On my daily walks around the neighborhood I would meet the same woman and man walking their dog. By this time, the dog would come up to me and cautiously smell me. I think that it was getting to know me and knew that I was no threat. I told the couple about the party and asked if they knew how I could inform the people in the area of what I wanted to do.
The man told me there was a homeowners association in place and that he had a roster of all the members. When I asked if I could have a copy, the woman spoke up and offered to help by sending an email invitation to everyone with all the details. I thanked her and told her what day and time I had set.
With most of the plans in place, I called the caterer and florist and gave them the details. Was I making a mistake by doing this? Every time I found myself in a situation where I might be exposed or harmed, I started wondering if I was doing the right thing. I am sure that there are people living around me that have secrets that they are hiding. Do any of them have a secret as dark as mine?
Every night I paid a visit to a bar or club and found some unsuspecting victim to feed on. No matter how much I read and tried to learn, I could not figure out how to harvest blood from a victim and keep it for later use. Everything would involve the use of all kinds of equipment and, in most cases, a willing person.
The blood I had in the cooler would probably not last until the night of the party. I needed to get more blood but from a different place. I was concerned that, when the hospital I had visited before found that there was blood missing from their supply they would be more vigilant. It was luck, my finding blood at the hospital. I needed to locate a blood bank – there was one in almost every part of the city.
I parked down the street from a facility just a few miles from my home. There were a couple of men sitting in front of the building, waiting. I slipped by them and walked around the building. This place was a fortress. There were few windows and they were covered with bars. I noticed security cameras at various points on the building. The alarm boxes were plainly visible. There was no way I could break into this building without attracting attention. If I knew the layout and knew exactly where to go, I could move fast enough to get away with it, but not now.
I knew I was being overly cautious. I guess that was the price I had to pay for having a conscience. I had spent too much time living as this creature, trying to survive in this world, and I was not willing to throw it away. I am not sure what it will take to capture me or kill me if I screw up. I am not willing to take that chance. I have found myself in situations where I have had to do desperate things to survive and they were not pleasant. No. I will not take a chance at this time.
I walked to my car, noticing that the two men that I had seen earlier were gone. As I reached for the car door I heard snoring coming from someplace nearby. My sense of smell was bombarded by strong body odor. Near the passenger side of my car was a hedge and underneath it were the two men I had seen earlier. They were both sleeping. I looked them over and attacked one of them. I drank until I was full. When I felt for his pulse, I found that I had killed him. The other man never stirred during the time I fed.
I got into my car and drove away. Why did I do that? I didn’t monitor his heartbeat while feeding, but I sensed that he could afford the amount of blood I took. I was trying to make sense of what had just happened when I realized that he must have given blood earlier. When I fed off of him, the combination left him too weak to survive. I was beginning to think that finding a supply of blood in a blood bank or hospital was not a good idea.
I decided that I would take a chance that the remaining bag of blood would be good by the night of the party. The worst that could happen would be that I would have to slip away for a while for a quick bite at the bottom of the canyon.
Chapter 14
The night of the party finally arrived. I was nervous as hell. The caterer had arrived and set up the food. Since my refrigerator was empty, she stocked it with various kinds of drinks. People started arriving and introducing themselves. Several of them wanted to take a tour of the house and since I didn’t have anything to hide, I told them to help themselves. One thing I had forgotten to do was find someone that could fix drinks for the guests. Fortunately, Tami volunteered since she would be there to make sure that everything went well with the serving of the food.
I stayed away from all the eats and drink she had brought and spent most of my time outside, socializing. Several of my guests were curious about me and asked where I came from and what I did during my career – all of the typical questions one would ask at a first meeting. Obviously, I could not give them too much information. I did tell them who I had worked for and how I had managed to stop working.
I found out that most of the people were either still working or retired from some kind of business. There were a couple of people that I recognized from television or the movies. The couple that I had met during my walks arrived and each was thrilled to be part of the social gathering. I kept busy moving from person to person, getting to know them. Because of my nervousness, it never occurred to me that I did not have a drink in my hand. Nobody asked if I was eating or drinking, so I never joined in on the feast. Many of my guests were getting loud and appeared to be enjoying themselves.
I found out a lot of things about the neighborhood and the people that lived there. The evening was a success. Around midnight, the older people came up to me and thanked me for a wonderful time and said their goodbyes. As soon as the others saw this, they too started meandering towards the door and left. Tami had started packing up and by the time the last guest left, she was out the door, too.
Now I was faced with the task of getting rid of the flowers and food left behind. I opened all the doors and windows to let as much air as possible move through the house. I grabbed some plastic bags, shoved everything into them and set them out for the trash. I had to air out the house for a couple of hours to replace the stink with fresh air. Finally, I went down to the wine cellar an opened the remaining bag of blood and drank it. As far as I could tell, there was nothing wrong with it and I felt no ill effects.
