Ellen Datlow - Teeth - Vampire Tales

She knew that human boys were like that as well, sudden in their decisions, uncaring about softening the blow. But they grew up, became men. Learned how to care, be thoughtful. She’d watched it in Ken; seen him learn to love his wife, Sonia, and his children. All of them cared about one another and many other things.

She’d first met Ken fifty years earlier. She was out hunting with a group (she’d been a vampire twenty years, and the group constantly changed but essentially stayed the same), and they’d targeted a young, juicy man, sitting alone in a bar. Stools on either side of him empty, but the rest of the room full.

“You go,” one of the gang had insisted to Claudia. “You haven’t pulled one for a while.” Claudia hated this, the seduction of a victim. She hated the way they all fed off the same veins, the same blood. But she knew she had to join in or they might tear her apart.

She’d sat down by the lonely man. He’d looked around, as if surprised. “Is it okay if I sit here?” she’d asked.

He’d nodded. Speechless, she thought, at the idea that someone was talking to him. She felt terrible pity for him, glad his life was almost over.

She ordered a Coca-Cola; she didn’t want the barman asking for ID. Even in the ’60s they didn’t like letting minors get drunk.

“Seems quiet tonight,” she said. She was really bad at this. “You meeting anyone?” She had to find out if anyone would miss him for a while.

“No. No. Just came out because the apartment gets too quiet sometimes. So what’s your name? I’m Ken.”

“Claudia.” She didn’t want to know his name. “So you live alone?”

He didn’t answer.

“What do you do, then?”

“Work in the coroner’s office.”

“With dead bodies?”

“Yes, with dead bodies.” He said it angrily, as if ready for what would come next. It must have happened many times. People walking away in disgust.

“Cool,” she said. “Do you get to touch them?”

Ken took a sip of his beer. Didn’t speak.

“Do you touch the dead bodies?” Claudia asked again. It seemed important.

“Yeah, I touch them. I mostly do paperwork, though. Lists and things.”

“Oh.”

“But I do get to touch them. Have you ever touched one?” She could see him getting excited, thinking he might have found the right girl.

“I have.” Then something he said sparked. “What sort of lists do you mean?”

“I’m not supposed to talk about it. People aren’t supposed to know.”

She leaned closer. Across the room, the vampires were getting impatient, bored with her. Good. Let them find their own victim. “What sort of lists?”

“We keep a list of the terminally ill. Just so we can be forewarned. So the coroner can plan ahead. But people think it sounds bad, so we don’t really talk about it.”

She felt something like excitement growing.

“People on the list are going to die, no doubt? They are definitely going to die?”

“There’s little doubt, according to their doctors.”

She liked him for not saying, “We’re all going to die.”

“Can we go see some dead bodies?” she said. “I’d like that.”

She took his hand and led him past the vampire table on the way, and she shook her head at them, bent over to her boyfriend of the time (what was his name? She could barely remember his face), and whispered, “Leave this guy. Lives with his mother. Too much trouble.”

“Where are you going then?” her boyfriend asked. She knew he didn’t care.

“I’ll be back. Eat without me.”

The group of them physically turned their backs on her, but she didn’t care. She was used to that.

That was how she got the first list of the terminally ill. It was around the time that Adolf Eichmann was hanged for war crimes, and death was a focus in the minds of many. War was coming again, and yet each death was worth grieving, each life was worth remembering.

The first person from the list she killed was a woman in her forties. Claudia had never seen anyone in so much pain, with so much suffering around her. Daily she begged to die. Daily.

As Claudia took her, she said, “Thank you.”

There was no loss of memory as Claudia drank. Her parents remained clear.

Ken brought her updated versions of the list when she asked for them, never questioning what she wanted them for. Just her attention was enough. Their friendship grew even when he realized there was something up with her. He accepted it completely. They saw each other through life’s events, though more so for Ken than for her. She helped him to find Sonia, and to keep her. She had never met Sonia. It was best that way. But without Claudia, Ken would never have had the confidence to make a family life. He saw her through dozens of boyfriends, mostly vampires, and disapproved of them all.

At first when she and Ken were seen together, people mistook them for brother and sister. Then father and daughter. These days it was more like grandfather and granddaughter.

He had moved beyond the morgue to other jobs, but she had learned much in her eighty years and could hack into the computers for her lists whenever she needed to.

With the thought of Joel a dull ache and Ken very much on her mind, Claudia walked down to the seawall, enjoying the wind on her face and the smell of the salt. Joel said she didn’t really feel anything except for hunger, the sensation only a memory of what was. “You have a very good memory,” he said as an insult.

The seawall was high and the drop on the other side long. Teenagers would tightrope the wall, and even though it was as thick as a footpath, they teetered nervously.

Claudia walked slowly in the early-evening light. She liked this time, when there was enough natural light to see by. She liked the night falling, darkness growing. Liked the way it made her focus.

She sat on the wall, her feet dangling over. Pulling out her notebook, she checked her timetable. Joel didn’t know about this; none of them did. They already thought she was boring. Imagine what they’d think if they knew she had a list of future food sources, with their usual movements, phone numbers, all of it. She didn’t need notes to find her meal tonight, though. She knew where he’d be. Her notes were a simple comfort, this time, giving her a sense of control.

Darkness came down, and it seemed half the streetlights didn’t work. Sea spray meant the air was misty.

Up ahead, she saw someone on the wall, arms spread. There was no audience, so not a teenager showing bravado. She walked closer, saw it was Ken, his face wet.

He did not hear her approach. Tears. He was crying, passionately, as if he were emptying himself out.

“Ken?” she said. She’d been tracking him without his knowledge for six weeks now, knew his movements. After all these years of friendship, this was an odd intimacy. Watching this old man when he thought he was alone revealed nothing she didn’t know, though. He was a good, kind man who picked his nose.

Every morning he would leave the house and go to sit by the seawall, tempting himself until evening drew him home.

Looking at him, she thought, He’s almost the same age as I am. He remembers what I remember. The music, the movies. But he got old and I didn’t. Moments like that made her glad to be a vampire. She was glad to be living young in the twenty-first century, to have enjoyed the changes in the world as a young person.

“Ken,” she said again.

He turned to her voice. “Do you think I’d die if I jumped or just hurt myself?”

She climbed onto the wall, holding on tight to the edge. Looked over. “You’d hurt yourself. I guess you’d drown if you kept your face down.”

He sat slumped beside her. He had an odd smell, something not quite right.