1. Split open hot dogs down middle
2. Stuff with chopped jalapeño peppers and shredded cheese (whatever type you prefer; Lou used cheddar)
3. Wrap hot dogs tightly with bacon
4. Grill on medium-high heat on upper rack (if upper rack not present, grill on indirect heat)
5. Serve, eat, attempt to avoid coronary.

They’re great with or without buns, but if you do use a bun, you may only use Martin’s Potato Rolls. (That is a rule strictly enforced by me, but not really part of the recipe) Click on the picture at right for a larger version, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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[editor's note: this installment was written in a different color ink than the first part, apparently at a later time. There were no other chapters in the Trapper Keeper (tm)]

The sweet air was all around them as Emily and Nightfin walked in towards a smoky evening. They didn’t exchange any words, but Emily knew they totally didn’t need to, and even the trees were singing, just for them and them alone. The sky was turning a dark indigent blue.

When they were way down the street, Nightfin took off his Charlie glasses (he’d been wearing glasses to make himself look like a doofus), and suddenly the full fist of his sexiness hit Emily in her mind’s jelly-guts. Suddenly she wished she really was just going bowling with stupid Jessica or something, and she worried about Nightfin’s tongue.

“I thought we could just, you know, walk around and stuff,” said Nightfin, and Emily sighed a big sigh of relief.

“That sounds cool, I guess,” said Emily, who was trying to be all blasé, instead of spazzing out like the dummy she usually was.

“Check this out!” said Nightfin, who then did, like, 20 back springs right down the middle of the street! But sexy. And Emily was amazed by his limbers, and stood there like a dum-dum. Nightfin waved to her from waaaay down the street, where his hair and black coat waved in some sort of unseen wind.

“Join me! Come! You can do it!” he said, but Emily wasn’t sure. I mean, gymnastics was the thing she was easily WORST at and totally hated, and she always tried to act sick or something when it came up in gym class, but the stupid gym teacher always made her do it anyway.

“I–I don’t think I can,” said Emily, glancing down at the ground and looking very pretty (if only she could see herself through other eyes!)

“I believe in you, Emily Smithingtonson,” said Nighfin Daggarhart, and suddenly Emily was filled with some kind of kooky power-flow feeling, like when you’re on a swing and going up REALLY fast.

“Okay, I’ll try,” she said. Emily turned her back to the sturdy-standing Nightfin, scrunched up her eyes and thought about backsprings and swingsets…

…and suddenly she was COMPLETELY flipping around, backwards, and through the breezy air! She thought she’d get dizzy, or fart, but she didn’t, and totally did 20 backsprings. And on the last one she felt an even bigger mega-boost, and she went way way up high, and did this flippy thing, and landed right in front of Nightfin, who was TOTALLY surprised.

“Wow,” he said. He was trying to act all blasé, but Emily knew that she’d totally blown him away. “You really could be The One…”

“Huh? What do you mean??” said Emily, who knew but kind of didn’t know, you know?

“Nothing,” said Nightfin, who was now back to being nothing but sexy and blasé. Then he got this wicked smile on his face, and Emily got this terrible feeling, like a train was going to jump the tracks and onto her. “Let’s go get some ice cream.”

All the way to the Softy-Cold, Emily wanted to hide into a manhole or something. Would Nightfin still think she was okay if he found out? She wanted her feet to be going backwards, not forwards, but her direction was not hers and hers alone to make, and before you knew it they were there.

“I love ice cream,” said Nightfin, who was all licking his lips, making him look like a hungry model or something.

“Yeah, ice cream’s pretty wow-awesome,” said Emily. Oh, no! She was TOTALLY losing it and talking like a dork! “I mean, yeah, it’s pretty blasé.”

“Give us two chocolate ice creams, Nick,” said Nightfin to the boy behind the counter, who was also totally cute. And sort of sexy, but not as sexy as Nightfin, to Emily. Ashley might have thought he was WAY more sexy, which was fine and all. But Nightfin was the REAL sexy one, so Ashley could have the new boy. If she wanted.

“On the house, Nightf–I mean…CHARLIE,” said Nick (who probably wasn’t really named Nick, we’re thinking.)

Nightfin’s blue eyes looked at his so very brown ice cream, and his tongue licked it all swirly. Emily gulped and stood there being nervous with her stupid ice cream cone.

“Mmmm,” said Nightfin, giving his ice cream another sexy lick. Emily noticed that his teeth were really, really white and totally perfect, which she certainly admired. “It’s soooo good! Why haven’t you had yours yet? Did you want a bigger one, with more milk in it? Nick, give her a bigger one…”

“No, Night–I mean Charlie,” said Emily, who barely remembered that no one was supposed to know his real name. A dark sad cloud swept over her soul and heart, for she knew she had to tell Nightfin the inconvenient truth, and that their love could never be, and that her life was just as stupid as she thought it was.

“What’s wrong?” said Nightfin, who didn’t look sexy or wicked or mean AT ALL at the moment, but looked really concerned and sort of sad, too. Which was kind of sexy. And Emily knew that she could tell him ANYTHING. She gulped another bunch of breath and decided to plunge her words, for both of them.

“I can’t eat dairy,” she said, bracing herself as she waited for her soul-mate to spurn her blossoms, for Eternity. “I’m lactose intolerant.”

But to Emily’s wholesome surprise, Nightfin smiled and put his hand around hers, which was around the ice cream cone, in which lay the deliciously damning nourishment.

“Yes, you can,” he said, and Emily’s stomach started to go all tingly. She looked into his eyes (which were now ever-so azureous), but her level of brave was smaller still.

“But…if I eat it…then later…”

“You won’t fart tonight, Emily Smithingtonson,” he said, and it was like a big sigh! “And I wouldn’t care if you did. It smells different to…” and he looked over at the guy that Nightfin called Nick (he’s actually named Trudude), who nodded, like they were in on some kind of plan.

“…our kind,” finished Nightfin, who then pushed the ice cream up to Emily’s lips. And Emily licked it, and it tasted sweet and milky, but like it was from another PLANET, or some other unbeknownst place. And she ate it and ate it and ate it, and Nightfin held her hand on the cone, so warmly, and he smiled as she devoured the cone-nectar, like he was the kindest person ever (but not like he wasn’t still sexy, because he most dubiously still was!), and it was his first gift to her, to share.

“Okay you two,” said Nick, who was sort of acting annoyed, but was really probably just joshing them, and was actually pretty happy for them. Then he gave Nightfin a very morbid look (which would have driven Ashley NUTS, but she wasn’t there. Ha-ha!) “I think it’s time she knows.”

“Yes,” said Nightfin, letting go of Emily’s creamy hand, with drama. “Let us walk.”

Before she even knew it, Emily’s feet tread them into the woods where she used to hide when she was just a stupid little girl. And for a moment she thought “no, I can’t take him here”, and she worried about Nightfin’s tongue again, but she knew at that moment that she was totally SAFE, and it wasn’t creepy at all.

Then she was all confused, probably because it was pretty dark or something, and she didn’t remember how to get to her hiding place, or back to the Softy-Cold, or back home, or ANYWHERE.

“Shhhhh,” swam Nightfin’s voice into Emily’s auditory canal. “We’re here.”

Emily looked into Nightfin’s indigent eyes, and tried to ask him an infinite quantity of questions, just with her eyes only. How did he know about her secret place? What? Who? Why?!?!?!

“Shhhhh,” coursed Nightfin’s voice over her hair and soft cheek, which truly was pretty. “I know you have a lot of questions, which is why I let you bring me here.”

Then, suddenly, for some reason, Emily was soooo MAD! So was she just, like, his pawny play-thing, then?! Was she?! Had she just been leading him around on a chain that was in all actuality wrapped around her own truly pretty neck, and looped back in a way so that HE was actually holding it?!?!

“First you listen to me, Nightfin-Bannister-StupidGuy, or whatever your lame-o name is!?” she spat in a huffily turning away and acting as blasé as she could! (and really felt, really!) “Maybe I’d rather not ask you any dumb questions!! Maybe YOU’RE the dumb and don’t know anything?! You and your stupid, STUPID blue eyes!”

A hand caught her hand, and the hand was his hand, and he pulled her around, and she sort of twirled around and probably looked very graceful and pretty, though she’d never ever practiced doing that kind of thing in the mirror or anything.

“You’re right,” said Nightfin. “But if my eyes are stupid, it’s because they’re stupid for you.”

Emily wished she could shatter all of her stone words with a big chisel of feelings, and her heart became an ocean of delicious melty ice cream, and she collapsed into his torso.

“There, there, sweetly one,” said Nightfin. “You are no toy, not for me nor ANYONE, of mortal heritage or no. And I wouldst challenge any such who said so–but only if it were your wish, from respect. So you must not cry!”

“I–I won’t,” she said.

“Good, good,” said Nightfin. “For tears so delicious cannot ever be, lest the perils…” he said, mysteriously, as he glanced so sexishly away.

“I don’t understand,” said Emily, breaking herself apart from him.

“I don’t either,” said Nightfin, who turned his head briskly away to the side and down, and looked importantly gothic and blasé. “But I think it’s time that you know more about my kind.”

END OF PART 2

CONFINUE TO PART 3

EMILY AND THE SEXY VAMPIRE – HOME

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PART 1

Once there was a girl who was really, really pretty, but she didn’t know it. And no one understood her AT ALL. Especially not her so-called friends and especially ESPECIALLY not her parents.

“Did you have a good day at school today?” asked Emily’s dad.

“Shut up, whatever!” said Emily, who had had the worst day EVER.

“That’s it, young lady,” said Emily’s stupid mom. Then they grounded her and told she couldn’t text for, like, I dunno, a year or something.

The next day Emily was walking home from school, and this car pulled up. It looked fast, but not in a lame way like that kid Billy’s down the block. And there was this sticker on the window that looked like it was a magic symbol or something. Emily was sort of scared, but there was a cute boy driving it.

And that made Emily even MORE scared! She wanted to run–no, she wished she had her rollerskates on, and she’d skate away so, so swiftly! But before she could even take one velvet breath, the boy spoke to her.

“Hey,” said the boy.

“Hey,” said Emily.

Emily looked at the boy, and it was like they didn’t need any more words or anything. He had really, really blue eyes, like a thousand oceans inside of a thousand seas. Inside of two ponds, that were his eyes.

And though her heart told her this boy was meant for her, forever and ever, she just couldn’t believe it was true because she was ugly and stupid and not good at art or ANYTHING. So she looked away from her soul-mate and ran, faster even than she could have skated.

And even though it was pretty hard to hear over the sound of her own tears, she was pretty sure she heard him say “I’ll see you soon.”

“Who’s your new boyfriend?” asked Ashley the next day at lunch. “I saw you with him, and he’s one of those WEIRD older boys.”

“Shut UP!” shouted Emily. “He’s not my boyfriend, and he’s not weird, and he’s not that old!”

“Is too, is too, and is too!” said stupid Jessica, who always agreed with whatever Ashley said. Emily wished she could find other girls to eat lunch with, but, you know, whatever.

“I bet you let him put his tongue in your mouth,” said Ashley.

“SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!” cried Emily, and then she couldn’t stop crying. It was like she was a wet waterfall. But who was the river that powered the waterfall?

Or instead of a river, was it a thousand oceans?

Emily ran out of the lunch room, crying really hard. Ashley and Jessica laughed even harder.

And two blue pond-eyes watched the whole thing from outside a window…

Emily had weird daydreams the rest of the day. In one of them, she rode the whitest horse there ever was, and she fed it carrots. It carried her all around this forest, where all the animals said hi to her. And the horse had blue eyes.

In another dream Emily was on a throne, and her cat, Smudges, was there too. Except it wasn’t exactly her cat–the cat in her dreams had a black right ear instead of a black left ear. And it had blue eyes.

In yet ANOTHER dream she was flying, but over some kind of magical land. And she was pretty sure it was a long time ago, because way down on the ground she could see old buildings, like castles and things. One of the castles looked like it had blue eyes.

“Emily Smithingtonson! Wake up right NOW!” shouted a voice. It was Emily’s teacher, Mrs. Hately. “And if you don’t answer this next question right, I’m giving you detention for a week!” And you could tell that Mrs. Hately REALLY wanted to give Emily detention, because that’s what she liked to do more than anything in the WORLD.

