Count McAbre II - By Tim Stewart

John McAbre had been asleep, but some noise or other had woken him up. He didn't mind, he liked waking up early. Not that he liked getting up early, but waking up early meant you had that wonderful moment when you realise you don't have to get up yet, and can get back to sleep.
He yawned contentedly, and buried his head in the pillow again.
Waking up has several stages, but it's a few minutes before the brain actually warms up sufficiently to allow actual thought.
John thought, 'Now what was it I was supposed to do today?'
When he remembered, John got such a shock he sat bolt upright, never a good idea when you sleep in a coffin.
'Ow!'

As he dressed, he thought about what he was going to do. He wondered what might happen, if things worked out or not… Clearly, nothing would be the same again. He also wondered if, really, he should even be doing what he was thinking of doing.
Some would say that it was against the rules, but in John's experience, the rules weren't worth much.

The problem with being a vampire, well, the biggest problem… Well, one of the biggest problems, was that it didn't allow you to have anywhere near a normal life.
His master had told him that he could have a normal life… A normal vampire life.
John didn't see why he had to be pigeonholed as a vampire just because, technically, he was one. He had never felt anything other than perfectly human.
Most folks took a certain change of perspective when they became undead, a knowledge that they had just moved up in the food chain.
But a lot of people, (more and more these days, he was pleased to know) just couldn't bring themselves to think that way.
John had a friend called Sean, a zombie, who couldn't bring himself to kill people and eat their brains, so he eat the brains of sheep, cows, and anything else too stupid to run away. He felt guilty of doing even this, and was desperately in search of a vegetarian option. In the meantime, he was fighting down the urge to moo.

Humans had it easy, thought John, they had a choice.

And this was the plan:
They could go for a romantic moonlit flight, stop in a nice restaurant for a meal, then stop in a likely looking house for someone's blood, (Not too much, and always leaving some money for their trouble.) and afterwards, fly back to the castle, and over champagne on the balcony, John would propose to Anna. What could be simpler?

Jared was in the basement, as John could tell from the strange noises thudding through the castle. Jared had been up before John, something he only did when he was eager to get to work.
John hadn't told Jared of his plans to propose to Anna, partly because he hadn't been planning very long, and partly because they had been so busy. Today was John's day off though, he had decided.
John headed to the basement, realising he would have to go past Dr Schlitzen, the mad scientist sub-letting various parts of his castle. John would have to run and hope he wasn't caught in an explosion.
Inevitably though, there was a scream from the doctor's laboratory, and John, as he had done so many times before, went to help Schlitzen out from whatever pile of rubble he was trapped under.
Today it was quite novel.
The doctor was trapped underneath a giant potato; his wiggling legs were the only part of him visible.
John rolled the huge spud off him, and the doctor gasped with relief.
'Why thank you John,' He said, when he regained his composure. 'Bit of a shock that, to see a ten foot potato rolling towards you.'
'I'll bet.' Said John blankly. 'Why, I mean, what…' He motioned to the strange apparatus set up in the lab, and, of course, to the giant potato.
'It's a shrinking ray.' Said the doctor, knowing John never asked him questions other than 'What the hell is going on here?'
'And,' He continued, 'apparently it's an enlarging ray too. Hmmm, a bit of a mix up there I fear, I must have switched the wires on the translocating reactor with the fractal be-bop.'
'Oh, I see.' Said John, and then paused… 'Be-bop?' He asked.
'Ahem, eh, yes,' said the doctor, going a little red, 'I was having a little trouble coming up with names.'
'Well, good luck.' Said john, hurrying out the door. Being a vampire was bad enough, but being a twenty-foot vampire could cause serious problems. He wouldn't be able to suck people's necks for one thing. He'd have to carry a big straw around with him.

