Protip for Vampires #201: there are no starter kits.

It was the pee dream that got me out of bed, otherwise I might have just stayed there allowing myself to surrender to the deep exhaustion that ran deeper than ordinary muscle aches. You know the dream, the one where you find a pool or a tree or even a doorless toilet, and are overcome with the need to empty your bladder.. The dream is influenced by the pressure in your bladder and is either a warning or a prediction. Either way, it is the one dream that's guaranteed to come true.

Everybody knows the steps to this dance. Step one: roll out of bed, stagger to your feet like so, and do not open your eyes all the way or you'll begin to wake up properly. Step two: shuffle to the bathroom without moving any muscles you do not have to move in order to walk. Step two-b: ignore the apparition of a smiling Doreen since that is clearly part of the dream, and there is no way she is waiting outside the door. Step 3: fumble with the stupid goddamn draw-string on the stupid goddamn-pajama pants before yanking the front of the pants down. Step 4: urinate loudly and freely, feeling the relief flood through your body... and quietly pray that you actually did wake up, and this isn't part of your dream. Step 5: review Step 3, because you don't remember putting on any stupid goddamn pajama pants, so what the fuck?

I peeked around the corner of the bathroom door and sure enough, Doreen was still there, definitely not a hallucination. She smiled cheerfully as if all this invading my dream was perfectly normal. When she held out a brown McDonald's bag to me, I finally realized this was no dream. No normal human or vampire would dream about McDonalds.

"Did you dress me?" I accused as accusingly as possible.

"And I got you breakfast," she piped up, and then corrected herself: "Actually Claude came by and brought you breakfast an hour ago, but you just flipped him off, and he left, so here it is. Sausage and Egg McGriddle, right?"

I cautiously took the bag and extracted the promised sandwich, keeping a suspicious eye on Doreen the whole time. I was a little disappointed that Claude hadn't stuck around, but at the same time secretly relieved, because the awkward conversation about the vampire situation was not one I was looking forward to. I had decided to be stubborn in the face of reality and Claude was just going to talk some sense into me. Instead, all I had was this awkward conversation with Doreen. Yay?

"Thanks, but what are you still doing here?"

"Waiting for Beatrice," Doreen murmured, her face turning red as she glanced at her mural.

"Don't you have an apartment to go home to?" I pointed out.

"I-I can't go back there," Doreen's voice quavered. "That's Tanya's place, not mine. It's full of her stuff and... and memories. Not all good ones." She looked at me, her eyes bright and pleading. "Can't I just crash here until Beatrice comes back? I'll make myself useful. I'll even do your laundry or whatever. Stuff you can't do during the day anymore. You know, since you're a vampire and everything."

"Fine," I groaned. She had fixed up the place after all, and she was right about being useful. I might not want to be a vampire, but since I didn't appear to have a choice, there would probably be daytime needs. "You can stay," I conceded, "but not forever."

I bit into my sandwich, and flavour exploded into my mouth. I had only meant to take one bite, but found myself devouring the whole thing quickly as if I hadn't eaten in days. The sandwich had never tasted so delicious before with the beads of maple syrup complimenting the salty pork sausage so well, that I wanted to lick my fingers—

More!

The thought was sudden and so hungry, and so alien, that I turned, looking around as if someone had spoken to me. Of course there was no one there, only over-sized Beatrice winking saucily from the mural.

"It's a damn good mural," I admitted.

"It's the best thing I've ever done," Dorren blushed. "Oh! I have something else for you," she said and retrieved a folded piece of paper from her back pocket. "Oscar, you know Oscar right? The building manager? Well, he came by this morning and left this for you. He didn't look too happy."

I poked at the offered paper before finally taking it. One glance at the huge EVICTION NOTICE stamped across the top of the letter was all I needed for a heavy dread to rise up like a physical force, threatening to overwhelm me all at once as I read.

"... I have 'seven days to exit the property unless I pay all of the late rent and the repair costs for the door, a total of five thousand and ninety-three dollars.' Fuck," I said after a moment, and then just to be absolutely clear about my meaning: "FUCK!"

Doreen shrugged uneasily. "Sorry?" she offered. "I have some money, but not that much."

I let the eviction notice fall from my hand and tried to gather my thoughts, fighting back panic. I had forgotten how much my pre-vampire life had sucked, and now that I was immersed in it, I hated it so goddamn much. My eyes returned to Doreen's mural. Life-sized murals probably didn't qualify as normal "wear and tear." If Oscar saw it, my security deposit was toast. I pictured the smug look on Oscar's face when he got to add another thousand bucks of damages to his fucking assault on my finances.

