Welcome to Buffyness and Nightlurkers Presents: Tales of the Vampire, Issue #1!

Following Whedon’s Tales of the Slayers one-shot, Tales of the Vampires presents event more short stories about, I imagine, vampires.

No other introduction necessary! Only because I don’t know what to expect! This is the last bit of business before moving onto, like, “seasons” of Buffy and Angel. I think. I’m telling you, I’m going to be doing this for years.

Tales of the Vampires, Issue #1 [December, 2003]

“Tales of the Vampires, Part I” – Joss Whedon

Let’s begin! A rather frightening looking man with a torch leads a small group of children through some stony underground catacombs.

“They’re animals.”

“They are not.”

“I don’t know what we’re doing here.”

“They always call them animals.”

“They call you ‘sausage roll’ behind your back, that doesn’t mean you are one.”

“It’s so dark down here…”

The alarmingly ugly man stops and tells the children to stay quiet and calm. He wears what looks like a anti-fuckin’ chastity belt with a cross hanging from it. If I had to guess, we’re in the Middle Ages.

The children are afraid, yet prepared. After all, they need to see the real thing if they are to someday become Watchers! No reading this shit in books, books can’t bite your neck (unless you’re in Discworld!).

“I don’t want to be a Watcher. I want to be a Duchess,” whines one girl. The priest-like scary man with hideous creases in his brow and a terrible mustache unlocks a padlock and opens a door. “Be quiet, children. We are here to learn.”

Creak. Swing. Step step step. Creeeaaakk. Moo. There’s a vampire chained up to a stone wall. His face is all sallow and white; he’s got an Abe Vigoda chin and a Nick Cave haircut. Sophie, the one who wants to be a Duchess, recognizes the creature as Roche. Roche is ready to teach the children a thing or two about vampirin’!

Come sit on Pappy’s lap, kiddos! I have Werther’s Originals!

“We’re here to learn your history, then?” asks Duchess Sophie. Roche smiles like the Joker on crack. First, the kids are going to learn about vampires in general. Roche is cooperative, almost eagerly looking forward to teaching another round of prospective Watchers! “We are monsters, you see, not animals, and every one of our… lives… is different. Those who came before me. Those yet to come.”

#1: Vampires don’t leave anything behind when they “die”. Only dust! Which is not “nothing”, so we’re already contradicting ourselves.

#2: Humans can die by conventional means, and you can scare them off with conventional means. With vampires, you have to be super creative. You have to, like, trick ‘em and shit.

While Roche talks, a man appears to be throwing a young woman in a dungeon. I suppose we’ll get to that later.

“The Problem with Vampires” – Drew Goddard

When one suddenly finds themself conscious again, the first thing they need to do is try piecing together bits from their past. For example, a city skyline tells you that you’re in Prague. Your mouth tastes like whiskey and blood, which is exciting at first until you realize most of the blood is your own. Then there’s a stake sticking out of your bloody chest, which is a nuisance. And then, you’re sunk an inch into the ground by the river as if thrown from the bridge above.

“So then. Prague. Drunk. Beaten. Nearly staked. Thrown off a bridge. Left for dead. The sort of night that might make an ordinary person pause and re-evaluate his life.”

“But you’re no ordinary person.”

You rip the stake out of your chest and start to panic when your girlfriend is missing.

Ah ok, so the young woman is this vampire dude’s girlfriend. The so-far unseen man holding her captive has her strapped to an old wooden chair. He points to the wrist and leg cuffs. “As I tighten these screws, the spikes at your arms, legs, and back are slowly driven into your body.”

Sounds horrible! Except this woman is a vampire, so it’s instead, in fact, good.

You mean the giant spikes impaling my limbs? I thrive off of this, actually.

Look lady, if you don’t want to suffer with spikes for eternity, it’s time to listen the fuck up. The man shows her the contents of a small box, the kind that has an engagement ring inside. Her look is of surprise.

Meanwhile, New Vampire Jones is biting necks and strangling bitches.

The young vampire woman thinks to herself about how painful the spikes are, and how the inquisitor smells like turnips, cologne, and sweat. “I know what it is you feel,” the man says, lifting up her chin. “You have no conscience. You have no morality. You have no soul. You have nothing except pain. Pain is your nature. You hunger for it. You live to inflict it. It feeds your existence. It is the only thing you truly fear.”

This guy has her number! Being in pain sucks ass! She tries to think of horrible, gruesome things to make her feel better: a baby on fire in an upstairs crib. A woman mangled in a car wreck. Little girls lost at the fair. That one seems less gruesome. “It doesn’t comfort you,” she thinks as the rigid spikes keep her bleeding arms in place.

