Chapter 4.26 – Vital Chin Surgery

Note: my game has the ‘occults keep losing their facial markings and eyes’ bug and I couldn’t be bothered to keep drawing them on manually, so there are inconsistencies in their pictures.

April squirmed on her seat as the room filled with the kind of noises that had often echoed from Wyatt’s room, and her tummy filled with that horrible feeling like it was knotting into a ball.

The feeling only intensified as the camera panned around, through a haze of sweat and fur, to the other party. April was almost unconscious with cringe. Her stomach couldn’t tighten any further without popping out of her mouth, surely. Beside her, Melinda also appeared to be turning slowly inside out.

April could barely see through her fingers as she tried to watch in case she missed a key plot point. But the grunts and groans were so overacted and so loud that they felt like they were coming from inside her too, like the inevitable vomit that was threatening spew from between her gritted teeth.

“Mmm, oh god, oh…”

Oh god.

“I’m going to—”

Please don’t. Or do. Maybe that’d speed things up.

Just as April thought she’d literally die of embarrassment, a sharp jingle played, followed by a crisp announcement.

“We interrupt this broadcast to bring you an important bulletin.”

“Oh thank goodness.” Melinda sighed.

April drew in an unnecessary breath. She uncurled her toes which had cramped up together, and winged her silent gratitude towards the sky. She peeked out from between her fingers to check that the scene had definitely ended, and thumped her dad. “Wyatt, that movie had naughty bits!”

“You’re telling me,” Wyatt uttered on the breath he’d been holding for the last ten minutes. He hadn’t known beforehand that the poorly-rated horror epic Evil Monkey Men from Planet Banana would have been so damn explicit. If he had, he’d have been enjoying the movie alone with his hand rather than cringing along with his just-about-an-adult daughter and her girlfriend. They should have just played games until sunrise.

“Yes, we should have,” April confirmed, and then looked to the floor.

“Hey! Apes, we agreed no brain snooping.”

“I’m sorry.”

April had been finding it harder and harder lately to control her so-called snooping. It was just so easy to tune in to people around her now, especially when it meant that she didn’t have to pay attention to things like the mating monkey men.

“I need a drink,” Wyatt muttered and wandered off towards Broof’s liquor storage.

“I wonder what this bulletin is,” Melinda said, her voice slightly higher than usual, as the screen clicked from black to blue and the newsreader appeared on the screen.

“We have breaking news,” she stated in her overtired yet smug ‘I knew this before you’ way. “During the national trial of the midnight trials, Travis Davies, husband of the late Sandy Moss, has been finally been sentenced for the murder of his wife…”

Wyatt skidded back to the TV, drink forgotten and the three of them gawped at the flashing box. “…The autopsy found evidence of mild blood loss from a wound on her neck, thought to be connected to the vital chin surgery she was recovering from, and of suffocation, believing the latter to have killed her.”

“Mild blood loss,” April repeated, transfixed. “And suffocation?”

“Do you think that happened when she fell, April? Could that have been an accident? Perhaps fallen into something soft?” Melinda asked.

“Apes,” Wyatt joined in with the questioning. “Was she definitely dead when you left her?”

April shook her head, trying to remember. It felt so long ago…

“She had fallen in a heap, with her bottom in the air and her face turned to the side on the carpet, which I suppose was quite soft. And I… I assumed she was dead because she was very still and quiet, and Mother was never still nor quiet.”

“But you didn’t check?” Wyatt asked.

“No,” April admitted in a small voice. “I ran away.”

“And that’s when Travis came home and found her?” Melinda asked.

“…Yes. It was,” April realised.

“So he might have been the last one to see her alive.” Melinda said in wonder.

The newsreader, who had been reeling off details of some of Sandy’s other ‘vital’ surgeries, was reminded of the focus of the report. “Travis admitted to suffocating his wife with a cushion when he found her unconscious on the music room floor; a story that was corroborated with the fibres found in Sandy’s definitely-real nose.”

“Shit,” Wyatt gasped, forgetting to censor himself. “Apes, do you know what this means?”

April tapped her chin. “It means that I’m deadlier than I thought?” She giggled. “It means that I didn’t kill my mum, right? My da- Travis did. He must’ve finished her off while he had a chance.”

“So, you’re not the one who killed your mum, April,” Melinda said softly. “He is. By the sound of it you didn’t take much from her at all.”

“Huh. I suppose not. I guess my tummy was pretty small back then.”

“I wonder why he did it,” Wyatt said.

“She was horrendous to him,” Melinda said bluntly and then winced at her own comment. “I mean, that’s no excuse to suffocate her but I can understand why he would want to do it. I hope they’re lenient to him.”

The newsreader drummed her nails on the desk and said gravely. “Travis showed no emotion as he was sentenced to deletion.”

“Deletion?” Wyatt spluttered. “Woah.”

“Deletion,” Melinda repeated. “That’s very harsh.”

April gasped. “I’m going to be an orphan like you, Mel!”

“What? I’m your dad, remember?”

“Oh yes! You are!” April giggled.

