As an immortal, unkillable vampire, I've always enjoyed one specific phrase that the Americans seem to like to use to justify pedophilia. "I keep getting older, they stay the same age." Then, of course, I actually think about the phrase, and it seems disgusting, but Hugh Hefner lived off it until he died, so honestly I have no idea where this train of thought is headed. I'm quite certain my mind would be clear if I weren't on my eighth shooter right now. The guy across from me, whose name I think is Phil, is on his fourth, and still somehow thinks he's going to beat me. Pipe dreams are nice.

Next to him is probably one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen, and I think her name is Victoria. All I really care about is that she never directly looks my way, because I can already tell the connection is going to work, and I intend to make good on it. Maybe-Phil will never be able to tell the difference, and that's just wonderful. Truth be told, it's amazing he's lasted this long. Not just at the drinking game, but also at life.

"Drake here thinks he's gunna win!" Maybe-Phil slurs out, almost incomprehensible. I don't pay him any mind, I simply down my ninth shooter. I don't know if Maybe-Phil is smart enough to realize just how deep in he is, but I honestly don't care. 'Drake' isn't the weak-stomached pissant he so clearly is.

Maybe-Victoria is too busy hanging onto him to realize that my eyes are on her, every perfect inch of her. It's been quite some time since I've been in the body of a woman. Not that I have much preference. Both genders have their little wonders. I do find myself in male bodies more often, but I sometimes wonder if that's just because it's how I started out. Today, though, I'm ready to borrow a woman's body again.

Ah, yes, I feel those privy to this narration should probably know a few things before we get into the real meat of the story, shouldn't we? Certainly you've all heard the tale of Dracula, the nefarious count who rose as the first of his kind and became immortalized as a vampire? And what if I told you that's all a giant crock of shit? You'd probably shout, "Oh, no, Dracula, you've got to be kidding, I saw it all in the movies!", well guess what, I don't care! Y'see, the real story of Dracula is that he was a man who got every bad hand in life dealt to him. Story of Job, that sort of thing from the Bible? Yeah, Job wasn't the only poor bastard that God shat all over for no reason.

(Granted, I'm just speculating here, but I'm pretty sure Job didn't exist... Honestly, has anybody actually fact-checked the Bible? This is maybe more important than other things we're doing right now.)

Anyway, I was a very basic, normal person, living in a shitty and rundown farm in Wallachia. My father was murdered, my mother was taken and I never saw her again, the usual sort of thing that would happen in what are today third-world countries in Eastern Europe. I was left to fend for myself at the ripe young age of seven, which was interestingly about half my life-expectancy since I was then killed by a group of bandits on my fourteenth birthday.

I know. It was a shitty birthday.

When I finally made it to the afterlife, I had to wait in some godforsaken line in Limbo until I was eventually -- and you're never gonna believe this -- pulled from the line and thrown back to Earth! Thanks to some fucking skeleton in a robe carrying a scythe, I was back to life but not quite, exactly. The skeleton reached into my chest (which, admittedly, wasn't a difficult task, what with the giant hole the bandits had cut into me with their axes) and ripped out my heart entirely. After that, it dumped it into a glass jar and told me that I'd never again be a prisoner of death.

Now that I put thought into it, the skeleton was probably being literal, since a skeleton in a robe carrying a scythe is what people eventually started to accept as a personification of Death itself. Personally, I think Death is an average person, probably with a funky hairstyle or something like that, otherwise how would anybody not notice some six foot tall skeleton wearing a robe carrying a scythe every time somebody died? It would be friggin' impossible not to notice that!

Back to the topic at hand, after the skeleton left me, I made my way to the bandits who killed me and promptly did exactly the same to them. Limbo was probably backed up that day with all the newcomers. I didn't care, I'd gotten revenge and no matter what they tried to do to me (one of them cut my head off; it tickled), I couldn't die.

And there you have it, the origin story of the murderous, bloodthirsty monster named Dracula. I'm honestly not sure when the phrase 'bloodthirsty' went from 'extremely violent' to being a literal thirst for blood, but I've never actually drunk blood in my entire life, and honestly the idea of it creeps me the fuck out. I'm still not entirely certain where the name "Dracula" came from when my name is Vlad Tepes, but people like their movie monsters, and Vlad doesn't sound like a monster name. Either way, using it to make myself seem more imposing is quite useful, considering I'm one of the most harmless people on the planet. Well, except for those bandits. I haven't killed anybody since them, but I destroyed them.

From then on, my life was very simple. My original body aged, and I found I could use whatever powers being literally heartless gave me to take another for myself, and use it until it aged enough. I never let myself make it to a certain age, because then it became difficult to transfer until after the body died and I had to rebuild myself, essentially, bit by bit until I gained my original consciousness back. That had happened a few times, times when I lived to a ripe old age with a wonderful partner, and couldn't bear to leave them before their time. In the end, a part of my new body's original personality always left itself with me.

And it's that last thing I mentioned that brings me to today and this bullshit drinking game. In my last body, I'd married and fathered three children. I wouldn't let my wife pass alone. As luck would have it, she wouldn't either. I had no idea she'd had a gun in the bedroom, and took me with her. I can't imagine what kind of pain it put the kids through, but they were all out of the house with families of their own when it happened. Retirement communities tend to cause that.

After I found a new body, it took more time than I was comfortable with to pull myself back together inside his mind, and I found out why shortly after gaining consciousness. The man (whose name was Drake before I took him over, which is actually a hilarious coincidence when you think about it) was a college-aged alcoholic who was apparently so bad at everything that when I managed to put his shirt on the right away, his roommate nearly had a heart attack.

