A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  I squeeze my legs together and rock my hips while lust washes over me again.

  “You like that.” He smiles.

  “I do.”

  “We can’t feed on humans.”

  “But I get it, now.” I sit up straighter. “I feel—”

  “Forget how you feel, now. Remember how you felt, then,” Andreas says, squeezing my hand with a strength I can almost match.

  Remembering back a few days ago seems impossible, like seeing into someone else’s mind. But I close my eyes and use the white noise of the running water to go back. Even then my human memories feel like facts rather than experiences. “I was angry that you took my choice away.”

  “Right. Remember that, even if you have to write it down, every morning.”

  “Okay, but what if we get a donor—a certified blood donor—whose choice it is to give us their blood?” I bat my eyelashes.

  Andreas leans over my chest and licks my nipple. “I’ll consider it.”

  I moan and arch up to meet his mouth.

  His lips brush my sensitive flesh while he speaks. “When you prove you can control yourself enough not to kill anyone, I’ll consider it.” He sucks the hard nub between his teeth and presses his fingers between my legs.

  Control myself. Just once I’d like to control my own damn body.

  We feed on blood bags, together. Andreas “convinces” my landlord to break my lease early and without penalty—just like he “convinced” Dr. Treggman not to report us—so I can move into the guest room. He buys me a real bed and a mug that says “Blood: it’s not just for breakfast, anymore.”

  During the first week, we eat and fuck. I’m still not in love with him—don’t expect to be—but he lets me feed on him in the shower to ease my bloodlust.

  I stumble out, naked and wet, still unsteady on my changing legs. My muscles thicken and shape the more I drink. My facial hair fills in thick and dark where it was patchy before: a fine, perfectly groomed layer on my cheeks and neck. I always thought vampires looked like more beautiful versions of their human selves, though I can’t imagine a duller Andreas.

  “Stop staring at yourself in the mirror,” he teases.

  “Stop staring at myself?” I rub a towel over my hair. It rests shiny and perfect without any help. “I’ve never been happy with the way I look until now. And I’m not supposed to stare?”

  Andreas’s smile is so subtle, I’d have missed it with human eyes. He lifts me onto my new Ikea bed.

  “Can vampires cut their hair?” I ask, diverting Andreas’s mouth from its intent.

  “What? Why? You just said—”

  “When we were talking earlier, you said our government was as old as your last haircut.”

  “We can make small changes over long periods of time. If you cut it all off, it would grow back while you slept. Mostly, I was being facetious. Bit of vampire humor.” He glances at my hair. “Why, you weren’t thinking of changing . . . anything, were you?”

  I wasn’t. Not really. But knowing I can’t? What if prosthetics or surgery become so advanced—I’m going to live to see that. Doctors will be able to grow you a dick using stem cells or someone will invent a CyberCock that pairs with a brain implant. In a future where trans people will be able to customize their bodies, I won’t be able to. Mine will reject and revert. Beautiful but stagnant. No implants, no surgeries. Not even a haircut. This is why trans people aren’t allowed to undergo vampirification.

  It’s still better than dying.

  Will I feel that way in a hundred years?

  “Finley?”

  “Uh, no, not planning to change anything. Sorry.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Just . . .” I focus on the body I have, on the things I can control. Like my current arousal. “Just get back to it.” I force a smile when I recline. The smile sticks.

  The particleboard rocks under the force of our weight, knocking over the canvas I leaned against it. Andreas dives between my legs and sucks on my clit. It’s grown like a satisfied tick. And I’m hornier than I was during my first six months on T.

  I twine my fingers through Andreas’s shiny curls and hold his face against my crotch. He’s happy to oblige, trailing his kisses over my abdomen and up my chest. Ever since I turned, I can’t get enough of his mouth and fingers on my nipples. I missed them. I missed them and now they’re back, healed by his venom.

  He pulls away, leaving my slick, wet chest cold and exposed.

  “Don’t stop,” I whisper.

  Andreas looks between my chest and my face then back to my chest. “Something’s wrong,” he says.

