Fat White Vampire Blues

by Andrew J. Fox

Jules scowled. “Well, goody for you. I’ll be sure to have the monks mail you a gold star to stick on your forehead. What now, smarty?”

  “Do you remember how I was able to change my breast size and alter my waist-hips ratio? You should have the same type of control over your body’s composition. A good visual metaphor is helpful. Umm, did your mother knit?”

  “She didn’t make woolen booties, if that’s what you mean. But let’s see… when the war rationing was on, and you could hardly buy nothin‘, she used to hafta mend my socks pretty often.”

  Doodlebug smiled. “Very good. Here’s what I want you to picture in your mind, after I have you say your trigger words. Imagine your mother mending your socks, threading the new thread through her needle and sewing the holes in the fabric up good and tight. Then imagine that your hands replace hers and continue with the sewing, only what you’re sewing together isbone, not cloth. Finally, imagine a skeleton like the one that used to hang in your high school science lab, but it’syour skeleton, and it’s whole and undamaged and perfect. Do you have all that?”

  “Yeah.” Jules blinked again as sweat from his forehead stung his eyes. “So what’s my magic word, Merlin?”

  “Train set.”

  “Do I hafta picture it, or do I just say it?”

  “Doing both wouldn’t hurt.”

  Jules started to take a deep breath, but the expansion of his rib cage hurt so much that he quickly expelled it. He took a much smaller breath, then closed his eyes and said,“Train set!”

  Pain and fear were instantly swept from his mind. His thoughts were distilled water, perfectly clear and sharp. He saw his mother sitting in her scallop-backed Victorian parlor chair, knitting basket on her lap, squinting hard as she threaded her needle through the frayed edges of the toe rip in his coarse black woolen sock. Then he saw himself in the same chair, with the same needle and thread in his hands, only his knitting basket was filled with broken pieces of his ribs. One at a time he was fitting his ribs together, then pushing the needle through the broken parts (it slid through as easily as it would through foam rubber) and suturing them together. As he imagined all this, he felt the burning in his sides begin to lessen. (It’s working! It’s really working!) He knit eagerly but methodically, making sure not to miss even a single tiny piece of rib in his basket, test-fitting various segments of bone together like jigsaw pieces to ensure he was creating the proper matches. With each stitch, he felt himself grow stronger.

  When all the pieces of rib were gone from his knitting basket, Jules imagined the piиce de rйsistance-his own gleaming skeleton, perfect and unbroken, hanging from a harness at the center of a freshly scrubbed science lab, admired by dozens of nubile schoolgirls in short plaid skirts.

  Jules opened his eyes. He took a deep, deep breath, expanding his chest to its fullest, most impressive dimensions. The pain was nothing more than an awful memory.

  He grabbed his friend’s shoulders before Doodlebug could say a word. “Idid it! Iactually did it! Just like you said, I imagined the knitting and the mending and the whole time I was thinking it, it was actually happening! You’re agenius! A vampire Einstein!”

  The usually imperturbable Doodlebug surprised Jules by blushing a deep red. “I’m just happy it worked so well. You, uh, you really had me worried there for a while.” He reached out, tentatively, and placed his hand on Jules’s cheek for the briefest of instants. The younger vampire’s eyes may have revealed more warmth than he wanted to show. Jules found himself suddenly feeling acutely uncomfortable.

  “We should probably lay low for a while yet,” Doodlebug continued, a little too quickly. “Before we go very far, I’m going to need clothes. That cloak of yours will cover you up in a pinch. But if we get pulled over on the way back to the bed-and-breakfast, I’d rather not answer the officers’ questions while naked.”

  “If this is a theater, maybe there’re some costumes lyin‘ around in a dressing room. Worse comes to worst, there might be an apron down behind the concession stand we could swipe.”

  “Any port in a storm,” Doodlebug said. “I have your flashlight from the glove compartment. Shall we go exploring?”

  Doodlebug helped him off the floor. The flashlight’s beam revealed that the tremendous shiny wall Jules had been staring at was the back of a movie screen. The two of them walked around the screen to the front of the stage, and Jules immediately recognized one of the landmarks of his youth. Staring out at the hundreds of seats, he felt like a teenager again.

