Shad Michaels

Writing sample
Instructions: This sample will be very specific (and test your understanding of Sabbat vampire and such), this writing sample should be from the perspective of your character as to the actual embrace of their character.  Many of these will be variations of shovel-headings, but some clans go about it in other more particular ways.

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It had been a long and disappointing day, and I was well on my way to a nice drunk. It was shaping up to be one of those 'black out and wake up to being cited with misdemeanor disorderly conduct for pissing on a wall' kind of drunks. It wasn't every day that you learned your dad had died of a sudden heart attack three weeks ago and no one had bothered to let you know. Or that your boyfriend of four years, the reason your parents haven't spoken to you in about four years, texted to let you know that his test had come back positive for HIV. Or that you lost your job because the CEO liked Jesus a whole hell of a lot more than ‘the gays’ and someone found out about your dirty little secret and told the wrong person.

For what it's worth, I didn't get all of this shit dumped on me at once. No, the call from my mom was before breakfast. She couldn't talk long, had things to do, but she figured I had a right to know that my abusive, homophobic father had keeled over and died in the middle of church almost a month ago and she waited until now to make sure that I couldn't make it to the funeral. She would much rather have forgotten about her firstborn than deal with seeing Josh and I together in person.

I’d had a suspicion that Josh had been getting some action on the side, and who could blame him really, it's not like I was ever home thanks to work, but he confirmed it with the text at 11:29am. I wanted to feel like justice had been done, with him fucking around behind my back and getting HIV for his trouble, but I'd had a light work schedule for the past few weeks and we'd had time for some much needed intimacy. So, there was a really good chance that I was infected too.

I don't know who figured it out and told Mr. Johansen, maybe they heard me crying in the bathroom, but he called me into his office at 4:30 this afternoon to let me know that faggots like me are going to burn in hell for eternity and, if it were up to him, we'd all be rounded up and shot. Since he couldn't deport me to hell, or have me shot, he did the next best thing: told me to clean out my desk, and never bother coming in again. The firm had no need for the services of people like me. Talk about a case of the Mondays.

If you were looking for a continuation of the shit show, and expecting to hear that my car was keyed or broken into, no such luck. My trip to the bar was pretty uneventful. A half dozen drinks in and I found myself thinking about my childhood.

My parents, Mr and Mrs Michaels, named me Peter Shadrach Michaels, but I had gone by Shad ever since I was old enough to have an opinion on the matter. They decided to name their eldest son after the Apostle Peter, inspired as they were by his depiction in Matthew 16 as a devoted, insightful follower, and conveniently forgetting that same apostle's lack of faith after Jesus' arrest. They picked my middle name from the story in Daniel of the three men who refused to worship another god, even under pain of death. I guess they thought all of this would make me love Jesus more.

When I was ill as a child, dad would pray for healing, saying that God had a plan for my life. It was always like that at home. Encounter a problem? Have faith that God will sort it out. Experience difficulties, setbacks, or outright failure? That's just the devil trying to test your faith.
My family attended church three times a week; Sunday mornings and evenings, and once again on Wednesday evenings for good measure. We held hands around the dinner table while dad prayed for the meal mom had cooked. To all outward appearances, we were the perfect Christian family. Unfortunately for my brothers and I, our parents only cared about outward appearances.

Like many children of our generation, we were spanked when we misbehaved which, as shocking as it might be to hear for three boys, was all the time. It started with a slap to the butt, but that proved ineffective and they moved on to a slap on a bare butt to throw a little degradation in for good measure. The spanking arms race lead to a wooden paddle, and then using that on a naked butt, and it got worse from there. At some point, dad got the idea that our bodies were his to do with as he pleased, and discipline turned into first physical and later sexual abuse.

