By Jade Shames
-1-
It was after a long night. I had stepped in a puddle and my shoes were soggy. Another night with friends at the bar—trying to mingle. Trying not to think about Grace, even though I was wearing a shirt she had bought for me.
I dragged myself down Bedford Avenue fighting to forget every dumb little joke I made. Every time I boasted about when I’d worked for Christian Slater’s dog, or made a farting sound with my lips whenever there was an awkward moment in the conversation.
Full disclosure: I’m the guy a lot of people dislike. The asshole at the bar telling your girlfriend she has viridian flecks in her eyes. I read in a book that you can appear ten times smarter just by using obscure colors. For instance, don’t say, “I love your nail color—it’s orange.” Say “atomic tangerine.” Say “what an interesting shade—like a bourbon brown.” Don’t qualify whether you like it or not. Just say “interesting.” I’m a freelance graphic designer and when I can’t find work, which is often, I mooch off friends or donate plasma or other bodily fluids. I’m not really a “proud guy.”
But there are two things you should know about me:
People may think I’m a douchebag, but I know I’m a douchebag. I have to live with it every day. I have to go to bed and wake up thinking, “What kind of douchebag shit am I gonna say today?” It’s not easy.
The moment I have any hope that my interaction with someone might be more than just social ephemera, I turn into a complete wreck. I’m like the hulk if Bruce Banner were played by Ryan Reynolds and the hulk were played by Woody Allen.
Case in point: tonight. I really liked this girl named Jennifer, and it felt like she could see right through to my inner Woody. She had a really nice ear-to-ear smile and this shiny, hennaed-black hair that curled around her slightly too-large cheeks. She laughed at nearly the exact same jokes I did. It was a relief because Grace hated my sense of humor.
I once joked, admittedly too soon, that the one good thing about the attacks on New York was that the rent was finally manageable. Grace had been a survivor of the attacks and she didn’t speak to me for hours—despite that fact that I was kinda right. I moved to Brooklyn during what the hipsters call The Renaissance. All the money went into rebuilding, and the police department was broke. So the few cops who bothered to come to our neighborhoods didn’t care that we were having parties in partially dilapidated apartment buildings.
That’s where I was—in an unlicensed bar called Geronimo. The ceiling was made of found shards of colored glass—each a different size and shape, and they all fit together to form an angular dome. The heavy streetlamp light filtered through the glass ceiling and dyed everyone in tawny and rose. I sipped an old fashioned and talked to Jennifer.
At one point, she asked me if I'd come outside with her for a smoke. I agreed even though I didn’t smoke. Then, as we stood together outside the bar and watched the first snowfall of the season, I noticed she wasn’t smoking either.
Then we went back inside and I completely blew it by ordering two more shots for everyone—all on me. I was telling some anecdote and I slipped and knocked over a stranger’s beer. I wasn’t even that drunk, but I really looked it. The stranger happened to be a bumpy-faced, green-skinned blood, and the room got tense. My friend James slapped my shoulder and told me I had a few too many. His girlfriend, Aubrey, told me I should take a cab home. I stepped into the bathroom to pee, and when I came out I saw Jennifer talking to some other guy.
Drunk… creep… liar…
Halfway home, I threw up my last drink into someone’s garden.
…shithead… loser.
And just when I couldn’t take any more torment, I reached for the keys and realized that I hadn’t brought them. They were probably still on my dresser.
I felt tears coming. And then there was a voice.
“Something wrong?” she asked. I turned and saw a beautiful woman at the foot of my front steps. She wore a long black coat. Her hair was wild and thick. Her body was almost cartoonishly feminine, but her race was unidentifiable. It was as if she was a blend of all races. The result was a kind of exoticism you would see in a high-fashion magazine from another planet.
At first I didn’t even say words; I just released air from my mouth. But then I said, “I locked myself out.”
She inhaled deeply and I smiled. I was sick of feeling humiliated and for some reason that gave me strength.
“Do you wanna help me break in?” I asked.
It turned out to be easier than I thought. A short boost onto the fire escape and a little jimmying of the window got us inside in minutes. She immediately took off her coat and threw it on a chair.
“Would you like a hot toddy or something?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “You can use some of this.”
She tossed a bag of fresh mint on my kitchen table.
“You were carrying around a bag of mint this whole time?”
