Sean E. Britten

I’ve always been inspired by music (I know, super original!) and music has always been a part of my writing. Way back in the days of burnt CDs, my mates and I used to put together CD mixtapes and I came up with the idea of a series of short stories based around pieces of music. Mixtape is all short stories sharing their titles with different songs and inspired, to various degrees, by their lyrics, artists, and vibe.

Currently Playing: Dolly Parton – Jolene

Death and disappearances follow the new woman in town, Jolene, wherever she goes, just like her army of male admirers. But it’s not until her husband started slipping out of bed at night too that Becca realised what kind of bloodthirsty monster they’re dealing with.

Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence

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Through the kitchen window, Becca watched as the sun sank in the west and night invaded the yard. She would be coming. Leaving the kitchen, she went around the house and checked the doors and all the other windows were locked. She couldn’t be sure if the locks would do anything to stop her. Becca felt even less certain about the reeking bundles of garlic she’d hung off nails at the corner of every possible entrance, even though she’d had to go to the organic grocery store one town over to buy them.

Becca finished her walkthrough in their main bedroom. Light had died almost entirely from the windows. Wind made their cheap plasterboard walls groan. Her husband, Hal, waited on the side of the bed, fully dressed, his head in his hands. When he looked up at her, his face looked frightened. Eyes wide, chin quivering.

“It’s time,” Becca said.

“Baby, I’m sorry, I can’t fight it!” Hal said. “When she talks, it’s like I’m trapped in a cage in the back of my head! I can’t fight her, I’m sorry, I can’t help it!”

“I know, honey, I know. That’s why we’re doing this.”

“I’m worried about you!”

“I know.”

Becca kissed him quickly then turned to the window. Darkness filled the front yard. Wind moved the trees, silhouettes lit by street lamps. She felt something was wrong out there even if she couldn’t see it for several long moments. Then, an ember of light glowed in the corner of the yard. The orange spark of a lit cigarette. It cast just enough light to sketch the face behind it, plump lips, perfect features, like a face from a magazine cover, surrounded by waterfalls of auburn curls.

“She’s here!” Becca said. “How can she be here already, when the sun only just set?”

Without being asked, Hal lay on the bed and lifted his hands to the top of their headboard. He was a big man, muscled through his chest and arms, soft in the middle, just how Becca liked him. Right now, however, he looked like a child. Becca took the handcuffs from the bedside table. Hal had bought them in an attempt to spice up their sex life about six months ago but they’d only tried them once. Pink faux fur trimmed the bracelets but they were real cuffs that needed a key to unlock. Becca had been uncomfortable putting them on and throughout that little experiment but it was when Hal pretended he couldn’t find the key that she’d really freaked out and she’d refused to ever use them again. Locking one bracelet around Hal’s left wrist, she fed the other cuff and chain through the frame of the headboard then locked his right wrist as well. At the foot of the bed, they’d already tied off some lengths of rope. She fed their loops around Hal’s feet and tightened them. It was only when she picked up the gag as well that she hesitated.

“You’ve got to do it,” Hal said, eyes shining. “I can’t help it, I’m sorry! If she tells me to invite her in then I’m going to invite her in.”

A stick-on bandage scabbed the side of Hal’s throat. His skin looked pale and threads of silver had crept into his beard over only the last few days. Those signs were enough to remind Becca what they were fighting for. The gag consisted of a rubber ball she’d dropped into a sock and then taped to one of her belts with some extra holes punched through it.

“I love you,” Becca said.

“I love you too!” Hal replied. “We’re going to be okay.”

Becca shoved the rubber ball into Hal’s mouth. Spit immediately soaked the material of the sock. She wrapped the belt around the back of his head and tightened it, cinching it closed and threading the buckle’s pin through one of the new holes. Above the gag, Hal’s eyes shone, wide and frightened, and a couple of tears rolled onto his cheeks.

