Welcome to Buffyness and Nightlurkers Presents: Tales of the Vampire, Issue #4! In the previous installment, Roche tells a couple more stories.

A vampire father spends the rest of his son’s life continuing to love him and care for him… until a Slayer stakes him at his son’s deathbed.

Buffy and two more Slayers confront Dracula, who had put Xander in a trance as his personal slave. Per Dracula, his time with Xander were the best years of his life. Dracula dies old and friendless!

Meanwhile, little Watcher-bound Edna continues to be both suspicious AND attracted to Roche. I mean… no, not attracted to Roche. Gross. But attracted to the idea of Roche and his vampire-edness. Edna’s gonna get hella bitten on purpose, you can take that one to the bank and put it in your pipe and suck my dick.

Fun series! Let’s continue!

Tales of the Vampires, Issue #4 [March, 2004]

“Tales of the Vampires Part IV” – Joss Whedon

“I tell them stories. And they swallow them like the complacent fat lambs tha–”

“Wait.”

Edna interrupts Roche’s little diatribe, which he takes in stride. “I have a tale I want to hear,” she says defiantly.

This girl, Roche thinks. I will work her mouth into an O of agony. “Anything.”

The other children whisper amongst themselves. Some think that Edna’s gonna anger Roche so badly that he’ll break his chains and eat their livers and their bones. “I might just bite her myself,” says one of the hooligans.

“You’ve gone on about your massacres and your blood-soaked triumphs and we’re terribly impressed, truly we are. But you’ve told us nothing of yourself,” Edna says simply. “How did you become a beast?”

Roche frowns at this. It must be an embarrassing tale, like “I tripped and fell on this one sleeping vampire’s teeth”. He even admits that his life as a human isn’t worth talking about. He was a cobbler in France. He sucked at it, but he worked hard. Cobblin’ shoes. Deliverin’ orders after sunset. That sort of thing, hint hint. There was a plague going on at the time, so everyone hunkered down and said their prayers and ate their Kid Cuisines without much whining.

The last thing Roche saw was his sire’s beautiful shoes! Ah, a sight to behold! Verily.

Looking good, Pointy.

Edna asks what his sire was like while the other children facepalm and cringe. “A giant of a man… finely attired. But with the beast stamped clearly on his bearded face. Magnificent. Had the power to mesmerize, a power known to so few of us. Showed me worlds.”

Yeah, this Roche guy totally fucked his sire. Boned him right in the butt, not that there is anything wrong with vampire bonin’ at all.

But this is when Edna realizes that they’re not here to learn from Roche at all. They’re here to be lambs to the slaughter! The kid named Roger gets too close and Roche grabs his twiggy little neck…

“Dust Bowl” – Jane Espensen

Western Kansas, 1933. It’s desolate and shitty on the farm, with no crops to speak of growing anywhere! Anywhere! But they will, because the soil is still oh-so fertile and the Dust Bowl hasn’t actually happened yet. A teenage boy named Joe Cooper wakes up in bed, Dracula posters adorning his walls. “There is no wonder in this boy. He knows what he is and what he will be.”

The life a farmer doesn’t have much wiggle room for career growth, that’s for sure. Joe plows the fields, his mother feeds him and cares for him. Out in the field, they both look off in the distance. The horse gets scared. There is a plume of smoke rising up into the air from afar. “He tells her to get back in the house. They know that a little rain won’t hurt. But this storm has no rain.”

The horse runs away, and they trust that she’s headed for the barn. The blinding dust picks up, and Joe tells his mother to turn on the porch light for him to find his way back. Joe checks on the cows and sees a man nearby just standing there and staring at him. “They see these men more and more these days. Wandering men.”

Later, Joe arrives back home and learns that his mother has taken the man in. What nonsense is this!

He just asked for something called “neck stew”, whatever that is!

So, the next morning, Joe wakes up, washes his face, and comes down for breakfast. “Joe asks her if the man has already moved on. He asks her if she is all right.”

“You thirsty?” she responds. “I’m thirsty.”

GLOWING RED EYES OH NO

Ma turns around and lunges for her son, all fangy and such. “She is only asking for a hug from her son,” narration claims as she bites the fuck out of his neck. “Even without the light of consciousness, it is an instinct. Feeding from one’s mother,” narration claims as he drinks her blood back.

Can vampires run a farm? Do they even care about the cows anymore??

He wakes up a 2 o’clock. AM? PM? What’s the difference, time is a construct! “The last thing he remembers is that she changed somehow. That she asked to hold him. He wonders why her dress is torn. Was it that man?”