“But Mrs. Hately…” started Emily. She really, really wanted to apologize, and she meant it.

“Enough!” shouted the stupid teacher. “Here’s the question: in 1647 in Cyzgmrvyzzkavania, who killed the Vampyre Kyng?”

Emily’s head swam. Oh no! she thought. I’m going to get detention! Mrs. Hately had a really mean smile on her face, and started to grab a detention slip. But then suddenly it was like Emily just knew all these things.

“It was Smiggle Bigglye!” she shouted triumphy! Mrs. Hately frowned, because she wanted to give Emily detention and now she couldn’t. Except she asked another question.

“Well, if you’re sooooo smart, what was the Vampyre Kyng’s name?”

“Moonglow Daggarhart!”

“And when was the last Vampyre killed?”

This time no answer came to Emily’s head. Mrs. Hately smiled in a really mean way.

“A-ha! You ARE stupid!” Mrs. Hately shouted, triumphy again. “It was in 1666!”

“Nooooo!” shouted Emily. “The Vampyres live! Live! Liiiiiive!”

“Detention! Detention! Detentioooooon!” shouted Mrs. Hately. “In fact, go to the detention room right now!”

Emily cried all the way to detention. But not because of Mrs. Hately. No, that woman could never defeat her. No, it was because she couldn’t bear the thought that the Vampyres should be perished from this earth.

And two hungry blue eyes watched poor Emily cry her little eyes out while she sat, all alone, with no one else and by herself, in the stupid detention room.

On the third day of her detention, all alone, she saw someone outside the window and in the teachers’ parking lot. It was an older boy, and he was all gothic and wearing black–and suddenly blue eyes were staring at her!

The boy–her boy–put his finger to his lips and did that ’shhhhhh!’ sound, even though Emily couldn’t really hear it. Emily was afraid he would be caught, and tried to wave him away, but the boy just laughed.

Then he went up to a car–Mrs. Hately’s car–and climbed up on top of it! And then he started dancing on it!

“Oh, please stop! You’ll get caught!” shouted Emily, but she knew he couldn’t hear her. And even if he could, she knew he wouldn’t listen.

Suddenly the door slammed open, and a teacher walked in.

“What’s going on in here?” said Mr. Bimbins, the math teacher. “And what are you looking at?”

“Nothing!” said Emily, who knew for sure that the boy would get caught. But when she looked out the window, he was gone into thin air!

“That’s another week of detention for you!” said Mr. Bimbins. But Emily didn’t care.

Her boy had danced on a car for her, and then he got away.

Later on the way home, Emily felt like she was being followed. And she was. By the boy.

“Hey,” he said, just like the first time they met. Except this time he wasn’t in his car. He was leaning up against a tree, and Emily thought it was really sexy. His blue eyes were just as blue as she remembered them being.

“Hey,” said Emily. This time she trampled down the urge to run, even though her heart was running very fast indeed.

“You saved me back there,” said the boy. “If you hadn’t shouted, I would totally have been caught.”

Emily’s heart raced even faster, and she needed to fart. But she didn’t.

“How could you hear that?” she asked. “I was, like, inside. And you were outside.”

The boy laughed, like he knew a secret that Emily didn’t know. “Let’s just say that my hearing is really, really good, Emily Smithingtonson.”

“How did you know my name?” asked Emily, who was very surprised that the boy knew her name.

The boy laughed, like he’s just heard a very funny joke. “Let’s just say that my hearing is really, really good.”

“Well, what’s your name?”

“People in this town call me Charlie Bannister,” said the boy, but Emily already knew his SOUL.

“That’s not your real name, though, is it?” asked Emily, even though she already knew that it wasn’t.

“No,” said the boy. “My real name is not pronounceable by your kind.”

“I don’t understand,” said Emily, even though her heart knew the terrible truth.

“I’ve already said too much!” said the boy. “But I’ll tell you that my name sort of translates as…”

Suddenly the boy was looking around like he heard something, his blue eyes looking everywhere, and it was sexy. He turned to go.

“Your name! You MUST tell me!” shouted Emily in a voice more confident than she’d ever felt in her ugly, stupid life.

“You can call me…Nightfin Daggarhart!”

And Emily Smithingtonson watched Nightfin Daggarhart run behind the tree, and then he was gone, and she farted.

She didn’t see Nightfin for a whole week, and the only person she could talk to about it was her cat.

“I know you believe me, Smudges,” she said as she petted him in her room. “But why did he run away from me?”

Then there was a knock on her door. It was her mom.

“Honeykins, there’s someone here to see you,” she said. Emily imagined it was stupid Ashley and Jessica, who wanted to laugh at her lame clothes or something.

“Tell them to go away!”

“Okay,” said her mom. “But it’s a cute boy–with blue eyes.”

Emily’s heart beat so loud that her cat jumped straight onto her head, totally messing up her hair, which looked lame most of the time anyway. But Emily didn’t care–Nightfin was her moon, and like the sweeping ocean tides, she would rise to his sexy moon-song.

“Tell him I’ll be right there,” said Emily. She put on something that looked pretty okay, but not TOO good, so it wouldn’t seem like she was all “ooh, I just love, love, love you Nightfin!” and stuff, but she’d still look good in a more “oh, it’s YOU…that’s cool” kind of casual way.

When she got downstairs, Nightfin was in the kitchen and all talking to her mom, and he looked like a total dork! He had glasses on and stuff.

“Yes, Mrs. Smithingtonson, I’m a verrrry good student,” he was saying, and when he saw Emily he dropped the brainiac book he was carrying.

“Be careful, Charlie,” said Emily’s mom. “You might hurt your book or something.”

“Oh, I’d never hurt a book,” said Charlie (who was really Nightfin acting like a dork), who winked at Emily. “Books are totally wow-awesome!”

Emily’s mom laughed, because Nightfin had charmed her, big time. “Oh, Charlie! You’re sweet. Emily is grounded but you seem like a fine young man, so you can take her bowling if you want.” Nightfin winked at Emily again, because they were so totally NOT going bowling.

“Okay, Mrs. Smithingtonson. I’ll have her home at a reasonable hour,” said Nightfin (who, you will remember, was acting like goofy Charlie Bannister).

“I know you will–have fun!” said Emily’s mom.

And Emily went out of the house with Nightfin (Charlie!), into the pre-dusky sort-of dim November eve.

CONFINUE TO PART 2

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[editor's note: the editor would like to apologize to the author for not publishing this chapter sooner, as the e-mail to which it was attached was originally flagged by the editor's spam filter and not seen until two weeks after it was sent. The editor would also like to gently advise that using the e-mail address "12yr0hottie [e-mail provider withheld]” will probably not make it past most spam filters, and that the original physical delivery method is probably a better way to go in the future.]

Under moon shadows and over hill and dale and other places did the mummies go, to whence and where Emily did not know. For though she didst still have ears she could not hear. And though she still had eyes, she couldst not see. And lo though she didst yet have a mouth, it had a sock in it.

“Mmph-mmph!” said Emily, who didn’t like having a sock in her mouth.

“Geez, I’m sorry! But it’s for your safety and stuff,” said a hunky voice near her. But Emily couldn’t hear it, because the mummies had plugged up her ears but good with cotton balls or something.

“MMPH!”

Though Emily’s extra-sensories were totally cut off from the world, she could certainly tell that she was going somewhere. And she wasn’t trying to scream because she was scared–no, no!–it was because she had been ripped away from her Soul-mayte so soon before what she was pretty sure might be their triumphy moment of awesome togetherness.

“MMPHY-MMPH-MMPH!”

But unheeded did her mmphs go, and onward was she borne aloft on the wings of mummies. Finally, after about 5 1/2 forevers, she felt herself placed gingery down onto a softy seat.

They uncorked her ears first, but there wasn’t much to hear at the moment–though her heart had never stopped listening to Nightfin’s own corazón, which even then stood atop a crystalline tower, yowling into the barbarian chasm gulf that so speciously subdivided them.

Next went the blindfold, which she was wearing the whole time, but you probably figured that out already, so I didn’t bother to mention it before. Oh, and her hands were tied together, but not too tight, but then they untied them, so we don’t have to worry about that anymore. And no, she didn’t fart the whole time, so just SHUT UP about that, okay? Anyway, her eyes were more successful than her ears, and she saw that she was in a medium-ish room whose proportions conformed most curiously to that of a golden rectangle, whose ratio is approximately 1:1.618, which she of course knew for some reason.

Emily was entirely not alone in the room. All around were a bunch of the raggy, buff mummies, who sort of milled around like they didn’t know what to do or something. But it was the mummy standing in front of her whose stupid head bore the brunch of Emily’s womanly wrath.

“Uh-oh,” said the guy (he’s Tutt!), because he could tell that Emily was going to totally HAUL OFF on him. She wasn’t mmph-ing at the moment, but that made him even scareder. Her burning eyes just burned a hole through his own eyes–and caught his whole lunky soul on fire! Verily she must be his One True Love–the ancient but reborn incantation of Cleopatra herself!

Emily was for sure angry, but then started to get a little bit ooged out by how the big mummy was staring at her. Really, he was looking straight through her, like how a cat will stare just past your head, and you think there’s a spider or something on the wall behind you, but there’s not, and you turn back around, and the cat’s still staring. So you give it a snack.

“Um…I’m gonna take the sock out of your mouth now,” said the guy who was Tutt, though Emily didn’t realize it yet (she will, in just a sec!) “So, uh, can you not scream and stuff? Because…um…it wouldn’t be…er…blasé???”

Emily had totally been planning to scream, but after hearing the big, stupid-looking mummy say “blasé”, she just totally lost it, and laughed the sock right out of her mouth.

“Ho-ho-ho, hee-hee-hee, ha-ha-ha!” laughed Emily, with maximal mirth. Tutt started laughing too, and his head shook so hard that the old rags fell off of his lunky old head.

Suddenly Emily saw that the stupid mummy who’d ripped her from the bosom of together-foreverness was none other than the hunky dude who saved her when she fell off the roof of her house. Also suddenly, her heart was thrown into a washing machine of conflicty emotions, on spin cycle, and all of a sudden love was a battlefield of shadow, only all of the time.

“You’re that dude,” said Emily.

“Um…yes,” said Tutt, who was starting to doubt the wisdoms of berefting Emily from the vampyric environs. “Tutt.”

Then they just stared at each other for a long time, and even though Tutt’s eyes weren’t deeply blue (or even blue at all, probably) they were okay. I guess. But he was for sure cute, and strong, so that was pretty good. And he did care enough to kidnap her. But why?

“Well?” said Emily, who was starting to get annoyed with being stared at.

“Er…” said Tutt, who was ah struck by the visages of Emily (even though she still mostly thought she was ugly and stupid and UGLY.) The beefcake mummy decided it was time to see if she really was his One True Love, and he motioned for his co-mums to leave the room. Which they did.

“Weeeeelllllll?????” said Emily, again, in a repeated way. But she was sort of glad that they were alone, and kind of wanted Tutt to give her a horsie-back ride or something.

“So I’m going to ask you some questions, okay?” said Tutt, who looked very nervous for a strong dude.

“What if I don’t want to answer?” said Emily, with extra sass. Tutt looked at her with these puppy dog eyes, and Emily almost went “awwww!”, but she didn’t, because she liked cats better.

“You don’t have to, Cleo–I mean Emily Smithingtonson,” said Tutt. “You can leave right now if you wish. In fact, you can do anything you want–and I would do anything for you. Do you want some popcorn?”

“No, thank you.”

“Because I will make you popcorn–but not if you don’t want it. Or you can play me your favorite rap song on your Zune. Or you could tell me about your cat. Or you can wear my sports-playing-guy jacket and show it to all of your friends, who are probably stupid and don’t appreciate you. But I’ll hang out with them, with you, and make them like you, and then you can ditch them. If you want.”

Emily was starting to feel nervous for some reason. Why was Tutt being so nice to her? And what about Nightfin? Shouldn’t she just walk right out of that place, for him? She was so confused!

