“Has she found another adolescent boy to sink her teeth into?”
During the last stream, we put some new prompt topics on the Wheel of Prompticality, one of which was: “Write a story using random sentences from Fifty Shades of Grey.”
Of course, that’s what the wheel landed on, so that’s what we wrote.
Watch the video of us getting the prompt
and reading the final story here, or scroll down to read it.
Here’s the three randomly-chosen sentences we had to use:
- Has she found another adolescent boy to sink her teeth into?
- One of the reasons people like me do this is because we either like to give or receive pain.
- “It’s a pleasure,” he answered, turning his gaze on me, and I blushed.
Here’s what we came up with:
Has she found another adolescent boy to sink her teeth into? That was all I could grumble in my head as I made my way to the Sunnyville Retirement home, driving top speed in my rusty Swiss cheese Pontiac Aztec. This was the third bite of the month, all within a few blocks of each other.
First was a young kid, sixteen years old, working an ice cream stand for his summer part-time job. No cameras, no evidence, just a dead teenage body with blood spilling out the neck. Almost as dark as the melting chocolate ice cream dripping from his fingers.
Second was another young man, eighteen, walking home alone at night. He obviously should have known better with the murder just a few weeks ago, but he obviously didn’t care because he was young, fit, and had cheekbones that could cut through rock. They didn’t do much for him when he was found dead in the morning, dried blood on his neck and lipstick on his lips. It wasn’t his girlfriend’s brand.
You know what they say: once is a coincidence, two is a pattern. And now, with this latest call, I was expecting the same thing again. Another young boy dead, and it was a woman who’d done it. Or, at least, someone who wanted it to look like a woman had done it.
Of course, any of the idiot police who fumbled around the crime scenes could have told you that much. What special knowledge I had was that it wasn’t just a woman doing this, it was a very special breed of woman. One that my family had taught me from a young age to keep my mouth shut about, because at best I’d get laughed at, and at worst word would get around and I’d get bitten myself.
That’s what you have to do when you’re a vampire hunter these days. Stay quiet. Stay out of sight. Stay just one step more alive than the beasts you’re stalking. One of the reasons people like me do this is because we either like to give or receive pain. After twenty years, I still wasn’t sure which one I was.
I pulled into the parking lot of Sunnyville Retirement home, alongside the police cars and fire trucks. My car groaned and shook to a halt, and the door opened with a metallic scarp and squeak as I stepped out and walked up to the front door, taped off with police tape.
“Whoa buddy,” said the officer on guard duty. He jingled with keys and badges and a gut that I could only wish to have. “No one’s allowed here. Police business only.”
Before I could even grumble a retort to the blue oaf, Steve came running out of the home behind him. His mop of greasy black hair flopped over his glasses as he skidded to a halt and put a hand on the officer’s shoulder.
“It’s okay, Bret,” he said. “He’s good to come in.”
The officer cocked an eye at me, but shrugged and stepped back. Steve beckoned me in with a wave.
“Come on, Eli,” he said. “We need your expertise.”
Steve was my liaison with the police department, a family friend of a friend of a friend. Usually we pretended like each other didn’t exist, and we were both pretty happy with that setup. He didn’t like acknowledging that certain creatures were actually real and capable of really killing, and I didn’t like the way his greasy hair and glasses made me feel. If the man just took a shower for once and tried some contacts, he’d be even more of a killer than our suspects.
I followed him inside into the hallway padded with thick brown carpet and even thicker old-people smell. Wrinkly old men and women were standing in the doorways, hooked up to IVs or sitting in wheelchairs or both, as they croaked and creaked about the incident with each other.
“Hey thanks for your help back there,” I said to Steve as he led down the hall. “Wasn’t looking forward to having to smell doughnut-breath for any longer than I had to.”
“It’s a pleasure,” he answered, turning his gaze on me, and I blushed. Stupid greasy hair and glasses!
