Josephine the Vampire Slayer.
“DOWN BY THE WATER” PART 1
Previously:
Dusting vampires in the library.
Dusting vampires at the ball.
Blasting bad guys at the drive-in.
Dusting vampires at the hospital.
Dusting vamps generally….And giving Kevin a careful kicking.
Now you’re slaying with confidence!
Opening scene:
Josephine is changing her clothes behind a screen. Although it is supposed to stop anyone seeing anything, the bright light behind shows more in silhouette than anything yet seen this series.
She lets out an exclamation of surprise and shock. “My dress doesn’t fit!”
Arnold replies. “Well it doesn’t fit me either!”
There is a pause. We can see Arnold holding out a dress and passing it to Josephine behind the screen, while carefully averting his eyes.
After some moments provocative wriggling, Josephine is finally installed in her dress. She steps out form behind the screen.
Arnold sighs. “Next time you want to change, do it at home.”
“What’s wrong with doing it here?”
“We’re in a theatre! On Broadway! In the interval of ‘Jamaica!’”
Josephine looks at the audience. Most are frozen in time.
“Sorry folks!” She yells. -And then waves.
As if a penny had been put in the slot, the audience slowly becomes more animated. There is a small ripple of applause that becomes a deluge.
Josephine takes a bow. Then some people in uniforms come to usher them off stage.
“I love you all!” Josephine shouts over her shoulder, blowing kisses. Arnold drags her to the stage door.
“Wait until I tell Tony.” Arnold hisses in her ear.
Mishearing, Josephine asks. “Will I get a Tony?”
“Tony?”
“Tony award. If Jamaica doesn’t get one now, it never will!” [ 97 ]
In the audience, a man in a tuxedo turns to his wife. “That was certainly ‘sophisticated.’”
She replies. “No, here in New York we still call that ‘obscene!’” [ 98 ]
“What did you have to change for anyway?” Arnold asks.
“My skirt got stuck on a nail.”
“That’s not so bad is it?”
“It ripped it all along the seam, up to my hip, exposing a lot of leg. I looked like a cheap tart!”
“Like I said: That’s not so bad is it?”
Arnold and Josephine rejoin Leroy and Tony. They resume their patrol. Bobby and Austin are celebrating a baseball game- they lost 6-5 in the twelfth inning.
Leroy is alone for a minute. He ducks down an alley. –There’s a joke in there somewhere!
At the end of the alley is some huffing and puffing- one might call it panting. Curious, Leroy goes to investigate. It sounds like a woman. However, he ignores this woman, and finds another woman, somewhat older, struggling with a large tea chest. She asks for his help.
She’s trying to get the box into a dumpster. Leroy goes to assist. Under his breath he uses some magic words, and wriggles his fingers in his pocket. Only when he starts playing with a pinch of dung does he get a funny look. [ 99 ]
“It’s alright, its mine!”
Using his meagre strength, and the effects of the spell, they heave the box into the trash. The old woman rubs her hands. Leroy offers his hand for her to shake. She declines. “Thank you kind sir.” She says.
“Not at all ma’am!”
Leroy finishes his business. He washes his hands in a puddle. He’s been watching the public information films about hygiene. Though doing his business in a back alley didn’t seem to be covered in the film. The censors are still too prudish.
He joins the others. Except for Tony they are watching the graveyard. There are a few people gathered around a grave. Tony is watching the girls. Then a car goes by and he watches that.
“Don’t you ever get tired of watching girls and cars?”
“Yeah, there was this one time….”
“What could you have possibly seen that tore your eyes from a car or a girl?”
“A girl in a car!”
“Tony, maybe you should get a life.”
“This is life!”
Arnold interrupts. “Anyway, look over there. A few ne'er-do-wells, gathered around a grave.”
They all look.
Josephine says “Vampires!”
“How can you tell?”
“Well, first, it’s not the time of day to be burying people. Two: It’s a school day tomorrow, and three: They aren’t casting any shadows.”
“We aren’t casting any shadows either.”
“Probably because it’s a quarter to midnight!”
