Turning back, Loki noticed Dork Dracula was fully awake and growling, fangs out, red eyes glowing in the dark.
“Are those your fangs or are you just happy to see me?” Loki splashed the words out against the rain, happily spitting on Dork Dracula’s face. He didn’t look insulted.
“Stupid, Loki,” Dork Dracula grunted. “You’ll always be a kind-hearted loser, just like your father,” the vampire grasped Loki around his neck, ready to bite him.
“You knew my father? Who is he? What’s his name?” Loki asked, his stake slipping from his hand. If he was going to die in this awful Ordinary World, he wouldn’t mind knowing who his father was.
“Every vampire knew your father, the most famous loser of all, who gave up on Heaven for the love of a demon woman,” Dork Dracula smirked with crawling green veins in his face, waving like a mad snake. This was definitely not the nerdy dude from the party anymore. “If only you could remember who you really are. You used to be like us, one of us, Loki.
“Who am I then?” Loki pleaded. “Tell me what you know about me and my father!”
Suddenly, something hit Loki in the face. He thought this was the feeling of getting bitten, but it wasn’t. It was a thick branch from one of the creepy trees bending over the road that punched him.
Loki had been hit hard. He wrapped his arms and legs around the branch like an amateur monkey in a lousy circus.
When he opened his eyes, the night looked blacker and blurrier. He dangled his feet but there was nothing underneath to reach. He wanted to bang his head against something, watching Carmen disappear into the dark of the road in front of his eyes. He was simply left behind, hanging on a tree in the middle of the night.
Behind him, he heard the vampires getting closer, so he crawled deeper into the thick arched branches and hid behind the leaves, watching them chase after Lucy.
Loki wondered if Lucy noticed his absence. It wasn’t like you lose the guy on the roof of the car you’re driving every day. It would have felt good if she had noticed his absence. He wondered if he’d end up spending the rest of his life up there.
Sitting helpless on the branch in the dark, his phone vibrated in his pocket. He had never answered the phone while on a tree before, so he struggled pulling it out with one hand while keeping balance with the other. “Keep your balance, Loki. One hand on the tree, one hand on the phone,” he mumbled. “That’s the kind of skill they don’t teach you in school.”
Loki checked the caller’s name. It was Lucy.
“Where the tic, tac, toc, are you?” Lucy shouted through the speaker, fully awake now.
“I’m on a tree,” Loki said. He didn’t feel exactly proud about it.
“How could you leave me alone with all those fang-gang vampires following me? This is no time for trees, Loki.”
“Actually it’s me who was left behind—” Loki fired back. His loud angry voice must have awoken some creatures of the night. Something was rattling in the nearby trees. “Actually it’s me who was left behind, not you,” he repeated, now whispering and lowering his head to hide from any malevolent night creatures. A wolf howled in the distance, and Loki wished he was a lizard so he could change his color to match the tree.
“Why are you whispering?” Lucy yelled.
“You have to lose the vampires and come back to pick me up,” he said.
“I can’t believe you need my help again,” Lucy sighed impatiently. “You’re supposed to be the vampire hunter,” she huffed and hung up.
“Goodbye to you to you, too,” he said to an empty line.
Loki saw his shadow reflected by the moonlight on the road. It looked a lot taller and a little bent, which he was fine with. What troubled him was the other shadow next to him. It was of something short and chubby with what looked like spiky feathers. He wasn’t alone on the tree.
Slowly, biting on the phone like a dog with a bone, Loki turned to his right. It was an owl; a friggin’ white owl with yellowish eyes, standing firm and proud, looking like a happy stuffed pillow. It said nothing and only blinked occasionally.
Loki held the phone in one hand so he could shrug.
“Hi,” Loki paid his respects. It was hard to tell if the owl was friendly or a blood sucking vampire.
Usually animals talked back to Loki when they were alone—or maybe he was only hallucinating—but this owl didn’t respond. It didn’t even nod back. They shared a long moment of silence. It seemed that Loki was of no interest to the owl, which made him feel even lonelier.
When Loki’s phone vibrated again, the owl let out a sigh, and Loki held tighter to the tree branch so it wouldn’t vibrate him to his death.
Loki apologized to the owl for the disturbance, hoping he could count on its continued silence as permission to pick up the phone. This time, he didn’t know the caller’s number.
“You think I should pick up?” Loki asked the owl. Talking to it kinda eased his fear. The owl blinked once, so innocently Loki was about to fall in love with its coolness.