Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 23:34:20 PDT
From: Child Of The Grave <tiethenoose@hotmail.com>
Subject: The Little Things part 1 (boy bands and sf-fantasy)

You are about to be disclaimed.

This is not real. This isn't meant to resemble anyone, alive, dead,
or undead, male or female or otherwise. On the other hand, I
could be lying and it could have happened last week and it could
all be a big conspiracy to keep you shrouded from the truth. Then
again, you have to consider the source: Me.
I am not implying anything about anyone's sexuality. Except
perhaps mine. Dammit, I have a hard time remembering *I'm* gay
half the time, how'm I s'posed to figure anyone *else* out?
If you're not 18 or above, that means you're a minor. But you prolly
knew that, and you prolly know what I'm gonna say, so I won't
even bother, you naughty person, you.

You have officially been disclaimed.


This is my first posting on the 'net, so if I fall into the category of
crap on a stick, please don't hurt me. By the way, E-mail me at
TieTheNoose@hotmail.com    I would appreciate comments
muchly!


By the way, this has vampires 'n junk. I personally they're
interesting.

(I believe in vampires! I also believe in Santie Clause, cuz the little
voices told me he was for the reals... and the Easter Bunny lives
in my underwear drawer...)

*********************************************


I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why anyone would want to
become a vegetarian. Animals eat other animals. Humans are
technically animals. So why should they not also eat animals? It
is, after all, an instinct.

I suppose some people become vegetarians because eating meat
is against their religion. I guess some do it because they feel it is
wrong to kill animals for food when there are other sources, some
because they cannot fathom eating something that was once a
living, breathing being, and some simply because they think the
animals are cute.

I, on the other hand, would never think twice about eating animals.
I don't know, maybe it's because I've never had any pets, not even
a fish. I've only ever even touched two live animals, which was a
cat and a rabbit, and they both ended up scratching the hell out of
me in the scramble to get away. They always do that, the animals.
Stay away from me, that is. They either slink slowly away or tear
up the grass in a frantic scramble.

I never quite figured out why until puberty hit. You see, animals
have a sort of a sixth sense about people. They can tell when
something isn't quite right. Some people have the sense too, but
these people are very few and far between.

Unfortunately for me, my mother was one of them. She was
slightly crazy besides, and added to this, was convinced I was the
spawn of Satan; the son of a demon or some such nonsense. I
never got any affection as a child, as my mother was afraid she
would be struck down by God. I suppose she was, in a way,
because she died in a bank robbing when I was nine.

I was sent to live with my Aunt Vicki at that point, thank the Lord.
A bright, cheery woman, slightly overweight, who loved gardening
and playing with my hair, which was quite long because my
mother had neglected to cut it. My uncle, Vicki's husband, had
died a few years before that, so I think she was happy to have the
company, and exited to have someone to cook for once again.

My aunt, thankfully, *was* overjoyed to have me come to live with
her, and assured me that, contrary to my mother's thinking,
nothing was wrong with me.

Well, *she* didn't know anything was wrong with me.

My name in Asher, and I'm a Sanguinarian. For lack of a better
one-word description, I'm a vampire.

Now, before you jump to conclusions, let me explain a few things.
I wouldn't want a horde of crazed idiots running at me with a
chunk of garlic and a stake.

It's hard to explain this clearly, as this is a complicated subject. As
I'm sure you've figured out, we need to ingest blood. It isn't
something I chose, it isn't something I particularly wanted to
happen, but one has to get used to it. Blood, human or animal, is
necessary to a Sanguinarian's survival. Don't get me wrong,
however; we also need regular food. If we don't get blood, we will
feel sluggish, sick, irritated, or whatever.... It differs from person to
person, but the symptoms will continue to get worse until we die.
There's no way around it; without blood, we would die. *I* would
die.

That brings me to another subject. We are not - I repeat, *not* -
dead, or undead, or partially dead, or come back from the dead, or
any of that crap. We are very much alive, as alive as any human
being, although we are not exactly human.

You see, Sanguinarianism, or vampirism, can best be thought of
as a virus that causes a disease, for which there is no cure. The
"virus" alters DNA, causing the "disease". Many people do not
understand, or believe, that human DNA can be altered in such a
way as to produce such a being, and that is why people don't
generally believe in vampires.