None of the three of us escaped his attentions, but my youngest brother Matt bore the brunt of it. I was a sophomore in college when Matt hung himself in his bedroom. Not too long after his funeral, I came out to my parents. I expected it to go poorly, but was not prepared for getting into a fist fight with my father. I made it out of there, but disowned and without my dignity intact. Fortunately, good grades from high school had landed me a nice scholarship and I was able to stay in school without my parents help.

Fast forward five years to that night in the bar. Looking back on life, it was easy to see the places where I’d gotten the shit end of the stick. I was raised by liars who couldn’t help but repeat the same lies over and over again in order to let themselves feel like they were still in the right. Whenever one of us would have some kind of crisis of faith, there was another group of liars, the ‘support network’ of our church, standing by to help us reaffirm our beliefs. They never tried to solve problems, simply insisting that faith in God would see us through to the other side.

Faith in God sure did wonders for Matt. I couldn’t even imagine what it must have been like after I left for college, with John leaving the next year. He was alone, nothing to keep him safe from dad and with no hope of getting out for two more years. It’s no wonder he killed himself. Partly because of what happened to Matt, I often thought about killing dad, imagining what it would be like to feel the life being choked out of him, or bled out onto the floor. I still had my own life to live though, and murdering him would have brought all of that screaming to a close. I imagined what my chances would be in prison, a gay man doing life for patricide. With Matt gone and John and I both safely away at school, there was little harm he could still have done to us, so I let it be.

Was the deck stacked against me? In some ways yes, but not at all in others. I grew up as a WASP (white, anglo-saxon, protestant) with all of the privilege that entails. On the other hand, I was molested by my father, ignored by my mother, ostracized and shunned by my relatives for being gay, my ex probably gave me HIV and I was unemployed and probably about to be homeless. Like Red in the Shawshank Redemption, I decided it was time to get busy living or get busy dying.

Before my homophobic boss fired me, I’d had a good job, and a small savings that would have covered me for a few months until I could land another paycheck. Even if the old bastard managed to keep me from getting unemployment, I would have been all right for a while. Suicide wasn’t on the table, it just wasn’t in me to do it. I’d rather OD on heroin while giving a homeless guy head in an alley next to the cardboard box I “lived” in because at least then I would be the one who put myself in that situation. Suicide was like admitting I had lost control and had no hope of ever getting it back.

That remarkably shitty day became a disappointing night at the bar. I was never one for heavy drinking, but given the day I’d had, it felt deserved. I felt the need to avoid hitting on anyone, given that I probably had HIV and just didn’t know it yet. I didn’t so much care about whether someone else became infected, but the idea of simply not knowing felt strange to me. If I were going to put someone at risk for infection, I wanted it to be on purpose. I had some other dark thoughts that evening, but ultimately they devolved into moping by the bar.

I ignored several calls and about 47 texts from my ex over the course of the evening and reflected on the day’s events. After a few drinks too many, and knowing that that last tequila shot would come back to haunt me, I concluded that my life was salvageable and it was time to go home and kick the ex out; the lease was in my name anyway. It was not long before I was out of the bar and on my way home. I might have called a cab, but it was a nice enough evening and I wasn’t quite stumbling-fall-down-drunk, so I decided to walk.

Have you ever suddenly found yourself in a ‘bad’ neighborhood? Usually that means a block where white people don’t walk alone after dark because they suffer from an irrational fear of people who aren’t white. Sometimes, it means ‘everyone get the fuck out, no one is safe here.’ That’s the kind of bad neighborhood I found myself in that night. In my defense, I was wasted and more or less unable to feel fear so I pressed on.

A lot of lights were out, but I didn’t think much of it. I started seeing things, like shapes darting from shadow to shadow in the corner of my eye. It got decidedly weird when I saw a body and then another and a third not much further on. Moving on, in spite of the warning signs, I came upon the ultimate source of the strangeness and the corpses.

There were four of them, just standing there like they were waiting for me to come to them. At this point, it was finally getting through my booze-addled brain that something was very, very wrong. But what could I do? The sense of being in the presence of predators washed over me. These people, if they were people, considered me their prey. It was a sobering realization.

