Mom's house was so different than Father's, and that was putting it lightly.
Like the kitchen for instance. I was in the kitchen. Each surface seemed to shine, glow with this ethereal light that reflected the sunlight streaming into the room. The counters were made of hardwood, polished and sanded to perfection. The frigerator was a metallic behemoth that I knew was stuffed to the brim with fresh lunch meats, tuberware full of potato salad and ambrosia, with the shelves lined with neatly capped bottles of ketchup, mustard, relish, and mayonnaise coupled with an odd low-fat yogurt or two. Just to prove myself right, just because I couldn't help it, I ran over and wrenched open the door to confirm that there was indeed a freshly made coconut cream pie sitting smack dab in the middle of the center shelf, just like I hoped it would be. Pristine, rich-looking, the coconut shavings were like shards of glass on a bed of whipped cream.
I could smell something like berries or lemons in the air and spotted a strawberry-colored candle sitting on one of those warmers next to the microwave. I walked over to it to see what flavor it was: pink lemonade, it was called. Her kitchen smelled like pink lemonade.
Father didn't have a kitchen, or at least I was forbidden to call the space that was supposed to be the kitchen a kitchen. In that space, there sat nothing more than an old, beaten-looking wooden table that was rough and full of holes. Behind it was one of those large, eighteenth century stoves that ate up most of the wall and required a fully fledged camp fire to get it going. Above it hung an assortment of copper pots and pans that were sharp with rust and clanged like gongs any time the kitchen door was slammed too hard (which wasn't often, because Father doesn't like noises). We didn't have a frigerator in there, no microwave, no oven. All of that stuff, at least the fridge and microwave anyway, was up in my room. Father wanted no reminders of my half-vampirism, nothing that told him that I was a weak little half-breed who still required a Hot Pocket and Gatorade to get him through the day.
Everyone sat down for dinner. Mom, Jonathan, and Quincy. They all sat down and ate together.
Vampires don't do that. They have no concept of sharing a meal, unless they're part of a nest, and then most of the time nesting vampires only eat together to make sure no one is eating better than the other. So it's not really to share quality time with each other, it's just a way for vampires to be more greedy. Or less greedy, I guess.
The first thing Mom did was say grace. Grace. A prayer, a blessing over the food. Thanking a god for providing the roast chicken, homemade mashed potatoes, steamed peas and honeyed carrots, and freshly baked croissants that she made. Father and Catalina always told me there was no god, no such thing as heaven or hell. That vampires were creatures created just as animals were, just as humans were. They said vampires were just another link in the great cycle of life, and that it was only a petty human quandry that they happened to come beneath us when it came to who's eating who on the food chain. Catalina, in a rare moment of kindness, told me that we (or they) were kind of like lions and that humans were the antelope. She knew I liked lions, she was trying to make me feel better. It did make me feel better too...until she bought a lion home and ate it in front of me. If I didn't like meat so much I'd totally be a vegetarian right now.
After blessing the food, or making it cleaner, or whatever, they all started passing around plates to each other, saying thank you when someone handed over a tureen of gravy or dished a few extra carrots on a plate. They were all so friendly with each other, smiling and laughing--communicating. Catalina, when she wasn't sleeping, would usually have a snarky comment or two for me, seeped into some lesson about vampirism and the greatness of vampires over humans; Andrei spoke to me in much the same way, though everything he said was usually just an insult; Elisabetha and Father slept most of the day, and even if they were up they never spent time talking to me, much as I spent time avoiding talking to them. Nobody asked how their day was going, what they were feeling like, mostly because everyone at Father's house assumed everyone was thinking and feeling the same thing: when is the next kill coming? How long until the sun rises? What places are full of healthy humans but lacking high security?
I mostly just sat and watched them. Mom talking about her job at the clinic, giggling and patiently buttering a croissant for Marcie; Jonathan talking about his lawyer stuff, cases and his clients, while he chewed through the chicken; Quincy harping on about his basketball team and all the friends he had, how normal and perfect he was...at least, that's what most of what he was saying sounded like anyway: "Mom, did you know that coach needs a new front for the team? Did you know he said something about me being the front, Mom? Did you know that I'm possibly on my way to being VP next semester, Dad?" As if him succeeding at everything was news to anyone.
Nobody said anything to me until Mom looked over and saw that I wasn't eating.
"Oh...Dracen, honey, is something wrong?" She asked me, the corners of her eyes wrinkled with concern. "You not hungry or something?"
