10am. Three of the household were standing and sitting around in what passed for the kitchen. The group’s fourth member had not yet emerged from upstairs. The radio in the kitchen was being hummed to by a particularly blue, skinny individual, who was sat with his elbows on the table and his head resting on one hand. Opposite him was sat someone else, considerably taller and with long, luxurious white hair, peering at him studiously over the rim of the glass he was drinking from. The contents of the glass may have been mistakable for red wine at a glance, except that it was suspiciously opaque and a little thicker than red wine really ought to have been. 
   As he put the glass down on the table, the white-haired character watched a large, blue-black feather float down and drop into what he’d been drinking. Sitting up straight, he eyed he feather’s owner wearily: a tall, blue-skinned type, sporting a grand pair of beautiful, feathery wings, who was currently dropping a few slices of bread into a toaster.  “Janos, are you moulting again?” Janos switched the toaster on, and turned around.
   “Am I? I’m sorry, Kain. You know I can’t help it.”
   “I know,” sighed Kain, “I know. Just mind where you’re leaving your feathers, all right?” He fished the feather out of his glass and tossed it away. Janos rolled his eyes tiresomely, then glanced at the source of the previously humming voice, which was now singing a song completely different the one playing on the radio. “… Raziel, are you feeling all right?” There was no response. “Raziel?” Still, Raziel failed to supply an answer. He was singing something quietly to himself about a priest swinging from a chandelier and pissing on a crowd, staring past Kain and out of the window. “He’s not listening,” remarked Kain. “Look, let me do it.” He took a deep breath, and, leaning forwards over the table, bellowed at the top of his lungs, “RAZIEL!!!”
   “AAARRGH!!” screamed Raziel, falling backwards off his chair. “My life is a lie!!” Sitting back down, Kain smiled mischievously to himself as Raziel, having recovered from the initial shock of being screamed at in the middle of a daydream, dragged himself up off the floor, and glared at Kain over the table. “What?” he asked, irritably. 
   “Janos wants to talk to you,” chuckled Kain. Raziel stared groggily at Janos.
   “All right, what do you want?”
   “I was just wondering,” said Janos, “Where Vorador is. I haven’t seen him this morning.”
   “Don’t worry yourself,” laughed Vorador, finally making his appearance from upstairs, a bundle of sheets in his arms. “I haven’t gone anywhere.” He dumped the sheets on the floor infront of the rattling, shaking box of metal and plastic that was supposedly a washing machine. “Ah,” said Raziel. “Washing your bedsheets yet again, I see, Vorador.”
   “So how many women did you have rolling around with you in those sheets last night?” joked Kain, raising an eyebrow. He was actually quite disturbed when Vorador’s brow creased in deep thought and he began to count on his fingers. “Never mind,” said Kain, shaking his head.
   “Man-whore,” muttered Raziel, with a grunt.
   “Jealous,” teased Vorador, grinning at him. Then he paused, noticing something. “Janos, you aren’t making toast again, are you?”
   “I like toast,” said Janos, folding his arms. “Is that a crime?
   “But you can’t digest it,” remarked Vorador. “You’re a vampire, in case you’ve forgotten.”
   “I can digest it perfectly well,” protested Janos, “Thankyou very much.”
   Oh, of course. And I suppose that’s why you spent the best part of yesterday, and the day before that, complaining about those terrible stomach cramps, is it?” Janos was about to reply when Raziel pointed out to him that smoke was rising from the toaster. “The spring that makes the toast pop up must be broken again,” groaned Kain. “Who bought that wretched toaster in the first place, anyway?”
   “You,” replied Raziel, Vorador and Janos, in unison. Kain looked sheepish.
   “Oh. So I did. Heh.”
   “You are not going to set my toast on fire again, you infernal machine!” remarked Janos, grabbing a metal fork from the drawer and preparing to jam it into the toaster. “Janos!” cried Raziel. “Don’t do that!”
   “Do what?” asked Janos, and stuck the fork into one of the toaster’s slots. There was a loud bang as the fork short-circuited the toaster.

