Welcome to Buffyness and Nightlurkers Presents: Tales of the Vampires, Issue #5! In the previous installment, Roche tells a couple more stories.

A farmboy gets bitten and tries to bite himself a girlfriend, but fails. So he starts harvesting bodies and storing them in the barn instead of having a vampire fuck buddy.

A priest during Inquisition times, now a vampire, confesses his sins to another priest whom the vampire priest is compelled to spill his guts onto, yo. Turns out this guy is God, and he orders the vampire to sit out into the sun and die! Then it turns out he’s just some lunatic off of his meds! Ha ha ha hahaha haha!

This is the final issue of the limited series. Little Edna is still very intrigued by Roche and we’re now going to see how the end of that little obsession plays out.

Tales of the Vampires, Issue #5 [April, 2004]

“Tales of the Vampires Part V” – Joss Whedon

Roche has grasped one of the young children, Mr. Freckle Face. “You fools!” Roche addresses the Watcher-type people. “Did you think to parade this banquet before me and not have me feast? Release me. It is this morsel’s only hope.”

Another child smartly deduces that Roche is going to kill everyone anyway if he is released.

I deduce that this Roche fellow is single and waiting… hubba hubba.

And Edna, oh little Edna, she has a knife to a girl’s throat. “Perhaps you’d like some help,” she says to Roche with the respect to the whole “he’s gonna kill everyone anyway if he is released” situation. The Watchers cannot believe their eyes or their ears or their brains! What’s gotten into this girl? Huh? Eh? Wha?

“The girl is wise,” Roche claims. “She knows the power I can bestow upon her. The power of a god.” Roche wants to eat this girl’s neck and then let her eat his neck and then it’s more necking from that point forward.

But here’s a twist. The little girl with the knife to her throat, she’s Roche’s sire. Edna has figured this out because a) she suddenly showed up to join everyone at Watcher school for no reason one day, and b) she’s never in the sun! Thank you, and good night!

Edna gets thrown against some rocks, and she looks visibly scared for the first time since the beginning of the series. “You want to learn about vampires, little girl?” Roche is not havin’ it anymore. “Here’s your very last lesson.”

“Some Like It Hot” – Sam Loeb

“Doc! Come on! Let’s get moving here! I got places to go, people to eat!”

I rather pale, Hot Topic-shopping gothy-looking vampire lies in bed. He loves being a vampire. Super-strength, agility, immortality… but he misses the sun. Oh, the sun. It’s the one thing he doesn’t get to have.

“Before we proceed with this, I’d like to remind you once again of the severe risk you’re taking.” The doctor looks like Frank Zappa, only fully goateed, and he has the stupid round doctor mirror on his head.

Being a vampire is cold. All the time. Ice in the veins. It sucks. “It’s worth it,” the vampire responds, smiling.

Look, Doc, just fuck the sun into me. Can ya do that, sir?

It sounds like this guy is getting fitted with an IUD, but instead of preventing pregnancy it prevents turning into dust because of that big ball of hydrogen and helium in the sky.

It’s going to be exciting to see the sun again! Sunburns, Vitamin D, staring at it all damn day without eye protection. These are the good times.

Dr. Zappa takes a large saw to the vamp dude’s chest. Cutting into him like a large saw through butter, only a little bit harder to do, you know? “The pain is so bad I can barely stay awake,” the vampire thinks. “All I can do is keep thinking of what I’ll get out of this. Finally… to be warm again.”

“And then, all of a sudden, I feel… nothing.”

Doc takes a black heart out of his chest.

“Just cold. The empty, empty cold.”

WELL, WE’RE NOT DONE YET, DINGUS. The Doc rifles through his big treasure chest of shitty 18th Century doctor equipment and pulls out a fresh, red heart. When vampires get their heart removed, they’re invincible! The sun can’t hurt them. This is gonna be so f’in sweet, brah.

“Finished. Now rise! Rise, damn you!” Doc lifts his bloody hands up like a mad scientist caricature.

Here’s the caveat, though: it only works for 24 hours, then you die automatically. Haha haha.

Good thing Doc replaced the heart! Shit’s gonna be off the chain!

While the nurse gets ready to stitch the vampire up, he rises from the bed and bites her soft neck. She screams like a wimp about it.

He feels better! It’s a success!

Hee hee hee hee! Violence against women! That shit never gets old, right fellas???

Doc advises the vampire not to get the heart wet for about a week. I don’t know how to not get your heart wet when it rains all the damn time. Also, it’s ill-advised to go and get his head cut off. That would be hella lame, too, because the heart doesn’t prevent decapitation deaths. M’kay?