“Okay, I’ll answer your dumb questions,” she said, because it would keep her mind from thinking about other stuff or something. Tutt looked very happy indeed, and a little nervous too, and he began his inquisitionings.

“What kind of triangle has one 90° angle?”

“A right triangle, DUH!”

“What’s a trapezoid?”

“A quadrilateral that has one pair of opposite sides that are parallel!”

“And how do you calculate the volume of a pyramid?”

“You multiply the area of the base by the height by 1/3!”

“And what is the Pythagorean Corollary?”

“Tricked question!” said Emily, triumphy. “It’s the Pythagorean THEOREM–which states that in any right triangle, the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares whose sides are the two legs (the two sides that meet at a right angle). Or, written as an equation: a² + b² = c² .”

Tutt looked like he’d just been hit upside the head with a baseball stick, because Emily had just blown his mummy mind. From just outside the room there were audio gasps, for it seems she’d surprised all of the other raggy ones. But Tutt steadied himself and got ready to ask another question, and Emily had a feeling that this one would be for all of the nachos.

“Where are you buried?”

Emily looked at Tutt like he was a big dum-dum. She wasn’t dead! Or was she? No, of course not. Was it another tricked question? No…it looked like Tutt was really looking for a real answer–and he was starting to look disappointed. Oh, no! Maybe she WAS just an idiot ungainly! She’d better say something…

“The Taj Mahal!”

Now a collected gasp rose up that made the last one seem like a much smaller gasp. Tutt stared at her now with an extra-hard gazement, of awe, and some mummy heads were peeking into the room to stare at Emily’s stupid head, whose hair looked like crap, as usual. It made her nervous.

“I’d like some popcorn,” said Emily. Tutt waved away the eaveslooking mummies, and then he ran from the room. And though Emily didn’t really know what all was going on with the questions and stuff, she was certain of one thing.

Tutt was making her popcorn.

A shadowy shadow fell across the portal of Emily’s homestead. And though Emily was busy hangin’ with mummies, there were other people inside. Most notably, Emily’s mom. And really at the moment she wasn’t inside, or outside, but was to wit standing in the doorway.

“Charlie Bannister!” she said to the caster of the shadow, who was in verity Nightfin Daggarhart.

“Hel-loooo, Mrs. Smithingtonson!” said Char-fin.

“What are you doing here? Where’s Emily?” asked Emily’s mom, who looked confused and maybe a little worried, but probably not, because in all likelihood she probably wished that Emily had NEVER BEEN BORN. Though she did buy Emily a Zune, so she probably cared some. Sort of a little, I guess.

Nightfin was in full-on Charlie mode, and he pretended that he was all dorky-sexy heartbroken and stuff, and dreamy sad-sexy tears began to sexy-fill up his awesome blue eyes.

“She…she ditched me for this other dude!” bawled Nightfin, who was totally playing on Emily’s mom’s emoticons. She gave Char-fin a big hug–but it was a mom-hug, and not sexy AT ALL, so it’s not like she was some kind of cougar–which would be so totally GROSS.

“Oh, no, Charlie!” said mom, who probably liked Charlie more than she liked her own daughter. “What happened?”

“So we were at the bowling alley, having a wow-awesome time, when this group of jocks came up to us,” began Nightfin. Then he blew his nose on his dorky clothes (though if boogers could be sexy, these were them.)

“It’s okay, Charlie,” said Emily’s mom, handing him a tissue. “Go on.”

“So this one extra-muscley jock was their leader or something, and he was all like ‘I’m awesome and strong, and I can do anything I want and no parents could ever stop me!’ And I was like ‘Go way, you’re mean, and I bet you don’t study at all!’, but the jocular kids just pushed me aside! Boo-hoo-hoo!”

“Ohhh, Charlie!” said mom, who was such an IDIOT.

“I tried to stop him, Mrs. S., but there were too many of them, and one of them might have had a knife, maybe. And though Emily went with those athletes, I don’t think she really wanted to go!” said Char-fin, who put on a face like he was super-worried. “And I’m not sure, but I thought I heard the big dude say ‘And sure as my name is Billy Tutt, I’m taking you to our Sports People Club, and…and…’”

“What, Charlie, What?”

“It’s too terrible, Mrs. S!” said Char-fin, pausing for the drama of it all. “Okay…he said he was going to put his tongue in Emily’s mouth!”

“Nooooooo!” shouted mom, and she was completely flipping out! Nightfin almost laughed at her, and at how well his dialectical plan was working, but he managed to keep all his pudding in one place. Emily’s mom disappeared for a moment, and then came back with a phone in her hand, and there was fire in her eyes.

“I’m calling the police!”

Emily could hardly believe the claptrap that Tutt had just fed her along with the popcorn.

“So you think you killed your dad after he turned you into a mummy, in Ancient Egypt. And that I’m the reincanted version of your One True Love, who was Queen Cleopatra?”

“No,” said Tutt, shoveling another meaty handful of popped corn into his handsome mouth. “I KNOW that your my One True Love, and are too totally Cleopatra.” Then he got quiet and sad. “And yes, I did commit dadicide.”

Emily wanted to believe him, but it was just so weirdly. But was it? I mean, just like she knew stuff about vampyres, she also knew about mummy things–like geometry. And how else would she have known about the Taj Mahal? And she’d had plenty of dreams about old stuff. Which made her wonder…

“Were there unicorns in Ancient Egypt?” she asked. It was Tutt’s turn again to look like a dumb doofus.

“Um…no,” he said. “But we had camels! And those kind of kick butt, right?”

“Never mind,” said Emily. There were always unicorns in her dreams, not stinky old camels. But there were other things, too. “What about cats?”

Tutt got very excited, and he started jumping up and down. “Oh, yeah! Egypt’s got cats! Ohhh, yeah! Worshiped ‘em! Love ‘em!” And then he got very sadly. “In fact, my best friend in the whole world was a cat, and he demised.”

“Oh, no!” said Emily, and so moved was she that she comforted the dum-dum with a hug. He was very muscley, which was very different from Nightfin.

“Yes,” said Tutt. “Smudgisis was a faithful companion…”

“Did you say Smudges?!” shouted Emily.

“I guess if you translated his name from Ancient Egyptian, through hieroglyphs and stuff, it would be Smudges, yes,” said Tutt.

“My cat’s name is totally Smudges!”

Now Emily’s head went all swimmy, like when your friends talk you into going on that spinning ride at the carnival, and your cookies end up all over EVERYONE. Which is only fair, because they made you do it, and it’s their own fault if they’re mad, because stupid Ethan happened to be walking by when we all came out of the ride, and one friend who really likes him (and I DONT KNOW WHY) had big chunks of corn dog in her hair, and Ethan laughed at her and it pretty much blew any chance for them to hook up, and I DON’T CARE and I’m NOT SORRY. AT. ALL.

It was like that. But without the whole corn dog part.

Tutt looked deep into Emily’s eyes, and her heart–that throbbing organ which dispelled so much oxygen throughout her ecosystem–started beating like that awesome song that goes “DUM-da-DUM, da-da DUM-da-DUM!, da-da!”

“Oh, you’re so beautiful, with an edge and a charm,” said Tutt, gazing at her proximity. “My life has been a whirlwind since I found you. I’ve been running round in circles in my mind.”

Emily’s internal conflict, which had begun as a pumpkin seed, now bloomed into a mighty oak, and she wished she could just chop herself down with a rusty, velveteen chainsaw, and she turned around.

“I’m getting a little bit terrified…and I see that look in your eyes,” she said, not daring to look at the kinetic man.

“Please…turn around,” said Tutt, who really had no clue. Emily didn’t like being put on the spot, and was starting to feel petulant indeed.

“I’m getting a little bit angry, and I know I’ve got to get out and cry!” she said, striking a very dramatic pose, because that’s how she felt, so it wasn’t like she’d planned it at all.

“Turn around!” shouted Tutt again, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. “It’s enough for this restless warrior just to be with you!”

Mummies starting running into the room, ripping off their rags and stowing them in lockers that were along the walls (and had been the whole time.) Emily recognized some of them from her school’s various athletic teams, which was entirely surprising. Emily could hear a hubbub outside, with sirens and stuff, and Tutt looked mighty worried.

“We don’t have much time!” he said, spinning her around to face him, instead of asking like before. Emily was worried that her heart would leap out of her mouth and hit Tutt in the forehead, but it didn’t. He was a big beefy statuette, and she was entirely in his arms!

Police guys started rushing in with guns drawn, pushing mummies (who just looked like regular kids now) into lockers and handcuffing them. Emily could tell that Tutt wanted to kiss her, but she somehow knew that it would be, for him, a bloom of doom. So she shook her head “no”, for him. And though Tutt looked hurt, he braved himself as a big police dude handcuffed him and ripped their bosoms apart.

“I must ask…” shouted he, as they took him.

“What?! What must you ask?!” shouted she, to him, despite them.

“Us!” shouted Tutt. “The vampyres are jerks–will you be our Queen?!”

But before she could even formalize an answer, Tutt got bonked on the head with a stick or something, so there wasn’t much point in wasting breath on it. That’s when Emily saw her mom run into the room.

“You!” shouted Emily. “Why?!”

“Him!” shouted mom, pointing at Tutt as he was being dragged out.

“No!” shouted Emily, shouting. “You don’t understand! You never understand, and I don’t understand!”

“You’re totally grounded–FOREVER AND EVER!!!!” shouted stupid mom, grabbing Emily by the wrist and dragging her out of the Sports People Club.

And GAWD did Emily cry! And every tear was a wish-dream that was now nothing more than deadness–DEAD like the unicorns, DEAD like Tutt’s cat, DEAD like so many goldfish found upon dread morns floating, DEAD like EVERYTHING dies, DEAD, DEAD, DEAD!

But there was yet one flaky, wafting glimmer of undead yet to be extent. For as Emily’s mom carted her off in their stupid, dorky car, she espied in the gathered crowd the thing that had first emerged her woman-self.

Blue eyes.

End of Part 8

CONFINUE TO PART 9 and THE LAST

EMILY AND THE SEXY VAMPYRE – HOME

[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs, administered by Paul and Storm]

[editor's note: a very pretty and smart-looking young lady, possibly as old as fifteen, brought this chapter to the editor's door and rang the bell. Before the editor could open said door, however, the young lady ran back down the walkway and down the street, leaving the type-written pages on the doormat.

The top page read: "Sorry about my mom. She means well <3 . I think she likes you <3 . And please don't take anything out of my story again. Yes I totally used stuff from wikipedia, but anyone can do that because the government pays for it. But I'm not mad at you or anything (^_^) EMILY"]

The year is, like, -5,000 or something, so everything is very, very old and dusty indeed. A man is standing over this tomb-thing that sort of looks like a dude, except it’s gold, and the face kind of looks like it has mascara on it. The man is crying, but he’s still very manly, because he’s obviously dealing with some pretty heavy crap.

“Oh, my son! My only, lone only son!” wails the crying dad. “You were alive, but now you’re totally dead–and I think it was my fault or something!”

There’s a cat there, too, and the cat is also sort of crying, because cats care more than ANYONE, except for maybe horses (or, clearly, unicorns, but there aren’t any anymore, remember? Atlantis? Helloooo?) And it’s a very familiar looking cat, we think, maybe. The man looks at the cat and suddenly gets this idea, like the cat has told him something–something mystical indeed.

“Yes…yes, Smudgisis–that could work!” says the man, who lifts the lid of the tomb-thing, which is very heavy, but you can do amazing things when you’re being spooky.

Inside is a young man, and he’s not looking well at all. In fact he is dead.

“Oh, my precious Ancient Egyptian boy king Tutankhamun!” wails anew the bereaved father, and Smudgisis wails some, too. “But don’t worry–your faithful and very holy cat has told me how I can totally bring you back…TO LIFE!” Now the dad starts doing that evil genius mad laughing thing, so you can see that he’s certainly gone off the deep end.

“I’ll be right back,” he says to his dead son. “I need to go find some rags.”

