Do you know what it meant to be a vampire?

Many people probably imagine… immortality and power, physical and mental capabilities way beyond that of a typical human being.

Indeed. We, the vampires, were legendary manifestations of darkness, the blood thirsty creatures to bring forth terror and despair to the human race! 

Well, however…

The truth was…

Things were not going so well for us these days.

“BLERGH! DAMN IT!”

I threw away my dinner out of unbearable anger. The blood carton hit the floor and burst open. Red juice splashed everywhere. Actually, I didn’t even know if this thing could be categorized as food or not. The smell was so horrible that it made me want to vomit. And yes, that thing was called a “carton”. Somehow, people now served blood inside small paper boxes like this. 

“Urrghh” I made a sour face, shivers ran through my body. With just a sip of that stuff, I could feel my already tainted soul being tainted even more. 

Damn me. Is this even blood? I then thought.

But even me, a real vampire, self-titled as the world's best blood connoisseur, could not tell anymore! Blood was supposed to taste slightly sweet, iron-like, warm and invigorating. But this one… it left an aftertaste similar to that of a bad tomato. That reminded me of a time when those Helsing bastards would give every vampire they captured tomatoes to ridicule them. So, just by looking at the cartons was enough to make my cold blood boil. Even though us vampires do really love blood, we have somewhat of a standard as well, you know? My expectation was low when I first saw a thing called “packaged blood” written on it... I even ignored the part when I had to do something unsightly such as using a “straw”, and making a duck face.

But… that blood thing… 

I… I just couldn't!

Thus…

“Sera!” I angrily raised my complaint. “What the hell was that? Dear child, this thing is NOT drinkable!”

But Sera just looked at me, perplexed.

“Hmmm?” 

And to my surprise, with a szztttttt, she sucked her blood carton dry like it was the most delicious liquid to her.

But wait!

How careless of me!

I forgot to introduce!

Sera was my great great great… granddaughter (I honestly had no idea how many “great” that was). All I knew was that I had several sons and daughters and they gave birth to countless children and grandchildren. Afterall, vampires were sex maniacs. Anyways, her real name: Seraphine Dracula. Her other name: none, but I called her Sera for short. She was seventeen years old and born five centuries later than me. 

Basically, what happened was, Sera found her father’s note when she was moving out to attend a foolish human thing called university, saying that her ancestor was sealed inside a tomb at an old and abandoned cemetery. Her father and grandfather did try to rescue me, but were unable to break the seal because they were too weak. And when Sera decided to visit the cemetery herself out of curiosity, my barrier somehow expired and I was set free.

Yeah, pretty lame, wasn’t it? I was really happy to finally be able to get out though. But at the same time, kinda disappointed at my future generations. Seemed like they were a little bit weaker than I expected.

Anyways, Sera, of course, was a vampire too. And as my great great great granddaughter, she too had her Dracula bloodline running inside her veins. Us, the Draculas, was an infamous and prestigious clan of pure-blooded vampires. In fact, we were the biggest and strongest clan back then, we were the ruler of the underworld! But despite that, why did Sera not appear to me as a real vampire when we first met? 

Unfortunately, I had no explanation for now. She was indeed a Dracula, as I already checked, but just not a really strong Dracula.