Arnold continues. “So we’ll sneak over there and catch them at it, ask them what they are doing, and introduce them to holy water, and garlic, and stakes….And….Where did everybody go?”
The others have snuck off after Josephine. Try as she might to make her high heels click ominously, it’s not very intimidating on grass. Instead she makes clicking noises with her tongue. She peers over one of the mourner’s shoulders.
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Shhh! You’ll wake him up…..Too late!
“What’s going on here then?” she demands.Arnold has caught up. Huffing and puffing form the exertion.
Tony turns on him and Josephine. “What part of ‘sneaking up’ didn’t you understand?” he demands to know.
Leroy offers “The definition?”
Arnold hisses at him “Shhhhh!”
“What? We’re not in library!”
Josephine has ignored them all, and caught one of the mourners on the shoulder. With a vice-like grip, she spins the man away, and looks past him at the ground.
There in a fresh grave, a muddy hand has stuck up through the earth. It wiggles a bit, trying to clear the earth as the owner struggles to free itself.
Josephine asks “Should that be happening?” The mourners look at her.
“I mean, you guys wouldn’t happen to be vampires or anything. Do you? Are you? ….Eh?”
Inwardly Arnold cringes at her mangling of the English language.
One of the vamps says. ”Oh look, it’s the Slayer!”
The others all take a step back.
Leroy cuts in. “Does your job description always get that reaction?”
They all look at him. He steps back, and starts to mutter an incantation.
Tony, who has played football more than once, and been with wizards more than once realises the situation. He stands in front of Leroy, blocking him.
Josephine looks at the hand frantically scrabbling at the dirt on the grave.
“That’s one hell of a mole….” She says.
Leroy changes his chant. In a singsong voice he says. “I know a way to get rid of a mole…. in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni. [ 100 ] ….Get a gun and blow his head off!”
“That’s fightin’ talk!”
Arnold says “Fighting talk? Try: Si vis pacem para bellum.”
“Creep around the back and hit him with a bell?”
“No! If you want peace…expect…” A vampire clunks him with a shovel. “Ow! Hey! I wasn’t expecting that!”
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Shovel. Gravediggers weapon since 1886.
They start to fight.
A vampire lunges for Josephine’s neck. Her reflexes ensure his hands do not go around her throat. Instead, they settle on her collar, stretching the already straining dress. Josephine lashes out with a groin shot. It has the desired effect. The vampire’s eyes fill with tears.
“Is he really crying?”
“Well it is a funeral!”
Tony calls over. “New balls please!”
“Did he have a cricket box on?”
“What’s a cricket box? Somewhere to keep your equipment dry and safe?”
Another vampire lunges for Leroy. Tony is too fast for him. With his baseball bat, he sweeps the vamp’s legs from under him.
“How about that?”
A vampire leaps up at Arnold. He kicks out and connects with Arnold’s face. “In your face!”
“Mush.” Arnold tries to confuse him.
“Mush?”
“’Mush’ as in: Get going -you dog!” Arnold swings and misses.
Leroy is still chanting. In the middle he manages to ask. “How come they die as mild mannered bank managers, and yet come back a few days later as martial arts experts?”
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Mild mannered bank manager.
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Martial artist evolved from dead from bank manager.
Vampirism re-grows hair and loses a few pounds too.
“Dunno. But I’d hate it to be vice versa.”
“Isn’t vice-versa what they call miners in Puerto Rica?”
They all stop for a moment. Even the vamps.
There is a collective “Eh?”
This is just the pause that Josephine needs to reach in her pocket and draw out her favourite weapon.
“What’s she gonna do now? Give him some lipstick?”
“She’s more like a Rottweiler in lipstick if you ask me.” [ 101 ]
Josephine spins around. “Who said that?”
Everyone points at someone else.
She looks at them through narrowed eyes. “Whoever said that is gonna get such a kick in the mouth.”
“I already got that.” Arnold mumbles through blood and teeth.
“Thought so!” Josephine uses this pause in the proceedings to whip out an axe.
The vampire on Josephine tries to grab her waist. Josephine obligingly sweeps the axe down and imbeds it in his back. “No hard feelings, let’s go bury the hatchet.”
