I had meant to give my boss a call but I didn’t know what to say. I was basically dead during office hours so I wouldn’t have been able to work something out. He was a nice guy but not really cut out to lead people. Like a lot of government management he was more concerned with keeping his job than managing people.
I didn’t really like my job but then again, no one does. I would rather not go if given the option. I missed being a part of something. I had already started to feel isolated from my friends and family and now I wouldn’t have coworkers to bond with over our bosses’ incompetence.
Recently I had moved into an English basement owned by my best friend, Andrew and his wife of a year, Anne. I felt guilty living under him with my condition while he was trying to start a new life with his wife. It isn’t like I could’ve moved out. I didn’t have anywhere to go. I couldn’t find a new place to live. I slept during the day and leasing offices aren’t open at night.
I hadn’t figured out a way to tell him that I was a creature of the night although on some level his wife already knew. Maybe not consciously but somewhere down deep where she didn’t want to confront it, she knew that she should be afraid of me. Ever since my change people looked at me differently. At first I thought I was being paranoid because I had changed and was aware of it. I could hear a conversation from across the bar or smell whether someone decided to put on deodorant so every little change in body language was apparent. Somehow people knew that they should be afraid of me, they just couldn’t pinpoint the reason why. Aside from my paleness, my physical appearance was no different than anyone else’s.
Babies and animals knew to be afraid of me and didn’t care why. I had to avoid babies when I was at the store because they would point at me and start crying. Their mothers would apologize and mumble something about “I don’t know what has gotten into him (or her) today”. I would smile and keep moving. Even my dog that I had since she was a puppy didn’t have the same playfulness with me.
It was a pain in the ass not being able to go out in the sunlight. I couldn’t hold down a regular job and if I worked the door or bartended at some club it wouldn’t cover my student loans, rent and car insurance. Plus I don’t know how to bartend and spending eight hours a night behind a bar would be a waste of my new powers. In an expensive city like Washington, DC, $15 an hour wasn’t going to cut it.
I considered robbing a jewelry store, but they have cameras and I figured there might be people looking for someone with my description after I killed the girl. I didn’t see any witnesses to my crime but the city had too many people for someone not to notice.
Also, I didn’t know what to do with the merchandise. Perhaps I could stand on the street corner like some stereotypical goon with my coat open hawking watches. I didn’t know anyone who had access to the black market. All of my friends were bureaucrats or lobbyists. I didn’t even know what the black market looked like. I imagined it was a big warehouse filled up like a flea market with stolen goods, but that couldn’t be right.
My bills were piling up. I needed to pay my rent so I decided to mug someone. I felt bad about the prospect but I didn’t have another choice. I told myself that I would only do it this one time and then I would find a better source of income.
I couldn’t rob anyone on Capitol Hill because the neighborhood was too small, so I went to Dupont Circle. Riding the Metro rail up there was out of the question because there were cameras all over the system. On the off chance that the cops decided to look for a mugger, I didn’t want to be noticed.
On my walk northwest up Massachusetts Avenue I looked for people to rob, but I didn’t have any chances because it’s a major street with too much traffic. By the time I was in Dupont Circle my nerves were frazzled from sensory overload. It was hard to focus which so much going on. The headlights, taillights and all of the honking, honking, honking, made me feel like I was getting an aneurysm. I thought that if I heard one more person honk I would break his damn neck.
I walked west on P Street and after few blocks I found an ATM that I could see from an alley. I walked around the block psyching myself up, trying to convince myself that this was the only way that I could make rent. I saw an older couple walking in front of me on the other side of the street, crossing the threshold of the alley.
Running across the street, I passed close enough to the back of a moving car to hear the buttons on my coat click off of the rear bumper. In a flash, I grabbed the man by the back of his coat, wrapped my arm around his wife and forced them deep into the alley, tossing them on the far side of a dumpster. The only sound was the wife, saying “Wwwhhaaa”. I think she was going to say “what” but the rest of the “tttt” got held up in the process.
I pinned the man against the wall by the back of his neck with my right hand and picked up his wife by the front of her coat with my left hand. She was so small that I didn’t realize her feet weren’t touching the ground until I looked down. She searched my eyes to try to see who I was but I had wrapped my scarf high up on my face and pulled my winter hat pulled down. The less of me they saw the better.
I had read that vampires are able to hypnotize people by looking into their eyes. I wasn’t able to perform that trick but the look between the wife and I felt pretty close. She was completely under my control.
“When I put you down, you’re going to hand me your wallet and your cell phone, is that clear?” I said.
She nodded yes.
“Please don’t run, because then I’ll have to break your neck,” I said. I nodded at her husband still pinned up against the wall, letting her know that he would pay the price as well.
“Grab his wallet,” I said.
“Let me go,” he said gasping. He was trying to wiggle and create a little space for himself but I held him tight.
“Quiet,” I said.
