I'm going to cut to the chase here: you should definitely at all costs, avoid a vampire whenever possible.

See, the problem is that maybe 100 years ago you could actually do that, but these days, taking population explosion into account, maybe one person in every 50,000 you meet just might be a vampire. Avoidance might be a bit of an issue if you're that eager to not run into one, so yeah... good luck with that.

Imagine it. You're an ordinary guy, around thirty, which is my age, so you've grown up on a steady diet of rock music, horror movies, too much alcohol and withered expectations. I know exactly where Sidney was coming from since I used to be that guy who believed on some level that the movies got it right about vampires, no matter how many times they contradicted themselves.

I was that guy, and you were that guy too. Or the girl. Whatever. Stay with me on this.

Too many nights you've gotten drunk watching some bad horror movie with cheesy special effects or an equally bad horror movie with excellent effects. Either way, the movie is shit and you know it, and you love it. After all, you've been watching all kinds of horror movies since you were about eight, in an age before all the kids were on some sort of medication and before somebody's parents weren't trying to hide your eyes and your fragile little mind from the horror that is... well, horror movies. Usually, the most horrible thing on the screen was the story, but that type of analysis would come later when you became a teenager and by extension, an expert on everything under the sun.

By eleven, you were reading all kinds of horror novels, from Stephen King to Dean Koontz (although you gave up on him after all his books followed the same damn plot structure), and then Clive Barker entered the mix followed, of course, by Anne Rice and lots and lots of Neil Gaiman. You were the kid that everybody talked about and avoided because you were so weird and dressed in black all the time and why were you reading all the time anyway? Only weirdos spent that much time with their heads buried in books like they were always up to something.

By the time you were getting drunk at your best friend's house at the tender age of seventeen, you had seen it all and knew absolutely nothing about everything. But it was just an affliction, easily cured by turning twenty and having to get your first job.

So, of course, you know everything there is to know about the world, and still have no idea how or where you're even going fit in, but there are some immutable facts about the world and one of those facts is something you don't even have to think about: vampires don't exist.

Sure you and your friends have talked about how cool it would be if vampires did exist, but none of that talk is serious and is quickly forgotten, abandoned to dreams and broken, drunken memories. Most of that talk is nonsense in any case and none deal with the reality of how vampires would exist alongside with the rest of us and how invisible they would have to be to survive.

***

I noticed a girl at the bar glance over at us and look away, then she did a doubletake and her eyes widened, her mouth forming the words "What the fuck?" as her brain tried to figure out just what was going on, before deciding that she wasn't drunk enough for this shit and turned back to the bar.

So much for keeping a low profile.

Sidney's other hand was back in the bag and I knew it was clutching a wooden stake of some kind, either crudely made in Sidney's backyard or a prop purchased from the Internet. I thought about it and decided it had most likely been bought from some stupid vampire website that sold pieces of wood "blessed by a priest and sprinkled with Holy Water" to gullible people like Sidney. They weren't even hand-carved for a hint of authenticity, but instead were identical machine cut pieces of wood. Of course he had paid too much for it; it wouldn't be a proper scam if he didn't pay too much.

"Your negotiating tactics suck balls, I just want you to know that," I noted dryly.

"Fuck you, you fucking fuck."

Well it seemed that Sidney had a bit of a mouth on him. Insults? So quickly? Wow man, just wow.

I drained my glass and put it back on the table with an audible thud. I was determined to finish the bottle before I dealt with Sidney, just in case I had to leave in a hurry.

"No wonder you can't make it with Dorothy over there Sidney. You have no game and you have no idea how to relate to people."

"Don't make me compel you!" Sidney said and then turned whiny. "I just need you to turn me man. I need this. Just bite me and make me one of you."

"Just bite you? Are you serious?"

"I know that's how you get turned. Everybody knows it."

I fucking hate the bullshit that Hollywood and bad literature has spread about vampires. Dude was hitting every one of my pet peeves, and the cross thing was just getting annoying. There were currently two options to get out of this so I could go somewhere else and drink until the sun came up, away from idiots wanting me to turn them into vampires.

Option one involved grabbing that stupid cross from Sidney and jamming it so far up his ass that every time he went to the bathroom after that, it would be the holiest place in the city. And I definitely wouldn't be putting my mouth anywhere near his neck or any other body part. I would however still have time to drain the bottle, you know priorities and all.

Option two was probably going to be more entertaining...

