It Was a Dark and Stormy Night...

by Kurtz, Matt; McKenzie, Shane; Strand, Jeff

  “We can’t do this, Beula. It’s wrong.” Salty, bloody tears streamed down Ed’s face.

  “Ed, get your ass back over here, now!”

  In an instant, Ed was at her side, levitating next to the branch she sat on. His head hovered near her belly.

  “I’m sorry, Beula. It’s just…you seem indecisive. About us, about me turning you, about that idiot, Wulfie, who by the way, is a dog. You know that, right? A peek-a-poo, to be exact.” Ed tried to stifle a jealous guffaw, but that set off a coughing jag which severely limited the control he had over his powers of levitation. Ed plummeted sixty feet straight down before he recovered enough to clamor back up the trunk of the tree.

  Now, sitting in front of her on the branch, his legs in the criss-cross-applesauce position, he took Beula’s hands. “You don’t have to do this. We can be together just as we are.”

  “Yeah, real easy for you to say. You’ll look like that forever and I’m headed toward looking like Margaret Thatcher.” Beula buried her face in his chest. When she’d finally had enough brooding, she looked up at him and grimaced. The evidence of his earlier attempt at biting her was all over him.

  “Your face is a mess. There’s blood all over it. Gross.”

  “Beula, you want me to make you a vampire and you have blood issues? That’s kind of a deal breaker.” Ed ran a sleeve across his cheek, wiping away the bloody mess of tears and pine needles that had stuck to his face as he’d made his way back up the tree.

  “You know what I think? I think it’s you that doesn’t want to make me. Then you wouldn’t be able to sneak in and watch me sleep every night like some creepy pedophile. You are six hundred years old, after all. I’m sure there’s some kind of law against that, Ed. And if I were a vampire, I could fly like you and feed and torment humans and I wouldn’t be your sweet little Beula anymore. You don’t want me to be a vampire, that’s what I think!” She locked her challenging gaze on his unwavering pupils.

  The hunger overcame him. Ed yanked the neckline of her dress down, sinking his teeth into her neck. There was a fair amount of eye-rolling, moaning, and writhing around, accompanied by a not-so-sexy slurping sound that seemed to go on for hours.

  “Yes, baby. Suck it. Suck it hard.” Beula suddenly lapsed into a trance and started speaking like a female rapper. “Ooh, baby. Yes, tap that garble, garble, EBONICS, garble…”

  Ed reached out and slapped her. “Beula!”

  Her eyes opened. She was breathing hard. So was Ed. She sat up and gave herself a quick once-over, licking the blood from her lips. She didn’t feel any different.

  “Well, that was kind of anti-climactic.” Beula pulled a handkerchief from between her breasts and dabbed at the already healing wounds on her neck. “We done here?”

  Below them, Ed and Beula did not see the cute little peek-a-poo running around in circles at the base of the tree. When the dog tired himself out, he stopped, fell over from dizziness, then phased into a man. Wulfie stood, naked, hiked up his leg and peed, then shook his head, blinking rapidly.

  On the ground by his feet was a little flashlight lying in a pile of leaves, covered in his pee. The flashlight he’d given to Beula earlier, in the cute little Halloween goodie bag with the Now and Laters and the fake vampire teeth made out of wax.

  He closed his eyes and sniffed. Then he sniffed a bit more. Wulf’s eyes slammed open and his head jerked up. He could see the hem of Beula’s skirt hanging far up in the tree.

  He could smell her. He could smell him. He could smell Beula’s blood.

  With his fists raised high above his head and his naked body shimmering in the moonlight, Wulfie howled, “Be-ula!”

  Leonard Has an Evening Out

  by Richard Jay Goldstein

  Lightning flashes through the dark air like Superman through cobwebs. Sheets of rain sluice across the window in sheets. Leonard pushes himself away from the desk. Drops his PlayStation controller. Slams his fist on the desktop. Rubs his smarting fist.

  Eleven forty-five, says the clock. Almost midnight. His eye falls on a framed picture of Annabel and he drops his face into his hands. Tears squeeze out from under his eyelids.

  Annabel is Leonard’s wife, and she has just broken Leonard’s heart by walking out with a suitcase full of clothes.