   “… Janos? Hello?”
   “Look! He moved!”
   “Thank god…”
   “Janos, can you hear me?”
   “I think he’s coming to.”
   “I told him not to do it, but no…”
   “Oh, shut up, for crying out loud.”
   “Hello, hello? Janos? He’s waking up.” When Janos opened his eyes and his vision was less blurred, he could just about make out Vorador, Raziel and Kain, hovering around him. “W, where am I?” Vorador breathed a sigh of relief.
   “He’s alive… Thank god.”
   “What happened?” asked Janos, trying to sit up and look around but finding that he felt very weak.
   “When you stuck that fork in the toaster you took an electric shock from the mains.” Raziel told him. “Well done.” Janos groaned.
   “Oh… I can’t feel my hands… where are my… oh, wait. There they are.” Kain smiled at him.
   “I wouldn’t worry. With hands, I usually just sit back and trust that they’re right there at the end of my arms.” He clenched and unclenched is fists a few times. “There, you see?”
   “Oh, and by the way,” added Vorador, “You blew up the toaster as well.” He smiled a little. “Beauter.”
   “Never, ever do that again, you understand?” scolded Raziel, harshly. “It nearly scared the unlife out of us when we thought you’d stopped breathing.”
   “Sorry,” said Janos, managing to sit up, with Vorador’s assistance. Looking around, he saw that he was in the small, more or less square chamber that was his bedroom, on his bed. The others were clustered around him, with barely enough room to breathe.
    The room itself was probably the tidiest room in the whole house, the rest of which was usually such a mess that it looked as though students lived there. There were shelves upon shelves of old, tattered, dog-eared books and miscellaneous clutter. The best part of said clutter could easily be mistaken for junk, to the untrained eye, but to Janos, it was very important clutter, containing vast reserves of precious memories and sentimental value. He didn’t tend to spend much time in here, though, other than when he was sleeping. Having a tiny bedroom and enormous wings didn’t tend to be very practical. But Janos knew very well that it could be worse, however, since there were four vampires and only three bedrooms – he counted himself lucky that he wasn’t having to share a bed with Raziel, as Kain was. Even the thought alone scared him.
    “We knew we probably shouldn’t have moved you,” Raziel told Janos, “But we thought it best if we brought you up here to recover.”
   “I’m quite sure that it’s only when a person has broken bones that you aren’t supposed to move them,” said Kain. “I think it’s all right to move someone if they’ve had an electric shock.”
   “You aren’t meant to,” argued Vorador. “Because of shock or paralysis or some such thing.” His brow furrowed slightly. “At least, I think so…”
   “It’s fine to move them as long as you make sure they can breathe,” said Raziel, shaking his head.
   “I didn’t see you doing that,” remarked Kain, haughtily.
   “I didn’t see you doing it, either.” snapped Raziel. As the debate ploughed on, Janos sat and listened, wondering how in the world he could possibly have survived.
    It was times like this that really made him think. The four of them had been living in this god-forsaken hell-hole called a house together for only a short time, compared to how long the rest of their lives had been, but already it was looking as though it was a bad idea. Their personalities just didn’t seem to mix very well in what should ideally be a co-operative environment. Raziel clearly had a number of very serious issues that bothered him on a regular basis, and tended to bother everyone else on an even more regular basis. This in turn made Kain, having the least-existent sense of humour, resent him and Kain had also developed a tendency to pick on Raziel sometimes if the opportunity arose. And Vorador… Janos didn’t even want to speculate on what Vorador had become. It seemed almost as though he missed having all of those female vampires around him. Since getting to know the local area a little better, Vorador had begun to go out ‘clubbing’ every evening (this is what he usually said, but everyone knew where he was really going, and it definitely was not a legitimate night-club). Then he’d come home at some horrific hour in the middle of the night come early morning, bringing at least three strange women back with him, and on the odd occasion, coming in drunk off his face and being almost carried in by them. He’d make enough noise to wake the dead, so to speak, rousing the rest of his housemates from their slumber, and then proceed, often very loudly, to invite his ‘guests’ up to his bedroom. From that moment on, nobody slept. Janos seriously wondered how he did it. Not only was he able to pull even these modern young women with unnatural ease, but he could do it every single night, not get any sleep at all, be fresh as a daisy the next morning and then go out and do it again the following evening. Something very funny was going on there. Even funnier was the mystery of why none of the others ever saw Vorador’s ‘companions’ leave the house in the morning, and yet somehow they were able be unquestionably absent from the premises by 9 o’clock. They just seemed to vanish. Raziel had suggested once that perhaps they had eaten themselves, but, like most of Raziel’s theories as to why unusual things happened, this didn’t seem very likely.
