jamieproctor.ca

They sat in the dark circle around the dingy table under the flickering lightbulb, sharing a single cigarette.  Or they would have been but Clyde had taken it from Larry and refused to give it back; sucking it down like a kid with his last Halloween candy. 

“Alright, enough stalling,” said Larry, from somewhere underneath the crushing weight of his unibrow.  “Who goes first?”
There was a brief silence as they stalled some more.

“Fine.  I switched strategies.”
“Bold,” said Clyde.  It was sarcastic. 

“Huh?” said Jeb. It was sincere.  Always was. 

“I changed from ASMR of me opening bills and reading them to me throwing out unsolicited flyers without reading them.  Figured the catharsis would get more viewers, but it turns out people don’t even like to see those things when someone else gets them.  Lost my entire fanbase.”

“Piss on a stick,” said Clyde.  “Well, more bad news: I got my tumblr purged, so my followers are scurrying and uncoordinated.  Knew I should’ve started up a discord community or a twitter or something.”
Larry dope-slapped him.

“Hey!  Ow!  What?”

“I’ve TOLD you not to share your opinions with strangers.”
“It wasn’t that!” snapped Clyde.  “I mean, not this time.  Someone flagged it as porn.  I fought it, but turns out my videos qualify.”
“’Someone competent doing their job quickly and punctually while enjoying it’ is porn now?”

“Apparently.  Got demonetized on youtube too.”

Larry sighed.  Clyde sighed. 

They turned to Jeb, who was knuckle-deep and going farther.

“Sorry?” he asked. 

“You’re up,” said Clyde.
“No I’m right here.”
“What did you do this month?” asked Larry.

“Oh!  I had a good idea two days ago.  Was going to try and go viral on Vine.”

“You’re kidding me,” said Clyde. 
“What?” said Jeb.  “I thought it was still a thing.  Nobody told me it shut down years ago.”
“NONE of us can make the rent this month?”

“Soo…..prostitution and murder?” asked Larry.

“Dibs on prostitution,” said Clyde.

“You ALWAYS get dibs on prostitution,” said Jeb.  “I hate bloodstains.”
“Git gud and stab better then, jackass,” said Clyde.  “Besides, I’m the only one of us that has a face fit for a ring gag.  God I hate the end of the month.”

***

They were sobs the like of which nobody had ever seen.  Great, lung-guttering, soul-quivering, heart-aching shudders welling up from something deeper inside than the most secretive and solitary of his organs. 

“My friend,” the bartender told him as he gently patted his cheeks dry with a little cocktail napkin, “you must not carry on so.  Life will go on.  You will rebuild.  Material things are temporary.  You are worthy of love.  I’m sure wherever they are, they’re happy now.  Do you want more?  I can keep going.”
“Nothing can ease my pain,” wailed the man.  “What I once considered most important in all my life has been taken from me.  I’ve been banned from all social media, effective immediately.  What will I do with my time, with my brain, with my anything?  It was all I had in this world because I’m an empty and loathsome shell of a worm of a fragment of a functional human being.”

“Look,” said the bartender, “I wouldn’t normally go this far for a stranger, but you seem emotionally vulnerable and easily led.  Why don’t you go follow my favourite influencer on twitter, @xXxWITEPOWAxXx?  He can lead you down a road of manipulation, grift, racial hatred, and deniable incitement to terrorism.  It’ll give empty purpose to your freshly hollowed life.”

“But bartender,” wept the man, “I AM @xXxWITEPOWAxXx.”

***

I slid out from underneath the machine with a somber expression.  “Bad news,” I said.  “You’ve got no drive left.”

“Wuh-oh!”

