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You sit at or hold your device (laptop, tablet, desktop, phone, whatever) with a glass of junior blood wine at hand. It’s the cheap shit because everybody knows you were piss-poor broke before you were embraced, so why would undead life be any different? You sign into your VamVu (yeah, a play on vamp/vampire view) account located on the dark web. You catch up with some of your friends, thumb down a video by sociopolitical leftist-pussified vampires which promoted allowing weres, shapeshifters, zombies, demons, and Magic Folk on the site, and thumb up one commenter’s chant of “keep VamVu bloodstained red.” You read a post about Les Gardiens de Sang shutting down a pedophile vampire operation that turns minors into vampires, and nearly cry thinking about those poor kids. You then smile at the video of a pupe (basically a teenage vampire, though not by appearance) tasting food again after being a vampire for fifty years. You belly roll at another pupe greedily scarfing his well-missed favorite meal and puking as his stomach wasn’t the same as when he was human. You are only a larve yourself, being nineteen though you were twenty-three when embraced. You can’t wait to hit the fifty mark because damn, you miss chili jalapeno fries.

Well, it’s now midnight and you text some friends about meeting you at Raw, a vampire club, when a notice goes across your screen. It draws you in. Truly Madly Vamply, live video with Darren Hayes of Savage Garden right fucking now at midnight on the dot.

Are you fucking seeing this? You text your friend.

Truly Madly Vamply? They text back. Fuck yeah!

Hold the fucking door! Another friend texts. It fucking can’t be. Him? One of us? He’s more like a beau sang, right?

(First Friend) Dude, he’s gotta be fifty now. Ewww…No gramps beau sang, please.

(You) Guys, shut the fuck up, it’s starting!

Eagerly you click on the link, and you gasp in astonishment as you had forgotten how beautiful that man’s big blue eyes are, how his swollen bottom lip looks so juicily divine, and his perfect fair skin so petal smooth, and that inky black hair in soft strands touching his neck. He looks like he just fucking stepped off of the Savage Garden debut album.

“No fucking way,” you mouth. It can’t be. You haven’t heard anything about or from Savage Garden, Darren Hayes, and Daniel Jones in twenty-two years. What the hell is going on?

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“Well, hello there.” His lips part and you can see the pointy short incisors that most humans wouldn’t notice. Your chest heaves as his soft, delicate, refined voice with its native Australian accent invades your ears. Just beautiful. “So, let’s get this over with,” he continues. When he stretches his mouth wide, you get all kinds of naughty ideas just like in the nineties when he would hit notes that required him to do the same. You watch as his fangs elongate to full length. “There, now it is official, Darren Hayes is a vampire and so is Daniel Jones, who isn’t with me right now.” There is a bit of sadness in his voice as he speaks the last part and there’s a pause.

Your phone beeps to announce a text but you are not taking your eyes off your device’s screen.

“You might notice behind me…” Darren’s voice lowers slightly, and he gestures around. “Clothes hanging and shoe boxes. That’s because I’m hiding in the wardrobe. Daniel doesn’t know I’m doing this. So, this is between you and me.”

You are wondering what is going on between Darren and Daniel, but your mind shifts and your heart melts as you notice that Darren is wearing Baby Yoda pajama bottoms and a simple black tee-shirt. How adorkable, you think.

“Well, after we disappeared - after the Affirmation World Tour,” Darren continues, “we were lost and drifting. Things got a bit rough, and Daniel took off on his own path. I stayed in the same moldy rotting environment we were haunting not knowing what to do. I fed off bush rats and other unmentionable things. Then a good bloke that we all in the vamp community know, McGregor, found me and he took me to Daniel.

“Everything was fine. We were happy. McGregor helped me and Daniel cope with the changes. He then moved us to New York and here we are. Well…” He pauses for a moment with gloom darkening his beautiful eyes. You can feel your brows hunch as you watch his eyes dart above and over beyond the screen. When he comes back, you feel a sense of relief as his face settles back into ease. “Thought I heard something,” Darren says more to himself than to his audience. “Well,” he continues, “a few years back, things took on a bit of a turn. It was Christmas Eve, and we were snuggling on the couch - yes, Daniel and I are…” Your heart flutters and you gasp. Your phone dings repeatedly, but you still won’t check the messages. Darren Hayes is gay…Damn, your best friend and sister were right! “Anyway. So, we were watching a nineties music throwback show, then the “Break Me Shake Me” video came on and he flew into a rage. I don’t know.” He shakes his head and pushes a strand of hair from his face. You’re about to have a heart attack. “It’s like it triggered something. He grabbed his guitar and just wrecked the lounge room. And…” His voice trails yet again and you think he’s about to cry. “And…he trashed my Star Wars figures…yeah.” He inhales deeply, pulls a box into view, and tilts it so you can see all the broken collectible toys. Some were very ancient in design. “Bits of CP3O, Chewie, Vader…” He lifts a tiny wheel from the mass grave. “R2-D2’s wheel…I’ll just put these over here…” The box vanishes.

“So, things got...are…rough again,” Darren continues, “but, there is good news. Benton Pigglewidth contacted me, and I signed a deal. I will be performing at Raw three nights a week. I have a lot of new material I want to share. Where is it?” You watch as he turns away ducking his head under some hanging clothes that sway. He shuffles through some boxes and pulls out what looks like a beat-up tome. He holds it to the screen and then pulls it away. “This is twenty-two years’ worth of material that I wrote. I have many more books like this.” He flips open the book and runs his fingers over the pages as if he were connecting with another self he lost long ago. The sadness reaches you and your eyes sting. You know too well what vampire life can do to someone. After wiping your eyes, you watch as Darren parts his beautiful lips once again, but something happens. There is a calamity as the image shakes and twists, Darren’s hair flies around, then his body flies by and you’re now looking at a beige carpet and a wooden wall. The last thing you hear before the screen goes black is, “Darren, what the hell are you doing in the wardrobe?”