Sa Ai N, ; By Pinky 2 rs Sa ee ‘" a + ti iYour Drinking Problem By Pinky Berkowitz As told to Pete Sears Copyright 2017 Authors Note: Invaluable information about the internal workings of blood banks were provided by Jaime Pflueger. The information contained in this volume is for entertainment purposes only.Introduction: So. | knew | was in for a long night when | bit Kylie on the neck and she collapsed on top of me. Maybe | should back up. Iwas in a little place called "The Caboose" which was, of all things, a train-themed strip bar. Yeah. | know, Not my usual cup of tea, in terms of strip bars, But the one closest to my place is that one strip bar where strippers go to die... Your town probably has one too. I ike strip bars for a number of reasons, They're cheaper to get into than upscale clubs, The girls are friendlier than they are in upscale clubs, and if they're doing a lap dance on you, they usually rub their butt on your junk while arching their back just so...Neck practically served up to you on a silver platter. Wouldn't go in there if | were seriously hungry, but nothing wrong with going in, having a taste or three, top off the old tank, as it were, and fuck off for the high ground in a half-hour flat. Biting someone on the neck is a sensual thing and its one of those things that vampires can do, leaving their victim breathless and euphoric, assuming, of course, you're not also leaving them hypovolemic. As a result, there are a couple of girls at the strip club who want me as one of their regulars, and the rest are completely confused as to why. | am perhaps, the frumpiest vampire to ever stalk the night. | can't even look cool dressed in black head-to-foot. So | don't really try anymore. I'm not bestial or horribly deformed like some. I'm just not cute. And when I go to some upscale club or something like that, | just know that everyone can sense how | don't belong there. Hell. | half expect some club kid to point and scream like in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But as | said, there are some girls who like me. Kylie was one. She had a California girl vibe to her even though she was straight up Kentucky born. Lean and lanky with an easy smile and an occasional hug for no apparent reason. She could talk your ear off. | remember one night at the club when | almost didn't make it home before sun- up because she and | had been arguing in a friendly fashion about whether Aleister Crowley had been full of shit, and whether or not it mattered Sue me. | like the brainy ones. Anyways, Kylie passed out on top of me. Nobody had noticed yet. and her blood had tasted... Like it was spiked with Jolt Cola, Unfortunately, | knew what that meant. "Uh. A little help here.” Kind of silly. It wasn't likely anyone could hear me over the music, and if anyone could see me, they might assume | was getting a little something extra."DELROY" Delroy was the club’s board marker and de-facto bouncer. His head swiveled on his enormous trunk and seeing me more than slightly pinned, began moving in our direction. 5 minutes later, Kylie had come to and was slowly sipping a 7up. | laid a Franklin off on Delroy and asked him to make sure that she got home safe. My bite was likely to get her fired. She had been flying on cocaine, that funny taste in her blood, which if | had paying ANY sort of attention, | probably would have noticed. It also meant she hadn't actually eaten anything in 3 days. My bite had caused her blood sugar to crater completely, It also meant, sun-up or no, | was not resting in peace. So. | got my little notebook and started making notes. See, it doesn't matter if you're centuries old or you were turned last night. You've got to have blood to function. Some undead even require flesh, spinal fluid, air drawn from the lungs of their victims, and other less savory things. But MOST of us need blood to survive and thrive. This book is devoted to finding as many ways as possible to figure how to feed and do so as safely as possible. One just can't go rampaging across the countryside anymore. Oh sure, It's FUN. But it does tend to agitate the neighbors. And who needs THAT kind of heat? Hospitals It's amazing the places you can go and things you can do with nothing more than a lab coat and a clipboard In fact, | have been in the situation of having someone else's blood all over me and because | was wearing the right scrubs, no-one looked at me twice. Seriously. If you're a vampire, and you can at least pass for human, it is worth your while to acquire a security guard uniform, a set of scrubs, a lab coat, and a Catholic collar and rosary. Stick a garment bag in the trunk of your car and forget about it. | guarantee that you will need them some night Hospitals in your local principality are a one-stop-shop for a number of things. If you are one of those vampires capable of clouding minds, or bending wills, or at least being able to pass. for human. Some hospitals have their own in-house pharmacy (Although, these are usually tightly controlled and back-stopped with layers of paperwork designed to detect theft.) Some have morgues and their own crematoria. (Which can be a positive boon if you need to dispose of a body.) Some have their own blood banks. (Which I'l talk about another time.) By far, the easiest feeding is in the coma ward. If you're able to move from room to room unobserved, you can feast easily from patients who can't struggle and can't cry out for help.The only real downside is that with no external signals, it can be difficult to tell when you're taking too much. Also, they occasionally wake-up in the middle. Not often... but stil. It scared the crap out me the first time it happened. But back on the upside, they are normally fairly well fed and not suffering from another ailment that might make their blood problematical. Also, They aren't having their blood pressure checked every four hours. And these patients are MUCH safer to drink from than say, Hospice care patients because they aren't loaded to the gills with palliative pain medication. It doesn't help you at all to feed, only to become a pile of semi-boneless goo before making it back to your car. You might want to leamn to read a medical chart. If you have to go trolling for eats in some part of the hospital where the patients aren't completely insensate, It might do to be up on blood- borne parasites and/or the sort of medications that could reduce you to jelly or cause you to freak out like a toddler on PCP. STAY AWAY from anyone who is on a drip of blood thinners or anticoagulants. You just never know with that stuff. Most hospitals are fairly porous when it comes to security. They tend to have multiple exit doors with panic bars, so if you can defeat those, you've got an easy in. They may have a security detail, but many of these are contracted to external firms. The go-getting types of security guards tend to gravitate towards first shift, while the less enthusiastic, more placid sorts tend to find themselves stuck on 2nd or 3rd shift. Usually, their duties involve making rounds on a regular schedule, escorting nurses and lady doctors to their cars, and keeping unauthorized persons out of the room while a patient is coding. Occasionally they get stuck minding a cadaver on the loading dock while waiting for the funeral home to come round and pick up. The only real exception to this general laxity of security is in the area of the Labor Hall, No one who isn't a regular OB/GYN or a nurse in that area is going to go unnoticed, or