Member-only story
Monster Talk
Supernatural Fiction
Even the things that went bump in the night needed to have a break once in a while. Edgar, for one, had been a bogeyman for three decades — ever since he had died from a mortal existence he could not remember living — and scaring children got old after a while. And between the hours of 3 AM and 6 AM, all the people he could frighten had fallen back into predawn sleep. (Insomniacs were not the best company. They were often bingeing the latest thing on Netflix.)
Edgar had gotten into the habit of going to the local 24-hour diner just off the highway. At first, he had simply sat in a booth and mulled over a half-eaten tuna melt while wan-looking truck drivers nursed cups of coffee before they set off on the road again. But one evening in the middle of winter, things were different. That was the first time in the diner that Edgar glimpsed a vampire trying to find a quick and easy meal.
How had he spotted a bloodsucker so easily? Well, she wasn’t doing such a great job at masking what she was. She wore tight clothing that left none of her curves to the imagination, her blonde hair teased into an up-do that probably went out of fashion in the eighties. But even for a vampire she looked…old. Most vampires Edgar had come across in the past thirty years had been in their teens or twenties before their Change, but this one could have passed for a middle-aged…
