Nebula Awards Showcase 2019

by Rebecca Roanhorse

  “I am.” Blisters swell on his otherwise unblemished skin. “Just because I don’t catch fire wearing SPF 70 in the shade, doesn’t mean I can lie out on the beach in June.”

  I cross vacations off my list of future plans. A list that seems to shrink every hour.

  “Look, Finley, don’t let this ruin your last day.”

  I walk backwards across the line of light, watching Andreas grow smaller. He doesn’t offer any more wisdom. He doesn’t even stay.

  Don’t let this ruin my last day. It’s not really my last day. My last day was pizza and burnt French fries, strobe lights and pulsing bass. Drunk pissing.

  I stand at the top of St. Paul Street and watch cars fly past. They disappear between skyscrapers and the orange glow of sunset. I should care that this is my last sunset—at least for a few centuries.

  I cared when it was my last night with breasts. When I faced losing erotic sensation. Never arching under the hard pinch of rough fingers or the wet suction of a man’s lips. I didn’t want the mounds, but I had them my whole life. And, then, I didn’t.

  I cared before my voice dropped. When I faced losing my ability to sing. “Most guys can’t,” the Internet said and no voice coaches worked with trans men, only trans women. The drop was sudden and uncomfortable. I strained and pushed to sing The Kinks and The Beatles and cried when I couldn’t. I hadn’t lost my ability to cry, yet.

  I care that this is my last sunset.

  ◉ ◉ ◉

  The sky is black and blue when I show up on Andreas’s doorstep. His bandaged hand and heavy eyelids are my fault. He glances at the back of my canvas and my small kit of paints and brushes, as if he expected more.

  “I probably won’t see another sunset like that.” Not that I have to justify my time to him. He probably expected I’d visit with family or friends, vomit up a last ditch attempt at a favorite drink or meal. Maybe I should’ve. Too late, now.

  “No, you probably won’t.” Andreas steps aside so I can set my things in the guest room and kick off my shoes. “Ready?”

  “Yeah.” I roll up my pink and orange stained sleeves. “I’m ready.”

  Andreas leads me into the basement. It’s unfinished. The rough cement floor cools my feet; the air chills my exposed skin.

  “You don’t have to take off your clothes, but you should,” Andreas says.

  “Why?”

  “Death is messy. You don’t want it sticking to you.”

  “Fair.” I don’t ask for further details. Despite stabbing myself with a needle every two weeks and going through surgery, I’m not particularly good with gross body stuff. Surprise-menstruation was enough to last me an eternity.

  I leave my shirt and jeans in a pile, half-folded. Andreas lifts up a metal hatch, exposing soft, freshly tilled soil underneath.

  “No coffin?” I ask. Vampires aren’t exactly forthcoming about their reproductive process. Secrets are power and they’ve already given over so much to humankind.

  “No,” he says. “Just you and the earth.” His cheeks flush with recently-drunk blood. He’s jealous. He stares at the loose dirt like a lover he wants to wrap himself around.

  “You can join me. If you want.”

  Andreas shakes his head. “You don’t want that. You want to be alone. Trust me. There’ll be other nights.”

  I don’t tell him I don’t want to be buried alive and alone. I don’t want to taste dirt. Don’t want it matted in my hair, packed up my nose—the crumbs rolling up into my brain. If I’m barely breathing, does it even matter?

  Andreas offers his hand. I let him help me into the earthen grave because no one’s done anything like that for me since I was a girl.

  I sink a few inches when the dirt gives beneath my weight. Andreas’s grip tightens to keep me from falling. Mine tightens with hopes of pulling him in with me. But he doesn’t stumble, doesn’t follow. When he lets go, I clasp my hands in front of me.

  “Lie down.” Each of his words is a nail in my imaginary coffin.

  I dig myself a space, lie down, and close my eyes. When Andreas pushes the first mound of dirt over my feet, I panic. But my body’s not setup to panic, anymore. I have no racing heart or nauseous stomach. My deep breaths mean nothing. I suck air in, but it sits there until I push it out.

  “Relax.” Andreas covers my legs next. He doesn’t pack the soil tight. I assume so that I can get out. I hope.

  He unclasps my hands and lays them out beside me. Even corpses get to hold themselves in death. But I’m left exposed to the dirt Andreas piles on my chest and over my arms. Over my neck and ears.

  I blink up at him, nothing but a pale face amongst black-brown soil. A waning moon in the night sky. Andreas bends and presses a soft kiss against my lips. It doesn’t mean anything. I almost wish it did. We don’t love each other, don’t long for each other’s touch or look forward to some eternal romance. I didn’t even pick him. He bit me. I didn’t get a say beyond turn or die.

  Andreas climbs out of my grave and disappears from view. When he returns, he’s holding the wooden handles of a dirt-filled wheelbarrow. “I’ll be back for you.” And with that, he dumps it over my face. I feel him pat its cold weight over my head and body. Hear the squeaky hinge on the metal trapdoor and its bang shut.

  Dirt fills my mouth when I scream.

  ◉ ◉ ◉

  Starving.

  Starving and dried and thirsty.

  Thirsty and hungry are the same. My body is a desert. I swallow bits of dirt with the rush of blood I suck down. The source is hot against me. Hard against me. My jaw is rigid, eyes wide on those of the man who feeds me.

  “Finley.” His voice is underwater. My name ripples to the surface.

