Diary of a Blood Drinker

by Robert Arellano

  She told him she did not want anything to do with him. She told him that I knew about his accusation having to do with her and it was all taken care of. She tried to get an idea of where he was but he was being very elusive and would not tell her. She told me she thought that he was still in town. I knew he was not done with me. I asked her what time he called and made a mental note of the time. Every office handles its own utility bills, so I asked Mary if she could get the phone bill when it came in and keep it for me. She said yes. I thanked her and left the office.

  I was relieved that I would not have to do Mary any harm. For now I had an ally. Jonas was another story. If he persisted in harassing Mary and me, I would have to take care of him. I would have to wait and see if I could find him. If and when I did, I would have to do something. As far as I knew, the only person he was in contact with was Mary. If I made him disappear would anyone miss him?

  Two days later Mary called me and said that she had received the phone bill. I told her I would stop by and pick it up. When I got to my office I looked through it and found the number Jonas had called from. I looked through the cross-reference directory that we used, and found what I was looking for. I recognized the address. It was the same one I gave to the hacker when I was trying to find out if Jonas had the files in his computer. He had made the phone call from his home. It had never occurred to me to look for him there. I thought that he was hiding and would be someplace nobody knew about. I waited for nightfall and drove to his house.

  I parked down and across the street and waited to see if he was there. The neighborhood was quiet and his car was parked in the driveway. Looking at the windows, I saw the silhouette of a man moving from room to room. It had to be him. I hoped he would not leave. I would now have to wait until he turned out the lights and settled in for the night.

  Around one o’clock in the morning, an hour since the lights had gone out, I moved toward the house. I found a window in the back and quietly forced it. When the window opened I was hit by the strong smell of garlic. There were garlic ropes all around the perimeter of the window. I climbed in and, as I explored the house I noticed garlic hung at every entrance. I found the bedroom. Jonas was fast asleep on the bed. There were crosses on every wall of his bedroom. On the nightstand were several books about vampires.

  I remembered reading about all the things that were supposed to keep vampires away and keep a person safe. The way he had been acting, he must have been convinced that I was one and was trying to protect himself. Other than the pungent odor of the garlic, none of this stuff had an effect on me. I stood at the foot of his bed and looked down on him, trying to figure out what I was going to do. I had not fed that night, so I bent over him and sank my fangs into his neck. Feelings of fear and frustration met my senses as I drank. I felt his heart slow down and I stopped. This was the perfect opportunity to take care of this problem. I had to make him disappear and make sure that no one would find him. If his body was found, many questions would surface about the odds of two people that worked closely together being killed. I sank my fangs into him again and drank until his heart stopped.

  I walked out of the house and to my car. I pulled into the driveway, opened the trunk and walked into the house. I took his clothes off, picked him up and put him in the car. It was a quiet night and I could not see or sense anyone around. I drove through the neighborhood with the lights of the car off. I had to find a remote and isolated place where I could dump the body, somewhere it would never be found or identified.

  Once out of the neighborhood, I turned the car lights on and headed toward the mountains north of Los Angeles, following Angeles Forest Highway through some neighborhoods. As soon as I passed the last of the houses, I turned the lights off again and drove up the mountain for about half an hour until I found a narrow side road that followed a deep drop on one side and a mountain wall on the other. All the time that I had been on these roads, I had not met another vehicle going in either direction. I stopped at a narrow place on the road. I looked over the edge and all I could see were trees and thick shrubbery about three hundred feet down. I took the body out of the car and threw it over the edge and saw it disappear at the bottom of the ravine.

  I drove back down the mountain until I reached the neighborhood, reflecting on what I had to do. I hoped that this would be the end of what Frank and Jonas had tried to do to me. As far as I knew, most of my problems were over now. Hopefully I would be able to live without any more drama in my life.

  It had now been ten years since I became a blood-drinking creature. I was used to living with this condition. I treated my feeding on people the same way I used to treat going out to dinner at a restaurant. I was still at the same job and my investments were doing very well. I was thinking about not working anymore and living on the money my investments had made.

  But, I liked that my job travels would take me to places that I could feed. I guess that I could still travel and use that as a reason to widen my feeding grounds. I never heard any more about Frank and Jonas.

  A couple of years after the Jonas incident, Mary left the company and began a part-time career so she could have more time to devote to her children. Others in the company left and new people were hired. For the third time as a vampire, I changed my career choice.

  Actually, I decided to not work anymore. I called Randy, my investment counselor, and he told me that I was making more money with my investments in one year than I would make in five years working at my present job. One morning I walked into my boss’s office and quit. I decided that I could not live in an office or out in the streets anymore.

  Would I live in a mansion like the vampires in the stories did? Or would I move into a modest home in some neighborhood that gave me access to food whenever I needed it? There also had to be a way that I could acquire blood and store it at my home so that I would not have to hunt every night. There were several blood banks and hospitals around town that I could visit and possibly acquire some blood. I would have to learn how to get some and learn how long I could store it.

