by N.K.L. Storm
[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs, administered by Paul and Storm]
Part 9
[editor’s note: this chapter was received by the editor’s wife, who reports that the author was in a state of tearful distress when she brought the pages to the house. It seems that a boy she was interested in, and then wasn’t interested in, and then was again, turned out to actually have been interested in one of Emily’s friends and not her. Or something. At any rate, the author explained that it was her extraordinary emotional distress that caused her to lapse in her literary efforts, but that she decided she needed to persevere “for the sake of my fans.” The editor would also like to warn readers that the author uses some strong language in this chapter, but in the interest of preserving the author’s original vision no words have been altered from the original manuscript.]
No blue eyes could see through the bleak, moldy shower curtain that was Emily’s life, which was totally shattered and ruined, probably forever and ever and anon. And no hunky arms could lift her up out of the dank, deep, dumb, doo-doo pit where she wallowed and hoped to DIE, but not even death cared about her enough to notice that she was there. Even her cat Smudges had given up on her, choosing instead to hang out in her stupid brother’s room, which was just weird.
For the hunky arms were totally suspended from his school, and maybe expelled or something, or maybe maybe arrested. I don’t know. But Tutt was most certainly not around, and for all Emily cared he could be stuck at the bottom of a big bucket of poop.
And now that the fog of sexy had cleared, it assuredly seemed that the blue eyes were entirely deceitful. Once or twice Emily thought she saw them glinting outside her bedroom window, but screaming GO AWAY, GO AWAY, GO AWAY! evicted them neatly from her visage.
Emily was totally GLAD that she was grounded forever and ever, for she had also become a total social piranha at school, entirely shunted by her piers. It seems that most of the school’s football guys had been mummies, and after the incident at the Sports People Club they were all suspended, so now the football team totally SUCKED and everyone just knew that it was Emily’s fault.
“Awwww, poor Emily doesn’t have any boyfriends anymore!” said stupid Ashley at lunch one day. Even though Emily didn’t eat anymore, she had to be somewhere at lunchtime, I guess.
“Yeah, maybe I can date that creepy blasé guy now!” said dum-dum Jessica, who thought she was all that because she was starting to get boobs.
“I don’t care,” said Emily. And she DIDN’T. And after that day stupid, ugly, dumb, poopie-headed loser Emily just sat by herself at lunch, not eating, or breathing, or caring or anything. So just leave her ALONE. In fact, no one noticed her ever again, and sat there in the cafeteria until she DIED. And no one noticed that either. Not her friends, or her mom, or her brother, or any stupid boys.
THE END
Part The Last (for real)
[editor’s note: it seems that Part 8 was not, in fact, the end. This section was delivered several days later, again received by the editor’s wife, who reported that the author seemed much more circumspect about her situation.]
So Emily woke up one morning and realized that the whole dying thing had just been a dream, although things did still kind of suck. But then one day there appeared a fancy envelope under her bedroom door. It was made of very heavy, old-looking paper, and her name was inscribed on the front in some kind of metal or something.
“Whatever can it be, Smudges?” said Emily to her cat, who had come to his senses again. Emily opened the envelope gingery and dispelled its contents unto her hands.
There was just one small rectangular business card-thing, and on it written just one sentence:
“Only you can unite them.”
There were symbols in all four corners of the little card, two of which she recognized: the weird symbol-thing of the vampyren and a pyramid representing the mummies. The other two marks just looked like weird gobbledygook to her, so I won’t bother describing them to you right now.
Emily asked her mom if anyone had come by the house to visit her, but of course no one had. It seemed that mystycl forces were at work, indeed! Then she was out on the street or at the mall or somewhere (because she wasn’t grounded anymore) and she saw Tutt, who seemed surprised to see her.
“Wow, Emily…what a surprise!” said Tutt, backing away from her. Emily’s heart skipped a beet, despite her still being mad at him for some reason.
“Oh, hey,” said Emily, who had retained the gift of blasé despite her recent relapse into loserness.
“I can’t be seen with you or they’ll totally arrest me again,” said Tutt, who you could tell totally wanted to hug Emily or something.
“Whatevs,” said Emily, who indeed wouldn’t have minded a hug or something, I guess. But then she remembered the letter. “Did you write me a letter?”
“What letter?” said Tutt, who Emily knew wasn’t the right kind of smart to be deceptive.
“Never mind,” said Emily, turning to go. True, with one word to him she could be a QUEEN, but for now Tutt would just have to worship her backside.
“I will avenge you, and totally show those greasy vampyres what’s what–this Friday night, under the lights!” said Tutt, and Emily twirled around. And it was sexy.
“What?!” she said, blazing her eyes at his own peep-holes, with glory.
