Humans are cowardly, nervous, unreasonable creatures. They fear that which is not human, they fear that which is not readily explained, hell, they even fear things that are too human.

Skittish instincts, primordial, bone-deep, and measurable. They can be traced to specific parts of the neurology, passed generation by generation, a core part of the shared history of mankind. For the "top of the food-chain," humans fear deeply. Even prey animals tend to be more steadfast: humans are so deficient in dopamine that the only comparable species are rats- creatures which scurry away at the slightest sound. Not the most pleasant of peers.

These instincts, neurotic as they seem, feel outdated in the modern day. Perhaps being so skittish was reasonable in a time where humans had true natural predators, all those millenia ago. They may have even surved a purpose when natural disasters, very human cruelty, and even more human wars were commonplace, but even those existential threats are long in the "rear-view mirror" now. Yet the fear persists, unconcerned with the changing times. People seek out fright, they try to control it, throwing themselves into thriller and horror and the grotesque as a game, to cheapen the ancient terror and to learn to cope with it, but it never goes away.

Because no matter if natural or artificial threats are vanquished in the steady march of progress and civility, that says nothing of the unnatural. A seed of fear older than the oldest of men whispers that, no matter what the nice science man says, your life could be plucked at any moment by some uncaring, promordial creature. Or, much worse, you could yet be hunted by the sort of being that looks to your slaughter with glee, that relishes in the doing of it. Something you can't see in the "rear-view mirror," but is there in the van with you when you turn around...

Obviously not a legitimate concern. Unexplained deaths are so vanishingly rare these days that, even if terrible things go bump in the dark, against all scientific evidence to the contrary, no average person will ever happen upon one that awful fate. It does beg the question, though: why are there to this day "missing persons" in a world where most of the population broadcasts their GPS location, and cellphone service can reach the bottom of the deepest oceans?

Even in the glowing golden-age of humanity, there are still a few dark and stormy nights where those silly, paranoid, no-good instincts are vindicated. Nights where such improbable atrocities are committed that it shows so-called civilized people exactly why they should never rest complacent.

Against all odds, this is not one of those nights.

The pale man stands in the rain, smiling and waving at the departing roofers. His eyes narrow as they fly away into the deepening night at a positively unsafe speed, kicking up mud in their wake. He quivers, a shiver of something (revulsion? desire?) pulsing through his other wise still body, breaking his still and uncaring demeanor. To everyone's combined relief, he isn't in the van. He isn't in the rear-view mirror either, but he really hopes the speeding crew boss won't have the wherewithal to notice that particular fact.

He simply stands in the rain, making sure the roofers don't find any reason to turn back around, or decide to see or do something they shouldn't.

Then, after a few minutes of idling in the dark, he vanishes.

Just like that.

A thin puff of mist billows out, at if the rain is desperate to prove there were ever a man there before. A little patch of relatively dry dirt marks where the man had been standing before, and it begins to soak through, now that the downpour can clear through the now-empty space.

Then, an instant later, the pale man re-appears. With a gentle clack of his spiffy, hard-soled shoe on the floorboard, the pale man lands in front of the mansion's grand entrance. He pops his collar and runs a hand through his hair, shrugging, reordering his jacket... The man is now conspiciously dry, even the damp chevoit wool suddenly almost entirely dry, even slightly warm to the touch.

He addresses the pair of rotted oak doors. They remain somewhat impressive, barely holding on to their dark stained finish, antique and of considerable size, perhaps twice the pale man's height.

The pale man slaps the doors, one with each palm, and they swing freely open, revealing the greater foyer and mudroom. Nothing nearly so hard to explain about that particular magic trick: the doors' locks and knobs broke decades ago. No one has the time or money to fix them, so the fact the doors were "closed" at all was mostly a matter of ceremony. Smell of mildew and cabin-wood emanates from the mansion, stagnant air billowing out with the opening of the doors.

