Forty-four minutes. That's all it took.
Imagine for a second here that you're a dude named Chris Mannigan, an average looking twenty-two year old from Toronto who has somehow or the other lucked himself into an impressive sounding 43.2 million views on his YouTube channel. The channel in question is a combination of reviews and Chris himself being a charming dork, the kind of dork that millions of teenage girls seemed to have responded to in a very positive way to earn him some internet notoriety. Chris knows he's a bit of a dork and the fans know he's a bit of a dork and that seems to have been his particular dorky formula for success. People like people being dorks for some reason; go figure. Chris has also gained some male followers but they seem to be a combination of haters and wannabe YouTube kingpins, some of whom desperately want to partner with him to get some "synergy going on between the channels".
Word to the wise: anyone using the words "synergy" and "cross-platform" is usually talking out of their ass.
"I can feel the synergy in the room already man. You and me doing a cross-platform thing would be just about the coolest thing ever!" This of course was from the young man with the unfortunate and badly planned username of DoodWithAttitude_546. We can just call him Paul since that's his real name and a lot easier to type and to remember.
One of the downsides of YouTube fame was being invited out for drinks/beer/coffee only to have someone talk at you for the whole night about why synergy between your channels was inevitable and not a stupid fucking desperate plea for attention. Chris was still trying to figure out what Paul's angle was , but he ad already decided that he was just going to humor the dude, get a good meal out of the deal and maybe some beer and then get the hell out of there.
"Synergy. Right. You know I don't do the vampire thing, right?"
"After tonight, the vampire thing is all you're going to want to do, I guarantee you."
"Whatever man. Just as long as you know you're buying."
Paul smiled nervously and nodded eagerly. Chris almost felt sorry for him as he could sense that money was tight for Paul from whatever shitty job he was currently managing to stay employed at, but so what? It wasn't his responsibility to manage Paul's money and he had tried to warn him off, so...
"So 'Real Vampires' huh? What's your pitch?"
Paul was flabberghasted. He looked around nervously and then seemed a little disappointed.
"That was the pitch right there. Real Vampires man! They're real! They seem to like this diner... but none of them seem to be here right now, or I'd show you and you'd have to believe me."
No free meal was going to be worth listening to this shit.
"You're fucking kidding me right?"
Paul turned back to him, absolutely focused for the first time since he had met us with Chris at the subway stop two blocks down. He held his iPhone in a death grip and Chris knew instantly that he was waiting for his opportunity to begin filming at any minute, if that was what you would call it. A lot of the videos on Paul's channel were filmed from the iPhone with no lighting, sound or quality control whatsoever. Frigging amateurs, right?
"I have this inner ear imbalance, plus my doctor says I've got some kind of thyroid thing going on, and believe me, this causes all kinds of problems like you wouldn't believe. My weight fluctuates all over the place and some days I'm tired as shit, but here's the kicker: every now and again I get these killer headaches and for hours after they've passed I get these hallucinations, like auras over people's heads and shit. Sometimes I think I see ghosts and I know they're ghosts cuz they're staring right back at me, see? But I always just shrugged it off as just freaky shit, my mind playing tricks with me. One day I was recording on my phone and I just turned the camera around to record some of it, right? If you watched my channel, you've seen it—"
"I kinda skimmed through. Most of the shooting was really amateur and I kinda figured you were using your phone—"
"Maybe someday I'll get to your level, but I doubt it."
I doubt it too, Chris thought, but didn't say because while he might be a complete dick at times, he wasn't a stupid complete dick. You don't insult the guy buying you dinner unless that guy happens to be a complete dickbag, and unless said meal has already been paid for.
"I started shooting everything and some of the things I thought I hallucinated actually showed up on screen, which was weird and all, but the thing that really got me was this chick I recorded one night. Perfectly ordinary looking girl, kind of plain, but you could tell she had some kind of money, right? But her eyes were what got my attention, these pale shimmery blue eyes. The dude I was hanging out with was going on about how fucking gorgeous she was, and there I was looking at this girl who looked perfectly ordinary except for her eyes, and I'm not seeing what the big deal is—"
"What does this have to do with me?"
