Parallel World

Chapter 19

"Help! I've started to transform back into a human!" The voice on the phone was desperate. It sounded familiar but I couldn't remember who it belonged to.

"What?"

"I've started to transform back into a human! Elisa, you gotta help me, I don't know what to do!"

"Why are you calling me?"

"Because you're the cleverest vampire I know!" the vampiress exclaimed.

"Yeah, I suppose so. I'm sorry to ask, but who are you?"

"Bree."

"Oh, Bree... OK, come to my place. You know where I live, right?"

Bree's case was a truly extraordinary one. Just a year ago she was the singer in a rock band, dreaming of conquering the world with their music. The band was new and practically unknown so they mainly played unpaid gigs in dodgy clubs and sent out demos hoping to get the attention of a producer or an A&R rep. What they mostly got was either booing or rejection. I wasn't surprised. I had heard some of their songs - their music was mediocre at best. Stick to the day job, as we used to say.

Anyway, one night after a gig Bree was going home when she was attacked. It didn't surprise her as it had happened before. The attacker was a vampire but Bree had no way of knowing that. Instead of fleeing, she decided to fight. Bree always wore brass knuckles when she was out and about late at night. She punched the vampire in the face. According to her, she did a pretty good job as it made him bleed. Unfortunately, she cut herself on the vampire's razor sharp fangs and their blood mixed. Bree ran away not knowing what was about to happen.

The transformation was a massive shock to her. Music was what Bree loved the most but being a vampire meant she had to give it  up. It was absurd and sad at the same time - Bree now had a body that didn't feel tiredness, that didn't require doing anything to stay in shape, she had enviable working capacity and beauty that would never fade - she had everything humans craved but couldn't make much use of it. If the group did have a breakthrough one day it was naive to think that no-one would find out her secret. As soon as someone would discover that Bree is actually a vampire she would be whisked off to a secret lab for research purposes.

Bree had always had a temper, she was brutally honest and wouldn't let anyone push her around. Becoming a vampire made those qualities more pronounced. Bree was full of anger and dealt with it by wandering around at night and killing or beating up everyone who had once treated her badly: producers, musicians, bouncers and so on. On her way home she usually also vandalised a few cars and destroyed trash cans. Bree was desperate.

However, after a while Bree saw the advantages of her new body. She didn't have to work in order to have a roof over her head and put food on the table. She didn't care whether the place was heated and didn't have to feed several times a day. She actually started to enjoy being a vampire. But she still missed the music badly.

One night she turned up at Glory & Shame. Nobody had told her about the club. She found it herself. Bree later said that she had just gone out and suddenly realised which direction to go. She followed her senses and found us. That's how we met. Bree instantly liked me and told me her story. I felt sorry for her - when I transformed I only buried my dream of writing my name into history as one of the world's greatest chemists, not chemistry in general, whereas Bree had to give up on music altogether. She had stopped singing completely. As she explained every note, every tune reminded her of songwriting, rehearsals and gigs.

Bree arrived some forty minutes later. She looked totally lost.

"What makes you think you're turning back into a human?" I asked once we had sat down on the living room sofa. Jack was out of town and, once again, he had missed a great drama.