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“Bagel time-it’s bagel time! Bagel time-it’s bagel time!” Felicity would have skipped into the conference room if her brittle ankles would have allowed it. She loved turning cruelly mundane things into little blood curdling songs. She slipped a bagel in front of me, its bitter, sulfur fragrance assaulting my nostrils. “Cinnamon raisin for you, sweet Alexei!”
I snarled at the coagulation of confectionary refuse on the napkin in front of me. “I prefer my cuisine to be sanguine in nature, Agatha.”
“Oh? What’s that mean?” Felicity asked.
“Blood, Felicity. I only consume blood.”
She chuckled. “You young people and your fad diets.”
Fad...fad diets? I’ve never been on a diet in my life. I mean...you. Help me, here. You see this, don’t you? You see the beauty that is Alexei Vladel, Prince of the Vampires? My obsidian hair, cut by the Blade of A Thousand Years. Eyes so red and so rimmed with darkness that I could bring a soul to its end with just a look. A jaw sharp enough to impale the weak. Why would I need a diet?
Keif strutted in on his stick legs, his tight little waist packed into pleated khakis and his biceps popping out of the seams of his short sleeved button down. It was never leg day for Keif.
“We’ve got some performance reviews coming up soon, team. I know how we look forward to those!”
Literal squeals from the other employees around the unnecessarily long table. Keif’s performance reviews were all about positivity. He rewarded effort, not skill. It was all pointless. Everything in life had become...pointless. But I couldn’t fake my way out of this place. No matter how skilled I was at deception. I needed a life mate. And that meant love. And love...wasn’t real.
“I might sink my fangs into an unsuspecting commuter this evening,” I said aloud.
Keif gave a loud laugh and pointed at me. “Now that’s the kind of go-getter attitude I’m looking for, Vladel! You go out there and chat up some commuters, get them to try out LoveBubble and zing! A long-lasting love connection is—”
I stood up and walked out of Keif’s meeting. He’d have a chipper talk with me about “sticking it out” later but I couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe I’ll stick my head under the faucet in the breakroom. Maybe I’ll throw my rolling high back swivel chair with lumbar support out the fucking window. Maybe I’ll take a match to the—
I stopped. Someone was standing in the main office. Someone I’d never seen before.
She glared with the fury of a hundred restless souls. Dark eyes, hair blacker than irony and gathered into pigtails on either side of her head. She wrinkled her perfectly pierced nose, her black lips puckering. “Why does it smell like fucking bagels in here?”
“It’s...cinnamon raisin.”
She glared at me with those black rimmed eyes. “What the hell? Is...is this hell?” She looked around at the LoveBubble posters on the walls: a couple smiling, a woman pushing a full grown man on a swing set, a woman in a cardigan being force fed chocolate hearts...
“...worse.”
She nodded her head at me. “Who are you supposed to be?” She switched the shoulder bearing the weight of her messenger bag and revealed wrinkles on the shoulder of her already wrinkled collared shirt. One half of her shirt tail was tucked into a black pleated skirt that was far too short.
“I am Alexei Vladel, Prince of Vampires.” That introduction was once followed by a symphony of screams and a litany of groveling.
“Yeah? Well I’m here to audit you, bitch.” she tilted her head at me, blew a bubble of violet bubble gum and popped it with a studded tongue. “I’m your worst nightmare.”
And for the first time in my 874 years of life, a shiver ran down my spine. “But...” I swallowed. “I love nightmares.”
Episode 3: Coffee
She walked up to me, her eyes narrowed, though it was hard to make out the purity of her gaze with the amount of black eyeliner ringed around her eyelids. It was like staring into the void of death. Sweet, inescapable death.
“I’ll start with you,” she said, still chewing her gum. “Name?”
“I already told you.”
She glared at me. “Make a note. Employee is belligerent.”
“I’m not...wait, who are you talking to?”
“Employee is also nosy.”
I tried not to show how perfect she was, but I feared the corner of my mouth may have twitched. As for you, who seems to be becoming quite useless to me, if you could remind me that I am indeed the afterlife come to earth and to keep hold of my faculties?
“Name?”