  I had been driving all over the city for years and knew what every neighborhood had to offer. When it came down to finding a home to live in, I chose the foothills overlooking Hollywood. There was plenty of night life, plenty of hotels and many vagrants that would give me a menu to choose from. There were also several hospitals that I could visit and take advantage of the blood banks.

  One day I walked into a realty office and started a search for the perfect house. I looked through their listings and settled on three places that I wanted to visit, all within walking distance from each other. I was able to see them all with the help of a realtor and decided on the one I wanted.

  It was a mini-mansion with a view of Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles. It had a sizable back yard with a pool, spa, and a small cabana for changing into or out of a bathing suit. It had many things that I would probably never use and some that I would use all the time. I closed the deal and was able to rent it until escrow closed. Two days later, I moved in.

  One of the things that I decided that I had to do was to blend in with society. I would have to start socializing, meeting people that I could spend time with, without feeding off them. I was tired of the solitary life. I had enough experience being a vampire and deceiving people and I thought that I could get away with this. I hired a company to decorate and furnish the entire 4-bedroom house. There was a wine cellar and I had workers install an extra refrigerator with a lock. Anybody walking into the house would think that an ordinary well-to-do man lived there.

  After all the workers left for the day, I used my computer to find out where blood was stored after a donation. The very first thing I stumbled across was a link called, Oh No, Not another Vampire Story . I laughed and thought, “If you only knew.”

  I started mapping out where all the hospitals and blood banks were. I was not sure whether I would find anything at a hospital, but I had to try. I did find out that most of the donated blood was sent to th
e Red Cross. If I failed at a hospital I would search for a Red Cross blood bank.

  One night I drove to a big hospital on Sunset Blvd. I parked and walked into the main entrance. It was late on a weeknight and the place was not busy. I walked down the halls keeping an eye out for cameras, looking for directions to the laboratory. I spotted a person – not sure whether they were male or female – coming out of a room carrying a couple of bags full of blood, then disappearing into and emergency room area. The person was wearing a long blue gown, a cap that covered almost the entire head and a mask that only revealed their eyes.

  A sign on the door next to where this person walked in read Dressing Room . I walked in and on the shelves were gowns of all different colors. I had no idea what color different people on staff wore, so I grabbed a white coat, cap and a mask and put them on. No one was in the hall as I slipped out and made my way into the emergency room area.

  The room was cool and there were several glass-door coolers with bags of blood neatly stacked inside. All were filed according to blood type. There were bags labeled Whole Blood , others labeled RBC and more that I did not understand. I found a stack of portable coolers marked For Medical Transport Only . I opened the refrigerator, grabbed two bags of whole blood and stashed them in the cooler. I opened the door to the room, looked both ways down the hall and headed out the emergency room exit.

  As I passed the ER waiting room I saw a woman and a child sleeping on the chairs provided for visitors. No one else was around. Outside, I walked between two ambulances parked right outside the door. I headed toward my car. If someone saw me, hopefully they would think it was a hospital worker heading home. I was surprised that it was so quiet and I was able to get away with it as easily as I had.

  Once home, I put the bags in my wine cellar refrigerator and locked it. I went to my computer and double-checked my research on the correct temperature for blood storage. Depending on how long the blood had been in the hospital, I had between thirty and forty days to use it.

  I wanted to entertain at home. I would not look out of place when everyone else was holding a drink. I know it sounds stupid, but that would be one of the things that would make it appear that I was normal. Never mind that it would be human blood that I would be drinking.

  I was sitting in my backyard-with-a-view marveling at the amount of humanity that lived around me. I could not imagine being the only creature like me living among the millions of people in this city. Odds and numbers were something that I lived with all my life. The odds of winning the lottery were astronomical; the odds of me getting cancer were fair; the odds that I would be bitten by a bat and wind up being a creature like me…well, I could never imagine this happening to one person in millions.

  Everything seems to be a well-set plan. Or is it a cruel joke? As I was sitting there taking in the sights and sounds, I got a whiff of smoke coming from not too far away. I stepped to the edge of the yard and looked. Off to my left about one hundred yards were three small fires. At first, I thought someone was trying to light the hills on fire, but as I kept watch, the fires didn’t change in intensity. As I looked closely, I could see some small movement around each of the fires. This was something that I would have to investigate.

  It was a weekend morning and I decided to take a stroll around the neighborhood. There were gardeners working on my neighbors’ yards. I realized that I was going to have to hire someone to do the same to my place. I walked up to a man that was working a loud blowing machine and got his attention. He stopped and turned off the machine. I asked him if he was taking on any new customers. He answered in a very thick Spanish accent that the boss was around the corner and I should talk to him. A man came up to me and introduced himself as Jose and asked if I needed something. I was able to understand this man a lot easier and I repeated myself about him possibly doing my yard. We settled on a price and a day they would come by and I continued on my walk.

