Gerald Sheagren
Artwork by Rabidwire

The shrieking jolted Myra from a sound, dreamless sleep, causing her to sit bolt upright in bed, her heart beating like a kettle drum. Slowly regaining her senses, she glared in the direction of the crib, let out a weary hiss of breath and collapsed back onto the pillow. Good God; it was every hour, on the hour!

Her mind wandered back to her early childhood, to when she had first discovered that her life was nothing short of a nightmare. Her seldom-seen father was a vampire, Count Vladimir, and her mother was what she had come to refer to as “straight.” Thankfully, she had taken after good old Mom: just a normal, self-respecting woman, who worked by day and slept at night, and could see her pretty, raven-haired reflection in a mirror. Equally as thankful; she had been raised by her mother, while Count Vladimir, the missing, was hobnobbing his way across the globe.

Just short of her twenty-first birthday, she had been impregnated during a one-night stand; by a silver-tongued hunk named “Bill”, who had promptly deserted her and fled to places unknown. Upon discovery of the pregnancy, she had hoped and prayed that her baby would be nothing short of normal: rubbing her swollen belly with crushed garlic and sprinkling her entire body with holy water, which she had pilfered from a nearby Catholic church.

When her father had gotten wind of the upcoming event, he had bat-winged it in from Romania, insisting that when the time came, his precious “grandson” would be delivered by a midwife of his choosing: a slovenly, overweight woman, by the name of Ivona Bouska. Hospital delivery rooms were to be avoided at all costs: too much light, too many prying eyes and too many loose tongues. And despite all her prayers and precautions, and to her father’s absolute delight, the little bastard turned out to be a bloodsucker, with wolf-like teeth already sprouting from his tiny pink gums!

There was to be no mother’s milk for her little bundle of joy! Ivona was to supply and screen all the blood that was needed, and Myra, swimming into a deep dark hole of depression, couldn’t have cared less where she got it. To make matters worse, the little shit slept by day and did all of his crying and screaming at night, the windows covered by heavy black curtains to keep out the slightest trace of sunlight. The one big rule, the gospel according to Ivona, was “only one small nightlight in the room and only one.”

Cursing her abysmal luck and her son’s tainted genes, Myra had considered driving a stake through the little bastard’s heart, ending the curse and her nightmare in one moment of insane retribution. But she hadn’t, for fear of what her father might do in his rage. So she had bent under the burden of his wishes; day after day after dark day.

When the endless shrieking became unbearable, Myra launched herself out of bed and stomped into the kitchen, flinging open the refrigerator door and pulling out a specially sealed container of blood. Heating a pan of water on the stove, she filled a baby’s bottle with the blood and placed it in the boiling water to warm. As usual, the little bastard would probably have it emptied in the blink of an eye, screaming for another an hour later. She called him “the little bastard” for, as of yet, she had failed to come up with a suitable name. Maybe “fang” she thought with a giddy laugh. Or, if she decided to give in to her father’s wishes: Count Vladimir, the Second.

When the blood was adequately warmed, she trudged to the crib where the kid was carrying on, red-faced and red-eyed, his little hands and feet pumping a mile-a-minute.

“Shut up! Will you please give me a fucking break, here!”

She snatched up the baby, deliberately squeezing his little body as hard as she could, and wedged the nipple into his mouth. He took two sucks, before screwing up his face, as though experiencing an extra sour lemon, and spraying the blood across her face. As of late, he was getting increasingly finicky about what he drank, displaying his displeasure in any number of obscene ways. What was she supposed to do: venture out in the dead of night, lure some poor unsuspecting soul to her apartment and slaughter the individual, on the spot, for a fresh supply of blood?

“Shit, damn, fuck; I should have driven that stake through your heart, you little bastard!” She grimaced at his yowling face, the red-rimmed eyes, his little pointed teeth. “Why should I have to put up with this crap? Why me? Why has God forsaken me so?”

Before she could realize or react to what was happening, the baby wiggled from her grip and lunged for her neck, burying his fangs deep into her carotid artery. She stumbled back, gasping, as blood spewed from her neck, leaving a blotchy pattern across the carpeting. No matter how hard that she tried, she failed to pull the little devil from her neck, his teeth digging in harder very time that she yanked on his body! And, then, in one terrible second of dawning, she knew exactly what she had to do. Actually, it would be a relief. With one long, continuous scream, engineered to boost her courage, she clamped the baby against her chest and ran across the room, hurling her body through the glass of the room’s only window: the window with the most spectacular, thirty-story view of Central Park.

*** THE END ***