Ma rambles and yammers about being one and the same, how they’re strong, how they thrive in the dark now, yada yada yada. Joe is unnerved to no end! He picks up a piece of wood and stabs her in the chest. She implodes in a cloud of dust. Dust outside, dust inside, what’s the difference? Dust is a construct!

Joe walks outside, where it is indeed 2pm and the dust covers the harmful sun. “All that dust does make a person thirsty,” he thinks as he chews on some cows for a bit.

Mmm…steaky…

Joe runs inside and looks at the Dracula poster in his room. Eureka! It’s vampire time, friends.

When the sky begins to clear, Joe decides to visit a friend named Sal. Short for Sally. Not Salvador, as I originally thought! She lives in the next farm over. “She is a good sort of girl. Sal wonders why he was on fire, but sees no reason to panic.” That blasted sunshine! Burning everyone up to blazes and back, y’heard?

“Joe tells her not to be afraid. That he is going to turn her into one like him.” Like hell you are, Joey old boy. She’s– oh wait. She’s a bloody fucking mess on the floor now. “He waits, but she does not rise.” Joe frowns forlornly. “He is missing some part of the equation.”

Joe carries the dead girl and tries to bury her in the yard after dark, but the wind keeps blowing dirt back into the hole with every shovelful. He tries to set up a wooden cross, but it burns him as soon as he assembles it, the poor demon lad.

He wonders if the cow blood isn’t satiating enough. He has no one around to ask! Maybe he needs human blood? But there’s no one around. Frown.

He decides to rent out his mother’s room to any poor sucker who agrees to hang out with this blowjob. A grateful man agrees. He dies. A family’s car breaks down in the dust. They all die. He keeps the bodies in a pen he built in the barn.

“It’s just another kind of ranching.”

“Taking Care of Business” – Ben Edlund

“A vampire loves candy. All sweetness and no substance.” Sounds like me! Har har haaaaar!! He peruses the candy rack of a store, relishing in the fact that candy has advanced beyond dumb shit like pralines. What the fuck is a praline, anyway?

Yeah, no. Sorry, pal, you’re a strong case against it.

This creep is salivating over gummi worms while the cashier is unnerved and ready to call the police for the inevitable weird sex crimes. A priest walks into the convenience store, and Fedora Trenchcoat Jones smiles devilishly.

You see, this guy has spent a lot of his days targeting the men of the cloth. The churchy leaders. At first it was his own denomination, but then he decided that ALL faiths were worthy of his attack. Fuck tha church! “God’s answer to their hubris.”

This priest that walked into the store, though. This guy is different. “But for some reason – I want to talk to him. Tell him what I’ve done. Tell him what I am…”

He tells him he used to be tall!

Whew, that’s a load off of his mind. What a confession!

Fedora Trenchcoat Jones has a couple hundred little cross scars all over his surprisingly jacked body. He used to be tall, but that was six centuries ago. Now he’s the height of a preteen girl. “Was like you once,” he tells the rather plump Father. “Said my Marys, read my bible. A priest.”

During the Inquisition. When these jagoffs would kill women constantly. Those were the good ol’ days, certainly. “Though we did sentence at least one real witch. Heh… believe me, we wouldn’t have known, but a friend of hers stopped our caravan.”

“A vampire.”

This vampire… let’s call him Ladybug (that’s not in the comic, that’s me deciding that!)… he made short work of the caravan for serious. Then he turned on our loveable protagonist. “It took me decades to understand why he gave me his curse. That it wasn’t him, but God who wanted me this way.”

Guh! Buh!… Fuh?

Mr. Self-Mutliating Vampire is yap-yap-yapping and this priest ain’t even batting an eye! What gives! “In the face of his own death… he’s eating candy.”

Yeah, it’s God. You already saw the panel.

“Sure,” says God, “humanity has always been mixed up about what I want. That doesn’t mean you’ve got me pegged. Nobody does! I’m God, me-dammit!” He smiles. “I mean, what the hell could you know about it? I’m the original mystery man!”

The vampire has been groveling on his knees since the revelation, but God ain’t having it. He kindly asks the sick, twisted, little vampire / anime fan to lie down in the desert and wait for the sun to come up.

The vampire agrees that this is a good idea. For God Himself asked him to!

Twist! It’s just some guy named Hollis Avery who is off his meds. The cops come pick him up.

“Where the hell did you get that outfit?”

“Mail order. I met a vampire tonight, Sheriff.”

“That so? And what happened?”

“I think my Jesus beat his Napoleon.”

“Still crazy as a June bug, ain’t ya, Hollis?”

“I’m just the way God made me, Sheriff…”

Final Thoughts

This is a good series! What can I say! I can’t even make fun of it! It’s well-written and thought-provoking.

One more to go, then I can read about Angel jerking off Spike. Or would it be the other way around?