The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

Sylvester and the Missing Canal


Emerging from her room late in the morning, Tabbi entered the lounge. She had dressed in a spaghetti-strap, white tee-shirt and miniscule white cotton panties, either of which did much to cover Tabbi's somewhat generous curves.

The young woman was making a statement to her housemate and, wondered briefly, if he 'get-it', having decided that his stupid embarrassment had to be faced, after all.

She walked passed him and the television he was watching, blanket pulled up to his nose, as he lay on the sofa.

It was his favourite blanket, she recalled with a slight smile, on lips painted black, this day.
He was evidently still mourning the loss of his hair, as evidenced by the fact he still wore his recently acquired black leather cap.

Sylvester did not follow her to the kitchen with his eyes, as expected. Instead he chose to watch Chris Tarrant presenting the quiz show, 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire'.

“I'm making a proper coffee, do you want one?” Tabbi called as she entered the kitchen, swaying her still pert butt. He did not watch, she noticed, to her annoyance.

She did this rarely, as it was such a chore – 'but', Tabbi reasoned, 'this will be a bit of a treat, for the great unveiling.' And, imagining the smile she might wring from his face, Tabbi smiled as she busied herself, with coffee grounds and, 'finding the right amount'.

“Good coffee and a pleasant surprise will brighten his mood,” she mused quietly.

He'd been quiet and listless for days now and, his acquired laid-back manner perturbed her. For years they had been together and they knew one another well, or so she had thought. Although it mattered not a jot to her that Sylvester was younger than he appeared, yet it seemed so to him.

They had always had a tacit understanding, that though they each were as they were. Neither of them called it what it was, as if there was an unwritten rule. Even so, it was irksome to the extreme that she was hardly worth looking at. After all...

'He knew, or should,' she thought, 'that I want to be who I am and, that's desirable and hard, independent and... lovely...


* * *


“You need a change of scenery,” Tabbi announced a few moments later, two mugs of hot coffee in hand.

Sylvester only acknowledged her statement with a grunt, that Tabbi took to be one of irritation.

'Encouragement is required,' she told herself.

“There's something you should see,” Tabbi told Sylvester, as she took hold of his free hand with her left.

“Careful, coffee in hand,” he responded, resisting here entreaty, somewhat.

She pulled.

“So bring it with you,” Tabbi instructed.

She pulled harder and Sylvester rose, mug still in hand.

“Come with me Sylvester,” Tabbi added, “there's something I want to show you, alright?”
She was careful not to say 'old man': “And hold onto your mug.”

Sylvester relented and allowed her to guide him into a sitting position, so the blanket fell away, to reveal that beneath it he was dressed. He wore his long, leather coat of black; beneath which he wore an open-neck white shirt, ruffled down the front and at the cuffs. He also wore skin-tight coal-black jeans and black ankle boots, with a Cuban heel, of the finest Italian leather.

Tabbi did not register her surprise, just continued to pull. Finally Sylvester relented and stood, being careful not to spill his coffee as he did so.

Tabbi opened the white door in the recess below the stair, leading Sylvester by his left hand.

She led the way, half-hoping he'd be looking, whilst knowing he would not.

Downstairs in the basement, clutter abounded; with a workbench at one end and, a white sheet over a large something, that stood where Sylvester's machine had stood.

Tabbi steered Sylvester to the centre of the room telling him, “Wait here...”

Then she took pulled the sheet with a distinct flourish, to expose her handiwork.

Tabbi's modifications had been fairly radical.

A casing now surrounded the time-machine, leaving the disk at the back exposed.

The casing was silver, a homage to Hawkwind; a band from the nineteen seventies who Sylvester had encountered awhile back: it was his Silver Machine.

Tabbi opened a gull-wing panel facing them and exposed the machine itself, it's comfortable bench seating now gone. Instead two padded black bucket seats sat before the control arm, on which a mobile phone was now fixed firmly in place on the left, next to the handgrip.

Pointing to the phone Tabbi explained, “You know how to programme the longtitude and lattitude, so you can set where you want to travel to?”

“Yes,” Sylvester responded warily. He was reliant on his young friend to explain technology to him.
It had been that way since the first time she had show him how to use a kettle.

“Well,” she added brightly, “this new phone is voice activated. So now you can just say something like 'Bootle, Liverpool' and, that's where you'll be. Although, for fine-tuning the exact spot where you want to be, it's still best to be specific, using the old method...”


“How long did all this take?” Sylvester asked softly, filled with incredulity.

“Days,” she told him with a shy smile; “The idea is to provide shielding for the traveller through time corridor, so...”

She looked to the cap he wore.

“So there won't be any more little problems,” she finished.

He looked to his friend and allowed a grin to flit across his face; “My coffee's still hot, shall we finish our drinks somewhere nice?”

Tabbi grinned. It was all the answer Sylvester needed.

“All aboard!” He called, then entered the shell built around his time-machine and took his seat.
Tabbi followed, sat then closed the gull-wing door.

“Pass me your drink,” she instructed. He did.

Then switches were flipped and levers pulled. At the back the disc spun faster and faster. Then...


* * *


The sun was high and sweat filled the warm air, as it dipped down the sculpted, oiled bodies of the posturing men.

The two travellers had stopped on the wooden pathway, to look at the men with weights, working out inside a fenced off area of the beach.

“That's... so... brody...” a young woman's strident voice sang out, as one man with dark hair and a wide smile stood at the centre of a group of watching men and struck a pose.

Until that moment the fellow had looked big, in miniscule light-blue bikini-style 'trunks'; having flexed his upper body muscles, he looked simply enormous.

Rivulets of sweat trickled down oiled bronzed flesh and Sylvester looked to his companion, with a curious expression on his face.

“I know there are no canals Tabbi... but, I still can't use a mobile phone, as you'll have noticed. All that latitude and longitude malarky was just so confusing, so I set it by vocal command... and erm, I'm supposing that I should have emphasised what country...”

He glanced around, at the couples and singletons looking, passing by them on the boardwalk, all of them wearing so little that he wondered whether near nudity had become compulsory.

Tabbi looked to him and frowned a moment.

Then with a grin and her left eyebrow arched she quipped, “No really!?”

There was a sarcastic edge to her voice, “And, what makes you say that Sylvester? Could it be the smiling dark-haired fellow being filmed over there in muscleman paddock with an Austrian accent, who'll be back... one day?”