Today is the day.
There’s something I’ve kept hidden about myself for centuries now. Revealing this secret could change the entire direction of my immortal life. Not even my Alice knows, so well have I kept this tidbit to myself.
Y’all know I fought during the Civil War, and spent my younger years in the grand state of Texas. My drawl, in some circles, is even more famous than my gift for manipulating peoples emotions.
I am, quite possibly, the most fierce vampire in the Cullen family.
But here’s the truth: I’m actually British. I’ve been droppin'’ my g’s for so many centuries that it’s taken me a decade to find them all again in my inner voice. Also, if we’re laying everything out for inspection, I’ve always found the letter R rather distasteful, and it’s been so lovely to lighten it, even if no one else can hear me.
I’ll let that sink in for a minute with you, dear reader; let that voice that creates your internal monologue change from it’s Matthew McConanakedbongos with a little John Wayne on the side, to something of a more Hugh-ish variety.
Think Hugh Grant, narrating “Love Actually” and Hugh Laurie during an off-color interview for “House”, and, if you feel in the mood, you can add more than a touch of Hugh Hefner’s vintage swagger.
So what does this mean?, you ask, Why is this even important to the story, Jasper?
Well, it means my entire life has been a lie.
Yes, I was attacked and ravaged by newborn vampires, and regularly bitten by a raven-haired broad named Maria.
Do you honestly think, however, that I would just eat someone whole like a savage? Would I, a proper British gentlemen, tear open a neck filled with scarlet blood so deep it turned aubergine in the moonlight and gulp it down?
Of course not.
There’s a reason why my Alice has a certain affinity for teacups, and the very first one she “found” was the one I used for my Civil War Teatime.
Tilting a neck just so, it formed the perfect spout; a human My Little Teapot.
My Alice thinks she collects those dainty vessels with coordinating saucers because her mind works the way the ancients read tea leaves, stirring the rehydrated plants pieces until they say the right things.
The reality is that the cups are my only connection to my true identity. I may not remember where I came from exactly, but I do know that Maria was the only one smart enough to read my gifts for what they were worth.
She appreciated a proper tea, and made sure that every morsel I consumed coached me in the nuances of a Southern Texas accent to the point that my Britishisms were undetectable. I helped her create an army, she helped me hide behind a new identity.
So tonight, on this the five-hundredth anniversary of Mary Alice Brandon branding me hers, culling my senses to fit into the mold of a Cullen, I am revealing to her my true heritage.
I’ve prepared for the two of us a true English tea, with blood sausages I found at a butcher shop in Port Angeles, and the red drip, drip, droppings of a perfect doe that I’ve been saving, hidden in a tree near our treaty line with the wolves, for the last hundred years.
It’s a good thing I can live forever, because the planning of this one evening has taken me longer than a natural human lifespan.
It only takes one “Darlin'’”, though, for that girl to drop her drawers, but I’m much more interested in divesting her of her knickers tonight. I’ve been a Southern gentlemen my whole married life, but she’s no idea the things I can do with this semi-royal semi I’m growing for this evenings affairs.
I’ve blasted the rest of the house with enough lust to keep then occupied the rest of the night, and when my beloved comes upstairs I’m in a suit, my boots tossed in the back of my closet.
She gives me the arched eyebrow of a true demi-demon, and I match her in mirror image.
“Hello, my fair lady. How are you this evenin'’?”
She’s so hard to surprise, that Mary Alice, but I’ve kept this from her flawlessly.
“All right, Mister, I know you’ve got something to tell me so just spill your damn beans already.”
After centuries together in the same house, Alice has perfected a feminine version of the slang I mastered in Texas.
I decide to tell her like a balloon deflates on a too hot day. So slowly, with every syllable wrought in my most precise dialects, I tell her my deep, dark secret.
“My Darlin'’ Clementine, I’m not the Southern man you think I am, I may have fought in the War of Northern Aggression, but I hail, originally…”
I clear my throat and work my jaw back and forth to give her fair warning.
“…From somewhere near London. I’ve no relatives remaining to ask precisely my conceptual whereabouts, but the manner in which I’m speaking at this very moment is the voice with which I first uttered the English language.”
She just stands there, switching the arch in her eyebrows from left to right, and adding a pissy hip-cock to her overall demeanor.
“I… don’t believe you. You sound ridiculous. Is this because you found my copy of Vanity Fair with that Twilight boy on the cover? I’m all for role playing, honey, but this is taking it too far.”
I laugh, feeling like the wide mouthed frog must have felt upon encountering his foe the dreadful alligator. Ali the Alligator has the sharpest little teeth.
“I planned for this, actually, my dear girl, and wrote you a letter to better explain my confession.”
I hand her the tri-folded paper and she snatches it from me in a huff, flipping it open and reading the entire thing before most humans have time to blink.
“Really, Jasper, you expect to think that because you now spell favourite, colour, candour, and splendour differently that I don’t know who you really are?”
“I’ve been holding all this back from you, but you are the most important thing to me. You do know me, with the exception of this one tiny detail.”
“Yes, there seem to be a lot of extra u’s in this situation.”
She sits down on our bed, closing her eyes to process everything she’s heard and read. Finally she speaks to me cautiously.
“So you’re the one who’s been rearranging my teacups then, yes?”
“Yes, I love those bloody cups.”
She throws her hands up in the air in frustration and I nearly defenestrate myself with my uproarious laughter.
“Well, Darlin'”, she says with a sigh, “between the two of us, no one in this house is going to believe you talk like that Robert Pattinson bloke, so you might as well stick with your panty droppin'’ drawl. In fact, I’ll take mine off twice if you’ll just shut up right now.”
Stuffing my authentic voice back inside my head, I switch to the one she’s more comfortable with. And I do mean comfortable.
“All right little lady, I reckon I’ll do whatever you please.”
She starts to untie the waist of her wrap-around skirt and then stops abruptly, like she does when she’s seeing a vision.
“Darlin’, this is no time to be dealin'’ out the tea leaves in that mind of yours.”
“No, no it’s not that, it’s just… We’re not going to have to start listening to The Beatles all the time are we? I don’t think I can stomach the British shtick with a side of yellow submarine too.”
“Don’t worry, Miss, I’ve been a Stones fan for the last three hundred years.”
With that the skirt was on the floor.
“So, 007, how do you like my new knickers?” She shimmied her bum in a most scintillating way.
“I thought you said you weren’t keen on the role playing tonight?”
“Well, I may have changed my mind…”
Happiest birthday to my favourite Scottish girl! I hope you enjoyed your bad, silly, British humour. I've wanted to write you this Jasper for so long! I love you, Mz. M, and I hope your Boy and your Bub are so so good to you today.