At the party, I learned that there were a variety of people with unique personalities living near me. Some were pleasant enough. Others were the type that, if I never saw them again, it would be too soon. Those were the ones that I could use to feed on if I ever found myself desperate. In the meantime, I would continue hunting where I knew I could get away with it.
I know that I am spending a lot of time explaining what most everybody in this world takes for granted, but I need to. It is very difficult trying to live in a society where a creature like me does not exist. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of the people that I have used to keep me alive. I wonder how the lives of these people have been affected. I have to be aware of what is going on with my body at all times. I am so afraid of what will happen if I lose control and then find out later what I have done. Trying to fix any damage that I may do would be a lot more difficult than staying aware all the time. Don’t think that many times I have thought of ending this curse. The loneliness of being in this predicament is sometimes too much to bear. I would not wish this hell on anybody else. So, until I can find a way to be at peace with this, I have to do whatever I can to live a somewhat normal life.
The only time that I rested was when I went into a sort of trance. I would sit in a dark quiet place and my mind would take me to places I had been before. I would relive situations that I had experienced. In many cases, I could see the faces of my victims. I would relive the smells and feelings that I felt while drinking their blood. I knew exactly how many people I had killed and how I felt after I had killed them.
After the party, I found myself in the cellar in just this situation. If there were no interruptions, I would often come out of the trance hours later. In the early morning I was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell. When I finally got to the door I saw a woman, already halfway down the street, that had been at the party. I could not remember her name, bu
t I called out and she returned. She was one of the younger women that I had met that night. She said she had come by because she had lost an earring and was wondering if I had found it. I told her that I had not seen anything like what she was describing but invited her to check for herself.
She came in, walked toward the kitchen breakfast bar and sat down. “Are you going to offer me some coffee?” she asked.
Let me explain something here. It had been quite a while since I had any experience with women, other than feeding off them. She was about my age, brunette and not unpleasant to look at. As I recalled, she was with a man quite a bit older than her. I thought that they were a daughter-and-father couple that had come to the party together, and that was the reason I remembered her.
“No coffee – how about some champagne?” I replied as I went to the refrigerator and got a bottle and a glass. I opened the bottle and placed it in front of her so she could serve herself. I then asked her about her earring.
“I just remembered putting it in my pocket last night,” she replied.
I was not sure what she was after. All my fears and suspicions came flooding into my mind. She told me she was not able to spend any time with me last night and wanted to find out more about me. I realized that she was probably lonely and maybe liked to flirt with any man that caught her fancy.
She sat and I stood talking to her. All she would talk about was her relationship with her husband. She was intent on telling me that she was not happy in her marriage and needed someone that understood her and wanting to know if we could be lovers.
There were two things that made up my complex life. Hunting/feeding on human beings and trying to blend into today’s society. Having a lover was not on my list of what I needed. I told her I was flattered, but I was in a relationship already. She asked who it was and I told her that it was someone I had known for some time. She asked if this woman was at the party and I told her that she was on an emergency trip to see her mother. I was getting pretty good at lying and making up stories as quickly as I needed to. She stood up and started walking out the door and said, “If you change your mind, let me know.”
Here was one person that thought I was just an ordinary guy. Too bad it was such an extreme way of finding out. If this woman took a liking to me, I would try to eliminate her from my list of possible meals. Or, maybe this was the way she was and she had approached everyone in the neighborhood at one time or another. I waited for her odor to leave the house. I closed all the windows and turned the air conditioner on and settled in for the day.
Because I had come to the conclusion that acquiring blood for later use was not going to work, I decided to pay a visit to the vagrant canyon later that night. As darkness fell, I made my way to the campsites I had visited before. I could hear coyotes yipping at a distance. There was an owl, perched and hooting on a tree bordering the trail. When I was about halfway there, I smelled something terrible coming from just ahead. I soon saw a dead cat lying under the brush. I had not experienced that smell before. It was so overwhelming that I quickly moved away from it.
As I neared the encampment, I heard some rustling and yelling. I stayed in the shadows and saw two men arguing and pushing each other. I had decided that I would not intervene unless it somehow involved me, and this did not. One of the men was who I imagined to be the father of the children. Both kids were being comforted by the mother and, from what I could gather the other man was angry at one of the children for stealing some food. I could smell the strong odor of beer and figured that alcohol was the culprit in this disagreement. I stayed back and watched until things settled down.
The camp was small and its population seemed to range from seven to ten people at a time. I was concerned that, should I feed, they might notice a pattern of some of them not being well in the morning following my visit. I figured that they had many more problems than someone not feeling well in the morning. That was the main reason I chose people that had been drinking. I figured they would attribute it to the alcohol they had been consuming.
