* * *
Just kidding! Had you there for a second, though, didn't I?
Ed was walking out of the kitchen, a cup of ramen in hand, as I walked in the door.
“S'up, Nosferatu?” he asked casually. Great! Now the vampire nicknames were starting. If I knew Ed, he now had a whole list of IMDB derived names to call me by. Best to ignore him and hope he went away.
I followed him into the living room, where Tom sat. “Ah, the prodigal prince of darkness returns,” he quipped. “I see you made it back in one piece.”
“It was touch and go there for a bit,” I confirmed, “but, yep, no worse for the wear. You guys do anything good this weekend?”
“I took a road trip yesterday,” Ed said.
“Forget us,” Tom interrupted. “What happened with you?”
“Please tell me you tapped that sweet piece of ass that picked you up on Friday,” Ed commented.
To that I answered in the only way that I could. “Of course! Taught her some new names for God by the time I was done.”
“You're so full of shit!” Ed said with a smile.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But I've got all of eternity to wear her down. Eventually she won't be able to help herself.”
“Yeah, I'm sure Hell has to freeze over sometime,” Tom quipped. “Although speaking of help, I found your note.”
“Good. Fortunately you didn't need to follow my instructions,” I said.
“Yeah about that... what the fuck, dude?” Tom continued.
“What?” I asked.
At which point, Tom pulled out the note and proceeded to read it aloud.
Tom, Ed,
If I am not back by Sunday night, 9 pm. Send help!
Bill
“That's it!? Those are your instructions? Send help!?”
“I was in a rush. I'm sure you'd have thought of something,” I replied.
“Asshole,” Ed opined.
“Fine, maybe it wasn't the most well thought out plan,” I acknowledged. “So, do you guys want to hear about what went down this weekend, or not?”
* * *
I gave them the rundown on my meeting with James and the whole freewill situation. My roommates thought it hilarious that I was now this legendary creature of dread amongst the vampires. Lots of love there, I tell you. I then brought them up to speed on the whole faith thing and how it worked with Tom's Prime doll. Tom was ecstatic at the news. I then turned to Ed,
“Tom's covered here, but, sorry to say, as far as this faith thing goes, I think you're pretty well hosed.”
This didn't seem to faze Ed much (not that much did). He just grinned, “No worries. I think you'll find I have my rear covered nicely.”
He didn't elaborate, and so I continued with my tale, concluding with my outing with Jeff (minus some of the more embarrassing details) and the subsequent slaughter I was given credit for.
“This Ozymandias dude sounds pretty hardcore,” Ed chimed in when I had finished.
“No shit. He's definitely on my list of people whose good graces I wish to remain in.”
“Yeah. Although, it sounds like this Razor douchebag is more your immediate problem,” Tom said.
I nodded my agreement. “He's definitely number one on the 'waiting to kick my ass' list.”
“Which obviously means you need to kick his, first.”
“Really?” I sarcastically asked. “And I suppose you know exactly how to do that.”
Now it was Tom's turn to smile. “Fortunately for you, you have caring and competent friends around to make up for your shortcomings.”
I looked from one to the other in confusion. They let the moment fester until it became uncomfortable, and then Ed got up and grabbed something off of the kitchen counter. He came back and tossed it in my lap. It was a pamphlet.
“Jeff's a vampire, not a gnat to swat,” I said without picking it up. I had to endure a few seconds of baleful glares before I continued, “Okay, fine. What is it?”
“Krav Maga,” said Tom, a wicked grin on his face.
“Who's that?”
That earned an eye roll from Ed. Hmmm, if things didn't work out between Sally and myself, I might have to consider setting them up. I'm sure that would be a match made in the seventh circle of Hell.
Tom suddenly snapped his fingers. “That clicking noise, in case you're interested, is the sound of my opinion of you dropping a notch,” he said, starting to explain things in a voice that suggested I was a small, stupid child. “Krav Maga is a martial art. More precisely, it's the fighting style used by the Israeli Mossad.”
“Whoa,” I said in response.
“Whoa is right,” continued Ed. “They train those guys to fuck the bad guy's shit up.”
“Yep,” Tom jumped back in. “Something like Karate will teach you how to disarm an opponent with a knife. This shit'll teach you to take out a dude with a gun and then proceed to shatter every bone in his body.”
“Okay, and ...” I prodded him.
“And, while Ed was out, I found a place that teaches it. They offer night classes, so I took the liberty of using one of your credit cards... you really shouldn't just leave them lying around like that, by the way. I signed you up.”
“You're too good to me,” I said dryly.
“Aren't I?”
“And where, pray tell, are these classes?”
“In Queens,” he answered.
“Where in Queens?”