“Hal,” a new voice floated into the room from behind Becca. “Hal, let me in, sugar. You want to let me in, don’t you?”

Hal’s eyes frosted over. His attention turned immediately to the window, leaving Becca’s face. Even knowing what to expect, Becca jumped when she turned to look as well.

Jolene filled the bedroom window, standing in Becca and Hal’s front yard. Refracted light from their bedside lamp caught the burnished copper of her hair. Her skin looked like ivory, completely flawless. Eyes like burning emeralds, like those of some predatory cat, watched Becca through the glass as she raised the cigarette to her lips again. They were ruby red, her makeup always just as perfect as the rest of her. Hal started bucking as he tried to reach for her. The handcuffs pulled on his wrists and his feet kicked at the ropes attached to the bed. Behind the gag, his mouth worked but couldn’t make intelligible sounds.

“Becca, let me inside. I only want to talk.”

Jolene grinned. She knew her hypnotic powers wouldn’t work on Becca, they only worked on men. She was just toying with them, she’d waited until Hal was gagged because she knew they couldn’t stop her anyway. Pursing her lips, she blew smoke across the glass.

“You can’t have him! He’s mine, and you can’t have him!” Becca said.

Jolene kept smiling her jaguar smile. Her tousled curls were somehow untouched by the wind. She batted those long, impossible lashes and with a blur of motion she was gone.

“Fuck!”

Hal writhed, trying to get free and moaning under his gag. He seemed to have forgotten Becca was even there. She had to leave him, and she ran out of the bedroom toward the living room.

On their dining table, usually piled with laundry waiting to be folded, unopened bills, and random odds and ends, was Becca’s arsenal. She picked up the shotgun, a chromed Mossberg 590, and checked the chamber. Also on the table was a machete she’d bought that day at a local garden supply store, price sticker still on the sheath, an axe from the same place, and several wooden stakes. She and Hal had bought some wooden fence poles and sharpened them themselves, each of them about as thick as Becca’s wrist and nearly as long as her arm.

“Becca, hey, Becca.” Jolene’s voice came from the largest window in the living room. “Let me inside, sugar.”

Jolene’s hypnosis only worked on men but there was something unnatural in her voice as it carried across the room. It reminded Becca of the time one of the younger women she worked with, Mishonna, played some sound on her phone that only people under a certain age could hear. Mishonna could hear the frequency but none of the older nurses could. Becca wasn’t sure if she’d heard a glimmer of something or if she just imagined it. At the time, it had felt a bit like some kind of taunt.

“Leave me alone!” Becca said. “Leave my husband alone, please! He doesn’t want to go anywhere with you!”

“That’s not what he said last night.”

With the shotgun dangling from one hand, Becca fished her phone out of her pocket. Unlocking it, she swiped open the group chat she had with the other women. Jolene raised a fingertip to the window and began to sketch a large circle. Although she appeared to apply almost no pressure, her perfectly painted and manicured nail cut through the glass like a diamond.

‘Shes here’, Becca texted the group chat without wasting time on punctuation.

Alice messaged back immediately, as if she’d been hovering over the chat and waiting. ‘She’s there already??’

‘SHES HERE!!!’ Becca stabbed out in all capitals.

Alice and the others all had their own husbands and men to worry about, Becca didn’t really expect any help there. Shoving her phone back into her pocket, she took the shotgun in both hands and trained it at the window. With her impossibly sharp fingernail, Jolene carved a circle the size of a trash can lid into the glass. She scratched a couple of eyes inside the circle and then added a wide smile. Then, with a tap, she caused the smiley face to implode and collapse inward.

“Stay back! Stay outside, you’re not invited in!” Becca said.

In spite of the hole in the glass, Jolene didn’t reach inside. She couldn’t, as far as Becca was aware. Suddenly, she jerked forward and something monstrous passed like a storm across her face. Becca fired. The boom of the shotgun filled the house and the rest of the window disintegrated. With tinkling laughter and another blur of motion, Jolene disappeared from sight. She looked unharmed.