“Nothing,” said Tutt. “Forget I said anything. See ya!”
And Tutt ran away.
For the rest of the week Emily pondered over these puzzlements, which only got puzzlier when she saw stupid Ashley in the cafeteria all crying and stuff.
“Boo-hoo-hoo!” cried Ashley. Jessica was nowhere to be found.
“What’s wrong?” asked Emily.
“I started dating this really blasé guy, and then he dumped me for stupid Jessica!” said Ashley.
“Did he have blue eyes?” asked Emily.
“Yes–how did you know?” asked Ashley back. Before Emily could answer, Jessica came to the table, crying like a big, stupid baby with boobies.
“Waaaaaaah!” cried Jessica. “Charlie dumped me!”
“WHAT?!” said Emily. “Do you mean Charlie Bannister?!”
“Yes!” said Jessica.
“Yeah, he’s the blasé, sexy jerk that dumped me, too!” said Ashley.
Emily left the two of them to cry into their baloney sandwiches. For Emily was now on the warpath to find Nightfin.
Nightfin found Emily first.
Emily had just been walking along somewhere, all la-dee-da and stuff, when he appeared in front of her Poof! out out nowhere in the dusky dusk-time.
“Hey,” he said, as if he had no idea that he’d made poor Emily’s life a living HELL.
“Hey,” said Emily, who wasn’t about to give his stupid blue eyes the stupid pleasure of seeing her angry.
“You’re probably wondering why I totally went out with and dumped stupid Ashley and Jessica,” said Nightfin.
“I don’t care,” said Emily, though she did kind of care indeed. Of course Nightfin knew that, because he was rather perspectivey.
“Well I knew that it was the only way to get your attention,” said Nightfin. “But I didn’t mean to hurt you. And if it makes any difference to you, I never thought they were blasé at all, and YOU are my soulmayte, forevyr and evyr.”
Emily wanted to tell him to go eat raw eggs, in the shell and not hard-boiled, but her mind could not keep her heart from going all melty. Stupid, stupid heart! And before Emily could rally her brain-bone again, Nighfin kept up with the wily.
“But if you want to cast me forever into banishment, it’s more than I deserve,” said Nightfin, eyes downcast like a sad, sexy pirate. “Search your heart, search your soul: everything I do, I do it for you.”
Emily totally fell for it, and collapsed unto his sexy body and felt like she was whole once more, again.
“Oh, Nightfin!” she said, and she was treated to another million lifetimes of sweet bliss, which no one else in the world could ever understand, except for maybe Angelina Jolie. But even eternity must end, and Nightfin released her down gently back onto her own new newly-peaceful isle. Then he said more stuff.
“And don’t worry about those mummies,” he said, his eyes full of switchblades and bees. “Everything will be settled this Friday night, under the lights.”
Emily wanted to ask him “Why?!”, but there wasn’t even time for “What?!” or even “No!”
Nighfin disappeared into the darkness, leaving Emily in dark darkness of her own.
Sexy.
Emily’s guts told her that this time the deal was really going down. And though no new mysterious missives missiled under her door, she knew darned tootin’ where the showdown would be. Bribing her little brother with a Take 6 candy bar, Emily snuck out of the house after dinner and headed for her school’s football field.
To her surprise, it was completely dark at the football place. Maybe her gut-sense was wrong? Maybe she wasn’t as attuned to the vampyren and the mummies as she thought! Maybe she was just a stupid, ugly idiot after all.
But then the lights came on all at once, shining gleamingly everywhere, and it was bright indeed! There were chills in the air, like it was Halloween but it was all REAL, and she shivered as she stood high up in the stands. An eerie blue glow came from one end of the field, and a low moaning could be heard coming from the other, but Emily didn’t see anyone on the field at all.
Then from either end a single person walked towards the center. Emily was too far away to see their faces, but one of them was hunky and the other one seemed quite blasé (which surprises us not at all!) Emily thought the fur would start flying when they met, but instead they just stood face to face, staring at each other’s face. Then they started discoursing, and to Emily’s surprise she could hear every word.
“It’s curtains for you and your kind, Daggarhart,” said Tutt.
“You and your dum-dum people already wear curtains,” said Nightfin, and Tutt was all like buh-buh-buh! “You may be jocks and stuff, but we’re going to beat your butts good! I hope you brought your knife-stick-battle-weapon-things.”
“No,” said Tutt. “You chose the time and the ground. We get to choose the battle.”
You could tell that Nightfin was way annoyed, but that ancient and sacred rules governed these things, or something, and he knew that Tutt was right.
“Fine,” said the blasé one. “Our vampyre powyrs are enough to defeat you, even without our very cool-looking weapons.”
“We’ll see,” said Tutt. “For the mummies have decided what the battle will be. And it is: smear the queer!”