unchallenged. Best to steer clear. Too many babies have been stolen (By humans with bad wiring as well as the occasional vampire with poor impulse control) and as a direct result, there is much more heightened security awareness in that area. If a hospital has no other cameras, they'll have cameras here at all the entry points. Hospitals are porous because there is an understanding that people are going to be coming and going at all hours of the day or night, 24/7/365. And | think there is a little of the Hippocratic oath at work in the whole idea of letting a person leave if they want to leave, even if i's against medical advice. Psychiatric hospitals are a different animal altogether. By definition, they are places where the patients must be segregated from the general public. As such, they are going to have security Generally, this security is equivalent to that of a minimum security prison with at least one ward given over to segregating the most dangerous and violent cases from the general patient populous. There will be will be thick walls. There will be high fences. There will be cameras. possibly even motion detectors connected to an external lighting system. There will be security personnel, And these fellows won't be rent-a-cops. Security working in apsychiatric hospital are trained and employed in-house. They will be used to wading into violent situations. There will be patients whose perceptions are so scrambled that they may see through your ability to cloud their minds. There will be patients on a cocktail of drugs that could mess you up very thoroughly should you break your fast on them. They'll have internal doors that can only be opened centrally by contacting the security desk But on the other hand... If you're one of those sorts of vampires with the ability to turn into a creature that can fly or move about like a mist, or something like that. Then a psychiatric, hospital becomes a place where your food is captive, can't get away and isn't likely to be believed no matter what unless you kill them. As long as their meds don't mess you up, or happily, treats your OWN symptoms, then you have nothing to worry about. Seriously, Prisons and Psychiatric hospitals can be great staging grounds for attacks on a whole city. I've seen warring factions of vampires use this tactic. If you can lair there and come and go like the wind, Then not only will you stay fed even when other vampires are tightening their belts and getting crabby about it. But if they twig to your activities, they still have to break into the place to get at you. Not an easy feat. Ladies of the night, Soiled Doves, Hard Currency girls. Look. I'm not some kind of puritan or anything like that. To borrow a phrase from Saint Carlin... "Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. | don't understand why selling fucking isn't legal Why is it illegal to sell an orgasm when it's perfectly legal to give one away?” Hell. | understand now that there are professional cuddlers. THAT'S how alienated our society is these days. But while a vampire might not necessarily be interested in the contents of a professional's panties/banana hammock, You should probably stay away from feeding on them even though you can call them on your phone and have them delivered to your doorstep, There are many reasons for this. The potential for disease is one for as long as society deems prostitution a serious crime and worthy of "Moral" punishment. They may not know they are sick. Or they MAY know and get a sick twisted thrill out of infecting someone else. And human venereal diseases may not exactly affect us the same way it does them. I've heard stories. Your mileage may vary. Additionally, recreational drug use is a very real concer. Some pimps like to get their stable hooked or heroin or oxycontin or meth, so as to keep them in the fold. but even a “Clean party girl might like cocaine or ecstasy as a pick me up and these can be bad for you if you're not expecting them. But more pressing is the fact that Prostitutes are WARY of freaks, and as like as not, we tendto make blips on the freak radar. Every hooker, male and female, has that one horror story that they heard about someone that they knew, who went with some nut, and ended up dead of a thousand cuts, and posed upright in a pew, dressed in a nun's habit. People can sometimes sense a "Wrongness” about us and prostitutes can pick up on that. Hell, | would imagine that being a prostitute, you wouldn't last long at all without developing weapons- grade people radar. Additionally, Their time is monitored and they WILL be missed, So if you get overly frisky and do something dumb, there's no easy out. It's expensive. Especially if you're trying to snack in a hotel somewhere. Many times, the front desk will tum away your out-call if they catch a whiff of illegal activity or body glitter. That means EXPENSIVE call girls/boys who could pass for a bank manager. (Front desk clerks can be problematical. And they talk to one another.) Also, you can't take too much. | can't stress this enough. Much more than just a nip and they get wobbly on those great big clear heels of theirs. Which is NOT FUNNY. Ok, maybe it's a little funny. But it really shouldn't be. There's always the outside chance you might catch an undercover cop. That cop WILL have back-up. Also, the venue where you entertain the prospective professional might be a consideration Hotels can be problematical, as | mentioned. Most professionals won't go near somewhere like an abandoned building or way out into the sticks. Feeding on them in the car leaves you somewhat exposed, and if you bring them back to your place... Well. Let's just say that there are a number of prostitutes who make a few dollars on the side, by keeping an eye out for nice things in your house and then telling either their pimp, or some third party all about it, and those miscreants come round some night OR DAY, and relieve you of your stuff. Don't ask me how | know these things. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Prostitutes TALK to one another. They may not necessarily be friends with one another, but they understand the value of keeping an eye out for freaks, cops, assholes who try to skip paying, and vampires. Yeah. If there's going to be any group of Non-Occultist sub-culture that is going to be aware of vampires, it's going to be people who work that third shift. They SEE stuff and they got all night to talk to one another about it. Now, this is not to say that there AREN'T Prostitutes who DIG on being bitten. There are some. House whores tend to be MUCH more amenable to that sort of thing than street- walkers. But then again, Bordello’s are a bit of a different culture. You go to THEM and they, to a much greater degree, control the environment. Just don't be surprised if the person you decided looked good enough to eat, has a cross, holy water, a stake, and essence of garlic behind each ear.Also, and this is a very serious consideration, Vampires have traditionally had an interest in trafficking in human flesh and there may be some other vampire running that show in the town you find yourself feeding in. This may mean visits, and demands, and occasional hard feelings if they feel like you might be infringing on their turf. This goes for upscale courtesans and down-market ho's. The pimp might not necessarily be a vampire himself, but he might be on someone's "Payroll" and he WILL be armed. Blood Banks So. In vampire literature and in some movies, there is usually