The bartender with the pale skin and black eyes stood at the bar. A man walked in, messy, with paint-splattered clothes, wearing a hangdog expression.
“What do you have the will knock the lights out of me?” the man asked.
“That depends,” the bartender said. “How deeply do you want fall?”
“I’m having a hard time. My girlfriend left me and she’s taking our kid to Alaska with another guy. And I have to pay child support! I have to send money while they look at the Northern Lights and live in an igloo.”
“If you become someone else, nobody will find you.”
The bartender reached to the back of the bar.
“This is Pinot Gross. Drink this and it will transform you, you will become strong.”
“Isn’t it supposed to be Pinot Gris? That’s white wine, I don’t like that.”
“No, Pinot Gross is red wine, and it’s the reddest wine you will ever find.”
The bartender uncorked the bottle and poured the wine into a whiskey glass.
“Drink this and you’ll forget everything.”
“It looks like tomato juice.”
The man swirled it in the cup.
“Here goes.” He took a sip and coughed. “What happened?”
The bartender smiled and showed his fangs.
“Now, you are one of us. Enjoy eternal life.”
“Hey, I didn’t ask for this, I just wanted a drink.”
“Now you will thirst for eternity.” The bartender placed his hands in front of him. “We don’t have a manual, but you can figure it out. Don’t go out in the sun. Stay away from fire. Don’t tell anyone. You’ll be able to recognize your own kind.”
The man stumbled out of the bar. “I’d rather have had Pinot Gris.”
The next morning, before the sun rose, the man stood in front of the house where his girlfriend lived with their child. “I feel different. I am a creature of the night. I can’t tell her. I have to leave.”
He wrote a note in blood and left it in her mailbox. “I am going far away, and you won’t be able to find me. I’m not going to fund your new life with that man and our kid.”
He went back to his place and stood up in the closet.
“I need to get more Pinot Gross. When I wake up, the bartender will help me.”
He fell into a death-like sleep.
The next night, after sundown, he went back to the bar, but it had disappeared. In its place was a 7-Eleven. He went inside and asked the cashier if a bar had ever been there.
“This store has always been here.”
“But what about Pinot Gross?”
“We don’t sell spirits here. Do you want a Slurpee? We have those.”
“Pinot Gross is not a spirit, it’s wine. I became a vampire last night, and you’re telling me the bar never existed?”
“I think you need to leave.”
The man looked around the empty store. He reached across and grabbed the cashier’s neck and bit it.
The cashier screamed.
“You’ll give me my wine!” the man yelled.
“You can have a cherry Slurpee!” the cashier shrieked.
The vampire ripped his throat, drank his blood, then threw the body across the store.
He ran out of the 7-Eleven to the street where he climbed the side of a building.
“I am so thirsty,” he said to nobody when he reached the top of the building. “How can a thing like Pinot Gross exist? It’s not possible.”
He could see all around the city.
The vampires underground laughed at the new recruit. They loved to break them in with a horrible experience, that way, they would be tougher, like hazing on a college football team.
The man stood at the top of the building and looked at the sky.
A vampire flew up. “Hello,” he said. “Do you need help with anything?”
“I need a drink,” the man said.
“We can do that for you,” the vampire said.
He gently carried the man down to the street.
“Your new chapter is starting. We’ll get everything sorted out.”
They walked together to another bar where they sat and drank wine and tried to solve their problems. They didn’t, but the wine helped, because it was Pinot Gross, the all-knowing all-seeing elixir of life, the reason humanity dominates, unless we count vampires.
Shannon O'Connor holds an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College. She has been previously published in The Rye Whiskey Review, as well as Wordgathering, Oddball Magazine, and Alien Buddha Press. She lives and writes in the Boston area, and has been known to dress in costumes when it is not Halloween.
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