Three months earlier, Jolene had appeared suddenly employed at the same hospital as Becca. That wasn’t unusual, the turnover rates meant that people came and went all the time. She only worked nights. From the very beginning, every man in the hospital was obsessed with her. Doctors, other nurses, maintenance and security guards, and of course their patients. It was easy to see why, she was impossibly gorgeous. Her flaming hair, her gleaming green eyes and hourglass body. Her perfect skin and perfect face. Her makeup was always pristine and she never looked tired or overworked like the rest of them. Of course, she also didn’t appear to actually do any real work. When Becca heard that said the first few times she’d thought it was just jealousy but it was true. She came and went as she pleased, was never around when something needed doing, and seemed to make up for it with her army of admirers.

And then, Becca had seen Jolene popping up in other places as well. Working night shifts at the Save A Dolla Supermarket, at one of the local bars, at the gas station, always at night. There was no shame in that, Becca herself picked up some shifts at the Save A Dolla too, but it was hard to imagine how Jolene found time for all of them. Everywhere she went, she appeared to spend none of her time doing work and was always surrounded by admirers. Always men.

It wasn’t just admirers. Death and disappearances began to follow the mysterious woman as well. Patients at the hospital, the rumours were that they died drained of all blood and some of the doctors, male doctors, were covering it up. Men vanished from other places Jolene worked, the supermarket, the gas station, the bar, cars left abandoned in their parking lots. More rumours that the police, male officers at least, were covering up the disappearances or refusing to investigate.

Becca was close to the women she worked with at the hospital. A few at the Save A Dolla as well. When some of them told her their husbands were disappearing at night, slipping out of beds silently, leaving, and then returning before dawn looking pale and aged with injuries on the sides of their necks, she began to put things together. It all followed Jolene. Some of those men slipped out of bed and never returned. Good men, faithful men, who had no reasons to disappear on their wives and families. Still, she couldn’t believe it when Hal began to sneak out too. He claimed to remember nothing until Becca forced the issue, and forced him to recall where he’d been. It was only then that she and the other women figured out what they were dealing with. Jolene wasn’t human. She was some kind of vampire. And with the cops in town already under her control, most of the doctors at the hospital as well, there was no one they could rely on but themselves.

Suddenly, the lights snapped off. In preparation, Becca had switched on at least one light in every room before sunset but simultaneously they all went out. Jolene had cut the power.

“Shit, shit!”

Becca fished the phone out of her pocket. She could see a whole bunch of messages had been sent into the group chat but she didn’t have time to check them. With the glow of the screen, she looked back at her little arsenal on the living room table but she hadn’t thought to get a flashlight. There was one in the junk drawer in the kitchen, she had no choice but to go get it.

Carrying the shotgun into the kitchen, she set it down briefly as she reached for the drawer. Inside was a yellow flashlight. She took it and peered out the window. The moon had risen and there was enough ambient light from the street to see shapes and movement in the backyard.

Jolene strolled carelessly around the yard, juggling something in her hands. A lawn gnome, Becca didn’t even know where she’d gotten it from. Jolene raised the gnome back behind her shoulder and fired it forward like a fastball pitcher. Becca just barely managed to step aside before it exploded through the window. Glass peppered her upraised arms. The gnome flew across the kitchen like an RPG and hit the refrigerator hard enough to put a crater in the door, exploding into pieces of fractured ceramic. Bits of gnome, magnets and takeout menus all scattered. Becca realised she was screaming and choked it off.

The cuts on Becca’s arms were shallow. She dropped the flashlight for a moment and grabbed her shotgun in both hands. Aiming through the shattered window, she fired, rucked the pump action, and fired again. Her shoulder throbbed with the impacts from the weapon’s buttplate and she staggered after the second shot. Jolene disappeared with another peal of laughter.

