He nodded, shaking, and he was. He truly was.

She came to the bed and sat gently down next to him. She looked down at him, and Rory knew that she was the same five-foot-four sexpot she always had been, but to him she seemed thirty feet tall. And Rory was the same size he always had been, the reductive interdimensional field that enclosed him made him appear to be ten inches tall.

“Well, I think I’m smaller than the butternut squash,” he said, and they both laughed. Then she reached down and carefully picked up her lover like a little girl with her favorite doll, holding him up so that his tiny face was near hers. The feeling of sitting in her hand was bizarre and wonderful.

“I know this is weird,” she whispered. “If a woman asked me to be shrunk down and used as a dildo, I’d be nervous, too.”

“I’m actually pretty excited,” he said. “Feet first? I have plans for some serious wiggling.”

She giggled and kissed him, slopping his entire head with red lipstick, and he got ready to be lost in her love—figuratively and literally.

And he hadn’t forgotten about her reward—to shrink herself down to half her size and let him live out that tight-midget fantasy he’d always had.

“Even the Nights Are Better”
Vampire
“…Then you came to me and my loneliness left me…”
by David M. Fitzpatrick

On his knees on the gravel beach, Lucius hated the night. He hated the darkness, hated the cold, hated the world being asleep while he was awake. The only thing he liked was the Moon, which gave the dark world a hint of the hidden Sun. Every night as the Moon waxed towards full, he basked in it, the only sunlight his body could handle. And every night as it waned away to nothing, he cursed it for leaving, cursed the night, cursed his curse.

The new Moon was up there somewhere in the darkness, a shadow floating amidst shadows as unseen waves hit the nearby beach. It was the worst time of the month. On better nights, the full Moon would reflect in the black ocean and the crashing surf. Tonight, it was just utter darkness, like most of Lucius’ last three hundred years.

He’d taken enough blood from the drunk, unconscious man in the gravel before him. He rarely killed these days; it created too many questions. Lucius had grabbed this idiot when he’d staggered out of a bar at closing time, knocked him out, and carried him through back alleys and across deserted barrens to the beach. If only the vampire legends were true; flying would have made his task much easier.

But he was incredibly strong, so soon he made it to the beach, a remote stretch bookended by rocky outcroppings, with a gravel shore that made it unpopular with lovers looking for a secluded, sandy spot to pretend that lust was love. Stupid mortals. They lived their brief lives yearning for true love amidst truer lust, and they were usually disappointed. Those who weren’t, Lucius knew, were only fooling themselves.

He pulled out his jackknife and carefully scored a shallow incision between the fang punctures on the man’s throat—enough to hide the marks, but not bleed the man to death. Lucius rolled him over and found a nearby piece of driftwood, which he placed strategically under the man’s throat. The effect would be that he had drunkenly stumbled to the beach, tripped, and fallen onto the driftwood. He’d tell the story for the rest of his life, and never be the wiser.

Lucius got to his feet and turned to go—and froze when he saw her.

She stood just feet away, wearing a white dress that was in such contrast to the dark night that it seemed almost as if she wore lights beneath. She was motionless, her blond hair waving in the night wind, her bright eyes fixed on the scene. She wasn’t horrified, so Lucius realized he had to start talking.

“This guy’s passed out,” he said. “He seems okay, though.”

She regarded him in thoughtful silence for a bit, and then she moved to him. He could see bare feet beneath the knee-length skirt. She carried a pair of black pumps in one hand and a black clutch purse in the other. She stopped next to him, looking down at the unconscious drunk.

Lucius realized that he was holding his breath. And why? There was no reason to be nervous. Either she bought the story or she didn’t; if the latter, he could drain her and bury her somewhere. But he realized that he didn’t want to kill her, simply because it would be a shame for the world to lose such a beautiful creature. In three centuries, few women he’d seen had been more beautiful.

“I saw you take him,” she said, her voice somehow both soft and firm, meek yet strong, timid but commanding. It was an astounding mix of paradoxes in just five words, and Lucius found himself frozen. “I followed you, wondering what strange story was behind this. I would never have guessed that you were a vampire.”

She took another step closer, unafraid, and squinted in the darkness, then pulled her cell phone from her purse and snapped it on. The screen lit up his face. “Nice fangs. So are you a real vampire, or one of those wannabes with cosmetic dentistry?”

“I’m real,” he said in a low growl. He was going for beastly and menacing, which he was usually good at, but it didn’t seem to faze her.

“Prove it. Fly, turn into a bat, or whatever.”

