Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to read my work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends about the
Fat Vampire
series, to help spread the word.

Thank you for supporting my work.

For all the fat vampires out there.

A
NOTE
ABOUT
THESE
BOOKS

I’M ONE OF THE THREE hosts of a podcast called
Better Off Undead
, and on
episode six
of that podcast, we asked the question, “If a vampire offered to turn you into one of his kind, would you accept?”

Dave, our resident “fat guy and proud of it,” said that he’d take the deal.

My co-host Sean and I said that maybe that wouldn’t be such a great idea for Dave, because if you’re out of shape when you’re turned, you might stay out of shape for all of eternity.

So I wrote a book about that single dumb idea. Then I wrote another, and another, and another, because I like to beat a dead horse until it’s undead.

This compilation contains books the first 4 books in the
Fat Vampire
series
.

I hope you enjoy it… with extra cheese sauce.

FAT VAMPIRE

A
SSHOLE

REGINALD BASKIN, NOT REMOTELY A religious man, closed his eyes in his small cubicle and asked God for his money back.

“Whatever I paid before I was a sperm, Lord,” he said under his breath, “I want it back. Every cent, or I’m reporting your ass to the Better Business Bureau. I was promised much that I did not receive. The marketing was deceptive. I am not completely satisfied. I would like a full refund and a personal apology from the maitre d’. And a free calendar. Not a shitty one. One with naked girls on it.”

Reginald was many things. He’d been the fat kid in high school. He’d been the fat kid who didn’t fit into the small lecture hall seats and had to sit in the aisle in college. He was now the fat guy who worked for a fitness equipment manufacturer, which had its own unique breed of irony. He was also, on occasion, the fat guy on the bus and the fat guy who wouldn’t take his shirt off at the beach.

And he was, lastly, the kind of person who prayed out loud to a god he didn’t believe in when nobody could hear him but himself, just to prove a point.

Reginald stood up, leaning heavily on the corner of his desk to do so. He looked down at his wheeled chair, grabbed the small pink set of rubber lips that was protruding from under his seat cushion, and pulled.

A Whoopee Cushion. Awesome.

He dropped the thing into the trash can, then sat back down and tried to ignore the snickers coming from the other side of the cubicle wall.

Fucking Todd Walker.

He wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of replying, of rebutting, or of responding. He’d just act as if nothing had happened. There had
been
no farting noise and no unceremonious disposal into the trash can.
Screw you, Walker. I didn’t even notice your prank.

Walker had never grown up; that was the problem. Neither had Simmons or Yancy or McGuinness or Graham or Nichols or any of the rest of the sales team. Almost the entire company was male, in its 20s, and in great shape as befitted a proper fitness company. The only exceptions were those who worked behind the scenes: Reginald, Sarah Kopke, Noel Leonard, Scott Valentine, and the new kid who worked overnight and dressed all in black. Everyone else looked alike and was more or less ready for a magazine cover shoot on a moment’s notice, should the need arise.

Reginald was fat. Sarah and Noel weren’t terribly attractive and were the wrong gender. Scott was in his sixties. The new kid looked nineteen if he were a day, and dressed like a goth. He wore a sword on his belt, for God’s sake. Nobody wanted to talk to him.

But everyone else looked alike, as if they’d been cast from the same mold. Reginald, Sarah, Noel, Scott, and the new kid couldn’t’ve stood out more if they’d tried, and just like in high school, standing out meant Whoopee Cushions on your chair or dentures and adult diapers on your desk. Or, if you were especially lucky, tampons in your coffee.

It was enough to make you ask for your money back.

Reginald had always held onto hope. He’d taken the abuse all through high school with as much aplomb as he could because it was always only a few more years, months, and days until he was out of school, into college, and into the real world where people understood that appearances only ran skin deep. But that’s not what had happened. Instead of landing in a nonjudgmental utopia, he’d landed in a frat house.

He wondered if it would always be like this. He wondered if people ever changed. He wondered if he could ever be just “Reginald” instead of “Reginald the fat guy.”

