“Is this anything worth giving up an afternoon’s drinking for?” muttered Bill Warrington as he staggered blearily along Bridge Street in search of Vampires and Zombies. A story had recently appeared to his editor in a dream, suggesting that vampires, werewolves and similar had been seen indulging in secret beer-drinking rituals in Warrington’s underground caverns. The information, which came from an unusually unreliable source , suggested that a series of cellars connecting  Warrington Station with a secret location was the scene of some strange goings-on. Whether these cellars these cellars were originally constructed as part of storm drain Bunker leading to the Manchester Ship Canal, or were a lost branch of the famous Williamson Tunnels, was of no interest to anyone.

Bill had been tasked to manufacture (investigate , surely? Ed.) a story about the descendants of the tunnel builders,a zombie-like race, known as Irish Navvies, who never saw the light of day. At least when sober.

Lots of important people who know all about Warrington have denied that there were ever any such tunnels. One bloke in a pub drinking a.Vampire’s Kiss said he couldn’t care less. It appeared that there was no story about Zombies.

.But Bill had a source of information on Vampires.

Tracking Deep Bite to his lair in a booth in Porters Ale House was an easy task for a hack with Bill’s drinking habits. He found him sitting there wearing a pair of Grouch Marx spectacles and moustache, drinking a long ale.

But the initial reaction of Warrington’s foremost authority on underground culture was to deny any knowledge about anything.

Worldly-wise Warrington wearily withdrew a wodge and wafted it in front of the dubiously disguised Deep Bite. “Is there something in this hand that would make you remember about vampires?”

Deep Bite:

First thing I have to say about vampires. We do NOT… I repeat NOT… Sparkle in the daylight. Last thing I want to hear is another mortal swooning over Edward Cullen!

Bill W:

It has been reported in the British Psychological Society, that Vampires may be classified as succesful psycopaths who are ruthless, callous, fearless and arrogant.The report says that thanks to their superior self-control and conscientiousness, rather than landing in prison, they end up as company chief executives, university chancellors and Queen’s Council barristers. What do you say to that?

Deep Bite:

There are a lot of famous people who are actually vampires. You can tell who they are, because to make them look ‘normal’ they have to apply a LOT of fake tan. I can not tell you their names however, as we are all sworn to secrecy, however, If I say “Cheap as chips” or “Supermarket Sweep” I think you will know what I mean.

Bill W:

OK, how about this, then? Leading vampire expert Stephen Marche, writing in Esquire magazine on 13th Oct said,“Vampires have overwhelmed pop culture because young straight women want to have sex with gay men.” He went on to say “vampires are normal. They’re not Goth, they’re not scary, they’re not even that weird.”

Deep Bite:
We do not like the emo clique at all. They are annoying beyond compare. We are not as dangerous as people might think however. Yes we do bite, etc… however the Were’s are worse, with all that hair, all over their bodies.

And its not just the Werewolves, there are weres of pretty much every creature out there, including the weresquirrell… You can spot them easily by there huge red beards and their strange habbits when eating nuts. To try to blend in, they often just call themselves ‘furries’.

At this point our reporter made an excuse and left.

As he drifted off into the night, Bill wondered what the physicists Costas Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi would have made of these revelations. After all, they had recently published a report proving that vampires didn’t exist.

They argued that, if vampires had first appeared on 1^st January 1600, then the human race would have been eaten up by June 1602. They had gone on to say;

“Another philosophical principal related to our argument is the truism given the elaborate title, the anthropic principle. This states that if something is necessary for human existence, then it must be true since we do exist. In the present case, the nonexistence of vampires is necessary for human existence. Apparently, whomever devised the vampire legend had failed his college algebra and philosophy courses.”

Obviously, they never met Deep Bite.

Since this story first came to light, a significant silence has settled on Warrington, which has more than 100K residents. Not a single one has commented on this story. A conspiracy? Or something even less sinister?