Vampire Teeth

They are a family of vampires, born into the life of curses and gifts we know vampires to live. They cannot appear in the daylight, cannot come into contact with garlic, cannot stand a wooden stake driven through the heart. Mirrors are empty, holy water stings real bad. Blood is their sustenance. They are undead, above human weakness. They live a life of nocturnal hedonism, compounded with longs periods of coffin-sleep.

He is the youngest, but the largest. He is, in fact, freakishly large, the largest anyone in the extended family can ever remember. They take every opportunity to remind him of this, followed by some offhand comment about his frailty, his meek demeanor.

“You are my greatest failure,” says his mother, an old vampire who thinks of herself as “the glue” of the family. “Jesus Christ, at least stand up straight!” she snaps.

And he takes it, all of it. For despite his size, he holds one great weakness. Four to be precise: his canines, the most crucial teeth for biting, the “fangs” as we know them, are dull and stubby—more like extended molars. He could easily manhandle any of his siblings, could even outrace many of them. But those aren't good vampire traits. Vampires bite.

He seduces a likely victim, corners her against the wall in her bedroom. She feels his jaws open wide at her neck, screams when she looks in the mirror across the room. But moments later, she is still screaming, still feeling his mouth on her, his saliva dripping down to her shoulder. She does not feel her skin pierced, only slightly gnawed, a bruise at most. She hears his weeping, his frustration.

“It's okay,” she says.

The Hypnotist

The hypnotist looked up from his book. It was not, like one might expect, a book on hypnosis, or the occult, but a book of photography: bleak images from a dust-stormed village in China, weary old men with bandanas wrapped over their faces like old western outlaws.

“Are you free for a session?” she asked. “I've been really wacked out recently. I've hardly slept all week.”

By “free”, of course, she meant available. The hypnotist never worked for free. She, along with an extended group of patients, visited the hypnotist at his makeshift home office. They were of the class of people who could afford to pay a licensed psychiatrist, but for whatever reason had grown to distrust traditional medicine. So they visited the hypnotist, who, for a sizable fee, put them under his spell and tweaked their brains. He had originally started his practice as a side job in college, helping other students quit smoking, or improve their short-term memory. Since then, however, he had branched out into weight loss, self-confidence, and the overarching category of “psychiatric disorder”. Recently he had been inundated with this last group—an altogether troubling bunch, but not surprisingly most eager for help, and most willing to pay.

He nodded to the woman. She was a regular, and although he couldn't remember her name, he knew she always paid on time. From his pocket he removed a round pendant hanging from a silver chain. He leaned over the desk and began swinging it in front of her face, so close that it nearly scraped across her nose. He began his usual speech, telling her to calm her mind, and before he even finished the first sentence, she fell unconscious. This would be easy, he thought. She had been so eager to be put under hypnosis that coming to his office was merely a formality. He continued speaking in that calm, even tone he had developed over the years, working through a rambling, circuitous monologue about thinking and living. There was nothing especially brilliant about what he did, only the fact that he did it so often, to so many people, with such light-handed confidence, that his patients were willing to give themselves over without precondition.

When the speech was done, he left her in silence for a few minutes. This was when the actual healing took place, when her mind would wind itself back up. The hypnotist looked back down at his book. The photographer who took these shots must have been swamped with dust and dirt, having traveled all that way. The subjects of the shots, too—their lives must have been full of constant struggle against the elements. He looked up and noticed the woman's body beginning to stir. She was ready to be woken up. He snapped his fingers and her head jerked up, her eyes flung upon. There was always this moment of surprise, followed by the feeling of elation. He could already see the smile spreading sincerely across her face.

“Thank you so much,” she said. “I feel fantastic.” She removed an envelope of bills from her purse and slid it across the table. “I'll call in advance next time.” She stood up and walked out the door. He heard her go down the hall and open the door to the staircase instead of taking the elevator.

The hypnotist errantly flipped through the book, skimming the author's biography on the last page. I'm only 34, he thought, I can do more with my life. His day planner lay open on the windowsill. There would be several more patients before the day was through.

Business Vacation

The designer of his shoes must have been in collusion with the designer of his pants. These things, along with his bad knees, made running nearly impossible. He managed a sort of trot, jerking his briefcase, which rattled against his legs every few paces.

If he missed his bus, he would miss his train, and later his plane. He was told that the buses sometimes got snagged in traffic and arrived late. But the trains were always on time. If this were back home, he thought, both the bus and the train would be reliably late. In fact, if he were back home he never would have been taking public transportation at all. Instead of hurrying like this he would be in his car, watching this forgettable scenery drift by.

Although not an especially introverted person, at moments of frustration he was perfectly capable of holding an extended monologue in his head. This whole trip had been frustrating, and his head was swelling with various gripes, which stayed contained because he was traveling alone, and it seemed to him that none of the locals would understand. As he was running, the thought of the previous night's dinner popped into his head. It was baked chicken, delivered to his room by a man whose pants sank far too low on his hips. He complained to himself about the man's appearance, and later complained to himself again: the chicken was horribly overcooked. He took two bites of it before anger overtook his appetite. The next morning when he woke up, he detected the smell of eggs coming from the hallway. Eggs, it so happened, repulsed him--enough so that breakfast was completely forgotten. As a matter of fact, it had been an entire day since he had eaten anything at all. Upon considering this fact, he began to feel light headed, forced to a walk. The thought of a bus, a train, or a plane suddenly felt distant. He looked around the alleyway and felt it would never end.

To his left, a small girl appeared. She stepped out of a door with no handle on the outside, taking care to close it quietly behind her. In her hand she held a small tin lunch pail, its sides blank yellow. Her head was covered with a floppy white hat, leaving shadows across her face. She wore a blue school uniform: a long dark dress, adorned with a red crest.

To him she appeared anachronistic--too stereotypically schoolgirl-ish, too delicately European. She was probably stepping out of an ancient church, heading home to her entirely-too-European family, on a cobbled-stone street. This was all very annoying to him.

His head swirled with exhaustion and anger: 'If I am caught, I will blame my hunger.' This thought came to him as if from somewhere outside, and quickly took the place of all other thoughts. He ran straight for the girl, swinging his briefcase high above his head, yelling as best he could after having run for so long. The girl, perhaps noticing his particularly American yell, closed her eyes and covered her face with her lunch pail. Just before colliding with her, he stopped in his tracks. The girl clutched the handle of the lunch pail, her body trembling. She felt his sweaty palm press against her forehead, drawing up a few strands of hair. With his other hand he ripped the lunch pail from her grip. Before she got a good look at his face, he was already running off down the alley, both his briefcase and her lunch pail held under one arm, like a rugby ball. She turned and ran the other direction.

At the bus stop he sat down and opened the lunch pail. In it was half of a roast beef sandwich wrapped in wax paper, perhaps left over from the girl's lunch. He threw the tin pail on the ground and held the sandwich up to his nose. It had no distinct smell. In his ravenous hunger, he finished it in quick successive bites. The doughy white bread stuck to his mouth, but all together the sandwich was satisfying.

With his wits back about him, he hoped the girl would not call the police. Hunger, he thought, was not an acceptable excuse for what he had done.

Update

I'm writing this blog entry on horseback (no easy task), so I must keep details sparse and to-the-point.
Life is decent, although slowly improving.
That is all I can say for right now. You see I am writing this while combating the rocking movements of this huge ship (try getting a horse onto a ship--it costs more than a person!). Bye for now.

Love,
Dan