I am in the middle of preparing my nightly souffle when I hear a loud crash from right outside my kitchen window.

I look up from my whisking, perturbed.

I live in a large house at the dead end of a very quiet street. This is by design. I do not wish to be disturbed when I am in need of peace and quiet. I also do not wish to be discovered in the midst of doing certain of the things I often do during the overnight hours.

As such, a loud crash coming from right outside my kitchen window at eight o’clock on a Tuesday evening is definitely unexpected and absolutely unwelcome.

I hear the noise again, and then a third time. A few moments later I hear several distinctly human voices do an incredibly poor imitation of a werewolf’s howl, followed by peals of human laughter. They’re teenagers, most likely, from the way they smell and from the snippets of early twenty-first century American English slang I can hear wafting up to me from the street below.       

Human teenagers never come this far down my street. In fact, few humans of any age come this far down my street in the evening unless they happen to live nearby or have an unusual predilection for strolling through poorly lit neighborhoods at night. Or both.

It’s one of the reasons I chose this place. The solitude makes my location ideal.

On a hunch, I glance at the calendar hanging on my kitchen wall. It’s a cheap thing I picked up from Target last December, featuring a different kitten playing with a ball of string each month. It’s ridiculous—I readily admit that—and it hardly goes with the rest of my home decor. That said, looking at it makes me happy for reasons I cannot quite articulate.

According to the calendar, tonight is September twentieth.

Understanding comes to me in a flash.

“Oh, fiddlesticks,” I mutter under my breath, setting down my bowl of half-beaten eggs. My stomach sinks. Because this nonsense really is starting earlier and earlier every year, isn’t it? 

The terrible fake howling continues over the course of the next hour. I try my best to ignore it and to focus all my attention on my pitiful souffle.

But it is no use.

I am utterly unable to get the blasted thing to rise.

~*~

It used to be that I wouldn’t be exposed to humans’ bizarre obsession with creatures like me until October the first at the earliest.

Which suited me just fine.

Well—not fine, exactly.

But it was definitely better than it is now, back then. Thirty, maybe forty years ago, when the rampant commercialization of Halloween wasn’t quite what it is today, October the thirty-first was simply one day out of three hundred and sixty-five where human children dressed up in silly costumes and begged sweets from their neighbors. That, I could more or less handle. Sure it was mildly annoying. Sometimes more than mildly annoying, on the rare occasions a particularly intrepid group of children knocked on my door expecting sweets.

But it was nothing compared to what it is now. In the current century Halloween is no longer simply a one-day excuse for small humans to have some childish fun. Some years this monster-obsessed nonsense starts as early as mid-summer.

And it isn’t limited to the very young anymore either. If I had a nickel for every time I have seen a grown adult dressed up like a “vampire” over the past twenty years I would never have to steal from blood banks again.

In the abstract, I do recognize humans living during end-stage capitalism need some form of escapism to keep from going mad. Even if someone like me doesn’t get to them first, the cumulative ill effects of poor voting booth decisions, climate change—or both—will soon have them all praying for death anyway.

So, escapism? Sure. I understand the appeal of escapism. I can understand why people build pretend islands on their computers and populate them with cute little animals with ridiculous names (or whatever it is they do). I can understand why they drink alcohol and take illicit drugs and engage in risky sex with each other.

I can also almost understand why they watch terrible television programs like Love Island or Dancing with the Stars.

But what utterly stymies me—what I will never understand, not if I live for another thousand years—is why so many humans have decided their escapism needs to take the form of celebrating monsters like me.

I am a vampire. I have survived for centuries by consuming the blood pumping through living humans’ still-beating hearts. If I do not lose control of myself and drink a human dry first there is a real chance they will end up a monster like me before I am through them.

And so it defies belief, really, knowing that so many young people today think vampires are… well, cool, for lack of a better word. I burn up in the sunlight like an ant under a magnifying glass. I never sparkle.

I eat people with relish and with gusto.

Under no circumstances should humans wish to emulate me.

And it should go without saying that they should never, ever find me “sexy.”

But humans seem to live in a post-facts world these days. In my mind, there is no better example of this than how they romanticize creatures like me.