As he left, something watched from the rafters…

Jared Becker, AKA 'DJ Drag', was sitting amongst a stack of albums, sorting and searching through them. Occasionally he would stop at one, play it for a while, then either toss it aside, or add it to his pile.
John was familiar with the routine. Samples.
Jared was more concerned with samples these days than he was with blood.
'Find anything good?' asked John.
'Yeah, some cool stuff,' he replied, 'how do you feel about doing a remix of the A-Team theme?'
'Excellent, I used to love that show.'
'Oh yeah? Who was your favourite?' Asked Jared.
'Hmm, gotta be Murdock, I felt I had a lot in common with him. What about you?'
'BA All the way.' Replied Jared.
'Really? Hmm, I had you down as a Face sorta guy.'
'Naa, Face was alright, but BA was hard as nails.'
They both fell silent, lost in memories of gold jewellery, poor aims, jeeps rolling over, and being locked in a warehouse with only their wits and the components to make an armoured car to help them.
Jared was the first to speak. 'Did you see that episode of McGyuver with the flesh-eating ants?'
'Yeah, that freaked me out.'
'Me too.'

John had planned to tell Jared about his plans as soon as he saw him, but talking about old TV shows is hard to stop when you start. Eventually he got round to telling him.
John got down on one knee…
'Jared, would you be my best man?'

Anna was in the library, reading a book on vampire history. She had been a vampire for a few months now, and she was eager to learn what she had been missing. It was quite interesting really…
Take Countess Molkovitch the Red, for example. The first female vampire, she had, while being a human, protested for equal rights amongst the undead. She showed people the real meaning of sufferage. Things had been different then. Vampires were known to exist, before they had been forgotten, dismissed as myths by the younger, better-educated generation. Funny old world really.
She was also, to a certain degree, avoiding John.
It wasn't that she didn't like him, but over the last while, he had seemed very distant. She had put it down to his and Jared's musical ambitions, but she had started to feel like he was getting tired of her. She kept out of his way to see if he would seek her out, but that hadn't helped so far. Maybe things would be better though, he was taking her out to dinner tonight, he might be coming around at last…

And so it was that Count McAbre and Miss Little flew off into the night, in search of good food and a romantic setting. It wasn't hard to get a table in even the best restaurants, as vampires have a certain, presence, shall we say, that makes them very hard to say 'No.' to.

Back at the castle, all was going to plan, they were drinking champagne on the balcony overlooking the town. All was going well. Except John was shaking like a leaf with nerves.
Anna had noticed this, and had already made the connection. 'He's going to ask me to marry him!' She thought.
She wondered what she would say, she decide to say she would think about it, let him sweat it out for a day or two, pay him back for the last couple of weeks. No, why bother? She loved him and that was good enough, she would say yes. His behaviour was already explained to her, he had been busy organising things no doubt, preparing for tonight.

'Anna?' Said John, putting his hand in his pocket for the diamond ring. He had been given it by his master many years ago, when he had become a vampire. Its design was strange. The ring itself was made of steel, but the diamond was large, and exquisitely cut. It was priceless, it was beautiful… It was not there.

John checked his pockets again, more rapidly this time, and again, until he looked like a man with a ferret down his trousers. He had put it in his pocket before they left, and he knew he had it when they came up here, because he had checked it then. So where was it?
Anna was looking at him, he panicked. 'More champagne?' He said, trying to stay calm in a crisis.
He poured her another glass, and leaned on the edge of the balcony. She did likewise. As soon as she did, he turned back and scanned the balcony for the ring, his nerves stretched, he felt ready to scream.
Then, just as his knees were turning to jelly, he saw it. It was hanging in the middle of the air, rising slowly. 'What sort of magic is this?' He thought.
He approached it slowly, not wanting to attract Anna's attention. The ring was being held in the air by a piece of thread and a magnet, and pulling the thread, a small rat.
It saw him grab for the ring, pulled the tread hard, and the ring shot out of sight. John landed on the ground, and yelled, rather inappropriately for the occasion, 'Bastard!'
He looked up, and Anna was heading for the door.
This wasn't good.