The pale man moves more gingerly here, perhaps out of concern for the integrity of the decaying structure and its surviving furniture. As the doors swing shut behind him unprompted, He leaps from the mudroom to the dancing hall, then starts a long trek through the eastern wing. He moves like a ballet dancer, slow enough now to see move. Not actually slow, by any means, but a more modestly superhuman speed,

Moving dozens of feet with every carefully placed hop, he clears hall after hall, saving what can only be described as "a great deal of time." This mansion of mansions may have decayed, but outside of a few entirely collapsed rooms, rot does little to shrink a building. It must have required tens of staff to keep in operation when it was still lively and properly occupied. Whistling sounds like ghastly hymns and errant knocking and creaking chase the pale man through the mansion, but if the place is haunted, the ghosts are much too slow to haunt him.

Past luxurious fields of sofas and comfortable chairs with cute tea tables and lamps (mostly non-functional) he runs, past the office quarters and doilies and dining spaces he flies, beyond the kitchens and bedrooms with hinges rotted off the doors he leaps, slowing only when he has come to the farthest end of the furthest hall, which is marked by a free-standing spiral staircase, rooms with heavier, and leaded, mostly intact doors marked things like "furnaces," "storage," and "utilities,"

The pale man pauses, paces a few steps, then leaps towards the dusty wall opposite the staircase. Spinning in the air, he kicks off the wall, sending himself upwards. The man shoots from the wall like a rocket, but the wall barely even registers the contact, quivering gently. He flies up, past the stairwell's broken bannister, tumbling then gracefully through the adjoined third-floor hallway, decelerating as the air remembers he is there, and finally landing on his toes in front of a oak door.

This one door happens to be padlocked shut. Notably, it seems to be one of the few wood doors left standing in this place at all, aside from the absolute relics that mark the grand entrance. Most of the rooms to now have had no door, or what is left of a door half leaned into its doorframe awkwardly,

The vicinity is almost entirely unlit. In fact, outside of the few rooms that seem to have both running electricity and working lightbulbs, the mansion itself is running on natural light. Very little natural light, as it happens, due to the curious lack of windows in any space of this mansion yet seen. Were it not for the slow rot of the mansion wearing open holes and gaps between surfaces where there should be none, this place would be practically lightless.

In this case, what light exists is provided by parts of the decaying wall opposite from the locked door. Thin shafts of moonlight emanate from the spaces where wallpaper, insulation, and baseboard used to be. It's not a great deal of light, probably lets in bugs, and some of the rain from outside is being swept in by the wind, so it's still a sorry replacement for a window, even assuming you want one. The pale man side-eyes the holes in the wall and tisks, shaking his head. On the plus side, the space seems relatively dry.

The new roof is indeed doing its job. That much, he finds satisfactory. He resolves to hire those men once more if he ever acquires sufficient funds to get more structural repairs at their rates, and he pats himself on the back for his handling of the hired help so far. Especially the fact that there are still roofers that exist to call.

That thought makes the strange man furrow his brow, in what has been a heretofore rare expression of emotion. He turns back to the address the padlocked door. He grips the knob, and... damn it all!

The mostly-intact door clatters to the ground, taking a good chunk of the wall along with it- hinges and all. The padlock itself just rattles, still mostly intact; it was wrapped on a doorknob, symbolic, not mounted to anything important. Large dents manifest where the pale man had gripped around it, and he grimaces. He'd been so caught up in his frustrations that he forgot to actually turn the knob before yanking at it.

He looks at the wreckage idly. It's not really a mistake worth much concern, but it has been such a long time since the pale man last had to lock a door, and so he takes a moment to make a mental note of the mistake befor stepping over the door and into the room.

A crackling sound rings out from further in the dark, and with it comes a sound like shattering glass. Perhaps shattering ceramic? Certainly a loud clatter either way, with sounds of snapping wood mixed in as well.