The others cannot believe their ears. “You named your axe ‘Barry?’”
Tony’s opponent tries to crawl away. Tony yells after him “Oh no you don’t!”
He brings the bat down on the vampire’s head. There is a horrible clunk.
One of the other mourners has drawn out a length of chain. He starts whirling it above his head. Josephine regards him disdainfully. She rises to her full height, and swings the axe at the man at her feet. His head comes clean off, and with a whiff of drama points, sails all the way over the city. Just as it is about to land in the Yankees stadium, it finally turns to dust over the pitcher’s mound. The body crumples like old newspaper.
The chain wielding antagonist comes over. He whips out the chain at Tony, who merely jumps over it.
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Fearsome martial arts weapon. Bathplugi-kusari.
Leroy finally finishes his chant, and with a wave of his arm, a brilliant light bursts from his hand. To maintain the light he rotates it slowly, all the while patting his tummy.
“Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!” He yelps. All the vampires start to char in the searing light.
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Leroy’s Catherine wheel spell. -Sparky!
Josephine leaps into the remaining fray. Using this momentum, she throws ‘Barry’. It sticks out the back of the chain wielding maniac. Leroy who can see this observes. “It’s sticking out the back a little.”
“Good, I hit him in the front!”
Tony observes, “You’d make a good short stop!”
The vampire dusts like iron particles around a magnet. As it does so, the axe falls on Arnold’s foot. Tony manages to stake another. It explodes like glitter off a child’s Christmas card.
The last vampire makes a run for it. Already charred by Leroy’s light spell, he makes about ten yards before a spark ignites him in the middle of his back. This quickly spreads, until fire and light spread out to the extremities, and he disappears in a shower of sparks, like those from a good bonfire.
Leroy is not one to whoop over his victim. “Interesting lightshow!” he comments as dryly as he can. In the grave the hand is charred and crumbly. It soon crumbles, resembling over-stale layer cake.
The team decide to leave, seeing as they might attract attention from some of New York’s finest. They saunter over to the graveyard gates. There is a man waiting for them, leaning on the gatepost. He claps his hands slowly. This immediately gets Josephine’s spider-senses tingling and her hackles rising.
“Nothing like a good stake to set you up for an eternity of nothingness” He says as an opener.
While they look on bewildered, he backs off a little and several of his vampy friends look out from beyond the safety of a good block and a half’s head start.
“I know it’s a cold evening for you young-bloods, -not that I care. I want the slayer.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to slay something for me”
“I’m not for hire.”
There is a large amount of sniggering from the others at this point.
“You might give a dead man his undying wish…”
“What could I possibly do for you?” More sniggering ensues. Josephine turns to the others. “Will you stop that!”
The man continues. “I don’t know what it is, but our tidy little homes in the sewers have a bad case of vermin”
“So? I don’t care. I so do not care.”
“I rather think that you’d better start caring missy-slayer, coz sooner or later the vampires will retire to their lofty retreats, and the mere mortals of this town will be on the menu instead.”
Josephine thinks about this. The others go for pizza and a movie while she does. As they return, the man is continuing.
“There’s something down there that’s a might bit bigger than any sewer rat. Many of our brothers and sisters have been taken at night and never returned. The odd bloody chunk washes up occasionally though”
“Okay. Maybe it might be bigger than the both of us.”
“Ask old Swampy Hayvers if you like” The vampire says. He turns to go.
They prepare to leave. At the last moment they agree to meet again tomorrow
“Here at midday?”
“Make it later.” The vampire says.
“Define later.”
“After dark, say eight o’clock?”
“Okay. Or midday with some SPF ten-thousand!
The vampire leaves. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off for a ‘bite’ with my…” He looks at their dusty clothes. “Remaining friends!”
As soon as he is gone, Josephine turns to the others. “So a big beastie is touring the sewers is it? –And somehow that’s my job….?”
“You got it! Go girl!”
“Who is swampy Hayvers?”
“I’m guessing a fella who works in the sewers. Precisely who, needs to be researched.”
“Research!” Through encrusted blood and black eyes Arnold’s little face lights up for the first time this evening.