One thing you must understand, though: most things you see in
movies or read in books about vampires are not real. Crosses and
holy water do nada; in fact, some of the vampires I know are
Christians and regularly go to church. Do we turn into bats, you
may ask? No, I've never even seen a bat outside of the Discovery
Channel. Do we sleep in coffins? The only coffins I've seen were
at my mother's funeral. Do we fly? Tell me if you see any wings.
Do we have reflections? Of course we do! This question is one of
those big fat "duh's".

Now, garlic on the other hand.... We are slightly allergic to garlic.
But it isn't just garlic, it's all of a group of plants in the Allium
family, like onions, shallots, leeks, chives, and others. It isn't a
huge deal; it won't kill us unless we ingest huge amounts of it.

And ah, yes. We come to the big one: the myth that we only come
out at night. Does the sun turn us into Crispy Critters? No. A
simple answer; no. I do sunburn very easily, and the sun hurts my
eyes a great deal, as with almost every other Sanguinarian. We
can walk freely in the day, though we do feel more fatigued, sick,
and agitated in the daytime.

Vampirism, in a person who inherits it, becomes active at puberty.
(This is why I didn't know why the animals avoided me until
puberty hit.) Many believe it has to do with the release of
hormones. Normally, shortly after puberty begins, the person goes
through a rather large growth spurt, but then growth slows. After
this point, the person ages approximately one year for every six or
seven years that pass. If a vampire were to hit puberty at age
twelve, then at age seventy-five, he would appear to be about
twenty-one. Generally, Sanguinarians live to be anywhere from
about 450 to 650 years, at which point he would look
approximately 65 to 100 years old.

Anyway, enough of the technical crap, and back to my life. None
of us can figure out why the hell I'm a Sanguinarian. By "us", I
mean I and the four other vampires that I live with. My parents
were not vampires, my grandparents were not vampires, nor were
my great-grandparents. They were all semi-normal, perfectly
healthy human beings. I am the first Sanguinarian in my family,
and no one knows how I came to be one. We suspect that one of
my parents, or grandparents, was a carrier of the so-called virus
without being infected, as is very possible.

About those other vampires I live with... among them was my best
friend, Janie, who I met shortly before I transformed, in the eighth
grade. I'd been thirteen, going on fourteen, and nearly crazy.

I wasn't getting along with other kids at all. I didn't know what was
happening, why I felt a hunger no sort of food could satisfy. Rather
unfortunately, at this point, I had also discovered I was gay, so
that only added to my worries and stress.

I was a freaky kid to begin with, with long hair and tending toward
colorful, shiny, and leather clothes, and now this? It was almost
too much to bare. Fortunately for me, though, Janie came along.

Janie was a fourteen-year-old girl with blue hair and an attitude
from hell. She would smoke in the hallways, put out the cigarette
on the bottom of her combat boot and then flick the dead butt at
the principal's chest. And according to her, I intrigued her.

I met her the third day of my eighth-grade year. I was sitting alone
in the cafeteria, poking at something the cafeteria tried to pass off
as casserole, when she just flopped down next to me, a pair of
pink sunglasses perched on her blue head, looking like she'd
gotten dressed in the dark. She introduced herself, and asked
what was up, and for some odd reason I was compelled to tell her.

I told about my almost violent mood swings. I told her about the
fight I had with a guy who called me a faggot the other day. After
he and three other guys pinned me to the floor, I'd bitten him
without thinking. I'd just sunk my teeth into his arm, breaking far
beyond the skin. He'd screamed out in pain, and I'd jumped up
and run home.

I told Janie about how I seemed to be getting sick. I constantly felt
like throwing up, my eyes hurt in bright lights, and I was tired all
day. My Aunt Vicki had taken me to the doctor, but his only
diagnosis had been "puberty."

I even told this crazy blue-haired chick about the rabbit I'd nearly
strangled. I'd been in the science room when the teacher had
asked a few of the students to feed the animals. I'd reached into
the rabbit's cage and dropped some pellets into it's dish, and had
the urge to pick it up. It was cowering in a corner. I reached for it,
and grabbed it by the scruff of its neck, then wrapped both hands
around it. It was kicking wildly, struggling to escape my grasp, but
I tightened my hands around its' neck. Harder, and harder, until--

*Creak!*

I had dropped it back into the cage, startled by the sound of the
door opening, and the teacher entered once again.

Hell, I even told her about being gay. It wasn't like she could
discriminate against me any more, nearly killing a pet rabbit.

