It was an extremely average-looking morning in the city of Covington, Virginia. Well, okay, maybe "morning" wasn't exactly the best word for it: the time was four o'clock in the afternoon, and the sun had already reached its high point in the sky and was now on its way back down toward the mountains on the horizon.
Despite all this, it was clearly "morning" for somebody. Somewhere out in the outlying suburban areas of the city, the annoying beep-beep-beep-beep! noise of an alarm clock blared over and over throughout every room of a certain house. Though it was only one story high, it was still a fairly large house, with a driveway and a bigger-than-usual garage attached to the side. Even this late in the day, very little sunlight reached the inside of the house, thanks to the dark curtains covering every window. Its sole inhabitant was a very pale man, who had just been awakened from his day's sleep by the constant beeping. Reaching one hand across the bed, he turned off the alarm and then sat up, yawning and stretching his arms. He reached up and rubbed his eyes slightly, scratched one of his pointy ears, and finally yawned once again before pushing the sheets aside and standing up.
Though he didn't quite look normal, his early-morning routine was not much different than anyone else's. He quickly took a shower and changed his clothes, putting on some scrubs that looked like they would have belonged on a doctor or nurse if not for the goofy-looking black bats that decorated them. Glancing at himself in the mirror, he grinned slightly and adjusted his shirt a bit before reaching for a bottle of sunscreen, labeled "SPF 99."
It was at this point that the pale man's routine became a little bit different. He stood in front of the mirror and carefully applied the sunscreen to every inch of exposed skin, not stopping until he was absolutely sure that he hadn't missed any spots. Once this was over, he headed into the kitchen and the early-morning routine became even more different than most people's.
Rather than a bowl of cereal, some bacon and eggs, or perhaps a plate of waffles, he grabbed a grapefruit sitting on the counter and dug around into the refrigerator for a second before picking up a small bottle of some thick reddish liquid. He sat down at the table and bit into the grapefruit without even peeling it first, sucking some of the fruit's juice from the holes... and then abruptly recoiling from its sourness, his face twisting into an odd puckered look for a few moments afterward.
"Huh... don't think this one's quite ripe yet," he mumbled to himself, passing the grapefruit back and forth between his hands and taking a closer look at it. "Nah... definitely not ripe yet."
Setting the fruit back down onto the counter, he picked up an orange instead and went back to where he left off, biting into the unpeeled fruit. This time, apparently, it was ripe enough to eat; after tasting the juice, he proceeded to peel the fruit using his abnormally-sharp canine teeth. Within a couple minutes, there was very little left of the orange, and the pale man washed it down with the bottle of red stuff before tossing the peel into a nearby trash can and carefully placing the glass bottle into the kitchen sink.
Now finished with his breakfast, he headed to the bathroom and brushed his teeth like anyone else. The only difference, of course, was that his canine teeth were quite a bit longer and sharper than most people's. After brushing, flossing, and rinsing, he headed back into the kitchen and picked up a bundle of things sitting on the counter. A wallet and some car keys went into his pockets, a pair of dark sunglasses went onto his face, and finally, he stuck a laminated nametag--which very clearly read "PUGH"--onto the front of his shirt.
Pugh, the recently-famous vampire of Covington, Virginia... was heading off to work, just like anyone else.
Chapter 1
~ The Problem With Being a Famous Vampire ~
The first sign that something was a bit off that day was the teenage girl, dressed almost entirely in black, that was actually waiting there in the hospital parking lot when Pugh's Bloodmobile came rumbling in. Usually, nobody would actually come to donate blood until after the Bloodmobile had been sitting there for half an hour or so; even on days when its presence was announced well in advance, it was rare for anyone to actually arrive before Pugh himself was even there.
But there she was, standing in a grassy area just a few feet past the far end of the parking lot, typing away rapidly on a cellular phone of some sort and looking up toward the road every few minutes. As the Bloodmobile rolled up the road and made a wide turn into the parking lot, her face suddenly lit up and she typed frantically for a moment before putting the phone away and running to the exact spot where the vehicle was about to come to a stop.