  The Loews’ State Palace, in its prime, had been one of the top two movie theaters in downtown New Orleans. In the nearly eighty years since it had been built, the world of moviegoing had changed radically. Going downtown was anathema to modern-day audiences; they watched their movies in multiplex theaters built on old cotton fields. The State Palace had somehow hung on, though. For the last few years, the grand old theater had played host to dance raves and revivals of classic movies.

  Jules shone his light onto the tremendous balcony and side wings that, by themselves, could probably seat nearly eight hundred people. His beam reflected off the dusty but still-glittering crystal segments of three enormous chandeliers; the dazzling reflections momentarily turned the huge theater into a disco. Jules recalled coming here as a young vampire and sitting nervously beneath one of those chandeliers, while on-screen Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera dropped a similar chandelier onto the heads of an audience of opera patrons.

  “Hey, Jules! Shine the light down at the floor. I think we may’ve found something for me better than just an apron.”

  Jules played the flashlight beam into the empty floor space in front of the first row of seats, the area once reserved for a live orchestra. Off to both sides were portable clothing racks, holding what looked like musical theater costumes. He noticed that a banner had been hung from the front of the stage. He descended the stairs to the floor so he could read it.

  “Hey, get a load of this: CELEBRATING AMERICA’S FAVORITE MUSICAL-singin‘ in the rain

  – 45TH ANNIVERSARY.Looks like they’ve got a live stage show to go along with the movie.“

  Doodlebug was already rifling through the costumes hanging from the racks. “These costumes are gorgeous! I recognize a lot of them from the musical numbers. Let’s see… here are outfits from ‘Be a Clown,’ ‘Good Mornin’,‘ of course ’Singin‘ in the Rain’… oh, howwonderful! This has to be one of my favorite movies of all time. Debbie Reynolds was simplyprecious!”

  Jules took in Doodlebug’s enthusiasm with a jaundiced eye. If he didn’t put the brakes on, his friend could be trying on outfits until after sunrise. “Hurry up and pick one out, okay?”

  “Ohhh… justlook at this beautiful dress,” Doodlebug said, running his hands across smooth white chiffon, apparently not hearing a word Jules had said. “I think Cyd Charisse wore one like it in the ‘Broadway Ballet’ number-”

  Jules sighed in resignation. “Aww, go ahead, then. Have your fun. You’ve earned it after tonight, I guess. Actually, though you probably won’t believe it,Singin‘ in the Rain is one of my all-time favorites, too.”

  “Really? I thought your taste runs more toward Jimmy Cagney gangster pictures.”

  “Well, itdoes. But whenSingin‘ in the Rain came out, me and Maureen were havin’ one of our periodic fallin‘-out times. I’d always liked Gene Kelly-back then the girls used to tell me I looked like a taller Gene Kelly, see, only I didn’t know how to dance none-and anyway, I figured maybe seein’ a lighthearted musical might cheer me up some. So I went to see it; right here in this theater, in fact. And I loved it. The whole time I was watchin‘ it, see, I was imagining that Gene Kelly was me, and that Debbie Reynolds was Maureen. Shit, I musta watched that picture fifteen times before it left town. Some nights I’d imagine that Cyd Charisse was Maureen, instead of Debbie Reynolds, if I wanted a, y’know, a more spicy viewing experience.”

  Doodlebug finished buttoning up a replica of one of Debbie Reynolds’s yellow-and-green summe
r dresses and then smoothed the cotton over his thighs. “Ahh, now I feelhuman again.” He cocked his head and squinted hard at his friend. “Say… I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that posthypnotic trigger I gave you helps tremendously with your multiple transformations. Care to see whether I’m right?”

  Jules looked around him. “What? Here?”

  “Why not? There’s plenty of room. It’s only 2:45A.M.; we wanted to wait a bit before heading back to the B-and-B, in any case. And I’m dying of curiosity-healing your own injuries may have speeded up your mastery of multiple forms by weeks, maybe months.”

  “Eh, I dunno,” Jules said, staring at his feet and shuffling them some. “This has been a real ball-buster of a night. I mean, I’m exhausted as hell. Besides, the floor in here, it’s that sticky floor like what they got in all the old movie theaters. I might get all that floor stickiness mixed in with my slug-thingie, and then I could end up with monster acne, or somethin‘-”

  Doodlebug, looking about as unconvinced as a vampire could be, planted his fists on his hips and slowly shook his head. “Excuses, excuses… it’sso important that you make the attempt right now, while that posthypnotic suggestion is still strong.”