    Another thought came to Janos’ mind as the others stood around him squabbling. “… Excuse me… what happened to my toast?”
   “Oh,” said Kain. “It’s in the toaster.”
   “And where is the toaster?” asked Janos.
   “Out of the window where Raziel threw it,” replied Vorador. “In a heap of mud and shattered glass, as I recall,” he added, throwing Raziel a black look.
   “It was on fire!” protested Raziel. “What was I supposed to do?”
   “If you’d have stopped to think ahead for once,” sneered Kain, disdainfully, “You might just have thought of throwing the fire blanket over it!”
   “You mean Raziel broke the window?” asked Janos.
   “Yes.” answered Kain, levelly. Janos covered his eyes with his hand.
   “Oh, I don’t believe it… Raziel,” he said, eventually looking up and trying not to sound angry, “I know it can be… very hard for you sometimes, but you really must learn to control your temper. We can’t afford to replace any more windows. You know how little money we have.”
   “Especially with Vorador spending it all on booze and women,” growled Kain, under his breath. Vorador glared at him.
   “How dare you! I do most certainly not spend all our money on booze and women! What in the world makes you think I’d do that!?” Kain glared back.
   “Oh, I don’t know… Could it be the way you go out every night and come back drunk out of your mind with three or four perfect strangers?”
   “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
   “Of course you don’t! You’re always too hammered to remember anything!”
   “What!?” 
   Leaving Kain and Vorador to argue between themselves, Raziel tried to explain himself. It always made him feel terrible when Janos told him off without actually telling him off at all. “I’m really, really sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking. I won’t do it again.”
   “I hope not,” sighed Janos. “It isn’t as though money grows on trees in this day and age.”
   “I know,” said Raziel, looking at the floor. “I’m sorry.”
   “Well… as long as you’re sorry, that’s alright.” Janos heaved himself off the bed, and somehow managed to slip past Kain and Vorador, who were still arguing very heatedly, without knocking anything off the shelves. Raziel followed him out of the room, strongly doubting that Kain or Vorador had even noticed them leave. “Are… are you alright, Janos?” asked Raziel, seeing that Janos was a little unsteady on his feet. Janos smiled at him, and nodded.
   “Yes, I’m fine. Don’t concern yourself with me. Come along. We have glass to sweep up.” Raziel nodded slowly, still feeling strangely guilty for what he had done. He wished he knew how Janos did that.
    It was half an hour later when the screaming argument ringing from upstairs stopped. “Do you think they’ve noticed we aren’t there and stopped shouting at eachother?” asked Raziel, tipping another dustpan of glass and shrapnel-like fragments of toaster into the bin. Janos peered up the stairs. 
   “I hope so,” he said. “I don’t like fighting.”
   “It all sounds quiet enough,” remarked Raziel, walking back towards the broken window through which the now gently smouldering toaster had recently been propelled.
   “Kain always gets so agitated when we have money trouble,” lamented Janos, gloomily, putting on a pair of oven gloves. “It causes many problems when his temper grows short this way…”
   “You say that as though we don’t have money trouble all the time,” said Raziel, picking up the larger pieces of glass by hand.
