"Fairy Gothmother" Part 1

Fairy Gothmother

by A. Fraser
Part 1

A wreath of aromatic blue smoke hung in the still air of the paper-strewn room. 
Fingers tapped at a typewriter (think of it as a combination of a keyboard and 
printer without the monitor or CPU in between if that will help, kids). An 
ashtray full of the detritus of a smoker wobbled precariously on the edge of the 
desk. The butts were black, and slightly thicker than those of an ordinary 
cigarette, for the industrious typist smoked a specially-made panatela that was 
soaked in rum and then rolled on the creamy white thighs of absolutely no human 
woman. They cost enough, though, that they ought to have been.

Long, tapering fingers on a long, tapering hand reached for the latest finished 
sheet to roll it off the platen (look, kids, if you keep interrupting to ask me 
what the parts of a typewriter are, I'll never finish the story). It was the 
sort of hand, in itself not very far from creamy white, that likely once would 
have been called "aristocratic". In this enlightened politically correct age, 
however, we would merely say... well, actually, there isn't a politically 
correct way to describe that hand. It was undeniably aristocratic. It had 
breeding that hand, the sort of breeding that leads to military officers, high 
church officials, stuffy-looking balding men cutting ribbons or laying 
cornerstones, and hemophilia.

Hemophilia was not a problem suffered by the owner of that hand.

Nor was male-patterned baldness. The thick raven-black straight-as-a-plank hair 
on the head of the owner of the hand showed no trace of crop circles or a 
retreat from high tide of the scalp. That long pale hand reaching for the paper 
had possibly cut ribbons, but only of the sort holding together expensive little 
boxes containing gifts of minute size and staggering price tags, or else 
expensive little dresses containing young women of a very similar description. 
It was not a hand that had ever laid a cornerstone. One may take it for granted 
that the young women were ... never mind.

Still, despite its disappointing lack of the sort of qualities we have come to 
expect of the modern aristocracy, there was no denying the birthright of that 
hand. The rest of him must also be considered for a complete inventory. That 
black hair, mildly distressing for its lack of a Byronic wave or boyish curl, 
sat atop a very arresting head. A long, high forehead, the effect somewhat 
blunted by the midnight locks of hair. Good, high, sharply defined cheekbones 
(breeding again; you want good cheekbones, you have to breed them.). A high-
bridged, straight nose, made specifically for sneering down at the lower 
classes. Full, sensuous, heavy red lips and straight, even white teeth (ignore 
the hint of fangs for the moment, we'll get back to those.). The mouth seemed 
designed for crushing the lips of willing women. A powerful jaw, set in a line 
that shrieked of stubbornness and pride. A strong, handsome face.

And the eyes. Perfectly shaped, perfectly spaced, and storm-gray. Picture the 
sky as a rip-snorter gathers and the reflection of that in the waiting sea. Yes, 
just that shade of angry pewter. With those eyes in the equation, the 
description of the man at the typewriter can be upgraded to "beautiful".

He was dressed in a crisp short-sleeved button-down shirt, the sort that for 
some odd reason is advertised by a man with an eye patch. Equally crisp twill 
pants and leather loafers completed his deceptively simple garb. This is not a 
man you can easily picture in jeans and a T-shirt.

A gold watch flashed on his wrist as he reached for the piece of paper. The 
cluttered smoke-polluted room in which he worked was the study of a large 
gothic-style stone mansion, complete with tower.

He never went into the tower anymore. All the doors to it had been locked. No, 
there was no mad first wife hidden in those now dusty rooms.

Alexander Goldanias's first (and only) wife had died many years ago. More years 
had passed than that handsome, wrinkle-free face revealed. He did not know when 
Katrina had died, nor when their sons had, for he by then was far away and not 
the same husband and father they'd known.

Becoming a vampire tended to involve nasty inconveniences like being forced to 
abandon your family.

He hesitated over the pile of pristine white paper awaiting the attention of the 
typewriter. He'd already pounded out two chapters of his new novel tonight, it 
was time for a break. Let the publisher and deadlines go hang. The world had 
waited this long for the sequel to *Stormwing,* it could wait a little longer.

