Chapter four… wow. This is like the little oneshot that could.

So… vampires are kind of the scariest things ever. Well, maybe not, but they're pretty damn intimidating.

There I am at Sunday dinner, chatting it up with Carl and Raoul and Jason (one of the little brothers,) when there's a knock on the door and they open it to find this guy who's all pale and sort of blasé looking, and I'm like 'oh my god, a vampire, totally a vampire.' Then Carl let him in and sat him down at the table, because apparently that whole 'vampires and werewolves are enemies' thing is just a ploy to sell movies. The vampire (Steven,) was really polite, but he didn't eat any of the sushi we made, and spent the whole dinner talking in this really quiet, smooth, voice, like he was used to being listened to. Or else.

Raoul told me after that it was just because he was being polite that he didn't try to pin me down and have some Martha a'la mode, (friends don't eat their friend's friends.) And I was just like… 'I had dinner with a murderer. Goddamn.' Because apparently that whole 'vampires will often just steal from blood banks, and can totally eat animals' thing is just a ploy to make the vampires in the movies more likable. According to Raoul, (who, to be fair, tends to exaggerate,) vampires like their blood fresh, hot, and flowing. Plus, eating animal blood is like eating your shoe. Only advisable during extreme starvation conditions. And he totally just sat there the whole dinner, talking about tax cuts with Carl, cool as ice. It kind of reminded me of that guy from Silence of the Lambs, you know? Like he was about to do that tongue-sucking thing any minute. Except he wasn't behind a nice plexiglass wall, he was sitting right across the dinner table, and if he decided he was too hungry to be polite, he could snap my neck in a second and have himself a nice entree right in the middle of Raoul's dining room.

Eventually he left, but before he went, he turned to Carl and said, "I'll talk to your landlord for you," referencing something Carl had mentioned at dinner, then he walked out the front door and climbed into this little gray car and drove away.

Just, the way he said it. Like 'talk' meant 'dismember.'

Naturally, I muttered something about how kind of scarily impressive the guy was, and Raoul spent the next week talking in a very smooth, quiet voice and trying to sound threatening at the same time. It was kind of adorable.