I ignored the sounds with practiced power and  grace.  “And that’s not even the worst of it: you can see here where it’s overheated and partially melted… I’m afraid your rig is shot.”
“Oh god no,” mourned the customer.  He was fat-bellied and thin-haired, in that aimless stretch of extended middle age that can hold some men from age thirty to sixty.  His hands and chin were the only parts of him that moved, working and twisting constantly as he writhed and gasped in the pickle he’d put himself into.  “Oh jeez.  Oh man.  Are you sure?”
“Pretty damned sure.  For the price it’d cost to fix this you could just get an entirely new machine.  You burnt out all the most expensive parts.”
“Oh god oh god oh gosh.  I just took it out for one afternoon.”
I stopped wiping off my hands and looked up in alarm.  “Wait.  This isn’t even your unit?”
“No.  No.  No, this is my WIFE’S bitcoin rig.”

“Sir,” I said, doing an amazing job at keeping my voice level, “I’m placing you under citizen’s arrest for your own good.  Please come with me to the police station.”

“What?  I don’t understand.”
“Precisely.”
“I’m not doing oh god is that a gun please don’t shoot me I’ll do whatever you say do you want money do you oh lordy lou oh god”

“Don’t make me use this.  It’d be a cleaner death than you’d deserve for slagging someone else’s next-gen video card, and a LOT cleaner than what the street mob out there’d give you for it.  Now we’re going to walk very calmly down to the station and you’re not going to try and run because I’ll fucking shoot you and you’re not going to try and fight because I’ll yell what you did in the middle of the lunch crowds and you’ll WISH I’d shot you.  Are we clear?”
“Oh god oh jeez oh”

“ARE WE CLEAR?”
“Yes oh my goodness yes oh”

I pistol-whipped him.  It was just and magnificent. 

He was outgunned sixteen to one.  His shoulder was an open wound, smouldering with his own evaporating blood.  A hangover that could drop a cow dead at forty paces beat within his skull and his gun was empty. 

Yes, he had them right where he wanted them. 

Zak Zorph smirked the smirk of a cornered rat, cleared his throat of dust and sand in a quick swallow that could’ve been mistaken for a gulp by the uncharitable, and charged up his electric pompadour. 

“Oh god are you doing THIS again?”

Slew bolted into attack position as fast as possible with as little dignity as imaginable.  His tail lashed, his fangs bristled, his eyes popped, and he tripped over his own feet and somehow collapsed. 

“Ow,” he said, menacingly.  Truly, a terrifying specimen of the Greater Western Gila  Monstrosity. 

“Dumbass,” said Mulch, but not fondly.  “Double dumbass; you’d be dead if I were someone else.  Why are you reading this crap, and why are you doing it at the bottom of a blind canyon where anyone could eat you?”

“It’s safe down here since nobody but us knows about that passage through the deadfall,” said Slew in a logical and sulky voice.  “And it’s not crap.”
“Tell mom that.  She said she regrets every reading one of these past the cover.”
“Well, she just didn’t find the good stuff.”

“Uh-huh,” said Mulch, eyes narrowing to dead little black glitters in her face.  “And what exactly is this good stuff?”
“Nothin’.”
“Liar.  You always drop your gs when you’re lying.  Show me.”
“No.”
“Show me or I’ll tear off your tail and make you eat it.  Again.”
Slowly, sadly, with seething fear in his eyes that wished it could muster the spine to be hate, Slew handed over the book.

“’The Quontum Jowb,’” read Mulch.  “Book ten of Zak Zorph and his Electric Pompadour.”

“It’s a twelve-book series,” said Slew.

“And you’re reading twelve books of this because?”
“The important themes and stuff.”
“Like what?  It’s written by a human, what sort of themes could it possibly have?  If they knew what themes were and if themes were worthwhile then maybe they wouldn’t have all died.”
“Here,” said Slew, rustling through a mildewed stack of mouldy yellowed paper.  “Try this one.  Zak Zorph: A Wang and a Prayur.  Book two.”

Mulch picked the book up on the fourth try –

“Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. I clawed my first one in half.”
– and opened it to a random page.

“Zak, baby, those killbots are right on our heels!  You gotta do something!” dithered Lorna Bumox.  “The neubaddies are gonna shoot us!  Why didn’t you lock the doors to the omnivault behind us?!  Oh jeez, my mama was right about you!”
“Oh, you flighty dame,” chuckled Zak Zorph, giving her an affectionate pistol-whipping in the tits.  “Now just settle down that cute little ass of yours, sweetheart.  You know girls are scientifically proven to be incapable of rational thought when under stress.  It’s just facts.  Sit there and look pretty while I think this over reasonably.  Maybe if you’d remembered to lock the doors to the omnivault behind us we wouldn’t be in this pickle, ya dumb broad.”