She stopped and looked at the back of his neck and then handed me his wallet. I grabbed his credit cards and let the rest of the wallet fall to the ground.
“What’s your PIN?” I said to the husband.
He paused, like he had a choice in whether he was going to tell me or not. I pulled him back a few inches and slammed him against the wall hard enough to make his nose drip blood. He groaned pretty loudly and I worried that a passerby would hear us and call the cops.
“8, 9, 2, 4,” he said.
The lady started to back away from me. She was getting close to being out of my reach so I grabbed her by the front of her coat.
“You’re going to withdraw all the money that you can out of the ATM from his cards and any cards that you have as well. Don’t make a sound. Blink twice if you understand,” I said as quietly as possible so that we wouldn’t attract attention.
Blink blink.
“I’m going to watch you the whole time, and if you look at anyone else or try to get help, I’m going to start breaking his bones, one by one,” I said. “We clear?”
Blink blink.
“Go,” I said nodding towards the ATM. I watched her walk over. She looked down at her shoes the whole time.
When she came back something had changed in her eyes. She wasn’t scared any more. She was pissed and I saw courage building in her posture. She didn’t cower away from me.
“The money,” I said.
She held her hand out, but held the money far enough away from me so that I would have to let her husband off the wall. I let go of her husband and turned on her. I picked her up by her coat and held her against wall so that we were eye to eye. I put my other hand on her neck and I felt the blood pumping through her veins. The man had turned towards me after I let him go but he was frozen in place with fear. I was face to face with her. She had her eyes closed.
“Look at me,” I growled through my clenched teeth. I was doing all I could do not to shout at her. “Look at me!”
She opened her eyes as little as she possibly could. Her husband shifted his feet.
“Please don’t make this process harder than it needs to be,” I said to
her. I looked at her husband. “Don’t try to be a hero.”
Then I let her down. Her hand still had the money in it. As soon as I put my hand on hers to take the money, she recoiled.
“Now the ring,” I said, looking at her wedding ring.
She put her right hand over her ring finger for protection.
“Please no,” she said with tears in her eyes.
The sad wet look in her eyes that made me feel miserable and ashamed. I took the money and ran off into the night. I wondered if every mortal that I met for the rest of my life would be afraid of me.
Whenever I’ve seen vampires on TV they are rich, brooding, teenage hunks and glamorous ladies, but if there is a How To Get Rich Manual for vampires, I haven’t seen it. As for my looks, it’s usually my humor that wins women over.
I thought that being a vampire would be more fun than it turned out to be. On TV there were vampire bars and other weird and interesting creatures (like werewolves) that vamps feuded with but that wasn’t going on in DC.
I still had to pick up my dog’s poop. There was something a little discombobulating about how she looked me in the eyes while she was using the bathroom, like she needed her privacy. Meanwhile she was going on the corner of Massachusetts and Constitution while traffic is bumper to bumper.
Vampires have to feed every week or so, but instead of finding humans to survive off of, I was draining stray cats and dogs. I didn’t want to repeat the horror of the first time I fed on a human but I also couldn’t stand the smell of the strays and their fur. Most of them tasted like sour milk from being sick. One of the dogs was so sick that I couldn’t drink his blood. I broke his neck to put him out of his misery. He didn’t even try to run from me like all of the others. When I walked up to him he rolled over on his back, resigned to his fate.
I woke up one evening and turned on the television out of habit. I was feeling a bit lonely and wanted to watch something comforting and normal. The news was on and even though I didn’t watch it before I was turned, I was curious to hear about what had happened in the world while I slept. There was a story about a fire in Adams Morgan that destroyed an apartment building, and then the girl that I had fed off of appeared to the left of the talking head. I had tunnel vision and thought I was going to pass out. I didn’t hear what the reporter said, but then they cut to a police officer at a press conference.
There was something about the way the cop looked into the camera and said that they had no suspects that assured me that he was lying. I felt him looking at me through the TV. His look made me feel like I was going to get caught. He mentioned the girl’s name, Leanne Washington, which reverberated in my head a few times before I was able to push it out. The headlines would read “Monster From the Hill” (hopefully not Hill Monster because that would make me sound like a troll) or “DC Dracula Drains Daughter”. The authorities would make me do a perp walk all chained up with a mask over my face like Hannibal Lecter. There was no way that I would get a fair trial. Outside, the church bells rang, signaling eight o’clock. The bell tolls for thee, I thought to myself.
After the broadcast I was nervous about going out and snatching another person off the street, so I went to a hospice that was on the south side of Pennsylvania Avenue.
The building was part of an old Section 8 housing unit (Section 8 is a federal program that provides with rental assistance to low-income families) that covered half of a city block. The other units around it had been knocked down to create parking for the surrounding residential area. The three-story building had been made without any aesthetical consideration: bleak grey with maroon trim that was fading into rust. The complex was an eyesore and one of the last reminders of the old neighborhood in a rapidly gentrifying area.
