The only window on the small house belonging to supposed vampire Alden Sall was blocked out by thick black drapes that resembled the curtains at the Globe Theater. The house was mostly a garage with one door and a walk way of cracked granite stone, very run down, and not in a particularly benevolent neighborhood either. Police sirens wailed in the distance as Dr. Glomb--clad in baggy pajama pants, t-shirt, and bath robe—stepped onto the lawn. Weeds had over-grown the front yard and creeper vines slithered out from a box attached under the window were the corpses of flowers hung their leaves like lace veils at a funeral.

He checked his digital watch. 4:11 Am. Clarice is going to kill me.

On the drive Dr. Glomb had begun to rationalize the situation a little more thoroughly than when he was standing half naked in his bathroom with the telephone pressed to his ear. He remembered an article he read once in a magazine talking about a strange new fad amongst teenagers. These renegade geeks apparently role played one too many times and got to thinking that they actually were vampires. Or, as they called themselves, Vampyres. It was supposed to be a step up from that other Goth fad.

These Vamps stayed out of the sun, dyed their hair black, and had fake fangs custom made by dentists. Dr. Glomb certainly never came across anything like that in his profession, though he had a friend who specialized in dentures and had made quite a few fake fangs for vampire-wannabes.

Al’s reference to were wolves still confused him, but he was willing to forgo that by assuming it was all part of some elaborate role play circle he had no business trying to understand and spend the rest of the drive laughing at different ways he could tease Al.

Been to any good Italian restraints lately?

AB positive or AB negative?

So how’s Dr. Frankenstein doing?

Careful, this mouth rinse is 90 holy water!

Unfortunately it was hard to smile with the howl of police sirens to his back. This could be an elaborate scheme concocted by a dentist serial killer. Or it could be some geek who lives with his mom. Settling on the latter, Dr. Glomb stepped up to the front poach and rang the doorbell. The young man who opened the door did not live up to Dr. Glomb’s expectation of a stick thin teen wearing his mother’s make-up with long black hair and yellow contacts, dressed in frilly lace and a studded leather jacket complete with clothes-pins and spikes, stinking of cigarette smoke and other various narcotics, with a Johnny the Homicidal Maniac t-shirt that he thought was cool because none of the other kids were wearing them.

Alden Sall was a young man, rather thin but not under weight, who implied a greater impression of computer nerd than he did a dark warlock in Dungeons and Dragons. His hair was also black but short and poorly combed, a product of either laziness or disregard for proper grooming. He was dressed in a dark red t-shirt, no comic book icons in sight, and slightly baggy blue jeans that Dr. Glomb admitted to look very comfortable for lounging around the house, grocery shopping, just about anything. No chains, no spikes, not a trace of leather anywhere; he wasn’t even wearing shoes. Al sported no fashionable colored contacts, but he did have on a brownish pair of plastic frames, each one larger than a good sized magnifying glass yet smaller than the lens of the Hubble telescope. Only one feature hinted that this was the man who had called him almost an hour ago; a pair of inch long incisors locked in position by a bear trap of twisted, brown-gold shrapnel torturously attached to Al’s teeth.

Dr. Glomb did his best to hold still and avoid eye contact with the grizzly braces. “Mr. Sall, I presume?”

The vampire with the bear trap in his mouth nodded. Out of the corner of his eye Dr. Glomb thought he saw the poor man trying to smile. He stepped aside, allowing Dr. Glomb inside. “Yeah.”

The lights were on their lowest settings throughout the house. Amidst the gloom Dr. Glomb thought he spied a gargoyle grinning malevolently down from its living room perch. But it was not a gargoyle. It was a 1940s Mickey Mouse. The plushie’s eyes gleamed like balls of lightning caught in a sorcerer’s dark globe. Other novelties from the era, including post cards, unopened copies of Disney’s earliest films and television shows, a classic Musketeer cap, lithographs, pins, key chains, and countless memorabilia neatly stacked inside a glass case. As he started to look around Dr. Glomb noticed many other trinkets from the 1940s, 50s, 60s, and 70s displayed on all sides. Baseball cards, basketball cards, trading cards, bottle caps, movie posters, movie props, commemorative plates, a whole museum of stuff Dr. Glomb never dreamed existed, and it won a smile from the disillusioned doctor. “You must spend an awful lot of time on E-bay.”

“Hm? Oh, no. I collected most of this stuff myself back when it only cost a couple of pennies. A hundred years from now, I stand to make an enormous profit selling it all to museums. I already started on some of the older stuff.”

“You must have a lot of free time on your hands,” Dr. Glomb grinned. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to part with this treasury, even if it could potentially be worth millions. Alden seemed indifferent to his marital assets. He even glared when he caught Dr. Glomb smiling, as though offended by the idea that he actually enjoyed these stupid toys.