“Yeah, it’s why I was out. I wanted to make a mojito, but I realized on the walk home that I hate mojitos. I was thinking of a mint julep—but that’s made with schnapps.”
“I think I have some schnapps."
“That’s OK. A toddy sounds even better.”
She smiled. I put the kettle on.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Mira. What’s yours?”
“Henry.”
The conversation went dead and we were quiet for a moment. Then, Mira blew a raspberry. I laughed lightly as the kettle whistled.
My next moment of clarity was the following morning. I woke with the sun in my eyes and Mira was gone.
I grabbed my head and staggered through my apartment in my underwear with one red eye. Each empty mug on the coffee table and indent in my sofa accessed another memory of the night before. The out-of-control pawing we did. Her nails across my skin. I checked my forearm for evidence and found long, raised, red lines.
There was still a very faint sweat stain from when her back was pressed against my wall.
“Oh damn.”
Her underwear poked out from behind my sofa. I remembered removing them.
“Don’t worry,” she’d told me. I knelt in front of her—frozen in shock. Her cucumber dick bobbed in front of me. She grabbed my hand and told me to trust her. Then she guided my fingers up her thighs and into a place I never thought could co-exist with male genitalia.
Maybe confusion is an integral part of arousal—because I remembered having the best sex of my life.
***
That afternoon, I had lunch with James. He had picked up my debit card from the bar and tossed it over to me with a smile when we sat down in our booth. I was experiencing an intolerable hangover.
“Right across the street is the cafe Michael Fayne worked,” James told me as he pointed out the window. “A friend of a friend used to know him—as a barista, not a blood.”
“Holy shit… I think I had sex with one last night,” I said right as the young waitress approached us. We were all quiet for a moment. Then we ordered coffee. James and I leaned in to make the conversation more private.
“Was she weird looking?” he asked—I could tell he was jealous.
“No, she was beautiful. Incredibly beautiful. She was exotic for sure, but she was still very much a woman.” I felt shame.
“Did she say she was a blood?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then what was it? If she was a blood… how did you know?”
I was caught and I didn’t handle it well. James knew something was wrong.
“Well,” I said, wiping my lips. “I’ve never seen anyone that looked like her.”
“Long teeth? Red eyes?”
“No no no. She was just different… like, you know how bloods come in all kinds of species and some of them have things that humans don’t…” I looked down. He knew I was hiding something. I knew he knew. It was over. “She had both male and female body parts,” I said, looking up to see that the waitress had arrived with our coffees.
For the rest of our meal, it was tense and I didn’t blame him for feeling awkward. But the tension was broken when, right after we asked for the check, an elderly man caused a scene as he refused to be seated next to a guy with long, sharp teeth. I was embarrassed by him. As a human living in New York, you can sometimes forget about this kind of discrimination for periods at a time. But they never forget. I felt a sudden sense of pride for hooking up with a blood and James nodded to me, which seemed to mean, “Hey, whatever you’re into is OK.”
Before we left, James said that he had almost forgotten something. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to me. He told me it was Jennifer’s number.
“That is…” he said with a condescending smile, “…if you’re still dating women.”
***
As soon as I got home, I put Jennifer’s number into my phone and called her. I got her outgoing voicemail message: “Hi, this is Jennifer Harper, please leave a message.”
Very professional. Commanding, even. She doesn’t even say she’ll call you back as soon as possible like most people do. Most people apologize on their outgoing message. I’m so sorry I missed your call! Please please please leave me a message! I promise I’ll get back to you! I promise! Jennifer doesn’t need to apologize. She’s a busy woman. Deal with it!
I realized I was lost in my head and had inadvertently recorded several seconds of my breathing.
“Hi!” I said quickly and a bit too loud. “I’m… this is Henry. Um. From the bar the other night. James gave me the piece of paper that you gave to him which he then gave to me which I then called and now I’m leaving you a message. Anyway, give me a call back, or not. It’s not a requirement. It’s entirely your choice.”
I ended the call.
The next several hours were spent in crippling humiliation. I was surprised at how long and heavy my hangover was continuing to be. I felt like I had chipped teeth in my brain. I took another handful of aspirin and binge-watched Cheers until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. When I threw myself into bed, I checked my phone and realized it had lost power. I plugged it in and began to doze when I heard a computerized ping. I checked my phone and saw that I had a missed text from Jennifer Bar:
Funny voicemail. How about Friday at Code Blue?
