Joe Vampire

by Steven Luna

  I would have to prove it to him on his own terms.

  “Okay,” I told him, “let’s try this another way. Think of something totally random – anything, whatever comes into your head – and I’ll tell you what it is. Okay? Anything – no holds barred.” He eyed me warily. “Whenever you’re ready.” Then it came. “Dodgeball. Paper clip. Chicken leg. Pamela Anderson’s left nipple. Dodgeball again.”

  Hit, hit, hit, hit. And hit.

  Hube was not prepared for something like this. Honestly, who would be? He sank onto the couch. “I thought you needed an intervention, not an exorcism.”

  “It’s not like that, Hube,” I assured him.

  He didn’t believe me. I don’t think he knew what to believe, actually. “What’s it like then? Tell me, Joe, what is it like? You’re pale as hell; you don’t seem to eat anymore. You won’t go outside; you hide out in your house all the time. You’re gone from work for nine goddamn days and I can’t get you to pick up the fucking phone! Were you sick, dude, or were you strung out, or were you possessed by the devil? And what are you right now? ‘Cause I’m watching my best friend go through some pretty dark shit here, and I feel like there’s nothing I can do to get him out of it.” He was crying. “So what the fuck?”

  Yikes. I was so busy worrying about what had happened that I hadn’t stopped to realize I wasn’t the only one who was being affected by it.

  The human part of me that was still in there felt like a total shit.

  I flopped down next to him on the couch. “First up: I’m not on anything, Hube – I swear to you, I’m not. I know how well junkies can pull off a lie, but I would never lie to you about something like that. Plus, you know how I feel about putting foreign substances in my body, right? Germs and everything?” He accepted that. “And as tempting as I’m sure it would be for any demon to get all up on my sweet ass, I’m not possessed, either.” That made him laugh a little. “But close.”

  That didn’t.

  I spent the next two hours explaining to him what had happened at Pomme, and my conversation with Don, and everything that had gone on between the two, right up until the minute he walked in the door. He was dumbstruck, which made me sort of glad for the mindreading thing. Is this even possible? “I wouldn’t have thought it was, until all the fun-filled features started showing up. The doctor visit was enlightening, though. Hard to deny a missing heartbeat.”

  Hube was quiet for a while. I just let him absorb it all. “Sorry I accused you of being on drugs, dude. That wasn’t cool.”

  I waved it off. “Forget it. You were trying to help me out. How were you supposed to know I was a vampire and not a crackhead? I made it kind of difficult to tell the difference.” The tension was fading. “Sorry for waiting so long to tell you. It hasn’t been easy to find the right way to say it. Bet you wish I really had been on drugs after finding all this out, huh?”

  He chuckled weakly. “Nah… we’ll figure it out,” he said, not sounding terribly confident about it. I, on the other hand, couldn’t have been more relieved to have spilled it all to someone – to Hube, especially. I kind of felt like I had a partner in vampirism now.

  “Thanks anyway for the intervention. Aren’t there supposed to be a few more people at these things?” He told me he’d called my parents, but tonight was a new episode of Breaking Bad, and they wondered if this couldn’t be done next week instead. My sister was out of town; my brother didn’t pick up the phone. “That sounds about right.”

  Hube looked sort of embarrassed. “But I didn’t want to wait any longer. So you just get me… an intervention of one.” I slugged his shoulder.

  As it turns out, one was all I needed.

  POST 13

  The Man with Two Brains (And No Girlfriend)

  Since spilling my guts to Hube, it’s become quite a bit easier to deal with all this vampire crap. Whenever some new aspect crops up – say, little fanglets (yep – they’ve started coming in) or a slight pointing at the tips of my ears – I bounce it off of him to make sure it’s real and that I’m not going insane. He’s a great sounding board for stuff like that. He’s also not afraid to let me know when I’m getting a bit too dark – shocking, I know, but it does happen – and he doesn’t let me stay bummed for too long when it all threatens to overwhelm me. For a member of the fully living, he has some pretty keen insight about how to have a normal life while being somewhat dead.

