Merde

Before she was turned, The Queen Of The Vampires was called Gladys Hotzelbacher.

Facts are facts. What can she do? But all that is over, now she is the magnificent Queen Of The Vampires, able to shape shift into anything, and mesmerize anyone she chooses with her regal and otherworldly manner.

Getting there was no walk in the fucking park, Bo Peep.



Penelope Hotzelbacher, the aged aunt of the aforementioned Gladys, the very same wretched and screeching old battle ax who told her she was damned and who tried to kill her with a silver dagger cleverly hidden underneath her ill-mannered and piebald Persian cat, who never moved except to crap in the potted plants,

That very same old mothball auntie has kicked the bucket and left the QOTV a small amount of money, delivered this very day by check. 

Well now.

The QOTV would love to tear it to little pieces and dance on it in exactly the way dear auntie would most have objected to, but she can't. She owes the fucking electric company a certain amount, and if she does not pay it by 5 p.m., out go the lights. 

Damn.

So, the Queen Of The Vampires grabs the number sixty-three bus to Evergreen road where the bank is, and walks in.

She is dressed entirely in black and crimson, with her hair down to her waist and her attitude filling the room like a brimstone plug-in. 

Just barely restraining the urge to shape shift, she walks up to the teller. 

"I want to cash this check," she announces, and presents it with a flourish. The security guard is transfixed, but the teller is all business.

"Sign the back, please," she drones, while doing something else.

The QOTV withdraws a genuine quill pen from her bosoms, and pricking her finger with its tip, she signs "Q.V." in blood, on the back of the check. 

"Ma'am?" The teller sounds spectacularly nasal and officious. "This check is payable to the order of Gladys Hotzelbacher. Is that you?"

There is a long pause. A very very very....long....pause.

The QOTV purses her lips, the same lips that have bewitched her victims to the point that they willingly bared their throats to her. People behind her are watching. The guard is watching. 

Very softly, she says,

"I was."

"What does that mean, Ma'am?" The teller sounds like a particularly dull  machine in a factory. "May I see your driver's license?"

The QOTV shifts from foot to foot and resists the urge to shape shift into a cobra. 

"I don't drive."

"Ma'am, I can't cash this check if you aren't Gladys Hotzelbacher. Are you Gladys Hotzelbacher or not?"

The QOTV remembers Gladys, the cowed, unloved whipping girl of the Hotzelbacher clan. Nothing like she is now. Nothing to do with who she is now. 

"It's my check," explains the Vampire Queen through clenched teeth, including the very long, very sharp ones. "Please cash it." Saying please to this automaton is costing her. 

"Ma'am," drones the teller, "I am not authorized to cash this unless you can show that you are--"

With that, the Queen Of The Vampires shape shifts into a black panther and leaps onto the counter, letting loose with an ear-splitting cat-scream and slashing an inch away from the teller's face with her murderous claws. 

She crouches, ears back, screaming, showing her fangs, and says, with her cat-mouth, "Cass da fucking check!!!!"

The teller says, blandly as a beige wall, "You'll have to sign it Gladys Hotzelbacher before I can cash it for you. It's regulations." She says this last bit the way some people say "It's in the bible" as if that settles everything.

So, not wanting her electricity cut off, the Queen Of The Vampires shape shifts back, bites her lip, stands tall and silently signs the hated name. 

Money in hand, she catches a bus downtown and pays the power company their money. Then she takes a third bus home. 

And so it is that Chloe finds the Queen Of The Vampires curled up in a ball in one of the outside chairs at Danny's, by herself, with her face down on her arms, crying.

"Oh sugar, what's wrong?" Chloe is not generally known for her Earth Mother warmth, but she knows a girl who needs a shoulder when she sees one.

The serial killer holds the red-eyed Vampire Queen for a while, and sings to her. True, the song is "99 Bottles Of Beer On The Wall", but hey. 

There are people working regular jobs who could learn a little humanity from golfer-killer, judge-seducer, prison-escapee Chloe. 
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