Four Tasks (Not Three)

Four Tasks (Not Three)

By Gail Mayh

Copyright © 2014, Gail Mayh

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-291-82410-0

Prologue

Artwork Due Thursday

You did what? I asked, and my voice wasn’t quiet.

I promised the client the artwork would be ready tomorrow, said Mandy the account executive.

"The artwork is down as due on Thursday, I told her. She was glossy-haired, bright-eyed, and pretty in an unspectacular way, but it wouldn’t save her. You cannot vary the due date without discussing it with me first," I said.

Can’t you just move some stuff around or whatever it is you do? she asked. I had to conclude she had only the intelligence of a small, single-celled blob. For the last ten minutes she’d been standing in front of me, refusing to understand that I was an inch away from slaughtering her where she stood, figuratively speaking, of course.

No I can’t move some stuff around or whatever it is I do, I said. I have no stuff to move around, only urgent, scheduled jobs for our major clients. You know who I mean. The clients who pay our salaries.

I get salary plus commission, she said proudly.

Your client wants a one-off, small, print ad for a tiny company with no advertising budget, I added. Why should I change priorities and let long-term clients down because of this job?

Because I promised I’d get it done for Tuesday, Mandy explained, and I knew we were stuck in a loop. The same loop we always got stuck in.

And why did you promise that? What’s in it for you? I asked. Now she looked shifty.

Nothing. I was just being helpful. Oh. Plus I’m going out with the owner, but that isn’t the reason.

You’ve taken leave of your senses, I said. I hate this life. I hate this job and most of all I hate stupid account executives like you. Now clear off. If I see you again before Thursday, you’re going out the window.

Derek said you’ve never actually thrown anyone out of the window, she said, still pleasant as I ranted and raved at her. Derek was also an account executive, and a snitch.

"But did Derek tell you about this?" I asked. I reached for a can of spray-mount and a lighter that was kept for this purpose only.

Um. Yes, he did, she said, backing away towards the door of my office. He said you singed his hair.

I was trying to set him on fire, I said. She ran for it. I put the spray mount and the lighter back where I kept them especially for frightening account executives, then I went to the glass between my office and the design studio. My design studio. God I loved this job, and my life, if not quite perfect, was still pretty good. Not that I’d tell an account executive that of course.

I had to be somewhere near Heathrow for a scheduled photoshoot that afternoon and as I went out there on the tube I made my plans. Another year of this and I’d set up my own agency, in an office at least five or six storeys up and then I would throw the account executives out of the window. I’d move to a bigger apartment and I’d meet a billionaire who wanted to give me all his money and wonderful sex. And when I’d got all of his money, I’d buy serious shoes, bags and clothes. And the billionaire would be really cute and not at all like Mike-the-unkind who’d been my last serious boyfriend sometime last year. Or Iain-the-insular with whom I dallied briefly the year before. Or Tim-the-Twerp for that matter (five minutes with him, two years ago now, my how time flies). There’d been plenty of offers since Mike-the-unkind, but they quickly found out about my big mouth and my penchant for pushing everyone away and the offers dwindled into not-a-chances and total-disasters. I’d hold out for the billionaire. In my mind I had a picture of him; long hair, not so dark, more sort of dark reddish-brown (Pantone 676 C or similar), green eyes, a big smile whenever he saw me, and lips made for kissing. He’d be older than me, probably mid-to-late thirties, and he’d be honest and trustworthy and I’d never have to shred his clothes in a rage. I knew it would happen, and it would happen soon. Yeah right, I told myself. More likely it would be a semi-comatose, incontinent eighty-eight year old with a lot of debts, and he’d be a bully too. Still, he’d probably be deaf, so at least my big mouth wouldn’t get me into trouble. Or out of it.

The job itself was unspectacular, just another model plus product shot for the glossies. The client always gave out lots of sample cosmetics at the shoots and so I took a few palettes of eye make-up wondering when I thought anyone would be silly enough to invite me to a party so that I could use it. I’d give them to the girls and boys in the studio as usual. And then I met someone I actually knew.

Emma Blenkinsop had been at university with me. My friend’s friend’s friend was her friend, give or take a friend or two, and when she realised I was in charge of the creative department, her brain said Network Opportunity.

Oh fantastic. Phoebe! I can’t believe it! she oozed at me. This is, like, so lucky! You never come to the reunions, she accused.

I’m always too busy working, I told her. It goes with the fancy job title. Plus, I would rather eat my own feet.

