By Gail Fulkerson
The sunrise brought clear skies and a light breeze. Ophelia abhorred days like these since she’d been caught outside in one without her large black umbrella and almost died. Luckily for her, a ‘saviour’ pulled her smouldering body into the shadows just before she burst into flames.
As Ophelia stood and smoothed out her nightgown, she told the man who saved her that she couldn’t thank him enough for rescuing her from a fiery death. The man smiled, tipped his hat, then walked away. It was a good thing, too, because Ophelia’s fangs were showing, which can sometimes happen when a vampire becomes unnerved through no fault of their own.
She allowed the man to disappear around a corner before setting off after him. He was a burly man who carried a lot of blood in his system, and Ophelia didn’t want to pass up this opportunity to increase her blood supply.
Making a quick trip back to her basement to retrieve some blood bags, she returned to the streets and tracked the man to his front door. Keys jangling, the man sorted through them looking for the right one. As he did so, Ophelia walked up silently behind him, and, as the key hit the lock, Ophelia’s fangs hit the motherlode of blood-sucking. This guy’s blood pressure was so high that, as she drank, blood spurted out around her lips and onto her clean nightie, staining it pink, then red. No matter how hard she tried, Ophelia couldn’t get a good seal around the puncture marks, and the blood loss was mounting. She started plugging the bags directly into the wounds, quickly filling them and placing new ones after less than a minute’s time. About the fourth bag in, the man’s blood slowed to a more manageable flow, and the blood loss ceased. Later, when she transferred the contents of the bags to the mason jars, Ophelia counted 12 bottles, the most she’d ever reaped from a kill to date, not counting what she’d drank, which she figured was about two and a half litres, conservatively speaking. Ophelia placed the jars on the shelves in her basement, turned off the light, and went upstairs to shower and change into a fresh nightgown. She would burn the bloodied one in the furnace the next morning, along with the man’s corpse.
**********
The next night, Ophelia went about town in her fresh, clean linen nightie, walking like a human child for a time and then floating like a linen-clad apparition that scared the bejesus out of pedestrians. She loved the chilling effect she had on people.
**********
Tonight, the victim Ophelia chose was a corpulent spinster named Freida. She was known around town as the jolly missus who loved her cats — she had seven — and they were all named after the seven dwarves from the fairy tale.
As was her practice, Freida fed the cats outside, thereby avoiding any fights the cats may get into if they ate too close to one another. Grumpy and Doc were particularly jealous of each other’s food. She was just picking up the last of the dishes and bringing them in the house to wash, and trying to pat Bashful’s head, when Ophelia stopped at the gate to observe the big woman at her work.
“Is there something I can do for you, little girl?” Freida asked her.
Ophelia stood silently, her eyes never leaving Freida’s.
"Perhaps there is something you can do for me,” Ophelia began. “You look rather piqued; maybe you need a drink of water, or a cup of tea. Shall I come in and make some tea for you?” she asked the woman.
Ophelia kept constant eye contact with the woman, ensuring she maintained the powerful spell she put the woman under with her gaze.
“Sure, come on in,” Freida said. “There’s a kettle of water on the stove that’s probably boiling by now,” as Ophelia made her way into the woman’s well-kept home.
“Would you like some cook—” Freida started to ask Ophelia, but was cut off when the little vampire jumped on her from behind and buried her fangs into her neck. The cats fled for their little lives when Ophelia attacked and killed their mistress.
Ophelia drank in mouthfuls of the bright red liquid until Freida swooned from blood loss and lay prostrate on her clean and polished kitchen floor, now stained with her blood. Not wanting to waste any additional blood, Ophelia pulled out her bags and filled six of them before the woman’s body ran dry. She left Freida where she dropped, not caring who would find the bloodless body.
**********
A few days after the Freida attack, Ophelia received an invitation to a little boy’s birthday party. The boy, Stephane, was having his 10th birthday party on the upcoming Saturday. Ophelia couldn’t attend since the day was going to be hot and sunny, so she sent her regrets along with a small gift for the boy, a four-ounce jar of curdled blood, infused with honey, that was quite tasty on toast. Stephane and his family were horrified by the gift and couldn’t wait to dispose of it outside in the sewer, not wanting to chance having any fumes escaping into their house and doing god-knows-what to the drapes.
When Ophelia found out what they’d done with her gift, she was miffed. The next night, she snuck into their home while the family slept and took ‘sips’ of blood from each of them. They’d all wake up tired and with sore necks, wondering where the bite marks came from — had a big spider monkey broken into their home and attacked them all in their sleep?
**********
Ophelia loved going to the park and playing on the swings in the dead of night, spending hours on them plotting her kills. As she swung, she decided on reaping the librarian next, an older woman with a muffin top waist and sagging jowls. The Widow Leisel did not awaken when Ophelia drank her blood, since the little vampire had been very gentle when she pierced the woman’s neck skin. Or maybe it was the medications Leisel always took before bed that put her into a comatose state; either way, she was numb to the blood loss and died peacefully in her sleep. Ophelia, on the other hand, felt a bit woozy after imbibing, so she took extra care on her way home, not wanting to stagger or trip over her own feet. The blood would need time to settle in the jars — about three months — to allow the drugs to dissipate.
**********
Ophelia shelved the mason jars filled with the Widow Leisel’s blood and traipsed happily up the basement stairs with a bottle of blood she’d collected last Fall from a shopper at the mall and set it on the kitchen table, along with a straw. She’d blend it up into a frothy ‘shake’ and have it for breakfast after she showered and put on a fresh nightie.
**********
Sated by the blood shake, Ophelia yawned and, rubbing her eyes, made her way into her coffin. Dawn broke as she snuggled under the myriad blankets and quilts and sighed contentedly. It had been a busy and productive night. Closing and sealing the coffin lid, Ophelia was soon deeply into the sleep of the damned.
(New story)
Ophelia loved to cook. Even though she could never eat anything she made, being a vampire and all, cooking up a storm calmed her nerves when the police started sniffing around and asking questions about the recent deaths in town. She offered no information that would incriminate her, even suggested to them that the little boy, Stephane, whose birthday party she couldn’t attend the weekend before, probably had something to do with them. That lie was enough to take the focus off of Ophelia, giving her time to hide her stash of bloody mason jars, moving them deep underground, below the basement floor.
She had dug the void to escape detection by the townsfolk decades ago, hiding in it for months that stretched to years. Figuring the heat was off after laying low for so long, Ophelia surfaced during a power blackout, making her way into her basement. Her preternatural sight allowed her to see details in the space as though it were daylight. Most everyone else saw blackness.
-- Gail Fulkerson is a writer who specializes in writings of the supernatural. She lives with her family in Saskatchewan, where she is working on another story. This is a series about Ophelia Banks. Stay tuned to 'OZ' for future stories.
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