The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

It was cold, I smelled fish, and I was covered in things cold and slimy. I opened my eyes and saw that I was in what looked like a warehouse for storing fish to be packaged and sold. I have never felt so relieved in my life before that moment. But I was lucky the truck that had caught me went right beneath me as I fell and should be thankful that the fan had blown me so far out above the street. Cold, clammy, and smelling strongly of fish entrails and post mortem excretions, I climbed out of the back of the truck and made my way out of the relatively small building and out onto the streets. After looking around at the street signs and getting my bearings straight, I began my trudge home to see if I could rid myself of the stench of fish and take a long, long nap.

As I climbed the stairs of my apartment house, the overhead light glowing like a gathering of fireflies above head, exhaustion hit me like a shotgun blast to the face. The moon was low in the sky, early morning I could tell; I was so tired and sore from my fall that I actually ran into a few dead ends on my long walk to my apartment on the other side of town from where I had woken up.

Just as I crested the top of the fifth landing, my floor, Mrs. Peeman, the landlady, wrenched her door open and glared at me from behind her coke bottle glasses that made her eyes look too large for her head, like bug eyes. Her hair was originally a fiery orange, but was now graying at the temples and fading. When I was going to college, after the orphanage burned down, she and I had met one another and came up with an agreement that allowed me to live in one of the apartments so long as I paid on the third Friday of the month. Over the years, we had become friends, to a degree. Anything I did or was involved in that messed something in her complex up was my fault and came right out of my security deposit, everything else between us was amicably sane. When I first moved in, I was working as an office assistant at my school and paid the rent with most of my pay. About three and a half weeks ago, Mrs. Peeman had gotten a cat and named it Coco because of its chocolate colored fur. The bad thing about that cat was that it pissed all over the place, but Mrs. Peeman didn’t care, so long as no one said anything about it.

Seeing her standing in her doorway, her soft blue robe tied tightly at the waist with the sash, her glasses slightly askew, and her green slippers, she could almost pass as relaxed. But her face showed nothing relaxing; rage burned in her eyes and her tear drop face was screwed up in her wrath. She glared at me with her enlarged jade eyes that gleamed in her anger, and I swear I heard her growl in contempt for me showing up as I did. Looking me up from head to toe, her nose crinkled the way it does when she smells something foul or the marijuana Joanne on the third floor smokes.

“What the hell is that smell?” Her voice was hoarse from age, but gentle and commanding at the same time. “And do you have any idea what time it is?”

She talked like she would get whatever she wanted if she said so—she usually did either way.

Feeling even more tired, I opened my mouth to answer her, but I got cut off when May and her boyfriend Jane’s voices boomed from behind their door adjacent to mine.

“I don’t give a shit what you say. You’ve been seeing that bitch Wendy what’s-her-face from work,” shouted May’s shrill voice that could curdle milk with its sweetness despite her anger. She had always sounded like some tiny two year old girl with her voice at such a high pitch.

I could hear Jane protest against May’s accusations and suspicions.

“Oh, come on. Why would I do something like that? Don’t be silly. I would never cheat on you. I was working late. She’s my boss and she wanted me to finish filing those papers from that PR guy.”

As he said that, I saw out of the corner of my eye Mrs. Peeman roll hers before shouting at their door, “I’m telling you right now, you have got to call ‘Bullshit!’ dear. He’s lying through his teeth. The only filing he did was filing his subpoena in her cabinet!”

After that short bit of advice, noises of smashing china and breaking glass sounded from behind their door and shouts of pain from Jane. He soon was stumbling out the door, dressed in only his boxers with pink hearts on them, still dodging flying dishes and yelling at his landlady. “Damn it, you old hag! Keep that kind of shit to yourself,” and then disappeared into the room again. Cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West, Mrs. Peeman turned back to me and sobered faster than a car in the Indy 500.

Staring into my red, gold, and black eyes with her fluorescent green ones—how did she get those?—her anger at me was apparent. Why she was so mad, and at me, I had not the foggiest clue.

Her eyes swam in their fury, swirling around like they contained liquefied emeralds, and then I realized that she had been drinking…a lot. The smell of dead and rotting fish I was giving off had drowned out the smell of liquor until I realized the bloodshot look of her eyes, her swaying stance, and the fact that I could see a half empty Jim Bean bottle on her table through her open door.

