It was one of those nights. The kind where no matter how hard you try to get to sleep, you can’t help thinking about what chicken actually tastes of. The number of times people come back off holiday and tell you that the local speciality tastes of chicken are remarkable, but no-one can ever seem to be really sure of what chicken itself tastes of. Hans thought it might be snake.
The proposition made perfect sense to him. Snakes had obviously been around for a long time. After all, it wasn’t a chicken that offered Eve an apple in the Garden of Eden was it? Not that Hans was particularly aligned to any one religion, if anything he favoured Buddhism because he liked the robes; but the reference in a document this old must been they’d been knocking around a fair few years.
All that remained for him to do now was test his theory. He’d had enough of lying on his back in this bed anyway. He pulled on a shirt and some jeans and went out to see if there was a phone anywhere in this castle.
His plan relied on their being a takeaway open at 3am that would deliver snake; not likely he thought, but this was the kind of problem that would prey on his mind if he didn’t try and resolve it immediately. There was, however, some chicken in the fridge to test it against, making this test slightly easier, but not much.
It didn’t take Hans too long to find the phone, but the problem then became that as he thought, no-one served snake, hardly surprising as there isn’t that much of a demand for it in Scotland. As he turned the page in the phone directory, he looked up and was surprised to see a woman in a red dress pulling along a vacuum.
Not quite sure what to make of this he decided to lift up the phone at the woman in as threateningly. Well, as threatening manner as he could given that he was holding a telephone and not an actual weapon. As he moved forwards he saw her more clearly, she was in her mid-twenties, with medium length dark hair and a body to die and, given he’d probably wouldn’t get the courage up again, he decided to find something else out too.
“Two questions,” said Hans, “What are you doing here in my castle and, if you don’t answer that with something that scares the life out of me, what are you doing on Thursday night?”
“You’re asking me out on a date?” she replied, feeling slightly perplexed by the situation.
“Ah!” said a voice from the end of the corridor moving towards them. They both spun around to see Mervin approaching them. “Erm, Hans this is my daughter, Chloe. She does the cleaning.”
“At this time of night!” exclaimed Hans
“Well …err,” began Mervin
“I’m sort of a half vampire, okay. I can’t be exposed to daylight, no that’s a lie. I can, but it hurts a hell of a lot if I don’t protect myself,” blurted Chloe, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do.”
As Mervin and Hans went back to bed, Hans found himself pushing aside the matter of what she meant by half vampire and instead tried to work out whether she’d said yes to him or not.