Janie, sitting patiently, had merely nodded slowly, chewing at her
sandwich.

"You wanna come over to my house?" she'd asked suddenly.

I had only sat there, staring dumbly, until she grabbed me by the
arm and dragged me out of the lunchroom, leaving my crappy
casserole on the table.

We'd jogged, without stopping, fourteen or fifteen blocks to her
house, Janie dragging me all the way. By the time we were there,
my face was red, I was huffing and puffing, and my legs felt like
jello, while she hadn't even broken a sweat. She let go of my arm
and walked into her house like nothing had happened.

"What.... the fuck.....?" I panted, trying to keep up as she trotted up
the stairs. As we reached the top of the staircase, we entered a
hallway, which rounded a corner to a door, which I had assumed
was her room, because she opened the door, and sat on the bed.

She pulled a book from between the mattresses and handed it to
me without saying a word. After looking closer, I had realized it
was an old journal. I raised my head to speak, but Janie stopped
with one word.

"Read."

I'd flipped absently through the old book, noting that the
handwriting changed every few pages or so. Big and swirly for
three, small and tight for two. Then a caption caught my eye.

"First Transformation.

The subject will exhibit flu-like symptoms, photo-sensitivity, and
nocturnal tendencies..."

That was how the entry started. I looked up at Janie, with a
confused expression.

Her voice softened. "You're a vampire, babe. And I know, because
I am, too."

And that was how all this bull shit got started.

I didn't believe her at first, of course. It took a lot of convincing and
a very messy demonstration on a rat before I would even consider
the possibility. But, eventually, I came to accept it.

Janie introduced me to a few of her friends, three of whom were
Sanguinarians, and one psychic vampire; that is, one who feeds
on the psychic energy of others. It was strange to finally be
accepted by others, regardless of what I was, what I looked like,
or my sexual preference.

My Aunt Vicki was happy that I had finally found friends, as I'd
never had much luck in that area. I came out to Vicki the day I met
Janie, and Vicki told me she couldn't care less. It was a great
weight off of my shoulders to finally be completely open to her.
Well, not *completely*, but as open as I could be while not
endangering my life.

However, once I started spending so much time out of the house I
suppose she got lonely again, and started dating. I would call her
an attractive woman, if I were into that sort of thing, and she got all
sorts of invitations, but she finally settled down with one man, a
man named Gerry. They were married when I was sixteen, and
Gerry asked me to be the best man.

I liked Gerry, I suppose, as he tried to be friendly, and he was
certainly nice enough. I just always had a strange feeling around
him. I always figured it was the feeling of having another "man of
the house", feeling like he was trying to take over. But it just didn't
seem like the right explanation. Oh well.

Anywho, on to the present. Took me long enough, eh?

Janie had gathered all four of us - me, Jason, Liz, and Spider - in
our darkened living room. I'm guessing this was hard to do,
because we're rarely all in the house at once, and even if we are,
Jason's usually sleeping.

"Why are we here?" Liz whined, running fingers through her long
dark hair. "I'm late for a dinner date."

Janie rolled her eyes. "I need to announce something to you butt
pirates, no offence Ash."

"None taken. Carry on."

"Anyway," Janie continued, standing at the front of the room, "I
need to announce something. You all know my sister is getting
married? Well, apparently, one of my damn relatives is too cheap
or something to get a hotel, and needs a place to stay for like a
couple weeks."

"But--" Liz started to whine.

"No 'but's!" Janie cried. "I'm not done yet!" She sighed and flopped
onto an overstuffed armchair. "Me, being the dumbass that I am,
agreed to let him stay here. It's all my moms fault, I think she has
mind control powers or something..." she muttered absently.

"Who is it?" I asked her, hoping it wasn't one of her loud, cigar
smoking uncles.

"I dunno," she responded. "I think it's one of those 48th cousins,
seventeen times removed, and glued back together with used
chewing tobacco. I kinda forgot his name."

"So when does he get here?" Spider asked from the couch. I'd
almost forgotten he was there. Jason was sleeping against his
shoulder.

"Um, well, you see, I... uh... kinda told him he could get here to--"

*Ding-Dong!*

"...night..."

*****************************************

Hey, sorry nothing good happened yet, but you need build up the
character and crap like that. Next chapter coming in a few days!

Caca on a stick, no? Eh, well, comments would be muchly
appreciated, at TieTheNoose@hotmail.com