Renfield’s Syndrome

The morgue is pretty boring, except for the little sand dunes of dust on the floor. I'm out of breath. While I stop to fish for excuses about why I got here after all the action, a stake falls out of my duster, rolling into one of the ash piles. Now it's official: I am the worst vampire hunter.

Not like the Van Helsings. They're assholes, and what makes them even bigger assholes is that they're really nice about being assholes. The new one, Wilhelmus - every time we, y'know, team up, and I stake a vampire just to the left of the heart, he gets this weird half-smile and gives me the speech. "Paul, go under the sternum and jab upwards. So you don't have to force your way through the ribcage." I can't stand it.

I stick my finger in the ashes, then smell them. They don't smell like anything but ashes, but I figure it's kind of a cool signature move. You never know who's watching, huh? In this business, you get a lot of mysterious strangers spying on you from the shadows. Which is a terrible thing to find out about at 3am while you're pissing in a storm drain.

It was a stakeout, right? Apparently something was going on in Koreatown by the cannery. I mean, I guess it was. I'd been watching the loading dock for the past 5 hours, but all I'd seen were some teenagers huffing toner or something. So I get out of the car to pee, because, shag carpet in the van, ya know? You aim wrong and you never get that smell out. I go down the big concrete embankment, get things going, and, when the tank's half-full, boom, guy behind me.

"Enjoying the evening air?" He croaks it in like a Tom Waits voice, like piss over dry gravel. I kind of jump, but I don't wanna turn around with my pecker in my hands, so I play it off like I don't need to see his face 'cuz I'm cool too. My damn duster's all wet down the side now. His breath hits my neck, but it's cold. Vampire.

Now, I was on the verge of a panic attack, and my zipper was stuck. That's really the only way to explain why I'd say, to a complete stranger: "Not since you bastards killed my uncle." Look, I know. I know! Doesn't make sense in hindsight.

Okay, so I played the dead relative card too early. There are really only two ways you become a vampire hunter: you train from when you're, like, ten, just like those jackass Van Helsings. Or - someone you know dies, and you kinda fall into the whole cycle of justice and revenge thing. It's so cliché and dumb, but when you're at a funeral and an old lady shuffles up to you, hugs you real close, then whispers in your ear, "I want you to find the bastards that did this and kill them." ... I don't know, how can you refuse? You look like a total shithead if you do.


Thing is, I'm braced to get punched, kicked, or the ol' neckbite, so I do like this quick turn around move without even zipping up. I'm giving the guy my best kung-fu-I-can-kick-your-ass stance, which is really bullshit 'cuz I got kicked out of my dojo after two weeks when my check bounced. This vampire, he's a white guy dressed kinda business-y. Khaki pants, white shirt, cropped hair, and snaggletoothed fangs. The way he's eyeing me, it's hungry, and then he looks down at my junk. "My, aren't you a big boy." he says. I give him the once over, preparing to cock back my best haymaker and all of a sudden I realize he's packing. Plain as day, his dick's hanging out of his pants, too.


My brain starts cranking, and it finally chunks it out. That message board that tipped me off was right: there is some action going on here, but it's fucking gay cruising. I'm so embarrassed that I spout a line of bullshit about how now that I've got his attention, I want to save his soul with the power of Christ and lead him away from the path of sin and anonymous storm drain blowjobs. He gives me this super confused look, and after a beat I turn and just start running away as hard as I can, pecker flopping in the wind.


Swear to god, I'm gonna quit this whole game. Wilhelmus says he can get me a janitor job at his family's bakery, but I'm kinda iffy on it. I have my pride, you know?

World of Ruin

It only gets colder. I'll reassure myself that there can't be a colder day in this winter, that there's only a gradual rebirth into the golden land of Spring awaiting me after this little rough patch of absolute zero. But I can't even fool myself. The weather has me indoors, and it's doing more than just fever my cabin. It's leeching out the discipline I've been building in myself for the past year - I still work out, but my mind's fuzzy and I find it hard to stare at any problem without blinking and looking away. It's like my brain's wearing a parka made of fiberglass insulation. It took me thirty minutes to think of that simile, and it's not even good.

The dead of winter is the appointed time of my existential crisis. When all the holiday glow has subsided, when my hours at work get cut back, when all I can hear are the silences of my apartment, I turn inward. I've been working out for the past year now, and I've lost 25 lbs., become physically stronger than I've ever been in my life, and have developed a bit of steel deep within myself. But it's both not enough and too much.

I'm worried that I'm taking it too far. The testosterone fucks with my head and feels awful unnatural. It awakens some atavistic urge to callousness deep within me. If I go far enough, the physical changes will make it even harder to pass. But I need more power.

I need more power.

I don't know what sentence to put after that, so by necessity it stands alone. Written in a story, something so declarative would be pithed out after a definitive trauma. My village is razed by mercenaries while I'm out hunting. A drug deal gone bad leaves my girlfriend in a wheelchair. A bully pushes me down into the sand and I make a tearful, determined resolution. Best as I can see it, I'm reacting to feelings of powerlessness by finding a way in which to becoming powerful.

Super Sonic Speech Impediment

Holy fuck, I used to write some painfully long blog posts.