Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
“So are you going to try for it?”
Grabbing the edge of the metal from of the drop ceiling, I glanced down at Mark where he is holding my ladder steady-ish. The accounting department had not moved the desks to the new layout for the upgrade to their printers, so the ladder straddled between two cubicles as I pulled down the wires. “Try what?”
“Eric’s position.”
“He’s leaving the company?” I put my head back in the ceiling. We were on a tight schedule this morning; contactors were coming by in the early afternoon for the installations of the new equipment and we needed all the wires in place, preferably before the day crew showed up. “I didn’t think he could.”
“Nah, but he got promoted nearly twenty years ago. He’s going to go down for his first topor any day now.”
“Incoming.” I yanked the heavy weight of the long cables we ran between the computer floor to accounting, dumping the coils below me.
“So how about it; you going to try? You have the seven-year minimum time in company, and, man, I would be happy to answer to you compared to Lynn or David.”
Leaving the ceiling tile out of position, I climbed down the ladder, dusted off my hands, and started separating the wires into the pair we needed. “It wouldn’t be a good fit for me.”
“Come on, you got everything man.” Mark kept his eyes on me as he pushed, barely paying attention as he tied the matched sets to a weight. He punched my arm as he passed by, taking the first two sets to the primary print station. We will need to run the other three pairs through the ceiling to the third secondary station and the two manager offices, but the weights will make it easier to grab while also keeping all the heft of the cable from pulling them back down the two floors to the computer department. “The experience, the master’s degree, employee of the month for our department more than any other.”
“That’s because I have no home life.”
“Which they love.” Mark said, his voice raising at the end in emphasis, as he did that head bob thing with hands, I guess from some television show, that I was never home to watch.
“Yeah, but vampire? That is a commitment.”
“You already been here for ten, which was longer than your marriage.”
“Yeah, but there is that eye contact thing.” I glanced his way before climbing back up the ladder, rotating on it until I had line of sight to Abigal’s office, her blinds wide open for the rising sun over the many skyscrapers she admired at night, then poked my head back up through the hole. I put a hand down for Mark to hand me the next neatly paired cords and the extendable pole to direct the materials to the right locations.
“Right, you are like autistic, autistic. I keep forgetting.”
“Can you imagine me trying to hypnotize someone?” I shove the Abigal weight to her office, extending the pole to its maximum of forty feet. “Look into my eyes.” I said with the cheesiest accent ever, then switched to a slightly hyper scared voice. “Nope, don’t do that. Never mind.” I got diagnosed in third grade and had wonderful therapy all my life, but certain things remain damn near impossible like crowds (I love my job where I keep things going during the day while everyone else works nights) and staring deeply into the eyes of the woman I loved.
We had two great years, two increasingly bad years, three wonderful children, and enough hell when she couldn’t take my quirks anymore to traumatize all five of us. The kids were teens now. Being a vampire wouldn’t be bad in relation to the family since the first torpor wouldn’t set in for another twenty and only lasted two years.
Still, I wouldn’t want to deal a bunch of neurotypical vampires for eternity. Trying to keep them up on the latest technology had been hard enough.
(words 680; first published 12/25/2025)