A gasp came from the vampyre’s side of the field, and Nightfin actually looked a little unnerved.
“That’s totally homophobic!” he said, looking around nervously. “Choose something else.”
“No!” said Tutt. “You can call it anything you like, but the fact is we’re going to chase you around and tackle you–TO THE DEATH!”
A great moan came up from the mummies’ end cap, because they were totally looking forward to squashing the vampyres. Emily could tell that it was taking every bit of Nighfin’s blasé to keep from freaking out, but he held his steady.
“Fine,” said Nightfin. “We’ll do it your way. Now we shake on it.”
Nightfin held out his hand, and though Tutt was suspicious because of the high-five incident, he reached out and they shook hands. As they did, Nightfin muttered something under his breath.
“What did you say?” said Tutt, who had a bad feeling that no good was up.
“Oh, nothing…” said Nightfin, who started to walk away.
“No, stop!” said Tutt, grabbing the lithe vampyre by his wiry arm, spinning him around like a dumb little kid on a playground turny-aroundy thing. “What…did…you…SAY?!”
“I said,” said Nightfin, pulling his arm from Tutt’s grippy vice-hand, “that the vampyres get to use…FOOTBALL PADS!”
As soon as he said it, the vampyres came running out onto the field wearing these really gothic and blasé football uniform-thingies. They weren’t like normal, stupid football guy uniforms–you could tell that they were totally designer and stuff, and the girlpyres’ outfits had these cute black skirts that looked all sort of torn on the edges.
“You dirty cheat-guy!” puffered Tutt, who was angry indeed! But he knew that once they’d shook hands there could be no changes. “Well it doesn’t matter–MUMMIES TAKE THE FIELD!”
Now the mummies came out, and even though they didn’t have pads on they looked just as big as the stylish and padded vampyres. The two sides were like swarms, and it looked just like that big scene from that stupid movie trilogy that Emily’s brother loved soooooo much, the one with elves and Habits and stupid stuff.
A mummy crashed into a vampyre, and it disappeared into a puff of sexy smoke…a vampyre caught a mummy unprepared, and all of its arms and legs broke off…someone kicked someone else in the jimmy…the cool uniforms were getting all torn up…
It was all too terrible for Emily to bear witness, and she looked down and away, sexy. And there at her feet in the stands was her most loyal friend.
“Smudges! What are you doing here?” said Emily. Smudges didn’t answer, choosing instead to run down towards the field. “No, no, no, Smudges! You’ll be squashed like a Twinkie that you forgot you had in your pocket!”
Forgetting the great peril to her own casement, Emily rushed down after her feline, finally catching up and scooping him into her arms. And so worried had she been about Smudges that Emily didn’t realize she’d run straight to the middle of the field!
“Oh, no! Smudges!” cried Emily, looking down at her cat. “What have we done?!”
But when she looked at her cat, it suddenly became clear: it had been no accident or coincidence. Smudges was trying to tell her that only SHE could stop the vampyres and the mummies from fighting!
“Smudges, did you write that letter?” she asked, and to her amazement Smudges shook his head ‘no’. “But you delivered it, didn’t you?” Now he nodded ‘yes’.
Emily still didn’t know where the letter came from, but anyone who could convince her cat to deliver a letter must be onto something.
“STOP! STOP! STOPPY-STOP-STOP-O! Hel-LOOOOO?!?! I said STOOOOOOOPPPPPP!”
Everyone stopped.
It was silent.
During the stoppage.
“That’s better,” said Emily, because she couldn’t think of anything better to say. Every head that was still on its body was looking right at her, as were those that had landed on the ground facing her. “I…I think it’s totally dumb that you’re fighting.”
More silence.
Emily noticed two blue eyes in the crowd, and then a hunky profile, and she knew that both of them were about to speak. But this time it was Emily who had the stuff to say.
“I know what you’re going to say,” she said, addressing the crowd, but really it was more to Nightfin and Tutt. “You’re going to say that I’m your soulmayte, or your one true love, or you Queen or your Goddess or WHATEVER. It doesn’t matter.”
Now the vampyres and mummies started to look away a bit, though they were still listening, and it made Emily feel bravy all over.
“And you’re telling yourself that you’re fighting for me, or my honor, or my stupid ugly beauty,” continued Emily. “Well, I don’t think you are.”
Nightfin and Tutt both started to open their mouths, but with one gesture of her swanly hand Emily shut their yappers.
“Maybe I should be flattened by your attention, and for a while I was. But you’re fighting because that’s all you know. You’ve fought for centuries, and I’m just your latest excuse.”
Now Emily’s two beaus didn’t even start to talk back.
