Vampires and their Intolerances

By Josh Allen

So, I wanna start this story, this story you’ve requested, with a preface. That preface being that yours truly, Jack, has yet to divulge this particular story on any official channel yet. Anyhow, being interviewed by anybody and anyone from ol’ Ellijay is warrents an honest story.

Your choice of words, “tell me of the beginning of your love affair with cryptids,” I take a mite bit o’ umbrage with since were I to compare my relationship with most cryptids to a love affair, I’d be Knives Chau from that there Scott Pilgrim movie. Monsters always did me wrong and dirty. if ya know, ya know.

So, back on topic here, lil Jackie is where it all started. I was on a family vacation to Puerto Rico in the 1970s, visiting my great uncle Alejandro De Lamoca on his sheep farms what where he made all his money in woolen goods and whatnot. We spent the better part of a week in late august during some ol catholic festival; apparently, they were partying harder than usual in Moca since there was allegedly some kinda vampire problem, and they seemta embrace their own eventual demise by way of exsanguination. One afternoon after help Unca Allie with milkin’ the sheep all mornin’, I heard a loud wailin’ from a nearby copse of trees, and me bein the intrepid and stalwart adventurer that i is, I did a little investigatin’. Now what ye might not know about lil Jackie is when i was a youngin’, I basically started the Got Milk craze myself. I would drink milk mornin’ noon and night if I could, and I did. So I took this fresh sheep’s milk bucket with me to investigate the caterwaulin’, taking little sips of it here and there. Once I breached the tree line and got to lookin for the source of the sound, I realized I was shaking like a leaf on a tree, to paraphrase the immortal bard Sir Lynyrd Skynyrd, and had to stop and steady myself from panicking.

I’ve always had an affection for reading on the paranormal so an aura of fear was something I knew that existed as part of the vampire’s hunting toolkit, so I became acutely aware of the chance that I was about to get bled dry with the quickness, so I reversed my intrepid exploration to a more tactical position and before I could get back to the barn what were the sheep get their milkin and shaving and sheering done, before me stood a most unfathomable horror from beyond the limitations of imagination. This weren’t no Dracula I’d ever read about. It must have been some terrible regional variation. It stood nearly 5 feet tall, with a sheath of leathery and scaly skin, spiny like a porcupine, and with bright red eyes that burned into my soul. It was gripping a lamb in its claws, and the poor lil thing was shrieking like nothing I’d ever heard.

Now I wanna make it clear that despite my preternatural tendency for cryptid hunting, Lil Jackie was still a child at the time, and seeing a full grown, full sized mutant vampire suckin’ on a lamb is enough to put a mighty fear in the chest of the bravest of children. I ran as fast as any kid possibly could and sloshed goat milk all over me in the process. I could hear the vampire chuffing and chasing me, my mistaken inclination of exfiltration instigating its predator response of pursuit. I ran from the farms all the way back to the nearest barrio. The whole time I felt that unholy abomination chasing me, shaking that half mummified lamb with it.

My neck was a-prickle with the knowledge that certain doom was chasing me, so in a desperate panic. I could see the lights in the houses of the barrio ahead of me but I just knew the vampire would snag me before I got to safety, so in a fit of survival instincts I turnt around on’m and tossed the only thing I had in hand, the bucket of milk still warm from the teet itself.

This is the moment that I, Jack, discovered the Vampire’s heretofore unheard of allergy to milk. The shriek that filled the night air absolutely shattered my eardrums and haunts Jack’s deepest nightmares to this day. The flesh of the vampire bubbled and melted into a jammy, jelly-like consistency and its skeleton exploded. This, of course, kills most vampires. Where a gangly scaly skinned, red-eyed, and long fanged demon of the night once stood, was only a lamb with more blood covering it than filling its veins.

I’ve tried tellin’ other cryptid hunters out there of this vampire hack, but I think the ones who tried it were using the wrong milk or something since allegedly it don’t work like that. Maybe it was a lactose intolerant person in life or something, and I got lucky? Anyhow, That was my first real life brush with the shadowy beasts hidin’ outside of society and put me on the path I’m on today to become the stalwart and intrepid explorer of the unknown and eventual slayer of the Squatch that I am.

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