"You made a crack on one of your videos two months ago about how you couldn't sleep and you were beginning to see things in a different way. Little things opened up a whole new world for you."
"Yeah, and?"
"Well then I figured that maybe you could relate to seeing weird shit." There was almost a plea in his eyes and Chris just nodded for Paul to continue. "I walked into this diner a week after I saw this chick and it was full of people in expensive suits and pale blue eyes. Some of them were very attractive, but a lot of them were just ordinary, but the thing was that they all acted like they were all drop dead gorgeous."
"This has got to be the worst pitch I've ever heard," Chris said and waved for the waiter.
"They were all vampires!" Paul hissed as the waiter, Jimmy came over to take their order.
"I'll have an ale, whatever you got that's local and red, your eggs and french toast special with bacon. Eggs over easy."
Paul waved Jimmy off and Chris knew for a fact that if he were to empty Paul's wallet, the only money he would find would be possibly two twenty dollar bills, enough to last Paul the rest of the week. And here he was talking vampires and buying dinner for someone who he didn't know and desperately wanted to partner with. Schmuck.
"Lots of people have blue eyes," Chris felt the need to point out. "Maybe it was a blue eyed people convention or meet-up. Besides, weird eyes don't make you into a vampire, but more importantly Paul: vampires don't exist."
"Humour me. Pretend they do."
"Fine. Did you see them biting anyone?"
"You suck at pretending. If you were a vampire, would you bite someone out in the open? I've seen some of the bad videos out there man. I know what kind of company I've put myself in just with the name of my channel, but at least I'm not going out and hiring bad actors and filming shit with extremely improbable footage, no matter how shaky it gets."
"How do you know they were vampires?"
Paul got really intense right then and Chris was almost scared at the focused belief coming off of the man in front of him.
"When you see them man, when you're in their presence, it's something that you just know. You don't question it at all. You just accept that they're perfect and it's something you will never be. And you would do anything at all for them. And the worst thing is that you're aware all along that there's something wrong about them but you can't help yourself."
"So what you're saying is... you never actually saw them bite anyone or do anything freaky like turn into bats or anything."
"Why are people always so obsessed about vampires and bats? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
"What do I know about vampires? I'm just a dork on YouTube. You're the guy with the 'Real Vampires' show. Guess which one of us is the expert on things not dealing with vampires."
Paul spotted something outside the window and his eyes widened for a second. He very shakily placed the iPhone onto the table and pressed the RECORD button, then looked Chris in the eye.
"You'll see exactly what I'm talking about man. And you're going to want to tell all of your subscribers the truth."
Chris stared at Paul and Paul stared at Chris and it was becoming obvious that Paul was expecting something to happen, but nope, not tonight.
"Yeah..." Chris said. "That's not going to be happening. Like ever."
This was the exact moment that Claude and Hester entered the diner and changed their entire world.
The coming of Hester was like a low grade hurricane, all eyes turning to the door to greet him before it even opened. There was a waiting expectation for everyone, a moment where they all forgot to breathe and then the door was opening and the most beautiful man anyone in the diner had ever seen, was entering, a god walking among men. And there was Claude of course who was still trying to figure out if and how he could actually stop Hester from killing any random people.
In that moment, Chris Mannigan changed his mind about everything and was one hundred percent convinced that vampires walked the earth and that giving his blood to them would be the best thing that he could ever do with his life. He felt the idiotic grin growing on his face as he watched Hester, his only thoughts about how he could get Hester on his show and tell the world the good news.
If he had known about the countdown that had started the minute Claude and Hester had entered, he still wouldn't have cared that there were only forty-four minutes.
Forty-four minutes that were all recorded for viewing on YouTube.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm trying out something new here and I'm feeling my way along, but this comes from the thought that there are some huge questions still to be answered. This means that we'll be spending a little more time with Claude and Beatrice, but the payoff is going to be huge.
Forty-Four minutes has begun.
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