“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.