So I'm a Vampire... Now What? - Book 2 (Original Version)

Chapter 2.3: The Notorious B.O.B (pt 3)

I was exhausted when I woke up, but at least this time the apartment was empty.

I should have woken up screaming, but I was too tired even for that.

If my life were a movie, I would have woken up to yet someone else in my apartment. You see it all the time, and it's there sometimes to keep the momentum going, or even for cheap laughs. It's an onslaught of comedic errors one after the other that show exactly how hapless the hero is.

Since I was fully aware of this trope, and I knew exactly what kind of life I lead, when I woke up around 3:30 PM, I did so very, very carefully. I first opened one eye, fully expecting to see the hulking and dangerous shape of Mr. Bryce coming back to kill me this time, Harry having changed his mind. I was almost disappointed when nobody was there. No Harry or any other kind of dangerous and pissed off (at me) vampire occupying my bedroom. Just me and my overactive imagination.

"If anybody is hiding in the closet or the bathroom, now would be a good time to come out! You know, just to get it over with!" I called out.

Nothing.

All I could hear was the sound of an empty daytime apartment, which if you don't know, is entirely different than that of an empty nighttime apartment. There was the dull roar of traffic from outside, passing cars and one slamming door, a car cornering a little too fast for comfort. The three-year-old from upstairs repeatedly slammed his hands against the glass screen door of his apartment, bang... bang... bang... just over and over again and no one was yelling at him to stop. The clock I had often meant to throw away still hung in the kitchen, its tick-tock-tick irritating in the silence, as it always was. I resolved once again to throw it out, but knew that I never would, and it would be waiting to irritate me still when it got too quiet once again. The motor in the refrigerator ticked on and hummed to life in a vain attempt to keep my food cold. It would have been great if there had been any food inside to speak of besides a possible block of cheese (I wasn't too sure if it was still there) and some very suspect milk that might have gone all the way past bad and directly to criminal acts. These were all ordinary sounds that I heard every day and never paid attention to, but somehow, I always knew that they were there.

So yeah: nobody was lurking around waiting to jump out at me.

Yet, there was that feeling that somebody should be jumping out at me. Even as I peed noisily, feeling that relief that only the first pee of the morning can bring, there was a moment where I very slowly reached over and pulled back the shower curtain so I could see inside. I had to switch hands in order to do that and almost peed all over the damn floor, but I somehow managed not to make a huge mess.

The shower was, of course, empty.

Nothing jumped out at me. Not even a cat that I didn't own, and would never see again, but would no doubt have generated an extremely humorous reaction from me. There wasn't even a random wild raccoon that had somehow, and implausibly, snuck into my shower and managed to stay silent until that very moment when it could jump out at me. And there definitely wasn't anybody waiting to kill me. It was almost disappointing. I suppose I could have peed on any attackers and given them a nasty surprise, but thankfully, that wasn't an option. Word to the wise: don't interrupt a man while he's peeing.

Nobody jumped out from behind my couch or tumbled out from an impossible position from inside my cereal cupboard. I even closed and opened the door a couple of times, just to be sure.

I was waiting for something bad to happen, and it was simply refusing.

I ate my cereal dry, the bag of milk sitting in its jug on the table next to me while I considered drinking it.

I texted Claude:

Me: The milk has gone off.

Claude: it's pasteurized. You can still drink it if you want. Just ignore the chunks.

Me: Seriously? Ew.

Claude: it's not like it's going to hurt you anyway with your "condition"

I considered for a long moment, waiting for the milk to look even vaguely threatening, then typed my response.

Me: You're not lurking anywhere in the apartment waiting to jump out on me, are you?

Claude: I've never jumped out at you from anywhere. Not my style dude.

I didn't drink the milk. It's not like I didn't trust Claude (I totally didn't), but I just didn't want to deal with any chunks in my goddamn milk. It still makes my gag reflex go into overdrive just thinking about it. The cereal was just fine without it.

Oh, that reminded me of a song. I quickly found the Anthrax album I had been thinking of (Attack of the Killer B's), connected to the Bluetooth speakers that Claude had mysteriously shown up with one day, and cranked the volume. Music filled the room in the way you can only experience when you're home alone, and the next song is going to kick some ass and tell you to pour some goddamn beer on your Wheat Thins.

I sat there munching mindlessly on cereal as I scrolled through Facebook, Twitter and a shit-ton of missed emails that I had only glanced at out of habit. It was as if life had gone on without me, and nobody had noticed I wasn't around to be snarky at them. The upside was that I wasn't being deluged with Facebook invites and updates on random Kickstarter campaigns. I had no idea how long I stayed like that, or even how far down the social media rabbit hole I had fallen until I realized that someone was banging on my door and had been for quite some time.

I paused the music and listened, my heart pounding in my chest from the sudden surge of adrenaline.

Silence.

"Hello?" I called out.

The knocking started up again, and I stood up slowly, trying to focus my hearing, trying hard to listen to whoever was outside.

I opened the door and Benjamin, who had paused in the act of knocking, turned his fist into a wave "hello." All four of the members of my vampire support group was there. I had so glibly called it "Friends of Vlad," but we usually casually referred to it as Vampires Anonymous or even more casually and realistically as "the group."

I looked from Benjamin's eternally guilty face to the scruffier face of the muscle-bound Stanley, to the more anxious-looking Natalie and finally to Frankie's uncertain and anxious grin, his teeth startling white in contrast to his dark skin. They were all thoroughly covered since it was the start of winter and it had gone brutally cold in the course of a few days without the benefit of the snow to at least look pretty. Of course, they were also wearing jackets with enormous fur-lined hoods, the better to protect them from the sun, which apparently had been hiding behind cloud cover for the whole damn day instead of doing its job and burning them all to a variety of unusual looking grease marks.

"Hi Bob," Benjamin said.

"You motherfuckers," I said flatly and slammed the door in their faces.

############# AUTHOR'S NOTES ############

The Friends of Vlad are back! Time for an apology tour.   More to come.