"Well listen, you must come to my flat-warming party tonight," she said, and though I made non-committal noises, she pushed and pressured me until I felt I was being unkind to blind puppies to say no. So I said yes and only afterwards realised that she was just showing her boss how well connected she was. To say I always realised these things too late is an understatement.

To cut a long story short, I went to the party. Emma greeted me as if I was a long-lost sibling, telling me how utterly, utterly brilliant it was that I was there, but then her upper class friends arrived and she was suddenly too upper class herself (though I believe her father was an estate agent from Dagenham) to speak to nonentities like me. She totally ignored me and I didn’t know a soul there. I opened up conversations with random people but they were either being cool, aloof and unapproachable, or they were uninterested in activating their brain cell for anything less than a Right Honourable.

I sidled into the bedroom on a mission from hell. I would trash her bed and then I would go, is what I’d planned, though I have to confess trashing her bed did not include axes or similar. I wish. All I did was pull up the bottom of the undersheet and pin it onto the duvet above so that when she tried to get into bed she’d have 20 seconds of not being able to. That’s right, an apple pie bed, though that seems an odd name for it. Pretty pathetic, I know, but at least this one was done with malice, and I poked my tongue out at the bed the whole half-minute it took me to set it up.

And then I turned. There was a woman leaning in the doorway watching me and I had just sufficient conscience to feel a little guilty for the malice-aforethought-bed-thing, but she didn’t miss a beat. She was ok-ish to look at. I could see she was quite stocky, not very tall, and had dark hair, but other details were hard to glean as the room was dark. Her eyes flashed at me and I didn’t like her, without knowing why. She wore trousers, great, big, baggy things in black, with a white blouse that made her look a bit like a waitress, and for a millionth of a millisecond that’s what I thought she was. I began to move towards the doorway but she was blocking the way. She came forward those last few steps and said, How do you do? My name is Lady Elizabeth Chatsworthy, pleased to meet you. I put my hand out to shake hers, but never got the chance to tell her who I was. She bit me and then started sucking my blood.

My first impulse was that it was a joke, my second that there were no such things as vampires so who was she kidding? I tried to get away, but there was someone holding me still and I became light-headed almost at once. And in those final moments that, strangely, involved me drinking something too and the clink of metal, I remember thinking that when I’d bought the fiendishly expensive top I was wearing I’d worried about getting a stain on the green silk that wouldn’t come out, and now I’d never get the bloody thing clean. And as my life faded out, if there had been one thing I could have said to anyone, about anything, it would have been to my deputy, to tell him to stop Mandy the account executive from taking advantage of my death to get her artwork before Thursday.

Chapter One

Avaunt Thee Evil One!

"You said what?" I demanded, and my voice wasn’t calm.

I said...

I know what you said, I told him. You said I was a loathsome, bloodsucking, coffin-dwelling, undead thing.

No. I didn’t, argued the boy quivering on my doorstep. I don’t know what he’d expected was going to happen, but obviously, it wasn’t this.

You’ve never even met me before! I howled. You come here and call me names, and then you say you didn’t!

With all due respect, began the teenager.

Oh yes, I sneered. Very respectful. Listen sunshine, it is not respectful to call someone a loathsome, bloodsucking, coffin-dwelling, undead thing. As you did.

I didn’t say that. I said you were a vampire, which you are. He was trying to sound reasonable and unafraid, but I leaned very slightly towards him and he jumped back at once.

Yes, I agreed. "A loathsome, bloodsucking, coffin-dwelling, undead thing. And then you said... what was it?"

Um.... avaunt thee evil one, he mumbled.

You didn’t say it like that. Every word had capital letters when you said it before. And you stressed the ‘t’ at the end of ‘avaunt’. And it echoed.

Er... um... sorry, he said, obviously not quite sure why the conversation had gone this way.

I pressed my advantage. I’m not a vampire. If there was an opposite to a vampire that’s what I’d be. Plus, vampires don’t exist anyway. And even if they did I wouldn’t be one. I thought I’d covered all the bases, but no, the creep wasn’t shifting. I took a step forward and closed the door of the basement flat I shared in Highgate.

I don’t believe you. You look and act like a vampire.

There you go again! I howled. You called me a loathsome, bloodsucking, coffin-dwelling, undead thing again! I hadn’t had so much fun since I died.

I didn’t, he almost whimpered. "You do look like a vampire."