After they all settled in for the night, I made my way to where the two men I recently visited were. The one I had attacked last time was not there. The other one was sleeping and a new man was sitting next to the fire, drinking and smoking a cigarette. I moved behind him and grabbed him by his shirt collar and pulled him back. Before he hit the ground, I was at his throat drinking his blood. He struggled for a second but my grip on him kept him subdued. His heart almost stopped and then I released him. It had been a while since I had attacked a person while still awake. For some reason, I could not sense his emotions as strong as when I fed on someone that was sleeping and relaxed. That was another thing that was changing in me.
Of all the transformations I had experienced, only my conscience remained intact. Even when I was not totally in control when I attacked someone, my feelings would play hell with me when I realized what I had done. After feeding so many times the urge would not let me understand what was happening. I would be in total control as I was stalking my victim. A split second before I attacked, the urge took over and there would be nothing I could do to stop myself. Once the blood of my victim was going down my throat, I became conscious of what I was doing and I would regain control. My whole body was in tune with the person I was feeding from and I could control when to stop. After the feeding session was over, I would look at my victim and feel sorry for him. I would experience anger and hate for what I had done.
As I was leaving the canyon trail and getting on the road, I heard and saw two people walking towards me. I recognized them as a couple that lived in the neighborhood and had been at my party. I greeted them and asked what they were doing out so late. They told me that sometimes, when they could not sleep, they would patrol the area making sure there were no people wandering the neighborhood that did not belong. They would also make sure that no fires spread from the camps along the canyon. They asked what I was doing out so late. I lied again and told them I could not sleep and had gone for a walk. When we arrived at my house, I went in and they continued on their way. I made a mental note to watch for this kind of thing during my nightly hunt.
Now that I had a retreat, I could come and go as I pleased. I started expanding my hunting area. This city was so vast that there was no chance anyone would see a pattern in any particular area. I had all night long to get to any place in the city and be back by sunrise. I was pretty centrally located to the beach cities. I could travel to the valleys and all the little towns located along the foothills. Everyplace had its share of vagrants. Every town had its night clubs or bars and in a pinch, I could always find a residence that was isolated enough to visit. Most of the time, traffic was a big issue, but after one o’clock in the morning, I had no problem. The only thing that concerned me was that I was driving so much. That could not be avoided. Frequently, I would see a police car and feel sure I was being followed. I now believe I was just being paranoid.
I had to make sure I was not developing a pattern that someone might notice because of me leaving every night from my house. I started varying the days that I would leave my neighborhood. The nights that I did not leave, I would make a visit to the vagrant camp down in the canyon, or I would walk to the nearest night club along the strip. It was beginning to become a chore trying to avoid a pattern. Again, was I being way too cautious? I could not take any chances that I would do something that would start someone asking questions. Once in a while as I was leaving or returning to my home, I would see one of my neighbors out walking the dog or jogging in the neighborhood. I would treat it as a normal, waving to them as I drove by. Sometimes I would stop and chat with them. I was trying hard to appear as normal as I could be.
But I was not normal. I wondered if everything I was doing was a waste of time. But what could I do? I was not happy. Everything in my life was about having someone close by to feed on. I knew it was about survival, but what kind of surviving was this? There had to be something that would fulfill my soul, not just my
hunger for blood. I needed something or someone that I could interact with that would satisfy my needs.
So far, the only thing that I had encountered was the group of people that wanted to be vampires and were playing the role. I decided to go back to the gathering and spend more time with them and see if I could create a relationship with one or more of them. I knew they would not fully know what I was going through, but even in pretending, we might be able to find a common ground that would open up a whole new world for me.
Chapter 15
I found a shop downtown that made and sold costumes for the theatre and movies. I met with a designer named Kathy and came up with the most authentic costume we could conceive using pictures from books. She told me they were not busy at this time of the year and she and her staff could have it ready in a couple of days. When I came back for the final fitting, I liked what I saw in the mirror. This would work out perfectly.
As part of this club I would have something to occupy my time, I would meet people that could provide stories and experiences, no matter how silly or crazy they may be. If I decided to join in on the fantasy, I could control how much I would contribute that would be believable. I found the posting in the newspaper and called the number.
I explained to the person that answered who I was, the fact that I had attended the meeting once before, and that now I wanted to join. She told me she remembered me and was glad I was joining the group. I would pay a small fee ay at the door to help cover the cost of food and drinks. She put my name on their roster, welcomed me to the group, and told me she would see me at the next meeting.
I put on my costume before I left for the meeting and as I was driving there, only a couple of people seemed to notice me. I figured they must be tourists because nobody else paid any attention to me. I arrived at the location and was met by the same woman as before. She did not recognize me because of the costume but when I told her who I was, she welcomed me in.
Diary of a Blood Drinker Page 9