Matt The Not Particularly Good Vampire Hunter

As first published on the DVD and website of www.imaginefx.com

Matt, the not particularly good vampire hunter

“I know how bad this looks.” Matthew Felix pursed his swollen lips and tried his best to form them into smile. Clasping his hands in front of his bruised and battered face, he glanced nervously at the policewoman staring nonchalantly back at him. Pulling himself to his feet and wiping his bloody hands on his trousers, he tried desperately to ignore the bloated corpse on the floor in front of him.
“But honestly. I can explain.”
The policewoman opposite at last raised an eyebrow. At least twice Matt’s age, with greying hair and a hook nose and a stare that gave her the appearance of an aged school teacher, she didn’t look like she believed him, and he could see why. Covered in bruises, cuts and bites, both fresh today and older ones hidden behind bandages, with blood all over his hands and hoodie and trousers, he didn’t look like a man who had much of an explanation.
That he had broken into a nervous sweat and was talking in a high, shaky voice didn’t help his case. Then, neither did the fact he’d just been caught in the act, hammering a wooden stake into the chest of a portly, swollen vampire.
“I’ve just walked in on you stabbing a sleeping man with a sharpened piece of wood,” said the policewoman, as she reached out and snapped one half of a pair of handcuffs around his wrist, attaching the other to the doorframe of the cellar room where he stood. Matt knew better than to protest. “You’re a dangerous, probably deranged young man. That’s all the explanation I need. But go on, while we’re waiting for backup. You might as well give it your best shot.”
Matt nodded, and smiled once more as he shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, the thing is, this is going to sound crazy. I appreciate, this isn’t your normal, run of the mill police business. But the thing is, I’m not the bad guy here, I’m not the one who’s breaking the law. Not completely, anyway. See, this guy here, he’s not a person, not a tramp or anything. He’s a vampire. And that’s why I was killing him. I’m not a murderer, cos I can hardly murder someone who’s already dead. Anyway, I was only doing my job.”
Matt knew he didn’t fit well with the conventional idea of a vampire hunter. He was too young, for starters, having only just celebrated his 20th birthday last week. He guessed he was a little too weedy, though he was working on that, but right now he didn’t exactly have a warrior’s physique. He wasn’t an aged, learned professor who’d studied the vampire for years, or a half-vampire with a vendetta; nor was he, for that matter, a feisty female with a penchant for karate kicks.
In short, he was none of the things that films and comics would have you believe vampire slayers looked like. Matt was a typical lad from a council estate, most often found in hoodie and jeans. He was a pretty, charming young man with good looks that meant people thought he was a model, or an actor, but never an eradicator of the undead. Indeed, he thought he could have been a model if it wasn’t for the cuts, and the bruises, and the bites – the bites were the worst thing, but they went with the territory. They spoiled his looks a little and made people think he was always looking for a fight, and always losing. But Matt liked to think they gave him that ‘rough diamond’ edge. People could think what they liked. After all, he could hardly tell them the truth about his constant stream of injuries: they were an occupational hazard in his line of work, killing vampires for Bristol City Council.
Matt had never wanted to be a vampire hunter. When he’d answered the advert in the local paper asking for ‘Pest Control Officers’ he’d expected to be killing rats and mice and cockroaches. When they’d explained he could earn extra money in the Special Division, he’d jumped at the chance and was packed off for two months’ training and assessment. At first, this had only consisted of playing video games, watching home made horror movies and taking ‘self defence’ lessons, and Matt thought he had found his dream job. By the time he’d realised just how ‘specialist’ his new role would be, he was told it was too late to change his mind.
Being a vampire hunter sounded pretty cool. It was certainly an original line to use on the ladies when they asked: “And what do you do?” Though, of course, he couldn’t actually tell them. The ladies in question would look at him like he was insane, and it was part of the terms and conditions of his job that if he ever blabbed about what he did, he would have to face the consequences.
People with a vampire infestation didn’t really like talking about it, much like a takeaway with a cockroach problem would like to keep things hush-hush. So Matt kept his silence, and went as quietly as possible about his business of killing vampires. The trouble was, he just wasn’t very good at it.