  “What? Nothing’s . . .” I pat the bare skin and wince. Tender dimples of breasts poke out. “What’s happening to me?”

  Andreas swallows a hard lump in his throat. “Your body. It’s—I don’t know.”

  I skitter back until I hit the headboard, until I can’t run any further away from my own chest. “Make it stop,” I say. When Andreas doesn’t move, I shout. “Make it stop!”

  He hisses at me for silence.

  “Please,” I whisper. “Please, make it stop.” Something warm rolls down my face, red drops splatter on the growing mounds of my chest.

  Andreas growls as he rips the covers off the bed and flings them into the air. The colorful cotton drifts slowly to the floor between us. He bites his bottom lip leaving a thin red line that drips down his chin.

  “I have an idea.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll be right back.” But before he can get too far, he turns back. “Don’t move.”

  I shake my head. “I won’t.”

  I can’t and I don’t.

  I stare at the pattern on Andreas’s manufactured quilt. The colors are intense, even in the dark. Red too bright for blood. Yellow too clear for the sun. A sun I won’t see again until I’m god knows how old, and only then from the shadows.

  The quilt doesn’t warm me like I wish it would. My body’s cold now. It used to be warm. Testosterone runs warmer than estrogen. I stopped wearing a sweater to work. Wonder if I’ll start, again.

  The door clicks shut. Andreas appears in the doorway; he slows to a human pace mid-step. I can see the change, now. It looks like slow motion. How slow must walking feel to him after so many years.

  “Drink this.” Andreas crawls onto the bed and wraps an arm around me. He rests a blood bag against my lips.

  I push it away. “I’m not hungry.”

  “You’re hungry for this. Trust me.”

  I purse my lips before accepting the bag. My fangs pierce the thick plastic so easily, I have to concentrate on not ripping it open over the mattress.

  “How do you like it?” Andreas watches me.

  I don’t like when he watches me. I look inexperienced—I am, but that’s not the point. Andreas makes vampirism look casual, like a lifestyle. Like vegetarianism.

  I carefully back off the bag, long enough to really swallow, to run my tongue over my teeth and let the blood absorb into my body. My temperature rises. A warm euphoria radiates from my skin, swarms my brain, swells between my legs.

  “This is good.”

  Andreas smiles.

  “What’d you do to it?”

  “Vampire venom enhances what it finds: clear voice, luxurious hair, firm muscles—”

  “Remaining breast tissue; I get it.” I grit my slippery teeth. “What did you do to this?”

  “Injected it with testosterone.” He looks thoughtfully between me and the bloody bag. “I didn’t think, when I drained your blood, that I’d depleted any hormones you may’ve injected. Most humans’ bodies keep producing whatever they need.”

  “Mine doesn’t.”

  “I know that, now. Thought I’d reintroduce what you need. Steer your new vampire body in the right direction.”

  “Not bad, Dr. Andreas.”

  I crush the bag against my mouth and suck it dry. The plastic crinkles until it’s raisin-like in my hands. A drop spills over my chin
and tickles my neck. Andreas leans over and licks it away.

  I growl and toss the empty bag onto the floor, accepting Andreas’s mouth against mine. He avoids my chest, though I feel the mounds press against his shirt when he climbs on top of me.

  I wake up horny. Andreas sleeps beside me, still, his hand draped over my chest to protect me from it. My consciousness stirs him. When he flexes his hand, it brushes my side and I push it away. It’s too much. I can’t stay in and fuck away the bloodlust for the rest of my life.

  “Hey.” Andreas props himself up, eyes only half-open. He stares at my body. “They’re gone.”

  I look. I don’t want to, but I have to, and he’s right. The area’s not as hard and defined as it used to be. Andreas gently touches the puffy skin. I gasp. The air feels strange in my lungs, like a lump in my throat.

  I quickly expel it and sit up. “I need more of that blood.”

  I burn through T like a bodybuilder. My old dose is not going to be enough and Andreas warns me against trying to visit a human doctor, again.

