by Steven Luna
• Are you good with being up at night… like, all night? We tend to practice late. Yeah… I work nights, so being up until the wee hours is no trouble. Not a big sleeper during the day, either, so I can deal with whatever works for you.
• We’re big on non-disclosure in this band… it’s a huge issue for us with the big plans we have coming up. How good are you with maintaining privacy and keeping things secret? I pride myself on my ability to keep a secret, and I keep to myself about almost everything. No worries there.
• We’re planning on moving around a bit after things get going, for recording and live shows. Do you have problems with being gone for extended periods… any girlfriend waiting at home for you, or family commitments that might cause complications? No girlfriends, and family is so not overly concerned that they wouldn’t even notice if I was gone. Plus: I’ve got a ton of vacation saved up, so I’d be good with touring for however long we’d be on the road.
Then they looked me up and down, trying to picture me as one of them, I’m sure. I could see why. They were sizable – even Lucas was probably six three; I was six inches shorter and far less AnF than everyone else in the room. I smirked a little out of nervousness, and one of them asked point blank, “What’s with the teeth?”
Damn. The fangs.
They were gonna lose this for me.
“They’ve always been like that… a genetic thing. I’m saving up to get them fixed.” That seemed to satisfy them.
The other one glared through me. “And what do your ears look like?”
I froze.
They must have seen them poking out.
I resisted the urge to pull my hair down to make sure they were covered. “Uh… my ears… are… ”
Lucas broke in, shooting them both a look that told them to stop humiliating their guest. “What he means is that he hopes they’ll look good with a mullet.” A mullet? “You’re going to need one if you’re in the band. What do you think, guys? Is Joe who we’re looking for?” I was sweating it. I didn’t want to, but I sort of peeked in their heads. All of them were thinking the same thing: he’s the one. So I knew before they said it that it was unanimous.
One of them piped up. “I think we’ve found our guy.”
The tension finally broke.
“Welcome to Forever 81, Joe. You’re in.” They all slapped me on the back, and I let go of the breath I’d been holding from the minute I walked in. “Your friend Lazer was right about you.”
Lazer? “He had something to do with this?”
Lucas smiled. “Oh yeah. He was the one who put us on to you… said you didn’t seem to be committed to your own band, so maybe we’d be able to take you off his hands.”
Wow. That almost sounded decent of him. I could only imagine what other things he’d told them about me. “He’s not my biggest fan, so maybe don’t believe everything he said.”
Kyle – I think – waved it off. “Actually, he was pretty helpful. We need to thank him for helping us get to you.” The way we hit the bar and spilled bottles of Dom told me there was some serious money behind these guys. The business cards suddenly made sense – and the producer hunt, and the studio, and the readiness to sharpen their act. In one afternoon, I went from an unappreciated bass synth player who’d been kicked out of his own no-rate electro-garbage band to the keyboardist for an up-and-coming rock band that was actually going to be something.
I’ve wanted to know this for sure since the whole thing dropped on me, but I think I finally see that it’s all going to be okay despite my vampirosity. I had started to doubt it, but not anymore.
It’s about freaking time.
At last, I could check off something from the Hell, Yes! column, the one Louise is always telling me to focus on. It turned out to be worth risking the sunburn.
There was, however, a little complication that arose when I got home, something I hadn’t thought to expect. But I never thought to expect any of this, so I guess it’s just the next step in learning how to deal with being a vampire. Some days, you have to figure out how to nourish yourself by chewing on raw meat rather than people’s necks; other days, you have to change your ‘do to make sure your pointed ears stay covered during your band audition.
And some days, you have to take down a vampire hunter before he beats the fuck out of you and tries to pierce your heart with a railroad spike.
POST 33
Freak Attack
Until recently, I had never been jumped on by a heavyset southern man wearing a John Deere cap and reeking of beer and chewing tobacco. I have officially added it to my list of Things I Hope Never Happen to Me Again, right below being bitten by a vampire, and above accidentally walking in on my parents having vigorous sex… which happened while I was an adult.
And the position they were in wasn’t anywhere close to missionary.
Even once in a lifetime is too much for something like that.
It was after dark when I got home from celebrating my addition to Forever 81 with my new band mates, and I must say I was mighty buzzed, from the shots as much as from the success I’d had at the audition. I was floating on my own happy cloud at how well it had gone. My life had music in it. My future had something good in it.
My door had a crowbar stuck in it.
And the lock had been smashed. And the frame was splintered way more than it should have been.
These all probably coincided with the severely-lifted truck parked across the street from my house. I pushed the door open slowly. Even with the lights off, my night-ready eyes picked up most everything in the dark. I moved in slowly, finding nothing really out of place other than a few things scattered about… and that was most likely a mess I’d made before I left. But the skin-crawling sensation that someone was in the house with me shivered down my back.
