Chapter One: VampFed is Cancelled
Sugar Pine 7 Vampire AU
Author: @oncemorewithvodka
Editor: @sugarpinecrews
“Hey everybody raise your hand if you still have a job!” Mike asked the room. No one raised their hands. Not even the ghosts who haunt the halls and would still be here after we left.
VampFed is Cancelled. There are four nights left.
All the sets were being dismantled. All the stuff we used to relate to the humans in boxes. Even though VampFed was ending it was nice to know everything was staying the same. Even our human prisoner James was thinking of staying behind.
“Steven, I’ve been trapped here all weekend. Please help me get down,” James let me know as he worked on taking down our lights. I closed the door and let him get back to work as he begged for me save him. But that’s what he gets for being a gross human who can’t fly. For some of our untalented employees, it was interesting to see what they had planned for the future. I did end up asking James what his plans were to which he responded, “I dunno what I’m going to do now.” Yikes. Kind of a bummer for that guy! Probably staying with the ghost unless he can learn how to deal with heights.
One of our studio techs, Zach Taylor on the other hand, was taking initiative.
“Uh. My name is Zack Taylor. I am for hire. This is my resume. Um it looks good.” Actually, it was just okay. It failed to include exactly how much blood he drinks in a single day which is good for any company to be aware of, especially if you’re company that hires vampires.
I decided to go around the office testing everyone’s ability to find a new job. The test involved employees stating three things they’re good at in a matter of twenty seconds.
“You have fifteen seconds to say three things you’re good at, otherwise you’re fired,” I told fellow vampire host Candace who responded with just staring into the distance. Though, Sam Bashor was able to answer with talking, swimming and running. Pretty good dude. That was good.
I asked some of the others who were around their three things
“Design, editing, typography!” Hired!
“Drawing, illustration, graphic design.”
With Chris’s consistently snarky attitude, I was really hoping he wasn’t going to be able to answer in time.
“Camera work, lighting, audio.” Fine.
Making my way around the office I was given more answers.
“Uh, not having a job, getting fired, and uh being a new unemployed wereboy” Fired.
I even asked James who had somehow either gotten help from a witch or overcame his fear of heights.
“Everything, nothing, and most things,” Fired.
“I don’t know” Candace finally answered.
I went to ask Zack who responded he same answer as Chris’s. When I told him he couldn’t double dip he explained he was like Chris but an inch taller. This was the wrong answer because Zack is a vampire and Chris is an elemental. Unbelievably James came in to the save the day.
“Licking, he’s good at licking” Zack agreed with this. Hired! It’s important for a vampire to lick their victim though it worries me that James knows the difference between a vampire’s bad licking and good licking.
“Cooking, eating, sleeping. Goodbye” were Matt Lieberman’s answers. Fired on the grounds that vampires don’t need to know how to cook. But he heard my response which put me in danger.
“You take my firing back, Steven Suptic. You’re just a chicken vamp with a camera. I’m a vamp with a practice sword!” My unlife was at risk as the sword was made from wood.
“You’re dangerous, you’re hired, you’re hired!” I yelled as he backed me into a supply closet.
“Cool, thanks. What’s my salary?”
“Fourt,” I responded and then chased him away. He was a little boy and I chased him. I was once again, safe.
You know, one question that I think really deserves an answer and I don’t think anybody knows, is how did this office keep spreading diseases so easily? Maybe it comes from the licking that is important in any vampire or werewolf society. For those of you who think vampires cannot get sick let me tell you we have our own illnesses and we can spread to them to other beings including humans. How do you think the common cold happened?
I know what you’re thinking. Are people really okay with you filming them during such an emotionally draining process?
“Okay, I get that you’re trying to document what’s happening here for personal gain. But…I want some too.” You could have put it up on your own vlog channel Liberman.
“I hope you make a good bit of money off of filming all these people who just lost their jobs. I hope you make a nice bit so you can pay off the government for your fuckup,” Zack told me.
Clearly, some people were very jealous of my enormous wealth. While others took things more seriously. Rickey Mizuno for example pretended to shoot himself with a gun, which we all know doesn’t kill vampires but then he farted thinking it would be funny. Unfortunately, that was a lot more dangerous of fart than he thought it was gonna be. Vampire farts are the worst.
“And that was the last we saw of Rickey Mizuno” Zack mentioned.
Joel Rubin, one of the oldest vampires of all time came into the room. He may be old and powerful but very much a drifter as he goes from one supernatural brainwashing company to the next.
“Guys, we need to have our Oddity meeting for the next three months of Oddity,” Joel told the room.