(Granted, I'd also told the roommate who I was and what I was doing, so that could have had something to do with it.)

Back to the present day, I've finally hit my fourteenth shooter and the room is now starting to spin. Lucky me, dumbass Maybe-Phil's face is already making out with the table. I set my glass down and cheer alongside everybody else, including Maybe-Veronica, who seems almost a little too eager to know her boyfriend lost a drinking game. I've still got her in my sights, though. Luckily, Drake will wake up with no memory of what I've done and go back to his old life.

(Also, if you're wondering about the "Maybe-Veronica" instead of "Maybe-Victoria", I've finally remembered her name isn't Victoria, but I've forgotten everything other than the letter V in her name, and thus I'll go back and forth between different V names.)

After the drinking game, I follow Maybe-Vera, not too close but not too far, either. She doesn't notice me, thankfully. If anybody were really noticing anything, I'd be considered a stalker. Well, Drake would be. He's kind of a sucker, really. It's funny in a funny way. Either way, it doesn't look like stalking, as Maybe-Velma and Drake live in the same dorm building, but on different floors. I remember one of my lives would have been in Heaven if she'd been allowed to live in a co-ed dorm.

The both of us arrive at the dorm not long after we left the bar. Drake's roommate is in place, ready to cart his friend back up to their room and throw him in bed. Honestly, the idea of that sounds wonderful to me right now, but I had more important things to do than sleep. I'll jump into Maybe-Vanessa, then I'll sleep. Preferably with someone, because cuddling is one thing I definitely prefer from the female side.

Maybe-Violet slips into the women's bathroom, cutting me off from her. It's not a giant problem, but it's a major inconvenience. I hate taking control of women in the bathroom. I always lose some form of bladder control, and usually have to stay in there for a good half an hour until I'm certain everything is dealt with. Hopefully, this doesn't end up that bad. I make my way over to Drake's roommate -- his name is Eric, I remember now; don't know why I forgot it, but I did -- and sit next to him on the lounge couch. "Be ready," I tell him.

Finally, I close my eyes and picture Maybe-Verra. I obviously don't know exactly where she is in the bathroom, but I don't need to, I just picture her in my mind. Thankfully, I'm good at remembering faces, otherwise this whole body-swap thing would be fucking impossible. The connection is made, though she's unaware of it. I let Drake's body slip, and then I'm finally free of the absurd alcoholism (well, for awhile, people's personalities never truly leave me, but that's a topic for another day).

As I make the surprisingly long journey from body to body despite the actual physical distance being less than a hundred feet, I'd like to tell you why it is I'm swapping Drake for Maybe-Vivica when I've already told you I generally take more male bodies than female. Unfortunately, the tingles have already started to take me and I can't really do that. Just know it's to help Eric because he and I have gotten to be pretty good friends these past few months I've spent in Drake's body, and I promised him I'd do this. Also, I get the feeling he's probably wanted to see how this whole thing works, and me jacking his body wouldn't help there.

As I said, the tingles start almost immediately. That's a good sign, it means the body's particularly vulnerable and I can jump in without any real damage to the original owner. If they put up a fight, it can take me a few hours to actually take control and it's almost always physically painful. Maybe-Virginia will just feel like she's going to sleep until she finally wakes up after I've left her body. If you're wondering about the moral dilemma, I'm never cruel to their bodies, and they never feel like they've been body-snatched. They have enough memory of what happens to piece what I turn their lives into back together and remain the combination of who they were and who I made them. To my knowledge, none of my former timeshares have ever gone mad from being taken over by an immortal vampire.

The tingles intensify as I start to feel other sensations. I feel the toilet underneath me, at least one hand is on the stall wall and my legs are... Spread very wide. Wider than I expected, actually. Women don't generally spread their legs when they take a piss, what the hell?! The tingles strengthen and spread throughout my new body.

And as I gain full control, I realize why and the hand that was against the wall is now clamping my mouth shut. Damn good thing, too, because Katie (that's her name, by the way; I was completely off with the V name thing) is just about to climax, and what I remember from Drake's almost completely incoherent thoughts, somebody in the locker room described her as a screamer. I remove the vibrator and let the juices flow until I can finally maintain my composure again.

I've lived centuries, been hundreds of different people, and this is the first time I've ever taken control of someone in the middle of masturbating.

I clean up quickly, make sure everything's put away and that no one will notice what I've done (well, not what I've done...) and leave the bathroom. Why Katie would have taken that chance, I'll probably find out when I'm not thinking about it. Granted, no one was in the bathroom, as most people are out somewhere for some reason. She, and subsequently I, was very lucky that nobody ever came in the entire time.

Eric is munching down on a bag of Cheetos when I get back to the lounge. Drake is still passed out, but he'll likely be that way for a good fifteen hours, then he'll wake up and get drunk again. He's only managed to stay in school because I brought his grades up.

Eric's eyes light up when he sees me, almost as if he's surprised. Then again, this is the first time I've swapped bodies since meeting him, so he doesn't yet know it's worked. "Hey there, Eric," I say, perfectly imitating Katie's sweet-girl persona (however the hell that works when she uses a vibrator in the public bathroom), "you ready to take me out tonight?"

He almost jumps from the lounge couch. "You're serious? This is really... Um..."

I smack him on the back of the head, a residual bit of Drake left over, most likely. "Yes, dumbass, it's Dracula. Now, seriously, take me somewhere. I haven't been a woman in decades, and I'm dying to have a date where the guy's paying again."