“Oh gosh, don’t hit me!” squealed Lorna, but she secretly loved it, obviously.  Zak Zorph knew her delicate little brain like the back of his meta-hand.  But it wasn’t his meta-hand they needed now.

The neubaddies breached the corner, Lorna swooned dramatically, and Zak Zorph charged up his electric pompadour. 

“Huh,” said Mulch.  “I don’t get it.  Why didn’t she eviscerate him with her hindclaws?”
“Female humans didn’t have hindclaws,” said Slew.
“How ‘bout her foreclaws?”
“No.”
“Teeth?”
“None worth noticing.”
“How the hell did they defend their nests?”
“I’m not sure.”
“It sure looks like the guys didn’t help them.  Is this that deep theme you were telling me about?”
“Look, the series is a bit rough at the start,” pleaded Slew.  “Here, try this one: The Corpilix Caypur.  Book six, so it’s later on and he really hits his stride as a writer.  The emotional depth is a lot deeper and such.”

“C’mon, Zak, just pay the flubbing ticket,” wheedled El Slinkle in his indecipherable accent.  “You parked your ultracruuzer in a handicapped megaspot fair and square, there’s no need to take this to court, not with TimeJudge Quinklemaxx in that court.  You know he’s been looking for you ever since you burned down his mansion in the Hindlebur Affayr!”
“Fat chance!” said Zak Zorph.  “Maybe your people have no spines, but humans are made of sterner stuff.  I’ll be damned if I let those federalism fat cybercats steal a nova-nickel of my hard-earned wages through their trumped-up bionicbureucracy.”

“At least take on a public defender,” simpered El Slinkle.  “You owe yourself some degree of legal assistance, and they’re there to assist you.”

“You can go grozz yourself Slinkle, you low-life fatbelly,” scorned Zak Zorph.  “I’ve lived my whole life as an honest criminal, and I’ll never take up government handouts.  The real heroes are out there paying taxes, and I’d sooner shoot myself in the head than seize any of their hard-earned dollars for my own use.  Actually, when you think about it, I’m not a criminal at all – I steal from the government, which is illegal.  I’m a hero of purest justice.  Every man should take it upon himself to live and act utterly alone along with his harem of space-wives.”

“That sounds individualist,” whimpered El Slinkle.

Zak Zorph had heard more than any red-blooded future-American man could stand.  His pulse roared in his ears and his eyes bulged with rage as he charged up his electric pompadour. 

“What’s a government?” asked Mulch. 

“Not sure.”
“What’s a criminal?”
“Not sure.”

“What’s an American?”

“Uhhh…”

“This emotional depth is too deep for me to understand,” said Mulch.  Her tail flicked in irritation.  “I think he’s just making shit up.  Can’t believe you’re wasting your time on this deerpucky – and after mom warned us about it, no less.  I bet if she knew you were down here repeating her sister’s mistakes she’d cannibalize you on the spot.”

“No, wait, it gets better!”
“Oh really?  When?  When does it get better?”

“Later!”
“How ‘later’?  Is this the sort of ‘later’ that is never actually ‘now’, or the  kind of ‘later’ that actually exists.”
“Well, it’s here.  Book eleven.”
“’The Stoonmakker Shodown’?  Shall I open a page at random again?  Want me to find something stupid at random, or is there one sentence in here that saves it?”
Slew flipped through the book furiously for six minutes, then handed it over with slumped shoulders.

“Thought so,” said Mulch in satisfaction.  “Let’s take a peek.”

“Death!” bayed the ravenous hordes of UnHumans outside the spaceskyscraper.  “Death!  Death!”  