  I kept glancing toward the area where I had seen the fires the night before. Looking down the hill, all I could see was thick brush among several trees. There were several small trails that wove through the area, but I could not see anyone around. A man and a woman walking a small dog came up to me. The first thing that hit me was the strong smell of perfume coming from her and cologne from him. I thought to myself, “Can’t they smell how overwhelming the odor is?” Or was my sense of smell so keen that it was sickening.

  The dog growled at me and was told to be quiet. He settled down. “They come and sleep down there every night.” the man said. I introduced myself and asked what he was talking about. After his introductions, he said that vagrants would come and spend the night down in the canyon almost every night. Neighbors were concerned about the fires these people built and had called the police several times, but to no avail. “By the time the police arrive in the daytime, they are all gone.”

  The two asked if I was new to the neighborhood and I told them that I was, describing the house I had move into. They welcomed me to the neighborhood and then continued to tell me the good and bad things about living there. I told them that I was thinking about hosting a party for the neighbors so that I could get to know them and asked what they thought of the idea. She said, so long as you have plenty of booze, many of the neighbors will come.

  Chapter 13

  That night I decided to go down to the canyon and see what I could find. I walked along the road for a while until I found a small trail heading toward the area that I wanted to visit. It was dark and I was not concerned about being detected.

  As I moved along the trail, I heard and saw small rodents scurrying among the bushes. I saw a coyote run away as I approached a clump of bushes. Soon after, I heard voices coming from the direction I was traveling. When I was walking, I smelled places where someone had urinated or defecated.

  I finally reached an area where I saw a small group of people sitting around a fire. Beyond this group of two men and a woman, I could see through the bushes where others sat around two more small fires. I put on my dark glasses to compensate for the glare of the fire and stood in the shadows watching the people go on with their business.

  I quietly checked out the other two campsites and found what I assumed was a family – a man, and a woman with three children. They were eating out of tin cans. At the other site two men sat on crates, smoking and drinking beer.

  At all three sites blankets were set up around the fires. I saw and smelled food containers strewn all around the area, discarded by these people or others that had been there before. I waited and watched. One by one they settled in for the night.

  I had fed on the blood from one of the bags I had stolen and was not hungry, so I left them alone and walked away. I found that the biggest different between the blood from the hospital and the blood form a live person, was the temperature. That being the only difference, my hunger was satisfied and I felt no ill effects.

  I found myself getting restless throughout the next few days. I did not have much to do and paced through the house. Periodically, I would get a visit from the interior decorator or someone bringing more furniture to complete the job. Every time someone came into the house, my body tensed and I had to control the urge to attack the person. I don’t know if it was because someone was invading my space, or that my body was going through another change.

  I was trying to conserve the blood in the cooler because I had planned on using it as a beverage during the times when someone would come to visit me. I had been going down to the strip and using the clubs and bars again as my hunting grounds. I knew that I had the people down in the canyon as a backup and decided that it was time for me use them.

  That night I found myself standing near the vagrants’ campsites down in the canyon. From my previous visit, I knew what time they would retire for the night. I decided that if I fed on the children it might be fatal to them. I did not want to use the parents because they needed their strength to provide for the family. I know I was rationalizing this too much, but I was
glad because that meant I was in control. If I did not have to take a life, I would not. Finding dead people would always create a whole lot of questions. There was always a chance, however small, that those questions could lead investigators to me.

  I decided on the two men that were at the farthest campsite. As I approached I smelled the strong odor of beer. The fire was almost out and they were both fast asleep. I bent over one of the men and sank my fangs into his throat. I heard a small moan come from him while I drank. I could feel his heart beat. I stopped as it started to slow down. I was concerned because I did not experience any feelings coming from him. Maybe his conscience was shut down because of the alcohol or he was at a point in his life where nothing mattered.

  I made my way home and decided to plan a party. To make it look like I was a normal person, I would have to provide some foods to snack on and some drinks. I didn’t know how I would react to being in a food market trying to buy what I needed. The alternative would be to find and hire a caterer and have everything set up. I went to my computer and found a catering service in the area that might provide what I needed. When I called, a woman named Tami answered. I told her what I needed and that I did not know how many people would attend. She said that she would prepare a spread for at least 30 people. I told her that I would need to keep enough drinks on hand for everyone. I gave her my credit card number as a deposit and then I hung up.

  Now I needed to figure out how to invite people that I did not know to come to a party. I thought about having to deal with the smell of the food and people in my house. I had finally learned how to deal with the noise, but the way strong odors affected me were something I had not yet overcome. I called a florist in the area and ordered the most fragrant flowers they could provide – many for every room that we would be using. I planned to spend as much time as I could on the patio near the pool outside.