Prologue
So you know those typical Hollywood vampires? The ones that are all black and dear god sparkly? With flashy houses and cars, with tons of money from their ancient treasures.
Yeah, that's not me.
The name's Alfred Jones and I'll probably be the most disappointing vampire that you will ever meet. S'all good though, since the very idea of living in a coffin or dank old castle without any internet sounds like the most horrible thing you could ever do to anyone. Granted, the Internet only came out in a minuscule amount of time relative to my lifespan, but it's been a serious game changer. Up until then, I was practically a vagrant living in the streets and feeding off society's undesirables. I didn't have a home, friends, an identity. And I sure as shit didn't have some vast fortune that I could live off of and bribe blood donation employees with.
Now I don't have to worry about getting supplies during daylight hours, I can work from home, I can be social. It's awesome.
And one of those very awesome things was MySpace. Yes, kids, I've been around that long. Still, it was nice to act, well, normal with humans again, without feeling the urge to suck the life out of their veins. A steady supply of illicit home-delivered blood packets helped, a lot. But having the temptation removed entirely helped distinguished chattel from personality.
I "met" Arthur Kirkland when he was thirteen years old. He really was a cute kid with awesome taste in music. That's how it started out, chatting about The Clash and The Ramones. By the time that we switched from MySpace to Facebook, we had been corresponding daily for years through chat rooms, emails and sms. He grew up smart and witty, handsome and successful. I clung to that, living vicariously through him. He didn't mind. I told him I had some sort of disease that wouldn't let me go outside of the house very easily. He liked to tell me that he'd live for the both of us. Now he was a world renowned author, who had traveled all over the globe. I would have been jealous if I didn't care for him so dearly. And I would never, ever be able to meet him.
Besides, what did I really have to offer him? I was some anti-social loser who lived in the basement (actually, it was my house, I just rented out the top to people), who never got out except to work at my part-time night job at McDonald's so that I didn't turn into a complete hikikomori. Plus I looked like I was nineteen. Adult when I was conceived, but still a child nowadays. Arthur was... not nineteen.
It's okay, I could deal with it. Humans die all the time. It just happens. Never mind that I couldn't figure out how to sneak over to England with all these newfangled modes of transportation to turn him - too many chances to get exposed to sunlight. Plus I sucked at turning people. (Vampire joke, har-har.) But seriously, I sucked. I practiced on people and just got a bunch of nasty mindless ghouls. So no, no turning Arthur into a vampire for me... All I could really do was just continue existing, living off of Arthur's messages, hoping he didn't croak any time soon.
Like I said, I'm probably the most disappointing vampire you'd ever meet.