The vampire couldn’t enter the house without an invitation. She couldn’t force Hal to invite her while he was gagged. But she could apparently circle the house and attack it from the outside all she wanted. Poking holes like she was torturing a couple of bugs stuck in a cardboard box. It was a game to her and Becca couldn’t work out her next logical move.

Becca took the shotgun and flashlight back to the living room. Already she didn’t have enough hands. Her breathing came hard and fast and threatened to overwhelm her, like waves that kept getting bigger and bigger until they were crashing down on top of her head. She struggled to control herself. At the table, she stuffed more shells into the shotgun and into her pockets. She clipped the sheath of the machete onto her belt. Two of the wooden stakes she threaded under her belt on the other side.

“Hal?” Becca returned to the bedroom.

Hal couldn’t answer, of course, with the makeshift gag in his mouth. When Becca turned the flashlight on him though, he stared back at her with fear in his eyes. Jolene’s hypnosis had worn off, until she used it on him again.

“It’s alright, she’s outside, but it’s alright,” Becca said.

Holding the shotgun with the flashlight cupped beneath its pump action, Becca hunkered by the window. She knew how to handle a gun. She’d been in the Army Nurse Corps, where she’d gotten her nursing degree, and she’d gone through basic combat training just like everyone else. Eyes scanned the yard. Sure enough, she spotted movement. Becca wondered about her neighbours. They must have heard the shotgun blasts, the screaming, the smashing. Would any of them call for help? Would it be worse if the police actually showed up, assuming most of the officers would be men? Had Jolene already hypnotised them and instructed them to stay away? She had no idea.

“Please, leave us alone!” Becca said. “You could have your choice of a thousand other men, you don’t need him!”

“But Hal’s the one I want, sugar.” Jolene’s unnaturally projecting voice came back to her. “And I always get what I want.”

“You’re not getting in here!”

A light flared in the yard as Jolene lit another cigarette. Becca could see her features in the glow. Hard, cruel, perfect.

“I don’t need to come in there, if y’all come to me,” she said.

Jolene inhaled, and kept inhaling. Becca watched the tip of the fresh cigarette burn at an impossible rate. A cylinder of ash was left all the way to the filter. Jolene flicked the butt aside. Fulsome breasts thrust forward, she huffed and puffed like the Big Bad Wolf but instead of smoke she vomited a stream of incandescent flame. So bright it hurt to look at. Her dragon breath raged across the lower plane of the windowsill then climbed the siding to one side of the glass.

Becca trained the muzzle of the shotgun and fired. The window collapsed and flames whorled around a tunnel created by the blast. Heat slapped Becca in the face, singeing her hair, baking her eyeballs, and sent her staggering backward. Jolene was actually hit and dropped back as well with an unearthly scream.

Fire fought its way through the broken window. It engulfed the drapes to either side, climbed the walls, and fell on the carpet like a starving animal. Becca spun and raced to the other side of the bed. She could feel the temperature inside the room rocketing higher, sweat springing from her pores. On the bed, Hall screamed through his gag.

In the light of the flames, Becca could see Jolene recovering outside. The shotgun had gotten her full in the face. Rags of flesh hung off her beautiful features but there was no blood. There was something else underneath them, dark, bristling, like her flawless skin was only an impossibly perfect mask over an entirely different kind of creature. Her jaw unhinged and fangs like broken glass glittered inside her mouth. Again she spewed flame, this time directly through the window to add to the inferno.

Becca knew she didn’t have a choice. “Hal, it’s okay, baby! I’ll free you, I’ll free you!”

Reaching into her pocket, Becca hunted down the fuzzy handcuffs’ key. It was tiny and slick between her sweaty fingers. Bearing down to keep her hands from shaking, she unlocked the nearest bracelet. She left the other bracelet of the cuffs around his wrist and turned on the ropes. Hal sat up to help. Smoke thickened the air, making their eyes stream, and fire moved toward the bed. They didn’t have time to deal with the knots.

