Celia Longo

Her arrival is a storm of noise and uncomfortable laughter, walking in broken heels and old lipstick. People are drawn to her, but few stay long. Still, she sips and hopes the next gathering won’t leave her feeling this hollow.

Celia Longo is 30 or so when she becomes a vampire, to her surprise. Her mother, Jasmine, grieving her own immortality, turned her to live with her ever after; a curse to anyone who had lived this far into her life in her house. As soon as she saw her teeth sharpen, and her mother's embrace closing her further in a place she could never call home, she ran out, though she was chased.

For three months she hid on the seaside, posing as a reclusive, seasick poet, until her mother is at her doorstep; another eight in the bustling city as a loud bartender, living in a shoddy apartment around where people go missing, until a familiar knock is heard at her door; a copywriter in some sleepy town, till she is found. A year in Flatpine, in a stone house abandoned, before a letter reaches her. Her mother had died on her way there, or so she assumes.

It only read to inform her that she had been named as a beneficiary in the last will of her mother, who passed away three weeks before. As she breathes out, relief, as she breathes in, guilt, restlessness.

Still, in a new land and with no one around, and no reason to continue running, she stays, but the silence suffocates her. Questions that she kept avoiding come creeping in, regarding herself, the people around her, and she runs from them. She distracts herself hosting parties, pulling people in and hoping someone will stick, to carry her forward.

Here, she builds herself as a ‘mature’ vampire for this town. Regardless of whatever theme she has spun the party around, she is always found donning purple and black tight outfits, a signature plum scarf, and red jewelry. Voluminous dark brown hair, pulled slightly back, and expired makeup add to her aged look. Her skin is pale and intact, save for wrinkles. In the mirror, though, she sees nothing, the same nothing she would have seen if she were alive. She doesn’t know who she is and can’t decide what can make her happy.

Years of this chasm inside her come about with no solution and she grows impatient, her parties more frequent.

What were fun quirks become destructive habits. Her parties grow in excess, and they are more and more performative and disorienting. Whether they are themed after something sci-fi, a season that hasn't started yet, or a funeral for someone still alive, she becomes a nuisance to the local community. Local attendees phase out of attendance, though she remains reputable among vampires. More often than not, her parties end sourly, in heated arguments, once even in a week-long scandal where she kicked out all of her guests, believing them to have been conspiring against her. But they came back, out of morbid curiosity, and found her cheer seemingly renewed.

Somewhat more careful now, she still really, really does not wish to be alone. She lives in that decrepit mansion, prettied up for events, but succumbing to age anyway. In the 30 years she has lived here, she finds herself slowing down on heated flings, currently engaged with a fiancé, and tangled up with some other, more transient guests. She is struggling to commit, quietly expecting the other shoe to drop and to be trapped again. She doesn’t know what to do, but prefers to sip on some blood nectar and give some relationship advice to someone who isn’t her. Croner, mainly, whom she visits in the aftermath of worse parties, trying to fix his loneliness the way she avoids her own. It isn’t welcome advice.