I took off my sunglasses and wiped my brow, pretending very badly and over-dramactically to be affected by the cross.

"Okay, you got me, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, can you please move the cross now?"

I glanced at Sidney to see if he was buying my Razzy winning performance, but he had fully seen my freaky light blue vampire eyes and the reality of what he was doing suddenly crashed over him. Terror sweat had broken out on his upper lip and he started to shake in fear. The thought occurred to me he just wasn't prepared mentally to deal with the full reality that was a real vampire. The reality that was me.

Congrats Sidney: you've just met your first real life vampire.

***

I looked Sidney directly in the eye and gently pushed the cross down. He weakly allowed me to do this, definitely terrified of me. Damn, my buzz was fading away, and I suddenly needed to pee very, very badly. Damn tequila.

"Crosses don't work. Neither does Holy Water, a chain of garlic, a silver bullet or whatever other stupid shit you've talked yourself into believing works. You have no protection from what I am, just because you read about it on the internet or whatever. Think about it, Sidney and for once in your life, get out of your head and into the real world. You are not the star of the show and for that matter, neither am I. I'm going to be a footnote to you, an interesting story you can tell your friends. Call it 'the night the vampire didn't kill me,' because believe me, I can kill you and I'm not even the worst vampire you could meet." The part about me killing him was a lie, since I'd never killed anyone, but I wasn't telling Sidney that. "There are some really, really bad people out there, so don't you ever pull this shit again or you're going to wind up very dead. Just not by me and not tonight. You got me?"

He nodded mutely, still staring at my eyes, and I wondered if he had heard a word I'd said. It was almost as if he was hypnotized or something. That's not quite the word, but I couldn't think of a better one, so, like, whatever man. I was over it and the urge to pee was fucking killing me.

"Gimme the cross." He handed it over and I threw it into a corner where it couldn't insult anyone else. I held out my hand to him again.

"And the stake."

There were six of them, six inches long, smooth and identical, all from the internet (www.wekillvampires.com). They still had the stickers on them.

I sighed deeply and looked Sidney in the eye again.

"Do you want to live Sidney? I mean, really live?"

He nodded and I sighed. I was done playing and I was on the verge of peeing my pants. I pointed over to Dorothy and her friends.

"Then fucking live. Go over there and ask her the fuck out. She's either going to say yes or she's going to say no, but at least get off your ass and get an answer and then you can move on with your life. And you'll get to ask another girl later on and maybe she'll say yes, because Dorothy there might not be the one for you and she'll probably say no, I mean look at her, but damn dude you gotta try, and I really gotta end this now cuz I gotta pee, so whaddaya say?"

Sidney nodded and stumbled to his feet. I got up with him, feeling the weight on my bladder of two bottles of tequila wanting to come back into the world a lot more diluted. I clapped him on the shoulder, and he turned wordlessly and walked toward Dorothy, a man on a mission of certain doom, but damn he was embracing his doom--

I never got to see how it turned out. I ran off to the bathroom and for a second I thought I wasn't going to make it to the urinal. I danced from one foot to the other, while trying to pull down a suddenly stubborn zipper, and finally I was free to pee the pee of the damned.

That's the problem with tequila: it always shoots right through me.

What? Don't give me that look. Just because I'm a vampire doesn't mean I'm suddenly a magical creature with no natural urges or processes. You try drinking two bottles of tequila and see if you aren't hosing down the closest urinal before you even get halfway through the first bottle. My pipes work the same as everybody else's.

If Sidney had bothered to even ask me what being a vampire was like, I would probably have told him the truth, although my total lack of badassery might have been a little too much for him to take in one night. One can only destroy so many dreams at once you know.

Truth is, I'm probably the worst vampire I know.

###################

The book is now AVAILABLE in Hardcover, Paperback and Ebooks. It's going to live here free on Wattpad, but if you love the story and want to support your awesome author (me), grab a copy from one of the lovely retailers below. Who knows: maybe it can become a bestseller with the help of you lovely WattPadders

Amazon - http://bit.ly/Amazon-SIMBAV

iBooks - http://bit.ly/iBooks-SIMBAV

Barnes & Noble - http://bit.ly/BarnesNoble-SIMBAV

Indigo - http://bit.ly/Indigo-SIMBAV

Check out the website: http://www.bobthevampire.com

QUESTION OF THE DAY: How would YOU go about finding other vampires?