For Canada Day: Even The Paranormal Play Sports

Happy Canada Day!

To celebrate, I bring you a little Canadian paranormal:

Even The Paranormal Play Sports

“Welcome everyone to the final showdown between the Clover Creek Undead and the Johnsonville Bloodsuckers! Let the hockey begin!”

A roar went up from the crowd; we had all begin looking forward to this championship game for weeks. I mean life has to go on, right, even if some of your friends and neighbours aren’t, well, exactly alive anymore.
I was sitting third row up, so I scanned the rink as the players skated in and cheered as my boyfriend Freddie hit center ice. I waved at him and he blew me a kiss. He was so gorgeous, even in all that bulky hockey gear; I could see a hint of his vampire fangs as he smiled. It was good to see him smile again, heck to see everyone so happy again, after all that happened.

“Miss Dawson, could we get back to the interview?”
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot the reporter. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to neglect you, but I had to wave to my sweetie. And you can call me Deidre.”
“Teenage love aside, Deirdre, my paper is very interested in the alleged strange occurrences in this area, so if you would...” He turned on a tiny digital recorder.
Geez, the guy’s persistent. Would it kill him to wait until the game was over? I sighed.
“Okay. Here’s how it happened. It started early last summer, just before the start of tourist season. No one even bothered giving the two strangers much notice. Most everybody just thought they were nutty Europeans, although Marcy thought they were a gay couple from the States, California maybe, and Crazy Mitchell swore they were mobsters to anyone who would listen.” I paused for a second as they dropped the puck and our team won possession.
“These guys rented the old Sampson place up on the hill off Cedar Street. They kept to themselves and they didn’t come to town much, or do any of the tourist stuff. This, of course, got all the tongues wagging and theories about what they were doing in that house were flying left and right. People were even saying Crazy Mitchell was right about them being mobsters and any day the town would be shot up or invaded by the RCMP.”
My attention was pulled to the ice; Freddie had the puck. “Go Freddie!” I cheered as my honey scored and the reporter fumed beside me.
“Relax, why don’t you? I’ll get to it, but I’m not missing the hockey.” I cheered again as our team won the faceoff.
“They were here for a couple of weeks or so, before the first incident, when the dead cow was found. At first everyone thought it was coyotes, but then the rumours went around, about how there was no blood in the carcass.”
“I heard about those rumours. They didn’t have any hard facts to back them up. There was no evidence the police were called in to investigate, no official record of an incident with a dead cow, or any report of a disposal of the carcass. There’s no proof of any such event occurring.”
“Oh, it occurred, but I wouldn’t know about police investigation or stuff like that. I don’t usually take notice of dead cows.” I smirked at the reporter. “Besides, I was too busy with the end of year school dance. It’s a sort of pre-prom thing for all the high school students. We did this whole vampire/werewolf/Twilight theme, which is kind of funny considering.”
“I’m sure your dance was lovely, but could we get back to what’s important here.”
“Hey, jerk, the dance is important. That’s where it happened.” Action on the ice distracted my attention. “Damn, Clover Creek has the puck. Take it back, Johnsonville. Don’t let them score!”
“Could you please try and focus on the story, Miss Dawson!”
This guy really annoyed me, and he was asking for it, but I turned my attention back. “Like I said, the dance is where everything happened. We held it at the arena here, on account of the big turnout, and hockey season being over meant the place was free to use for the evening. We had to have chaperones, cause everybody was afraid we get drunk or something, like we couldn’t do that anyway. And I guess that was the excuse those new guys used when showed up at the dance. It’s like we thought they were just trying to help, be all community or something.”
“Two strangers show up at a teenage dance and no one questioned it? I find that odd.”
“Well that was the thing wasn’t it? They should’ve seemed out of place. Marked as possible pervs at least, but they weren’t. We didn’t know until later how or why.”
“You’re saying these men conned their way into a high school dance? To do what exactly? Threaten a bunch of teenagers? To what end?”
“Recruitment. They spiked the punch and the rest of the drinks, waited, then locked us in the arena and gassed the place. We didn’t even know what went down until we, uh, woke up I guess.”
“You are telling me two men locked down an entire building to drug a group of teens unconscious? That seems a bit, farfetched.”
“No. We weren’t drugged, they killed us.”
The reporter stared at me as if I’d just grown two heads, and then he got mad. “Is this some type of joke? Pull one on the idiot reporter? Because I don’t like having my time wasted, young lady!”
“It’s no joke. The two guys were honest to real vampires. They put some juiced up vampire blood in the drinks and then pumped in poison gas to kill us all. Except we didn’t die. We became like them, vampires. Pretty much every teen around here, over the age of fifteen is now a vampire.”
“That’s preposterous.”
“Yeah, it was kind of a complicated idea. I mean, after we, changed, we were supposed to fall in line with their plans and all and become some kind of army or something like that. Like we’d listen to a couple of uptight, out-of-town vampire loons.”
The reporter looked at me funny and shrank back in his chair. “You’re serious. You actually believe what you’re saying. What is this, some weird paranormal cult thing?”
“Is that what you think? Well it isn’t. It’s real.”
“This is nuts. It must be brain damage or brainwashing or a hoax. You can’t be-be...”
“What? A vampire? The undead? That’s what everybody else said too, until the government came. Now, they believed us, and did the whole hush-hush clean up bit you see in movies. But not before a few rumours and YouTube videos leaked out. Which is how you got sent here, I’m guessing?”
“We go on more substantial facts than YouTube videos, but yes, my paper sent me here to investigate a possible government cover-up and suspected violations of civil rights.”
“Good luck with that. This whole incident has been deemed a ‘national security risk’ and those two vampires classed as ‘domestic terrorists’.” I notice two burly men headed our way. “Did you know that our national spy agency has a paranormal division?”
“Excuse me? CSIS has a what?”
“A paranormal division. It seems it has been operating for years. They have the entire area under surveillance and curfew.” The two brawny guys came to a stop behind the reporter. “And I believe these two agents are here for you.”
The agents hauled the reporter out of his seat and they scuffled, but he was taken away. I kind of felt sorry for him, but hey, I got to protect my own. Those CSIS nuts were serious about not letting the secret out and my friends and I like living or un-living as it were. As long we vampires cooperate, we get to keep our heads.
I turned back to the hockey, just in time to watch Freddie steal the puck.
“Go Freddie!” I gave my sweetie my best fanged smile.