Cut My Life Into Pieces, This Is My Last Braincell

On an ordinary Saturday afternoon, the doorbell rang.

Olivia blinked, sitting up from where she’d been lying on the couch, and stared at the door with no small amount of confusion. No one visited their house. If it was a business thing, it was handled at work, and if it wasn’t a business thing—well, as her dad said, people had phones for a reason. That wasn’t even getting into how much he hated solicitors—one poor door-to-door salesman had been yelled at so loudly Olivia was pretty sure half the neighborhood heard.

Deciding she didn’t want to put whoever was at the door through that (or put herself through the embarrassment of being in the house at the time), Olivia sank back into the couch and continued messing with her phone.

The doorbell rang again.

She sat up again, now very confused—and then it rang again. And again. And again and again and again and again and—

“OH MY GOD!” her father yelled over the rapid doorbell ringing. “Olivia! Get the door! Shut them up!”

Olivia—who was getting quite annoyed at the ringing herself—shot up and sprinted to the door, yanking it open. “Sorry, we’re not buying what—” Then she actually noticed who was at the door, and temporarily lost the ability to speak.

In the doorway was a man who looked around her dad’s age, maybe a bit older, with unkempt, scraggly frizzy curls that spilled down to his shoulders and wild brown eyes like he was perpetually seeing ghosts. He wore a thick scarf wrapped around his neck and an enormous green coat to which—and this probably should’ve been the first thing Olivia noticed—he’d strapped a frankly ridiculous amount of wooden stakes, two bandoliers of water, a string of garlic (???), silver crosses, and a whole host of other items.

In other words, like if Van Helsing was trying entirely too hard.

Olivia stared at him, unsure what to do or say or how to tell her dad “hey, there’s a crazy person at the front door”—when the man finally seemed to notice her and let out a loud gasp.

“WHAT?!” he exclaimed, so loudly that even Olivia—who was used to overhearing her father’s tantrums—winced. “A— a small child? I checked the MapQuest, this should be Indigo’s house!”

Olivia kept staring, unsure of how to (or even if she should) explain to him that yes, this was Indigo’s house—when the man suddenly barged in, knocking her aside with a yelp. His wild eyes darted about, looking around the foyer like it would suddenly sprout teeth and eat him. “Everything looks normal—where’s the coffins hidden? This house is haunted—invaded by evil!”

“Um” was all Olivia could get out.

The man whirled on her then, and she went pale, taking a couple steps back. “You! You tiny vampiric child! Your appearance of innocence may have fooled my cousin, but it shan’t fool me!” He whipped out one of the stakes. “You shall be—!”

Olivia let out an ear-splitting shriek—and from the stairs came a panicked “Olivia?!” a blur of movement, and then with a BANG the stake had fallen to the floor and the man was sprawled against the wall groaning.

“Olivia?” Her dad had grabbed her shoulders and was shaking her, looking legitimately panicked in a way she almost never saw him. “Are you—?”

“I’m fine,” she said weakly, still staring at the stranger and trying to comprehend what the hell had just happened.

By now, the man was getting back to his feet with a groan, and her father whirled on him with a glare that promised excruciating pain—then visibly double-taked, staring incredulously before facepalming. “Oh, for crying out loud…”

“Wait—Dad, do you know him?” Olivia asked, equally incredulous—she could hardly imagine her dad spending any amount of time with this obvious lunatic.

Said lunatic froze. “Dad?” he repeated, sounding just as confused as Olivia was.

Her dad paused, then sighed, shoulders slumping. “Really hoping I’d never have to have this conversation,” he muttered, then cleared his throat. “Hawthorne—this is my daughter, Olivia. Olivia…this is Hawthorne. My…” He hesitated, then, in the tone of someone who found the word physically painful to say, grumbled, “Cousin.”

“Wait—seriously?” Olivia stared at Hawthorne, completely flummoxed (though she could actually see the resemblance a bit, mostly in the frizzy curls her father always slicked back). “You have a—?”

Hawthorne, who’d been staring at her in equal shock, whirled to her father and said, in genuine surprise, “You managed to procreate?!”

A very, very long silence followed that. Indigo’s eye twitched.

“…was that weird?”

“Extremely,” Olivia replied bluntly.

“Ah. Well—” Hawthorne reached back to rub the back of his head, scattering dandruff. “My apologies for the assumption! And nearly staking your spawn.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Indigo said flatly, voice sharp as a blade of ice.

