Andrew Fox - Fat White Vampire Blues

Unfortunately, he’d concentrated too much on the Munchkins and not enough on Jake La Motta.

Three identically obese nude dwarfs stared at each other and murmured in unison: “Oh, shit.”

Malice X’s jaw nearly bounced off the turf. “This-thisis your big parlor trick?Midgets? ”

There was no time to try again. Even if there had been, the triplicate vampire couldn’t muster a fraction of the necessary energy. He(they) were stuck. The three Juleses had no choice but to make the best of it. They bent their barrel-like bodies and snatched up the pieces of stake with their stubby little hands.

Malice X clapped his hands together and raised his face to the artificial heavens above. “Ladies and gentlemen, this proves what our preachers been sayin‘ for years-God is a black man. Wait, lemme rephrase that. Since the Good Lord don’t answer vampires’ prayers, I guess the Devil be a black man, too!”

Jules sensed his three consciousnesses splitting away from each other, like pieces of stuck-together saltwater taffy being pulled apart. He was becoming three separate people-Jules 1, Jules 2, and Jules 3-none of whom exerted direct control over the other two.

Three consciousnesses: Jules 1 prayed that they’d all remember the plan. Jules 2 tried contacting the other two telepathically but only got a shooting pain in his sinuses. Jules 3 didn’t place his trust in either prayer or telepathy. “Snap out of it, guys!” he shouted. “Let’s surround him!”

Malice X grinned and hummed a few bars of Randy Newman’s “Short People.” Then, without bothering to slip out of his clothing, he transformed smoothly and slickly into a panther. The big, muscular cat immediately lunged at Jules 2, knocking the rotund dwarf flat on his back. The panther’s three-inch-long incisors tore at its prey’s fat throat.

“Aaaahhhhhhh!”all three Juleses screamed.

The pain traveled from one to the other like a power surge through a live wire. Jules 1 nearly dropped his stake to clutch his own throat, but he stifled the reflex and ran toward the enemy with all the speed his stumpy legs could muster.I might be a dwarf, he told himself,but I’m a vampiredwarf!He pictured his legs as stubby but powerful springs, and he leapt onto the crouching panther’s back. Before the creature could shake him off, Jules 1 plunged his stake into the cat’s side.

The panther shrieked with pain and rage, immediately releasing its choke grip from around Jules 2’s throat. Jules 3, unengaged in the struggle, found himself caught between equally powerful and desperate urges.The plan-he’s distracted-now’s the time to hit his coffin- But one of his other selves lay bleeding on the grass, while the other was menaced by a snapping set of jaws reaching back to bite him in half.Fuck the plan! Improvise! Jules 3 grasped his stake tightly in both fists and ran toward the melee, howling a wordless battle cry and aiming the point at the panther’s heart.

Unfortunately, Jules had never studied veterinary science or even basic biology. He buried his stake in the animal’s liver. Instead of crumbling to dust, the panther erupted with an earsplitting bellow. It bucked like a snakebit bronco, hurling Jules 1 from its back and knocking Jules 3 violently to the ground. Jules 1 tumbled twenty feet through the air before striking his head on a planter and landing in a heap. He didn’t move or make a sound.

The panther tried dislodging the two stakes with its teeth. It managed to pull out the weapon hanging from its side, but it was unable to reach the one perforating its liver. It shrieked and spat with frustration. Its form wavered, then melted as it transformed back into Malice X.

The black vampire grasped the stubbornly lodged stake with both hands, took a deep breath, and yanked it from his body.“Fuck!” He sucked air through his clenched teeth. Tears ran freely from his red-veined eyes, and specks of blood flew from his mouth as he exhaled again. “Fuck-fuck-FUUUCK! That hurt like amuthah, you little cocksuckers!”

Jules 2, still gushing blood from fang wounds in his neck, tried desperately to rally his strength. He began weakly crawling away. He didn’t get far. Malice X kicked his retreating foe onto his back, then pinned him by planting his right foot deep in the dwarf’s soft stomach. He reached for his long stake, temporarily discarded when he’d transformed into the panther.

Jules 3 shook off the cobwebs just in time to see Malice X raise his weapon above the prone, helpless form of Jules 2. But instead of immediately plunging it into the trapped dwarf’s heart, the black vampire grinned sadistically and started to sing.

“Short people got / No reason-”

He brought the stake down hard, burying it in Jules 2’s plump left shoulder. The already wounded dwarf screamed with fresh agony. Jules 3 screamed with him, envying Jules 1 his unconsciousness. Malice X yanked the stake out and raised it above his head again.

“Short people got / No reason-”

This time he drove the weapon through Jules 2’s rib cage. The vampire’s inhumanly powerful thrust completely impaled the dwarf and embedded the sharp point deep in the ground. Jules 3 sensed his other self slipping into shock. Fighting a wave of encroaching darkness, he charged the black vampire on wobbly legs. But his feeble counterattack was stopped dead by a contemptuous backhanded blow, which both broke his nose and sent him flying into a shrubbery.

Dazed, bleeding, sprawled upside down in an azalea bush, Jules 3 could only watch as Malice X finished his deadly song.

“Short people got / No reason-to LI–IIIVE!”

This time was the deathblow. The thrust through the heart. Jules 3 had no idea what would happen-would all three of them crumple to dust simultaneously? No time for any whispered good-byes-no time for anything as he felt maple wood savage his heart, as he smelled blood and tasted salty iron and choked on his own effluvia as he felt his body coming apart…

But he didn’t come apart. He didn’t dissolve or crumple or blow away. Jules 3 pawed himself to make sure he was still all there. All his important parts seemed intact, still hanging upside down in the azalea bush. His other self wasn’t so fortunate, though. On the patch of grass where Jules 2 had struggled so valiantly just seconds before, there was now a faintly pulsating pool of gray proto-matter, the two-edged stake projecting from its center.

“What the hell isthis now?” Malice X grimaced disgustedly as he wiped proto-matter residue off his bare foot onto the grass.

Jules 3 didn’t have time to puzzle through the vampiric metaphysics behind what was happening. Their only chance now was to somehow force Malice X to transform again, to make him unwittingly send part of his mass to his coffin. He rolled out of the azalea bush and ran to Jules 1’s side. The other dwarf was still stone-cold unconscious.

Jules 3 grabbed his duplicate’s shoulders. “Wake up, kid! Wake up! It’s the bottom of the ninth and we’re five runs behind-”

Out of the corner of his eye, Jules 3 saw Malice X tentatively jiggle the long stake still protruding from the pool of proto-matter. “Guess maybe I best leave that in there for now,” the black vampire muttered. “No prob-Jell-O Puddin‘ Man here done droppedhis stake, and I seriously doubt he’ll be havin’ any need for it…”

Jules 3 whirled around to protect his prone twin. But all he saw was a flash of foot, then a shower of stars as a bomb exploded in his midsection. He was vaguely aware of being airborne again before he landed bone-jarringly at the edge of the onlooking crowd. Seconds later, he sensed the agonizing decomposition of another third of himself.

“And then there was one,” Malice X said, brushing his hands together briskly. “I really gottathank you, Jules. Who woulda thought I’d get the chance to kill you three times? Shit, I wish you coulda split intoten little dudes.”