Dark Moonlighting (7 page)

“You are the boss of this place, Trevor,” I
said while I slowly walked towards him.

“How do you know my name?” he asked in a near
panic.

“I know lots about you. The internet can be a
powerful tool, although I suppose I don’t have to tell you that. I
know your name, I know your address, I even found out that you
usually work late on Saturdays. I would have thought you could
automate the process more. It’s nice to see someone with your work
ethic nowadays. I have three different jobs, and I can tell you
that none of my coworkers—”

“I’ll remove you from the mailing list,”
Trevor shouted in desperation. “Just tell me your e-mail and you’ll
never be bothered by me again. I swear to God.”

“Oh, it’s far too late for that now,” I
answered with a shake of my head.

My slow approach towards him had brought me
to his original position in front of the computers. Trevor was
still backing up, careful to keep a gap of about ten feet between
us. It was of no concern to me. A ten-foot gap was not really a gap
at all given my abilities. I took delight in his fear, enjoying
every second of his pathetic attempt to escape. I quickly bent
down, snatched a mouse and ripped its cord from the computer. I
kept my vision locked on my prey’s eyes so I could enjoy his
terrified reaction.

“I’ll shut the whole company down!” Trevor
stammered as his voice cracked. “I’ll get a real job that doesn’t
involve annoying people. I’ll volunteer at an animal shelter and
help adorable puppies and kittens. I can give up my sinful ways and
join the priesthood, anything you want! Jesus Christ, I’m sorry.
Okay? I’m sorry!”

“How many spam e-mails do you send out a
day?” I questioned, ignoring his plea for mercy. “300,000? Half a
million?”

“No, man. Nowhere near that much. I’m just a
small time guy. I mean, look at this operation,” he said as he
motioned around the near empty room. “My max volume is like…
10,000. Tops.”

“Strange then that of such a small number of
spam e-mails that you send out, I would personally receive 143 in
the last week that could be traced back to you.”

“It must be a glitch,” Trevor explained. He
glanced back and discovered that he was nearing the far wall of the
room. “I’ll fix it. I swear to God I’ll—”

“You send out thousands of e-mails, and you
get maybe a fraction of a percent of the people to fall for it? Who
doesn’t know about spam by now? I have to imagine you mostly
swindle adorable grandmothers who have just learned how to use a
computer. But hey, it’s all free for you right? You annoy millions
of people, but the hell with them. Anything to make a buck.”

“You’re right,” Trevor emphatically agreed as
his back hit the wall. “You’re absolutely right. I’ve been a
terrible—”

I stretched the mouse cord out between my two
clenched fists. “You’re a blight on humanity. A pathetic organism
that survives at the expense of decent human beings. You’re a
virus. You don’t deserve to exist.”

I closed the gap between us in a blur of
speed. He was in the process of pulling his arm back to throw a
punch when my hand clenched around his throat. I spun him around,
wrapped the mouse cord around his neck and squeezed it tight. His
fingers clawed desperately at the cord, scratching gouges out of
his own flesh in the process. After a few seconds his body went
limp from a lack of oxygen.

I removed the mouse cord from around his neck
and let his body fall to the floor. Adrenaline surged through my
veins as I inspected my victim. Tiny trickles of blood flowed from
the self-inflicted wounds in his throat. I ran my index finger
through the precious fluid, closed my eyes and inserted the finger
into my mouth. The wonderful taste made me moan in delight. I
grabbed Trevor by the hair and dragged him back to the center of
the room. Two mouse cords were enough to properly bind his arms and
legs. He was no match for me physically, but my next task would be
easier if he was bound. Next, I removed two objects from the
pockets of my pants. The first was a gag that I carefully inserted
into his mouth. I was confident that the neighborhood was abandoned
this late on a Saturday night, but I could not risk a random
passerby overhearing the commotion. The second object was what was
going to cause the commotion. I unfolded the sheet of printer paper
and waited anxiously for my victim to regain consciousness. It took
less than five minutes, but it felt like an eternity.

