The Downsides of Immortality

Pesky wannabe vampires, for example.

Image found on Pinterest.

“Ash in your mouth.”

The vampire-wannabe who’d been pestering Lucrecia for weeks now blinked, confused. “I’m sorry?”

“Ash in your mouth,” she repeated. “That’s part of this whole deal. Anything you try to consume that’s not blood? It turns to ash in your mouth, so your little ‘eat human food to keep up appearances’ trick won’t work. Just try swallowing a mouthful of ash. I dare you.”

Lucrecia knocked back another glass of blood while she let her would-be fledgling mull that over. She had no idea how he found out that she was a real, honest to God vampire and not just another goth girl, but somehow he had and now? Now he wouldn’t leave her be.

Everywhere she went, this little twerp was there. Any club she went to, he’d find his way there and try to make conversation. If she was feeding, he wouldn’t be far off acting as a ‘lookout’ and drawing unwanted attention.

‘Annoying’ was putting it mildly.

She’d complained to a friend of hers about it, and he’d had a rather…straightforward solution to her problem.

“Just drain him,” Will said with a shrug. “He wants the vampire experience, so give it to him. Nobody said you actually have to go through with turning him. Just drain him dry and toss his ass in a dumpster when you’re done.”

Oh, it was tempting. Very, very tempting. Just grab him by the throat, pull him in close and turn him into a human juicebox. And, just like a juicebox, throw the rest in the trash where it belonged.

“Believe me, I want to,” she’d grumbled. “But with my luck this jackass will haunt me afterward. ‘Why’d you kill meeeee? All I wanted was to be like yooooou. You’re so meeeeeeean’.” She wiggled her fingers like a spooky ghost, rolling her eyes.

Will laughed. “Okay, so if you’re not gonna kill him, what are you gonna do then?”

“I’m going to try to talk some sense into him. Right now all he’s thinking about are the cool parts of being undead. Maybe if I fill him in on what the rest is like it’ll discourage him, and he can stop stalking me.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“If it doesn’t,” Lucrecia began, “Well, keep your schedule open buddy, because I might need you.”

Meanwhile, her recently-acquired headache had thought about what it would be like to swallow the contents of an ashtray and shrugged it off as not a deal-breaker.

“Okay yeah, so that’s…that’s a bit of a problem but I’m sure I can work around it!” he said. “I mean, I can always find some excuse as to why I’m not eating, like say I had food allergies or I’m on a special diet, or maybe that I’ve already eaten so I’m not hungry…”

“Yeah, you do that,” Lucrecia growled, refilling her glass. Around them the rest of the undead laughed, danced, and were in general having a good time. She wished she could join them, or be doing anything but sitting here with this guy. Of all the vampires in the world, he had to stumble across her.

Maybe she could point him to anyone else here? Just pick a bloodsucker, shove him in their direction, and be like ‘Go talk to them, they’ll help you out’.

No, a lot of them were friends of hers and it’d be cruel to pawn this guy off on them. Plus, she’d known some of them for over a century, and if there was anything she knew about other vampires, it was that they held grudges. Last thing she wanted was someone angry at her for the next five hundred years because of this.

“There’s also the most obvious problem, and that’s sunlight. All but the oldest of us end up flash-fried when we even put one toe outside on a sunny day. Are you really prepared to never see the sun again?”

He shrugged. “I’ve always been a night owl. In fact, I crave the night. It calls to me,” he said in a way he meant to be dark and moody, but just ended up sounding silly and overdramatic.

Oh my god, get me away from this dipshit.

“So, is it true that a vampire’s bite feels…good?” he continued, grinning a stupid grin at her.

“Yes, mainly to keep our prey from struggling too much. Easier to feed on someone when they’re not flailing and screaming bloody murder, yeah?”

Seeing him turn pale for a moment was satisfying. Maybe, just maybe, in that brief second he realized exactly what he was dealing with. Not just a pretty girl with fangs, but an actual predatory monster. Humans were food to her and pretty much everyone else at the club.

Lucrecia took advantage of the silence to steer the conversation away from whatever stupid questions the guy wanted to ask or hounding her to turn him. “Let me ask you something, um...?” she trailed off, not knowing his name.

“Zack.”

“Zack. Alright Zack, let me ask you this: why do you want to be an undead monster so badly? You know if you do get turned you can’t go back, right? What is so enticing about it to you? Is it the power? The lure of immortality? The sex appeal?”

There was a prolonged silence as Zack looked down and away from her. Lucrecia sighed.

“….It’s that last one, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Of course that’s what it would be. Of-fucking-course it was. While all the vampire movies and literature on the market had done a fantastic job in fictionalizing them, making sure that humankind didn’t see them as anything other than made-up monsters, it also had a number of unforeseen consequences.

Some of them were useful, like the mistaken belief that vervain hurt the undead. More than a few hunters had looked pretty silly when their vervain-laced weapons and concoctions had done nothing to their targets.

