starting to think you have a problem with women, Nodin.”
“A problem with women spewing slithering spawn?” Edmund wondered.
Chaz hoped he wouldn’t have to break up a brawl this early in the competition. Delia hadn’t moved, but she had tensed, changed in a moment from basking in the adoration of the fans to being coiled to strike. “And the Catholic Church, among others, would agree.”
“Are we so incapable of thought that we must claim The Church as an ally in our discourse?” Nodin said.
Delia threw back her head and laughed. Every male in the audience, plus or minus ten percent, responded with an erection. “No,” Delia said. “We are not. Madeline?”
“I am, yes. An admirer.” Madeline was congratulating herself on being a person of such depth that she had already snared the interest of the judges.
Every year. Chaz gave a nearly imperceptible nod in response to The Voice coming through his earpiece.
“So, Madeline,” Chaz said. “Tell us about the time you recently spent in Happy Mountain.”
“It was good, Chaz. Really good.”
“For those who don’t know, Happy Mountain is a sanatorium catering to the violent and severely delusional.”
“The staff there is wonderful,” Madeline said.
“Yet I understand you didn’t go willingly.”
“Absolutely not, Chaz.” Madeline smiled and added, “Although now, I highly recommend it. Unless of course you’re one of those happy people, and then I don’t think there would be any point.”
“Seriously?” The Voice was pissed. Chaz shrugged. Mental illness wasn’t a big deal these days; the stigma, along with the thrill, was gone.
“That was fantastic, Madeline.” Chaz threw an arm around her shoulders. Madeline quivered. “Are you guys excited to see what she’s going to do throughout the competition?” The crowd was. “All right, you head off with the girls, and we’ll see you for the first challenge.”
The girls steered Madeline away, one of them leaning close and inhaling her neck. They were very much alike, both tall and blonde, both newly turned. Around set, they were sometimes referred to as “the twins.” Their names were Rylie and Kylie, but no one could reliably tell them apart. Madeline thought them beautiful and let herself be led offstage with no sign of fear. Chaz was doing his best to monitor them since being newly turned meant they had an unfortunate tendency to want to sample the contestants.
“I’m so sorry, sir, but we had to start without him.” Little P braced himself for The Voice’s reaction to his failure. “He’s just nowhere to be found.”
“Yeah, no shit,” The Voice said, gesturing at the monitors covering an entire wall of his cavernous office. “Fuck it. He’ll show up eventually.”
Lola’s in the house bitches! Though technically, they’d brought her over from the house an hour ago. It was a badass house, and she planned on returning to it in glorious victory. Lola thought the Manor nearly worthy of, well, Lola. It had twelve fucking bedrooms for Christ’s sake. Lola’s had a canopy bed and a claw-foot tub, both things she’d coveted as a child but never experienced. Lola had gone without a lot of things growing up. In fact, the dressing room she stood in now, which paled in comparison to the Manor, would have looked like paradise contrasted with her childhood abode.
For Lola, the discrepancy between what she wanted and what she could obtain disappeared the summer she turned fourteen and worked out how to use her brand new body. Soon enough, there would be nothing she wanted and didn’t get. Fuck that, soon enough wasn’t. She was getting everything she wanted starting right fucking now.
She felt she was going mad with anticipation. The rules of separation, enforced by rigorous supervision, had prevented her from catching even a glimpse of the others staying in the Manor. Even the trip over from their current home hadn’t provided any opportunity for interaction. They had been ferried over individually and shut in their dressing rooms. If anyone could thwart the lockdown protocols, Lola would be the girl to do it, but for now, the rules should be followed. Not that Lola followed rules for the sake of obedience, but she might have been caught. A fresh failure would not put her in the proper mindset.
Even with minimal knowledge of what she was up against, she saw herself winning. Lola had made up her mind to win. It didn’t much matter what that entailed. “Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets…” Lola threw back her head and laughed. As long as there wasn’t a singing competition, she’d be just fine. Although she was probably better than she thought. Too bad American Idol had finally gone off the air. Otherwise, she’d do that next. Lola was good at life, which was funny to think of now.
She smiled at herself in the
mirror, pleased with what she saw. Of course, Lola had a tendency to be pleased when she looked in the mirror. Framed by a fall of sleek black hair were a generous mouth and hazel eyes. She tried the smile again and considered whether it might come off as cocky. She pulled out her girl-next-door grin, the one that got her favors, gifts, and other gestures of friendship or lust. Sometimes, these tokens were followed by a period of hurt feelings when Lola failed to reciprocate, but she dealt with that easily by bestowing another smile, a lingering touch, a promise of more to come.
Lola snapped out of her reverie and cataloged one more time the white teeth, the dimples, the eye contact that meant she was a person worthy of trust. Check, check, check.
Some lackey knocked on Lola’s door with her five-minute warning. Lola got dressed.
Onstage, Chaz addressed the audience. “Are you ready for your next contestant?”
The crowd screamed affirmations.
“Then let’s meet Portia.” Chaz extended a hand to Portia, who was crossing the stage with all the poise Madeline had lacked. The crowd quieted when she reached him; they were over the first craze of excitement and were settling into a routine.
“How are you, Portia?” Chaz said. She placed her hand in his and leaned in to exchange cheek kisses.
“It’s a beautiful night,” Portia said, “and I feel fine.”
She was a beautiful girl, Chaz noticed. But she was a girl on the cusp of looking more woman than ingénue. She had already developed the habit of not smiling too hard to keep the crow’s feet at bay. From the beginning, they’d gotten more applications from actresses of a certain age than from every other demographic combined.
“Are you ready to tell the world all about you?” Portia nodded and smiled her careful smile, lots of teeth, minimal eyes.
“My name is Portia, and I’m an actress.”
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