VSPPP, or, How I Finally Committed and Got Something On Paper (And Thence Onscreen)
My first online fiction! Explanation and author's notes follow the text.


First Lesson

Pat eyed the growing collection of equipment on the table nervously. “Um…” he began, “I’m really starting to have second thoughts about this.”

“Oh, come on!” I set down the bottles I was holding, with perhaps more force than was strictly necessary. “I thought you said you wanted to do this. And what does ‘really starting’ mean, anyway?”

Pat held up his hands placatingly. “I just- I didn’t realize it was so complicated, is all. And can’t we have one conversation without your inner grammar Nazi taking over?”

I sighed. He had a point. “All right. Inner grammar Allies are storming the beaches of inner grammar Normandy as we speak.”

“Ah, but do they have inner grammar air support?”

“Anyway, it’s really not as confusing as it looks, once you’ve got the basics down.” I picked up one of the bottles, deliberately covering the label with my hand. “Do you know what this is?”

He squinted, biting his lip. “Holy water?” he asked finally.

I snorted, then caught myself. “First lesson. Holy water works on less than half the vamps, and it’s a close-range weapon so you won’t get a second shot.” But maybe if you hit one with holy water first, I wondered, and then immediately staked it while it was laughing…I shoved that train of thought firmly aside. The problem with experimenting in this business is that you can only be wrong once. It kind of rules out trial and error. “There’s incredible variation in what methods work, anyway. Some recoil from anything Christian, a lot of them can’t stand sunlight, there was even one in France that dissolved under antibacterial spray- we’re still trying to figure out how that happened. A stake is always your safest bet, though. I’ve never heard of one a stake couldn’t take down.”

“Stake always works. Got it.” He nodded, looking more sure of himself now we were dealing in absolutes again.

“Silver will work on most of them, too, and sewing scissors are way easier to conceal- or explain away, come to that- than a stake, so you’ll always want a pair for crowded areas, like, I don’t know, an outdoor masquerade or whatever.”

“But I keep the stake on me, just not somewhere visible.”

“Right. Feel ready to try the hard part again?”

“Yeah. I do.” He nodded, then took a deep breath and looked down at the table. “So this one is… lip liner- no, eye liner.”

“Right! What made you change your mind? I’m curious.”

He paused. “Well, it’s brown…and most lipstick comes in shades of red, so you’d want a lip liner to match that, right?”

“Good.” I smiled. He really was getting the hang of this. So what if people said a boy couldn’t be a Vampire Slaying Pretty Pretty Princess? I’d show them. After all, this is the twenty-first century.


This story was inspired by (what else) The Vampire Slaying Pretty Pretty Princess meme. The jokes owe a lot to the Tales of MU community: "Inner grammar Nazi" comes from comments 47 and 49 on this entry, and the punch line was inspired by the first two comments on this story. Addendum: the vampire-slaying disinfectant spray was inspired by this author's sidebar, from when MU was on livejournal.

(P.S.: Check out my maaaaad HTML skillz!)