EXCERPT – Dark Dates
SO,
WE’VE all seen Buffy, right? I mean, you didn’t pick this up because the shop
was out of Jane Austen and this looked like the next best thing. It’s just that
this story will go a whole lot faster if I don’t have to spend too much time
convincing you of the whole ‘they walk among us’ scenario, and we can all just
accept it and move on.
Don’t
believe me? Just look around you. OK, not so much if you’re sitting reading
this on the sofa on a Sunday night – though that might not be a bad idea. Was
that a shadow I saw there? (Made you look, right?) But if you’re sitting on the
bus or the tube or in the office canteen, take a good look around you and tell
me, hand on heart, that everyone you see is 100% human. You’re honestly saying
you’ve never wondered? Look at them. Really look. Properly, go on, risk
it, they won’t be paying any attention to you anyway; they’re too busy trying
to pass as normal. Come on, don’t some of them look a little… undead, maybe?
Witchy? A little less than normal? A bit… Other?
Of
course, it’s easier for me. I’m what you’d call – if you were in a generous
mood and we’d got past all the denial and the labels like ‘nutter’,
‘delusionist’ and ‘freak’ – a Sensitive. With a capital S, if you don’t mind,
because I didn’t go through all this crap for all these years to be lower case.
What’s a Sensitive? Well, it’s probably easier to tell you what it’s not. I
can’t give you the lottery numbers or put you in touch with your dead aunty
Betty, and you won’t see me doing mindreading tricks on TV anytime soon. But I
can walk into a room and know it’s haunted. I can look into someone’s eyes and
know they are a bad, bad person, even if I’ll never be able to articulate why.
What it means, in a nutshell, is that when you look at the woman with
the saggy grey skin and the cracked fingernails and the slightly red eyes and
you’re wondering if, now that I mention it, there isn’t something a little
weird about her, or if she’s just another zoned out commuter, one of life’s
lost losers with more on her plate to worry about than skincare and a manicure,
I would know. Don’t ask me how. I don’t understand the physics or the
history of it – as far as I’m aware, I come from a long line of Normals, with
nary a sixth sense between them, but there’s no one left anymore I can ask.
Like most people I’ve got my own backstory but I’m not sure I know you well
enough yet to share. But trust me on this one thing – I’d know. It’s not her,
by the way. It’s the guy at the back in the suit.
I’m
in my office. As these things go, it’s quite a nice office – small, of course,
because I’m always on a budget, but well-located and tastefully if slightly
blandly furnished. The windows may only look out onto the other side of the
street, but they are large and let in a lot of light. Not now, of course,
because this meeting, like most of my work, is taking place at night.
“So,
tell me a little about yourself.”
He’s
nervous, but that’s not unusual: most first timers are. Scared of what they’re
telling me, scared of what I’ll say, scared that this is all some elaborate set
up and I am biding my time, waiting to spring a trap. He folds and refolds his
pale hands in his lap, looking up at me through an unfairness of lashes that
are as long and dark as a girl’s.
“Um,
I like the cinema. Westerns, action movies. I like Clint Eastwood. The older
ones.”
I
nod, my professional smile glued firmly in place. Though my Sense is buzzing
slightly, it’s not in alarm: there’s nothing here to worry about except that,
in his anxiety, he might knock something over and break it.
“OK,
that’s good. Anything else?”
“Books.
History books.”
I
nod again, encouraging. I have his file open beside me – despite being a few
months shy of my 29th birthday, I’m fairly old school in some ways and I like
to do everything in hard copy first – and he’s looking at my pen like it’s some
sort of weapon. Then again, it is silver, so that’s not an entirely
incorrect assumption.
“OK.
How old are you, exactly?”
“Um,
do I have to say… exactly?”
I
try my best to look unthreatening, but I’ve been holding this ‘harmless and
professional’ smile so long that my face is starting to hurt, slightly.
“A
ballpark figure usually helps.”
His
head bobs, as if accepting the reasonableness of this, then he runs a slightly
shaking hand over his face. He’s not quite handsome – there’s an almost crooked
slant to his features – but he’s not unattractive, with boyish looks and skin
so smooth you could believe he had never had to shave.
“OK.
Um… 60. About 60.”
It’s
my turn to nod: I’m not surprised, that’s the age I tend to cater for. Not so
old to be stuck in their ways, not so young they don’t need me. I make another
note on my file, and he winces at the sound of the pen scratching on paper.
“And
do you have a particular type of person you’d be interested in?”
“A
girl, obviously.” A short, embarrassed laugh. “Well, not obviously, these days,
I suppose. But yes, a girl. Blonde, or brunette or… well, it doesn’t matter.
Colour… of skin, I mean… that doesn’t matter, either. But maybe… a bit older? I
mean, older than I look?”
I
laugh kindly, still trying to put him at ease, though I am starting to think
that particular task is beyond me. No wonder he needs my help.
“I’m
sure we can find a nice cougar for you.”
I’m
not sure he understands my terminology, but like a puppy he is soothed by my
tone, and he nods again in sheer relief that this part of his ordeal is over.
Part of me is wondering how he managed to stay alive at all over the last few
decades. He watches me fill in his form as if I am signing his death warrant –
a not uncommon reaction. They tend not to like things being written down.
“Anything
else?”
He
pauses, frowns, then licks his lips slightly, before leaning forward slightly
as if confiding a terrible, embarrassing secret.
“Um…
O positive?”
I
nodded and made a note.
About The Author
Tracey Sinclair works as
freelance copywriter, editor and legal directories consultant. A diverse
and slightly wandering career has included writing factsheets for small
businesses, creating web content for law firms, subtitling film and TV and
editing one of the UK’s largest legal directories. A keen blogger, she
regularly writes for online theatre site Exeunt and science fiction site
Unleash the Fanboy and her blog Body of a Geek Goddess was shortlisted in the
Cosmopolitan Blogger Awards 2011. Her work has been published in a number of magazines
and anthologies and her short play Bystanders was premiered in 2011 as
part of the CP Players New Writing Season at Baron’s Court Theatre, London. She
has published two small press books (Doll and No Love is This,
both Kennedy & Boyd) and is now dipping a toe in the digital
self-publishing world with her new urban fantasy novel, Dark Dates.
Be sure to check out this awesome authors book!