Vampires weren’t much like they were in films or comics either. They weren’t the beautiful creatures literature would have you believe; they didn’t have superhuman strength, and neither garlic nor crucifixes had any effect on them. Matt didn’t even think they got burned up if they went out in the sun; it was just easier to bite people’s necks and drink their blood under cover of darkness. Being immortal held none of the romance people might imagine. Vampires’ bodies continued to age; they just didn’t die.
When they were hungry, vampires were little more than shrunken sacks of skin and bone with dark hollows for eyes and prominent, hungry teeth. When they were sated, like the one Matt had been staking to the floor when the policewoman turned up, they were swollen, purple bulbous creatures who swelled so fat they could do nothing but wallow for days in their own filth, giant, pseudohuman ticks filled to the brim with blood.
The good thing about finding them when they’d fed was they were easy to catch. Stumble upon one who was hungry and you risked a severe beating, not to mention some serious bites. That was what had happened to give Matt his freshest set of teeth marks and bruises. When he’d tracked down this vampire to its lair in the basement of a condemned building two nights before, the creature had been only half full. It still wanted to feed, and it wasn’t going to lie down and let Matt stick a stake in its chest. So he was battered, and bitten harshly on the neck – it sucked a pint or two for sure before dumping him semi-conscious in the street.
That was the other thing that wasn’t commonly known about vampires. It was very rare for them to kill for their dinner. They didn’t drink more than a couple of pints at a time, and they didn’t leave two little telltale holes on the neck of their victims: they left dirty great tearing bites with ragged, jagged edges, like the one Matt had concealed under the hospital dressing on the left side of his neck. He had bites on his face, arms and legs too; piss off a vampire, and the chances are, it’s going to bite you.
His first encounter with this vampire had led to Matt spending a night in hospital. He was no stranger to the casualty department, staff there would look him up and down and shake their heads that Matthew Felix had been fighting again. The neck wound, the face wound and the deep cuts on his arms were, they assumed, caused by a knife.
He didn’t know why he’d decided to tell the young nurse who cared for him the truth. Perhaps it was because he was in trouble at work already – his kill rate wasn’t good. Half the time when he did manage to perform a staking, he’d miss the heart and do nothing but deflate the swollen creature, covering himself in half-digested blood in the process. Often he didn’t get that far: they’d bite him and beat him and throw him on the street. Only three out of ten successful kills in the last six months: improve, his bosses had told him, or face dire consequences.
Maybe it was because she was blonde and busty and beautiful, and she’d talked to him gently as she cleaned his injuries and patched him up: “Now then, they tell me you’re a regular in here. What’s a handsome boy like you doing getting his pretty face all scarred and bruised?”
Or maybe it was because he was sore and shaken and light-headed after being attacked. Whichever it was – and probably it was a combination of all three – he’d caught the nurse’s hand as she cleaned his neck wound, and said: “You’ll think I’m crazy, but here goes. I’ll tell the truth.”
And he had told her everything. He’d told her all that he was telling the policewoman now, and as expected when his tale was told, she’d smiled sympathetically and patted him on the head.
“Oh dear, my love. You have such an overactive imagination. It’s a shame it keeps getting you into trouble.”
The next day, he’d been called to work early and told his record was causing “serious worries” for his superiors. If he didn’t finish the vampire whom he had been attacked by, then the council would have to think about termination.
So Matt, the not particularly good vampire killer, had vowed to prove himself. He had one last chance to overcome this creature, and one thing was for sure; he wasn’t going to get beaten up and supped from again.
“…And that’s it, basically,” Matt concluded, as he noticed his chained arm was starting to ache. The policewoman was still looking at him coolly, and he didn’t think she’d believed a single word he’d said. But still, he shot her a wide smile and a wink in a last-ditch attempt to convince her. “I know how crazy it sounds. But that’s what I am, that’s what I do. I’m Matt the vampire hunter.”
The policewoman regarded him for a moment more, watching as Matt tried to maintain a look of innocence. Keeping his cool, however, was far from easy in the circumstances, especially as he could feel the blood from the slain vampire soaking into his trainers, into his socks and up between his toes.
“You may have an overactive imagination, granted,” the policewoman said. “But you certainly have a big mouth. And that’s what worries me, and more importantly, worries your bosses. I know what you are, I know what you do. You’re Matt, the not particularly good vampire hunter. And now, thanks to that big mouth, half the hospital knows about you, too.”