I stared at her, a dumb look on my face, I knew, but I couldn't help it--she was so beautiful. Her face was so alive-looking, pumping with blood and vibrancy. Her blue eyes were warm, her light brown hair pulled back from her heart-shaped face into a messy ponytail. She was so different from Elisabetha, whose face was unlined, sleek as porcelain, dead and cruel-looking. I liked that Mom's age showed in the lines by her mouth, the crinkles around her eyes. Whereas Elisabetha was over a hundred years old, still so young-looking but nothing more than a cold corpse full of somebody else's blood.
"Dracen?" She said again, that age-old fear creeping into her voice. I cringed at it. She was still afraid of me, still scared of the half-vampire son that she didn't really know much about---that she didn't really want to know too much about.
"What, you don't like carrots?" Qunicy piped up, pointedly shoving a forkful into his mouth. Jackass.
"Yeah, is that it, Dracen? Do you not like carrots?" Mom asked, tapping her fork nervously.
Is it blood you want, they all wanted to ask me. You don't need blood, do you? God, we're not going to have to give you some of our blood, do we?
"Uh, no, no," I said quickly, dumbly, as I picked up my fork and stabbed through the thigh of my chicken. I pulled off a piece and plopped it into my mouth. It tasted like heaven, like life. Well, dead chicken life, but you know.
"Mmm," I murmured, meaning it. "Mm, it's so good, Mom. Really, I love it. I haven't had roasted chicken in a while."
She smiled, thinly veiled relief spreading out over her face. "Oh...well, good, honey. I'm glad you like it. I...well, I'm glad you like it."
Yeah, I bet she was. In her mind, had I been unhappy I'd have been over the table with my teeth at her neck in seconds, sucking out every last bit of her blood to satisfy myself. Nevermind, that I was a half vampire, incapable of tearing through human skin with my skimpy little fangs and claws. Nevermind that the thought of blood, dark, and full of clots washing down my throat and into my stomach disgusted me. Nevermind that there was still a part of me that was a part of her swimming around in my body, that my blood was her blood, even if Father's poisonous bile was intermingled with it. I was still a monster to her, a foreign guest that she had to put up with every other week per her guilty conscience and government regulations. Mom loved me, sure, but she liked loving me from afar where I didn't remind her of the fatal mistake she made fourteen years ago when she found her way into Father's coffin.
Sometimes I think she pitied me more than she loved me. And that she feared me more than she could ever love or pity me. Whether I was in her house, clean and smelling of lemonade and life and light, or whether I was shut up in my enormous, Victorian-styled room in my Father's house that was dank, dark, and void of any human impression whatsoever, I was always going to be in the middle somewhere. Neither vampire, nor human. Not really a son to anyone.
A loud burp sounded across the table. It carried a gross combination of chicken, vegetables, and Dr. Pepper. I looked up at Quincy, smirking at me. I'll admit it, it was at least comforting to know that he wasn't really intimidated by my otherworldy-ness. To him I was still no different than the nerdy kids he probably picked on in school, just another life form not blessed with his great looks and beguiling charm, just someone else to lord it over.
I frowned at him, taking in his stereotypically jocky face that was all square jawed and chiseled. He was good-looking in an arrogant, asshole kind of way, his eyebrows arched so that he always looked pleasantly surprised.
Meanwhile, I was skinny, still too pale for a human, with my sorta-pointy ears, long nose, and black, black hair that refused to spike up for any brand of hair gel. As I watched him, running his hand through his hair, nonchalantly texting underneath the table and smirking at the letters, I thought that I could make a better son than him. I could make her love me.
If she'd give me the chance.
I actually don't have many bad things to say about this one. Other than some awkward sentences and maybe the general angsty tone to the whole piece, I think it's pretty good. Dracen (or Drace) is a character of mine from this little series I had going on involving the teenage boy offsprings of well-known monsters--ie. Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, etc. Drace, if you couldn't tell, is the son of Dracula and Mina Harker, effectively making him a tortured half vampire who doesn't fit the category of human or vampire. Out of all the characters, he's a little more intriguing to me, mostly because of the fact that writing about the half human son of Dracula brings up a lot of interesting possibilities. He is rather angsty and whiny, but I don't shy away from this fact. He's at once poetic and thoughtful along with being pouty and melodramatic. I love him for it, what can I say.
Yeah, this isn't my post about the love confession which was actually between he and another character, his best friend. Not really sure I like that angle anymore, at least when it involves his best friend. Seriously, I need to stop writing so many "oh-I'm gay-I-like-my-straight-best-friend" stories. They're becoming a little redundant.
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