An Unattractive Vampire

by Jim McDoniel

  “I mean that Nora was much more attractive, physically. Sexy. More beautiful.”

  Yulric said nothing. He just looked at her.

  “Sasha,” she continued, trying to put it in terms the creature would understand, “is more . . . pretty. Not as beautiful. Therefore, she is human.”

  Laughter. A shrieking, dry, dead laugh erupted out of the creature on the couch. Yulric Bile flopped back into the cushions. His bones crackled and popped as he clapped his hands appreciatively.

  “So, this is what we have become.” He cackled, trying to catch his breath . . . or whatever he did instead of breathing. “Millennia of legend and lore, and now we appear to you as mere adolescents at the height of beauty and bloom. Tell me, are all the stories of my kind thus? Are vampyrs always immortal champions with rosy cheeks and marble physiques?”

  “Sometimes they’re bad,” she said.

  He laughed even harder. “Indeed, sometimes we are bad. Seducing mortals for nefarious ends. Immortality. Beauty. Power. All rolled into a single drama. A pleasant fiction.”

  “Mostly,” said Amanda.

  “Mostly?” mocked the vampire. “Is there a downside to their existence? Is the curse of the Phantom having to choose between locks of gold or tresses of auburn?”

  “No, the show is mostly fiction,” replied Amanda. “Because The Phantom Vampire Mysteries is written, produced, and acted by actual vampires.”

  The vampire stopped laughing.

  • •

  The fact that The Phantom Vampire Mysteries was made by vampires turned out to be common knowledge. Of course, the vast majority took this to mean members of a somewhat-creepy subculture who liked to pretend and play dress-up. Only those obsessive enough to pore over every interview and feature, to examine the hidden themes behind each and every episode, to download leaked script drafts, complete with notes from the executive producer, only they gleaned the truth—that they were in fact members of a somewhat-creepy subculture who liked to pretend and play dress-up, and were also vampires.

  Yulric Bile spent every hour of every subsequent day poring over episodes of The Phantom Vampire Mysteries. He snorted incredulously at their barely above-human abilities. (“Spiders? Rats? Can they not transform into anything?”) He marveled at their ability to withstand classic vampiric banes. (“So she can cross running water anytime she wants?”) He laughed far more than seemed appropriate when the vampires were staked and turned to dust. (“A stake through the heart. Why, of course. What else would you possibly need to do?”) But not nearly as loudly as he did at the concept of vampire creation.

  “Why on earth would a vampyr make other vampyrs?” Yulric screamed at the screen.

  “Fellowship? Companionship?” Amanda suggested from the recliner.

  “An army?” Simon added.

  “Bah!” Yulric exclaimed. “Pointless. They always fall apart. There!” He snatched up the remote and paused the DVD. A moment later, he was on all fours inspecting the screen. “What is that?”

  Amanda sighed. “Lord Dunstan is siring a vampire.”

  “This siring nonsense again!” cried the vampire.

  “So vampires are not sired?” Simon prodded.

  “I just told you, boy. Vampyrs do not make vampyrs,” Yulric retorted.

  Simon clicked his pen and added this to a notebook he’d begun taking with him around the vampire. “Then, how do they come to be?”

  Yulric glared at Simon, aware that the child was pumping him for information. “It varies.”

  “For example?” Simon inquired.

  Yulric did not answer. He merely returned to the couch and restarted the episode. “We may continue.”

  It took him less than a week to make it through all five seasons, including commentary and special features. Of course, The Phantom Vampire Mysteries was hardly alone in this genre, and Yulric now turned his attention to other vampire stories. He devoured it all—TV shows, movies, books—from the poem written to impress Lord Byron to the popular teen drama about a pair of vampires in love with the same girl.13 Unlike Phantom, few featured actual vampires, though every so often, Yulric would detect a brief whiff of vampirism in movements a hair too quick or a stare a bit too predatory.14 However, there were definitively two common threads through almost all the vampire stories: a steady progress toward attractive respectability and a name, Talby.

  After three weeks of nonstop research, Yulric came to a decision, though perhaps not at the most opportune time.