some talk about blood banks. | mean. Why do bank robbers rob banks? Because that's where the money is, right? So it would seem that if| and a number of other creatures are interested in staying fed and happy, ‘we ought to be interested in making withdrawals at our local branch. That's sensible, right? So | did a bit of looking around and found out why virtually nobody ever does it. It's a hassle. Most blood banks are part of a local hospital. Which means layers and layers of bureaucracy. It's not enough to have a guy on the inside who can sneak a bag out the back door. Although that might work once or twice just because the scale of the crime is so small, it might take a long while before anyone realizes that the bag is gone.... But rest assured, sooner or later, it will. See, it's not like the old days back before hospitals became super sensitized to the concept of legal liability. | imagine in those days it was a lot easier, Let's take a look at what happens to blood that is donated to a blood bank When a human being goes in, they get asked a number of questions and normally a glass straw of blood is drawn for testing purposes. Then they take your blood and put it in a plastic bag, which is affixed with a barcode that is matched to the straw. That barcode goes into a database which may or may not be on the site itself. Then your blood is tested for type, RH, antibody types, and a bewildering number of diseases and toxins. Medical waste is usually incinerated, so maybe if you don’t mind drinking risky blood this might be a good way to sneak... Yeah. | didn't think so So they take your blood downstairs and they put it in a big old refrigeration unit. (Reach-ins usually, not walk-ins.) Sorted by type usually. where they are held for about 35 days, Assuming there isn’t some massive blood shortage in that time, the blood is then taken to long-term storage, treated with glycerol and frozen. While it will keep for up to 10 years this way, | literally have never met a vampire who would be interested in that for nourishment. Freezing blood tends to rob it of its thirst-slaking effectiveness (You'd likely have to drinkgallons of it.) Also, long-term storage of blood tends to be MUCH colder. Pretty sure that you couldn't just toss it in the microwave either, and | have no idea what glycerol does to the taste. Not sure I'm keen to find out But it's kind of academic. Nowadays, medical facilities are almost always outfitted with security that makes our abilities to be stealthy and to bend minds almost useless. Secure areas of hospitals and blood banks all have cameras and key card access. Granted if you can get a key card, you can usually go anywhere within the facility, but each access will be logged ona security database somewhere. SO even if you put the whammy on somebody for some fast blood. it’s going to be noticed. Lost cards or cards held by staff members that quit or are fired are terminated immediately. A blood bank with less security might be a tempting target for bioterrorism. And nobody wants that There's also a subtle line of defense insofar as blood banks are often separate facilities from the main hospital. You can grab a lab coat and wander around a hospital and see dozens of unfamiliar faces in a large hospital without anyone thinking a thing about it. But Blood banks are much smaller environments and all the people in the secure area are going to know one another. Some stranger poking around in a freezer is going to invite comment and suspicion. Really, the only way you could reliably use a blood bank as a means of slaking your thirst on the regular is to be dug in and have a few people in your pocket, or enslaved by your powers. There aren't many who bother. And the ones who do...Well, those blood banks are going to be even more secure. And I've even heard stories of blood banks related to religious hospitals that had thermographic imaging capability added to their video monitoring. Detecting a vampire tooling around in a place like that tends to summon people who are NOT police but who are not incapable of engaging you directly and violently. If you take my not-so-veiled meaning “Blood Dol!” Culture Okay. Here's the thing. Being a “Creature of the Night" is all about learning how far you, personally, are willing to go to keep your belly fed. You wil, in all likelihood encounter situations that will test your moral fiber and your ethical resolve in ways you never dreamed of as a child in Sunday school, The Bible doesn't really have a lot of help for us, and when you start to feel an itch that makes black tar heroin seem like Sanka... Well, a lot of that moral guidance gets body-checked hard into the boards. So, certain vampires... 'm not pissed enough to name names, decided that it might not be a bad idea to foster and cultivate a subculture of people who, to borrow a line from a song, "Had tasted blood and wanted more.”It's a bit skeevy. It's like having a minion, but without much in the way of commitment. In fact, It seems like the few times I've had contact with those people they seemed very...on the prod to become some vampire’s property. And as they get older and the bloom is off the rose, they tend to get desperate. Becoming ‘Owned! is a very real goal for them. The thing is, the way that this whole culture is shopped to them is a bit like BDSM culture. In lots of BDSM, You've got Submissives and Dominants. Vampire/Human relationships tend to fall into the same kind of groove with one glaring exception. Sub/Dom relationships only work if there is trust between partners. A dominant has to trust that a submissive will tell them if something isn’t working for them, or if they are at their limits, and a submissive has to trust that a dominant will pay attention to those limits and respect the safe word when it comes out. Trusting hungry vampires is an epically bad plan, Hungry vampires don't give a fuck about your safe word. That even assumes they can even hear it over the sound of your drumming pulse. But by the time you figure that out, it's usually too late Unlike submissives, you don't get to run the fuck. Unlike submissives, they'll use your own subconscious death wish against you Unlike submissives, You are sworn to a level of secrecy that even deep cover government agents don't have to deal with. If you casually mention a new person in your life to your best friend, You may come home to their cooling corpse in your bathtub, with a postit note on their forehead that reads, “Keep your fucking mouth shut!” There are equal elements of espionage and cult behavior in Blood Doll sub-culture. There are recognition signs, and countersigns, and shit like that. Clubs that are especially for Blood Dolls are usually high-security affairs requiring special keys and in some cases biometric sensors. There are always stories that circulate of some silly twit who couldn't keep her mouth shut, and how they forced her favorite vampire to drink her dry, and then they set HIM on fire The style and fashion of the sign/countersign stuff tend to fluctuate from place to place. Also, certain types of jewelry and tattoos have gone in and out of style. Vampire related ink might be a recognition sign to some and a security risk to others. And if you go tooling around wearing an ankh on a silver chain, you are frankly asking for trouble. Oh sure, the clubs are swanky. No reason why they shouldn't be, and frankly, it helps to create a non-stop party atmosphere. Vampire slush funds are great for this sort of thing. In some places, I've