Saving the Future: Shooting You With My Smile

“What the hell are we doing out here?” Silicone Sally needed to know, as she stood at the perimeter of the fire-lit camp.

“Something unbelievably stupid,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! didn’t hesitate to tell her, as he studied the surrounding forests through the night-vision setting of his Gawker Goggles.

“Standard operating procedure for you, then,” Sally Rezilyant snarked with a frown.

“And yet, you volunteered to come along, without me even asking,” Dreamcatcher Kokopelli Foxglove pointed out with a smirk. His eyes darted briefly to glance at her concerned expression, and he suddenly switched gears. “Ever read Ray Bradbury?”

Sally blinked in confusion, then shook her head as if to clear it. “I was never much for sci-fi.”

“Ray would be the first to tell you that he was never really sci-fi,” Dream chuckled. “Case in point being Something Wicked This Way Comes. Great fuckin’ novel. Scared the shit out of me when I was a kid,” he recalled enthusiastically.

“Is there some reason we’re talking about this now?” Sally felt the need to steer the conversation toward a more productive end.

“There’s this great scene,” Dream went on, apparently oblivious to Sally’s increasing agitation. “There’s this evil fuckin’ supernatural carnival, Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show, that’s visiting, I don’t know, like, some shitheel town in the Midwest, and in this one scene, Charles Halloway, this old man in town, is doing a shooting trick on stage with the Dust Witch, who’s, like, one of the carnival members, yeah?”

“Dream, I feel like we’re being watched,” Sally interrupted urgently.

“Oh, yeah, that’s the vampires,” Dream brushed it off, not even reacting as Sally’s face fell with horror. “I already spotted them heading towards us. Anyway,” he resumed his reminiscence, his tone unchanged, “they give him this wax bullet to fire at her, because that’s how the trick works, so she can pretend to catch it. But what Charles does is, he carves, like, this half-circle into the wax bullet, and when he fires it, he kills the Dust Witch, because it wasn’t just a half-circle. It was his smile. Those evil carnival fuckers are so scared shitless of happiness, that he’s able to kill her, stone-dead, with, literally, nothing more than his own smile.”

Sally gaped at Dream in silence for a few seconds, before blurting out, “What the hell was the point of all that?”

“Huh?” Dream seemed to snap out of his reverie. “Oh, I don’t know. I just thought it was a really cool fuckin’ story,” he giggled.

The looming shadows that slowly emerged in the distance tripped another change in Dream’s mood, as he slung his arm around Sally’s waist. “Okay, get ready to get back on the game clock,” he sounded almost eager, flashing a false smile to the approaching figures even as he spoke out of the side of his mouth to her. “Figure we’ll go with a Fourth Doctor/Romana II meet-and-greet,” he muttered under his breath, throwing her into momentary confusion, before he clarified somewhat, “Just pretend we’re doing improv comedy. Watch me for the changes, and try and keep up.”

By his well-bred features, ornate raiments and regal bearing, the tall, gaunt, pale man at the lead of the pack of roughly half a dozen vampires who stalked forward was clearly in charge. He was also just as clearly not expecting to receive the response that he did from the short, slender, glowing young mortal before him.

“Oh, hi, you must be our new neighbors!” Dream beamed, as Sally followed his lead. “It’s so wonderful of you to welcome us to the block, but I wish you’d called ahead. We could have made a late supper of it. My wife makes a lovely quiche,” he tugged her closer to his side, as if to emphasize his statement.

“I am Lord Julius Abyssinius, royalty even among the ranks of the undead,” the lead vampire looked down upon the two mortals, both literally and figuratively. “Who are you, that you would condemn yourselves to eternal death, by disrespecting your betters in such a pointless fashion?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Dream extended his hand. “Please allow me to introduce myself. I’m a man of wealth and taste –”

“Your name,” Julius specified, through tightly clenched teeth.