Anna was packing
John banged on the locked door, 'You don't understand!' He shouted.
'Go away!' She shouted back.
'Men! Huh!' She thought. Well, of course, technically he wasn't a man…
'Males! Huh!'

She left, and didn't tell John where she was going.
She was going to her mothers, despite her aversion to Anna's vampire lifestyle. She would catch it from her about leaving John, but it would be worth it to be away from that worthless bum.

John sat with his head in his hands. Every once in a while, he would raise his head and mumble, 'Wstfgl.' then repeat the process.
Jared and Doctor Schlitzen looked on.
'I've never seen him like this.' Said Jared.
'He certainly seems to be having a psychological episode. I think she broke his brain. Most illogical' Said Schlitzen.
'How can we help him Doc?' Asked Jared.
'Well, it's hard to know what we can do, we don't even know what happened.'
Suddenly John stood up, shouted, 'Rats!' and fell over.

It was a day before they got the whole story out of John.
'How could a rat have caught the ring out of my pocket with a magnet? How could they do that?' He gibbered.
'Well, the rats in this castle are… special.' Said the Doctor, trying to hide his embarrassment.
'What have you done now?' Said Jared.
'Well, it was one of my first experiments here really. I tried to create rats that were smarter than average ones. The effects were amazing though, they could reason, talk, and manipulate small objects. I got fed up with them in the lab though, they were always correcting me. So I released them, I couldn't bring myself to kill them, I mean, we knew so much about one-another.'
'How many did you release?' Asked Jared.
'Just two, a male and a female one.'
'And it didn't occur to you that they might breed?' Shouted John.
'Well, not really, they couldn't stand each other, they were always arguing over things. When I tried to make them breed, I put on some romantic music and candlelit their cage, but they complained that the candles were singing their fur, and then they started fighting over the lyrics of 'Lady in red'. The whole thing really was a fiasco.
'The ring!' Shouted John. He was doing a lot of shouting now he had woken up.
'We have to get it back! My master gave it to me! I was going to give it to Anna! We were going to get married! It was precious! Irreplaceable! One of a kind!'

'This sir,' Said Schlitzen to John, 'is your only hope to get the ring back.'
John looked at the shrinking machine, and a knot formed in his stomach. Then he thought of Anna, and his resolve returned. Nothing would stand in his way, to get the ring back, to win her heart again.
'Groovy.' He said.
He stepped up to the shrinking platform. What looked like a ray-gun was pointing at him.
'You can't be serious!' Exclaimed Jared. 'What if something goes wrong?'
'Something already has gone wrong, now I'm going to set it right.' Said John.
'You're mad man, what If he can't bring you back to your original size?'
John shrugged. 'Save on food bills I suppose. Doc, do your thing.'
Schlitzen pulled the GBL, (Great Big Lever) and the machine whirred into life. A pink glow surrounded the machine, the ray-gun wobbled as it powered up.
'Initialising shrinker!' Shouted Schlitzen, over the growing noise. He pushed the BRB (Big Red Button) and the ray-gun shot a pink beam at John. He disappeared.

'Hey!' Shouted John. 'You did it! I'm small!'

'What? We can't hear you!' Shouted Jared. John covered his ears, and fell over.
'Oops.' Said Jared. 'He needs help, Doc, you'd better shrink me too…'

John and Jared were now standing on the table. They were both only an inch high. Schlitzen peered at them with a magnifying glass. The vampires peered back at his huge eyeball.
'My my my,' Said Schlitzen, softly. 'Honey I shrunk the vampire.'
'Right Doc, were going!' Shouted Jared, as they took to the air, and flew towards the ceiling.

