CHAPTER FORTY SIX

FORTY SIX
Daylight Savings Time began last night, or
this morning to be accurate. I hunted down a watch
repairman and fed on him at exactly 2 a.m. to mark
the change. This guy was in Connecticut. Every year,
somewhere in America, someone connected to the
manufacture or repair of timepieces dies to mark the
beginning of this inauspicious period of the year.
Believe me. It happens. You can set your watch by it,
as the saying goes.

This year, as every year, I whisper the name
George Vernon Hudson into the ear of my sacrificial
victim. Hudson was the New Zealander who came
up with the idea to discombobulate time every
year. Why? He was a factory worker and his hobby
was collecting bugs. The entire world was changed
due to the desires of some factory worker intent on
enhancing his collection of insects. Is that insane or
what?
If I ever go to New Zealand – an unlikely
journey – I shall wreak havoc, hunting down and
feeding on every person with the surname Hudson. It
would be my pleasure and delight to wipe any vestige
of that family name from the island nation. Truth be
told, on more than one occasion I have singled out
this name when choosing my meals here in North
America. George Vernon Hudson published his idea for Daylight Savings Time in a New Zealand newspaper as a letter to the editor in 1895. It first took hold here in 1918; the second decade of the last century being the period when this abominable practice began taking hold worldwide.
Here is an interesting tidbit: as a result of Daylight Savings Time, the city of Indianapolis, Indiana has been spared the ravages of vampires feeding there. For almost a century this heartland city at the westernmost edge of the Eastern Time zone resisted the custom of setting the clocks ahead in the spring and turning the time back an hour in the autumn. In 1920, on one of those rare occasions when all vampires who dwell in North America come together, we all agreed to refrain from feeding in Indianapolis.
In 2005 the city yielded to the pressure to conform and adopted Daylight Savings Time. The vampire synod has yet to meet since this change, so the pact still holds. However, I suspect that Indianapolis is a de facto hunting spot again, when the opportunity arises.
The worst of it for me is that this means I am faced with a choice: attend my opening night with my powers in abeyance, or skip the first act and have my reputation as an eccentric enhanced with everyone in the theater world. As if I don’t have enough decisions to make already, as producer.