Yay, Bingo!

[kit_r_writing]

At the last minute, but hey. They're kind of a low, wide "W" across the top two rows. They're five stories set in the universe of City of Sun and Darkness. The van Helsing family has been hunting vampires for a couple of centuries; the psychic trauma adds up.


Damage
prompt: job-related trauma
rating: PG-13
warnings: features a character having a panic attack
This time, Oliver vows, he will make it. Past the door, through the hallway, down the stairs, into the street.

He tells himself that as he arms up; loaded for anything the night might have in store for him. Stakes tucked into the front of his coat and the back of his waistband, a folding crossbow hanging under his left arm and a machete slung beneath his right, a three-inch cross around his neck and another, larger one tucked behind the row of stakes. Enough holy water to put out a small fire.

He realizes he’s getting ready for a full raid, not simply a patrol, but maybe if he’d been a bit better prepared ...

He shakes his head, as if that will clear it of the images that try to crowd in. But his hands are already starting to shake, and his mouth has gone dry with fear.

The doorknob rattles in his grip, as he turns it. He pulls the door open and steps forward.

It’s as if the wind was pulled out of his lungs. He fought to take a deep breath, but his lungs refused to co-operate.

“Come on!” His great-uncle Max stood in the hallway, glaring. “What are you playing at, boy?”

”Playing?” he wanted to ask, but his throat was already starting to close in on him. He staggered back against the wall, let it hold his weight until he got the door open, and collapsed inside.

Someone was pounding on the door; Uncle Max was demanding he come out, while Aunt Betty was asking if he was all right. But he couldn’t make himself answer either of them. Instead, he pulled himself into a ball.

Tomorrow, he told himself. He’d go back out tomorrow.


Own Good
prompt: abuse
rating: PG
warnings: physical violence against a 9 year old girl, mild anti-semitism
Leigh van Helsing looked up from the letter she was writing to her cousin as her daughter, Shannon, came into the room. She was favoring her left foot; carefully not-limping as she headed for the couch.

“Shannon? Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Shannon said, in that off-handed way that reminded Leigh of her husband. Shannon might not have Nate’s blond hair, but she’d picked up his tough demeanor early.

And how many times had Shannon seen her her father come limping home from the night’s hunt? When Shannon had been born, Leigh had mostly stopped hunting; her duty was to protect her daughter, and now, the unborn child she was carrying. But her crossbow was never far from her hand on those long nights when Nate was out hunting, and she made sure he let himself in. If the threshold stopped him, she prayed she would be strong enough to put a bolt through his heart.

Could she kill the shell of the man she loved? For her children’s sake, she hoped so.

But for now, she was concerned about Shannon. “What happened?” she asked, expecting to hear that she’d been roughhousing with her cousins.

“I was sparring with Grandfather Max,” Shannon said.

“Sparring?” Leigh echoed, her brain trying to catch up with what Shannon had said. She looked closer, and saw that the beginnings of a bruise on Shannon’s collarbone.

She shoved herself to her feet.

Her hands were shaking as she opened the freezer, got out a pair of ice packs, and retrieved the Ace bandage from the well-stocked first-aid kit that stood just inside the front door. She wrapped Shannon’s ankle -- which was already starting to swell -- and propped her foot up, then placed the ice packs on top of her. “Does anything else hurt?”

“No.” But Leigh wondered if she would tell her, even if something did.

“Wait here. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She headed to the hallway, and down the steep, narrow stairs to the basement. She clung to the handrail; between the excess bulk throwing her off balance and the fact that she couldn’t see her feet, the descent felt perilous.

Maximillian van Helsing looked up at her, his expression guarded. Leigh wondered if he knew why she was here.

“You hit my daughter.”

She’d half-expected him to deny it, but he simply shrugged. “She needs to learn how to defend herself.”

“She’s nine years old, Max!”

“She is a van Helsing, Leah.”

Leigh hated the way he used her Hebrew name; insinuatingly, as if he’d discovered some shameful secret. “She’s my daughter. And if you ever lay another hand on her -- “

“What will you do? Tell the authorities that I am teaching her to hunt vampires? I’m certain they would find your story quite interesting.”

