Q & A with a Vamp
17 Nov 2020Today’s prompt: “Interview someone you admire. Write a short profile of the person.”
You: So, what’s it like being a vampire?
Lucas d’Pointy: Ugh, it’s friggin’ terrible. You can’t possibly imagine how gross it is to have to survive by drinking blood all the time. Everybody thinks it’s all sexy that vampires drink from people’s necks, and I’m like, come on, you clearly just need to get laid. Can you imagine, murdering an innocent human being just so you can eat?
You: I guess I just figured you could just kill people who deserve it.
D’Pointy: Sounds like someone wants to appoint themselves judge, jury and executioner. First things first, I’d have to restrict my diet to only those criminals deserving of capital punishment who haven’t already been caught by the police. What, do you expect me to become some kind of magical detective that cracks cold cases and metes out justice? Becoming a vampire imbued me with immortality and the ability to turn into a bat, not the ability to solve crimes that the police can’t. If you’ve got issues with the justice system, that’s on humans to fix.
You: Okay, that makes sense. But couldn’t you just not drink all of a person’s blood, like leave enough for them to recover?
D’Pointy: So they can live with the memory of that assault for the rest of their lives?
You: Or you could turn them, so they can live.
D’Pointy: The math for that turns bad pretty quickly. So let’s say I drink enough of your blood to survive tonight, but then I turn you. Tomorrow, we’ve got two hungry vampires turning two more humans into vampires. And the night after that, it’s four vampires siring four more vampires. Do you know your powers of two? In a mere 33 nights we’ve turned the entire world’s population. And then what do you eat? I’ll tell you what you eat. You eat what ethical vampires like me eat. Rats. Mice. The occasional raccoon. It ain’t pretty. Have you ever tried to catch a raccoon?
You: Eating rats does sound kind of gross.
D’Pointy: It is! And if you can’t catch them, you go hungry for a while. You get pretty scrawny and even paler than normal.
You: So I take it not all vampires are ethical?
D’Pointy: Oh, definitely not. My sire, Lestab, really enjoyed killing people.
You: Yeah, that definitely sounds like the better way to go.
D’Pointy: Excuse me?
You: Nevermind. Still, being a vampire can’t be all bad. You get to live forever.
D’Pointy: Sure, but if you make human friends, you get to watch them all die. And if you make vampire friends, inevitably they trick you into drinking dead blood and dump you in a swamp, or trap you in a coffin, or shut you in a room filling with sunlight in the creepy vampire theater where you’ve been hanging out.
You: Uh huh, sounds cool.
D’Pointy: Are you even paying attention to me?
You: Look, I’ll cut to the chase. Will you make me a vampire?
D’Pointy: Fuck you. This interview is over.
(D’Pointy turns into a bat and flies out of the room. You start putting away your legal pad and pen and are about to turn off your tape recorder when a bat flies in through the window.)
You: Oh, good, you’re back. Now, Mr. D’Pointy – may I call you Luke?
(The bat transforms into humanoid form, revealing an entirely different vampire.)
Lestab: Oh, no, I think you’ve confused me with someone else. Say, y’ got anything to drink around here? (He flashes a fangy smile and laughs.) Ahahahaha, I crack me up. Now where was I? Oh yes. Nom nom nom nom nom.