  “They’ll report you. They’ll report me!” He follows me to the front door.

  “Why do you even care?”

  I pull the door open and storm into the night like an angry teenager. Heat builds under my cold skin. Cis people are all the same: human or vampire.

  Andreas grabs my arm gently, by his standards. I pause out of respect—and rather than dislocating one of our shoulders.

  “Is it so wrong to want to feel normal for once?” he pleads with me.

  I see an ancient monster against canary yellow walls, glossy wood floors, and ergonomic furniture. He tried. He’s still trying.

  “I’ll be back.” I leave, running as fast as I can, which is still not faster than Andreas, but hopefully fast enough to lose him and his questions.

  Normal. I slow to an acceptably human speed outside the Center Street Clinic. It’s closed. Obviously. Nothing discourages new vampires from visiting like hours that end before sunset. Perfectly legal. Perfectly gross.

  I watch patrons drinking in the bar next door, while I walk around it and into the alley. I’ve yet to ask Andreas how long until my body can handle alcohol. Seeing how fast it absorbs hormones, it’d probably take a lot of booze to get me as drunk as the night we met.

  I race up the fire escape and crack the glass with my elbow. The clinic is empty. At home in the dark, I easily navigate the clutter of chairs and narrow hallways in search of the pharmacy.

  A sign stops me: “Ask about subsidized hormone therapy, today!” Center Street is a good clinic. What kind of asshole robs a pharmacy?

  Me. I’m the kind.

  There are dozens of bottles of T, here. They’ll know if I take one, so I might as well take what I need for the next six weeks. The clinic can order more.

  I load the little boxes into my backpack, grab some needles and syringes for good measure, and climb back out the broken window. Halfway down the fire escape, I consider that Andreas would have found a less obvious and destructive way in.

  I jump from the second floor, landing on wobbly feet in the alley. Drunk blood wafts past me from the bar. I hurry away from it, so I won’t be tempted to rip a beer out of someone’s hands—or the jugular out of someone’s throat.

  I still smell the alcohol when I pass the gym. Fast-pumping blood, still hot from working out, burns my nostrils. I drag my tongue over my fangs, imagining how one of these late-night meatheads would taste.

  “Hey.” A solid, wide-jawed man nods at me. “You’re out late.”

  “No.” My razor teeth show through my smile. “You’re out late.” I hear his heart pump faster, smell his adrenaline spike. I bet he tastes even better turned on.

  He runs a hand through his sweat-slick hair while he swaggers towards me. He lowers his voice. “I’ve never fucked a vampire, before.”

  I press a hand against his abdomen and linger on the over-developed muscle. “You’re subtle.”

  “Wasn’t getting the feeling I needed to be.”

  “You don’t. Come with me.”

  Andreas isn’t home when I-still-haven’t-asked-his-name and I get in. I sit my backpack carefully on the bench in the foyer then kick my shoes into the middle of the hall.

  “Bradley,” the man says between kisses. “My name’s Bradley.”

  “Finn,” I say instead of “I didn’t ask.”

  “This your place?”

  “Something like that.”

  He peers down the hall into open rooms as I pull him into mine. Probably wants to know what a vampire’s lair is like. Apparently it’s like the inside of a Swedish furniture store. Sorry to disappoint.

  Bradley tugs his shoes off and leaves them behind the bed. He smashes his mouth against mine—a move I assume is sexier to someone who can’t literally bite his face off.

  But I go with it. I relax. I let him push me against the mattress—even pretend he’s pinning me there. His sweaty shirt sticks between us when he pulls mine off over my head.

  “You feel like marble.”

  Big vocabulary for a gym rat. “If that’s a problem, I can put my clothes back on.”

  “No, no, no.” He kisses down my chest. “I like it. It’s just . . . different. You’re cold.”

  I snake my hand down the front of Bradley’s drawstring pants. He’s already hard. My hand glides easily over his sweaty cock.

  He moans against my lips. “You want that? Want me to warm you up?”

  As cliché as his lines are, his arrogance gets me wet.

