Chapter 14: The Vampire Pirate's Daughter by Lynette Ferreira
It is not advisable to drive in the city at night for fear of hijacking. It used to be: do not talk to strangers, or do not take candy from strangers, and now parents should add to that list, lock your doors when you are in the car and after twelve you should treat stop lights as yield signs. Try your best not to stop at a red light late at night. Not long from now parents will have to draw up a list, similar to the Ten Commandments and make sure their kids learn it off by heart by the time they are five.
We leave the city and take the off ramp onto the main road going south. Duncan accelerates and moves over to the fast lane. Drunk as he is, he loses all sense of logic and now he wants to show off. The entire evening, he tried to get me alone. Under the table, he moved his leg to rest against mine and I had to move it repeatedly. The more he drank, the less he got the message I was not interested. At one point I wistfully wished it was Andrew pursuing my so persistently, but he pretended I did not exist.
Once I felt him watching me and when I looked up at him sideways, he turned his gaze to another group of people standing to the side of our table. Andrew did not have a lot to drink and for most of the evening, he sat there pensively, turning the green beer bottle around and around, with his fingertips resting on the open mouth.
Carmine was singing at the top of her lungs, and at one point she was even dancing on top of our table. She was not drunk, though, she just had that permanently intoxicated state about her. Some people had to drink to be this exuberant and enthusiastic, but to Carmine, it came naturally.
Besides, except for me trying to avoid Duncan, I had a pleasant evening. It was not like when I went out in the seventies or even the nineties when things got wild and out of hand and the friends I had on those separate occasions used to call me a wet blanket, no matter how hard I tried to fit in. Now in the new millennium young adults seem to be more mature and grown-up, perhaps a sign of the times. Young people must grow up fast these days.
Duncan looks away from the road, over his shoulder, at me. “Are you inviting us for coffee, Susie?”
I am about to say that it is after two in the morning, but I gasp instead as I see the road ahead narrow and as drunk as Duncan is, he sees the look of fear in my eyes.
He turns forward and he yanks the steering wheel sharply to the left. I feel the car swerve and then I feel the car on my side lift.
As if in slow motion, the car lifts into the air. It lifts so high it twirls once and then drops down onto the tarmac with an explosion of sound. It does not stop, though, it bounces over again … again … again.
The car comes to a stop on its side. It rocks violently from side to side and then the rocking slowly stops. I am hanging on my safety belt and I look at Carmine beneath me. In a daze, she holds her hands in front of her face, staring at the glistening red crimson blood coating her fingers.
Amazingly, I hear Duncan laugh from the front and then I see Andrew slumped over against the broken glass of the shattered window under him.
I pull at my safety harness with such might I pull the bolt out of the seat with one hand and it pops with a loud crash. I hold onto the door frame with my other hand, not wanting to fall onto Carmine.
Hoisting myself out of the window, I hunch on the car and then I leap down. I land on my feet and then I run around to the other side of the car. Without a moment of hesitation, I crouch down and grab onto the frame of the car—easy really because all the windows on the car are shattered. I lift the car without difficulty, and it bounces over onto its tires.
Fear makes me open Carmine’s door first. She has a gash on her arm. Leaning over her to undo her safety harness I suddenly have an urge, an awful urge, to massacre her and the rest of them. The smell of blood is cloying its way up my nostrils and I feel the saliva in my mouth. I feel an ache in my throat and an unimaginable thirst.
I rip the clip out of the mechanism and then I help her out of the car, letting her sit on the side of the road on the verge. The car bounced into the grass next to the four-lane main road.
I hear Duncan struggling against his door, where it is wedged into the frame of the car. With lightning speed, I run around the car and pull the door off its hinges. He climbs out, laughing hysterically and almost walks into the oncoming traffic. I pull him around the car to Carmine and he sits down next to her, his legs suddenly buckling under him.
With trepidation, I move closer to the car again. I should not have left him until last, I know. I have an awful feeling he might be dead, judging by the way he is still slumped forwards. The bouncing over of the car should have woken him, but it did not.
With a violent scraping, I open the door on his side and noisily it falls to the ground. Leaning in, I know I need to hurry because the smell of blood is overwhelming in the car. I am unsure how long I can stay focused, how long I will be able to push the animal in me aside.
With feeble fingers, I compress the safety harness buckle and it pops. I pull the belt away from his chest and he folds over double. I pick him up and relieved I hear his heartbeat when I carry him. Just as the headlights of a car sweep over us, I place him softly on the ground in front of Carmine and Duncan. The engine of the car stopping behind us die and I hear cries of shock and doors slamming.
Continue reading Chapter 15/23
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