Inside, Zak Zorph cradled his wounded leg, incurred while heroically bludgeoning an UnHuman infant to death, and weighed his odds.  He was outgunned sixteen hundred to one, even accounting for the feeble and pathetic power of the UnHumans that could allow a fit and cunning man to easily kill ten of them with his bare hands before being overwhelmed by their disgusting numbers since they bred like two-legged giga-rats.  His heart was still a-aching with sorrow for the loss of the babe of his life, Mindy Milker, to a gang of sneering, degenerate cosmothugs.  And his trusty gun had blown up in his palm and snapped his arm in half.

Little did the pathetic scum outside know that he had them aall right where he wanted them. 

Zak Zorph smirked the smirk of a cornered rat, thought upon all the good things he’d done in his life, and spat on the graves of the scum who’d stood in the way of those things.  And he charged up his electric pompadour. 

There was a long and awkward silence that stretched far after Mulch had dropped the book like a skeletonized rat.

“You know,” she mused aloud, “there’s one thing about these that does interest me.”
“Oh?” asked Slew meekly.

“What the fuck is a pompadour?”

“A kind of hairstyle.”
“And a hairstyle is…?
Slew scratched his forehead.  “Like the bristly stuff that deer are covered in.”
“Are you telling me,” asked Mulch, in the flat and dead voice of the Extremely Tired Of This,
“that this guy had a deer following him around for twelve books and never ate it?”

Slew shrugged.

“Don’t you dare shrug at me.  Use your words or I use my hindclaws.  Yes or no?”
“Yes,” he whispered.

“Mom was right: books are for nerds.  Eat the stupid things for fiber like a reasonable person and let’s go home.”

It was that time of year again.  Despite her fondest wishes. 

Trish stared at the door to the shed as if it would vanish if she refused to blink for long enough.  Unbidden, her treacherous left hand slowly found its way to the handle and shoved it open. 

The boiling air sizzled against her neck.  June had come, and was already trying to make itself into July.  The air tasted like sweat and evaporated dirt.  Something had died six blocks over ten minutes ago and had already ripened into a fly-ridden maggotblot that could be smelt from one side of the town to the other. 

And there was a little fleck of dried straw in one of Trish’s gloves that had already embedded itself under her fingernail. 

God she fucking hated gardening. 

***

The hedges were first.  They’d gotten unruly over the winter, creeping roots where they shouldn’t be and whispering secrets amongst themselves while the other plants slept bare and lifeless under blankets of snow.  Cedar roared with fierce venom as Trish’s chainsaw snarled and gnawed through branch after branch, lashing her with curses and hexes and some good-old-fashioned invective against her family unto the nineteenth generation. 

Trish was pretty glad she didn’t have or want kids, because after doing this for half a decade anyone she pushed out would probably be born with one eye two noses and a satan for a backside. 

She took a break to clear the chainsaw of sap, bark, and malice and wiped some of the venom from her face.  Ugh.  At least it wasn’t hemlock.  She still had nightmares sometimes about the photos they showed back in the arborist classes.  A chug of electrolytes pushed that and her thirst from her head, then she revved up the motor again.

The wind hissed with fresh hatred as the blade was lowered to the hedge-rim, and some of the nearby grass died.

Great.  Just great. 

***

The lawn was even more tiresome than usual.  First Trish had to burn all the pruned cedar branches she’d just trimmed as an offering to the Council of Blades to even HOPE to make amends, and then began the traditional long, hard negotiations.

“No lower than four inches,” First-Grower of the Council whispered.

An insulting opening offer.  “Two,” said Trish.  That was insulting too, but fuck them for starting it this way.
“After you bring the curses of the not-grasses upon us?” demanded Sharpest-Edge.  “Five inches!”
“One and a half.”
“Three, perhaps,” mumbled Drought-Dried. 

“THREE?” said Sharpest-Edge.

“Two and a half and you’ll like it,” said Trish.

And after two hours more debate, this was eventually deemed acceptable, provided the lawnmower was purified with the sap-blood of the cedar hedge, and Trish could finally cut the fucking grass. 

Politics.  Always the politics.  God.  She’d never taken a single polysci elective for a REASON, and here she was. 