even seen how the Blood Dolls occasionally receive a yearly stipend, Most blood doll clubs are completely exclusive and are the sorts of places that are only accessible by an unmarked door off an alley somewhere downtownMost Blood dolls have jobs and maybe even families, but the culture is like a shared Stockholm syndrome on steroids, The money and the blood make it hard to see or process on those occasions when some vampire flips out from hunger and kills some poor schmuck Usually a closed casket affair. Now, granted, some places have put some safeguards in place. Like, | knew of a place that had a foyer like an airlock, and once a vampire came in off the street, he had to answer some basic questions (over an intercom) before being allowed in. and if he couldn't answer, became belligerent, or flipped the fuck out, then they'd shoot him full of trank darts and then wade in with shock rods. Then they'd break out a 2-foot syringe with cattle blood and Thorazine and have the dude sleep it off. And this, to my way of thinking is the sensible precaution. But it doesn't help a poor blood-doll being stalked on the street by a vampire who's recognized them and knows they're likely to be “Up for it’. On nights like that, it's a long damn run to the car. Some places have even gone to the lengths of having a full medical suite on the premises, and supposedly a supply of universal donor blood, to combat hypovolemia. But if they've got access to blood like that, probably from a blood bank, then why do they need the blood dolls? | can't help but think it's a shuck and jive to keep the dolls from getting all agitated Somebody's minion usually has to end up running the place. That poor bastard has to go around to the various blood dolls and make sure they're taking their proper vitamin supplements. Also, blood dolls are the go-to set for vampires who like their blood spiked with alittle something, so that guy also has to manage a fully stocked bar and deal with various drug dealers. He's also got to keep the Dolls themselves in check, if they aren't careful, they'll endanger themselves by allowing too many vampires to drink from them. | saw one place where they'd come up with the idea of making certain that a blood doll’s club access card would only work twice a week. But that wouldn't stop him from making himself or herself available to any vampire who had shared a phone number or email address. Occasionally, disease rears its ugly head and when that happens, the first thing that happens is that Blood Doll central gets shut and vigorously sterilized. You can imagine how well this goes over with the Dolls themselves. So who ARE these people exactly? They tend not to be rich or powerful. They tend not to be martially capable or have super-useful skills. Otherwise, vampires would just make minions out of them. Most tend to be people with a strong subconscious death wish. Back in the day, that meant Goths and the various flavors of Goth subculture which seemed to go hand in hand with being in love with vampires. Heck. | had a fairly strong urge to throw on a Joy Division album while I wrote this... And while there are still Goths out there, the search for “New Blood” forced a bit of an expansion of the basic idea of who would be suitable for beingbrought into this little world. There has been a move on among more technically minded vampires and/or hired guns of theirs, to create a profile of people with strong SDW. Cutters, anorexics, bulimics, former members of cults, failed suicides, and the like. Often, a few words to an impressionable young person on a message board is enough to set the hook. If that isn’t enough to ensure a good supply, then there may be some IP tracing and some night a vampire may turn up on your doorstep, doing that “hey hey baby, come play baby” shuffle. I've heard that usually the first night they come to the club is usually one where someone already in the know is bringing them in, or if they are coming in from an external recruitment, then someone at the club is chosen to be their “Swim Buddy" Such interactions are monitored and a few specific questions are asked just so the management can vet them a little and make sure they aren't the child of a politician or cop. Nobody wants that kind of problem | will say that if there is one trait that Blood dolls share, it is that they tend to be pleasant to look upon. In blood doll circles, to be plain is not to be “Chosen” and so Blood Dolls tend to leam very quickly how to show themselves off to best advantage. If you're a young person brought into the fold, you are either pretty or you learn make-up skills very quickly. Body types, however, can range all over the map. Some like skinny, some like muscles, some like a bit of extra meat on the bones. Blood dolls are a bit of a security risk, but a slightly necessary one. They can make feeding into a relatively low impact affair, one that is even pleasurable and avoids icky predator feelings for the vampire in question. It's a social scene really, and for vampires who haven't gone bestial or who have forsaken their basic humanity, it’s a cushion... possibly even a crutch. But as | say, they ARE a weak link in a society essentially built on secrecy. There have been situations where blood dolls have been vampire hunting infiltrators. (with varying degrees of success.) Thus, all of the cult/espionage underpinnings. Some vampires won't so much as bite until they've worked a blood doll over with his mental powers. And in truth, that's not necessarily a bad plan. Owners of the clubs expect a certain number of question from newbies just getting their feet wet, but they do pay attention to Dolls who keep asking questions long after those toes are damp. To a certain extent, this can be chalked up to an eager person looking to find out as much as they can about vampires and vampirism because they want to BE one someday... But there's a fine line, and if you cross it, they'll go rooting around in your brain-meats to see if you're a spy.Body Disposal Ok. Let's say you've gone and done something stupid Maybe you went out and got yourself into one of those trendy upscale clubs that | am far too frumpy to patronize and maybe you bit some lovely underage girl on the neck and got yourself a mouthful of hot young blood laced with Ecstasy. ‘And maybe, just maybe, you hustled that young lovely back to your car and bit her again...And again....And maybe one more ‘gain. It's at this point where you look up and realize, “Oh dear. Chelsea doesn't seem to be breathing” Sooner or later, the law of averages will catch up to you. You will kill someone some night | can counsel all the caution. | can give you all the tips and tricks | know. I can give you all manner of advice on how to keep well fed. But in an inexhaustible existence predicated on stealing the life out of the veins of living creatures. Sooner or later you will press your luck and come up snake eyes. But knowing this, you can prepare for that night to come. It won't be pleasant. But you'll be able to fix the problem and dwell on the awful aftermath later. Things to carry in the trunk of your car: 1) Plastic tarp. 2) Milk crate of cleaning supplies. 3) Machete/Fire Axe 4) Coil of Rope (Doesn't have to be climbers test rope) 5) Bolt Cutters 8) Box of rubber gloves (| get mine at the drug store and you get like 50 to a box.) 7) Large travel bag with a wide mouth. Heavily scotch-guarded inside. 8) Heavy Ply Plastic bags. (Don't skimp!) 9) A separate change of clothes for yourself. 