Bite Me

the uninitiated like someone beating a chicken to death with a banjo. Just wait, and all would become clear. This time, however, Abby, whose tone ran from tragically romantic to passionately dismissive, was sounding much more urgent, and the patience gambit wasn’t going to work. Her voice in his Bluetooth headset was like having a malevolent fairy bite his ear.
    “I’m in the middle of something, Abby. I’ll be home as soon as I finish up here.”
    “Now, Foo. There’s a herd, or flock, or a—what do you call a bunch of kitties?”
    “A box?” Foo offered.
    “Fucktard!”
    “A fucktard of kitties? Okay, sure, that could be it. A pride of lions, a murder of crows…”
    “No. You fucktard! There’s a bunch of vampire kitties about to eat that crazy Emperor guy and his dogs right outside on the street. You need to come save them.”
    “A bunch?” Steve was having a hard time getting his head around the idea. He’d only recently gotten his head around the idea of one vampire cat, but a bunch, well, that was more. He was just a couple of months away from having his master’s in biochem at age twenty-one—he wasn’t a fucktard. “Define a bunch,” he said.
    “Many. I can’t count them because they’re stalking the golden retriever.”
    “And how do you know they’re vampire kitties?”
    “Oh, because I drew blood samples from them, ran it in that centrifuge thingy of yours, prepared some slides, and looked at the blood cell structure under a microscope, duh?”
    “No, really,” he said. She was flunking high school biology, there’s no way she prepared blood slides. And besides—
    “Of course not, you douche nozzle, I know they’re vampires because they’re stalking a golden retriever and a homeless fuck who’s hiding in the vaporized meter maid’s cart. That’s not standard kitty behavior.”
    “Vaporized meter maid?”
    “The one Chet ate—sucked her to dust. Come now, Foo,turn your sunbeam full-on and get your luscious ninja ass over here.” Steve had rigged the hatchback of his tricked-out Honda Civic with high intensity UV floodlights, which he’d used to flash fry a number of vampires, thus saving Abby and, for the first time in his life, having a girlfriend and someone who thought he was cool.
    “I can’t come right away, Abby. The sun lights aren’t in the car.”
    “Oh my fucking God, there’s some little old guy with a cane coming out of the alley. Well, he’s toast. Fuck!”
    “What?”
    “Fuck!”
    “What?”
    “Oh fuck!”
    “What? What? What?”
    “Oh-my-fucking-god-ponies-on-a-stick!”
    “Abby, you need to be more specific.”
    “It’s not a cane, Foo, it’s a sword.”
    “What?”
    “Come now, Foo. Bring the sun.”
    “I can’t, Abby. My car is full of rats.”
    THE EMPEROR
    The Emperor watched in horror as the cats leapt onto the back of his noble captain, Lazarus. The golden retriever shook himself violently, dislodging two of the fiends, but they were replaced by two more, and three more leapt ontop of them, nearly bringing Lazarus to the ground. But they weren’t pack hunters, and as each maneuvered for the throat, another attacker was pushed off, his claws shredding both predator and prey as he fell.
    Blood splattered the windscreen of the police cart. Bummer bounced around inside the tiny cabin, barking and snorting, and throwing himself against the glass, covering everything with angry dog slobber.
    “Run, Lazarus, run!” The Emperor pounded on the glass, then pushed his forehead against it as he tried to squint back tears of anguish and frustration.
    “No!” He would not do it. He would not watch his companion slaughtered. Outrage filled the ancient, boiler-tank of a man and condensed to courage. He was fighting the door latch when half a cat hit the side window and slid down trailing gore.
    The door handle snapped off in his hand and he threw it to the floor of the cart. Bummer immediately attacked it and broke a tooth on the metal. Through the haze of blood spray, the Emperor could see another figure in the street. A boy—no, a man, but a small man, Asian—wearing a fluorescent orange porkpie hat and socks, tight plaid trousers that looked as if they’d been teleported out of the 1960s, and a gray cardigan sweater. The little man was brandishing a samurai sword, bringing it down again and again on Lazarus in quick snapping motions, but before he could cry out, the Emperor saw that the sword wasn’t even grazing the