Fat Vampire: A Never Coming of Age Story

vampire hooker she knows in New Orleans and we’re wearing the same top.'

Vampire hooker, thought Doug.

'And all the time she — she wants me to…' Absinthe quailed, but recovered quickly. 'Did you know that Asa really isn’t a vampire? He’s a…thrall. It’s so fucked up.'

'She introduced him to me that way. As her thrall.'

'Yeah, but do you know what it means? It means she almost made him a vampire, but she didn’t give him enough blood. She just gives him a tiny bit at a time, so he’s addicted. It means he’s her slave. He can never leave — he has to do whatever she says. What kind of person does that to someone?' Her face pruned. 'Shit! I’m in such shit,' she said, and she folded up against her knees.

Doug put his arm around her as he’d seen people do on television, but she only seemed to stiffen and lean away. Like the way an unhappy baby could almost pitch herself backward out of your awkward clutches. He let her go as she got to her feet. She turned and hugged her arms, though Doug knew she could not possibly be cold.

'I told my boyfriend. Almost right away I told him. He was cool with it. Well, not so cool with the whole getting-ravished-by-a-vampire thing, but…I made it sound like I hadn’t been into it. Like it was more of a…rape or whatever.'

'Uh-huh,' said Doug. Where was this going?

'I guess he…I guess he really never was okay with it. He started making all these little comments, not much at first, but then all the time, and…I finally got tired of it and dumped him.'

She dropped her cigarette butt and ground it out with her toe.

'But then people started asking me these questions, everyone’s looking at me different, and I know he’s been talking about me…' She raised her face and pinched her eyes shut. 'God, Travis! Don’t you know I have to kill you? Don’t you know you’re making me?'

'Elizabeth?' said a voice behind Doug, and he turned to see Cassiopeia Polidori stepping onto the porch.

'Oh, perfect,' Absinthe said, her eyes shining. 'Perfect timing.'

'Hello, Douglas,' said the signora. 'You are welcome inside. Elizabeth, why don’t you come back in—'

'Don’t look at me,' said Absinthe, and then her whole body exhaled and was only mist, a lewd column that shed its clothes and lost its shape and rose into the sky.

Doug looked at the pile of clothes, next to the other pile of clothes.

'You can’t keep transmogrifying away from your problems, young lady,' Cassiopeia called to the vapor as it drifted over the trees. She watched, for several beats after it had vanished from sight, then turned as if suddenly remembering that Doug was also there. 'Douglas. This is a surprise. Leave the clothes. Asa will see to them.' Doug followed her inside.

They walked through the parched, candlelit hall. 'You’re looking well,' said Cassiopeia. 'I can’t confess to agree with your recent flair for vigilantism, but I daresay it agrees with you.'

'You shouldn’t believe everything you’ve been hearing about me,' said Doug.

'Hm. So I suppose you don’t have an invisible motorcycle? What a disappointment — I was rather looking forward to not seeing it.'

They settled in the drawing room near the harpsichord, Doug on an uncomfortable chair and Signora Polidori on what Doug assumed was an uncomfortable sofa. He thought they should be drinking tea and remarking on the latest society gossip and news from London and whenever would Mr. Fucklesby settle down and marry? A moment later Asa arrived with the tea.

He glanced briefly at Doug with eyes that, while not exactly approving, no longer carried the hint that Doug was something to be scraped from his heel. So that was something. Doug thought about what Absinthe had said. If true, it was Doug who was the superior being — Asa probably wished he were him.

'Mr. David tells me that you did not attend your last appointment with him,' said Cassiopeia after Asa withdrew. 'And that he’s heard naught from you since. Milk?'

'Uh, no,' said Doug, looking down at the tea.

'Sugar?'

'No. Thanks. So…I didn’t feel I was learning with him. And I didn’t like his attitude, to be honest.'

'Mr. David, despite his many fine qualities, could have a more winning disposition,' Cassiopeia admitted.

'Right. Well, I heard from Victor that there was supposed to be some big meeting a few weeks ago. Stephin forgot about it, or just blew it off. I dunno.'

'And I have not pursued the matter because I believe the issue at heart has been…settled? The television show?'

Doug allowed a beat to pass before speaking. 'Let’s just say I took care of it,' he said. It was something else that happened on TV a lot, these kinds of enigmatic statements. They were probably a kind of story shorthand, thought Doug. It was all that needed to be said, because the viewer already knew the details, or wasn’t meant to yet. It wasn’t going to work in real life, he reasoned. Nobody just let you say a thing like that without explaining yourself. But here, now, was Cassiopeia’s curt nod, and then silence. Don’t you want to know what I did? thought Doug. Don’t you want to know how I did it? He had a sense that he was moments from being dismissed. That the signora would stand, and Doug would have to stand, and then Asa would come from wherever Asa came from to guide Doug through such uncharted territory as the stair hall and the foyer.

He didn’t want to leave. He was kin to women like this. Why had he ever thought vampires smelled bad to one another? Here he was in a vampire’s chambers, and he couldn’t smell a thing. The world outside smelled like a farm.

'Have you found out anything about the mystery vampire?' asked Doug quickly. 'The one that made…all us guys.'

Cassiopeia shifted in her seat. 'We are investigating. It’s no fox hunt. It can be a long and delicate process, finding a fellow cousin.'

'Oh, right,' said Doug. 'Obviously. I didn’t expect you would have found her yet, it’s just Stephin thought I ought to try to learn more—'

'I don’t suppose you have any further details about your benefactor you may have neglected to mention…?'

'No. Like I said before, it was dark. I didn’t get that good a look at her.'

Cassiopeia pursed her lips. 'It would seem no one did. Douglas, may I be frank? When one considers young Victor and Evan and Danny, the inescapable conclusion one reaches is that our mysterious stranger has a… type. One positively leaps to this conclusion. Do you take my meaning?'

'I’m not sure. You’re being awfully subtle.'

'Yes. Very good. Most of our kind develop ‘types,’ Douglas. The older we get, the more distasteful we find the notion of supping on anything but our ideal. Like…a restaurant ‘regular’ who always orders ‘the usual’. Yes?'

Doug didn’t like where this was heading. He needed a change of subject.

'Perhaps we search out subjects that remind us of first loves. Or past enemies, punishing some former rival again and again,' Cassiopeia continued, though she made it clear by her tone that she found this latter habit offensive. 'Others simply have a physical preference. I have known a hundred kinsmen, and we are all the same in this regard. All but our Mr. David, who has always claimed a more egalitarian lack of preference. But our Mr. David is given to invention.'

'You mean he’s a liar?'

'A dreadful liar.' Cassiopeia smiled sweetly. 'Quite unapologetic about it. To hear him tell it, he has been in the night tide reborn so many different ways. Bitten by a despondent New York banker in October 1929. Or in Reconstruction South. During five distinct wars…at the culmination of the Boston Tea Party…whilst a cast member in the original touring production of Faust.'

Doug frowned at his hands. 'He told me he’d been made in the Civil War.' He remembered Stephin’s narrative and felt like a chump. Tom North? Oh, and let me guess — he was shot by Dick South?