10) baby wipes (for final clean-up) 11) Black Light 12) Medical Shears Here are the steps you need to take when you kill someone: 1) If you are being directly observed when you kill. Determine whether or not you can play it off somehow. If you cannot, immediately flee. Fake your own death. Leave town. 2) If you are not being observed, the first thing you must do is stop panicking. I'm not even going to say “Don't Panic” Because you are GOING to panic. But you have to grab a hold of the reins and slow those fucking horses down. There are steps. You can take them. If youkeep it together, you won't have to flee, fake your own death, and leave town. 3) Wait for 15 minutes. You can begin making preparations. But if someone heard an altercation, and called the cops, the cops would be arriving right about then. You can say you were in some kind of fugue state for a bit. That'll probably play. Then, either put the mental whammy on the cops or make a phone call to get ahold of someone who can do it on your behalf. | don't care how good your lawyer is, they won't be able to get you out before sun-up. 4) Question to ask yourself: Is it possible that you can leave this body here and there is nothing to connect you to the body that a fast clean-up job can't get rid of? If the answer is "Yes!" (Let's face it, the odds are against it.) Then DO that fast clean-up and get as far from that corpse as you can. 5) Ifthe answer to the above question is “No.” then it means you will have to move the body. | have seen a vampire walk a corpse out of a hotel lobby talking a blue streak about how much the other guy drank and doing some fairly half-assed ventriloquism to cover the other side of the conversation. That's fairly brazen. | don’t recommend you do that. 6) Go get your kit from your trunk. 7) Drink the rest of the blood in the body. Yes. Yes. | know. Cold and Icky. But it will reduce splatter for what's going to happen next. 8) Spread the tarp. Lay the body on top of it 9) Remove the head and limbs with the axe. Use the bolt cutters to remove the fingertips. Head and fingertip removal will usually prevent the body from being identified which will generally stymie any sort of homicide investigation. The only problem is that all surgical pins, medical prosthetics, and breast implants will have a serial number on them. This can't be avoided usually. 10) Place the head and fingertips into a separate bag for disposal at a separate location, if at all possible. 11) Place the torso and limbs into your large travel bag. If you think leakage is still ikely to be a problem, you can use the heavy ply bags to cover both ends. 12) Once the body is properly stowed. Attend to clean-up. Pay special attention to anything your hands have directly touched. Doorknobs. TV Remotes. Light switches. Bathroom taps. Phones, Etc 13) Check over quickly with the black light. Some stains may not come out ever. But you can still cover pretty well. 14) shower if you can, (Baby wipes if that's not feasible.) change into fresh clothes. 15) Place your old clothes and your rubber gloves inside the bag with the corpse. Return all of the articles to your trunk, Roll the corpse out the door inside the large travel bag. Resist the urge to whistle a jaunty song. Transporting a body is a ticklish business. I've known vampires who are dumb enough to prop the body up next to them in the passenger seat under the premise of, "So we can use the carpool lane” But this is begging and pleading for trouble. There are any number of things that can gowrong on the road, and many of them will attract the attention of law enforcement professionals | have known a number of crafty individuals, though. One fellow bought himself a Hearse, kept a casket in the back. If he ever got stopped, he'd give the cop his card explaining that he was a backup singer for Alice Cooper and the boss kind of insists on a certain image... That guy looks a bit like a heroin addict and has impressively scary ink on his skin, so no-one really questions it. If asked about the casket. He says he keeps his car tools in there. Never been stolen once. Another vampire of my acquaintance acquired a junker car from a relative. Tore out its drive train and cut it in half. He built a custom undercarriage for this vehicle that could hold up to 4 full corpses. There were hidden catches that would enable him to open the cantilevered top of the car and allow him to stash things within. Then, he would attach this non-functional vehicle to the back of his very functional truck with a towing rig. He called it, “The Invisible Hearse” He even had a magnetic sign made for his truck door that proclaimed him a driver for an entirely spurious towing company. | had to admit. | was impressed. This guy made serious bank by cleaning up vampire-based messes for his hometown. He was also, firmly of the opinion that when there is an overabundance of physical evidence, FIRE is a sovereign cure. Truth is, it's a little more complicated than that. SO. You're on the road to someone else's final destination, So where are you going to go? There are a number of different approaches. Most of them amount to “the Outskirts of Town” Dumping a body in a dumpster in town is a good way get yourself firmly curb stomped by the other local vampires. 1) You can bury the body, assuming of course that you have time and a place to do so where you are unlikely to be disturbed. And also assuming it's not winter time and the ground is frozen solid. You didn't even think about that, did you? You'll want to bury the body deep because predators will be able to smell the body and will likely dig it up. 2) You could probably dump the body down the steep side of a country road, or maybe jam the damned thing into a culvert and maybe nobody will even see the damned thing until there are just bones left. You've got to be well out in the sticks for this to work 3) If you're connected, You may be able to arrange for the use of a crematorium and maybe even a hearse to pick it up. If you're NOT connected, you might acquire a number of hay bales and a few gallons of kerosene and a good out-of-the-way spot. Fun Fact: A hay fire will actually generate temperatures that can cremate the long bones (Hip bones are the sturdiest bones in the body being able to handle more P.S.|. than all the rest of them. 4) If you don't have a spot out in the boonies where you can get up to those sorts of shenanigans, then you might consider dumping the corpse in a body of water. Done correctly, the body may never be found. Remember to slash the abdomen of the corpse, as gaseous build-up will cause the corpse to pop to the surface like some grisly bobber on a fishing line5) Apparently, Corsican Razorback hogs can generate enough jaw pressure to break up nearly all of bones and a group of them can consume an entire body in a matter of a couple of hours. This isn't foolproof, though, Hogs won't eat the clothes obviously. Use the medical shears to cut them off. (You should probably do this anyway to prevent identification) And again, they won't eat medical pins of breast implants. Anything that’s "Not-Meat’, they won't touch. Still. it works well enough that a couple of vampires | know have invested in hogs. They're pretty vicious and make a good impromptu alarm system for someplace out in the sticks. Ok. So the body is gone and you've made it back to the house. Home free, right? Slow down slappy. You've still got work to do. 1) Wipe Down, Re-sharpen, and spray down all your tools with WD 40. This makes them useless for forensic matching purposes. 