Seven Minutes to Midnight

3

You have to understand—we lived and breathed vampires as well as all things dark and morbid. Veronica set about making over Frank much as she had me two years earlier, and soon our closets consisted of red and black. I convinced them both to read Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, and we spent months debating about the pairings between the characters, drawing pictures that involved fanciful costumes, and watching "Interview with the Vampire" and "Queen of the Damned" over and over again.  Once we finished the Vampire Chronicles, we branched into other series. Veronica devoured the Twilight series in the course of a week, then moved into a steady stream of paranormal romances where the vampires seemed more interested in sex than anyone's blood. Frank began reading histories of Romania and Vlad the Impaler—the older and more obscure the title, the better. My reading interested ranged somewhere in between.

Some kids started calling us "The Coven," and we adopted that name for ourselves. Our activities, as we grew closer, became more isolated from reality. In the warmer months, instead of hanging out at whoever's house was the most unsupervised, we started hanging out in the graveyard. Usually Frank would bring along some form of alcohol—his father is a notorious drunk. Mostly it was cheap beer, but sometimes red wine fueled our fantasies. It certainly looked more like blood.

"My name is Lachrimae," I announced one balmy night, perched on a fresh tombstone. I felt light-headed, the full moon bright in my eyes. "I have come to drown your sorrows."

"Is that Latin?" Frank asked.

I nodded. I had chosen Latin as my required language in school, as my guidance counselor had suggested it would be good for SAT prep. My study of the dead language, however, had already exceeded my Latin teacher's expertise.

"I want a creepy Latin name, too!" Veronica crowed. Her voice excited some sleeping birds in the trees nearby, and they rustled their wings in fright.

I thought for a few moments while Veronica chugged from the wine bottle. "Calixa," I pronounced with a smile. 

"Calixa," Veronica closed her eyes and allowed the syllables to drop from her tongue like the liquid she drank.

Frank plopped himself beside me on the wide tombstone with a flourish of his trenchcoat. "And what name will you designate for Francis Pierce?" His deep voice took on a slight British accent, as it sometimes does.

"Francis is already old-fashioned," Veronica said.

I spoke without thinking. "Francis Corvin."

Frank pondered this name.

"Corvus is Latin for crow," I explained.

He nodded, stroking the sparse hairs on his chin. "It is befitting."

"Immortality bores me," I said, picking up a bit of Frank's accent. "It is so tiring to kill night after night."

"I agree, Laryncmay," Veronica said.

"Lachrimae," I corrected.

She ignored me, instead launching into full dramatic mode, clutching her heart with one hand and placing the other upon her forehead. "What is the point of living forever, when we must remain hidden from the humans?"

"We are more powerful than they," Frank said. "The humans have become too complacent. They have no fear and trust only in science. It is time for us to make ourselves known—we shall rule the world!"

The role playing was so exhilarating to me that I began writing it all down when I went home that evening, scribbling as fast as I could in one of my school notebooks. I only stopped when the first rays of sunrise crept through my curtains. Once I had finished recording our tales, I typed them up and printed them out for Frank and Veronica to read. They loved them, and so our role playing continued.