“Real vampires don’t snore, Mom.  They don’t butter their toast with tofu, either.”  Mother and I have regressed to the confrontational mode again.  “I refuse to marry Norman Hines.”
        “Why Beatrice Rutherford,” she says, beaming, emphasizing the short u sound of our family name.  “However did you discover he snores?”
        “Not that way.”  I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.
        “Of course, dear, anything you say.”  Mother buries cloves of garlic under the fat layer of a rack of lamb.  She’s nontraditional.  “But I am delighted that you’re finally getting to know each other.”
        “Mom,” I whine, as my cheeks blossom like large radishes.
        “No need to be embarrassed.  Lots of couples don’t wait until they’re married these days.”
        “Mom.”  I’m standing up now, waving my arms as if fending off armies of gnats.
        “And your grandmother will still permit you to wear her white lace gown.”
        “For Godsakes, we haven’t been doing sex.  And we won’t.  Ever.  Norm and I are not—repeat not—getting married.   I will self-destruct before spending the next two to three hundred years with some nerd who won’t address me by my real name and spews out more nasal sleeping grunts than a den full of bears.”
  
Mom’s no longer smiling.  Her large brown eyes evoke total guilt.  Her lower lip quivers: the wolf expression.  Dad was a lycanthrope, but we’re genetic recessives and have never had a “hair experience.”  I don’t want the hair thing and she doesn’t need it to prevail.  Her pathetic canine aura could con even Mrs. Fields into buying a lifetime supply of cookies.
        “Your father’s pet name for me was Rozzie.  He used to say that Rosetta made me sound two thousand years old.  What does Norman call you that’s so awful?  Bea?”  She knows I hate to be called “Bea.”
        “Busy Little Bea—Honey Bea—B. Ruthie—Ruthie B—Ruthie-Ford Bea—every time he comes over, he’s devised a new way to butcher my name.  And on the rare occasion he manages to do ‘Rutherford,’ he uses the long u.”
        “So how do you know he snores?”
        “He fell asleep in the family room last weekend, when you were out visiting friends.  Crashed, watching CNN.”
        “It can’t be that bad.  Your father snored, you know.”
        “I almost dialed 911.  We are not getting married.”
  
She doesn’t respond, but I know what she’s thinking.  Dad would be so disappointed, right?  It’s been so difficult without him, right?  I’ve failed as a parent, right?  The mother thing—as if it was my fault she let Dad out during a full moon when he was overdue for his distemper shot—as if it was my fault he loved to terrorize the neighborhood dogs that crapped all over our front lawn.
        “You should visit Norm.  Fix him a nice dinner.”
        I succumb.  “Okay, Mom.  I’ll see him this weekend.  Uh, really.”
        She recovers instantly.  One for her, zero for me, as usual.
  
Dad promised me to Norm the day I was born. What a crock!  How could a shape-shifter who ate raw meat loaf have pledged his only kid to a vegetarian who has to cut his blood with a pH-balanced mixture of carrot and V-8^® vegetable juices?  Someone who snores?
   
Friday afternoon, I stuff prophylactics into my purse—no, not condoms, earplugs.  I drive up to Sonoma to see Norman Hines; but first, I stop at the local Safeway store and buy two huge steaks, so thick they’ll stay rare even if broiled forever.  You are what you eat…I keep hoping.  (Being a dutiful daughter is not for sissies.)  I also buy a bottle of Bardolino, even though I’m only seventeen.  The clerk doesn’t ask for my I.D.  Maybe he’s Italian.  Maybe he figures that anyone who shells out thirty bucks for two steaks and a bottle of imported wine has to be of age.
        Norm appears surprised when he opens the door.  “Ru-Bea, it’s you!” he says.
        “Beatrice Rutherford,” I reply in an icy monotone.  He’s adulterated my given name again, complete with the long u.  I think I’m going to be sick, but manage to barge into the kitchen and take over. “You fix the salad.  I’m preparing the real food.”
        I fling the steaks into a pan and shove them under the broiler element.  I’ve never seen an oven this clean, even in an appliance store.  Pretty soon, the fat starts to splatter and the kitchen smells like electrocuted beef.  It’s exhilarating!  Norman is getting paler, his complexion like a bleached dish towel.  I smile and serve dinner.
        “This is very delicious…”  His face takes on a weird tinge as his jaws clench a piece of bloody porterhouse.
        “Marvelous Caesar.”  Something unnatural and green just got wedged between my molars.
  
Norman bolts for the bathroom.  While he’s occupied, I finish my steak and his, put my salad down the garbage disposal, and clean up the dishes.  Thirty minutes later, he emerges.
        “You seem rather ill, Norman.  You ought to rest.”
        “Yeah,” he says, then begins mumbling.
        I think he has the words “steak” and “stake” mixed up.  I tuck him into bed and take off my clothes, though it’s barely two a.m.  Somehow I’m not worried about him getting romantic.  He starts to snore.  Good thing he has no close neighbors.
        At first it’s pretty funny.  The bedroom sounds like a World War II battle zone.  After a while, I’m no longer amused.  I insert the earplugs and stuff my head under a pillow.  No use.  Finally, I curl up on the bathroom floor, with the door shut and the

 fan turned on.  I almost have a fighting chance at sleep.
   
