Disclaimer: The Little Vampire books and the characters thereof were created by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg. I'm just writing my twisted little fanfics for my own amusement, not for profit or anything. Warning: It's of the depressing, dark variety. I.E., not cute. De-baffler for English-language readers: I am Finnish. These books were originally written in German. When they translated the books into Finnish some things about the names were changed - Rüdiger was spelled Rydiger, for example. Mostly the names were kept the same. In this fanfic I use the original German names - I think - but in English the characters' names were different. This might cause some confusion in those who read the books in English. But I just couldn't bring myself to call Rüdiger "Rudolph!" So, Tony's called Anton, Gregory is called Lumpi and... well, I can't remember what Uncle Theodor was called in English, but you'll know who I'm talking about. And I also mention Olga, Rüdiger's love interest - I have no idea what she's called in English... Oh, you'll figure it out. CHILDHOOD GHOSTS A Little Vampire fanfic by Hyel When Anton was twelve he hadn't wanted to live forever. Or maybe he hadn't wanted to die. The concept had become muddled when he first became acquianted with vampires. Not imaginary vampires. Those he had loved since before. He loved the shiver of fear in the back of his neck when he read about the accountant approaching the strange coffin, about to push the lid aside. He loved imagining the creatures sitting there in the darkness, hungry, waiting. Then he had looked into sunken yellow eyes in a skullwhite face, and been enveloped the stink of rot and dust. The smell in time came to mean 'friend'. 'Anton Vampires' Friend', some of them called him. And, although he hadn't wanted to be one... yes, he had liked his pale hungry friends better than any human he knew. Theirs, and his with them, was a life of adventure, of delicious fear, and strangeness... He had crept through the graveyard at night, listening to every little sound, the swish of his pant legs against overgrown grass, and for the creak of a stone being pushed aside, or the nigh-silent rustle of a cloak. He had danced in a half-ruined castle among a hundred animate corpses, his life depending on inexpertly applied make-up. He had... ...flown. Uncle Theodor's cloak had been taken away from him, and not only for an inventory. There had been someone else to use it. The morning sun was still a couple of hours away. It had been raining earlier in the night, and the moisture gleamed on the sidewalk. The sky was black beyond the streetlamps. There was no way he could see into the shadows. He hated streetlamps. Rüdiger had shown up on his fourteenth birthday's night, during the blackout. It had been seven months then, since their last good-bye forever. (Anna hadn't said good-bye. She said there's no such thing between true lovers. Then she had cried, and for the first time, Anton had seen blood roll slowly, lazily down her white cheek.) Anton had got out of bed and opened the window before he was even fully awake or realized what he was doing, let alone that he'd heard a knock. It was the cold, death-scented breeze that shook him awake. There was a glint of a grin in the darkness, before he was tackled by a small bony figure five times stronger than Anton. He'd thought it was Anna, at first. Rüdiger didn't often touch him. Anna would be along later, Rüdiger had said. She was still hunting. On his fifteenth birthday, it was Lumpi who got to him first (with his less-then-subtle come-ons growing less subtle by the year, until even Anton had become aware of them), then Rüdiger (who went on about being back together with Olga), then Anna (smelling of her new Mufti, Bitter Heart). On his sixteenth, Anna didn't show at all. It was then that he realized that she had really stopped coming. Tonight was Anton's seventeenth birthday. He had begged for no party. And when his parents were asleep, he'd snuck out, went to a bar, and stayed there drinking soda and ciders until they kicked him out. ...He was applying for colleges now. His grades weren't all that good. He'd toyed with the idea of taking literature, but decided (with Mom's insistent backing) to pursue architecture instead. He liked buildings. They were human. He wanted to study abroad. He'd thought of getting a girlfriend once or twice. But he never ever met a girl after dark. After dark, he wouldn't even look at girls. His classmate, Katerine, had been killed two years ago. They never told him how. But he'd taken her to the movies two nights before. And then it was Rita. After they'd met by chance in the park after nine. Mom had been so happy when he gathered all his old vampire books and threw them in the trash. She didn't see what he did to them first, though. He thought about them sometimes, how someone - maybe someone small and body and strong - might open up the old garbage bag and see the ripped pages, the drawings and the writing scribbled all over those once-loved pages; his hatred spread out naked under the sky. Rüdiger didn't notice. Rüdiger never noticed anything that didn't directly affect Rüdiger. Not even, and especially, when he wasn't wanted anymore. (Imaginary friends are supposed to go away in time.) Rüdiger said Anna had other interests these days, and grinned that bloodbloodblood grin at him, that had stopped worrying him, since he knew Rüdiger wouldn't ever bite him. Not really. But Anton remembered also the way Anna had looked at him the last time he saw her, and snippets of old conversations haunted his mind, her sunken, bitter eyes, "sometimes you have to force people to their own happiness". He couldn't believe he had rather loved her once. Now every shadow had her eyes. Anton hurried his steps. And in the darkness behind him, as always, scuttled a small shape, black and bony, stinking slightly of old roses and dust.