Human for a Day (9781101552391) (17 page)

My glance fell on her other hand. When I saw the blood seeping from the cut, I gagged again as I recalled sticking that appendage into my mouth.

“If you feel this bad,” she said, “I don't think you should go to school today. I want you to go back upstairs and lie down.”

“What? No!” I wanted to escape this house and start seeking answers to my dilemma, not remain in Margot's bedroom doing nothing.

“If the very thought of eating makes you gag, you might be coming down with something, and you shouldn't be in school. Now go upstairs and lie down.” When I tried to protest, she spoke in a voice I found hard to deny, “No arguments, young lady. Upstairs. Now.”

I sighed in defeat, then turned and walked out of the kitchen and toward the stairs. My mood improved as I realized that this was probably a better plan, anyhow. The school, rife with adolescent bodies and hormones, would probably overload Margot's senses to such an extent that I couldn't possibly focus on my problem (figuring out how to return to my own existence); I would also be overwhelmed by the challenge of masquerading as Margot amidst her peers and in her regular lifestyle. At least in her bedroom, I'd have solitude in which to think.

“You don't need to escort me,” I said when I realized the mother was following me up the steps. “I'm going to, er, my room.”

“
I
'
m
going to the bathroom,” she said. “I need to put a bandage on this cut.”

I proceeded to the purple bedroom. She proceeded down the hallway to the bathroom. Only moments after I closed the bedroom door, I heard her shrieking at me about the mess I had made in the bathroom.

Unaccustomed as I was to human hygienic requirements, I probably had indeed left the bathroom in disarray. I considered apologizing . . . but given the state of Margot's room, I suspected her mother was accustomed to finding the bathroom in unacceptable condition after Margot used it. So I said nothing.

I sat down on the unmade bed and considered my situation. Since I was in Margot's body and living her life in a suburban home (New Jersey? Westchester County? Long Island?), I thought the most logical prospect for what had happened to
my
body was that Margot currently inhabited it.

On that basis, confronting Margot-in-my-body was obviously the first step to take toward resolving this peculiar situation. What I should do, I decided, is call myself. I remembered seeing Margot's cell phone earlier, somewhere amidst the jumbled mess of her possessions. As I heard the mother descending the steps to return to the first floor of the house, I started searching the room for the cell. A few moments later, I heard music. A vapid pop rock song that I didn't recognize. I wondered why that music had suddenly started playing—then realized it must be Margot's ring tone. And the noise was coming from beneath the discarded gold lamé tube-top. I tossed the garment aside, seized the phone, checked the LCD panel—and recognized César's cell phone number.

I answered the call immediately. “César?”

“Yes,
chérie
.” César said. “Is that you?”

“Yes! How did you get this number?” I asked. “What's going on? Where are you?”

“I'm at your place. Or, to be strictly accurate, I'm in the basement laundry room directly above your place.” Cell phones didn't get a signal in my lair. “I came here shortly before dawn, hoping you were feeling better by then and would welcome a little company. Instead of you, I found someone in your coffin who looks, sounds, and smells exactly like you, but who is most certainly
not
you.”

“Is her name Margot?” I asked anxiously.

“Indeed. And I would have called you sooner, but it's taken me since dawn to get her to stop shrieking, jabbering, cowering, and wailing. Whatever she was expecting when she started playing around with black magic, it evidently wasn't to wake up in a coffin underground to find a vampire trying to have sex with her. I think she's going to need a lot therapy after we get her back into her own body.”

“
That
'
s
how we wound up switching bodies?” I was aghast. “This girl was playing with black magic?”

“Yes. Though it's taken me some time to get a coherent explanation from her. Just listen to her babbling and weeping,” he said with a sigh.

“I don't hear anything,” I said. “Mortal senses.”

“Oh, dear. Of course.”

“But why
me?
I don't know this girl. I've never met her. I've never bitten her.” I'd seen her face in the mirror this morning. I would recognize her if I had snacked on her.

