The door opens on Shell's nightshift at the 7-11. The warm glow of the sun is fading in the distance, like peachy embers as the cold fluorescent lights of the store begin to flicker on against the dusk.

There is nobody here but in a few hours, teenagers will arrive with packets of gum to buy and cans of beer to conceal.

Another mouse will be caught in the humane traps that Shell has set. He doesn't even suck their blood. He lets them go a few miles away, and waits for another person to answer his personal add.

It is not exactly ethical, but he gets his meals and some extra money by sucking the blood of vampire kink enthusiasts.

Something about Buffalo attracts more Vampire fetishes than any other place. When he took the 7-11 uniform out of Barthelemew's hands he had no idea there was such a flourishing community here.

But now it all made sense-why a 10000-year-old vampire of so much status and prestige would even be here in the first place. Bartholemew's coats were velvet, leather, and black, and Shell had been to his house a few times.

The ancient vampire was quite a showboat. His boudoir was filled with beautiful masks, glitter, and sequins. He loved to wear sparkles. He sometimes made an appearance at the burlesque show hidden in a back alley. It was a perfect way for him to get out of the house. They were always at night.

Shell's modest accommodations were a bit more modern-midcentury modern to be exact. He decorated his home with a single mustard yellow chair with round lines and wood accents.

He left the original baby blue wallpaper intact, with its tiny blue flowers and original crown molding. The houses in Buffalo were old, like him, and his friend. And the dark wood and pseudo-Tudor garnishings seemed to fit him.

Every now and then he would pass a house where the original stained glass had been kept, and his pale skin against the sprinkle of rainbows was something magical to behold.

His landlord was a living woman with old creased skin and starchy, blonde hair with straw-colored bits sticking out like errant thoughts. But she never seemed to think of much other than the rent. She owned a vintage toy store that was beautiful to look at, but terribly understaffed and under-sold.

It was a brown building with red brick, and it was right underneath Shell's modest single-bedroom apartment.

The kitchen in Shell's house was old, from the 1950's. It was even pink, although completely dysfunctional and a fire hazard.

So Shell mainly got his meals from the diner across the street, which served burnt eggs and kind faces alamode.

He left his house every day at dusk, and like clockwork, made his way to the diner to eat his burnt eggs and a bit slimy ham before his shift at the 7-11 mart.

He sometimes thought of his family, what were they up to? What do they do now? He made his choice to become a vampire because of them, but now he never saw them.

They were just a memory in his head. His deal with the devil he made out of lust for the past, and he never even got to experience it.

When the vampirism overtook his body, he knew he would not see them again.

​

There was something about the peaceful night-job that bolstered his solitary spirit. It left room for him to grow. The routine of the door opening, the cash register tinging, and the oddly consistent customer base was fortifying to his moldy soul.

Since the vampire bite Shell noticed a distinct moldy, decay to his essence. His interior world, warm and exuberant as a human, was now dank, gray, and strange, like the interior of an old basement.

He looked inside, trying to find the warm memories of the past, but his hands blankly felt the black, hollow space. And his mind only touched the glowing philia of mushrooms and other sickly sweet underground creatures.

He sometimes held his hands up to his heart, and he could still feel the echos of the yellowing wooden teeth there.

The bite echoed in the chambers of his spiritual architecture. Only the cold glow of the store and the routine seemed to bolster in the echo of that blast.

There was one woman, who came in the store ever night, however, who seemed to be able to cut through the dank, gray, slime of the newly minted vampire's essence.

Her name was Sheila, and she was a beleaguered primary school teacher who lived in one of the TV Ad apartments only a block away from the store. She always came in with gray sweatpants and a pink sweatshirt with a teddy bear embroidered on the front.

Sheila was single and alone as well. Her life was mainly her job at the preschool.

"Always liked kids growing up so I made it my life" She said.