So the sad dad finds some old togas or something and tears them up, and Smudgisis helps, which is very cute. And he comes back to his son, who we now see is in the basement of a really big pyramid, and he does a bunch of stuff to him that’s kind of gross. I think maybe he takes his brains out, but I really don’t want to think about it. So just know that it’s this big ritual, and the dad is all serious, and so is the cat. And YES this is all important and has to do with other stuff, and I PROMISE the big vampyre/mummy showdown will start soon–and it is GUARANTEED to be SEXY–so just hold your horses.

“Ra’ a ba! La-la ba-ra la-ba-bo!!!” shouts out the dad, whose eyes are filled with crazy, and then he wraps up his dead son in the rags. “Ab-fa-win-ma-turk-lin-ach! Boo! There. That should do it.”

Suddenly the son is not so dead, and he springs up (because he is very athletic)(!!!) and grabs his dad by the throat.

“Woah! Hey! Stop!” shouts the dad, who is entirely not expecting this. But he shouldn’t have gone messing with weird stuff, we’re thinking. “Wait! Don’t you recognize me? I’m your father! Don’t curse me like this! Oh, no! Gack!”

And now it is the dad’s turn to be dead, and he is (for good???) And as soon as the last breath perspires from the man’s lungs, the boy-mummy sort of comes to his senses.

“Oh, no!” says the young man-mummy, shaking off the old rags. “I killed my dad!” Smudgisis rubs up against his legs and purrs, but it sounds like words to the boy. “Oh, I see. So my dad didn’t do the whole mummying thing the right way, so I was evil for a second, and I killed him, but now I’m fine.”

Smudgisis purrs louder now, because the boy isn’t as dumb as he looks (and he does look very dumb, if hunky indeed!) The boy pets his cat, and you can tell he’s got his thinking cap on.

“Because I killed my dad, I’m dreadfully not deserving of my name. From now on, I shall be known only as………………………… …………………………………… ………………………………………………. …………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………….Tutt! And as a way to attune for this griefish sin I have committed, I swear on my dead father’s dead body, which is right over there, that I will use my new life to stop people from doing stupid things with magic!” says Tutt. “For I have lost my father, and it’s the least I can do.”

Now a rumble comes from deep in the bowls of the earth, and the walls get all shaky and crumbly. The man-boy-mummy looks all around, like he’s dumb, but he’s not, probably. In fact he’s likely doing a complex series of equations that are well beyond any mere mortal’s mind to comprehend, because even though he’s a strong hunk and all, it will take more than sheer brown to survive the foreshadowed pyramid collapse. But he HAS to survive, for though he has shaken off death’s meaty fist, he has a most important mission.

He has to tell his One True Love that he is still alive.

“Stay close to me, Smudgisis!” says hunky, hunky Tutt. “I will lead us out of this, like a team!”

The line of vampyres was looking astoundingly extra-sexy and gothy, all standing there like they just didn’t care or anything. And on a scale of 1 to 10 on the gothic meter, they just didn’t care. Some of them were popping bubblegum bubbles, because that’s precisely how much they didn’t care. But they knew that to the raggy old mummies it was like they were saying “Ooooooh, we’re all, like, soooooo scaaaaared!”

There were just as many mummies in the roller rink club as there were vampyres, and you could tell that they were trying to be all blasé, too, but there’s no way they could pull it off. NO. WAY. I mean, they pretty much looked like they were wearing toilet paper.

For just about forever they stared at each other (some with very sexy eyes!) sizing each other’s up. At first Emily thought that the vampyres were for sure going to get their butts kicked, because all of the mummies looked like they were jocks or something. Even the chicks were all buff. But then she remembered that the vampyren had special powers and stuff, so maybe the shoe would be on the other foot.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” said Nightfin, stepping forward, and Emily wanted to hug him or something. “This is the lair of the vampyren, and you totally aren’t vampyres.”

All of the vampyres laughed, because it was funny, because the mummies most certainly were NOT vampyres.

“You should never have come back to this world,” said a mummy as he stepped forward, and Emily thought his voice seemed veeery familiar–and most certainly hunky– even if she couldn’t see his face.

“We go where we please,” said Nightfin, who took a step to the right. “See? I’m over here now, because I want to be. Is that some kind of biggie to you? Are you going to stab me in the back now? Because that’s what mummies like to do, right? Kill people’s fathers? Right? Huh? Like you killed mine? Right? Eh? Yeah? HUH?!”

Some of the vampyres sort of looked at each other, because Nightfin had kind of lost his blasé for a second. But the head mummy’s blasé seemed even more shaken, and he didn’t have much to begin with.

“You have a big mouth, Daggarhart,” said the hunky mummy, and he lurched forward at Nightfin.

“Whoa, wait now!” said Nightfin. “I was just kidding and stuff. Gimmie five–down low!”

Nightfin held his hand out, palm up, and Emily was glad that it looked like they wouldn’t have to resort to violents. The mummy calmed down and looked around at his fellow mums, and they all sort of nodded their heads.

“Yeah, okay,” said the mummy, swinging his hand down. But at the last second, Nightfin totally moved his hand away, all fast and sexy smooth, and slicked his hair back and ZING! revealed his flashy-blue eyes!

“Oh, no! Too slow!” said Nightfin, and all of the vampyres laughed and gave each other all kinds of crazy high fives, jumping off the walls and flipping and stuff. The exotic vampyres did this elbow-five thing, and we notice again that there are black vampyres there, too.

Nightfin came over to Emily to give her a special high five, but she wasn’t sure how blasé it really was. I mean, why couldn’t vampyres and mummies be friends?

Luckily, someone slapped someone else in the yapper, and she didn’t have to decide whether or not to spurn her soulmate’s triumphy gesture.

“Ow!” said Sexxica, who was holding her hand to her mouth. There was a trickle of blood on her hand, and Emily nearly fainted. Everyone had been sort of scuffling around and pushing each other, but now it was SERIOUS. The room was deadly quiet, like when someone totally random farts in an elevator, probably because they couldn’t help it.

“Enough of this playing around,” said Nightfin as Trudude led Sexxica back to the bar. “It’s time to show you what we vampyren can really do.”

Poor, hunky Tutt was squashed at the bottom of the Ancient Egyptian pyramid. But fortunately for him he’d positioned himself in just such a way that he’d be able to wiggle out. UN-fortunately, it took him 100 years to do it, but he totally had to tell his One True Love that he was alive!

“This sucks,” he said after the first 10 years. But then he saw HER in his mind, and he found the strength to keep hunking through.

“Oh, no! Smudgisis!” he said after 20 years. For though Tutt was now immortal, it seems his faithful cat was not, so much. And Tutt cried, for even the beefy ones do sop the salty of tears, sometimes, when they’re buried under a pyramid. I guess.

“I’m totally almost there!” he said after 50 years. But he wasn’t, and he got pretty bummed out. But still his One True Love propellered him ever onward, through the living rock and on til morning.

“I’m there!” he shouted after 100 years, and he was. Tutt ran with the swift of the righteous all the way to his One True Love’s house, and everyone he passed was all like “woah, we thought you were dead!”, and he’d be like “Can’t stop now! My One True Love bewaits!” And they were all like “whatever”, and put their arms up and did that Egyptian walk thing.

Finally he got there, and he wasn’t even out of breath, and he knocked on the door. This really happened.

“Hello?” said this really, really, really old woman.

“Is that you, Cleopatra?” said Tutt, who totally didn’t care that she was a wrinkly old prune–she was still his One True Love, and he could use his new mummy power to make her beautiful again! But the woman made this face like “wha???!!!”, and Tutt knew that it wasn’t her.

“Cleopatra was my great grandma,” said the woman, who was all wise and sad. “You must be Tutankhamun–her One True Love that died, like, 100 years ago.”

Tutt wanted to jump off a cliff or something, but he knew it wouldn’t kill him, so he just stood there looking really, really dumb for a while. Finally the old woman took him by the hand and led him to Cleopatra’s tomb, which was totally the Taj Mahal.

“Oh, no!” wailed Tutt as he read the inscription on the wall, which read:

“Dear anyone who might read this, especially my One True Love. After you left me, I realized I was just some stupid and ugly little dorky girl, with bad clothes, and I just didn’t care anymore. You probably never liked me at all, anyway. So when this guy showed up and was all blasé and stuff, I was all like ‘I like you!’ And for a while it seemed like he liked me, and he said he was something called a vam-PYRE. But he was a big fat liar about everything, I’m thinking, and I had his baby, and then he left me. And it sucked. And now I’m dead. I hope you’re happy. Love, Cleo.”

And with each word he read, Tutt swore on everything that can be sworn at that he would avenge her, and himself, and his dad, and his cat. He would find these vampyres indeed, and show them the what’s-for.

Tutt was ready to bust some heads, and so were all of his buff friends. Through the ages they’d battled with the vampyres, but they’d never been able to gang up on them like this before. But there was something else tonight that Tutt wanted even more than to kick Nightfin in the nads.

The girl. Emily. It was SHE that had drawn him here to the pesticide layer of the vampyres. There was something about her…something about her…something…True???

“Get ready to have your world rocked,” said Nightfin. All of the vampyres had formed up into this extra-sexy formation, like a really awesome dance squad that you can’t get onto, even though you practiced for a whole month and acted really nice to them, even though you thought they were kind of bitchy.

All of the mummies were like “HUH?!?!”, for the vampyres were using mystycyl pwyrs, and all of the mummy’s brown was for not. Then Trudude popped up behind the bar, and he totally had this awesome DJ rig!!!!

“Ho! Yo! Ho!” he shouted as he started to kick out these really fat beats. Then the girl vampyres, led by Sexxica, started doing this really sexy dance, and the guys sort of stood there looking sexy. The mummies just stood there like dum-dums, because they were totally getting schooled! Then Trudude started doing some rapping.

“My name is Trudude and I’m looking at you, dude!
You better watch out, all the cows say Moo, dude!
Your gonna get rocked, but not with rock
Because rock music sucks and rap’s the best!

Now I’m pretty good but there’s a guy who’s even better
He doesn’t wear rags and he doesn’t have a sweater
In fact you could say that today he is blasé
And here he comes now, just to blow you away!”

Then Nightfin exploded out from NOWHERE, all flipping around and stuff, and Emily started jumping up and down because it was so COOL, and she didn’t have to fart. Nightfin winked at her, even though he was in the middle of a big battle and stuff, and their eyes took a vacation together on a Disney cruise, just for them.

But for everyone else it was just a second, and in lickety-split Nightfin went into his war rap, which went something like this:

“I am the man with the sexy blue eyes
You mummy’s think you’re all that–whoops, surprise!
You ain’t gothic and sexy like me
I’m so sexy I should be on TV

My name is Nightfin!
And I have bright skin!
In a lineup of blase I would fit right in!

So okay–you might have guessed, well I’m impressed–NOT!
Now I’m gonna do a little dance just like a ro-BOT!

Breeeeeaaaaaak!”

And then Nightfin did this awesome break dance, but all sexy, and the exotic vampyre dude sort of danced along with him but not quite as good. Then Sexxica did this slutty dance in front of Tutt, like she liked him, but then she was all like “nah-uh!” and walked away, and she got all KINDS of high fives from the other vampyres! Then Nighfin rapped more, exactly like this:

“I am the guy who won Emily’s heart!
I didn’t care when she had to run home!
I think she’s great, she is one of a kind!
I have great hair, and she loves my blue eyes!

I gave her ice cream cuz she’s one special girl!
I am so sexy, that’s why Emily loves me!
I will live forever and never go to school!
I would die for her if it were possible for me to die!

I dance good!
I dress great!
I like Emily!
I have an awesome car!
I hate mummies!
I have lots of friends!
Take it, Trudude!”

And Trudude started doing this wicked beat-boxing, and all the vampyres danced to it for a long time, and then Nightfin leaped up and did, like, 1,000 jumping jacks, and then the moonwalk. And all the vampyres started cheering and high-fiving, because they knew they’d totally pwned the mummies!

Except that when they looked up, all of the mummies were gone.

And so was Emily.

END OF PART 7

CONFINUE TO PART 8

EMILY AND THE SEXY VAMPYRE – HOME

[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs, administered by Paul and Storm]

[editor's note: this chapter was hand-delivered by a woman who identified herself as Emily's mother, who informed the editor that she would have called the police except that it would have broken her daughter's heart. She also told the editor that despite the "harsh characterization" of the mother in Emily's story, she herself bore little resemblance to the character. She further noted that while she wished to encourage her daughter to explore her "wild and original imagination", she has cautioned Emily about making things "too sexy". She also wished it to be stated for the record that vampyres do, in fact, sometimes like older women.]

