When I walk through town I think I know what most people see. I may even know what they think of me. I should know. I walk into their souvenir shops. I drift into their parks, and libraries, and they see the trio of zits on my forehead, the shiny grease on my nose. Sometimes the looks that come my way are so cold that a trip wire goes off in my heart, and I become a teenager again. All the nerves and fidgets that should not belong to me anymore come roaring to the surface. I touch my acne gingerly and cast my eyes downward.

The tourists are more clueless than the natives, but even they catch a whiff of danger. They suspect it has something to do with my young, strong bones, my hunger for women, or my anger at the world. They never suspect that I am a vampire.

The town I was born in was fostered and financed by a wine loving man. He walked alone at night, when the town was silent and the stars sparkled like glowworms. Sir Antonio de la Cruz lumbered across the cobblestones as red wine sloshed in a jar and spilled from his mouth. I would see him alone in front of a house, or in front of a church. And he would see me emerging from the graveyard, or from the shadows. We followed each other. And I couldn’t help but feel a dark, ugly connection with him.

“Robbie...” he said once, “ aren’t you the nutty one?”

The street light above us flickered and he swung his head up to squint at it.

“I’m not nutty, I don’t think.” I said.

His jaw was still pointed at the sky and I could see the glutinous gulps of wine bob up and down beneath the skin of his neck.

“Yeah. You are.” He whispered.

He brought his face back down to my eye level. Antonio didn’t say anything for a long time. I shuffled my feet and delicately picked at my blooming acne.

I think there must be a loneliness that is only felt by monsters. Even when two of us are staring into each other’s eyes, mere feet apart, I feel farther away from him as I have ever felt with another being. It’s as if we are entirely different animals.

“Well I’m really hoping I’m not crazy.”

The light flickers again,

“HAH... ha!” He laughs and stumbles back into the pole with a loud thump.

Instead of screaming or crying, Antonio giggles. He slides slowly down the lamppost until he is sitting on the sidewalk. All the hopes I’d had for creating a friendship were gone. He would never be able to recognize me for the monster I was.

We still walked together occasionally. More often than sometimes I felt my tendency to stand upright was rendered completely unnecessary.

He drunkenly swayed like a tree in a storm, and spread his arms wide like he was balancing on some invisible tightrope. Antonio was a very fat man. It was akin to watching a spinning dreidel slow its centrifugal force over, and over again.

He took his sweet time drinking himself to death... I’ll be honest, I don’t know if it wasn’t me that killed him. There is a statue of him in the market, and beneath that a young girl sells churros.

There are a lot of things that I thought were true about being a vampire. Sunlight for instance, has not charred my bones to ash as if they were tinder. Garlic has committed no sin against me, save for strong breath. As far as I know, my complexion has not caused any girl to swoon. And I wear a cross around my neck. It doesn’t burn.

Most of the things they tell you, the bible thumpers, the doe eyed girls, are completely wrong. The only thing I feel that is true to mortal stereotypes is the uncontrollable lust for blood. Every time I think about blood, My heart crawls to the back of my throat, my stomach curdles, and I can’t breath. I’ve puked several times already since the first taste. So it’s best that I’ve completely sworn off the stuff. Instead I gorge myself on red Seven Eleven slushies and the kindness of strangers. I attend mass on Sunday just for the wafers...

If I ever went to school or decided I wanted mail, I suppose I’d have to supply the government with a home address. And If I were to do that, then my packages might end up somewhere near Mrs. Andreas’s graying mausoleum. Her spacious two bed one door resting place is perfect for all my needs. Chief among them the fact that her husband's casket was entirely empty the first time I entered the graveyard. I consider it a plus that moldy fluid hadn’t leaked everywhere in the room. Which I guess must be due to the fact that Mrs. Andreas is all bones and jewelry. Her necklaces fall into her ribs like raindrops sliding down a glass. Would she hate me if she were alive? Looking at her long, tattered white gown, I pretend she wouldn’t have.

As I tuck myself into her husband's aging coffin, I run my tongue softly over the sharp ivory triangles in my mouth. My body fidgets. The coffin creaks, and for the third night in a row I think, This is your home now. My face gets hot, really hot. My face is burning. No, I’m crying and my eyes are festering sores, dripping the puss of grief. This is the only place you’ll ever belong. I can’t breathe, much less swallow. Spit and tears drip down my red, open mouth. Everything is red and wet and disgusting, and very, very sad. I cry harder. That was my tenth day since leaving home.  

As the sun creeps down again, I lay in the coffin wide awake. Breathing in the old wood, and the faint, but impossible to ignore, smell of decayed flesh. That smell will stick to things forever. I make no noise. Not even a whimper. I am becoming less afraid of the dark but no less afraid of dying. I try to close my eyes as consciously as closing shutters, but they stay hinged open.