Matt lost his smile. He blinked his eyes a few times as he stuttered: “I… don’t know what you mean.”
The policewoman took a step back as something wet and cold brushed against Matt’s ankle.
“You see, that young nurse you talked to was concerned; a ‘fantasist’ like you was an easy target, she thought; she thought you were a bit simple, which was why you keep getting beaten up. She took her concerns to her superiors, who eventually got them back to your bosses. And your bosses contacted me.”
“The police?” said Matt. “But why?”
The policewoman smiled, as the cold, wet thing clamped around Matt’s ankle. Looking down, his eyes bulged as he saw the face of the ‘dead’ vampire smiling back at him, its now half deflated body still dripping regurgitated blood. He’d missed, again.
“I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely honest with you, Matt. Though to be fair, if you’d actually paused to read my card, you’d know. I’m not a police officer. I work for the council, just like you. I’m a supervisor and it’s my job to check pest control officers are doing their job effectively – and act appropriately, in cases like yours, when they’re not.”
She nodded at the vampire as it clawed its way up to Matt’s knees, pulling itself slowly to its feet.
“Termination, Matt. Pest control officer, unfortunately killed in the line of duty. You had been warned.”
She stepped back to leave the room as Matt twisted hopelessly against his handcuff and the vampire straightened up.
“Let me go,” he mumbled. “Please. I’ll do better. I promise.”
“Sorry, Matt,” said the woman. She turned to leave, and Matt screamed as the vampire’s cold fingers clawed under his hoodie.
“No, please! No, don’t leave me! Or at least untie me, let it be a fair fight. It’ll be more realistic, if I look like I’ve been fighting him…”
The woman looked thoughtful, then shrugged.
“By the time he’s finished with you, you won’t look like much of anything. He’s not only hungry, he’s quite pissed off, since you hammered a pointy stick into his gut. Edward here is one of our best vampire double-agents, and so he should be; he’s been doing it for 400 years.”
But she smiled as she reached up to unfasten his handcuffs.
“But for once, you may actually be right. No-one will think it strange you’ve been in another fight.” She unchained him, and his hand fell to his side. “But go on. Give it your best shot.”
Matt shook his arm and smiled too.
“Oh, I will.”
Stretching his arms above his head as if in a yawn, he’d bared his fanged teeth and caught her throat before she could even put the key to the cuffs back in her pocket. Before she could scream, he’d torn his way to her jugular and drunk a couple of pints. He shoved her towards Edward and let him do the same before she passed out, and Matt broke her neck with a swift move he’d remembered from his self-defence lessons.
One thing that was true about vampire legends was that to become a one, you had to drink another vampire’s blood. Matt’s dreadful aim and poor memory of anatomy meant he’d had enough mouthfuls in his time, even before the incident last week when Edward had tapped a little too much from his neck. Matt had drifted close to unconsciousness, until Edward had taken pity on or a shine to the pretty boy, and opened a vein to feed him some back. His own blood, mixed with countless splashes of vampire blood, mixed with Edward’s, was a strong concoction.
“Join me,” Edward had beseeched. “I’m old, and lonely. I could use a handsome young companion. And the conditions as a double agent are far better than working for the council.”
Matt had thought about it for a moment, and agreed. It was either that, or stake himself. The beating had only been for show, though the bites were real enough.
It was that beating that Matt was thinking of as he coolly, calmly turned back to Edward, still grinning and slavering over the woman’s corpse. With a lightning move, Matt bit through his neck at the same time as pulling a stake from his pocket. He drank just enough to keep himself looking healthy, not too bloated and not too thin, before hammering the stake into Edward’s chest – accurate, when he wanted to be. With the inside information he got from the council, it was easy to track down his rivals when he got hungry – feeding on his own kind would make him far stronger than sucking on a regular human neck.
As the old vampire crumpled to the floor, Matt shrugged.
“Sorry, Ed. I’m afraid that’s just what I am, it’s what I do.”
He smiled as he stepped over the corpses and walked out. He was Matt, the vampire hunter. The trouble was, he just wasn’t very good.