Bill The Vampire - 01

by Rick Gualtieri

  The machine maxed out at three-hundred and fifty pounds, and that's what Tom set it to as I sat down at the bench press. “Shouldn't we start low and work our way up?” I protested.

  “Warm-ups are for pussies,” was his reply.

  Okay, I can do this... maybe, I thought, as I prepared to lift a lot more than I would have ever even considered trying.

  “If something happens...” I started

  “You'll heal fast. We already know that,” Ed finished. I was feeling the love, I tell you.

  I needn't have worried. I started to push and, as I put on the pressure, I actually felt the bar start to rise with the effort. Holy crap! I mean, I knew I was stronger after the whole being turned into a vampire thing, but it was another thing entirely to know how much I was lifting.

  “Goddamn, you're doing it!” Ed whispered.

  “Yeah,” Tom said in awe. “How does it feel?”

  “Badass!” I grunted

  “No, stupid. How does the weight feel?”

  “Heavy, but I could handle some more.”

  Ed took a quick look around, saw that nobody was looking, and hopped up onto the weight stack. Ed wasn't a big guy, but he pushed the total easily past the five-hundred pound mark. I gave a loud grunt and almost lost it, but managed to keep it up... barely.

  “Thanks!” I sarcastically wheezed once I had lowered the bar.

  “Don't mention it,” Ed cheerfully replied.

  We moved on to other exercises and spent about another hour obtaining similar results. I wasn't going to be casually throwing cars around anytime soon, but the results were definitely impressive. At last I’d had enough, and we found ourselves alone in the locker room, cleaning up and getting ready to head home.

  “That was fucking wild,” said Tom excitedly. “You're like a freaking super soldier. We're talking Captain America here!”

  “At the very least, Bruce Willis from Unbreakable,” countered Ed.

  “I guess that's cool,” I sighed.

  “What?” sniffed Tom. “You were hoping for the Hulk?”

  “It's not that,” I said. “It's just that I can lift all that weight; I can take all sorts of physical abuse. Hell, I could probably kick ass in a dozen Olympic events.”

  “Developing a high opinion of ourselves, are we?” Ed quipped.

  “You know what I mean!” I said as I stood up and started flexing in front of a mirror. It didn’t look any more convincing than it had before I became the undead.

  “I can do all this shit I couldn't do before, and I still look like this! I mean, when the hell is it going to happen?”

  “When is what going to happen?”

  “You know. When am I going to get all... sexy?” I said in a small voice.

  Tom and Ed took a second to give each other a glance, and then Tom responded, “Bill, I ask this with all due sincerity... what the fuck are you talking about?”

  “My entire coven!” I said, feeling a rant coming on. “They look like they stepped out of a fashion shoot, each and every one of them! So, I figured eventually it might happen to me. You know, like in Interview with the Vampire. Brad Pitt got bitten and suddenly his hair got all done up and he was a lot better looking.”

  “Well, for starters,” Ed said calmly, “it was just a stupid fucking movie, idiot. Secondly, he looked like Brad Pitt to begin with. Being bitten didn't turn him into Brad Pitt.”

  “Yeah, but he at least got Fabio hair,” I pointed out.

  “You'd look stupid with Fabio hair.”

  “Fine, no Brad Pitt,” I whined. “But what about Antonio Banderas?”

  Fully engaged now, Ed took the bait, while Tom sat back to see how this would all play out. “Antonio Banderas? Why the hell would you want to look like him?”

  “He was in that movie, too. Also had great hair and seemed to be doing pretty well for himself.”

  “Pretty well? He's married to Melanie Griffith. She's definitely seen better days.”

  “Well, yeah, now he is,” I agreed. “But back in the day he nailed Salma Hayak.”

  “That was just in Desperado, dipshit!”

  “Fuck that. I guarantee he banged her in real life. Even if he didn't, he had a long sex scene with her and was groping her tits throughout the entire thing.”

  “I will concede you that point,” said Ed. “However, your logic has one major flaw. In Interview with the Vampire, he was busy lusting after Brad Pitt. Dude had gone totally homo for him. Shit, pretty much every vampire in that movie did. It was like a giant vampire man-ass festival. If that's what you're going for, you're going to need to rethink that whole sucking-on-naked-dudes-phobia you’ve got going on.”

  “Stop right there, because I got you now, motherfucker.” I got all in his face. “Not every vampire lusting after Brad Pitt was a guy.”

  “I'm pretty sure they were.”

  “What about Kirsten 'I banged Spider-Man' Dunst?” I pointed out.

  “Dude, she was like twelve.”

  “Originally, yeah. But near the end she was more like sixty.”

  “She still looked twelve.”

  “Gotta agree with Ed on that one, bro,” Tom piped in.

  “Shut up!” Ed and I simultaneously told him.