  “You will take me to meet the vampyrs,” Yulric said.

  “Get out!” screamed Amanda, pulling the shower curtain out of his hand and hiding behind it.

  “Not until you agree—” Yulric was cut off by the most vicious, wrathful stare this side of himself.

  “Out! Now!” she barked.

  Yulric decided to appease her. He did, after all, still need her assistance. “Very well,” he said with a little bow, after which he exited the bathroom.

  The vampire was waiting on the other side of the door when Amanda finished her shower.

  “You will take me to meet the vampyrs,” he repeated.

  “We are not having this conversation right now,” she snarled.

  “And why not?” asked Yulric.

  “Because I’m wearing a towel!” she shot back.

  “And?”

  Amanda fumed. “Simon!”

  “Yes!” came a voice from downstairs.

  “Can you come up here?” she called back. The boy appeared, sweaty and disheveled, wearing a dirty apron, and holding a trowel. She didn’t even want to know why. “Watch him,” she instructed and disappeared into her room.

  The vampire glared at the boy and vice versa.

  “So, the shower didn’t work, huh?” said Simon, wiping his hands on his apron.

  “No.” Yulric scowled. “It did not.”

  “I told you,” Simon gloated.

  Yulric refused to acknowledge that with a response, true though it may have been.

  “I don’t suppose you know anything about masonry?” asked Simon.

  The door opened, and Amanda appeared in her hospital scrubs. “Thank you, Simon.”

  “Don’t mention it,” the boy said, taking up his trowel and hopping down the stairs once more.

  “Now you,” she said, turning to Yulric.

  “You will take me—” the vampire began.

  “First of all,” she spoke over him, “never, ever go into my bathroom again.”

  “I don’t—” Yulric protested. “Never.”

  “You can’t—” he growled.

  “Ever.”

  The vampire snarled, “Or what?”

  “Or . . . I’ll throw out the TV,” she threatened.

  Yulric’s eyes went wide. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  Amanda summoned the caregiver’s ability to bluff. “Try me.”

  Yulric fumed, then, through gritted teeth, answered, “Very well. Now—”

  “Second,” she interrupted him again. The vampire hissed in anger. “Any future conversations we have will be predicated on both parties being fully clothed. Is that understood?”

  Cracks were forming in the vampire’s teeth. “Yes.”

  “Good,” she spat. Taking a deep, calming breath, she continued. “Now, is there something I can do for you?”

  The vampire took some deep, unnecessary breaths. Killing the girl where she stood would not give him what he wanted. And the elaborate tortures that immediately came to mind might put her off cooperating. So, with a tiny bow, he adopted a demeanor previously reserved for the most insufferable of Templars.15 “Dear lady, I humbly beseech your aid in acquiring an audience with the vampyrs.” He ended with a flourish of his arms and another bow, which he held, looking down at the ground in a grand display.

  “That was overdoing it a bit,” she said.

  “The French never thought so,” Yulric retorted, still with the deceitful charm in his voice.

  Amanda thought long and hard befor
e answering. In the end, though, the ancient creature’s request lined up with her goals exactly: namely, getting him off her back and getting in with the undead. “Fine,” she conceded. “I will take you to see the vampires.”

  Yulric bowed again, even lower.

  “Stop that,” Amanda said, embarrassed at the ostentatious display. He stood with that horrible impish smile still etched on his face. She went to leave, and to her horror, he made a move to go with her.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “You said you would take me to see the vampyrs,” he answered in tones both polite and utterly condescending.

  “Not now!” she exclaimed.

  He bit his tongue. Hard. Black blood dripped down his mouth before he spoke again. “Why not?”

  “I’m busy,” she pushed past him and descended the staircase.

  “Doing what?” he inquired, his politeness was running out, and the anger was rising again.

  “Working,” she shouted back at him.

  “You said—” he began.

  “Look.” She appeared at the bottom of the staircase. “I said I would take you to see the vampires, and I will. When I have time. But now, I don’t. So . . .” She tried to think of something impressive to end with but came up empty. She had to settle for an awkward nod before walking out the door.

