Night-Time-Vamps

You may laugh when you see a title like like Night-Time-Vamps, you may just pass it over entirely, but that would be a tragedy, because you’d miss the warning about the Night-Time-Vamps.

It was in Early summer me and my friends; Abby Carter, P. Skillet, and Tawnda Jones all went out to a camp site in a nearby national forest, to drink hooch and smoke pseudo legal recreational Marihuana.

We all got in Abby’s car, well technically it was Abby’s mom’s car, and it was also uninsured, so we drove out after 9 pm. When there wasn’t much traffic, and Abby drove carefully, because we weren’t sure what would be worse to get caught  with, the no insurance,  or the box full of jars of bootlegged moonshine and bags of unlicensed outdoo, and we were resolved not to find out, especially considering both the unexistence and existence respectively of the above.

Anyway we got to the camp site around midnight and we saw that there were two big tents already set up, so we set up our four one person tents around the campfire spot farthest from the camps that were already set. Skillet had brought a pile of chopped wood wrapped in plastic. I unpacked the wood and built the fire, while Skillet roled up some reefers.

“Toss me a light, Daggman.” He politely requested.

“Kinda usin’ it, can ya hold on?” I groused, as I continued lighting the campfire, once it was going I nonchalantly chucked the lighter over my shoulder and it hit Skillet right in the raybans.

“Not cool dude!” He admonished.

“Right! Watch how you throw that thing!” Tawanda added.

“It’s my lighter, I decide how to throw it.” I proclaimed rudely as I found a seat on one of the fireside benches.

Abby was just getting back from the car aroud then. “Are you guys behaving out here.” She asked with genuine concern.

“Oh we’re behaving alright,” P. Skillet began ironically, “behaving like animals!” He finished sincerely.

“Are you throwing things again, Dagger” She asked looking across at me with an exaggerated crossness that had to be in jest.

“No more than usual, Carter.” I said with a shrug. That wasn’t an understatement either, objects did have a tendency to leap out of my hands. Especially where Skillet was involved. I’d like to say he brought it out of me, but it probably had more to do with my issues than his.

“A’right, guys, this is Northern Lights from my uncle Dave’s farm.” P. Skillet announced as he toked up the slender doob. I thought to myself. If they’d let me roll we’d have a much fatter joint. Then of course that voice in the back of my head reminded me that if they let me roll, I’d still only be about half way through.

We started observing the sacred  tradition of puff-puff-pass and somehow one of the jars of Moonshine made its way into the rotation, almost like a chaser for the joint.

As the hours drew on my friends and I remained awake around the fire talking loudly and carrying on as we consumed a preponderance of shine and weed. Around 3 am. Tawanda set up her stereo and put on an EP of some traditional African dance music and began going through her routine. Skillet enjoyed watching her move. I liked this situation because it gave me an excuse to sit closer to Abby, not that that proximity would grant me the courage to make a move…

But, when Tawanda was about halfway through her routine our fun night  of substance binging was interrupted as an old man emerged from the closer of the two other tents. “Can you youngsters quieten down that jungle music?!” He shouted at what seemed like an unnecessarily loud volume.

“Use ear plugs!” Tawanda shouted back continuing to girate. “And put a damper on those logs you’re sawing.”

“This is bullcrap!” The old man varitably screamed. “Shut it down, right now!”

Suddenly there was a stirring in the farther tent, then with an unexpected suddeness a group of dark skinned men in lenin robes surrounded the old man, and just as suddenly the color drained from their skin and hair, their features became elongated and grotesque notably their teeth stretched into conical serated blades, as did their fingernails. They tore into the old man and feasted on his flesh, less than fifty yards from us.

“They’ve transformed into… Night-Time-Vamps!” P. Skillet stated with a surety that alone exceeded the absurdity of the phrase, which, under the circumstances, those of the strangers having undergone a frightening metamorphosis before our eyes and brutally slaughtered the other camper, probably contributed to that name sticking in our minds.

“Oh hell no!” Tawanda exclaimed, “We finna get outa here!”

As we all started running to the car Abby tripped and lurched toward  me grabbing me about the midsection. “I may have drank too much to drive,” she said, “You’re  a big  guy, Dagger, think you can take the tiller?”

“Sure thing, Carter.” I said with a confidence I didn’t feel, as I tried to pull her along without slowing too much.

“Wait, the stuff!” Skillet said, almost turning around to go back for his box of herbs and hooch.

“Just leave it!” Tawanda roared, grabbing him by the hand and dragging him. “If we’re not going back for my stereo we’re for sure not going back for that stuff.”

It definitely would not have been a good idea to turn back for anything, by the time we were in the car with the doors shut they were all around us. Abby jammed the key in and started te ignition from the passenger seat as I took the wheel and nearly flooded the engine before we took off leaving a wake of smoke and dust for the distorted humanoids to choke on.

I’ve seen many horrors since, but none have rattled me more than the chance encounter with the so called Night-Time-Vamps. So before you decide to go camping, remember to respect other people’s space and avoid unnecessary noise  pollution, because you never know when that unassuming dome tent across from you may be housing a brood of Night-Time-Vamps.

Another lesson to take away from this is never to drink and drive, because on the highway way on the way back to town we were involve in a head-on collision with a police vehicle in wich I fractured  eight ribs from colliding with the steering wheel, Skillt suffered a lumbar separation and spent the rest of his life as a paraplegic Tawanda dislocated her right hip, an injury she blames for her failure to start a professional dancing carreer, and Abby recieved severe facial scaring from being pelted in the face with a cascade of shattered glass. The police officers both had functional airbags, which successfully deployed,  however they both complained of neck pain, and collection agencies continue to harrass Abby’s mom to this day, demanding recompense for the officers’ medical bills.

My “medical treatment” occured in a prison infirmary, I was let off with “Time Served.” after a couple months, not really enough to heal, but more time than the state was willing to pay for, apparently. I remember someone in the ward I was in continually shouting about, “Night-Time-Vamps” I’m not entirely convinced it wasn’t me, though it sounded far away.