11:22 PM is one of the worst times to get a haircut. If you really need a haircut at that hour, you're just going to have to do it yourself.

Claude bought a buzzer from the nearest pharmacy, which was pretty close to a McDonalds, and since we needed a power source and a mirror (plus I was hungry and wanted an apple pie), McDonalds was the best choice.

So I shaved my head in the McDonald's bathroom. It was far from the oddest thing I had ever done in the bathroom of a fast food restaurant, but it was strange to watch the burned clumps of hair fall into the sink as the skin of my head emerged from under the scruff of black hair that was just getting long enough to get a little curl to it.

There is something relaxing about having a freshly shaved head. The ability to run your hands over the skin in one direction and feel the smoothness and all of the previously hidden bumps saying "hi!" to the world, is a completely alien feeling to most people. Some people have only ever had a trim or a cut of their hair, never even thinking about taking a buzzer and going right down to the skin. They will never feel the alien landscape of their freshly shaved heads that on a simple change of direction in stroke, turns from silky smoothness to a prickly and strangely arousing experience as every single sheared follicle is pushed in the wrong direction. That right there, that feeling was the reason I never liked a lot of people rubbing my head on those times that I did shave it.

I normally kept my hair on the shorter side, since at a certain length it stopped growing thick and straight and it started to get curly. I had grown it out as a teenager and had ended up with a badass afro of thick curls, one of the benefits of a black father and a Mexican mother. A lot of the girls had loved it at the time, so that look was pure gold for a teenager. I had first shaved my head when I hit twenty-one and had then kept it short over the years. The shorter hair was just easier to deal with, especially just shaving it all off, letting it grow a couple of inches and then repeating the process.

My blue eyes stared back at me in the mirror as I ran my hand over my head and I just stared at myself for a very long time, wondering who this stranger was that stared back at me from the mirror.

It was disorienting to see those alien eyes again and not for the first time I wondered if the sunglasses weren't a means of self-protection, at least at first. Part of me wanted to claw at my eyes, to rip them out in sheer panic because they sure as shit weren't my eyes—

Okay, deep breathing, calm yourself.

After a moment of deep breathing with my eyes closed, I managed to look at myself in the mirror again, but I was very careful not to look myself in the eye.

The manager burst in at that moment and there was some confusion as he looked from the hair in the sink, to the still vibrating buzzer, to my face and then back down to the hair, still trying to figure out what was going on.

"Someone said you were shooting up in here. You can't do drugs in my bathroom pal."

"I'm just cutting my hair—"

"I don't care what you're doing buddy. You're done."

It was strangely ironic that I had done drugs in quite a few bathrooms and here I was finally getting kicked out for cutting my hair.

***

We ended up at the diner on Bathurst street. You know the one, right downstairs of the Thompson Hotel, so the diner's food prices had increased as a response to their location. Apparently, celebrities stayed at the hotel when they came to town and they couldn't have one of the Hollywood elite eating the six dollar pancake combo.

I was concentrating on making Judy-the-waitress turn away from talking to the young family that was currently taking her attention. The little girl was trying to climb over the back of the booth to get a good look at me, while the father was valiantly wrestling her back down, and the little boy was repeatedly stabbing the menu and loudly repeating his order of "and fries!" while his mother ordered for everyone. If I had any mental powers at all, they were being overridden by the chaos of a small family trying to order dinner.

Claude was looking up vampire powers, courtesy of the fount of all knowledge, humanity's version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: the internet on an iPhone. Unfortunately, the internet was full of questionable sources and flooded by any idiot who had $12 to buy a domain and whatever it cost them to host a webpage that contained their particular brand of idiocy. At least he wasn't looking on 4Chan or we would have been besieged by a good dose of racism to round off the night.

"Standard vampire powers are supposed to include turning into bats, or small mammals," Claude read, somewhat sceptically.

I rubbed my temples and narrowed my eyes as I tried to concentrate on the waitress. I had seen someone somewhere do something like that once so it had to work, right? No, not the bats: the concentrating. I think it might have been David Copperfield or some other stage magician. Those guys were worth millions of dollars so maybe they knew something that I didn't.

"More shit from the movies. It this the same article that said I could fly?" I asked, still concentrating. "Because fuck that guy."

Claude grimaced and typed on his screen.

"Okay, this next site looks more promising..."

There was something logically wrong about what Claude had said and it bothered me enough to make me break my concentration on the waitress, who had almost escaped the family but now had to deal from the spill the six-year-old boy had caused when he had kneeled in his seat to insist that she acknowledge his order of "and fries! Please!"

"And is that like a single big bat or tiny little bats? How the hell is that even supposed to work?"

Claude shrugged, as confused as I was.

"Don't shoot the messenger. I'm just reading what I see. Here's a promising one: you get to come back from the dead."

I looked for Judy but she had already ducked away into the back. Damn, she moved fast. I looked back to Claude, not impressed with his Google powers.

"We already know that. Kinda the whole thing behind being a vampire. I had to die to get here, didn't I? I'm one of the undead."

"You have a heartbeat and you bleed. Like a lot. I don't think I've seen anyone bleed as much as you, so I think it's fair to say that you're not dead."

"Good, cuz I don't feel dead."

I didn't either. I wondered for a second exactly how being dead was supposed to feel and if I'd even know the difference.

"But if you die again, you get to come back."

I raised my eyebrow at Claude and played with my empty glass of we-don't-have-Coke-is-Pepsi-okay. The ice cubes clinked restlessly into the bottom of the glass and I stared at them as I tried to form the words that I wasn't quite able to get my mind around. Finally, I looked at Claude and just shook my head.

"I don't think we're going to be testing that one out," I said cautiously. "First of all, I'd have to die and then we have the question of who's going to kill me. I can't let you do it, because if it doesn't work, then we're both fucked and very important here: I'm fucking dead. I'm too chickenshit to even try offing myself and if it doesn't work, it's really going to suck, what with me being fucking dead. Besides, it could be as much bullshit as the turning into bats thing and I really, really don't want to die."

"Considering it's on the same website, maybe I should go to the next site?"

"Clickety-click!"

Judy the waitress was back with drinks for the family and I resumed directing my mental energy at her, really concentrating now. Claude fought back a laugh and then, as seriously as he was able: "How about those psychic powers? Any luck yet?"

"If anything I'm making the waitress stay away... which is the exact opposite of what I want. I might as well throw a pen at her for all of the good it's doing."

"Or you could, you know, call her over."

"I am calling her over. With my mind!"

I gave up in disgust and just raised my hand when Judy glanced over my way. Believe it or not, she saw that instantly and nodded at me, the universal waitress sign for "I see you and I'm coming, but this family is driving me crazy, okay?"

Claude smiled and flashed his phone at me. There was a lot of red and black on the site. Lots of black. Talk about bad design.

"This site mentions compulsion—"

"Which doesn't work. Next?"

"Telekenesis?"

I tried and failed to knock over the salt shaker with my mind. I reached out and gave it an assist from my hand instead.

"Next!"

"Pyrokenesis."

"Well you're not on fire and I've been trying since we got there. Sorry, not sorry."

Claude threw his phone down in disgust. "So what can you do dude? What kind of vampire are you?"

"Apparently the wrong kind."

******** AUTHOR'S NOTE **********

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

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