Being small, you could see the detail that went into everything. A table leg was a huge, beautiful column, with strange, alien patterns weaving up the side. A glass jar was a futuristic structure, a picture was a landscape, a cobweb was a deadly, intricate trap.
They reached the roof, to a little crack that led into the walls. The rats had been here, making tunnels in the stone… John wondered how they could have done that. It was very dark, but vampires have good night vision. They came out in the kitchen. It was a large kitchen anyway, but now, it was gargantuan. They flew to the fridge, and sat down on the magnetic letters.
'So where do we go now?' Asked Jared.
John thought. Being small made it harder to find his way around. Everything was different.
'The pantry!' He exclaimed. They must go there to get food! That's where we can find them…'
They flew over to the door, which was shut tight. The gap at the bottom was just big enough to squeeze through though.
They flew upwards, past shelves of cereals, bread, and other interesting things. On the top shelf, a mousetrap had been set. Carefully placed beside it, was a neatly written piece of card, it said:

There was another hole in the ceiling, where the rats had been coming in. The odd thing was, (overlooking the written notes) that no packets had been chewed or opened. Could the rats have taken the whole things?
The hole led to one of the inner walls. These had been insulated, and this made the going hard. The tunnels were still there, but it was easy to snag your foot on the insulation. After a while they were exhausted, and sat down to rest.
'Hot as hell in here.' Gasped John.
'Yeah man, but it's a dry heat.' Said Jared.
They didn't notice they were being watched.

Steve the rat watched them from further up the tunnel. He had been coming down for some food, when he had heard two strange voices. He came round the corner to see the two vampires, a shock to say the least. How could they be here? How had they gotten so small?
He ran back to the village, shouting, 'They're coming out of the walls! They're coming out of the damn walls and floor!'

'You hear something?' Said John.
Jared shrugged. 'Must be the heat getting to you.'
'Yeah, lets keep going.'

They hadn't gone much further when they reached the end of the tunnel. They were in the gap underneath the floorboards and above the roof. The thin slits between the floorboards admitted only a little light, but it was enough to see the houses by.
They reached nearly as high as the floorboards, their walls made from strips of cardboard. John noticed the corn flakes rooster on a strip, the honey monster on another.
He had been wondering where his packets of sugar puffs were going. Jared usually had toast at breakfast, and Anna ate porridge. John couldn't stand the stuff, and Anna had once told him she couldn't either. There was so much he still didn't know about her. He suddenly felt a huge longing for her, just to be there, asking her these things, discovering more and more about her. She puzzled him, she was fascinating, and he loved her…
He was shaken back to reality by Jared nudging him in the ribs.
'What?' He blurted, and then saw it. They were surrounded by rats. They crowded the streets between the houses, and were even on the roofs. They looked angry, and they were closing.
'Jared?' Whispered John.
'Yeah?'
'This looks bad…'
'Yeah.'
John looked around at the rodent faces surrounding them. They didn't just look angry, they looked scared too. He raised his hands…
'We, eh, come in peace?'
The rat nearest them stepped forwards. 'Well that's a bloody relief.' He said.

Ten minutes ago, John had wanted to kill every rat in the building. Now, ten minutes later, he had a different view.
Both John and Jared were sitting in the Town Hall, a huge building, (From their point of view) in the very centre of Little Edinburgh, which was the name of the rat town. Apparently they had passed many smaller settlements on their way up. After the rats had befriended them, the lights had been turned back on. The roof of the city was strung over with Christmas tree lights. It gave the place a colourful, warm glow. It was, as Jared exclaimed, far out.
They also had a thimble full of beer each. They couldn't even hold the thimbles, so they had been propped against the wall. Jared was upside down in his, his legs wiggling happily.
Steve was chatting to them, telling them all about the city, and how it was run. Suddenly, the lights went out, and there was a great hush in the hall.
'Whuzz 'appenin?' Blurted Jared, from his thimble.
'Its starting! The music awards!' Said Steve.
'What?' Said John.
'You'll see.'

The lights came up, and standing on the stage were three rats, each with a microphone, and another rat behind them, on what looked like a mixing desk with turntables.
The crowd roared.
'HELLO LITTLE EDINBURGH!' They shouted in unison. 'WE ARE! THE BEASTLIE RODENTS! M. Cheese. A, Adrat, and Mice D!'
They launched right into song.