“If I have to, I’ll tell them the truth -- that you gave her bruises and a sprained ankle. But all I really have to do is keep her in Kansas.”

“Do you really believe that Nathaniel would approve of keeping her from her family?”

“He will if I tell him I’m afraid for her.” She hoped.

“Unlike you, he knows what to be afraid of. He understands that I only do this to keep her safe.”

“I can keep her a lot safer by keeping her inside after dark!”

”So what does that teach her -- to hide from the dangers that prowl the night?” He scowled. “It’s better that she worry about her immortal soul than her mortal body. Our Lord said -- ”

Leigh wasn’t going to get into that argument with him. “She’s a child, Max! She has no business hunting vampires!”

“Better she learns now, than when it is too late.”

“And you’re the one to teach her, by leaving her bruised and barely able to walk?”

“You make it sound like I deliberately crippled her!”

“You went far enough by accident, Max.” She made her voice cold. “You touch her again, I’ll see that it’s the last time you see her.”

“Nathaniel will never allow it.”

“Nate knows better than to endanger my daughter.” She slid a stake from beneath her jacket, and pressed it up into the soft flesh beneath his chin. “If you’re wise, you’ll learn the same lesson.”

She saw his eyes darting, looking for a weapon; she jerked the stake away and slid it back into its holster. She backed away slowly, not really expecting a counterattack, but preparing for one anyhow.

Not that she could do much about it if he tried anything. He had half a century of fighting to her few years, and she was heavy and off-balance at eight months pregnant.

He continued to stare at her, pale eyes flat and cold, until she retreated up the narrow stairs. She found herself shaking again, this time with fear. Shannon was watching, wide-eyed, from her place on the couch; Leigh wondered how much she’d heard.

One way or another, she decided, she was not bringing either of her children back under this roof, ever again.


Bedtime Story
prompt: fairy tales/folklore/mythology
rating: G
“Once upon the time,” her grandmother says, “there were two brothers named Cornelius and Abraham.”` Abraham, the younger, devoted his life to scholarly pursuits, but as Cornelius knew he was set to inherit the van Helsing family fortune, he thought he had no need for either work or studies. Instead, he searched for something that would make him happy.

“He thought he’d found it, in a young woman named Sabine. She was both beautiful and intelligent, and at first she seemed pious and loyal. She gave Cornelius two children, a boy and a girl, and he believed his happiness was complete. But she hid a dark secret of her own. Because more than God, she feared growing old and dying.

So when a handsome man who wore gold and braid upon his uniform came to her, and told her that he knew the secret to life everlasting, Sabine was intrigued. She met with him when her husband was busy, slipping away behind his back. And finally, the handsome Colonel’s seduction was accomplished. She bared her throat to his fangs, and sold her soul for a false promise of eternal youth.

When Cornelius returned, he found his wife waiting. She was eager to cast off the last of the shackles of her mortal life, including her husband and children. She took him as her first meal, and left him an empty corpse on the threshold of their house.

Their children would likely have met the same fate, had it not been for Mary, the quiet, pious girl who had been hired as a nanny. She knew what she faced, and was brave enough to take action. She raised her cross to block Sabine’s way, and hurried the sleeping children out into the night.

Three nights she spent in desperate peril, taking shelter with the children in one church after another. Three days she spent, looking for her employer’s younger brother, terrified every moment that the police would find her and accuse her of Sabine’s crimes, and hand the children over to the woman who wished nothing but to murder them.

But finally, on the evening of the third day, Mary located Abraham van Helsing. At first, he did not believe what the young woman told her, believing her overwrought with grief and fear. But he agreed to shelter her and her charges until he could examine his brother’s body on the morrow.

When he performed the autopsy, he was shocked; there was no blood left in his brother’s corpse at all. And then he knew that Mary was telling the truth, and that Sabine was a vampire. But since she had access to all Cornelius’s money and connections, and he was keeping his niece and nephew from their mother, he had no choice but to take Mary and the children with him.

“They fled his apartment at the university, desperate to find passage to England. But ... “ her grandmother straightened. “It’s time for you to go to bed, now.”

“But I want to know what happened!”

“If you’re very good,” she said, “I’ll tell you tomorrow night.”


