The Vampire Depravities

Jeni groaned. She was fucked and she knew it. She looked again in her rear-view and saw the blinding blue strobe lights then resignedly indicated to pull in and slowed to a halt. The quiet country road was deserted at almost 2 am and although there was no street lighting it was clear that the cop was only following her. While she waited in her car for the inevitable she began thinking how stupid she was to stay on at the bar and not get a cab with Gwen and Ria and the others earlier. But she was only going a few miles dammit, and she hadn’t had that much to drink! Its not fair! And she already has 7 points on her license (that Yousef doesn’t know about). If she loses her license what will she tell him? How would she get to work? Or get the kids to school. Fuck!!! What was she thinking?

It had all started so simply too. A work teambuilding exercise / training course. She had been delighted to be chosen to go, even more so when she discovered her friends were going too. Yousef had misgivings about it but she ploughed on insisting that she must go for the sake of her job, and of course the family depended on both of them working. It was the reason they had moved to Wales in the first place, she had argued. That and the fact that Jeni no longer had ties to London since she married Yousef, her conversion to Islam cutting off all connection to her former family and friends.

The course she had been sent to was in a hotel in the pretty seaside town of Porthmadog. The hotel was a nice old sandstone building with lovely views out over the harbour and the bay beyond.

After the first day of the course, her friends from work, Gwen and Ria, had suggested they go over to the tourist town of Portmeirion just across the bay where apparently some famous TV show had been filmed. Jeni hadn’t thought too much of it to be honest, the two places looked more or less alike, but they had found a karaoke bar anyway and that was where Jeni really started to let her hair down, alternating cocktails with her take on girl-band classics. When the other two had said they wanted to leave and ordered a taxi, Jeni was still next on the list to sing "Wannabe" and more to the point was being shown rather a lot of attention by some of the male patrons, so she had made her excuses and said she would make her own way back. She had of course staved off the local Romeos, even though she had found their interest almost as intoxicating as the cocktails, but when closing time came she had decided to head back to the hotel on her own. In her own car!

She looked at the dash. 1:27. Her hotel was only a few minutes away in Porthmadog. Maybe she could start the engine and outrun the cop she thought fleetingly then dismissed it. She had almost made it along the quiet deserted country road until the blue lights appeared.

After a seemingly interminable wait, the cop walked up to her window and she lowered it with dread.

“Good evening Miss”.