Driving Me Batty

Chapter 5: Roll Over and Play Dead

If you don't believe in ghosts, you've never been to a family reunion.

- Ashleigh Brilliant

The thing about vampires is that when they are changed their bodies remain exactly as they were in the instant before they changed. In my sister’s case that meant she was a perpetually PMSing sixteen year old. Her then boyfriend had chosen the worst time of the month to change her. Really. Living with her was a nightmare. Sure a familial bond had developed between us since her arrival a few years back, however that same familial bond took sibling rivalry to a whole new level. Twenty years of being an annoying sixteen year old and she still wasn’t able to suppress her childish instinct.

“Can I just borrow your eye-liner? Mine mysteriously vanished.” I suspected her but I wasn’t going to accuse her when I was asking for a favor.

“Why should I? You wouldn’t lend me your denim skirt when I asked.” Her petulant tone was like nails on the chalkboard of my mind.

“I was wearing it! What was I supposed to do? Strip down just for you?”

“Well, I’m wearing my eye-liner right now.” I silently chanted the count down to my return to college in my head like a mantra. Three weeks. Three weeks. Three weeks.

“Whatever Stacy. I’ll just borrow Grandma’s. Do you know where she is?”

“I might.” Oh she was enjoying this. I don’t know what I had ever done do deserve this.

“Where is she?”

“The den.” I stomped off in the direction of the den, fuming. I was surprised the smoke alarms weren’t going off.

I dramatically swung the door to the den open and shouted “Grandma!” before swiftly slamming my hand over my eyes, tripping backwards and yanking the door shut. It would take at least four tequilas to erase that image from my mind.

“Again grandma? Again? UGH!”

“Grandma?” a young (naked) male asked in confusion. The walls and doors of this house were not thick enough as I was repeatedly reminded throughout my childhood.

“Just a term of endearment,” she placated him. “Sweatheart what do you want?”

“In the grand scheme of things I would like to not keep walking in on my grandmother naked and sweaty in the throws of passion with some werewolf, vampire, ghoul or some other creature of the night in public areas of the house. But I’ll settle for borrowing your eye-liner right now.”

“Top left hand draw of my bureau. And this one is human. With the stamina of a vampire on Viagra.” The things I heard after that statement would forever be burned into my brain. I was scarred for life. I left the vicinity as swiftly as possible passing my sister on the way to my grandmother’s room. She was cackling like a w(b)itch. I glared at her.

“You knew what was going on in there?” She smirked in reply and it took every ounce of strength I had not to jump on her and rip every strand of hair out of her head. “ARG! What is your problem?!” The only thing that really stopped me was that I didn’t have time to fix up before going out with my friends to the only decent bar in town.

I was using my grandmother’s eyeliner in her empty, totally usable room when my phone rang and I knew my old high school friends were here to pick me up.

“Lira,” my sister’s voice rang out all sugary, sweet and false as I reached the last stair, “give me a lift to my boyfriend please.” Seriously?

“Since when do you have a boyfriend?” She looked at me incredulously as if I had just insulted her mother, her deity of the month or her pair of Jimmy Choos.