Episode 2

The Hillbilly Vampire Chronicles 2
The Peasnap Uprising


by Tonto Fielding © 2010. All rights reserved.

Website: www.hillbillyvampirechronicles.com
Blog: www.hillbillyvampire.blogspot.com
Email: tontofielding@gmail.com



“Buttercup, I have to find out who this could possibly be,” Mealy said to his favorite lamb.

Mealy Peasnap had in fact grown up in West Virginia, on the Kentucky border. He led a pretty average life; at least it seemed to him. His mother had no teeth (decay ravaged by Mountain Dew); none of his relatives graduated from high school, and his brother Little Bucket was caught with his half cousin, Pigfoot (called so, on account that his left foot had only two large toes, making it look like a cloven hoof) in flagrante, in the privy. Nothing out of the ordinary, for his side of the border. After all, all the uppity people were over in Kentucky.

Education and social dictates were meaningless when there was no money and thirteen people packed into a single two room shack. But Mealy made the best of the situation. He secretly learned how to read, and through his imagination the expanse of the world opened before him.

When his father and brothers and cousins were out hunting for Bigfoot (certain that it lived in the West Virginia mountains and would bring them fame and fortune) Mealy would be at the trading store reading scraps from newspapers used to wrap products (newspapers were not to be wasted on reading—they had more practical purposes, like packing stuff and wiping your butt).

Mealy’s father, Edgel, could shoot the eye out of a squirrel from a mile away. He simply loved squirrel—said it tasted just like frog, but was more tender and juicy. One time he had a bead on the mythic creature and plink, the bullet hit its target. They never found Bigfoot’s body though, when they finally scrambled up to the top of the ridge. Not long after that, Billy Ray Bob Steinberg started showing up at Temple Beth Shalom Y’all in Prestonsburg wearing an eye patch.

Sure that there was this huge world out there waiting for him, Mealy signed up for a hitch in the navy as soon as he could. Saying goodbye to the clan, he headed off to give service to his country and to discover ports unknown.

Unfortunately for him, in one of these ports (somewhere in the South Pacific) he was attacked by a prostitute in a brothel, who also happened to be a vampire. When he awoke as a vampire himself, his behavior became suspicious to the officers on his ship. Under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy he was quickly discharged as a fag.

Mealy was not actually a fag. But his tendency to search out lonely seamen, in hopes of draining them of their life source, got him put in the brig more than a couple of times. He had to feed on rat blood until he was deposited back in the States.

Returning to West Virginia was not an option for Mealy. He was related to practically every person within two counties of his birthplace and couldn’t stomach the notion of feeding on his own kind, so to speak.

But Mealy had heard about the hills of southern Ohio, from one of his buddies in the navy. It was full of people like him, yet also had a population of sophisticated and educated people. This appealed to him, because he had read everything that had come across his path since he learned how to read. Ohio offered the best of both worlds to Mealy.

Not sure if there were any other vampires in the area, or if there were vampire hunters around, Mealy stayed way off the grid. For a West Virginia hillbilly it was no problem at all. These were the hillbilliest of all the hillbillies on the planet (sorry Virginia and Arkansas). You could say that they were the MacGyver’s of the woods. With just a pocket knife, they could fashion any kind of structure in the deepest parts of the wilderness (and we’re talking areas never seen by hunter or Bigfoot).

For years Mealy had exclusive reign in the countryside. He fed to his hearts content on “barn critters,” as he referred to them. Why bother with stupid humans when you don’t have to?

But now, the discovery of another vampire on his turf was more than he could handle. He needed to find out who this person was. In fact he would lay a trap and catch whoever it was in the act of pilfering from his cornucopia. Oh yes, there was going to be a showdown—West Virginia style!

Gideon Chickenstalker was a four hundred pound vampire who had been raised in Athens County. He had the misfortune of being turned into a vampire, not long ago, when he ventured up to the big city of Columbus in search of pussy. It was a trip made out of desperation, because Gideon (being a virgin) had developed an addiction to having sex with warmed up cantaloupes (Cantaloupes--you might ask? When heated, a hole is cut into the melon, and well--you can guess the rest). During this mission to lose his virginity he had fallen prey to an incredibly hot professional dominatrix who was enjoying some off time in a club that catered to alternative lifestyles. Gideon had picked this club to cruise with purpose, figuring that it might have some fellow “trekkies” there (the kind of folk he could identify with). Gideon was mad about Star Trek, the original series.

The Mistress of Eternity, as she liked to call herself, at a later point tried to kill Gideon and his best friends, Amos Pecksniff and Esther Gradgrind (Esther adopted the name of Ginger Lynn, in deference to her favorite celebrity porn star), after Gideon had gotten her into hot water with the COUNCIL of vampires.

But eventually the Mistress, known to her intimates as Missy, ended up helping Gideon kill the head of the COUNSIL of vampires (initially an alliance of convenience) and as a result became another of Gideon’s close friends.

Gideon Chickenstalker shared a trailer with Esther and Amos, way out in a secluded holler. There used to be two trailers, but when the COUNCIL led an assault on the three residents (a result of an attempt to rid Gideon of his alliance with mortals), Gideon and Amos set fire to one of them in order to kill several of the blood thirsty vampires. The three now shared the one remaining trailer, which only recently was hooked up with plumbing. It was pretty much an “old school” hillbilly abode, including a cast iron stove with chimney coming out of a hole cut into the roof, as the only source of heat in the cold winter months. Pirated satellite television was their one modern convenience.

Esther was captured during the assault and a subsequent rescue was undertaken, with the help of the Mistress and Duff Durdle (former Mr. Ohio 1990). Duff was now serving the Mistress as a slave and as yet, has not been turned into a vampire.

Gideon, Esther and Amos, have been leading a life of relative peace since their last adventure. They get by with collecting bottles and cans from the county roads and selling them to recyclers for cash.

When they are not doing this, Esther is usually smoking her precious meth while Amos is passed out on the couch from drinking a fifth of vodka, and Gideon is out prowling the countryside for barn animals to drink from. He had recently tasted human blood for the very first time, when Esther whacked a trespasser over the head with a shovel and presented the limp body to Gideon to drink from.

He realized at that moment that animal blood would no longer suffice, yet his skills at accosting humans needed to be worked on. He looked to the Mistress to help him with this. In the mean time, he would drink from cows and the like until he acquired his new craft. Missy lived in Columbus and they only had the opportunity to get together during visits and go over Gideon’s designs for their new line of latex fetish attire. Gideon had discovered a hidden talent of designing clothes during a conversation he had struck up that one time, when she had come to Athens to kill him, dressed in her dominatrix get-up.