“Hollywood crap. They only thing they get close to right is the sunlight part. We don’t vanish in a puff of smoke, but we burn quickly.”

“So… just a wannabe, then.”

He was annoyed, but at the same time he admired her. Another paradox. He glared—more beastly menacing—and stalked across the beach to a pile of boulders. She hurried to follow, even as he crouched and wrapped his arms around a big one, easily five hundred pounds, and stood and hoisted it over his head. She seemed impressed, so he heaved it to a good dozen feet away. It hit the gravel beach like a meteorite.

She nodded, brow raised. “Okay, that was quite superhuman.”

They stared at each other for a minute, he all Immortal Badass, she all Nonchalant Don’t-Give-A-Shit.

“I only drank from him,” Lucius said, feeling that he had to explain things to her. “I didn’t kill him.”

“So why aren’t you taking me?” she said, and for the first time he noticed her throat. The very nature of his condition meant that throats were usually the first thing he noticed. How had he not considered hers until that moment? The dress, with thin shoulder straps, dipped low in a V that didn’t show cleavage but did expose her neck and throat, which were framed by the full mass of blond hair that tumbled down her back.

“My eyes are up here,” she said, grinning, and he realized he’d been staring. He met her gaze and tried to look menacing, but realized that he was continuing to fail miserably at it.

“Why follow me here at two in the morning?” he snapped. “I could have been a killer.”

“Whatever. I was about to head home and kill myself anyway.”

He gave a start. “Why?”

“Just tired of it all. Useless family, selfish friends, failed relationships. Shitty jobs, boring world. Pointless life. But this changes things. If there are real vampires, then the world might be more interesting than I’d suspected.”

He felt helpless. Her words, her presence—it was as if she were in control of him, like a Hollywood vampire who could mesmerize his prey.

She moved to him again, so close that her breasts almost touched his chest. She looked up into his eyes.

“Can’t decide whether to drink my blood or fuck me?” she asked.

“I… I don’t want to do either,” he stammered.

“Liar. You want to do both. You’re a vampire, so you want to drink my blood. And you’re a man. I know the look a man gets when he wants to fuck me. So which is stronger? The lust or the blood lust?”

It was more than that. He knew it, but didn’t know what. She enraptured him, and he couldn’t explain it. And in that moment of complete confusion, she smiled up at him in realization.

“Oh, I see,” she said. “Guess I made a good first impression.”

She got onto her tiptoes, her breasts crushing against his chest, and she kissed him. He found himself unable to resist the urge to kiss her back, and just when he thought he had to wrap his arms around her and kiss her all night long, she abruptly broke the liplock and stepped back. He felt the stunned look on his face.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“You fascinate me, so I’m not going home to take all those bottles of pills. I’ll see you on this beach again? We’ll start with nighttime dates here and see how things go. Who knows—maybe we’ll get to the point where we can put a coffin in my basement.” And she laughed at her own joke.

She smiled and turned to go, but after a few steps spun back. “What’s your name?”

“Lucius,” he said.

“Nice. I’m Elizabeth.”

She waved then with her purse hand, and then turned and headed into the darkness—a fearless enigma who had stopped a bloodthirsty vampire in his tracks. Lucius’ confusion was suddenly being overwhelmed by a sense of panic at her departure, and without thinking, he called out, “It was good to meet you, Elizabeth.”

“Right back at you, Lucius,” she said without looking back.

And then her white form melted away into the darkness, leaving him alone with the night and the beach and his thoughts. He realized that, more than anything, he wanted to be with her, and that there was no denying that he was being as dumb as the humans. He finally understood what being in love meant. Three centuries with women, but he’d never been so taken with one as he was with her.

He breathed the cool night air, and it was the most cleansing sensation he’d ever felt. The darkness was like a comforting blanket to him, and for the first time in several lifetimes, he didn’t miss the Moon’s light.

That stopped him in his mental tracks.

That was astounding. Elizabeth was many things, but most importantly she was—after more than a hundred thousand nights—the first person who had ever been able to make the night better for him.

“The One That You Love”
Zombie
“…Must we end this way, when so much here is hard to lose…”
by David M. Fitzpatrick

The window over the sink was broken, but there was no longer a glass company to call, and no way to call anyway. Just like there was no guy to fill the oil tank, and no electricity to kick the furnace on.

Maynard sat in his easy chair, staring at a television that hadn’t worked since it had all happened two years before. There was a deck of cards on his folding table and a lost game of Solitaire before him. It was just he and Millie and the empty room.

