by Collins, Tim
I have to confess I’m feeling rather stoked by the prospect of becoming a rock star. I might even use my vampire poetry skills to write their lyrics if I consider them worthy.
10PM
My sister wouldn’t shut up this evening about a lesson she’d had about the environment at school today. She asked my parents if they could hunt for blood closer to home to improve our carbon footprint, and they patiently explained to her that if we attack humans round here, a vampire slayer or a fan of paranormal romance will track us down and there’ll be all manner of strife.
If my sister doesn’t approve of the way my parents harvest blood, she should go out hunting herself. After all, her vampire powers are much more reliable than mine. We should save the rations of blood in the fridge for those who can’t feed any other way (and that doesn’t include Grandpa).
2AM
Following my sister’s rant about the environment tonight, I’ve been wondering if it would make for a better world if our lot took over.
If all the vampires of the world came out of the coffin and declared themselves to humanity, we’d be free to dash around at top speed without the need for pollutants such as cars and planes. And if humans get jealous and want to join us, we should let them. Before long we would live in a vampire utopia, with all nations united under the rule of the Vampire Council.
Obviously, we’d have to make sure that at least half the population stayed human, otherwise there’d be no one to feed on. And to make things simpler we’d probably have to keep them in special camps surrounded by barbed wire. But they’d be allowed food and toys, if they behaved.
Actually, having considered it, that probably wouldn’t make the world a better place at all. I don’t like thinking about how to improve the world. It gives me a headache.
SATURDAY 15TH OCTOBER
6PM
I brought my electronic keyboard down from the attic this morning. It’s older than I remembered, and for some reason it keeps breaking into a bossa nova rhythm, which is unlikely to go down well with the metal faithful. But once I’d changed the tone from tuba to grand piano and practised my Mozart pieces, I felt confident that my superior musicianship would win the day.
I arrived at Brian’s garage just as they were setting up. I didn’t think my battery-powered keyboard would have much of a chance against John’s drums and Si’s amp, and I was right. As they thrashed randomly away I tried to add a keyboard line to the dirge but I might as well have been tapping a marshmallow for all they could hear.
Brian started to scream a few minutes later, which I took as a sign that either he’d hurt himself, or they’d finished jamming and were now playing an original composition. The song went on for about ten minutes without any sign of a chorus before Brian shouted ‘Satan!’ and the instruments cut out.
When they did, I shouted ‘Keyboard solo!’ and began to improvise a brilliant melody. I have to admit that I didn’t do my contribution any favours by accidentally hitting the ‘demo’ button, causing the machine to play ‘Together Forever’ by Rick Astley in a series of novelty tones, but I still reckoned I’d proved I could lift the band to the next level. So I was surprised when Si told me I’d failed the audition.
So I have now officially broken friends with the goths again. I should never have offered the hand of forgiveness in the first place.
12AM
I was on my way to the graveyard tonight to sulk about my failed pop career when Jay and Baz from the tough gang stopped me and said I had to buy some alcohol for them. I’d have refused outright if Jason had been with them, but he wasn’t, so I thought I might as well try to stay on the right side of the hard kids.
Jay and Baz gave me four pound coins and shoved me into the off-licence. As I only ever drink blood, I don’t have any experience of buying alcohol, and the man behind the counter could tell I was uncomfortable. He peered up from his newspaper and asked if he could help. I panicked and grabbed a bottle of red wine, although Jay and Baz had actually requested lager. I think I was just drawn to the colour.
I put it down on the counter and the assistant asked for my date of birth. If I’d said my real one (14/05/1911) the assistant would have assumed I’d had too much already, so I tried to calculate the date of birth of an eighteen-year-old.
The assistant recognised the strain of mental arithmetic on my face and told me to leave. But then I remembered I still had a library card from a few years ago inside my wallet, with my photo next to the date of birth 14/05/1991. I showed it to the assistant and he handed over the wine.
Outside, I gave the bottle to Baz, who thanked me despite looking disappointed at my choice of beverage. So I managed to stay friends with the tough gang, but the incident only heightened my concern about the company Chloe is keeping. It’s only a short journey from underage drinking outside the off-licence to taking drugs and selling your mum’s jewellery or whatever it is that bad humans do.
SUNDAY 16TH OCTOBER
My sister has now convinced herself that she has mind-reading powers. I asked her what I was thinking about and she said ‘Chloe’. She was right, but that’s because I’m predictable rather than because she’s psychic.
I said we should try again, but this time I’d write down the name of the person I was thinking about on a piece of paper. Just to wind her up, I wrote ‘Kyle’, the name of a boy from her school she fancies, and then decorated the paper with love hearts. She guessed that I was thinking about Grandpa, but when I revealed my answer, she launched into a violent attack. When I pointed out that as a psychic vampire she must have known what I’d written and therefore would have no reason to become suddenly angry, she slumped back down on the sofa.