Worst Nightmare
prompt: coma
rating: R
warning: death
“I’m sorry,” you hear the doctor say. “She’s not going to wake up.”

“But you can work miracles.” Nate’s voice, on the edge of your consciousness.

“She’s lost too much blood,” the doctor says gently. “There wasn’t enough left to carry the oxygen to her brain.”

You should be screaming. You should be sobbing. You should be doing anything but staring down into your daughter’s face, and thinking how young she looks. How young she is.

And then the plug is pulled out from the wall, and everything falls silent until you wake up in your bed, your eyes blurred with tears, and you dash from your room to Shannon’s, to see her sprawled, asleep. And as you watch the steady rise-and-fall of her chest, you vow that you’re getting out, and you’re taking your children with you.


Shamefull
prompt: history
rating: R
warnings: molestation by a priest
“Shameful,” Irene Dempsey muttered beneath her breath, as she snapped off the TV. Her roommate, a colorless woman whose name Joe Dempsey had forgotten as soon as they’d introduced, looked reproachfully at her before returning to knitting her endless, shapeless scarf.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” Dempsey asked.

“You remember Father Theo?”

Hands, slicked with crism, sliding across his chest and hips in a parody of benediction. Voice raised in a prayer that had nothing to do with God. The feel of stubble against his skin. “How could I forget?”

“Some young men from St. Benedict’s are suing the diocese. They’re accusing him of -- well, you know, Joey. What those people like to accuse priests of.”

“Molestation.” He said it coldly, as if he was reading from a report.

His mother winced. “Do you want everyone to hear? They’ll think we agree with it!” Her hands clenched on the sides of her chair. “I don’t know why the judge doesn’t just throw the case out. This is just some Mexicans trying to get money by suing the church. They’ve seen it on TV, and decided to make a quick buck. Anyway, if Father Theo was really doing such awful things, why wouldn’t the boys have said something when it was happening?”

“A lot of kids don’t. They’re ashamed, they’re afraid. They don’t think anyone will believe them.” His mother opened her mouth to argue, and he added, “I see it all the time.”

Irene nodded, and turned to her silent roommate. “He’s a policeman, Marge.”

The other woman kept at her knitting as if she hadn’t heard her. And maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she’d long-since learned to tune Irene Dempsey out of her consciousness.

Since her motherly achievements weren’t earning her any points, Irene turned back to her previous subject. “Father Theo is such a nice young man. Well, not so young anymore. Which makes it worse; they’re accusing an old man of touching little boys. As if they couldn’t have just run away from him if he’d tried anything!”

Dempsey tried to imagine Father Theo as old. The man he remembered had been in his early thirties, lean and muscular, and a lot more approachable then old Father Garvey. So when he’d failed to struggle with his problem himself, it had been the younger priest he’d gone to.

”Father, sometimes I think about boys.”

But Father Theo would have to be in his seventies now. In his sixties when he’d allegedly -- who was he kidding, when he’d molested the young men who were suing him now. What could he possibly have had to offer them?

A lot of young men feel like that, Father Theo had said. Girls can be very intimidating at your age.

He’d been eager to jump for the explanation. Anything that would make him not a homo, a faggot, a fairy.

But then Father Theo had put a hand on his shoulder, and let it slide down until it rested on the small of his back. And despite everything, he’d felt himself growing hard.

He’d hunched forward, trying to hide it, though he felt incredibly obvious. “I don’t want to be a pansy,” he said.

“Nobody does,” Father Theo said, his voice becoming low and intimite. “And before you condemn yourself, maybe you should make sure it’s what you really feel -- “

He pulled himself back, into the present, to find his mother staring at him once again. And now, like he had then, he had to conceal the stirring of an erection. Even now, after all these years ...

He’d never allowed himself to slip into that sin again. But he’d never managed to forget it, either.

His mother had said something, he realized belatedly; she was looking expectantly at him. And the walls of the room felt suffocatingly close.

He shoved himself to his feet. “I need to get some air.”

As he hurried for the exit, he could hear his mother calling after him. But it was drowned out by Father Theo’s voice, dripping with disgust. ”This is why you people can’t be trusted. You lead the innocent into sin. It’s shameful.”