I have been working so hard to get a newsletter and free giveaway up. More about that in a few days. For now, here’s a sneak peek at my new book, An 80s Kind of Vampire 2:
Tyler tapped the curvy keyboard. He scratched his disheveled dun-colored hair and looked over his glasses at me. “You never were a boss brainiac, Vinnie.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I turned away from the database stacks. My fangs sprang out.
“You hung with the nerds, but that was all,” he said, looking at his double screens and not me.
I shrugged. “So I wasn’t in the chess club. I didn’t program in BASIC. I didn’t play D & D—except that one time.”
Tyler grinned. His chair squeaked as he turned around, his way-large ass overlapping the edge.
He used to be so skinny. We both were, back in high school.
We had both gone through a change. Mine fast as lightning. His took thirty years. But here we both were, much altered. Much the same.
“You played for like, ten minutes,” said Tyler, snorting. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Then you drank all the peach Schnapps, danced around the room, knocked our game over, and passed out under the gaming table.”
I shook my head.
“Ancient history,” I said, but my face was burning. “I barely even remember the person that did those things. That human.”
Tyler scoped me up and down. His beady gaze never wavered.
“Yeah. You’re a vampire,” he said softly. Something in his voice was hard, though. “You’d think, being a vampire, that would give you super intelligence. Or make you irresistible to the opposite sex. Or some other skill worth having.”
I held my head high.
“I guess you’ll never know,” I said.
Tyler was chicken to make the vampire deal. I offered all those decades ago to change him and he turned it down.
I was kind of glad, since I didn’t actually know what I was doing, but that didn’t make him any less chicken.
We got in a fight after that. I never offered again. But I did warn him—once—that if he continued to let me visit him, one day he might wind up my lunch.
It was not in my vampire nature to continue warning my prey over and over. Or at all, really. But Tyler. I’d known him a long time and he did used to let me hang out with his nerds and geeks. He let me crash under the gaming table and never alerted any parents. He even got me home that night.
I kinda owed him a little leeway. And there was one other reason I let him keep on living.
You might say he held the key.
The key—to my MTV!
I scoped his media cabinets in what he called “the MTV vault.” Thousands and thousands of VHS tapes lay within this air-conditioned, windowless room in his apartment. Tyler wasn’t much into renovation or design—or even hygiene—but he kept this room immaculate. His future existence totally depended on it.
Back in the 80s, when MTV was fresh and tubular, Tyler taped it every day. He didn’t just tape a few shows. He had this righteous nerd obsessiveness, and he taped it ALL. He bought VHS tapes in bulk and he recorded, recorded, recorded. He made copies, and he sold MTV. It was illegal, but so was computer hacking, and Tyler did a lot of that, too.
When I was human, I got my MTV fix wherever I could. We didn’t have cable in my house, so I bought tapes off Tyler.
Yes, it was tragically lame. The mighty Vincent did not have MTV as a human teenager growing up in the 80s. The resulting trauma probably left me scarred for undeath.
I wasted mondo moola on those tapes of Tyler’s.
Then I became a vampire and the Dweebus Maximus was suddenly handing them over for free. We made a deal, he and I. A deal that started out pretty simple and grew into a glorious stratagem over the years.
Me: “Give me MTV, and I won’t kill you.”
This was in 1988 after he refused my offer to make him a vampire.
Him (shaking behind piles of garlic necklaces): “Whatever you say, Vinnie. Just don’t bite me!”
In 1995:
Me: “I want you to make me mix tapes of all the good music.”
Him: “I could burn you a CD…”
Me: (using scary vampire voice) “Mix tapes!”
Him: “Eep! No…no problemo, Vinnie!”
In 1999:
Me: “I’m sick of all these dark movies with tweaked-out plot twists. Make me VHS tapes of all the awesome movies.”
Him: “You mean from when we were kids? I can get them on DVD…”
Me: “Haven’t we been through this? Yeah, the awesome movies. Like The Lost Boys and Footloose.”
Him (sighing): VHS, then. I think there’s another video store going out of business down the street. I’ll see what I can do.”
In 2001:
Me: “What music have you got for me this week?”
Him: “Look at this! I downloaded about 50 mp3s for you. There’s Talking Heads, Madonna, George Michael, Tina Turner—” (hands me a tiny deal) “This is an mp3 player.”
Me: (giving him a most heinous vampire glare) “Mix tapes!”
Him: “But Vinnie, Napster is hella cool! You can get SO much free music and…” (he eyes my fangs) “Okay. Mix tapes.”
2006:
Me: “A crap-ton of my tapes ate it during my last feed attack. (throws bloody, mangled cassettes at Tyler) Make me new ones.”
Him: “Have you heard of this thing called YouTube? I mean, I know you’re a luddite, but…”
Me: “I’m a love bite?”
Him: “No, a luddite. Someone who doesn’t use computers or the internet.”
Me: (scratching my ‘do) “I assure you, you’re going to get more than a love bite if you don’t make me new tapes. And put some Cabaret Voltaire in this time.”
Him: “Vinnie, will you listen? There’s all this music and all these amazing movies and clips on YouTube. I can get you music you haven’t heard for years.”
Me: “I’ve already got amazing music and movies, thanks to you. Here’s a tip: don’t ‘Nag, Nag, Nag’ the vampire. I don’t need any clips. I just need tapes.”
(Notice he didn’t mention all the videos that were on YouTube. That would’ve gotten my attention, for totally sure!)
2011:
Me: “Tyler! I’m here!”
Him: (stares at this tiny screen in his hand) …
Me: “Tyler! Dub or die!”
Him: …
Me: “What are you looking at? Why is your neck all bent over like that? Did another vampire already bite you?”
Him: (taps the screen) …
Me: (looking over his shoulder) “What’s this Facebook deal? Are you talking to someone else while I just stand here? That’s so rude!”
Him: …
Now it’s 2018 and all that’s different is Tyler’s got a bigger smartphone with YouTube on it and I guess yeah, it holds entire albums in massive quantity. So he tells me.
The thing is, thanks to some of last weeks’ victims, I discovered the awesomeness of smartphones for myself.
I was practically a genius with them by now. I mean, I was radical at this computer science thing. Forget programming in BASIC. I could get the computer phone to respond to my voice.
I know Tyler thought I wasn’t smart when it came to state-of-the-art technology. But I was going to show him.
I could get my own MTV.
I had a few loose ends to tie up. But Vincent was a luvite no longer. A little more practice on the computer phone, and I wouldn’t need Tyler any more.
Except humans were always good for one thing I could think of.
I licked my lips. All those years of pushing keyboard buttons from his chair had made Tyler fat and slow. He looked plumper and juicier every time I saw him.
“Yeah, you bailed me out a long time ago,” I growled to myself. “But ‘What Have You Done For Me Lately?’ Answer: called me a dumbass without skills.”
Tyler’s Command Central was about to become Vampire Command Central. I had the perfect idea for my new job. I only had to get Larry to agree to it first.
***