I never thought I would know what it was like to deal with a drunk that had power over a part of my life. Wait a minute, there is one drunk in my life that has some power; Horus. How ever little, he did have some amount of say in my actions and has proven time and again to be a serious pain in my ass. Oh well, I let him take control of me, I could have stopped him but didn’t. What the hell was I thinking?

“I’m sorry Mrs. Peeman, but no, I don’t know what time it is. As for the smell—” I started to say, but good ol’ Mrs. Peeman had to jump in between my words.

“Don’t you dare do that to me you…you…shit-ass!” That raised my eyebrows in astonishment; she hardly ever swore at me. “If you think you can go four days without coming back and saying something to me, then use that fucking tone like it doesn’t matter, then you can just pack your shit now and leave.”

She trembled in her fury and shock at her own statement. I was blown away, speechless in fact, at her for voicing such a direct attack at me. And the fact that she said that I had been gone for four days. How the hell was that possible? It was only last night that I had been taken in by the cops, right?

I was just about to do what she had so angrily ordered me to do, when a single tear rolled down her freckled cheek. She wiped it away madly and looked even more abashed when she continued to stare at what must have been the grief I was feeling for her and for what she had said. I let her fall into me as she began to sob furiously into my rancid smelling clothes, gripping my shirt in her tiny frail hands tighter than they looked able to. I rubbed her back in small circles, afraid to say anything because it would probably come out wrong, and turned Mrs. Peeman around and guided her into her room. I laid her down on the soft brown leather couch and covered her in the throw-blanket she draped it with. After tucking her in, and sneaking a snort from the bottle on the table, I creeped out of her apartment room and nearly stumbled into mine, crossing the floor without even touching the light switch into my bathroom. I stripped down, ridding my self of my filthy clothes and took a ridiculously long, and hot shower, scrubbing every bruised inch of my body. Clean, fresh smelling, and practically stupid with exhaustion, I crawled beneath my cool sheets and fell asleep before I could find any kind of position to sleep in.

The darkness that I sunk into was as deep and dark as a giant gaping mouth that swallowed me whole and sent me whirling into a dream I neither understood nor cared about. It was like I was falling down a series of rabbit holes, hitting the sides every now and then. Then, the dream turned into one that made me think of one person whom I had only met the other day.

It was a little more than half past one in the morning and the entire neighborhood and half the police and fire precinct were outside, watching the blazing building. People filled the street, cops were running about, trying in vain to keep the people back, and firefighters shouted to each other, “Get that damn ladder up!” and “Where the hell is that woman going?” Nobody paid me any mind, even with my garish looks.

I was six one, tall for a seventeen year old. My hair fell to my waist in a dark, flowing blood red braid, bright against my stark complexion; I had skin like pale ivory. Naked from the waist up and shivering in the cold, I huddled in the shadows of an alley across from the burning orphanage. A young girl not older than five turned and stared at me. She gasped and began tugging on her mother’s pant leg. Her mother looked at where her daughter was pointing and she picked her up and rushed off away from where they stood. She must have noticed my eyes. They were red and gold surrounded by a ring of black and glowed in the dark. I never knew how I had gotten them. Everything about me seemed to be strange and abnormal. My ears were pointed at the tips, my hair was a hue nature never made, and my teeth were long and pointy like an animal’s fangs. In the dark, my eyes seemed to gather the light and glow, like coals. I was a hundred and twenty pounds, lighter than any of the twelve year olds at the orphanage!

Sirens blared in the distance. Ambulances must be on the way. They would be too late. I knew it. Mistress Morgan had run back inside because a few of the younger kids were still inside the inferno that was once our home. She had always treated me like a normal person, despite all my—features. I guess she just looked past them at what was underneath. I had graduated high school a couple years ago and was going to the state university on a literary scholarship. But still, she never brought up my looks, or asked why I didn’t want to be adopted. She probably understood why, she just never said if she did.