  He’s like my second brain, that guy.

  He’s also willing to make all kinds of crazy sacrifices to help me out, things I end up having to put in perspective for him so he remembers that this whole shebang is a little more wonky than what we’re used to facing, being a couple of work-a-day dudes in a synthesizer rock band and all. Hube prefers to think of This as a wake-up call, something to remind me how alive I still am, and how lucky I am to be so. A near-death – or un-death – experience, of sorts. He thinks I should approach it like I’m on some kind of an adventure, like a super-pale Bear Grylls or the Indiana Jones of the undead. I’m thinking no. Adventure is something I prefer to experience from a distance.

  And through television.

  Hube is also ultra-aware of how much the whole human bloodfeeding deal really bothers me, as it should bother anyone who thinks about it for even a second as a real-life possibility. But he’s all about the solutions… to the point of excess, sometimes. “Maybe you could become a vigilante, like, a superhero sort-of thing,” he suggested once, when the topic of feeding came up.

  “Nah… I’m too lazy.” I come from a long line of very still, very conservatively-dressed people. The last thing I wanted to add to my list of shit to figure out was how to move quickly in spandex without everything jiggling.

  “Right… right. You could become a missionary, then, dedicated to tracking down terrorists and dictators and human garbage in general.”

  “That’s mercenary, not missionary. And no.” How would I fund something like that?

  “So, no criminals and no terrorists.” I think my reluctance irked him. “I understand you’re walking a moral tightrope here, but is there any faction of loser you actually would be willing to suck blood out of in order to avoid biting the innocent? We have to find you someone to feed off of.” This is precisely the reason I love Hube: he speaks in terms of we, as if even my being a vampire is something we’re going to tackle together. He’s always been this way. He doesn’t stop to think about it for a second, doesn’t hesitate. I tell him I’m a vampire and he just jumps right in with both feet to help me out, no matter how whacked things get. He’s more of a brother than my own brother, really.

  My own brother is just an asswipe.

  Before I could stop him, Hube jumped in one more time. “Got it. You could feed off of me.”

  I was sure he was kidding. “Yeah, right.”

  “I’m clean and healthy, had all my shots. No history of blood-borne illnesses.”

  A little less sure after that. “Hell to the no, bro.”

  “Why not? We’ll make a schedule… it’d be like a donation at the blood bank. They take a pint every eight weeks, so we could start with that and see what happens.”

  He was totally serious. “No freaking way!”

  “I’ll have to double up on my protein pretty quickly… how many Slim Jims do you have on you?”

  This was too much. I stopped him as he was tapping his neck to make his jugular pop out. “Hubert, pal, listen… you’re the best; you’ve stepped up to the plate like no one else ever would – not even my family. I know how totally there you are for me with this crazy vampire shit. But dig me here: I’m not going to take your blood. I’m not going to take anybody’s blood.” He kept insisting this would work, saying he couldn’t just sit by and do nothing while I circled the drain. I assured him I was nowhere near the drain – I was way at the back of the bathtub, and the water wasn’t even halfway down the sides yet. True, I could sometimes see a scummy ring from where I was, and the soap was full of hair, but I didn’t let on.
“You’re a vampire, for crying out loud,” he reminded me. “You’ll have to feed eventually.”

  “No, I’ve got this – I’ll just be non-practicing. I already do it with my religion and that seems to be working out okay, so why not give it a shot with this stuff… am I right?” He didn’t think that was as funny as I did. So I explained how I’d experimented with uncooked steaks and stuff, and how just sucking the juices out of the flesh seemed to energize me a little, like licking a battery or downing half a Red Bull. The charge didn’t last long, maybe because everything I sucked out was from something that was already dead. But I assured him I’d find a way around this, that this was a perfect opportunity to put my hard-earned D in college biology and my internet addiction to good use. There had to be some non-invasive, unfelonious solution that didn’t involve biting my friends or consuming raw animals on the regular. It might take a while, but eventually I’d figure it out. “How much of a while do you think you have?” he asked.

