Deceased Dora Read online

  He panicked and tried to dislodge the fluffy critter. He violently swung his arm, and the squirrel lost its grip and flew into the air with a ‘wheeee’ sound. He heard a thud in the distance as it landed in a copse of trees.

  “Don’t let them bite you. You don’t want to be a were-squirrel-angel.” Carissa cried as she dodged an attack from the big grey squirrel.

  “We need to get out of here!” he cried as a vicious squirrel shot past his face, just missing him.

  He tensed all his muscles, and then felt his wings pop out of his back. He turned to face the squirrels and flashed his wings at them.

  They abated for a moment, backing away from his massive wingspan, which flapped menacingly in their direction.

  He wrapped an arm around Carissa. “Hold on,” he said as he flapped his wings with as much power as he could muster.

  The squirrels that tried to attack were blown backwards as the gust of wind from his wings hit them.

  The hardier squirrels attempted to roar at him in defiance, making angry squeaking noises before they too were blown away.

  He noticed some of them were coming back for more, so he pushed off the ground and flew into the skies with Carissa tightly holding onto him.

  “You said, ‘oh, no they wouldn’t’ earlier. Who wouldn’t? What kind of lunatic would do that to squirrels?” he asked as he headed towards Dora’s house.

  She sighed. “There’s only one person I can think of who would take something adorable and try to make it deadly.”

  “Who?”

  “My mother,” she ground out.

  Pooey slipped into the dark room and silently closed the door behind him. His new bulky form made being a ninja difficult, but not impossible. He flexed his muscled arms and grinned. Being a were-bear wasn’t all bad. He felt big and strong.

  Stop dicking around.

  He shook himself out of it. This was no time for admiring his beastly body. He needed to get the hell out of here.

  For all his new strength, he had not arrived on Earth in a good place. He’d been discovered in the woods by a supernatural matriarch and become her prisoner. She was an even more massive beast than he was. After capturing him, she had made him into her bitch.

  I’m no one’s bitch!

  He had tried to escape a few times, but this time it was going to work. It’d taken him a while to become acclimatised to his new position on Earth.

  Earth had changed a lot since his time here, but it didn’t take him long to realise that his ninja skills were always there, no matter what hellhole he was dropped into.

  So with some schematics of the building and a small torch, he was going to finally get the fuck out of here.

  And after all this shit, those Hell judges are going to pay!

  He flipped on the torched and scanned the room. It was a large room filled with packing crates and boxes with tarps over them.

  He silently rushed down the aisle to get to the end, glancing at a small laboratory as he passed it. It was home to bubbling vials and computers.

  I wonder what kind of shit they experiment on in here?

  He shook his head. He didn’t care as long as he got to the elevator shaft and escaped this place, once and for all.

  He continued down the aisle, but paused when he heard a croak followed by a squeak coming from one of the boxes.

  He turned to face the box and frowned.

  One look can’t hurt, right?

  He lifted the tarp and inhaled sharply when he saw a pair of kitten eyes blinking at him from the body of a toad.

  What the fuck?

  The kitten-toad mewled from inside a glass cage.

  He almost felt sorry for it until a ridiculously long tongue with teeth on it shot out of its mouth and stuck to the glass.

  The kitten-toad hissed as its eyes glowed yellow.

  He stumbled away from it and fell backwards in shock, grabbing onto the tarp behind him to stop himself falling over.

  The tarp slipped off all the boxes behind him to reveal hundreds of cages with creatures inside them.

  The sudden light from the torch must have woken the creatures up because they all started making noises. An array of chirps, barks, roars and growls filled the room.

  He hit the floor with the tarpaulin.

  Shit!

  Using the storage rack to pull himself up from the floor, his eyes connected with creatures in glass cages as he rose.

  In the first cage, a creature that looked like a fluffy ball with an asshole and a mouth walked around in circles, eating and shitting.

  He watched it in awe as it ate a piece of carrot, and then crapped it out, looking exactly the same, a few seconds later.

  What the fuck is that?

  He read the label on the front of the box:

  ‘Amoebalus Prime: Devoid of Digestive System.’

  No shit!

  He watched a piece of sweetcorn drop out of its fluffy backside.

  Shaking his head, he pulled himself up further and encountered the next cage.

  A cute white mouse blinked its big sad eyes at him.

  “Hey little fella,” he whispered. “What are you doing in here with all the freaks?”

  The mouse roared like a lion and vicious spikes shot up all over its body, including out of its ass. It turned it’s ass to the glass and sprayed some kind of green liquid that sizzled in his direction.

  “Urgh!” Pooey jumped back into the tarp-covered boxes behind him, and the tarp fell away to reveal more boxes.

  He came face-to-face with a pair of scary glowing eyes. He shone the torch on the cage to see a giant spider that had the cute head of a bush baby attached to its fat arachnid body.

  “Agh!”

  With his heart hammering, he made a run for it, bouncing off one cage to another as he tumbled down the remainder of the aisle.

  Where the fuck am I, The Island of Dr Moron? What idiot would make a fluffy fucking amoeba?

  He nearly defecated in his pants when a giant lion-looking beast with a missing tail came into view at the end of the aisle.

