Shoplifting Vampires (2.0)

2.0

September 2026 - Hale’s Rest Police Station

DC Burke took a moment to write down what I’d been saying before he resumed his questioning. It was all to remain unofficial, off the record. Legally, I was dead, gone, vanished. I knew I could trust him, because he had seen the result of what happened when someone crossed me. And anyway, I didn’t mind telling him. In all honesty, I quite liked the attention. It had been so long since I’d had someone to talk to about that summer.

'Hold on,' he said, raising a hand.  ‘I’m just gonna pause you there. Before we get any further, I just wanted to ask: what was it with the nicknames? How did those come about?’ He turned his notebook to the front and showed me a table he had drawn up, listing our real names next to our nicknames. ‘I’m just curious about the inner workings of your, well, strange little lives.’

I smiled. ‘Strange?’

‘You know what I mean. You guys were the town misfits. Everyone knew of you, but nobody really knew you,’ he said nervously, like it might have caused me offence. 

‘Yeah, well, we were just kids. We were stupid. We hated our parents and everything they gave us. But a name is easier to  change than a family, so that's where we started.’ I shrugged, like it was nothing. ‘I’ve had mine the longest, though.’

‘Please, tell me.’ He sat there, his pen ready to scribble down whatever I said like it mattered. I could’ve just lied about everything, and he’d have no clue, but I was still the same arrogant little shit who wanted recognition for the things I did. 

‘I was abandoned as a baby. My birth mother left me in a skip like I was some leftover takeaway. I should have died, left out in the cold like that. But I didn’t - Reverend Green found me. The old Reverend Green, the dead one. He was passing by, having missed the bus, and heard my crying. If I hadn’t had that strength to muster up those cries, or if he hadn’t missed the bus, I’d have frozen. But I didn’t- he found me. And he took me to the hospital and made sure I was okay. They didn’t have a name for me, so they called me Rev’s baby. Of course, when I went to the foster family, I was given a name. But everyone still called me Rev. And I like it.’

‘If you don’t mind me asking, what was the name they gave you?’

‘Mary,’ I shivered at the memory of that name. ‘Mary Martha Craily. I hate it.’

‘I get it. You don’t look like a Mary.’

‘Exactly! Just how Spike doesn’t look like a Dennis, Nails doesn’t look like a Charlie and Rusty doesn’t look like an Edmund! That’s why no one called us by our real names. We didn’t suit them.’

‘So, what are the stories behind Spike, Nails and Rusty?’

‘Spike dressed like a knock-off version of Spike from Buffy, Nails once hammered not one, but two nails through his own hand when he was like eight, and Rusty has red hair. They’re really not that interesting.’

DC Burke laughed. ‘It is, actually. You guys had invented this whole other world for yourselves, and that’s where all these events made sense. To us, you guys just seemed mad.’

‘Yeah, well.’ I thought back to the Shed, and the smell of cigarette smoke. I thought about how little DC Burke knew. I smiled. ‘Maybe we were.’

God, I wanted a cigarette so bad.