The Yoga Practicing Vampire

Jack meets a Yoga Practicing Vampire named Lavinia after his college class one day....

The Yoga Practicing Vampire

and the Grease Monkey

 

       

 

        Jack couldn’t believe it.  He was incredulous.  It was obvious that Simone had never talked to Lavinia or her boyfriend.  They were the crazy ones.  Jack thought to himself:  I might have had a few relationship problems, but at least I don’t go around telling people that I am undead.

       “If you could kick your crack-w****s habit , a lot of these issues would resolve themselves.” Simone announced this with a smirk and the toss of her hair.  “This craziness will go away once you get away from them.”

        “Ok, I admit last weekend was a bit freaky, but wait there is more.  I’ll tell you a good story. My life is meatloaf compared to this gourmet story.”

       “Truly?  I hate meatloaf.  Tell me anyway.”

       “Me too.  Anyway, I met this girl last week named Lavinia or something. She fed me some line that is a vampire and her boyfriend is a grease monkey, complete blue collar god or something.  Talk about unlikely couples!”

        “A vampire! Are you sure it wasn’t Jenna in disguise?  She strikes me as the blood sucking type.”

        “All right already, I am no longer dating her!” Jack relaxed on the hood of his car.  “I went to visit Dr. Miller and this girl Lavinia was in his office.  They were discussing Dracula because he teaches it in one of his classes.  Anyway, I saw her around campus the next day.”

        “And naturally you ran screaming,” interjected Simone.

        “Actually, no.  I stopped to talk to her.  I was like ‘you were in Miller’s office weren’t you?’ And she was like ‘Yep, so I was’ so I asked why she was talking to Miller about vampires, and she claimed to be an expert, so naturally, I wanted proof.  She said ‘because I am one’ like that was an obvious conclusion.”

         “She just blurted it out like that?”

         “She sure did.  I was completely shocked.  I didn’t really believe her at first.  I mean, come on, a vampire!  So I asked her if she was kidding. She wasn’t.  She asked why I thought she was teasing.  I told her that she was the wrong color, no fangs and a real lack of suspicious, bloody deaths around here. She said, ‘well what makes you think you aren’t the first mysterious death?’  At that point I got scared.”

         “Well,” Simone said, “you are not dead, so I am assuming that this went somewhere else.”

          Jack looked at the pavement, and then back up at Simone’s bemused face.  “Yeah. I mean she was psycho, so I had to walk with her and get to know her more. She told me her whole life story, which is longer then the movie ‘Titanic’ and ‘Gone with the Wind’ combined.  I guess she was born in Rome a long time ago.  She was banging this guy Armand, then one day, she notices he was a vampire. He is the one that made her a  vampire and then abandoned her.  This guy was like classical-era white refuse.  Anyway, this made her very angry and bitter, turning her into a merciless killer.  Apparently, she was quite the seductress and charming killer.”

         “Sounds like Anne Rice to me.”

         “Whatever. I’m getting to that part.  So she got bored with Rome and traveled the world.  She ended up in Tibet, which is where she picked up the whole Yoga thing. She spent  hundreds of years there just contemplating her navel or something equally interesting.”

         “Some people have neat bellybuttons, I guess.”

         “SO, she got bored with that and decided to wonder back out into the world.  She spent seventy odd  years exploring and relating. The past couple years she has found true happiness.  She got with this blue collar god named Joe.  They live downtown in a small apartment and she is going to college to ‘make something of herself.’”

         “What is she going to be?  A politician? She’s got the storytelling thing down.”

         “No, a teacher.  The real neat thing is that she doesn’t drink blood.  She stopped drinking blood 200 years ago.”

          “So how does she survive?”  Simone queried. 

          “She said that and she said she just has to take the proper balance of vitamins and herbs  Its all about self control. She is an herbal vampire”

          Simone giggled, “What’s next?  Witches that keep black cockatiels, don’t cast spells and ride Kirby’s?”

