Blunderball

Are You There God? It's Me, Dracula

"Stay back!" stammered the woman, backing farther into the dark alley. "I've got a crucifix and I'm not afraid to use it!"

"Ah! Ah! Ah!" laughed Count Goldschmidt. "Your little piece of wood means nothing to me. For I am a Jewish vampire, and— Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! What gives?!?" He took several steps back, frantically putting out the flames on his sweet vampire cloak.

"Oh, that," said Count Williams, coalescing out of a handy cloud of bats. "That's one of the quirks of being a vampire, yeah. You find out that Christianity is the one true religion."

"Wait, what?" said Count Goldschmidt, still smouldering slightly.

"Yeah, man. It sucks." Count Williams stopped himself briefly: "No pun intended. But, you know. You go through life pondering all these great mysteries, living with a sense that you can never really grasp the fundamental nature of the universe but appreciating that at least everybody's in the same boat. And then you get bitten by a vampire, and oh hey! Crucifixes make you burst into flames. So..."

There was an awkward pause.

"Yeah," continued Count Williams. "Kind of a lot to take in when you're new, but, you know..." he shrugged. "Unlife goes on."

There was another awkward pause. Or the first one just sort of resumed at that point. It was hard to tell which.

"Can I go now?" asked the woman clutching the crucifix.

"Are you going to Raiders of the Lost Ark-style face-melt us with that thing if we come any closer?"

"Yeah."

Count Williams made an "after you" gesture in the general direction of the alley entrance.

"Cool, thanks." She started to walk away, paused, then turned back. "Is your friend going to be okay?"

"He'll be fine." Count Williams flashed a sympathetic, if very toothy smile. "It's just something you've got to go through as a vampire. Sort of like finding out that Father Christmas isn't real. Or that the Easter Bunny is."

"You cannot be serious!" broke in Count Goldschmidt, who had until then been staring vacantly into space.

"Naah, I'm just fooling!" Count Williams grinned. "Cheered you up, though, didn't it?"

"No!" Count Goldschmidt was fuming. "My faith was a really big deal to me when I was a mortal, and now I just feel like a chump."

"Aww." The woman walked back over, careful not to point her crucifix towards the vampires. "If it makes you feel any better, it's kind of come out of left field for me too. I've always considered myself spiritual but not religious, and now..."

Count Goldschmidt made an annoyed little noise.

"Hey, how do you think I feel?" asked Count Williams. "I was a secular humanist. At least you were in the ball park."

"It's still quite a shock!"

"Well..." put in the woman. "It can't be that much of a shock. I mean, crucifixes stop vampires in all the movies, so..."

"Yeah, but you have to assume that those movies are made with a particular audience in mind and that even if you personally don't subscribe to the belief system presented in the movie you can suspend your disbelief for the sake of the narrative! You don't necessarily expect to be going about your real life business as a real life vampire and suddenly find out that the cross thing really works! And, I mean..." Count Goldschmidt paused. "How does it work, anyway? Could you hold up two pencils in a cross shape? Would that do it too?"

"No," said Count Williams. "It can't just be a cross. It has to be an actual crucifix. It needs the little Jesus dude on it."

"Yeah, but who properly knows what Jesus looked like anyway? How close a likeness does it have to be? Could you just use Russell Brand instead?"

"Why are you still pulling threads on this?" asked Count Williams, exasperated. "We're real vampires. The crucifix thing really works. I mean...can I see that?"

The woman held out the crucifix.

"Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!" yelped Count Williams. "Okay, bad idea. But still, why do you care what the exact rules are? What difference does it make?"

"I don't know." A tear rolled down Count Goldschmidt's cheek. "I only became a vampire a week ago, and I didn't even know vampires existed until then, and now this. I just...I don't understand how the world works any more. I wish things just made sense."

"Hey..." Count Williams put a hand on his back. "Come on. It's not all bad! You're immortal, you're a count, you can turn into a cloud of bats on command – you'll never have to take the bus again! – why not just chalk this one up as a win?"

"Oh yeah," said the woman with the crucifix. "I meant to ask: how does the bat thing work? Do you control one bat and all the others just follow it around, or are you all of them, or—"

"Don't you start on the bat thing!" snapped Count Williams. "Do not even start! If you ruin the bat thing for me, I'll—"

She held up the crucifix.

"Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!"