Let's Go For A Pint (Vampire/Humor)

5.1 A Ghostly Familiar

All living things must sleep. Whether someone considers vampires as living is up to the individual. I can't really say if I'm a living thing. I guess I am as I require food to stay alive, but my outward appearance hasn't changed in over fifty years. Or was it a hundred? A granny told me I was the spitting image of a woman she once knew, but that's a whole different story.

And yes, I do sleep. Is it a nightly sleep? Not exactly. My definition of a good night's rest is total seclusion. No, I don't sleep underground in a coffin and apparently that's the only way I seem to get proper sleep. I usually plan my sleeps around weekends, and I have negotiated with Carmen when I need them. For three, sometimes four days straight, I don't leave my bed. Even with that negotiation, I still couldn't get the sleep I required.

There was a weekend when proselytizers invaded the complex. I kid you not. Even though they were different religious groups, I suspected they banded together on purpose to annoy the Hell out of the building. First the Mormons knocked, then some door-to-door salesman trying to sell a self-help book. The last to come knocking, before I decided to stick a sign on the door for people to fuck off, we're the J-Dubs. The J-Dubs belief in 144 000 people will only go to heaven makes me think they do this to flaunt this fact in people's faces. We're the special ones and we're recruiting you into the fold just to stay special. I've given up at this point in convincing them to not convert me. I told a pair of them once I was a vampire and they didn't take the revelation well. Still ended up with a meal though.

Once I was certain no one would bother me, I finally headed off to dreamland. Like the yellow boy who claimed to be a Viking in them, I have my dreams that I'm someone else. That night I started my weekend sleep, I dreamt I was a rock star. I led a goth rock band back in the eighties. The venue was a small club with a large crowd. I was a fiery redhead dressed in black with fishnets definitely part of the outfit. My backing band was the Sisters of Mercy and I was singing their rendition of "Gimmie Shelter". My voice didn't go off-key as it usually happens in dreams. Maybe it did, but the crowd appeared oblivious to that.

So I finished singing, and the crowd cheered for me. It was euphoric while it lasted but when I looked to the crowd, one person stood out front and centre. He had short, poofy, black hair though it was obviously a wig. His outfit comprised of black leather pants, a mesh shirt, and a long black coat. He also wore various metallic chains around his neck, the jewellery kind. One of them was a pentacle even. His face wasn't heavily covered in makeup except for the circles around his eyes. One could say he had this zombie look to him.

Then the dream got weird. It started out with that guy and then the whole crowd. Somehow he was every fucking member in the whole fucking crowd! Not only did he asexually reproduce himself, he replaced the Sisters. I had no idea what kind of mindfuckery took place, but the dream ended when one of them appeared in front of me on stage.

I woke up from said dream punching my hand through something cold and ectoplasmy. Is ectoplasmy even a word? The best way to describe it was like sticking a hand into a jello cake. I turned my head to the right and, as if my dream became real, the concert attendee was standing, more or less floating on his tiptoes, right beside my bed. I took my hand out immediately and stuck my head under the pillow.

"You're not real," I said to myself, hoping he would disappear.

"We haven't seen each other in three years and I find you in a tiny bedroom. You deserve something more palatial, Mistress."

"Don't call me that, Draven." I still had my head under the pillow, hoping he'd disappear if I thought about it long and hard enough. My brain didn't explode; therefore, it didn't work.

"I'm indebted to you, Mistress, for liberating me from my mortal existence. While it's not exactly what I wanted and hoped for, it's an upgrade from my previous life. Living, I should say."

I lifted one side of the pillow, enough to see Draven. "Can you just leave me alone for the next couple of days? I'm fucking tired and I haven't slept in three weeks."

"No fucking way am I leaving! Last time you shooed me away, I had no idea where I went. When I returned, you weren't there."

And that's when hereminded me. I had kept him from finding me with a simple spell. If the spellwas single use or multiple I couldn't remember, but it was worth a shot. I tookmy phone from the nightstand and scrolled through my memos. Once I found thespell, I read aloud, "Mé coisc ort ómo láthair, Séamus Pádraig Mac an Easpaig!" Yeah, the witch wrote itin Irish and I butchered the pronunciation, but it seemed to have done thetrick. The moment I looked up from my phone, he disappeared. Once I was sure heleft, I had my weekend nap. But the spell didn't work.

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Irish revision/check shoutout goes to Cola_Leaf

Dreams are sometimes hard to remember in detail, but we all have at least one we can recall. If you want to share that, feel free to do so. If not, are you a day person or a night owl?

You know the drill by now. Comments are appreciated.

Song featured: "Gimmie Shelter" cover by Sisters of Mercy

edited: 09/06/2018