The Vampire security guard

One night at work many years ago, one of my servers blew a drive and I stayed late to replace it and redo the mirror. Since I was already there I started another preventative maintenance task of sorts to take advantage of the down time window and something screwed up and I ended up being there until 2 or 3 in the morning (unplanned maintenance = unplanned trouble). So when I had put everything back together again and was certain that everyone would be able to work when they came in the next day I called it a night and headed downstairs to the security guard post to sign out.

I didn't really even look at the security guard because at 2:00 am they are just sorta part of the government decor right? Plant, chair, desk, security guard... As I was digging out a pen I heard a funny sound coming from part of the decor. It was a "Kaaaazing..." and something shot over the desk and landed on the sign-out sheet. It was a little circlet of silver metal.

I picked it up to look at it. It wasn't quite round, it was sort of a spiral cut at both ends. It was a bit warm. I looked down at the security guard and did a double-take.. He was an odd looking fellow. He was young but looked old, if you can picture that and he was smiling sheepishly with very long incisors.

'Vampire guy' - I thought.. It looked like he had gone to the dentist and had them filed into points, or maybe they were just naturally that long. He had black fingernail polish on very long natural nails (I notice nails. I'm a fingerstyle guitar player with a set of long nails on the right hand and cut short on the right. Every now and then I get some gel fakes put on if I'm playing somewhere. Try it sometime, not many guys do, get made fun of in Vietnamese, it's great!).

He had some funky rings on too, like Yngwie Malmsteen, one on every finger. Some neat long dagger earring dangling from a chain that they'd probably make him take out of he were working the day shift and a strange white shirt under the blazer, kinda like the puffy pirate ones Jerry Seinfeld wore once on his show. His nametag said "Horrace".. The kicker was the Ann Rice novel on the desk next to a bunch of tools, a long thick rod and a spool of metal.

"What. ... are you making???" I was incredibly interested because I make all sorts of weird stuff myself. As soon as I said that it was like I was his second-best friend or something because he launched into a huge explanation.
"Chainmail" he responded gleefully. He pronounced the "mail" part differently like "Maille" or something.
"You take a metal rod and you coil this wire around it and then you cut the coils with tin snips and you knit it together. "I'm working on a coif!" From the looks of it a coif was some kinda chain-mail hat. "I just finished this cod piece!" That thing looked to be some sort of medieval jock in case you got hit in the schnutz by some Knight.

Veeeeeeeeeeeeeeery interesting! I really was truly interested. I started telling him about my bullwhips and the Australian plaiter's guild and HE was genuinely interested. I asked him what hell it was for and he explained that he was a medieval re-creationist and he got together with friends on the weekend and they wore the stuff and hit each other with these big rattan swords.

MAN! This gets better and better!
"I take Kendo at the Takehashi dojo in Chinatown, are those rattan swords kinds like bamboo Shinai's?"
" Not really." he goes. The swords they use don't give at all and you can get hurt if you don't pay attention. That sounded real interesting! I asked him how he learned to make chainmail and he said he had a booklet some local guy in the Ottawa Valley had made. He offered to make me a photocopy. I said that would be cool!!!!!!
I started to tell him my name and office number but he held his hand up and said "You're and you work on the 10 floor of the JT, Section C4 in Services Science & technology division..." (I hadn't signed the sign out sheet yet and I had been in my closed server room when the other security guard did the 10th floor floor patrol). ...

Scary...

The next day I had a photocopy of a booklet on how to make chain-mail on my chair. At break I told the guys the story and one of them said "Maybe he IS a vampire and he like, knows who you are because while you were working in your office he flew up 10 stories outside the building and hung there in mid-air keeping an eye on you!"

I didn't work any OT for awhile after that.

I saw the guy at work quite a few times afterwards, always on the night shift after the sun went down. He really didn't go out in the sun much.. About 3 years later I opened the newspaper around Halloween and he had been interviewed for some 'people who live and act like they're vampires' story. Interesting people in this city...So, sorry to the girl with the same last name as Horrace the vampire security guard on Kirok's facebook friend list. Didn't mean to freak anybody out with a stray email(of course, I'm a vampire sometimes too though...)