You have received an instant message from HrnyGuy4U.  Accept? Y/N

            “What the hell is an instant message?” Stacey asked aloud.

No answer was forthcoming, since he was the only occupant of his messily comfortable little house on Castille Avenue.  Katheryne, who’d kindly hooked up his computer and showed him how to connect it to this new and mysterious “internet” thing, had departed a while back, probably at least partly due to the barrage of questions he’d been asking since the moment he’d sat down at the computer.  Even she, with her gentle nature and near-infinite patience, had her limits.  Since then he’d been aimlessly wandering around on the wild electronic frontier, trying to figure out if the internet was something that would entertain him or merely annoy him.

After bumbling around skeletal Star Trek fan websites, which bored him, and a few sites dedicated to bands he liked, which didn’t yield anything he didn’t already know, he’d finally found that there were places he could “chat” with other people via text messages, and had immediately gotten into heated arguments with morons on several different continents, taunting and tormenting them in both English and their own languages until they’d signed off to escape him.

It had been fun, though he found it a bit flat compared to pissing people off in person or over the phone.  After all, half the fun of messing with somebody, like Axl Rose, for example, was hearing how shrill he got while he was howling in fury and seeing how many different shades of red he turned.  Not only that, but on the internet, people could get away from him by logging off, which meant that he couldn’t follow them around and irk them to the point of insanity, nor could he push them down a flight of stairs or rough them up in some other inventive way, which also took a lot of fun out of it.  There just wasn’t enough satisfaction in destroying somebody over the internet.  It was akin to winning a contest to see who had the most brain damage.  Actually, that pretty much summed it up.

Granted, the technology behind the internet was rather mind-blowing when one thought about it, and considering that he’d never encountered anything quite like it in his centuries of existence, it was pretty neat all in all.  When he was a kid in his home village in Wales, something like the internet would have been unthinkable, it was so far advanced from what people had access to in those days.  Hell, they hadn’t even had paper back then, so this was some pretty impressive shit right here.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t doing a damned thing to entertain him in any meaningful way, and he didn’t care just how newfangled and advanced something was; as far as he was concerned, something wasn’t worth jack unless he could get something out of it.  The internet was failing miserably on that account, thus far.

Following some more wandering, he’d parked himself in a Los Angeles chatroom, wondering if he could find some locals to bother.  He hadn’t found any, but after thinking about it, he figured that anybody he’d be interested in talking to probably would have better things to do at night than sit in front of a stupid computer.  He’d been ready to sign off and forget about the internet when he’d gotten the instant message from “HrnyGuy4U,” whoever that was.

Shrugging to himself, he accepted the message.  Might as well.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and all that shit.

HrnyGuy4U: hi Stacey! how r u?

Stacey rolled his eyes.

HrnyGuy4U: y r u bored?

HrnyGuy4U: LOL  thats prety strong languge 4 a girl!

            Stacey shook his head, wondering if guys like Tracii Guns and Kelley Nickels had to continually beat the shit out of people who thought they had girly names; he’d have to ask them the next time they all hung out.  But in the meantime, he might as well get himself into one last brain-damage contest before giving up on the internet altogether.

    HrnyGuy4U: u r a girl right?

        “Yeah,” the vampire muttered, “The girl that’s gonna make you cry like a bitch, computer or not.”

    HrnyGuy4U: LOL  u think so? a/s/l?  39/m/LA here

        “Time to show this jerkoff how much damage a determined 12 year-old girl can do,” Stacey said with a smirk, cracking his knuckles before typing his answer.

    HrnyGuy4U: LOL  i like you Stacey!

    HrnyGuy4U: ROTFLMAO  i think i’m in luv! :)  r u realy only 12?

    HrnyGuy4U: LOL  just how smart r u?

    HrnyGuy4U: i bet i know things u dont & culd show u

    HrnyGuy4U: do u know what a 69 really is?

    HrnyGuy4U: im serious Stacey!  y wont u give me a chance?

    HrnyGuy4U: wold u like 2 show me?

    HrnyGuy4U: i bet i culd  i no how 2 make grumpy girls like u smile  :)  dont tell n e body but ive don it b4  its a secret

        Stacey frowned as his hackles rose, his instincts starting to murmur to him.  It took longer when there was a computer in the way, but it never took him long to spot a bona fide creep, as opposed to a lovable creep like himself.  Time for a little investigative action.

        The vampire growled to himself as he leaned closer to the screen, his expression losing its bemusement and gaining a more predatory air.  There were few things in the world that could genuinely piss him off, and he had the feeling that he’d just found one of them.