  It stealthily turned in its cage to face him and opened its massive jaws to roar, but all that came out was girly squeak.

  Pooey widened his eyes in terror when he saw it eat a peanut that was the size of a melon. The peanut was a monstrous creation all by itself, but it was the fact that the lion’s head puffed up like hamster’s when storing food that shocked him the most.

  He read the label on the cage:

  ‘Hamsterous Lioness: Vegetarian.’

  A shiver of fear ran down his spine.

  Was this what his evil mistress had planned for him—to have spikes coming out of his ass, or to be made into a squeaking vegetarian?

  Well, she does keep making me wear dresses. Could it be any worse? Yes, fuck this!

  He turned and fled. All his carefully laid plans for escape were now a muddled mess in his mind.

  He couldn’t hide in an elevator shaft until morning. He couldn’t stay here one more minute.

  He spun around looking for a way out. His pulse was racing, and he feared he’d never get away until he saw a vent in the wall.

  He ran over to it and sniffed.

  Fresh air!

  This would do. He pulled the cover off the grate and clambered into it as fast as he could.

  He was escaping tonight, right now. He pushed himself through the grate, struggling to fit his shoulders through the small gap and into the dark shaft.

  He heard the tweets and roars of the crazy animals behind him and pushed himself deeper through the opening.

  I’m not going to make it.

  He panicked.

  Emitting a low growl, he used all his strength to push himself through the small hole in the wall, feeling the edges of the vent cutting into his sides.

  After struggling for some time to get his ass through the hole, he realised he wasn’t going to escape this way. His body was too big.

  He tried to back up and find another
way of escaping, but there was a problem. He was now stuck in the vent, with his ass hanging out of the front of it.

  Noooo!

  He struggled and clawed at the vent, trying to either get in or get out, but his body was wedged half in and half out of it.

  Fuck!

  A few minutes later, he heard a noise that chilled him to the bone.

  “Oh, Snookums!” He heard his mistresses call. “Where are youuu?”

  He stopped struggling, and his head flopped onto cold vent in defeat.

  I’m doomed…

  Dora shifted uncomfortably in the inflatable pool chair. It protested with a loud and elongated squeak.

  She glanced around the deserted corridor, feeling out of place.

  Terrance had been dragged away by the other vampires for some kind of ritual. They told Dora to wait here for an audience with the Ancient One.

  Whoever the hell that is.

  She felt uncomfortable. The vampires weren’t exactly a welcoming bunch.

  She peered down the hallway of the gothic mansion. It was lined with inflatable plastic chairs and pool furniture, which seemed terribly bright and garish in such an austere setting.

  A giant of a man walked into the corridor with a vampire that she recognised as the Ancient One’s secretary.

  The man wore a velvet smoking jacket and glared at her with steely grey eyes.

  Is that the Ancient One?

  “Please take a seat. You’ll be called when he is ready to see you.” The secretary told the man before she turned with a flip of her red hair and clattered out of the hallway on her six-inch heels.

  I guess not.

  The man in the velvet jacket glanced around him, looking for a chair. He frowned when his eyes settled on the pink inflatable chair behind him.

  He tried to sit down in it. But because it was so low to the ground, he ended up squatting over it.

  Dora watched him in silence as he struggled into the chair. He ended up stuck in it, facing her with his arms and legs hanging out of it in an uncomfortable slouched position.

  His eyes connected with hers in moment of silent anguish as he fought to sit up straight and regain a shred of dignity. His chair made random farting noises every time he moved.

  She did her very best to not laugh as the elegant man was reduced to a wriggling suit in a pink bubble.

  He tried to pull something out of his jacket pocket and the chair made a long, slow farting noise.

  A gasp of laughter escaped her lips.

  Incensed by her laughter, the man shot her a steely glance with anger flashing in his eyes.

  He pulled out a cigar and popped it in his mouth. The chair erupted into several long squeaks and farts as he searched for his lighter. Eventually, after some struggling he pulled out a Zippo and lit the cigar.

  He took a slow drag of it and stared at her with distain. He attempted to appear regal as he raised his chin and rested his smoking hand on arm of the chair.

  The chair let out a long, loud fart.

  She felt tears of laughter brimming in her eyes and fought to contain the urge to burst out laughing. Her resolve cracked when a burning ember of ash fell off the cigar and onto the chair.

  The chair popped like a balloon, and she exploded with laughter as the chair deflated, and the man flopped into and ungainly heap on the floor.

  He glared up at her from his slumped position.

  She was about to apologise when the doors to the Ancient One’s sanctum opened.

  A waifish girl with spikey green hair stepped out of the room.

  “He’ll see you now.” She nodded at Dora. “Come with me.”

  Dora stood up and gave the man a wink before she followed the girl into the room.

  There was haunting music playing the room as she stepped over the threshold. Behind an ornate mahogany desk was a plush, leather chair that was turned away from them.

  “You may leave us, Janet.” A hollow voice echoed from the direction of the desk.

  Spikey-haired Janet silently exited through a side door into another room, leaving Dora alone with the Ancient One.

  Dora attempted to control the urge to continue laughing as she heard a random farting noise come from the hallway outside.