“Apparently there's a self-proclaimed vampire living in this dormitory directly above you.”

“Oh, no.” One of
those.

“She's a girl from Margot's town in New Jersey, one year older, now a student here. And for whatever reason, Margot wants her body, her boyfriend, and her life. But the body-swapping spell she cast and aimed in this general direction was—”

“Was aimed at a
real
vampire,” I said in exasperation. “And so, sleeping innocently in the same area last night, and being the only real vampire there, I got the whammy.”

“Precisely.”

“Hell and damnation! I could just eat Margot's eyeballs for this.” As soon as I said it, I felt queasy again. “César, I have got to get out of this body. You have no idea how disgusting being mortal is.”

“Oh, believe me,
ma chére
, I remember. In fact, I even had acne when I was mortal. Can you
imagine?
”

“Let's not reminisce.”

“Fortunately, Margot thinks we can reverse this.”

“She thinks?
Thinks?
She'd
better
reverse it, or I swear I will feed her mother to you while I make her watch! I'll—”

“Calm yourself,
ma belle
. If it's any consolation, the experiences of the past few hours have terrified her so much, I think it may reduce her mortal lifespan by ten years.”

“Given what her mortality is like, that really isn't much consolation,” I said. “So, how does she
think
we can reverse this?”

“In her bedroom, there should be some candles, some idols, a bell, and some henbane, which looks a bit like—”

“Like a weed?” I said, moving toward the dresser, where all of these props were laid out.

“Yes! You've found it?”

“I've found
all
of it.” I eyed the bowl of ashes I had noticed earlier. “She performed a ritual that involved chanting to these idols, ringing the bell, and burning the henbane? And—poof!—I woke up human.”

“That's it, more or less.”

“It's outrageous. She has no right to play with my existence this way.”

“I think she has come to full and sober realization of that fact,” César assured me. “And she has already experienced her punishment, in the form of shock and fear which will remain fresh in her mind for years to come. Thus, all that remains, my dear, is for us to enact the ritual and get you back where you belong.”

Margot's heart was pounding again. God, it was annoying. With a distraction like this clouding my mind, I really hoped I would be able to competently conduct—of all the idiotic things—a black magic ritual for mutually reciprocal incorporeal translocation without winding up in the body of a poodle.

I lighted the candles, took a few breaths (how laborious—
breathing
), and said into the phone, “I'm ready. What do I do?”

“I'll put her on the phone so she can walk you through it,” César said. “The next time I speak with you, I hope it will be face to face—
your
face. Good luck!”

A moment later, she said, “Hello?”

I told her I had the materials ready and asked for the first step in casting the spell.

She said, “God, your voice sounds so nasal!”

“It's
your
voice,” I replied through clenched teeth. “Now how do I start the spell?”

“Your clothes are cool,” she said.

Based on the evidence of her taste which I had seen today, I realized I would need to seriously rethink my look once I got back into my body.

“But, God, your skin is like
ice
,” she said. “So is your boyfriend's. And it grosses me out that I wanted to bite the neck and suck the blood of the girl who was just in here doing her laundry. I mean, I know it's instinct and you can't really help it, but
still
.”

“Then let's hasten your return to your own body,” I said. “What do I do first?”

She walked me through a reversal-version of the black magic spell that had caused this outrage in the first place. It was fairly standard stuff, though the difficulty of breathing and chanting at the same time tripped me up, so I had to give it a few tries before I finally got it right.

After some dark whirling and flashing lights, I found myself sitting in my lovely, pale, cold, bloodthirsty body in the laundry room of the dormitory beneath which I keep my lair.

“
Ma chére?
”

I lifted my head and saw my handsome César gazing anxiously at me. “It's me,” I assured him.

He made a little sound of relief and embraced me. I kissed him, enjoying the cold feel of his lips pressed against mine. From the corner of my eye, I could see and sense the pulsing jugular vein of the college student who pretended not to notice our embrace while he folded his whites.