  “Well…”

  “Look. We might never get another chance to put you over the top. I can’t stick around forever, Jules. I have responsibilities back home. And even if Icould stick around and help you forever, it wouldn’t be good for you. You need to fly solo.”

  “No rest for the wicked,” Jules mumbled to himself from the floor in front of the movie screen. Before he had time for second thoughts, he repeated his trigger. Immediately, his mind was washed sparkling clean. Biology, physics-it was all instinctive to him now. His transformation into bat-form was the easiest he’d ever experienced. Disappointingly, his bat-shape was still as rotund and flightless as it had been for the last twenty or so years. As soon as he felt fully settled in his batness, he mentally probed the ether for the remainder of his mass. He gently pulled at it. Creating his wolf-form was as easy as filling a bucket from a hose.

  The theater echoed with the sound of applause. Even though it was just Doodlebug clapping, to Jules’s four extraordinarily sensitive ears, it sounded like the Rockettes doing a tap number just above his heads. “Oh, Jules! You’ve done it! I knew you could! Iknew you could!”

  It had been so easy, so painless and effortless, that it took the two Juleses a few seconds to recognize what he’d accomplished. Bat-Jules and Wolf-Jules stared at one another, almost disbelievingly. He saw himself, and he saw himself seeing himself, and he saw himself seeing himself see himself. It was dizzying, like being in a fun house hall of mirrors.

  His wolf-self had an overwhelming desire to sniff his bat-self up close and personal. This was so exciting! Wolf-Jules gazed deep into Bat-Jules’s black, beady little eyes and admired the lively, curious intelligence there.Sure, maybe the little winged guy’s a bit rounder than he should be, but just look at that terrific wingspan!

  Bat-Jules was hardly less admiring of his fellow.He’s so noble looking! And lovable! No wonder that bitch in Baton Rouge found me irresistible!

  Wolf-Jules nudged Bat-Jules with his nose as he was sniffing him. The resulting sensory feedback loop-his touching himself touch himself touching himself, ad infinitum-overloaded both of Jules’s brains. His concentration shattered. Both of Jules’s bodies devolved into pools of proto-matter before vanishing in clouds of fleshy mist.

  “Ohhhh mannn…” he sputtered after he’d re-formed, sprawled facedown on the floor. To his disgust, his left cheek was stuck to the tacky surface. “What happened? I was doin‘ so great…”

  “Don’t worry about it. You did fabulously well. The shock of direct physical contact between two bodies sharing a single, generalized consciousness is enough to overwhelm any vampire at first.”

  On his second attempt, Jules was able to maintain separate wolf- and bat-forms for six minutes before losing his concentration. Next up, he was able to flop around the floor as three individual bats for nine and a half minutes-before exhaustion, more than lack of concentration, forced his collapse.

  While Jules was toweling himself off, he decided to ask the question that had been bugging him virtually since the first night Doodlebug started training him. “Hey, D.B., even tonight, even with my usin‘ that posthypnotic trigger-thingie you gave me, how come all my other bodies are still sofat? I mean, I still can’t get even an inch off the floor when I’m a bat, ’cause my damn bat-belly’s like an anchor holding me down. What’s up with that? Multiple bodies is a kick and all, don’t get me wrong. But it’s about as useful in combat as bein‘ able to juggle eight heads of lettuce, if all my bodies end up as fat and slow as my regular body.”

  Doodlebug pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I’ve done some thinking about that very subject. I don’t believe your other bodieshave to be fat and slow at all. I think you create them that way out of habit. I think that, somewhere along the road, you got used to the notion of Jules Duchon as obese and clumsy, and you got comfortable with that. I think your wolf-belly drags the ground because youbelieve it should, and that your bat can’t fly because youbelieve it shouldn’t.”

  Jules was quiet for a long moment. “That can’t be right,” he said finally. “I’vewanted to be a skinny bat. I’vetried. Don’t you think all them times my life’s been in danger-that time by the lake with the Levee Board cops, or tonight in the alley-don’t you think I tried with all my might to become a bat that could fly? Why would I hold myself back like that, when mylife depended on it? It’s gotta be that I just… can’t… do it.”

