So You Might Be a Vampire

by Rodney V. Smith

  SO YOU MIGHT BE A VAMPIRE

  Rodney V. Smith

  So You Might Be A Vampire

  By Rodney V. Smith Published by Rodney V. Smith at Smashwords Copyright 2010 Rodney V. Smith

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  For Allison

  Prologue:

  BURN MOTHERFUCKER, BURN

  I’ve killed a million petty souls

  But I couldn’t kill you…”

  -Korn, Slept So Long

  -PROLOGUE-

  Burn motherfucker, burn

  When the sun finally came up, I was already burning, and I had nowhere to run, but I was a little past coherent thought by then. Fire and pain, or if you like, pain caused by fire has a tendency to do that to you. It reaches up to your brain and instead of saying nice useful things like, chill out, be logical and let us just figure this out together and put the flames out… instead it just screams at your brain; a long wordless scream of panic and useless stuff like: “Fire! Fire! Put it out! Fire!”

  In situations like that, your brain is only going to fuck you up.

  I’d like to reassure you that I was familiar enough with pain, and I’m a seventh-level badass who can escape from any situation, but I live in the real world where bad things happen to me all the time. And to be honest, if there was any badassery in me at all, it too was currently on fire.

  “Burn you motherfucker! Burn!”

  I wanted to scream something sarcastic, cutting and snarky all at the same time, but the part of my brain which was in charge of snark was busy screaming as well. You know, because of the pain and the fire and all that good stuff. I might have managed a “fuck you” but it came out more like a long drawn out scream of “arghhhhhhhhh!” that just went on and on.

  Now, if you weren’t me, and not running around on fire and screaming, you would have seen a blonde woman standing in the middle of the desert watching me burn. She was an attractive woman by all standards, but you wouldn’t have seen that right then. At that moment, not an inch of her was exposed to the sun. Not a single inch. She was dressed head to toe in black (because it’s stylish), with a full-on face mask and high-tech polarized goggles (because they look pretty fucking cool). Her platinum blonde hair would have spilled out from under the mask, creating a contrast of white on black that in other circumstances would be stunning.

  This woman was, of course, responsible for my condition, she of the nice looking swords and big-fucking-knives, but that wasn’t the important thing. The important thing was that she wasn’t going to let me die; just let me suffer a lot and scream even more. She had many more punishments in store for me, even if it involved killing me to resurrect me, just to do it again.

  See the car? The cherry red vintage Camaro with the blacked-out windows and extra thick racing wheels parked on the side of the road? Right now that’s my only hope of getting away from the searing burning pain that is being inflicted on me by the sun, and the blonde woman is the one thing standing between me and the car. And she wants to see me burn.

  Just a regular day for me and Beatrice. Believe it or not, she’s my biggest fan.

  I had spent the past ten minutes pleading with Beatrice for cover of some kind, you know, a pair of pants, a shirt, maybe the confines of the trunk of a vintage car… something that wouldn’t be too much trouble, but she had been resolute.

  “Just let it take you Bob. It won’t be so bad,” she had said and had pulled her twin swords out with a flourish that was completely unnecessary.

  “That’s because you won’t be the one who’s on fire! Can we just go somewhere and talk about this--”

  “It’s coming Bob! Maybe this time you’ll see him.”

  My skin was already smoking all over as the day got steadily brighter. The shade had vanished a long time ago, and I was exposed to the steadily brightening sunlight, and it was as much fun as I remembered. As in, not at all.

  I feinted right to make a run for the open car behind Beatrice, a move made more out of panic than anything else, but she was ready for me. I got a boot to the face for my trouble and staggered backward, glad she hadn’t used the sword this time.

  “Do I have to be naked?” I yelled at her, and she just smiled at me. I couldn’t see it, of course, because of the stupid mask, but I could tell from the way she tilted her head that she was smiling at me.

  “Don’t be silly. Of course you have to be naked. It’s the only way to be reborn.”

  I considered making another run for it as my skin bubbled and blistered, smoking pouring off of me now, but I knew it was already too late and even if I could get past Beatrice, it would be no good. At some point, I was going to burn because that was what Beatrice wanted. And Beatrice wanted me to burn because of our extremely fucked up relationship.

  When this is over, she’s going to spray me down with the fire extinguisher, toss me into the back of the car and dump my body into a cheap motel so I can heal for a couple of days. And in a week, she’ll be back again, wanting something from me that I can’t give, and then we’ll begin again.

  I know this because we’ve done it three times so far.

  She knows what hurts me, what kills me, because she’s a vampire just like I am. It’s why she’s covered like she is, so she doesn’t burn.

  No. Today it’s my turn to burn.

  I wish I could say I struck some dramatic pose as I burst into flames in the sunlight, but even if I had, it wouldn’t have lasted very long before self-preservation tried to take over and tried to get me under cover of some kind.

