DESCRIPTION: Nosferatu loses his potato salad.
Mollie Brown ’18
The boy twitched his fingers incessantly. It was tiring to watch, and the brief interlude taken for him to scratch his neck wasn’t any better.
“I-I bid you not eat me, sir,” Thomas squeaked. He sat timidly on a comfortable stool, curled over with his chest caved in like some sort of mannerless barbarian.
“I do not vant to drink your blood,” Nosferatu’s lip curled. Disgusting, really, that this entitled child would assume his blood was good enough. Probably tasted like avocado toast and gluten free bagels, the millennial brat.
Thomas swallowed hard. The vampire sighed, leveling the child with a tired gaze. “Look, kid— you can’t just valtz into my manor like some- some overzealous verevolf. I vas about to leave, and now I have to deal with you.”
It was true, for Nosferatu was clad in his nicest wool peak-lapel tuxedo. The shiny black notch lapel framed his green-tinted skin and bald head beautifully, Thomas had to admit. It was a perfect fit. Comfortable, but not loose.
Nosferatu was excited to show it off at the high school reunion, but his chances of ever showing up were becoming slim. He had been preparing a platter of finger sandwiches before the boy had so rudely charged in, claiming he was being chased by a theology teacher for late work.
Nosferatu sniffed, arms crossed. A drawn out silence lingered between them before Thomas coughed.
“Uh… so, you got any snackies?” Thomas asked, hands between his knees.
Nosferatu’s forehead met his palm with a loud thwap. He groaned, “Really, kid? I just- yeah, yeah I’ve got snacks. Just eat all of my food, vhat do I care? I’ve got peach cobbler, finger foods for the party I vas going to attend, tapas… you like tapas, kid?”
Thomas looked wide-eyed.
“Oh, vhatever. Just take some of the potato salad. Not all of it!”
The boy nodded daftly, slipping out of his chair to pussyfoot to Nosferatu’s fridge. His crocs squeaked against the cold stone of the vampire’s castle, and he would have shivered had it not been for his patented AMHS socks™ with insulation technology to keep his toes nice and toasty.
He opened the fridge and peered inside. A few decapitated heads, some blood bags, kale, chobani… and, ah, a big glass bowl of potato salad. It was magnificent, really- the potato chunks pressed tenderly against the Saran Wrap, begging to be consumed. Thomas fell into a squat and shimmied his arms around the large bowl. He huffed, legs wobbling, but stayed true to his course. He brought the great bowl to the recently renovated marble counter and set it down with the kind of care typically reserved for mothers and their babes. A drawer produced a spoon, and in one hand he tenderly peeled the Saran Wrap, revealing the beautiful potato salad. The mayonnaise shimmered under the soft overhead kitchen lights.
But alas, if man has one downfall, if I am to be so candid as to believe, it would be hubris. Entranced by the potato salad, young Thomas neglected the slippery nature of the recently waxed floor and took too brash a step toward the bowl. He cried out in surprise, but the warning came to late as his back begun its descent to the ground.
Nosferatu turned away from his healthy living blog and had little time to react as Thomas’ foot spliced the air, connecting with the glass bowl of potato salad and sending it toppling off of the counter. The boy’s back met the floor with a thud, but louder still was the awful cry made by the vampire, as his precious potato salad splattered on the stone. A dream, crushed.
“It took me three days to make that potato salad!” he cried. “THREE DAYS!”
Let this story warn all who so carelessly wear crocs indoors, and fail to turn in their theology papers. The reckoning will come, and all, potato salad and otherwise, will be lost. End.
Into the Jungle 