I sighed a "holy shit" of relief, and responded with a: yeah, cool. See you @ 8.
I suddenly felt my pain subside.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I sat up in bed and listened for the door.
Tap. Tap.
There was someone outside. I quickly put on some white canvas pajama pants and a Perfect Strangers band shirt, and I walked to my door. To get into the foyer of my complex, you need to unlock a large steel door. Then there’s stairs that lead to the three other apartments. If someone was tapping on my apartment door, it must be another tenant in the building.
I opened my door and Mira was leaning against the frame. She smiled at me.
"Hi, Henry.”
"Hey," I said. Wanting to seem cool, I leaned against my end of the doorframe in the same way she was. "What's happening?"
"Are you free?"
She kissed me very softly on the lips. She slowly withdrew and wet just my bottom lip with her tongue and teeth. She kissed me again, and again it was so soft it reminded me of my first kiss when I was thirteen. It was this juxtaposition—the extreme sexual aggression mixed with childlike sweetness—that ultimately silenced any and all desire to ask how she got past my thick steel foyer door.
We stumbled into my bedroom. It was even better than the last time. I completely lost myself in her body—not even minding the extra bit. When she asked me to finish, I remembered that I hadn’t last time. I was too drunk. This time, I was in a perpetual state of almost finishing. I grabbed the condoms from my dresser drawer and fumbled with the wrapper.
"No," she pleaded. "Finish in me." There was something desperate in her voice.
"You're on the pill?" I asked.
"Just do it," she said. I felt a rush of hot, nauseating paranoia.
"Just please tell me you're on birth control."
"Yes, yes, I'm on the pill. Just cum in me."
No. No. No. No. No. Something was wrong with this. My self-loathing took over:
You really think a blood sex goddess could possibly be into you? Loser. She feeds on idiots like you!
I crawled away.
"What are you doing?" she asked, frustrated. Her neck craned around to see me.
"I… I just don’t want to do it that way."
She stood and faced me. Her eyes were penetrative. She spoke with a robotic kind of certainty, “But that’s the way I wanna do it.”
Mira crept over to me and gave me little kisses from my lips to my navel. She threw me on top of her. I felt her… member… against my belly as we had sex. Then, at the penultimate moment, I pulled out and finished on my duvet.
"Shit!" she cried. "Why the fuck did you do that?"
"I don't know. I just wanted to," I said, feeling slightly vindicated.
"I told you to do it in me.”
"What's the big deal?" I asked, sensing it was a very big deal.
Mira sniffed my bed sheets and then tossed them away.
“It’s ruined,” she muttered.
I rested propped up on my elbows and watched her dress. Trying not to let my nervousness show, I asked her if she was a blood and if this was some kind of feeding situation.
“How’s your head?” she asked.
“Better.”
“The moment I leave it’ll get a lot worse.”
Mira smacked the sole of her foot against my chest and pressed me against my mattress—her strength surprised me.
“I’m going to let you experience it one more time so that you know what it’s like to be without me. And when I come back, you’re going to do what I say. OK?”
I couldn’t speak and she left with a door-slam.
-2-
On Thursday night, one day before my date with Jennifer, I met James and Aubrey at Geronimo. We had a few drinks and I loosened up enough to mention Mira. The alcohol did nothing to sooth my throbbing temples.
"She's a succubus," said Aubrey.
"A what-u-bus?"
"A succubus. A creature of the night that preys on men's lust.” Aubrey went on to explain that she learned about these creatures from her mythology class in grad school—a topic she never seems to leave out of any conversation.
James asked how my head was. I told him it was bad but didn’t say how bad it was. I asked them if they thought I should go to a hospital or the police.
“Jesus Christ, yes!” said Aubrey. “She’s clearly done something to you.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that this was some sort of vampiric sex magic,” said James.
I chimed in, “It’s true. Maybe this is completely unrelated.”
“You’re defending her and it’s weird,” said Aubrey. “She sounds like a psycho.”
James said, "Just because she's a blood doesn't—"
"It's not because she's a blood, it's because she has clearly done something to Henry!" Aubrey interjected. Then they bickered for a while. It reminded me of the last few months with Grace. After three years in a relationship, it's easy for "being right" to replace the orgasm. I actually kinda missed it.
I told them I needed air and stood up and put on my jacket. The pain in my head was starting to make me dizzy.
