The vampire Rogasz had taken to carrying a knife when he walked the streets on his hunt. It was not for protection; it was to slash the faces of his victims as they lay drained of blood, to cut them for being so stupid. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” he screamed at them... and sometimes witnesses heard his cries, drunks hidden under piles of trash or street kids waiting to turn tricks in darkened doorways. The witnesses sold their accounts to impatient Eyewitness News teams and so the story spread throughout the city, “STUPID, STUPID, STUPID!” ran the headlines, and in the coffee shops, reporters from all the media brainstormed what they would call this latest novelty. The Stupid Slasher? No. Not menacing enough. And menace was what sold newspapers.

Meanwhile, Rogasz stalked through the city like a jaded library goer who can’t find any books he wants to read. Some rainy nights he would just stake out a territory, attacking anyone who violated the space: striking them down, cutting them with his knife, throwing them off his land without even drinking their blood. He couldn’t bring himself to feed on such meager feasts; they would taste the same as all the others, back through the centuries. Besides, he hardly needed to drink these days — the city air was so full of blood and desperation, it seeped into his pores by osmosis. In a more lucid moment, he wrote in his notebook,

I have the feeling I do not drink blood, but rather karma — the personal richness of a human soul. This explains the poignant flavor of a virgin as opposed to sluts... and yet, in this bleak age, the difference is nearly imperceptible. The best wine is but a hairs-breadth from vinegar. The world has lost its saints.

There came a steamy summer night when the city smelled of garbage — garbage rotting in Dumpsters as hot as ovens, garbage thrown into the streets by children whose mothers said, “Get this stink out of the house, I don’t care what you do with it.” Long ago, no one heaved decaying food onto someone else’s sidewalk, nor did people sit in front of overloud TVs, too desensitized to realize they were bored. Rogasz prowled past fortress apartment buildings and screamed at the flickering television light reflected in every window. “Poisons, poisons, poisons!”