It was a ghoulish hole in the wall. The room was divided in two halves: the visitors, oblivious to where they were or what they were surrounded by, and the predators who watched the room for the vulnerable and lonely. The owner of the bar was a witch who called himself Santa. Most of the town called it Santa’s Lap, a name which only playfully described how creepy this place was.

While predators cast their beautiful smiles as lures from the corners and the dark ones fed on the general despair which hung in the air like the smell of pneumonia, I could not help but feel very uncomfortable – panicky even. Every time my ears burned from the searing bloodlusts which rang throughout the room, I tried to remember how I got there. I was certain that I had not come with a friend, but nor did I come by car. I hated my condition.

I was getting frustrated by the uncertainty of my arrival and my head began to ache from the deafening cacophony of thought – my own as well as those of the people around me. I was torn between the lustful draw for me to stay and prey on the visitors and the reason within which reminded me I was merely confused by the monsters’ thoughts. I sat on a crusty maroon couch near the sinister red glare of the EXIT sign which I desperately wanted to run to. I hated my condition.

I was dreading the rest of the evening. When the sun rose, most of the predators would be long gone and the only people remaining would be too drunk to keep me from leaving. The truth was I was trapped. My imprisoners did not know they were doing so, but they were holding me there with their minds. I could not leave until I regained control of my own actions. I hated my condition.

It was 2 AM – long until sunup. The catlike eyes watching me could tell I was vulnerable and not in control of my actions. Predators watched me greedily and witches coveted my body for their spells. Drunkards tried to imagine if they were able to drive home or not. Lonely women looked past me at the pale bad boys in the corner with the shining eyes.

I was so lost in the room’s traffic of thought that I barely noticed the absent-minded young lady sit down next to me. Her mind was so empty I was able to regain myself for a brief few minutes.

“Hey there,” she said in her songlike voice. “I saw you over here all by yourself and I could not help but think you wanted some company.”

She was a prostitute, but there was something relaxing about her. She was different. Her skin seemed to reflect what little light was in the room. Her eyes were a perfect yellow like sunlight that seemed to glow and her hair was a white blond like the moon. Even the substance of her psyche was set to a different tune: part normal, part something else. She was different.

“So how about we take this party somewhere else?” she said in a voice from an old, black-and-white movie. She coughed melodically. Never had I seen such beautiful depravity.

“Um, sure,” I agreed. I had no interest in paying her for anything of the sort, but her beauty was overwhelming and her charm made me want to do whatever she said. If she were to say that an old applecore were ambrosia I would not hesitate to gobble it up.

Even though nearly a dozen eyes followed me out of the vicinity, I suddenly felt a weight lifted from my shoulders when I let go of the door on the other side of villainy. I suddenly regained full control of my mind.

I immediately remembered how I got there. I was coming home from work at Home Depot. I walked because my “disability” kept me from properly maintaining control of any vehicle (at least within the city). I always went out of my way to keep away from that “gay bar” on the edge of town – a deliberate untruth intended to numbers from showing up. In this town on the Texas Coast, between Galveston and Corpus Christi, the only visitors to this hole in the wall were those who could easily disappear.

Even though it was on my way to my parents’ house, I lacked the ability to control myself when I walked past. All I had to be was close enough to sense the heroin addict shooting up in the bathroom or the lonely woman taking a mysterious stranger’s hand to lose myself and wake up hours later with no memory of anything that happened.

I always tried to walk another route. I even requested sunlight hours so the pull of the bar would not be nearly as strong.

This had been a good week. I was able to keep a civil tone in the presence of a disgruntled customer; I was able to resist the draw to start speaking clear Spanish to the lady at Walgreen’s. I was even starting to feel enough in control to consider reenrolling in college.

So when I stayed late to help with close up around ten, I felt strong enough to walk to the pharmacy right next door to Santa’s Bar. I decided not to take that long-ass way behind the Wal-Mart and across the highway. I was confident that I would not be drawn in.

“So, let’s continue this somewhere else?” she said, her eyes not moving away from her phone. She was texting her pimp, suspecting that he was watching us now. He could be anywhere: watching, waiting. I could feel her intense fear. Something was wrong.