It’s colder now. The paramedics just pulled up in their ambulances, rolling stretchers out the back of them. A firefighter was carrying something wrapped in a blanket. He laid it on the ground and I watched, holding myself in a one-person hug. It was freezing cold outside, especially when you’re only in your pants and you don’t have a jacket. Los Angeles had some cold nights in the spring. The medics unwrapped the blanket carefully, making sure they didn’t move whoever was in it. The last fold fell down and I was staring into the wide eyes of Gina Morgan. Her face was covered in burns, her nightgown ripped and sooty. I closed my eyes and turned away, tears leaking out of them. I couldn’t look, I couldn’t; but I had to. I had to look.

My eyes opened and I stared, pursed-lipped and breathing shallowly. The medics checked her pulse, checked for breathing, and shared a look when they didn’t find either. They picked her up and strapped her onto the stretcher. She was rolled to the ambulance and the doors closed, shutting her and the medics from my sight.

I took a breath, another, and stood up. Looking up at the building, fires almost gone, I turned around and ran. I ran, barefoot over rock and broken bottles. Until the sounds of the sirens and shouting were far beyond earshot, I ran. My lungs were on fire, my legs burned, my skin was frozen, but still I ran. I ran until I reached an abandoned warehouse. The kids who had torched the orphanage had gone there to get drunk and party.

It was a large brick building, the doors and windows boarded up. Graffiti was everywhere. Gang names, symbols, pictures of clowns and all kinds of things were painted all over. I ran around to where a large painting of a comical looking face was erected. The mouth was opened wide and a door was built into it. I pushed it open.

Twenty pairs of eyes flicked to me and the noise that was blaring out the speakers of a beat up boom box stopped instantaneously. I stood, shirtless and shoeless as twenty people—boy and girl alike—got up and smashed empty beer bottles. Chains, bats with long nails driven through them, brass knuckles, and various other weapons were taken out. Faces painted like skulls, death metal t-shirts, and the rank scent of hard liquor surrounded me.

I just stood there, in nothing but my pants, and said in as clear a voice as I could, “You killed her.”

They laughed, cruel laughs full of mirth at someone’s pain and suffering. They laughed at me and at the chaos they had caused. I balled up my fist as hard as a steel bearing and lunged at the biggest of them, teeth bared in a snarl of rage. He fell to the ground, whimpering and clutching his nose. Warm blood oozed out from between his thick fingers as he curled up into a ball.

Dawn came as I walked out the door. Bruises, blue and black with dried blood, some of them beginning to turn yellow, covered my stark body. I walked with a slight limp in my left leg and one of my eyes was puffed up, closed from the swelling. I was in better condition than those gang bangers. I made sure that none of them would hurt anyone again. Of that, I was sure.

The sun had risen as it always had, and slowly I made my way back to the remains of my home. I stumbled through the rubble; ashes, beams, and broken furniture barred my way. Finally, I found what was left of Ms. Morgan’s office. Her desk was a charred block of wood, the drawers stuck in place. I grabbed a soot-blackened paperweight and smashed the drawers open. I dug through papers until I found what I was looking for: a yellowed envelope with my name on it.

I ripped it open, unfolding the rough parchment letter carefully. Flowing letters formed a few sentences and a familiar signature was written beneath that. The words read:



Dear Angelus,

If you are reading this, then you are either eighteen, or I am gone. You should know, you were left on my stoop in a blanket with your name on a card during a storm October 31, 1982; you are not my bastard child. I took you to the hospital to see if there was a record of your birth, or to find out how old you were. The doctors had no idea who you were, and they said you were anywhere from three weeks to three months. I ask you, my dear sweet boy, to keep to all I taught you. Follow not fools, but only your heart; know the difference between right and wrong; and above all else, be well. You were always the light of my heart. Good-bye, my son.



Gina Morgan, Mistress

It was a dark and cold night that Christmas Eve. A man was driving down the road with presents for his niece and his nephew, and his sister and her husband. The weatherman had said the storm would hit them that night and he was right, but still the man would not be kept from his family on Christmas Eve. He had no children, no wife; only his sister and her family.