Outside, I could almost see my breath in the air. I thought about how recently Grace and I were planning a cross-country road trip. Maybe she sensed me pulling away. I panicked whenever I thought about her as the potential mother of my child—she would have definitely been a soccer mom. I used to sit across from her at brunch and admire the angles of her face and her artisan-soap washed skin—but then my inner hater would spin things around:
Sure, her jowls are fine now, but look at that sag potential! By the time she’s forty-five it’ll be all jowls, all the way to the floor—along with those breasts. Being the piece of shit you are, you’ll probably leave her for some hot younger woman.
One morning, about six weeks ago, I was in my bathrobe making a turkey sandwich and Grace walked in, fully dressed, and told me she had something important to say. She had met someone else. She was moving out. After that I wasn’t hungry. Over the next week, she cleaned out her stuff and left me with the spaces those things once occupied.
***
When I got to my apartment, I went to the refrigerator. I moved the milk and saw a very moldy turkey sandwich. I grabbed it and threw it in a plastic bag and walked outside.
After I tossed the bag in the garbage, I saw a woman inspecting my fire escape. She had red hair tied back into a ponytail. She wore cowboy boots and smoked a hand-rolled cigarette. The air reeked of marijuana.
I nodded at her and walked up the steps to my foyer.
“You live in the building with that fire escape?” she asked and pointed to my fire escape.
“Yeah?”
“I’m special agent Sophia Kobe of the FBI,” she said and flashed me a badge.
“Oh, hi, um, what’s this about?” I asked, electrically panicked. Had I violated some law breaking into my own apartment?
You're such a fuck-up.
“May I come up to your apartment?”
I walked her up the stairs and led her inside. I was extra sensitive to law enforcement overstepping their bounds, and a part of me wanted to ask her for a warrant—but that side of me was silenced by another, more cowardly, side.
“Have you seen this person?” Sophia asked as she flashed me a picture. Like a punch in the solar plexus. The woman in grainy black and white was Mira.
“I don’t know what she may have told you…” said Sophia. “But she’s a very dangerous person.”
“Dangerous how?” I asked.
“In 1995, a team of European research scientists got lost in a snowstorm in Tibet. There in a valley, they saw a Riwoche—a breed of horse thought to be extinct for thousands of years.”
Sophia began shaking as she spoke. A small trail of blood dripped from one nostril. “There are things living in this world—hiding and evolving all on their own.”
It sounded like the mutterings of a blood-hater. I doubted this woman’s connection to any form of law enforcement and felt unsafe with her in my home. I took a deep breath and asked her if I could have her badge number. Sophia looked me over again and twisted her lips in disgust. She threw a piece of paper at me and slammed the door as she left. The paper had her number on it.
***
On Friday, the pain in my head was ever-present and I rushed to the West Village, where I was meeting Jennifer in an illegal restaurant called Code Blue. The restaurant was built on the fifth floor of an apartment complex still in construction. Two walls were completely exposed, and steel beams poked out like bone from a very serious gash. Bullet holes riddled one wall, and someone had stuffed paper flowers in them. I was dressed up in a way that looked like I didn’t have the time to dress up.
I got into the manual elevator and pulled myself to the fifth floor. I saw Jennifer sitting by herself at a table. A waiter wearing a hardhat delivered her a glass of red wine.
And then I left.
I couldn’t believe I was doing it. I didn’t even text her an excuse. I just hopped back on the subway.
I felt my head swim a little less when I got back to Brooklyn.
You just stood her up. Why the fuck did you do that?
“I don’t know,” I said out loud.
You did it for Mira, asshole.
I ended up at Geronimo. The crowd was heavy and the music was a bit too loud but I felt soothed by it. A girl's bare breasts were poking out from scissor-cut holes in her tee shirt. A blood massaged them while the girl balanced her knees on a barstool, and only a couple creepy guys and girls watched out of the corners of their eyes.
The bass line of a Syphone song shook the room. I went to get a drink and suddenly I felt no pain. I spun around and Mira was standing behind me.
I breathed heavy. It was too loud to hear each other speak so neither one of us did. The power surged and the lights strobed for several seconds. Mira mouthed the words “I love you.”
