Interviewed by the Vampire

Ebi, no Olaf, today he was Olaf, woke groggily. His stomach lurched at the prospect of the job interview impending. He rose and washed his face. Applying pale foundation and attempting to attach the two bits of neatly cut plastic to his incisors. He donned his purples velvet cape, his mum had made for him, over his shoulders and stared at himself in the mirror, his reflection stared sternly back, he’d have to work on that if he got the job.

On the way out he walked past the packed lunch his mum had made, stomach churning too much to eat, he stepped past it. Four steps down the street, guilt kicked back in and the Ebi, that is Olaf today, returned back to pick up the brown paper wrapped sandwiches. He could always give them to the ducks he thought. Particularly if they were Satan’s own ducks.

Ebi arrived at the given address. An imposing white brick tower with Gargoyles aimlessly placed around the top (as if they had just returned from a drunken night out), rose in front of him like someone had dropped a very rectangular piece of ice-cream on the ground, or some other better metaphor. Above the door was the sign ‘Lestat, Viago, Von Carstein, Blackula and Von Count – plasma removal specialists’ underneath which was their customer satisfaction charter which people had signed in red pen. They’d scored 35% satisfaction rates which Ebi felt was a low score to advertise.

Ebi, no Olaf, Olaf, strode nervously across the polished reception marble to the desk where a smartly dressed young man with enough product in their hair to keep pampas grass upright in hurricane met him with a dead eyed greeting. Olaf (Ebi was getting the hang of this now) tried to work out if this half dead receptionist was a soulless familiar, or just a disgruntled temp agency worker.

As instructed, Olaf took a seat on the sofa and flicked through the magazines on the table. They had them all; Cheshire Afterlife, Bella (Legosi), What Car(bon based life form)?, Pentacle, Woman, Un Cut. Olaf picked one up and pretended to read it. His perusal broken by a lady in a formidably shoulder padded suit breaking his eye line. “Michael will see you now, 13th floor, door straight out from the lift, just go straight in.”

Olaf smiled and nodded and did a quick look at the magazine as if to say ‘cracking read that’ (it was an impressive facial expression) and put the magazine down on the table realising he had it upside down all the time.

Olaf complied with the lift instructions (what else was he to do?), he strode as purposefully as the leather trousers he was wearing would allow down the corridor to the dominating double doors. He entered the room.

Nervously, once on the other side of the door, Olaf found himself in a modern office with crisp clean walls on 3 sides, the last side was made of crude brick work and beams, shielded nearly entirely in shadow though he could see it did have a white wall with some statistics on it about sales and on the wall someone had written “you don’t have to be a blood sucking creature of the night to work here – but it helps!”.

A voice spoke from the suspiciously shadowed side of the room “How did you get in without permission!”

Olaf froze his stomach performed a few somersaults “I…err…the lady said…”.

The vampires laugh echoed around the room, impressive given the thickness of the carpet. “sorry my friend old vampire joke, we’re not good at getting through doors sometimes.”

The figure behind the voice stepped from the shadows he was tall, slim and striking with an impressively neat beard for someone unable to see themself in the mirror. He wore a pair of cream chinos, blue shirt and brown jacket, Olaf admire the chutzpah of the combination. He gave Olaf a firm handshake and beckoned him to sit opposite him at the desk at the back centre of the room.

“Thanks for coming my friend, help yourself to water” the figure beckoned at the jug and glass. Olaf reached for the jug, accidently dipping his frilly sleeve in the water, Olaf grimaced and hoped the figure didn’t notice his error as water dripped onto the desk in front of him. Olaf quickly put his hand down by his side, to try and hide the wet sleeve.

“Thanks for theeing me.” Olaf said, he was struggling speaking with the fake fangs, he knew he should have practiced more. “Oh, and thorry about that video interview we tried, I could thware you weren’t there.”

“A common problem.” The figure mused “seems to happen with every video meeting I try, people think the video is broken, or I’m not online”.

He leant on his desk and steepled his fingers fixing Olaf with a transfixing gaze, something he was very good at. “Don’t think of this as an interview, just a friendly chat to get to know you.” Olaf smiled “After which based on the quality of the answers, you give to our questions we’ll decide if you’re suitable or not.” Olaf gulped “You join us at an interesting time, us vampires have a long reputation as the bad guys, you know, creatures of the night going around biting virgins, I blame tv and movies.” He banged the desk “I mean, look at The Lost Boys and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, what kind of self-respecting vampire moved somewhere so damn sunny?!”.