This room is also dim and barely lit, not that it's mattered much so far. The space was at some point a nice and well-furnished lounge, with a queen-sized bedframe and deflated feather mattress, various baubles and dressers and a few comfortable seating spaces, which may have once served as a guest bedroom. Not as luxurious or single-purpose as the real guest bedrooms are, but comfortable enough, so perhaps a guest bedroom for guests' guests? Maybe for their servants? The nicest thing in the room, the focal point, was a Ming-dynasty vase. Exceedingly rare, historied, though no longer very sought-after in this day and age.

Curiously, the room smells of sea-salt and sulfur, but more curiously still is the thing that occupies it.

A hulking mass, about as wide as the average man is tall, crawls over the remains of that very vase- scattered among the destroyed wreckage of the bedside table that once housed it. Then, the thing crawls over the remains of what was once a coffee table, just for good measure. The hulking mass appears to hate furniture.

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It also appears to be tied up. In fact, it appears to be rather humanoid, though eerie in how it moves; the mass is a man, of gangly proportions. He's tied to a frail wooden chair, thick rope looped around it over and over, then tucked over its mouth, and behind its head. It appears to be crawling around on fingertips and toes, moving a bit like a crab. The fact that this creature hasn't simply broken the wooden chair and gotten free on its own defies explanation, as does the thing's height; even seated it is as tall as a man, then what size will it be if it stands up?

The pale man scowls down at it- him, perhaps? This new fellow is distinctly unnerving, but perhaps masculine, with a boxy but handsome face, perfectly arranged and gravity-defying black hair, and a muscular, developed body. Yet, he was ultimately gangly with a too-thin body and too-long limbs for his relatively short torso. It feels as though Adonis was put in a tube of toothpaste and squeezed back out, left a bit squished by the ordeal, bent and elongated,

Also, much like any good Greek statue, this strange gangly tall chair-person is buck naked. Before one conjures strange thoughts about "naked, perhaps conventionally attractive tall man gagged and tied to a chair," he doesn't have any visible genetalia of any kind. In fact, he doesn't appear to even have nipples, or body hair, or much of anything but the barest, most superficial display of mammalian flesh.

As one looks more closely at the creature, distinct irregularities stand out: its long limbs, still bound, have much-too-thin joints, articulated even. Parts of the layers of skin and muscle just stop making sense when they collide, as though the sculptor simply forgot the key parts of how the anatomy is supposed to work. One quickly realizes that the whole eye is compound, and the motionless black "pupils" are a thin disguise for layer after layer of ommatida. His not-too-pale white skin, vaguely transluscent with a tinge of greyish-blue, his too-long fingers, with sharp and twisting nails...

The crackling sound happens again as the creature twists in the chair to look up at the pale man, joints popping.

Forget gender, Is it human at all? Not likely. In all respects, this seems like a case of animal mimicry, with people as the prey.

Well, if the pale man is shocked by any of this, it doesn't show. He moves in a blur, reappearing behind the thing on the floor, and... works at its knots.

"Don't think you're out of the doghouse just because you played nice for a few hours," the pale man grunts. Even so audibly annoyed, his voice is remarkably monotone.

The creature says something or another, muffled by the rope still over its mouth. As if only just realizing that was still there, it crunches down, biting cleanly through the thick twine in an instant.

"Hey," a deep and silky and distinctly masculine voice says, idly spitting out the rope, "come on bro, let me off the hook!"

Whatever effect the creature's voice is supposed to have on its victims, vernacular like 'bro' in this day and age probably isn't helping. It'd be considered "old man" language by people these days, but the way the creature says it is remarkably childish, or perhaps man-childish. The pale man's hands blur, working to shuffle ropes about, untangling the twists and turns at an extraordinary speed.

"You let me get us a new roof," he says, "after ruining our chance of getting one affordably, and setting the entire region into high alert."

"I can't help it," the creature whines, wriggling around "it was such a free meal!"

"Stop struggling, you absolute oaf," the pale man says.

"Eat a dick!" The creature shouts, "and not in the good way!"