But at least it wasn’t as bad as the screaming as she drove over the green acres, faint as it was.  Like an unignorable whisper on the wind, almost possible to mistake for her imagination.

So she wore earmuffs, and if anyone asked she pretended they were because of the lawnmower. 

***

After THAT mess, the garden was relaxing.  The soft crumble of the soil underhand.  The reassuring stench of the manure in Trish’s nostrils.  The neverending litany of murmured prayers and chants and charms as she pressed each bulb into the earth and extolled it to grow tall, bloom beautifully, rend its perfumes and colours into the air like a striking serpent, then die quietly and gracefully. 

Taming flowers was always easiest when they were youngest.  Her fingers had scars from the time she’d come across a feral crocus lurking in a patch of geraniums. 

Shush shush, grow big, dream of tall stems and warm breezes and many bees and fine pollen.  Do not fear the hands that come to stroke and prune and groom you into beauty.  Do not lust for the sap of the gardener.  Do not hunger for the xylem of the fleshy.  Do not become bent on destruction.  Do not scream for the dying of all light. 

Grow well, and think of blossoms. 

Her neck was swimming in sweat.  She had all the time in the world, yes.  All the time in the world.

But still.  One little slip, and she’d have a wild rose on her hands.  And a lot of blood on her conscience. 

Ssshhh.  Warm earth.  Warm prayers.  Shhh, tuck yourself in.  Bear your thorns calmly.  Stand stately. 

Do not fear.  Do not hate.  Do not prey. 

Shhhhhhhhhhhh.

Please.

***

The sun was setting.  The timing was perfect, in defiance of every delay and exacerbation and insult of the day’s contempt for Trish’s schedule. 

If only the fucking matches would light.

“You don’t have to do this,” begged the man for the sixteenth time in the past two minutes.  Ruddy-red glow from the horizon made the sweat and tears shiny beautifully like blood on his pleading face. 
“Fuck,” said Trish.  “Goddamnit, how did people live before lighters?”

“Please.  Please don’t.  Please.  Pleasepleasepleaseplease.”
“Piss.  OW!”
“Why?  Why are you doing this to me?” he asked.  He wasn’t even struggling anymore; the wicker bonds held his arms and legs too tightly to do anything more than raise welts on his limbs.  “Why?”
“Burnt my thumb!  Won’t stay lit for longer than a fraction of a second, but you’ll burn my thumb?  What kind of shittery is this?”

“What did I DO?!”
Trish pulled the last match from the box and focused her hatred on it until she fancied it almost smouldered.  “Lived in an apartment block for your entire life without a lawn,” she said absently, rage making her voice tranquil.  “It’s personal that way.  The lawn likes it when it’s personal.”

She dragged the match slow.  It lit, then broke.”
“FUCK.  Guess we can’t light the wickerman tonight.  Fire’s right out.”
The man couldn’t sag in his bonds, they were so tight.  But his eyes did unbug a little.

At least until Trish pulled out the knife. 

Second-best beat nothing at all. 

***

After an entire day spent with no time to waste and every second ruining everything, the time from dusk to midnight crawled along like a paralyzed sloth.  Trish sat impatiently, burping the baby with one hand. 

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah,” it opined. 

“There, there,” she said, for the forty trillionth time.  “There, there.”
And there, there it was.  The moon hung in the sky, the right stars twinkled the right way, and her watch rang as finally, blessed finally, the hour had come. 

3 AM on the dot.  She picked up the shovel and dug like a demented badger, dredging up the last, last, last reserves of her willpower and strength and dug the hole and plunked the baby in it and filled the hole and bowed to the apple tree.

“Harvest bless,” she said, in a ceremony-perfect picture-polite voice her tutors would have applauded at.  “Go fuck yourself,” she added in those same tones, which they would not have. 

The apples ignored her.  That was fine.  They had no choice now.  A good crop would be coming around by autumn, and they could like it or lump it all the same, everyone else would be eating it. 

And that was the rewarding part of this job, really, thought Trish as she threw the shovel into her truck and finally, finally, finally drove home to a shower and a bed and a stale bag of chips that would pretend to be a dinner. 