The cold sensation of about a liter of adrenaline being dumped into my bloodstream was the immediate precursor to a fight-or-flight reaction. Whatever these people were, it seemed they did not have a problem with killing, so it stood to reason they would run me down if I ran. Fight it was. I said "ok, I'm here, what the fuck do you want?"

The two in the middle, could hardly have been less alike. On the left, was a guy whose appearance reeked of soldier. He had a platinum blonde crew cut, rippling muscles, combat boots. If he'd barked at me to drop and give him 20, I may very well have complied. On the right was one of those women you hear about, but never really believe actually exist. She was tall, with long, black hair, and dark eyes.

While I had never had even the slightest sexual attraction for women, something about her made me want to say 'aw hell, what could it hurt?' In response to my question, he scowled and she flashed a grin, showing me her fangs. Those, I did not expect. He reached into a pocket and thrust a wadded up bill at her. Still grinning, she pocketed it. "The fuck was that about?" foolish, drunken, angry me asked; not really wanting to hear the reply.

She smiled sweetly and said in an unexpectedly hard voice, "we had a bet going. Alex said you'd lose it and break under the strain, I said you'd keep it together. The winner gets twenty bucks." She waited a beat for effect before adding, "and you." My stupid lizard brain was still in fight mode and it was running my mouth without checking in with the rest of me, so I said "sorry honey, but you're not my type."

She pouted, putting on a little show of false humanity, perhaps trying to put me more at ease. As if it was really necessary, we all knew that I was not going to walk away from this. "But we put so much work into ruining your life. It would be a pity to just kill you now, so I'll give you a choice," she said magnanimously. "We can cut our losses, cut your throat, and leave you for the cops to find tomorrow. Or, you can die anyway, but I will give you something that will make it worth your while. You have 10 seconds, choose wisely."

The way she said it made the first option sound really unappealing. If given the choice, no one would opt for being murdered unceremoniously and their body abandoned. It might have been the last thing I ever said, but I couldn't help asking "what happens to my body if I pick the second option?" "Why," she replied uninformatively, "you'll take it with you, of course." Her voice turned hard and she said, "decide. Now." It didn't even warrant thought on my part. If I was going to die either way, the second option at least seemed to promise a more interesting ride. "I'll take the one where you make it worth my while. Obviously."

Darkness sprang up, enveloping me completely, almost before I finished speaking. I had begun to choke, realizing that I couldn't breathe, when I sensed a presence next to me. It was her. In the next instant I felt the electric jolt of my skin being pierced, coupled with a pleasure unlike anything I'd ever experienced. I noticed vaguely that she had me in an iron grip, mouth around my throat, and those fangs sunk deep into my carotid artery. Shortly however, coherence faded, subsumed by an enrapturing joy. My final thought before everything went black was that this feeling did, indeed, make dying worth it.

Then I woke up with the salty, coppery taste of blood in my mouth. I felt dry, empty, and ravenous. Where I had previously found the sight of blood somewhat unnerving and the taste revolting, something about it was like eating real food for the first time. As though nothing I had ever consumed before held any substance, value, or meaning. There was only this blood, it was not enough. Not even close. I heard someone walking nearby. I could smell the life in them, almost feel their heart beating. It woke something up inside me, something hideous, primal, and unrelenting. There was nothing I could do but lose myself in its furor.

As my senses returned, I discovered that I was hunched over another person, a young man. He was dead, there was blood everywhere. All over his neck and clothes. My own clothes were ruined, blood was dripping from fangs which had appeared in my mouth and running down my face. I did not know what to feel, or how to react. The realization that I had become a murderer struggled with the fact of my continued life, even after I had been promised death. I waited, confident that she would return. After only a few more minutes, she emerged from the shadows and they led me away into a completely new kind of existence. It was the worst day, and the best night, of my entire life.