“W-w-where did you come from?” I blather, ridiculously, sounding like the dumbest coed in the dumbest slasher movie ever made.
“I’ve been here all along,” she explains, hands resting gently in her lap. “We can do a lot of things, Hector, but… we’re not ghosts. We can’t just slip through glass windows and rusty truck doors when you’re not looking.”
“H-h-how did you know my name?”
She snickers and with one pale, cold finger points to my chest. “It’s on your nametag, silly.”
I look down and, sure enough, there it is.
The road is mostly deserted this time of day, but even if it wasn’t this time of day, it would still be deserted on this particular day.
The bends of Route 1 sag and stretch along the hilly countryside of Patchwork, West Virginia.
The countryside is brittle and yellow with the afternoon’s early frost.
I can still feel it in my fingers after the long hours spent hosing down the factory floor, my joints creaky and cold despite the gloves already mildewing in my employee locker.
“So you’re not a ghost,” I find the stones to say just as we pass the Patchwork Funeral Home, its parking lot empty. “And yet, you pop up out of thin air. So… what are you?”
“I already told you, I didn’t ‘pop’ out of anywhere. I’ve been sitting here the entire time. Don’t you listen?”
Her voice is impatient, tired, almost bordering on a sneer.
I like it even less than her raven hair and grave marker pale skin.
“Sorry, it’s a little hard to focus when I’m freaking out, you know?”
She smirks, black lipstick curling into half a smile.
“And you still haven’t answered my question.”
The truck sails along, heavy under my hand. With last week’s paycheck in the bank, I finally have a full tank of gas. Plenty to race up to speed and sail through the fence on old Man Potter’s farm, sailing just over the property line to crash, passenger side first, into his biggest pecan tree.
Take that, snarky Goth suddenly appearing girl!
“I’ve been sitting here your entire shift,” she explains as I gradually begin to accelerate. “I knew you wouldn’t start the truck, let alone pull out of the parking lot, if you’d seen me so I waited until you were halfway down the road before allowing you to see me.”
“You can… do that?”
“Of course we can,” she snaps. “But, that’s not what you really want to know, is it Hector?”
Her voice is cold; colder than the November countryside, colder than my still-thawing fingers after eight hours on the factory floor.
I hate it.
I hate her.
I don’t care who she is, or what she is, or where she came from.
“Slow down,” she says through barely parted lips.
I glance at the speedometer and see I’ve sped up to nearly 60 miles per hour.
Not bad for an LA freeway but, here in Bum Stuck, West Virginia, I might as well be daring a cop to pull me over.
Even if it is Thanksgiving.
“Sorry,” I grumble, stepping slightly off the gas.
Then I think: “Why should I be the one to apologize? I mean, it’s my car.”
She settles back, thin as a rail and sharply angry in her black jeans and matching hoodie.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she oozes in that cold, unlikable voice. “Speed up, aim the car at the nearest tree, hope the crash is less painful than what I have in store for you.”
“What, you’re a ghost and a mind reader?”
“Slow. Down. Hector.”
Her voice is like steel; cold steel.
I do as I’m told.
I mean, what if she can read my mind?
“I can’t, you know,” she says, a smooth smile oozing across her frosty face. “Read minds. It’s just, you’re speeding up, you haven’t taken your eyes off that row of trees up in the distance, so… a girl can put two and two together, you know?”
I nod, biting my lower lip.
I do that when I’m nervous.
Or, you know, about to face certain death by unidentified stranger.
“So what can you do?” I ask, throat dry, eyes still on that row of trees up in the distance.
I wish the factory wasn’t so far from town.
There’s nothing out here but pecan trees and rusty barbed wire and hills and dales and miles and miles of open, empty road.
“Well, I can see myself in your rearview mirror, for one. I can become invisible, for another. And I can tear your windpipe out with my fangs if you keep giving me the attitude, how’s that for starters?”
“So… you’re a vampire?”
She nods, quietly, then hisses around two wicked, yellow, curved fangs.
Kind of like vampire show and tell.
I shake my head, grit my teeth and drive.
“So what now?”
“Well, I thought you’d be more impressed, Hector. I mean, it’s not every day a vampire shows up riding shotgun.”
“I am impressed. I’m just… more shocked… is all.”
“Shock would be the appropriate response, Hector.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because it’s not every day a vampire shows up riding shotgun. Sheesh, I thought we just covered this…”
“I mean, why are you here?” I ask. “Why are you sitting here? Today?”