So before I tell you about the awesome fight scene and stuff, there’s a couple of things I forgot to put in the last chapter, but I forgot or something.

So remember the part where Emily’s in her room with her sweet new clothes, and her mom comes in and she’s all like “duhhhhh!”? Well she was just pretending to be all stupid, but wasn’t really. In fact she’s extraneously smart. And right before she told Emily that Charlie Bannister was there, she totally gave Emily her Christmas present early–and it ROCKED. Emily had asked for an iPod that year, and though her mom bought her a Zune, it turns out that the Zune is AWESOME and WAY BETTER THAN A STUPID IPOD, no matter what anyone says (especially Emily’s lame-o friends who only have stupid little no-name chunk blowers that most decidedly DO NOT have distinguishing features like its FM radio, subscription model, and the Zune Social. FM radio is available on all Zune hardware models, while Zune HD also features HD radio. FM radio features include RBDS, which receives and displays digital information in conventional FM radio broadcasts. Files can be shared wirelessly between Zunes and PCs as well as other Zune devices. Zune’s primary competitor is the Apple iPod product line.)

[editors note: at this point, three pages of text that seem to have been lifted directly from Wikipedia have been cut from the original manuscript.]

Anyways…

So all the vampyres were like “woah!” and “Aaaaah!” and “wooga-wooga!” and running around in crazy circles because the mummies were coming–except for Nightfin, who just stood in the middle of the roller rink bar all yawning and stuff, because he was so sexy calm. And he was Emily’s anchor rock, and she freaked out not at all.

“What are we to do?” asked Emily, who had no clue, except those little diamond hint glints that glanced from Nightfin’s eyes.

“Don’t worry, baby,” said he, and he yawned again to show just how unflummoxed he was. “Mummies are super-slow, so it’ll be a while. In fact, I should have just enough time to answer all the questions that you haven’t asked, but that I know you’ve wanted to ask, about we vampyres and how it is we’ve come to live here in your town, and why we don’t die in the sun, and why we’re ever so sexy.”

Emily was amazed at how acute Nightfin was at reading her mind, but then again she wasn’t, really. She was just about to tell him to start telling her about all that stuff, but he guessed that, too. And as she gazed at those two visual organs just below his brow, he just started talking…

“Many, many, many moons ago, my people roamed in ancient places, having come from other places. And it was good. We had parties and stuff, and we could stay out all night if we wanted, and pretty much did what we felt like.

We had an awesome city and abundance lands, and we rode around on unicorns all day long through forests primeval. And it was good. And the unicorns could talk, and they’d tell you how pretty you were, and how no one could ride them except the most special people, which was us–the vampyres.

None of us were ever old, except maybe for my dad, Moonglow Daggarhart, and his friends and stuff, who were all, like, 40 or something. But mostly none of us were old.

Well, for some reason we had to move. It was an earthquake or something. And our beautiful city crumbled down, down into the sea. Many vampyres died, and all of the poor unicorns drowned, which is why they don’t exist anymore. And you know what? That city of ours was totally the lost city of Atlantis. I know–wow, right?

So we were cast to the four corners of the earth. And what really sucked is that we lost all of our vampyre powers when we lost our city. Like we could no longer fly anymore (because we could–in Atlantis), or move things around with our minds, or juggle. And our teeth were no longer totally straight and gleaming.

It sucked raw. I remember the first town we went to, and the stupid villagers were all like ‘you’re all stupid!’ and they persecuted us with sticks. So we didn’t stay there. But eventually we found a land where the people weren’t total douchebags, Cyzgmrvyzzkavania, and we prospered. We were kind of good at doing stuff, but it was really by learning to be really sexy that made us survive. And then quite by accident a vampyre boy unlocked the secret to all of the lost powers of the vampyren, and it would lead to our dishevelment.

He was just walking along with a village girl, who (can you blame her?) was totally in love with the vampyre boy. And she was very, very beautiful–much (or maybe exactly???) like you, Emily Smithingtonson. And the boy was thinking he’d like to marry her, because she was pretty special alright, and was just about to ask when the girl spoke.

‘I have to tell you something,’ she said, and the boy could tell from her frowny-face that it wasn’t going to be good.

‘What is it, my love,’ said the boy, whose eyes were the color of what you’d get if you could squeeze all of the sky into a glass through a paper towel. For a long, long time the girl didn’t speak, but simply drank in the strained and concentrated goodness that was his gaze.

‘I’m totally dying,’ she said.

‘Oh, no!’ said the boy who, as you can imagine, felt like his heart had just been shot through by one of those bow and arrow thingies that’s sort of like a gun, with a trigger and stuff. ‘I don’t want to live if you die!’

‘No, no, my love!’ said the girl, whose beauty braved him greatly. ‘Ours is a love eternal, despite any fire and all the rain.’

Together they fell into an embrace, and she lay her heart and head upon him. Forever and a Tuesday they stood swaying together, like a tree and the bark that surrounds the tree or, really, is part of the tree. And just as the primary components of vascular tissue in plants are phloem and xylem, so too were the young, ripe pair each others component that facilitated the transport of nutrients to the furthest stretches of each others soul.

At long last the girl looked up at her sturdy/sexy boy, and great tears did well up in her eyes. The boy looked down and saw in those preternatural tears a billion-kajillion fun happy dreams that could never, ever, EVER be. So he kissed her.

And though he originally thought he’d go for it and kiss her on the lips, those very sexy lips couldn’t wait to get all the way down to her mouth, and they grazed down onto her eye, and it was the purest kiss of any kind by anyone anywhere ever. And he tasted her tears.

And it was good.

The boy felt an awesome rushy flush of something or other, like he’d just been told they were having tacos for dinner, and he knew that it was the power of her tears. The girl began to weep as she mulled her doom, and every drop found a home on the boy’s lips and, hence, his digestive tract.

As he drank the girl’s death-sorrows, the boy felt like he could do ANYTHING, for the salty imbibement was indeed poking his long-napping vampyre powers to life. Maybe he could fly again? Maybe he could juggle? Or…maybe he could save her!

‘Of what manner of disease do you suffer?’ he asked with implore.

‘It’s leprosy or something,’ said the girl, and just at that moment she clutched at her chest. The boy ratcheted his brain trying to remember how to cure leprosy or something, but it had been too many hundreds of years since he’d done it.

‘Ack!’ she said as the cruel disease began its final ravaging.

‘Wait, no!’ shouted the boy, who cursed his brain for picking such a poor time to be a dum-dum.

‘I could wait forever, just a minute at a time,’ said the girl, a won smile coming to her lips. But clearly she was a goner. ‘However, this is not the time and place for you and I, together. But into eternity I will cherish you, and this, and it was really great.’

‘You are my first. You’ll be the last,’ said the boy, and then the girl dissipated and was gone. The boy howled up into the sky, and to this day you can still hear it echoing in certain places of the world, especially if you’re by yourself in the woods near your house, or listening to sad songs on a Zune.

Don’t forget about the mummies–they’re still coming!

“And so it was that the vampyren discovered how to get their powers back, and to make their teeth straight and white again,” said Nightfin, who looked to Emily like a wounded bird that had been carefully mended over time, only to be cast down into howling, sad darkness.

“You were the boy in that story, weren’t you?” said Emily, whose soul, as usual, knew a lot more than she did.

“Totally,” said Nightfin, and it seemed to Emily that he was going to say something else–something that would be HUGE to her (and possibly even ABOUT her, maybe–or maybe not! We don’t really know!) But he didn’t, and almost immediately he regained his blasé. Emily decided not to push it, buster, and asked a different question.

“So all of the vampyres started drinking human tears to get their powers back, right?” was her question.

“Yep,” was Nightfin’s answer. Now it was Emily’s turn to blurt stuff out, because she’d so completely figured out what happened to the vampyres next, because maybe she’s not really so stupid at all, huh?

“And I bet that when the vampyren got there powers back, they became wicked awesome at doing things, and it was a total Golded Age,” said Emily, but Nightfin’s eyes looked like they were going “ha-ha!” Not like he was laughing at her for being stupid (because she wasn’t), but more of like in an ironical way, like he totally WISHED it was a Golded Age.

“Tragically it was not so, though it might have been if we didn’t muff it up so bad,” said Nightfin, shaking his head. “So I told my dad about the crying thing, and he was all like ‘Awesome!’ And he told everyone, and all the vampyres started going around making all of the human villagers cry so that they could drink their empower tears.”

“Oh, Nightfin, no!” said Emily, who imagined how sad the villagers must have been. It was probably like having your cat die, but every day.

“Yeah, I know,” said Nightfin. “If I’d realized what would happen, I would have kept my stupid mouth shut.”

An embracement was in order, and they hugged, and it was awesome.

“So yes, we vampyres did get really good at doing things, and indeed we did do a lot of blasé things for the villagers, even if they were sad all of the time,” said Nightfin, with whist.

Emily was confused. “So if making the villagers sad didn’t piss them off, what happened?”

Nighfin’s eyes lifted a lot of gravity into Emily’s, and broody darkness brooded there upon his loftless words. “With great power comes great sexiness.”

Emily gasped, for she knew how potable sexiness could be. “What happened?”

“The villagers, though we vampyren had greatly improved their stuff, resented us,” said Nightfin, who now looked kind of mean, and his teeth sort of glowed. “Some of them started to spread rumors about us–like how we drank blood with fangs, and that we hated the sun (which they just LOVED), and didn’t cook with garlic, and broke mirrors, and didn’t wash our hands after going number two, and had whiny voices, and dressed dorky, and wore black capes, and were friends with Frankenstein.”

“Oh, no!” said Emily, who knew that none of these things were true about the vampyren!

“Yeah,” said Nightfin, who you could tell was getting totally torqued up. “Everything good about us was made to be all upside-down, and they started prosecuting us every chance they got. First they said we weren’t allowed to smile, because we might bite them or something. Then they made us eat a lot of garlic, because they wanted us to be all stinky like them. Then they would beat us up if we came out during the day, though in truth most of us hung out mostly at night anyway, because it was more sexy. But still, it sucked.”

“Finally, we vampyren had had enough of the jealousy and intoleration, and decided it was time to do something about it. The year was 1647,” said Nightfin, who was quite frankly looking rather angry, with a heaping side of sexy. Emily already sort of knew what happened, but she let him finish.

“So my dad challenged the Elders of Cyzgmrvyzzkavania to a duel,” said Nightfin, and pillows and swizzle sticks began to blow around the room, knocking into the other vampyres as they got ready for the mummy invasion.

“All of them?” asked Emily.

“Yep. And there were, like, 20 of them or something, which is a lot.”

“Wow.”

“I know,” said Nightfin. “And they agreed that if he could defeat them, the vampyres could live in the village forever and ever and not get beat up again. But if he lost, they’d all have to leave and never come back. And he totally beat them.”

“Wait, I’m confused,” said Emily. “I thought that Smiggle Bigglye, um…defeated your dad.”

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” shouted Nightfin, and a platter on a nearby table shattered, scattering onion rings and sliders everywhere. Nighfin’s eyes glowed like colicky sapphires, and a dread moan rose from somewhere just outside of the roller rink club.

“My dad won fair and square!” said Nightfin, who turned to the front door with great umbridge. “But that night, Smiggle Bigglye sneaked up on him–and totally stabbed him dead!”

Now it was Emily’s turn to say “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”, which she totally did. Emily could hardly believe the treason of such a person, and felt her own blood ooze with pestilence.

Now all of the vampyres stood together in a sexy double line, ready to meet the mummy onslaughter. Trudude and Sexxica were side by side, looking like they were all that, and they were indeed. As were they others, and they were all comprised of fierce.

There was a loud bang on the door–then another–THEN ANOTHER! BANG! went the door! BANG BANG BANGY BANG! Nightfin gently pushed Emily back behind the line, for she was treasure beyond measure.