   “Indeed,” agreed Janos. “That is true.” He walked out through the door, still wearing the oven gloves, to pick up the toaster. He was just returning with it, when there was suddenly a loud crash from upstairs. “Oh no,” groaned Janos, looking. “What now? I should deal with this before more things get broken… Here, take this.” He gave the toaster to Raziel, before hurrying up the stairs. Raziel was just about to run after him, when he realised that the toaster was still very hot and was burning his hands, which weren’t covered with oven gloves. “Ow ow ow, hot, hot, hot, ow, ow, ow -” He juggled the toaster for a few moments, then threw it out of the window again and rushed after Janos. When he got to the top of the stairs, he saw that Janos was already pressed against a wall as Kain stumbled backwards towards the landing, having been dealt a hefty punch to the jaw by Vorador, who was already sporting a bloody nose. “What happened!?” Raziel asked Janos, as Kain and Vorador stood and snarled at eachother. “What in Nosgoth is going on!?”
   “It seems,” said Janos, regretfully, “That the argument is far from over after all.”
   “Aren’t you going to do anything!?” cried Raziel. “They’ll kill eachother!”
   “I… don’t think we should interfere,” remarked Janos, watching Kain take a swat at Vorador. “If we try to get in the way it could very easily make things worse.” Raziel, seeing Janos’ point, sidled cautiously around Kain and Vorador, and tried to come up with some sort of plan, but he couldn’t think of anything. He just couldn’t take his eyes off the two of them. “Is this what money trouble does to normal people?” asked Janos, equally stunned by the other pair’s behaviour. “They’re acting like animals!” Raziel didn’t reply. What Janos had said was true. Vorador’s ears had flattened against his head as he stood glaring at Kain, his cat-like pupils thin slits of colour in his rage. Kain was glaring back just as hard, a couple of bleeding slashes across his left cheek where Vorador’s claws had caught his face. He had his own hand drawn back ready to strike if Vorador came too near, as both of them stood just out of arm’s length of eachother, fangs bared, bellowing and hissing at eachother like beasts. “I thought they respected eachother!” said Raziel, eventually. “I can’t believe I’m seeing this!”
   “I don’t know what’s come over them,” said Janos, still not moving any nearer. “I never thought I’d see Kain and Vorador fight like this. Not after all they have been through together!” Eventually, Janos raised his voice to shout to Vorador and Kain. “Stop this at once! Violence solves nothing!” But they weren’t listening. Either that or they firmly believed that this was one particular problem what violence could, and would solve.
    Raziel watched in horror as Vorador, having had enough of standing around, lunged at Kain, who was only inches away from the top of the stairs. He gasped, seeing what was about to happen. “Kain! Vorador! No!” But it was too late. As Vorador slammed into Kain, he knocked him backwards, and over the edge of the top step. There was a series of loud thuds as they tumbled down the stairs, still clawing viciously at eachother’s throats until they hit the floor and fell into the cabinet at the bottom with a crash. Janos ran to the top of the stairs and stared aghast at the scene of utter destruction on the floor below. Amongst the shattered pieces of crockery which had been in the cabinet, and the splinters of wood which had previously been the cabinet itself, Vorador and Kain were lying in a dazed heap. “Fucking hell!” he screamed, then clamped his hands over his mouth, realising that he’d said it out loud. He slowly turned to look at Raziel, who was gazing at him with an expression of complete disbelief on his face. “What did you say!?” Janos swallowed hard.
   “Uh, I, um, don’t you think we should be more concerned about Vorador and Kain?” he asked, quickly.
   “I didn’t think you even knew words like that!” exclaimed Raziel, not concerned at all. “That is absolutely incredible!”
   “Look! They aren’t moving!” cried Janos, pointing desperately down the stairs.
   “Now I’ve seen everything!” remarked Raziel, not looking. “I’m impressed!”
   “There’s blood on the carpet down there!” said Janos, almost shouting and still pointing at Vorador and Kain with a shaking finger. “I think they may be seriously hurt!”
   “How come I’ve never heard you curse like that before, Janos?” asked Raziel, captivated.
   “… I don’t know!” replied Janos, getting very anxious and starting to have half a mind to shove Raziel down the stairs as well to shut him up and make him pay attention to Vorador and Kain. “There are more important things to worry about!” He grabbed Raziel’s head in both hands and pointed him down the stairs.