“But you know what?” said Emily, standing as tallish as she could. “I don’t need this crap.”
The dusky wind blew sweet and dark through the supernatural assemblage, and Emily knew that she’d really told them something, or something. Then the sound of one person clapping came from up in the stands where Emily had been before.
Emily and the entire battlefield turned to look at the figure which began to descend to the field. It was a pretty old man, though not grandpa-old, and he wore a long cloak and a hat which covered most of his face. To Emily he seemed both blasé and hunky–for an old man, that is.
The crowd parted to let the mystery guy walk through. Trudude and Sexxica gave each other surprised and confused looks as he went by, and some of the mummies had the same reaction. Finally he reached center field where Emily, Nightfin, and Tutt all stood. The man pulled up his sexy-floppy hat, and Nightfin and Tutt both did a double-take.
“Dad?!” they said at the same time.
Emily looked from the man to Nightfin, back to the man, then to Tutt, then back to Nighfin, then at Smudges, then back to the man and around again. Of course! How could she not have seen it before!
“You two are so TOTALLY brothers!” said Emily, who was smart indeed!
“Yes, they are,” said the man. “And I am…Moonglow Daggarhart!”
All of the vampyres bowed down to the ground. The mummies just looked annoyed.
“And I am also,” said Moonglow Daggarhart, “Papa Tutankhamun!”
Now too did the mummies bow down. Emily started to kneel as well, but Papa Daggarhart motioned for her to stay standing.
“There is no need for you to prostate yourself, Emily Smithingtonson,” said Papa Daggarhart. “For you truly are a Queen…and a Goddess.”
Emily blushed all over, though somehow she’d known it was true all along. Papa Daggarhart continued.
“I’m sorry that you had to go through all of this, but it was the only way, for some reason, to know for sure that you were the one who would unite us. And we are united now, right, kiddies?”
All of the vampyres and mummies stood back up. And even though they didn’t say anything, and you could tell that they were all still sort of pissed at each other, that indeed they were united.
“Good,” said Papa Daggarhart. “Now that that’s over with, let’s get started on the important things…”
“Wait just one minute, buster!” said Emily, standing in the stout olden fellow’s way. “I think I deserve some explanations! Am I really Cleopatra re-incarcerated, and also some stupid peasant girl from the England times, or wherever it was the vampyres were, or am I just plain, stupid, ugly Emily Smithingtonson? If you were killed in Ancient Egypt, how can you be here now? And were you a vampyre before that, or after? Or both?”
Papa Daggarhart started to open his mouth to answer, but Emily was on a roll.
“What about Atlantis? Was that true? How about the space-place of the mind? Do you have a unicorn? What happened to Smiggle Bigglye?”
Once again the old Mumpyre wasn’t given a chance to answer.
“But most of all, I want to know which of your dum-dum boys I’m supposed to be with?!” finished Emily, eyes all googley.
“As for my boys, you need not choose now,” said Papa Daggarhart. “You have plenty of time to decide who you wish to share your life with–if anyone–and in fact it doesn’t even have to be either of these two!”
Nightfin and Tutt both looked like they’d both been punched in the junk, which they probably would have deserved. But Emily had already reached Papa Daggarhart’s conclusion deep in her heart. But it wasn’t going to stop her from enjoying blasé or hunky in the mean time!
“The important thing is that you’re important to all of us, and we need you to lead us,” said Papa Daggarhart. All of the vampyres and mummies gathered close. “I know we’re asking a lot of you, and you don’t know exactly what you’ll be doing. But look into your heart, or ask your cat, and I think you’ll find the answer.
Indeed Emily searched with her soul-beacon, and she looked around her. At Nightfin’s sexy blue eyes. At Tutt and his strong, leadership self. At Trudude and Sexxica and whatever it is that they represented. At the assorted other people that did stuff, too. And finally at Smudges.
“Oh, Smudges. You’re always there to listen, but I’ve never asked you for answers,” she said. But to Emily’s surprise, Smudges winked, and she turned to the crowd. “Okay, I have your answer.”
The entire bunch hung on her every word. And though the unknowns of the futures scared her so, there was excitement and blasé there, too.
“I’ll do it!”
Everyone cheered sexily or moaned with happiness, according to their customs, and Emily was carried off the field by the crowd!
And though she didn’t get all of her answers that night–not because there weren’t any, because there ARE, and if you want them you better get enough people to ask for them, because this is a lot of WORK–one thing was certain.
Emily Smithingtonson was a girl, indeed. But she was NOT stupid or ugly.
Or something.
THE END
(????????)
EMILY AND THE SEXY VAMPYRE – HOME
The forty-firstnd episode of our podcast, Paul and Storm Talk About Some Stuff for Five to Ten Minutes (On Average), is now online.