As soon as the Bloodmobile's door swung open, the girl leapt up the steps and ran over to Pugh almost too quickly for him to even get out of the driver's seat before she reached him. She was literally bouncing up and down with excitement--definitely not the reaction that any normal person would have to the thought of giving blood. Pugh just gave her a blank stare, raising one eyebrow slightly.
"Um... are you here to donate blood?", he asked. "It's a bit early, I haven't even unpacked all of the equipment yet, and--"
"That's okay!", the girl squealed, "You don't need all those needles and stuff! Just bite me!"
With that, she reached up and almost ripped her shirt open, exposing her neck (and quite a bit more!) and leaning in toward the vampire with her eyes closed. She ended up crashing to the floor as he stepped past her and went to work unpacking the boxes of syringes and other equipment needed for taking, testing, and storing blood. The girl whined a little, then stood up and brushed herself off.
"Aww... come on! You're the guy who was on TV last night, I know you're a vampire! Bite me!"
Once again, the strange girl practically threw herself at Pugh... and once again, she went flying past harmlessly as he stepped aside. This time, she landed face-first in the cushion of a rolling chair, causing it to slide across the floor for a few feet before bumping into one of the Bloodmobile's back seats and coming to a stop.
"Just calm down and have a seat in that chair," Pugh said, readying a syringe and a small box of other tools. "And I'd appreciate it if you'd stop asking me to bite you. I mean, I just had breakfast half an hour ago."
The vampire gathered up a syringe, an empty plastic packet, and a Band-Aid, then headed over toward the chair where the girl was sitting.
"Besides," he continued, "Even if I was hungry, I can't just go around biting any random human who comes in off the street... that's how we get diseases, you know."
The girl blinked a few times, looking a bit confused.
"Diseases? You mean vampires can get sick?"
Pugh cleaned off a spot on the girl's arm, then began to draw out her blood with the syringe, waiting until it was full before answering.
"Well, of course we can get sick," he said, "Humans get sick all the time, don't they? We're not that much different."
He transferred most of the blood from the syringe to the storage packet, putting the small amount that was left over into what looked like a very small test tube and walking over to place it into a slot in some sort of strange machine.
"But... but... I thought," the girl stuttered, "I thought vampires were... you know... undead and immortal and all that."
One of Pugh's hands immediately flew upward and lightly slapped his face, and he sighed with the kind of annoyance someone only gets after hearing something many, many times before. He turned on the machine that held the small vial of blood, then headed back over to the girl, applying the Band-Aid to the tiny puncture wound on her arm.
"Did you actually listen to anything I said in that interview?"
The girl looked down at the floor, as if embarrassed.
"Err... well... I... I mean, I was going to, but..."
Pugh shook his head and groaned.
"You didn't, did you? You didn't even watch the news last night at all, you just heard about me on the Internet or something silly like that and came rushing out here as soon as you could."
The girl's eyes widened a bit and she turned to stare at Pugh.
"Th... that's exactly what happened! How did you know that!?"
"Eh, just a lucky guess, really. Just because I was born half a century ago doesn't mean I don't keep track of where technology's going."
He walked back over to the blood-testing machine, noticing that it was finished with all the required tests and hadn't detected the presence of any serious diseases or other contaminants. Nodding slightly in approval, he added the packet of the girl's blood to the others already sitting in the Bloodmobile's refrigerator, then walked back over to the chair.
"Looks like your blood checks out just fine," Pugh said, "No diseases, no drugs, nothing nasty in there at all."
"Well, looks like everything's done here," he continued, wheeling the chair over toward the door and dumping its occupant unceremoniously out of the Bloodmobile and onto the grass just outside the parking lot before she could even open her mouth to complain. "Time for you to leave now."
"And please... make sure you tell all your friends that this is not the place to go if you want to be bitten by a vampire."
