Bite Me

audaciously cool thing he had ever done, if it hadn’t been for the straight pins that had fastened the shirt to theslacks. But after a minor fit on the sidewalk as he yanked the pins out of his back, hips, and abdomen, while rhythmically chanting, “Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch,” he returned to the calm and casual cotton-clad vampire aspect he’d been going for. He waited until he was at the library, in the stacks, before he pulled the piece of cardboard out of his collar and yanked off various tags and threads. Fortunately, there had been no anti-theft tags on the display outfit.
    Now he was ready, or as ready as he was going to get. He had to go to Jody now, hold her, tell her he loved her, kiss her, shag her until all the furniture was broken and the neighbors complained (undead predator or not, he was still nineteen and horny), then figure out what they were going to do about their future.
    As he walked back through the Tenderloin, dressed in his “please rob me” white boy outfit, a jittery crackhead in a hoody that had once been green, but now was so dirty it was shiny, tried to rob him with a screwdriver.
    “Give me your money, bitch.”
    “That’s a screwdriver,” Tommy said.
    “Yeah. Give me your money or I’ll stab you with it.”
    Tommy could hear the tweaker’s heart fluttering, smell the acrid stench of rotting teeth, body odor, and urine on him, and could see an unhealthy, dark gray aura around him. His predator mind flashed the word “prey.”
    Tommy shrugged. “I’m wearing a leather jacket. You’ll never get a screwdriver through it.”
    “You don’t know that. I’ll get a running start. Give me your money.”
    “I don’t have any money. You’re sick. You should go to the hospital.”
    “That’s it, bitch!” The crackhead thrust the screwdriver at Tommy’s stomach.
    Tommy stepped aside. The tweaker’s movements seemed almost comically slow. As the screwdriver went by, Tommy decided it might be best if he took it, and he snatched it away. The robber lost his balance and tumbled forward into the street and lay there.
    With the flick of his wrist, Tommy threw the screwdriver onto the roof of a four-story building across the street. Two guys who had been standing in an alley a few feet away, thinking about taking the robbery over from the crackhead, or at least robbing him if he was successful, decided they would rather go see what was happening on the next block.
    Tommy was a half a block away when he heard the uneven, limping footsteps of the crackhead coming up behind him. He turned and the crackhead stopped.
    “Give me your money,” said the tweaker.
    “Stop robbing me,” said Tommy. “You don’t have a weapon and I don’t have any money. It’s totally not working for you.”
    “Okay, give me a dollar,” said the crackhead.
    “Still don’t have any money,” Tommy said, turning his pants pockets inside out. A note from inspector 18 fluttered to the sidewalk. He heard movement above—claws on stone—and cringed. “Uh-oh.”
    “Fifty cents,” said the crackhead. He put his hand in the pouch pocket of his hoody and pointed his finger like it was a gun. “I’ll shoot.”
    “You have got to be the worst armed robber ever.”
    The crackhead paused for a second and pulled his gun-posed hand out of his pocket. “I have my G.E.D.”
    Tommy shook his head. He thought he’d left the cats behind, but the felines either still had some connection to him, or there were so many of them now that there was nowhere in the City you could go where they wouldn’t be hunting. He didn’t relish trying to explain the whole phenomenon to Jody. “What’s your name?” he said to the crackhead.
    “I’m not telling you. You could turn me in.”
    “Okay,” Tommy said. “I’ll call you Bob. Bob, have you ever seen a cat do that?” Tommy pointed up.
    The crackhead looked up the side of the building to see a dozen cats coming down the bricks, face-down, toward him.
    “No. Okay, I’m not robbing you anymore,” said the tweaker, his attention taken by the clutter of vampire cats descending on him. “Have a nice evening.”
    “Sorry,” said Tommy, meaning it. He turned and jogged up the street to put some distance between himself and the screaming, which only lasted a few seconds. He looked back to see the crackhead gone. Well, not really gone, but reduced to a pile of gray powder amidst his empty clothing.
    “It’s how he would have wanted to go,” Tommy said to