  “I’ve had it,” Annabel shouted when she left, keeping her suitcase in front of her like a shield. “You’re a grown man,” she shouted. “Grown men don’t sit around playing TV games all day. They go out and get jobs.”

  “Video games,” Leonard said.

  “What?”

  “Video games. Not TV games.” Leonard changed direction before Annabel could shout again. “There are no jobs. And you’ve got a good job.”

  But Annabel left anyway, breaking Leonard’s heart.

  More lightning shatters through the storm, etches trees against the dark.

  “I can’t stand this,” Leonard mutters. “I’ve got to get out of here. Get some air.” He goes to the closet for his coat.

  “You’re not going out there, are you?” a voice says. “Not on a night like this. Who knows what’s out there?” If this were a movie, instead of real life, and we were watching it, the voice could be yours or mine. But, as it happens, it is Leonard’s mother’s voice, which he imagines as he pulls on his coat.

  “Who cares?” Leonard says. ”Nobody cares about me.”

  “Oh, Leonard,” his mother complains.

  Leonard opens the door, and a wet and angry wind swirls in, scattering rain and leaves.

  Outside, the sidewalks stream with water as if they are sweating heavily. Walkers are few, and churn by with heads down and jackets clutched tight. Cars leave twin wakes as they splash past.

  Leonard walks quickly, like the others, head down, hands in pockets, like Superman would if he had a pocket full of kryptonite. He is already regretting coming out.

  He comes to a nearby park. It is even darker under the trees. He turns in, sloshes up the walk. Shadows of shadows. Drip drip drip of leaning trees. Even Superman would be nervous. Leonard sees a playground he has seen before, the jungle gym like bare tree branches silhouetted against jagged city skyglow, the swings moving in the wind as if ghost children are riding them.

  Leonard cuts across the lawn, which has turned to swamp. He has some vague idea of swinging on the swings, even though he is not a ghost child. But when he gets to the playground, he can see beyond, into the murk. He sees a strange house sitting amongst the trees—trees hung with festoons of moss. This is odd because he is in West Hollywood and moss does not festoon the trees in the parks in West Hollywood. This is just a neighborhood park, stuck in between boulevards and malls, not this big and deep and dark, even in the rain at midnight.

  And another thing, come to think of it, Leonard cannot recall the last time he heard thunder or saw lightning in LA. Now it is crashing and sizzling all around him.

  Plus he has been in this park many times and has never seen this house before. If house it is. Sharp spires stab upward into the low clouds. Towers leer. Dead ivy tatters in the wind. The gray stones of the walls glisten with rain.

  Leonard finds himself standing before the immense iron-clad door of the house. As he watches, the door slowly opens, creaking. Tendrils of mist curl out, like tendrils of mist. Inside, Leonard sees shadowy stairs leading upward. Or downward, depending on where you are standing. Then, without knowing quite how it happened, he is inside himself, climbing the shadowy stairs. At the top of the stairs a man waits. Presumably waits for him, Leonard, since he is the only other person there. A man dressed in elegant, shiny black evening clothes.

  “Good evening, Leonard,” the man says, in a sinister voice, and then he smiles.

  Leonard sees the man’s smile, and for a while he sees nothing.

  ***

  Leonard awakens in his own bed. For a moment he thinks Annabel is beside him, but it is only his extra pillows piled there. A wave of sorrow washes over him. Something itches on his neck. He rea
ches up to scratch it and feels two tiny scars. How had that happened?

  He looks out the window and sees it is night, clear and soft. But hadn’t there been a storm? He is confused. How long had he been asleep? The clock says eleven-thirty, which is no help at all. He’s sure it was later than that when he first went outside. Is this a different night? Could he have slept an entire day?

  Leonard rises and a hunger, a bizarre desire, washes over him, displacing the sorrow. It is an irresistible, unnatural craving. He cannot resist it. Because it is irresistible. And unnatural. He must satisfy it. It must be satisfied. Now. His hunger cannot wait.

  He goes to his desk, finds the phone book, opens it, dials the number for A-1 Formal Wear.

  “I want a tuxedo. Now,” he growls into the phone, but it is only an answering machine. He leaves his number, but that is not enough. He is not quenched. Quickly he throws a beach towel over his shoulders, cape-like, and stalks out the door.

