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When I was a kid, there was a strange old fellow who lived all by himself in a spooky old Victorian house on a hill that overlooked our town. Even though we hardly ever saw him, everyone knew who he was because of the reputation he had for being an odd one. He always smelled bad, kind of musty. He was always unkempt, like he never looked in the mirror. And what was more, he only came out at night. We kids talked about him a lot, especially around Hallowe'en. Talk was, the old geezer was a vampire.
I asked my Dad about the old guy, and told him that we thought he was a vampire. He laughed and said that he and his friends had thought the same thing when they were kids. I talked to other folks around town, and the librarian, the deli owner, heck, even the chief of police all said the same thing.
Well, late one autumn, a few kids in town got sick. Before long, several more got sick. Soon, lots of kids were sick, and no one knew what was causing it. A couple of them even died. It was really scary. I knew someone was going to have to do something. I started talking to a bunch of my classmates. Almost none of them had the guts to go up there to do what had to be done. In the end, I only found two other kids who would go along with me. We collected the tools we would need, and chose that very Saturday to go up there ... during the day, of course.
We sneaked up the hill, trying to keep ourselves obscured behind the trees so as not to be seen. We found the old cellar hatch, and surprisingly, it was unlocked. That would be perfect, we figured, since the ghoul must sleep in a coffin down there. But there was no coffin to be found. Strange.
So we made our way up the stairs and into the downstairs of the creepy old house. As quietly as we could, we made our way from room to room, but we couldn't find him. There was nothing for it but to go upstairs; the fiend must be there, or nowhere. At the landing, we heard a sound like a television set. We followed the sound to a bedroom down the hall. As quietly as we could, we opened the door and peeked in.
The room was completely dishevelled, like no one had picked up or cleaned it in years. The windows were all blacked out with paint, and the only light came from the flickering program playing on the old rabbit-eared TV set. It was Days of Our Lives, the show my Mom watched faithfully. On the dirty bed he lay, dressed in nothing but boxers and black socks with suspenders, a nearly empty bottle of Jim Beam clutched between his thighs. As we expected, he was fast asleep -- he was a vampire after all!
We crept to the side of the bed. with a wooden stake in my left hand and a mallet in my right, I swung with all my might, driving the stake directly into the old demon's heart. All at once, his eyes opened, his body jerked, and he made a sound like "Hwuuuh." Then his eyes rolled back into his head and he lay still. We had done it! Even so, we were pretty surprised how easily it had gone, since we had come expecting trouble. We went back down the hill, ready to exult in a hero's welcome.
At the trial, we presented all the evidence we had that we thought proved that the old guy was a vampire. The same people -- the SAME PEOPLE -- who had only recently said that they too once thought he was a vampire were now beginning to doubt that it was true. The prosecutor was really aggressive too, like we had done something wrong instead of acting like the heroes we were. I guess it's a good thing we didn't tell him about the big metal box full of old banknotes we found under the bed. Anyway, long story short, in the end the judge dismissed all of the charges because he always thought the old bastard was a vampire, too. So justice was served.
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So there. Admit it, you thought Saddam had WMDs, too. Now why don't you all just shut up and give our President a break.
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