        When the guy on the other end told him in graphic, albeit misspelled and grammatically-mangled, detail, Stacey’s fangs unconsciously slid down into place and his eyes attained a light reddish glow.  Yup, this guy was definitely one of them.

    StaceyRules69:  How do I know you really know what you’re doing?  You probably haven’t done any of that before.

    HrnyGuy4U: OK  tell me were u live & i will b over  i promise u will love it!

        The deep-throated, doom-laden rumble of a hellaciously-overpowered Harley-Davidson motorcycle, affectionately named Warhorse, thundered up his driveway and moved to his garage out back, signaling the arrival of Brandi, his adoring girlfriend who was beautiful, intelligent, and could lift a Buick over her head.  She was also as much of a softie as he was when it came to the little ones, maybe even more so.  Stacey grinned as he started typing.  She was gonna love this.

        There was a long pause on the other end, and as he listened to Brandi shut down Warhorse’s massive engine, Stacey started to get the feeling that he’d blown it and this creep had bailed.  Pricks like this guy were usually at least somewhat skittish, and while some of them were stupid and brazen enough to try anything, many of them could smell trouble before they got caught.  He was just about to try sending another message when the guy suddenly responded back, showing that he wasn’t one of the smarter ones.

    HrnyGuy4U: is she ur age?

    HrnyGuy4U: :)  she sounds pretty!

    HrnyGuy4U: i have a friend i think she wood like

    HrnyGuy4U: if u promise 2 b a nice girl 4 me Stacey!

    HrnyGuy4U:  i new u wood cum around! u will luv it trust me!  were do u live?

        Stacey typed in the answer just as he heard the back door open.  “Yoo hoo!  Where are you, baby?” Brandi called out.

        “In here, toots!  Come here and check this out!” he replied as he waited for the answer.  “Katheryne hooked me up with that internet thingie, and I think I found something it’s actually good for!”

    HrnyGuy4U: i promise Stacey!  c u soon!

        Brandi’s footsteps sounded through the cluttered house as she followed the sound of his voice, and as her statuesque 6’4” frame passed through the doorway into his crowded little den, she snorted, “What’s that?  Upsetting Star Trek geeks?”

        “I did that earlier,” Stacey said, “This is better, trust me.  Whoop!”  He yelped in surprise when she yanked him out of his seat as easily as a little girl would pluck a kitten out of a basket and crushed him in a loving hug that would have killed the average mortal.

        Giving him a kiss on his forehead before squashing him again, she squealed, “Oh, I’ve missed my funny little monkey-man!  I haven’t seen you since last night!”

        “Agkh!” he lovingly wheezed, trying to return the hug as best he could.  “I’ve … missed … you …too … foxy.”

        She gave him another kiss and then dropped him back into his seat, peering over his shoulder at the computer screen, her long red hair spilling over him like a silky crimson waterfall.  “What’s this?”  Brandi read several lines of the conversation and then scowled, “Oh, Stacey!  This guy’s a pervert!”

        Pushing her hair out of his face so that he could see the screen again, he replied, “He sure is.  I think I’ve got myself a gen-u-wine pedophile here.”

        She smacked him on the shoulder.  “What?!   You hate kid-fuckers as much as I do, and you’re making nice with this guy?  Are you retarded, or what?

        “Put that knee-jerk reaction back on the shelf for a moment, babe.  I’ve got an angle here,” he said, giving her a wicked grin.  “The internet’s shit for entertainment, but it’s got great possibilities for ordering take-out.  I got us not one, but two kid-fuckers on the way over here, and we don’t have to lift a finger.  This is even better than that thing where Donita writes her name and number on bathroom walls, because we don’t even have to leave the house for this!  I bet you anything that the internet’s full of pervs like this guy, and whenever we want to chomp down on a kid-fucker or two, all we’ll have to do is get on the internet for a while and trick them into coming here, just like ordering a pizza!  This is the wave of the future, baby!”

        Brandi thought about this for a moment, and then she grinned at him and ruffled his long black hair, making him squawk.  “You know,” she said, “I don’t care what Tommy says about you, and it doesn’t matter how much proof he has to back it up.  You’re pretty smart sometimes, baby.”

        Trying to untangle his hair, Stacey snorted.  “Damned right I am.  What do you think I got the internet for in the first place?  I had this all thought out in advance, babe, because I’m a dude who’s seriously ahead of his time.  Too cool for fuckin’ school.”  Giving up on his hair for the moment, he asked, “So whaddaya wanna do while we’re waiting for the take-out to get here?  We’ve probably got a good half-hour or so, at least.”