We turned a corner and we were there. There was a whole throng of police officers and police photographers flashing cameras, but I could tell just by the smell. Even moldy old-people smell is nothing compared to the putrid nostril-punch of a dead body.
Steve pushed past the officers, pulling on my sleeve, and I pretended not to be sweating. Not from the murder or the danger of the killer still being at large, but from the closeness of his fingers.
Finally, I got to see the body up close, and it was just as I expected. Another young boy, maybe seventeen years old, lying still on the carpet with fresh blood spilling out of his neck, his face covered in at least a dozen lipstick kisses.
“Seems like he was volunteering here for community service,” Steve said. “There was a scream, a thud, and now we’re here.”
I squatted down to examine the body up close, to see if there was anything else that could help identify the killer. The kid was wearing white nursing scrubs over his jeans and “who farted?” t-shirt, presumably to protect him from accidental vomiting and bleeding. Ironic that it didn’t do much when he was the one bleeding out.
Steve sat down next to me and glanced around the room. The photographers had left and there was only the guards standing outside. Alone, he leaned into my ear and whispered.
“This has to be a … you know what,” he said.
“Just say it, Steve,” I said with a grin. “It’s a—”
A scream came from down the hallway. The guards dashed away, and Steve and I followed right behind them. Another scream came, then another, each more piercing than the last. It sounded like an old woman. Did the creature strike again, with all the police around? But it had never attacked an old woman before!
The police barged into the open room that the screams were coming from, and I followed right behind them, expecting to see another dead or dying human.
Instead, I came face to face with something very unexpected: an old woman sitting on her bed, yelling at a glass of water.
“It was me!” she cried, tears spilling down the crevices of her wrinkly face. “I killed Mason, the nice poor boy!”
While the other police officers looked around stupidly at each other, I focused on the glass the woman was holding. I saw what was inside, and my heart skipped a beat.
Fanged dentures.
Immediately I went into vampire hunter mode. I reached into my pocket, wrapped my hands around the wooden spike, and prepared to yank it out and thrust it into—
Steve walked up to the woman and slapped a pair of handcuffs on her wrists.
“Ma’am,” he said. “You’re under arrest. Please, come with us.”
The woman nodded, tears dripping down onto the carpet, as she stood up and was escorted away by the police. I was left alone in the room, still holding onto my wooden stake, feeling like an overreacting idiot. I’d been about to give away my identity, all for what? To take down a single elderly vampire with dentures? The police could easily handle her from here.
Steve peeked his head back into the room.
“Hey Eli,” he said. “You coming, or do you want to hang out with your new friends here?”
I sighed, let the wooden stake fall back into my pocket, and followed Steve out of the room. At the very least, since this was a quick case, maybe we could spend some more time together today, me and Steve.
I shook my head, chuckling at my silly notion. No, I shouldn’t do that, no more than I should stab an old woman through the heart with a dozen witnesses around. Still, there was something about that Steve that always made me feel like he was stabbing a stake through my heart….
Suddenly, a thought hit me. I dashed back to the old woman’s room, my vampire hunter senses going into full blast and scanning everything. My eyes darted from her nightstand full of old romance paperbacks, to her dollar-store-framed photos of her grandkids on the wall, to the pile of containers of nail polish and eyeliner that sat on her desk in front of her mirror.
Despite all of that, nowhere was there a single vial of lipstick.
“Yo,” said Steve from behind. “What’s wrong?”
I turned around to face Steve, the same anxiety coursing through me that I always felt when I was nearby him. I’d always thought it was because I’d had a crush on him. But now, scanning him with new eyes, I knew my heart went into panic mode for a different reason.
Sticking out of Steve’s left pocket was the tip of a vial of lipstick.
Be sure to check out the video for reactions to the prompt, see some different ways it could have gone, and get my thoughts on the full story!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you. We stream on Twitch every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 6:30pm-10:30pm (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Scott Wilson is the author of the novel Metl: The ANGEL Weapon,
forthcoming March 2019.
Featured image: Flickr/Mike Mozart, Pakutaso (Edited by me)