Andrew Fox - Fat White Vampire Blues

Malice X laughed. “Hey, I got nodoubt you left her lookin‘ like a sap. You walk around lookin’ like a sapall the time.” He laughed again, and then his smile faded. “But you ain’t gonna be walkin‘ outtahere, sappy lookin’ or not.”

Jules had no more patience for banter. It was time to call his rival out. “You gonna back those words up? Or are you just gonna sit there and threaten me to death?”

Malice X pushed his lady companions aside and rose from the swing. His silver Lycra athletic pants glistened like polished chrome, and his ribbed undershirt did little to conceal his chiseled abdomen and oiled, bulging pectorals.

“Preston, fetch us the stakes,” he said.

Cowboy Hat picked up what looked like an antique rifle case and laid it at Malice X’s feet. The lieutenant unlatched the case and opened it. Inside were two identical shafts of maple wood, about four feet long, each with both ends sharpened to a deadly point.

“This is an idea I copped from a bossTomb of Dracula comic,” Malice X said proudly. “In this one issue, see, ol‘ Drac was challenged by this other bloodsuckah as to who should be king of all the vampires. So Drac proposed a ’Duel by Stake‘-two vampires, two stakes, and only one vampire walks away. Wicked, huh?”

Jules eyed the twin stakes warily. The introduction of such weapons didn’t come as a complete surprise to him. Before the days of gentlemen’s agreements and arbitration in the vampire world, duels like this had been distressingly common. Anyway, if he played his cards right, he could twist the introduction of stakes to his own advantage. “Okay. I’ll accept your terms. On one condition,” he added.

Malice X raised an eyebrow. “Who said anything ‘bout any ’conditions‘?”

“Idid,” Jules said. “I’m on your turf, ain’t I? Surrounded by your friends and flunkies? If you’re so cocksure you’re better than me, and you’ve got home-field advantage on top of that, what’s the harm in throwin‘ me one little bone?”

“That tub-a-lard ain’t got no right to demandnothin‘!” Malice X’s sister shrieked, her face contorted with contempt. But many other onlookers murmured that they wanted to hear Jules’s demand. The murmurs were subdued and nearly anonymous, but they were insistent.

Jules watched Malice X’s face carefully. Clearly, the black vampire agreed wholeheartedly with his sister’s admonition; but just as clearly, he couldn’t risk losing even a fraction of the respect granted him by his underlings. Jules enjoyed seeing flickers of indecision play across his rival’s mouth. “All right… name it, fat man. One condition.”

“I win this duel, I get your coffin. You burned up mine when you torched my house. I need a new one.”

“That’sit?” Malice X’s momentary indecision morphed into incredulity. “That’syour one condition? I thought maybe you’d want me to fight with both hands tied behind my back or somethin‘-”

“That’s my condition. And I want it down herenow. Where I can see it. Before we start our duel.”

“Why the hell d’you want that for?”

“So you can’t welsh on me after I win.”

Malice X started to protest, but his objections melted into rich laughter. “Fuck yeah, man. Sure! I gave you a chance to make this dustup halfway fair, and if that’s what you want, that’s what you get, man. It’s your fuckin‘ funeral, and you got a right to screw it up any way you wanna.” He turned to his chief lieutenant. “Preston, take a coupla dudes and fetch my coffin from the master bedroom. Make it snappy, huh? I wanna get in a coupla rounds of blackjack upstairs before the sun rises.”

Cowboy Hat grunted his assent, then nodded to a pair of toughs, and the three of them disappeared into the mansion. Malice X turned back toward Jules. “So what doI get whenI win? And don’t be tryin‘ to pawn off that lame-ass car of yours on me.”

Jules thought about this for a minute. “If you win, you get to scatter my ashes in the parking lot of the Esplanade Mall, so my sufferin‘ soul is stuck in the goddamn suburbs forever.”

Malice X laughed sharply. “Shit, man, fuck the parkin‘ lot. You goin’ in the mall’surinals.”

“Whatever,” Jules muttered. And he managed a tight little grin of his own as he watched Cowboy Hat and the others maneuver Malice X’s polished teak coffin through the double doors into the courtyard.

“Okay, it’s here,” Malice X said. “Satisfied?”

“Yeah,” Jules said. He took off his safari jacket, then knelt down to untie his boots and pull them and his socks off. Next to come off were his shirt and undershirt. He had unbuckled his belt and was unzipping his trousers when Malice X interrupted.

“What th‘ hell you tryin’ to do now-nullify my knockout by nauseatin‘ me with your nudity?”

“I’m strippin‘ down for action,” Jules said, sitting on a stone bench while he peeled off his trousers and began the arduous task of extricating his underpants from between his massive thighs. “You got a problem with that?”

“No problem. Just a silly li’l question: How the hell do you plan on holdin‘ a four-foot stake when you got wolf’s paws or bat’s claws?”

“You letme worry about that,” Jules said, smiling inwardly. He scooped up his pile of clothing and walked boldly across the open square to where Malice X stood. He made no attempt at all to cover his privates (mostly hidden by his stomach, anyway) or to hide his tremendous, quivering white ass from the onlooking crowd. For the first time he could remember, he wasn’t ashamed, either of his naked body or having strangers see it. His overwhelming mass was an asset, not a handicap-his secret ace in the hole, secret even though it was in plain sight of everyone. He’d show them all, before the night was done. He’d show them what a fat vampire could do.

He dumped his clothes next to the coffin. “So they’ll be handy when it’s time to cart this thing away,” he said. He glanced at the two long stakes in the leather case near Malice X’s feet. “How about lettin‘ me have one of them pig stickers now?”

“Give him one, Preston,” Malice X said. Cowboy Hat grunted wearily, selected one of the stakes, and held it out to Jules.

“Gimme the other one,” Jules said.

The lieutenant looked quickly to Malice X, who shrugged irritably and said, “Let ‘im have it.” Cowboy Hat handed his boss the first stake, then gave Jules the second one.

Jules backed away to the far edge of the open square of grass. He broke the stake twice over his knee, snapping it into three stubby weapons. Before his rival could do more than grunt with surprise, Jules whispered two words to himself.

“Train set,”he said.

It was the most difficult transformation he’d ever attempted. He concentrated on thoughts of all the little tough guys he’d admired in the movies-Alan Ladd, Jimmy Cagney, Edward G. Robinson. Little tough guys who didn’t put up with shit from anybody; fighters worth twice their weight in a scrap. He was going to do something even Doodlebug couldn’t do-he was going to carve three middleweight vampires from one heavyweight.

He felt his bones melting. He sensed the familiar pull of his far-off coffin on a portion of his great mass, but he resisted, concentrating on keeping it all present, splitting himself like an amoeba. His nerve endings were afire, but he refused to settle for the familiar, the easy. Images flashed through his splintering mind-Jake La Motta; Sugar Ray Robinson; the mayor of Munchkinland in his little purple suit…

The fleshy mist began to clear and coalesce. For a moment Jules felt like he was on the wildest caffeine jag of his life. But then the static in his brain(brains?) died down to a tolerable buzz. He’d done it. Again he experienced the vertigo of looking at himself watching himself stare at himself. Where there had been one 450-pound Jules, there now stood three 150-pound Juleses.