  “No idea.”

  For the time being, I’m okay with raw meat and the blood gravy and other various concoctions that I’ve come up with. They are neither delicious nor entirely satisfying, but as long as they give me a little energy without harming anyone else, that’s all I really need as far as food goes. For now, anyway. Not sure if the Need to Feed will get stronger or if this is the worst of it. I’d feel much better about things if I could just stop smelling people as if they’re a twelve load of Krispy Kremes about to sail beneath the magical curtain of love glaze. It’s under control, though; they may smell virtually identical, but I’m not so far gone that I can’t make the distinction between snacks and people.

  Little Debbie? Totally edible.

  Debbie from Accounting? No fucking way.

  My bigger issue at the moment is what to do about Chloe… not that women should be my primary worry. I think I’ve got enough to deal with at the moment. But Hube might be right about the wake-up call thing. The idea of having died and yet still being at least halfway alive has made me begin to realize something: the opportunities I’ve let pass me by have probably been snatched up by other dudes who ended up with happiness that could have been mine if I’d just crawled out from under the coffee table a little sooner. So I think it’s time to try a different approach. A better approach.

  Any approach.

  And none of this baby games shit of giving her my phone number and waiting for her to make a move. The move is mine to make, and make it I will. Haven’t quite nailed down the where or the when of it all yet, but I’m definitely stepping things up. Maybe her situation with the Tool is in a downward spiral, anyway. Maybe all this time she’s been waiting for me to make the first move, and I’ve been too lame to just do it. Maybe it’s time to grab my junk and drive the fucking car already, vampire or not. Whenever I think about this, I can feel that primal sort of impulse spark to life again, like my inner vampire is getting his dick stroked a little. It definitely didn’t exist before the change. It’s a lot like when I cornered Buttons in the dumpster and tried to chow down on him. Whatever it is, I get the feeling it’s going to push me in the same way to jump in and try for something big with Chloe. Only this time, I won’t be diving for a cat and ending up with a mouthful of fur. Unless she wants me to, that is.

  That was crude.

  I hope she isn’t reading this.

  Anyway, it may take me a minute, as the hip kids say, but I think I’m ready to take the chance I couldn’t bring myself to take before all of this happened. I don’t see that I have much to lose at this point. What, if she shoots me down am I gonna die?

  Been there.

  Done that.

  POST 14

  Tuning In and Tuning Out

  Music has always been a big thing for me – listening, playing, collecting. Everything, really. I’m never without tunes, even if it’s just sounds running through my head. After I discovered telepathy in my bag of vampire tricks, earbuds became a sure way to block the thought-noise I was picking up. Imagine listening to the inane stream-of-consciousness ramblings of everyone you pass, from their to-do list to their love troubles to how they like their frappuccino. Sure, it’s a fun little game to freak people out by speaking their minds for them, but the rest of the time, it’s better if you can be selective about what you hear coming out of their heads. So I keep my iPod handy at all times. I’m not trying to be rude by tuning everyone out or anything. Strange as it sounds, it’s just easier to hear my own thoughts with a little Nine Inch Nails piped into my ears, or Sinatra, maybe. Even Tchaikovsky or Bach. Yeah, I know who those dudes are, too. My playlist is diverse by design. I’ll listen to just about anything if it thumps right, or shreds raucously, or the melody is sweet enough. But rarely ever do I listen to my own band’s stuff.

  The music of Vomiting Nonsense is not among my favorite.

  I wish I liked our tunes more, and maybe I would if I had a little more input on the direction the music was taking. Things were much more even when we started out, when we all had a common vision for what the sound would be. We’re a laptop band making electronic music; there are a million possibilities for something like that. So I know I didn’t vote for Instrumental Industrial Sleaze Trance when it came up on the ballot. Not to sound snobbish, but my playing tends toward a more free-flowing melodic sensibility. I don’t try for it; it just comes out when my fingers hit the keys. But that doesn’t serve any purpose in Vomiting Nonsense, because our songs have no melody. And almost no structure.