“Travis’s defence claimed there was some sort of ‘pact’,” Lorna continued in the background. “He claimed that he was so devoted to his wife that he wanted to help her remain ‘alive’ in the public eye as long as possible. He claimed that Sandy had believed that an early demise would have kept people talking about her long after she’d passed. Well, it definitely did…”

April nodded along with the newsreader. “Mother did say that. From the start, she said she was ‘an early death away from being almost eternal’. It’s what made me start looking for vampires in the first place, because I wanted to know how to be actually eternal.”

“So he was telling the truth? They had a pact?”

April shrugged. “Who knows?”

“The prosecution ripped through this ‘defence’ claiming that Travis was simply enraged by his wife’s affairs and killed her in cold blood. It is not known if he killed his daughter or where he hid her body, but it’s thought that he believed her to be the product of one of Sandy’s affairs…”

“He was right about that too,” Melinda said. “Poor Travis.”

“We now go live to Reb Porter who is at the courthouse at the small hours of the morning, for some reason that the justice service thinks is a good idea. Reb?”

“Thanks Lorna,” the reporter said, walking up to the courthouse doors amidst a humming crowd of what looked to be Sandy fans, reporting in a deadly serious voice, “I’m here at the courthouse where Travis has just been sentenced and where a huge crowd has gathered to catch a glimpse of the doomed man, the murderer of the legendary Sandy Moss and his own daughter, April, aged only 18—”

“April’s alive!” Came a shout from off-screen. “You’ve gotta believe me!”

Reb baulked as a familiar man stumbled in front of the camera in a pyjama top and swim shorts. “I saw her!” Omar shouted. “She’s living in a drug den in Evergreen Harbour! She dressed me in this!”

“And he refuses to change out of it.” Grumbled Kaylynn beside her husband.

From the other side of the unmoved reporter came another voice; this one quieter. “I saw April’s face on a piece of toast. Wholemeal. No butter.”

“As you can see,” Reb continued, yanking the camera back to centre. “The case still holds a lot of emotion for those involved. Sandy fans are still grieving the loss of their idol and her daughter and may be for a long time to come,” Reb subtly gestured for someone to remove the two fans who were fawning for attention. “Back to you, Lorna.”

“…And it’s such a shame, don’t you think? Sandy’s estate and all that money… oh, I’m back!”

“We now return you to your regular programming—”

Wyatt moved to turn the TV off, but Melinda had, naturally, beaten him to it before the Evil Monkey Men had even made a reappearance. The screen clicked to black and the room fell silent.

“Phew, well that was exciting!” April gushed to fill the empty space. “And at least we know that Omar is doing all right. It’s a bit sad that no one is taking him seriously, but at least that means that no one will find us. So, is the sun up yet? I want to try our new potion.”

“It’s too early for sunrise.” Melinda placed the remote down and took April’s hand. “How are you feeling after all that?”

April squirmed. “Fine. I guess.” She fiddled with her skirt, feeling Melinda and Wyatt watching her and trying very hard not to listen to what they were thinking. “Actually, I don’t feel fine. I feel very weird. People are missing me and yet I’m right here. I want to go up to them and say ‘Hey! I’m not toast! I’m here! I can inherit the house!’ But I can’t do that because I’m a stupid vampire and they will stake me.”

“And how do you feel about the rest? About Travis?”

April thought very hard. But try as she might, thinking of Travis didn’t really make her feel anything. She shrugged. “Perhaps a little sad, but I have you and Wyatt now, so maybe it’s just hard to feel like I have lost anything?”

“Yes, you have us,” Melinda repeated, squeezing April’s hand. “And if you ever need to talk about it, we will listen, OK?”

April nodded and looked for a distraction, which fortunately came from Melinda who had received a text and had of course pulled her phone out before Wyatt and April had even registered the ping! She read the message to herself; her eyes widening with every word. “Oh my gosh.”

“What?” April asked, trying to see the screen and trying again, very hard, not to snoop into Melinda’s thoughts. “Is it the police?”

“Why would the police text… never mind. No, it’s Lilith. She says that they had dinner tonight with one of the elder witches and she thinks they might have a lead on making a vampire cure!”

“Yippee!” April squealed alongside Wyatt’s groan.

“There’s more,” Melinda continued. “She says that she and Broof will be staying in the village for a while and so she needs our help. She wants us to look up… her family tree and the burial sites of witches? That sounds very dark – what kind of cure would that be?”

Wyatt ran his hand through his hair. “It could be a potion, but it sounds like—“

“A potion? Hurrah! We can make those!”

“We’re going to be cured!” April squealed, pulling Melinda to her feet and into an embrace. “We’re going to be cured, Mel!”

In her excitement, April totally forgot that she shouldn’t be snooping; she heard every word Wyatt was thinking as he finished his sentence.

It sounds like it’ll need dark magic.

Seth had arrived at the Galloway Manor a tick before four in the morning. Taking care not to step on a twig or a loose flagstone, Seth walked the perimeter, peering through windows. Most of them were so heavily caked with muck that he could barely see through them, but a few offered a glimpse into its dire depths.

Kitty was in the sitting room, at the piano. The melancholy medley she was playing appeared all-consuming to the blonde vampire. Perfect. Seth should be able to continue his exploration without fear of her noticing his presence.

With deftness that defied his build, Seth shimmied along the wall and over the moss-covered battlements. His heavy boots slid beneath him. He glanced up to judge his distance and whether he should simply mist across to the next balcony, when he lost his footing, and his stealth, entirely.

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