  I guess he found a new chair.

  She forced herself to focus on the brown leather back of the chair. She could see the left arm of the Ancient One and not much else.

  “Er, hello?” she said.

  “You are brave to speak so freely in my presence,” the Ancient One replied.

  “Why is speaking against the rules?” she asked while glancing around for something that would indicate a vow of silence.

  “Ha!” The Ancient One exploded with a deep laugh. “Such arrogance in one so young.” His voice boomed around the room.

  She wondered what Terrance had got her into with this coven of vampires.

  He’d come to her rescue with several members of the coven, who he’d told her he’d met in the mall. But the other vampires all seemed a bit creepy, and they called him ‘The Saviour’, whatever that was supposed to mean.

  “I haven’t been arrogant, yet,” she said. “How old are you anyway?”

  “You toy with my patience, child. When you’ve lived as long as I hav—”

  “And how long is that exactly?” She interrupted.

  The chair spun around, and a man in his forties with a grey goatee leapt out of it.

  “You dare to question me about my age, of all things?” His eyes glowed red.

  “Doesn’t everyone?” She eyed him with curiosity.

  He wore a black biker jacket, worn jeans and several chains around his neck. A tattoo of some kind ended at his throat, but the tip could be seen over the collar of his Kiss t-shirt.

  “Yes, actually.” He lowered his voice.

  “It’s not a surprise, really,” she said while her eyes wandered over his desk, noticing a battered laptop and some files resting upon it.

  “Why, because I don’t wear a fucking cape and haunt married women?” He scowled. “Don’t you know it’s rude to ask a vampire their age?” His fangs popped out, and he hissed at her.

  “Dude, you’re called The Ancient One. Who wouldn’t wonder how old you are?”

  His fangs disappeared as his eyes widened with realisation.

  “So how old are you?” she asked again.

  “I have seen more of this world than you will ever know, foolish child. I am the oldest vampire in this province, and the most powerful,” he muttered ominously.

  “And how many years has that been for?” She persisted.

  He rumbled with a growl that was filled with threat. “I have survived some of this world’s greatest disasters.”

  “Oh, which ones?” she asked with interest.

  “The great stock market crash,” he said.

  “The one in the nineteen-twenties?”

  “No, the one in two-thousand and ten,” he mumbled.

  She rolled her eyes. “Just fess up how old you are.”

  “Do not speak to me with such disrespect. I am a creature of the dark, an ancient one!” he cried.

  “So what, I lived in Hell for a while. Get over it already.”

  “Really?” He perked up with interest.

  “Yeah, it wasn’t how they describe it in the movies,” she said as memories of Kieron standing beside her in Hell’s arena flooded into her mind.

  She felt a moment of longing for her demon-friend.

  Where is he now? I hope he’s okay.

  “How was it?” the Ancient One asked.

  “How old are you?” She countered.

  The Ancient One dramatically flopped into his leather chair and sighed.

  “Fine, it has been seven-hundred and eighty moons since I arrived on this Earth. And for three-hundred of those, I have been seated on the dark throne of the undead.”

  It took a moment for her to do the math, but when she did, she scowled at him.

  “Dude, you’r
e only sixty-five years old! My grandfather is older than that, and he’s still alive!

  “Can your grandfather do this?” His eyes glowed red, and then he hissed while his fangs popped out.

  “Yes!” He hisses when his dentures come out all the time. Also, he had a bad case of pink eye this one time and—”

  “Enough!” The Ancient One snapped. “I have seen more terrible things than you can possibly imagine.”

  “Like what?”

  “Rick Astley in concert.”

  “Fair point.”

  “You should bow in my superior presence.”

  “You should kiss my as—wait a minute! The oldest vampire in this province is sixty-five. How old are all the other ones?”

  “They vary from very young to close to my age. The older ones are my lieutenants.”

  “Lieutenants, are you at war?” she asked.

  “That we are.” He slyly eyed her. “Perhaps I shall send you out into the trenches as punishment for your disobedience.”

  “There aren’t any trenches in Berkville.” She corrected him.

  Dora stood behind a roughly dug trench in the middle of the Berkville Forest and sighed.

  How do I get myself into these situations?

  She glanced at the three young vampires beside her. They were so young that they’d only been undead for a few months.

  She eyed the leader. He was a geeky boy with slicked back hair who called himself Fredward. He wore a dark suit and some kind of glittery make up.

  “Dude, you look like a plank.” She told him.

  “Hush, you’ll give away our position, and we’ll lose.” A painfully thin girl with dark circles under her dark eyes whined.

  “Why the fuck are you all wearing glitter if you’re supposed to be hiding?” Dora asked.

  The reflection off their faces was glowing in the dark.

  “It reflects the sun,” a small blonde girl called Melanie whispered.

  “It’s midnight. There is no sun,” Dora said.

  “Quiet!” Fredward ordered. “I sense a beast approaching.”

  “Ooh, I hope it’s Carob. He’s so hot.” Melanie squealed.

  “He’s a disgusting werewolf. They are never hot!” The dark-haired girl snapped before then peering up at Fredward for approval.

  He nodded at her with an endearing smile on his face.