BEING BITTEN BY A RICH GIRL BEFORE WATCHING TWILIGHT: BREAKING DAWN

I could tell that Jude had become a better business person because he was now thinking of ways to make money out of everything. He booked an entire Gold Class cinema out for the Twilight: Breaking Dawn Premier and then sold each of its seats to his (mainly female) friends for one hundred dollars each. It worked because they certainly had the money, and also because he sold them an experience above a mere movie ticket: he hosted a Twilight ‘Fancy Dress Only’ Marathon party especially for them in the entertainment room of his extremely large house the week prior to the premier where they could all enjoy a few glasses of champagne and watch the first few Twilight movies. After the marathon, all guests were then driven by limousine to Jude’s poolside party, which was hosted at one his parents’ other large homes. If the guests paid Jude an extra fifty dollars each, they received a wonderful Twilight-themed cocktail professionally made by his handsome Jacob-looking bartender friend, who a lot of the guests had a crush on (they had to pay extra if they wanted more drinks or if they wanted a kiss on the cheek). To add to his guests’ Twilight experience, Jude also hired a pale-faced Edward lookalike to play Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” by the pool, as well any other songs under request.

The receptionist refused to come to any event that involved Jude, so for the majority of the poolside party I found myself in the company of liquor. “Here,” Jude would say whenever we’d bump into each other, giving me a free cocktail laced with something. “Down this or I’ll kill you.” After an hour or so I could see dragons, big, beautiful dragons with squinty eyes and slippery blue skin and drooling mouths that would eat the women or lick them up from behind. I knew everyone else could see them too, because they were all pointing up at the sky, their mouths open as wide as the dragons’, screaming as to how beautiful the dragons were, screaming for them to stop eating them and licking them from behind. It was the most horrific sight in the world and I couldn’t stop laughing. After goodness knows how long I found myself in a smoky room, holding hands with an unusually tall girl. “Those shoes don’t look good on you,” she said before kissing me. “You have uncomfortably large hands,” I told her as I kissed her back. She smiled, turned around and grinded against me; looking right, I noticed her holding her bra up and dropping it on a glowing table. Someone was pinching me – I turned around to see Jude, who had a spark plug coming out of his head. He grabbed my collar and shook me around. He was yelling, “Don’t do this man, don’t do this, don’t screw it up,” or something like that but it all seemed muffled so I slurred something back and pushed him away. He sighed, laughed and took a photograph of me with the tall girl and vanished. Almost instantly, the entire room turned red and the ceiling began to rotate. A significant amount of silence seemed to pass. “Stop biting,” I slurred softly, looking down. The tall girl stood up, smiling, licking her lips, her pupils as red as everything else in the room. Her face looked out of place: she was as pale as the moon. She whispered something and I nodded. She leant forward, biting my neck softly at first, and then suddenly biting it so hard I could feel it cut open and bleed – I knew I was going to die. “You’re a vampire,” I realised. “No shit,” she hissed, pulling away, giggling, her teeth painted with my blood. “I’ll suck your blood until you’re as hollow as everyone else in this party. When I’m done with you, you’ll always rely on others for validation. When I’m done with you, you’re going to die and be born again as a handsome brooding teenage vampire who sparkles in the sunlight.”

I woke up in a parked BMW. Rubbing my eyes, I stepped out, closed the door and walked towards a McDonald’s. I found Jude and Vail sitting inside. “You’re a naughty boy,” Jude said, shaking the brown McDonald's paper bag until some chips came out. He picked up a chip, looked at it, and then quickly put it in his mouth. “Anyway I pimped out the Edward lookalike to this sexy fat chick for a thousand bucks,” he snickered. “We split five hundred between both of us.” I sat down next to Vail, who was busy checking something on her mobile phone. I began to cry. “I got bitten by a vampire and I died,” I said, trying to wipe all the tears out of my face. I put my head on her lap, hoping that she’d tenderly stroke my hair like she used to. She didn’t. I looked up and realised that she wasn’t Vail, that she looked nothing like Vail, that she was actually one of the wealthy blonde girls we met at the Barracks. Smiling cruelly, she leant towards my ear and whispered something that I no longer remember.