My Vampire King

My feet hesitated at my brother's threshold, allowing my thoughts to haunt the back of my eyes. His green eyes flew open at the sound of my tiny footsteps. "Molly? What's wrong?"

        "I'm scared Darren," I stopped in my tracks, waiting for him to kick me out of the room, "I saw something."

       "What'd you see?" he sat up, peering at me with a pair of light, concerned eyes.

       "Fangs and blood," I grabbed the edge his bed sheet to prevent him from going back under.

       "What the..." he threw his hands in the air, "Molly, you woke me up for that? I can't believe you! You're already 5 years old, why don't you put all that vampire crap away and just go back to sleep! You know vampires aren't real."

        He stuffed his head in between his pillow and bed, snoring in just seconds. I sat down next to his bed on the floor and leaned my head against his top mattress. I must have fallen asleep sometime because the next time my little green eyes opened the bed was cold and seemed it had been empty for a while now. I slowly stood up on my feet, predicting this to be one of my brother's jokes of jumping out from random things at random times.

        Five minutes passed, nothing happened.

       Twenty minutes passed, nothing happened.

        My heart raced as I realized my brother was gone. My mind took over, telling me to calm down and check the whole house before coming to any conclusions. I crept downstairs, passed the vacant master bedroom—supposedly for my parents, if they ever returned from their year long business trip, so far it had been two years—and into the kitchen. Nothing but the hum of the refrigerator.

       I walked into the living room, making sure to look behind every piece of furniture.

       Finding nothing, I approached the garage, knowing it was be the only room left. I crept open the doors to the stairs that led down into the wet and cold space. I spotted my dad's old tool box and my mom's dusty treadmill placed at the end of the steps. I waited for my eyes to adjust into the light before slowing tip-toeing down into the endless abyss. I stopped at the very middle and froze when I heard a small tapping noise coming from the sole window. Squealing, I ran back up the stairs and rattled the basement door, ineffective in getting it open. Someone had locked it. My eyes crept back towards the tapping of the window. Something white flashed, like a lightening bolt, followed by a hollow and hysterical laughter. My gut yelled at me to stop, but my claustrophobia told me to run for the window and get out of this death hole. My hands quickly worked to open the freezing lock, but the sound of my racing heart in my ears prevented me from hearing the click.

        When my confused hands finally managed to open the lock, a swift movement from outside opened the window, grabbed my shoulders, and hauled me into our filthy and untamed backyard. The hands on my shoulders tightened, holding me in place. A figure turned the corner and came close enough to breath into my pale face, filling my nostrils with a faint smell of leftovers. I looked up into the eyes of the ravaging beast and found myself staring into a pair of dark, wild pair of eyes that resembled the grass I was standing on. "What a young life," his long, red fingernail traced along the right side of my face and stopped at my heartbeat that pounded in my throat. "The younger the tastier and you know how picky I am, right My King?"

     "Don't forget to save some for me, Jason." The voice behind me proclaimed.

      Was it just me, or did that sound like Darren? And king?

     A face appeared above the hand on my shoulder and I screamed realizing that the face staring back was my brother's except I found that his eyes shone an unnatural green and his nails showed a display of blood red crusted at the very tips. My brother smiled a toothy smile and I noticed a pair of unnatural over sharpened canine teeth hanging out.

      Fangs!

      I don't know how I got free, but next thing I knew I was running over the fence with the two vampires continuing to laugh their hysterical laugh. I slammed into the front door, rattled the knob and cursed at myself for not keeping the spare key under the doormat. The door suddenly opened and I fell in, a pair of familiar arms encircling me and hugged me tightly.

  "Hey! Why were you outside, Molly?! You know you have to be in bed by 9! Where were you?!"

    I stared up at Darren and broke into tears, glad that he wasn't forever enslaved to the night, but here to protect me from those who were. I managed to gasp out a broken answer, "looking...for you...basement...vampires...you...king."

            He quickly shushed me, pulled back my dark hair, picked my up, and placed me onto the kitchen counter while walking to the freezer, "Chocolate or Cookies n' Cream?"

           I opened my mouth to answer but I spotted something near my hand. I smiled at myself, wiped away the tears, and ignored it while grabbing the box of Cookies n' Cream Ice Cream from his hand and devouring my first spoonful before I asked him, "So, where'd you go?"

      "Oh, you know how much I like my night time walks." He sat next to me, digging his own spoon into the box. "Why?"

      "Oh, nothing. Just saw something again."

      "Molly! I told you to forget about that! That was just Dad's way of getting you to sleep!"

       "Not that!" I giggled and I held up the objects that lay next to my hand: the fangs Darren had used on Halloween and Mom's old bottle of red nail polish. "I just saw you!"