Initially, I might add, this kaleidoscope was not all roses. Wild animals are not offended by “bad” odors, because they haven’t been socialized to distinguish good odors from bad. Odors are just odors. If a dog sniffs something caustic or acidic, it will reflexively pull away, but not because of any idea associated with the smell. A dog has no problem with bad breath, stinking feet, farts, or any other special effects of the human body. A vampire’s reactions, on the other hand, are vestigially human, at least until he has had time to unlearn them. Before that happens, crowds of humans can leave a newly turned vampire gasping with incredulity.
But as impressive as my vampire powers were, they were not really supernatural. I could not, for instance, outrun a bullet. A vampire is subject to physical laws—inertia, gravity, and so on—just like other creatures. I could run about forty-five miles per hour, tops. Which is to say I could, if the need arose, chase down an ostrich. This is considerably faster than the fastest human, but it is still the running speed of a two-legged animal. As for stamina, if I had to, I could maintain thirty miles per hour for a couple of hours. And I could jog along at twenty all day. Or rather, all night.
Naturally enough, adjusting to my heightened powers brought its little problems. It took me quite a while, for instance, to get used to my own strength. For a long time, I inadvertently broke things. I had to relearn how much effort to invest in common tasks, like lifting objects that were no longer heavy. I would open a door and find the knob snapped off in my hand. I broke so many shoelaces I stopped untying my shoes when I took them off.
I also had to make some radical adjustments in how I dealt with people. Even the most formidable were no longer threatening. The difference in strength made it ludicrous for a human to offer physical resistance. Nor was it just a matter of strength. My reflexes were unmatched by any animal I’d ever encountered. But again, this didn’t mean I could dodge bullets. I may have been able to anticipate a bullet’s trajectory. I could see that someone was pulling the trigger of a gun pointed in my direction, and in the time it took the finger to squeeze, I could probably move out of the way. But this ability was dependent on my seeing the gun being fired. A bullet in the back, though it wasn’t likely to kill me, would definitely spoil my mood.
Even after a hundred years, I’m still occasionally surprised to discover some previously unsuspected talent. But these tend to be small surprises. For the most part, I know what I can and can’t do. What I can’t do is tolerate sunlight. It is genuinely unpleasant. I can survive maybe twenty seconds of direct exposure. Maybe. I have never been inclined to test that particular limitation. Discovering my strengths was usually more entertaining that bumping up against my weaknesses. And often enough, discovering what I could do forced me to deal with the consequences when my curiosity, my enthusiasm, or my boredom got the better of my judgment. These failures of judgment often began as small things, seemingly trivial when first committed. Then the consequences would start to snowball and it would soon be obvious that I had once again gone too far.
A good example comes to mind. I was in a small town near Atlanta, Georgia. It was in 1919, I think. I was strolling one evening among the crowd at a county fair. In one of the booths, a “strongman” was challenging all comers to arm wrestling matches for twenty-five cents, and doing pretty well for himself. He was a big guy, rather obese, but with a lot of muscle under the fat. I watched him easily defeat a well built young man, taking a lot of pleasure in laughing at him afterwards and taunting the other male bystanders to show their wives and girlfriends what they were made of. It was just part of his act. He would ridicule his audience, trying to shame them into paying a quarter to prove themselves.
It was stupid and pointless of me to make a spectacle of myself in front of all those witnesses. It would have been okay if I’d lost the match. People would have understood that I’d just wanted to try. But they could not understand my winning. I’m five feet ten inches tall and weigh about one hundred fifty pounds. I was several inches shorter than my opponent and about half his weight. His upper arms were thicker than my thighs. Of course, the size difference was irrelevant. No matter how strong the guy was, he had the strength of a human. The match was legitimate only as a contest between two men. With my vampire strength there was no contest.
Looking back, I can only assume I was bored out of my mind. I stepped forward and slapped a quarter onto the tabletop. The strongman got a good laugh when he saw me, and of course the crowd was equally amused. Rather than side with an obvious loser, most of bystanders immediately switched allegiance, calling out for the strongman to break me like a twig, and other charming encouragements.
We squared off across the table. At the signal to begin, we both held our arms in place without applying any pressure. He looked at me, smiling, waiting for me to press. I looked at him, not smiling, waiting for him to do the same. We stayed that way for maybe thirty seconds before he began to slowly add pressure, as if he were conducting an experiment to determine exactly how much I could resist. I matched the gradual increase, just enough to keep my arm vertical. At a certain point, when it became clear
