His steel cold frame encompassed her as they darted through the forest. Above, a full moon shine down, shimmering off the leaves in quick glances of light, blurring past her as they drew deeper into the growth. She’d only known him for 25 minutes, but for some inexplicable reason only possible in love stories written by those not ever having been hurt by another, she trusted him completely. He was strong, silent, masculine, handsome, and a vampire.
They stopped just short of the clearing. In the distance she could see movements of small forest creatures. The same sort you might see in a Disney film, except these didn’t talk. He laid her down on a bed of flowers, which she later realized were honestly just moss and weeds, but they felt like flowers to her.
“Oh Edmund”, she said softly, “This is so beautiful”.
“It is?”, he replied, skeptically eyeing the aforementioned woodland creatures and mossy bed, before quickly regaining his composure. “Yea… Beth… it is”.
“Are you going to tell me what it’s like to be a vampire?”, she said, relishing the last word as it came out of her mouth.
“I guess”, he said.
“Don’t you want to share it with me?”, she replied quizzically.
“It’s kinda dull honestly. I’m hungry most of the time, except I have an insatiable appetite for human blood instead of lattes or hamburgers. I don’t grow old, and for some reason in this version of my existence, I can’t turn into a bat, which kinda sucks”, he confided in her.
“It sounds dreamy”, she said slowly.
“Did you really just use the word ‘dreamy’?”, he asked.
“I suppose I did”, she swooned.
“Yea… sure….”, Edmund said as he came around the other side of his mossy half-effort-but-its-the-thought-that-counts bed. “Beth, I have to tell you something”.
“What is it?”, she asked.
“I’m kinda hungry, that’s why I brought you here”, Edmund said.
“You want to show me how you hunt?”, she said, peering deep into his cold, dead, sorta blackish with specs of brown eyes.
“Uh… Beth… you don’t get it do you”, Edmund said as he pulled out a bib, the same sort you see at value-priced lobster shanty restaurants. He couldn’t afford another dry cleaning charge this week.
“You want me to be with you forever?”, she inferred.
“Beth… I’m a frickin’ vampire. We met on Match after I literally told you in an email that you looked good enough to eat. I just figured you were suicidal or something, but now I can see – you’re just dumb and oblivious”, Edmund said as he opened his mouth, baring his fangs.
“Wait a minute – you don’t seem to be that romantic after all…” Beth said before she was cut off.
<five minutes later>
Jason, the werwolf, arrived in the clearing just in time to see Edmund untying his bib.
“I missed it again?!?”, Jason said incredulously.
“Told ya man, I work fast”, Edmund said with a laugh.
“One day I’m gonna get here ‘just in time'”, Jason said reluctantly.
“Sure”, Edmund said, “I guess some day you’ll get here early enough to rescue yourself a girlfriend, loser!”
Author’s Note: The title of this post was inspired by, honestly, a section at my local Barnes & Noble. They now have a shelf titled “Teen Paranormal Romance”. It’s right next to another shelf named (I kid you not), “New Teen Paranormal Romance”. Meanwhile, their computer book s are missing, and their science & engineering sections are hidden away!
[SSDay]