In the weeks prior, I had decided I wanted to be 1) a singer and 2) a detective. My singing career came to an end when I performed with my then-best friend in front of our music class and a mean girl laughed at us. My detective career ended when I and the best friend couldn't come up with any more fake mysteries to solve at my elementary school.
[For the record, the biggest case of my hard-boiled days was why one tile in our bathroom was a different color than all the others. (Answer: button to a secret room, obviously.)]
I don't actually remember deciding to be a writer, but I haven't managed to decide on anything else since.
My fourth grade -- and fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade -- writing career revolved around coming up with a lot of characters and meticulously planning every single aspect of their appearances, homes, schools, dogs, class schedules...and then not actually writing anything. Which is why I decided somewhere in that time that I would be a journalist instead.
Fiction, apparently, just wasn't for me.
But to this day, I still love reading fiction and, deep in my heart, I desperately still wish I could write it. And that's why sometimes, I still try my hand, usually to disastrously embarrassing ends.
For example, a few months ago, I saw this text post on Tumblr and decided I would write something based on it. Because, of course, if I'm going to write fiction, it's obviously going to write about something like vampires.
So, I set out to write about a lazy, artistic, female vampire who kills delivery boys in Alabama.
Only, naturally, because it's me, I didn't actually finish. In fact, you don't even actually meet my lazy vamp girl in the (undead) flesh!
But! That's not the point of this post! It isn't that I started writing a fiction thing and I didn't finish -- it's that I started writing a fiction thing and I actually still like it. So, I'm sharing it with you.
Here is what I scrambled up in a few hours one day (at work) and what now sits on my desktop, unceremoniously titled "delivery-vamp":
///
It was his first day on a new job and he already wasn’t listening to the boss.
As Tobias Quaker -- sole proprietor of Quaker’s Quick Cookin’ -- droned on in front of him about the importance of properly cleaning out the chicken fryers and not texting while driving the company vehicle, his attention faded in and out. The steady hum of the air conditioner seemed louder — and frankly, more desirable to listen to — than the paunchy, disturbingly sweaty man behind the desk in front of him.
He knew all these things Quaker was saying already. In the twenty-one years leading up to this glorious moment, he had been pretty much every imaginable kind of delivery boy. He’d delivered papers. He’d delivered pizzas. He’d delivered Chinese food and food questionably labeled simply “ethnic cuisine.” He’d even delivered medical supplies for a time (never again — he was still scarred). He didn’t think “delivery boy for Quaker’s” was going to present him with anything too out of the ordinary.
“Oh and, Jacob, this is very important…”
He snapped his head up and tried to look politely interested and not like he’d just been drawing a tic-tac-toe board with the toe of his sneaker in the dust on the floor.
“Yessir?”
“If ever someone calls from a residence near…let’s say, a cemetery? Or the local mausoleum? Use your best judgement before going there.”
Well, that was definitely weird.
“Do I…look up the address before I go?”
“Oh, yes, yes,” said Quaker, flapping his hands a bit and, if possible, sweating a bit more. “Delivery boys should always run the addresses through the GPS before putting in an order. Did I not say that?”
(He probably had.)
“No-sir, I don’t think so.”
“Oh, well…yes. And if it’s too close to one of the…places I mentioned, just…don’t go. It’s an…unusual situation, but it’s policy.”
He said this last part with a finality, as if very aware that Jacob was on the verge of asking how a delivery place could just decide who to deliver to. Instead, he just nodded.
What did he care?
Quaker nodded distractedly and told him he could go along and change into his uniform — his first delivery could be tonight, since he had so much experience already.
//////
“Did he tell you about the Delivery Boy Butcher?”
Jacob looked up from retying his shoe to find a kid with wild eyes and a goofy grin leaning distressingly close to his face. He thought maybe his name was Todd.
“Huh?”
“The Delivery Boy Butcher, man! Like, he told you not to go to houses by the cemetery, yeah? Or the mausoleum? It’s ‘cause of her.”
The manager of Quaker’s Quick Cookin’, Max — a big burly guy who almost definitely played football in high school and likely could not believe this was his life — cut in before before Todd could continue.
“Shut up, Hamilton.”
But Jacob had to admit, he was interested in whatever it was Todd was talking about. If nothing else, “Delivery Boy Butcher” was a catchy name. The Lifetime Movie Network would surely come calling any minute.
And it was a really weird rule.
