Fat White Vampire Blues

by Andrew J. Fox

  Three identically obese nude dwarfs stared at each other and murmured in unison: “Oh, shit.”

  Malice X’s jaw nearly bounced off the turf. “This-thisis your big parlor trick?Midgets? ”

  There was no time to try again. Even if there had been, the triplicate vampire couldn’t muster a fraction of the necessary energy. He(they) were stuck. The three Juleses had no choice but to make the best of it. They bent their barrel-like bodies and snatched up the pieces of stake with their stubby little hands.

  Malice X clapped his hands together and raised his face to the artificial heavens above. “Ladies and gentlemen, this proves what our preachers been sayin‘ for years-God is a black man. Wait, lemme rephrase that. Since the Good Lord don’t answer vampires’ prayers, I guess the Devil be a black man, too!”

  Jules sensed his three consciousnesses splitting away from each other, like pieces of stuck-together saltwater taffy being pulled apart. He was becoming three separate people-Jules 1, Jules 2, and Jules 3-none of whom exerted direct control over the other two.

  Three consciousnesses: Jules 1 prayed that they’d all remember the plan. Jules 2 tried contacting the other two telepathically but only got a shooting pain in his sinuses. Jules 3 didn’t place his trust in either prayer or telepathy. “Snap out of it, guys!” he shouted. “Let’s surround him!”

  Malice X grinned and hummed a few bars of Randy Newman’s “Short People.” Then, without bothering to slip out of his clothing, he transformed smoothly and slickly into a panther. The big, muscular cat immediately lunged at Jules 2, knocking the rotund dwarf flat on his back. The panther’s three-inch-long incisors tore at its prey’s fat throat.

  “Aaaahhhhhhh!”all three Juleses screamed.

  The pain traveled from one to the other like a power surge through a live wire. Jules 1 nearly dropped his stake to clutch his own throat, but he stifled the reflex and ran toward the enemy with all the speed his stumpy legs could muster.I might be a dwarf, he told himself,but I’m a vampiredwarf!He pictured his legs as stubby but powerful springs, and he leapt onto the crouching panther’s back. Before the creature could shake him off, Jules 1 plunged his stake into the cat’s side.

  The panther shrieked with pain and rage, immediately releasing its choke grip from around Jules 2’s throat. Jules 3, unengaged in the struggle, found himself caught between equally powerful and desperate urges.The plan-he’s distracted-now’s the time to hit his coffin- But one of his other selves lay bleeding on the grass, while the other was menaced by a snapping set of jaws reaching back to bite him in half.Fuck the plan! Improvise! Jules 3 grasped his stake tightly in both fists and ran toward the melee, howling a wordless battle cry and aiming the point at the panther’s heart.

  Unfortunately, Jules had never studied veterinary science or even basic biology. He buried his stake in the animal’s liver. Instead of crumbling to dust, the panther erupted with an earsplitting bellow. It bucked like a snakebit bronco, hurling Jules 1 from its back and knocking Jules 3 violently to the ground. Jules 1 tumbled twenty feet through the air before striking his head on a planter and landing in a heap. He didn’t move or make a sound.

  The panther tried dislodging the two stakes with its teeth. It managed to pull out the weapon hanging from its side, but it was unable to reach the one perforating its liver. It shrieked and spat with frustration. Its form wavered, then melted as it transformed back into Malice X.

  The black vampire grasped the stubbornly lodged stake with both hands, took a deep breath, and yanked it from his body.“Fuck!” He sucked air through his clenched teeth. Tears ran freely from his red-veined eyes, and specks of blood flew from his mouth as he exhaled again. “Fuck-fuck-FUUUCK! That hurt like amuthah, you little cocksuckers!”

  Jules 2, still gushing blood from fang wounds in his neck, tried desperately to rally his strength. He began weakly crawling away. He didn’t get far. Malice X kicked his retreating foe onto his back, then pinned him by planting his right foot deep in the dwarf’s soft stomach. He reached for his long stake, temporarily discarded when he’d transformed into the panther.

  Jules 3 shook off the cobwebs just in time to see Malice X raise his weapon above the prone, helpless form of Jules 2. But instead of immediately plunging it into the trapped dwarf’s heart, the black vampire grinned sadistically and started to sing.