The back of the hospice building had a high wall with some trees facing I-395. One of the windows on the second floor was cracked open. I jumped up to the window and held on to the thick concrete sill. I could hear the heavy breathing of the sleeping occupant and the faint suck and wheeze of a ventilator. I pulled myself up and slowly opened the window. An elderly man’s head was sticking out from the covers. He was long and gangly like a spider. I pulled myself into the room, stood in the corner, and watched him for a minute. Even if he opened his eyes, he may not have been able to see me. His heart-rate monitor was the only source of light in the room and the faint green display didn’t create much light. I was wearing all black and had pulled my hood up over my head. I listened to his faint heartbeat corresponding with the monitor and wondered if he had enough blood pressure to feed me. Nurses down the hallway were discussing which patients they thought were going to die first, which was rather morbid even to me. Someone said it was going to be Margie, but my bet was on the guy in the room with me.
I crept into the hallway and walked down a few doors to look around. Most of the bedroom doors were open and most of the interior windows had their shades drawn putting the patients on display from the hallway. Each room had the same faded light green paint and the doors were outlined in dingy white paint. The only person with flowers was an older lady whose lone medical appendage was an IV.
The hospice was creepy and I was anxious to leave. I didn’t fear getting caught by anyone because my senses were on high alert, but I was anxious because I was there to kill my first person since Leanne. I quieted my insecurities and focused on the sounds around me. If someone changed his or her breathing pattern within 50 feet of me, I would’ve heard it.
I went back into the man’s room. I found his carotid artery and sunk my teeth in. There was a momentary rush of adrenaline accompanying the blood slowly pumping into my mouth. His heart monitor slowed to a stop and then the flat line alarm went off. I stood there for a moment looking at the husk of what used to be a barely living human and watched as the two puncture wounds slowly healed themselves. I went to the window and pulled it most of the way shut after me. As I descended to the ground I heard the soft jogging of sneakers combined with the huffing and puffing of the out-of-shape nurses responding to the alarm. I leapt from the brick wall and faded into the night. The thrill and the strength that I gained from the blood was tainted by the death of someone I didn’t even know. The only positive, besides being fed, was that it didn’t taste like a stray animal.
Afterwards, I went home. The snow had started to fall in little flakes just big enough to announce its presence. I was a few blocks away when I could hear the sounds of people having sex. At first I thought it was amusing until I recognized the lovemaking sounds of my ex-girlfriend Christy. She was much too rich for my blood and I wouldn’t have ever been able to give her the life that she had expected. When I thought about her it made the part of my life where I was a regular human seem like an eternity ago.
I was on my nightly stroll when I heard a voice. I wasn’t sure of where it was coming from at first but it was loud enough to weave itself into all of the other sounds of the night.
“Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, ‘Why do you come out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me,’” some holier than thou guy said.
Curious, I ran towards the voice. It was coming from a big, grey stone church. The church looked out of place. It was surrounded by row houses and cars like it had fallen out of the sky and landed there.
I leapt to the roof and landed with a thump. Then I hid behind the steeple so that if anyone came out to look at the roof to see what the noise was, the tops of the trees and the pitch of the roof would hide me. I sat down and listened to the sermon.
“After forty days David convinced his father to let him fight Goliath. From 1 Samuel 17:45, David said ‘You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty.’” The preacher continued, getting to the gist of his sermon, “David knew that with the Lord on his side he didn’t need to fear anyone or anything. That was the true strength of this faith.”
When
I was growing up I did a little time in church, and the pastors failed to mention that after David killed Goliath he cut off his head and carried it around like he had won the Vince Lombardi Trophy while the Israelites plundered the Philistines’ camp.
I started to get mad thinking about all the bullshit and half-truths that Christianity had told me, and how the clergy omitted the gory details. The fact that Christians don’t follow the Bible even though they said that they believed in every word pissed me off. By their standards I was going to hell. While I was thinking about hell and how it was my destiny, I looked up and eight feet above my head was a stone cross, anchored into the steeple.
I jumped on top of the steeple and pushed on the horizontal part of the cross. The old stone budged a little.
These were the same people who would’ve burned me at the stake in the past.
I pushed a little harder.
These people would’ve burned down my house with me in it while I slept if they knew I existed.
I pushed and then pulled back towards me and the cross loosened a little more.
These are the same people who judged me even before I became a monster in their eyes, conveniently forgetting the all-important, “judge not lest ye be judged” part of their religion.
With a final push the cross broke free of its mooring.
The thought that I was going to hell and there was nothing I could do about it enraged me. My condition wasn’t my fault.
I looked over the side of the roof and saw a black Escalade parked in front of the church, the perfect target. I threw the cross and it crushed the roof down to the seats. The glass exploded outward and for a moment the destruction was beautiful. The tiny broken shards of glass reflected the light in infinite shifting ways. The congregants came out to see what had happened, but by the time they were outside I was three blocks away, strolling down the street at mortal speed.
After Sunset Page 3