Pages From a Vampire's Journal by Olivia D'Abo

Chapter 1: Finches
    Journal Entry 7: “
Ran into my former teacher today. Long convo in coffee shop over his “regrets”. Tried to change the subject but he kept bringing us back to it. I told him we should never regret, per se. That breaks our own rules. Regret is for the weak. Mortals are weak. That is why they bow to Christ: to ease their regrets. Not us, I told him. Lions should never lay down with lambs. He became ill-mannered with this and walked off in a huff, saying I was worse than he. That old fool is going to get me killed someday with the running of his mouth…I just know it. I’ll wake up one day to a battering down of my door with peasants & torches, screaming “Get…her!” I should report him.”
     
     
     
     
    December was the most brutish, bullying month for Trixie. Her semester grades were going to be in the mail unexpectedly early at 2pm on a dreary Friday as she looked out towards the quilted snow from her upstairs window. She wondered if she should brave the upcoming bleak, bashing blizzard to retrieve it before her stepmother Camilla did. She knew her step-mom had been eagerly awaiting it since Thanksgiving, and any excuse to drench Trixie with criticism was enough to get her saliva boiling. What a black, sorceress heart she had, Trixie thought.  On some quiet winter nights as she lay staring up at the stars through the sunroofed ceiling, she looked at her door and could swear she heard the “thump-dump” of her cruel stepmother’s heart in the next room. Sometimes she feared that it escaped her stepmother’s body completely, beating and slinking up and down the stairs at night in the calm darkness, and returning to its lair before the rays of dawn arrived. Perhaps even
it
grew weary of Camilla’s callousness. Trixie didn’t look forward to any of the grades that came and went over the years. She was an average student and not interested in nailing herself to a cross in some competition with other students. She wouldn’t do it for Camilla’s satisfaction. And those other students didn’t have Camilla for a stepmother.
    The entire grading system seemed to conspire against Trixie in a maelstrom of half-truths and false faces. She had once dreamed of being overwhelmed by hordes of militant letters comprised of As and Bs, whose jagged peaks and razor edges poked and prodded her to compete and bring her academic arrears to the spotlight of Camilla’s fascist approval.  She had never wanted to aim her lettered darts at the bullseye of the board however, but rather aimed just off center as to not draw the attention of the mob of braggarts and snobs that she despised at school. She buried away any hope of getting straight A’s as these might prove diminishing returns. She imagined some future tombstone which would read: “
Here lies Trixie Cunningham, killed by her squalid As and badgering Bs
” and with a fine inscription: “…
this message sponsored by Camilla
”. Her school resembled a circus where the elephants and tigers were angrily loosed from their cages, and she was left alone, spinning on her wheel in the throwing dagger exhibition tent after everyone had fled. Trixie did dream too lucidly on occasion, however she always kept her dreams to herself. It was safer that way.
    Perhaps most importantly, she at least liked herself. She wasn’t about to spend eight hours a day trying to ace every exam and kiss up to every sweaty-palmed gym teacher who flirted with her just to please Camilla. Camilla had hurled fiery, ungodly names at her for repeatedly not suiting up for gym class, and then grounded her for a month for not “being part of the team” as she put it. Trixie hated dodge ball, or getting hit by the other girls in any way. She didn’t like violent competitions. These were petty and egotistical, she believed.
    The appetite of the great beast Camilla could never be satisfied anyway. If you got straight A’s, she’d grumble about your lackluster attendance. If you won