  “Short people got / No reason-”

  He brought the stake down hard, burying it in Jules 2’s plump left shoulder. The already wounded dwarf screamed with fresh agony. Jules 3 screamed with him, envying Jules 1 his unconsciousness. Malice X yanked the stake out and raised it above his head again.

  “Short people got / No reason-”

  This time he drove the weapon through Jules 2’s rib cage. The vampire’s inhumanly powerful thrust completely impaled the dwarf and embedded the sharp point deep in the ground. Jules 3 sensed his other self slipping into shock. Fighting a wave of encroaching darkness, he charged the black vampire on wobbly legs. But his feeble counterattack was stopped dead by a contemptuous backhanded blow, which both broke his nose and sent him flying into a shrubbery.

  Dazed, bleeding, sprawled upside down in an azalea bush, Jules 3 could only watch as Malice X finished his deadly song.

  “Short people got / No reason-to LI–IIIVE!”

  This time was the deathblow. The thrust through the heart. Jules 3 had no idea what would happen-would all three of them crumple to dust simultaneously? No time for any whispered good-byes-no time for anything as he felt maple wood savage his heart, as he smelled blood and tasted salty iron and choked on his own effluvia as he felt his body coming apart…

  But he didn’t come apart. He didn’t dissolve or crumple or blow away. Jules 3 pawed himself to make sure he was still all there. All his important parts seemed intact, still hanging upside down in the azalea bush. His other self wasn’t so fortunate, though. On the patch of grass where Jules 2 had struggled so valiantly just seconds before, there was now a faintly pulsating pool of gray proto-matter, the two-edged stake projecting from its center.

  “What the hell isthis now?” Malice X grimaced disgustedly as he wiped proto-matter residue off his bare foot onto the grass.

  Jules 3 didn’t have time to puzzle through the vampiric metaphysics behind what was happening. Their only chance now was to somehow force Malice X to transform again, to make him unwittingly send part of his mass to his coffin. He rolled out of the azalea bush and ran to Jules 1’s side. The other dwarf was still stone-cold unconscious.

  Jules 3 grabbed his duplicate’s shoulders. “Wake up, kid! Wake up! It’s the bottom of the ninth and we’re five runs behind-”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jules 3 saw Malice X tentatively jiggle the long stake still protruding from the pool of proto-matter. “Guess maybe I best leave that in there for now,” the black vampire muttered. “No prob-Jell-O Puddin‘ Man here done droppedhis stake, and I seriously doubt he’ll be havin’ any need for it…”

  Jules 3 whirled around to protect his prone twin. But all he saw was a flash of foot, then a shower of stars as a bomb exploded in his midsection. He was vaguely aware of being airborne again before he landed bone-jarringly at the edge of the onlooking crowd. Seconds later, he sensed the agonizing decomposition of another third of himself.

  “And then there was one,” Malice X said, brushing his hands together briskly. “I really gottathank you, Jules. Who woulda thought I’d get the chance to kill you three times? Shit, I wish you coulda split intoten little dudes.”

  Jules 3 picked himself painfully up from the turf. Near as he could tell, that last kick had broken two or three of his ribs; yet he refused to face death lying down. It was over. His plan was impossible now. But he’d done the best he could. He’d put his life on the line to protect Erato and Chop, to avenge Maureen and Doc Landrieu. He had nothing to be ashamed of.

  Malice X picked up a discarded piece of stake from the ground. “Ready or not, loser, here I come…”

  The last remaini
ng bit of Jules tightened his feeble grip on his own chunk of wood. He struggled to avoid blacking out as his smiling nemesis approached. He felt his body sway as he fell into micro sleeps. He was hallucinating, dreaming. He had to be. Otherwise, the clouds of mist condensing above the glass panes of the greenhouse and seeping in beneath the garden’s doors made no sense at all One crash, then another, and suddenly it was raining glass. Jules saw, in the midst of the descending shards, a pair of large, wedge-shaped gray forms. The creatures landed on four powerful legs and immediately moved to cut Malice X off from Jules. The three clouds of mist that had drifted in beneath the doors were taking on a similar aspect, snarling menacingly as their low, muscular bodies congealed. Canines as big and nasty as the Hound of the Baskervilles-the same animals he’d encountered the night before outside the Trolley Stop! Jules blinked once, then twice, but the beasts didn’t fade away like some drunk’s pink elephants. They barked viciously at Malice X, lunging and snapping at his legs as they moved in a pack to surround him.