“Honey, today is our forty-ninth wedding anniversary,” he said over his shoulder. “Think we’ll make it to fifty?”

Millie, in her own chair where she knitted and crocheted and did her daily newspaper crossword, responded as she always did.

“Unnngggghhhh!” she said, her voice raspy. “Gaaahhhhrrr!”

“No, doesn’t feel like forty-nine,” he said. “Hard to believe we raised five kids in this house. Wonder how they’re doing wherever they are.”

“Ennnngggh!” Millie said, and she gnashed her teeth.

Maynard pulled himself to his feet, wincing at the arthritic pains. Seventy-five was getting old, and Millie was just two years behind him. He fished in his back pocket, pulled out his Ace comb, and drew it through his neatly parted white hair. Without a barber, Maynard had learned to do a decent trim using the bathroom mirror and a handheld mirror, something he’d learned from all the years Millie had styled her hair. He’d never gotten around to the three-way mirror she’d always wanted. He wished he’d done that for her.

“What should we do to celebrate?” he asked.

She growled and spat at him.

“Yes, dinner would be good,” he said. “We could go to that Italian place downtown and sit. I’ll catch you a cat or a squirrel and get you fed.”

She squawked and hissed, struggling in her chair against the Velcro straps that bound her. She had to eat, just like an uninfected person. She’d die otherwise.

Zombie apocalypse, they had said. End of the world. But the scientists said that it wasn’t like in the movies. Nobody was dead or rotting; they were just infected, and it changed their brains. Some believed that the people were still in there somewhere, their personalities overrun by the runaway primal instinct to eat the flesh off people’s bones.

He noticed the smell then. She’d defecated, which she did just like anyone. She just no longer cared. “Time to clean you up, sweetheart,” he said.

He tied the canvas bag around her head, which calmed her and kept her from biting him. He undid the straps binding her wrists and ankles, laid her on the floor, and changed her like a baby. Then he dressed her in her favorite blue Sunday frock and, with the bag still on her head, led her to the garage and buckled her into the car. She made noises under the bag, but she was mostly calm.

The street was clear of any zombies, so he hand-cranked the garage door open and drove the few miles into the city. There he weaved around the burned and abandoned cars, the garbage blowing about, and the human bones that littered the city like the remnants from a forgotten battlefield. A few zombies staggered around the deserted streets, always foraging for live meat. Maynard avoided them and parked right in front of the restaurant. The city park across the way was overgrown like a hayfield.

The restaurant was unlocked, so he led Millie in, found a table, and secured her to a chair with the Velcro straps. As soon as he removed the bag, she launched into a nonstop spree of growling, gnashing, spitting. She was no match for the straps, though; she was a tiny thing, frail and thin.

He found a menu and began reading off the list of unattainable Italian dishes, as she growled through it all, but then he wondered if maybe there was food after all. He excused himself from the table to investigate the kitchen, where he found plenty of boxed pasta and canned sauces—not very homemade of the place, but just fine these days. He had to turn on the gas to the stove and light the pilot, then fill a pot with a supply of bottled water, but soon he had lunch cooking merrily away.

“We’re going to have a real Italian meal, Millie,” he called out.

“Guuhhhrrr!” she replied.

He finally dished out two heaping piles of spaghetti smothered under ladles of sauce and seasoned it with several spices. It would be a great anniversary dinner. He stuffed a bottled water into his pants pocket, picked up the plates, and headed to the dining room.

“Dinner is served!” he announced, but when he rounded the corner, he realized that he and Millie weren’t alone.

There was a young woman standing near the entrance. She carried a backpack and seemed in great shape, although she was a bit disheveled and clearly needed a bath. Her long brown hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she held a pistol leveled at Millie’s head.

“No!” Maynard cried.

The girl—a kid, no more than twenty-five—looked at him with wild eyes. “Why the hell did you tie a zombie up?”

“It’s my wife,” he said. The plates of pasta were so hot they almost burned his fingers, and his arthritic wrists screamed in pain, but he didn’t care.

“Jesus, put her out of her misery!” the girl cried. “There’s no one left who can even think about curing this. Your wife is just an animal now who wants to eat you!”

“I love her,” he said, his voice cracking.

Millie snarled and thrashed a bit.

The girl stared at him with mouth agape, but then her face softened. She sighed and lowered the handgun. “Look, I’m sorry. I know this is hard. You two must have been together a long time.”

“We’re celebrating forty-nine years today.”

