Bite Me

get there.
    The little man smiled and nodded, pointing to the dollar sign. He went to his workbench, opened a wooden box, and held up a handful of bills. “Yes,” he said.
    “Okay, then, I guess you’re buying me an outfit.”
    “Yes,” he said.
    She made a drinking gesture, then nodded. He nodded and held up the knife again.
    “No, you can’t afford it. Animal.” She thought about making a piggy sound, but wasn’t sure that might not give him the wrong idea, so she drew a stickman on the sketch pad, then Xed it out and drew a first-grade stick piggy, a stick sheep, and a Jesus fish. He nodded.
    “Yes,” he said.
    “If you bring me a Christian petting zoo I’m going to be disappointed, Mr.—uh—” Well, this was embarrassing. “Well, you’re not the first guy I’ve ever woken up with whose name I don’t remember.” Then she stopped herself and patted his arm. “I’m sounding really slutty, I know, but the truth is I used to be afraid to sleep alone.” She looked around the little apartment, at the meticulously arranged tools on the workbench, the one pair of little shoes, and the white silk kimono he had wrapped her in.
    “Thank you,” she said.
    “Thank you,” he said.
    “My name is Jody,” she said, pointing to herself. She pointed to him, wondering if that might not be rude in his culture. But he had already seen her nude and burned up, so perhaps they were past formality. He seemed okay with it.
    “Okata,” he said.
    “Okata,” she said.
    “Yes,” he said, with a big smile.
    His gums were receded, which made him look like he had big horse teeth, but then Jody touched her tongue to her fangs, which it seemed were not retracting in her new, dried-up state, and she realized that she should probably be less judgmental.
    “Go, okay?” She pointed to the sketch pad.
    “Okay,” he said. He gathered up his things, put on his stupid hat, and was ready to leave, when she called to him.
    “Okata?”
    “Yes.”
    She made a face-washing gesture and pointed to him. He went to the little mirror over the sink, looked at himself covered with blood, and laughed, his eyes crinkled into high smiles themselves. He looked over his shoulder at her, laughed again, then scrubbed his face with a cloth until he was clean and went to the door.
    “Jody,” he said. He pointed to the stairs outside. “No. Okay?”
    “Okay,” she said.
    When he was gone, she crawled from the futon and stumbled from there to the workbench, where she rested before trying to move farther, to look at Okata’s work. Wood block prints, some finished, some with only two or three of the colors on them, proofs perhaps. They were a series, the progression of a black, skeletal monster against a yellow futon, then the gradual filling in of the figure. The care, wrapping her in the kimono, feeding her his blood. The last print was still in the sketch stage. He must have been working on it when she awoke. A sketch on thin rice paper had been glued to the wood block and he was carving away the material for the outline—the black ink in the other prints. They were beautiful, and precise, and simple, and sad. She felt a tear rise and turned so as not to drip blood on the print.
    How would she tell him? Would she point at the first sketch, the one where the figure looked like a medieval woodcut of Death himself, and point to his frail chest?
    “The first thing I noticed when I saw you was the life aura around you, and it was black. That’s why I wouldn’t let you give me your blood, Okata. You are dying.”
    “Okay,” he would say. “Thank you,” he would say, with his newly found grin.

19
Being the Chronicles of Abby Normal: Oh Day Dwellers Doth Betray Me?
    M y heart has been torn asunder, and I am faced with the revelation that my most awesome-haired mad scientist of passion may in fact be an uncaring assbag who has sullied my innocence and whatnot and then cruelly cast me aside. So, that sucks.
    ’Kayso, like it says in the Bible, “with great power, comes great responsibility,” which I totally learned by pushing my vamp abilities too far in trying to show off for Foo by diving through our boarded-up windows. So I was “doh,” and I passed out—real passed out, like head-injury passed out, not vampyre passed out. But in my unconsciousness, Foo and Jared gave me blood, and I healed, so when I woke up in the bedroom, I came leaping out into the living area, my claws ready to rend flesh and kick ass.
    And I was