Chapter Text
It was 5:36 on a Tuesday afternoon, and there was only one employee working the floor at the Game Stop in the Staten Island mall. She sat behind the register, back slouched, chin resting in her hands, just waiting for the next twenty four minutes to tick by before she could go home. It was early November, the sky already nearly black though evening had just begun.
The girl was lost inside her mind, thinking about going home to her cats and a warm, comfortable couch. She would make a bowl of instant noodles and spend the rest of the night watching reality TV, the perfect self care.
As she sat occupied with her daydream, she failed to notice a customer come in and start to look around. He gave a brief glance through a couple of sections, and upon finding the store empty, made his way over to the cashier.
“Ex-cuse me.”
The thick Iranian accent snapped the cashier from her train of thought. She looked up and had to stifle a physical reaction to the man in front of her.
He could only be described as odd. His clothes were odd, his accent was odd, and the energy he gave off was certainly odd as well. Standing well over six feet tall, the cashier found herself craning her neck to look up at the man. Long raven black hair framed his face, with a matching thick beard. Impossibly black eyes bore from beneath his heavy eyebrows, and a seemingly nervous smile showed his bright white teeth in an out-of-place expression.
He was wearing an incredibly intricate and historically accurate thirteenth century garb, a brown embroidered tunic underneath a thick red cape with a fur trim.
“May I help you?” She asked, giving a halfhearted smile. She was tired, and ready to go home, but tried to at least deliver decent customer service.
“Ah, yeees. Perhaps you can.” The man scratched at his beard, ornate silver rings catching the light as his hand moved. She watched the hand disappear again beneath the heavy crimson cloak he wore.
“I am looking for… somebody.” His cadence was slow and awkward, almost shy.
“Okayy… did you lose a friend or family member here at the mall?” The cashier peered out the glass storefront, looking for any similarly-dressed people in the mall corridor.
“No. I am looking for… assistance.”
Right. Of course.
The cashier glanced at her watch. 5:41. Almost time to close and she had to deal with a weirdo?
“Alright, how can I help you? Do you need me to look for something? Have a return?”
“I came to this store of video games searching for… a person… to bring back with me to my place of residence.”
Okay, this guy was just a nut. What did he even mean by that? Was he looking for someone to hook up with at a Game Stop?
Well, the cashier thought. This probably is one of the only stores in this mall that a cosplayer could find a date at.
“Um, I’m not really sure what you mean by that, sir, or what I can do to help you-” she tried to smile politely as he cut her off.
“No, you will help me,” the man interrupted, then he paused mid-sentence and fixated his eyes on the cashier’s chest. She was, for a second, quite shocked and angry until she realized he was reading her name tag.
“Char-lot-tay.”
Seriously?
“It’s Charlotte,” she corrected. “And what do you mean by that? I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“You have not even let me tell you what I need your help for, Char-lotte. I have special job offer for you. Much better than this Game Stop. No pesky nerds and virgins to deal with.”
Charlotte couldn’t wrap her head around this strange interaction. She decided surely this weirdo was acting in character to whatever cosplay he was wearing, probably from an RPG, trying to get her to go on a ‘quest.’
“Oh, really now? And, sorry, I don’t recognize, who are you cosplaying?”
The man made a confused face. “I do not know this coss-play you speak of. My name is Nandor the Relentless. I am a vampire, and I am offering you now to come and be my familiar.”
Charlotte laughed lightly, respecting the man’s dedication to his character. She noticed now that his smile was accented by two sharp fangs on his canines.
“Well, Nandor, your offer certainly sounds promising, but it’s—“ She glanced at her watch. “—5:45, and I’ve got to start closing up.”
There was a beat of silence as the man, Nandor, looked a bit unsure of what to say.
“Are you looking to buy anything today? Because I log out of the register in five minutes,” Charlotte said, turning around to start putting the day’s returned items into a tub under the counter. There was no reply. She turned around to look- Nandor still just stood there.
“Sir?”
“I just told you that I am vampire, and you have no reaction? Why are you not screaming and begging for mercy?” Nandor raised a large eyebrow. Charlotte laughed lightly.
“Sorry Mr. Relentless, this isn’t Disneyland. You cosplayers can stay in character all day but I don’t have to do it back!” She smiled, this odd but kind of charming interaction leaving her unsure on how to feel.
“I tell you already, I do not know of this cos-play. I am real vampire, you do not believe me?”
It was Charlotte’s turn to raise an eyebrow, skeptic of this stranger.
“If you’re a vampire, can you… turn into a bat?” She challenged.
Nandor glanced over his shoulder, behind him.
