Quiet Nights

George paused with the empty cardboard box in his hands, gazing out the window as the pale light of the moon washing over the friendly peaks of a typical suburban neighborhood. Even at this late hour, a few cars zoomed by as their drivers buzzed off to a midnight activity, probably a job if he had to guess, or something much more deceitful. 

It seemed like a lifetime ago that he had needed to slink forth from the shadows, stalking his victims into submission in lonely dark alleys, striking fear into the hearts of man and woman alike with his very presence on a mist filled night, and oh how they screamed at the sight of his beautiful white fangs dripping with fresh crimson blood. It was a sound that set his very blood aflame with a hunger so deep that he ached to the depths of his very bones to hear it once more.

Sadly, that was rarely the case nowadays. 

 Somehow through the years, the humans had become so much harder to hunt, his evening meal becoming more scarce that even a skilled elder vampire such as he had been forced to rely on the abundance of wild animals to slake the powerful thirst that had driven him to the brink of insanity. When had humans become so suspicious of their fellow man? Had no longer heeded his cooed phrases of flattery and eagerly followed him to the darkest depths of a building for his needs? Not even if he invoked his powerful vampiric skills of hypnosis would even guarantee him his prey. At the first sign of his intended victim becoming slightly dizzy and their speech would slur, some unknown person would fly into existence and accuse him of trying to ‘date-rape’ a person. A term that still confused him to this day.

Yes, humans were indeed a mysterious puzzle, one that still confused him to this day despite his nearly 1,000 years of age.

But with that confusion led to a new beginning. No longer would he need to linger in darkened estates, wearing titles of long dead victims and changing his name with every beat of his non-beating heart in the hopes that no human would recognize that he did not age, could not be wounded except by silver and wood straight through his heart. Yes, he still had to be extremely wary as to who might catch him slumbering in his coffin through the scorching daylight hours, but now it wasn’t so strange if someone did not see him out during the day. His departures at night now not quite so strange as they had once been frowned upon, that in itself was freeing.

And now he could own places like this, the newest branch in a sprawling neighborhood that was both quiet and calm enough that the parents allowed their children to play in the streets. The kind of place where neighbors watched out for neighbors, greeting each other with a smile and a nod as they passed on about their daily walks of life. 

It was a beautiful place, brimming full with a life of it’s own and pulsing with the thick rich crimson that also sustained his immortal life as well. Vampires were nothing more than a fairy tale, one that a mother might read to her child before bed, and who would ever expect an ancient predator of the night such as he to settle right in the heart of their own little neighborhood.

Vampires certainly weren’t real after all, so who wouldn’t look the other way when Mrs. Johnson was suddenly struck with anemia after a vigorous bout of exercise? Or when Mr. Fitzgerald disappeared after a night of drinking just a tad too much? Sometimes it was nothing more than the paperboy encountering a little accident on his early morning rounds before the sun had even stretched one peach colored ray into the velvet blue sky. If one had noticed the ever so precise placement of the two little pierce marks over an artery, one might suspect a more vampiric type of aggressor committing such crimes.  

But for now he was content, living the content life of a happy widowed grandfather by the name of George Smith. A man, balding and round, chubby cheeks always crinkled up in a smile and a wave of his hand directed to his neighbors in passing. No one would ever comment on his odd hours of leaving in the dark of the night only to return at the first sign of dawn. He was just an old man, friendly to all and a great entertainer at the memorial day barbeque with his tall tales of days gone past. No one would look to see that his perfectly white teeth were not dentures as one would normally have at his age, and that his canines were just a tad too pointed than most peoples. No one ever asked him about the mysterious diet he claimed to be on, the one that restricted food anytime someone was in his presence. 

No one suspected a living, breathing vampire was in their midst, and that was just how he liked it.

 “Isn’t it wonderful how humans can be so blind?” He asked to the air, turning away from the window to place the box aside and flip open the top flap. A young woman rested inside, her knees folded up to her chest and her hands held behind her shoulders with a thick round of silver duct tape. Her long blonde hair was still styled in the neat little bun she had slipped it in the previous evening, and her dark suit was still neatly pressed and wrinkle free. In fact, the only thing missing was the pair of wooden heeled stilettos that had decorated her feet. Those had been the very first items to go. “A to-go meal, my favorite.” A thick pink tongue slapped against the elongated incisors dangling between his thin lips as he wound his arms around the woman and lifted her from the box.

Not even a squeak of protest passed her lips as George situated her on his lap, and now none ever would. Her glassy eyes, hypnotized to the fullest extent of his power, only emptily gazing into the beyond as he buried his fangs in her neck and sucked every drop of blood from her veins.

After all, vampires did not exist and they certainly didn’t live in quiet neighborhoods like this.