Take right now, for instance. I am perusing the aisles at Target to gather needed supplies, as is my usual custom on the last Friday of each month. A few weeks have passed and it is now October the second. Given that I reside in the northern part of the southern United States the weather is still very warm outside. I am dressed in my usual going-to-Target garb: a dark, snugly-fitting henley that accentuates my fine upper body musculature; dark blue-jeans that ride rather low on my narrow hips; and a beige, leather trench coat tied around my waist that pulls the whole look together.

You know. Human clothes. On the rare occasions I go out in public where people can see me I want to blend the best I can. I tend to leave the black cape at home for Target runs.

But I digress. At present there is a clutch of young humans clustered at the end of the cat food aisle, and they turn their heads in unison to look in my direction as I pass by with my shopping cart. They are all dressed in Halloween costumes—probably on their way to some stupid human party or something—despite the early October date and too-warm weather.

They look at me, and already I know how this exchange is going to go.

It happens again and again this time of year.

I close my eyes, bracing myself for it.

My cart, incidentally, is filled with things that would terrify these humans if they had any sense: syringes; gauze pads; prescription-strength blood thinner. The things I need to eat, to live. To kill. But these humans look to be no older than twenty or so—and I have lived in this world long enough to know that humans rarely possess much common sense at all before they reach forty years of age.

“Hey. Great costume!” I can see one of the young women in the group waving enthusiastically in my direction from my peripheral vision. She is dressed like… a cat? A wombat? Possibly a werewolf? It’s hard to tell from this distance, and I don’t care enough to stop walking and get a closer look.

“Seriously, dude, your costume slaps.” This incomprehensible combination of words comes from one of the young men in the group, who seems to be little more than earnestness, terrible werewolf costume, and the nearly irresistible aroma of O-positive blood. “Where did you get those fake teeth?”

“I need to get teeth like that for next Friday,” the first person says.

“But you’re going as a cat, not a vampire.”

“So?”

I ignore them, pushing my cart down the aisle across from them, pretending I neither hear nor see. 

It occurs to me, after, that I’d probably draw less attention to myself if I somehow hid my teeth during my Target runs. But it’s uncomfortable, wearing a prosthetic over my gums. (And besides the problem lies with them, not with me.)

~*~

Drinking a human dry and then going to a restaurant for “dinner” after my monthly Target runs has become something of a ritual over the years. I never eat any actual food at the restaurant of course; save for souffles, food meant for human consumption has not seemed appetizing to me since around the end of the American Revolutionary War.

That said, I still come here once a month after Target because even I tire of my own company once in a while. And for reasons I’ve never fully understood, the particular Italian restaurant where I find myself now is a local favorite of individuals who, like me, could potentially pass as human from a distance but upon closer inspection are pretty gifted at striking terror in the hearts of mortal men.

I am waiting for my old friend Thornapple to arrive when I sense the four young people sitting in the booth across the aisle from mine shooting me sideways glances whenever they think I can’t see them. What they don’t know, of course, is that I can see everything, in every direction, for up to a quarter-mile in each direction. I know it every time they turn their heads to look at me without even having to look up from the plate of mediocre eggs and toast I ordered so that I would not draw even more attention to myself than I already am. I know what they’re giggling and whispering about—me, of course—and I would know these things even if I were seated in a booth a block away from instead of right in the same room.

But they don’t know those things about me. And to be quite honest, I don’t want them to. And so I say nothing, pretending not to hear their giggling or know exactly what it is they’re talking about.

At length, one of them comes to a decision.

“We should invite him to come with us,” one of them says under her breath, but still loudly enough that I can hear it easily. I close my eyes and let out a sigh too quiet for them to hear. “Julia would hit that so hard.”

“No way,” says another, emphatically and sensibly. My hope for the future of the human race is briefly, minutely, restored. “I mean, yes. He’s really hot—”

“He is,” the first speaker agrees.

“But he’s kind of creepy too. Don’t you think? I mean, look at him.” A pause. “Like, I don’t think that’s a costume.”

The conversation continues in this vein for some time—some of the group wanting to invite me to whatever inane party they’re attending this evening; the others very astutely arguing that that isn’t a good idea. Meanwhile I just sit there, held hostage by my tardy friend who is running more than thirty minutes late by this point as I stare down at my decoy plate of food, pretending I cannot hear them scrutinize and discuss me as I slowly and methodically tear the paper napkin spread across my lap into tiny shreds.

