“America’s Next Vam­pire,” screams the poster. Some sort of tele­vised com­pe­ti­tion. You sigh.

For awhile, you had thought vam­pires were the only mag­i­cal group with sense. Appar­ently, you were wrong. Dear lord, to what lengths cer­tain vam­pire sects have sunk.

Being a vam­pire used to mean something.

Only cer­tain peo­ple could be vam­pires. Only cer­tain peo­ple would be hon­ored with the strength; the power; the immor­tal­ity; the elite fam­ily and connections.

They had one thing going for them: they were exclu­sive. Now they’re let­ting any­one in who can win some stu­pid competition.

It’s prob­a­bly the sun­ners. Imbeciles.

It’s not nat­ural. Not vampiric.

Vam­pires are not sup­posed to be happy. They are sup­posed to brood in dark shad­ows, sleep in coffins, the whole expe­ri­ence! Regret­tably, they have had to cease drink­ing blood — most donors began get­ting too creeped out, in spite of being will­ing, intro­duc­ing into the blood a rather awful after­taste that reeked of moldy rasp­berry ice cream cup­cakes — but things change, and one day, you’re sure, donors will once again sup­ply deli­cious blood.

Indeed, with so few well-trained donors, blood is now such a del­i­cacy that only the rich­est vam­pires ever indulge in it – which is say­ing a lot, as the poor­est vam­pire is merely a millionaire.

Instead, you see every­day young vam­pires walk­ing around out­side in the sun, smil­ing of all things, eat­ing these dis­gust­ing blood-flavored lollipops.

Lol­lipops! Vam­pires! Lol­lipops! It just doesn’t fit!

Then they go home, they go to bed on a nor­mal bed – it’s as if they are nor­mal! What’s the point of vam­pires if they’re normal?

Vam­pires should brood.

The 40% sui­cide rate is nat­ural. It’s who they are. Plus, liv­ing for­ever does get old after a time (you’ll ignore that the vast major­ity of these sui­cides occur dur­ing the first thirty years of vampirism).

Walk in to the sun, they say. Expe­ri­ence hap­pi­ness, they say.

You’ll go in the sun when you want, all right.

But if a vam­pire does, you’ll put him in his place.

They don’t belong there.

They should go off and brood.