Fangfiction Winner Erin T. McMillon

The following vampire story by Erin T. McMillon won first place in our Jane Lovering Fangfiction competition 2014.

Congratulations Erin on winning signed copies of Vampire State of Mind and Falling Apart.

My name is Alexander. 

It used to be Tony, but who cares?

I like to change it every twenty years or so to keep up with this whole “obsession with being anonymous” crap “the ones like us” always complain about.

I never could say I truly hated anyone before this whole thing started, but I truly hate all of them – except for my Father Gregory, of course. 

They have this ridiculous sense of entitlement; this air of superiority over the human race that makes me want to flay them and lock them in the biggest room of my house. 

But as it stands right now, I’m not strong enough and haven’t gotten rich enough to accomplish this.

If I’m patient my time will come, Gregory says, when I will be able to do whatever my cold, black heart desires. 

But if I go by the whisperings of the others in our clan, he’s an insane low-born who drank the blood of rats until he turned me, which was apparently an accident. 

In the meantime, I’m forced to sit around and listen to their stories.

According to them, “the ones like us” are responsible for everything from the “discovery” of America to winning the Civil War (which I swear they got from some crazy movie about Abe Lincoln that came out a few years back). 

But on our many days alone, my father tells me about how we were also responsible for sending those girls to those burning stakes in Salem. 

“We had to do something. It was us or them. We sat down at our annual conference and collectively decided a few of their girls would be the martyrs for our cause.”

“And what cause was that?” I asked, brow furrowed in gross confusion. 

“Peace! You Fool!” he growled as he banged his tiny fist into the large wooden desk in front of him. “There are times, there will always be, when we have to do unspeakable things to keep living in the shadows. Things didn’t end well between our kind and the Salem covens, but everything that happened was in the name of peace.”

I told him I understood, but I didn’t. 

I just know I have to do what I am told. After all, he is older than me and he feels so strongly about it. 

I learned a long time ago, back in my mortal days, that old people don’t talk just to hear themselves. They’re telling you things because they care about you and don’t want you to make the same mistakes they did. 

It was hard for me at first. I was still holding on to my mortal life. I wanted to be with my family, my real family, and I did until it became obvious they were aging and I wasn’t. 

When I “died” they all came to my funeral. I laid in the casket as the parade of people came up and laid flowers around me. There were a few times when I wanted to giggle, like when my cousin Alberta’s wig fell off in the middle of her uncontrollable crying. I couldn’t understand for the life – for the death of me why she was carrying on like we were best friends. I hated her and the punches to my jaw when we were kids told me she felt the same. 

They buried me that afternoon and Gregory and some of the more athletic members of our coven came to dig me up that night. I tried to thank them for their help, but Father silenced me with a cold stare and sent me to the car. 

“Don’t ever thank them for anything, my child,” he warned as we drove back to the house. “They are paid men. Paid men do no favors that require gratitude.” 

We went home that night to balloons, streamers, and bottles of the finest, warm blood money could buy. 

“Happy Birthday, Son!”

*****

I stayed in mostly after that and the days dragged on, turning into months. People think they get bored, but they have no idea what it’s like not having anything to do when you have forever to live. 

The dullness of my life after death began wearing on me. I started talking to myself and spending hours staring at the wall. 

I had to get out. 

So I began slinking around in a local nightclub for anonymous entertainment.  That’s where I met her. And the alley behind it is where I ripped her throat out with my adult fangs and let her life run smoothly down my throat. 

She writhed with pleasure until the last drop. 

I dropped her and ran, afraid because her death brought me so much joy.

I tried to hide it from my dad, but he came to me as I lay in bed the next morning. He told me he was there with me, like he is everywhere I go, that he loved me, and that he would take care of it. Now, you see the importance of privacy, he said into my head from his bedroom. 

I can still smell her death on your lips from my room.

I stopped going out. 

I don’t do much of anything anymore. I wake up at night, go to the coven meetings, listen to their ridiculous stories and go back home with fists full of bottles of warm blood. 

We have enough money to live ten life times, my dad says, so I mostly hang out around the house talking to him. 

“It may seem like a boring life, My Son, but it’s the best way to live when you’re like us.”

I want to believe him, but my pit is telling me I can’t. It gnaws at me, waiting for the right time to happen.  

I swear I can feel it closing in on me as each sun sets. 

I’m afraid. 

---

Erin T. McMillon, MSM entered into the publishing industry as an advertising copywriter. She has written for numerous magazines and online media outlets in the U.S. and abroad, including an award-winning music magazine. She was most recent featured in the Summer 2014 of The Horror Zine. Erin is the author of The Becoming of Us, Vol. I and II. Her first collection of short horror/suspense stories, What’s Hiding in the Dark?: 10 Tales of Urban Lore, is due in the summer of 2014. Find her on Facebook at and on her blog.