Joe Vampire

POST 23



Nightshifted



Here’s a sentence I bet no one has ever written before: raw meat can really bring a grouchy bastard out of his sulk. I’ll try to watch that more closely from now on. I have a note on the fridge to remind me to keep things stocked. I’m depressed enough as it is; I don’t need low blood consumption to make me suicidal. Like suicide would do any good. I’m a vampire, for f*ck’s sake. The living dead, as they say.

Unless I can figure out a way to test the folklore by staking myself in the heart, suicide is never going to be an option.

Still, the events of the past few weeks have left me… darker, I think, with no Hube to boost me, no Chloe to draw me toward a happy daydream of the future. I thought it was rough breaking up with Aretha and Dionne, but this is a thousand times harder. And I don’t even get to call them anything but Hube and Chloe, because there’s no joy in trying to make up clever, insulting names for people you still care about.

That kind of fun only works with the shit heels.

So how do you reinvent yourself when you’re a solitary vampire who just wants to move on after everything good in your life has tanked? For starters, you should develop an appreciation for nighttime hours. When your eyes are stuck in full-on night vision mode, it does wonders to not be assaulted by sunlight. Moonlight is still something of a bitch, as is indoor lighting, so you wear shades anyway – even inside. A small compromise, really. Night is way better for the skin, too. I can actually drop my hoodie now if I want and not end up with a face like Darth Maul. And with far fewer people wandering about, it’s almost possible to feel normal, and not like someone is going to discover your secret at any moment.

It may not be perfect, but it’s way safer than daytime at this point.

My old work peeps wanted to do a happy hour with me before I left, as a goodbye. Sweet of them, but I was too down to be down. I told them I had a bunch of spam I needed to mark as phishing scams, and my toenails were in dire need of clipping. The toenail part was true: vampire toenails are ferocious and require a good trimming just about every day. So I took a pass without worrying whether or not they bought my excuse, and they left a cake on my desk anyway, and a card with everyone’s signature. Good people, those ones. Makes me feel bad for shit-blogging about them when they didn’t notice my changes.

Not quite the same atmosphere on the night shift, though.

That’s because there’s no atmosphere on the night shift.

The shift itself is about the most nothing job you can imagine, and I took a pay raise to make the change. I can’t believe everyone doesn’t want a piece of this action – or inaction, as the case may be. Less work, less hassle, more money – it’s like a golden ticket to the chocolate factory, as far as I’m concerned. I’m surprised word hasn’t gotten out about it. If there’s anything resembling a Willy Wonka in the heavens, it never will.

The work goes like this: there are computer jobs that run to update all the systems with all the information that trickled in throughout the day’s business – blah, blah blah. Boring shit. To keep from interfering with the network while the day shifters are busy financially analyzing things and whatnot, these jobs all run overnight. And someone has to check in on them to make sure they don’t get all whacked out, or pile up on top of one another in a confused data orgy, or crap out and quit running altogether.

One of those someones is now me.

It took a whopping twelve minutes of training to switch my gears from keeping track of every penny in twenty-seven robust financial accounts to pushing a button every two hours and watching a screen between the pushes. So my new work schedule amounts to something like this:

• Punch in

• Watch screen/surf web

• Push the Button

• Watch screen/surf web

• Push the Button

• Go home

I feel like the guy from Lost, stuck down the hatch all alone with nothing but a stack of classic LPs for company. The big difference for me? I sort of like being stranded on this island. Much like the guy from Lost, however, I’m not alone. There are others here, too.

Not many. But some.

Because there are so few of us, we’re scattered throughout the work space – much different from the day shift, where we practically lap-danced on each other to make room for everyone. Smaller headcount makes smelling people as food much less of an issue. It also eliminates the need for friendly small talk about weather and traffic and the rotten economy. So I can plug into my tunes, scan the Twittersphere for hilarious one-liners or watch reruns online to keep me entertained and Push the Button in peace. A perfect set-up for the solitary hermit-monk lifestyle I’m trying to develop. The whole place is very much a colorless corporate replica of my home, really.

Only without the coffee table.

This reduction of responsibilities has given me a lot of time to think about everything that’s happened as well. I’d like to believe that it all must be some kind of blessing in disguise – a pretty kick-ass disguise, too, since I’ve yet to see any of the blessing showing. But still. Shit like this doesn’t just drop on you without bringing along a lesson about everything turning out for the better.

Not for my better, maybe. But for everyone else’s.

Especially where feeding is concerned.

In accepting that my fate is to be a vampire – and, as much as I try to minimize it, it is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me aside from losing my virginity and discovering Hulu – I realize that I can’t make it small. And it doesn’t want to be small, so my efforts to shrink it will probably just backfire eventually. Still, I think it’s worth the fight. I may not be willing to embrace my vampirosity, but it sure as hell wants a hug. I think the best thing I can do at this point is not inflict it on anyone else.