“Errr…”

“Exactly!” the vampire continued. “That’s why I live in the North of England, the sun rarely troubles me. The sourcing of virgins, however, is more of a problem…”

He leaned back in his chair “Sorry, I’m very passionate about vampirism. As I was saying, we are currently looking at a bit of rebranding to try and improve the vampire name.” The vampire paused and poured himself a drink of undetermined colour from an elaborate flask into a recyclable goblet. “So we’ve had a PR firm come in. And to think people accuse us of being soulless – ha!” The figure got up and strode behind his desk to the shuttered windows “they’ve recommended that we lose our ‘creatures of the night’ tag by getting more sunlight, so I’ve been doing that” At this point he drew open the shutters, the shafts of sun instantly setting him into a conflagration. The vampire made a bloodcurdling scream and spun in repeated circle before dropping from view behind the desk.

Olaf stared forward dumbstruck. A hand appeared from behind the desk and reached for the shutter pully, closing the light out again. The vampire stood up his skin charred and suit singed and smoking. “Yep, definitely getting better at that.”. He straightened his suit and returned to the chair on his desk. Olaf tried not to stare at the one hair from his beard that was still on fire.

The vampire took a long draft from his goblet, paused and picked up a sachet of sugar which he preceded to stir in. “They’ve advised we need to rebrand a little and are talking about ‘compassionate bloodsucking’ so we are trying to recruit vampires that have that common touch. Preferable ones that are good with web design.” Olaf smiled. “so, why do you want to be a vampire?”

Olaf sat up further in his chair and grabbed the glass of water to stop him being overly expressive with his hands. In his head the answer ‘the immortality, the virgins, the bloodletting, but mostly the virgins’ played on a constant loop. “the vir…the virtue of making a difference.” Olaf was getting to grips with speaking with the fake teeth, “I saw the job advert, and thought this is the job for me, I’m a real people person and I’ve used a website before.”

The vampire stared at Olaf for what seemed like an eternity, well maybe not that long, but at least longer than 30 seconds. “Good answer” said the vampire in a tone of voice that struck Olaf he’d said anything but. “OK, what strengths do you bring to the job?”

Olaf paused again and took a swig of water. He hadn’t really killed anyone and drunk their blood yet, but he reasoned that wasn’t one these vampires were looking for at the moment, plus he thought he could pick up the bloodletting quite quickly. “Well, I’m a good team player, and I have strong communication skills and I’m a real creative thinker.”

The vampire leant back in their chair; “how do you feel about using creatures of the night to send messages…no…no emails, how do you approach writing an email?”

“I…errr…I make sure I check the name of the sender and get the email address right and then I type a message and press send.”

“Hmmm.” The vampire said in a fairly encouraging way. “Last question. As soon the sun sets, and I must turn into a bat and drink the blood of those negative reviews on our website…” The vampire hit his hand across his forehead “I mean reply to the reviews, I’m still trying to get used to it all.” He straightened up “So how can you help with our vampire rebranding?”

Olaf had been waiting for this question and was totally ready for it, in his head he had a long answer with lots of points and counterpoints to make his case. “I think, that is to say, what we need to do is think about what the vampire means to the public and set up a good website that myth busts all that. Maybe a decent radio jingle so we can get to the public that way.” With that, Olaf crossed his arms and leant back in his chair satisfied.

The vampire gave an unreadable smile. “thanks very much for that. Is there anything you’d like to ask me?”.

Olaf hadn’t prepared for this, but he was feeling much more confident given the belief he had provided strong answers so far. “Whats the best part of being a vampire?”.

The vampire grinned the razor sharpness of their fangs glinting off the strip light. “Well you have to work some anti social hours and you’ll outlive all those you love. But it’s a lot of fun being a bat. And all your clothes will ultimately come back into fashion so you are constantly ahead and behind the curve” At this point he smirked and said in a conspiratorial whisper. “The virgins aren’t bad either” and winked.

He rose from his desk around to Olaf he leaned in close, really close then flinched, pulled back and offered his hand. Olaf stood and shook it. “Thanks for your time today, we’ve a few candidates to see, but we’ll be in touch soon. If you take the lift back down, the receptionist will see you out.” Olaf smiled and made his way out of the office and home.

One week later Olaf was practicing strutting in his cape in his bedroom when his phone pinged to notify an email had arrived. Olaf hurriedly read it:

‘Dear Olaf,

Thank you for your recent interview to become a vampire. As you can appreciate we have had a lot of applicants and unfortunately on this occasion you have been unsuccessful. The successful candidate was more experienced (they arrived in the form of a wolf).

I appreciate this is disappointing news, but please keep an eye on our website and apply again. Keep vampiring!

Yours sincerely.

Michael’

Olaf felt the initial surge of disappointment. He sat on his bed, and gathered his thoughts. As his mum had told him, the werewolf market was picking up and as he hadn’t managed to remove the false fangs yet, this would give him a head start. Besides, who is to say a werewolf couldn’t wear a cape.