Vampires Don't Sparkle! (20 page)

With the cane before me like a knight’s lance, I drive the shaft home, straight through the vampire’s chest, piercing the foul thing’s heart and driving it back into the manger. The angel overhead comes crashing down and the
cruor geminus
becomes entangled in the wire frame and blinking lights. As the sun rises, the fiend dies before our eyes, its body bound by the twinkling lights of a Christmas Angel.

“Huh,” Sarah says, “I guess sometimes vampires do sparkle.”

DRACULA’S WINKEE: BLOODSUCKER BLUES

Gregory L. Hall

Gregory L Hall has a long history in comedy, improv and theatre. He’s a national Telly Award winner and produced the annual Baltimore Comedy Fest to support autism awareness. His dark fiction can be found in oodles of publications and anthologies as well as his novel 
At the End of Church Street 
and short story collection 
Werepig Fever
. Nowadays Gregory is perhaps best known as the host of the internet radio talk show 
The Funky Werepig. 
However, he prefers to brag about the time he was hugged by Pat Morita — Mr. Miyagi — because wouldn’t you?

Although he loves vampire classics from 
Nosferatu
 to 
30 Days of Night
, his biggest influence has been The Count from
Sesame Street
.

–––––––––––

L
ove. It’s more than just a three letter word. It is perhaps the greatest gift bestowed upon humanity and without a doubt the hardest to define. But who is worthy of love? There are many who say the one place love cannot exist is in the hearts of those who are truly evil. Like proctologists and Wal- Mart greeters. But true love can grow anywhere, even in the darkest of souls. And it lasts an eternity.

As Dracula looked through the bedroom window at his latest prey, he had trouble believing any of this. Yes, she was attractive in a 1990’s Katie Couric kind of way. But there was no emotion left in his world outside of anger and depression. And sex had faded into a cruel joke.

It was Frederich Nietzsche who said ‘Facts are like really rigid truths.’ And it was Jack Nicholson who said ‘You can’t handle the truth.’ For the Lord of the Undead, the ugly truth was in order for a man to achieve an erection, he must first have blood flow. That was something a vampire did not have. Blood was food. It was for energy and for maintaining a life force. Anything else was a cruel tease.

Sure, in younger days he always drank more than enough to saturate his own veins and arteries. Every day was a Happy Penis Day. But as the centuries flew past him, and his victims polluted their blood with drive-thru meals and Zima, Dracula had to severely cut his intake of crimson nourishment.

The first to fall was his once mighty winkee.

Intercourse went the way of traffic cops, typewriters and face-to-face communication. There was nothing worse than young naked women wanting the ultimate taboo - hot vampire boinkings - and offering them nothing but the flaccid junk of a three-thousand-year-old Romeo. To make matters worse, he was always room temperature. Tiny, old and cold. Not an attractive package. And by package, we mean package.

So he had to use his darkly erotic reputation and his European charm to drive women to orgasm. Being woozy from massive blood loss helped his ladies believe the fantasy. But heavy petting and dry humping was all their mysterious lover could offer.

Dracula’s frustration was thicker than ego on a Donald Trump-Oprah Winfrey sandwich. After a half dozen or more centuries of simply grinding against women and relying on hypnosis to drive them wild, how long had it been since he had ejaculatory satisfaction of his own?

Well, the answer would be a dozen or more centuries. It’s written right there.

Hovering outside his potential victim’s window, the Prince of Darkness wondered if it was worth it any more. Would she be the one he had been seeking for too long now? Could she provide the spark deep within his loinal area to make him a man again? Would tonight be the night he would drive a stake into her?

He chuckled. It was vampire humor. You probably wouldn’t get it.

As he watched her pop out the
Twilight
DVD and wash off her Ben Wa balls, he figured he had nothing to lose, except his lunch.

-----

The village girl knew it was a mistake to leave her bedroom window open after dark. There was sudden silence as all noise stopped — the crickets, the wind chimes, the screaming of the patrons at her Momma’s all night community shower as they realized there was no hot water left. It made her feel uneasy, which was indeed strange. If there was ever one word to describe her, it was ‘easy.’