Then she was pulled into the crowd by someone. I pushed through to see. Grace was speaking with Mira. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t believe until I noticed Grace’s arm tattoo: a lion devouring Saint Ignatius. I couldn’t make out what either woman was saying, but Grace seemed to be pleading with Mira. A small red line fell from Grace’s nose. Mira grabbed my arm and pulled me through the crowd and out into the smoker’s backyard.
Outside, the air was thick. She led me to the gate that separated the bar’s property from a community garden. It was away from the patrons and the artificial light. Squinting into the darkness, I saw Mira place her fingers in the chain links.
“How do you know my ex-girlfriend?” I asked. Mira climbed over the gate and plopped down.
“Let’s do it in the garden.”
“Tell me what happened back there!”
“There’s something different about you,” she said. “It took me a while to find it and I made mistakes along the way, but all that matters is that we’re together now.”
“Mistakes?”
“Your scent was all over her clothes. I got confused.”
“Were you the one she left me for?” I asked. I waited for a response. I asked her again.
Mira let her jacket fall to the grass and she slipped out of her dress. She pressed her naked body against the gate and I ran my fingers over the hexagons of skin that poked through.
“Darwin did more than give us evolution,” she said. “He gave us pride. For the first time in history, we weren’t the orphaned children of God—we were survivors.”
A mosquito hovered across my line of vision. I gathered my remaining willpower and took off running away from her—through the smoky backyard and into an alley. I heard her cry, “I’m getting sick of this! You’re not the only one who’s different!”
***
As soon as I got back to my apartment, I rummaged through the miscellaneous junk on the top of my dresser until I found Sophia Kobe’s number. When I went to input the number in my phone, I saw that I had three unread text messages from Jennifer asking where I was.
Asshole.
The phone vibrated. Grace was calling me. I answered.
“Henry, I saw you go outside with Claira,” she said. “Do you know where she is?”
Claira?
“Wait. Let me explain. I owe you that,” she said. “Claira came into my life at an inopportune moment…”
“While we were together?” I asked.
She breathed into the receiver for a few seconds and then asked me, again, if I knew where she was.
Grace begged me, “I need her. Please…”
Disgusted and horrified, I ended the call and BANG! Something hit the outside of my window. I jumped and crouched into my bedroom door’s frame.
I tried to see through the glare of my lamp and into the darkness outside the window. Something moved.
I darted down my stairs and out into the drizzling rain—each drop released a bit of mist from the asphalt. I slid into an intersection and threw my arms at a cab coming my way. He pulled over.
Inside the car, I told the driver to go straight, and I called Sophia.
"Hello?"
"Sophia?"
"Yeah…"
"You were at my place the other day asking about someone. I know Mira. I think she might be at my apartment right now."
"Listen to me very carefully. Her name is not Mira. She is very dangerous. Is she with you?"
I looked out the back window of the cab. Through the blurry ovals made by the rain, I made out a small figure—it appeared to be following me.
"OK, just stay where you are," said Sophia.
"No! I'm coming to you."
"Keep her there!"
"You JUST told me she was dangerous!"
"…right. Well, she's not that dangerous." I heard a hacking cough on the other end of the receiver that was unmistakably weed-related.
"Any amount of danger is not OK with me right now!"
Sophia reluctantly told me her address and the driver sped up to the on-ramp of the BQE.
-3-
It was not the apartment of an FBI agent. Half-eaten take-out food rested next to hundreds of marijuana roaches and one actual roach. There was a couch and a cot and a coffee table—that was it.
"OK," I said. "You're not from the FBI."
Sophia dropped to the couch and sat with her forearms resting on her knees. She rubbed her temples.
"I'm a fertility specialist."
"Who or what is Mira?"
"She introduced herself to me as Sadie. A while back, she came to my office and wanted to know why she couldn't get pregnant. I had recently published a series of papers on interspecies breeding and benefits of using vampiric DNA. Sadie is… as you probably know… not human. The truth is I still don’t know what she is. She’s I1V1-positive but… I found other irregularities in her DNA—ones I had never seen before.”
“What kinds of irregularities?” I asked.
“Her species doesn’t have genders. Theoretically, they can reproduce with each other. She could also smell blood types, and she believed someone in New York City had a slight mutation in their blood allowing breeding compatibility with hers—she could smell it in the air."
"Holy shit. She said my scent was all over my ex-girlfriend's clothes and that she 'got confused.’"