  The vampire remained at the top of the stairs. A smile—a real, horrible smile—spread across its lips.

  “Simon!” he called.

  “What?” the boy shouted back from somewhere in the house.

  “What is your sister’s work?” he asked.

  “She’s a nurse,” replied Simon.

  The vampire was fairly certain that the young woman had not recently conceived and so assumed the boy was using the word in a medical context.

  “A nurse where?” he shouted.

  “Shepherd’s Crook Hospital,” Simon answered. “Why?”

  The eight-year-old received no reply. In fact, for the rest of the evening, Simon could not help but note that the vampire was unusually quiet. Not that he lost too much sleep over it.

  He was too busy building a forge in the backyard.

  Chapter 8

  Rusty Olsen rode the bus home at 2:00 a.m., sure that everyone was staring at him. Everyone may have included only the bus driver, who was staring at the road, a homeless man, who was staring at the back of his own eyelids, and a waitress, who was staring at him and had a good grip on her mace. It didn’t matter, though. Rusty was always sure that people were watching him. Sometimes, it was because they were judging him; other times, it was because they were jealous of him. Sometimes, it was his red-orange hair or his acne or his stubble.16

  In this case, it was because he was wearing purple-and-black velvet robes.

  The robes hung off Rusty like a person hangs from a ledge—desperately. Custom-made, the robes gave off the illusion of not fitting, quite possibly because they didn’t. They had been tailored twelve years ago for a teenager hoping to grow another six inches and shed a few pounds. This had not happened, and so the middle was too tight, the ends were too long, and the hood, big enough for three heads, fell well past his eyes, making it impossible to see.

  Rusty tapped his rings impatiently against the bar in front of him. Each finger had a ring, including clawed ones on both pinkies. While this made getting his bus card out of his wallet a ten-minute ordeal, Rusty refused to do without them. Better to go all-out than be seen as a half-assed poser. And besides, he couldn’t get the rings off without large amounts of Vaseline. The only concession he made when traveling among “normal” people lay in a black velvet pouch attached to his waist. The items resting in that sacred space were more valuable than gold to Rusty, and losing them would mean utter disgrace and another couple hundred bucks.

  They were his fangs.

  To be honest, he would have much preferred to wear them, as well. Fewer people openly gawked at a pair of enlarged, sharpened veneer canines. Fewer still tried to mug him for whatever was in his purse.17 As a weirdo, he was vulnerable, but as a freak, he was fine.

  That being said, there had been an incident, of sorts. It had been an innocent-enough mistake. The little old lady had simply needed help getting on the bus. Rusty, black clothes and fangs aside, was actually a very nice boy. So he’d given her a kindly smile and tried to help her up the stairs. The problem hadn’t been that the fangs made him look particularly dangerous or threatening, it was that the little old lady, while little and old, was also a kendo master, one who suffered from bouts of dementia.

  Following the shame, the police report, and the physical therapy, Rusty now carried his fangs in a pouch while in public.18

  Rusty pulled the cord to signal his stop. With an awkward amount of effort, he extricated himself from his seat and walked to the door. As he did, he passed the twitchy waitress.

  Hiss, his mind hissed, filling her with fear, respect, and just a bit of lustful desire.

  Yeah, you keep walking, freak, her mind replied, without any fear, respect, and absolutely zero lustful desire.

  Rusty exited the bus and began the long and uncomfortable march home. Sauntering through the city, visiting the bars he did, in the parts of town he did, that was one thing. Taking the bus out of the city, that was another. But walking through a quiet suburban neighborhood, with lawns and gnomes and swing sets, while dressed as a dark lord of vampirism was something else entirely. Plus it was cold, and surprisingly, the velvet robes were not warming.

  As he walked, his mind turned back to the night he had had. He considered his fellow role-players and how their petty intrigues were destroying his empire. He reflected upon the assassination attempt he’d survived and how insulting it was to be the target of so feeble a plot. He thought about Torvald Blackmyst, née Donald Quiggly, and how he’d decided to quit their group just because he’d gone and gotten himself a girlfriend, the poser.