2) If you still have the plastic tarp for some reason, hose it down until your black light shows that it's clear. 3) Take any bloody clothes or cloth goods like the travel bag and throw them into your backyard grill and burn them. If you use the Hay/Kerosene method you can, of course, do this at that step. 4) Get rid of any ID and/or credit cards. | cannot stress this enough. DO NOT ATTEMPT to use them yourself for any nefarious purposes. DO NOT sell them to criminals of your acquaintance. You would be best served to put them down the disposal in the kitchen sink. Wait 5 years before attempting to get rid of any jewelry via pawnshop. Cash is probably okay to keep. If they had a phone on their person, wrap it in tinfoil and tape it to the underside of a Greyhound bus that is heading out of town 5) Before the week is out, replace everything in your trunk, you never know when you might have to bail out a fellow vampire. Hey. Stop looking at me like that I'm a writer. | drink, and | know things. That's what | do. Tips for Travelling Occasionally, in your vampiric existence, you will have to travel. Or, if you're like me for the better part of my existence, You travel as a matter of course. No really. | went from place to place for a long time there. It was something | was used to in my breathing life and | didn't want to give it up. Never settling down. Never staying long. Refusing to get tangled up in local vampire politics. It was refreshing. And even though travel can be precarious. It can be done and it can berewarding But there are rules. And like humans operating in the cold reaches of space, a moment's inattention can kill you. So it stands to reason that if you want to go somewhere else in life. You've got to make plans, Stick to them, and follow the rules. Don't leave Hungry. | really shouldn't have to tell you this. It ought to be super-obvious even to someone turned last night. If you mean to go from here to there, even if THERE is only two towns over. Don't. Leave. Hungry. The reasons for it are multi-fold. You might get there and find that the grand high poobah of vampires in that region is kind of a cock and won't let you feed for some reason. You might get there and discover that the locals have overfed the place, or that someone has been “Feeding Sloppy’ and there’s a body count, and public paranoia to go with that. You might get there and find that there is a serious outbreak of scabies. (Don't laugh!) and most of the humans are staying indoors until it all blows over. Whatever the reason, if you decide to travel even in shorts hops, and you set out the door with a tight belly, you are asking, begging, pleading, for trouble. Call Ahead, if you can. Every place is different. Most places have some vampires in them. Some places are mostly open buffet and relaxed fit jeans. Other places are more authoritarian medieval fiefdoms. Whatever the case may be it’s a good idea to call ahead as best you are able. Odds are good you've got SOMEBODY in your town that has connections in other places. Go to them and offer them favors in order to have them get in touch. They may not even know anyone in your destination city, but they may know someone who does. Have the person on the far end calll you and tell them you're coming and approximately how long you intend to stay. If i's not a problem to say exactly what your business is, then go ahead and mention it, assuming it's not something like “Depose your local leader’ or “Violently kill a string of hookers.” If you can't really say what your business is, don't bring it up. or at least come up with some likely pre- text. It's okay, They'll assume you're lying anyway. Naturally, you'll have a few questions you'll want to ask in return: * Are there places in your town where it's hazardous to go because of internecine vampiric warfare, other supernatural creatures, human hunters, or human unrest? * Are there types of Prey in town that you should stay away from as a matter of course? (Like say, one of the older vampires has this thing about black female midgets and it's a bad idea to rile him.) *Are there places set aside in town where feeding is easy and even outsiders are encouraged to top off? (like the club district that’s almost always downtown.) “Are the locals particularly uptight? (Usually a deal-breaker for me)* If am sharing my plans with you, is there someone among the vampires in town that | ought to talk to in order to conclude my business swiftly? Don't be overly shocked if they saddle you with a "Native Guide” on your arrival. In fact, welcome him or her. At best, it's a new connection that you can make in that city and they may even be actively helpful. At worst, at least you know where the spy is. In fact, | am usually more worried in cities where | can arrive, touch base with the Powers that Be, and then be released on my own recognizance. Some of our kind can be remarkable stealthy and may have powers that make them indiscernible. If you have a visible minder. Relax. be friendly. That way, if you have to ditch them for any reason, they are less likely to be prepared Fuck Planes! No seriously, Fuck them in the earhole with a big rubber dick. Any mode of transport that can be routinely delayed, re-routed in mid-transport, or fall out of the sky and crash. is a mug's game and should be eschewed as best you can. If you MUST take a plane. Do so in a coffin, light-proof crate or in a 50-gallon drum. Preferably filled with flame retardant gel. (You don't have to breathe, remember?) Sure, it will fuck with your ability to mess around with your Kindle, but it's your best bet of surviving a crash on dry land. A water landing is much worse. You may not be able to swim to shelter before the sun comes up. There are only two reasons to take a plane in my opinion: A) Matters are time sensitive and serious enough to risk a possible crash, 8) Intercontinental travel (Although, if time is not a factor and you need to get to Asia, I'd drive or take a train to Alaska and puddle hop at the Bering Strait. If you plan on going to Australi you're simply fucked. That’s something like an 18-hour flight and when you get there you'll find that the place is only about 8 feet from the surface of the sun.) Do not take a plane as a passenger. One delay on the tarmac and you could end up burning in your seat. Do not feed on anyone on the plane Whatever conveyance you take, make sure it locks from the inside. (TSA and baggage throwers are notoriously nosey and/or light-fingered.) Fast=Less Exposure Slow=More Secure Itall depends on whether you are in a hurry or not. A plane crash or a bullet train will get you there faster and thus you are less likely to have problems on the journey itself. But if they crash, they'll test the limits of that "Immortality" thing you supposedly have going on. While your exposure in a slower mode of travel is greater, They are also more secure. If you're on a train, a passenger cruise liner, or best case, traveling in your own car. You are less likely to have trouble en route, and in the case of a passenger train or boat, you will ikely have enough sustenance for an extended trip. Assuming of course, that the passenger ship doesn't have an outbreak of Cholera or something like that. Trains are better in this regard. Ifsomething goes completely sideways you can pull the brake cord and run the fuck off into the night. Granted, it might be the middle of nowhere, but odds are good that it will be safer than what