Tom mumbled something in return.
“What was that?” I asked, knowing pretty well what he just said... vampire hearing and all. “I didn't quite catch you.”
“A few blocks from Ozone park,” he said sheepishly.
“You want me to walk around there, after dark? I'll get my ass shot off!” I complained.
Tom replied, “But that’s the brilliant part! It's in a bad area. Think about it. You could potentially be attacked going there. You'll definitely get beaten up during class. And then you could be attacked again coming home. That's like three times the fighting experience for the price! By the time this Jeff douche comes after you, you'll be Chuck Norris.”
“Besides which,” said Ed, “need I remind you, you're a scary-ass vampire now? The criminals should be afraid of you, not the other way around.”
“He does have a point,” Tom added
“Fine,” I conceded. There was some logic to their plan. It was completely insane logic, but logic nevertheless. “When do we start?”
“We!?” Ed exclaimed. “There's no we, here.”
Tom agreed. “We're not coming with you. A person could get killed walking around there after dark.”
* * *
Contrary to popular belief, prior to the past couple of weeks I have not been privy to all that many beat downs in my life. Sure, in high school I got my fair share of lumps, but that was more due to being a smart ass than anything else. In retrospect, I probably deserved each and every one of them. The thing is, being a smart ass also saved me from more than one smack-down, as well. People who crack wise tend to cause just as much laughter as abject anger. As such, it tends to even things out and more or less put you in a safe zone... except when you cross the line and say something exceptionally stupid to someone with an underdeveloped sense of humor... which also tends to happen from time to time. Being a wiseass means you sometimes just can't help it.
Then there's the whole geek thing. Most would assume that caused me to endure undue strife during my formative years. However, also contrary to popular belief, people like me are not at the bottom of the high school food chain. Why? Simple. It's because there are a lot of us, and we tend to flock together. As in the wild, there's safety in numbers, because predators don't like to charge directly into the center of the herd. It's a poor hunting strategy. Predators prefer to pick off individuals. In the jungle, this consists of the sick, or the elderly. In school, this typically equates to those socially inept enough to not really fit in anywhere. Loners (except maybe those with the rep
of being psychos) are the most vulnerable. Thus, a geek with a decent sized circle of friends and a quick enough wit to be tolerated by the other social cliques can waltz through school fairly unmolested.
Such was my existence... at least until recently. I might have chalked some of the more recent stuff up to bad luck, but then Tom signed me up for that self-defense class. Now I'm wondering if maybe I inadvertently pissed off a major deity or two.
Now, don't get me wrong, I am a believer that there are plenty of positive reasons to pursue a lifetime learning the martial arts. Some do it for self defense, some do it for self esteem, and I'm sure there are some who do it to find inner peace. Then there was the guy teaching my class. I'm thinking that, as a youth, he must have seen The Karate Kid and come to the conclusion that, while he might philosophically agree with the Cobra Kai dojo, they were too big of a bunch of pussies for his tastes. Had I still been a mere mortal, I have little doubt I'd be recounting my memories of this place from a body cast, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
It turned out that Monday morning had gone better than planned. Jim seemed pretty cool, if a little dubious of my sudden 'condition'. They had a few programmers upstate who were considered permanent tele-workers, so he didn't see much issue with getting me classified as the same, providing that I continued to meet all my deadlines. I faxed over the documentation Dave had provided, and he promised to get it to HR as soon as possible. I was home free, with only one regret: Sheila. She was pretty much the only reason I ever showed up to the office, period. But as I mentioned before, I doubt she even knew who I was, outside of maybe “that doughy guy who occasionally shows up to collect a paycheck.” Oh, well, maybe it was for the best. If I'd learned one thing in the last couple of weeks, it was: the hotter the babe, the bigger the trouble.
Monday night, however, went a lot less smoothly. Contrary to my nerdy little white boy paranoia, the trip to the dojo turned out to be fairly uneventful. Even if it hadn't been, Tom had a good point about me being a vampire. If I was going to be an eternal creature of the night, I should probably, at some point, get over any fear I might have about walking around during it. You don't see tigers making it a point to only stalk their prey in well lit middle-class areas.
However, any violence I was spared on the way over was more than made up for by my introductory class. Sensei Berkowitz was a disciple of the school of thought that considered the best way to learn to defend yourself from an ass kicking was to be on the receiving end until you learned to fight back. It turns out that my vampire abilities were actually a major disadvantage in this place. I was strong and fast enough to be able to counter enough strikes that I was almost immediately paired against the advanced students, who then proceeded to take me apart like I was made of legos. Superior strength and speed were all well and good, but they weren't much help after a solid chop to the windpipe. One hundred and seventy-five bucks a month for the privilege of getting beaten up. Remind me to thank my roommates for that one.
