Read The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant for Free Online Page A

turned into a vampire, I knew some things were going to have to change. I would not be able to make it into work at the accounting firm anymore, I would have to forgo any walks into sunshine, and I would need to get used to a far more liquid-based diet. These were things I understood and accepted with a humble grace. What I did not expect was that the accounting business I started to accommodate my new lifestyle would explode with popularity.
    At a time when most people were making plans for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, I was working around the clock trying to meet deadlines for all the new clients I had recently received. I’m not exaggerating, either. We vampires don’t have to sleep during the day; we just have the option. At night I can take enough Percocet to kill a bear and still be wide eyed. In the day, however, the mystical forces that animate my now-dead body relent and allow me to slip into slumber. At least they did before the rush of work had kept me up for three nights and days straight.
    It was really my own fault. I had taken some time off to attend my high school reunion and come back to a mountain of new assignments that had arrived in my absence. I could have turned some of them down, of course, but that would have involved talking on the phone, and possibly yelling or shouting, and the truth is, I’m just not very good at confrontations.
    Now, I know what you’re thinking. Who ever heard of a vampire that was scared of conflict? Well, I was non-confrontational in life, so I am still non-confrontational in death. Yes, we vampires are portrayed as a group of, for lack of a better term, “badasses,” but as far as I can tell, we are greatly similar to who we were when our hearts still beat, only with paler skin and more physical prowess. Granted, that is based solely on my experience because I have made no effort to seek out others of my kind. The only run in I had had with other supernatural beings happened at my aforementioned reunion, and it had been anything but low stress.
    As I clapped a pair of documents together and joined them with a paperclip, I let out a sigh. Yes, I can still sigh, and I still make a habit of intaking oxygen with my lungs, though I do not know if it still qualifies as breathing at this point. I was nearing the end of this week’s work, but I still had hours of filing and data entry left. It was tedious work that required no special skills and was usually outsourced to temps or assistants. Since I had neither and suspected none would be willing to work with someone of my . . . condition, that meant the grunt work fell firmly on my own narrow shoulders. 
    I went to the fridge and pulled out a thermos, then popped it in the microwave. After a few minutes it was ready, and I all but cannonballed it. I overeat when stressed, which is why I was a portlier fellow in my living days. Now all I have to worry about is a larger bill for the blood I buy, but with all this work, it would be easy to afford. I could always cut that cost in theory, but my few attempts at feedings were less than spectacular. The last of these excursions, a pitiful effort capping off a string of failures, began with trying to skulk along a rooftop as I trailed a lone pedestrian, followed by tripping on loose brick and cracking myself in the mouth, then ended with me taking a tumble into a nearby apartment’s dumpster. That was when I learned the downside of vampire senses, along with the fact that the building in question hosted an unusually large number of babies still in diapers. There was no dry-cleaning out that smell from a pair of khakis. So, I just purchase my blood from a business acquaintance that runs a local hospital and has need for the services of an exceptional accountant.
    Dabbing my mouth with one of my black napkins (you can only imagine the stains I got when I still used white ones), I washed out my thermos and began heading back to my desk. I worked in my apartment, which was