I do not. This outfit is more Julian MacDonald than Christopher Lee, I argued. The skin-tight jeans and tight-fitting green silk top certainly didn’t fit alongside a corpse in a tuxedo and opera cape. And the very high NineWest sandals I was wearing would just look silly if I was crawling down the sheer face of Castle Dracula, which I wouldn’t be anyway. Even if I could. Which I can’t.

I was glad my flat-mate Tizzy wasn’t at home; the boy might be amusing to me, but he didn’t need the sort of nastiness she would have dished out as a matter of course. He was harmless, but she wouldn’t have cared.

You’re so pale!

I haven’t been well.

Then what about your teeth? he demanded.

My teeth? I asked in surprise. What about my teeth? My teeth are perfectly normal. The creep said nothing and just stood there smirking. Ok, I admitted, my canine teeth are very slightly longer than the others, but everybody has canine teeth a little bit longer than the rest.

Your canine teeth are twice the length of your other teeth, he accused.

That’s absurd, I said, trying to talk and keep my mouth shut at the same time. I gave up. Your own teeth aren’t that great either. Don’t you ever clean them?

Look in the mirror, he said with what was obviously supposed to be a sneer.

I’m eisoptrophobic. He looked blank, as well he might. A mirror frightened me when I was a little girl and I’ve never been able to look in one since, I explained, glad I’d looked the term up in Every Girl’s Big Bumper Book of Phobias and memorised it only days before. I’d not had the chance to use it till now.

You don’t look in the mirror because you’re a vampire and vampires don’t have reflections.

Oh? So it’s loathsome, no-reflection, pointy-toothed, bloodsucking, coffin-dwelling, undead thing now is it? Any more insults to hurl?

You still haven’t answered the mirror allegation, observed the little creep, who had learned about my red herrings far too quickly for my liking.

I’m catotrophobic, which is pretty much the same as eisoptrophobic, except with fewer letters. I don’t like seeing myself.

Not much chance of that, he sniggered.

Next you’ll be saying I don’t go to church and that makes me a vampire too.

I was coming to that, he said.

How do you know I don’t go to church? It’s not as if you’re ever there to not see me. You don’t go to church either but I don’t call you hurtful names like loathsome, no-reflection, pointy-toothed, bloodsucking, church-avoiding, coffin-dwelling, undead thing.

I didn’t actually call you that, he said.

Yes, but that’s what you meant. It’s very hurtful to say things like that. If I came up to you and called you a vile, post-pubescent, greasy, shuffle-footed stalker with personal hygiene problems, I’m guessing you wouldn’t like it.

Probably not, he admitted. But I’m not. You are a vampire though.

There you go again. What have I ever done to you?

He pondered this for just a moment before recognising it as another irrelevance. You don’t wear a cross, he said, ignoring my last statement completely. He tried to sound firm but I could see he was beginning to waver in his certainty that I was what he thought I was. I took another step forwards, but he only shuffled a quarter step back so that it was me who had to retreat, but not before I’d got a whiff of sweaty armpits and dirty socks.

Get real, I said.

It would burn you! That’s why you don’t wear one. The little shit looked so pleased with himself I nearly kicked him.

No, it isn’t because it would burn me, which it wouldn’t anyway because I’m not a vampire. It’s because I’m an atheist. You’ll be saying next that the reason I don’t carry a flask of holy water with me everywhere is because I’m a vampire rather than because it would be a stupid thing to do. The expression on his face shifted ever so slightly. Oh. You’ve got one have you? What does that make you?

You stay in bed all day!

Wait till you get to university, I said. Then you’ll understand.

Vampire!

I don’t like you very much, I told him, looking him in the eyes for the first time. He couldn’t meet my gaze and his eyes dropped. Unfortunately.

There’s blood on your chin!

No there isn’t.

Yes there is. Just there. And there.

Do you normally wear glasses? No? Then perhaps you should. Or have you been sniffing glue?

My eyesight is perfect, he announced, which I very much doubted with a squint like that. I lost my patience.

"Ok, I am a vampire, but that doesn’t make me a bad person. And it doesn’t give you the right to bug me." I took another step forward, and this time he did move back, In fact he backed up three or four paces, more than quadrupling the space between us. Then he fell backwards over a big pot of dead plants previous tenants had placed in the little passageway that led from the steps to our front door. I smirked. And sniggered.

You kill people! he accused once he was back on his feet. He was pointing at me now and sounding mildly hysterical.