        “I told you that was much stranger then last weekend.  It pales in comparison.”

        “So, did you end up sleeping with Lavinia? To break the cycle so to speak.”

        “No!  Give me a little more credit then that.  You must think I am a real pimp.”

        “You are, and that is all the credit you get.”

        “Well, I didn’t.   You know the weird thing?  She was absolutely beautiful and I didn’t even think about sex. It must have been the whole mortal fear thing.” 

        “So,” reasoned Simone, “by that logic, why doesn’t Jenna or Donna phase you? One tried to kill herself, and the other is a complete toad who tried to make out with you.  I would much rather have my blood sucked out then get it on with either one of them.”

      “Its not like I’m not scared of them,” mused Jack, “I can’t be responsible for their actions, its not like that whole deal was my problem.”

      “No, but you compound the situation. It is the thing that you have with meeting an absolutely nasty girl, absolutely abhor her, and end up sleeping with her anyway.  What’s up with that?”

       “Maybe I can just not have sex altogether.  I mean, if Lavinia can kick the blood thing, I can kick the intercourse thing.  I just need to think about my naval more heavily.  Ooooommmm.”

       “Jack, it isn’t sex.  It is the inherently evil choice of crack-w***e as a partner.”

       “I am the nicest guy in the world.  Why can’t I have a normal life?  Maybe I can start hanging out with Lavinia and she can scare them all off.”

       “You know you don’t want that. You crave this fly-by-the-seat-of-your- pants lifestyle that attracts a certain variety of women.  It is the shallowness of these women that makes you unhappy.”

       “Simone, you’re analyzing me.  But I like it this time.  Wanna rehash your theories for Miller?  It might be a viable excuse for me missing his class for a week.”

       “Sure, the theory will be that a former player gets scared straight y a self-denying vampire.  Think he’ll buy it?”

        “Why the hell shouldn’t he? And if doesn’t, I’ll just was his car.”

 

       Simone and Jack went on their quest to find Dr. Miller.  They rehearsed what they were going to say as they made their way to his office.  Dr. Miller, however, was not there.  “That scrub!”  Jack exclaimed, “If we can’t find him soon then he is going to be taken off of my cool list.”

       Simone took Jack arm of his shirt and pulled him away from the door.  “Don’t give up yet, I have some ideas.”  Simone lead Jack around the halls and finally outside.  It was between Roundwood and Broomfield hall that they found the elusive Miller.  He was sitting at a table on the sidewalk that was set up to promote his soccer team.

      “I haven’t been in class this past week because I was mentally ill,”  Jack told Miller.

       “And I’ve been counseling him.  He has these issues.  All he can date is crack-w****s,”  Simone added.

       Miller smiled in amusement, “Is crack-w***e one word or two?”

      “Hyphenated,”  Simone decided.

      Jack continued on with his story, “I would have been in class, but I had to recover from my insane weekend.  It all started when I went to the flats....”

       “You see,” Simone explained, “He went there with these two girls.  The one was like trying kill herself in the back seat while the other was trying to hit on him.”

       “It was really disturbing.  You can see why I needed a few days to recover.”

       Miller did not question the story, he just dug into his magical black bag and dug out Jack’s test.  “I handed back the midterms on Monday,” he said handing it to him.

       Jack took the midterm and looked it over.  “Awesome!  I only missed three. Not bad for all the craziness going on at the time.”

       This reminded Simone of the rest of their story, “Hey did you know that Lavinia was a vampire? An herbal vampire no less,” she asked Miller.

       “I remember her mentioning something about that,” he nodded.

       “Well, Jack here got a chance to hear her story and that scared him straight for awhile.”

       “So, I shouldn’t be missing anymore classes for awhile,” Jack assured Miller.

      

Author's Note

This appears in Chapter 10 of my book OUT THERE: A COLLECTION OF SUPERNATURAL SHORT STORIES