In retrospect to all that had happened to him these past two days, Kieran finally figures out the reason for the migraines that have been pestering him incessantly with their painful thrums and throbs. 

Looking back into the past he has never quite needed to take care of anyone before - no nieces he knew about who were still alive to greet him, no brothers that weren’t already decapitated bodies strung along the river of many other corpses, no other Mirandas that had been born out of his mother’s careless mistakes and a father’s reckless ignorance. That isn’t to say Kieran cares nothing for his family - a pang of hurt sears through his chest as he instinctively reminisces - just that most of the time he spent awake would also be accompanied by an awful lot of running, planning and shooting; none of these he’d want his relatives to witness.

Just across from where his Bentley is parked comes the shrill caterwaul of a teenaged girl leaping through the school’s opened doors, timed to the sound of a bell’s sonorous chime as she makes a beeline for the school gates. Behind her, out from the narrow hole of two open doors, students spill from the sides and out into the courtyard like a gush of water from a staggered tap. It follows a strange pattern that Kieran leans forward to observe behind the hood of his car: the tap splutters out cliques that dissolve into the crowd before it unleashes an even larger horde of children just clambering towards the painfully inviting school-bus sign that grounds itself only a few meters away from Kieran. The school doors empty students out in waves upon waves until it regurgitates only a trickle of slow-walkers and students gesturing to their mothers, who seat themselves comfortably in the refreshing gusts of heavenly air conditioning.

To Kieran’s humble, reclusive life, the storm of students that surge towards the massive steel gates somewhat reminds him of a B rated zombie flick. Among the bobbing heads that cluster in groups, he can’t seem to make out Alta’s face at all until his eyes are drawn away from the packs and her face makes an appearance between two overexcited bubbles of teenaged chittering.

Oh, excellent, Kieran thinks and promptly slams his hand across his honker.

The Bentley bellows a blaring, excited noise on par with Kieran’s own strained yell of ‘Alta, I’m over here.’ As he rips the glasses and his scarf off his face in a final effort to be recognised by his niece so they can leave this godforsaken place before it gives him any more undue stress. Her head whips towards the noise, surprise before faint relief as her figure bounds towards him with a contained smile of politeness.

Around her students part to let her cross, leaping backwards into their friends and triggering a ripple of movement across campus.

“Thanks, Uncle Kieran.” She sighs when she reaches him, clambering into the backseat. “I was looking for you.”

“No problem. We will head promptly to the supermarket.”

“Oh!” Her phone vibrates, she sniggers suddenly and looks up. “My friends think my dad is really hot.”

“I’m sure he was a catch,” Kieran snorts, “not that it helped since he’s dead now.” 


“Oh, no.” Alta replies with a shake of her head, “They meant you. They thought you were my dad because you’re picking me up.”

An image flashes across his brain before he can stop it: it is an unpleasant one in which he is married to his absolute wreck of a half-sister. Bile rises up his throat and he forces it down.

“I see.” He coughs. “Maybe refrain from telling me things I don’t need to know, niece.” 


“Hey,” she replies, “same here.” 


“What?”


Alta shrugs, leaning back in her seat. There are no subtle changes to her expression as she speaks - her eyes are so fixated on her screen that Kieran wouldn’t be surprised if she were sucked in. There is a moment between the pause in her reply and the words that follow after wherein Kieran realises what a terrible thing he’s done.

“So I guess he died, huh.” 


— -

Kieran didn’t count it to be very long ago but for Miranda, fifteen years seemed like a lifetime away. Back when she was still a college graduate he remembered begrudgingly accepting an invitation to see his mother’s eighth child wear a tall rectangular hat for an hour before tossing it onto the ground in triumph.

My Kieran:


Understandably, you are in pain. The ramifications of his death have been hard on you and you may deny that fact but still thank my leaving out of his name. However, as I have respected the foolhardy choices you decided to lead your life with, you must respect equally reckless decisions of my own making.

Her name is Miranda. Enclosed is a plane ticket. You will go and meet her, and you will find that she is with child, and she is alone. I suppose, in the end, your father was right: the Oculus tree is a destructive one laden with hardships, but as we have come to accept the fact so must she. As my only living son, you will do this out of obligation, and love and duty, and I will die peacefully in the corner of my house knowing that my human daughter will find the strength to raise her offspring regardless of the tragedies that may befall her.

Your mother

It was awfully cryptic. Then again, the thousand-year-old woman had been known to be cryptic, and it wasn’t like anything she had written was wrong or misunderstood. Kieran had taken the ticket and met Miranda in her spunky graduation cap adorned with odd jokes he couldn’t understand, and they had left quickly after the pictures had been taken.

“Mom told me I had a brother,” Miranda said. “She told me more about you than I wanted to know.”


“That’s disheartening.” Kieran frowned.

“Sorry,” She shrugged. “But you kill innocent people for money and that’s kind of fucking atrocious.”

She hasn’t screamed at him or rejected anything he had to say afterwards. She didn’t take them to be excuses for his absence in her life either; those were darker times for him that she had spent in a relatively ignorant and idyllic home with a mother that didn’t look a day over twenty-one. Somehow Miranda had simply accepted it and went on with her life, unhampered by the fact that her five-hundred or so year old brother was shooting people in the dark and wiping floor after floor with white vinegar and cleaning rags. He supposed that it was because Oculuses didn’t grow up in an ordinary childhood home, regardless of species.

“Where is your husband?” Kieran frowned. 