  These weren’t just dogs, Jules realized. And despite their distinctive wolflike features, they weren’t wolves, either. They were something new, both familiar and unfamiliar-these five creatures were vampire wolf-dogs!

  “You lousycheater!” Malice X screamed as he kicked at the wolf-dogs’ heads. “All bets are off! See how you like fightin‘ a dozen brothers at once, you fatfreak!”

  Two of the wolf-dogs leapt for Malice X’s throat, their fangs flashing in the multicolored garden lights. But by the time their jaws slashed the space where his throat had been, Malice X was no longer himself. Jules heard the flapping of desperately beating wings as the black vampire beat a hasty tactical retreat. The wolf-dogs snapped furiously at empty air as they leapt after the fleeing bat, which flittered toward the broken glass dome high above.

  Jules turned his attention to the crowd behind him. All eyes were locked on the bizarre spectacle in the center of the garden. Now was his chance He ran to Malice X’s coffin and snatched his safari jacket off the ground. He retrieved the tin of lighter fluid and the box of matches from the right-hip Velcro pocket. Jules opened the coffin. Inside, a three-inch- deep layer of gray proto-matter glistened and pulsated-nine-tenths of Malice X’s bodily mass. Limbless, voiceless, sightless. Helpless. As helpless as Maureen had been when Malice X plunged a stake through her heart.

  Jules bit the cap off the tin of lighter fluid. He squirted the combustible liquid all over the proto-matter and the coffin’s velvet lining.

  “Look! Over there!” Malice’s sister shouted. “What’s he doin‘ to Malik’s coffin?”

  Jules struck his match against the side of the coffin. It lit on the first try. Remembering the inferno that consumed his home, he tossed it inside. The proto-matter ignited like a whiskey-soaked slab of Brennan’s Restaurant’s bread pudding.

  The effect on the bat high overhead was immediate. It shrieked, and the unnaturally piercing cry shattered several more of the glass panels overhead. Its wings crumpled, crushed by an invisible fist. Then it plummeted toward the ground. Into the nails and jaws of five vengeful creatures eager for a taste of blood.

  “Malik! Brother!”

  Jules almost felt bad for her. Almost. Malice’s sister would’ve thrown herself into the feral pack, would’ve tried to pry the pieces of her brother’s blood-spattered body from the wolf-dogs’ teeth, had Cowboy Hat not wrapped her in a powerful restraining embrace.

  “Malik!They’rekilling him! Preston, let mego! Damn you, they’rekilling him!”

  The smoke from the burning coffin made Jules’s eyes water. It smelled greasy and evil, like rancid andouille sausage that had been left on the grill too long. Malice’s sister stopped twisting in Cowboy Hat’s grasp, and her curses collapsed into sobs. The wolf-dogs finished their bloody work and trotted over to Jules’s side. Several wagged their tails as they sniffed him. One licked his hand, leaving behind flecks of reddish foam.

  Malice’s sister stopped sobbing as abruptly as she had started. She stared at Jules with a hatred that made his balls seek the safety of his belly overhang. “Hecheated. You heard my brother. Hebroke the rules. Kill him, Preston… kill him for me…” Her voice shifted from a whiny, almost childlike tone to shrill invective as she whirled to face the others. “All of you!What are you standing there for? Kill him! Kill him for me! ”

  The wolf-dogs moved into a protective phalanx around their master. They growled at the dozen vampires standing at the edge of the garden. Jules stared into Cowboy Hat’s shadowed face. “You an animal lover, Preston?I am.”

  The former chief lieutenant didn’t make a move in Jules’s direction. Neither did any of the others.

  Still surrounded by his wary, protective pack, Jules pulled the stakes from the centers of the two pools of proto-matter pulsating weakly on the grass. Strength and mass flowed into him almost instantly, tributaries rejoining a river that had nearly run dry. In seconds he was his old self again, all 450 very welcome pounds.

  Malice’s sister sank slowly to the ground. Looking in the blankness of her eyes, Jules could see that her spirit was broken. At least for now. But the face of the tall man in the buckskin jacket and ten-gallon hat was still hidden by shadow.

  “So what’s it gonna be, Preston? I got no real beef with you. You gonna let me walk outta here, take over the Horse-X trade yourself, become the new big man? Or are you gonna play ‘avenging flunky’ and maybe end up like your ex-boss there?” He pointed to the lumpy red smear at the center of the garden.