A few minutes later I am saved from this by the arrival of Thornapple. He breezes in the door and heads in my direction.

Thornapple is massive—at least six-and-a-half feet tall and built like a man who plays professional football—but he grins innocently at me when he gets to my table, and his gait is as light-footed as a child’s. 

“Ludwig,” Thornapple greets when he reaches me. He takes off his leather jacket and drapes it over the back of his chair. There won’t be another full moon for two weeks so my friend looks passably human tonight, although his particular form of lycanthropy leaves him quite hirsute even when he isn’t in his wolf form. He rubs at the thick patch of hair on the bridge of his nose and says, “Good to see you, man.”

“Thornapple,” I say tersely. “You’re late.”

He has the decency to look sheepish. “I… kind of forgot about meeting up. I’m sorry.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You forgot? We always meet here at eight o’clock on the last Friday of the month.”

Thornapple grins at me again, and for a very long moment he appears more wolf than man. He leans towards me across the table and says, in a conspiratorial whisper, “I got lucky.”

My stomach churns at his words. I am not totally up to date on modern American slang but I think I understand his meaning well enough. Just in case I’ve got it wrong, though, I repeat, “You got lucky?”

He waggles his eyebrows at me, and—well. I guess I did not get it wrong. “I sure did.” Thornapple jerks his thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of the restaurant door. “Out in the alley behind the dumpsters. I didn’t plan on it but he was…” He pauses. His grin widens even more. “He was persuasive.”

And that’s another thing. I cannot remember exactly when this began happening, but at some point—probably around the time some stupid book series about vampires or another became popular—a certain subset of the human population started finding creatures such as myself and even Thornapple sexually appealing. The idea that someone like me, who subsists entirely on human blood in order to survive—or that someone like Thornapple, who is quite literally a wolf forty-eight hours out of every month and might actually be about ten percent wolf the rest of the time—could be a good and appropriate sexual partner for a human…

Well it’s ridiculous. Isn’t it?

I shake my head, closing my eyes. Now that he’s sitting directly across from me I can easily smell his recent tryst on his person. He reeks of human sweat, cheap cologne, and bad decisions.

“But… why, Thornapple?”

He shrugs. “Why not? It was fun. I was horny.”

I grit my teeth, trying to force down the bile that rises at the thought of my dear old friend Thornapple being horny. “That’s not… that’s not what I was asking.” I lean across the table and ask, in a quiet voice so the table of young people next to us won’t be able to hear, “Why do they find us sexually appealing?” I shake my head in frustration, because—no. No, there’s more to it than that. “Why do they find us interesting at all?”

Thornapple shrugs again before grabbing for the dinner menu. He pages through it until he gets to the section in the back that lists the red meat entrees.

“I’m not totally sure,” he admits, not looking up from a particularly vibrant image of rare steak. He licks his lips, salivating a little. Okay, maybe he’s more like twenty percent wolf the rest of the month. “I think some humans are attracted to things that are dangerous, or to things that could hurt them. I think they think it’s hot to imagine that they’re a monster.” He looks up at me in amusement. “They think it’s even hotter to imagine getting fucked by a monster. Or… whatever it is they think we are.”

My eyes go wide with surprise and horror. “Hot?”

“Hot,” Thornapple confirms. “I don’t know that I get it either, man. But if it means I get laid sometimes, who am I to argue?”

His cavalier attitude enrages me. Why am I friends with this infuriating man?

“Don’t you see how wrong this is?”

Thornapple sets down his menu, and cocks his head to the side, considering me. “Wrong?”

“Wrong,” I repeat.

“Why is it wrong?”

I try to think of a way to explain my reservations to him that won’t actually be the entire truth—which is that I really quite enjoy eating people, and cannot understand why anyone would be okay with that trait in a sexual partner. Thornapple always gets squeamish when I discuss my diet, and even if he is insufferably annoying he is a friend.

“We’re… I mean, we aren’t human,” I finally say, lamely. “It’s just wrong.”

“I mean… I’m human,” he says, pointing to his broad chest. He sounds hurt and more than a little defensive. “Most of the time anyway. And you used to be one hundred percent human.”

