After he graduated from school with his masters in computer technologies, Marek Johnson was full of excitement of the big bucks he had anticipated that he would make at the high tech firm that had hired him. Instead he was filled with dread and disappointment as he was hired for a dull desk job at the computer company Initech housed in New York City. All he could do in his job was to fill out files and papers, and type reports on the zero work that he was doing. Hell, a computer could have done his job.
Marek himself was your typical male college graduate. Everyone that knew him would have told you that he was the best computer person possibly in the whole United States. Despite his well know position of being the local computer nerd, Marek was fairly well built. He went to the gym regularly and worked out with the guys that were on the college football team. When he had received his masters from the University of Southern California, and then had received a job offer almost immediately.
Being all excited as a school girl, Marek took the offer as soon as he got it, hoping it was his ticked to stardom in the computer world. Unfortunately, those aspirations were not met and so he was forced to do the stupid busy work that big companies always had. So he went on with the job, putting his brain on autopilot all day and receiving a paycheck every two weeks.
Marek lived in an apartment in the outskirts of the city, so he wasn't always in the damn hustle and bustle of the typical big city. His apartment was fairly nice, a one bedroom with a kitchen, living room, and bathroom. For his place he only had to pay three hundred a month for it, and being in New York that was a steal for a place like that.
When Marek got home was when his real job began. He would stay up all night and became a hacker for hire, or basically an internet mercenary. The job offers came through his dead drop e-mail, and then when he agreed and the payment went through, he would make the necessary changes. These jobs never got into to dangerous stuff. Hacking a school firewall to change a grade or steal information from another company for industrial espionage. But then his most challenging work came in the mail late one night, just as he was ready to take his power nap for the morning.
All the e-mail said was "Opportunity to change your life." And so naturally he was curious. The mailer said he was referred to Marek by one of his contacts and that he had some info that he wanted to get. So all he said was sure, and then quoted the price for the job. The next afternoon after work an envelope full of cash was in his mailbox, thus honoring his terms. So Marek then set out to hack the site that night.
The site he was linked to was called and when he typed into the site, he got a typical webpage. The job was for him to change some info in one of the folders and that the caller had no idea what kind of internet security the site had guarding it.
All night he sat there trying to hack the site, but nothing he would try would work. It seemed whatever he tried, a hidden firewall would pop up or some kind of anti-virus would delete his plant inside the page. It soon became frustrating for him, because no page had ever taken this long for him. Hell, he had cracked the FBI database one day just for fun. But this site had some kind of unknown protection that he had just never seen or heard of. To top off the list of problems, his laptop had fried in his lap while trying to get into the database. Someone who was watching the site must have seen his work and got to his laptop first.
The next night after work he set after the site again. This time he had borrowed a friend's laptop that had almost every single kind of security measure known to man, so that he wouldn't be attacked while doing his hacking. Once again he was frustrated as everything he had tried failed on this site. He had begun to think what was guarding the database. Perhaps it could be some kind of advanced AI or a new computer defense system that another big company had recently developed. Whatever it was, Marek was sure that it was going down the next night, hell or high water.
So the next night he set to break down the security surrounding the database. He had almost given up hope at around three in the morning when he caught a lucky break. He had found a crack in the firewall and got into the pay dirt. With his chance he browsed through the folders looking for the info that he was supposed to change. Then he found the folder and opened it, and then almost cried at what he saw. Inside the folder there was a message saying "-Congratulations, you have successfully cracked out system."
A few nights later, Marek was so pissed at what he saw that he took no other job offers that week. Then he started to leave the house and go into the city and go drinking at the local bars. And there it was that he would stay, inside the bottle, wasting away because someone had played him for the fool. He didn't even look at the many women that would walk past him, looking at him with interest.
Finally about a week and a half after the hack, he was sitting in a corner booth at a small bar in the outskirts of town called, "Sunrise Bar and Grille" He ordered the drink that he had learned was now his favorite, shots of whiskey with a beer chaser, and began the new nightly ritual of getting completely plastered for the next morning. After three shots, he noticed that a very hot blonde woman kept staring at him the whole night, and then eventually walked over to where he was sitting.
She was completely gorgeous, with long flowing blonde hair and wearing a slender red dress with a slit up the one side. The way she had walked was also very enticing, and as she crossed the room she had received stares from all the guys in the bar. Hell, she could have been straight out of any man's dreams. Then she sat down next to Marek and started up a conversation.
"My, aren't you the handsome one," she said to him, staring into his eyes. It was almost as if he was mesmerized by her presence.
"What is your name," is all he managed to utter in reply.
"That's not really important. What is important is what your name is."
He turned around to look if she was in fact talking to him, and then said, "M-My name is Marek."
"Well then Marek, what do you think of me?"
He was stunned at his luck. He sat there silently praying that he would not screw this up. "Well, I think that, that you are stunningly beautiful."
She chuckled slightly at the remark, and flashed a look only she could have pulled off. A look of what appeared to him as if she wanted him and him alone. "Let's get out of here Marek. I know a great place where we could go to downtown."