  “Do it,” I say, helping his clothes off. I accidentally rip his tee shirt. His pants slide off unharmed. His swollen cock bobs near my face and I fight the urge to suck it. Bad idea, teeth.

  “Hey, you should know . . .” I trail off. I could kill him and I’m still afraid to tell him our genitals don’t match.

  “What? This your first time?”

  I shake my head.

  “Afraid you’re going to hurt me?”

  “No—well, a little, but I—I’m trans.”

  “What?”

  “I’m transgender.”

  “You have a dick?” He pulls my briefs down, throwing me off balance.

  “Excuse me!”

  “Are you kidding? I find the only fucking gay vampire with no dick?”

  “Didn’t think I’d need one for what you planned to do.”

  “I’m not putting anything in your pussy.”

  I tense up at the word. “Please don’t call it that.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I have another hole, in case you missed it.”

  Bradley shakes his head and reaches for his clothes. “I’m not into girls.”

  I grab his arm and flip him onto the bed. “And I’m not into transphobic douchebags, but I’m hungry so I’ll make an exception.”

  My fangs lodge easily into his neck. My tongue slides over his salty skin and I overwhelmingly realize why Andreas bit me. I can’t even blame him.

  Bradley doesn’t taste like Andreas, though. He tastes like steroids and adrenaline with a hint of alcohol. He doesn’t fight me or he stops fighting me. His heat floods my veins.

  The front door clicks its quiet, controlled click shut. Andreas’s eyes meet mine in the dark. He doesn’t speak. He walks slowly, at human speed even though no one’s around to judge him, and kneels at the foot of the bed.

  “He smells delicious,” Andreas says.

  I swallow a mouthful of Bradley’s thick, heady blood, then pull out. “Want to share?”

  Andreas kisses me, his tongue flicking against mine for a taste. He licks the corner of my mouth, cleaning me up. I’m a messy eater. I’m a monster.

  “No thanks,” Andreas says. “Once was more than enough.” He bites his wrist and lets his blood drip into Bradley’s wounds.

  “You didn’t do that for me.”

  “You’re not even close to draining this man, Finley.”

  The effects on Bradley are instant; the ragged holes in his nec
k stitch themselves back together. Seamless.

  Bradley opens his eyes on Andreas’s.

  “You and Finley had a good time, but it was a one-time thing. He’s not really your type.”

  “Yeah,” Bradley says.

  I roll my eyes.

  “Why don’t you head home and shower off that gym stench,” Andreas says.

  “Good idea,” Bradley agrees, robotic.

  When the jock’s dressed and gone, Andreas says, “Get what you need?”

  I stretch my jaw and crack my neck. Slide my tongue over my teeth to get the last of the taste. “Mostly.”

  “Let me help you.”

  Help me. How is an old cis vampire supposed to help me when he doesn’t understand the first thing about my body? My eternity?

  I ask, “Do you have any nails?”

  Andreas leans against the threshold, sipping blood while he watches. His skin is pale, but not pallid. His pose casual, but precise. “Little more to the left,” he says. “There. That’s it.”

  I walk backwards until I bump into him. He hands me the mug and I take a sip. “Not bad,” I say.

  My last sunset hangs over the bed. With my new eyes, I see the thick texture of paints where the colors blend and my brushstrokes overlap like waves. Apricot, wine, and goldenrod blur together, each clearer and more real than anything printed by a machine on one of Andreas’s quilts.

  “Small changes over long periods of time, you said?”

  “Yes,” Andreas says. “Why?”

  “Just making sure.”

  I imagine what a real sunset will look like when I’m old enough to experience one. If they’ll still exist or if smog will cloud the skyline. The only thing that won’t change is me, my body, my canvas. “What about a tattoo? You know, to remember.” Blood drips from the corners of my eyes.

  “Possible. It’ll hurt, but possible.” Andreas tightens his hold on me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes,” I resolve. “Haven’t cried this much since—before, you know. It feels good.”

  “Since before I turned you?” he asks.

  “No,” I say. “Before I turned myself.”