"You may be the lucky guy with the weird blood." Sophia rubbed her temples and a small red drop fell from her nose. She picked up a joint, lit it, and took a puff.
"You've been with her, too." I said. I pointed to her nose. Sophia grabbed a used napkin and patted her blood. She released a little cloud from her lips and blinked several times.
"She produces a very powerful series of pheromones," she said. "Your body goes into withdrawal."
My head was throbbing. I sniffed and tasted copper.
Sophia handed me her weed. "It helps," she said. “Trust me.”
I took a small puff and handed it back.
"Sadie and I were working together—or rather I was working with samples of her blood. One of her evolutionary advantages is that she can control the appearance of her age. I thought I could use that function of her DNA to create a kind of anti-aging vaccine. But so far all attempts have been failures. My brilliant vaccine ironically increases the aging process. I sunk a lot of time into this project and, as you can see, nothing else." She gestured to her crummy living situation.
"So your vaccine makes you age faster?" I asked.
"Five hundred times faster." Sophia said and coughed. She put out the weed and rubbed her eyes. "I still think it’s possible, but I need more of her DNA. She was cooperating with me regularly until about six weeks ago—she just stopped showing up. I made a fake badge and asked around until I found a neighbor of yours who said he saw her on your fire escape. Sorry for the deception, by the way. It’s just easier to ask questions when you’re FBI."
A flash lit the living room and then everything went dark. I ran to the light switch and flicked it on and off. Sophia turned on her flashlight app and told me it happens all the time. Her phone made one tiny stream of light—our shadows, like silhouette monsters, grew and shrank along the walls.
“Henry, if she bears your child, I believe it could be very bad. She used to talk about her species being superior to all others. She said she wanted to breed in order to bring an end to the wars. Her species can mature faster than ours. They’re stronger, and they’d be much more fertile.”
“Jesus! Fine, well, I’m the last of my bloodline so all I have to do is not impregnate Mrs. Dick-Chick Uber Alles.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Sophia said, suddenly standing and pacing. “If I were her… I’d be breaking down my door right now to get to you…”
Both of us turned to face the door and braced ourselves. Nothing happened.
A noise made us jump. It came from both of our phones. Sophia glanced at hers and told me not to worry about it. She said it was just an Amber Alert.
I remembered the last thing that Mira said to me—I wasn’t the only one who’s different. “Oh god no,” I said. My jaw went slack.
Asshole… asshole… asshole.
“Two years ago,” I told her. “I needed rent money and… I… donated sperm.”
Sophia grabbed her car keys and said, “I know where she is.”
***
The raindrops were fat and Sophia drove like a maniac. We hydroplaned onto the sidewalk and knocked over a newspaper kiosk as we turned. The little bit of THC in my bloodstream intensified every sound and only marginally aided my migraine.
“Vials of my failed aging vaccine are kept in a storage facility up here. My guess is that she smelled your DNA coming from somewhere else in the city. She followed the scent to the child made of your donated sperm. Now all she needs to do is bring it to maturity.”
“What?!”
“She’s going to rapidly age the baby using my vaccine until it reaches maturity and then she’s going to inseminate herself with your child’s seed.”
“Oh my god!” I gagged on my own stomach acid. “That is… that’s sick! Sophia, we need to call the authorities. We can’t just go barging in like superheroes!”
The car screamed to a halt. Sophia pulled a gun from the glove box.
“This is what’s going to happen. You will enter the storage facility and make love to her. Once she’s pregnant she’ll have no need for the child. It’s the safest way.”
The storm made the inside of the car a mess of white noise. My eyebrows were soaked with sweat and rainwater. It was difficult to feel anything that wasn’t fear and discomfort.
I asked her what she was planning on doing with the gun.
-4-
There was a busted lock dangling from the gate. I scampered through the rain holding my jacket over my head. Everything was wet and freezing cold. I walked straight through the back door that was also broken. I noticed a security camera dangling from frayed wires.
Into the maze of lockers. A few fluorescent lights blinked overhead, but mostly it was dark. The only time I saw clearly was when lightning flashed.
There was one odd light source. It was green and coming from a unit farther down. I hugged the walls and followed the light. A rummaging sound grew as I got closer to the source.
Mira was tearing up a storage unit. Clothes, books, an old PC laptop—all in pieces pouring from the steel box. She drew a strange black liquid into a syringe. A baby was squirming in blankets on the floor. She knelt to it.
