Weird Stories I Wrote While I Was Bored

By Scot Savage

A series of short stories and novel excerpts.

Some scary... some humorous... some thought provoking... but all of them strange!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781387232055

Book preview

Weird Stories I Wrote While I Was Bored

Weird Stories I Wrote While I Was Bored

A Collection of Short Stories and Novel Excerpts

Scot Savage

Weird Stories I Wrote While I Was Bored

A Collection of Short Stories and Novel Excerpts

Scot Savage

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Scot Savage Enterprises

Schaumburg, IL

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Scot Savage Enterprises

Copyright © 2007 by Scot Savage

ISBN # 978-1-387-23205-5

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including, but not limited to, photocopying, recording or by any information storage retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews or where permitted by law.

Cover Art by Doug Helwig

Stygian Illustrations

Printed in the United States of America

¹⁰ ⁹ ⁸ ⁷ ⁶ ⁵ ⁴ ³ ²

Dedication

To all aspiring and self-published writers: Never give up!

A Night in the Unlife of Roger Sparks

The sun has finally set.

All that matters is that I know it is night—I can feel that it is night.

And so, I awaken!

The night belongs to me and all my kind.

It is ours to rule!

The city belongs to us as well as the human sheep that live in it.

It’s time for me to come out and play!

The night is my time.

The city is my playground.

Since I have sensed that night has fallen, I open my coffin to embrace the start of a new evening.

And with that darkness, I know it is safe for me to come out.

I push aside the window curtains and gaze at the half moon that is somewhat obscured by the dark clouds.

Even after forty years, every night I wake up gives me a sense of excitement—invigoration—I still get a kick.

I look down from my apartment window and watch the denizens of the city scurry about and tending to their petty human and mundane concerns. I laugh to myself at the fact that these mortals think that they run the show, when in actuality, it is my brood that are the real rulers.

We are the true predators—the top of the food chain!

And what exactly am I a part of?

Well—then let me explain it this way: It is 2005 and I am sixty-five years old, but I have the physical appearance and same fitness of body as I had since I was nineteen years old.

As a matter of fact, I stopped aging at nineteen when I was taken into the fold. Despite my years, I am but a child in the eyes of most of my family.

My name is Roger Sparks—and I am a vampire.

Now, don’t get all hyper when you hear that!

I’m not some blood-sucking psycho that goes around ripping apart innocent people’s throats. Just because some asshole from Transylvania and a few other bad apples went on a murdering spree, doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to take a bad rap.

Sure, we feed on human blood, but most of us don’t have to kill the poor bastards in the process. We only need to drink a portion of their blood—

not all of it.

We vampires have to keep a low profile. If too many dead bodies show up, totally drained of blood, it would bring too much attention on us. Then we would tip off the humans and they would be hunting us down left and right.

Humans may be sheep, but they’re pretty determined sheep when they band together to fight a common enemy.

To remedy that situation, we mentally dominate a dozen or so humans to use as permanent feeding vessels. Now, if we get hungry, we give one of our vessels a call and tell them to come over. We’ll suck only a pint. Afterwards, we make sure to give our vessels lots of liquids and foods with plenty of sugar in them.

I lick the two puncture marks which instantly seal the wound and make it undetectable. Then, when they replenish their lost blood, we send them home and no one’s the wiser. We give them strict instructions not to do any heavy exertion for the next twenty-four hours.

In exchange for allowing us to feed, we, in turn, look out for the human vessel and see that nothing or no one harms them. We even manipulate things from behind the scene so that they have a few advantages in life.

In other words, we protect our feeding stock!

Some say that we treat our vessels as pets, but we consider them beloved pets. This may sound crazy, but I know this old bastard that lived a few houses down from me that treated his mangy German Sheppard better than he did his own wife.

Occasionally, we’ll even let our vessels drink a drop of our own blood, thereby preserving their youth and vitality for a few extra years. That explains why you see some people that still look youthful despite being in their forties or fifties.

I, too, am very protective of my vessels and I am proud to say that I never killed anyone that didn’t deserve it.

Being a vampire has its advantages.

For starters, you don’t age and since the blood in my body isn’t burdened by keeping me alive, I can use that blood for other purposes, such as increasing my strength, sharpening my reflexes and healing my wounds in a matter of seconds.

You see, vampires are not invulnerable and impervious to injury like it is portrayed in the movies.

Ever see a flick where a vampire takes a shot to the chest with a .357 magnum and doesn’t even bat an eye?

That’s a load of crap!

I’ve been shot in the chest and it friggin’ hurts like hell! I’m only able to use the blood in my system to heal myself so quickly that it only appears that I’m immune to the bullet.

When a human sees this, they usually get so distraught that they give up shooting (lucky for us).

Think of it as something similar to a certain claw-retracting super-

hero’s healing factor. Hey, if it works for a comic book hero, it works for vampires.