Josephine puts her hands on her hips and looks at the others. “Who’s gonna do research?”
“We will!” The others say in unison.
“My good friends.”
“We’re your friends.”
“Were my friends. Are my friends.” She gets confused.
Arnold helps out. “I think you forgot the third party past participle.”
Tony asks “Is that a masculine or feminine verb?”
Josephine looks at him. There is a quizzical look in her eye.
Tony clarifies. “For the hard of understanding, that’s male and female.”
“Or you can use one of each.” Arnold prompts.
“Ah yes!” Josephine gets it at last. “That’s where you get diminutive verbs from!”
They start to walk back. The cogs in Tony’s mind are starting to turn.
“What kind of a thing can be strong enough chew up vampires?”
Suddenly the horizon starts wobbling.
“Okay Josephine, you can put me down now. Point proven. There’s a good girl….”
“Scoobie snack?”
“Not invented yet.”
“Oh!”
Suddenly the horizon goes back to its original orientation. “That’s better.”
Josephine is thinking out loud –again. Though thinking and complaining are often one and the same thing.
“Anyways, I’m here to kill vamps, not join the army or whatever.”
“Oh, picture you giving a damn.”
“Never!”
“Anyway, killing vampires is an army job in some places.”
They all turn to look at Arnold. “Oh, sorry. That’s classified information. Need to know. Please ignore me.”
Josephine considers. “I could join the army.”
“Sea the navy?”
“Eh?”
“Old military adage.”
“Oh.”
They continue on. Tony says. “Well you were asked to kill it. – Whatever ‘it’ is.”
Josephine turns on him. “Do you do everything you are told?”
“Yes.”
“Do my homework!”
Tony is taken aback. Arnold cuts in. “Too late, I already did it!”
Tony is still thinking. “Maybe Mrs. Rat woman bag lady is killing vamps?”
Leroy tells him. “She couldn’t lift a chest into a dumpster.”
“Neither could you.”
“I was having one of my strong moments.”
“Remind me not to shake your hand.”
Arnold is interested in the woman and the box and the dumpster. “Maybe we should look into it?”
Leroy shows him the time. It’s way past midnight. “Tomorrow?”
They go their separate ways back home.
The next day is a school day, and because of the late night, they are all feeling tired in class. Tony even manages to get a couple of hours sleep in, without being caught.
“How do you do that Tony?”
“Simple. I painted eyes on my eyelids with makeup.”
“What’s a man doing with makeup?”
“Painting my eyes! I just told you!”
After school they call on Derby. Josephine files her nails. The others are doing research.
“Maybe we should look through archived newspapers for any reports or sightings?”
Arnold turns over the paper he’s been looking at, picked almost at random from the archive. “Like this?”
“Yeah, like that!”
“And this?”
“Like that too. C’mon lets show the others!”
They gather round and read silently. Josephine’s lips move.
“Better get some better weapons!”
“Like shovels?”
“Like this!”
Josephine is showing her latest acquisition.
“Those are some weapons!”
“You could have someone’s eye out with those!”
Josephine looks down. “Oh! I left my crossbows in the backroom, I’ll only be a minute!”
As she disappears again, the others look around.
“Who would have thought that Mister Derby would have all the back issues of the New York Post and Times in his office, as well as a well stocked arsenal?”
Arnold is proud of his mentor. “I would expect nothing more….or less!”
Later on as it gets dark, Leroy and Arnold go to check out the dumpster. They look inside.
“Open the box?”
“Take the money?”
“Both! Take the box and open it!”
“Okay!”
With trepidation they look inside the box. “Eew! A body!”
“Some body!”
“Who?”
“Don’t know who exactly, but his name is Vincent Dyer.”
“Dyer, Dying dead.”
Arnold looks down at the body. He turns to Leroy. “How did you know his name. Some sort of mystic divination?”
“Nope. I found a card in his wallet… -And six bucks!”
Arnold isn’t paying much attention. “Look at his neck!”
“Let me guess…Two little bite marks?”
“Check!”
Arnold thinks. “Maybe he was killed by the creature in the sewers?”