"I'm going out, Mrs. Jenkins," he said as he left the morass that was his study 
and strode purposefully through the ill-lit halls of his home.

"Yes, sir," came back a calm disembodied voice from whatever room the 
housekeeper currently occupied.

Alex had always suspected that her reply would be "Yes, sir" had he announced 
his intention to jump off the cliff or fly to the moon. Nothing perturbed Mrs. 
Jenkins. He hastily amended that to "almost nothing". She'd been very perturbed 
indeed when she'd discovered what her employer had done to his cousin.

No. No thoughts. Those were all to be channeled into the new book, *Killing 
Cousins* (working title). No thoughts of *why* the tower rooms were locked, no 
thoughts of why Valley Mansion's halls echoed with his footsteps. No thoughts at 
all allowed, not even to acknowledge that he was spinning his wheels in neutral.

Speaking of wheels, the modest returns from the sales of *Stormwing* had bought 
him new ones. Persuaded to trade in the overly ostentatious and impractical 
Rolls Royce, Alex had actually scaled down. A new Audi sat in the driveway, 
gleaming black in the pooled light from overhead.

Alex got in and drove. He was almost tempted to stop atone of the other houses 
on the Cliff Road to visit. But he did not, reluctant to disturb the residents 
at ... good lord, three in the morning .

So, not much of the night left. Fletcherville was not exactly a jumping all-
night hot spot. To Alex's knowledge, only the gas station and one convenience 
store were open at this hour. Fletcherville tolerated the Cliff Road Crowd, who 
kept peculiar hours, but didn't believe in catering to them.

It wasn't until Alex was on the coast highway (the scenic route through Maine!) 
that he realized he'd left his cigarette case on his desk in Valley Mansion. For 
a moment, the inside of the car was blue. Then he relaxed. He'd survive a couple 
of hours, all the time he had before dawn, without a smoke. His addiction was 
purely psychological, after all. He was beyond all physical cravings except for 
the stuff that maintained his existence.

The blood is the ... oh, you know the rest.

He turned the car stereo on, but failed to find an appropriate song. Not one 
station was playing "Sympathy for the Devil", "Bat Out Of Hell", "Bloodletting", 
or even "The Moon Over Bourbon Street"; proving once again that life fails to 
provide a soundtrack. Refusing to settle for "Who Let The Dogs Out" (he was not 
a werewolf, thank you very much), Alex turned the radio off again.

It was pleasantly pointless to be out driving nowhere with no aim in mind; Alex 
made a mental note to try this again sometime. Not to plan it, mind, for that 
would make it a chore. Just sometime when he was feeling pent up and frustrated. 
Loneliness was the ache of a ticking clock.

No. Save it for the novel. The plot of *Killing Cousins* (stupid title, must 
find a better one) was Alex's steamy affair with his cousin (a *distant* cousin, 
separated by several generations, incest had not been the issue) and the tragic 
results. He missed her. It had been a mistake of epic proportions, but he missed 
her. What really hurt was the suspicion that she didn't miss him. He'd left that 
out of the book. Naturally, all the names had been changed to protect the 
guilty.

He'd tried to find some sort of balance in his life since. Writing and 
publishing *Stormwing* had been a huge boost for him; the fact that sales had 
been modest and nobody was begging for the movie rights was unimportant. He'd 
achieved something unexpected and he was determined to find a way to keep 
himself from backsliding.

What he really needed was a more radical change. He'd tried spending some time 
at his villa on a private island off of Venice, but he'd been too lonely there.

"Damn!" Alex said out loud as the car's headlight beams flashed off another 
highway sign indicating another deserted tourist attraction. "I don't see why 
the hell vampires can't have wishes granted. Why don't _I_ have a fairy 
godmother?"

"Because you never asked for one before, idiot," said a voice from the passenger 
seat.

Alex was wearing his seatbelt. An Audi has good brakes. These two factors 
prevented him from meeting the hood of his car from the wrong side of the 
windshield.