“I’m glad you asked,” she smiles, almost… purring.
With no other traffic in sight and the road clear for miles, I risk a second look her way.
She looks young, maybe 17 or 18?
My age, at least.
But there is an air of wisdom about her.
Or maybe just superiority.
She is thin but I can tell, even from the veins in her wrist and the set of her jaw that she’s wiry, strong… powerful.
“Today is a very special day for vampires, Hector.”
“Thanksgiving?”
“Absolutely. It’s the one day of the year we can feel guilt-free about dining on humans. Well, certain humans, anyway.”
“What, like you feel guilt?”
I hear the hard edge to my voice and see my knuckles, white on the wheel.
She turns her head and cuts me an icy glare. “Just because I’m undead doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings, Hector.”
“Okay,” I snap, a little too quickly. “You’re going to tell me you’re one of those beatnik vampires who feasts on rats and cows and not people?”
“Actually, 364 days a year, yes… I don’t eat people. But you’re lucky; today’s my one exception.”
After a long, deliberate pause she adds icily, “You’re my one exception.”
I speed up again.
Screw her.
I gun it!
She sighs, and doesn’t move a muscle.
“Go ahead, Hector. Crash your car into the nearest tree. Who do you think it’s going to hurt? Me? Who’s been alive for the last 200 years? Or you?”
“If I’m going to die, I’d rather die on my own terms.”
“No you wouldn’t, Hector. And besides, who said anything about dying?”
“You did, lady. You just said you were going to eat me.”
“No I didn’t. And I’m no lady, Hector. My name is Isabelle. My friends call me ‘Izzy.’”
“Huh, how about your victims? What do they call you?”
“Gurgle, Gurgle Scream?” she jokes. “No, but… seriously. You can call me Izzy, too.”
“Okay, Izzy, well… you just said I was going to be your one human victim of the year. So if you’re not going to eat me, what are you going to do?”
“Give you a choice, that’s what.”
“A choice?”
“Yes, Hector. You can live or die.”
“Live! I choose to live. See ya!”
“You don’t seem to be taking this very seriously, Hector.”
“Oh, I am. It’s just, like y
ou said, not every day a vampire pops up riding shotgun for no reason.”
Her head snaps around. “You think I’m here for no reason, Hector? You think I showed up in that parking lot back there, in your truck, for no reason? Think again, friend.”
“Then what reason, huh? What could I have possibly done to clock out of work and find a vampire sitting in my truck?”
“You just answered yourself, Hector; you clocked out.”
I shoot her a glance as I zip past another pecan tree and she adds, “What do you do for a living, Hector?”
“Go to school. I’m a senior at Patchwork High.”
“For work, Hector?” she asks, unimpressed. “What do you do for work?”
“What, back there? That’s… that’s my winter job. I took it to help out the family for the holidays. Dad’s on disability since the accident, Mom works nights at the mall but they cut her hours to make way for all the seasonal part-timers, so… I took the job at the factory, why?”
“You consider the slaughter of innocents a job?”
I look at her, then smirk.
“Innocents? You mean, the frickin’ turkeys?”
“Yeah, the turkeys. Did you ever think of them before?”
“No, Izzy. Wanna know why? ‘Cause they’re turkeys – ouch! What the hell?”
I look down to find her hand resting on my thigh, and not in a frisky-cheerleader-after-the-football-game way, either.
From the tips of her fingers stretch long, black claws; sharp, and one of them has blood dripping it off of them onto my torn work pants.
Then she moves her hand and I feel the blood trickle down my leg; slowly, at first, then thicker, faster, like grape jelly oozing over the crust of a double-decker PB & J.
I look down and see the perfect slice across my inner thigh; clean and neat, the torn work pants revealing a glistening, oozing flesh wound.
“Turkeys have feelings too, you know?”
“No, I don’t Izzy. Know why? Because I don’t work with the turkeys, you witch!”
“What? What do you mean? You work at the plant, do you not?”
“Yeah, in custodial! I clean up turkey crap and feathers all day, hose the bloody walls and belts on the line. I’m 17 years old, you freak! You think they’re gonna let me slaughter turkeys at my age? Jesus, you really cut me!”
“Well, I mean…” she’s blathering now, stammering, looking uncertain for the first time since she appeared out of thin air. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“I was trying to when you practically sliced my leg in half.”
“Pull over!”
“No way! I’m going to a hospital to get this—”
She reaches over and, with one hand, lifts my leg off the gas pedal and, with the other, yanks the wheel hard to the right.