Especially after what happened the last time I saw Hube.

The more I thought about having smelled fear in him, the more I realized how good it felt at that moment knowing that I had such power over someone. I felt it in my fangs; they kind of ached in a way, the same way a hard-on would ache once you know the prospect of getting laid has become reality. I certainly didn’t mean to feel it, and I am in no way whatsoever condoning what I felt; I’m a total rat bastard for even considering it no matter how angry I am at the guy, and I knew that right away. But the darker elements in my modified brain seemed to recognize this feeling as the whole point of being a vampire, like an instinct had finally justified itself. It seems to me that one little slip of the tooth would put the vampire in control instead of Joe. I’m well aware of my shortcomings in the dietary department; I may not eat like a sumo wrestler, but if I’m in for a single snack cake, I’m in for the whole box. Sugar just does that to me. Knowing now that my nose tends to pick up on the sweetness in everyone’s blood, I get the sinking feeling it would be the same if I were to bite someone. Necks would just become Zingers or Ho-Hos, nothing more than snack food for the ravenous, blood-starved fiend that I would certainly become. Not a chance I’m tempting a fate as potentially disastrous as that. I have little doubt that if I were to try it even once, it wouldn’t be long before I’d be jumping on everyone who passed by, clinging to their necks like a deer tick and sucking them dry. If it turned out they were afraid of me while it happened – which, of course, is the whole point – then I’m betting the whole tingling fang thing would become orgasmic. And if I let it go that far, I would never get it under control again. So no matter how strong the pull to fang-f*ck the general populace, I’m sticking with abstinence. It’s much safer for everyone that way – me included. Alice can keep Vampire Wonderland for herself.

There’s no way I’m going down that lousy rabbit hole.

This is why night shift is so totally workable for me: If I want to avoid the possibility of biting people, I’ll make it easier on myself by avoiding people altogether. And it went off without a hitch for the first week or so. Then a complication arose, in the shape of a woman.

It’s not what you’re thinking.

And it’s not what I just made it sound like, either.

A few nights back, one of the night shift long-timers stopped by to introduce herself. She’s what I would call librarian-esque, and had been head-down in some pulpy romance novel or another every night since I started. To keep from bothering her, I’d just wave a little if she looked up rather than busting in and saying hello. I’m the newbie; I should bow my head and respect the natives, and earn their respect in return. No intrusions. No assumptions. And since I didn’t really want any intrusions or assumptions laid on me, either, I totally understood. But that night, when I looked up from my streaming Saved by the Bell reruns to Push the Button, there she was, staring me down like I had spit in her chai. It was focused staring, too, like she recognized me from somewhere. But I had never seen her before in my life. “You’re Joe, right?”

“Yup. New guy.” I reached out a hand. “And you’re… ?”

“Louise.” She said it flatly, shaking my hand a little too long for comfort. “Cold,” she commented. And she kept on staring. People almost always stop that shit when they get caught, but this one had some major lady balls and just kept going for it. She was squinting, too, like she was trying to diagnose me or read something written beneath my skin. No one on day shift had ever looked this closely at me. I know I’m pretty cool-blooded these days, but the vibe I was getting from this creepy bitch made me shiver in my hoodie. So I rolled out my list of excuses for my appearance. “I’m going through a little battle with anemia right now. That’s why I’m so pale.”

She shook her head. “No… that’s not it.” She didn’t just have balls; she had a dick to go with them, especially considering that she wasn’t exactly flashing a Coppertone tan herself.

I protested. “Um, yes it is.”

She examined the sides of my head. “And what about the tips of your ears? They kind of slant upward… they’re almost pointed. Is that anemia, too?”

Damn. I knew I should have worn a cap to put those things under. “I am as God made me – pointy ears and all.” I smiled, then stopped quickly when I felt my fangs poke out.

“That isn’t true,” she said, and it wasn’t out of kindness. “Someone made you this way, but God had nothing to do with it.” She sat her wool-skirted, Irish sweater-wearing, school teacher-looking ass down in the chair next to me as if she had a personal invitation. I was seconds away from carpeting her with f-bombs. “And what’s with the sunglasses? Are you stoned?”

“No. I have… my eyes are – ” Before I could stop her, she reached up and removed my Ray Bans. There they were, naked to the world: my totally open pupils, drowning out the colored rings that used to surround them. Huge and dilated, two empty holes leading into the middle of my head. I felt like she was staring into me, like I was totally exposed without my shades.

“Ah – I thought that’s what it was. You’re a vampire.”

Shit. I’ve been made.

I went into full denial mode. “A what? A vampire? No that’s just… that’s just crazy. Crazy.” I sounded like my brother’s skank.

She shook her head. “No, it’s not. I can tell completely; you’re a vampire.” She smiled a little, just enough for her own fangs to show. “Just like me.”

So I guess the night shift won’t be quite the opportunity for laying low that I thought it would.

Dammit.