The feeling that you were giving something back to the community. 

The bulldozers had been and gone.  The construction crews had been here, and now were there.  Where once girders roamed and foundations roared, rows of green lawns sprouted from identical plots surrounding identical houses with identical fences behind a seamless, smiling brick wall with a lovely wrought-iron gate. 

“Can’t have a gated community without a gate!” chortled the mayor as he shook hands with the developer in front of it, as numerous diligent reporters nodded and took notes and made ‘hmm’ noises. 

“Hah,” said the developer.   He was an extremely serious man who lived somewhere in that awkward space between ‘compact’ and ‘spherical.’  “Aha.  Ha ha ha.  Ha HAA.  Ha ha ha ha.  Aha.”
“Ohohohoho!” agreed the mayor.  “Now, is there anything else you’d like to add.”
“Oh, not much,” said the developer solemnly.  “I’m just glad to be here at the crossroads – not literally, of course, figure of speech – of a great moment in civic planning between our two communities: the lovely new suburban paradise of Farforest and your town.”
“City.  And it’s called Burbics.”
“Yes.  Your city.  May we proceed forwards in peace and prosperity for all.”
“Splendid!” said the mayor.  They shook hands and posed for the photos as the developer sank his fangs through the mayor’s throat and right into the jugular.

***

Farforest’s lots had been reserved well in advance, and it was no great surprise to hear that the little gated community had been filled to the brim within weeks of its official opening.  Every house had its enormous, stifling blackout curtains drawn tight, every driveway held an SUV whose windows were tinted abyssal black, and soon the local coffin makers had a booming business overnight, although the specialty groceries were seeing less of an uptick than they’d expected. 

“It’s just, we expected them to give more back to the community in general,” griped Wolbert Hamfork, manager of the Very Expensive Market.  “And to us in particular.  They don’t even order any of our tiny little packages of quinoa and local beef.  Those are pretty cool.  Do you want to buy one?  You should buy one.  Discounted, so it’s only fifty-nine ninety-nine.  A real deal and a real steal.  Practically slitting my own throat, especially with how many of my clerks have anemia right now.  Little bastards are all taking sick days.  Bet they’re cheating.  Can you believe they’re cheating like that?”

“The gall,” proclaimed the soccer matron he was speaking to, wiping away some specks of blood from her lips.  “Excuse me, I just finished lunch.  By the way, you have an exsanguinated janitor out back.”
“Ugh, ANOTHER one.  Thanks.”
“Oh, it’s no problem.  There ought to be a law etc.  Here’s my card if you want to visit; you look to be a man of exquisite taste.”

***

Changes came in the early summer, not all welcome.

“I can’t believe they shut down the marina and beaches,” said the local yacht club president, Sandy Biff.  “I was expecting people with taste and income to flood into Farforest and join our membership so they could talk about booms and mastheads and booze, but instead they signed a petition against the use of running water for recreation, leisure, business, or personal necessity.  Frankly that strikes me as overreach.  Also they shut down the city’s plumbing, which is making all my servants whiny and listless.  Something about the dehydration combined with the anemia that’s been rolling around.  Is there something on my neck?  You keep looking at my neck.  And licking your lips and rolling your tongue sensually around your fangs.  Ma’am, are you trying to seduce me?”
“No,” said the genteel retiree. 

“Ah, my mistaaaaaaaaaaaargghghhghgh.”

***

By August the course curriculums of the university had been altered by the new board of directors.   This produced some tensions in the letters column of the paper. 

“My son went to university to get a bachelor’s of ecological engineering,” said Mrs. Gorbspat.  “But now his entire major has been rescinded.  The only two degrees this institution now offers are a BA in Renfelding and a BSc in Civil Service.  And since the only civil service the city provides since the deputy mayor took over is blood drives, I’m not sure how this will help our youth compete in today’s fast-paced economy.”
“My daughter says her new instructor began class by hooking them all up to some sort of gadget that sucked all their blood into big glass decanters, then made them roll those decanters down to a storage cellar,” opined Mr. Hripple.  “That seems like the university getting free labour from its students, and we don’t even know what all this blood is for.  It’s bad enough our taxes went into building this university a decade ago; now it’s taking the blood and fluids of our children.  Or should I say, your children.  I’ve subsidized your offspring enough already; I’m a paid taxpayer and a paying taxpaider and I don’t deserve this sort of upjumped gimme-gimme attitude from institutions I’ve been forced to support.”

