Annie went missing. That's why posts have been few and far between. She just dissolved into the crowd waiting to see Santa Claus one night at the King of Prussia Mall. Sarah took her. She wanted to go. So they dressed her up as a normal little Caucasian mortal child. They put her in jeans and sneakers, a turtle neck and sweatshirt. They brushed her fine, soft, sandy-blond hair, anointed her with a powdery scent meant for little girls and that was it.... Annie loves mortal rituals. She joins in and sings 'Happy Birthday' every time the wait staff brings a little, sparkler-topped cake to some smiling simple soul at the Princess Diner they take her to for chicken soup on cold winter nights. Annie never eats the noodles, or the little carrots that swim around in it. She pushes them aside and gently drinks the rest with an oversized tablespoon. Vampires can ingest mostly clear liquids. Broth is OK.
Everyone looked for her. Jonathon went to all the dim sub-basement specimen storage warrens beneath all her favorite museums. He questioned all the dusty mummies. Many vampires instinctively comprehend dead languages. But the desiccated, old North African aristocrats didn't know anything, nor did the immense groupers
(who could conceivably swallow a deep diving, female pearl fisher) moving through the shadowy depths of their large commodious home, in the aquarium 'cross the river....Same with the elferinas and elferinos. Same with all the night-folk. Annie was just gone. One moment she was explaining to the Mrs. Claus woman why she was wearing the wrong bra and the next she went bye-bye....
They asked 'Papa' her well formed twenty eight thousand year old progenitor, if he could detect anything.... He broke off his mid-space stare, momentarily making eye contact, before clicking on Will & Grace and settling in for his favorite show. 'Life Eaters' (the politically correct term for vampires) are such a strange breed. And the townhouse is such a strange place.
Edith, the witchy-woman housekeeper, offered to throw a hoo-doo. Jonathon told her he'd think about it... She went back to her seek and find puzzles, but proceeded to doodle old New Jersey Pine Barrens magic symbols all around the border of page sixty nine in her latest puzzle book... with a pen she took from the Citizens Bank. I think she hummed an obscure Piney reel, but I'm not sure. She might have just belched or wheezed or something....
This is where I have to supply a little background. You see, Vampire Wonderland has a minor alien problem. Once, some all powerful, off-Earth race decided to get funny with our oceans and Earth woke up surrounded by a two miles thick concentric roiling solid shell of salt water about sixty miles overhead. Not much light came through, so it was hard to see all the stranded ships and submarines and whales and fish and squid and seaweed and all just laying there upon the abysmal plane. Folks on cruise ships were real pissed, because the bottom of the sea wasn't perfectly flat and a lot of those top heavy luxury boats keeled right over, resulting in a whole mess of people who were gonna be dead before they got to the all you can eat buffet. True, there were some disoriented survivors stumbling around on the damp dark sand. Considering the horror of it all, they thought they were dead. People prayed. They called out for loved ones. You know families with little children take cruises too and Bic lighters only last so long. Biologists among you might know that certain marine crabs can survive for quite a while on dry land. Pickings were usually slim down there, but now, especially 'round the tipped over cruise ships (some naval and commercial vessels too, I guess) meat was all over. Close your eyes and think. You can imagine the rest....
Now Annie was snatched by some aliens, but not the ocean-moving ones. Ocean-moving ones are real bastards. And Earth did manage to reverse that strange interlude via hidden extraterrestrial info. World leaders thought it best we all forgot about it real fast. As you know, world leaders can do anything, because you all didn't know about it and that's proof.... Annie's aliens were from a more mellow, meditative race... like Mortimer Snerds with octopus tentacles instead of what we got. They had a different take on physical pain too.
So when they sent her back with a big old, multi-colored, swirly all day sucker, but minus one arm torn out from the socket, they had no idea what her (or anyone else's) reaction would be....
<more next time... and since this is a new year and 2018 and all, our aim is to make those 'next times' happen a lot more often>
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