Panic won out. The mural had to go. Now, how to break the news to Doreen delicately?

"The mural's got to go," I blurted and immediately cringed inside. That was not quite the tact I was going for.

"Or you could go fuck yourself," Doreen replied, her eyes tightening and her lips thinning as if someone has threatened to take away her precious. I had the sense that I was walking on some potentially dangerous ground, but there was one way to fix that. Fuck normal.

I looked Doreen in the eye and focused my concentration on making a connection with her, feeling the slight touch of her mind as I prepared to glammer her—

Pain exploded in my face.

I staggered back a step, coming to the realization that Doreen had punched me in the nose. Like what the fuck?

She looked as surprised as I felt, but I was busy dealing with the sharp stinging pain and what might possibly be a busted lip from the way it had gone numb.

"What the fuck?" I repeated.

"I don't know!" Doreen replied, flustered and clutching at her traitorous fist. "You just tried to do the vampire eye-magic thing on me! Not nice, dude!"

Goddammit! Getting punched in the face wasn't the response I was looking for, and this was not the hill I wanted to die on—beaten to death by a tall, muscle-bound, blue-haired lesbian. Beatrice had made glammering seem so easy. Doreen had first been glammered by Mr. Flynn and then by Beatrice, which meant she knew the glammering drill, but somehow my attempt had backfired. I was going to have to ask Beatrice about that, probably just before she murdered me.

I inspected my hands, expecting to see them covered in blood, but there was nothing. The sting in my face was fading, my vampire healing kicking in.

"I'm so fucked" I moaned. "How am I supposed to come up with six-thousand dollars?"

Doreen scrunched up her face and then rolled her eyes. "Dude, you're a vampire. We could get Oscar in here and you can do the eye magic thing on him, duh!"

"Apparently I'm not very good at that," I snapped, and she raised her hands in mock surrender. "You might have to pull Oscar off me if I screwed up glammering him."

"Sorry," she mumbled, and actually looked embarrassed, then hid the fists of fury behind her back. "Maybe... maybe you ask a certain vampire friend named Beatrice for the money?" Doreen wheedled, fake innocence radiating off of her, ulterior motives not hidden in the slightest.

"Yeah, she's not happy with me right now, so that's not happening..." I grumbled, fear flaring up at the thought of Beatrice showing up in my apartment. To be honest, I was a little surprised that she hadn't come already. I looked around the apartment, suddenly not wanting to be there anymore, especially with Beatrice looking at me from the wall.

I retreated into my bedroom, resigned to calling the one person who had the unique combination of ready cash and the ability to care about my plight without giving me a lecture about how much I was fucking up my life. I am, of course, talking about Claude since there was no way I was going to call my mom to borrow money. I sent Claude a text message.

Me: SOS, Dude. I need to borrow $6k.

The three dots of doom appeared almost immediately.

Claude: I can transfer money to your account. Strings attached. You want to be normal, you need to get a job or something.

So much for no lecture. I sighed and typed my response. Me: Thanks for the bailout. When you coming over? I need to borrow your brain.

Claude: Not happening. I'm on a plane for the next nine hours, then I'm gone for a couple of days.

Me: Seriously? What happened to us meeting up today?

Claude: My life is currently a telenovela, remember?

Me: Hello? Actual vampire here? I think I win the prize for the telenovela-type life. We can call it So I'm a Vampire... Now What?

I thought for a long moment, then typed again. Me: Maybe Sammy can put in a good word for me with the boss. *heavy fucking sigh*

Claude: It's definitely worth a shot for the short term. We'll talk when I get back.

I emerged from the bedroom fifteen minutes later, dressed in normal clothes and ready for action. It was a relief not to be wearing an expensive suit that had been provided by a vampire countess.

"Where are you going?" Doreen prodded.

I paused to take a dramatic and what I hoped was a determined pose, hands on hips, chin held high. "I'm going to do what normal people do. I'm going to get my job back!" I announced, and without waiting for a response, strode out of the front door.

I promptly returned about ten seconds later when I almost caught on fire from being out in the sun, and Doreen didn't even laugh once. If we hadn't been friends before, we were now.