“But anyway—” Hawthorne grinned at her, as though the past few minutes hadn’t happened. “As your father stated! I am Hawthorne. Hunter of the darkest creatures known to man.” His voice dropped low. “Vampires.”

Olivia stared at him. “Vampires don’t exist,” she said.

“Ah, but they do! They simply hide in the shadows, waiting for them to strike. It is my duty to hunt them down and slay them!”

“I’ve never seen a vampire before,” Olivia said, blinking.

“And you’re welcome, my dear…” Hawthorne hesitated, bravado losing steam. “Uh…niece? Second cousin? What does one call the child of one’s cousin—”

“What do you want,” Indigo snarled through gritted teeth, tone of voice making it clear that whatever it was, Hawthorne was not getting it.

Hawthorne missed the message. “Ah. Well. Funny story.” He cleared his throat. “I was chasing some vampires down in Colorado when—quite suddenly—one of them turned into a deer and leapt out in front of my car!”

(Olivia was pretty sure that was something deer did vampire or not.)

“Of course, I panicked and swerved the vehicle so as to not fall into their dastardly trap—but, uh.” The bravado was gone again. “I may have…crashed into a tree.”

Olivia winced. Her father made a noise like he was trying not to laugh.

“Luckily! I escaped with minimal injuries. The most harmed part of me was my left leg, and, well—” Hawthorne reached down and rolled up his pant leg, revealing silver metal. “Prosthetics heal swifter than flesh, it must be said—”

“Wait, what happened to your leg?” Olivia blurted, then blushed when she realized that might not be appropriate. (Though part of her counted it as a win that she was able to recognize what was or wasn’t appropriate now.)

“Ah, that tale…” Hawthorne cupped his chin in his hand, frowning. “I’d have been…perhaps fifteen? Your father was thirteen—anyway, I had brought him along on a thrilling vampire hunt, only for the vampires to trap me in a dumpster! I shouted for him to get help, but they must’ve knocked him out—because he says he doesn’t remember any of this—” He cast a glance at Indigo, who had an odd look on his face “—and one of them turned on the compactor and…”

He hesitated. “My leg did not survive.”

Olivia winced. Indigo’s mouth twitched like he was trying not to smirk.

“But!” Hawthorne shook his head. “That was then. This is now! As I said, I escaped with minimal injuries. The car…did not. And getting a new one sort of…blew all of the funds I had.”

An awkward pause followed.

“…so can I stay for a bit?” Hawthorne asked, bravado gone in favor of something infinitely more awkward. “You’re rich, you can afford guests, right?”

Indigo had stopped smiling by this point, mouth pressed in a thin line and eye twitching like mad, and Olivia winced again—she knew the signs of an impending explosion when she saw one. “You’re asking to stay,” he said, voice carefully controlled. “You are asking. To stay. In my house.”

Hawthorne seemed to realize at this point he’d made a poor decision. “…yes?” he squeaked out.

That particular action proved terminally stupid.

“GET THE HELL OUT!” Indigo yelled, chasing him out with his own stake as Hawthorne shrieked and scrambled out the door. “AND DON’T YOU DARE COME BACK TO MY DOOR YOU COMPLETELY MORONIC LUNATIC—!”

The door slammed shut. Indigo huffed, tossing the stake over his shoulder. “Didn’t even let me finish my threats.”

A long, awkward silence followed.

“…so,” Olivia said. “I saw your face, when he talked about his leg—what, exactly…?”

“Oh, that!” Her father visibly brightened, lips curving in a smug smile. “He’d dragged me off to stalk some random woman, and I’d gotten sick of him screaming. So I turned the compactor on to shut him up and left. He had to crawl all the way back to the house, it was hilarious.”

An even longer silence followed, Olivia staring in absolute shock.

“…what? He lived.” Indigo scoffed, rolling his eyes. “You really gotta learn to enjoy schadenfreude, hon.”

“…message received,” Olivia squeaked out.

And that was the end of their visit.

XXX

(A/N: I picked Hawthorne because it was a color, and because “Vampire Hunter Hawthorne” rolls off the tongue very well. A joke I could not squeeze in and am very sad I couldn’t: Hawthorne asking Indigo where the wife is and Indigo saying “a werewolf ate her”. Both because he does not like admitting he got ditched and because Hawthorne going on a wild goose chase would be funny to him :P

Also, no one in this family has any volume control. They just all express it in different ways :P