Joe Vampire

POST 33



Freak Attack



Until recently, I had never been jumped on by a heavyset southern man wearing a John Deere cap and reeking of beer and chewing tobacco. I have officially added it to my list of Things I Hope Never Happen to Me Again, right below being bitten by a vampire, and above accidentally walking in on my parents having vigorous sex… which happened while I was an adult.

And the position they were in wasn’t anywhere close to missionary.

Even once in a lifetime is too much for something like that.

It was after dark when I got home from celebrating my addition to Forever 81 with my new band mates, and I must say I was mighty buzzed, from the shots as much as from the success I’d had at the audition. I was floating on my own happy cloud at how well it had gone. My life had music in it. My future had something good in it.

My door had a crowbar stuck in it.

And the lock had been smashed. And the frame was splintered way more than it should have been.

These all probably coincided with the severely-lifted truck parked across the street from my house. I pushed the door open slowly. Even with the lights off, my night-ready eyes picked up most everything in the dark. I moved in slowly, finding nothing really out of place other than a few things scattered about… and that was most likely a mess I’d made before I left. But the skin-crawling sensation that someone was in the house with me shivered down my back.

Seems highly unlikely that a vampire would be afraid of something unseen lurking in the dark, but there you have it.

“Whoever’s in here,” I called out, remarkably composed for some-one so ready to pee his pants, “I don’t want any trouble. So here’s what’s going to happen: I’ll throw my wallet in the middle of the floor – minus my driver’s license – and you can grab it and run out the door. I won’t even call the police… you can just take the wallet and go. Okay? Is it a deal?” My offer received no response. In a stroke of brilliance that I’m happy to take credit for, I sent my mind reading skills out ahead of me, just peeking in the corners of the room and all around. All that came back was a picture of a Budweiser bottle and scenes of trucks with massive tires tearing through a mud bog.

And vampires.

Sparkly, pretty, and nicely dressed.

I flipped on the living room lights and slinked to the hallway, trying to watch my back and my front at the same time. All was clear ahead and behind, but someone else’s thoughts were still stuck in my brain. I swung open the doors to the bedroom and bathroom, but those were empty, too. There weren’t many other places for someone to be. So when he came dropping out from his hiding spot between the two walls above my hall closet, it sort of took me by surprise. He must have wedged himself up there like a fat Spiderman. His bulk knocked me backward into the living room, where we both crashed into the coffee table and smashed it flat.

Guess I won’t be crawling back under there anytime soon.

He made a quick spin for being such a chubby guy, like he’d been practicing wrestling maneuvers for quite some time, and ended up straddling my waist and pinning me on the pile of table scraps. I could hardly breathe with his mass crushing my stomach. Then he raised his arm above his John Deere-capped head, and I saw the spike gleaming in the light as he swung it downward. I was able to catch his wrist before it made contact. But this guy had some mad power in his arms, and he shoved the metal point toward my face, aiming pretty directly for my throat and inching toward my ribcage. It took a second before I remembered what had happened in the gym with the weight machines. I have a superpower I can use here… So I clutched his wrist firmly and pushed, feeling the bones crackle slightly. I think he cried out “Holy Momma!” as he struggled, but it felt like there was no resistance from him whatsoever. I just held his arm back against his shoulder, pressing my thumb into the soft spot below his palm until he dropped the spike. “Goddamn, that hurts!” he hollered. Then I clutched his waistband and sort of hoisted him off of me as I stood up. I had him pushed up against the wall, maybe even coming off of the ground and kicking his feet in mid-air a little. He was a not-so-solid two hundred eighty pounds at least, and I had the better of him at a buck seventy.

Vampire strength.

F*ck yeah!

He was wearing a ten dollar workman’s tool belt like you get at Home Depot, with all kinds of odd stuff hanging off of it – garlic bulbs, a flask with a piece of masking tape with the words “holy water” written across it, a hand mirror, a pocket tool for fixing small appliances and cutting your way out of a seat belt… and opening beer bottles. “Is this some sort of vampire protection kit?” I asked him. His other hand was reaching into his pocket for what I imagined would be another spike. But when I caught that wrist in my grasp, all he was holding was a cross. “That doesn’t work on the Jews.” I twisted his arm behind him and shoved his face against the wall pretty hard, but keeping careful not to hurt the guy. He may have pulled a major sneak attack on me, and he looked armed for some fierce ghoul battle, but I had it all taken care of now. No need for bloodshed or bone breakage. And with this muscle-less strength at my disposal, it seemed all too easy to cause him real damage. No matter what he was trying to do to me, that wasn’t the direction I wanted to go with this. “What other fun surprises do you have stuck in your tool belt, huh, John Deere? Is there a gun in there, or a knife?” I ripped off the belt and threw it across the room.

“Don’t suck out all my blood, please, mister,” he begged me. “I got an old lady and a baby at home!”

He had a deep, deep southern accent, like he might have been from a row of states between Texas and Mexico that haven’t been added to the map yet. For the sake of clear communication, I won’t try to reproduce it phonetically here.

You’ll just have to imagine how it sounds as you read.

He wasn’t putting up much of a fight, so I let him go, keeping cautious the whole time of where his hands were as he turned around. They were mostly rubbing the pain out of his wrists. “What the f*ck are you doing in my house?” I blasted.

“It ain’t obvious?” He held his arms out so I could read his shirt:

The Pire Hunter

Kickin Tires ‘N Killin Pires



Catchy. “So you’re a vampire hunter – is that it?”

“Yessir. I’m on Twitter and Linked In, and I’ve got a Facebook page. Bumper stickers and magnets are on order.” An overweight, socially-networked, media-marketed vampire hunter from the south, who likes mud bogs and domestic beer?

There’s not enough mind reading vampiricity in the world to have picked up on something like that.