  Doodlebug walked over and sat in the chair next to him. He started to reach for Jules’s hand, then hesitated and pulled back. “Jules, I’m not a trained psychologist. But it’s pretty obvious to me that someone, a very long time ago, convinced you that you weren’t worth much. Whoever that was, they inserted a little facsimile of themselves into your head, just like I inserted your posthypnotic trigger earlier tonight. And that little mental facsimile whispers to you not to try, because if you try you might fail. And only someone who is worth something can afford to fail, so you’d better not take the risk.”

  Halfway through Doodlebug’s soliloquy, Jules had clamped his hands over his ears. “I know what you’re doing,” he said. “I read about it inNewsweek. You’re psychobabbling me.Blah-blah toilet trainingblah-blah self-esteemblah-blah inner child… Well, it’s not gonna work, Dr. Ruth. I’m not gonna let you get away with blamin‘ all my problems on my mother.”

  “Who said anything about your mother?”

  “Youdid.”

  “I did not. I never mentioned your mother.You mentioned your mother.”

  Jules got red in the face. “I didnot!”

  “Yes, you did,” Doodlebug responded coolly.

  They sat in silence for three long minutes. Doodlebug was the first to break the uneasy quiet. “Tell you what. Let’s try something new. One last thing. We’ll do it together this time.”

  Jules didn’t respond in any way. Not even a grunt.

  “You said thatSingin‘ in the Rain is one of your all-time favorite movies, right?” Doodlebug continued. “That people used to tell you that you looked like Gene Kelly, and that when you watched this film, you imagined youwere Gene Kelly? Well, go ahead.Be Gene Kelly. I’ll be Cyd Charisse. We’ve got all the costumes we need right here. We can do one of the dances from the movie. I’ve shown you how you can turn your imaginings into solid reality. Don’t just imagine yourself as a slender, graceful Gene Kelly- behim.”

  Jules tried not to respond as Doodlebug nudged him. But he realized that the younger vampire would just keep talking until Jules saidsomething. “That, hands-down, is the single mostidiotic idea you’ve come up with since you’ve been back in New Orleans.”

  “What’s so idiotic about it?”

  “I told you before. I don’t dance.”

  “No problem. We’ll do the fantasy duet from the ‘Broadway Ballet’ sequ
ence. Cyd Charisse does all the moving in that number. Gene Kelly just stands there and looks awestruck.”

  Jules sighed. He felt like he was speaking with a retarded child. “Even you can’t dance without music, right?”

  “No problem. I’ll run the film. We’ll wait until that part comes, and then we’ll dance along with it.”

  Again Jules sighed. “No matter what I say, you’re gonna do it anyway, aren’t you?” he said flatly. “So go ahead. Get it over with. Put on your costume and play your games. Only the joke’s on you, pal, ‘cause there ain’t any outfit on either of them racks that comes anywhereclose to fittin’me.”

  “We’ll just see about that,” Doodlebug said, and smiled.

  After twenty minutes of trial and error, loading and unloading various reels of film, Doodlebug found the reel that contained the “Broadway Ballet” sequence. As the film stuttered into life, Jules found himself sucked into the images on-screen. Despite his resistance to the whole idea, hearing Gene Kelly sing “Gotta Dance!” and watching him stride around those Broadway sets in that athletic, manly, yet compellingly graceful way of his brought back memories both good and surprisingly bittersweet. Jules was shocked by how much Gene Kelly resembled what he remembered of the young, human Jules Duchon. Not so much the physique (even in his best shape ever, Jules had to admit, he’d been nowhere near as buff as Gene Kelly)-more the smile, warm and cocky and reassuring all at once, and the friendly cast of the eyes.

  When Gene Kelly saw Cyd Charisse stride through the doors of the Broadway casino, and the scene melted into a fantasy tableau of the two of them dancing together in an ethereal paradise, Jules didn’t see Cyd Charisse; he saw Maureen. It was Maureen in the flowing white gown, her fifteen-foot train soaring behind her in the wind, her beautiful long hair spilling over her bare shoulders. It was Maureen who danced around him, wrapping his torso and arms with her gauzy cape, who dazzled him with her angelic footwork, exciting a brilliant smile from his lips. It was Maureen who danced away, her arms futilely beckoning, as the fantasy dissolved into the harshly lit reality of the casino, and she turned away from him to accept her gangster boyfriend’s cold embrace.