Page 6 of The Vampire Always Rises
“What is the problem—holy shit!” Ellis stopped speaking for a second and pointed a wavering finger at the floor next to me. “What the hell is that?”
I snatched up the furry red blob of tape that I’d successfully ripped off my nether regions, and instantly, my hair snaked out and got stuck on an exposed bit of waxy glue. “Ignore that! Oh, darned socks! Now it has my hair.”
Ellis doubled over, and for one horrible moment, I thought he was going to vomit on me. I tried to scoot backward across the bathroom floor, but stopped when the noise emerging from him was gales of laughter.
“It’s not funny!” I said, glaring at him as I tried to get a hand in between my thighs to pry them apart while still maintaining the decorum of the towel covering me. “My legs are glued together!”
“They’re what?”
“Stuck together!”
“I thought you pulled the strip off?”
“I did, but that was just one side,” I said, scowling fiercely at the tears of hilarity streaming down his face. “Really, Ellis! A little empathy wouldn’t be out of place here!”
“My dear, I’m as empathetic as I can be, but if you could just see you ...” He burst into another round of laughter, collapsing onto the toilet, pulling toilet paper to mop at his face. “Sitting there like a burrito with enough red fur to cover a large mouse hanging from your hair ... oh, where’s my phone? I must get a picture of this.”
“You do, and you’ll never walk straight again,” I threatened, looking as mean as I knew how.
It just made Ellis laugh harder than ever, and it took a full five minutes before he managed to regain his self-control.
“All right, darling, let’s see just how bad it is,” he said, kneeling next to me and reaching for the towel.
“It’s Papa! I just know it is!” I moaned. “This is his curse. He always said he wished he had a way to keep me pure, and I just know he’s done this from beyond the grave!”
“Deep breath, girlfriend, deep breath. I doubt that even your father has found a way to blight your coochie from the misty veil.”
“You don’t know how deranged he was,” I said, pulling toilet paper from the roll to mop up my face and nose. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“Going in,” Ellis warned, digging his fingers between my glued thighs. He didn’t get any farther than I did.
“What are we going to do?” I said, my words definitely a bit wobbly.
He got nose to pubic mound and examined the situation for a few seconds before getting to his feet. “Sit tight. I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?” I asked, panicking when he padded out of the bathroom. “You’re leaving me?”
“Just to get some ice and the phone. Calm down, darling. I won’t leave you in this destined-to-be-a-virgin-for-the-rest-of-your-life state. Hello? Are you the Girl from Ipanema Waxing Kit technical help people? I’m glad you’re still in business. What do you have for someone who was raised in a cult, and doesn’t know that you shouldn’t glom fifteen-year-old wax strips onto your choochita?”
A half hour later, Ellis returned from a visit to a nearby pharmacy to pick up bottles of baby oil and mineral oil, both of which we drenched over my parts and thighs, which luckily allowed me to get my legs separated. There were still bits of blue bath mat fuzz decorating my private parts, which were enlivened by red, angry welts from the glue strips, but at least I had the blasted thing off.
“I feel ridiculous,” I said a short time later, an ice pack pressed against the tender parts.
“Mmm. Well, if you ask me, it’s not so much ridiculous as gullible,” Ellis said.
“Huh?”
“The vampires, darling. You don’t know any better because of your upbringing. Where the rest of us were growing up toStar Warsand Steven Spielberg movies andBuffy the Vampire Slayer, you were stuck reading some misanthropic version of the Bible.”
“You don’t believe vampires are real, do you?” I asked, giving him a sidelong look.
He shrugged. “Does it matter if I do or don’t?”
“Not really.” I was silent for a moment, then added, “I can’t help shaking the dream I had last night. It had a vampire in it, and he needed me. I mean, seriously needed me. Life-and-death sort of needed me, and then he started kissing me, and after that ...”
Ellis sat up. “And after that what? Don’t stop now, darling. I love a good erotic dream.”
I waved away the comment. “And then nothing. Just when I thought it was going to be good, poof, it was over.”