  He rips the source away. I lunge after it, but he pins me on a cold cement floor. I run my tongue over the sharp line of my teeth and cut it on my fangs. They taste like him. My wandering eyes settle on the source. The source has a name. His name is Andreas.

  “Finley.”

  That’s my name. I know because I chose it.

  “Finley, can you hear me?”

  I cough up dirt and blood. Spit it on the cement. “Yes.” My voice is smoother, darker, fuller.

  “How do you feel?” Andreas asks.

  “Starving and dried and thirsty.”

  He smiles with closed lips. “Let’s get you in the shower and some blood in your system. How does that sound?”

  My answer is a low growl—one that’s conceived in my chest and born through my throat. I chase the feeling with another. Andreas pulls me off my feet and into his arms as if I am his pet. I press my nose against his shirt and sniff his blood through the layers of cotton and flesh.

  He sets me on my own feet, again, in the shower. It’s big enough for three, no curtains blocking us in. Showerheads hang from the ceiling, raining hot water onto our cold bodies. Andreas rips his clothes off and tosses them into a sopping heap on the rug. I’m already naked—I forgot.

  Starving.

  I feel every drop of water that strikes my skin like a match tip catching fire. Mud rolls over my muscled arms and unsticks from the dark curls between my legs. I’m not bleeding, anymore.

  Andreas offers his wrist. I latch onto his neck, instead. His laugh resounds through my jaw. The blood jostles, choking me for a moment. I pull back and crack my neck, let the rush settle in.

  Nerves in my chest prickle to life—nerves that died under the knife years ago. I squirm where Andreas slides his hand down my back, where he rests it under my ass and squeezes, pressing our bare bits together.

  When I bite him again, my teeth light with as much pleasure as my cunt—more, even. Like there are nerves in my new fangs.

  “There are,” Andreas says, confirming my thoughts. “And it’s so much better than sex.”

  My body pulses with blood like that first rush
of testosterone. Andreas doesn’t taste like one person. He isn’t a varietal vintage. He’s the blood of everyone he’s drunk. Like the house blend, I drink him until he stops me.

  I know it’s blood; I can taste the iron. But it recalls words like silky and juicy, the swirl of red in a glass, and roll over the tongue.

  “Enough,” he says with fangs exposed.

  I didn’t expect the lust part of bloodlust, but Andreas looks different with my undead eyes. I can see the lines of severity in his expression, the flare of his pupils, feel his subtly shifting muscles.

  I reach between us and grab Andreas’s erection, rub my blood-engorged clit against it and moan. “I want you,” I say.

  “You want blood.”

  “I want both.”

  Andreas smiles. “I’ll give you both.”

  We fuck with my forehead pressed against the slick tiled wall, Andreas’s mouth hovering against the back of my neck. Even amidst the steam, his breath is hot, tongue strong and wet. I want him to feed on me again, like that night in the alley. Only this time we both want it and it is so much better, this way.

  His cold fingers shock my nipples hard, rolling and pinching them. In only a few hours they’ve regained the sensitivity they lost under the knife, two years ago.

  With his other hand he covers my mouth. And while I relish the bondage, the stifling of my growls and moans, I know it’s an offering. I sink my teeth into his wrist and draw the color from him.

  While his blood rushes through me, turning me, resurrecting me, Andreas pushes his thick cock into my cunt. I steady myself against the wall while he lifts me with one arm—the arm not lodged in my mouth—and thrusts.

  It’s not long before he comes, trembling inside me; his body pins mine to the wall. I’m so close, so full, probably saturated. Andreas reaches between my legs and rubs my clit. I close my eyes, lick the wounds on his arm, rest my weight on the full feeling in my groin.

  If he weren’t propping me up, my orgasm would knock me to the shower floor. It radiates through my blood stream. It wakes me up.

  Andreas has to rip his arm away from me. “Careful,” he whispers in my ear. “Your body is adjusting. You don’t want to be sick, again, so soon.”

  He rinses us off, takes my hand, and together we lie on the shower tiles, their orange-pink marbling a farce of sundown. I rest my face against his pec, over his juicy heart, and kiss the skin. Andreas chuckles and holds me there while the water pounds over my blissed out body.

  “I’m still hungry,” I say.

  “I bet you are.”

  “When can we hunt?”

  “We can’t.”

  “Why not? You did.”

  Andreas flips his body on top of mine. “I’m old, Finley. Too old. I’ve followed human history for millennia. I’ve met believers and skeptics. Warm beds and pitchforks. Somehow, I never expected assimilation.” He relaxes onto his side, rests his head on his hand. “Never expected to go mainstream.”

  “’I’m Andreas. I was a vampire before it was cool,’” I say, mocking him.

  His smirk is sharp and quick; I almost miss it. “You think you’re going to be the vampire that breaks the rules. That fights the normalization of our culture. That doesn’t register with a government that’s existed as long as my last haircut.

  “Your laws don’t really matter to me. But for some reason I went along with them. I figured, why not try something new? Live in the open for a change, make friends, furnish an apartment, get a hobby.

  “Wasn’t so bad at first. Bagged blood is like your Diet Coke. Not as good as the real thing, but you get used to it—so much, sometimes, that you get a sugar rush if you revert.” Andreas traces a finger down my jaw, over my neck and chest, swirling it around one of my swollen areola. “I wanted to hold a live body in my arms and feed while it wriggled against me, struggled for the life I sucked hot out of it.”

  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 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.