KEVIN OF THE DEAD

PEOPLE often say to me, “Kevin, what’s it like being undead and all that?” And I say, “It’s a job, you know?” You get up at sunset, brush off the dirt and slugs, climb out of the box, and off you go into the night looking for some poor unfortunate to siphon a pint from.

- Eoin Colfer

My resting place is nothing to write home about, just a plywood pauper’s coffin that has seen better days. I suppose it could be worse. If my coffin had been carved from ebony—a lesser-known weakness for my kind—it would burn me just to touch it. But some nights it’s tough to keep my chin up because there’s a rat that lives in the drains who seems to have developed a taste for plywood. He tunnels over when I’m out feeding and gnaws at the wood. I didn’t even know rats could tunnel. Surprising what you learn being a vampire.

The long and the short of it is that if I can’t catch that rat, I’ll be left freezing all winter without a coffin. Maybe I could turn the rat and he could guard the coffin for me. But creating a familiar is tricky business. You have to get the blood draining just right or the subject dies and then you’re back to square one.

It’s a much easier job to make a new vampire than a familiar. Just give your victims a sip of your own blood and three days later they’re kicking their way out of the dirt all angry and confused. In my opinion there’s a real market for vampire counsellors. Someone to guide you through the process. It’s very traumatic waking up dead, I can tell you. Not as traumatic as high school but pretty close. I could really have used a friendly face, someone like Miss Quan, our language arts teacher from Hillfield High, to take me through the change step by step and help me process my emotions. Miss Quan was lovely and wore old-fashioned blouses with a brooch at the throat, and I wouldn’t ever bite her even if I was in the middle of a dry spell, though that brooch did draw attention to her neck.