"Kill people? Of course I don’t kill people. What sort of a girl do you think I am? Kill people indeed. I thought for a moment. Well there was one, or maybe two, but no more than two. Unless you count the fifteen people who.... No, they were an accident. It was two. Definitely." I was winding him up, but he didn’t bite. Nor did I. Nor was I going to.

Every time I’d come out of my flat for the last six weeks or more I’d seen this little creep hanging around pretending not to be watching me. I’d hoped he’d get bored and drift away; instead he’d acquired a little courage.

Right then, I said. What do we do now that we’ve both been outed?

Both? he repeated in surprise. How have we both been outed?

Me as a vampire. You as a snack, I told him in as patient a tone as I could find and was gratified to see him back away just a little more. Ooops. He fell backwards over another plant pot. It would have been better if you’d thought about this bit up front. You’ve been watching me long enough - couldn’t you have drawn a diagram of the front of the house marking plant pots on it and then memorised it? Unless you want to be bitten.

Of course not.

Good. I have no intention of biting you.

What do you mean? Why not?

I laughed out loud at the stupidity of the kid. Then I saw his face. What? You’re upset because I don’t want to bite you?

I don’t want you to bite me, he claimed.

Good. I don’t want to bite you, I agreed. So that’s us all happy then.

Why don’t you want to bite me?

You don’t want to get bitten, but you find my refusal insulting? He didn’t need to answer. I took a proper look at him. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen tops. I don’t think anything short of plastic surgery could make him look good, but if he lost the lank, greasy hair, and did something about his spots it would be possible to glance at him and not vomit - so long as it was a quick glance, of course. I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot litter-picker. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you smell? Is that garlic?

Um..... he said, looking at his feet.

That doesn’t work in any case, I told him. Nor does the holy water vial in your pocket. Perhaps the stake you haven’t actually got behind your back might make me a teensy bit unwell, if you were fast enough to catch me, and if you actually had one. I began to move away, but then something else occurred to me and I turned and looked back down the steps at him. "By the way, not all that smell is garlic. No wonder you can’t get a girlfriend!" And then I really was gone.

I hadn’t been amused to wake up dead a few days after that fateful evening. My only consolation was that I had thoroughly ruined the party for Emma Blenkinsop, but even that was spoiled because I hadn’t been there to see it, and nor did I ever find out if the apple-pie bed had worked, or even if I had the right bed.

I woke in the dark, in a cold and quiet place. I lay still for a moment, thinking something on the lines of, well this isn’t quite what I expected. Then I questioned myself as to what I had expected and couldn’t give myself an answer. We were off the map. I knew at once I was in a coffin - and a cheap one at that. The lining seemed to be polyester, judging from the feel of it against my fingers, whereas I saw myself as more of a silk taffeta girl, and absurdly, I chuckled at the thought that had they asked me, I’d have said I wouldn’t be seen dead in a coffin with a polyester lining. Still, it would be fun sitting up at my funeral.

I refused to panic, telling myself repeatedly, I am not the sort of girl that has a screaming fit in the middle of the night in her coffin, and it certainly helped because I wasn’t and didn’t. Besides, when my hands probed for a way of opening it, the lid slipped off at once and clattered to the floor, the noise echoing eerily through the deserted building.

I sat up. It was still dark, but I could see quite well. The room was large and clinical and there were other coffins stacked near the door, but if they contained bodies, the bodies didn’t say anything. Any other residents seemed content to stay put.

I slipped my fingers into my mouth and sure enough, I had fangs. I remembered dying. I knew who killed me. You didn’t have to be a Quantum physicist to work out that I’d been killed by a vampire. Only I could have been killed by something that didn’t even exist. Oh sure, I knew that there are scary things in the universe, but I thought they were roughly divided into a) clients and b) over-enthusiastic, puppy-like, account executives, both of which categories could be absolutely terrifying in their own way. Vampires had been in the category of don’t-exist-never-did-never-will, and those who believed, or worse, longed to meet one, were sad cases to be sniggered at. Instead, I found out when I no longer worked in advertising that there was a huge undead market just waiting to be targeted by clients with the right information at their fingertips - and my creative department, obviously. If I’d known this when I was alive it would have been the perfect platform on which to launch my own agency. In the hour after I rose for the first time that’s what annoyed me the most.

Nothing much had been done to my body that I could see, but then, what did I know? I’d have looked in a mirror, but I already knew it would be a waste of time, given that vampires have no reflection. I assumed I looked odd. I was wearing a high collared blouse which was presumably intended to hide the scar on my neck, and a boring skirt. I wouldn’t have been seen dead dressed like that normally. Snigger.