"You really shouldn't slam the brakes like that, moron," growled the voice from 
the passenger seat. "You could've caused an accident."

Alex gripped the steering wheel, which creaked ominously, and stared at the 
trees and quiet houses in the headlight beams. He was grateful for his vampiric 
state of being for the first time ever since he'd been turned. Had he still 
possessed a beating heart, it'd probably have gone into cardiac arrest.

Slowly, delicately, he turned to look at the seat beside him.

A young goth girl with the standard Cleopatra haircut, a black ruffled poet's 
shirt, a PVC short short skirt, wide-woven, artistically ripped fishnet 
stockings, and army boots gazed calmly back at him from under several pounds of 
make-up. She had a nose ring with a chain that attached it to an earring, and a 
spider web tattoo on her left hand. She smelled faintly of incense and leather, 
but not of blood or sweat. Whatever she was, she wasn't human.

"Who the hell are you?" Alex snapped. She'd given him a bad shock.

"I'm your fairy godmother," the apparition snapped back.

"My *what*?"

"Fairy godmother. Something wrong with your hearing?"

"No, of course not. But you don't look like a fairy godmother."

"Yeah? You're an expert? How're we supposed to look?"

Of course Alex knew the answer to that. Fairy godmothers were supposed to be 
cute little old ladies with curly gray hair and flouncy dresses who waved magic 
wands and said things like "bibbety bobbety boo". Weren't they?

That was about the time his brain started screaming that there were no such 
things as fairy godmothers. Right. Just like there were no such things as 
vampires?

"Well?" demanded the black-clad total stranger sitting in the Audi. "How is a 
fairy godmother supposed to look, Mr. Expert?"

"More... twinkly?" Alex suggested.

"Sorry. You ain't Cinderella, so no twinkles. I'm it, and I'm over booked. Lot 
of vampires out there. Now, let's get to it." Out of a backpack that Alex was 
prepared to swear hadn't been there a second earlier, she pulled a thick file 
folder brimming with papers.

"What's that?" Alex asked.

"Your dossier, Einstein. You think they send us in with no info at all on the 
clients? Now shut up and let me read."

Alex winced at the size of his file and tried not to think about the contents. 
This proved difficult, since his fairy godmother read the juicier bits out loud 
as she came across them.

"Born 1780. Difficult child, stubborn, disobedient, often punished. Hah! Given 
choice between military career and marriage. Chose marriage." The raccoon-like 
eyes bored into his. "So, though you'd make some woman miserable instead of 
trying to be a soldier? Typical."

"I..."

"Shut up. Two sons, mm hmm. Couldn't wait to knock her up, I see. Cheated on the 
wife. *That* doesn't surprise me. Drinking, gambling, spent more time in taverns 
than at home. No surprise there, either. Fell ill due to the activities and the 
fact that the mistress was a vampire. Stupid male! Wifey nursed you back to 
health . Well, sign *her* up for the sainthood."

"Don't you speak a word against Katrina!" Alex slammed his fist on the 
dashboard.

"Keep your shirt on, Galahad, I'm not *her* fairy godmother. Where was I? Oh, 
yeah. You decided to be a good little hubby and daddy from then on, so you went 
to break it up with the mistress. Gold star for you. But, boo, hiss, she was a 
vampire. You got turned in 1815 at the age of 25."

"Don't remind me," Alex shuddered.

"She abandoned you. Nice sense of irony. You fled to Paris, got taken under the 
wing of a couple of older vampires like Jean de la Mare and Gideon Redoak." A 
plucked eyebrow went up. "Oh, so you already *had* a fairy godmother."

"That's not funny." It was a growl.

"Weird reaction. It says here that you're homophobic. Not to mention a selfish 
pig, suicidal, bipolar..."

"I am NOT!"

"... antisocial, a smoker..." she flipped some pages. "You screwed and turned 
your own cousin? Sick. You need a psychiatrist, not a fairy godmother."

"But she..."

"Shut up. You wrote a novel. *You* wrote a novel?"

"Yes, I did."

