Copyright Oggbashan November 2014
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
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I had gone to the Christmas costume party only to escort my sister Mary. It was full of her friends and I didn't know any of them well. Mary had insisted that I should get out more and socialise. I didn't feel like it. Even though my engagement had ended six months ago I was still hurting, particularly as I had just received an invitation to my ex-fiancée Andrea's wedding to John next month.
Andrea had wanted to be the scatty blonde who would rely on her man to look after and provide for her, to allow her to do anything stupid and rescue her from her mistakes. I thought it was an act and that she would change. It wasn't an act. She really wanted to be irresponsible, flighty, flirt with any man she met, and avoid all responsibilities. I wanted a girlfriend and ultimately a wife who would stand beside me, not hide behind me.
Eventually her incessant flirting became too much for me to bear. We had an argument and finally agreed to part. We still liked each other but were incompatible. John, her husband-to-be seemed happy with Andrea's role. I couldn't be.
**
On the way to the party Mary had wanted me to help carry some household items up two flights of stairs to her friend Julie's new flat. Julie had been trying to move for months but the legalities of buying it had seemed endless. Mary would park her car near Julie's flat and then we three would walk a couple of hundred yards to the party.
After the party, Mary and Julie would go back to Julie's flat for the rest of the night, if there were to be any rest of the night left. I would probably take a taxi back home to my own flat.
Mary was dressed revealingly as a good witch, with a very large hooped skirt and a glittering cleavage-revealing bustier. That meant I did most of the carrying. Mary was struggling just to manage her skirt up and down the stairs. I was boring as Count Dracula in tight black trousers, a long black Edwardian jacket, a massive cloak lined with red silk and a floppy hat. I had a pair of fangs but I had not bothered to put them in my mouth. I would have been more appropriate at Halloween. I had the costume and didn't want to hire one.
I was dubious about Mary staying the night in Julie's flat. It was piled with boxes and several items of flat pack furniture cluttered the living room. The main bedroom had a mattress on the floor with the bed frame leaning against a wall. But if Mary partied as she usually did she wouldn't leave before dawn.
As I expected, I was bored. Mary's friends are several years younger than I am, and they seemed so unsophisticated and naïve. Perhaps they were, or perhaps I was just feeling jaded. Anyway, I drank too much. Alcohol made me more moody and even more detached from the party activities than I would have been.
I went to the kitchen to make myself some strong coffee. I might call a taxi and go home. The kitchen was in the far reaches of the ground floor of the large Victorian house. I slung my cloak over the back of a chair and put my hat on the seat. The sounds of the party seemed far away as I filled the kettle and found the coffee.
Then I heard a faint sound. I looked around the kitchen. There was nothing and nobody that could have caused the sound. I heard it again. This time it sounded like somebody trying to cry quietly. There was no one else in the kitchen.
The back door was firmly bolted, but there was another door, perhaps to the pantry. I flung it open. Curled up in a heap on the floor was a young woman dressed in a ball-like purple costume.
"Hello," I said, rather too brightly, "why are you hiding in the pantry?"
She jumped up and flung herself at me. She started sobbing loudly against my shoulder. I held her, stroking her bare arm.
"What have you come as?" I asked. I don't know why.
In between sobs she managed to say that she was the Sugar-Plum Fairy.
"Sugar-Plums should be sweet, nice and smiling," I replied, leaving her to explain her distress if she would.
"He's gone," she sobbed.
"Who's gone?"
"Brian, my boyfriend, and I've got all his keys. He can't go home. I don't know where he'll go, or what he'll do."
"And why did he go?"
"We had a row. He said hurtful things to me. He said he didn't want the baby..."
She started sobbing again. I had already realised that her round costume was covering a large bump. I had drunk too much alcohol to be tactful.
"Like a coffee? I'm making some."
"I shouldn't. I've been on fruit juices because of this." She patted her bump before wetting my shoulder again.
But she did. She sank two cups of coffee, most of the time sitting on my lap. She recognised me as Count Dracula which argued a reasonable amount of observation. She called me Dracula. I called her Sugar-Plum.
Gradually she explained what had happened. Brian was her current boyfriend but not the father of her baby. The baby's father is a married man who hadn't admitted that he was married until Sugar-Plum was four months pregnant. Until then he had been pretending that they would marry before the baby's due date. Brian had been a friend before she met the unnamed married man and had comforted her when she had been brutally dumped.
But it seems that Brian was a bit of a prude. Sugar-Plum's costume had been a surprise and a shock to him. The plum concealed the bump but emphasised her recently increased breast size. He had objected to the display. He had drunk too much. They had argued before he stomped out of the front door in a huff saying that he wanted her but not the bastard. She said something about the wedding but she was too incoherent, or I was too drunk to take it in.
Unfortunately for Brian he had come as a super-hero in a very tight skimpy costume. He had nowhere to put his keys and phone so had given them to Sugar-Plum to keep in her handbag. He had kept some banknotes in his pants but nothing else. So now he was out in the street in a revealing costume. Without his keys he couldn't return home and he couldn't phone anyone else for help. Sugar-Plum thought he was despicable, horrid but stupid. She didn't want to see him again but she had to get his keys and phone back to him. Could Count Dracula help?
Count Dracula was too drunk to refuse. I wrapped my cloak around her, left her in the kitchen for a couple of minutes while I told Mary that I was going, and then we crept out of the front door. I had hoped that Brian would be hovering outside. He wasn't.
I tried to think. Where would I go if I had money but couldn't get back home? The nearest pub?
We tried the nearest pub. It was obviously an eatery for families. A super-hero would have been out of place. We tried several others. Each time Sugar-Plum cowered outside, wrapped in my cloak, my hat pulled well down on her head while I entered and prowled the bars. Without my hat, cloak and fangs I passed unremarked.
I found Brian in the sixth pub. As soon as I spotted him I slipped back outside to Sugar-Plum. She gave me his keys and phone. I went up to him. He was sitting at a table. He looked too drunk to stand. I sat down beside him but out of reach if he decided to take a swing at me.
"Are you Brian?" I asked.
"Yes, who are you? You were at the party as Dracula." He could still speak.
"Someone asked me to give you these. I don't know her name. She just pointed you out and left."
"Is she OK? I'm worried about her."
"She's OK. She's a friend of my sister so she's being looked after."
I thought it better not to say I was looking after Sugar-Plum.
"She was concerned that she had your keys and phone. They are yours?"
"Yes. Thanks mate. I don't know what I would have done without them."
"Here you are. Thank her when you see her."
He put them on the table with exaggerated care. His coordination was shot.
"Thanks." He slowly picked up his drink, concentrating hard. I left him.
The barman intercepted me as I walked past the bar.
"Is he a mate of yours?"
"No. I don't know him. He left his keys outside. I was just returning them."
"He's drunk too much and says he can't go home."
"He can. He didn't have his door keys before. He has now."
"Are you sure you don't know him?"
