I haven't been a vampire very long...about five years, I guess.  And it is not easy to be a vampire these days.  Least it hasn't been easy for me. Perhaps the best way to explain is to start at the beginning.

 

I was born Harold Richards about forty years ago.  I started on my journey in the normal way...born with a mother and a father and even an older, obnoxious sister.

 

Nothing in grade school or high school or even college led me to believe that I would end up like this.  I knew about vampires, of course.  I had seen them in the movies and even read Bram Stoker's Dracula along the way.  I even knew a few what-to-be vampires here and there.  But all in all, I never thought that they were real.

 

I continued along in life quite naturally and normally, though never marrying or having children.  I am not what you would consider a "catch" by any stretch of the imagination.  On a good day maybe interesting but nothing more.

 

I worked for the Census Bureau extrapolating trends and developing new ways to make sure everyone got counted.  I found that in the computer age, I could do all of that and still live out in the country.  That may have been my biggest mistake.  Or was it moving near a graveyard?

 

Anyway, I lived there for about fifteen years.  There were the usual stories about specters and such being seeing in the headlights of cars near midnight.  Strange settling of graves years after burial. But hey...what's a graveyard without a few rumors and stories?

 

My property corner met the back corner of the graveyard.  Nothing even interesting about that.  For most of the years I lived there no one was buried in that section. About two years before I became a vampire they did start using that section.  But even so it was way down back; far away from the house and garage.

 

Across and down the road from the cemetery, (which was at a crossroads...another very bad sign) was a bar.  It had many incarnations itself...biker bar, country western, and finally a seafood restaurant and bar. 

 

I never really frequented it before they had seafood but it seemed that while the bar changed the patrons didn't.  The same people were in there.....just in different attire.

 

After dropping in a few times for the all you can eat crab and corn special, I noticed a very attractive waitress and barmaid name Lily.  She had the face of an angel and a southern accent that could melt butter. 

 

After a few times she kind of recognized me as a regular and would spend a few minutes talking to me if she wasn't busy with customers.  Most of the time I was long gone before dark.

 

It was one afternoon that I ended up staying longer than usual.  I had walked down into the back yard and hopped the fence. It was nothing to walk the property line between my backyard neighbors and the cemetery.  The weather abruptly changed and became a driving rain so I stayed.  I kept hoping that the rain would let up or at least lessen so that I could get home and not have to swim to do it.

 

I guess it was about nine o'clock when the rain finally let up. Lily got a strange look on her face.  She told me to walk the long way around to get home.  She couldn't tell me why...just that she had a feeling that it would be better if I did that. 

 

I should add that Lily had been raised in Louisiana and had a rather curious way of looking at things.  Once when I stopped in and she was working the day shift I gave her a ride home.  As I pulled into the driveway next to the house I noticed the feet of a rooster...just the feet and a bit of the legs hanging from her back porch.  I didn't say anything.  Looking back, perhaps I should have.

 

As I exited the bar that dark, dreary night I considered walking down and around but it started to drizzle.  I took the same route home that I had taken to get to the restaurant.  But the grass was very wet so I went up and used the road through the cemetery.

 

I guess I had walked past about three tombstones when I saw a young woman leaning against the one and only tree in the middle section of the cemetery.  She was crying.  Maybe it was wailing.  I'm not sure anymore. 

 

OK.  First clue should have been that she had no car, and she was not wet.  Second should have been that she was way too pretty.  Now I am not...or rather was not at the time homely enough to scare people but at 6'3" and only 175 pounds and slightly balding I was not Gary Grant.  I wasn't Herman Munster either.

    

This woman with long blonde hair, deep brown eyes and a flowing full length dress was in distress.  Harold Richards to the rescue.

 

She told me that she had been abandoned in the cemetery and asked if I could help her.  Of course, I wasn't going to leave her there with the rain getting heavier every minute.  So I invited her to my house. 

 

I planned to get my car and drive her where ever she wanted.  I never made it out of the cemetery.  By the time we made the boundary line she had her fangs in my neck and I was a goner.

 

To this day she swears that she never planned on turning me into a vampire.  That she meant to drain me dry and leave me for dead.  But apparently she had been waiting for a couple of decades to catch someone alone and she got a bit carried away.

 

So that is how I was brought across.  Now once I had moved from one reality to another I figured what the heck.  I could be a cool vampire.   I mean, have you ever seen a vampire that wasn't either cool or scary?

 

Well, there are plenty of us.  I found that some of those silly vampire want-to-be's are actually the real thing trying to kill time till they can move through the system.

 

Yes, even in the Afterlife there are rules and chains of command.  And it is no better there than anywhere else. After five years as a vampire I should have earned my cape. But I haven't.  I barely have fangs at this point in my new found career.  And a career it is.  Being a vampire is hard work if you want to be a good one and rise in the ranks.

 

The problem is that in the old days anyone could be a good vampire.  There was nothing that said that you had to be certified to "earn" you cape.  Nothing that said that you had to have so many people brought across to get longer fangs.  I mean, this is not an pyramid scam where you advance based on how many people you bring in...or is it?