“Nah, I did wonder about the rule. Who’s the Delivery Boy Butcher? A girl, you said?”
Todd’s eyes got even wilder and he gave Max a smirk. Then he turned back to Jacob.
“Yeah, man. She kills delivery boys. Or at least, it’s probably a girl. Obviously she kills most of ‘em, so no one can really tell us for sure. One guy supposedly got away from her once, but no one has seen or heard from him for years. She probably got him.”
He said all this very fast, but ended with a solemn nod. Then he plowed on.
“She moves around a lot so that she can’t be caught, but she always lives near death -- like an omen, you know? Cemeteries, mausoleums, a hospital for a bit. Tons of delivery boys have gone missing around here and it’s always when they were last known to be delivering in one of those areas. It’s a whole thing around here. Everyone believes in her. There’s even a rumor she’s a vampire — that one seems a little far-fetched, but you never know, you know? I think she’s just a nutcase. A serial killer, right?”
Right. A female serial killer…who exclusively kills delivery boys in Collinswood, Alabama. And who lives “near death.” Naturally.
“I see.”
Todd glanced at Max and then started talking even faster.
“They tell us to run addresses through the GPS, yeah? And just don’t go if it’s in the ‘wrong place’? It doesn’t really hurt business because there’s not a lot of food delivery places left around here — you know, because the delivery boys keep disappearing. You can usually tell if it’s her before you check the location though. She’s got this deep, slow voice and she always uses some freaky fake name.”
He straightened up and threw back his shoulders.
“I’ve talked to her twice.”
Max rolled his eyes. “What an accomplishment. Get to work.”
Todd grabbed the keys to his Jeep and turned at the door to give Jacob one last significant look.
“Remember: deep, slow voice. Freaky name. Near death.”
He drew his finger across his throat, grinned and left.
//////
If someone had walked in the door and told Jacob that he had been sitting by the phone at the Quaker’s counter for an eternity, an eon, millions and millions of years — he would have believed them.
Because that’s certainly what it felt like.
There were, allegedly, other people in the building. There was a fry-cook back in the kitchen somewhere. There was at least one person in the administrative office (probably Quaker himself). Todd and Max made occasional appearances. But for the most part, for hours, Jacob had been alone at the front.
As he stood considering just how long it would take for anyone to even notice if he just, say, stabbed himself in the eye with the pen meant for taking down orders — the phone rang.
He pounced.
On the other end was a girl.
“Hello?” said the voice.
The deep, slow, girl voice.
Jacob rolled his eyes at himself. Whatever.
“Uh, hi? This is Quaker’s Quick Cookin’. I’m Jacob. How can I help you?”
“Yeah. I need a small order of tenders and a large order of mashed potatoes,” said the voice.
It was the weirdest accent Jacob had ever heard -- some carefully blended mix of every region of America, plus a little of somewhere else. Deep. And very, very slow, like she was dragging each syllable from some long ago past with little will to do so.
“Um. Ok. Can I get a name for that order?”
A pause. Then a raspy cough of a laugh.
“Yeaah," she dragged out. "Mary Shelley.”
Did that constitute as “freaky”? Were people really freaked out by Frankenstein?
“And an address?”
“2974 Ravencroft Drive.”
“Right. Ok. It should be there in 40 minutes or less…That’s our, you know, guarantee.”
He heard her snort into the receiver.
“Right. I anxiously await your arrival.”
Click.
Jacob didn’t need to type “2974 Ravencroft Drive” into a GPS. (He did it anyway). He’d only lived in Collinswood for a few weeks, but it was something desperately close to the tiniest town in the world, so it wasn’t hard to know where everything was.
And, just like he already knew, the GPS told him that Ravencroft was right by the cemetery.
Of course.
So, now this was a matter of feeling versus sense. Feeling told him that he had been told not to deliver to any residents near the cemetery. Feeling told him there may or may not be some murderous female here in the great town of Collinswood, Alabama that may or may not slay exclusively delivery boys. Feeling told him that he may or may not have just spoken to her on the phone.
But sense told him that was ridiculous. Sense told him that the cemetery was probably just in a bad neighborhood and Quaker was a racist or something. Sense told him that Todd was just a joker who picked on new guys because it was basically one of the only small satisfactions one could get in life as a delivery boy.
Sense told him that that feelings flitting through his mind without consent were nonsense. There were no delivery-boy-killing serial killers here. And there were definitely no vampires.
He put in “Mary Shelley’s” order.
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