As he was looking in the passenger seat of his car at the card his sister’s family had sent him, a blaring horn and bright blinding headlights flared up in his face, wrenching him back to reality from his imagining to swerve just seconds from hitting the semi head-on. His car, out of the truck’s way, skidded and slid towards the ditch on his side, plunging into what he was sure an icy depth of deathly cold waters the ditch still held.



As his car’s engine rumbled and died with a spurt, he realized that he would not make very long without a heat source. Looking through his already frosted windows up the road, he spotted what appeared to be lights. House lights! Without a single thought of what lay just outside his door, he threw it open, allowing the biting sting of the icy waters to flood into his car and take his breath away as it washed over him, drenching his clothes with the subzero liquid.



Already freezing and sneezing with every step, he dug his way out of the car and onto the road, to begin his slow death march towards the house. His legs, leaden with cold, began to snap and pop. Looking down at his legs, he was so cold he could barely comprehend that the water that had soaked him to the bone back in his car, had frozen to create a thick, icy layer over his pants.



Knowing that with every passing second he was closer to death, the man rushed headlong to the house as fast as his numb body would take him.



Upon reaching the door, the man pounded the doorbell with his stiff, broken fingers. He felt deep inside his soul, that unless he found a warm hearth to stay by, he would be frozen in place like a dead living statue.



Inside, behind the shutters, he could make out someone moving towards the door, peeking inside the window. The woman behind it stared at him with wide eyes, as if the man were a creature from her most horrid dreams.



“Heeellpp! P-please help!” he screamed with all his might, but it only came out a soft, hoarse gasp. The woman inside turned away, snapping the shutters closed, shutting all hope the man had for salvation in the darkest corner of his consciousness.



The man whimpered and cried tears that instantly froze on his bare cheeks. He looked around in hopeless despair. Off in the distance, he could just make out the dim lights of a small farmhouse.



Numb, frostbit, and near death, the man stumbled and staggered toward his last chance of survival. He began to slowly place one foot in front of the other, inching his way toward the cold lights of the building. His vision blurred and he felt a type of warmth deep inside as he saw the pair of yellow eyes moving towards him at unearthly speeds. He saw the people inside the SUV, the look of joy on those familiar faces.



As Molly was starting up yet another song, Vinny slammed on the brakes, but it was too late to stop the car from plowing into the object in front of him. He had no idea what it was or what it was doing in the middle of the street, he only knew that he would run into it no matter what he did.



“What…in the HELL was that!” Vinny had slammed on the brakes so hard, that the wheels had locked up and the SUV had bashed into what stood before it, while Vinny had tried in vain to avoid hitting what had popped up in front of him. “Stay here,” Vinny commanded to his son and daughter.



As Molly and Vinny crawled out of the car, the boy inside asked his little sister, “Hey! Do you think dad hit a guy? It’d be cool if he did, right?”



Just as Vinny and Molly looked under the wheel of the SUV at the man they had hit, they were filled with a feeling that few have had the misfortune to know.



“Ooohh…my…God!” Molly gasped, exasperated and stricken with a mixture of grief and horror, at what she feared most.



Vinny had hit a man. He had run his SUV straight into his brother-in-law.

For the Discordians out there, here is a story you may know, if you know me. For everyone else, here is a little entertainment.



Nykl Dormir





A serious young man found the conflicts of mid 20th Century America confusing. He went to many people seeking a way of resolving within himself the discords that troubled him, but he remained troubled.



One night in a coffee house, a self-ordained Zen Master said to him, "Go to the dilapidated mansion you will find at this address, which I have written down for you. Do not speak to those who live there; you must remain silent until the moon rises tomorrow night. Go to the large room on the right of the main hallway, sit in the lotus position on top of the rubble in the northeast corner, face the corner, and meditate."



He did just as the Zen Master instructed. His meditation was frequently interrupted by worries. He worried whether or not the rest of the plumbing fixtures would fall from the second floor bathroom to join the pipes and other trash he was sitting on. He worried how would he know when the moon rose on the next night. He worried about what the people who walked through the room said about him.



His worrying and meditation were disturbed when, as if in a test of his faith, ordure fell from the second floor onto him. At that time two people walked into the room. The first asked the second who the man was sitting there was. The second replied "Some say he is a holy man. Others say he is a shithead."



Hearing this, the man was enlightened.