Being painted as tortured, tragic souls who just needed love and comfort had made reeling in prey much, much easier, but it also meant that they were swamped in wannabes who only had half an idea of what they were getting into. Then when they decided they didn’t like being a vampire anymore you had to put up with their whining for decades.

She must have had a look on her face, because he immediately became defensive.

“What? Girls like vampires!”

Just digging himself deeper. She wasn’t even going to try to convince him that he didn’t need to be a vampire in order to get a date. He’d been trying her patience for weeks now, and she was just about done with all of this.

Had he actually had a justifiable reason for seeking out undeath, like being terminally ill and wanting to give ol’ Grim the finger, she’d actually entertain the idea. Hell, she might even do it. But this? Not a chance.

One more shot. She’d saved her best argument for last. This had to convince him, or else it was on to plan B. “Okay, yeah, you’ve got friends and family right? Barring any kind of unforeseen tragedy these days, I know most people do.”

Zack nodded. “Yeah, of course I do. Why?”

“Say goodbye to them.”

Much like the comment about humans being prey did, that gave him pause. It tended to for a lot of would-be vampires. “….Huh?”

“Think about it; if you become a vampire you’ll never age, and you’ll never die. Sooner or later people will notice, so it’s better to just cut them off now.”

From the look on Zack’s face, he never even considered that. Probably thought that he could just ‘keep it secret’ and go on with his life. Nothing different except for a pair of fangs. Didn’t work that way.

“Can’t I just…I don’t know, see them once in a while and keep everything else long-distance?”

Lucrecia shrugged. “That’ll work for a while, but not forever. What are you going to tell people when you’re in, say, your fifties and you still look like you do now?”

When he was silent, she went on. “See? Even if you try to keep your distance, you’re just kicking the can down the road. Friends, family, that girlfriend you want so badly, you’ll have to leave them all behind. Keep getting close to people, and be prepared to do it over and over again.”

That was what being a vampire was really like. There were reasons they became detached from humanity, and feeding on them was only one. Another was the heartbreak of losing your mortal loved ones. Provided they hadn’t died already, you were going to outlive them by a very, very long time. The truth of the matter was that becoming one of the undead meant leaving a trail of corpses behind you one way or another.

That had discouraged countless wannabe vampires before, but not this guy. Oh no, not this guy. She didn’t have that kind of luck.

“Well, we can always spend eternity together,” Zack said, waggling his eyebrows suggestively with a goofy grin.

Lucrecia wanted to scream. Just when she thought she was getting through to him he had to go and say something so monumentally, abysmally stupid it made her want to punch him through a brick wall. She’d been on this earth for a hundred and fifty-five years; she could damn well do that with minimal effort.

But no. Plan B it was.

She sighed. “You’re really set on this, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I really am. I know, I know, being a vampire has its downsides, but I really want this. I’ve always wanted to be something other than just a regular old human, you know?”

Stupid kid. You still don’t get it, do you?

“Fine then. Meet me outside in like….ten minutes. I have a couple things to take care of first.”

After Zack left, Lucrecia pulled out her phone and sent a few quick texts, smiling when she saw a response: ‘Gotcha. Let me just change real quick and I’ll be right there.’

---

Lucrecia led Zack on a meandering path through the streets. The act of taking on a fledgling was intensely personal, so it was usually done in private. While she wasn’t about to invite him into her home — the last thing she wanted was to let him know where she lived — she knew a perfect spot where she could perform the rite.

She tuned out his excited chattering about finally, finally getting to be something awesome and not just another boring human. Let him ramble; in a few minutes she wouldn’t have to worry about it ever again.

Zack was wondering out loud how much the actual transformation would hurt when a glass-shattering shriek cut him off. Something swooped down and landed next to Lucrecia with a heavy thud, something big with leathery wings and coal-red eyes.

“Oh, there you are,” she said to the werebat. “Hungry? I brought you something to eat.”

The monster’s low, clicking growl wasn’t as ferocious-sounding as that of a wolf or a bear, but a nine-foot-tall bat was still plenty scary, especially when it was eyeing you up like a bug. Zack actually squeaked, eyes darting nervously back and forth from Lucrecia to the werebat.

“Wait, eat? I thought you were going to turn me!”

She shrugged. “I lied. You’re just food for my pet here. Big guy hasn’t had anything in days, and he’s getting a little ornery.”

In what was the only thing resembling common sense he’d shown all night, Zack took off running. Gone, hopefully, were any thoughts of becoming a vampire. Even if one day he did start pestering another bloodsucker, she was sure it wouldn’t be her.

Will snickered as he shrank back into human form. “Man. look at him go. Shoulda just had me do that from the start.”

“I really should have, shouldn’t I?” Lucrecia agreed, grinning up at Will. “Thanks, buddy. I owe you one.”