you left. Freight trains and cargo ships can be used in the case of vampires with limited resources, but it also means fewer people to snack upon on a long journey. And if you do something stupid, an absence will be noted sooner rather than later. It used to be that sailing ships crashed into the destination with the bone-dry corpses of the crew aboard, Don't be that guy. Staying in hotels It can be done, Even though Maids don't ever seem to be respecters of the “Do Not Disturb sign” Also: No hotel room is ever going to be light-tight. So it’s up to you to cover yourself. You can usually hole up in the bathroom, It locks from the inside, although the maid MAY have a key. | find that a post-it note with the words, “Warning! Pet Snake!” will usually keep the maid out. Roll up a towel and put it at the bottom of the door. Also, it's not a bad idea to keep a roll of weather stripping, or gorilla tape, for the rest of the door crack in case it faces east or west and there's nothing occluding it. Although I've found that this is usually rare. | went out and bought a cunning device for traveling vampires like myself. I's a set of two suitcases, Once the clothes and toiletries have been removed the sides of each can be zipped out and then there is a small accordion-like nylon joiner that can be zipped in. The two suitcases side-by-side are long and wide enough to hold an insensate vampire body and you can leave the top unzipped enough to push yourself up underneath the bed. Of course, if some hotel employee, (Not always the maids mind you!) goes through your bags for stealable items... Well. That person pretty much is going to get what they deserve Your Wheels and You There are a number of simple things that you can do to keep your wheels in good working order and hopefully off the radar. 1) | cannot stress this enough: Keep your vehicle's paperwork up to date. Pay your insurance. Keep your tags and inspection stickers up to date. Once a week, do a 360-degree walk around the car. Get one of your minions to test the brake and tail lights for you. Even if your paperwork is all in some spurious name or in the name of one of your minions. Make sure you put it on your calendar to keep all that stuff up to date. State troopers now have visual recognition systems that can spot expired tags and stickers from a surprising distance. While local municipalities don't have the budget for that stuff yet, it's only a matter of time. You don't want to give the police a second reason to look at you. 2) Take a defensive driving course. While an automotive collision isn’t likely to kill you, it can certainly fuck up your day or leave you several miles from shelter. DD courses have useful advice to minimize the possibility of collisions. 3) Tend to regularly scheduled maintenance. This is a good idea even if you don't go travelingoutside of your hometown all that much, but it's vital to a traveling vampire. Also: get yourself an AAA membership. They have lovely discounts, map services, auto-repair reimbursement plans and the first time you have to have your car towed home it will pay for itself. It's even good if you're a passenger in someone's else’s crapped out vehicle. 4) You want a big trunk. That usually means a sedan of some sort. Vans are okay. | have known vampires who prefer extended cab semis, A guy | know even had a U-haul as his primary shelter. He fixed it so it locked from the inside, It did get stolen once and he woke up one night to find himself in Tucson, Arizona That's the thing about Vampires Vehicles. They either scream “Look at me!” or they scream, “Don't look at me!” Only one guy | know split the difference. He had a Winnebago which had 6 foot high letters on the side in house paint that said, “Jesus Is Lord!” He told me that he NEVER got stopped by the police. They were too afraid they'd come around to the driver side door and find he was wearing a child's head as a hat. 5) It's usually a bad idea to try to feed on tow truck drivers and cabbies. It’s akin to trashing a public phone. You never know when you're going to need one to bail your ass out. Also, they tend to be armed and suspicious. Troopers and Cops I'm not proud of this, but | had to kill a cop once. | wasn’t stoned or anything. But the guy said had crossed the center line. | was younger then, and | wasn't able to deal with a delay. So | came off rough to the guy. He didn’t handle it welll. Tried to take me in. | felt bad about it. Still do. | send an anonymous contribution to the police charitable foundation in his name every year. | was still too young in the blood to have the kind of abilities | have tonight. Look. If you have the whammy. Use it. If you can talk your way out. do that. DON'T get cute and try to bribe the guy/girl. But you cannot allow them to put you in the back of the cruiser and take you in. You will die in a cell when the sun comes up. NO lawyer can get you out before the Judge comes in around 9AM Don't forget to trash the dash cams and the data storage unit in the trunk of the cop car. The Last Thing Unless you have compelling reasons to make sure nobody knows where you're going, leave word where you plan to go, and instructions for what to do if you don't make it back.Assorted Gambits and Hustles Those of you who know me, know that | am all about solutions. And since I've traveled quite abit and I'm naturally chatty and nosy. I've run across some pretty neat ways to keep oneself fed. In order to keep the tummy from rumbling, you have to either go where the food is or get the food to come to you. One of the powers that we can develop is the power to draw and fascinate. Like that asshole Lestat says, “One of our kind can stand in front of a building and simply turn his face up towards it and the one who seeks death will come out to him." Which isn’t really how it works. I'm not one who can hypnotize with a glance, so | have to use what | do have. | have a voice that is arresting, eyes that catch the gaze, and although | am one of the frumpiest vampires to stalk the night, | have a certain amount of fading charm. Getting blood out of people is only slightly more difficult than getting sex out of people. So my general modus operand is to roll into a bar, long about midnight or so. | am on the lookout for a certain type of person. Usually, it’s a girl. Almost always lonely. Many times, she's already been ditched by her gay best friend. | chat her up. Maybe I'll even read her Tarot or her palm. I'm half convinced that such things were invented to get women into the sack in the first place by making you seem exotic. | have a pretty standard rap. 45 minutes and few rounds of drinks and then we're heading back to my place. Unlike living guys, I don’t get tired. And | won't get her pregnant I'm not proud of this necessarily, but at least I give for what | get. And I can make good on my promise to make her weak in the knees tomorrow. | have known a couple of vampires who were far more skilled in the Mind Whammy as ‘opposed to monkeying with the emotions. One earns his living as a cabaret hypnotist. Makes good money too. But it also gives him an opportunity to slot a post-hypnotic suggestion. He has former audience members turning up on his doorstep every night of the week. None of them are the wiser. | know a woman who was a psychologist in her breathing life. She's fairly good at rooting out traumas and bad memories. She's also pretty good at rooting out bad habits. and in return, she makes decent money and she has patients visiting her office every evening. You may be saying to yourself, “Well that's all well and good Pinkster. But | ain't no shrink.” Probably true. But if you have the whammy, you will find that (fake) credentials are easier to come by than actual doctor knowledge. And you can start listening to psychology lecture courses on iTunes tonight.