Odd Stuff Read Online Free PDF Page B

vampire. 
    Okay, so there are vampires . They did drink blood, they also healed super fast. Some of the stories were true, or at least they were in my hallucination, and that was what I needed to figure out, really. What are the rules in my big nutsy dream? “So, can you read my mind?” I asked the vampire.
    “Sometimes. If I want to.”
    I nodded. I pictured him screaming in the sun.
    “Ohhh, that was not nice.” 
    I grinned to myself. So maybe I had to be more careful about what I thought about. “Where is Natural Foods?” 
    “On Route Twenty, toward Saybrook.” Vance tapped the windshield. I nodded. “But we need to make a stop first. Stay on Twenty, but head toward Ashtabula City instead of Saybrook.” 
    “That is the opposite direction and, depending on how far we go, at least ten minutes out of the way. We only have a half an hour.” 
    “So, you will be late for the cemetery. I will talk to the ghost hunters. It will be fine.”
    I looked over at him again. He had one hand braced on the dash.
    “If you can’t die, why are you clutching the dash?”
    “I hate woman drivers. You are insane behind the wheel. Do you realize how quickly you could die?”
    “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mr. Eternal Life.” I sped up another ten miles an hour and passed a Ford. 
    He stuck a hand on my knee, and I sucked in air. I slowed down a notch. “We will get along fine, my little screamer.” 
    I snorted.
    “Turn here.” Here was down a side road, State Road to be exact, past a BP station. He waved his hand toward the right again and I obediently turned, which put us on Tannery Hill. Tannery Hill looked to be primarily industrial. As far as I could remember from living here when I was younger, the only things down Tannery Hill were some factories and a strip club. 
    “Yes,” Vance answered me as if I had spoken aloud. “Only it is not a typical strip club. Those of my nature are drawn to the darker sides of those of your nature.”
    “Is that a nice way to say vampires like to see boobies?”
    He laughed. He didn’t say I was wrong, though. I pulled into the lot of Peaches, the strip club. Vance unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to me. “Stay here.” 
    Darn. I wasn’t going to get to go in and see the naked women. I nodded, and he got out. I sat in the car for a good ten minutes and looked at the green neon sign. The first three minutes, I didn’t care. The fourth minute, I realized I kind of did. The fifth and sixth were me thinking that I was playing chauffeur to a hedonistic vampire while he checked out the local…talent. 
    The seventh and eighth minute I spent calling him names.
    The ninth minute had me thinking maybe I should go hurry him up, since I had plans. I conveniently forgot that I didn’t much care for my plans, anyway.
    By minute ten, I got out of the car. He wasn’t so damned all powerful and mind-reader-y if he didn’t know that I was sick of sitting in the car when I could be home suffering from insomnia, like any other night.
    I walked to the door of Peaches and noted that it was a very industrial building itself, probably just a redone old factory. A few random people mulled around the lot, and I tried to look like I was there on purpose, for their sake. 
    I opened the door to find a man sitting in a small entryway on a bar stool. He was about my height and, since I am only five foot five, short for a man. What he lacked in height, he made up for in girth. He weighed in at least three hundred pounds and sported a shiny bald head tatooed with an eagle.  
    “Can I see your ID, sweetie?”
    I hate being called sweetie, honey, and any other cutsie name almost as much as I hate getting ID’d. I guess though, at my old age, I should consider getting ID’d a compliment. I mean, I am almost forty. Probably, though, it was the college sweatshirt, rather than any actual youthfulness on my part. I showed the nice tattooed man my ID, and he told me there was no cover for