Andrew Fox - Fat White Vampire Blues

Doodlebug read the name of the club. He looked up at his partner, and his fire-engine-red lips puckered into a half frown. “Not so fast, Mr. Hooded Terror. Your performance tonight wasn’t exactly what I’d call confidence-inspiring. I think we have a little work to do before we attempt to beard this lion in his lair.”

Jules thought about arguing. Then he looked down at his blood-splattered clothes, scowled, and clamped his jaw tightly shut.

Doodlebug scooted him toward the front door. “Earlier tonight you sent me back to high school. I had such afabulous time. Well, my friend, now it’syour turn to go back to school. Vampire University, in fact. And I just happen to be dean.”

“Are you ready for a major surprise?”

Jules rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Right now, the only thing that’s surprisin‘ me is that we’re sittin’ on our asses in your cottage instead of stakin‘ out the Hit ’N‘ Run Club. What’s all this bullshit about you teachin’ me to be a better vampire? Kid, I was an A-One vampire when yourmama was in diapers, much lessyou.”

Doodlebug smiled. “The only ignorant man is he who refuses to learn, grasshopper. Now change into a wolf. I have something very important to show you.”

Jules grumbled. Then he reminded himself that his embarrassing failure of nerve at Elisha Raddeaux’s had nearly gotten Doodlebug’s arms wrenched from their sockets. Maybe he owed his friend a little indulgence. He started unbuttoning his jacket, then stopped. “Hey, this isn’t some kinda trick you’re pullin‘ to get me naked, is it?”

Doodlebug snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself. I dress like a woman, but that doesn’t mean you’re my type.”

Reassured, Jules stripped off his safari suit, shoes, and underwear. He concentrated on the full moon, Lon Chaney Jr., and lots and lots of hair. At least his transformations were coming more easily now. They still made his bones and joints ache, but that was nothing new; five decades of ever-increasing obesity had left him achingly familiar with aching bones and joints.

The universe shifted around him. The visual world turned black and white, like the picture on an old Philco TV, whereas the sensitivity of his ears and nose jumped a hundredfold. His long gray nose twitched; Doodlebug was wearing a pungently vile perfume, a witches’ brew of citrus extracts and boar musk. Jules sneezed violently, three times in quick succession.

“Jules? Can you understand what I’m saying? If you can understand me, scratch the floor twice with your right paw.”

He really wished Doodlebug would stop screaming. But he complied, thumping the polished floor twice with the thick black pads of his right front paw.

“Good. Now come with me into the living room. It’s a tight squeeze with your coffin in there, but we’ll manage.”

His furry gut dragged as he followed his friend from the kitchen. Doodlebug opened the lid of the piano case that served as Jules’s coffin.

“Take a peek inside. You should find this very interesting.”

Whatever was inside smelled weirdly familiar. He trotted up to the big wooden box, placed his front paws on the edge, and peered in. The thing that had invaded his coffin certainly didn’tlook familiar. It was like a huge, pulsating slug, but a slug that couldn’t hold a steady shape for more than a second or two. It filled most of the floor of the box; Jules guessed it was between six inches and a foot deep. He couldn’t tell what color it was, of course, but the shadings and the blotchy patterns on its surface shifted as frequently as its shape did.

Why the hell did the thing smell so damnfamiliar?… With a start of recognition, Jules realized what the peculiar odor reminded him of. The big, amorphous slug smelled exactly likehe did, himself, after a few lazy nights of skipping showers, drinking coffee, and lying around in his undershirt reading old comic books.

“Change back to your normal shape now. But keep your eyes on that thing in your coffin.”

Jules did as Doodlebug requested. As his hind legs unbent and his arms lengthened and his nose shortened, he watched the grayish blob. While he was changing, it gradually grew smaller, like a tubful of dirty, soapy bathwater disappearing down the drain. But the piano box didn’thave a drain. By the time he was on hands and knees instead of hind paws and forepaws, the slug-thingie was entirely gone. He reached in and touched the soil. The dirt was dry and crumbly, just as it had been the last time he’d slept. Whatever the thing had been, it had left no trace of itself.

“Holy mackerel,” Jules muttered. “What the hellwas that? And where the hell did it go?”

Doodlebug crouched down beside his friend and placed his arm on Jules’s shoulder. “That was the part of you that you weren’t using at the time. As for where it went, when you needed it again, it vanished from your coffin to rejoin the rest of you.”

Still naked, Jules leaned against the side of the couch and covered his privates by squeezing together his trunklike thighs. What Doodlebug was implying made him dizzy. “Come again?”

“You heard me. It’syou. And I think you suspected it yourself while you were a wolf. I watched your nose twitch very sharply while you were leaning over into the box.”

Jules rubbed his forehead wearily. His life was taking yet another turn toward the bizarre, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. “Yeah, I heard you. I’m just not sure Ibelieve you.” The whole notion made him nauseated, as if he’d just watched himself having open-heart surgery. “How come no vampire I ever met knew about this-this slug-thingie?”

“There’s a very simple reason. How many vampires bother to peek back inside their coffins after they’ve transformed into another shape? Not many. And vampires tend to be solitary. Most large predators tend to keep to themselves, with the notable exceptions of lions and killer whales. So it’s not as if many vampires would have a companion who might notice this unusual phenomenon. My Tibetan teachers, however, have lived in very close quarters with one another for untold centuries. On a wintery night in the very distant past, one among them made the shocking discovery of where all that extra mass goes when vampire-man becomes vampire-other.”

Jules was more perplexed than ever. “‘Extra mass’? Whoa! Don’t forget, you’re talkin‘ to a guy with a ninth-grade education here. And half ofthat was in catechism. Keep it simple, will ya?”

Doodlebug smiled gently and helped Jules to his feet. “Come back into the kitchen and I’ll make a pot of coffee.”

Jules pulled his pants and shirt back on, then sat at the kitchen table. Soon the air was alive with the blessed odor of chicory.

“Have you ever read anything about Einstein’s theories regarding mass and energy?” Doodlebug asked.

Jules scowled. “Does the pope bless abortions in a whorehouse?”

“Ohh-kay. I’ll do my best to keep this, uh, basic, then.” He poured two mugs of coffee and joined his friend at the table. “One of Professor Einstein’s most famous theories regarding how the universe works is called the Conservation of Mass. All of the ‘stuff’ in the universe can be classified as either matter-like you or me-or energy, like sunlight. All things that are made of matter have mass.”

“You mean weight, right?”

“Well, that’s a limited way of looking at it. But if it’s easier for you to think about it that way, yes, mass can be thought of as weight. Getting back to our friend Einstein, the good professor said that mass can neither be created nor destroyed. Under certain very unusual circumstances, such as a nuclear chain reaction, mass can be converted to energy, but mass can never simply disappear. Now, when you just changed to a wolf, not only your shape changed. Your mass, or weight, changed, too. You went from a man of approximately four hundred and fifty pounds to a wolf of, oh, I’d guesstimate about two hundred. That extra two hundred and fifty pounds or so didn’t disappear. And it wasn’t converted into energy, either. Or else the entire state of Louisiana and a good part of Mississippi would be a smoldering crater now. The mass had togo somewhere.”