“There’s one more thing you should know about Smiggle Bigglye,” said Nightfin, who never looked sexier WOW he was sexy!

BANG! and the door began to splinter.

“What?”

BANG! the door bomb burst in the air, and beclothed figures began to lurch into the club.

“Smiggle Bigglye was a mummy!”

END OF PART 6

CONFINUE TO PART 7

EMILY AND THE SEXY VAMPYRE – HOME

[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs, administered by Paul and Storm]

[editor's note: "Emily" once again left the chapter in the editor's mailbox with a note, this time written on a slip of paper that, despite efforts to obscure its origins, was quite clearly from a "Hello Kitty" notepad. It read "Hey. Please tell my fans <3 that I'm sorry about not supplying them with my eloqutive sustains in a more timely fashion. I think my slaptard brother knows about it (like I care!) but I don't want him telling my mom and getting me all grounded again, so I had to wait until it was possible for me to obtain great stealth, which heretofore I have achieved."]

Strange things were afoot upon the piebald moors that were the outer skirts of Emily’s stupid small town. Misty, swirly, swanky figures appeared there as apparitions, gathering then themselves together with bad intent, for sure. Together they swayed a terrible sway, in a manner that would certainly be recognized by an ancient and quite possibly prehistoric person, who otherwise you’d probably think was a total idiot compared to us, but in this for-instance sure knows a lot more than we do, for she would indeed recognize the movements of the figurines as a most accursed dance, indeed!

Thence one, thence another, and thenst them all began a low, balmy moaning, and it was some way scary crap. (Don’t worry–there will be more sexy later!) Then every scuzzy bandaged body looked up at Emily’s forsaken town, and that most heinous juggernaut of olden slow folk began to march…

Emily’s jaw literally dropped to the floor when she opened up her closet. For while she was expecting to see all of the stupid lame clothes that she always saw, and that she’d continue to be a LOSER her entire life because her parents would never let her wear anything even half-sexy, that’s not what she saw at all.

And this part is so cool: every awesome dress and skirt and top and shoes and EVERYTHING that she’d ever seen at the mall and thought “wow, I might not be such a DOG if I could wear that, except my stupid mom won’t let me” was in her closet now! Emily looked over her shoulders, expecting perhaps a pair of…blue eyes? But no; Nightfin’s machinations were way more subtle, and she laughed at the little girl that she no longer was for thinking he was anything other than the good sneaky.

Emily tried on, like, EVERY outfit in the closet, and each one was more awesome than the next. Smudges purred his approval, because he loved clothes that didn’t suck, too.

“Oh, Smudges!” sighed Emily, who had finally picked the most vapidly tasty outfit of the bunch. “I just hope that I can be as blasé tonight as these sweet threads are.”

Then the door knocked, and it was Emily’s mom, and Emily was all like “oh, no!” inside because she was soooo nervous now that it was actually really time to go, and Nightfin’s tongue, and she thought for sure she’d drop a deuce in her hammock, but she didn’t.

“That little sweetie-kins Charlie Bannister is here, honey,” said Emily’s mom (who Nightfin so totally didn’t care about, in the least.)

“Tell him I’m dead or something!” said panic-bundled Emily.

“Okay, but he brought you a present,” said dum-dum mom. “I’ll just tell him you don’t want it.”

Oh, gawd! What should she do? Some nascent pebble that was her youthful innocence knew that if she stepped out that door, the one right there, in front of her, in her room, that there was no turning back. Not never EVER. And Emily’s mind raced like fast things, and she thought about stuff, like being alone with sexy eyes, and walking on beaches and babies and stuff and OH GAWD!

Maybe she could just take his stupid present and then run back to her room and cry and die and never come out again and live there with Smudges and eat nothing but dust until she was DEAD!

But then again, no, she thought. That’s just the silly little girl of yesterweek peep-peeping up with her stupid blah-blah voice because she knows nothing of the world. But now she knew the boundless debts that are the vastest reaches of the biggest things, that she saw in a duality of star-cussed eyes.

Now her brave was a real one–that of a WOMAN–and she adjusted her thong before sweeping through the door, past vampyre-charmed mom, to meet her density.

Nightfin-Charlie’s heads literally exploded when he saw how awesome Emily looked (because she did look totally tight, even if she never ever believed she could. But she can–she so TOTALLY can!) He was all like “buh-buh-buh”, and Emily wanted to hug him because he was so stupid, but she didn’t, though he was entirely dumb-sexy. For Emily wielded more empower than before, and had awesome clothes.

“Shall we traipse, Charlie?” said Emily, who looked and felt every bit the sophist.

“Erm, uh, duhhhhh,” said Nightfin, as if he’d been hit by a hockey bat. Then he got his act together, bode Emily’s mother good night, and out the door they went. Sexy.

Others were also slumping out into the night, and they too were sexy–NOT! They were smelly and raggy (or were they, really???), and they were mysterious and don’t you want to know who they are?

Together they stumbled up towards town–Emily’s town, where Emily rode in a blasé fast car with a sexy driver indeed towards destinations unbeknownst–with one extra-big one leading them ever onward. And though the head stumbler looked (for now, but maybe not later?) like some kind of thing that gets buried (perhaps by an ancient civilization, under a geometric shape whose volume can be calculated by multiplying the area of its base by its height by 1/3), you could tell he had something going on. Like he was a leader or something.

A leader of…teams???

???????

By the time they got to the old roller rink, Emily no longer felt so hoi polloi. It was like some kind of magnet was sucking the awesome out of her the closer they got. She wanted to barf, but she didn’t want to despoil her tasty threads, so she didn’t. but just barely.

“Okay, we’re totally here,” said Nightfin, who was by now every bit not Charlie Bannister. Even his ears glistened with some kind of static power.

“Totally,” said Emily, who wished she could just punch herself in the stupid face and DIE.

“Don’t worry. You don’t look stupid or dorky or anything,” said Nightfin. “And I shall sully the face of him or her who sayeth otherwise.” Suddenly Emily felt pretty alright again, and it was easier for her to keep her biscuits in the pan.

They walked up to the old roller rink, which hadn’t been open in forever, like at least three years, and it had cobwebs all over it. Emily wanted to ask Nightfin if they were in the right place, but she knew she’d sound like a total dodo if she did. Indeed as the got closer she saw that there was a mysterious symbol over the door that matched the mystical swirly unicorn-thingy that was on Nightfin’s awesome car. Nightfin winked teally at her, for he knew that her brain was one that figured things out, most of the time, and he thought that was pretty okay.

“Are you ready?” said Nightfin, whose eyes were like deep, misty gorges, possibly with a waterfall powering their power, like a hydroelectric plant put up by some previous regime so many aeons ago, mysterious and unknown. Emily knew that she could not make her timponous lips breathe out blasé words, so she just nodded.

The doors parted afore them, all by themselves, and there was totally no one behind them pulling them, and they weren’t hooked up to electricity or wifi or anything, and Emily knew therefore that it was vampyre maygyc. Inside was another set of doors that Emily remembered from when she was a stupid little girl that had old posters on it, and those doors too opened up, all by themselves. But then there was ANOTHER door that she DID NOT recognize, for it was new. It was some kind of maygyc metal that she’d never seen, whose color defied description, except that they were silver. And they had jewels in them that were definitely red. And some blue. And super-diamonds.

“Take this,” said Nightfin, who took a gem off the door and handed it to her. It was very impressive, indeed, and she asked him a billion questions with her questing eyes, and Nightfin answered back with a trillion answers, none of which made sense. So she put it in her pocket.

They stood there at the doors, just saying nothing (which was totally great, because she and Nightfin could laser across the universe like two spaceships just by breathing together near each other), and then Emily realized it was some kind of test. She looked at Nightfin and he nodded, because he knew that she knew what he knew that he wanted her to do. Which she HAD to do. Now.

“Um…” said Emily, not because she was dumb, but because she was thinking with her soul-well. She knew that if she said the wrong words, she’d leave false illusions behind, and that forever would she be barred from whatever it was on the other side of the door.

Emily plumped her depths, and in hazy craze saw dancing visages. For a second she freaked out, because the images came so fast that it was like being in the middle of a food fight that you did not start but got into trouble for anyway, because your stupid friends were SO immature, and yes, maybe, you threw a carrot stick. But only one, and you didn’t hit anyone, and it was sort of dried out and not even homeless people would have eaten it so, like, whatever.

Anyways, out of the miasmas rode a steedy unicorn, and it ducked its head down, and Emily patted it on the neck, and it whispered something in her ear…

“Oopus Doorus!” she shouted! And verily the door opened! Nightfin gave her a high five, and they stepped through a flavorful mist…

The moaning trompers tromped along through the town. Because I didn’t forget about them. It’s just taking them awhile to get to the roller rink.

Emily literally had a cow when she saw that the inside of the roller rink was totally not a roller rink at all. It was sort of like a really cool bar, with couches and pillows everywhere, and kind of dark but not in a scary way but YES sexy, and there was a bunch of people there. Or, to be more fastidious with one’s lexicon, there were VAMPYRES there.

“Hey,” said Nightfin as they walked in, all blaséxy. Some of the vampyres said “hey” back, others didn’t, and other did other things. Emily recognized a few of them–Sexxica was talking to Trudude, who was behind the bar, and the exotic girl and diverse boy were there, too. Plus there were some others, and probably a couple of black vampyres, and a smart looknig vampyre girl with short hair who was probably a feminist or something.

“Well if it isn’t little miss farty fart-fart,” said Sexxica, who was looking especially slutty. But Emily knew her whiles, and was ready for her.

“If you smelt it, you must have dealt,” said Emily, and all of vampyres went all like “oooooohhhhh!” You could tell Sexxica thought she’d make Emily cry, but she wasn’t even close.

“Well, you’re a big stinky pickle with stupid sauce, covered in stink-cheese, and smelly because you were in someone’s butt!” reported Sexxica, triumphy. By now all of the vampyres had gathered around to witness the battle of whits, and they listened intense as a sexy bunch. All eyes were on Emily, and the room was so quiet that not a single pin could drop.

“It takes one to know one!” reported Emily, and all the vampyres laughed and pointed at Sexxica, who had, in effect, had her own insult harnessed against her. Nightfin smiled and winked at Emily, and she was so happy that she thought her heart would give birth to kittens. But when she how angry Sexxica now looked, she realized she may have pushed back a little too hard.

The whole room hushed together, and Sexxica walked up to Emily like she was the queen of something important, and she smiled the smile of someone whose cruelty knew no bounce.

“I like you, Emily Blah-blah-blah,” said Sexxica, and some of the meaner looking vampyres laughed, because she’d just made fun of her name. “So I almost don’t want to tell you this…”

“No, Sexxica–don’t!” said Trudude, who looked somewhat impaled himself. Slutty, mean Sexxica ignored him and turned her whore self back to Emily.

“I…had…the…” started Sexxica, with sly.

“No, Sexxica!” yelled Trudude.

“..tongue…of…your…”

“Sexxica, no!” shouted Trudude.

“…beloved…guy…who…is…over…there…”

“Stop, Sexxica!” wailed Trudude.

“…Nightfin…Daggarheart…”

“Sexxica, you must desist!” howled Trudude.

“…in…”

“Estop your procedure!” vociferated Trudude.

“…my…”

“For the love of Moonglow Daggarherat, no, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO, NO, NOOOOO!” claxoned Trudude.

“…mouth!” said Sexxica.

The whole room faltered to silence, and you could totally tell that Sexxica instantly regretted opening her stupid mouth, and that everyone knew now that she was a TOTAL slut, for sure. Emily looked over at Nightfin, but his ever-tumbling eyes were now, like school in the summertime, closed to her.

“Is it true?” she asked of him, but in the center part of the core of her heart, she knew it was a verity.

“I…um…she…we…you…them…” began Nightfin, by way of explanation. Emily tried to lasso his two see-orbs, but they were just as good at being elusive as they were at being sexy.

For a moment Emily wanted to cry, but then she didn’t for some reason, and it was cool. I don’t know. She just dealt or something.

Before anyone could say anything important, one of the less-sexy vampyres ran up to the shell shocked group in a manner that would certainly indicate that he had a very important announcement, possibly having something to do with something else that has happened that, up to this point, you were not certain what it had to do with this story.

