LEXINGTON
By Mark Burke
A vampire is not a monster, nor is he admittedly entirely human , ( or at least homo sapien). He is a creature of remarkable strength and speed, and healing abilities, but there is nothing supernatural about this. Watch a dog recover from a surgery and you will see that humans really are rather frail compared to most animals on this planet. A vampire is about the same strength as was our cousin Neanderthal Man, though a good deal quicker. In this respect a vampire is no more dangerous than, say , a cougar, except of course that he is considerably smarter and can pull a trigger. In fact many of the legends about werewolves are probably derived from vampires. Werewolves of course do not exist, any more than do vampires in their ridiculous imagined form. But the idea of a sort of animal-like 'super-human' likely comes from early human contact with vampires. A vampire does indeed favour flesh, though it is the greatest myth of all that a vampire drinks human blood. Admittedly most vampires do have an ancient hankering after human flesh, probably derived from atrocities committed during the Dark Times, but it is by no means an overwhelming urge and very few indulge this fancy (for the simple fact that they would be discovered, and I dare say also many have come to tolerate and even like their human cousins. Unions , although problematic, have occasionally occurred between the species). Vampires look human, and I assure you that they find their recent popularity and depiction in the cinema and literature very amusing indeed.
Lexington was one such vampire. He was a very average looking fellow and very pleased about that. He was a little short, middle-aged ( or rather appeared so ; his healing ability lent his physique twenty years or so ) and had brown hair, and did not stand out in a crowd. Like all vampires, his incisors were a little on the pronounced side, but nothing that would look out of the ordinary. Lexington had an athletic build, but not one that belied the fact that like most vampires he could snap a man's neck in an instant and jump over a car with relatively little effort. Of course Lexington would never harm a human ( though God knows he had come close in a couple of bars and road rage incidents ). He might despise what they had done to the world but he enjoyed the internet and fast food as much as the next person, and was loath to give up his creature comforts. But Lexington did know however of vampires that wanted to exterminate humans, not just as individuals, but as a species. These foolish creatures believed that the world would be better off as a barren wilderness, where vampires would once more have the advantage over their more numerous cousins and would not have to shamefully hide their abilities and natures. Lexington hunted down such fellow vampires. And when he found them he killed them.
Now, you may think it is a fine thing indeed that Lexington usually did what appeared to be the right thing, though if the truth be told, Lexington was merely fighting to keep the world the way he wanted it. He did not want to live in a world where he froze his ass off in winter and never had any new books to look forward to. Perhaps we all do such a thing every day, in every choice we make, big and small. It is just that for most of us, these choices do not include murder.
This occupation, along with his nature of course, made Lexington rather a loner, unknown to humans and feared by many of his own kind. As much as he tried to keep his existence secret and make his kills look accidental, there were still rumours in the vampire 'community'. It is the reason why on another Friday night Lexington found himself alone and watching a political party conference intently on the small t.v in his local bar. The politician on the screen was particularly interesting to Lexington. It wasn't just her politics that were abhorrent to Lexington. She was probably a vampire, and if so, Lexington was going to kill her.
It was vampires like this that forced Lexington to live in the developed world. Most of his kind lived in the rural areas of poor countries where they could stay off the radar and avoid the chance of being discovered by a doctor during a 'medical incident'. Lexington could not hunt his quarry from such locations. He had compromised and now lived a semi-vagabond existence in rent for cash rooms in major cities where he could get what he needed. The company of drug addicts and battered women might be disdainful to Lexington but it was the best way of escaping notice in this society, barr being homeless.