   “Oh, god!” gasped Raziel. “They’re not moving! And it looks as though there’s blood on the carpet! Janos, I think they could be really hurt! What are we doing standing up here!? Come on!” Janos fell silent with sheer stupefaction as he watched Raziel dash down the stairs to see if Kain and Vorador were all right, eventually running down after him. Once down there, Raziel gave Kain a nudge. “Kain. Kain, are you all right? Can you hear me? Kain, come on. Wake up, Kain.” After a few minutes of this, as Janos saw to Vorador, Kain groaned, and clutched his skull. “… Aaarrgh… who dropped a blasted rock on my head…?”
   “Can you get up?” asked Raziel, putting a hand on Kain’s shoulder.
   “… I can’t feel my legs,” said Kain, after a long pause.
   “That’s probably because Vorador is lying on top of you,” remarked Janos, picking Vorador up and carrying him to a sofa. “There. That’s better.”
   “What happened?” asked Kain, as Raziel helped him to his feet. “My head is spinning…”
   “You fell down the stairs,” Raziel told him. “Look, and you smashed the crockery, as well.”
   “Oh, great.” grunted Kain, remembering. “More expenses… Where’s Vorador? It’s his fault this happened in the first place!”
   “Why is it Vorador’s fault?” asked Raziel. “Why were you fighting?”
   “He hit me first,” replied Kain. “Vorador started it.”
   “I wasn’t asking who started it,” said Raziel. “I asked why.”
   “Oh. I called him a drunken slut. And he hit me.”
   “I’m not surprised! What possessed you to do that!?”
   “He is a drunken slut!”
   “Ah. Good point.”
   “Raziel!” scolded Janos, wiping the blood from a wound on the side of Vorador’s head with a damp cloth. “You aren’t supposed to agree with him!”
   “You’ve got to admit, though,” said Raziel. “He is a bit of a man-whore.” Kain chuckled.
   “Vorador the Man-whore. It even rhymes. Doesn’t that tell you something?” Janos could feel his considerable patience wearing thin. 
   “Just because it rhymes, it doesn’t give it meaning, Kain.”
   “Of course it does.” said Kain. “Take that rhyme we made up about Moebius, for example –”
   “- All right, fine.” said Janos, getting annoyed. “That particular rhyme does have some meaning.”
   “There, you see?” asked Raziel. Janos sighed tiresomely.
   “Oh, I give up…” He knew very well that when Kain and Raziel ganged up on someone in a discussion like that there was no winning.
   “Not only that,” added Raziel, “But there was the one we made up about the Elder God, and the one about the Hylden –”
   “- And the one about Ariel,” said Kain, “And the one about Zephon –” Raziel laughed to himself.
   “Hee… the one about Zephon was funny…”
   “The one about Ariel was funnier,” said Kain.
   “Is that all you two do all day?” asked Janos, getting to the end of his tether. “Sit around and write insulting lyrics about people?”
   “Yes, I’d say so,” replied Kain, matter-of-factly.
   “I don’t know about you but it makes my job a lot easier,” remarked Raziel. “I wrote a new one about Turel the other day, you know. Would you like to hear it?”
   “No.” said Janos, flatly.
   “Janos!” protested Kain. “I want to hear Raziel’s rhyme!”
   “Well I don’t!” argued Janos, having had enough.
   “But I haven’t heard it yet!”
   “Neither have I! And I intend for it to remain that way!”
   “Oh, come on.”
   “No!”
   “Please?”
   “I said ‘no’, Kain!”
   “Raziel, tell me anyway.” Raziel shrugged.
   “Yeah, all right. Ahem. ‘There once was a –” Just then, Janos stood up.
   “RAZIEL!” Suddenly the words seemed to stick in what was left of Raziel’s throat. Janos was staring at him angrily. He couldn’t move. He was nailed to the spot and it felt like Janos’ glare was burning holes in him. “Ugh… Never mind…” There was total silence for some minutes after that, as Janos sat down on the sofa and continued to tend to Vorador’s wounds. Kain and Raziel looked at eachother, saying nothing, but knowing that neither of them had ever been so frightened in their whole lives as they had been a few moments ago.