Her partially blue eyes spied the Darkness as it swirled outside on the tiny balcony. Slowly, it took shape. The stranger glided into the room, and without hesitation, unbuttoned his already partially unbuttoned frilly girly shirt to show off his chiseled alabaster tan body. Although there was no wind, it blew through his long dark hair. It made her hot and she was willing to admit it.

“You’re making me hot,” she said. “You’re like a very dangerous stranger whom I want to give my body to without question. Geez, I hope you’re not undead or something.”

He pointed a finger at her. She yelped like a school girl, because it would be all paranormal and no romance if she didn’t.

“I am Dracula. And your blood belongs to me.”

She stared into his dark eyes like Paris Hilton at Fermat’s Last Theorem. “Well, as long as it doesn’t hurt.”

The vampire moved quicker than she could imagine and she prayed his sexual endurance didn’t match that speed. He clutched her bare shoulders and she moaned. They kissed deeply as his hand caressed her fashion model-flat chest nub.

“Try the other boob. I could only afford one breast implant. But Christmas is coming…”

“Hee hee. Coming.” Dracula said in his exotic thick foreign accent “Insert joke here.”

“Okay but let me take my underwear off first.”

He stole another hungry kiss. She felt her knees give out as she tasted the vampire’s tongue again. “Wow. You kiss better than a waffle iron. I don’t know if you’re into this kind of thing, but sometimes I like when guys give me hickies on my neck. You want to try that?”

If there was a camera nearby, Dracula would have deadpanned into it.

He sank his fangs into her jugular vein and her life liquid exploded into his mouth in one gooey burst. His victim grabbed her neck.

“Owie. I think you pinched a nerve or something. I hope you didn’t break the skin. Hey, you have something red on your chin there. Geez, I should have told you I’m a bleeder. That’s why I had to switch from being a cutter to licking wall sockets. All the cool kids are doing that now anyway. Cutting is so 2002. Oh poopies. Now I’m feeling kind of dizzy. I mean more than just from being blonde. Blonde is like the yellow hair, right? That’s the kind I have. Wow, this night is getting weirder than paying a homeless guy to lap dance your Grandmother on her 70
^th
birthday.”

Dracula shot her a glance. “How would you know?”

“Oh boy. Control alt delete!” the girl giggled and found a chair to lean against.

“I grow tired of this encounter. My hunger has turned into more of a sexual nature. Let us spelunk the furry fissure, slave!”

His mental powers grabbed the girl’s brain. There was no road block. Not even a speed bump.

“That tickles.” she said as her eyes went glassy. “Hey, am I the only one hearing an echo?”

He mentally pushed her to the floor and made her legs fly open. Her nightgown violently yanked up and her underwear ripped off of her hips.

She gasped. “Excuse moi. Looks like no more Taco Bell for me!”

“I did that, woman-child. Not you. For my powers are limitless.” He gazed at her nude nakedness. Morning was just on the other side of the horizon. Minutes were disappearing like job opportunities for David Hasselhoff. The vampire knew if he was going to plunge his flesh gherkin into her lady-loge, it would have to be now.

He pulled down his pants and stood proudly before her. She gasped.

“Well say hello to my little friend!” she said. “Seriously though, Mr. Dark Prince fellow, size doesn’t matter to me. I’m a big fan of ‘motion of the ocean’ and all that. Some girls only want to be bludgeoned with a fifty pound Abe Froman sausage. But I’m fine with being jabbed with a toothpick. You just have to do it like a million times real fast. You know the toothpick thing, it could be an issue of blood flow, you know? By toothpick I mean your penis. I’m just saying. Toothpicks are thin and tiny too. But unlike your penis, they’re hard.”