I awaken around noon.  The decibel level has dropped below one hundred, but I could die for a raw hamburger.  Nerd’s down for the count until sunset.
        I get dressed and head for the nearest coffee shop.  “Double patty, please, extra rare.”  A guy’s sitting in the corner booth, eating something right off a meat hook.  It’s clasped between two pieces of bread that are red and soggy.  Bloody juices are oozing between his fingers and drizzling down his wrists.  God, his cuffs are soiled.  Not a vegetable in sight. I wonder what he’s like in bed.
        “Do I know you?”  I move from my table to the booth.
        “Uh, sure, why not?”
        “Name's Beatrice Rutherford, what’s yours?”  I’m careful to emphasize the short u.
        “Don’t have a particular name,” he replies, “just an appetite.”
        “Oh, really?”  He’s staring at my legs.  I want to open them a little, but I don’t.  I can see Mom’s wolf expression and Norman’s perplexed stare.  Somewhere from the next world, Dad is howling.  The waiter brings me my hamburger but it doesn’t taste right.  Don’t-have-a name watches my every swallow.  He wipes his hands on a paper napkin.
        “So you like things rare?” he says.  He doesn’t address me by name.  I hear the scrape of a zipper and stop chewing.
        “Only dead things.”  I don’t look.  What kind of dude exposes himself in public?  I excuse myself and leave a ten-dollar bill with the cashier.  Once outside, I panic and run for my car.  Then I drop my stupid keys.
  
“Do I know you?” Don’t-have-a-name mocks from two feet away.  His pants are still unzipped but that’s not the real problem.  He’s holding a gun, and only idiots believe the bit about “only silver bullets.”  Jeez, Dad got wasted by doggie germs.
        “Would be really friendly to go for a little ride.”  He’s got a smirk that would make the Grinch who stole Christmas resemble Joan of Arc.
        Suddenly, I see my picture on the evening news or the back of a milk carton.  I can’t remember if it’s appropriate to scream or fight or run or plead.  Can’t remember anything.  The car door is open and I’m shoved inside.  Instinct prevails: I snarl.
  
The freak backs off.  I snarl again.  Dad would have been proud.
        “Uh, sorry.  Okay?  Sorry.  Didn’t mean to offend…”
        The dude looks like he’s just been though virtual reality, Stephen King-style.  Within ten seconds, he’s running like hell down the street.  Fortunately, he left my car keys in the door.  I reach for the key ring and am jolted by clumps of coarse hair sprouting from the backs of my hands.  The image in the side mirror nearly induces fainting.  Beatrice Rutherford has just become a poster child for electrolysis.
        Maybe I have been eating too much red meat lately.  I visualize myself entering Payless Drug Store, wearing latex gloves and a chador, and saying, “Three cases of Nair, please.”
        Instead, I drive off and find a library parking lot, then crouch on the floor of my Toyota.  After about an hour, my hair follicles finally listen to reason.
  
I head back to Safeway to purchase some romaine lettuce and tofu.  A carton of salsa ought to disguise their grass-and-soggy-eraser texture.  By the time Norman wakes up, the china and silver have been arranged neatly on the table.  The dining room is illuminated by a gardenia-scented candle.  I smile and serve a disgusting veggie dinner, complete with turnip rosettes dyed blue.  He opens a bottle of champagne.
        “Why Beatrice Rutherford-Hines…”
  
He’s just used the short ‘u’!  I’m ecstatic.  We munch rabbit food and squish tofu nuked in salsa.  His thumb strokes my jugular vein.  My legs feel as if they’ve been transmuted into bean curd.  You are what you eat.
        “I’ll be very gentle,” he says.
        I know he will and let him carry me into the bedroom.  I don’t take earplugs.  Real vampires do snore, or at least one of them does.  I’d better learn to cope.  
  
A summer wedding would be nice, around the time of the quarter moon.  Norm can help re-stain the deck so that it’s more presentable; our relatives have unbelievable night vision.  We’ll probably have to move the barbecue to the far corner: downwind.  I suppose Mom will insist on wearing shocking orange chiffon.  She’s non-traditional.  Wonder how I’ll look in Grandmother’s white lace gown? 
 
 
      About The Story and the Author
  
        “Real Vampires Don’t Snore” first appeared in the January/February 1997 issue of Calliope (#64), where it won Second Place in that year’s Fiction Contest.
        SIG member Laurel Anne Hill writes from Orinda, California, an east bay suburb of the San Francisco Bay area.  KOMENAR Publishing released “Heroes Arise,” Laurel’s debut parable, in October 2007.  ForeWord Magazine has chosen “Heroes Arise” as a finalist (science fiction and young adult categories) for its Book of the Year Award for 2007.  Laurel’s shorter fiction and nonfiction have been published in two major newspapers and a variety of small-circulation magazines.  KQED-FM (NPR San Francisco) broadcast her perspective in 2004 about the plight of homeless families.
  
“Vampires Don’t Snore,” reprinted by permission of the author.  ©1997.