Seems highly unlikely that a vampire would be afraid of something unseen lurking in the dark, but there you have it.
“Whoever’s in here,” I called out, remarkably composed for someone so ready to pee his pants, “I don’t want any trouble. So here’s what’s going to happen: I’ll throw my wallet in the middle of the floor – minus my driver’s license – and you can grab it and run out the door. I won’t even call the police… you can just take the wallet and go. Okay? Is it a deal?” My offer received no response. In a stroke of brilliance that I’m happy to take credit for, I sent my mind reading skills out ahead of me, just peeking in the corners of the room and all around. All that came back was a picture of a Budweiser bottle and scenes of trucks with massive tires tearing through a mud bog.
And vampires.
Sparkly, pretty, and nicely dressed.
I flipped on the living room lights and slinked to the hallway, trying to watch my back and my front at the same time. All was clear ahead and behind, but someone else’s thoughts were still stuck in my brain. I swung open the doors to the bedroom and bathroom, but those were empty, too. There weren’t many other places for someone to be. So when he came dropping out from his hiding spot between the two walls above my hall closet, it sort of took me by surprise. He must have wedged himself up there like a fat Spiderman. His bulk knocked me backward into the living room, where we both crashed into the coffee table and smashed it flat.
Guess I won’t be crawling back under there anytime soon.
He made a quick spin for being such a chubby guy, like he’d been practicing wrestling maneuvers for quite some time, and ended up straddling my waist and pinning me on the pile of table scraps. I could hardly breathe with his mass crushing my stomach. Then he raised his arm above his John Deere-capped head, and I saw the spike gleaming in the light as he swung it downward. I was able to catch his wrist before it made contact. But this guy had some mad power in his arms, and he shoved the metal point toward my face, aiming pretty directly for my throat and inching toward my ribcage. It took a second before I remembered what had happened in the gym with the weight machines. I have a superpower I can use here… So I clutched his wrist firmly
and pushed, feeling the bones crackle slightly. I think he cried out “Holy Momma!” as he struggled, but it felt like there was no resistance from him whatsoever. I just held his arm back against his shoulder, pressing my thumb into the soft spot below his palm until he dropped the spike. “Goddamn, that hurts!” he hollered. Then I clutched his waistband and sort of hoisted him off of me as I stood up. I had him pushed up against the wall, maybe even coming off of the ground and kicking his feet in mid-air a little. He was a not-so-solid two hundred eighty pounds at least, and I had the better of him at a buck seventy.
Vampire strength.
Fuck yeah!
He was wearing a ten dollar workman’s tool belt like you get at Home Depot, with all kinds of odd stuff hanging off of it – garlic bulbs, a flask with a piece of masking tape with the words “holy water” written across it, a hand mirror, a pocket tool for fixing small appliances and cutting your way out of a seat belt… and opening beer bottles. “Is this some sort of vampire protection kit?” I asked him. His other hand was reaching into his pocket for what I imagined would be another spike. But when I caught that wrist in my grasp, all he was holding was a cross. “That doesn’t work on the Jews.” I twisted his arm behind him and shoved his face against the wall pretty hard, but keeping careful not to hurt the guy. He may have pulled a major sneak attack on me, and he looked armed for some fierce ghoul battle, but I had it all taken care of now. No need for bloodshed or bone breakage. And with this muscle-less strength at my disposal, it seemed all too easy to cause him real damage. No matter what he was trying to do to me, that wasn’t the direction I wanted to go with this. “What other fun surprises do you have stuck in your tool belt, huh, John Deere? Is there a gun in there, or a knife?” I ripped off the belt and threw it across the room.
“Don’t suck out all my blood, please, mister,” he begged me. “I got an old lady and a baby at home!”
He had a deep, deep southern accent, like he might have been from a row of states between Texas and Mexico that haven’t been added to the map yet. For the sake of clear communication, I won’t try to reproduce it phonetically here.
You’ll just have to imagine how it sounds as you read.
He wasn’t putting up much of a fight, so I let him go, keeping cautious the whole time of where his hands were as he turned around. They were mostly rubbing the pain out of his wrists. “What the fuck are you doing in my house?” I blasted.
“It ain’t obvious?” He held his arms out so I could read his shirt:
The Pire Hunter
Kickin Tires ‘N Killin Pires
Catchy. “So you’re a vampire hunter – is that it?”
“Yessir. I’m on Twitter and Linked In, and I’ve got a Facebook page. Bumper stickers and magnets are on order.” An overweight, socially-networked, media-marketed vampire hunter from the south, who likes mud bogs and domestic beer?
There’s not enough mind reading vampiricity in the world to have picked up on something like that.
POST 34
Bo: Hunter
Vampire hunters are another element of the whole deal that I thought were only the “myth” part of the mythology – fantastic devices for storytelling as a counterpoint to the evil antics those literary Suckers of Blood were up to, but not an actual contingent prowling the night armed with stakes and crosses. By now, there aren’t many aspects of being a vampire that I haven’t considered from a real-world perspective. But the idea of people devoted to hunting them is just something that had never occurred to me.