“I don’t know. Wanna get something to eat?”

“Look, Mr. Sideburns,” she began. “I’m not a dinner date, okay? We go back to my place. We do what you pay for. Then I get paid and you leave. No somethingtoeats.”

There was an odd spot around in that sentence, almost like it was a lie of some sort. Sometimes, certain kinds of thoughts feel like others. She started to think about her pimp. He would be angry if I wasted any more of her time. He was difficult. He once killed a john for some reason. She thought about him to this day; reflecting that she, in part, killed him by approaching him. The next week he was found beneath a pier. Who knows why they never investigated the reason he was found drained of all his blood. Drained of all his blood.

I dropped her thoughts like a baseball. I just stopped listening to the echoes in her spacious mind when I spotted the subtext in her thoughts. Her pimp was a vampire. Suddenly the parking lot got much darker. As if all the lamps continuing to shine were diminished of their effect. A kind of darkness overcame my mind: a predator’s presence.

I was not the only one who spotted it. The angel before me began to panic. She sensed the vampire too. She had a connection which prompted her to feel his presence. He was not happy.

“Look, guy. If you want some of this, let’s go. If not, just tell me so we can both go back inside.” Her hummingbird heartbeat fluttered when she remembered the vampire’s words: “You can’t afford to make any more mistakes. If you continue to falter, nay will I tarry to sell you back to Titania.” She did not understand all of those words, but she knew what he was telling her.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said. “Why not go to your parents?”

She gave a kind of snort while she continued to look into the blue glare of her phone. Her mind betrayed that, at this point, she was just looking into her phone so she did not have to look at me. As soon as I said it, her mind told her story in a flash. She did not even know what her father’s name was. All she knew was that he was “different” like her. Her mother was a real piece of work too before the prostitute killed her (she quickly tried to remind herself that it was an accident, but it failed to erase the guilt hanging on her like Spanish moss). This girl in front of me had nothing and nobody to go back to.

I was alarmed that she killed her own mother, but I wanted to follow just exactly how different this girl was. I went back to what I was saying.

“You know, there are other things you can do.” I had not finished before I knew that she did not believe me. “I’m sure you have talents or skills or whatever that you cando to make a good job out of. You don’t have to be what you are. You’re different; I can tell.”

My mind began to flood before I was even finished speaking.

Different? He doesn’t know, know who/what I am. What I am is wrong, is wrong, is different, “unique”, freak freak freak. No mother: killed her. Just like my father. My father. My father: don’t know who who who he is He made me. He made me and left me. Made me and left me. Made me a freak. A freak. A freak. An elf. A freak. A freak. Who is this guy this guy who thinks he can tell me what I can be, what I can be, what I can be? (No way out). Stephen saved me. He is helping me overcome, overcome myself. He doesn’t bullshit me like these pricks who think they can change me, like they can tell me how to live my life: become a clerk, hairdresser, some kind of gay ass real estate agent. (How the hell can I be a real estate agent when I can hardly control myself from this screwedupness [that asshole, my father]? I can’t control myself from what I am). Stephen is helping me control myself. Stephen, the vampire. Stephen Stephen Stephen. God, I fucking hate Stephen. I don’t want to go back to that house. This dude’s a prick, a freak, but he doesn’t deserve to get killed. Killed. Killed. Tricked. Pinned. Stephen’s fangs in his neck. I have to watch. Stephen won’t let me leave. That godawful sound, the scream. The scream that nobody hears but me. Then… Dead. Dead. Covered in cement in the back yard. God, I hate the smell of cement. Just like that guy from last month. Throw away their IDs. That guy had a picture in his wallet. Wife and children. Wife and children. Wife and children. He was a douche for coming to me anyways. Wanted a “relief”. Ew, gross, sick. Now he’s dead. But his wife and children (wifeandchildrenwifeandchildrenwifeandchildren) will never know. Never know. Never know. Can’t think about that. Don’t want to think about that. Don’t think about that. Don’t cry. This guy better get out of here unless he wants to be vampire chow. God, Stephen’s here. I see him in every corner. In front of me. Behind me. In the shadows. In the light. In the club. Out back in this parking lot. Better this guy than me. Stephen says he likes me. He likes me. He likes me (translated: he likes my blood). Better find someone soon or else he’ll turn on me. Just enough to keep me alive. I don’t want to do this again. I want to leave. There’s no way out, no way out, no way out. Stephen.

