Andrew Fox - Fat White Vampire Blues

He slid open the small window in the plastic shield between the front and rear seats. “You lookin‘ for dinner, pal? I know where all the healthy spots are. A guy like you wants to eat right, right?”

The fare jutted his sharp-nosed face close to the little window. “You know a good place for grilled fish?

Someplace the locals go. I’m sick and tired of tourist traps. Get me the hell away from the French Quarter.“

Jules steered onto the Uptown-bound lanes. “Sure! Bucktown’s where all the locals go. It’s a bit of a haul from here, but the food’s worth it.”

“Yeah. Whatever; as long as it won’t cost me more than fifteen bucks. But don’t take the ‘scenic route,’ okay? Let’s just get there. I get any hungrier, the acid’s gonna eat a hole through the bottom of my stomach.”

Jules stepped on the gas. “I know what you mean, pal. Believe you me, Iknow what you mean.”

Jules was accelerating up the Calliope Street I-10 on-ramp when his passenger rapped angrily on the plastic screen. “Hey! It’s hotter than hell back here! Doesn’t this hack have a/c?”

Uh-oh.Jules hadn’t thought of that. The Caddy’s only a/c vents were in the dashboard. Closed off behind the plastic shield, the backseat must’ve felt like a windowless attic. Jules slid the little sliding window open again. “Sorry about that, buddy. Last few years it’s been open season on cabbies, so the Taxi Cab Bureau made us install these damn plastic gizmos. Let me crack those back windows for you. The air outside’s nice an‘ natural and all.”

Where should he do it? Maybe the levee alongside Bayou St. John? The levee was dark, heavily shadowed by long-limbed oak trees, and the fact that it was a popular lovers’ lane meant that cops normally didn’t molest people who parked by the murky, slow-flowing waterway. On the other hand, choosing a lovers’ lane meant that there would be lovers about. The boat launch at West End?Nix that; too many fishermen snooping around. Jules finally decided upon a small playground he knew of behind a boarded-up refreshments stand along a closed-off section of Lakeshore Drive. It was a more open area than he would’ve preferred, but it should be deserted enough for his purposes.

Jules exited the interstate and headed north toward Lake Pontchartrain. As he turned onto Robert E. Lee Boulevard, he pressed the buttons to close the rear windows. His passenger angrily tapped the plastic shield, but this time Jules kept the window tightly shut.

“Hey! What’d you shut the windows for? You want me to broil back here?”

Jules’s only answer was to press a small jury-rigged stud near the Caddy’s left wheel well with the toe of his shoe. His sharper-than-human hearing detected the low hiss of gas being released into the rear compartment. Stomping the accelerator to race through a yellow light, Jules glanced in his rearview mirror to see how his fare was reacting.

“Jesus! Somethingstinks back here!” The rapping on the plastic divider escalated to a frenzied pounding. “What the fuck’s going on? I’ll report you to the city-aha, aha,a-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

The crazed laughter was music to Jules’s ears. So the laughing gas hadn’t been too old after all. Seconds later his passenger slumped unconscious on the backseat, an angelic grin on his previously furious face. Jules depressed the stud on the floor a second time, shutting off the flow. Then he opened the rear windows wide, letting the accumulated gas escape into the humid night. He’d done a very thorough job plugging the open spaces around the shield’s edges, but there was no sense in taking chances. There’d be no fucking up tonight, not like the last time.

Jules turned right and headed through an upscale neighborhood adjacent to Lake Pontchartrain and Lakefront Park. He slowed down to five miles per hour below the speed limit, eager not to attract attention. The portion of Lakeshore Drive at the end of Canal Boulevard was a jumble of broken concrete and dried mud, the result of a project meant to repair the roadway from the ravages of erosion but that seemed to only be making matters worse. Jules cut his headlights, relying on the illumination of a half-melted moon and its shimmering reflections off the lake to slowly maneuver around parked backhoes and haphazardly placed barricades.

The short trip along Lakeshore Drive did the Caddy’s suspension no good. Jules figured at least one strut had given up the ghost by the time he reached his destination. At least his passenger wasn’t awake to complain. He pulled onto the grass and parked between a shuttered refreshment stand and the kiddie play lot behind it, out of sight of the road. His thick fingers fumbled with the key as he shut the ignition. Tonight’s meal couldn’t come too soon. Jules climbed out of the car. The balmy breeze that caressed the fleshy gap between his shirt and distended trousers did little to calm his nerves. He stared at the Lake Pontchartrain wavelets that stretched to the black horizon. Lately he’d been having all his meals near water. Did that mean anything?

The turmoil at the base of his stomach nearly knocked him off his feet, so he wasted no more time in opening the rear door and crawling inside. Too late, he realized that he’d forgotten to move the front seat forward. His shoulders and arms had fit inside the rear compartment without a problem, but now his belly was wedged tightly between the rear seat back and the plastic shield. Only carnivorous desperation gave him the strength to wiggle forward the last few inches to his sleeping fare’s waiting neck. He swore fiercely to himself that this was the last humiliating jam he’d let himself get stuck in. Very soon, he’d parade his body beautiful in front of an appreciative Maureen. Tonight was the first night of the rest of his unlife.

He bit deep, and his mouth quickly filled with warm gore. But the blood didn’t taste right, somehow. It wasn’t just that it was thin and watery, reminding him of tomato soup from a cheap buffet. The flavor was definitely off, like overchlorinated tap water. Drinking it made his nose tickle. His rear molars felt like they were sprouting flowers. Jules paused in wonder as he sensed soft petals wriggling against his tongue. Delicate roots pushed their way through the roof of his mouth and into his sinuses, like spiders made of water vapor. Strange laughter filled his ears, manic and loopy and off-kilter. Jules didn’t like the sound of it. Whoever was laughing seemed to be right in the car with him.I don’t get it, he wondered.What the hell is so damn funny…

Jules awoke to the sound of voices.

“You think it’s a couple of faggots, maybe?”

“I dunno. Hard to tell. I can’t see if the one on the bottom’s a man or a woman. Can you?”

“Jesus Christ! Look at that ass! You ever see anything so fat in all your life?”

Jules forced his eyes open. Flashlight beams probed the Caddy’s interior. He removed his mouth from his passenger’s neck. The man was still breathing, which was a minor miracle, considering the dead weight that had been resting on his chest. Jules tried to back out of the car. He was stuck tight.

Something blunt and hard prodded his posterior. “Okay, buddy, fun time’s over. Come on out of there.”

The poke of the nightstick really woke Jules up.Shit! It was either cops or Levee Board police. In any case, they’d be sure to ask him why he was drinking a drugged tourist’s blood in a playground in the middle of a no-trespassing zone. He had to get away. But he was trapped! Like a rat!

This last thought gave Jules an idea. He had to make himself smaller. He hadn’t transformed himself in a very, very long time. But desperate times called for desperate measures. Which form would be best? His wolf-shape would scare the bejesus out of the dicks, but there was an equally good possibility that his canine form would find itself no less wedged in than he was now.