Sandy was back with a brand new face.

It looked very much like her old one, bar the few raw stitches that had been expertly hidden behind her ears.

She was certainly in a good mood. She sashayed in to the dining room for her lunch and took her usual seat at the head of the table next to the large mirror, stealing glances at her new chin and smiling. Until April slid in place beside her.

“Hello mother.”

“April.” Her tone was curt but polite.

Despite it being a Saturday, Travis was at work. The butler had barely served up lunch before Sandy sent him out on a crucial errand. She was out of Glimmerbrook spring water and she couldn’t possibly drink any other kind.

It was rare that Sandy and April were ever home alone. But even rarer that Sandy hadn’t said anything to her. April tried again.

“You’re looking nice mother. Your chin looks good.”

“No thanks to you.”

April looked at her lap. Perhaps her mother wasn’t in such a good mood after all. April could feel the tension building as they each ignored their food in silence.

“Oasis Springs, April.”

April dared herself to look up, confused. “Sorry Mother?”

“Yes, you should be. Three hours it took to travel there. All because of you and your silly little crush on Dr. Vatore.”

April’s fork clattered to the table at the mention of the name. Her mother went on. “Now he’s probably told all his clients about his disastrous evening at the Moss residence. How will I ever show my face in this town again?” She looked at April who said nothing. “Don’t you go denying it. Trying to get a glimpse of him through the sitting room door and then all your attention-grabbing behaviour at dinner. Oh and don’t even get me started on how you followed him to the bathroom of all places! Then to top it all off, you swooned so hard listening to him take a leak that you knocked yourself unconscious.”

“You don’t know anything!” April brought her fists down so hard on the table that the chandelier shook. She pushed her chair back and stormed off across the hallway. She heard her mother’s chair scoot back also, and the click of her heels as she followed.

April burst in to the music room, anger roaring inside her. Sandy stepped in front of her daughter, her face twisted as much as possible with rage.

“How dare you talk to me like that. I’m your mother! I raised you. I have given you everything and this is how you repay me? By trying to ruin my image and my reputation – the very things that put food on your table! You’re an ungrateful brat, April. You’re just a spoiled, stupid little girl. You’re just as pathetic as your father. Living in my shadow, leeching off my success.”

April stood dumb. A deer in headlights. She knew this dance.

Sandy’s tone had that knife-blade edge. “You’d be nothing without me. You’d be dining in the gutter with those stinking, flea-infested mongrels you call friends.” She lowered her voice to a hiss, the sure sign that April had gone too far. “I will teach you not to answer back to me, you little witch.”

Sandy walked towards her daughter, her hand raised to strike.

April used to scream but no one ever stepped in, even when they were home. Instead, she threw her hands up in front of her face, an attempt to deflect the physical side of her mother’s control.

Sandy stopped in her tracks. Her arms dropped to her sides, her mouth hung open around an insult, her body still.

April looked at her trembling hands and back at her mother’s face. Have I done this?

She could feel something radiating through her arms, her fingertips. She pulled her hands slightly towards her face and then pushed them away from her watching Sandy sway with the same motion, like a puppet on a thousand invisible strings.

April was just as mesmerised as Sandy. She couldn’t remember a time she had been this close to her mother. She could smell her shampoo and see the creases in her make-up.

Oh boy, she would be in so much trouble when this was over.

She’d enjoy the control while it lasted. As she manipulated Sandy gently side-to-side, to and fro, April’s mind drifted.

Her mother had given her everything and yet nothing at all.

April subconsciously drew her mother closer until she could almost feel the pulse racing in Sandy’s neck. Her mind was flashing with memory after memory. Every insult, every hit, they all now collided in her mind and fuelled the fire she had kept dampened for so many years.

She thought back over all the times her mother had stopped her from seeing her friends, from having her own life. She’d controlled April down to the minute details: stopped her from thinking, stopped her from talking, stopped her from eating.

The thought hit April like a train.

She can’t stop me now.

April didn’t even try to be delicate. As her fangs slashed open her mother’s neck and the blood poured forth, she drank deeply. Sandy gargled to her daughter; a plea or an insult? April didn’t hear. It was lost to the echoes of everything else Sandy had ever said to her.

