He treats the blood bank like a McDonalds. Eddie was running hard and fast after the bat with Sarah on his back. She had to catch him before he reached the blood bank and cashed out. The crazy bat didn't know how to stop. 

    By the time they reached the blood bank, Vlad had lost them and Eddie was worn out. The only sign of life outside was some parked cars and the faint sound of Aerosmith.

    They stepped inside and Sarah knew immediately that Vlad was there for sure. A group of Hauntless had moved in. Vlad's assistants, Digger, Crusher, and Cy, were serving as makeshift bouncers. There was a Bluetooth blasting a remake of Walk this Way by an undead band that called themselves _____. He had turned it into a monster dance club.

    They found him in a supply closet with a phlebotomist. 

    "Vell, my friend I once was a phlebotomist myself, but the work made me too thirsty. I had to give it up." He was saying to a young man as he sipped on a pouch of blood. "It vas back during the blood shortage of '83. I vas looking for my next feasting, and I came upon a university that vas promoting their phlebotomy program. I said to myself, vhere else will I get to needle zee customers and drink for free?"

    He continued. "It was a rough time for ghouls, let me tell you. The humans were running away with things, and we had to fight back. One of the biggest problems was the drugs. You see, we needed the needles to harvest the blood but the humans were using them all to inject drugs instead of harvesting blood! We had ghouls to feed, cemeteries to raise, spirits to haunt. 

    "So when I heard the Phlebotomy school was accepting applications, I signed right up. This was my chance to get in on the ground floor, really move some volume for my fellow undead. I couldn't pass it up!"

Dichotomy of the illusion of Reality

Split between the person I am and the person you would have me be

Unable to blend the two into one without periodic flashes of truth

that reveal the dichotomy of my reality and betray the illusion outright

Making the consistency hard to maintain.

The persona, its perfection marred only by acceptable flaws of social construction

The other, a living being contorted to maintain the illusion

They draw me out with the bait

Looking for some facts to twist back into some semblance of the illusion.

Occasionally we come to crisis created by the inability to tolerate our truths

Seeking to restore the myth, we wind our facts into narratives

Hoping to disguise the inconsistency of reality with a pretty lie dressed up in theories

Running away from the truth, we only trip up over the inconsistencies

The inconvenient truths of our imperfections and failures

Cannot overcome the engineering of our most contorted perfection

In which reality is the disease, and lies are the cure

Inevitably comes the crash, through the conflict of what is and what we pretend to be

In the end, the illusion is the reality and the truth is the psychosis we hope to deny.

Tips from a Therapist