When Jesus had found out about Romeo, he said, “This shit has to stop,” but then confessed to a ten-year “emotional affair” with someone he met online gaming. Katy slept in the guest room after that, which was fine since Jesus was a blanket hog. In the dark, she had wondered what it was she had loved in him. Was it how he wouldn’t break a sweat as he worked his way through a plate of buffalo wings? Or was he—as Adriana had suggested—just a replacement for Papi?
Oh, Papi. Papi had never talked about prizes. He had never said much of anything, and when he did, it was about the weather—things like “It’s gonna be cold today” or “It’s gonna be hot today.” Every once in a while, though, after a few Drambuies, he would pat her head and say things like, “Katy, mi niña, life is all sacrifice.”
He was right. Because now she had to sacrifice herself. There was no cellar to hide in, no helicopter waiting on the roof. Letting her husband be the one to consume her seemed like the proper, wifely thing to do. But surely Romeo would do it with more imagination.
But then she had another epiphany. She didn’t have to go one way or the other. She had a third choice.
If she remembered right, Jesus had the keys to the car in his sweatpants pocket, the car that was parked in the driveway, the driveway across which Romeo was currently, fitfully shuffling.
Fine, then. She would move the furniture. In a minute. But first she poured herself more cabernet, and then she made a double-headed pike out of a stainless-steel curtain rod from Crate & Barrel, and once she finished her wine, she would roll up her sleeves and her new life would begin.
Pincer and Tongue
STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES
Had there been a trail cam, then all of this would been recorded in blurry still shots.
What happened had been centuries in coming. Rudolfo, the second vampire of his line and the oldest left anywhere on earth, had been lured into a daytime ambush deep in the Guatemalan jungle. He of course knew it could only be an ambush, and he also knew who the invitation had to have come from: Gretta, the German werewolf he had had a relationship with, each of them feeling the other’s kind out, to see if this could even be a workable thing. The wrongness made it more fun than it should have been. It had started out as information gathering, but then they ended up truly smitten with each other, until . . . they weren’t. Instead of going their separate ways and taking pains to stay out of each other’s territory, however, well—they were exes. This big final blowout was bound to happen sooner or later. South America would be as good a place for it as any.
Rudolfo, of course, knew Gretta would come alone. Unlike his kind, her kind had a scent so distinct it could be made out for miles around, by anyone with the nose to smell.
Rudolfo came alone because, well: pride. And who knew, right? Maybe this would just be the opening steps of another decades-long dance for the two of them. Gretta was unpredictable and irascible, but that served to make her a good counterbalance for Rudolfo’s calm, reserved, supposedly (so she said) “aloof” presence.
The world would tremble were the two of them to walk it hand in hand again. It could be like the old days. Until it wasn’t.
But, as these things work, not only was there no trail cam installed, hopeful of documenting a migrant jaguar or a rutting armadillo, also no trail cam could realistically have seen into the hearts or lives of this vampire, that werewolf. It could have trapped their fight on its memory card, though.
It was epic.
Gretta came at Rudolfo not with her claws out and her hair on, but with a slashing blade. He, of course, dodged it, but in dodging it he had to whip back fast enough to impale himself on a wooden spike Gretta had embedded in a tree specifically for him.
Then she brought her claws out.
Rudolfo peeled his lips back from his mouthful of fangs, extracting himself hand over hand from the off-center spike while she raked him to ribbons, even going so far this time as to sever the pinky and ring fingers of his right hand.
He slung them away, dived at her, and she, wily as ever, dashed into the sunlight, trying to lure him to his death, taking their fight out of what would have been the frame of the trail cam, had the trail cam been there.
What that trail cam would have been seeing after the fight moved on to a different part of the jungle was just . . . leaf litter. A tropical jungle readying itself for the afternoon shower. Bugs resuming their insectile duties, birds flittering and fluttering.
And, just at the corner of the frame, two severed vampire fingers.
Two fingers that were now . . . moving?
Yes. But not of their own volition. Rudolfo, with his next full meal, could easily regenerate those fingers, should he survive Gretta’s onslaught. If not—either way, really—once the next day’s noontime sun beamed down through the canopy and found those fingers, they would flicker into flame, smoke away into nothing. Nature takes care of its own.
But now those fingers were . . . not so much crawling as traveling by antback or ant column—both—to the cavernous mound deep in the jungle, technically past the focal length of the trail cam, had there been a trail cam.
Had the digital file been delivered to the right hands, though, then focus could be changed, zooms could be faked, images unblurred such that they resolved into a lone finger jammed now at the main entry
