Jean Pamfiloff - Vampires Need Not...Apply

“I’m alive, baby. And if you come back to bed, I’ll show you how much,” Betsy—or was she Brenda?—whined. He hated whiny women. They were so… whiny.

“Look, Bre— Señorita .” He turned and stared down at the attractive brunette wearing too much mascara and his favorite polo shirt. “I have work to do. If you need to cuddle, my cat Simon is around somewhere.”

Fury flickered in her brown eyes, and she stomped off, mumbling some profanity about Don Juans. “And my name is Belinda!” she screamed from somewhere inside the spacious apartment.

“Mujeres!” He shook his head. Why did women always behave that way? So damned irrational and needy. It wasn’t as if he hid his true colors, either. In fact, he made it a rule to be transparent. “I don’t date anyone but my work, and she and I are happy together. Alone,” he’d say.

Couldn’t get much clearer than that. Yet they always came home with him. They always wanted more. They always left angry.

Well, too damned bad. He knew what mattered: cracking this code, saving his brother from a terrible fate, and if he were lucky…? He would finally meet this woman.

An image of her flashed in his mind. He saw himself in a dimly lit bedroom, the light from a fireplace flickering over the walls as he thrust himself between her thighs and stared at her obscured face.

A loud crackle suddenly came from the microscope. What the…?

He bent his head and looked through the lens. The molecules shifted again, but this time they moved with such fluidity that he could swear it was a liquid, not solid. “Qué diablos?”

The black crystals swirled on the plate and a tiny black hole opened up as if the center had disintegrated completely.

“ Caray. It’s amazing,” he mumbled as an earsplitting snap cracked through the air. The tablet vibrated on the table and jumped as if hooked up to a lowrider suspension system.

“Coño!” He lunged as it reached the edge and fell to the floor with a crash. An explosion threw him across the room, the wall breaking his momentum.

Antonio felt his body slide down the wall, the air sucked from his lungs. The room flickered from bright white to red to darkness. But he wasn’t unconscious. No. Not at all. The pain he felt was not a dream.

And he could not see.

January 3. Time: 6:00 p.m. Rec Room of Valley Hills Elementary, Sedona, Arizona

“Hi, everyone. I’m Ixtab. My friends call me… well, I don’t really have any friends, so it’s just Ixtab, I guess.”

“Hi, Ixtab,” said the middle-aged group of twelve men and women sitting on foldout chairs in a circle.

Ixtab stared through her black veil, down at her feet. “And it’s been twenty-two days since I caused the death of an innocent mortal.”

Applause.

“Thank you.” She took a deep breath. That had been easier than she’d thought. Normally, she wouldn’t stop to join in a wishy-washy human gathering, but she’d happened to be in the neighborhood on a job and suddenly felt the urge to share.

Of course, it was normal for Ixtab to go with the flow; that’s how the Universe directed her toward the humans most in need. Though sharing like this was a definite first, and she enjoyed it in some weird way, even though she’d compelled them all.

Ixtab sat and took a sip from her Styrofoam cup. The coffee was bitter and cold. Good. She didn’t deserve anything warm and comforting. “It hasn’t been easy steering clear of accident-prone men; though, I have been improving. But even with the extra effort, I still can’t avoid them completely. Last month, for example, I went to the fabric store—spring is coming, so I thought I’d make a new dress—pink linen or pale yellow cotton with white daisies.”

The crowd stared with perplexed faces.

Ixtab looked down at her shapeless, flowing black dress through her black lace veil. “Oh. I like to wear summery things underneath.” Why? That was a very long, emotional detour of a story.

The group nodded and murmured a collective “Aha.”

Ixtab sighed and then placed the cup at her flip-flop-clad feet. “Even though I waited just before closing time, and I swear there was no one left in the store besides the clerk, boom!” She clapped her hands together. “I rounded the corner near the pattern section, and the man ran right into me.”

What came next was always the hard part: watching them die after they touched her. Why? Simple. She was poison. Dark, bitter poison—most of the time, anyway.

“Go on,” urged one of women wearing a red sweater and name tag that said Anne. She had a bright, soothing smile. “What happened next?”

Ixtab held back the urge to cry. “Before you could say ‘Singer’ he shoved an entire McCall’s M6466—a really nice off-the-shoulder dress pattern—right down his throat.” She shook her head and sighed. “Such a shame. Such a shame. He was so good-looking, too. The accidental kills always are. Always hot. Always men. Why do you think that is?” she asked the group.

The crowd shook their heads. They didn’t have a clue, either.

“It’s not right. Why do I have to be so… deadly?” Ixtab reached under her veil and whisked away a tear. “Is it too much to ask? To touch a handsome man without killing him? I mean, really. Just once. Just one damned time, I’d like to bump into a nonevil guy and have him smile at me, maybe give me his number. But noooo. Their eyes haze over like a week-old fish, and then they find the nearest deadly object.”

Anne reached for Ixtab’s shoulder to comfort her, but then snapped her hand back. “It’s not your fault, Ixtab. And remember our first rule? Acceptance. We must accept the things we cannot change. And sometimes we can’t change the fate of others. Sometimes, their time is simply up.”

Ixtab shrank on the inside. That’s what Francisco used to tell her. Don’t think about him. Don’t think about him. You promised yourself you wouldn’t do this anymore. Surely two hundred years of suffering for accidentally causing the death one’s soul mate had to be long enough. Wasn’t it?

Ixtab didn’t know, but she desperately wanted to move on. It was time. Maybe that’s why she was here tonight, trying to take a step forward.

Or maybe she was there for another reason: justice.

Ixtab cleared her throat. “The only thing that really keeps me going is that in between the accidents, I really do save lives.” With the right amount of concentration and a little help from the Universe, she had the ability to extract the darkness from a good soul. “Just this afternoon, for example, the Universe led me to a very sad girl—sweet as bag of kettle corn. She’d obviously been feeling down lately—lots of bad energy buildup around her heart—and thought it would be fun to try these pills her boyfriend gave her.” Ixtab opened her hand and showed everyone the pills. “She would’ve died and not gone on to fulfill her destiny of being a pediatric surgeon.”

Murmurs of approval erupted.

“See, Ixtab. There’s always a ray of sunshine to be found in every situation,” said the other woman to her left named Jess.

Ixtab smiled appreciatively at the two young ladies. “Yunno, I’m really glad I found you guys. It’s nice to have someone to talk to for once. And, yes. You’re right. There’s always a silver lining.” Ixtab got up, walked across the circle, and stood before a shabby looking man in his early thirties. His head was too small for his body and his bulging brown eyes matched the stain on his wrinkled T-shirt.

“What the hell are you looking at, freak?” he said.

“Jerry, right?” Ixtab’s heart tingled with giddiness.