“Move back!” Becca said. “Move your hands back!”

Hal did as he was told and Becca took the machete from her hip. The edge of it, unused, was sharp. With a couple of swipes, she hacked through the ropes and left chips in the bottom of the bed frame. Hal rolled and scrambled off the bed.

“Nowhere to run, sugar!” Jolene howled.

Becca sheathed the machete and recovered the shotgun and flashlight before they ran from the room. The handcuffs dangled from Hal’s left wrist, tatters of rope trailing from both ankles. He reached for the gag jammed in his mouth but Becca stopped him.

“No, don’t! If you can’t talk you still can’t invite her in!”

Hal nodded. His eyes looked terrified above the gag. He followed Becca into the living room. The fire in the bedroom, however, didn’t move like a natural flame. A line of it snaked into the corridor as if they were leaving a trail of gasoline behind them. Smoke billowed across the ceiling. It was obvious they wouldn’t have a house to hide in for very long.

“Grab a couple of those stakes!” Becca said.

Hal took two more of the sharpened wooden poles, holding one in each fist, and followed Becca into the kitchen. Fire followed them across the living room, leaping from place to place like an animal. Becca scanned the yard from the broken window. Nothing moved that she could see but she knew Jolene would be out there somewhere. Maybe they could get to a neighbour’s house and start the standoff all over again. She unlocked and booted open the back door then led the way outside with her shotgun.

Jolene hit Becca from the side almost immediately and sent her spiralling. She clung to the shotgun as she hit the grass. Her flashlight spun across the yard. In the doorway, Hal raised one of the wooden stakes. Before he could bring it crashing down on Jolene’s chest, aiming for the heart, the vampire slapped it from his hand. She grabbed the second one and tossed it then picked Hal up and threw him as well. She looked half his size at most but handled him like a bag of straw.

The damage to Jolene’s face had almost entirely healed. Idly, she pressed one final shred of flesh back onto her cheek and it sealed itself without a scar. Becca despaired, wondering how they could possibly beat such a creature. She looked almost entirely human again, beautiful, flawless, although long and disjointed fangs still flashed behind her ruby lips.

Hal recovered from the throw first. He scrambled to his feet but Jolene stopped him with an upraised hand.

“Stop,” she said, green eyes blazing, and she looked toward Becca. “Hurt her.”

Eyes fogged, Hal turned on Becca like a robot. Without hate, without anger, with pure mechanical efficiency, he brought a foot back and then drove it into her midsection. Air exploded from Becca’s lungs and she was flipped onto her spine again. She kept a hold on her shotgun but couldn’t use it on him. Hal stood over her and stomped on her shoulder.

“Hal, please!” Becca said.

“Take her gun,” Jolene said. “And remove that stupid gag.”

Hal leaned over and ripped the gun out of Becca’s nerveless fingers, throwing it across the yard. Reaching for the side of his head, he unbuckled the belt Becca had used to make the gag. Spit trailed from the damp sock covering the gag’s rubber ball.

“Jolene, Jolene,” Hal groaned like a zombie. “Jolene, Jolene.”

“Keep hitting her,” Jolene said. “Shoot me in the face, will you, bitch?”

Hal stomped on Becca again, this time on the stomach. Moaning, she curled in on herself. She had the machete and the two stakes but she couldn’t bring herself to use them on her husband. He bent over, lifting her partly before driving her back into the dirt then swinging at her with a couple of clumsy punches. She managed to block his fists. Jolene watched with sadistic glee, an overly long tongue forking between her razor teeth. Flames filled the windows of the house as living fire moved from room to room. There were still no sirens in the air, no police or firefighters on their way.

“Hal, please!” Becca said. “Fight it! You’ve got to fight it!”

Hal might have hesitated but it was difficult to say. His movements were jerky and mechanical, like a puppet. Throwing Becca to the ground once more, he wrapped both hands around her throat and began to squeeze. Locked to his left wrist, the bracelet of the fuzzy handcuffs bounced against her shoulder.