  I wasn't about to lose this one. “It doesn't matter what she looked like. Before she got turned to dust, she was more than old enough for Brad Pitt to pork.”

  “That's fucked up,” he said. “So you're saying his character was a pedophile?”

  “Read my lips... SHE WAS SIXTY!”

  “That vamp who bit you must have drained all the blood from your brain. She had the body of a kid.”

  “And the emotional maturity of an adult,” I countered.

  “Her body still looked like a kid.”

  “So? Some midgets look like kids. Are you saying anyone who nails a midget is a pedo?”

  “Not the same thing, asshole! They're physically mature adults.”

  “Who just so happen to look like kids. According to your logic, that makes it the same thing!”

  “You know,” said Ed, throwing up his hands in disgust, “sometimes I just can't talk to you. It's like trying to communicate with a retarded bonobo.”

  “In other words,” I grinned, “that's point and match, bitch!”

  “Fuck you. And you'd still look stupid with Fabio hair.”

  Back To the Meat Grinder

  Following work Thursday night, we took a field trip, as Tom called it, to a church. There, after seeing that I didn't burst aflame upon entering (I was starting to tire of how most of these tests seemed to be against how flammable I might or might not be), we pretended to pray until we were alone. Then Tom and Ed took turns either splashing me from the holy water basin, or touching me with the various altar relics. In all cases, nothing happened, except perhaps that I wound up both wet and annoyed.

  “We probably shouldn't be surprised,” Tom said on the way home. “I think that was a Lutheran church. According my grandmother, they're already a den of Satanists.”

  *sigh* Assholes, both of them.

  * * *

  Friday night finally arrived. It had been a long week. During the days, Ed and I were slaving away at work, and then the nights felt like they were spent with my roommates coming up with new and inventive ways to torture me. Speaking of work, I had managed to do my job from home all week, which was good (considering the crispy fried alternative of going to the office during the day). Unfortunately, that wasn't going to last forever. At some point, they'd expect me in for a face to face meeting, or status update. I'd have to work on a contingency plan for that. Fortunately, I had at least a few days before that was going to be an issue.

  Friday night was supposed to be a night off for all of us. With the weekend coming, the crowds would be out in force, and there would be little chance of us getting anything done without attracting undo attention. So, the plan was... well okay, the plan was pretty damn close to almost every Friday night prior to me becoming one
of the undead: pizza, some beer, lots of bullshitting, and maybe a movie or two. That was just fine with me. Tomorrow was supposed to be my day to check back in at vampire central. I wasn't looking forward to it. Well, alright, I was looking forward to some of it, but not a lot. As it turned out, the 'some of it' part of the equation came looking for me, instead.

  Around seven o'clock in the evening, there was a knock on our door. This was a little odd, since we hadn't buzzed anyone up. But, then again, the downstairs tenants would occasionally leave the front door open, so it wasn't unheard of, either. Ed got up to answer it, leaving myself and Tom arguing over the finer points of whether Stargate Universe was superior to Stargate Atlantis. Ed opened the door and I heard a familiar voice say,

  “I'm here to see Bill.”

  “Sally?” I said loud enough for everyone to hear.

  “This is that vampire chick?” Ed blurted out, inadvertently swinging the door open a little wider.

  “Good job keeping the family secret, Bill,” quipped Sally as she started to step in.

  “Hold on there,” Ed said, stepping in front of her. “I haven't invited you to cross the threshold.”

  Sally just rolled her eyes, commented, “Out of the way, dork,” and stepped around him. Okay, so that's another thing from the movies that's a total load of crap.

  She was wearing a tight black cocktail dress, four-inch heels... and, well, she was by far the best looking thing that our apartment had seen in a long time. As she walked over to me, Tom lowered his voice and whispered,

  “You left that to come back home to us? You, sir, are seriously gay.”

  Ignoring him, I stood up and faced her. “What are you doing here? I thought we had a deal.”

  “Deals, much like underwear, are changed often.” She glanced for a moment at my roommates. “At least for some of us.” There was a momentary silence, during which both Tom and Ed gawked at her like a pair of retards, and then she added, “Going to introduce me? Just because I got you killed is no reason to be rude.”

  “Tom, Ed. This is Sally.” I grinned evilly at her, and added, “Sally Sunset.”

  That elicited a glare from her and the beginnings of a chuckle from Tom. However, before it could evolve into more than that, Sally said, without taking her eyes off me,

  “Before any of you laugh, let me just remind you that I'm capable of twisting your heads off like a beer cap.” That pretty much killed my joke dead, right there.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Sally,” Ed said, completely deadpan. Tom immediately followed suit.

  She nodded slightly, then pretty much dismissed them. “As much as I’d love to stay and play with your pets, we have places to be. Grab your backpack and some things. Oh, and put on something decent, too, we do have an image we’re trying to maintain.”

