Urban Legends And Tales

Dinner With Vivianna

That is, until she transferred to our school.

Vivianna Alexander was her name. She showed up one day in class out of nowhere. She was perfect! Lovely pale skin, deep dark hair, secretive eyes, she was the Fairuza Balk to my... Well, there wasn't a male lead in that movie, so she was the Balk to my... me. She was new to the school so she had no friends for me to compete with. Does all of this make me sound creepy? C'mon, I'm 16, how developed do you expect me to be? I saw this as a sign. So, in true Cameron fashion, I avoided her and instead tried to dig up some information. There wasn't much to dig, though. Ike knew less about her than I did. All I was able to get from asking around to the few people that would speak to me was that she'd come here from another town due to family issues. I had no idea what those issues were. That would involve speaking to her, but I figured that it'd bode well for me to get to know her. After all, I had a few issues at home too. My mother was raising me alone, and she was a handful anyway. Big old half Sicilian woman, loved to eat and talk at volumes far beyond those of normal social standards. Still though, the challenge was in talking to her, which is not something I excelled at well. However, fate seemed to be on my side throughout, as a few events happened that led me right into her home.

She mutilated a bird. That's what started it. See, everyone was saying how weird she was. She would sit in silence, eat lunch alone, and walk with her head down. On paper, it would seem that her self-esteem was just low enough to make her a perfect candidate to date me. People left her alone for the most part. Some of the girls called her Lydia, like from Beetlejuice I guess, while a few others asked her once or twice if she worshiped Satan. That was about the extent of it though. She wasn't really focused on until the bird incident. No one knows why she did it either, and with my luck, I missed it when it happened. Kids were saying though that she was seen at lunch slicing open a bird on one of the outdoor stone tables near the cafeteria. See, Warren Easton was located about a half mile from downtown New Orleans, so we got a lot of pigeons. Most of the kids would toss them bread during lunch, so these birds knew where to come everyday for a good meal. According to the rumor mill, Vivianna had managed to catch one. Kids were watching as she gently picked the bird up, laid it down on the table before her, and proceeded to use a fork (yes, a fork) to slice it open down the stomach. People watched on in shock and awe as she then dipped her finger into its open guts and took a taste of its blood.

Now, at first I thought this was all bogus. They already were calling her a devil worshipper, so the idea of her killing a bird in the name of her dark lord just seemed too convenient. I was ready to rule it out, but then Ike called me that night and told me that he saw it happen. I would have laughed at anyone else, but Ike didn't lie. He called and told me something like,

"Dude, that freaky girl you like killed a bird at lunch today and drank its blood."

We talked about that for a long time, and he swore on all the characters of Final Fantasy and beyond that it happened, just like that. The next day she wasn't at school, as she'd likely been suspended, but all the kids were talking now. Those hard to find rumors were fleshing themselves out, as suddenly everyone was a subject matter expert on Vivianna.

"She had to transfer from her old school because the police found out what her family really does," said one girl to me as I sat down in class.

"Her family was kidnapping local homeless people," said another.

"They were caught running a Satanic Cult and had to move out of their last neighborhood," confirmed a third.

By the end of that day I heard that she was a Satanist, a serial killer and finally even a cannibal. Someone even claimed that her father ran a restaurant that was secretly serving human to wealthy weirdos, and the cops had caught on. I didn't really believe much of it, as most of those claims should have wound her family up in jail, not just moving to another school. However, the bird incident seemed to have really happened, as not just Ike but just about everyone else that shared a lunch period with her swore to it. There was even a little reddish-brown stain on the table where she'd been sitting. Bird blood perhaps?