Slayer (Chapter Three)

Days passed and nothing too interesting happened. The window got fixed, I checked the newspaper every so often to see if anything that hinted a vampire was going on, but other than that it was a pretty boring week. You’d think that I would have hobbies and stuff to do in spare time. Vampires were very uncommon. There was usually only one or two of the monsters in a city at a time. I had lots of time in between to do other things, but I never really did anything. Sometimes I would go to the gym to workout, but you could only do that for so long and so often.

A week after the frightening experience I had had, the body was ready to be taken care of.

The body was fragile and about half way decomposed. It stunk so bad, which was one of the reasons I needed to get rid of it. Because it was so broken down, I was easily able to pull off its arms and legs (which was a horribly disgusting job), then break those into smaller pieces. The abdomen was easy to take care of- all I had to do was step on it and it collapsed in on itself. I threw the pieces into a garbage bag with the kitchen garbage, and then put the bag outside for garbage pick up the next day. By the time it got to the dump it wouldn’t be recognizable as pieces of someone’s body, so I wasn’t worried about anyone finding it.

After that was done I used an entire Frebreeze bottle to try and get the stink away. I vacuumed in the closet, scrubbed the walls with soapy water, but the smell still stuck in there. I threw the sponge I was using into the pail of soapy water, giving up.

More days passed, and still no news of anything out of the ordinary. I worked out a couple times, played games on the computer, and watched a lot of TV. I tried calling my aunt, but she didn’t pick up any of the times that I called. I drew some pictures, painted them, learned how to knit, knit a scarf, but still nothing happened.

I tried calling my aunt again to ask her how it was going. I tried to be nice to her for a couple of reasons. One, she was pretty much the only family member I had left. Two, she helped me pay for my house. She had more money than she would ever know what to do with, and she knew that I was usually too busy with vampires to get a job. Yes, my aunt knew about vampires. She knew I was a slayer, and she knew that a vampire was what killed my family.

My mind started going back to that night years ago- the last night I would ever see my family.

It was getting near midnight and I was the only one still lying in bed awake. Everyone else was long asleep. My room was dark and quiet. I was having trouble sleeping that night for some reason. I had always thought after that night that somehow I had known something was going to happen, so I refused to sleep. I was thirteen at the time, but I remembered what happened as if it were yesterday.

I thought I heard the front door creak open and closed downstairs. That wasn’t unusual. I knew that my brother smoked, but he didn’t want mom and dad to know so he did it in the middle of the night. I assumed it was just him heading outside for a quick puff.

It was quiet again. The silence dragged on and on, but I still couldn’t sleep. Every time I started to drift off, I would think that I heard something and wake up again, only to find out that it was the wind on the window.

A scream broke through the perfect silence so suddenly that I almost jumped right out of my skin. Lights turned on outside my bedroom and I heard hurried footsteps running. I threw the blanket off of myself, determined to see what was going on. I rushed to my bedroom door, threw it open, and-

I cut off the thought. No way was I going back to that moment. I wouldn’t think about what I had saw when I had stumbled into the hallway. I wouldn’t. I don’t think I would be able to handle it, anyway. I had cried many times looking back, and no matter how many times I thought about that night, it never got less sad or scary.

I jumped when the doorbell rang, startled out of my day-dream. I glided over to the door, hoping it was one of my few friends coming to see if I could hang out. I needed to get out of the house. I was disappointed when I opened the door to a police officer.

“Alice Cast?” He asked, peering at me. My heart rate picked up and I became paranoid. Did he know something? Had someone found the body before it had had time to completely break down? I gulped back my fear and forced myself to answer.

“Yes, that’s me.”

The officer sighed. “Can I come in? There’s something I need your help with.”

The request was not what I had been expecting, but I nodded and stepped aside to let him in. I led him to the kitchen and sat down at the table. He sat down across from me.

“Alyson Seaver is your aunt, correct?”

I nodded.

He sighed. “I’m sorry to be having to tell you this, but your aunt was reported missing this morning by one of her coworkers. She hasn’t been to work in three days and wasn’t answering any calls. We searched her home and found everything in place. Her coat was on the rack, her book open on the bed, and her car in the garage.”

I sank down in my chair and stared at the table. The police officer remained silent for a minute, patiently letting me process what I had just been told.

“Do you have any idea where she could be?” I asked, my eyes rimmed with tears.

The officer sighed. “So far there hasn’t been much. We couldn’t find any sort of purse or wallet anywhere in her house or car, hinting that she might have been out of the house at the time. Other than that, no one knows anything. None of her friends have seen or heard from her in days.

“Look, Alice, I know that this is hard to deal with, but it would be really helpful if you could give us a picture of your aunt, and any information you could give us. Her hair colour, eye colour, approximate height-anything is helpful in tracking your aunt down.”

“Yeah, sure.” I said. I got up and pulled my photo album off of the bookshelf and flipped through until I found the picture I was looking for. It was a picture of me and my aunt standing beside each other at the zoo. It had only been two years ago, and it was the most recent one that I had of her. I scribbled down some basic information about her on a piece of paper and gave it to him. He thanked me and stood up to leave, but gave me a card first.

“If you have any more questions or if you find anything out, call that number. We’ll call you if we find out anything. Thank you for helping out.”

“Yeah.” I said and showed him to the door. As soon as he was gone and I was sure he wasn’t coming back, I changed into some good athletic pants, a warm sweater, tied my hair up, and grabbed my hunting bag.

I knew what had happened to Aunt Alyson. She had been taken by a vampire. Some times vampires would take people and keep them for a few days because they weren’t hungry at the moment. If this was true, and Aunt Alyson had been gone for three days already, then I had little time to find her and save her from the vampire.

I grabbed my keys off of the shelf by the front door, made sure my house completely locked up, grabbed some food to snack on in case I got hungry, and went off to save my missing aunt.