“Stop the presses!” shouted the demi-sexy vampyre.

“Here come the mummies!”

END OF PART 5

CONFINUE TO PART 6

EMILY AND THE SEXY VAMPYRE – HOME

[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs, administered by Paul and Storm]

[editor's note: this installment was found in the editor's mailbox, along with a yellow Starburst wrapper and a note which read "Dear old guy: I guess it's okay and stuff if you want to continue subscribing my story up on the internet , if you want. But if my mom finds out I'll be so completely busted that it's not even funny.  k? - 'Emily' p.s. my name isn't really Emily, but it would be, like, WAY creepy if you knew my real name and stuff. Not that I think your creepy or anything. It's just, you know, whatever."]

School was a dour visage the next day for poor, poor Emily. Even more than the usual blandishment that was her horrid school days, on this day her spirit wanted to crawl into her locker drear and DIE FOR GOOD. For there was entirely no way that her young tender heart could gaze a future where hope was something anything other than, irrevocably, gone.

“Did your stupid old weird boyfriend break up with you or something?” said stupid Ashley.

“Yeah, I bet he was all like ‘ooh, I’m gonna put my tongue in your mouth!’, and you were like ‘no way!’, and he was all like ‘bla-la-la-la!’ with his tongue and you RAN!” said lame Jessica, who knew nothing of tongues or love.

But Emily’s soul was now, like, waaay too complex to get all cranked up by her so-called friend’s missive’s. She didn’t even bother to tell them “whatever.” She just sat there, not eating, and not hungry. Nor thirsty. For she was herself a great ocean, but without blue, blue water. And no amount of water, blue or no, could refill her waters, except for very special waters indeed. And those waters had now flowed, far away, into a different mystical sea from whence they came. Or something.

On this day not even Mrs. Hately could yank her chain. Emily didn’t even know what that particular hag was even saying the WHOLE time, and she probably got an F for the day, but wasn’t sure, because that’s how much she didn’t care. AT ALL.

All the way home little springs of hope sprigged up along her path, only to be squashed away like butterflys that had been trapped, taken out of the cruel net, thrown wickedly to the ground, and trod upon, harshly. There was this guy washing his car, and for a sec Emily thought it was HIM…but it wasn’t. It was just some dude. Then she saw two other dudes, but they were also just dudes. And she thought FOR SURE that when she walked by the Softy-Cold she’d at least see Trudude, and there WAS a dude there, but, lamentably and irrevocably, it was also but a mere dude.

By the time she got home Emily couldn’t decide if she wanted to cry or die, so she decided she’d climb up onto the roof to figure it out.

“Alas, it is very high up here,” she lamented, for verily her ugly self had pitted herself against a very perilous situation. Indeed, the wuthering heights fled from her mind thoughts of decimating herself, for she realized she couldn’t bring herself to make that most penultimate of sacrifices.

“AAAAHHHHHH!” she yelled, because she fell off the roof for some reason.

And in her whirly mind’s eye a billion thoughts screeched like popping balloons in her ears, each one a memory vivid and so, so spry. She remembered special things, like blue eyes, birthdays, and pretty views. But only one view mortally mattered now, and it was all that she had, and it was the ground.

A boy is walking along, and he is not expecting that anything odd is happening at all. He’s just like “hum dee dum!” as he ambles. And he’s cute, but you don’t have to know that yet. And he’s walking down Emily’s block. And he’s kind of, I dunno, a jock or something, which is TOTALLY (suspiciously??) different from Nightfin. And he’s near Emily’s house going all “Ho-dee-do-do!” and thinking about sports or something, or maybe cars, or shooting a BB gun at cans, or pyramids (foreshadowing!)

What he is NOT thinking about is a stupid, ugly girl falling off of her roof for some reason, and yet it is happening in front of him. It is a shame, because maybe if he was paying attention he might perhaps catch her, and save her life, for which she would probably be quite grateful or petulant. But no, he is probably too busy picturing himself hitting a grand slam in the Super Bowl for him to realize it as the girl falls, falls, falls, falls, falls, falls…

Emily found herself not splatted on the ground at all, but indeed in the arms of a hunky dude who was cute.

“Oh, my!” she sighed, wondering if she would swoon to the point of fainting, and she put her hand up to her forehead. “I thought I was a total goner.”

“You’re no goner,” said the hunky dude, who had blond hair and looked to Emily like the captain of teams. “The only goner is my heart.”

Emily’s own heart pittered and pattered, and she was glad that she hadn’t eaten since last night. This boy…this man…this dude…had saved her life!

But googly goblins began chasing around the jasmine in her mind, scolding her ever so meanly! What of Nightfin? Didst you not love him? Are you so easily plucked? Are you to fall in love every time you fall off a roof?

“I…I don’t know what to say,” said Emily, who wanted to stay safe in her new dude-cradle forever and ever, though she knew she musn’t!

“I’m sorry,” said the guy. “I can be a dumb blockhead sometimes, though my heart is stout. I don’t even know your name.”

“Emily,” said Emily. “I guess I should thank you, um…”

“Billy. Billy Tutt,” said Billy Tutt. “But you can just call me Tutt.”

“Well, thank you, Tutt,” said Emily, who only then realized that she pretty much had a complete wedgie. “You can set me down now.”

But before Tutt could even begin to move his big arms, a voice called out clear and forthright.

“Unhand her this instant!” shouted an entirely familiar voice–a voice with the power of odd places and sexy, gothic miasma. Nightfin’s voice. “Or you shall face forces twixt which shall unrender you!”

“I will release her,” said Tutt, who was blasé in his own way. “But only because it was her wish, which it is a sweet yet sorrowful pleasure to obey.” And he didst release Emily to the ground.

For a very long time sexy Nightfin and hunky Tutt stared at each other, and Emily thought for sure that the deal would go down. And she looked at one, then the other, then both, and her heart did even more battle than the two of them might have been doing, if their eyes had swords or guns. And Emily knew that only she could sway them and keep them from kicking each other in the junk.

“Boys, no! Stop! Nay!” shouted Emily, standing between them and waving her arms or something. “Don’t fight over me! I’m just some stupid girl!”

Both Nightfin and Tutt looked like they’d just been slapped, or dunked in milk.

“Emily Smithingtonson,” said Nightfin. Sexy. “In many ages have I seen many stupid things. And my heart has felt stupid things. And my eyes have seen stupid things. And stupid things have brushed up against these garments I wear.” And Nightfin’s clothes were wafted by an unborne breeze. “So when I say you are no stupid girl, you can–no, MUST–believe it.”

Nightfin’s clothing was all flapping around with magic, and he was like a dark, brooding peacock strutting on the edge of a knife, standing still.

Tutt looked unnerved, and he too spoke.

“Well, um…Emily…I think I’ve seen old things–no, wait!” he said. “What I mean is if I’m stupid, then you’re stupid. Shoot! That didn’t come out right. Dang!”

And Tutt ran away.

Nightfin gazed down at Emily, who maybe kind of thought she might not be entirely stupid after all. Maybe. And Emily looked past her shame in order to look back into Nighfin’s salvation eyes, which once more were hers to jump into, like a stupid younger brother might jump into a ball pit. After perhaps a mental fortnight, Nightfin spoke words from his mouth, though they’d already written together an entire trilogy, plus an extra book, with their collected eyes.

“Go put on some blasé clothes, Emily Smithingtonson, and meet me at the old roller rink after you have dinner,” he said.

Oh, no! thought Emily. My clothes are all completely LAME!

She had to tell him that she didn’t have anything that didn’t make her look like a total DOG, and she looked up at Nightfin to tell him, but she didn’t really, because he wasn’t there anymore.

Emily walked into her house only to find her dorky younger brother, who we’re meeting right now.

“I’m telling! I’m telling!” said the little twerp, who everyone knew was a total accident, but who always got whatever he wanted anyway, because he was annoying and whiny and STUPID.

“Shut up, Randy!” said Emily, who was just not in the mood. “And so what? Mom and dad won’t care. They never care about ANYTHING. And so what if boys like me?”

“Boys don’t like you! You’re ugly and stupid!” said Randy, who stuck out his tongue and ate a candy bar.

“I am not!” said Emily, for the first time in her life. I mean, it was the first time she’d ever not agreed that she was ugly and stupid. “As a matter of fact, TWO boys like me. So you can go ahead and tell.”

“Well, I’m also going to tell that one of them’s a vampyre,” said Randy as he shoved another candy bar into his stupid face. Emily felt like she was tumbling down from the roof again, but it was only a roof in her mind.

“How did you know?” asked Emily.

Randy shrugged. “Kids can see vampyres. Duh! Now if you don’t buy me a cool video game for my stupid Nintendo thingy, I’m telling.”

“Fine,” said Emily, who really didn’t need this grief. And she made her brother swear on his retarded Pokemon collection, and he didn’t tell on her at dinner, which was lucky for him, because she would have KILLED him.

So her mom said it was fine to go out, because it was with charmy-charming Charlie Bannister, who she loved, which is totally too bad for her because vampyres DO NOT like moms.

And as Emily walked to her room, her countenance furrowed deep. For her heart’s head was now in a guillotine, and the executioner was her closet and all of its stupid, dorky clothes…

END OF PART 4

CONFINUE TO PART 5

EMILY AND THE SEXY VAMPYRE – HOME

[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs, administered by Paul and Storm]

[editor's note: this section appeared on the sidewalk directly in front of the editor's house, paper clipped together in a "Juicy" bag along with a note requesting the return of the Trapper Keeper (tm)]

So you remember Trudude, who was also called Nick? Well, he was still back at the Softy-Cold all the while when Emily and Nightfin were sharing their magical times. And then three COMPLETELY gothic kids came up to him.

“Hey,” they all said to each other. Trudude gave them all ice creams for free, and caffeinated beverages, and it wasn’t a big deal or anything. Clearly they were certainly friends.

“So have you seen Nightfin?” asked this girl who looked like a TOTAL slut, though her boots were pretty factually awesome.

“I guess so-I don’t know–no, definitely not–YES, yes I have!” said Trudude, who was totally busted by the girl’s slutty whiles.

“Tell us where he is,” said this other boy, who was very diverse looking. And I guess there was an exotic looking girl with him (who was the third person), and they were probably going out together.

“No, I can’t!” said Trudude, who didn’t want to get Nightfin in trouble. But the slutty girl had these, like, goo-goo laser eyes or something, and she zapped his brain. “Okay, come with me,” he said.

And they all went with him. To go find Nightfin (who was with Emily, if you will remember, right?)

Nightfin paced back and forth, biting his brooding lips, his hair falling over his face, like a long-haired cat with a mane. Emily could feel the pulse of his confusion, and knew he must be smart and not just good looking, because he was definitely thinking a lot.

“I have to tell you something, and it’s might certainly COMPLETELY upset you,” said the uncertainty-strewn Nightfin. But Emily could feel his heartlight, and knew.

“You’re a vampyre,” she said.

Then Nightfin went all stiff, and for a second Emily thought he’d knock her block off. But then he relaxed again, and sexy.

“Yes,” he said, breathing hard. “I’m totally of the vampyren–but we’re not what you think we are!”

Emily remembered what Mrs. Hately had said about all the vampyres being dead, and how TOTALLY busted she was.

“I entirely KNEW it!” she said. “But why does everyone think you were decimated out of existence?”

A sexy shadow fell across Nightfin’s face and blue eyes, and he breathed deep the gathering gloom. At his very moment Emily felt almost holy to be so proximate to him.

“Verily, it is true, we almost were decimated away, for good,” said Nightfin, who gazed deep into Emily’s eyes, like he was looking for something at the bottom of a big, empty paper bag, in a room that didn’t have much light. Emily felt sad teardrops start to bunch up in her own gazey eyes.

“No, no!” said Emily.

“You must not cry tasty tears!” swooned Nightfin, breaking his gaze, then looking back because she was so unknowingly beautiful, then snapping his head off from her again.

“I–I won’t!” said Emily, who was starting to feel pressure building up in her guts. But she got her act together, and Nightfin did too, and he looked back into her, so it was cool.