“Oh, Georgie’s dead.” Miranda said bluntly, “Few months back. Motorcycle incident. You know how that feels, don’t you?”


“Well,” he shrugs, “If you and I have done our fair share of crying, then we needn’t grace the topic again.” 


Somehow it wasn’t a pain to see her. Perhaps it was because she was what remained of his mother’s strong jaw and hard eyes and that she was the only person in this world that shared his name and felt no need to run from him or shoot him, or both.

“What’re you drinking?” He asked her. A few hours after that he had left and killed a Chinese attorney; wiped the edge of his desk and left him sitting like a king. A day after this he disappeared and she wouldn’t see him again until a year had passed.

“You should try it.” She replied, shaking it in her hand. “Tastes like orange marmalade.”

— -

Alta Fair doesn’t mourn. Not like Miranda did, he recalls, in those rare times that he saw her in the backseat of his car making gratuitous use of his tissues.

Oh, Georgie. Oh, Georgie.  Curiouser and curiouser.

“I apologise.” He says as he revs up the Bentley’s engine and they shoot down the street. “I assumed Miranda told you about the incident.”


“Nah.” She shrugs. “She told me she had a fling with a frat boy before he ditched her, which isn’t exactly wrong. I guess I just interpreted it the wrong way.”

Kieran frowns. “You are not sad.”

“I know, right?” She laughs hollowly. “I’m a terrible daughter.”

Supermarket runs have never been easier. In the many hundreds of years it has been working in this peculiar business of his, Kieran always relied on the extra middleman to get the job done. A thought enters his head- questioning, of course, whether or not bringing his niece into his own affairs is the morally right thing to do. Then again he has never played by moral or immoral rules, and so calmly watches her swing two bottles of white vinegar out of her enormous shopping cart and next to the cashier with a glass clang.

“Stocking up on kitchen supplies?” He whips his head up to see a young male: narrow faced, shyly but affably glancing up at Alta as she reaches for her two bottles of vinegar and cream. 


“Nah.” She beams, “My uncle’s getting married in a few months and this was on his wedding registry. We’re just checking all the boxes. Making sure he’s satisfied with his crazy list.”

“Huh. Alright.” The cashier makes a face. Kieran doesn’t like it. “Well, have fun.”

“We will,” Alta replies and she’s about to leave when her eyes dart to Kieran - next in line - and they flash some enigma.

“It’s happening in Disneyland.” 


— -

“Was he such a character?” Kieran grumbles. “Was I so entranced by the stupid desperation of a pamphlet distributer from Disneyland that the world around us crumbled into a romanticism of possible future endeavours that, in your imaginative human brain, included marriage?”


“Hey-” Alta splits her poker face into a subtle grin and, although she previously apologised for the incident, Kieran wonders if he can retract forgiveness. “I’m really sorry, it was too hard to pass up and your reaction was priceless. I won’t do it again.” 


“And here.” The vampire sniffs, dismissing her response with a wave of his hand. “You are apologising.”


Alta’s face morphs into confusion. “… Yes. I’m sorry.” 


“No, I-” Kieran bites his lip, struggling to find the words as they veer around a corner. “I am trying to understand why you are the way you are. Unperturbed by contract killings. Your silence is neither rebellious nor depressing. Your father is dead and you feel nothing, yet somehow you are laughing at this trite joke.” 


She pauses- the quiet white noise of incoherent lyrics in her earphones stops and Kieran realises that only now are they sitting in silence. She brings a hand to the back of her neck and scratches.


“Well,” she replies, “If you put it like that, we’re all kinda super depressing, huh.” 


“We are.” Kieran nods. It seems as if they have finally reached a point of understanding. “We are depressing. That is the point exactly. We.”

“Yeah…” She nods, eyebrows raised at the sudden level of enthusiasm Kieran emits despite his mouth being kept at a relatively firm frown. “I dunno. It just feels good to forget sometimes. If you were born into a messed up family tree and everyone was dead except for your workaholic mom and her hitman brother, I think you’d want to just laugh it out too or something.”

“That is right, again.” he checks his speed and screeches to a stop at a red light which blinds his eyes. “Everyone is dead. No one but my half-sister and her small child who knows nothing of the grief that has plagued me for over a hundred years of solitude remains.”

“Wow.” Alta raises her hands, almost as if suppressing the sudden influx of Kieran’s overeager response. “So, yeah I mean… like, that’s… just my coping mechanism. What’s yours?”

He’s never quite thought about that. Kieran ponders on the question for a while as streetlights dim- her school really is far away, isn’t it…

And perhaps he would let his thoughts dwell on the matter further if he had not spied the dreadfully familiar figure in the rearview mirror just meters away from him as the Bentley slinks past flickering lamplights and towards the next street. The pondering thought instantly goes; irritation replaces it and an ounce of fear - not for his life, of course, but hers. 

“Alta?” Kieran grips the steering wheel tightly. To tell the truth, he wouldn’t be this worried if he wasn’t going to keep to that awfully binding promise Miranda forced him to make. Yet, strangely enough, he feels that the absence of such a promise wouldn’t change what he is doing now.

“What’s wrong?” She says. 


“Nothing in particular,” He responds haphazardly. They turn a left corner. His apartment fades from view, becoming a faint blob in the distance as Alta’s eyes widen and her hands tighten around her phone. “There’s a shop to your left that we’ll be reaching soon. Electronics. Lots of people there too, you can mingle.” 

She nods quickly.

“Good.” He bares his teeth in the form of a newly practised smile and tosses a key into the backseat.

“I trust you know the way home, don’t you?”