"Hm. Maybe there's something I can work with, after all." She continued to read 
in silence, occasionally pursing her lips.

"I don't run with scissors," Alex offered, knowing it was weak.

She didn't even spare him a glance. "You sure as hell don't play well with 
others."

Alex wanted desperately to change the subject form his defects. "What exactly 
does a fairy godmother do?" he asked.

The female in question slammed the dossier shut. "Well, getting you to the ball 
so that Prince Charming can fall in love with you doesn't seem to be an option." 
She drummed her fingers on the file folder "You're the one who asked for a fairy 
godmother. What do you want?"

"Change," came the helpless answer. "A new focus for my life."

"Hm. Well, I like a challenge, and you certainly are one. From what I'm reading 
here, I think what you need is... no, that won't do."

"What won't do?"

"Never mind. I'm going to try something radical. What's a really wild, romantic 
lifestyle you've always wanted to try? Name anything."

Alex wasn't certain what was more wild than being an international playboy 
vampire, but he gave it a try. "Pirate?" he hazarded.

"Typical male fantasy, but if that's what you want..."

Feeling a bit stupid, Alex said, "What are you talking about?"

"You'll see. Now, you'd better get your ass back home, because it'll be dawn 
soon and that will make all this pointless."

"Damn." Alex started the engine and pulled a U-turn. "Would you like..." but he 
was addressing an empty seat.

"Oh, hey, I almost forgot." She was back. "You get into trouble, just yell 
"Noni'."

""Noni'?"

"It's my name, okay?"

"Listen, Noni, I..." but she was gone again.

Shaken, Alex drove as quickly as he dared back to Valley Mansion. He said 
nothing to Mrs. Jenkins about his peculiar encounter with a fairy godmother, 
just bid her good morning and took himself down to his bedroom. Maybe tomorrow 
night, he'd talk to Michael about all this.

He woke up thinking that the Atlantic sounded much louder than it normally did, 
as if the waves were lapping at the walls of Valley Mansion. But that was 
impossible. It was a hundred feet above high tide. What was that sound he'd just 
heard? Someone shouting? He sat up and abruptly cracked his head on a ceiling 
beam.

What the hell was going on? Rubbing his head, trying to blink his eyes back into 
focus, Alex swung his legs out of bed. Or, he tried to. They seemed to be 
trapped in some kind of net. The more he struggled, the more enmeshed he became, 
at one point turning completely upside-down. Finally he broke fee of his bonds 
and landed with an unceremonious thump on the plank floor.

Plank ... floor. Head still throbbing, Alex took in his surroundings. The "net" 
was a hammock. His bed, his bedroom, his very *house* had vanished. He was in a 
tiny little room (his brain wanted to use the word "cabin" for some reason) 
containing the hammock, a large, rough-hewn table with a couple of stools and 
some clothes piled in a corner. The table held a brace of flintlock pistols, a 
sword, two knives, an empty wooden bowl, a couple of lanterns and some large 
sheets of what looked like parchment with charts drawn on it. That was pretty 
much it for furniture and decor. And he'd always thought his bedroom had been 
Spartan.

There was a strong smell he couldn't quite identify, like the way air smells 
after fireworks. Other odors were easier; the sea, lantern oil, old wood, wool, 
leather, a dozen more assaulted his nostrils.

He'd gone to bed naked. Now he seemed to be wearing black wool knee breeches and 
a loose, badly stained red shirt; both of which had laces rather than buttons or 
zippers. A quick glance at the corner strewn with clothes showed him a pair of 
boots and a long coat that seemed a bit rusty.

His hand, trembling a little, touched his upper lip. Yes, there was a pencil-
thin moustache there that probably looked rakish as all hell.

"Yo ho ho," Alex muttered. He had more than a sneaking suspicion that no real 
pirate had ever had an Errol Flynn moustache, but whatever. Real pirates 
probably never said "Yo ho ho", either.
| GO TO TOP OF PAGE | ON TO PART TWO |
Fairy Gothmother

by A. FraserPart 1

by A. Fraser
Part 1
