Exploring Comedy & Paranormal Fiction - A Snippet

This is another short that I wrote in response to a prompt! It features a vampire whose... friend? enemy? frienemy? -- turns him back to a normal human. Had some fun with it and tried to make it a bit of a comedic piece! I also wanted an excuse to use the word "nincompoop".

I knew, of course, that this was Alan’s doing. Despite his best attempts and good intentions, the boy was a walking catastrophe, and a bit too reckless for a human. When I awakened in the middle of the day and found him sitting beside my coffin, that infernal old book in his hands - when I saw the look of shock and surprise overcome his features - I knew something was ‘up’, as they say.

He had guilty eyes and red hands, and he sat in a beam of sunlight, having opened my chamber curtains to read - and perhaps to protect himself, should his plot fail. And, of course, it had. All of Alan’s plots failed. I had pitied him this after his fifth attempt to murder me in my sleep, had taken such pity on him that I had decided he would become my protege. Nothing nefarious, of course. I was simply imparting upon Alan the wisdom I had learned over my centuries of living - wisdom he sorely needed - as well as the sense of style he so obviously lacked. Yet still he tried during every waking hour to plot against me and betray my mercy.

“Alan,” I sighed in exhaustion, irritable as I often was after waking. “We have spoken about this, have we not? Could you try not to awaken me during the day with your failed attempts at doing away with my wretched soul?” I stepped out of the coffin, stretching my stiff limbs and staying out of the sunlight. “Evening is a much more appropriate time - between the hours of six and eight should suffice, yes?”  

“Get back in your coffin,” Alan said - no, ordered.

“I don’t think you’re in any position to tell me what to do, my young friend.” I picked up a discarded wooden stake and inspected it with a grimace. “Why must you always carry these things around? They would not kill any vampire - asleep or awake, I’m afraid.”

“Give me the stake,” the boy said again, his tone that of a lord over his fief, irritatingly demanding and utterly misplaced, given the situation.  

“I suppose this one is a bit sharper than the others, though,” I murmured, holding the stake up towards the light to better see its outline. “Very fine craftsmanship, Alan. This one’s much better than the last few you made.”

Alan huffed and snapped his book shut, placing it on the ground and getting to his feet. “It was a long shot, I guess,” he muttered. “But, seriously, give me back my stake. I am really proud of that one.”

“What was your plan this time?” I asked, genuinely curious. I had had a decade of death-searching in my younger years - a particularly nasty decade where I had wanted, quite badly, to self-destruct. Despite my own best efforts, nothing had worked. “Another attempt at cursing the stake?”

“No,” he growled, snatching it out of my hand. “If you really must know, I was hoping to turn you into my minion.” He picked up the book and handed it to me. “All your warnings were for nought - the thing’s an old fake. I tried the section on page thirty-four about forcing a vampire into servitude and the spell did nothing. Useless. That was my last try with that book. You can have it back.”

I hummed in amusement, flipping through the pages to find this spell he had used. I knew for a fact that this book held power - if one knew how to wield it, of course. Perhaps Alan simply didn’t understand yet. Page thirty-four - the page number had been written in the bottom right-hand corner of the paper in Alan’s untidy scrawl - had a small diagram showing a vampire with an arrow leading to a drawing of a normal man. An explanation of the spell was written beside the diagram. I sucked in a deep breath.

“Alan,” I said, horrified. “Alan, what have you done?”

“Nothing!” Alan replied defensively.

“Alan, this isn’t a spell to turn me into your servant! This is a spell to turn me into - into a human!”

“Nuh-uh,” Alan said stubbornly. He jabbed a finger at the diagram. “Look here. Obviously this diagram shows the vampire being in the service of the human.”

“The arrow doesn’t signify servitude, you nincompoop! It’s a transformation!”

There was an awkward silence as Alan’s face turned into one of realization, and then, one of a deer caught in headlights. “Oh,” he said. “My bad.”

Another long silence. I glared at him.

He cleared his throat. “Well... Did it work?”

“Don’t be silly,” I scoffed, closing the book and tossing it into my coffin. “You can’t even understand the language. How could it have actually worked?”

Alan stepped back into the sunlight, shrugging. “There’s only one way to find out,” he said, his eyes holding a challenge. “Put your hand in the light.”

I rolled my eyes. “This is nonsense,” I said, but stuck my hand out anyway, because even I was curious now. It was, of course, preposterous and highly unlikely, if not completely impossible, but I didn’t have anything to lose, except for a few minutes of burnt skin. Besides, I’d always quite enjoyed foiling Alan’s plans. It had become something of a hobby in the time that I’d known him.

I reached out into the sun slowly - mostly for dramatic effect, because Alan’s wide eyes were following my every movement with such amusing and undisguised eagerness. I steeled myself for the sizzle, the burn.

But there was none.

I left my hand in the warmth of sunlight, fully expecting it to burst into flames at any moment.

The flames never came.

I met Alan’s gaze with wide eyes of my own.

“Alan,” I breathed. “What have you done?”