BLOG POST #11

Heeeey! No doubt you were all in anguish after going an entire month without hearing from me. I apologize for inflicting such pain but I’ve been really occupied of late. The other day when I was at work, one of my coworkers noticed when I walked past a mirror and didn’t have a reflection. Ever since then, she’s been dogging me like you wouldn’t believe. (I can’t decide if she’s a wannabe Buffy the vampire slayer, or just an overzealous Twilight fan…I’m not sure which would be worse.) Either way, she was recently transferred to another store, so I can finally relax.

Yes, for all those of you who are still marveling: I do, in fact, have a job. (How else am I supposed to buy things like clothing or music or gas for my motorcycle without a source of revenue?). I work at a clothing store during the evening shift; I’m there from five to ten and then I have the rest of the night to do as I please. How did I manage to get hired when I don’t have a social security number, birth certificate or photo ID? I’d tell you, but the answer is highly illegal and the last thing I want to do is have to worry about cops as well as vampire slayers. (I don’t have a driver’s license either, which means when a cop does try to pull me over I just have to floor it and try to shake them off. This is easier than you might think with a small, agile motorcycle whose driver doesn’t have to worry about dying in a crash. I once drove through a foot and a half wide space between two cars that were coming and going in opposite directions. That was an adrenaline rush.)

Honestly, though, I don’t have to work very much because life as a vampire isn’t expensive. I don’t have to worry about food, medicine, doctor’s visits, dental work, insurance, retirement, or taxes. Plus renting a place is a lot cheaper than owning one, and a motorcycle is much cheaper than a car. So most of the time I keep work to a minimum.

As far as jobs go, working in a clothing store is a pretty nice one. I get an employee discount, which is really helpful if, say, you need to replace your leather jacket because some careless lady drove over the other one while you were wearing it (see blog post #8).

In the past I’ve tried working in a restaurant, which is a terrible job for someone who hates food or having to be around people who are eating. I didn’t realize until I started working there how revolting eating really is. Think about it—eating is basically stuffing mushy or chewy food lumps in a damp cavity to be ground into a vilely colored, gelatinous paste. BLEECH. I get dry heaves just thinking about it. And let me tell you, it’s nearly impossible to wait tables in an efficient manner when it’s taking all your self-control not to gag. At the clothing store all I have to worry about is avoiding the dressing room mirrors.

Other past employment experiences include pizza delivery guy, librarian, coffee barista, dj, and assistant at a Red Cross blood drive (no, I didn’t bite anyone—it’s just that the dark humor of it all was too good to pass up). I’ve tried being a drifter before too, but that was easier in the 70s. There aren’t very many hippies left to hunt nowadays.

BLOG POST #10

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but vampires are expert climbers. And I don’t mean skilled-freestyle-mountain-climber type of climber—I mean we climb like geckos. Think of that scene in Spiderman when those tiny little hairs grow out of his palms and he climbs straight up the side of the building. There’s also a similar scene of in Dracula, where this human sees the Count climb headfirst out of a window, and the human totally freaks out (which is a very accurate description of a typical reaction).

Fortunately, those “gecko hairs” are also retractable, so our hands don’t always stick to things. (Have you ever gotten your hand stuck to someone’s face before? Now THAT’S awkward.)

Apparently the vampires in Twilight can also climb really well, so I guess that’s one thing Stephanie Meyers got right. Of course, if they wanted to use their feet when they climbed, they’d have to be constantly removing their shoes and I’m pretty sure they don’t do that…so never mind.

The reason I bring all this up is because…well, today I noticed the light bulb in Mrs. Pendragon’s entryway had burned out. The ceiling in that part of the house is pretty high, and I don’t think the old girl even owns a ladder, so I thought I’d help her out.

I was almost finished when Mrs. Pendragon came walking in and looked right up at where I was sitting crouched on her ceiling. I braced myself for the ensuing screams, but all she did was ask me if I would “be a dear and dust the ceiling corners, as long as I was up there”.

I’ve pretty much concluded that I could axe murder someone in the living room and she wouldn’t notice, as long as I cleaned up after myself.

BLOG POST #9

Having no heartbeat is one of the more interesting parts of being a vampire. Since I can’t remember being mortal, I don’t really know what it’s like to have your heart contracting inside your chest. Thus human pulses have always held a certain fascination for me…though I have to be careful because if I’m close enough to sense a human’s pulse, they’re technically close enough to sense that I’m lacking one. Honestly, though, people rarely notice. The human mind has immense capacity for denial: humans believe it’s impossible for the living dead to exist, thus they won’t notice even when one is standing right in front of them.

Something that I find really amusing, then: you know how some superstores have those blood pressure cuffs set up in their pharmacy section? It’s really fun using those to mess with the store clerks.

“Excuse me, ma’am, this machine seems to be broken—it keeps showing that I have a blood pressure of 0/0. Huh, that’s weird, it seems to be working for you…let me try again. Nope, still 0/0…”

Oh, the looks on their poor, frustrated faces… Of course, having no heartbeat isn’t all fun and games. I have an awful time getting most touchscreens to work.

Clueless Moron #1: “Hey, look at that—my i-pad seems to think you’re dead! Ha ha ha…”

Me, who’s heard that joke way too many times: “Hilarious.”

One kind of funny thing about having a heart that never beats is that it turns out it’s not actually essential to have it attached to the rest of you—as long as it doesn’t have a wooden stake through it, you’re good to go. In fact, I’ve actually heard of vampires who removed their own hearts to make themselves less vulnerable to vampire hunters. I get where they were coming from, I suppose…but this doesn’t seem like a very good idea to me. I mean, sure, having your heart reside somewhere else besides your chest probably would be handy in certain scenarios (plus if anyone accused you of being “a heartless monster” you’d have the chance for all sorts of sarcastic replies), but where on earth would you keep it? Somehow the typical list of hiding places—under your mattress, inside a fake book, in the back of your closet—just doesn’t seem at all satisfactory when the thing in question is your heart. I mean, what if you lost it? Can you imagine?!

Mrs. Pendragon: “What are you looking for, dear?”

Me: “Well, it’s red and squishy and about the size of my fist….”

It freaks me out when I can’t find the keys to my motorcycle, let alone a crucial part of my anatomy!

 Or what if…ohmygosh what if someone else found it??? Even if the person who found it didn’t know anything about vampires, they could still damage it! If Mrs. Pendragon found a heart in my bedroom I’m pretty sure she would make it into soup, and I DO NOT want to find out what would happen to me if an old lady cooked my heart in a pot of vegetables and ate it.

*Shudder*. Ugh, I don’t get how you’d ever relax. I’d be so worried about leaving my heart unguarded I’d start carrying it with me in a little box wherever I went…which defeats the point of removing it in the first place.

Okay, okay—I’ve think we’ve pretty much summed up that hacking your own heart out is a bad idea no matter if you’re a human, vampire, or a lawyer. So don’t try it.