That petty declaration was punctuated by the sound of the pale man popping the last knot loose, which made the remarkably childish horror creature stop sheepishly. The ropes fall to the floor, but it doesn't seem inclined to get up just yet.

"There is no good way to eat a dick," the pale man growls, still leaning over it. "Even if it's already well engorged, the feeding is quite messier than just going for the wrist or jugular. Then they wind up far too busy screaming bloody murder for the whole thing to be any fun, no matter if you sedate them. Too much sedative also stops the blood flow to the-"

The creature cuts in, perplexed. "Wait, I thought you were straight?"

"I've been around 'a long while,'" the pale man sighs. He stands, stepping back from the freed creature. "You'll find that, with sufficient time, you wind up exploring your preferences, and then some." His tone seems remarkably calm, like an old man with his grandchild, telling an old tale, but it takes a hard edge to it as his frustration stews, to the point where his eyes flash red. Eerily red. "At least, you would have time to find that out, if your stupid ass could survive long enough to move out on your own."

"Okay, mister esteemed Vampire sir," the creature says flippantly, "am I allowed to get up now?"

"Regretfully yes," the pale man says, "I know this sort of punishment doesn't do much for you. Hard to stop and reflect on your mistakes with an empty head like yours."

"That was uncalled for," the creature whimpers, still on the floor, "I reflected plenty! Look, most of the furniture is still intact!"

"Did you?" the vampire snarls, his lips pealing back to reveal his wicked-sharp, elongated canines, "You sabotaged our only chance of getting the electricity and walls fixed affordably. Now we have thousands of dollars, just lying around! Worthless, and all with a home that could kill me in my sleep."

"You know it's not that simple," the creature says, "everyone has different urges. Yours aren't so-"

"Do you think you're the only one with those urges? I haven't fed in weeks and I still managed to avoid eating the roofers!" The vampire pauses. "Okay, it was a very close thing, but I did manage to keep it in my pants. Even when my compulsion on their boss gave out, I stayed calm, cool, and mostly collected. Despite the way you," the vampire says, jabbing an awfully sharp nail accusatorily at the creature, "vivisected the very first human being that gets near our doors in a decade the very moment he shows up."

"Oh, come on! It was totally their fault! How was I supposed to know they'd send someone that juicy looking to inspect the house?"

"You're a menace, and you know it."

The gangly one shrugs, pouting sullenly. Its hanging jaw reveals some astonishingly sharp teeth, concealed tidily in the otherwise picturesque exterior.

"No, you might not know it yet, after all. I forget how little you know, some days." The vampire's tension seems to drain away, and he sighs once more. "But know this: there's absolutely nothing in the contract for being a bloodthirsty creature of the night that means you need to eat the few people willing to do our maintenance, on the cheap, without asking questions. It took me years to get that relationship set-up, and now it's gone."

The gangly one goes quiet for a long time, probably sulking. Eventually, he settles on saying "I told you I wouldn't do it again."

"It's not about doing it again," the vampire says, "I know they used to talk about learning from mistakes on TV, but there are some cases where you need to learn without mistakes, because mistakes mean you fucking die. Or kill the closest thing you have to a nanny."

"I'm sorry," the gangly one says, "and I know it meant a lot to you."

"You're right about that much," the vampire says. "To be clear, I had to choose whether or not to abandon you that evening, for fear of a collapse taking my own life. Do you understand? I don't appreciate having to make that choice, to hang my concern for you to weigh on a scale against my own safety. This much I give is already too much, but I'm doing it for you, man. This is the only chance I have left to give you, no matter how much I care. Not unless you'd ask me to shrivel up and die."

"Bro, I..."

There's a sudden pressure in the air, a heavy atmosphere between them. Eventually, the gangly one lets out a brief, strangled sound, and simply nods,

The vampire is privately relieved. As heavy handed as he's being, it isn't like he wants to leave. He isn't just here because he has to be- but the gangly one absolutely is. He's isolated, endangered, out of options. You can't afford to act this way with your safety and the trust of your few living allies when your back is already against the wall.

