I was getting rid of an old notebook, and I stumbled across this old story that I don't think ever made it out of the notebook. One of the characters ended up in My Man Gertrude, the longest Grumblebunny story, but I don't think this story itself did. Anyway, it made me chuckle. Maybe it will make you do the same. Some references more obvious in 1999 may need to be explained in 2024 alas. Anne Rice has died since the story was written, but maybe, like some other deceased authors, her publisher will get her to keep pumping out new books (with artificial intelligence, a.k.a. plagiarism machines, this is perhaps even more likely), so maybe she is coming out with a new book still. More obscure now are The Doles. Probably most folks have forgotten about them, and younger folks have probably never heard of them, but they were fairly prominent in politics in the late 20th Century/early 21st Century. When this story was written, Elizabeth, or Liddy as she was often called, ran The American Red Cross and was paid a pretty large salary, though there's some kerfuffle about how she didn't accept her salary for a year or two. After losing a presidential election, Bob made some dough hawking Viagra. I updated the story for this post. Liddy is still living somehow. Perhaps she is a vampire? Obviously, I was not a fan of the Doles at the time, but this story is still some weird sort of Dole fan fiction, I guess. Eat a banana, like the fruit company, as Bob would say, and enjoy. Anyway, here's some silliness.
Edwin the vampire was reading as usual in the duct system of the central blood bank when he noticed the time. "Ah, brilliant," he thought as he ducttaped the new Anne Rice novel to the wall of the duct, "I'm bloody dying for a drink."
He turned off his flashlight and floated down the duct a bit, bored with levitation, shimmied the rest of the way, doing the swim and the twist and the anteater shuffle. He peered through the duct grille.
Nobody home. A drop of spit strolled down his right fang as he viewed the door to the walk-in refrigerator that held the newest blood. He pushed the duct grille off the wall and got his growing blood belly through the hole into the room.
"Ugh. I've got to lose a little weight," he mumbled out loud after not very gracefully dropping to the floor.
He contemplated tearing one of his arms off. That would take off a good chunk of weight in one go, but decided against it since that would be a bit extreme. Instead, he sucked up his gut, opened the fridge door, and strolled into the blood fridge. He walked down its rows of red-filled plastic bags and wanted to cry. A kid in a candy store. A man in a pornshop. A woman in, well, a mall. Let's skip the gross generalizations shall we and catch up to Edwin as he toured the vampiric equivalent of a wine cellar.
"Hmm," he pointed, "Perhaps I'll start off with some O. I'm feeling cosmopolitan tonight. Then maybe some B+ washed down with some A-. Oh, and some B- for a daycap."
"I should have brought a shopping cart," he said as the bags piled up.
"Oh, well, I'll just reduce my load now," he said with a cackle.
He was about to slit open a bag of delicious O when a figure stepped from the shadows and said, "Not so fast, you blood-guzzling freak!"
Edwin halted and raised his eyebrows. A Victorian gentleman never guzzles. Admittedly, he does gargle with goat blood every so often, but that's only when he has human flesh caught in his teeth, which to be perfectly honest is fairly rare these days. The blood bank is so much nicer. It's like farming instead of hunting.
The figure moved closer, high heels clacking.
Edwin gasped as he recognized her as she emerged from the shadows. Elizabeth Dole!
"That's right. No more free lunches for you, Drac! The Red Cross called me in as a special agent when they noticed that this area was always under an emergency blood supply."
"Curses!" Edwin thought. He probably shouldn't have thrown those parties for his fellow creatures of the night. Otherwise, he probably could have kept up his blood bank residence for years. Nevertheless, the situation wasn't entirely lost. After all, Liddy might make a tasty fresh snack. Fresh food always beat frozen food anyway.
Edwin cleared his throat, looked the former head of the Red Cross up and down, and said, "No wonder that old man needed Viagra."
"You rude meanie!" Dole yelled and slashed at Edwin with her color-coordinated nails.
Edwin ducked and threw a pack of B+ at her.
Elizabeth caught it full in the face and fell over.
Edwin pounced and sank his teeth into her delicate faded Southern belle neck.
"Yuck!" he recoiled in horror, spitting.
A brownish liquid spurted out of Dole's neck.
"You taste like an automobile!" Edwin said in disgust.
Gears ground in Dole's neck. She got up. "WD30 to be exact."
She grabbed the vampire by the neck and picked him up like a doll. "Now you know my secret No-No-No-Nosferatu! That's why they sent me after you. I'm an android created by Richard Nixon himself."
"But what about Bob?" Edwin choked out.
"He never knew," Liddy smiled as she pulled out a vintage placard sign with "Dole For President" on it.
She flipped it over and Edwin saw the wooden sharpened stick point coming his way. He used his vampire strength to swing his feet up and caught Liddy's arm before she planted the sign in his chest. "Sorry, Liddy, but, like most dead people, I vote Democratic," he said, then executed a flip-twist-switch and planted her on the floor.
With her grip around his neck broken, Edwin let go of her arm with his legs and dashed backwards to the refrigerator door, grabbing a couple more pints of blood for later as he went out it. As he slammed the door shut, he heard the yard sign penetrate into it, but it was too late. Edwin was out a window and flying into the night.
"Drat!" he thought as he downed a pint quickly in mid-air, "Now I'll have to get another copy of the new Anne Rice."
The Front Yard War isn't out yet (only one more section to proofread for you scorecard keepers at home), but the previous Wred Fright novel is! You can read the others also!
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