Much as I enjoyed all this, I’m disappointed it was so easy for my sister to guess who I was originally thinking about. I think I’ll approach Chloe tomorrow. My terms will be that if she promises never to bring up the topic of transformation again, she can have me back.
MONDAY 17TH OCTOBER
I waited outside the school gates for Chloe this morning to deliver my terms. She ignored me when she arrived, and I had to run after her and outline my conditions for taking her back. I hadn’t got far when she interrupted me to say she had no intention of asking for my forgiveness, as she already had a new boyfriend!
I didn’t quite know how to respond to this. I know we had our issues, but it’s surely impossible to get over true love and move on to the next man in little more than a week! I was still reeling from this revelation when an event so unpleasant occurred that I can hardly bring myself to describe it. That lumbering, ignorant caveman, Jason, plodded around the corner and put his arms around Chloe. And then, instead of alerting a teacher, she gave him a kiss on the lips and said, ‘Hi, babes.’
Then the oafish ignoramus had the nerve to hold his hand out to me and say, ‘No hard feelings.’ If I still had my vampire strength, I’d have lifted him up by that outstretched arm and flung him right through the windscreen of the headmaster’s Land Rover. As it was, I took the only sensible option and went home to bed.
TUESDAY 18TH OCTOBER
I stayed in bed all day yesterday. I was considering doing the same today, but I’m determined not to let these shallow humans and their trivial little affairs get to me. I must remind myself that I’m from a superior species to Chloe, and should be no sadder about losing her than a human would be about losing a pet hamster.
I might ask Grandpa if he knows any other covens I could move in with. Then I’ll be able to meet beings who’ve got more in common with me and perhaps find a nice vampire girlfriend. Or an evil vampire girlfriend. Either would do.
So I went into school today. I thought it would upset me to see Chloe and Jason walking around hand in hand, but it didn’t really affect me. I only saw them five times - once in assembly, once in the corridor outside the science block, twice in smokers’ corner and once as they walked out of the school gates. I barely even noticed them.
Mum and Dad brought home some new flasks o
f blood this evening, but they did little to cheer me up. The blood was a thin and tasteless type A- , and when I complained they said that Grandpa has requested we drink healthier blood with lower sugar levels from now on. I told them that it was fine for him to go on a diet, but at my age I need all the energy I can get. I then demanded they go back out and harvest some sugary blood from the fattest person they can find before I collapse with weakness, but I was ignored. Obviously.
WEDNESDAY 19TH OCTOBER
12PM
The word in the playground is that Chloe has been reported for dropping litter and stripped of prefect status. I knew she’d go bad when she joined the tough gang. Much as I predicted, she is now on the slippery slope to drug addiction and prison. Well, it’s too late to save her now. She’s ventured into the criminal underworld, and she’s beyond my help.
9PM
Tonight my sister showed us a paragraph about human rights that she’s written (i.e. copied from the Internet) for her English class. It argued that everyone in the world, regardless of where they live or how much money they have, has the right to live in a house and drink clean water and watch TV or whatever.
She seemed very pleased with it so I thought I’d grill her further on the subject. I asked her if she thought it was a human right to go about your business without having your blood stolen from you. She said it was, then she thought about it for a minute and changed her mind. Mum told me off for trying to confuse her, but it was a simple enough question. I just couldn’t see why I should have to endure a lecture on the rights of humans given by someone who survives by drinking their blood. It’s like being lectured on the rights of worms by a chaffinch.
2AM
Although I don’t especially care about Chloe and Jason’s childish romance, I can’t help but feel as though I should get a new girlfriend to save face. But where can I find one? If I get involved with another human girl, she’ll be overpowered by the same greedy lust for immortality that blighted my last relationship.
This is truly the curse of the vampire. You endure painful decades of loneliness until someone comes along who makes you think this planet might not be such a bad place after all, but then she goes immortality crazy, gets vexed when you won’t transform her and dumps you for a uni-browed lummox.
You see all those vampire fans mooning around with their pale foundation and black clothes, but if they had any idea what it’s really like, they’d jack it all in and take up stamp collecting instead.
For the time being, I’ll just have to download a picture of a hot chick to my phone and pretend she’s my new girlfriend.
THURSDAY 20TH OCTOBER
12PM
Craig saw the girl on my phone today and asked if she was my new girlfriend. I confirmed that she was and he insisted on showing it to everyone in the class. Fortunately, I’d chosen an attractive woman so I had nothing to be ashamed of. Unfortunately, I’d failed to notice that the attractive woman in question was an actress from EastEnders. No wonder Craig laughed every single time I said she was my girlfriend.
When he pointed out that the girl was an actress, I said I must have used the wrong picture by mistake, but that didn’t stop him leading the entire class in a rendition of the EastEnders theme.
