Bagsy Beetlehorn and the Vampire Affairs (The Bagsy Chronicles 4)

Secrets Unlocked

Three, the stunt worker with many piercings and eye shadow so smoky it danced with flecks of fiery amber, had blurred around Bagsy as they applied her make up and put her into the ridiculous dress that constituted her costume. 'Let's cover up those scars again,' Three said as they pushed paste-like stuff into the indents and placed foundation over them, all the while Bagsy grit her teeth against the pain.

Shoved towards the set, and finding a script thrust into her hand, Bagsy barely had a chance to look at the two corridors leading off from the main room before the rehearsal began. As terrible as she had been before she read through the script, her acting only got worse as she grimaced at what was going on in the story. Rose Deprive flirted cringe-inducingly with Benji 'Bites' and Ko 'Fang' Fin. The worst thing about it was that most of the 'romance' involved vampire themed puns, or really weird comments on vampire specific things.

At one point, Rose was meant to ask Fang if being bitten by a vampire would be any different than being bitten by a human, to which Fang would suggestively say 'much better'.

Bagsy politely declined to read that line.

'We can take it out of the episode if it makes you uncomfortable, darlin',' Philip offered, clicking his fingers for someone to hand him a script before drawing a line through it. Bagsy let out a relieved breath.

As the episode focussed on the action, though, it became less embarrassing to act. The two vampire boys, though enemies of Rose, ended up having to team up with her when they found themselves trapped in a village that had been insidiously taken over by face-changers. The sets felt very real, and the costume for the face-changers sent shivers down Bagsy's spines. When they revealed their true forms, they had morphed faces that were half one thing and half another or hands where they should have feet. All of it was meant to be deeply disturbing and Bagsy found herself swept up in the storytelling.

By the end of their forced team up, Rose convinced the two vampires, who had fallen in love with her in the span of a few days, to abstain from hunting and killing. The narrator, who for some reason only appeared in the show at this one point and never before or again, would say how Rose was a fool for thinking a vampire could ever do such a thing.

The episode ended with Fang, restless from not killing, unable to hold back his urges anymore. He killed an innocent girl at the episode's close, unable to resist his cravings, and lavishing in the dying cries of his bloodied victim.

At that moment, Bagsy certainly wasn't thinking about inappropriate flirting. Mezrielda was all she could worry about and how this episode might make people treat her.

'Can't you change that part?' Bagsy asked Three after the rehearsal, as the stunt worker removed all the parts of her costume and the many layers of make-up plastered onto her face.

'Are you kidding? That's the best part! It's so shocking and dark... Rose loves Fang and Fang loves Rose, but it's a tragic affair because he's a vampire.'

'So?'

Three laughed, then realised Bagsy was being serious. 'You know what vampires are like.'

Bagsy couldn't find a voice to respond with she was so angry at the whole situation.

'Well done for remembering your permission slip,' Three said, changing the topic and indicating the piece of paper with permitted written on it in calligraphy that they'd given to Bagsy last time. 'It's always annoying when the tiles activate with each step.'

'I can imagine,' Bagsy said, distracted by a section of material at the edge of the tent that had a small crease in it she hadn't noticed before.

Once she was out of her costume she thanked Three, who left to practise their stunts, and began to collect her things. She tiptoed to the crease and found a hidden passage behind it. Glancing behind to be certain no one was following her, Bagsy slipped into it.