  The air is soft, the shadows silent. There is no trace of storm. The streets are dry. Leonard stalks down his own street, stalks down a bigger street, until he comes to a shopping center. He knows there is no tuxedo store in this center, but he has another hunger as well, one that must be satisfied. And so on.

  Like a shadow himself, Leonard melts through the shadows. Superman could not be more quiet.

  Leonard stands hidden behind a downspout in front of a movie theater. He is like one of those lizards that look like whatever they are standing on and you can’t see them unless they move, which Leonard does not. His preternatural hearing tells him the movie inside is almost over. His preternatural intelligence suggests that he Google the word preternatural as soon as he gets home. Meanwhile, he fixes his dark eyes on the theater door from which his prey will emerge.

  And here they come, a gaggle of teenage girls, giggling, flipping their hair back from their bright eyes, licking their wet red lips. They titter and twitter and wobble out to various cars. One lags behind.

  She is the one.

  Leonard speaks with the voice of an old woman. He has always been good at impressions. For example, he does a very good Bela Lugosi. “Excuse me, dear,” Leonard says like a kindly grandmother. “Can you help me for a moment?”

  The girl hesitates, peers into the shadows behind the downspout, and before she can scream, Leonard has her. His preternaturally strong hand clamps down on her neck, and he drags her into the tiny alley behind the downspout. The girl’s eyes widen in shock and dismay.

  Much to his surprise, deadly fangs sprout in Leonard’s mouth like the spires on a strange house in the park which should not be there but is. He bites into the girl’s soft neck and hot blood springs forth. Her eyes roll back in agony and ecstasy, as if she is a book about Michelangelo. Leonard laps at the salty carmine feast, in considerable ecstasy himself. He lifts his eyes to the theater marquee, and irony fills him deliciously, as if the girl’s blood is spiced with salsa.

  Twilight: The Saga Continues, says the marquee.

  Leonard stumbles away from the shopping center, filled with revulsion and blood. Behind him the girl’s body lies pale and empty in the convenient alley. Leonard has thoughtfully covered her with his beach towel. Her sad little hand is stretched out from under the towel, as if it is reaching for her sad little teenage dreams which will never come true now, because she is dead and her sad little life is over. Even Superman would cry if he knew about it.

  Leonard is filled with revulsion because he is filled with someone else’s blood. He does not understand the bizarre compulsion which has compelled him to kill a young girl and drink her blood.

  Am I really a vampire? he thinks. Cool.

  As he runs, shedding hot pink tears, a vague image floats just above his head of a strange house and a man in a tuxedo with a frightening smile. Even as he admires the tuxedo he somehow knows this man is somehow responsible for the strange things which are happening to him. The man’s face melts away and he sees Annabel’s face. What if Annabel returned? What if he killed her and drank her blood? How bad would that be? He cannot face such things, such thoughts.

  Leonard realizes that he must find the house again, find the man in the really nice tuxedo with the terrible smile. He must confront the man, find out what terrible, smile-like curse is upon him, Leonard.

  Leonard runs stumbling up the deserted street, his face hidden in his hands. It is very hard to run that way, even for a vampire, and so he stumbles. He turns one corner, then another. The park should be just ahead. But when he turns the final corner he does not see the park, with trees and playground equipment rearing up between houses. Instead, round hills roll away into the distance, like ocean swells, covered with thick grasses and a fuzz of coarse bushes. These bushes are heather and bracken but Leonard does not know that yet. Pale, cold moonlight from a fat full moon pours down, turning the hills silver. Leonard can’t remember moonlight pouring down like silver on the shopping center he just left, but being a resident of LA, he has absolutely no idea what phase the moon is in.

  A long wailing howl rends the silent moonlight into liquid tatters. The howl sends shivers down Leonard’s back and his vampire fangs shrivel back into quiescence. Leonard quickly files quiescence with preternatural for later attention.

  The howl seems to have come from a hollow among the hills just ahead. A hollow howl. What could that have been? Leonard wonders. I better have a look. He starts down the hill.

  “For God’s sake, don’t go down there,” Leonard’s mother says, always attentive, though not present. “Are you crazy? Haven’t you ever seen a horror movie?”