  “Not until you tell me what the rush is? For all you know, I had plans for tonight.” She gave me a skeptical look at that one. “What? I do occasionally have plans with actual people... sometimes even women.”

  Another of Sally’s eye-rolls. ARGH! Getting me killed I could tolerate, but her constant rolling of eyes at me was going to get this bitch decked.

  “If you say so, champ,” she replied. “Oh, and since you’re wondering what the rush is, James called. He’s driving down to see how his favorite Freewill is doing.”

  “Freewill?” Ed blurted out.

  “Later,” I assured him, and then, back to Sally, “Why is he coming back so soon?” Despite my surprise at hearing such, I was also damned glad for it. Jeff would probably keep his distance with James around. Of course, this was assuming that James wasn't coming back with marching orders for my dissection.

  “Go figure. Personally, I thought he’d either give it a few weeks, or forget about you completely, but apparently not. Who knows, maybe you really touched something deep down inside of him and he’s driving in to profess his undying love for you.” She giggled. Tom and Ed, sensing this was a joke that was unlikely to get them killed, joined in.

  “Perhaps,” I mused. No way was I going to let her win this one. “When I see him, I’ll ask. Don’t worry; I’ll be sure to give you full credit for coming up with that theory.”

  As expected, that shut her up. Most of the vampires in the city might be able to kick my ass in a fight, but when it came to verbal sparring, I was Muhammad Ali. Satisfied that I’d had the last word, I turned to gather my things. Hopefully everyone would still be alive when I got back.

  * * *

  I needn't have worried. I returned to find my roommates no worse for the experience, with maybe the exception of having Sally's cleavage burned into their retinas. I went to grab my jacket. Whilst doing so, I quietly slipped a note under Tom's door, listing some quick instructions on what to do if I wasn't back by Sunday night. Then I and the person responsible for my murder set off into the night together.

  A short while later, I found myself speeding back toward Manhattan on a train with Sally. I could sense the many male eyeballs in the subway car checking us out. I had no doubt they were all thinking that I was either rich or had a giant dick. Damn, envy feels good when you're on the receiving end!

  “Nice friends you have,” she said, apparently looking to kill some time with small talk.

  “Yeah. They have their quirks, but they're good guys.”

  “They freak out when you told them?”

  “Surprisingly little.”

  “Really?” she replied, sounding a little surprised. “Most people freak and then we usually have to kill them before they try something stupid.”

  “We tend to watch a lot of movies. You'd be surprised how desensitized you get. Ed could probably come home, have an alien burst from his chest, and the rest of us would be most concerned with how to clean the carpet afterward.”

  “You guys are certainly an interesting bunch. Way different than the crowd I used to hang with.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They freaked.”

  “Oh,” I said, not wanting to know more. Instead, a memory from the week prior came back to me, giving me an opportunity to change the subject. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  “If this has anything to do with third input, you're going right through the side of this train,” she warned.

  “Third in... oh, that. No, it doesn't. Although we can save that discussion for another time...” She glared hard at me, so I quickly continued, “What I meant to ask is... well... did you always look like this?”

  Not comprehending, she answered, “No. I'm a little dressier on the weekends, and I tend to change my hair color once a year or so.”

  “Not what I meant. Forget about clothes or hair. Did you always look like you do now?”

  “Well, I used to look like a baby, then a little girl, but eventually I grew these (if you need me to elaborate on her emphasis, then you have even less a social life than I) and well, golly, now I'm all grown up,” she mocked.

  “No, no, no. You're not getting it.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “It's just that every vampire I've seen so far looks like they could moonlight as an underwear model...”

  “Except for you?”

  “Yes, except for me!” I snapped.

  “And you're wondering if maybe we all started out average looking, then we got bitten and, poof, suddenly the vampire whammy transformed us into the seductive creatures of the night you see before you, right?”

  “Well, yeah, actually.”

  She started giggling again. “They say there's no such thing as a stupid question, but damn they're wrong.”

  “Shall I assume the answer is no?” I asked icily.

  “Sorry. But it's all by design. If the coven looks like a scene out of Baywatch, it's because Jeff wants it to. A lot of coven leaders do the same thing. They figure if they're going to stare at the same faces for all eternity, they might as well be pleasant faces.”

  “So, I'm shit out of luck and get to spend eternity sticking out like
a sore thumb.”

  “Yes, but that might not be a bad thing.”

  “This phrase you say, I do not think it means what you think it does.”

  “Look at it this way, Bill. No matter what we may look like to you, after a while, it all starts to blur together for us. It winds up like you're living in a house full of clones. What you think of as 'hot' winds up being dull and normal for us. You, on the other hand, are different than the average vampire.”