Stake News

Even if the girl hadn’t been wearing headphones, she wouldn’t have heard a thing.

Farvald Braddocke fell from the midnight skies like a raindrop, liquid and silent. He fluttered behind her, exploding out of a swirl of black ink to take human form. Farvald landed on his feet, mid-stride. He bloomed his cape out behind him for good effect – as was the vampiric way.

The girl, sensing something out of the corner of her eye, started to turn. One hand went to her over-ear headphones, which blared music loud enough for others to hear. ‘Huh?’

Farvald grinned, letting his teeth extend for her to see.

Her eyes went wide and white. ‘Oh, n—’

He never tired of seeing how his prey reacted to their greatest fear greeting them. Each person was a unique snowflake; you never knew what you would get. Farvald viewed his victims as Chri-Chr— C-C-Chris— Ugh. He viewed his victims as winter solstice presents. They waited for the gift receiver to tear them open. Instead of wrapping paper, nature wrapped them in delicate pink skin.

Farvald pounced.

Her punctured neck sprayed something that looked but didn’t taste like red wine into his mouth. The girl shook, shimmied, and jived. Her limbs spasmed and choked gargles bubbled from her throat.

Farvald drank and drank and drank. He squeezed and rolled her up from her feet to her head to eke out the last few drops from this human food tube.

The girl’s eyes glazed over, like a woman on a first date with a man who won’t shut up about Bitcoin. She let out a long, protracted breath and never drew another.

Farvald ran his hand over his now-swollen belly. ‘Oof,’ he groaned. ‘Stick a fork in me, I’m done.’

Rapid footsteps and voices echoed from further down the road.

Farvald’s dusty heart began to knock against its coffin lid. He hadn’t reached this ripe old age by being sloppy and leaving evidence of his existence in plain sight. A vampire’s survival depended on their ability to remain hidden. Scooping up the pile of wet leaves that was now the girl’s sagging corpse, Farvald dashed for the bushes.

A blinding white light shone into his eyes, the assailant only a silhouette behind.

He hissed, waiting for the crucifix or the holy water.

Or the stake.

Instead, a bold, obnoxious voice started talking to someone who wasn’t there. ‘Yooo! It’s your boy, D-Money here, coming at you with the craziest videos on the net! Now, I kid you not, this fool just dropped outta the sky and straight-up unalived this chick. He even drank her blood, like he some sorta werewolf or something.’

Clutching his victim’s remains to his chest, Farvald took a step back, frowning. His dazzled eyes adjusted.

It was a young man with a backwards-facing baseball cap and an ill-fitting hoodie. He was holding up a small black rectangle. It was from this that the bright light shone. It was into this that he spoke. ‘I tell you, man, you wouldn’t believe some of the crazy stuff we get up to on this channel. If I didn’t get this on camera, you’d say I lyin’ or something.’

He gasped. Camera? That wasn’t good; it was time for the old razzle-dazzle. Holding the bundle that had once been a person with one hand, Farvald waved his other hand in front of the boy. ‘You see nothing. I am a regular, cool human guy, out walking his girlfriend.’

The boy shook his head and made a clicking sound with his tongue. ‘Nah, I saw it all, bro, you can’t threaten me into silence. That ain’t how we do it on my channel.’ He turned the phone to face him and made the V-sign. ‘D-Money! Real journalism!’

Annoyance buried its teeth into the neck of his mind. He hated it when something caught him off-guard; it imbalanced him. Farvald cleared his throat and tried again: ‘You will forget you ever saw me or the dame. You walked drunkenly from one tavern to another without disturbance.’

The boy turned the phone back around. ‘Bro, you seeing this? Bro thinks he can frighten me into telling lies! Well, that’s not how D-Money rolls! And if he were one of my six million subscribers, he’d know that I don’t taint this holy temple with nothing but cherry vape. Oh, and ey, speaking of vapes, here’s a word from our sponsor.’

Farvald sagged, the girl drooping over his arm. It wasn’t working. Why the hell wasn’t it working? He relied on his hypnotic powers of suggestion to get by. What was— Oh. That little black rectangle he spoke into. The boy wasn’t looking at him at all – he was looking through that device at the world. And it had his undivided attention.

You couldn’t hypnotise someone who was already under a spell.

Farvald tossed the girl’s lifeless body into the bushes, where it stuck to the thorns like a scarf in the wind.

‘Bro, what! This guy, right? I catch this guy literally – I mean lit-er-all-y – red-handed, murderising this girl. And I say, “Yo, you busted!” And he’s all like, “You ain’t see nothing! Fake news!” And I’m like, “No way, fool, I got you on camera.” He’s like, “Nuh-uh!” And I’m all like, “Uh-uh!” And then he throws – bro, literally throws! – her body into the bushes! Man, that’s crazy bro!’

Farvald stalked towards the boy, inch-long black fingernails razor-sharp and ready.

The kid started to panic. ‘Ey, it’s a prank, bro! Just a prank! I ain’t really recording you, I—’

Farvald punched through the boy’s chest. He yanked out his beating heart, like the antagonist in that archaeology movie that came out the other day or so.

The boy vomited out a crimson soup, which splashed down his front. He collapsed to the floor, still holding his phone. ‘Don’t forget to like and subscribe.’

Panting, Farvald gathered the boy’s effects. He stomped on the phone, hoping to erase whatever evidence “D-Money” had taken. Farvald started for the bush – where the girl flickered like a flag in the breeze – before pausing. He tilted his head to one side, listening.

‘Ey, yooo! It’s your boy—’

‘Heeeeeyyy! It’s yo gurl—’

‘‘Sup, it’s NoobSlayer420—’

‘Hello, my friends, and welcome to another episode of—’

The vampire groaned.

An army of people recording themselves and the world around them marched towards him. They gazed like lovers at their screens. They were all collecting evidence of him. And they were all impervious to his hypnotic powers.

He might be looking at the past through blood-tinted lenses, but he could swear that things used to be better. Kids used to perish from cholera or die in wars. They didn’t waste their lives away, blathering nonsense into the void. Oh well, what was a vampire to do? He had to fly under the radar, or the King’s guard would be after him. And if your fancy new tricks – upon which you’ve become overreliant – don’t work, resort to the old ways. Those muscles had atrophied a bit, but he had no choice. Yes, some of the older ways were best. Forget hypnotism; that was a new fad for young sanguivores.

It was time to return to the classics, such as “unaliving” the witnesses.