Bite Me

rejected, proving, I think, that he really does love his car more than me.
    So it’s like, Oh noez! And an inky-colored despair of rejection enveloped me like the black tortilla of depression around a pain burrito.
    I needed to mope and grieve for my lost innocence, but no. We had to fix the vacuum so it would suck vampy rat fog and turn it into vampy rat chunks. So while Foo wired science stuff into the Shop Vac, I had to get Jared down off the kitchen counter, where he had decided to stand and chuck a major spaz because he hit his rat fog tolerance level.
    And Jared’s all, “Get them off me! Get them off me!” And he’s swinging the tennis racket around like a friggin’ windmill, when the rat fog isn’t anywhere near him, but running around the edges of the room like a steamy baseboard.
    And I’m all, “You must chill, Spunk Monkey, my boots are scratching the counters.”
    Which Jared takes as his cue to start screaming like a little girl. (When Lily and I were going through our Gothic Lolita fashion phase, which we both abandoned later, me because I’d just gotten my lip ring and I kept dribbling lattes on my lacy parts, and Lily because ruffles made her ass look huge, we used to go to Washington Square Park and practice our horrified little-girl screams, but even without practice, Jared was way better than either of us ever was. I think maybe it’s his asthma. Me and Lily could pown him at creepy staring, though.)
    Anyway, I was just glad that Jody took his dagger away from him, because someone could have lost an eye if he was still holding on to it when I swept his feet out from under him with the same stainless-steel torchiere lamp that the Countess had used on Tommy. (Although it was kind of bent now.)
    And he’s all, “Ow, ow, ow.”
    And I’m all, “Your cross-dressing sissy-man kung-fu is no match for my superior household lighting kung-fu.”
    And he whines like, “I’m going home. You hurt me. You suck. This sucks. I have to go have family dinner—with my family—and I’m going to school tomorrow so you can just fuck off and die, Abby Normal.”
    And I’m like, “Fine, give me my boots.”
    And he’s like, “Fine.”
    And I’m like, “Fine.”
    And it would have been way better if he could have just stormed out right then, but it took us about a half hour toget my boots off of him, with me sitting in the sink and him on the counter, guarding me with the tennis racket, because it turned out that I have a pretty low tolerance for rat fog trying to bite me, too.
    ’Kayso, we got my boots off of Jared and he decided to stay and help because it turns out that even a stream of biting rat fog is more fun than family dinner. So Foo had the Shop Vac all scienced up with sunlight LEDs and whatnot and he turns it on and starts sucking in the mist with most awesome suckage. (Gay Builder Bob rocks hardware!) And it’s so cool, because we can see the fog go in—then we can hear the thump as the sun LED turns the rats to solid again and they hit the inside of the plastic drum.
    And Foo is all yelling over the motor, “We may have to unload and put them in their boxes before we get too many. We don’t want to open this and try to deal with a hundred rats.”
    And I’m all, “Why don’t we just leave them in there until sunup and then they’ll all be asleep?”
    And Foo looks at me, all surprised, and I’m like, “Shut up. I can be smart and hawt.”
    And he’s all, “’Kay,” which I don’t know whether he meant sarcastically, or that I couldn’t be smart, or that I wasn’t hawt. But I never found out, because right then the Shop Vac starts making this, foof-thoop splat noise, and Jared lets loose with his little-girl scream.
    And it turns out that the exhaust of the Shop Vac is blowing vampy rats out the back side, which is the foof-thoop noise,and splattering them against the wall, which is the splat . And with every one, Jared is eeking. So it’s like, Foof-thoopsplat-eek! Foof-thoop-splat-eek! Foof-thoop-splat-eek! I know! It would make a totally cool industrial beat for a dance groove. But I didn’t sample it because there was stuff happening.
    And Foo is all, “Pick them up and put them in their boxes. Seal them with duct tape.”
    ’Cause it turns out that vampy rats are pretty durable, and after they splat and slide down the wall, they are starting to pull themselves together again and sort of limp away, but slow enough to catch. But they’re still all squishy