“Silence!” he cried out. His voice echoed through the large chamber — and we’re not talking about the room. There once was a day when he could have overwhelmed this trollop with his uvula hammer, but now, now it would be like riding a Moped into the Grand Canyon. The night ran out of options. The vampire’s eyes turned hellfire red with rage. The girl scurried backwards, knowing her fate.

“But I’m Team Edward…”

He snatched her off the floor and with lightning speed sank his fangs deep into her neck. All he could taste was corn syrup and regret. He hurled her out the window, hearing the patrons at Momma’s all night community shower scream again.

She was not the one. Not the one to kick-start his crippled mini-me. Not the one to fill his empty black heart with love. Not the one to share coupons with at Denny’s. He should have known. The writer hadn’t even given her a name.

Gazing out towards nearby woods, he spied a werewolf sneaking up on an innocent deer. Detecting danger, the chase began. Was this the way it would always be? Predator? Prey? The lycanthrope pounced on the deer, but instead of tearing her throat out, the werewolf mounted her. The deer rolled over on her back and they made-out like horny teenagers while their lovemaking exploded across what little was left of the night.

Another completely wasted evening. Dracula could only sigh. Disappointment was his body wash. He looked up at his exhausted face in the mirror, but realized he didn’t cast a reflection.

Some brothers just can’t catch a break.

-----

Juan was perhaps Dracula’s best, if not only, friend. He had lived at the castle for over a century, an extremely long life for an armadillo. Yet with the exception of a slight cameo in Universal’s classic movie version of
Dracula
, Juan had been forgotten or ignored as a major player in the Master’s folklore. Many were the nights the armadillo would play and rewind his appearance in the film as a naïve Renfield entered the castle and waited for Bela Lugosi to come down the stone staircase. He was agitated that the actor playing him had zero lines, but he thought overall the stand-in gave a fine performance.

He scurried into the living room to sneak in a morning viewing when he heard the TV was already on. That was not a good sign. He peeked around the corner to find his Master staring blankly at the screen, burying his pain and torment in another episode of
Degrassi
.

“Hey best buddy, it’s 9:00 in the morning. You haven’t hit the coffin yet?”

“I can’t sleep.” Dracula mumbled bitterly.

“Another rough night?”

“You could say so. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.” Juan nodded. “At least you went out on the town, right? Better than hanging around the castle for another boring evening of Bloody Marys and Jenga. Right?”

“Whatever.” Dracula pulled a blanket up around his head.

Juan searched for anything positive to pull his friend out of his funk. “Oh, Frankenstein called while you were out.”

“What did he say?”

“Fire bad.”

Dracula withdrew deeper into his blanket cocoon.

“I’ll call him back tomorrow.”

Juan ran into the foyer. He scurried back with a mail bag stuffed with letters and hopped up on the couch.

“You know what would help you out? Look at all these letters. From women all over the world. All wanting one thing from you — a night of hot supernatural passion!”

He dumped the sack, covering the couch with hundreds of envelopes and cards. Dracula reluctantly picked up a letter from the pile.

“This one is from the American Red Cross.”

Juan snatched it away. “Okay, that one’s a bad example. But all the rest of these? Since the paranormal romance boom, you’ve been more popular that ever!”

“Really, Juan?” the vampire snarled. “And just what am I supposed to do about any of this? Do you understand the ridiculous pressure all these books and movies and TV shows have put on me? Do you have any clue whatsoever, Juaaaaaan?”

The armadillo sat silently as Dracula threw letters into the air. He had heard the same speech more times than teenage perverts mispronounced the word ‘fajita’. It was better to just let his buddy vent.

“They’ve changed the rules! Instead of being the most evil and most feared creatures in history, they’ve turned us into prom dates and underwear models. Forget vampire lore! No one researches anymore. They slap fangs on any piece of fantasy man meat that gets their pent-up panties moist and say ‘Oh! He’s a cop, but he’s also a vampire! That mysterious bo-hunk in the apartment next door? OMG, a vampire! He’s the cute boy next to me in biology — but also a thousand year old vampire!’ You would think after a thousand years he would make it easy on himself and just home school.”