Of course, if my system is low on blood, I can’t heal as effectively. So if some guy has a sub-machine gun, I better have access to a few vessels for later on.

That’s only one of the many misconceptions about vampires. While I’m on the subject, I’ll clear up a few more…

Since vampires need to keep a low profile, humans tend to make up a lot of superstitious mumbo-jumbo to make up for things they don’t understand due to lack of information. 

Let’s start with the crap about vampires not being able to see their own refection in a mirror.

Yeah—right. I am so sure!

Some ignorant gypsy woman came up with that one. Since we no longer have a soul, we are unable to cast a reflection.

What a crock! I’m a vampire for crying out loud—not a ghost.

I’m still a creature of physical substance. Of course, I’m going to cast a reflection! A rock doesn’t have a soul either, but even an inanimate object casts a reflection.

Sure, we don’t see mirrors in a vampire’s home—but get real!

Since we don’t age, we never change in our physical appearance, so what’s the point of having a mirror? We already know what we look like.

You could shave my head and my hair will totally grow back by the next evening. I could even do it in a matter of seconds if I use my blood reserves.

Then there’s that crap about silver…

Where do humans get off thinking that silver is going to hurt us more than any other metal?

I’m not a freakin’ werewolf (and you don’t want to get me started on those jerks right now—but I could tell you some stories). Anyway, a silver bullet or a silver knife won’t hurt any more than any other bullet or knife.

How about the fact that vampires can’t enter someone’s home unless they are invited to come in by the legal owner?

That piece of shit is my favorite. That’s about as lame as the mirrors!

Like—I’m so sure that some old geezer shouting you can’t come in is really going to stop some blood-thirsty vampire from feeding off the poor old bastard.

Of course, we prefer to be invited in by the potential victim. It attracts less attention than breaking in. It’s also our own little inside joke of mocking a human’s intelligence.

Next, we are supposed to be repealed by the smell of garlic.

Bogus! Bogus! Bogus!

This one goes back to the Transylvanian twit that screwed it up for the rest of us vampires.

It seemed that ol’ Vladimir, back in his human days, was allergic to garlic and became ill when he ate or smelled the stuff. To make it worse, a vampire’s senses are keener than a human’s due to the fact that we are predatory. And since Drac’s sense of smell was more sensitive after his transformation, his allergy to garlic intensified as well.

So, just keep in mind, that the garlic problem was a unique quirk to one specific vampire.

A vampire is not supposed to be able to cross running water.

I’ll make this one simple: Bullshit.

A vampire can only rest on his/her native soil.

If a vampire leaves his/her homeland, they must put their native soil in the coffin.

Again, I say bullshit!

We can rest anywhere we want—but to be fair, since vampires exist for centuries upon centuries, we tend to become set in our ways.

Long distance traveling requires resting during the day in an unfamiliar place which would make us very vulnerable. It’s very difficult to find a trustworthy human to guard us during the daylight.

Why take the risk?

I love this Windy City playground and I have no intention of existing anywhere else, so I might as well rest here.

Then again, some of the stuff you have read about vampires is true.

I’ll give humans some credit. You can be right some of the time—and I only mean some.

Yes, it’s true that beheading a vampire will do him/her in.

With great effort and lots of blood, we can regenerate lost limbs such as ears, arms or legs, but we cannot regrow a new head.

No vampire I know, no matter how ancient or powerful, can pull that off.

A stake through the heart will definitely immobilize a vampire, but make sure you finish the job—by cutting off our head.

Once the stake is removed, we are up and about and ready to party once again—and, hopefully, to get back at the jerk that put the stake there in the first place.

Fire is especially nasty, since we are unable to immediately regenerate burn wounds.

Any vampire unfortunate enough to get engulfed in flames is sure to

be dead meat.

If a vampire can put out the flames and remain in hiding for a very long time, recovery is possible.

Even with our great healing powers, third degree burns take weeks to regenerate.

Usually, after being burned with fire, the psychological scars linger long after the physical scars have healed.

Even vampires can have traumatic experiences.

Vampires don’t go out during the light of day—but it doesn’t mean we can’t.

Sunlight limits our strength and we are unable to feed.

Why go through the trouble of that?

So we wait until night.

Finally, there is faith.

This one I can’t back up with any scientific facts because it is something that can’t be explained away. It is a human’s greatest strength and most powerful weapon against us.

Fortunately, most humans don’t have a lot of faith and don’t know how to summon it when they really need it.

Once a human believes in something so strongly, their power is unshakable, but not too many have that kind of willpower.

Our vulnerability to faith is the only mystical phenomenon to our existence. It is not the cross that is flashed in our face, but the belief that is channeled through it. The channeling holy symbol doesn’t have to be a cross either. It could be the Star of David, an Ankh or even a pocket-sized statue of Buddha.

Fortunately for us, faith only repels us if we have an intention to harm a human. If we leave them alone, faith won’t hurt us.

I shouldn’t mock the human population too much.

After all, I use to be one myself.