  “You don’t leave the coven just because Nancy Tompkins kisses you at our lame-o high school reunion,” he shouted to the wind. “You don’t change who you are just to get a girl!” Several dogs in the neighborhood obviously agreed.

  Children of the night, thought Rusty as he continued to walk and talk. “I mean, if she doesn’t understand your need to live a life of darkness, blood, and betrayal, then she’s not worth dating.”

  The night agreed in the form of a gust of freezing wind. Rusty thanked it with chattering teeth and a few choice curse words. This, in turn, brought the “You’re welcome” of house lights switched on. Rusty metaphorically nodded good-bye by shutting his mouth and running home. Rather, he ran a block, stopped to catch his breath, then continued at the same pace he had started at until he reached his house.

  Rusty quietly unlocked the front door and stepped inside. The house was dark and still, a sure sign that his parents had gone to bed. As silently as he could, which, considering a lack of coordination, wasn’t very silent, Rusty made his way to the basement. Not because his room was down there, no, that was on the second floor, but to get to it, he would have had to walk up the squeaky steps, across the creaky floorboards, and past his light-sleeping mom and dad. His mother would undoubtedly wake and cry and ask where she had gone wrong, and in the morning, Pastor Dan would be there to have a little chat with him. So, instead, he went to the basement where he had stashed his laptop, a change of clothes, and a futon. Well, he hadn’t stashed the futon. The futon was always there; more like he was stashing himself there for the evening.

  Rusty had done this often enough to be able to navigate his way around in the dark. He felt his way to the edge of the stairs, stopped, went back to grab a can of soda,19 and then descended, sans lights.

  In the dark, Rusty did not notice the soft ticking sound. Nor did he pay much mind to the click that muffled it. In fact, it wasn’t until a voice interrupted him midgulp that he noticed anything was amiss.

  “Good evening, Vermillion,” greeted the voice.

  Soda20 flew from Rusty’s m
outh in a fine mist, at least in the movie that played in the young man’s mind. In reality, there was a great deal of spitting and choking.

  A lamp clicked on, and Rusty saw the violator of his sanctum. The distinguished gentleman who sat revealed by the light was just that, a distinguished gentleman. Everything about him shouted an earlier era: his three-piece suit, his white gloves, his pocket watch. He wore a pencil-thin mustache worthy of William Powell, as well as sideburns somewhere between Elvis Presley and Martin Van Buren. Striking gray eyes peered at Rusty over small rectangular reading glasses. The man’s other-timely appearance combined with his dashing good looks made quite the first impression, though Rusty couldn’t help but register that the basement normally didn’t contain the velvet-cushioned antique chair where the man sat. Or a lamp, for that matter.

  Rusty, having spit up on himself, gawked stupidly before attempting to muster some impressive indignation. His stature grew by inches while his girth shifted and sloshed.

  “How do you know that name?” he demanded. Being years out of puberty, his voice didn’t crack, though age had never stopped his acne.

  The man smiled. “What other would I use, Vermillion?”

  Rusty’s mind focused. Only members of his coven called him Vermillion, no matter how hard he tried to get others to do so. That meant this was vampire business. Not a job for Rusty, then.

  “Who are you?” asked Vermillion, his voice artificially deep and gruff. “Why are you here?”

  “A friend,” said the man, baring a pair of very real fangs as he did so, “who is here to make you the offer of an unlifetime.”

  Chapter 9

  Catherine Dorset was knitting in her head. She was making a sweater for her sister. She had never actually managed to knit anything except scarves, but that was the beautiful thing about the mind—you didn’t have to worry about ability or skill or knowledge. Everything came out exactly the way you wanted it to. Which was ugly, because her sister had given her an ugly sweater three Christmases ago, and revenge was a sweater best served bright and unwearable.

  Knitting was just the beginning of Catherine’s big night in. Afterward, she intended to replay her favorite versions of Jane Austen’s novels. Then, she would do her yoga meditations, maybe sing some karaoke or play her guitar before settling down for a night of sweet dreams. All in all, an impressive evening for a woman in a coma.