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Leave the personal stuff out of the stories. Nothing ruins them faster.

Morning After A Second Wake

A church, centuries old in its rugged architecture and grey, gothic spires, stands atop a hillside overlooking a quaint little town below all nestled in the surrounding horseshoe foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. Behind the cathedral's spires, the first rays of morning light bloom in a myriad of pastel colors.. bringing the first of yawns to the wintry, frozen town below.

Just past the open sanctuary was a small door, so small that a priest must bend over to pass its threshold, that stood ajar. Beyond it, one of the clergy leaned over a small basin stand and washed his hands of the dirt that clung to them. He was getting on in years, soon to reach his retirement from officiating services.. as nights like the last only served to remind him. One of the fold had been lost to the darkness, following her shock and abject trajectory from an opened grave site.

A common ritual that marked the fifth anniversary of one deceased.. the grave was dug up, the coffin pried open from rusted nails that had kept it shut.. and the corpse examined by several of the town's council and at least one officiating priest.

Father Aleksei turned and dried his hands on a small clean towel before kissing the white satin mantel he would soon don as part of his ritual morning dressing. And afterward he bent over to emerge through the rectory door again and into the large sanctuary where already the sun's morning rays splintered into colorful fragments by the stained glass windows. The first psalter of incense was lit and swung three times, back and forth before the altar.. then rehung from it's nearby iron sconce. Like every morning at sunrise, he prepared for the first mass of the day.. for those most faithful Orthodox parishioners of the town below. Unlike the Catholics though, communion was not feasted upon with each mass.. but rather reserved for the Christian equivalent of the Pesach holiday. Neither did they believe in the transfiguration of wafer and wine into the body and blood of their Lord.. for such was an affront to all that was holy.
It smacked of vampirism to those of the Orthodox Church.

Father Aleksei crossed himself and whispered the final rite of prayer before he turned to await his early morning flock.

In all his seventy-five years he had never once officiated over the exhumation of a corpse and found a fattened, blood sucking monstrosity laying in its place. Many times over the decades he had wondered whether such myths even held any truth in them. But there were always the whispers and the beliefs.. a friend of a friend who'd heard tale of unearthing a fetid vampire suspected of terrorizing the folk of any given town. But not here. Not in this peaceful little provinçial town all nestled in the heart of Carpathian Mountain foothills. Last night proved no exception either.. on the fifth anniversary of Gavriil Kinski's untimely death.

Just as he had expected, the corpse.. was just a corpse. The skeletal remains of bone and dust, withered away beneath shreds of disintegrated clothing. Nothing more. Nothing upon which any ghastly abominations need be performed. There was no smashing of the skull with a sledgehammer. No pounding of stakes through its center to pin it to the ground. And no incineration of its blood-filled vital parts, so that its ashes might be mixed into flour cakes and consumed by the living to ward off the vampire. He was simply reburied with quiet dignity.

"God be with you," he said quietly to the young lady who had entered and seated herself in a pew.