We hit the ditch, go up and over and land, embedded, in a long swatch of barbed wire surrounding Mr. Butterson’s squash farm.
Steam rises from the punctured radiator and hisses green, brackish water all over the shattered windshield.
“What was that for?” I ask, tasting blood on my tongue.
“Your choice,” she gasps, inching over. “I promised you a choice; you have to make it. Now, before it’s too late!”
“What choice?”
“Live or die, Hector? Now or never!”
“How about none of the above?”
“Your thigh, Hector; look at it. I’ve severed your femoral artery, stupid. You have about two minutes before you pass out and never wake up again.”
“Well, what’d you do that for?”
“Hector! Because, I thought you spent all day getting your jollies slaughtering Thanksgiving turkeys.”
“What? I could… I’d never… I don’t even eat turkeys, Izzy! I’m a vegetarian.”
“That’s it,” she grunts, leaning over. “I’m choosing for you!”
Suddenly, she pierces my throat with those grody yellow fangs.
They slide in, not quite like butter, but smoothly, no doubt.
There is a warm sensation, kind of like the tickle you get between your toes when you feel that annual rash of athlete’s foot halfway through every football season; then… nice.
Just… nice.
“I’m sorry,” she is saying, over and over, as she pulls back from me, wiping blood – wiping my blood – off her thick, black painted lips and onto her thin black sleeve. “I thought you were one of those turkey killers! Oh dear. Well, at least you won’t die now.”
“I won’t?” I ask, my voice sounding far away.
“No, Hector; never. Not anymore.”
“Okay,” I sigh, blinking at her.
Her face grows blurry, then comes back into focus.
Before it goes blurry again she says, “Rest, Hector, and when you wake back up, we’ll be somewhere far, far away from here.”
“But I like it here,” I sigh, the barren West Virginia landscape yellow and frosty beyond my shattered windshield. “Wait, no; not really. I hate it here. But… my folks. The money; they’ll need it after I’m gone.”
“You’ll send them money, Hector; we both will. Just, rest for now…”
I look down at my shirt, see the blood gush down my throat and across my nametag.
The nametag that reads “Hector.”
Just below the name of the company I work for: Patchwork Poultry Factory.
Where I used to work, hosing down the turkey pens and shoveling turkey crap.
I feel the energy draining from me now, the life – my old life – bleeding out.
I blink my eyes open to find Izzy, smiling; smiling.
She looks almost pretty when she smiles.
You know, aside from my blood still drying on her fangs…
* * * * *
Zombies Don’t Gobble:
A Living Dead Thanksgiving Poem
The table was set
The candles aglow;
When at the front door
Three zombies did show.
“Who could that be knocking?”
Poor Mother did pout.
“Probably Mindy’s boyfriend,”
My Father did shout.
“I’ll see who it is,”
I said to them all.
As I skittered and shimmied
To see who did call.
The door it did open
My heart it did shudder;
My legs felt just like
A bowl of whipped butter.
“Brains!” said one zombie
“Your Brains!” said another;
“It’s turkey or nothing,”
Blared my big, nosy mother.
I held my breath tight
As they studied my skull;
Then each rolled an eye
To find it… quite dull.
I felt almost rejected
As they brushed me aside;
And toward our Thanksgiving table
Each zombie did stride.
The zombies they shuffled
Straight up to the bird;
They left quite a smell
Like a three-week old turd!
They reached out their hands
To tear off a leg;
Mom said, “Sit down you three;
And don’t make me beg!”
I figured they’d tear her
One limb from another;
But those zombies seemed –
Quite scared of… my mother!
In no time they listened
In no time they sat;
And wore napkins in their collars
In two seconds flat!
My family sat watching
The zombies devour;
A 20-pound turkey
In less than an hour.
They gnawed on the wishbone
And guzzled down gravy;
Their behavior was almost
Well… downright… behave-y!
Mom smiled and cheered
As they refilled each plate;
> It didn’t seem to bother her
That none of us ate.
And when there was nothing
To swallow or chew;
The zombies looked happy
Or at least far less… eeeewwwww!
My family sat frozen
Quite glued to our seats;
Until Zombie One burped
And sputtered, “Good eats!”
They rose without speaking
As we covered our brains;
They turned and shuffled out
Leaving only grease stains.
I stood at the door
To see where they’d gone;
And watched three stuffed zombies
Shuffle down our front lawn.
“It sure looks to me,”
I said with a tweet.
“Like they’re going away;