  I screamed a lot, just like Beatrice wanted, and yes, I burned like a motherfucker.

  My name is Bob, and I’ve got to be the worst vampire alive.

  -1-

  FRIENDS OF VLAD

  “Avoid fuckups. You all know the kind, anything they have anything to do with turns into a disaster.”

  -William S. Burroughs

  -1-

  FRIENDS OF VLAD

  “I want you to turn me into a vampire.”

  Two days after Beatrice had let me escape just so she could hunt me down again, I’d finally decided to drown my sorrows in as much alcohol as the remainder of Harry’s money would buy me. Since alcohol didn’t affect me as much as it did when I was still human, that meant I had to drink a lot of it and fast, just to keep the buzz going. It was while I was on my fifth bottle of Tequila that this squirrelly little guy with no chin and a stupid fucking fedora which was way too big for him, interrupted my drinking. He had been watching me for pretty much the whole damn night, and had decided that now I was a few bottles in, this would be the best time for him to nervously make his request.

  I eyed him warily over the glass, wondering if it was some kind of trap and then decided that at this point of my life, I just didn’t give a fuck.

  “That’s your opening line? Seriously?”

  Squirrel Boy swallowed hard and clutched his stupid shoulder bag even tighter than he had before. I knew almost instantly that he had some kind of stupid ass weapon inside t
hat he intended to use to protect himself or to fend me off and that I also scared the shit out of him. I almost laughed at that and wondered what kind of movie he had playing in his head where he had decided he was the lead and where I was the scary bad vampire man.

  “I’ve been watching you and I know what you are,” he whispered to me. “I could tell the whole bar, expose your secret.”

  I drained the glass and poured myself another drink, emptying the bottle. Yep, I was going to need another one and quickly. The buzz was a nice one even though I smelled very much like a tequila factory, but I wasn’t out to impress anyone tonight. I just wanted to forget about Beatrice and how it felt to burn in the sun until I was extra-crispy. I miss the days of getting blackout drunk sometimes, especially when I’m feeling this miserable.

  I sighed deeply and looked blearily at Squirrel Boy.

  “Go ahead then. Out me. Like I give a fuck.”

  Squirrel Boy licked his lips nervously, his bluff called. He obviously had seen this playing out differently. For a second, I almost felt sorry for him and considered telling him how lucky he was that it was me he was pulling this stupid stunt with. If it had been Beatrice, she would already be draining him dry in a bathroom stall and he would have not been able to do anything about it.

  “Look, what’s your name? I can’t call you Squirrel Boy all night.”

  “Armand?” A look of confusion crossed his face. “You haven’t called me Squirrel B-”

  “That’s not your real name. If you’re going to be obnoxious to me, you might as well tell me your real fucking name.”

  Squirrel Boy slumped and mumbled something under his breath, clearly embarrassed. “It’s Sidney.”

  I grinned wickedly. “Go get us a new bottle Sidney. Then we’ll talk.”

  ***

  First thing I want you to be aware of is this: being a vampire sucks.

  It's definitely not like they show you in the movies or any of the books that have been written on the subject. In the movies, the vampire is always such an intriguing figure and he always has his act together. He lives by the rules of the movie world and as rules go, they are fairly simple. Avoid sunlight, dress in evening clothes, drink blood from the necks of nubile and winsome young ladies, be handsome, don't ever worry about picking up the check, have lots of money and a castle in someplace exotic and cold with lots of thunder and lightning and preferably on top of a mountain somewhere, don't look into mirrors and most of all, avoid any really eager guys who happen to be carrying sharp pieces of wood with them.

  As you can tell by now, I’ve broken every single one of those rules, even the last one. What do you think Sidney is carrying in that bag of his?

  The rest of it, the going to sleep in a coffin and sleeping in all day thing, and, of course, the mounds of cash that goes with the job but no one ever sees; that kind of goes with the territory of the movie world of vampires.

  I suppose technically those are rules, and should be lumped in with the rest, but who are we kidding here? We all know about vampires. We know how they live and we know how they die. We even know how to become one of them.

  After all, the movies told us everything we ever needed to know, right?

  ***

  Sidney was looking less sure of himself as he watched me drain my second glass of Tequila from the new bottle he had bought. I, of course, hadn’t needed him to buy me anything since Harry’s money was still in good supply, but face it: he had been an asshole and rightly deserved it. If you’re going to demand something from a stranger, at least introduce yourself and buy them a drink first. Protocol must be observed.

  “Why do you want to be a vampire Sidney?”

  “Can you at least call me Armand? That’s the name I’ve decided should be my vampire name.”

  I barely held in my laughter. “Fuck that. You’re Sidney, so I’m fucking calling you Sidney. Now answer my fucking question. Please.”

