A.N.: I originally wrote that for school years ago, the italic part of the first sentence was given, and we were supposed to write a story. I just felt like sharing.

I'm not normally afraid of the darkness…

…well, that would be very odd for people like me. Not that I am ordinary now. I experienced that people like me have to deal with things like garlic and cruzifixes and unexpected sunrise, that's ordinary. Not to say that all the stories you've heard about vampires so far are fairly exaggerated, I suppose. We are not as inpolite as you think, we even try to startle when we are confrontet with a wooden peg, just to keep appearence. And it's complete nonsense that anyone of us turns into a bat. (We gave it up because it's very disgusting to wake up with remnants of dragnoflies in you mouth every evening.)

Of course, we might are a bit out of fashion nowadays. Maybe, you don't believe in us (in fact, I didn't as well so I wouldn't mind), maybe you sit there with this piece of paper in you hand and laugh – stop it, because you are wrong, my friend! And even someone who is out of fashion can appear to have very serious problems – which leads us to the main thing. Who takes a vampire serious that is afraid of the night? Excactly - nobody. It's nothing but ridiculous. That's what the others say when I appear at our monthly meetings (traditionally at new moon, oh dear) on the cemetery, coverd in my special cloak (with buttons all over that glow in the dark), armed with my supersize candles (to light them on the tops of the tombstones) and my two or three flashlights (to light the way and to light up suspicious bushes from where strangers could attack me). And it's for sure that I am the only proved case of a vampire who refuses to sleep in a coffin (dude, it's dark in there!).

Some of the others already are of the opinion that it was wrong to bite me(in case you don't know: that's what makes you a vampire, being bitten); they say I'm a shame for the clan. Don't get me wrong, I really tried to come up tomy species: I helped myself to a nice black coffin with velvet lining in a dusty cellar, I even attacked somebody to drink his blood – but I got so sick that I wasn't able to stand on my feet for days. I'm now living on tomatoes and tofu, yuk.

I just can't help it. Before the night I was bitten, I feared nothing. That's why they finally got me – because I loved to take a walk in the parc whenever I couldn't sleep. In the darkness. I have the black belt and no criminal frightens me. My favourite spice was garlic, and I was never into any religious symbols (like cruzifixes.) or superstitions. In fact I believed in nothing and I laughed at the people who did.

So they chose me as a kind of superweapon against all the things a vampire fears, but what they got is a vampire that is afraid of all the things that make him a vampire.

But I am optimistic. My therapist says that it's okay being different, and I'm looking for a bigger coffin now, which I'm going to leave slightely open through days. And maybe one day I will be able to bite one of my human friends who are as incredulous as I was myself, just to prove…that the fear of the fear itsself can make you fear. (Erm….well, maybe I'll just jump in their way from behind a tree when they walk around at night and glare them with my flashlights, that sounds more realistic at the moment as I am still afraid of being alone in parcs for too long)…