Some vampires don’t like to be reminded of that—but, hey—I can’t deny my own past.

Yes, indeed, I was a human.

And if you were to take a trip to the Hall of Records, you could find my birth certificate which easily proves my claim.

Of course, you would have to go back as far as June of 1940.

To be blunt, the first sixteen years of my life sucked big time.

My father knocked up my mother just after he graduated from high school so they had to get married (things were very different back then).

Since Pop had to blow his college fund to raise a family, the best job that he could find was that of a janitor. The pressure of being a family man at age eighteen drove him to drink. He couldn’t deal with the fact that he was a loser that had tossed away his golden years.

His drunken frustrations caused him to take his anger out on my mother and me. I hated the son-of-a-bitch for that!

Still worse, I hated my worthless mother for taking his abuse. Maybe, if my mom had the guts to leave my dad and take me with her, I could have turned out better.

Because I lived in a dysfunctional family environment, I didn’t do well in school and soon became a teenage delinquent. Half way into my junior year, I was old enough to be kicked out of school. I could have fought it, but why should I stick at something I was failing at?

This news drove my old man through the roof. He called me a loser.

Loser?

I had a plan. Losers don’t have plans!

My summer part-time job at the gas station was upgraded to full-time. Even better, Chuck, the owner, had taken me in under his wing and offered to train me as an auto and motorcycle mechanic.

I was going to pull in eighty bucks a week (and back in the 50s, that was great money for a teenager with no family obligations).

Pop said that I was still a loser and a bum. I argued back, thinking I had a point and that he would actually listen to me for once.

I reminded Pop that I was earning money—and legally at that. Bums don’t have a job and a steady income—but I did! I even offered to pay my fair share of the bills.

This wasn’t good enough for the stubborn old bastard. He threw me out of the house.

Luckily, Chuck let me live in the back room at the gas station. I loved that old man.

And so, for the next three years, I busted my tail.

I did everything from pumping gas, changing oil and over-hauling engines. I loved every minute of it!

I scrimped and saved—and after three years, I bought something for myself that I always wanted—a motorcycle!

It was 1959 and I was a big fan of the late James Dean.

I had it all: leather jacket, leather riding hat, black sunglasses, t-shirt, blue jeans and black leather riding boots. I had my hair slicked all back with grease— duck tail and all.

I was one bad ass!

The summer of ’59 and my very first bike was one that I’ll never forget.

It was the twilight of my eighteenth year. I was a mechanic by day and a self-proclaimed rebel by night.

The fact that I worked in a garage enabled me to purchase accessories for my bike at wholesale. My machine was an ensemble of leather seats and chrome pipes.

I finally learned how to smoke Marlboros without choking all over myself.

I was the king of cool.

I even earned a spot to ride with the local biker club.

I was on top of the world. I had my whole life ahead of me—or so I thought…

It was two weeks after I joined the club that things took a turn.

It was on a Friday night when a certain female biker in the club had taken notice of me.

Her name was Jeannie—just Jeannie.

To this day, I never learned what her last name was.

She liked to wear leather and tight blue jeans.

At first, I kept my distance from her because she didn’t like it when the other guys in the club made passes at her. Those that insisted on touching her without her permission ended up getting the shit knocked out of them.

I never would have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes!

This chick could kick any guy’s ass without working up a sweat. She could also ride circles around the rest of us—almost as if she was riding motorcycles for many years.

I never paid much attention to her at first because I thought I preferred my women to be more—well—like a lady. I liked the Peggy-Sue, pony-tail, poodle skirt, angora sweater, sweet and innocent type.

Not to say that Jeannie wasn’t a blonde bombshell babe in her own right. As a matter of fact, she was hot, but I stayed away because I saw that the more these other idiots forced their attentions on her, the harsher that she inflicted punishment.

Not that I was afraid to take a shot at her, but I’d feel kind of stupid if I had to swap punches with a girl.

Maybe, she was one of those strange chicks that preferred other chicks over men—or maybe, a little of both.

Boy, was I ever wrong!

It was on that Friday night that I was with my fellow bikers in our usual abandoned back lot hangout.

I was innocently sitting around stuffing my face with hotdogs, fries and beer, when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Jeannie walks right up to me and sits on my lap. She takes off my hat and starts running her fingers through my hair and blows in my ear.

She starts telling me how she’s been watching me for the past few weeks and how much she likes me. She says I’m real cool because I was the only member of the pack that didn’t make a move on her.

She also said I was the second best rider in the group. She was number one, of course.

She tells me that she pushed the other guys away because she’ll only be with a guy that can win her over.

Why the sudden attention? I asked. You never paid attention to me before.

Well, I’m paying attention now, she said back.

Then she puts this massive lip-lock on me that sends my teenage hormones into over drive. All I want is more of her. Win me over, Roger.

How do I do that?

Do something crazy, she whispered in my ear.

Crazy?

Wasn’t it crazy enough that the babe, who would let no one else