‘Some vampires can still drink animal blood. | still can. It’s not...the best way to slake one’s thirst. But if you can, it's a good way to keep from killing people by accident. My one tip on this front is this: Every American city and most European cities on a rail line have a stockyard. You can get fed at a stockyard, if, and | mean this, only IF, you actually have the ability to command the meaner creatures of the earth, Some do. It's not hard to learn either. See. the thing is, animals can sense predators. If you don’t have the ability to keep them calm...Well, let's just say that even a vampiric bad-ass can be slain like a punk bitch by a cattle stampede. I've seen it happen. It was NOT pretty. Smart vampires get their hooks into resources like this, so don't be surprised if there's someone there ahead of you. Be ready to pony up to that person Fun fact: Pigs blood is so close to human blood genetically that serology departments in medical schools use it for experiments. Tastes...pretty close. Like drinking a diet soda. Pig's blood is one of the few things that I think mixes well with whiskey...But your mileage may vary. The reason that | bring this up is that if you live in a city with a medical school, you might be able to have one of your minions approach someone who runs a slaughterhouse and pay good money for a couple of buckets of pig's blood (Strained and filtered of course) for experimentation purposes, Pay decent for it because you're also buying a certain amount of discretion too. ‘Nothing illegal is happening here, but once, | got stopped by a cop with two buckets in the back seat. By the time the university managed to get the whole thing untangled, the blood had gone off and it set the experimentation schedule back by weeks, That sort of thing is just hard to explain to people. You understand?” Granted, Cold pig’s blood is not the best drink I have ever drunk....But it beats flipping out and killing someone because you're too thirsty. The vampire who turned me was a genius at understanding human psychology. He had used his money and influence to make contact with a number of police detectives. He would sit down with them and talk with them about some of their hardest cases. especially the ones where the culprit got away because the court had screwed something up. or maybe a policeman had gotten too busy with his fists and the defense attorney had gotten the case dismissed. Or even something where the sheer lack of hard evidence kept the perp from going to trial. My maker referred to this as his “Skate List’ because these men (almost always MEN) had managed to skate on any real consequences for their various heinous crimes. As a result, my maker usually had a ready-made list of people who could die horribly. Not only was it a positive boon to the local commonweal, but one could expect that any police investigation into their disappearance would be desultory at best. No cop is going to go full court press to find the killer of a child-fondler. You would be surprised at the goods and services that are being offered by individuals who work all night. Take a look at your local yellow pages and you will find IT guys, veterinarians, and even Dentists who work all night, and will make house calls. Granted, Some of them might actually be fellow vampires holding down a job. There is something to be said thoughfor food that is willing to come to you. It is, however, a good deal more difficult to feed without exposure when YOU have to go to them. People who work on the third shift tend to have better security. On that note, | should probably talk about people you should stay the fuck away from. Each group of these people has certain things in common: 41) Their time is monitored 2) They will be missed sooner rather than later. 3) They are wary (especially if they deal with a lot of freaks.) 4) They get robbed (and as a result are likely to be armed) The list of overnight people you should stay away from is this: Hookers Strippers Cabbies/Uber Drivers Food delivery people Tow truck drivers Security Guards Bartenders Alll night gas-and-go clerks. Do yourself a favor, though. Get that local telephone book of yours and make a thorough list of alll the places in your town that are open all night. Then rate them in terms of some risk assessment used to know this vampiress from Knoxville. Real "Carmilla’ type. Used to get great feeding done by seducing men and then getting them to follow her into the Lawn and Garden section of the local all-night Wal-mart. Nobody's over there. There's no security to speak of. And Cameras are going to be focused on sections of the store where the easily stealable electronics are. It's not like there's any danger of people shoplifting a rake or a 50-pound bag of sod. So she rolls up on some dude, puts on her “Hey Come Fuck Me!” vibe and Bubba can't believe his luck. Worked flawlessly until she got too frisky one night and killed a guy.(Turned out the guy had a bad ticker.) Everybody in town knew about the way she hunted, so she ended up in some hot water for it, but the homicide investigation went nowhere, and eventually, it all blew over. She only does it now when visiting neighboring cities. In some ways, Vampire women have it much easier, If you happen to be decent looking at all, you can put your name on every website for internet dating, you can find and go to every single speed dating event in town. You can keep fed even if you don't have the ability to toy with emotions. Male vampires without those same gifts will have to make do with Pick-UpArtists training, neuro-linguistic programming, and anchoring techniques. Don't knock it, that stuff can work and for some vampires, it may be the only way they can get close to someone without having to blitz attack them. If you happen to be good looking and you go to these things. You should definitely come up with a cover story that explains why you're so good looking but seem to be unable to make it work without special help. something like, “Well. 'm a doctor and I'm in residency so I'm still working crazy long days. | simply don't have time to look!” Yeah. Something like that. You can go to most places in the world and find an AA meeting. It's an investment in time, but nearly every sort of therapy or support group meeting can offer feeding opportunities. Support groups for the terminally ill are an especially tactical if a somewhat heartless option. Heck, if you're pale and got sunken cheeks, and look a litle like Freddy Mercury in his last video, you don't even need a cover story really. They'll assume the worst. Most people who are terminal are looking to get it on one last time before they go, and if they don’t turn up to the next meeting, then it's not exactly a shock, is it? My only bits of advice are these: 1) Stay away from people who are on Chemo. (Let's just say a friend of mine had a very bad experience.) 2) Stay away from support groups for people with blood parasites. You could pass things to other people and not realize it. 3) Only get involved with group therapy for sex addiction if you have the juice to hypnotize and wipe away memories. Seriously, the level of soap opera you are asking for is non-trivial.