The rest of Pugh's day at work went surprisingly well, despite the somewhat rough start. About a dozen people showed up to give blood, and of that group only two of them were teenage girls who insisted on being bitten rather than having their blood taken the safe, legal way. Fortunately for Pugh, even these two quickly agreed to having their blood taken like a normal person once he explained that the blood would be used to feed hungry vampires later. Though both seemed like they would have preferred to actually be bitten for some reason, apparently just the thought of vampires drinking their blood (even if it was from a cup or a pouch rather than directly from their neck) was enough for them.
Pugh sighed and wiped a bit of sweat off his forehead after packing up all the equipment and properly disposing of the used syringes. After checking up on the Bloodmobile's supply of donated blood one last time, he closed the door and hopped back into the driver's seat, ready to head back home... after one little stop at the grocery store to stock up on a few things, that is.
The Bloodmobile slowly rolled to a stop in the brightly-lit Food Lion parking lot, barely managing to find enough room to park among the various pickup trucks, SUVs, and smaller cars. Pugh climbed out of the driver's-side door and reached into his pocket, fishing out his wallet and making sure he had enough spare cash left for the trip. For just a second, he thought he heard a strange, high-pitched giggling sound nearby, but when he looked around he didn't see anyone except a few elderly couples loading their bags of groceries into their vehicles. Shrugging, he ignored the sound and walked off toward the store's entrance.
Once inside the store, he quickly headed to the produce section, managing to walk fast enough (and non-suspicious enough) to avoid most of the odd looks from the rest of the store's customers. The few who did notice him only glanced at him for a moment, wondering why his skin was so pale and his ears were so pointy but apparently not making the connection between the man before them and the vampire that had appeared on television the day before. Pugh reached the produce section and grabbed a small basket, filling it up with a variety of different fruits. Just as he had placed several oranges and a large melon into the basket, he heard the same high-pitched giggle that he thought he had heard outside in the parking lot. He spun around in the direction of the sound, nearly losing an orange from his basket in the process, but once again there was nobody there who could have made the disturbing sound. A man in a suit and glasses gave him a strange look, then turned back to the stack of magazines he had been flipping through before.
Pugh checked his basket to make sure that none of the fruit had fallen out, then headed over to the vegetable section to continue his shopping trip. He scooped up a couple of large potatoes, a head of lettuce, and a couple of sticks of celery, placing all of them into the basket (which was now almost overflowing with fruits and veggies, and getting to be so heavy that an average human would have a bit of trouble carrying it with one hand.) He walked over to one of the aisles and added several cans of sliced olives to the basket, then finally walked back over toward the checkout lines. For a brief moment, he thought he heard footsteps somewhere close behind him; he flinched, then glanced around a bit, expecting another creepy giggle. This time, however, it never came, and he breathed a sigh of relief as he took his heavy basket of food over to the nearest open cash register.
After paying for the fruits and veggies and stuffing them all into a plastic bag, Pugh left the store. Just as he reached the automatic doors leading outside, he heard footsteps behind him--and this time, they sounded as if they were rapidly approaching him. He turned his head and saw perhaps the most frightening thing that has ever been seen in the middle of a Food Lion store--a horde of teenage girls, all dressed in black and wearing shirts with the logos of all sorts of vampire-themed television shows, drooling and squealing and reaching out with their creepy little groping hands as they charged madly after Pugh.
"Oh crap," the vampire mumbled, quickly turning his head back toward the automatic door in front of him (which was now wide open) and taking off running.
Pugh bolted out of the store as quickly as he could without drawing too much attention, narrowly avoiding a young mother pushing a baby stroller and almost bowling over a male teenager on a skateboard who accidentally rolled out into his path. The mindless legions came pouring out of the store just a few seconds behind him, completely ignoring the mother and child and practically trampling the unsuspecting skater.