I stood over him menacingly with the piece of
paper while he woke up. When his eyes went wide in terror, and he
tried to scream through the gag, I was confident that he had fully
regained consciousness.

“You see this?” I asked as I waved the sheet
of paper. “Doesn’t look very threatening, does it? This is one of
the e-mails you sent to me. You don’t think much of these when
they’re electronic, but I went ahead and brought it into the real
world. It will be the weapon with which I inflict the worst pain
known to man upon you. Paper cuts. One for each e-mail you sent me
this week.”

Trevor’s look of fear changed to puzzlement
momentarily. Evidently my devious torture regimen did not seem
particularly scary to him. That all changed when, with a quick
motion, I sliced the sheet of paper across his forehead. His
muffled scream filled me with pleasure. A single drop of sticky
blood escaped the tiny cut in his head. I mopped it up with my
finger and consumed it with a flick of my tongue. Trevor’s eyes
bulged out of his head as he watched me perform the disgusting
act.

“One,” I said slyly.

Trevor was sobbing uncontrollably by the time
I counted to 142 about an hour and a half later. I had covered his
body from head to toe in tiny, excruciatingly painful cuts. For
many predators, the kill is not enough to quench the appetite. Like
a cat toying with a mouse, I too wanted to play with my victim
before I ended his life. As I inflicted my final wound, a short
slice across his ankle, I knew the real fun was about to begin.
Trevor barely acknowledged the last attack. It was just a drop in
the sea of pain I had created.

“143,” I concluded. “I think you’ve learned
your lesson. Don’t you?”

Trevor moaned and nodded his head
emphatically.

“Good. Then I can put you out of your
misery.”

I ran my tongue over my teeth and opened my
mouth to let Trevor see my fangs as they extended. The color
drained from my face as I let out an involuntary hiss. Though
already traumatized by the night of torture, my victim tensed in
fear at the latest development. I picked him up off the floor by
the hair, cocked his head to the left and sank my fangs into his
neck.

After I was caught, I was often asked what it
was like to drink the blood of another human being. The best way I
can describe it is to say it is equivalent to a twenty-minute-long
orgasm. I know that is hard to understand, unless you are Sting,
but I can think of no better way to explain it. Evolution designed
sex to be pleasurable so that humans would procreate. The vampire
virus does something similar with killing so that the host
continues to feed and survive. After all, the virus wants to keep
its happy home.

The public has been grossly misinformed by
television shows and movies about vampires. They think drinking
blood consists of a quick bite on the neck and ten seconds of
sucking. The average human being has five liters or roughly 170
ounces of blood in their body. Of course this varies by body type
and gender. The ridiculously large convenience store Big Gulp is
only thirty-two ounces. Thus, an average human being contains well
over five Big Gulps of blood. Even taking into account the intense
desire to drink, it usually took me at least twenty minutes to
drain a victim of their blood.

Trevor was conscious for the first twelve
minutes of the feast. He screamed and futilely struggled against
the mouse cords as I drained the life out of him. Eventually he
passed out and was unable to tell, like I was, when his heart
stopped beating. I snapped back to reality when I had sucked the
last drop of blood from his carotid artery. The orgy of pleasure
subsided, and I had to move quickly to perform the next task. I
pressed off the floor and fumbled to open the fly of my pants. I
made it just in time.

I let out a groan of relief as a heavy stream
of urine gushed onto the floor. I stumbled and fought to keep my
balance as my altered kidneys quickly processed the enormous meal.
It was, admittedly, a disgusting side effect of vampirism. I
learned through my studies that vampire bats have to start
expelling urine soon after feeding, otherwise they are too heavy to
fly away. My need to pee was similarly overwhelming, and there was
a huge puddle on the floor by the time I shook the last few drops
out.