Across the cubicle wall came a farting noise. Then another. Then another and another and another in rapid succession, counterpointed with the guffaws and chortling of two deep male voices. Apparently the Whoopee Cushions had been a two-for-one deal.

This wasn’t supposed to be the deal. This wasn’t what he’d signed up for.

IT G
UY

THE NEW KID, WHO WORKED in IT and kept the computers working, turned out to be named Maurice. Reginald felt bad for him. The kid was asking for it by being nineteen. He was asking for it by being a small, shy goth boy with black hair and black clothes and black nail polish. But he was really asking for it — like,
above and beyond
asking for it — by being named
Maurice
.

For some reason, the perpetually teenaged found name humor especially poignant. One of Reginald’s best friends in high school had the misfortune of being named “Tag,” and being in the chess club. From ninth through twelfth grades, Tag was “Fag.” Sometimes teachers even said it wrong because the football players were good at internal branding.

Not that Maurice rhymed with anything interesting — or at least not anything in the vocabulary range of the clones — but it was very French. It was the sort of name you’d knock a kid’s books out from under his arm for having.

Still, despite their shared foes, Reginald didn’t want to talk to Maurice. Maurice was weird even from Reginald’s perspective. He was a goth, for one. He wore that sword on his belt, which
had
to be against human resources’ policy. He never seemed to eat or drink. He had brought in a special chair that he kind of kneeled on and that had no back on it. His hair was always over his face.

But one day, Reginald found himself in the kitchen with the kid and felt he had to say something, because it was awkward not to.

“Hey,” said Reginald.

“Hey,” said Maurice.

Things became less awkward after that. The next time Reginald ran into Maurice, he said “Hey” again and Maurice said “What’s up?” Reginald decided the question was rhetorical and that he probably wasn’t expected to explain what was actually up, but it was nice to have someone feigning interest for a change. It was so much better than being shoved into walls as he walked and told that he was taking up too much hallway.

The next time he saw Maurice, it was Maurice who initiated the conversation.

“What’s up?” said Maurice

“What’s up,” countered Reginald, leaving the question mark off the end to affect the disinterest that Maurice seemed so interested in.

It was nice to have a friend in the office.

Sarah and Noel, the company’s only two women, didn’t understand the new kid. They had both had their perception of attractiveness shattered by the company’s homogenous appearance. The problem was that while the rest of the men in the company were indeed universally attractive, their attractiveness went hand-in-hand with a breed of overt chauvinism that hadn’t been popular since the 1950s. Reginald had a few armchair-psychology theories about Sarah and Noel. He figured they were searching for someone to be attracted to who wasn’t attractive enough to be a total asshole. But Maurice might be too far in the other direction. Maurice confused them.

“I think he’s gay,” Reginald heard Sarah say while he was heating up a French bread pizza in the toaster oven.

“Oh, of course he is,” said Noel. “I mean, his name is
Maurice
.”

“I don’t think he’s gay,” said Reginald.

Noel looked at Reginald as if she’d been slapped. Culture at the company wasn’t exactly full of camaraderie outside of the six-pack-abs set, so entering a conversation that you’d overheard but hadn’t been invited to join was sort of like peeing in someone’s coffee while they stood there and watched you do it.

Noel seemed to think that she should respond, so she said, “Why don’t you think he’s gay?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t get that vibe.”

“What would you know?” said Sarah. “You’re a man, and you’re not gay.”

“How do you know I’m not gay?” said Reginald, who wasn’t gay but who didn’t care if anyone thought he was.

The thing about Sarah, Noel, Scott, and Maurice was that although they were mostly apathetic about each other and about Reginald, all five were united by their shared loathing of Walker and his clones. Noel, Scott, Sarah, and (probably) Maurice would never say that Reginald was fat, mock his fat, or even comment, when asked about him by a third party, that he was fat. And Reginald, for his part, felt the same about them. Scott wasn’t
old
, for instance. He was
Scott
, and he wasn’t part of the army of clones. That was enough.

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