April felt her mother falling heavy into her arms. She pulled back, allowing the older woman’s body to fall ungraciously to the floor. The Great Sandy Moss, a heap on the carpet.

April watched her mother for a few moments as the room came back into focus. She had no idea how she was going to explain all this when she came round.

But maybe she wouldn’t have to. April’s body became even colder as it dawned on her that her mother did not appear to be breathing.

The power was replaced by panic. April reached for her phone. She had to do something, she had to call someone. In the sudden silence she heard a key in the front door, footsteps in the hall.

So April did the only thing she could think of, the only thing that had ever helped her. She ran.

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Sandy was in the hallway, obsessing over her chin. Caleb had promptly made his excuses the second Dr. Goth had arrived. He said he would be in touch. Sandy hoped that April’s unusual behaviour that evening hadn’t put him off.

Her face still needed fixing after all and she had rather enjoyed the company of the quiet young man. 

So she was ever so slightly disappointed when he called her himself that morning to tell her he thought it best she find another doctor. She had taken it out on Travis, who just happened to be walking by, and who was now too terrified to walk past her again so had been hiding in the bathroom for three hours.

Now she was calling every doctor in Del Sol Valley. Unfortunately, news about her treatment of Dr. Caliente, a well-respected figure in the city, had travelled fast. After dialling the fifth number she was starting to wonder if it was too early in the year to be wearing a turtleneck. As she idled at her reflection, considering her options, she was rudely disturbed by the blood-curdling sound of April screaming.

Whether it really was some deeply buried love for her only daughter, or just the worry the neighbours might hear, Sandy rushed towards the landing where the scream had come from. 

Much to her surprise, April was standing on the landing, seemingly fine. Sandy approached her, anger hot in her cheeks. Did April not care that she had a reputation to uphold and an image to maintain?! 

Something about her daughter stopped Sandy in her tracks. April looked different, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Was she wearing… acrylic? 

“Everything OK, Mother?” April asked. “You look ever so flustered”. Her smile was sweet but her voice dripped heavy with insincerity. Sandy recognised that combination, she had practically created it.

“I… I thought I heard a scream.” Sandy whispered. Where has my fight gone?

April smiled; her soft voice seemed to float through Sandy. “Everything’s fine.”

Almost like her mind was not her own, Sandy nodded at her daughter and turned to head back down the stairs.

April watched her mother go, not quite sure what had just happened, but relieved all the same. She headed towards her room, her steps light and chin high. The pain had completely subsided and she felt great now. Maybe it was just a virus after all.

The early afternoon sunshine broke through her window and she felt her head throb with the brightness of it. Drawing the curtains she reached beneath her bed and pulled out her stolen library book. She again ran her fingers over the softly embossed words on the cover Encylopedia Vampirica. 

When the book had first been suggested to her, she had laughed. Vampires? There’s no such thing. It certainly wasn’t the kind of answer April had expected when she had asked how she might live forever. Vampires, as well as being fiction, weren’t even alive, were they? 

She didn’t really know why she decided to search for a copy of the book online, but her interest was certainly piqued when the only mention she could find of it was in a list of books sold at auction to Windenburg Library in 1992. 

She traced her fingertips down her face, her neck. She didn’t feel any different. She didn’t really know how she was supposed to feel, truth be told. She had wanted to ask Caleb so many questions that night but it had all gone so wrong. She had been so stupid, so awkward.

She turned again to the article about the Vatores. She had read it so many times the words rolled from her tongue even before her eyes saw the text.

Vampyre Infestation Finally Exterminated

Wilbert Wangshaft, renowned vampyre slayer, this morning presented to the townsfolk of Windenburg five decapitated heads belonging to the last remaining members of the known vampyre families: Straud and Vatore. The heads will be on display to the public until the next full moon, whereby they will be ceremoniously destroyed by holy water and fire. Tickets 1d.

She sank back on to the plushness of her bed, the book opened on her chest like a butterfly. Her mind wandering back to Caleb. Oh, he was so mysterious. What was his story?

She fantasised about meeting him again, about what she would say. Images fluttered through her head. Her imagination was vivid, so often her only escape.

They could run away somewhere together. Neither of them would ever have to be alone again. Her mind was drifting back to that night; the way he had held her, the way he had looked at her. 