What now? I should take stock, assess my new skills and see if I could turn into a bat or a wolf, though, with my luck, it would be a wombat or a snail. I told myself this was as good a time to gain an understanding of what I’d become as any, but then I realised there was no time to be lost. I found I had entered my afterlife with a burning sense of purpose. I left the mortuary intending to go out the front door, but smelt a strange odour I already knew was vampire, that vampire, presumably waiting for me. I sneaked out the back way instead.

I found I was only a few blocks from the office and ran all the way. In the car park I allowed myself to hope. I could see artwork on top of the coloured awning that stretched over the door, and it looked fresh. I jumped as high as I could and though I didn’t have the strength to jump up there, I saw enough to convince me the artwork was for a small, bitty print ad. I ran up the five flights of stairs as quick as I could and burst into my office. I headed for the pile of jobs scheduled, ignoring Joel, my former deputy’s shocked (and terrified) silence.

Don’t hurt me! he pleaded.

What day is it? I demanded. He looked surprised.

It’s Wednesday, he replied. You’re supposed to be dead Pheebs.

I know. Tell me very precisely, when will Mandy get her artwork?

For the one-off? Never. I could have kissed him. I did kiss him.

Why?

Because I threw it out of the window, he said proudly. I claimed I was channelling you from beyond the grave, I kissed him again.

I trained you well, I told him. My work here is done; I can die happy now. Well, no, because I’m already dead, but you get my drift.

Pheebs, you’d better hurry, he said. Mandy and Katie have gone over to your flat to sort out your belongings and send them to charity shops. Are you a vampire? I opened my mouth and pointed out the teeth. Haven’t used them yet, I said.

Go and bite Mandy, he suggested, and I headed out the door at the speed I came in.

Fortunately I didn’t live all that far away in my one bedroom hovel laughingly called a studio apartment by the estate agent I’d bought it from. Just as Joel had implied, I found Mandy and Katie sniggering over my stuff in the bedroom. They heard the door open and close - that wasn’t a surprise really as I no longer had a key and so I’d smashed down the door a bit. Well, more than a bit. I expected them to come out of the room shocked and scared, and they did. Katie, formerly my (alleged) secretary (actually full-time-phone-gossiper and work-evader) was ashen and she dropped the framed photo she’d been laughing at; it shattered at her feet. She at once bent to get it and cut her finger on the glass. The blood dripped from her finger onto the white carpet.

I grinned at her and she saw the fangs. It was one of those perfect moments that fate litters through our lives and in this case, my death. In that moment I had my revenge for every lost fax, every strategic disappearance just at the moment I needed her most, and indeed, every moment I wasted explaining a task to her when she already knew perfectly well how to do it. She was about to scream and the anticipation was sweet, but with her usual sense of timing and occasion, Mandy cut across her and stifled Katie’s scream so that it became little more than a squawk. The moment was ruined.

Oh, hi Phoebe. We’re just clearing your stuff out.

Why? I asked.

Because you died, she explained patiently. Did you know you haven’t got any relations? At all?

I had suspected as much. Who’s paying for the funeral?

We had a bit of a whip-round, said Katie. She had worked for me for six months, which was long enough for me to understand from her statement that the whip-round hadn’t happened yet and wasn’t likely to. Have you got a will at all?

Somewhere. There are insurance policies and stuff too.

Mandy was troubled for a moment and I wondered whether she had finally understood the oddity of what was happening, but no. Joel threw my artwork out the window. Now that you’re back, could you tell him to...

No.

But....

No. I’m dead. Not. My. Problem.

Ok, but when will you be in next? He’s sitting in your chair and everything.

I know.

Mandy, whispered Katie. She’s a vampire.

Yes, said Mandy brightly. Does that mean you’ll be wanting your clothes?

Yes, Mandy.

Even the Louboutin high heels?

Especially the Louboutin high heeled pumps in baby-soft, blue leather, I informed her. And the Prada sweater you’re wearing. Katie those are my rings. I am a vampire and will get even more tetchy than I did when you worked for me. I can throw things further too.

"Strictly speaking, I never worked for you," observed Mandy, cheerfully peeling off the sweater.

Something I thanked the advertising gods for every day, I remarked. That’s my bra too. Put your own clothes back on. How long have you two been here?

Not long.

Katie, I had no idea you could work this fast, I remarked. "Don’t forget to mention it to Joel when you get back to the office. Now scram before I show