For comedic effect, Leroy asks. “What, like a giant vampire rat?”
“Vampire rat. That’s something to consider.”
Leroy is suddenly more serious. “You mean you can get vampire animals?”
Arnold is deadly serious. “Oh yeah. And by the look of these marks, bigger than a rat.”
“A zebra?” Leroy asks brightly.
“Now you’re just being silly!”
Josephine and Tony have gone to look for Samuel Hayvers. They find out form the municipal works office that he is retired, and lives across town. They go to his apartment. Josephine is still working on the unsubtle approach.
“Mister Hayvers, what can you tell us about monsters in the sewers?”
“You might have knocked, and let me answer the door first!”
“Sorry.” Josephine looks at the door, goes to knock, but thinks better of it. “So what about these here monsters?”
“Interesting line of enquiry, young lady. Come in. How about some drinks? A coffee? Or maybe a soda?”
They go in and settle on the couch. Tony tries to put his arm around Josephine, but a sudden pain in his wrist makes him reconsider.
Josephine asks. “Monsters. What could possibly be down there chomping on all the vamp….” Tony digs her in the ribs. She hastily corrects herself. “Rats?”
Hayvers is evasive. “I dunno. I seen a lot of strange things down there.”
“Like what for instance?”
“Scary things. Things not for young ladies to hear about.”
Josephine is dismissive. “Pffft! I’ve seen strange things. Scary things. Real scary things!”
“Such as?”
“Um…. The school library for one. That gives me the wiggins even thinking about it!”
Hayvers isn’t going to tell. “Why do you want to know?”
Tony pipes up. “School project!”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“I know. I could hardly get over it myself. But you know….Anyway, people are concerned.”
“What kind of people?”
It’s Tony’s turn to be evasive. “Oh, just people.”
Hayvers is getting impatient with all this pussyfooting around the subject.
“You keep away from the sewers you hear me?”
Josephine plays the demure little girl. “Yes. Okay. I will.”
Hayvers sees them out.
“Take care little lady. –And don’t go into the sewers!”
“Okay I won’t. I promise.”
The next scene is the team assembled in Derby’s office. They are tooling up for a trip into the sewer. There are boots and galoshes and raincoats and sou'westers and dozens of weapons.
Arnold is schecking off his list. “Torch. Spare torch. Batteries. Axe, spare axe, rope, holy water. Boots, hat gloves, scarf, biscuits, flask of tea. Satchel.”
“You gonna be okay carrying all that?”
“Oh its not going to be me carrying it. That’s what Josephine is for. I’m merely the watcher.” Josephine comes over. “So what does that make me? The group mule?”
The others snigger behind her back. Tony says “Y’know there’s gonna be rats, and vampires and the odd demon or three, and maybe a giant croc or two, and a giant monster waiting for us.”
Josephine cocks a spring crossbow, and grins. “What’s not to like?”
They are all prepared. It looks as though they are ready for an ascent of Mount Everest. “Y’know we should meet mister vampire man later….”
“We can feed him to the monster first!”
“Good idea. Let’s hustle people!”
They all troop out. Except for Arnold.
“What’s the matter Arnold?”
“I think he’s carrying too much.”
“How can you tell?”
“He’s fallen over and can’t get up.”
They look over. Arnold is on his back, like a flipped turtle. His arms and legs are waving pathetically. His pride is stopping him from asking for assistance.
Josephine rolls her eyes. She takes off her bergen, and lays down various nasty-looking weapons. She helps Arnold up.
“What exactly are you carrying?”
“My satchel and a bottle of holy water.”
Josephine tips half the water away. “There!”
Arnold takes the bottle back. “Okay I can walk now, -maybe I’ll manage a trot later.”
Josephine adds all Arnold’s equipment that is still on the table into a second bergen, and adds this to her first.
Outside it is getting dark.
“I hate days like today.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“I got a bad feeling about this….”
“Me too. You know the best way to deal with premonitions of certain doom, death and destruction…?”
“No. What?”
“Go kick some evil croc-y vamp-y monster ass!”
CODA:
“Arnold’s fallen over again!”