3PM
This lunchtime one of Darren’s flea-ridden trainers was thrown on to the roof of the science block. He’s refusing to name his attackers, but rumours suggest the tough gang were responsible and that Chloe was involved!
I know Chloe has recently suffered the breakdown of a serious relationship, but even a crisis of that magnitude can’t explain how quickly she’s gone off the rails. Just a few months ago, she was thoughtful enough to lend Darren one of her father’s tracksuits so he wouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of coming to No Uniform Day with his PE kit on (he’s too poor to own any other clothes). And now she’s carried out an unprovoked footwear attack on him.
I can’t help but feel partly responsible. If I’d given in and transformed her, she might not need to vent her frustration on innocent pikeys. Though on the basis of her recent behaviour, I wonder if she might have turned into an evil vampire and killed loads of humans, and I’d have had all that on my conscience. You can’t win.
6PM
I had a Maths lesson with Jason this afternoon and I tried to sit as far away from him as possible and forget he was there. Unfortunately, Mr Wilson left the room and Jason disrupted the class with some boorish football chants.
I later informed Mr Wilson and suggested that Jason should be expelled, or at the very least put down to the bottom set. Mr Wilson was unwilling to do so, as Jason’s dad had threatened to ‘knock his block off’ in a recent late-night argument in the Black Lion and he didn’t want to do anything to aggravate the situation.
So this is how we’re going to be ruled now, is it? By the threat of physical violence? Do 2,500 years of democracy and thirty years of Parent-Teacher Association meetings count for anything against the might of the brutes? Apparently not.
12AM
I need to stop hating Jason so much. I’ve got to remind myself that he’s a human and therefore not worth getting riled about. Like all his kind, he’ll grow older and weaker until he turns to dust. Let him have his petty victories. He’ll be gone in the blink of an eye, but I shall remain.
12:10AM
It’s not working. I still hate him.
FRIDAY 21ST OCTOBER
1PM
I went to Stockfield Moor for a stroll this morning, and I was surprised to see someone running towards me at Olympic speed. At first I wondered if it was Jason, but as the figure approached I saw that it was actually Grandpa!
As soon as he spotted me, he slowed right down and clutched his back. I mentioned that he’d been running at a terrific pace, and he said that he’d been overdoing it and needed to go back to his coffin for a nice lie-down.
So much for Grandpa being frail. It looks like he’s got perfectly functioning vampire powers to me. He just doesn’t want Mum and Dad to know in case they make him pull his weight around the house and fetch his own blood rather than draining our precious resources.
2PM
At lunchtime, Jason got told off by Mr Morris for snogging Chloe. Quite right, too. Everyone knows that heavy petting is against school rules and if it was up to me they’d both have been suspended.
Nobody wants to see disgusting kissing when they’re trying to go about their business. Especially when it involves Jason with his rancid dog-meat breath. Just thinking about him put me off my lunch.
8PM
We have a week off for half-term now, so it will be good to get away from all the petty school gossipers. I expect they’ll have forgotten the whole silly affair by the time we get back. I know I will have done.
SATURDAY 22ND OCTOBER
2PM
I was in the bookshop this afternoon looking at a ‘3-for-2’ offer on vampire romance books, when I had a brilliant idea. If everyone is going nuts for these cheap knock-offs written by opportunistic charlatans, imagine how they’d respond to a genuine work of undead insight by an actual vampire? Why am I wasting my powers of self-expression on poetry when I could be showing these bandwagon-jumping fools how it’s done?
Of course, Dad will think I’m putting our identity at risk, blah blah blah yadda yadda, but this is too important an opportunity to pass up.
6PM
We need to keep Grandpa away from my sister because she believes any old nonsense he tells her. This morning I went into her room to get some blank paper and she said that vampires aren’t allowed to enter the residences of others without formal permission.
For a start, that’s just a stupid old superstition and only senile old vampires like Grandpa still bother with it. If my sister took just one second to think about it, she’d remember that she’s been in hundreds of houses without asking for anyone’s permission. And even if it were true, it wouldn’t count for bedrooms. I told her that Mum and Dad own the entire house, including her
room, but she was having none of it.
I attempted to prove my point by jumping back and forth across the threshold of the room, but unfortunately I tripped over her Hello Kitty hairbrush and fell down the stairs, which she took as confirmation of her silly belief.
10PM
I have now finished the first chapter of my book, Dark Embrace of the Night. It’s pretty strong stuff, so if you don’t want to be transported to a realm of dangerous passion, look away now…
DARK EMBRACE OF THE NIGHT
Chapter 1
Nathan walked into Claire’s bedchamber, only to find her cowering in fear and wearing this flimsy white dress where you could totally see her neck.
‘I’m afraid of you,’ whispered Claire. ‘So why is it I’m so attracted to you?’
‘That’s just the way it goes with me, babe,’ replied Nathan.