"Hurry up and get up, Longie," the vampire says, chuckling. "Berating time is over."

"Oh, great!" the horrifying creature informally known as Longie says. He reaches an arm straight up, easily spiking the ceiling, and he pulls himself to his feet effortlessly, quickly adjusting using the rest of his too-long limbs. The next moment, it's as though he'd been standing the whole time.

"Come on, idiot," the vampire says, beckoning gently. "Let's find something fun to do. I haven't figured out what to do about the television yet, but there's bound to something more fun than ropes and dark rooms. Probably."

"Wait," Longie says. "What was that about thousands of totally unused dollars? Which we can't use for improvements for ah, uh, how long did you say before?"

"A score," the vampire huffs. The gangly one looks at him blankly. "That means a fifth of the century. By then, deinflation will..."

"Right, yeah, inflation and stuff, got it. Do- do you have anything in mind for that money right now, though?"

The vampire blinks. "No, it's just sitting around, thanks to you. Why?"

"Dude!" Longie pops out of the chair suddenly, twirling around. He holds his hands to his chest and squats, bobbing excitedly like a massive, monstrous child. The sudden movement knocks the chair away effortlessly. "So, I was eating my way through this one neighborhood, and..."

"No!" The vampire cries, exasperated, "please tell me you didn't blow our entire cover. We've got a bit of money, but we can't afford to move!"

"Of course not!" Longie says quickly, holding up entreating claws. "This was like, way over in the other precinct! And before the adjuster incident! Won't happen again! On topic, on topic!"

The vampire looks cross, but he stows his objections. Longie nods. "I saw one of the kids were using these cool new headset things. The box said they were VR headsets, and, and, I said 'wow! Look! A game I could play with no hands' and then I forgot about it for a bit."

The vampire claps a hand to his face. "That's almost worse. We just had a talk about taking things seriously... We aren't wasting all our money on some shitty videogame headset."

The gangly one held up his hands, twirling and clicking his inhuman nails and ill-proportioned fingers.

"Even if you can play it hands free!"

"We don't have the money for one headset, man. We have enough for two! Two! And, and, there's a bunch of popular games now, but the big one is this cool new MMO. Everyone's playing it!" Longie waves his arms, gesturing wildly as if to emphasize the appeal. His nails score lines in the floor, but it hardly notices the ensuing damage, too caught in the proposal.

Through the antics, the vampire just gives him a death stare. For a moment, the gangly one is worried he went too far, but then he realizes that the man is actually, legitimately considering the idea...

In truth, it's a tempting proposition.

Ever since their dish and service finally bit the dust, the vampire's only decent entertainment in daylight hours was tending to some of the more safely enclosed gardens, and haranguing Longie for fun- when the creature wasn't out harassing animals and hikers, or apparently ravaging suburbs. More trouble. Regardless, at those times of day, his options are a great deal more limited.

Besides, a team game of some kind might be good for Longie's mental and emotional development, and if it was a creative enough game to be engaging... Old desires rear up in the vampire's mind. Not the oldest desires, of blood and ecstasy, but newer old desires.

For videogames, the sweetest drug of all. How had they changed over the years? Was it thirty now, forty? Long enough for a hiatus...

Longie takes a deep breath, which makes a whistling sound as the air trails into the creature's body. It can tell the proposal is working, but his claws click with anxiety even still. He can feel it. The vampire just needs one final push, and he's in.

Nervously, Longie throws it out. His trump card. "the headsets come in black, navy, and purple."

The vampire nods instantly; technically, the speed of the nod is just shy of the sound barrier, but "instantly" suitably describes the limit of what the human eye can actually perceive. "Okay, fuck it, I'll bite. It's not like we can really use that money for anything else now, can we? This seems safe enough."

He smiles, the first genuine smile on the vampire's face all night, almost coy, boyish even. "Besides, it's just some videogame. What's the worst that could happen?"