 

Anyway, I have found out a few things.  One....I won't turn to dust if I miss a feeding or even a hundred feedings.  What will happen is that I will get weaker and weaker which makes it harder and harder to capture someone.  I really find it distressing to prey on those with so little left in them that it is not a challenge. 

 

Actually, I would rather not prey at all.  When possible I break into blood banks.  I never steal the rare stuff.  Domestic is fine for me.  And you thought all those emergency calls for blood were because people weren't donating.
 
I really don't like bringing people across.  They tend to hang around and expect you to show them the ropes.  After all, I am still learning myself.  Maybe in a millennium or so I will feel more kindly to newcomers.

 

Speaking of ropes, that reminds me of one of my more frustrating experiences.  I had my eye on this one woman.  She was very boring and nasty.  I figured that she would be a good target.

 

But you know, the people that should protect themselves, the nice ones, never do and the nasty old biddies lay all sorts of traps for you.  Somehow she must have foreseen my attempt.  As I entered her window one evening I was descended upon by a fisherman's net.  I really don't know if it was there for me or just my bad luck that it was there.

 

Rule number five in the Beginner's Guide to Being a Vampire says that if you get caught in a net you have to untie all the knots at the rate of one a year before proceeding. 

 

If you see the net but are not entangled; you can back off and either pick a new target or attempt another try at a later date either elsewhere or when the net is removed. 
 
I got entangled.  There were three hundred and forty one knots in that net.  I know. I counted every last one of them.  Now you may ask how I managed to escape.  Angelique helped.  She is the one that brought me across.  She has been dead for about three hundred years now and took me under her wing.  She feels sorry for me since it was her exuberant behavior that made me a vampire.

 

Angelique called all her vampire friends and each of them and her and I undid the knots....each one of us untying one.  It seems that there is a way around some of the rules if you are a more experience vampire.  However, for her to do that, I had to forego that victim and find another. 

 

Every once in awhile I find someone that is near death and would find a quick death almost a blessing.  I am not supposed to do that but what the hey....what they going to do to me?

 

The quickest way for me to become a caped vampire would be to bring across an adult virgin.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to find an adult virgin these days?  So I had to go back to the book and find the list of substitutes.  It's sort of like the list of substitutes in a cookbook.  I am not allowed to tell you what the substitutions are.  Suffice to say that getting my cape is not going to be easy.

 

Part of the substitution that I can tell you, is to make my way through a newspaper office either taking someone or luring them out with me after I pass through.  Now that may seem quite easy  but nothing is ever easy for a new vampire.  In order to get to a prey within a newspaper office I would have to read every article on every page of each paper as I passed it. 

 

I have to wonder why so few people use that option.  One would think that the easiest way to foil us would be to surround your bed with the Sunday New York Times or Washington Post.  The Classified Ads alone could get you safely through the night.

 

As for garlic.  All I can say is that I love garlic butter.  Even though it does me no good, I can still enjoy the flavor of food and beverage.  Towards me garlic has no influence.  There are other vampires that it is very effective in keeping them at bay.

 

Another place that I thought I might find a number of worthy candidates for nourishment was the beach.  I took a little train trip to Texas.  I thought that maybe some time on the beach at Galveston might make me feel better about my situation.

 

I was sitting on the Seawall one afternoon with my sunglasses in place.  Oh.  You thought we couldn't go out in daylight?  That's an old wife's tale.  Being as pale as we can be at times, most of us do tend to work at night.  There is just something that doesn't look right about a sun burnt vampire.

 

However; when we are almost satiated, we can manage to be out in the daylight.  Most times we prey at night for the same reason that burglars burgle at night.  It is easier.  Less people to see what we are doing and less likelihood that someone might stop by unexpectedly.

 

Angelique keeps telling me that I need to sit down and read the Guide cover to cover before scurrying off to try something new.  I could not figure why I could sit on the Seawall at dusk watching the few remaining swimmers and not move towards them.  Even if they were alone I couldn't move.  I had never tried to move off the wall during daylight.  There were too many people. 

 

Had I known why I might have not even bothered to go there.  Not like I could go surf fishing or swimming myself.  I was there for dinner so to speak.  And here were people serving themselves up to me and I couldn't move.

 

Finally I gave up and went back to my room.  The book once again provided the answer.  The people were surrounded by sand and like salt, I would have had to picked up every grain between me and my dinner.  Not on a beach.  Even a vampire doesn't exist that long.

 

Like I said.  I am not someone to be afraid of most of the time.  I am a vampire by accident and though I intend to get my cape I am no more dangerous than a dozen other people that you know.

 

I only say that because it is true.  And the fact that the odds are that if I am looking at you as a tasty treat some rule from the infernal book will probably creep up and prevent me.

 

While I have been writing this my dear, sweet Angelique has been watching over my shoulder.  She is as pretty as the day I first had the misfortune to meet her. 

 

Unfortunately, I am also just as ordinary.  Perhaps when I have the cape I will be a bit more dashing.  Nah....but still it will be cool to have the cape.