Now that he was outside of the store itself, Pugh started to run a bit faster, easily surpassing the speeds of most Olympic sprinters and leaping over parked cars to put as much distance between himself and the fangirls as he possibly could. Before long, he reached the Bloodmobile and reached for the driver's-side door, just about to open it up and jump inside when an absolutely terrifying thought popped into his head.
"If I drive home and park this thing right in front of my house... they'll know where I live."
Pugh immediately shut the door and went about locking every last entrance to the vehicle, glancing across the parking lot every few moments to make sure that the squealing hordes hadn't gotten too close. Once he was finished, he tied the bag of veggies shut; he didn't want to lose any of the food, especially after all the trouble he'd gone through to get it. With the bag held tightly, Pugh took one last look in the direction of the fangirls before he took off running once again.
And for nearly half an hour, Pugh ran like he had never ran before. If he had been a human, he would have certainly shattered the previous records for running speed--and even compared to other vampires, his full speed was rather impressive. Before long, Pugh had reached the outskirts of the city where he lived. The squealing horrors that had chased him all the way there were nowhere to be seen, seeming as if they had fallen far behind him somewhere along the way. He stopped to catch his breath, wiping a bit of sweat off his forehead and looking around at the streets to figure out exactly where he had ended up.
Just when he was getting used to the peaceful silence of the night around him, that silence was broken by the one sound he definitely didn't want to hear... a high-pitched, fangirlish giggle from somewhere down one of the empty streets. He looked around in a sudden panic, glancing off in every direction for the source of the sound, before finally he spotted them--not the same crowd of teenage girls that had assaulted him at the grocery store, but a new group, approaching from a street not far from where his house was located. Like the others, they wore mostly black; a few even seemed to be wearing pale makeup or fake fangs, though it was difficult to tell from such a long distance.
This time, Pugh did not run. He walked along the sidewalk calmly, heading on a collision course with the giggling swarm that approached him. Just as they reached the far end of the city block where he was standing, he took off running... not away from them, but toward them. When he was just a few feet in front of the girls, he suddenly propelled himself upward, jumping at least a dozen feet in the air and flipping several times before landing on the opposite side of the demonic horde.
Before they even realized what had happened, he broke off into a full run down the sidewalk once again. He hopped over a fence and took a shortcut through the yard of someone else's house, causing a cat to cry out in surprise and a dog to go into a barking fit. After another fence-jump, he made a sharp turn down a different street, heading toward a very familiar house as fast as he possibly could. Just as the fangirls turned onto that very same street, he ducked into the front door and slammed it shut.
For a good ten minutes, Pugh was completely silent and motionless inside his house, just standing and listening as the black-clothed mob passed by outside. They seemed to have stopped right in front of his house, and were now trying to decide which direction to go running off in now that they could no longer tell which way the object of their unwanted affection had gone.
"Hey, where'd he go?"
"I dunno, I don't see him anywhere..."
"Maybe he's hiding in this big house?"
Pugh cringed, attempting to be even more silent and motionless than his already silent and motionless self. Were these girls crazy enough to try breaking into someone's house?
"Nah, can't be," one of the voices said. This one sounded a bit older than the rest, though still probably not legally old enough to drink yet. "Vampires can't enter a house without being invited, remember?"
"Oh yeah... I forgot about that part..."
Inside the house, Pugh was suddenly very glad that his interview the day before had never quite gotten around to debunking that particular vampire myth. It was probably the most ironic situation he had ever been in--rather than just giving the humans very creative ways to try and kill vampires, the old stories might have actually saved a vampire from a fate far worse than death.
A few more minutes passed, and finally the crowd in front of Pugh's house dispersed and went off to search somewhere else. He breathed a sigh of relief and slumped down to the floor, plopping the bag of fruit and veggies down next to him just softly enough that none of them would be damaged in the process. He was so relieved by the absence of giggling, fangirlish voices that he didn't even bother to change out of his scrubs before throwing himself onto his bed (still carrying the bag of vegetables) and falling asleep almost immediately...
immediately...
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