  They can only be considered “music” by the most marginal definition of the word.

  I am so down with modern electronic music and atmospheric dream worlds that creative folk everywhere are coming up with. But our music is not anything like that. And it’s not for lack of talent… for two of us, at least. Hube has a nifty flair for smashing together multiple opposing rhythms and coming up with some mad beats to hold everything up. I put in some slinky funk over top of that, which really limits my contribution to about three notes per song at this point. Between the two of us, we set up a mighty righteous groove. Then Lazer gets his ham-fisted mitts on it, puts all kinds of crap over top of what Hube and I have laid down – eerie, inappropriate machine noises, ghostly electrified voices, human barking, orgasm sounds – and shits it all up without even trying, really. Overall, it becomes a mess, yet it lends a qualifying sense of truth to the band’s name. His knack for taking the beginnings of a great idea and turning them into looped, squawky dreck with a few clicks of a wireless mouse is almost awe-inspiring. By the end, he’s overridden nearly all of our input and thinks he’s created a masterpiece. And we let him, if only because he has a better synth rack and studio set up than we do. Somehow, this has also given him the deciding vote in the look of the band, which does no one here any favors. Safe to say leather pants don’t belong on anyone over the age of twenty five.

  Or who weighs more than one hundred and twenty pounds.

  To his credit, he has also leveraged his massive Facebook presence to garner a fairly regular following for VN, though they aren’t the most savory of individuals. But they make loyal appearances at the shows, and they all pay admission when necessary, buying up our t-shirts and scuzzy memorabilia like it’s the rage. So if we only split the door, at least there’s door to be split. And if the promise of free glow-in-the-dark condoms and silicone logo wristbands as giveaways keeps them coming, then it’s worth it to have an audience to hear us play our crappy tunes. Someday, though, I’d like to do more with my music.

  Sadly, this is enough for now.

  Hube has talked recently about saving funds for a return to college, to study music this time since his BA in Pre-Columbian South American Pottery hasn’t made his dreams come true like he thought it would. He wants me to do it, too, and I definitely would have been open to it if the vampire thing hadn’t cropped up. Seems there are a lot of things that This has moved to the back burner. I would rather that music not become one of them. I’ve always been more creative than calcu
lational, and there will be no fulfillment for me in finance. Eventually, liking my co-workers and having a benefits package isn’t going to be enough to keep me in my job. So maybe Hube’s educational renaissance will prompt me to jump back into university life as well. Although at mid-thirtysomething – or later by the time the piggy has enough coin in his belly – starting anything new is a challenge, especially when it involves placing yourself among people younger, smarter and hipper than yourself. And a vampire diving into a sea of kids raised thinking the Nightfall books are some sort of historical text for vampire life doesn’t sound like such a swell idea. But the music study thing does.

  So we’ll see.

  What musical drive is left over after my enormous and ultimately futile contribution to Vomiting Nonsense I dump into my own compositions. They’re not very complete; some go on for about nine minutes and end up as sort of solo jam sessions. I think of it as the musical version of doodling, something to keep my hands busy while my mind drops to zero for a while. But now that I’ve got the vampire in me and everything has changed a little, the music in me is different, too. It’s gone from tuneful and pop-ish to almost gothic and downright classical. Chamber melodies fall out of me like some kind of Symphony for the Changed – darker than I’d like them to be, and way more pretentious. But pretty, too… tunes I’d imagine Chloe would like, if I ever worked up enough chutzpah to play something for her. It might never happen, though. In fact, depending on how This progresses, none of my music might ever hear the light of day. I try not to dwell on it, but I have this horrible image in my head of me being hunched over some decrepit piano in a dungeon somewhere, plinking away in misery, the lonely vampire composing somber ballads and pining for his lost humanity as he pours what’s left of his soul into his depressing music.