“Well, some people call me the space cowboy,” Dream struggled to maintain a straight face. “Some call me the gangster of love –”

Dream’s smugly mocking recitals of classic rock lyrics were cut short by Julius backhanding him savagely across the mouth.

“Ow,” Dream observed, after spitting neon green blood out of his mouth. “Heh, you didn’t even give me a chance to say that some people call me Maurice –”

“You are transparent,” Julius spat his words out in turn. “For all your petty attempts at deception, your simple falsehoods are as easy to spot as you are, and they will cease,” he commanded.

“Okay, fine,” Dream groaned, before he broke into a grin again. “I’m Charles Foster Kane, and this is my lovely wife Rosebud.”

Julius rushed forward in a swiftly gliding movement, closing the distance between himself and Dream in the blink of an eye. “You are still lying,” the lead vampire seethed, towering over the two mortals.

“Well, yeah,” Dream conceded, casually sliding his arm off Sally and gently nudging her away from him, so that Julius’ attention centered exclusively on him. “Her name was originally supposed to be Marion Davies’ Clitoris, but that’s a tough one to get your tongue around,” he suddenly turned to the surrounding attendant vampires and shouted, “AM I RIGHT? HUH? WHO’S WITH ME? FELLAS?”

When he was met with stony silence, Dream scowled and threw what amounted to a temper tantrum. “Okay, you know what? Fuck you all!” he jabbed his finger in the direction of his intended audience. “If I’d have told that joke to either the film school students or the journalism majors back on campus, they’d be laughing their asses off right now!”

Julius raised his hand above his head, but instead of cowering with fear at the threat of another blow, Dream arched his feet up onto his tiptoes, and thrust his jaw out belligerently. “Oh, that’s a brilliant interrogation technique, George Tenet!” he bellowed up at the lead vampire. “Order me to talk, then hit me across the fuckin’ mouth! What’s next? Maybe you could tell me to type out my confession, after you break my fuckin’ fingers, huh?” And then, just for good measure, he threw in, “You ass-brained dipshit.”

Julius was literally shaking with rage, and yet, he forced himself to stay his hand. “No,” he snarled, baring his fangs, “I think the time for words is over. There is clearly no reasoning with you, so instead, I shall simply consume your lifeblood.”

Dream’s defiant sneer gave way to a blank expression. “Trust me, you really don’t want to do that,” he held up his hands and began backing away.

“You are a pathetically weak liar,” Julius snorted with contempt.

“Fuck you, I’m an awesome liar,” Dream gritted his teeth, even as he trembled visibly.

Julius blurred forward, snatching Dream off his feet as easily as a doll. Sally shrieked as Julius’ fangs tore out Dream’s jugular vein in a flash of ferocity, spattering the lead vampire’s mouth with a shower of neon green blood, before he tossed the no-longer-glowing young mortal to the ground.

“Ah,” Julius basked in the sensation of Dream’s lifeblood coursing through him. “So rich, even for a mortal as young and as full of life as he obviously was.” He delicately wiped his mouth clean, then turned toward Sally, who was frozen in place from terror. “And now, my dear,” he addressed her with a façade of civility, “will you be more cooperative, or shall I help myself to a second course?”

“aaaAAAAAAUUUGGGHHH!!!” Julius heard the guttural cry from behind him, where he’d tossed the corpse of his first victim. “GODMOTHERFUCKINGDAMMIT, DO YOU HAVE ANY FUCKING IDEA HOW MUCH THAT SHIT STINGS, YOU DICK???” Dream screamed, staggering to his feet as he clutched the still-bleeding wound on his neck.

Julius’ eyes widened with alarm. “I didn’t turn you,” he sought to deny what he was seeing. “Mortals can only be turned if they are chosen to be embraced as undead. And I most certainly did not choose you.”

