I've moved out of the place I shared with my friends in WeHo. It was getting harder and harder for me to explain why I was isolating myself so much and why I was keeping such odd hours. Using my job as a bartender can only go so far. The truth is that I don't want to be in a position to hurt them. I've found that I can't always control my impulses and I don't want to lose it around the guys and end up killing them. Liz encouraged me to hunt and now I don't know how to change that part of me. What makes it even worse is I don't trust myself to be around my family. They wanted me to visit for Mallory's birthday, but I didn't go. I kept having nightmares about attacking them in their beds while they slept and that scared me enough to keep me away. I can't stand feeling like this, but I don't have any choice. I think I need to leave California. If I'm somewhere no one knows me and I can get lost among the crowd, all the better for me. I think New York is where I'm headed.

I lost the acting gig. I could have told my fucking agent that making demands on my behalf at this stage was a bad idea. I'm a nobody. You don't get to do that shit until you're a real name. Stupid asshole. Now I'm going to have a reputation for being difficult before I've even started. I'm so pissed off. I think I'm going to pay him a visit and kill the motherfucker.

He watched her from across the street as she left her house. She was too busy chatting on her cell phone to notice him cross towards her to follow as she made her way down the sidewalk. She'd first been noticed when he'd seen her walking home alone late one night. He'd thought her stupid and careless for putting herself in harm's way like that but hadn't made any move to confront her. She was intriguing. She reminded him of the one who had made him.

Tonight, though, he wasn't going to let her resemblance to someone else sway him. As he caught up with her and took her arm to drag her into the alley, he decided to teach her a lesson about not being aware of her surroundings. The cell phone was dropped and broke when it hit the ground, her screams quickly silenced by a hand over her mouth.

"Shh..." He smiled at her, smiled at the fear he could smell coming off her in waves. "I'm not going to hurt you." The lie fell as easily from his lips as it had every other time he'd said it. He held her eyes with his as he slowly lowered his hand from her mouth.

"What do you want?" she asked, her voice trembling.

This was the moment when he wanted to toy with her before feeding on the sweet, adrenaline-laced blood racing through her veins.

"What's your name?" He could tell the question caught her off guard. She was probably thinking he was going to rape her.

"M-M-Miranda," she stuttered out, wincing when he dragged his fingers across her cheek and leaned closer.

"You remind me of someone I used to know," he whispered, fingers now gripping her face between them. "Someone I miss."

She started to whimper. "God, no, please..."

"Don't worry," he murmured, "I don't want sex from you."

"Don't hurt me. I'll give you anything."

When she said that, he had a brief moment when he considered turning her so he could have someone with whom to share the hunt, someone who made him think of the woman who'd changed his life. But, in the end, he knew it would never be her.

"I only need one thing," he finally said, lowering his head and placing his mouth to her neck.

Aren't those just for teenage girls? That whole BFF bullshit? Maybe not. I hear my roommates talking about how they're best friends. But that could be a gay thing.

Bottom line: I've never believed in having a best friend. Or, maybe it's more along the lines that I don't treat any of my friends better than any other. I've got people I hang out with, people I know I can ask for favors, people I string along just enough to get what I want from them, and people who hang onto me even when I don't want them to. But none of them are the "best" anything.

I guess if I was pushed to pick someone, though, it would have to be Liz. She's the one who made me what I am, and I guess I depend on her somewhat. I don't know. Aren't best friends supposed to be who you call when you want to do shit? I don't exactly want to go bowling with her. I mainly want to have sex with her. Hey, maybe that makes her my best friend with benefits.

185

Are you kidding me? Not only have I killed human beings, but I've enjoyed every moment. I've smiled and licked my chops after I've done it, and I can't wait to do it again. So many of you people waste your lives, I'm practically doing you a favor if I end your sorry existence. If I get a good meal and a chuckle out of it, then it's a total win-win sort of thing.

Oh god, I can hear some of you trolls bitching about the fact that I'm not technically a human being anymore. Fine. In that case, I would not kill one of my kind. Why would I? We're powerful, exciting and we will never die. I dream of the day when we have you morons under our collective thumb. Right now, I hunt you for survival. One day, I'll do it for sport.

Unless your name's Elie.

150

Charles and Valerie Breskin are my parents. They're decent, hardworking people, and they have a lot of money because of all that hard work. They live in Malibu, they raised me and my siblings to share their values and know the satisfaction of earning a good living so we wouldn't turn out like all their neighbors' spoiled rich brats. My older brother's in medical school, my sister's working on... Shit, I don't know. Probably a degree in saving the world through excessive whining and recycling. I know my baby sister will go to college and probably end up as the CEO of some Fortune 500 company. That or President of the United States. They're good, smart people, and they wouldn't have turned out that way if Chuck and Val hadn't done such a fine job of rearing them. (I graduated from college with a degree that would allow me to contribute the least to society. You don't see a whole lot of theater majors helping disaster victims - unless it's for good press and photo ops, of course. If I was a doctor, I'd be expected to do that crap because it was my 'duty.' Whatever.)

