Pages From a Vampire's Journal Read Online Free Page A

twice at him.
    Cedric squinted at her, stroked his peach fuzzed chin and remarked “Two blinks mean yes, no?
    Trixie blinked once.
    “Uh, never mind…” he said, stretching his hands behind his head.
    “So where do you work?” he asked.
    “I was working at a call center. My stepmom had gotten me the job. I quit recently though. I just despised calling people up and demanding payments. I walked out one day at lunch and never went back. It’s my favorite way to quit a job that tries to hurt people. I call it “
going Casper
”.
    “Yeah I have heard those places are a little like meat factories, just taking in desperate souls and then grinding them back out in worse shape than when they came in”, he said.
    Trixie studied his face for a moment and asked, “Has anyone ever said to you that you look a little like…”
    “James Dean?” he smirked.
    “Yeah…a little” she said. She got the feeling he didn’t like that comparison, like a grandma at a family reunion pinching his cheek and telling him he looked just like his Uncle Leo. That is, before Uncle Leo removed himself from the gene pool with an amazing stupidity on the fourth of July…igniting a bottle rocket from his back side, with the rocket pointing the wrong way. Hilarity sometimes turned tragically
unhip
.
    Cedric pulled out a Chesterfield cig from his shirt pocket and lit it up. Taking a drag, he bellowed out in his best James Dean voice,
    “
You do look pretty, Miss Leslie, near good enough to eat
!”
    Trixie grinned at him and asked “What movie is that from?”
    “Giant, I think?” he remarked.
    Cedric coughed, and felt his body kick back the smoke he improperly inhaled.
    He coughed again.
    “Shit!” he said in between coughs.
    The lit cigarette then tumbled like a twirling baton down between his legs, falling into the crevice of his slightly unzipped jeans.
    Cedric grabbed the nearest thing he could and poured it between his legs: a hot pepper container that had not been screwed on completely, sending hot spices sprinkling into his crotch.
    Trixie laughed.
    “I’ll be back in a… *cough*… sec…” he said, coughing out more smoke.
    Cedric ran to the back restroom.
    The waitress walked over and saw the red peppers littering the booth.
    She shook her head, saying “Those stupid kids were in here again I guess playing their pranks on the pepper jars. Sorry I will get that cleaned up for you”.
    Trixie rubbed her eyes and thought, somewhere in the universe of video games and virtual landscapes, a character named Cedric roamed a coded countryside of sentient mushrooms and jump-able clouds. A perfect fit.
    A few minutes later, Cedric slid back into the booth anew.
    “Sorry about that” he said.
    “Not as sorry as your little man is”.
    He shot her a look of embarrassment.
    “My lil man is more resilient than you give him credit for”, he shot back.
    Cedric glanced at his watch and said, “Hey I’m gonna see if there is any decent music to be had in this joint. What kind of tunes are you into?”
    She sighed and thought hard.
    “Just pick something light” she said.
     
    Trixie watched him stroll over to the jukebox twenty feet away in that subtle strut he did, which was impossible to notice walking beside him but was quite clear from a few paces. He was clearly born in the wrong decade. Unfortunately it happened to the most unexpected people, Trixie thought. Males meant to be Marine snipers rejected for their color-blindness. Promising swimmers with asthma tossed out by Navy SEAL instructors. Near-sighted medical students propelled into pediatrics instead of neurosurgery. It happened to the best of ‘em, she thought, and through no fault of their own. Then again, maybe it shouldn’t be so unexpected. Mother Nature and her gambling habit with gene pools was an unmerciful lark, but an all-seeing lark; perhaps saving them from a disabling fate that is better traversed by stronger souls. Cedric seemed something of a genetic