Laughing at the Moon

The Moon--Come and howl with us!--is New York's hottest comedy club for the cold undead. Located at the heart of the city--well, beneath the heart, beneath the liver and the pancreas, deep in the bowels of the subway system behind a door marked “No Admittance,” this club never fails to attract creatures of the night. From graveyards, abandoned buildings, dark alleys and sewer canals all types of monsters limp, lurch, scuttle and stomp their way here every other Friday night to see such headlining acts as: Bastet Amon Akhenaten, known for his famous, “your mummy” jokes. Mother Agatha Price with her prop-heavy, insult comedy act, “The Bitching Hour.” And tonight’s special headliner, the prince of darkness and the king of cool, battier than Arkham Asylum’s softball team, Vlad “Fangs” Drakulas!

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The opening act was a flop. Benji “The Mad Dog” Bower’s set had the audience looking deader than before they had risen out of their graves that evening. A wild romp of highly physical slapstick routines had left The Dog panting as he trotted off the stage. He passed Vlad at the curtain and growled a warning to him. “Bunch of freakin’ stiffs out there tonight, man.” Vlad gave him an encouraging pat on the head and Benji sulked off.

“How do I look?” Vlad asked his assistant Boris, a hunched and hairy creature who, despite looking very troll-like, was, indeed, just a regular human old man enthralled into eternal servitude by his dark lord.

“Handsome and suave as ever, master,” Boris replied in a quivering voice. Vlad rolled his red eyes. He didn’t miss much about mortality, but at least a mirror would have given him an honest answer.

He patted his slicked back, black hair to ensure no strand was out of place and dusted off the lapels of his burgundy smoking jacket just as the emcee finished his introduction. Vlad put on his stage face, a saucy, crooked grin, and jogged out into the spotlight, arm lifted in greeting as the audience erupted into applause.

Grabbing the microphone he belted, “Hello, New York, ow ow owww!” The audience whooped along with him. He waited for the noise to calm down before continuing. “Good to be here, happy to be here. Happy that last act is over.” He jerked a thumb toward backstage and a chuckle rippled through the audience. “What even was that? Three stooges if they were all played by one dumb son of a bitch? What year is this? 1932? Let me tell you, I was there in 1932 and nooobody liked that crap back then either.” A pause. “It was just the only kind of act the mob would allow because they wanted to keep people sad so they’d buy more moonshine. True story. I might be a vampire, but I promise not to suck that hard.”

Vlad waited for the rumble of laughter to subside. “So, how are you all doing tonight? I’m doing pretty good, pretty good. I, uh, I just started dating this girl.” The crowd cheered. Vlad motioned for them to quiet down. “Don’t get too excited. She’s a human.”

“Boo!” a couple of patrons shouted.

“Careful with that word!” Vlad held up his palm in warning. “You’ll scare her.

“That’s the thing about human chicks, isn’t it? They’re always so freakin scared, aren’t they? Like, my girl, for instance, the other night she tells me,”--he hitched his voice up an octave–“‘Oh, Vlad. I gotta, I gotta keep my car keys out when I walk across the parking lot.’ I looked at her, I said, ‘Babe, what you gotta do that for?’ She says to me, straight-faced, totally serious, ‘For protection.’” Vlad raised his eyebrows in an exaggerated expression of surprise. “For protec–for protection?! Babe, it’s car keys, not a machine gun. What are you gonna do with keys? I am an undead, blood-sucking fiend with super strength, super speed, I can fly, I can turn into a bat, I can hypnotize you with my eyes and you’re gonna stop me with our post office box key?” He mimed jabbing a small key defensively in front of him. The monsters in the room all roared with laughter. “My cousin, Jimmy, eats horses for breakfast and picks his teeth with their femur bones and you think, what, you’re gonna blow him up with the trunk pop button?”

He shook his head as he waited for the audience to calm down. “Yeah, not a great strategist, my girl. Not. A great. Strategist...

“But I will say one thing that’s great about human chicks though.” He moved his hand to his chest in a cupping motion. “Biiig…hearts.” He clenched his hand into a fist. “They have big hearts. Big, blood-pumping hearts that just make the most appealing baboom, baboom, baboom sound you ever heard.” Someone in the back whooped. “That guy knows what I’m talking about. Yeah, big…hearts. And she loves me so much more deeply than any soulless she-devil I ever dated. Just the other night she says to me, ‘Vlad, I love you so much I would die for you.’ I said to her, ‘Babe…then this is the start of a wonderful relationship.”

Vlad continued his set until the wee hours of the morning finishing with a boisterous, “Thank you, New York!”

The audience swelled in a standing ovation as Vlad flourished a bow. Tossing air kisses to the less-decayed zombie girls in the front row he backed up until he was off stage. Boris handed him a towel and a glass of blood.

“How was the show tonight, Boris?” he asked, draping the towel around his neck and taking a large swig.

“Excellent, the best you’ve ever done, as always, master,” the manservant replied.

Vlad sighed. “Remind me to feed you to the crocodiles when we get home, Boris.”

Boris nodded. “Yes, master.”