“Hey, bitch!” a new voice shouted.

A glass bottle spun through the air from the corner of the house, like a Molotov cocktail someone had forgotten to light. Hitting Jolene on the side of the head, it shattered. What spilled out wasn’t gasoline but water. Jolene, however, reacted as if she’d been doused in acid. The vampire tipped her head back and screeched, a high, unnatural, glass breaking screech. Her hair burned. Bubbles rose and burst on her perfect skin, on the side of her face and trailing down her neck and shoulder.

“Holy water, bitch!”

Mishonna, one of Becca’s fellow nurses from the hospital, emerged from the side of the house. She carried a bag weighed down with glass bottles. Two more women, Niesha, another nurse, and Alice, one of Becca’s coworkers from the Save A Dolla, followed behind her. Alice carried, most prominently, an enormous silver crucifix. Niesha, ex-military like Becca herself, had a pistol trained on the vampire. The other women had come to help her. All three carried wooden stakes and other weapons as well. Not knowing exactly what weaknesses would work and what wouldn’t, they’d loaded up on everything they could think of. Holy water, at least, seemed to hurt her.

Gunshots clapped as Niesha opened fire. Unloading, in a controlled burst, into Jolene from the side. The bullets injured the vampire but not as much as the holy water. Mishonna hurled another bottle but it bounced, unbroken, off of Jolene’s chest. Alice manoeuvred with the huge crucifix. Several more crosses hung around her neck.

Hal let go of Becca’s neck and straightened. Her husband looked torn between following Jolene’s order or protecting the vampire. Becca glanced at their surroundings. While Hal beat on her, they’d rolled toward their patio furniture at the edge of the lawn.

Arching back onto her shoulders, Becca kicked Hal in the side of the knee. She wrapped her legs around his then leveraged, wrenching them out from under him. Hal spilled onto his face, barely catching himself.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Becca said.

Becca kicked Hal again in the back of the skull. He lolled, dazed. His left arm, with the cuffs attached, stretched in front of him. Becca lunged forward and grabbed Hal’s hand then pulled it toward the patio table. Taking the empty cuff, trimmed in pink fur, she locked it around the central leg of the table. The leg flared at the base so he couldn’t slip the cuff free. The table wasn’t that heavy, it wouldn’t anchor a man of Hal’s size in place, but it would slow him down. She spun away from him and scrambled to her feet.

Across the yard, Niesha stopped to reload. Mishonna and Alice rounded on Jolene with their anti-vampire weapons raised. Jolene retreated, hunched in on herself. As Niesha stopped firing, she made a retching sound. The bullet holes riddling her back and side collapsed in on themselves. She retched again and choked up half a dozen flattened bullets along with a draught of bloody red drool.

“You fucking bitches,” Jolene hissed, tongue stabbing between her fangs.

“The power of Christ is far greater than yours, demon!” Alice said. “Christ is my shield and my sword, through him all things are possible!”

Alice circled on Jolene with her crucifix raised. It may have just been the fire from Becca and Hal’s house but the metal seemed to glow. Jolene shied away with a reptilian hiss. For a moment, it looked as if she might flee but instead she lunged and grabbed the cross in both hands. Both the crucifix and her hands, with their impractically long and perfect nails, burst into flames. It clearly hurt the vampire. She screamed, a howl that raked the women’s  eardrums and sent chills through their flesh. Becca covered her ears.

Alice struggled, teeth gritted, but tried to stay faithful. The flames didn’t appear to burn her even though they danced, too bright to look at, over the backs of her hands. The horizontal arms of the cross began to bend. The depiction of Jesus nailed to the front of it melted into a silvery pap. Finally, shrieking, Jolene wrenched the crucifix out of Alice’s hands. It spun, burning, into the corner of the yard. Jolene’s screams ended abruptly but the flames on her hands took several more moments to gutter out.