“…and so to communicate with you, I have to speak in terms you understand. I have to speak in terms of pain.”

This guy thinks he has the upper hand here. And he almost does. She can’t think of ANYTHING else except the pain!

…until… she thinks of him.

These two fucking lovebirds. How romantic is vampire courtship? …it’s a little romantic, actually, I have to admit. There’s something about being together forever that’s just… ok, I’m back to reality now.

Vampire Dude continues chewing up mofos. Vampire Gal has stopped reacting strongly to the pain. “Hmm,” the inquisitor thinks, believing that he has rendered her unconscious. Time to get the holy water and the stake, this one has become a lost cause.

Anyway, we’re just gonna…

Vampire Dude tears through the dungeon door and bites the inquisitor on the neck! Hooah! He rescues Vampire Gal from the spiky chair and cradles her in his arms, all lovey-dovey.

“People think you’re crazy,” thinks Gal.

“They think the only thing you feel is pain,” thinks Dude.

“They don’t understand,” thinks Gal.

“Not that it matters,” thinks Dude.

They have each other, and that’s what matters. A real Monster Mash for the ages.

They’re thinking about travelling to the Hellmouth for the summer! Maybe kill a Slayer! It’s been a while.

The couple are Spike and Drusilla. The end.

Disgusting.

“Stacy” – Joss Whedon

“Nobody gets me,” this nerdy girl thinks while reading Children of Dune. I don’t get her. She’s fascinated with magic. Not magic tricks or illusions or love or any of that happy horseshit, we’re talking pentagrams and mages and floating skulls and +4 Swords of Wildfyre. Stacy saw The Lord of the Rings with her friends, and although she couldn’t take her eyes off of the sultry Elijah Wood, she was more entranced by a world of wizards, witchery, and Bertie Botts’ Every Flavor Beans. Her friends thought the movie was boring and, I quote, “gay”, but Stacy didn’t care. Boys are dumb.

“It isn’t boring if you have magic in your heart.”

What a gay thing to say, Stacy! Jesus H. Christ, dude!

Stacy wishes she were something other than human. Even an elf. Being an elf would be tops! “I wanted to live in that world so hard, to feel the light, to battle with that darkness – instead of battling with Jason trying to feel be up after half a tab of X.”

Fighting orcs! Scary, mean orcs! Fighting without fear! That’s the stuff! That’s the life!

I bet you stayed in your bedroom all day stroking your dick to Transformers and WWE wrestling videos.

We suddenly take a turn. “And I know you’ve never been murdered. I’m making it sound all dramatic, being killed. Actually, it was weird.” It happened at a house party. Everyone got drunk and stupid. While Stacy was helping her friend Dwayne puke his guts out by the side of a house, a man approached the both of them. He looked like if Trent Reznor fucked Keanu Reeves and had a baby made of marshmallow paste. “He looks wicked strung out, but he also has this thing…” We see him tenderly grab her hand.

“He says there’s a meteor shower going on. You can see it around the back of the house. What moron falls for that?”

THIS moron right here! *points to dumbass Stacy who’s about to get hella vamped*

Oh, yes yes. He bites the shit out of her neck.

“I wake up in the bushes. It’s still night – or it’s the next night, ‘cause I don’t hear the party anymore.”

Based on the scents and sights around, she knows that it’s been two days. Two days dead in the bushes and no one found her there. She can see without her glasses. It’s dark as shit outside and she can see, man. “Mostly, though, I can feel. Inside me. You know what I feel?”

“Connection.”

She is welcomed with open arms by Spike, Drusilla, and a small gang of other vampires. She never felt connected as a human. This, though, this was something else. Powerful. Sexy. Pungent?

She’s the orc now!

“Yeah, I know I’m evil, and I know I’m dead. But I’m something else too. I’m magic.”

It’s not the vampires who are animals, it’s the humans who are animals! “You’re meat.”

You see, all those mythical creatures always felt above her. Now she’s on the same plane. She’s just like the rest of them.

“I have magic in my heart.”

The evening doesn’t get anymore enchanted than this, that’s for damn sure.

Final Thoughts

There’s something… eerily romantic about all this. Romantic in the idyllic sense, not in the gross Spike/Drusilla sense. I like the part that, while reminiscing, Vampire Stacy still has it in her brain to find Elijah Wood attractive. Whedon really knows how to touch upon the human element of the montrously supernatural, and he’s good at finding the parallels between good and evil in a way that can blur the lines once in a while.

It makes me wonder what it would be like to vamp out. I bet I’d get a real kick out of it! I’m only 5% kidding.