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Here Come The Friday Vampires

A Novel

Chapter one

It’s Cold Outside.

 

This was not how Pen had imagined a ‘Friday Vampire Funeral’

It was just as shoddy and badly organised and cheap as she had imagined. Just in a different way, more nothing-y?  And they were all on form this afternoon weren't they? Jesus Christ when Bodmin wasn’t the biggest blowhard in the room you knew you were having a day. Not that old Barry Moor wasn’t being a prick today.

 

“You see Dinty’s problem was he wanted to be Robin Hood”

 

“I thought you said he wanted to be David Bowie”

 

“No I said he wanted to be Joe Strummer” 

 

“Same thing”

 

“No Pen fucking hell they’re really not! you’re dull sometimes! Strummer and Robin Hood are the same thing though because…”

 

Luckily Dan had interrupted to point out a Robert Baron truck going past, said it made him nostalgic. Dan also called Bodmin by his real name “awroight Barry” Bodmin hated this, the other idiots thought it was really funny. Pen just thought it was stupid.

The Husband had hated his real name too. Things like that seemed important when you’re young. The trick is hitting that sweet spot between being told you’re too young to do stuff and go there, and being told you’re too old to do stuff and wear that. You end up feeling young at 23 and old at 32, you can end up like Barry Moor, you can end up alone.

 

“Look you wouldn’t want to end up like Dinty, would you?”

 

Oh shit what were they planning?

 

“People need to have a place right? A birth place And a death place. We need to put them in a place, a location for them to seem real”

 

Fucking hell what’s wrong with me, thought Pen. That seems to make some sort of sense. She hated it when stuff started to not feel real. They’d been to young anyway, he had started to go before he went away for good. But that’s not important now. Should be thinking about Dinty and his poor grieving relatives.

            Dinty’s people had been the greyest collective she had ever seen. That’s why the reception was at a hotel conference room and not a Pub. The freezing cold but sunny day was perfect sales conference weather. And meant that everyone had barely noticed that most of Dinty’s translucent barely visible mourners had disappeared straight after the cremation.

            So after several glass bottles of the type of beer you only see at places with bars where they don’t actually want you to drink and enjoy yourself, it was decided.  A monument would be erected in honour of Saint Dinty (surely this wouldn’t catch on) A totem would be conceived and “erected in The Forest”.

For fucks sake she sighed in agreement, it probably is what he would have wanted. If he’d known what he wanted. She knew he had liked her, maybe he had liked her in more than a gross teenage way.  She certainly pitied him more now, and felt sad.  

 

“We have to take his memory back, make sure no one thinks this was some sort of neck beard survivalist macho tip, that he was on”

 

Sometimes it was hard to tell if it was Bodmin speaking or one of his acolytes

 

“We’ll make it more mystical and …earthy” interjected Dan the Bann

 

“No!  No no no, that neo liberal, practical magic, Glastonbury crystal, hippy shit is worse. Way worse.  Saint Dinty didn’t die because he was wearing the wrong clothes! He never wore the wrong clothes, We never wear the wrong clothes. And he would never have spent money on ugly cash grab books with badly drawn fairies or psychedelic computer shit on the cover…….”

 

Bodmin often spoke about money. He never seemed to need money, or do anything to get money. Just said they (he really) could be successful if they wanted to be?  Pen did need money. Always needed money, to take care of people.

Maybe that’s what all this was about.  What do selfish people stand for if the pursuit of money isn’t the ultimate goal?    

 

“Has that always been there”

 

“How would we fucking know?”

 

“Been there as long as I remember”

 

“So is this like owned land? Can we even put something here?”

 

And so it came to pass that the Memorial of ‘Saint Dinty’ of the hermetic order of the most enlightened Friday Vampires, (Kings Heath and Stirchley branch) would be erected where he died. Within sight of the Homebase car park and a stone's throw from the old Argos catalogue store. Dinty Moore the Patron saint of Liminal Spaces. Jesus Christ, you’d have to laugh, if you weren't so very tired

            No one had any concrete ideas on what exactly to build or how. Hopeless, absolutely hopeless. Pen felt tired, sad and tired. She went home.