“Yeah,” Dream winced, rubbing his neck tenderly one last time before he removed his hand, so that Julius could watch the gaping, gushing bite-marks heal back into unbroken skin. “Thanks for the tip, but I pretty much figured that part out on my own already.” He narrowed his eyes, and cocked his head to one side speculatively. “Little hot under the collar, there, Marilyn Manson?” he checked. “Only, you know, you’re turning a little more … tan than usual.”

Julius pressed his palms to his cheeks, and felt the long-since-forgotten sensation of heat coming from his body. The surrounding attendant vampires traded panicked glances, and backed away from their leader, as his face grew flush with color.

Dream snapped his fingers as inspiration struck. “In fact … with that spray-on bronzer complexion, you should change your name to ORANGE Julius! Huh? HUH?” he refused to stop prompting for laughter from his intended audience.

Sally face-palmed in embarrassment. “Oh my God, you are such a dork.”

“You abomination … what have you done to me?” Julius practically pleaded.

“You did it to yourself, asshole,” Dream shot back. “You’re a vampire. You’re a creature of death, decay and destruction. You are entropy personified. And I am an Agent of the Chaos of Creation. I’m an undrainable goddamn Energizer Bunny battery of life energy. I am sunlight, motherfucker,” he bared his own teeth in a vicious grin, “and just like I thought it would, my blood is burning you from the inside out.”

“Wait,” Sally gasped, “you mean, you knew this would happen?”

“Well, it was more of a theory than anything else,” Dream shrugged. “But as long as we were out here, I figured, what the hell, I might as well test it out, right?” His lopsided smile faltered when he noticed the reproachful wariness in her stare.

“But … your mind,” Julius protested impotently, as his once-cool flesh started to smolder. “I … felt your fear!”

“Oh, I know, right?” Dream whipped his head from Sally to Julius, pouncing on the opportunity to prove his previous proud claim. “But, see, it breaks down like this. A bad liar is one who can’t convince you that a lie is the truth. A good liar is one who can convince you that a lie is the truth. And a brilliant liar is one who can convince you that the truth is a lie. And I’m such a goddamned brilliant liar that – much like the Sandman, after he was retconned by John Byrne – I can lie in my own thought-bubbles.”

Julius howled with agony, as he finally exploded into flames. His surrounding attendant vampires all skittered a safe distance away, but continued to stare at Dream, as if expecting him to issue a final statement.

He did not disappoint. “Yeah, see, this is the part where you all flap your little batwings off, back to your gothic empire of Hot Topic wardrobes, Anne Rice personalities, Masquerade LARP politics and fan fiction nicknames, and you tell your Queen of the Damned, or whoever the fuck is in charge of you assclowns, that you just watched one of your own lose a fight by winning it. You tell them that I shot him with my own smile.”

“Holy shit,” Sally breathed, after the remaining vampires had retreated. “So … what other authors do you recommend?”

3 Tangent thoughts about the story:
1. There has been one thing I've never found out what Steve Miller was talking about was this: "I speak of the pompitous of love", what the heck was a pompitous?
2. I was waiting for Dream to call Julius "Julie" but then that made me to think about Julius Schwartz. But of course anytime I hear the name Julius it think of either Schwartz or Caesar. But then those names can send me on thoughts of Salad or Mel Brooks.
3. When Dream introduces himself & Sally as Kane & his sled: My mind went to Austin Powers 1 when Austin & Vanessa are posing as tourist & the names He gives: Richie Cunningham & his wife Oprah.

Other then my tangental thoughts a fun story all around.

Not so much Ray Bradbury as Terry Pratchet - Granny Weatherwax used a simillar technique to bring down most of a family of vampires (apart from the Old Master) in Carpe Jugulum.

Of course, the effects of her manoever were a little less ... destructive.

A fun CSFB story, with the usual excellent tie in between pop culture and his adventures. I hope to see Sally get a little more proactive (not that she's the shy lot, judging by the last story) and start relating to the Legionnaires as something more akin to an equal adventurer, as I'd like to see her considered for membership.

.