He couldn't believe it. He was actually going to get with this beautiful woman who sat no more than three feet from him. "Sure thing. You just lead the way."
So they left the bar and he got into her car and they both drove down to a place in the heart of downtown called the Skyline Apartments. She led him upstairs to what he thought was her apartment on the sixth floor and unlocked the door. Inside it was decorated in a very plain fashion, except for a phone on the kitchen table and a chair across from a very old looking television set. She continued upstairs and so that was where he followed her. Upstairs was decorated in the same fashion, with the only convenience being the laptop sitting on the table in the landing.
They both went into her bedroom and he found it surprisingly done up, with the walls painted a light red color and black lights all around the room. The bed itself was covered with a cheap blanket made to look like leopard skin. Marek just stood there in the doorway as she walked to the bed and lay down, not taking her eyes off of him. She then took off the red dress that she had on at the bar to reveal what most men on the planet would consider the perfect body. It was all too much for Marek as he could do nothing but stare at her with an utmost amazement.
She looked at him again and motioned him over with her finger. He could do nothing but comply with her demand and so he went over and lay down next to her. She crawled over to him on hands and knees and then lay over top of him. He did nothing but lay there as she started to unbutton his shirt. Marek still could not believe his luck for this night so he decided to just let her do whatever she was going to. She then went down a little further and unzipped his pants and started the night's events. The two of them went all night, doing almost everything imaginable. Finally at almost four in the morning, Marek looked over at the clock in between one of their sessions and decided that even though it was heavenly, he had to leave. Before he got up she crawled overtop of him and whispered something in his ear.
"Let me show you something."
Marek woke up with a massive headache the next morning. His head felt as though someone had driven a Mack truck through it, and the constant pounding was almost unbearable. He sat up and then just realized where he was and what he did all night. Scratching his hair he looked around the room and found a clock on the dresser next to him. But something didn't make sense to him, because the clock read that it was nine o' clock at night. He was there all morning, and he missed work. Not that it mattered to him, the work that was. His boss would notice his missing work, but he never cared about that job anyways.
Marek stumbled out of the room and looked around the apartment, but he couldn't find where the woman from last night was. He walked down the stairs to the first floor of the apartment, and finally found the woman, in the main room sitting down in the chair. She saw him coming down and looked up at him with severe interest. They both stood there staring at each other when finally Marek was the one to break the silence.
"What the hell is going on?"
She just smiled at him, and replied, "All in due time. You will know what you want to know when the time is right."
Marek stood there, dumbfounded at the words. What the hell did she mean by that? "Why did you keep me here all day?"
"It was for your own protection. You must know, it is not safe for you to go outside during the day."
"Why not?"
"Quite simply, it is because the sunlight is fatal to you, as it is to me and the rest of my colleagues."
None of her words made any sense to Marek. He was confused about what she meant. "What the hell did you do to me?"
Now she smiled an almost devilish smile at him, "You, my childe, have been embraced and you are now one of us."
"What in the fuck are you…?"
"You see, I know it is hard to accept at first, but you are now a creature of the night, one bound to the darkness and eternally damned in the eyes of whatever god you have prayed to before."
"W-What in the fuck are you?"
"We go by many names in many cultures, but I believe we are most commonly referred to as vampires. We along with many other creatures of the night that you only hear about in human fairy tales do exist. Almost every story you have ever heard about werewolves, mummies, zombies, and any other demon of the night is true."
It was all too much for Marek to take. It couldn't be real, could it? He just knew that someone would pop out of a closet or something and say 'gotcha'. "This is all a joke, right?"
"I am afraid not, but I can reassure you. Our condition is not as bad as you may think it to be. This curse is also a gift that is different for all. You cannot tell me honestly that something like eternal life is what no man wants. We also have abilities that you would call supernatural, and each one of us has different abilities."
"If this is all true, then why have I never heard about any of this before? Why don't we know about this kind of thing?"
"Mortals do not know of our existence because if they knew, we would most certainly be wiped out. We only survive because mortal man is ignorant of our presence. We are governed by a body of elders who ensure that something called the masquerade is enforced. This masquerade is quite simply our kind hiding our condition from the public eye. If you break the masquerade, then everything we worked for is gone, and you would have the wrath of our kind as well as human hunters after you."
"What am I supposed to do now?"
"If you are ready to accept what I have told you, we shall go to the mansion that we control in the city. This mansion is what we use as a haven and a gathering place. I think you will find the answers to all of your questions there."
So she got up out of the chair and put on a black trench coat and walked over to the door. He just followed her over to the door and together they headed out to the streets. She hailed a cab and opened the door for Marek to get in. Before he got in though he turned around to face her.
"What is your name?"
She just looked at him for a minute and said, "My name is Maria, and I doubt if we shall meet again in the near future."
He sat down and watched as she closed the door and walked down the alley. The driver didn't ask him his destination, so he assumed she had told him where to go. All Marek could do now was sit and wait to arrive at the place where he was now destined to go to. It was amazing to him how his life had changed so dramatically in the course of one night.