  “I’m a vampire, Ma,” Leonard says. “I don’t have to listen to you anymore. And I’m married. Or I was anyway. I’m a grown-up man. Besides, I have quiescent preternatural strength.”

  Leonard’s mother has nothing to say in the face of this monstrous vocabulary, so Leonard continues down the hill. The moonlight feels thick, like water, or Jell-o, silver-flavored Jell-o. At the bottom of the hill the heather bushes are thick. A musty, muddy smell rises around Leonard. From the shadows ahead Leonard hears a crackling of twigs, rough breathing. What is it? Could it be someone injured? Perhaps a young girl? A young girl with hot red blood? And a tuxedo in her sad little bag? His fangs grow large again.

  Leonard pushes aside the heather branches, or maybe they are bracken branches.

  Like Superman bursting out of a barn where he has been imprisoned by kryptonite, a dark sinister shape bursts out of the shadows, comes flying at Leonard. Leonard has a brief impression of a snarling face, fangs even bigger than his own, wicked curling claws, an immense, powerful body, and then the shape crashes into him and there is a flash of light, or lightning, and then a preternatural darkness closes about him, completely free of silver moonlight.

  ***

  Leonard awakens. He is lying on a lawn under a palm tree. The lawn belongs to a cute West Hollywood bungalow. He looks about him. There is no trace of the strange moor, no trace of bracken or heather. The moon pokes its silver face above the houses across the street and Leonard is bathed in waxing moonlight.

  A different night? Did I sleep a whole day? he wonders. Aren’t vampires supposed to sleep in dirt or something? Doesn’t daylight kill us? But he seems to be alive, even if he is among the undead. He wishes he knew more about vampire lore. He doesn’t want to make any mistakes. Jeez, he thinks, for instance, am I supposed to be afraid of garlic, or am I supposed to eat it? He hopes it is the latter, because he loves Italian food.

  The moon soars above the horizon of houses and it is like being hit by a bus, instead of by cold silver photons. Leonard doubles over in pain. His limbs twist, stretching, shrinking. He retches. He retches and stretches. His bones feel like they are breaking. His body shortens, lengthens, deforms. Coarse hair sprouts all over him like a Rogaine commercial gone terribly wrong. His face gnarls until it is utterly gnarly, his teeth grind into mighty fangs. He drops to all fours, and his hands become be-taloned paws, and he crouches like a beast
, which he is, a wolverine-like wolf-like caricature of monstrosity. He sinks to the ground in agony. But no ecstasy.

  Then it is over. The moon sails proudly in a clear sky.

  Leonard stands, and is shocked to find himself leaping ten feet in the air. He lands lightly upon his four powerful legs.

  Hey, not bad, he thinks, surprised and pleased with his new power.

  Experimentally, he gnashes his teeth and is gratified to find they do indeed gnash. No mere pair of blood-sucking fangs now. He has a whole mouthful of powerful, bone-crushing, flesh-tearing, wicked-sharp chompers.

  His metamorphosis complete, Leonard throws back his powerful, shaggy head and howls a howl of something that you would only understand if you had just changed into a powerful werewolf. He lopes powerfully down the street.

  Footsteps. He hears footsteps. Two sets of them. He whirls about, sees no one. Then realizes they are coming from several blocks away, one set to the east, one to the west.

  It’s my hearing, he thinks.

  His hearing is downright preternatural. Even better than a vampire’s. He can hear the wings of a moth crashing in the air above him. If he listens closely, he can tell that both sets of footsteps are multiple. One set belongs to a woman and a small dog walking beside her. The other set belongs to two men.

  Inhaling, he can smell them all too, with a wolf’s keen sniffer. Perfume, slightly sweaty cotton, doggie breath, dirty shorts. Olfactory hyper-acuity he can live without. But then he catches a whiff of the woman’s warm body, and saliva floods his impressive chompers. His powerful stomach growls. He growls.

  He crouches behind some forsythia bushes in the bungalow yard, wishing for a little decent bracken. The men appear first. They walk quickly, talking loudly in British accents. Leonard ignores them and they pass by unharmed.

  Then she is there, a tall shapely blond woman, holding a delicate diamond-studded leash at the end of which is a tiny white dog, a peekapoo maybe, or a pompadoodle, or possibly a maltomeal. The woman is dressed in a long stylish coat, stylish sandals.