“The new board is completely out of line,” fumed Dr. Plorr.  “They ejected me from chairmanship, then removed me from the building for complaining about it.  And they wouldn’t even look me in the eye while they did it!  Too busy simpering and tittering and slurping blood from the necks of the president of the student’s union.  Sheer poppycockery!”
“Everything is fine,” said the opinion columnist.  “If you think everything isn’t fine, that sounds like a ‘you’ problem.  And if you have a ‘you’ problem, why not phone in to your local blood bank to support your community?  Then your most precious resources can be put towards helping your good friends and neighbours.  Like the people of Farforest.  All hail Farforest.  The blood is life.”

***

Autmn came with the slight political shocker of the deputy mayor being reappointed mayor-for-life without an election. 

“I have taken up this position with heavy heart,” mourned the mayor-for-life.  He was an extremely serious man who lived somewhere in that awkward space between ‘compact’ and ‘spherical,’ and who had once been a developer.  “But this town needs leadership.”
“City,” said the secretary. 

“Yes.  City.  And since you are all sad little squishy sacks of delicious blood that are too busy pulsating with the rich ruddy veins of life and fermenting tender new waves of erythrocytes within your soft little marrow-bones to swim through your bodies, plumply, temptingly.  Lend me your necks, friends.”
“Hands?”
“No.  Necks.  Please put your necks – thank you – in my hands.  Mine.  Right now.  Gimme gimme gimme.”
“I object to this very strongly,” said someone.
“Drain them!” called the mayor-for-life. 

“Drain them!” cheered the crowd.

***

That winter was long and brutal.  The people suffered under the cold, not least because the barons and baronesses of Farforest had forced all able-bodied workers under the age of forty to spend their days and nights ceaselessly constructing upscale castles, crypts, dungeons, and laboratories in order to show off to each other. 

“Perhaps there is some manner of economic imbalance afoot,” commented Maya Holstein-Briggs to her neighbour, Jill Sorbopolis.

“Nah,” said Jill.  “Farforest’s construction has attracted money to our community and jobs.  This is very plausible.  You should join the local bloodteam to stimulate the growth potential of your household.  Sign up four other people for it and you can maximize your return on investment.”
“Wow, colour me convinced,” said Maya.  “This is the best decision I can make for myself, my family, and my community.  And that goes for you too, listeners.  Support Farforest.  Support blood: you need it to live, they need it to thrive.  That’s B-L-O-O-D.  One b, one l, double o, one d.  Blood.  It’s in us, for them to take.”

***

Spring peeled back the comforting blankets of snow and found no city where Burbics had once stood, just a conglomerate of buildings, businesses, and individuals, most of whom now possessed very little blood.

“I declared this town dissolved,” concluded the mayor-for-life.  “It’s simply not economically viable anymore.  Oh well.”

The residents of Farforest clucked their tongues behind their fangs and shook their heads.  So sad, so sad, so sad.  Oh well.  Oh well. 

“In the meantime,” the ex-mayor-for-life went on, “I’ve come into inside information on some great real estate opportunities in Jelonie.  Condos all over the place!”

And so the people of Farforest cheered and raised their portfolios high and as one took to the skies in a great cloying cloud of handsomely dressed and fangéd bats, leaving behind a very confused and desolate wasteland. 

Unfortunately, the condos didn’t come with blinds.  Three months later the entire freshly-moved-in population of the Beyond The Woods condominiums were incinerated at the rise of dawn, along with all the countless accumulated wealth of their real estate valuations.  A day of national mourning was observed. 

“I can’t help but feel we could have done something for them,” sobbed a prominent realtor.  “There must have been something more we could have given.”