“Your false god has no power here,” Jolene sneered.

Niesha had her pistol reloaded. She turned to Mishonna with her bag full of bottles of holy water.

“Throw one!” Niesha said.

Mishonna understood immediately and lobbed one of the bottles so that it drifted over Jolene’s head. Niesha tracked it, one eye closed, and fired. The bottle shattered and sprayed Jolene with holy water. More of her flaming auburn hair was burned away. Strips of her face melted, revealing something dark and batlike and demonic underneath. Alice was hit by some of the same shower but, of course, the holy water had no effect on her.

Becca recovered her shotgun, bent over her aching midsection. Hal wrestled with the patio table and knocked it over in the process but he couldn’t get free of the cuffs. Meanwhile, seeing her chance, Alice grabbed one of her wooden stakes. She gripped it in both hands and lanced it toward Jolene’s heart.

“Lord, guide my hand!” Alice cried.

Jolene caught Alice by the wrist. Half her face was still preternaturally perfect even with most of her hair gone. The other half hung in rags over what looked like the face of a giant bat. A pointed ear, upturned nose, and monstrous green eye. Clearly she’d underestimated the women but she wasn’t beaten yet. Her jaw unhinged, revealing rows of crisscrossed fangs that looked, literally, like shards of glass, jagged, uneven, partially translucent. A forked tongue whipped between them.

With a casual twist, Jolene snapped Alice’s forearm. A high, clear break. Alice screamed and her legs turned to rubber underneath her. Jolene kept her upright as her other hand, fingers curled into talons, came around to rip out Alice’s throat. Niesha couldn’t find a shot with Alice between her and the vampire.

Becca racked her shotgun and fired. Jolene’s clawing right hand exploded, flinging black blood and smashed fingers. The vampire screamed and let go of Alice. She tumbled to the grass cupping her broken arm. Becca worked the pump action and fired again, ignoring the wave of pain the recoil sent through her injured neck and midsection. Niesha joined in, pistol clapping, and Mishonna hurled another bottle of water hard enough that it shattered against the side of Jolene’s head again.

Becca moved across the yard, pumping and firing until the shotgun ran empty. Jolene tried to run but fell over and sprawled. Steam rose off her in gouts from the holy water. She looked weakened. The blasts and pistol bullets didn’t kill her but they knocked her to the ground. Becca tossed the empty shotgun aside then reached for her garden store machete.

The thing that had been Jolene curled up on its haunches, vomiting more bullets and buckshot and blood. Becca could see her right hand regrowing. Elongated fingers with black nails and some kind of webbing stretched between them. Before her eyes, the fingers grew longer, her arm extending and narrowing, becoming a batlike wing. Another wing ripped free from her other arm. The skin of her left hand dangled loosely, like a discarded glove.

“She’s trying to fly away!” Niesha said. “Stake her!”

A batlike ghoul tore free from the remains of Jolene’s clothing and steaming skin. It was humanoid but hunched and warped, with undersized wings instead of arms. Most of its fur was black but a rash of flaming auburn hair started between its pointed ears and ran down its back. Its face was monstrous, like a gargoyle, but Becca could see a vicious intelligence in its blazing green eyes.

Mishonna dropped her bottles of holy water and took a stake. Niesha did the same, holstering her pistol. She moved with a lithe grace that surprised Becca, like a hunter, but Mishonna hurled herself at the vampire first. A war cry ripped out of her throat. With both hands, she brought her stake around and hammered it into Jolene’s ribs. The flesh parted like melting butter. Mishonna put her weight behind it and kept pushing until the vampire was skewered but she had landed much too far to the right to have hit the heart.

The vampire took off, wings beating, and knocked Mishonna backward. The moment provided enough of a distraction for Niesha, however, who moved behind Jolene and slammed her stake into the vampire’s spine. The vampire buckled and fell forward. Niesha kept pushing until the tip of her weapon ripped through Jolene’s chest. Impaled on the end of the stake was a hunk of black muscle, a dead heart, throbbing with an unnatural rhythm.

