Andrew Fox - Fat White Vampire Blues

Jules took a long, deep gulp of coffee. “So you’re sayin‘ it went into my coffin.”

“Yes. You saw it and smelled it yourself. It didn’tlook anything like you because it was undifferentiated proto-matter, temporarily separated from the conscious and subconscious organizing power of your brain. But I could tell that your supersensitive wolf nose found the proto-matter’s odor intimately familiar.”

Jules winced. “Jeezus… I reallystink, then.” He took another swallow and was lost in thought for a minute. “So you’re tellin‘ me thisalways happens, every time I change into somethin’ else? My extra mass, or whatever, goes back to my coffin, like a batter runnin‘ to home base?”

“Yes. Actually, to be more exact, your extra mass goes back to the last place you slept. If you’d slept last night in the trunk of your Lincoln, that’s where we would’ve found that slug-thingie. This behavior is most likely what originated the custom of vampires putting soil on the floors of their coffins. Maybe some prehistoric vampire discovered that the isolated proto-matter needs soil’s nourishment to remain viable.”

Jules waved his hands in front of his face as if he were swatting pesky mosquitoes. “Whoa! Just when I think I’m startin‘ to follow what you’re sayin’, you zoom up into the clouds again. Look, this is real interesting and all; it’s like watchin‘ an episode ofThe Outer Limits and discoverin’ that I’m the special guest star. But why the heck does this matter right now? You said you was gonna teach me to be a better vampire, somethin‘ that could help me fight Malice X better.”

Doodlebug smiled again, but his eyes betrayed glimmers of irritation. “Jules, you’re not letting me finish. There’s more. Alot more. You’re capable of feats you’ve never even imagined. Let me show you an example.”

Doodlebug’s face hardened with concentration. His slender form began wavering, and a thick mist escaped from his blouse and skirt. A moment later he stood in front of Jules as a little girl-complete with pigtails-who looked about eight years old. With his clothes all billowy, Doodlebug might have been a cross-dressing tyke who’d snuck into his mother’s closet and tried on her fancy party outfit.

“Oh, I see how this could bereal useful in a dustup with Malice X,” Jules said.

Doodlebug didn’t smile. “Just go to the bedroom and look inside my coffin.”

Jules got up from the table, edged around the piano case in the living room, and walked to the four-poster bed in the next room back. He opened the lid of Doodlebug’s coffin. Inside was another pulsating slug-thingie. Only this slug-thingie was much smaller than his own had been; if his proto-matter had weighed 250 pounds, this blob had to be about a tenth that size, maybe 25, 35 pounds.

Suddenly the proto-matter began to vanish from the coffin, disappearing down a nonexistent drain just as the other one had. When it was entirely gone, Doodlebug called to Jules in a high, childlike voice, “All right, now come back into the kitchen.”

The mini version of Doodlebug was sitting on one of the kitchen chairs with a large black cat purring contentedly on his lap. Two other cats, a big orange tabby and a white Siamese, rubbed against the loose folds of hosiery bunched around his skinny legs.

The tabby trotted over to Jules and began rubbing aggressively against his leg. The big vampire’s nose twitched. His sneeze made the windows rattle.

“Ohh maannn… get these damn catsoutta here! I got pet allergies like you wouldn’t believe.” He rubbed his nose and tweaked it from side to side. “Where the hell’d they come from, anyway? They the owner’s?”

Doodlebug called to the tabby with a nod of his head. The big orange cat left Jules’s leg and hopped up on Doodlebug’s lap. “No. They’re mine. More precisely, they’reme.”

“Huh?”

“You watched the proto-matter in my coffin disappear, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, sure, but… since when could a vampire change into acat? Much lessthree cats?”

“Didn’t you tell me that Malice X changed into a black panther?”

“Well, yeah. But I figured that was just ‘cause he was a black guy. I figured, y’know, maybe black vampires follow different rules or somethin’ from us white vampires. Like I can change to a couple of animals from Europe, where my people come from, so I guess he could change to a couple of animals from Africa.”

Doodlebug’s hands kept the two cats on his lap satiated with pleasure. The third cat, the Siamese, sniffed and scratched at the cottage’s back door, perhaps sensing the pondful of fat goldfish waiting outside. “That’s not a bad supposition, Jules. Actually, there’s a germ of truth in what you said, although not in the way you’d think. Let me ask you this: After you became a vampire, how did you first learn that you could transform into a bat, a wolf, or mist?”

Jules pulled one of the kitchen chairs as far away from the three cats as he could and sat down. “I dunno. I guess Mo taught me.” He rubbed the stubble on his chin and thought some more. “Come to think of it, I guess I already knew I’d be able to do those things, even before Mo told me anything at all.”

“How so?”

“Oh, y’know, readin‘ vampire stories inArgosy as a kid. And there were even some movies I saw. Silent movies at the big theaters on Canal Street.”

“So when you first became a vampire, you already knew what vampires could do.”

“Sure.”

“And how do you suppose Maureen learned about it before she gave you lessons?”

“Heck, same way I did, I guess. Some older vampire taught her. And she probably already knew about vampires even before that, from readin‘ novels or penny dreadfuls. How about you? How’d you learn? When I first approached you outside that candy store, you knew exactly what I was offerin’.”

Doodlebug smiled. “Oh, I used toswim in vampire lore.Weird Tales, comic books, movies-Dracula’s Daughter,Son of Dracula,Mark of the Vampire — I saw them all. By the time I met you, I knew perfectly well what to expect. And that’s my point.”

Jules looked mystified. “I lost ya somewhere.”

“When it came to vampires, I knew what to expect: Vampires sleep in coffins. They need to drink blood every couple of nights or so. They can change into three other forms-bat, wolf, and mist. So when I became one myself, I only tried doing those things I already believed vampires were capable of. I was limited by what Ithought I knew.”

“Are you sayin‘ vampires can change intoanything?”

“Notanything, no. But my Tibetan teachers showed me that the range of possible transformations is far, far more varied than the three options that became part of the petrified forest of European legends. One could spend a hundred lifetimes attempting to master all the possible permutations. Some of my teachers have devoted centuries to that very quest.”

“Hold on a minute. Malice X never went to Tibet to study with them monks. How comehe could change himself to a panther?”

“I can only assume he wasn’t exposed to media portrayals of black vampires that would’ve affected his mind-set when he became one himself. Even if he was familiar with the same movies and stories that you and I grew up with, they didn’t mold him and limit him in quite the same way. There may be African folk legends he was exposed to that center on men transforming into panthers.”

“Let’s see if I got this down. What you’re basically sayin‘ is, what we can do as vampires is all a mind-over-matter kinda thing, right? Like them Indian guys who can walk across fire barefoot, just ’cause theythink it ain’t gonna hurt them none.”

“Exactly.”

“So the next time I run into Malice X, I can change myself to King Kong and stomp the creep into a smear on the sidewalk?”