'Cause no-body can-do-it,
Like Mice Master can…'

After they had finished, John asked Steve about the ring. Steve looked worried.
'Yeah, sorry about that, eh, it was me that took it. The Mayor wanted a trophy for the music awards, the ring, well, is it.'

The next act, Mice-ive attack, was announced, after that it was Rats against the machine, then Moby mouse, M.W.A, Fatrat slim, Armand Van Hamster…
'Is it me,' Said Jared, 'or is there a theme developing here?'
John turned to Steve, 'Where can we find the Mayor?'

Jared was enjoying the music too much to want to leave, so John headed backstage by himself. No-one wanted to stop him. The mayor was standing behind the judges, who had the ring on the table in front of them. He was a big rat, and wore a sort of red coat.
He saw John and smiled happily, 'Ah, our new human friend, John, am I right?'
'Yes, that's me.'
'And to what do I owe the pleasure?'
'The ring, the award for the music competition, its mine…'
'Of course, I think our friend Steve was a little too eager in getting this trophy, we don't normally steal from people… Well, not directly, not without necessity.'
'Please sir, I need it badly.' Begged John. 'If you could just return it to me…'
The Mayor looked thoughtful. 'What do you need it so desperately for?'
'I, its an engagement ring, I was about to propose when it was taken. I couldn't propose without it, but then she got angry, and she ran out on me…'
The mayor twitched his whiskers sagely, 'Tell me, this girl… Do you love her?'
'Yes!' Said John, quickly. No confusion there.
'But why do you put such importance on this ring? It is only an item… A pretty one maybe, but surely you put it before her… Hmm?'
John opened his mouth, then shut it. Damn, he did, didn't he?
'Here,' Said the Mayor, taking the ring from the judges, 'Take it back, and propose to the one you love, but make sure she knows you love her more than any ring can tell.'
With that, he handed it over, and John took it, surprised. 'That's it? No conditions? No Snags? That simple?' In his experience, nothing was that easy.
'Of course,' replied the Mayor. 'It is yours after all… But something tells me, the hard part is yet to come…'

John said his goodbyes, saved Jared from drowning in his second thimble, and headed back to the lab, thinking hard on what the Mayor had said. 'The hard part is still to come? Dead right…'

Many days later, and in another country, (Transylvania, if you want to be precise.) Anna was sitting in her room, reading a magazine article on one hundred annoying things men do, noting John was scoring highly, and feeling better for it. There was a ring at the bell, followed by another, a few seconds later, and another, seconds later. It was night, and her mother was in bed, so she went to answer it. She also had a pretty good idea who it was. She wasn't wrong.
But she was still surprised.

A diamond ring hung in the air, and holding it, a tiny figure. John.
She was speechless.
'Anna,' said John, hovering, out of breath. He looked very tired and scruffy, the ring was obviously a great weight to him.
'What…' She managed.
'Anna,' He said, struggling at first, 'This ring is a priceless heirloom, handed down from generations of vampires. I had planned to give it to you when I proposed, but it was stolen by super-intelligent rats. Jared and I were shrunk by Dr Schlitzen, and found that the ring was in the rat city between the floorboards, where I also met the rat people, who are very nice blokes by the way, and they gave me the ring back. We got back to the lab, and Jared got put back to the right size. I took the ring and flew here, for hundreds of miles, or, looking at it from my perspective, thousands of miles, sleeping in tree stumps and coke cans and things like that during the day. I carried this heavy ring here to propose to you, and if you don't say yes, I'll throw it away, because its worthless if its not on your finger.' He caught his breath. 'Anna, will you marry me?'

She wondered what she should say, maybe she should think about it, let him sweat it out for a day or two, pay him back for the what he had put her through.
No, why bother? She loved him and that was good enough, she would say yes.

'Yes.'

the end.

(Hmmmm, who should I thank this time? Everyone really, cause I owe them so much… Ok, Especially my big sis Sharon, my main man Jared <Appearing at his own request, well, in the first one anyway, hehehe> And Tina, concerned bystander and wonderful friend…)

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