Jolene collapsed, fangs gnashing. “I’ll eat your souls, you fucking worms! I’ll chew up your whole lives and shit you out!”

Becca wasn’t sure what she was expecting but a stake through the heart still hadn’t killed Jolene outright. Blood spewed out of the hole in her chest, the heart fluttering. The creature looked paralysed, unable to really move, its wings and clawed feet twitching. Becca raised her machete.

“You will not take my man, you bitch!”

With one hard swing, Becca hewed the vampire’s neck. Flesh gave way like paper. The honed edge must have found a gap between vertebrae, or maybe the creature’s bones were frail, because it carved through the centre of its neck and ripped out the other side with hardly a hitch. Jolene’s scream of outrage cut off in the middle as if snapped in two. The force of Becca’s blow caused Jolene’s head to spin free from the stump of her neck. A couple of spurts of black blood jetted from the hacked off stump then her body crumpled to the grass.

Becca and the other women circled nervously, not confident that it was over. Alice nursed her broken arm. Niesha slid her pistol out of its holster and aimed it at the batlike corpse while Mishonna recovered her holy water. It took Jolene’s head almost a minute to die, jaw working silently and brandishing its glassy fangs. When it did die, it happened all at once. The vampire’s flesh went soft and sloughed off its bones. Its face ran off its skull and puddled on the grass. Its wings broke down as if rotting in fast forward and its exposed ribs, skewered on Niesha and Mishonna’s stakes, started to collapse.

“What do we do now?” Mishonna asked.

Across the yard, Becca and Hal’s house burned. Flames had spread to every room and threw off tremendous heat but it now acted like a normal fire and not a living thing. Finally, as if sensing the danger had passed, sirens appeared on the wind. Becca took one of the stakes off her belt and skewered what was left of Jolene’s head then flung it into the house. Niesha, Mishonna, and even Alice, with her broken arm, collected the body and threw it into the fire as well then watched it burn.

“Hal? Hal, baby, are you alright?” Becca crossed to him.

Hal sat up, dazed. The handcuffs still locked his left arm to the base of the upturned patio table. Becca found the key to free him once more and then wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

“Is it over?” Hal asked.

“That’s right, baby, it’s over! It’s over!” Becca said.

Becca kissed him hard, pasting her mouth onto his. For several long moments, they rocked back and forth in the light of their burning home. No matter what they might have lost, they still had one another. Hal gasped when she finally broke away.

“I never even liked redheads.”

======

Sean: This one was almost certainly inspired by that Tumblr post you might have seen getting around, where Jolene keeps going and getting more and more eldritch with each verse. Also some of the Red Court from The Dresden Files in there. Big fan of depictions of vampires or possessed people or whatever where you’ve got the sense their human shape is just barely holding together over some writhing mass of eldritch wrongness. Not just demonic and horrifying but weird, something that just doesn’t belong in the same universe as the rest of us.

Incidentally, perfect timing, I actually just got around to seeing Sinners earlier this week! Awesome, awesome movie. Spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen it. First, I’m not as much of a cinephile as I once was but it has to be one of the most visually gorgeous films I’ve seen in a long while on top of being a great story. Ending gave me a feeling of deep satisfaction that I’d more often get from a good book than a movie, if you know what I mean? And the vampires, fantastic. Nothing crazy in terms of their powers or visuals like what I was talking about before, other than being just as visually striking as the rest of the movie. But that psychological wrongness, the cultishness, the seductiveness, the earnest belief in what they were saying in spite of their own monstrousness, it was beautiful. It’s probably for the best I’d already written this story before watching it, it’s got enough inspirations as it is.

Spoilers over! Unless you consider the new songs added to the Mixtape playlist as spoilers for what’s coming up! Feel free to check those out and try to figure out where my mind is going. And for more you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram.

Next Track: Fastball – The Way