his apartment has thin walls

[unblinkered]

Maxwell Wax leaves The Grotto. Not a bad coffee shop by any means, but it's not a fun environment late at night. The students at UC*D start showing up to down buckets of caffeine, cover the tables in textbooks, and study silently until they fall asleep. Nobody talking, nothing interesting to eavesdrop on. People get antsy about that old guy from the philosophy department staring at them, when they're not sufficiently distracted by their peers.

The University of California at Sunnydale is a quiet place at night. Rumors of violent crime going around the student body keep them from causing a ruckus on campus after sundown. Max couldn't be happier about this- his apartment has thin walls. It's good to be able to get some sleep. Not like back at UCLA, no sir. 

Oh, wait. There's someone out here, actually. Approaching quickly. Approaching very quickly. Someone with a reALLY MESSED UP FACE GOOD LORD SLOW DOWN WHAT ARE YOU WHAM.

Max is on the ground, and a bodybuilder with a freakish, wrinkled face is crouched over him, growling. Max is not pleased by this situatioCHRIST OW OH GOD WHY WOULD SOMEONE BITE HIM WHAT THE

Comments

[cross_and_bow]

And the person with the fucked up face is no more, and is instead replaced with a similar volume of fine dust.

Some thirty feet away is a teenage girl holding a crossbow.

[unblinkered]

Dust- really awful-tasting dust- falls into Max's eyes, mouth, and nasty-looking shoulder wound. He coughs, sputters, and tries to get to his feet. He clutches his shoulder, attempting to puzzle out what just happened.

ow there was a freaky person ow now they're gone ouch ouch BIT me ow and now there's dust and who's that over there

"H-hey, what?! You?! Who? Hey!"

[cross_and_bow]

"Are you okay?" she says. "Do you want me to call you an ambulance?" She stows the crossbow in her messenger bag and trots up.

[unblinkered]

"Wh- yes. No. Wait."

There's a horrible bite wound on his shoulder. Calling an ambulance is the exact kind of thing you're supposed to do in this sort of situation. If you were to ignore the circumstances leading up to that.

"Sorry- what? Dust? Did you- was that a- crossbow? Who- did you see...? He's... did you kill...? Biting? Dust?"

Clear and explicit inquiries are not yet on the menu, it seems.

[cross_and_bow]

She gets close enough to peer at his bite mark. "You don't look like you're bleeding out, but I'd still get that looked at and cleaned out and sewn up if I were you," she says.

[unblinkered]

He stares. He can't, strictly speaking, disagree with this analysis. This stuns him for a moment before he remembers to use his words to express ideas he wishes to communicate.

"You- you're not answering the ques- what just happened?! What just- dust- face- what?"

He's about halfway there, to the words thing.

[cross_and_bow]

"You were attacked," she says. "And now you are are injured and can I call you an ambulance or what?"

[unblinkered]

"Okay- yes, but- attacked by what, and why did he- why did it turn to dust? That's not nor- are you trying to get me to ignore- I'm not going to ignore that! Was that a, what, was that a death ray, you used on him?"

[cross_and_bow]

"I don't have a death ray," she says, producing her cellphone and starting to dial emergency services. "Bad sci-fi much?"

[unblinkered]

"You definitely just disintegrated a guy. Are you not going to explain how that happened?"

She's doing this on purpose. She is definitely doing this on purpose.

[cross_and_bow]

"You wouldn't believe me."

[unblinkered]

"Wouldn't believe- what do you think my competing explanation is, here? I don't have anything to work with! There is zero reason for a person to bite me and turn to dust in my universe! Can you give me- can you at least give me your best plausible lie?"

[cross_and_bow]

"Best plausible lie - sure. Hang on." She gives their intersection to the emergency dispatcher, then turns her attention back to him. "A guy came at you with a weird knife that might have had some kind of drugs on it, you lost plenty of blood and went shocky from the pain and trippy from the drug residue, you hallucinated, he's long gone and I wandered by and called you an ambulance."

[unblinkered]

"...okay, that has holes in it, not the least of which being I was... irresponsible in my youth, and know what certain things feel like, and how this doesn't feel like those, but... it'll do. Except for the part where I asked you for a lie, and that's what you told me. I'm going to get hung up on that."

He leans in closer.

"So now that you've told me the plausible lie, there shouldn't be any harm in telling me the implausible other-potentially-truthy thing, since I won't believe it anyway."

[cross_and_bow]

"Maybe I'm not very cooperative and you asked me for a plausible lie and I gave you plausible without paying attention to the lie part," she suggests, flipping her phone closed. "Or maybe you were attacked by a vampire."

[unblinkered]

"If you weren't thinking about lying, you wouldn't have said I wouldn't- wait, vampire?"

Now, that's...

"That is, technically, a much simpler and more elegant explanation for what just happened. It only has to explain "vampires don't exist", which I can see being misled about, and not "everything I just personally witnessed was unreliable."

He thinks.

"It also has to explain "how did you disintegrate the vampire", but I think that's- that's probably more a question of vampire mechanics than anything directly circumstantial."

[cross_and_bow]

"That's what happens when they die. It makes vigilante rescuing much less legally complicated."

[unblinkered]

He stares again.

"So- and that was a crossbow, I assume you can kill them with crossbows- so... I believe you. Or, I believe that explanation more than the "plausible lie", not dismissing the possibility of a third and even simpler explanation you're keeping secret."

He sits down.

"Why didn't I know about vampires?" he asks.

[cross_and_bow]

"The vampires don't want everybody and their cousin after them, and the people who know about the vampires would like the vampires to continue being motivated by secrecy. Is I think the dynamic, I don't know in detail."

[unblinkered]

"Haha! Heh. That's... that makes sense. Sure." He laughs weakly to himself. A question bubbles up from the back of his mind, where it has been waiting its turn to be asked. He thinks he can answer the question himself, by making up some plausible response, based on the things he already knows. A nice, palatable answer that puts his world back in order. But... questions have to be asked. Even if questions hurt to ask.

"So... vampires. I don't have to worry about... magic, or anything? Just a weird... dusty sort of rabies thing, maybe a little government coverup?"

[cross_and_bow]

"No, magic also exists. Also many species of demons, though vampires are by far the most common."

[unblinkered]

Max freezes. And then breathes, and chuckles to himself.

"Okay, now I don't believe you."

[cross_and_bow]

"Okay. You'll probably sleep better that way. Though, I recommend moving out of Sunnydale. This place is a vampire magnet."

[unblinkered]

A voice from that same place in the back of his head goes, you believed in vampires at her word, because that was the easiest thing for you to believe, and now you're disbelieving in magic despite her word, because that's the easiest thing for you to believe.

He tells this voice to shut up for a second.

"So... how'd you get into vampire killing? I sort of doubt you just happened to be walking by with a crossbow."

[cross_and_bow]

"Mystical calling, believe it or not."