Looking back, this short story, published in a 1988 issue of the horror magazine Eldritch Tales, seemed a holdover of the many comic-book stories I was writing for DC Comics in the same decade. My stories for House of Mystery, House of Secrets, etc. were short shockers with twist endings, a way for a reader to while away a few minutes. But few of them now seem memorable to me.
An old man forces a vampire to feast upon him, supposedly to be made immortal … but actually in order to exact revenge in a manner you weren’t supposed to see coming.
It seemed like a competent enough piece when I wrote it, but this by-the-numbers sort of story was what I was trying to break away from by writing my next story, “The Day He Bought His Last Hot Dog at Coney Island.”