My Son's Story About Vampires and Werewolves
Sometimes all you want is somebody to hate you
The other night, I asked my son to tell me a bedtime story. I usually tell the story, but that night my throat was sore from teaching with a cold. I just couldn’t do it. Thankfully the boy, four years old, rose to the moment. Here is what he told me:
There once was a lonely vampire who moved to a city of werewolves. The werewolves had a nice town. There was a waterfall and apple trees. They had a Key Food and subways. At night the vampire would go out and be by himself while the werewolves slept.
When the werewolves found out there was a vampire living in their town, they were upset. This was a special town for werewolves. They did special werewolf things. Like when the moon was full, they wrestled on the sidewalk. They smelled butts and ran around in the woods. Their town wasn’t for anyone else.
The werewolves decided to do something.
The mayor went to speak to the vampire, who was only a kid, though he was also very old. The mayor knocked at his door at night, which was the only time the vampire was awake.
The vampire opened the door. The mayor said he had to leave the town. The mayor started to say why. It had to do with special werewolf rules. But while he was talking, the vampire jumped up and bit the mayor in the neck.
The mayor cried. When other werweolves saw the mayor was hurt, they got angry. They got so angry that they turned from people into werewolves, even though there was no moon that night.
Two brothers who were furry werewolves jumped at the vampire. They didn’t want to kill him, but they knew they had to. They were flying in the air at the vampire but when they got close the vampire bit them in their hairy necks, and they fell down to the floor and died.
More and more werewolves came to the vampire’s house. The vampire bit them all. The whole town came and got bit and died.
The next night, all the werewolves woke up. They were now vampires.
The vampire said, look. Now we’re all vampires. Nobody has to leave this town. We can all live here. We can have fun.
The mayor, who was now a vampire, got up. He said, you’re wrong. We hate you. You made us into vampires. Now we can’t go out in the day. We can’t go to school or play in the park. Our teeth used to be pointy when we turned into wolves. Now look at our teeth! They are pointy all the time! We don’t like being vampires. Turn us back and you can stay.
The vampire said, there’s no way. You can’t stop being a vampire.
The werewolves were so angry. They wanted to kill the vampire boy. They chased him around the town and in the woods. They chased the vampire all the way until morning.
Then the next night, as soon as it got dark, the werewolves woke up and chased the vampire again. They wanted to get their mouths on him and bite him and kill him. The vampire ran away. He hid in the woods. Then he hid in the subways. He hid in the school, because now the school was empty because no one could go in it during the day. He hid all over the town.
And they did this every night, forever and ever.
And the vampire got to stay in the town, and was not lonely anymore.
This entire thing is a lie. I made it up. I found the first few paragraphs in my journal. I think that means that I actually told my son the first part and wrote it down. Like a lot of these things, I forgot about it and then, when I found it, wanted to see if I could give it an ending.
Though this one isn’t his, my boy does like to tell his own stories. He made one up about a taco superhero. I forget the details. I read the kids a chapter of THE BOXCAR CHILDREN tonight before bed. It was nice just to read and not to be responsible for figuring out what happens next.