“I can turn into bat. But not with the computer eye watching me,” he said curtly, motioning to the security camera on the ceiling. “I take you outside behind mall where nobody can see, and then I will show you that I am real vampire.”
Charlotte grimaced. This guy was absolutely confusing her, somehow managing to act suspicious and charming at the same time.
“Um, sorry sir, that doesn’t sound very safe. Listen, it’s time for the store to close, okay? You’ll need to be leaving in a minute.”
Nandor looked around with a mysterious expression, a mix of indignation and something… sad?
“First I want to browse the video-electronic games,” he decided, turning away from Charlotte and stepping to the closest end-cap, which was full of Zelda games and merch. Nandor picked up a Link plush and showed it to her.
“Who is this soft man with the green clothes?” He asked.
“That’s Link, from the Legend of Zelda” Charlotte sighed. Was this guy going to stay until she made him leave?
“Listen, sir,” she said, logging out of the cash register and locking it with a key on her lanyard, “The store is closing now. You’re going to have to leave, I’m sorry.”
Nandor looked down and held the Link plush to his chest for a moment before setting it back and patting the yellow fabric hair solemnly. “But it is very hard for me to get to shop at the mall because it is always closing as I am doing the waking up! I get here at crack of dusk and every store is shutting down…” Nandor shook his head.
Charlotte was really nearly convinced that this guy was an actual vampire, he hadn’t broken character once. But regardless, it was really time to go.
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir, but I can’t let you stay in here. I don’t want to have to call security to get you to leave.”
Bristling at the threat, Nandor turned around and marched to the door. “And to think I asked you if you wanted to be my familiar… I should have just drained you of your virgin blood where you stand,” he half-mumbled, leaving promptly. Charlotte’s jaw dropped as the door swung shut behind him. She watched through the glass paneling as he walked away, wondering what on Earth had just happened in the last ten minutes.
The strangely dressed man slowly began to fade out of Charlotte’s mind as she set about the store straightening and putting back merchandise, turning off lights and demo games, and taking the return tub to the back. She dipped into the break room, grabbed her jacket and purse, and headed out for the evening.
As she stood outside the Game Stop locking up the door, she quietly played back the interaction with the vampire cosplayer. Drain me of my virgin blood? Charlotte thought. How did he even know?
“Must have been a lucky guess,” she whispered to herself, turning on her heel and heading to the exit of the mall.
Charlotte made her way around the the back of the mall where the employee parking lot was, eyeing her boring gray Crosstrek. She took the keys from her pocket and pushed the unlock button, still about twenty feet away. The car lit up and gave a chirp.
“Quiet! What was that?”
A hushed voice from the darkness made Charlotte freeze. She sprinted the rest of the distance to her car and hid behind the tail fender, turning to see the voice’s source.
On the opposite side of a Dumpster near the exit she had just left, she could see two shadowy figures. Almost instantly she recognized the huge, caped silhouette of Nandor. Charlotte felt sick. Was he about to kidnap somebody? Had she made the right decision to not come outside with him?
Charlotte stayed crouched down behind the car, watching the pair watch her vehicle that had just made a sound. After a moment, the figures’ attentions went back to each other. Charlotte strained her ears to try and listen.
“Did you find anybody fit to eat, Nandor?” came a voice with a jolly sounding English accent.
“No. But I met nice cashier lady that could make perfect familiar.” The heavy voice of Nandor. They were talking about her! Wait, did the first guy say eat??
“Come on, Nandor, I’m practically starving. Let’s go to the park and find some joggers, I need to hurry home and show Nadja all of these sex toys I bought at that gothic gift shop!” The first voice boomed again, even speaking at a hushed volume it carried easily.
Charlotte’s eyes widened as the two figures both jumped in unison and then completely vanished. She thought just staring in the dark had made her vision go blurry, but she looked on at the empty lot. The men had vanished.
Standing up, Charlotte turned in a slow circle to scan her surroundings. And then, in the pale white light of a security light, she saw two large bats flying away. It couldn’t be. But, they were indeed flying off in the direction of the park, where the Englishman had claimed they were going.
Feeling numb and a little nervous, Charlotte opened her car door and got in. She took a sip of the water she’d left in the console and took a deep breath. Flipping down the visor in front of her, Charlotte checked herself out in the mirror. She looked fine. She felt coherent. But if she was one hundred percent sane and fine, what the hell did she just witness?
Charlotte shook her head, exasperated, as she put the key in the ignition and started the Crosstrek. She pulled out of the mall parking lot, coming to a conclusion.
She had just met a real vampire.