train vampires.

I was on the train the other morning, riding to work. The woman across from me was balancing her bag, papers, and a laptop. She’d set a travel mug on the floor between her feet. When the conductor came around to look for tickets, she began frantically rummaging through her bag. As she was looking for her ticket, she accidentally knocked her travel mug over, and I leaned over, picked it up, and set it upright on the floor again. She thanked me.

All of this is very normal.

What wasn’t normal was that my fingers came away sticky from where they’d touched the mug – and when I’d been setting the mug back on the floor, I’d noticed that the rim was red, like she’d been drinking juice. Or blood.

The second I thought it, I became obsessed with it. I thought, no, I was convinced the woman across from me was a vampire. I started watching her closely (not at ALL creepy), waiting for her to open her mouth so I could see her fangs. I tried to discreetly look at the mug again. I wished I had a mirror so I could point it her way and see if her image reflected back at me. I was so occupied with these thoughts that we arrived in DC in no time, and I hastened off the train before she could sneak up behind me and bite my neck.

What if vampires take the MARC train? What if sunlight doesn’t affect them the way legends and Twilight portray? What if they are walking among us even now, working at regular jobs, drinking blood from their travel mugs?