Billy's always worrying about me and my work, so I ruffle his sandy-brown hair and clap him on the back. He returns my grin with a smile while the monster's whimpering fades to hisses.

"I can handle this, Billy, and your growling tummy tells me your hungry"

"Well, I am hungry, Dad. A little."

His stomach growls again and we laugh, ignoring the hissing monster suspended in our basement.

"You'll be okay?" I ask.

He nods and smiles, holding his belly. He starts to glance at the creature but averts his eyes like a good boy. Such a good boy" so much like his mother. Before she changed.

"I'll call you when it's ready," he says at the top of the steps.

I nod.

I turn my attention back to the vampire when he's gone. It continues hissing until I raise the machete. I can't see its reflection in the polished gleam of the blade near the hilt, the part that isn't soiled by black bile.

"You love him, don't you?"

I ignore the monster's challenge as I approach.

"He will taste just as delicious as your wife did. What was her name? Elaine?"

I bury the blade into the vampire's stomach just as I bury the past into the back of my mind. I pull the blade up until its intestines slide out, dark and quivering like snakes, sloshing wetly to the floor. They squish beneath my combat boots as I gain a stronger foothold to better cut through the monster's sternum. Its wail fills with pain. If I were Billy or Elaine perhaps I'd feel sympathy. I'm not them, though.

I hear the microwave beep and smell Hungryman Chicken Dinners when the vampire's wailing wheezes to a stop. I hurry through my work because I'm hungry. Billy's hungry. The whole world is hungry, it seems. Even my machete hungers. Seems the closer I come to death, the more I feel alive. It jacks me up when I go to work in the basement, fills me with excitement which rubs off on Billy. But I wonder how much is healthy for my son.

The atrocities we've both witnessed in the past month"Billy having watched the vampire suck his mother dry before his very eyes, and me capturing the atrocity with garlic and holy water, and cutting my hatred into it nightly"has conditioned us, molded us. We eat while we work, discovering how the vampire works, using garlic and blades and wooden stakes"traditional paraphernalia"trying to figure out whether it has any weaknesses other than what I used to capture it.

I go upstairs, my hands shaking and tired from my work, my white T-shirt soiled with black splotches. Billy doesn't notice; he's been conditioned to grisly matters. I notice that the game is on while washing my hands at the kitchen sink. Chicago Cubs vs. the Astros. His dinner is finished, the plastic microwavable tray and empty glass still on the table. My dinner is cold as usual"I'm always late, always working. My milk has become warm like cooled blood.

"Made him scream loud, dad," Billy says, never taking his eyes from the game. "Sorry 'bout looking into that thing's eyes."

Billy shouts, "A homerun," before I can respond.

I smile and take my TV dinner to the couch to sit beside him. He grins and swats my shoulder "the Cubs are ahead."

"Like old times. Huh, dad?"

The vampire wails downstairs. I look out the window and see the nearby woods across the pasture, the corn wilting on long, hollow stalks in the fields beneath a blood-red harvest moon. I've let the farm go to hell.

"Right, dad?" Billy nudges me. "Just like old times?"

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