“I see.” She was eyeing the food. “I know she won’t eat that spaghetti. Zombies want fresh meat. So can I have it? I’ve been out there a while and I’m starving.”

“This is Millie’s,” Maynard said sternly. “But there’s plenty more in the kitchen. Help yourself, and join us.”

The girl nodded, holstered her weapon and headed into the kitchen. She returned a minute later with a plate. Maynard scooted his chair over toward Millie, who growled at him. The girl stood, looking uneasily at the table.

“She can’t get you,” Maynard said. “Have a seat.”

The girl sat opposite the pair and dug into her meal. Maynard slid Millie’s in front of her and began eating his.

“Oh, man, this is heaven,” the girl said between mouthfuls. “Hey, I’m sorry if I offended you. I just reacted. I’ve almost been eaten by zombies too many times.”

“It’s okay. You have a name, young lady?”

“Yeah—it’s Katy.”

“Good to know you, Katy. I’m Maynard, and this is Millie.”

She nodded to him, shot a glance at Millie, and returned to her meal.

“You look just like our youngest daughter, Jennifer,” Maynard said. “Doesn’t she, Millie?”

Millie struggled against her straps, cracking her teeth together as she tried to bite Katy from across the table.

“Quite a resemblance,” Maynard said. “Kids today don’t understand what true love is. Before the apocalypse, they’d mess around when they were teenagers, live together unmarried, and have all sorts of sexual partners. That isn’t true love. True love is when you’ll do anything for someone.”

Katy nodded, clearly not sure what to say. Maynard sighed and leaned back in his chair.

He ate another mouthful of spaghetti, then set his fork down and sighed.

“I need to believe my wife is still in there somewhere, and that someday she’ll come back from this,” he said. “That’s why I take care of her—change her, clean her, dress her, and take her out on our anniversary. We were high-school sweethearts and childhood friends, so we go back sixty-five years. Katy, do you see why that bond is so strong? Do you see why it’s so important that I behave the way I do? Or am I just a crazy old man to you?”

Katy’s face softened, and she smiled. “You’re not crazy. I think it’s beautiful. I wish I could have a love like yours, and grow old with someone like that. But I’m just trying to make it to the next day.”

Maynard picked up his napkin and dabbed the sauce off his mouth. “I’m glad you understand,” he said. “I’d hate for someone I’d just met to think I’m a loon.”

“I do understand.”

“Good, Maynard said, “because you’re right: Zombies need fresh meat, and Millie is very hungry.”

He drew the bottle of water from his pocket like a gunslinger and threw it with all his might. It hit the surprised girl right between the eyes, and she toppled over backward in her chair. Against the pain of his arthritis, Maynard struggled to his feet and hurried around the table. He just had to dive on top of the girl, beat her unconscious—

But she was young and fast, and not dazed enough. Maynard saw the gun too late, and the BANG was deafening.

He went down as the pain seared through his chest.

*   *   *

Katy screamed as the old man collpased, hit the downed chair, and rolled off onto his back. She scampered to her feet, backed up, and kept the gun on him. The zombie woman screeched and roared.

Maynard struggled to get up, but he couldn’t. Blood surged steadily from the massive chest wound.

“Why’d you do that?” Katy screamed. “WHY?”

“Help me…” he wheezed, reaching a feeble, shaking hand toward her.

“There’s no help. I shot you in the heart. You’re a dead man.” She felt the tears that stung her eyes begin to stream down her cheeks. “Why did you do that?”

“Have to… feed Millie…” he said, and when he coughed blood came out of his mouth.

“And you thought I wouldn’t fight back?”

“No… use me…”

Katy realized what he was saying. “You’re crazy.”

“I’m dead anyway,” he said. “She isn’t. Give me to her.”

*   *   *

Katy left the woman’s ankles strapped to the chair but released her wrists and tipped the chair over. She stood at the door, crying as the zombie woman clawed at the carpet and dragged herself toward her dying husband.

“Unnnggghhh!” Millie snarled. “Gaaaahhhrr!”

“That’s it… Millie…” Maynard said as the light began to fade in his eyes. “Come eat… I love you, sweetheart…”

Maynard stroked Millie’s hair even as she began biting into his chest, and Kary couldn’t watch any longer. She fled the restaurant, bawling like a baby, wishing she’d never had to see that happen, and wishing she could truly understand a love like that.
 

 

David M. Fitzpatrick is a fiction writer in Maine, USA. His many short stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies around the world. He writes for a newspaper, writes fiction, edits anthologies, and teaches creative writing. Visit him at www.fitz42.net/writer to learn more.