“So anyway,” intoned Nightfin, “We were hunted and stuff for a while, and some really bad things happened, and it sucked. But we vampyren have powers and things, so it worked out OK.”

“Wow,” said Emily, who was amazed by the mysticism of him.

“You see, we vampyren come from a different place that is not of this world, but is in this world, but entirely not.”

“Like an island?”

“Sort of,” said Nightfin. “But more like a barely-perceptile space-place. Of the mind.”

“So it’s like another dimension,” finished Emily. Nightfin’s jaw dropped in surprise, but in a sexy way.

“You totally understand!” he said. “I already knew you were smart and beautiful, but you seem to know so much about my people’s ways, with instinct power.”

“But I want to know more,” said Emily, hungry for the thirst of knowledge. “Tell me all about your ways, and your intransigent powers.”

But before Nightfin could even start to fathom for her, this weird wind started to blow, and though it made Nightfin’s mane-head look very sexy and wise, it was a portend of no good.

Now did the wind blow, and hence did the air glow, and thence, as if strewn aloft from the very wind that had been most unnaturally wrought, and in an eerie spectrum light, these kids showed up.

“Oh-ho, what have we here!” said the diverse boy, who minorities would TOTALLY love.

“I thinky Nighty-wighty finny-winny blah blah blah!” said the exotic-looking girl, who now that you can see her better is some kind of Asian, probably Chinese or something. Or Korean, because you’d never expect that.

“I’m sorry my good friend!” said Trudude, and the slutty girl pushed him into a tree, just to show how mean she was. “Ouch!” said Trudude, and he dropped his caffeinated beverage.

“Well, well, well,” said the slutty girl, who walked up to Nightfin and Emily. You could tell that she thought she was all fancy and sexy, but she was totally NOT, and she had on WAY too much perfume–and it was the slutty kind. “It looks like someone has deployed himself a new toy.”

“What’s it to you, Sexxica?” said Nightfin to the tawdry girl, who was all, like, standing there in her boots thinking she was all that.

“Well, we vampyren have very calibrated standards, and maybe we don’t like her,” said Sexxica. “Maybe she’s stupid. Maybe she’s ugly. Maybe she’s short. Maybe she has a dumb voice. Maybe she can’t dance good. Maybe her clothes are retarded. Maybe she likes Pokemon and dumb rollerskates. Maybe her hair is lame. Maybe she snores. Maybe she’s good at math. Maybe she isn’t sexy AT ALL. And maybe she doesn’t enjoy caffeinated beverages!”

And like a lighting bolt, Sexxica threw a can at Emily–and Emily totally caught it! All of the vampyres stared at her, especially Nightfin, to see what she would do. Emily opened the can of caffeinated beverage and drank it, because it just wasn’t a big deal or anything, and she drank them all the time and it was normal for her, so it just wasn’t a big deal.

Sexxica looked annoyed, but kind of impressed, but you could tell she was proudly (and maybe OK in her own slutty way).

“Well, that doesn’t prove anything,” she incanted, tossing her gothic head. But all the other vampyres could see that the ice was well past the broken point.

“Don’t be such a…a mummy!” said Trudude, and all the other vampyres went all like “oooooooooh!”, like it was the biggest insult in the whole wide world. And it made Sexxica REALLY made. And her eyes started to glow red, and Emily turned her head away for the solace of Nightfin’s truly blue eyes.

But there were churning conflicts in the fathomy deeps that she found there, and the whippy-wind was going again, all the vampyres looked kinetically sexy.

“Well, maybe she’s not so blasé,” said Sexxica. “Let’s she what she’s like without Nightfin’s vamp-aura!”

And there was a flash of light, and the wind was gone, and all of the vampyres were staring at Emily. And her tummy started to ache. And she remembered all the ice cream she ate. And she looked at Nightfin. Then Trudude. Then Sexxica. Then back to Nightfin. Then over to those other two. And then, finally and at last, back to Nightfin.

And she cut the cheese, big time.

All of the vampyres started to laugh, HARD–except for Nightfin but Emily didn’t notice that–and Emily wanted to be anywhere except for this sad place in the woods, which stupid Sexxica had just dessicated.

And so Emily began to run, and Nightfin shouted “WAIT!” with romance, but it wasn’t enough, and the vampyre’s laughing was too loud, and she RAN, RAN, RAN, and CRIED, CRIED, CRIED!

All the way home.

END OF PART 3

CONFINUE TO PART 4

EMILY AND THE SEXY VAMPYRE – HOME

We think we know where they got their inspiration from…

First of all, it’s been noted that, while we were at Dragon*Con, our touring buddy Jonathan Coulton was at PAX in Seattle, performing with Felicia Day (from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and The Guild). Well, Jonathan’s not the only person who got to share the stage with famous people from the Nettertubes; the audio file below is how we were introduced on Saturday night…

Strong Bad Intro (right-click to "Save Target as…")

Secondly, we forgot to link to this awesome illustration that Len Peralta did for our latest song, "Cruel Cruel Moon". Len, as per usual, is awesome.

Thanks to Ken Plume for pointing us at this one.

Glad that’s settled, then.

So when the following elements are gathered in one place:

• a musical
• starring Neil Patrick Harris
• and Nathan Fillion
• written by Joss Whedon
• released for free online

…then it’s time to act. So go see Act I of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog right now. Act II will be released on July 17, and then Act III on July 19. But seriously, do it now, because they’re taking it offline on July 20 (in preparation of releasing it as a DVD).

Ten Finger Johnny

Have a safe and happy Fourth, everyone!

All kidding aside, this man wrote some of the catchiest songs of the past century. We completely respect that, and our hats are off to him today.

Click on any picture below for a larger-scale version.

Well, not in our house; we’re all love, kisses and ice cream in our house. We’re talking about the rest of you unappreciative louts.

But you know what you can do to show Mom how much you appreciate and love her?  Play her Paul and Storm’s "Mother’s Day Song". We like to think it sums up the sentiments of the holiday quite touchingly and succinctly.

Sincerely, though; thanks, Mom!

If you haven’t heard it yet: some while back, Chunklet unearthed David Lee Roth’s isolated vocal track from "Runnin’ With the Devil", and it’s…well, it’s frickin’ awesome. (Kindly check your "Sammy Hagar was better" comments at the door–Sammy is fine, but that’s not what this is about*.)

Now, for your A.D.D.-addled spans of attention, we present the Condensed Awesome DLR RWTD Tidbits as a special tribute. It’s like having the ’80s stuffed into a small box you can open anytime.

As an added bonus, we’ve saved all of the individual yowls, yelps, screams, grunts and exclamations as individual sound files (MP3 or WAV) so that you can roll your own. And there’s a special prize goes to whoever can tolerate DLR’s "WHOOOOOOOoooooo!" as their OS alert sound for the longest.

And as an extra added bonus, we’ve put together a video for it as well and we’ve posted it to the YouTubes. Because that’s what we do.

UPDATE: Previous video not embedding properly for some odd reason; re-uploaded and re-embedded, should work now.

*though Storm’s wife thinks that Sammy’s hair is the best of all time.

But here it is all the same. Complete archives here.

Having decided that it just wasn’t worth the cost for constant Internet access (as alluring as the thought is), he’s gone a different direction and ended up with the LG Rumor. It’s still pretty snazzy, what with its slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and camera (which the Sprint Blackberries sorely lacked); so be sure to ask Paul how he likes his new phone next time you see him. (Unless, of course, you see him banging it against a wall and cursing; then you can probably guess his opinion) And the next time you see us update our Twitter page while on the road, you’ll know where it came from.

While digging through some old files, Paul found this list in a file called "song ideas" dated Jan. 10, 2003. It’s an interesting peek into our brains from five years ago. (Especially insofar as it resembles a peek into the mind of an 11-year-old boy) And for the most part, we have no clue what most of these ideas were supposed to lead to–although it’s interesting to see that "Your Town" apparently sat around for about four years before finally becoming something. And we’d love to know what song we were hoping to develop out of "faggy Mozart."

• SUV
• Japanese animation
• lights
• doo wop
• boogers
• peanut butter and jelly
• morning wood heights
• your town
• tin can
• band geek
• the bones of Beethoven
• faggy Mozart

Also featuring interactive menus,

Paul and Storm.

A guy who performs the Star Wars &quot;Cantina Band&quot; song by making fart sounds with his hands, while making oddly bemused faces.

His version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" is positively sublime.
Happy Holidays, everyone!

So here’s my situation: my cell phone is about to give up the ghost, and it’s time to upgrade. More to the point, it’s time to get a PDA. Being a Sprint customer (I’ve been very happy with them for years), my choice comes down to a Treo or a Blackberry; and I’ve had enough friends complain vociferously enough about their Treos that it looks like the Blackberry’s the winner.

So I can choose between the Blackberry 8703e and the 8830. Here’s where you come in, Clamoring Public. Anyone out there have a preference? If so, why? Any and all input is welcomed. Please help do my homework for me?

Oh, and my arm hurts, too.

Paul.

UPDATE:  I should have mentioned….I am now Mac-based (for the most part), so something that syncs w/a Mac without massive headaches is, while not absolutely necessary, at least a big plus.  Anyone had luck or lack thereof with any of the Windows-based devices, like the Moto Q? Also, while iPhones are kewl r0xx0rz, I am locked into Sprint, contract-wise (and as mentioned, am quite happy with them anyway); so no go, Steve Jobs.

Does Aqaba offer any entertainment choices or recreational for ships crews?

After reading the answer, go ahead and try to tell us they haven’t heard "The Captain’s Wife’s Lament".

What do we have against NYC, you collectively ask? Aren’t our yummy pizza and bagels enough to entice you, you say with a sneer? Or is our plethora of presidential candidates a huge, intimidating turn-off, you toss over your shoulder as you nonchalantly look out your window through a silvery mist at the Empire State Building, which is cleverly lit up in some color scheme or other to signify who knows what?

We’re actually quite fond of your little town; the trouble is finding a good gig. What can you do, you ask? You say you’re just one tiny person in a huge sea of American Idol runners-up concert-going, Disney musical-seeing, Yankee game-attending slobs, and that you can’t possibly change anything??

Nonsense, my friend. You are a warrior! A dynamo! A monolithic powerhouse!

With just a few clicks of a mouse, you can rearrange the hands of fate–from right here on our website! On the right sidebar you’ll see a blue box that says "WANTED" at the top…click where it says "Paul and Storm" and YOU can change the future by Demanding us at Eventful.com.

Really. This thing actually works. When we can show venues that we have lots of Demands, they listen. And they book. It’s all about putting butts in the seats, baby (or at least demonstrating that we have many interested, potential butts.)

And it’s not just in NYC–it’s ANYWHERE (we’re looking at YOU, Atlanta…Cincinnati….Ann Arbor and Detroit…) We already use it as a tool to decide where we’re going to go, and have had some successful gigs because of it. And even if we’re already coming to Your Town, it still helps us to know where folks dig us the most (you don’t want Atlanta, Cincinnati, Ann Arbor and Detroit hogging us for themselves, do you??)

And while we’re thanking hosts, more thanks go to the folks at the Auburn Public Theater in Auburn, NY. Not only was everyone great to us, and not only did Carey (the managing director) take us to his pizza parlor after the show…not only all those things, but Paul got his children’s TV geek on when he found out that Carey played "Moody’s Dad" on the hilarious "Moody’s Point" segments on The Amanda Show on Nickelodeon.  Awesome!

So it was really inevitable that we’d eventually come up with…

LOLCoultons

Ostensibly, these are just some gentle ribbing of a good friend. In actuality, they are our passive-aggressive way of sniping at him for his meteoric success in the past year. Tomay-to, tomah-to…

Photos can be from the performance itself, before, and/or after. And they don’t even have to look particularly good. Just fork ‘em over, ‘kay?

(click on a picture for the larger version)

All together now: "Aaaaaaawwwwwwwww…!"

Not to be left out, here are the old and busted original Sabourin dog, Lisa; and Storm’s cats, Reinhold and Cougar:

Paul’s cat, Billie, denied permission for her picture to be published here. (She doesn’t trust the media)

We have, of course, ordered "PaulandStorm the Monster," and will post it here as soon as we get it, you betcha.