011: The Long Night

Vampires can't exist, right? That may be true...until you experience the long night...

            The night was a long one if you knew the right people.  I knew the right people.  I was the right people.  I also read the four or so papers written by people with fancy degrees saying that it’s not possible for vampires to exist.  I have serious qualms with what they purport.  As a vampire, I find it a little disturbing.  Then again, Japanese people must also feel a little disheartened when they read the essays saying they won’t exist in about fifty years.  However, this does not diminish my anger.

            One of the fools who ‘researched’ the vampire ‘legend’ is now at a party I  had her invited to.  Deborah Hillcrest.  A doctor of geometry.  The first one to start this little research project.  Using mathematical models to ‘prove’ vampires couldn’t exist �" that we would have destroyed the food source a few centuries ago.  We’re blood-suckers, not dumb.  We have strict conservation laws and a meeting before anyone turns anyone.  Those who don’t follow the rules are no longer my friends.  And those who aren’t my friend find themselves on the other side of immortality.

            A friend of mine invited the little twat to the party after a conference for number crunchers.  I don't begrudge my friend his chosen course of study, but I don’t particularly like Math, in any of its forms.  I’m more of a literary sort, after all, I read her paper and nearly typed up a reply to her.  Apparently, as my secretary says, four letter words are not in vogue anymore.  Forever youthful, yet a fad behind.  But that is okay, I have a more classic sense of things, and, after all, everything old becomes new again…eventually.

            I see her talking at the bar.  She is drinking wine and trying to chat up the man who brought her.  She has no chance of success at that.  I slowly stand up from my towering perch.  The dance club we are at is large.  I sit above it all �" watching.  The place is packed with those of our numbers, and mortal folk alike.  The mortals �" the bleeders �" are the normal kind we attract for a reason.  Druggies.  Drunks.  The more they are into their vice the better.  We are rich enough to always have someone out handing it out to them.  They always take it, not caring where it came from, who it came from.  It could come from the Devil himself and they wouldn’t care.  I bet that Deborah doesn’t believe in the Devil either.  Perhaps debunking him is next on her list.  While thinking over the possibility I stalk down the stairs.  People part before me.  My people as well as the druggies and drunks.  I admit, they make a wonderful spectacle �" the bleeders.  Dancing and playing around like little children.  We don’t ever take any of them �" they are too unclean.  We like pure blood.  Only the good doctor is the kind we like.  She has no vices to speak of, and isn’t pretty enough to be too spoiled in that respect either.  Not that we fancy virgins, it’s just that they are a little more tasty.  Just like the oil �" extra virgin is a little better than just virgin.  So it is with people; a virgin is a little better than a person who hasn’t gotten any in a while.

            I stalk up to the bar next to her.  I turn on the charm and smile at her.  Gently I take her attention off the man who brought her.  He falls away into the crowd.  The music starts to fade �" she doesn’t notice.

            Are you Deborah Hillcrest, the writer of the paper on vampires, I begin.  She smiles and says yes.  I start to debunk her theory with simple biological and survival factors.  She says that she has thought about these and thought them irrelevant �" that a stupid beast like a vampire wouldn’t think of them.  I smile.  Behind the sweet eyes and smiling face I let my fangs grow.  She falters a touch.  She’s noticed the music has silenced.  She looks up, I open my mouth and take her life from her.

            We leave her body in her house.  Let the police think that she was murdered by a crazy person.  After all, vampires don’t exist.  It’s mathematically impossible.