UVampire

“Jackson!” Ray’s voice penetrated the haze that had been clouding my brain. 

It was a slow day at Ray’s Rays, the sunbed salon where I was sleeping my gap year away, trying to save up enough money for college. Most people spend their gap year abroad, travelling to exotic places. I was spending my gap year making people look like they had been abroad, travelling to exotic places. Go figure.

“Jackson!” Ray called again.

“You alright?” I called back.

“We’ve got a situation,” Ray said, coming out of his office. “Lindsay is sick, and I have an urgent appointment this evening.”

I had to fight hard not to groan. I knew exactly where this was going.

“I need you to man the beds. There are only two customers tonight: Mrs Graham and a new woman. I’ll pay you double time.”

Man the beds? I shuddered. I hated those cancer machines. The thought of letting their radiation touch me made me feel physically sick. Ray knew that. That’s why he had me work the front desk and spray tan booth.

“I’m sorry kid,” Ray said softly. “But I’ll only be an hour or so.”

There was nothing to be done. 530 came, Ray left, and I was left to man the sunbeds. Mrs Graham showed up at 545, right on schedule, and I listened patiently, as always, while she complained about her teenage daughter’s obsession with her cell phone. 

Then it was time to get her into the sunbed. The bell rang at the door as I led her through to the treatment room.

“Just a second,” I called. 

I shuddered as I opened the machine of diseases and was extremely careful to avoid its death rays as I helped her climb in. A small bead of sweat formed on my brow as my fingers brushed the edge of the UV light rays. Then the lid was shut, the timer set, and I was walking away.

The new customer stood by the reception desk, and I forced a smile onto my face.

“You must be our new customer,” I said. “Have you been on a sunbed before?”

“I have,” she said. “My name is Valerie, but people call me Val.”

“Well, Val,” I said, looking down at my bookings book for her name so I could tick it off. She was down as Ms Hensing. “The changing room is back this way.”

“I must say, you are very pale for someone who works in a tanning salon,” Val said as I led her to the changing area.

“I’m not a fan of the beds,” I said. “Claustrophobia.”

Ray insisted I give this excuse to anyone who asked. Apparently, the cancerous truth was ‘bad for business’.

“What about the spray booth?” Val inquired.

“It stinks,” I replied. “I don’t want to go home smelling of work.”

I left her to change while I went to get Mrs Graham out of the sunbed. Again, I shuddered and used extreme caution as I extended my hand to her. 

“How was your treatment, Mrs Graham?” I asked her.

“Oh, perfect, as always, Jackson,” she replied. “Though, it is odd to see you working the beds.”

“Yes, Lindsay is-”

The world blacked out.

When sight and sound returned, it was unpleasant. I couldn’t move, there was material wadded up in my mouth, and the whole world was upside down.

“So,” said Val, hanging in front of me with a stick in her hand. “You thought you could hide in a tanning salon, did you?”

She was fully dressed still, and she kept tapping the stick in one hand. Oddly, neither her clothes nor her hair was dangling in any way. My head was pounding. None of this made sense. I tried to talk, to ask what the hell was going on, but only a muffled garbling came out around the gag.

“What are you doing?” The voice of Mrs Graham asked my question for me. “Untie us at once. Jackson? What’s going on?”

“Don’t worry,” Val said. “We will let you go as soon as the memory modifiers are here. It’s him we need.”

Mrs Graham continued to squirm and call out for help until Val left my vision. There was a loud thud, and then silence.

“That’s better,” Val said. “Now, I am going to take out your gag. I have a few questions to ask you before we finish this.”

She moved toward me, her hand reaching out, and suddenly my mouth was mercifully empty. I began to cough.

“Let’s get this over with,” Val said. “Don’t bother lying. I’ll know.”

I wanted to say, “Get what over with?”, but I had a feeling I didn’t want to know the answer to that, so I kept my mouth shut.

“When was the last time you fed, demon?” 

The last time I what? 

“My lunch break was about five or six hours ago…” I said, wondering why on earth it mattered to this woman. “Did you just call me demon?”

“Forget the pretence, we both know what you are.”

“A tanning salon employee trying to make enough money in his gap year to attend a good college?”

