Page 42 of How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager
‘Vampires wanted.’
He shuddered.
Even the local library branch had been set up to dissuade vampires, with hours that always started after sunrise and ended before sunset and high windows that acted as skylights over most tables in the small building. There was a single chair squashed in the nonfiction section where from nine to ten thirty the light was just dim enough that Vincent could curl up there with a visored beanie he’d taken from Wes’s laundry room, plug his phone in, and spend some time messaging Wesley.
That was his one spot of good luck so far: his cell hadn’t been slain by the lake after all. Though the amount that he and Wesley were continuing to text seemed to be giving it a much slower and more agonizing death. Vincent snorted at Wes’s most recent meme, a popular multi-panel one from a TV show Vincent had never seen. Wesley had scribbled in vampire fangs and rewritten some of the dialogue with his favorite brand of cliché predator-prey language.
The sandy-haired man beside him huffed to himself. He’d been there when Vincent arrived, already set up next to the only chair that was vampire-safe this time of day and had been awkwardly pretending Vincent didn’t exist since their initial greeting. He had a laptop open in front of him, a dozen different fandom stickers peeling off the back, but for the hour since Vincent had sat down he’d been jotting notes in a physical notebook while chewing the eraser off the end of his pencil.
It chose that moment to give in, the pink nub tumbling across the table in front of Vincent. As the man grabbed for it with a hasty apology, his gaze drifted over Vincent’s phone screen. He did a double-take.
When he opened his mouth, Vincent was prepared to flee headfirst out the library entrance despite the aches and shakes it would inevitably cause, but what he said was so odd that Vincent could only stare at him.
“Is that popular right now?”
“Is what popular?” Vincent asked.
“Sorry, how rude of me. I mean the meme format with the vampire connotations. I’m working on an article on the new trend where young people present themselves as vampires.”
Vincent wasn’t sure how he felt about the idea of people wearing the media flair of his life like a costume they could take off whenever it became inconvenient. “Um, no, I don’t think so? My friend and I just play a vampire RPG game together. The meme is a reference.”
“Right.” The man turned back to this laptop, rubbing his hands down his face. He looked like he was in physical pain and there was something very much like a piece of eraser stuck between two of his teeth.
Vincent glanced at his phone, then back at the man. “Are you okay?”
“I’m writing a fluff piece that’s sole reason for existence is to let an older generation complain that their kids are depraved and foolish and ruining the best things about society, so not really.” He shrugged, then sighed. “There’s actually some very interesting social introspection to be done about the cycle behind the framing of vampirism in media and the ways that it builds into culture and cultural knowledge, particularly starting with the youth. But no one wants to pay money for that. Though you probably don’t want to give away your free time for it either.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. Please, go back to your memeing.”
The societal progression of media to culture and back actually sounded rather interesting to Vincent, but the man had already begun scribbling again. Vincent held his phone at a more private tilt as he messaged Wesley a series of laughing emojis and a short description of the conversation he’d just had.
LordOfTheWin
So you mean like, how video games affected what I thought of vamps before I met you?
HotMouth
Yeah, but more than that. It’s like
Like how you bought a bunch of those vampire games to try to learn from them.
How the dating sim ones made you want me to bite you more, but then I bit you and you realized that the thing from the game was a vague stereotype of the bite, but that you could still bring the things you enjoyed from the game into the real version to enhance it further. It becomes a kind of recurring loop, where your interactions with media feed into real life, then real life feeds back into media, in order to create something more complex than either on their own, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.
But when people engage with kindness and empathy as their foundation, I think those interactions are mostly positive ones.
LordOfTheWin
Okay, that’s super cool.
But now I’m just thinking of your teeth. On my neck. Tonight.
Bros For Biting TM
Vincent lifted his shoulders a little higher as he sunk into his chair, like that might hide his blush.
HotMouth
That’s never catching on you know.
LordOfTheWin
