The Elder – Part One

Vancouver, BC – The body of a twenty-five year old boy drifted ashore this morning, drained of all its blood.

The news spread like wildfire. The whole town talked about that murder before the morning’s coffee break. Helped by blogs, Twitter and other Internet channels, the news rippled further and the whole world swapped opinions during lunch. By the time the woman who found the body washed her dishes after dinner, she had already been asked plenty of times if the yet-to-be-identified victim had two puncture wounds. She received a bunch of emails about it too.
That was bound to happen when popular culture drilled the idea of vampires in everybody’s head.
“I should never have given the first interview to begin with,” she yelled in the receiver, hanging up on the last of the regional newspaper.

Edith Brooks made a gruesome discovery while taking her usual walk along the Pacific shore. She stumbled upon the half decomposed body of a young man that probably reached the beach sometime during the night.
Forensics have yet to identify the body. So far, we know the man was about twenty-five years old with brown hair. He would have been killed at least two weeks ago. The official cause of death is a wound to the neck that caused him to lose all his blood.

While everyone shuddered and whispered about the horrifying event, the vampire society tensed and investigated – an attempt to figure out if one of their own was indeed responsible. Negligently disposed of leftovers was a punishable offense and they had every intention to make someone pay.
“It’s bloody enough for the movies to desecrate our name, I’ll do without a second inquisition!” One of the elders snapped at the assembly. The decibels rarely rose within that room – supernatural hearing and all – but everyone was on edge tonight.
To the elder’s outcry, murmurs answered. Some disliked his passion, others agreed with his outrage and a small portion mumbled that they rather liked some of said movies.
“Calm down, yall.” The assembly always liked that elder and were quick to obey. “The first vampire I’d summon is the morgue supervisor. Where’s that dumbass?”
The crowd agreed in a unified roar. That vampire should be starved for his failure to dampen the news – not that it made sense to blame the guy with no ties to the press and who slept like everyone else when the body’s autopsy was rushed in at 8 o’clock am.
He would also be able to explain his contradictory report: traces of vampire smell on the body but only one small puncture wound made with sharp, slowly spinning object.

The police are doing everything they can to identify the body and contact the next of kin. They hope that the victim’s whereabouts before his death, along with the evidence left on his body, will lead to an arrest.

A few miles east, in Burnaby, a brown haired mother leaned in the doorframe of her eldest son’s empty bedroom. He had left home three weeks ago to get an apartment with his girlfriend in the city.
The mother hoped her son was alright; she never liked the girlfriend.
It was just weird for a young woman to be ecstatic about working nights at a pizza joint.

Coming next Friday: The Elder – Part Two >>