By the time class was over, I felt I had learned a lot... as in a lot of different ways to take a punch and a lot of different ways to fall to the floor. Missing Sheila at work had broken my heart. Attending this class had broken the rest.
Screw that whole nocturnal predator thing! By the time I was done and had gotten back home, all I wanted to do was down a few pints (of both blood and beer) and go to bed. Ed was still awake when I walked in the door. I grunted hello and proceeded to the fridge to make good on my plan of action. I got what I was looking for and was shambling to my bedroom when I heard him say,
“Someone left a message for you on the machine. I think it was that Sally chick.”
Unfortunately, I couldn't have cared less. I muttered something unintelligible in return, which might have sounded like “Bitch,” and then closed my door behind me.
The Terror That Flaps in the Night
Up until class ended on Tuesday night, things had been similar to the day before: work, then a trip to Queens, followed by two hours of being crippled in new and interesting ways. A couple more decades of this, and I might learn to like it... maybe.
As the rest of the students were leaving, the Sensei called me over to give me a motivational pep talk. This talk more or less consisted of him praising me for being able to take a hit better than any other novice he'd ever taught. Wow, I guess karate really is all about self-esteem, after all. Needless to say, it was all I could do to resist sinking my teeth into this guy on principle alone.
I finally excused myself, murder still on my mind, and started walking the few blocks to where I could grab the bus back home. I was almost there when I heard a sound behind me. Turning to check it out, I was met with rough hands grabbing the front of my jacket. Before I could pry them off, they slammed me hard into the side of a nearby building. The blow knocked the wind out of me for a second (probably not helped by the fact that my body was working overtime to take care of all the bruises I had received in the prior hour). When I finally looked up, there was a pair of angry looking eyes staring right into mine.
I was not in the mood for this shit, so I shoved back. The space between myself and my attacker suddenly widened. Now that my view wasn't as obscured, I could see that there were two of them. The one I had just pushed off of me was a large African American with a shaved head. A smaller Latino-looking gang banger stood a few feet behind him. I was hoping they'd be more interested in harassing a victim who was less likely to fight back. Just in case that didn't work, I figured they might be even more inclined to favor a human victim. I opened my mouth and extended my fangs in front of them. Both of them chuckled in response... not quite the reaction I was going for.
“Motherfucker thinks he's scary,” said the large one. He looked at his companion for a second and then they both turned back toward me with their own fangs bared. Oh, crap.
“You guys are vampires, too?” I asked incredulously. I hadn't seen these vamps before. I mean, I was sure there were other vampires than my coven out there. I just hadn't expected to run into them on the street.
“We got us a fucking genius here,” said the Latino one.
“Not that smart,” growled the other. “Thinks he can fuck with the HBC and walk right the fuck out of here.”
“HBC?” I asked sheepishly.
“Howard Beach Coven, asshole! (Oh, okay then.) You should know, since you decided to get all up in our shit!”
“Hold on, guys,” I said, holding up my hands. “Sorry. I didn't know this was your turf. I'm from this coven over in SoHo...”
“You're from Village Coven?” asked the Latino, grinning. “You don't look like you fit in with all them Kens and Barbies. They keeping you as a pet, or something?” That caused both him and his large companion to laugh for a moment.
“Listen. It's cool, guys,” I pleaded. “I didn't know this was your turf. I'll be more than happy to just leave.”
I started to back away and the big one got in my face again. “Fuck our turf!” he screamed. “The other week we started hearing rumors that Village Coven recruited themselves some kind of freak. Then last night, Tito and Big Mike got their asses ashed. Now we find you here pretending to be a little lost puppy. Seem like a coincidence to you, Roberto?”
The smaller one, Roberto, I presume, shook his head, “I don't believe in coincidence.”
“Neither do I,” said the larger one, starting to advance upon me.
“Come on, guys,” I said, trying to sound as friendly and non-threatening as possible. “Do I look like I could just waltz in here and kill two of your friends?”
“Don't know. Been hearing some strange shit lately. If any of it's true...”
“If it's true, then why would I come back?” I asked, not really liking where this was going.
“Maybe you're stupid,” said Roberto.
Okay, these guys were obviously spoiling for a fight. I don't know what happened to their friends, but they seemed hell bent on taking it out on me or any other innocent vampire (were
there other innocent vampires?) that happened to cross their path. I could only think of one other option. It would either get me out of this mess or dig me a lot deeper into the shit I was already in.
I stopped backing away and held my ground. I then changed my whole demeanor. I willed away the weaseling and instead broadcast (or tried to, anyway) a calm grin toward the two in front of me. I addressed the big one directly,
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