Vampire Goes on Hunger Strike

HEMOBERG, WV – A small mountain town is abuzz over the news that one of its citizens, Count Dracula, has now been on a hunger strike for fifteen days. On the one hand, they feel safer on leaving Mac’s Bar and Tavern and Honky Tonk and Place to Buy Smelly Pickled Eggs at 2AM without having to wrestle a hemo-vore in the parking lot, especially on Free Jell-O Shots Night. On the other hand, they are concerned about the health of the Count, a neighbor like anyone else, who, said one townie, “always asks about your family and recycles his plastic plasma bottles.”

Count Dracula is protesting the reduction of his cable service.

“I was just getting used to my free month of HBO when it was shut off because I refused upgrade my service. The goddamn cable company already gets enough of my money – now they want my blood. Good luck with that.”

The story has gained national attention since Anderson Cooper visited the Count’s modest two-story home that features a dark bedroom in the basement with a satin-lined coffin serving as a bed. Cooper cried for the cameras after seeing the emaciated body of this immortal man who had not sucked a single drop of blood from the neck of a scared shit human in two weeks.
“This is horrible,” sobbed Cooper. “And for it to happen in the richest nation in the world is simply tragic! America, look and listen! Give this man his HBO, please.”

Dracula told Cooper that he really liked The Wire, with “its gritty realism.” He also loved Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm, though sometimes he laughed so hard that his fangs hurt. But it was the loss of Six Feet Under, or rather the ability to use the On Demand service provided by HBO to play catch-up and watch old episodes from the first four seasons, that pushed Dracula to embark on the desperate measure of a hunger strike.

“A series set in a funeral home? C’mon, it’s a vampire’s dream show. I love it. And Nate and Brenda – what’s gonna happen with those two? And David and Keith? Will they adopt a child of their own? Well how the fuck do I know? The cable company took away my HBO.”

A spokesperson for HBO said there is a less drastic way for the Count to have unlimited HBO, and that’s “to pay for it like everyone else in America except spoiled children of obliging parents who slake their own version of non-fangs-on blood lust with countless re-runs of The Sopranos, or those assholes who steal it, like my asshole nephew, Ted.”

Dracula responded to this statement by calling the spokesperson “a bloodless bureaucrat, and not the good kind of bloodless,” and added that he would have no problem paying a monthly fee for HBO if he had not first watched it for free. “That’s called being an Indian-giver. It’s bullshit.”

The spokesperson responded to the response, saying: “And you know what else? The guy isn’t even a Count for chrissakes. He lives in Appalachia, and the last I checked, there was no royalty in the land of Jerry Springer’s biggest fan base.”

Goth kids and young adults around the country are rallying around Dracula’s cause by wearing more black attire than usual in their ebony life style, while some have resorted to painting their faces a chalky white, not unlike a corpse in Six Feet Under, or the mime that Bruce Willis tried to run over in Die Hard III.

“That will show them,” said one young lady, who looked like she had just come from a Coven meeting.

The mayor of Hemoberg, Arthur Salisbury, owner of an Ace Hardware Store, told reporters that he just wants this to be over, so that the town can get back to locking its doors and windows after sunset.