Marylin Manson over here traipses around outside in the woods. “The sun! After so long, I’m finally able to bask in its warm, beautiful rays. All the cold is gone! All that’s left is warmth and joy!”

…

…

“$#%@, it’s hot. I need a drink…”

THE END

Oh, the levity!

“Numb” – Brett Matthews

Angel stands out in the cold like a Grade A dingus, overlooking a small town. He’s nearby a sign that welcomes you to the small town. The name of the small town is obscured.

Angel, our hero of the story, walks into a quaint little diner. “What’ll it be?” asks a quaint little miserable old diner waitress. “I’m not sure…” he responds helpfully.

Ah, say no more. Here’s your cup of blood! Enjoy.

He spits it out immediately.

“WHAT?” The waitress reveals an arm full of cut wounds. “Mine’s not good enough for you anymore?”

Angel walks away from the diner, brooding and sulking as one does when one is Angel.

“You can’t see your breath no matter how hard you try,” a girl says suddenly. No coat. A light pink dress, clutching a stuffed bunny. “Because you’re dead, silly. Like me.”

Angel doesn’t think he’s dead… is he dead?… what even is dead, you know? Aren’t we all just dead, when you really think about it? Piles of carbon atoms and–

“Don’t tell me you forgot,” the child points, looking frightening.

Doesn’t ring a bell, kid. Sorry. Do you need a diaper change?

The girl kicks Angel in the shin. “Jerk!” And she runs away.

He remembers now. The shin jolt really knocked some sense into him.

Angel approaches a large mausoleum-like structure and lifts open a couple of cellar doors. “Tickets, please.” A female usher wearing the whole usher get-up reaches out her hand.

“Miss Calendar?” he asks? Remember when he killed her, too? He killed so, so many innocent people! lol!

He doesn’t have any tickets. “You always say that,” she responds as she grabs some tickets. She leads him down a twisty, nightmarish path with many oddly-shaped doors. She tells him not to open any. He’ll probably not listen to her immediately.

So he opens a door before she’s even out of eyeshot and finds Jenny Calendar’s dead, white-as-a-sheet body. “I told you not to, Angel. Why can’t you spare yourself it?”

Now what? Usher Calendar leads him to a hole in the ground and tells him to jump down that fucker. “You fall. You’re weak. You know what that means…”

Then he is confronted by his shackled evil Angelus persona. Dream sequences are fun, aren’t they? A real humdinger.

Angelus, being the evil guy that he is, tries to convince Angel that the only real motivation, ambition, and drive he’s ever had was through his evil Angelus persona! So give in to your bad self, mon ami. “You can feel me break loose again every time you let your mind wander or close your eyes. We both know that’s why you’re here. That it’s only a matter of time…”

Go blow yourself, hombre. Angel pushes him against the wall and clocks him in the mug.

“You know, sometimes…” Angelus bleeds from the nose. “Sometimes I think you’re the soul that was put into me. That that’s all you are. A soul. Nothing more. So, tell me Angel, in your heart of hearts… what do you see when you look in the mirror?”

Angel snaps out of it and finds himself in his bedroom. He looks in the mirror.

He sees nothing.

Obviously.

‘Cause he’s a vampire.

THE END

Put a shirt on, Soul Boy. You’re scaring all the kids you killed.

“Tales of the Vampires Part VI” – Joss Whedon

“God rest her soul.”

Edna had reduced the vampire girl, Sophie, to dusty dust. Roche is crying over his dear sire. Edna is livid. “Is this how you train Watchers?” She addresses the room full of horrible, incompetent Watchers. “By bringing children to be slaughtered? Bloody idiots.”

One Watcher is like “mind your P’s and your Q’s, and other letters too if applicable, little shrew”.

Edna turns to sad-sack Roche. “Vampire, you are everything I loathe. But I have learned from you. And I’m sorry for your loss.”

The Watchers are beside themselves with this behavior! How dare she address the mean, bad vampire as if he were something to sympathize with! “That girl has no place in the Watcher’s Organization,” says one. But not to worry! By the time she’s on the council, these old fucks will be long gone. Let her ruin it with her vampire buddy-buddying.

“So what exactly have we learned?” Edna asks herself. “Grown-ups are stupid, even when they’re dead.”

Edna returns to her family’s bakery. “Giles’ Bakery”.

Final Thoughts

That was fun, wasn’t it kids? These Buffyverse comics ain’t no slouches, that’s for damn sure. Good stuff all around!

Next up I cover some exciting, sexy Angel and Spike action. It will surely put some pepper in your pantaloons! Stay tuned, Buffyphiles.