“You most certainly are not human,” I correct him. “Two days out of the month you run around naked and shit in the woods.”

“Yeah. Me and half the frat boys in this country.”

“Thornapple,” I exclaim, exasperated. “You know what I’m trying to say.”

“I do,” he agrees. He closes the menu and places it back down on the table. “But I don’t agree with it. What’s wrong with having a little fun?” He smirks at me. “When’s the last time you got laid anyway?”

If I were physiologically capable of blushing I am certain I would be doing it right now. My mind is definitely not going back to the last time I engaged in sexual congress, and I am absolutely not thinking about how good that had felt. Sally Mathers was her name. I think, anyway. Lovely girl.

I cross my legs and clear my throat pointedly. I shake my head to try and clear it, and then glare at my friend.

“It is absolutely none of your business when I last did… that,” I say, frostily.

“Sure it is.” He leans forward again, looking genuinely concerned. “I’m your friend, aren’t I?”

“That’s debatable.”

He ignores me. “How long have you been alive now, Ludwig? Four hundred years? Five hundred?”

In truth, I’ve lost count. “Something like that.”

He has the nerve to tsk me. Then he jerks his head in the direction of the table of young people to our left and says, “They keep staring at you you know.”

“I am well aware.”

“They think you’re hot, too.”

I grit my teeth. “I want to eat them, Thornapple. Do they not realize that?”

“No, probably not,” he admits. “But to be honest, the way that one girl is looking at you I’m not certain she would care if you did.”

“They should care,” I mutter. “I could kill her, even if I didn’t mean to, if I were to…” Engage in sexual congress with her, I think, but do not say.

If Thornapple knows how I was going to finish that sentence he shows no sign of it. He seems to have forgotten I’m still sitting with him at all. All his attention is focused directly on the people sitting beside us. With a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach I realize, suddenly, what he’s planning.

“Thornapple,” I say, warningly.

“We should get them to invite us to that party they’re talking about,” he muses

I slam my fist down on the table with so much force the silverware jumps. “Thornapple.”

But Thornapple is already pushing out of his chair and making his way across the aisle to where the young costumed humans are sitting.

When he reaches them they look up, delighted, their eyes wide.

Thornapple looks back over his shoulder at me, very briefly—and winks. If my stomach could sink it would be doing it right now.

“My friend and I were wondering if you wanted to join us for dinner tonight,” I hear him saying in his loud, distinctive voice.

I am going to murder him, I think, murderously, as the young people from the table next to ours pull their chairs over and sit beside us. The young woman who is dressed like a bunny rabbit—the one who’d been so eager to invite me to their party—is now sitting so close to me the outside of our thighs are practically touching. She giggles a little, and then looks up at me with wide, doe-like eyes.

They’re brown.

She’s… actually very pretty, now that I really get a good look at her, with a smattering of little freckles across her nose and a bright, laughing smile.

“Hey,” she says, with none of the nervousness a human girl with even an ounce of self-preservation instinct who is also sitting this close to a vampire really ought to be exhibiting. As if to further prove that she puts her hand on my knee, giggling again and making me nearly jump out of my chair in surprise.

Then she slides her hand up my leg. Just a little, but enough that even to me, a man who’s been undead for centuries, her meaning could not be clearer. She squeezes my thigh gently—but with purpose.

And then, to my utter surprise and abject horror, a very specific appendage in the lower half of my body does something… unexpected, you could say, in response to her touch. It is unexpected because the blood that is within my body does not actually flow and this specific reaction has not happened to me since I knew Sally. Which was sometime around the American Revolutionary War.

“Uh,” I say, like an idiot. Like a human teenager. I try not to think of Sally Mathers, or of what I used to like doing with Sally Mathers. I try, in fact, not to think about anything at all. But now this girl is laughing animatedly and saying something to her friend, and she smells like breath mints and happiness, and—

I try to focus all my attention on Thornapple and on how much I loathe him. I try to plot exactly how I’m going to make him pay for this.

But then the girl squeezes my leg again, my body reacts further, and all thoughts of retribution fly right out of my head.

I turn to face her.

She… really is very pretty. Her hair, her face. Her eyes.

My brain short-circuits a little and I say the first stupid thing that pops into my head.

“Do you… um. Like souffles?”

(As it turns out, she does.)