Before I could even think to say anything, I was beaten to the punch by an icy, antique voice:

“My good man, make the miss an offer or hasten off.”

I turned around. The gentleman was pale as moonlight and possessed some of the same luminosity. He was covered however from shoulder to ankle in a long dark blue trench coat. I really could not see much of him, but he exhaled an air of danger from his mind.

It took nearly a half-second for his mind to impress itself upon me with the blinding kind of influence which made all other things forgotten. I could still sense vampire thoughts, but they were just different. Even though my sixth sense did not really distinguish the thoughts of different languages, his were like those of a different language. I felt them, but could not interpret them. At least, not very well. His were colored with a grim shade of danger coated around his complexities.

Wordlessly, I walked past the prostitute and into the street. As I passed, I tried to catch her name. Her name was Jamie. She was twenty years old. Even though she had never met him, she knew that her father was an elf. On evening, when she was sixteen, she accidentally killed her mother by draining and absorbing all her life out. And, after that, she came under the custody of the elves who, in turn, sold her to the Vampire Stephen. Now, every night, she seduces men and lures them into the clutches of the Vampire Stephen. She lamented how her parentage got her into this mess, this slavery.

I did not look behind me as I slowly inched away, every step taking me deeper and deeper into the sweet, life-promising night and further and further from Jamie’s thoughts becoming dimmer and dimmer. I wished I could control my sense like that more often.

As I walked off, I could still remember the desperate guilt and despair which hung from her like the white cloud cover on a December day. She was not the smartest or even the kindest (but undoubtedly the prettiest) young lady I’d ever seen. However, she was in danger. She was enslaved by this monster – this vampire.

I had discovered their kind when I first began working the night shifts. You’d be surprised how many of them there were just stalking the evening. I immediately learned that they were not nearly as pretty or as sexy as they could make themselves to be. They only needed to be sexy for so long. Besides, they were not interested in humans in that way. Vampires had one and only one interest in humans.

What benefit did this one get from pimping half-elves (if there were others)? What did half-elves do? What did elves do? This was a discovery for me. Not shocking though. When you can hear people’s thoughts, you learn about the world’s dark secrets. Elves and half-elves were new though. I did not know that this world were so diverse in that way. What a discovery

I walked to the pharmacy parking lot and called Carla, my cousin, to drive me home. She was five years younger than me and the only person I could call. Also, she mastered the art I never could. She can block up her mind. She never read my thoughts and kept me out so I could have a moment’s peace. She asked questions, but never searched through my thoughts.

I waited nearly a half-hour in the 24-hour pharmacy before she pulled up around the front in my uncle’s turquoise, two-seater pickup.

I walked up, trying to wall up my mind for that first half-second when she is most likely to catch something. I tried to remember the words to the national anthem, something I had not said since I graduated. When I had remembered it, I tried translating it in my incomplete Spanish.

Seeing me, she unlocked her door and let me in. For a quiet moment before either of us could say a thing, a thought leaked out of her. She pitied me that I couldn’t control myself. I pitied me too. She kept her mind quiet for the rest of the ride. If she caught wind of my night with the half-elf and the vampire, she didn’t let me know. I had a moment’s peace. She just drove me home.

At least, my mother wasn’t like me, I mused with relief. Nor my father, nor my sister. My mother inherited her mother’s gene for telepathy (obviously, since I had it), but never expressed it like her brothers or my cousin did.

As I got out of the car at 3:21 A.M., walked down the stone walkway to my parent’s porch, penetrated the cold lock with my shaking key, I sighed with relief. What joy after a hard night to hear the reassuring click in the doorknob that said you’re home.