Now I know better.
“So there’s a huge call in this area for vampire hunters? Are there vampires just running around all over the place, like sewer rats?” I know they abound, especially down by Pomme, but it hardly seemed like common knowledge. So I tried to play it cool and condescending, hoping it would throw a smoke screen over the truth. I really didn’t think it would be too hard to do with the anti-genius standing before me in my living room.
I was right. It wasn’t hard.
“I don’t know about that. I drove across town to get here. I’m mobile.” He turned so I could see that the map on the back of his shirt. Serving the greater metropolitan area. Like pizza delivery, or plumbing repair. “You’re my first kill… or you would’ve been if you hadn’t been so dang smart.”
Don’s first change, this bozo’s first kill. I’m everybody’s first. “Well, sorry you wasted your gas. No vampires here.”
Once I denied it, he became a little more attentive, like suddenly he had to prove himself right to justify having the t-shirt printed. “Really? ‘Cause I could’ve sworn vampires had fangy teeth, like yours there.”
“These? Genetic defect.”
“And your pointy ears? Are those generic too?”
“It’s genetic, not generic and… and… ” I stopped mid-lie. “You know what? Screw this.” Suddenly I didn’t feel like playing my own game anymore; it was too hard to keep the list of lies straight, even in my own head. Whether or not he would have bought the excuses, it was time for me to try a different tack. This take-down I’d gotten over on the chubby hunter told me I could pull myself out of trouble if something here went sour. I didn’t want to cause any real mayhem, but I would go totally Tasmanian Vampire on his ass if it came to that. So I told him the truth. “You’re right, dude; you caught me. I’m a vampire.”
He eyed me sideways. “Now you’re just shitting me, aren’t you? Messing with the dumb guy’s head?”
Oh my God. This was rough.
“Nope – not shitting you, not messing with your head. I am a vampire.” I hardly ever say it out loud to myself, let alone to anyone within earshot. It felt kind of liberating. “That’s why you came here, isn’t it? Hunting vampires?”
That made him even more suspicious. “Yeah, but a ‘pire’d have to be real stupid to admit it to a hunter. You don’t seem stupid.”
“Stupid or not, it’s totally true. No use denying it anymore – you found me. I am absolutely, without question, a vampire. See? Here are the teeth,” and I bared them, “and the ears,” and I showed them, “and this is where I was bitten.” I pulled down the collar of my hoodie and showed him the bite marks. “And my skin – see? It’s pale, kind of.” I almost wished I hadn’t kept up with the carrot juice. “And you can feel how cold it is. That’s how you can tell; all of those are signs that I am one of the undead. A vampire.” He just stood there, with a stunned redneck-in-the-headlights look on his face.
I think my about-face totally threw him.
He whipped a flashlight out of his pocket and shined it right on me. I hadn’t even thought about it, but my Ray Bans had come off in the tussle, and my all-black eyes were gazing right at him. The light dazzled the crap out of them. “But you don’t even sparkle. Maybe your hair, a little… not your skin, though. Nothing glittery about you at all.”
I grabbed the flashlight and threw it on the floor, hoping it had broken. “I’m a vampire, not a pole dancer.”
He stepped forward to look closer, and I threw up Judo hands to warn him off. For the record: I don’t know Judo, but if he came any closer I had no qualms about figuring it out on the fly. “And why are your eyes all black like that? Where’s the gold parts?”
“There aren’t any gold parts. This is what a vampire really looks like.”
“My old lady read the Nightfall books about a thousand times. We got the movies on DVD, too. She knows everything there is to know about ‘pires.” I don’t know why he kept calling them ‘pires. Was it really so hard to say the whole thing? “You don’t look like you’re supposed to, the way those kids do.”
“That’s a buttload of fiction.”
He looked puzzled. “I got everything but that last word.”
Really? I only said five. “It’s bullshit; make-believe. A fairy tale.”
“Fairy tale? Those movies don’t have a single fairy in them.”
Wow. “Good point. Not a fairy tale in that way; it’s just a made-up story about vampire
s. It’s not based on real life.”
“Sure sounds like real life to me.” This right here? This is the problem!
This, as much as This.
“What’s your name, Pire Hunter?”
“Bo.” He kicked the carpet. “Ah, dogcrap. I’m not supposed to tell you that.”
A hunter named Bo? Radical. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll probably forget it in a minute.”
“Oh. Good.”
“So Bo, you’re looking at a vampire – me; I’m a vampire. God’s honest truth.” I smiled a bit, putting on a friendly face despite my undeniably feral mouth. “Do I look like what they talk about in those books or show in the movies, aside from the fangs and sloppy hair?”