Metamorphosism

Okay, so someone else pitched the tent

Look, seriously, swear to god, Jessica just called, I'll just dart into Vienna for just a sec and pick them up, she and Brendan want to go for a ride in the Dobló and see the kids, be right back, it'll only take a sec, I'll do the tent when I get back, it'll be funnier with an audience, you know? Like the kids are going to go to bed before eight PM anyway, c'mon! I have plenty of time, what do you mean what are you going to do with a dozen kids full of birthday cake for two hours, let them bounce on the furniture or something. Let Beta and her friends herd them around, what're we paying them for? Look the sooner I get out the sooner I'll be back to pitch that huge, complicated borrowed tent in our livingroom...

My guests and I crawled through the tent into our library, where Alpha sat with other parents, drinking wine. I sort of introduced everyone, except I was sort of disoriented by hurrying into Vienna and then back out and being excited at having real live guests so I sort of forgot some people's names and ended up just saying, hi everyone, Jessica and Brendan here would you like some more wine? One of our grown-up guests had pitched the tent, the girls' former nursery school teacher. She was giving off negative vibes, I suppose because the tent had been rough to pitch.

I told them you'd tell them a scary story, my wife smirked.

Story! Story! Story! they were chanting.

Let me finish this wine, I said. I was stalling. I had to think of something fast. I was on the spot.

The secret of a slumber party scary story is, you want to scare them badly enough so they'll be entertained, and a little more, so they'll stay in the tent at night and not wander around the house, but not so badly that they wet their sleeping bags.

Story! Story! they chanted. Gradually a story blossomed in my head. I drained my glass and entered the tent.

A Vampire Story
So you guys know I'm going to Slovenia tomorrow, right? But did you know I work for a vampire hunter? What? No? Didn't Gamma tell you? She must have told you I'm half werewolf, right? On my mother's side? What do you mean, how can you tell I'm half werewolf - I'm almost 45 and I still have most of my hair, dude. And you should see my sister, she's hairier than I am. Seriously.

So anyway, yeah, Slovenia. We werewolves and vampires are natural enemies, right, so I don't have much sympathy with them. And lately there've been all these little mummies turning up in Slovenia. It would seem there's a vampire down there lately that preys on small children, about six, seven years old. Sucks them dry. All people find is the dessicated husk of a child. A mummy. Weighs about as much as a loaf of white bread. The vampire, see, the vampire preys on the ones who wander off alone. The kids who ignore their parents' warnings and, you know, stray. Sneak out of tents at night, for example, or wander off on their way home from school.

So we're going to go down and look for this vampire.

Um... What was that noise? Just a pin dropping, I think. Don't be alarmed.

So anyway, yeah, vampire hunting. What do you mean, is this a true story? Of course it is. Would I make up something like this?

We caught another vampire once, down in Greece it was, in an old castle. It was almost night, and pitch dark, and scary, man. The vampire was hidden somewhere inside and had blacked out all the windows so it was dark. We were down to our last candle, and last match. We went from room to room. My boss had the stake, I had the mallet. We were going to catch the vampire in his coffin and drive the stake thru his heart while he slept, see. Cause he'd been drinking all these little Greek kids dry, see.

We went from room to room, kicking doors open and shining the candle in. But no luck so far. Then we finally got to the last room. The candle went out. We relit it with the last match, then kicked the door open. We could just make out a big box of some sort on a table in the middle of the room, when a gust of wind blew out the stub of candle and everything went pitch dark.

Then we heard the box creak open, and a fluttering of wings. Our eyes had adjusted to the darkness, but all we could see was the outline of a bat-like creature fly past, out the door and down the hallway. A man-sized-bat-like creature!

Stake and mallet in hand we chased it through the hallways, through dusty, cobwebby rooms, up and down stairs. Night had fallen outside and it was trying to escape but we caught it just before it went out the main door.

Boy did it squeak!

Did we kill it? Eh, well, we had it pinned down, you know, needle-sharp tip of the stake over its heart, mallet all raised to strike, but then I felt sorry for it. You can even feel sorry for a blood-sucking vampire, weird. We handcuffed it and brought it back to Vienna at night, to the basement of the national museum, where they have a lab. They're experimenting on it as we speak.

Seriously. Of course this is all true.

What, you want what? Garlic? Sure, okay. Tell you what, I'll hang some up over the front door of the tent, and some more over the back door, so you'll be perfectly safe all night, okay? As long as you stay in the tent. And here's some more, to take with you in case you have to get up to go to the john in the middle of the night.

Sleep well.

Results: I figured kids see a lot of violence on TV, right, so they could handle a story where no one actually gets staked. There was no wandering in the night, and no wet beds. One little girl, though, a classmate of Gamma's, refuses to go to school without garlic now.