The words came out far more sarcastically than I had intended. Annoyance flashed in Val’s eyes. It was odd; moments ago, it was terrifying me, but now it seemed sort of… funny. Hilarious, actually. I found myself snorting, trying to keep in giggles, not quite sure why it was so important to do so.

“You think you will get out of this alive, demon?”

I couldn’t help it. A roar of laughter escaped me. A small part of my brain, still throbbing painfully, registered the laughter as shock. I was in shock. Val was staring at me, fire burning behind narrowed eyes.

“How many have you turned?” She asked.

“You mean like spun?” I asked, giggling. “As in like I’m spinning around, Move out of my way. Doo doo doo doo I like it like this-”

“Enough!” Val commanded.

“-Bringing it down. Doo doo doo-”

“What the hell is going on in here?”

Ray’s voice echoed through the room, and some small part of me, the part that was not currently singing Kylie Minogue, registered that this was a good thing.

“Ray!” I exclaimed. “This new customer is a Kylie fan!”

“No I am not!” Val said. 

“Who are you?” Ray demanded. “And why are you hanging my employee upside down?”

Upside down? Well, that explained why Val’s hair wasn’t reacting to gravity. 

“Ray, my head hurts,” I told him.

“I’m not surprised, kid,” Ray said. “Your face is purple.”

“You are Ray?” Val asked him.

Ray nodded.

“And are you aware that you have an undead creature of the night working in your store?”

Ray eyed Val with something that looked like suspicion. I stopped singing.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Val. Val Hensing.”

Whatever happened next was over so fast I couldn’t make it out. One moment, Ray was in the doorway, gaping open-mouthed at the situation; the next, Val was being held up by her throat while Ray flashed fangs- actual fangs- at her.

“But… but…”

Val was staring at Ray, but she didn’t look scared. More bemused.

“You are the vampire at the tanning shop?” She said.

“Boo,” Ray replied. 

“But… but he is so pale. And he was avoiding the sunbed rays like the plague. And he… he… you aren’t…”

“I’m African American?” Ray asked. “You shouldn’t be so presumptuous. Vampires can turn anyone, regardless of race, and their race doesn’t change just because they’ve been turned.”

My vision was beginning to go blurry, my toes becoming tingly. My head was throbbing so hard I thought I might throw up. I was freezing. Freezing to death in a shop designed to make people look like they had been in tropical places. 

“It’s okay, kid, I’m getting you down,” Ray said.

 It was a strange sensation, blinks that lasted a few seconds each, every time I opened my eyes a new scene in front of me. 

Gentle hands were lowering me to the ground.

Ray was tying Val to a chair. Her head lolled.

Val was kicking out at Ray. Her eyes were full of fear now.

Ray was holding Val’s head back as she struggled.

Val was kicking the sunbed open. I felt a wave of nausea as its light flooded over me. Ray was standing in that light, laughing.

Ray was bending over Val, kissing her neck. Val’s eyes were glazed over.

Ray was standing over me, leaning in to my neck. Pain like nothing I had ever felt shot through me for a second, and then the sweetest, purest bliss I had ever felt seeped in. Ray’s voice began to circle in my mind, repeating the same thing over and over again.

“There are no vampires. This has been a strange fever dream. You will remember none of it.”

Ray was right, really. This was all very silly. Vampires didn’t exist. I must be asleep. I would have to remember this when I woke up, tell him about it. He’d get a real kick out of the whole thing. 

I was in my bedroom. It took me a moment to realise that. How had I gotten here? The last I remembered I had been at work and… 

I looked at my phone. The date checked out. I really had gone to work and Lindsay had called in sick. I must have been daydreaming for the rest. Maybe I had fallen asleep at the desk. I really wasn’t feeling well. Perhaps I had caught whatever Lindsay had, and Ray had brought me home. That must be it. There was no other explanation.

I felt confident in this assessment as I got up and trudged downstairs for breakfast. My mother had left out porridge and a note telling me Ray had given me the day off to recover from a concussion I had gotten slipping over in the shop. I was to rest and call her if I needed her.

For a moment, I doubted this. I wondered whether it had been a dream at all. Ray’s voice spoke in my mind, reminding me that vampires don’t exist, and I laughed aloud at my pondering.

A vampire running a tanning shop. Honestly.