“It's so good to be back where I belong.” I said.

Holding hands, we adjourned to the forgotten underground passages in the building which I used to access my lair by day. Once safely ensconced in my coffin, we engaged in a satisfying bout of vampire sex—which, like everything else in my undead experience, is so much better than it was when I was mortal.

Jean Rabe

 

 

 

 

“T
hou knotty-pated execrable wretch!”

I watched Bill grab the purse snatcher by the wrist, his iron grip snapping bones and causing the thief to howl in pain and drop his foul-gotten gains.

“Thou warped elf-skinned puttock!” Bill continued, as he twisted the snatcher's limb backward and—I'm guessing accidentally—cracked the snatcher's ulna. The thief howled louder and Bill had to shout to be heard above the wail. “Thou churlish fool-born malt-worm ! Thou—”

“Enough with the Elizabethan curses, Bill.” I nudged his foot with mine. “He gets the message. He shouldn't've pinched the dame's pocketbook. I bet if you break his other arm, he'll never pinch anything again.” Somewhat to my surprise, Bill did just that, and the snatcher mercifully collapsed into unconsciousness.

The throng that had gathered on this warm summer day—the young lady whose purse had just been rescued, a scattering of tourists snapping pictures, businessmen on their lunch break, a homeless gent stinking to that proverbial high-heaven, and a trio of daycare workers herding a flock of toddlers—broke into applause.

“Let's get out of here, Bill, before the cops show up.”

He returned the purse with a flourish, bowing and kissing the woman's hand.

She grinned coyly.

“The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief,” he said.

She cocked her head, not understanding.

“
Othello
,” Bill supplied. “Act I, scene III. The robbed that—”

“C'mon, Bill, we gotta go.”

Bill reluctantly followed me, as did One-from-Seven and an ugly duck. We cut down a bike trail into a more heavily wooded section thick with lofty pin oaks, where everything seemed oddly quiet. I loved this part of the park, not far from Belevedere Castle. I couldn't smell Manhattan's pollution here, too far from the cars belching exhaust, but I could detect a trace of manure, a by-product of the popular carriage rides. And when the wind shifted, like it was doing now, there were scents supplied by the hot dog carts and churro vendors, and let's not forget the hint of burning salt from the pretzel hawkers.

Bill was spouting again. Distracted, I'd missed the first bit. “. . . villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars—”

“What?” I stared up into his unblinking eyes.

“From
King Lear
,” he said.

“Great. Remind me never to animate you again. Ever.” So maybe this year I didn't choose wisely. Maybe this year my moniker fit. This year I picked Bill—William Shakespeare. Coaxed him down from his stone pedestal southeast of Sheep's Meadow. Heard he'd been up there since 1864, and paid for by money raised from a benefit performance of his play
Julius Caesar
. He'd been sculpted by John Quincy Adams Ward. There were three other pieces by Ward in Central Park. I should've picked one of them, but I'd thought Bill was dressed interestingly enough to share my company, though a little out-of-date. Should've realized his speech would be out-of-date, too. At least he spoke some form of English.

With us was One-from-Seven. I don't know what else to call him, as he won't tell me his name . . . hasn't said a single word so far. I suppose I could call him Soldier Boy or Hey You, but I like the sound of One-from-Seven better. I plucked him out of the 107th Infantry memorial. There were seven fellows there, representing what was originally called the Seventh Regiment of New York during World War I. I'd animated the one in the center a couple of years past, and he'd told me their unit saw heavy action in France, nearly six hundred of them dying before November 1918 came to an end. The memorial was unveiled in 1927, not far from the perimeter wall of the park by Fifth Avenue and 67th. The soldier all the way on the right, One-from-Seven, carried two Mills bombs and had been supporting the wounded guy next to him. I picked One-from-Seven because I thought the bombs might come in handy later today.