Shaking it off, Dr. Glomb made his way to the nearest light switch, which was actually a knob sticking out of the wall. “Mind if I turn these up a little? Or can’t you stand the light?”

Alden looked at Dr. Glomb. Against the back light of the living room Dr. Glomb thought he saw a flash come off Alden’s chocolate colored eyes, like the sun reflecting off a diamond and splitting into an array of silver, blue, and green.

Must be the glasses playing tricks on me. You could light candles on a cloudy day with glasses that size.

“Go ahead,” Al muttered as he settled himself in a dusty arm chair.

Dr. Glomb turned the light up to a level that he was comfortable with and went around to the front of the arm chair. Al appeared startled by the sudden change in lighting and blinked furiously to take the sting out of his eyes. His glasses were doing that strange trick to the light again. This time the light seemed to come directly out of his pupils. There was no evidence that the phenomenon was related to the glasses. Dr. Glomb could see his reflection in the massive lenses; nothing else appeared to be going on exclusive to the eye wear.

Now that he thought about it, he noticed a similar effect when he was trying to coax Clarice’s cat out from under the bed with a flashlight. Maybe Alden did have contacts after all.

Or maybe Alden didn’t. Maybe he maybe he was better off not thinking about it.

Putting Alden’s glowing eyes out of his head for the moment, Dr. Glomb politely asked him to open his mouth. Alden had difficultly getting his jaws far enough apart for Dr. Glomb to assess the damage. Dr. Glomb poured sympathy for the pathetic state of his mouth. He’d put braces on kids as young as nine before. Sometimes he saw them in so much pain even a sugar free lolly-pop couldn’t dry their tears. Dentists usually get a bad rap for the things they do to little kid’s teeth. Dr. Glomb hated to see his patients in pain. Alden’s mouth was the worst case of malpractice he’d ever seen, it looked like a Nazi camp set up around someone’s teeth complete with barbed wire and lots of electric fences.

Dr. Glomb leaned back, retreating from the rusty shackles in Alden’s mouth. “Gosh... that’s awful. I’m sorry I tired to hang up on you, I had no idea it was really this bad. From what you said on the phone I thought for sure you were pulling my leg. Do you remember the name of the dentist who did this to you?”

Alden massaged his jaw, keeping his lips apart so they wouldn’t snag on the sharp edges of his braces. It looked unsettlingly like the snarl of a wild animal. “I don’t remember, my girl friend made me see him. Big guy should have been in professional wrestling, or football. He looked like a Dr. Mufesto to me.”

Dr. Glomb frowned. “That’s terrible. I don’t even know if I can get them off without pulling teeth. Frankly, I’m shocked you’ve avoided infection for this long. Your mouth should be… well, you probably don’t want to know. How long have you had these monsters?”

“A year.”

Dr. Glomb sat up with a start. “A year!”

Alden nodded. The unnatural glow in his eyes only enhanced the anger portrayed by his disfigured face. “And I broke up with the bitch, too. Can’t believe she made me get these, these—ow!” he covered his bleeding lip.

“You alright? You’re going to need some disinfectant on that.”

Just as Dr. Glomb was getting up Alden stopped him. He lifted his hand to show no harm was done. A few specks of blood wetted his finger tips, but it could have come from his gums as easily as from his lip.

“I wish I’d brought something with me to ease the pain a little, or at least my calling card, though I suppose if you’ve got my number you already know the address of where I work. When you said you were a Vampyre I didn’t know what to think. I mean, from my perspective, it sounded pretty silly. So you understand how hard it was for me to believe you had this problem, too, right?”

Alden didn’t seem interested in discussing either fads or forgiveness. He started to stand up, keeping those strange glowing eyes in line with the eyes of Dr. Glomb, who did his best not to look away. “So are you going to help me?”

It occurred to Dr. Glomb now that the examination was over how odd it was that Alden had kept his false fangs in while the braces were excruciatingly applied to his teeth. Those couldn’t be human incisors, they were too long, and being well experienced in the immense variety that human teeth come in Dr. Glomb could say with complete certainly that teeth such as these didn’t come naturally to any creature short of a Tyrannosaurus Rex!

He realized that Alden was still staring at him with his lips spread in that sad expression of agony, probably thinking that his steady silence meant he was having second thoughts. Now that he thought of it the grimice was actually quite threatening. A bloodless chill crept under his skin. Forcing a tiny smile, Dr. Glomb nodded, “Of course I’m going to help. I’d be a monster if I left you like this. Here, I’ll write down the address and a time you can come in. I can get them to let me keep the place open late if I tell them I have a patient coming. No problem.”