Nice! Thank you for your submission. A compelling story indeed.

Okay as you know what we're here for is to improve our writing, so I will drop my critique on you now. Please don't take anything I say too personally, and know it's coming from a place of community and helping.

So I'll put your paragraphs in, then critique below.

A few years ago, I was sitting in the pub, in a city full of vampires. We got to talking about monsters. My >friends described all kinds of ravening, terrifying beasts. Here is the monster I gave them.

There are worse things than death. Working at an old-fashioned accountancy practice is just one of them.

I don't think you needed the above, it didn't add anything to the story and in fact you could argue it took a little away. Because you've already told me in the first line that this is a tale of monsters and vampires and how they're going to be introduced.

**Remember in flash fiction it is fine to leave out backstory details, as long as the reveals aren't confusing they'll work. **

Leave some clues for your reader so they can work out the mystery. That's half the fun! 😁

For the first time in years, Wilbur Drinkwater felt excitement.

The way you started here is nice, with a simple yet effective sentence, you immediately do a nice job of showing me that Wilbur leads a very boring life.

He had finally escaped from that awful job at Haynes, Hytner, Hubbard and Partners. He had felt dread going to Mr Hubbard’s office to hand his notice in. But the man in the grey suit hadn’t even looked up, just taken the hand written letter and said, “Very well, you’ll receive your final salary cheque on the fifteenth of next month. We expect you to work until then, and for your desk to be clear by the end of that date.”

What would have been nice here is if rather than telling us he had an awful job, would have been to take a line or two to show us the grind he goes through each day. Perhaps mentioning something about how sick he was by a worn carpet, or an old picture on the wall, stained from being there so long. Or perhaps his irritation with a colleague who says the same thing to him every morning.

Also try describing the scene where he gets his paycheck in more detail, how did he feel when he was receiving that cheque? What were the sights and sounds dominating the scene?

Poor Wilbur. I don’t think I’m a monster, but I have to feed. It’s a simple matter of hypnotic influence to blank the human’s mind after taking a pint or two, to obliterate just a minute or two of time. I’ve made sure he has no friends to point his pallor out to him, to make him think once more. Every day, he comes to work, and every day after he has finished his (very competent) book-keeping duties, I drain a little more of his life away. But I haven’t killed him, left him a drained corpse in some alleyway. I’m not a monster.... am I ?

I love the reveal at the end, and like I said it would have been even more hard-hitting without the opening paragraph.

This next point is more personal preference, I'm not a huge fan of switching perspectives, because unless it's done really well, it can be confusing (I had to read the last paragraph twice before I understood).

Like I just mentioned, I like the reveal, however I would have preferred if we'd stayed in third person limited or at best switched to 3rd person omniscient.

So all in all GREAT JOB and a HUGE well done for getting the creative juices flowing and submitting to The Flash Fictioners.

Can't wait to see what you've got next!

Cg