  All eyes turned to the man in the cowboy hat. He pushed its wide brim up with a flick of his forefinger and scratched his forehead. For the first time, Jules could see his eyes. They were tired. “You walk, fat man. Pick up your shit and get the hell outta here.” He pressed a large red button on a console next to the mansion’s back doors. Jules heard a distant rumbling echo from the far end of the vehicle tunnel, a rumbling that must’ve been the door to the outside opening. “But this ain’t over. Don’t expect things to just go back the way they was for you. This town ain’t friendly territory, and it’ll never be again. You’re goin‘ down. Maybe not tonight. But some night, when you least expect it…”

  Jules gathered his soot-covered safari jacket, pants, and shoes from next to the smoldering coffin. “Just remember to bring some doggie treats when you come visitin‘,” he said, patting a wet nose. “They prefer bat wings to Milk-Bones.”

  Surrounded by his canine saviors, he walked to the door of the garden and opened it. Then he left the underground lair he hadn’t expected to walk out of, his head held high, and no vampire dared block his way.

  But despite experiencing a triumph bigger than he’d ever hoped for, Jules’s victory was made hollow by three little words:

  This ain’t over.

  TWENTY

  “Top a the world, Ma! Top a the world!”

  Jules’s shouts echoed off the brick walls of the Warehouse District behind the casino. Even as echoes, his shouts sounded forced and phony.

  He should be ecstatic. Or glad. Or at least relieved.

  But Jules was none of those things. Malice X was gone. Yet that fact hadn’t brought back Maureen. It hadn’t even brought back a single King Oliver platter from his melted record collection.

  One of the wolf-dogs-the leader-seemed to sense his melancholy. It nuzzled his hand gently; its cold nose on his fingers felt good in the humid night air. Another of the pack tried to cheer him by example, prancing around Jules and leaping boisterously, bouncing its paws off his stomach and chest.

  Now Jules was able to take a closer look at his rescuers. Were these really his… pups? Wasthat why they’d seemed so familiar to him outside the Trolley Stop? All of the wolf-dogs had light brown spots on their chests and upper forelegs. His canine companion in Baton Rouge had similar markings, hadn’t she? It was hard for Jules to remember; he hadn’t been in his most lucid frame of mind during that night of amour. But the wolf-dogs’ scent was so viscerally familiar, and he was sure h
e’d gotten more than a noseful of the friendly bitch’s scent in that alleyway. His human-self might not remember that particular odor, but his buried wolf-self certainly would.

  If theywere his pups, how did they get born and grow up so fast? It was barely a month since Jules’s trip to Baton Rouge. Dogs didn’t gestatethat fast, did they? On the other hand, it wouldn’t exactly have been any normal pregnancy. He’d never knocked up anybody before, human, vampire, or otherwise. Who knewwhat the rules were when a vampire was involved?

  Jules sat on the front steps of a shoe repair store and let the wolf-dogs lick his face while he patted their noses and scratched behind their ears. There was another possibility, he realized suddenly; the wolf-dogs didn’thave to be his pups, not necessarily. Maybe Doodlebug hadn’t left town when he said he had. Maybe his old friend had stuck around, watching him from the shadows, waiting for a time when Jules would really need him.

  But Doodlebug wouldn’t want to help him as Doodlebug. No-doing so would toss all that self-esteem/self-reliance psychobabble he’d regaled Jules with out the window. Doodlebug would figure out a way to be sneaky. He’d try to help in a way that would make it seem salvation had been the universe’s reward for Jules’s own actions. Hadn’t Jules taken pity on a poor, stray animal, gotten her food, and kept her warm for a night? His karma had come full circle, Doodlebug might say; the universe had saved his big, fat behind a month later.

  Maybe. Or maybe not. Jules gave each of the wolf-dogs a final scratch behind the ears, then stood up. They sureseemed like real wolf-dogs. But then again, Doodlebug was a very talented vampire.

  It didn’t really matter, he supposed. Either way, Doodlebug or pups, beings he’d had a hand in creating had stood by him in his time of need. After all, in a world where some men could turn into bats and preferred the taste of blood to andouille gumbo, what was one more mystery? Maybe he’d discover the truth someday. Or maybe he wouldn’t. He’d lived this long not knowing where the first vampire had come from, or why the Saints had never made it to the Super Bowl.