There is a soft knock on my coffin, “Robbie? ...Robbie?”

More knocks. I am quiet. The knocks stop, but the voice starts talking to itself,

“You’re not a vampire Robbie. You crazy freak, you— you’re just insane”.  

For awhile the cicadas are the only things that can be heard. They still chirp as the floorboards creak, and I can tell that my brother has sat down.

He whispers softly, “Robbie. Robbie, Robbie, Robbie…”

He whispers until my name doesn’t mean anything anymore, and it’s just a collection of sounds. He whispers as if his words could hack through wood.

“...What?” I ask.

My brother pauses, “How are you? You’re not dying on me, right?”

The question strikes me as funny and I start to snicker. At first I think my laugh is reverberating back to me, but my brother Leo is laughing too.

“You know I will never die.”

“Well, I know that you think that.”

We talk for awhile longer. There is something deep in his voice. Anger, or sadness maybe. I can tell that his evening ritual of trying to coax me out of madness has gone on for a lot longer than it usually does. Mostly because the cicadas have gotten quieter.

“Hey, can I take you to a movie tonight?” He asks.

“Why?” I scratch the rotten wood in my coffin, trying to carve something nice into it.

“Just because I think you need to see it.”

The carving I’m making is beginning to look like a mess, and not what was initially intended, a simple bird.

“Thats suspicious” I mumble.

“It’ll be fun.”

“No it won’t.”

I scratch the wood deeper.

“People give me weird looks.”

He sighs, it’s long and sounds pained. I know he wanted to say that it was because I act strangely. Like a vampire. And he’s not wrong, but I'm not acting. I just am.

“Please?” He says.

My fingers keep carving deeper and deeper into the brittle wood. All of the sudden he shrieks. And I realize my whole hand has broken through the lid of the coffin. He leans over the fist-sized hole. Finally, we see each other eye to eye. Splinters stick out of my hand like porcupine quills.

I speak through the gaping hole, “Only if you buy me a slushie.”

We walk down the train tracks into town. We walk slowly, sucking on lollipops and turning our lungs into chimneys with thinly rolled cigarettes. My fangs clip the silver cross in my mouth. I carefully turn it over in my tongue. At first the taste is a trace hint of copper. Then it is bracingly salty. I spit it out, and the necklace falls back onto my chest. The steel rails under our calloused feet are warm, and hard as bone. It takes approximately thirty minutes to get from here to the Movies. One of the rails creaks. One has gum fastened to its side, hardened by winter and summer and spit. Every once and awhile gravel crunches like a mouthful of cereal as I lose my balance on the beam.

Walking Bones! The lights flash and dance on the cracked sidewalk. Leo drops his cigarette and puts it out with his leather boot. The brightness of the Playhouse lights look good on his face.

“Walking Bones? The thrilling end to the famous horror trilogy?” I ask.

He walks away, and comes back with two tickets.

“You brought me to a horror movie?”

He shrugs and hands me money to buy the slushie.

“Guess so.”

The main character is a vampire. I should’ve fucking guessed.

    We are sitting four rows from the front. I can see everything with grating detail. In between scenes, Leo whispers in my ear things I really don’t want to hear,

“You can see your own reflection in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see a monster?”

Yes, I think, but I don’t answer. I don’t answer a single question.

“Do you attack people?”

No.

“What are you doing with your life?”

I don’t know.

“Mom wants you to come home.”

No she doesn’t.

I focus on an old man in front of us. He sits alone in the second row. He holds himself tight, tighter as the movie nears closer to the credits. He grips himself as if his body was his life raft. Two girls in the back row of the theatre smack on their popcorn listlessly as they watch the man shake and huddle beneath them. He’s close to rocking his chair like a madman. Or maybe he really is a madman. I don’t know. the man is crying silently at the screen. The girls were no closer to teary eyes then they had been when they walked in. I watched him tremble in the mess of a scene he was making.

Leo says something. I ignore it, I can’t keep my eyes off the shuddering man. I start to shake too.

“Robbie, you’re ruining your life.”

Something happens on screen and the girls start yelling. I see the white face paint glinting off his chin, and I see the blood on his lips. The vampire has just sank his teeth into a young woman. There is so much blood. My body convulses. My body shakes too.

“Leo,” I whimper, “I hate you Leo.”

Leo’s hands are trying to soothe me. The old man below has stopped moving. Is he dead? I can’t tell. I start weeping. And now the popcorn chewing girls are looking at me. I can feel their stares on my bent spine. And I hate them, too. You stupid mortals dont believe me.