It was easy to see why American authorities
labeled me as “The Urinator”. They had reports of piss puddles at
crime scenes for over a century, and thought a number of copycat
serial killers must exist. It never occurred to them that all the
crimes had been performed by the same man. After all, very few
centenarians are mobile enough to commit such brutal murders. The
F.B.I. and various police departments always believed the urine was
a demented calling card. Many were disappointed when I explained it
to be nothing more than a normal biological process. I never found
out what they thought had happened to the victims’ blood. Serial
killers often take trophies from their victims, but did they think
I had oil drums full of bodily fluid in my lair? The logistics of
that process would be mind-boggling.

I felt sleepy after the big meal but forced
myself to cover my tracks. The steak knife that I jammed repeatedly
into my victim’s neck removed any evidence that the real cause of
death had been tiny fangs. I wiped down the few surfaces I had
touched to make sure the investigators could not find any
fingerprints. As an afterthought, I tore the Ethernet cables out of
the computers. It would likely be days before anyone noticed that
the terrible human being was missing, and I thought it would be a
good public service to put a quick end to his spam e-mail
operation.

Confident that everything was in order, I
cautiously exited the building and darted back to my car. I was
twenty miles south of Chicago before I started to calm down. I had
gotten away with yet another murder. It was still dark when I got
back to my apartment in Starside. I crawled into bed and was asleep
shortly after my head hit the pillow. My subconscious did not
create any nightmares to plague me. It had been many years since I
felt remorse for one of my victims.

Chapter Four: The Stupid Little Prick Who I
Wish I Had Eaten

It had been a good hunt, and I was content
and well rested the following Monday when my next work shift
started. Law enforcement was my most recent professional endeavor,
and I found it to be more exciting than my other two jobs. While I
was still occasionally surprised by legal cases or medical
oddities, most of my work as a lawyer and a doctor had become
mundane. As a police officer, I was always finding things I had not
encountered before. Having been alive for so long, new situations
were a rare and welcome diversion.

My job as a cop was the only one for which I
did not have to use the albino cover story. My unusual request to
only work nights had been enthusiastically approved by my boss. It
must have seemed odd to him, but he had no interest in looking a
gift horse in the mouth. With so many officers looking to avoid the
night shift, I represented one less slot he had to fill. This
arrangement did pose one problem for me. I enjoyed being a cop, but
knew I had no opportunity for advancement. I was knowledgeable
enough about the criminal justice system to become a detective.
However, I could never have gotten away with being an investigator
who only worked nights. Waiting for the sun to go down before
following a time-sensitive lead would certainly have been frowned
upon. I cannot imagine how many complaints the department would
have received from witnesses who I would have had to woken up to
interview.

I parked at the police station and nodded to
a few of my fellow officers who were standing near the side of the
building. They were chugging down large cups of coffee as they
waited for the briefing to start. Even the cops who enjoyed the
thrill of working nights usually needed some form of stimulant to
handle the shift. I, being a creature of the night, held up much
better than my comrades.

I entered the police station and headed
straight for the briefing room. I had a few minutes before the
meeting was scheduled to start, but I was eager to begin the
night’s work. The front door of the station opened up to… you know
what? Screw it. It looked exactly like the police station from
Dirty Harry
.

The briefing room had three rows of three
tables each. There were two chairs at each table so the partners
could sit together and look towards the front of the room. I, still
having a cool kid mentality despite the fact that I was 677 years
old, took an empty seat at one of the tables in the back of the
room. I had less than a minute of quiet before one of the rookie
cops entered and sat in the middle row kitty-corner to me. He made
a point to slam the newspaper and coffee cup he was carrying onto
the table.

“What I don’t get,” Officer Crockett started
as if we had been in the middle of a conversation. “Is why
NYPD
Blue
never had spin-offs. I mean they had
CSI: Miami
and
Law & Order: LA
, why not
NYPD Blue:
Starside
?”

“Rook, are you actually suggesting they make
a show called
New York City Police Department Blue:
Starside
?” I mocked.

“Oh, right,” Crockett submitted. “I guess
that wouldn’t really make sense. Still though, Starside needs its
own police procedural.”