“And that was the last we saw of Joel,” Zack told me, but I highly doubt it.
I went over to Audrey, who stayed covered in her hoodie as to not expose us to the danger of her unknown power. I wanted to check in on how she was dealing with the end of VampFed but she did not look up from her editing.
“And that was the last we saw of Audrey,” Zack was setting a theme was these announcements. Maybe it was from his extra power to see the future.
I went to go check on Sofia, a very dangerous witch when Zack assured me:
“We would, however, see Sofia again,” and knowing that I left the room to go bother one of the werewolves Eric.
“Are you working on VampFed stuff?” I asked him.
“No, no. I’m uh messaging everyone I know asking for a job.”
Eric’s comment about reaching out to friends made me realize, I have a lot of connections in the YouTube industry. I decided to reach out to a pervious VampFed employee for help, Ian Dokie, Ruler of the channel Zombi Noggin.
“Hey Steven.”
“Hey Ian.”
“What’s up?”
“You hear the news?” I asked kind of nervously but I heard him take a deep breath.
“That VampFed’s cancelled?” I wondered if he knew why I was calling already.
“Yeah. So I just figured I’d just call you and see how, um, Zommbi Noggin’s doing.
“Good. It’s doing good,” he sounded skeptical. He knew why I was calling.
“Yeah, I’m not really the kind of guy to beg on my feet, but um, do you have, do you have a- Please give me a job,” I blurted out
“Uh huh?”
“I’ll get back- You’ll get back- I’ll get it. Alright I got the job, thank you, thank you,” I was in, I wouldn’t be stuck roaming the streets.
“Someone will reach out-” I hung up when I saw Joel, and worked up the courage to confront him.
“You got me fired, you son of bitch,” I told him.
“Well, maybe you should have done a better…work.” Hmm! Maybe I should have done better work!
That’s when I found a telephoto lens lying around and after all these months I was finally able to spy on Luis. He was an editor but I knew he was secretly a vampire hunter. I was able to get footage of Sofia destroying her paper trail. Zack was right, we did see her again. Though I didn’t feel like I was done talking to Joel about exactly why VampFed was being shut down.
“I mean, it does suck, because we were doing really well. I mean, we had the most brainwashing, like the most sustained, over five months of brainwashing for the first time since 2013 on the channel? I’m looking at the human subscriber analytics right now and we haven’t had this good of subscriber numbers,” he turned the screen so I could see a guinea pig eating carrots, the code for brainwashed humans, “in I don’t even remember how long. I mean at least since, maybe July?” That was hard to hear.
What else was hard was seeing everyone else working knowing it would coming to end soon. Filip wrote a 17-page script that I’m sure everybody was very excited to film during their last week. I suddenly then got a vision of what Matt was up to, he was writing a letter.
“Dear guinea pigs, I’m Matt Lieberman,” he was writing. What business he had with the brainwashed humans?
That’s when I saw the unthinkable. Look at this little punk-ass werewolf wearing the same shirt as me, making my day fuckin’ worse. I figured I would get my mind off it by playing Star a song.
“Alright, so are there any requests? Any song in particular?” I asked sitting ready at my keyboard.
“Shooting stars.”
“Shooting stars, who’s that by?” Of course I knew.
“I don’t know,” Star failed my test but I’m a gentleman.
“Ah, I know that one! Here we go!” I began to play the song thought the keyboard did it in the voice of a banshee. I jammed more out as the keyboard contained drum beats and horrifying animal noises that I think added to the song.
So right here. This is about the point I stopped having fun for the day, and started recognizing that everything was going to end.
I went with my camera to one of the last meals we would all have together before the company ends. We even let James have a regular human beer instead of being the meal like he normally is. That obviously seems very abrasive. Filming people while they’re eating- it was, but everybody was a good sport about it and after this week I dunno when I’ll be able to see these guys again.
I’m sure most of us are going our separate ways. But at the end of the day, you can’t count on a company, or another monster. You just have yourself. But when you’re feeling lonely out there, and you miss your old co-worker Steve it’ll be easy to look back on these videos and remember working for a channel called VampFed. And maybe a couple years later, you’ll shoot me a text, and we’ll get a human to feed on, and talk about the old times. Or maybe our chapter’s done. Whatever the case, it was a pleasure working with all of you. When I was alive I was an only child, and I don’t know if this is what having brothers and sisters is like, but it’ll do.
Together everyone watched the video where we told the humans and other beings who watched the channels that VampFed, VampFed Nerd, and Vampires Be Like were canceled. We filmed our last VampFed podcast where we talked about the good memories and many nights we had spent together like a family. Because that’s what VampFed had become, a family.