    After a while, the tense silence was broken by a mumble from Vorador. “Oh… w, what the… ow…”
   “Is he all right?” asked Raziel, finding the courage to say something but not quite feeling brave enough to go any nearer to Janos.
   “I certainly hope so.” replied Janos. “He’s had a bad blow to the head. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a concussion.”
   “Is that you, Janos?” asked Vorador, opening his eyes and gradually sitting up. “Did I get hit by another car?”
   “No,” Janos told him, remembering all too well the last time Vorador had got drunk and tried to cross the road by himself. “You fell down the stairs.” Vorador thought about this for a while.
   “Oh. Right.”
   “… Don’t you remember?” asked Kain.
   “No,” replied Vorador. “I don’t think so.”
   “What is the last thing you do remember doing?” asked Raziel. Vorador looked at the floor.
   “Uh… The last thing I remember is carrying Janos up the stairs and seeing him wake up,” he answered. “Which reminds me, are you all right, Janos?” Janos nodded.
   “Yes. Don’t concern yourself with me. We are more concerned about you.”
   “I feel a little faint,” remarked Vorador. “Did I hit my head on the way down the stairs?”
   “Don’t you remember anything?” asked Raziel.
   “No,” said Vorador. “What happened?”
   “Well,” said Kain, “First of all I said that you were –”
   “- Never mind,” Janos interrupted him, firmly. He turned to Vorador. “You see,” he explained, hoping to avoid the breakout of another fight, “You fell down the stairs and hit the cabinet at the bottom. You were knocked unconscious, so I assume that yes, you did hit you head.”
   “All the crockery’s broken,” added Raziel.
   “Is it?” asked Vorador. “Oh, well…”
   “It seems as though you have lost some of your short-term memory, Vorador.” observed Janos. “But I don’t think that you have done yourself any real harm.” Vorador nodded, but then noticed Kain.
   “You look beaten, Kain. What happened? Did you get into a fight with someone?” Kain was about to tell Vorador who exactly he got into a fight with, but stopped, seeing that Janos was looking at him. He rethought his answer. “Oh, I, well, uh –” He couldn’t think of anything that sounded plausible. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, giving up. “It’s nothing.”
   “Are you aware that you’re bleeding, Kain?” asked Vorador. “It looks almost as though something tried to maul you…”
   “It’s nothing,” repeated Kain. “Forget about it.”
   “If you say so. By the way,” added Vorador, “What happened to the toaster? Is it still outside?”
   “No,” said Janos. “I brought it in.”
   “Where is it?” asked Kain. “You aren’t supposed to put hot things in plastic bin liners."
   “I gave it to Raziel,” replied Janos. All eyes turned to focus on Raziel, who suddenly recalled where he had put the toaster.
   “So where did you put it, Raziel?” asked Kain. “You didn’t put it in a plastic bin liner, did you?” Raziel knew damned well that he was going to be in a lot of Trouble. And the capital letter was important, because when Kain stared at you like that, Trouble was inexorable. Raziel guessed that Kain already knew.
   “I… ugh… um… I, I… err…” He began to wave his hands around in an effort to express himself. His voice appeared to be hiding in some dark corner of his mind, most likely the same place in which the part of his brain that was supposed to do the thinking ahead was hiding. Vorador’s face lit up as he sat up on the sofa. “Charades! I love this game!” He, Janos and Kain peered at Raziel, trying to decipher Raziel’s demented sign language. “Box,” said Vorador. “Case, uh… toaster! Right, toaster. Toaster, um, cradle? What, throw? All right! Box. Sheet. Glass. Window!” Kain scratched his head.
   “Raziel, do you ever make any sense?”
   “No, wait,” said Janos. “Go through that again, Raziel. Toaster, throw, window…” Silence fell over the room. Raziel cringed as a collective groan rose up around him: “Oh, Raziel!”