“Hey, girl!” I said just as lightning lit the facility so brightly that I could see her irises narrowing. She was in tattered, wet clothes, and her nails were black with grit. She didn’t speak. She only stood, slowly, still holding the syringe.
It was time to do what I do best—lie to a woman in order to have sex with her.
“I had no idea that you wanted a baby,” I said. “I would LOVE to have a baby with you.”
“It’s not just a baby. It’s a new world order. I’m the next step in mankind’s legacy,” she said with cold certainty.
“And I love it! Let’s do it—right now.”
She walked toward me with cat-like reservations—still holding the syringe.
“You sure you can handle that?” she asked. “It’s quite a commitment.”
“I wanna make babies with you,” I said.
“Lots and lots of babies,” she whispered with her lips grazing mine. “A better world.”
Mira dropped the syringe and threw herself at me. We pawed at each other and my clothes came off very quickly. She pushed my back to the floor and I winced as my skin made contact with the icy concrete.
The sex was insane. She was a rabid animal. Crazed and desperate, I pulled her to me and sucked her neck and shoulder and licked her hot, tangy sweat beads. The storage lockers and the baby and the rain and the eugenics all evaporated. My nerves surged with electrochemical reactions—mirroring the current night sky. I let go.
After I finished, she fell off of me and hugged her knees. She rocked gently from side to side and cried.
“I did it,” she said in quiet elation. “I can feel it. It’s real.”
“Now!” I screamed as I grabbed the syringe and leapt away from her. Sophia ran in with her pistol drawn and shot me in the shoulder—this was not the plan we had discussed in the car. I howled as I fell to the floor, clutching my wound. The baby screamed.
“We did it,” said Sophia.
Henry, you dumb fuck. Never trust an ex.
Mira said, “Are you nuts? People will hear that.”
“Don’t worry. I have a full tank of gas and a box of Depends. You relax in the backseat and I’ll have us in Canada by tomorrow afternoon.”
“I am so sick of this, Sophie! You come barging in trying to save me—messing with my whole plan. It wasn’t easy stealing this baby!”
“It doesn’t matter now. We have the child. We can continue our legacy,” said Sophia.
“My child. My legacy. You didn’t do shit. You've never done shit for me. You were a stepping stone—an easy lay to hold me over.”
Sophia pleaded with her. She knelt at Mira’s feet and kissed her legs.
“And I hate it when you’re like this! Spineless!" said Mira. "Your whole godforsaken species is weak and stupid and spineless. Just move on!”
Mira pinched Sophia’s cheeks with the fingers and thumb of one hand and lifted the woman off the ground. Sophia dropped her pistol and screamed as she scratched Mira’s forearm.
"Please!" said Sophia. Her scream and the baby's scream harmonized.
Then, Mira tore out Sophia’s throat and tossed her to the floor.
Sophia's body twitched. Another lightning flash revealed the amount of blood and bits of cartilage spewed over the polished concrete floor. I could make out some red specks on Mira’s face. The baby’s voice went hoarse.
I was still bleeding out on the ground—my hand pressed against my shoulder. My whole body turned to pins and needles. My vision was tunneling.
Mira straddled me. “I want to take you both with me,” she said. “We could make this world better—together…” She leaned in close and whispered, “You're the one, Henry. You're everything I've been waiting—”
I jerked my wounded arm forward. She gasped and jumped off me. The syringe was stuck in her leg. She removed it and examined the glass tube. Empty.
At first, she tried to fight it. Gasping and writhing on the floor, I saw her revert to the body of a sixteen-year-old, but then her hands withered like a grandmother’s. Her eyes grew big and round like an infant’s, but her hair turned white and brittle. With a weak brattle she seemed to let go of the fight and in the next thirty seconds I saw her age a hundred years. As I watched, I regretted ever worrying that a woman I loved could ever grow out of her beauty.
When she turned to dust, you were curled up in the middle—a baby replica of the both of us.
I never found out anything more about your mother, and I still don’t know how you survived. I’ve written about her to that vampiric taxonomy expert, Doctor Swann, but he never wrote back.
So all I can say is there may be a time when you feel the urge to procreate. And I’ll be honest; I’m freaked out about it. But I’ll do my best to keep you safe. You may have come from a monster, but you don’t have to become one.
All right, kid. The sitter will be here any minute, and I have to get ready for a date.