Now, all of that is to explain (in a really roundabout way) why I wouldn't want new parents. I know it's kind of boring to say that (and, god knows, it's been kind of tiresome seeing everyone saying the 'different parents would mean a different me' thing) but boring or tiresome doesn't mean it's not true. The basic answer is, I wouldn't pick anyone in the world, living or dead, to be my parents because no one could ever replace my dear, sweet mom and dad.

And if you don't buy that, I've got another reason:

I wouldn't want anyone else to be my parents because there's no telling if other parents would put up with my shit. I've spent years honing my skills at bullshitting and charming them when I need to. I have no guarantee that another set of parents would fall for that stuff. Don't get me wrong, now. I do love them. I'd be sad if they died (Mom's my biggest fan). They've been really cool to me and my brother and sisters, and I know how lucky we are to have them as our folks. To tell you the truth, I don't know how the hell they managed to get stuck with a brat like me. Same goes for my baby sister, who is, like I've said before, a mini girl version of me. Maybe there's a recessive "bad seed" gene in the family line. Chuck and Val don't seem to mind, though, and that's why I'd keep them.

450

If you ask the girls I've hooked up with, they're all going to tell you that my biggest mistake was being an asshole and ignoring them after we did the deed. I'd have to correct them. A one night stand is not the same as a relationship. It's just something to pass the time in a way that feels really, really good.

My answer to this brilliant inquiry? I don't make mistakes in relationships. Why? I don't get into them to begin with. Come on, the worst thing a young, single guy can do is get attached. Who the hell wants to be tied down? Figuratively, I mean. It's all about freedom and getting to do what you want, when you want to do it. The beauty of being 23 for eternity is never having to grow up and become a "family man." I guess I might slow down and get serious about someone when I'm tired of doing my own laundry, but I could always just hire a maid. I grew up with one and they're kinda nice to have around. I'd hire a hot one, though. Mrs. Finley is nice and everything, but she's looked like Methuselah's grandmother since I was a little kid. Yeah, I'd hire some really hot maid and make sure she was open to doing a little more than dusting my davenport. That still wouldn't count as a relationship, though.

Hey, you know what? This thing could be asking about friendship, too. No, that would be kinda lame. Real friends don't hold mistakes against you, so if you do make them, they don't really count. It's like I said. I don't make mistakes.

279

When she was a kid, my sister Hannah had this stupid collection of ceramic figurines. There were kittens, birds, flowers, puppies, angels, all the shit that girls like. Anyway, she loved those things and Mom let her keep them on display in a cabinet in the living room. One day, when I was 15, my brother David and I had been left in charge of the girls because Mom and Dad decided they wanted to go out for some "alone time." (That was just code for them renting a hotel room and having sex without the threat of being interrupted by their kids. Gross.) Anyway, Dave and I were messing around in the house, tossing a baseball back and forth in the living room because we were bored and it was raining outside. Hannah came downstairs and saw us and said she'd tell Mom and Dad we were playing ball in the house. I guess I was in a pissy mood or something, but having a bratty little sister telling me she was going to rat on me and David annoyed me to no fucking end. I took the ball and threw it full force at the curio cabinet housing her precious collection. It was awesome. Glass shattered, shit fell off shelves and crashed to the ground. (Be honest. You know there's nothing more satisfying than breaking stuff when you're pissed off.) Hannah ended up in tears, locked herself in her room for the rest of the day, and didn't talk to me for a week. Mom and Dad grounded me for two months and made me spend my allowance to replace the stuff I'd broken. To this day, Hannah still thinks I'm a jerk for doing it. She's right, of course.

292 words

Gimme a break. If you get disappointed by something, it's your own fucking fault for getting emotionally invested. Just grow a pair and figure out that life sucks. If it didn't, we'd be living in a goddamn Disney movie, and who the hell wants that? Nobody over the age of four, that's who.

You're not always going to get what you want. Things aren't always going to go your way. You'll lose something or someone in one way or another. Instead of sitting around whining, get off your pathetic ass and do something about it. Get pissed off, get even, get wasted, get laid. Just do something. Don't sit around being some pansy-assed emo loser who needs to be beaten with a large, blunt object. Though, at least if that happened we could be entertained by the pretty colors your bruises turn. That would make you interesting for about five seconds.

Hard truth: No one thinks you're deep if you're suffering. You're just annoying. Guess that covers disillusion, too.

If you'd have asked me this last year, I would have said no. All that spooky, paranormal crap was just that. Crap. I was the annoying guy who wanted empirical evidence for everything or else I'd dismiss it as nothing more than a fairy tale. I'd do the ouija board with my friends and push the planchette around so I could scare the shit out of them by telling them they were going to hell for fucking with dark forces.

Being face to face with a monster you never thought existed has a funny way of changing a guy's perspective, though. Imagine how much a mind can be changed if you actually become one of those monsters. I don't have any proof that the thing lurking in the closet or the boogeyman lying in wait under the bed is real, but I do know that things I previously dismissed as mythical creatures are very real. I've yet to see a ghost up close and personal, mind you, but if I could have been wrong about other creeps that go bump in the night, I'm probably wrong about ghosts, too. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and believe in them until I get evidence they don't exist.

208 words