  Sidney hesitated and I noticed that he was only playing with his still full glass of tequila. He was purposely not drinking it, perhaps trying to get me drunk, but considering the number of empty bottles on the table which on any other night or in any other bar would be getting me arrested for public drunkenness, since this was Texas after all, he should have really thought harder about this plan.

  “I want to live forever, but I want the power and everything that goes with being a vampire. I want to be cool, just like you.”

  “Is this about a girl? This is about a girl, isn’t it?” It’s always about a girl. At the root of all of our problems, it’s always about wanting to impress someone. “What’s her name?”

  Sidney considered lying to me, I could see it in his face, but he was already smiling, picturing the girl in his mind. “Dorothy,” he breathed her name and I knew he wasn’t lying this time. He turned and looked across the bar and I looked with him. “She’s over there.”

  The girl was gorgeous. She was slim with a nice build for her small frame, dark hair and eyes and her smile really lit up her face as she joked with her friends. She really looked like a nice girl, the kind of girl Sidney probably was too shy to be honest with and, as a result, had probably ended up in the dreaded place called the friend-zone.

  “She looks nice. But why do you think being a vampire is going to make her like you?”

  “Look, are you going to make me into a vampire or not?”

  Well, that escalated fast. And I thought we had just made a personal connection.

  “Have we reached the part where you threaten me already?” I asked and poured myself a drink.

  Apparently we had. Sidney reached into his man-purse and pulled out one of the biggest fucking crosses I have ever seen. He held it out in front of him triumphantly, clearly playing his trump card, bringing his knowledge of vampires from movies and books into the one thing that he knew would protect him.

  Goddamn movies.

  ***

  The one thing that the movies never did tell us is that vampires do exist. And more specifically, we were never told to actually avoid them, or even better, exactly how to avoid them. The one thing that they do leave out is that you should definitely at all costs, avoid a vampire whenever possible.

  See, the problem is that maybe 100 years ago you could actually do that, but now maybe one person in every 50,000 you meet just might be a vampire, so avoidance might be a bit of an issue if you're that eager to not run into one, so good luck with that.

  Imagine it. You're an ordinary guy, around thirty, which is my age, so you've grown up on a steady diet of rock music, horror movies, too much alcohol and withered expectations. See, I know exactly where Sidney was coming from since I used to be that guy who believed on some level that the movies got it right about vampires, no matter how many times they contradicted themselves.

  I was that guy, and you were that guy too. Or the girl. Whatever. Stay with me on this.

  Too many nights you've gotten drunk watching some bad horror movie with either cheesy special effects or an equally bad horror movie with really good effects. Either way, the movie is shit and you know it, and you love it. After all, you've been watching all kinds of horror movies since you were about eight, in an age before all of the kids were on some kind of medication and before somebody's parents weren't trying to hide your eyes and your fragile little mind from the horror that is... well, horror movies. Usually the most horrible thing on the screen was the story, but that kind of analysis would come later when you became a teenager and by extension, an expert on everything under the sun.

  By eleven, you were reading all kinds of horror novels, from Stephen King to Dean Koontz (although you gave up on him after all his books followed the same damn storyline), and then Clive Barker entered the mix followed, of course, by Anne Rice and lots and lots of Neil Gaiman. You were the kid that everybody talked about and avoided because you were so weird and dressed in black all the time and why were you reading all the time anyway? Only weirdos spent that much time with their heads buried in b
ooks, like they were always up to something.

  By the time you were getting drunk at your best friend's house at the tender age of seventeen, you had seen it all and knew absolutely everything about nothing. But it was just an affliction easily cured by turning twenty and having to get your first job.

  So of course you know everything there is to know about the world, and still have no idea how or where you're even going fit in, but there are some immutable facts about the world and one of those facts is something you don't even have to think about: vampires don't exist.

  Sure you and your friends have talked about how cool it would be if vampires did exist, but none of that talk is serious and is quickly forgotten, abandoned to dreams and broken, drunken memories. Most of that talk is nonsense in any case and none deal with the reality of how vampires would exist alongside with the rest of us and how well, how invisible they would have to be in order to survive.

  ***

  Sidney was making being invisible very difficult at the moment, especially with that huge fucking stupid cross, held out in front of him like a weapon. His other hand was back in the bag now and I knew that it was clutching a wooden stake of some kind, either crudely made in Sidney’s backyard or a prop from the Internet. I thought about it and decided that it was most likely purchased from some stupid vampire website that sold pieces of wood, “blessed by a priest and sprinkled with Holy Water” to gullible people like Sidney for way too much money.

  “Your negotiating tactics suck balls, I just want you to know that.”

  “Fuck you, you fucking fuck.”

  I drained my glass and put it back onto the table with an audible thud. I was determined to finish the bottle before I dealt with Sidney, just in case I had to leave in a hurry.

  “No wonder you can’t make it with Dorothy over there Sidney. You have no game and you have no idea how to relate to people.”