"Drink My Blood":

Richard Matheson's 1951 short story focuses on Jules, a pastey-faced creep kid. "He made people shiver with his blank stare" (362). "They thought he was blind until the doctor told them it was just a vacuous stare. He told them that Jules, with his large head, might be a genius or an idiot. It turned out he was an idiot" (363). Jules becomes obsessed with Dracula, to the detriment of his dubious academic endeavors in elementary school. After reading Dracula, Jules insists he wants to victimize all the girls and wants to "get even" (365), but for what? He acts as if he's a persecuted abnormal kid, but he's more like Renfield, and his problem pre-exists before any possible persecution and before the vampire fascination. (Could the catalyst have been any movie or book?)

Matheson's style here is appropriate: one-sentence paragraphs often, with a flattened style of reporting consisting repetitively of "He [verb]" patterns, yielding a sense of starkness and alienation. The ending is ambiguous, with a seeming partial epiphany and a vampiric death experience. "He knew he was lying half-naked on garbage and letting a flying bat drink his blood.... Through dying eyes Jules saw the tall dark man whose eyes shone like rubies. 'My son,' the man said" (369-370).

"Place of Meeting":

Charles Beaumont's 1953 short story offers a nice twist on the typical post-nuclear apocalyptic melee tale. Kroner's hands show he's not removed from the working world like the usual vampire. So with the folksey talk (and us expecting him to spit some 'baccy), we have Andy Griffith as a vampire, Opie and a weeping girl, Floyd, etc. The defamiliarized tragedy for them is that they've lost humans as a commodity (the thinking of which is part of the nuclear weapons problem in the first place).

"Same thing we'll do again and likely keep on doing. We'll go back and -- sleep. And we'll wait. Then it'll start all over again and folk'll build their cities -- new folks with new blood -- and then we'll wake up" (375).

"Snip My Suckers":

Lois H. Gresh gives us a love triangle involving a vampire plant, who literally "stalks." "A quick prick, and I'll have him. I crawl up the side of his house, sharpen my thorns on the stucco" (39). "By morning, I've sucked dry three stray dogs and a host of rodents" (41). "My roots curl up his walls, slither like snakes up the basement stairs. I find him snoring in the bed. The bed he shared with Rosemary. This time, he will share it with me" (44).

"Coffin.Nail":

Richard Parks' technology-as-vampire short story desperately needs updating. This story features Elizabeth, a Gothic studies major, and Mike, who battles a vampire online. After the final message, WHO011ARE00 YOU???" we learn it's "Dr. Michael Van Helsing. And the answer is 'yes.' My great-grandfather" (107).

"Unicorn Tapestry":

Suzy McKee Charnas' 1980 long short story presents Floria as a crappy psychoanalyst with no apparent direction in her treatment of Weyland, who seems to be a vampire. The story does not stick with its allusions to this nor credit the perspective, but really the taboo involves eating, not sex. The absurdities of psychiatric practices emerge though, only sometimes intentionally: "'How do you experience your face at this moment?' He frowned. 'As being on the front of my head. Why?'" (515).

100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories. Ed. Robert Weinberg, Stefan Dziemianowicz, and Martin H. Greenberg. NY: Barnes and Noble Books, 1995.

The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories. Ed. Alan Ryan. NY: Penguin Books, 1987.