Vampire muck has a very recognisable consistency - and it clings to shoes more readily than pavements. What I mean is it’s far more cloying than the dog variety. Unlike the careful cleanliness of the cat, such dead doings stay unburied, more by intent than mismanagement. Sown with red veins, it’s hard to miss, but that’s the least of it. By trying to avoid it, rest assured you’ll land in a bigger, better blood pudding!

Well, that dawning day was no exception. These muckstrutters had scattered, no doubt, to their pristine earths - and the walkways were left aswamp - with only a single tongue to cluck, my tongue, as I’m responsible for urban waste: the cleaning of it, that is, not the cause of it I hasten to add. Me and my shovel-bins are on the go before all you good folk are even up and about. If it weren’t then, for the likes of me, you’d have more reason to believe in vampires than you otherwise would - other than, of course, the evidence of your pet cats puking bits of it all over your morning carpets: not regurgitated bird, but pulpifications of what had been your sweet daughter’s first blooding.


(published 'Vampires Anonymous' 1994)