***

A couple of hours later when the sun had slipped beneath the horizon and it was safe for vampires to roam the city, I took the bus to work, revelling in the normalcy of everything. There is quite nothing like riding the bus that brings you back down to a proper sense of reality. This part of the day was a ritual, part of the everyday that none of us have to think about. You just tuned out and went with the flow, turned your brain off and listened to your music or podcast or whatever. The rules were simple and universal. If you didn't have a commute buddy, you looked out the window if you didn't have a book or a newspaper. You never made eye contact with anyone unless you wanted to be the creep on the bus, and if you did, you averted your gaze and pretended to be reading one of the many posters and advertisements plastered on the walls. It was an easy routine to fall back into as the bus rumbled from stop to stop in the inevitable way that it had.

I even resisted the urge to get off at Jaime's stop. It wouldn't have made sense anyway since she was at work and all I would be doing was low-grade stalking her. After the events last night, that felt wrong somehow. I had killed her boyfriend, after all, and gotten her kicked out of the club, so that was going to come back and bite me in the ass at some point. Just not today.

Nobody wanted that type of normal.

I put on my headphones and listened to a mix from 2001. I didn't have access to Jaime's Infinite Playlist anymore since Claude had deleted it from my phone, but it was close enough. It was normal, and had nothing to do with vampires, and that was good enough for me.

***

The feeling that I could take on the world, only lasted until I entered the front doors of the Porn Emporium, your one stop shop for movies, sex toys and other legal pleasures of the sexual nature. The Boss, who was the love child of a troll and Danny Devito, shut that shit right down.

"Get the fuck out of here, Bobby!" the Boss yelled and pointed at the door which was still swinging shut behind me.

"But I've got a great story this time!" I protested.

"You've been gone for over a week, no calls, no email, even fucking Sammy has no fucking clue where you've fucked off to, and you come in here with a story? What are you? High?"

"When you put it like that—"

Sammy and the new guy (Benjamin? I think it was Benjamin) entered from the back office with a stack of boxes and headed towards the counter. Sammy glared murder at me, her face dark with a boiling anger, and I knew she couldn't wait to tear me a new one. However, she was going to have to wait her turn. Benjamin wore the official staff T-shirt and was actually wearing an apron. The Boss snapped his fingers in front of my face to recenter my attention on himself.

"Bobby, I don't not like you, but you fucked up, kid. I got one of Bennie's friends to replace you five days ago. I got a business to run, and you fucked up the rotation."

I looked down at the short domineering man and really wanted to tell him how much he looked like a bad Danny DeVito knockoff, but somehow resisted.

"I really need this job. I mean really. This is a seriously fucked up time for me--"

"Goddammit, Bob. I'm trying to be the nice guy here, and we all know how fucking rare that is, am I right? You coulda asked for time off. Would you have gotten it? Probably not, but it all depends on what we coulda worked out, I mean I'm a reasonable guy, you know?"

Sammy had opened one of the boxes and was mindlessly handing merchandise to Benjamin, all the while staring at me, lips thin and mean. She smirked humorlessly and drew her thumb across her throat to communicate how dead I was.

Fuck it. There had to be an easier way than being humiliated like this.

I remembered the last time I had seen the Boss a week ago and I had glammered him almost instinctively. Would that work again without me getting punched? With only one way to find out, I looked the Boss deep in the eye, and glammered him. The connection was easier this time, and I could see how much he was really going to regret kicking my ass in the alley behind the store, but that it needed to be done because I was obviously not taking a hint and he promised himself not to enjoy it too much but God it would feel so good to just let go and kick someone's ass--

"Give me another chance," I said to him, "I'm not a bad guy, and at least I've never stolen from you. I need this job as much as you need someone like me to do it, so just think again. You want to give me another chance."

Something shifted, and I felt it—a grudging fondness for me.

"I'm going to give you another chance, Bobby," the Boss agreed.

"What the ever loving fuck?" Sammy breathed from somewhere behind us.

Well at least he hadn't hit me like Doreen had, so that was a win, right?

"Don't fuck it up," the Boss continued and then shook himself. "And put on a goddamn apron!" the Boss concluded as if it was all his idea. As if he had any choice. He retreated into the back of the store, and I caught Sammy staring at me, mouth agape,

"That's the second goddamn time that's happened!" Sammy declared.

I shrugged and tried to play it off. After all, there was nothing to see here, just normal me, doing normal things. "Hey, he just loves me. Want me to put in a good word for you?"

"The fuck he does," Sammy snarled, and pointed a clamshell plastic-wrapped Throbbmaster 5000XL at me, the most serious threat of them all. "There's something seriously fucked up going on with you. It's only a matter of time, but I will find out what it is."

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