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Now Vampires? Part 5

    Brandon sat on the floor for another minute. He said a prayer and then he was up and heading toward the media center. It was test day now, and he'd been reminded about it every day for the last week. It was a monotonous affair, which involved a few hours of watching students take a test that they didn't want to take, and trying to threaten them into silence when they started to talk even when testing was over. State testing was no joke and even though the students seemed to do okay with it, there was still always the possibility that something could go wrong. It had happened before.     Brandon had his materials and his room set up in only a few minutes. He was an old hand at testing now, and it wasn't a huge deal to him, but as mentioned it always left him feeling stressed. The time came and students started filing into the classroom and he signed students into the test, passed out materials and generally got everything ready and situated.      St...
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Now Vampires? Part 4

  “You teach 7th grade, correct?” the vampire said. He grinned when he said it, and that grin promised something very nasty the way Brandon saw it. He took a few steps back in the squishy watered logged yard and prayed that he wouldn’t slip.  Think, Brandon commanded himself. Think! But, nothing was coming to mind. He just needed a verse, just one verse and he would be safe. The vampire took a step forward and reached out its hands. Its mouth opened and revealed rows of dagger-like teeth that reminded Brandon of a shark or a leach.  “Can’t think of a verse teacher,” the vampire said. He made the word teacher sound like a curse or something dirty. “No one hurts my girls. No one, but me.” The vampire lunged. Brandon cowered. Then suddenly Brandon heard the sound of Jess’s audio bible come on in the kitchen. It was the closest room to the backdoor afterall. The vampire blanched at the sound of scripture, turned and then ran as if he were fleeing a legion of angel...
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Now Vampires? Part 3

            At two thirty in the morning, Jess woke Brandon up. “Vampires?” Brandon asked instinctively, and his heart started thumping in his chest. “I’m sick,” Jess said. “What’s going on?” Brandon said. Jess got up and rushed to the bathroom and he heard the tell tale sound of vomit hitting the water in the toilet and Jess retching.  “Do you need me to call out of work?” Brandon asked. There was more vomiting. Brandon got up and pulled his laptop out of his bag and began the process for his school to find a replacement for the day. He went back to sleep and didn’t get up until six in the morning. Jess stayed in bed. Brandon hoped she would get better. Rebe was up at 6:30 and sat on Brandon’s lap while she drank chocolate milk. Gwen and Abby got up later. It started to rain, and then it started to storm. The rain violently battered against the house making it seem like they were inside a giant washing machine, or a car wash. Jess s...
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Now Vampires? Part 2

  The security system dinged as Jess went through the side door to their van. Jess knew how to handle vampires and she had her Bible, but Brandon still worried. It was getting dark already and it would be full dark before she got back.  His anxiety ridden thoughts were interrupted by a happy shriek which came from his youngest daughter Rebekah. She was grinning like a little elf or maybe a goblin with red hair and dimples from her high chair. “Okay,” Brandon said, pushing himself back from the table. “Let’s get bath toys.” Gwen and Abby ran to get toys while he got Rebe, which was short for Rebekah out of her seat and cleaned her off. In less than ten minutes, all three little girls were playing up a storm amongst tiny mountains of bubbles in the tub and giggling as they fed their bath baby dolls soapy water and pretended it was medicine. “Drink your medicine baby,” Abby said in her baby voice. Brandon was just getting Rebe out of the tub when the security system ...
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Now Vampires?: Part 1

The children were folding towels and talking about little girl things. They giggled and laughed like a couple of girls under seven should do, as they tried to get through their task so they could watch television. Brandon’s wife was cutting up boneless and skinless chicken thighs. She wore a purple apron over a blue long sleeve henley shirt that was too small for Brandon but seemed to accentuate Jess’s figure. She also wore loose wide leg jeans, flip flops and gray wool socks. It was her own chore, but she was making two. One she was going to take to a family who had just had a baby. “You know it’s easier to cut half frozen meat then it is to cut thawed meat,” Jess said. “You can’t even cut frozen meat. I wonder why that is?” “I wonder if the meat is more brittle or something,” Brandon said. He was writing in his notebook. He had been doing nothing. It was the last day of winter vacation and he hadn’t really gotten out of his sweats. “Can you go down and get me the frozen b...
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