THE NIGHTMARE LIFE-IN-DEATH WAS SHE__AT FIRST SIGHT BLOGFEST

For Jacee Drake and her AT FIRST SIGHT BLOGFEST :

http://jaceedrake.blogspot.com/2010/09/at-first-sight-blogfest-with-prize.html

I sat with my back pressed against the tomb of Marie Laveau. I was safe here.

At night the cemetary held only the dead. And the dead couldn't hurt you ... except with their memory.

Midnight was heavy in the humid air. Fingers of black fog weaved around my shoulders as if to whisper some secret only the dead can know.

Yeah, I talk funny for a kid. Try spending all your time in the library for the air conditioning and a safe place to sit and see what it does for the way you think.

And now, I was back on the streets again.

I was not going to cry. I wasn't. I looked up at the dim stars.

They blurred and bled down my cheeks. All right I lied. I was crying.

After years of scuffling alone on the streets, I had finally found a friend. A creepy friend to be sure. But a friend.

Now, I had screwed up and lost him. Sure, Captain Sam was undead. But who said friends had to be perfect?

I stiffened. Something all misty was oozing out of the tomb in front of me. It slowly took shape. I frowned. What the?

It was a girl. She looked to be my age : thirteen.

But she was dressed in a black Victorian style dress. She was kinda pretty ... if you were into undead girls.

She spoke as if her vocal chords were all rusty :

"Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Nightmare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold."

She was trying to scare me. And doing a damn fine job of it, mind you. But then, it hit me : she oozed through that tomb.

She was a ghost.

And ghosts were all misty. They couldn't touch you. She was just trying to yank my chain. Well, I didn't scream like a little girl for anybody.

I jutted my right forefinger at her. "Coleridge! The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner."

She took a step towards me, and leaves crackled under her foot. Uh, oh. She wasn't a ghost. She could touch me.

She smiled. Red-smeared sharp teeth. Oh, great.

A ghoul.

What was it with the French Quarter? Was the whole damn place haunted?

I still wasn't screaming. I had a mind. And I had my feet.

If one end didn't solve this problem, the other end would.

I smiled as an idea suddenly came to me. Sure it meant grief to some other people. But they were really bad men. They had much more meat to them than a scrawny street kid like me.

And better them than me.

She brushed back a stray lock of fine-spun gold from her eerie electric-blue eyes. "You're aren't afraid?"

"Oh, I'm scared shitless."

She giggled and studied me. "But you see a way out for yourself, do you not?"

I stumbled to my feet, spreading out my hands. "Hey, I'm Victor Standish. I always have a plan."

Those eyes seemed to be suddenly seeing me as more than a meal. "I am Alice, Victor. And just what is this plan of yours?"

I winked at her. "How would you like to add drug dealers to your diet, Alice?"

She glided to me faster than I thought possible, looping her arm through my right one. "I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

I patted her cold, cold hand, trying not to notice her long, sharp fingernails that matched her teeth. "I think so, too."

I looked up at the face of shadows in the full moon. I smiled wide. At least I wasn't alone anymore.

Sure she was a ghoul. But who said friends had to be perfect? And she was kind of pretty.

If you ignored the blood on her teeth.
***