…The way he had taken her.

A different kind of fantasy started to emerge. April closed her eyes and allowed the scene to knit together in her mind. Lost to her thoughts, the heavy book slid to the floor beside her. 

She didn’t even notice.

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April had been in bed all day, in various states of consciousness. Her fever was high and her skin was ashen. Dr. Goth had visited and diagnosed a virus that would likely pass in a day or two. He offered to take April in for observation, but Sandy refused. There was enough media attention already what with a midnight ambulance arrival at her house. Heaven forbid someone actually left in one; the media would have a field day.

The shaft of light from the bedroom window was directly in her eyes causing April to shift in her sleep. Her eyelids fluttered open and she blinked at the sun. Why was it so bright?
As her senses drifted back she noticed someone had tucked her into bed and she was in her ugliest pyjamas. Had her mother put them on her or – oh God – had it been Broof? Her father? She cringed at the thought of any of them seeing her undressed and tugged her sheets up over her head.

How long had she been asleep? She could vaguely remember hearing Dr. Goth’s voice mentioning a virus and her mother crying, but she must have dreamed that. April had never seen her mother cry, except in movies. Crying at her daughter’s bedside? Even that would have been a falsehood too far for Sandy.

Oh, she was thirsty. She felt like she hadn’t had a drink for days. Her tongue drew across her teeth, rough like sandpaper and her stomach ached; it felt like her insides were caving in. 
She crossed the room to her dressing area – no way was she letting anyone else see her in these pyjamas – and she ran her fingertips over her rail of clothing. She had never really appreciated how many beautiful clothes she had. Gentle florals, pink sweaters, a pastel rainbow of softness. Sandy had bought them all for her, of course. She had to have her daughter fit a certain image, and ‘all-round-good-girl’ was the image Sandy had chosen for April. 

But she wasn’t feeling that today. She felt like something… darker. She reached into the back of the wardrobe and brought out an item Faith had gifted her the previous year when they were still friends. 

A black sweater from a high street fashion store. The three of them each had one. April had accepted the gift but had hastily stashed it away, knowing her mother would never approve. She had never even tried it on. 

Faith and Melinda were much more expressive in their fashion choices than April was allowed to be – bold colours, lots of black, tattoos and piercings. It was probably one of the reasons Sandy hated them so much – April couldn’t just stick an expensive dress on them and make them blend in to her world. People in Del Sol Valley just didn’t have band logos inked on their arms or additional holes in their faces.

April didn’t have any way to pierce her nose but she did have this sweater. As she pulled it down over her head she relished the way the crisp, artificial fabric felt in contrast to her usual cashmere. 

It felt like freedom.

She made her way down through the silent mansion to the kitchen. If she didn’t eat something soon she felt like she would surely die.  To her surprise a bowl of fruit salad had been left in the fridge for her. It was most unusual; the butler was not supposed to feed her when her mother was not around.

April lifted a small piece of fruit to her lips, but as soon as the sugary goodness touched her tongue she felt instantly terrible. It tasted like ash in her mouth, even worse than Broof’s food usually tasted, and she recoiled in disgust as waves of nausea rolled through her.

She steadied herself on the counter top as as a crippling pain tore through her abdomen, bringing her to her knees. What the hell was in that fruit? Her head began to fill with a thick, black smoke. As the room became darker, the image of a familiar man formed in her mind. 

She could see the light as it glinted on his teeth, could feel his cold skin as he pressed against her. She once again felt the life being sucked out of her and could hear his words echoing in her head. You should know better.

As she sprawled on the floor, the only solid part of the room, she replayed that night in her head. His hands on her body, his teeth in her neck…

She needed to get to her room. Gripping the banister, she hauled herself up the stairs. Why did they have so many stairs?! If she could only get to her bed, she could get the book, she could look for a way to make it all stop.

Her legs wouldn’t work. She had reached the last step but she was on her hands and knees. Her body felt boneless, collapsing in on itself. Oh gosh, it hurt, everything hurt so much. As her body gave up and the cool marble floor rapidly approached she let out a long, last scream. One final wave of pain rushed through her and then she felt herself becoming lighter; she felt like she was floating. 

This is it, she thought. This is the end.

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