Fat Vampire Read Free Page A

seller’s area with its hundreds upon hundreds of long boxes packed with hard-to-find-issues and action figures—but who has time for action figures when you have to rush to make the eleven o’clock panel discussion with the creator and stars of Nebula-Bravo followed by a nap-inducing lunch in the food courts where you were forced to eat soft pretzels and pizza because they didn’t sell anything else.
    Doug was really going to miss the soft pretzels and pizza.
    â€œOw. I’m going to have to drink someone soon,” he told Jay, and realized he was slurring his speech. Was this what it felt like to be drunk? “I’ve got the shakes. And I was totally getting somewhere with that girl last night, too.”
    â€œSorry,” said Jay, for maybe the thirtieth time. Doug’s gut twisted. He hadn’t meant to squeeze another apology out of Jay. He hadn’t meant to give the impression that they’d only been thrown out of the party because of Jay’s monopoly of the hall bathroom, either, but somehow he had.
    â€œWhat happened after the panda hit you?” asked Jay. “Can you remember now?”
    â€œNo. I can remember everything up to—Well, I noticed the camera, and it’s looking at me, and then it looks down at this little pink thing next to the panda, so I look, too, and it’s this tiny animal.”
    â€œBaby Shuan Shuan,” said Jay. “You’re so lucky.”
    â€œI feel lucky. So I’m looking down at this tiny hairless panda when I hear footsteps, and a door bursts in, and these uniformed guys with metal poles start tasering me. And you know what doesn’t work when people are tasering you? It’s shouting ‘Stop tasering me.’ If they’re tasering you already, they won’t stop because you ask them to.”
    â€œNo,” said Jay.
    â€œThe Tasers aren’t working so well on me, maybe because I’m a vampire, but they really, really hurt, so I back up, trying to get away from the guards, and I guess I get too close to Baby Ching Chong because that’s when the panda punches me in the head.”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œThen there’s a scene missing, because the next thing I know I’m back out in the zoo, in the bushes, without any clothes on. So you gotta figure that’s one hell of a missing scene.”
    â€œUh-huh.”
    â€œAnd then I go to find you, but you’re not where I left you— ”
    â€œI said we should meet by—”
    â€œâ€”but you are by the exit, and the exit is by the T-shirt stand, so I don’t have to drive home naked. So that’s fine. Ow.”
    Jay looked glum.
    â€œWe should have left money on the stand,” he said. “What we did…it was bad enough without stealing a T-shirt.”
    Doug sighed. “Yeah.”
    They crossed the train tracks to the convention center.
    â€œBut it was a stupid shirt,” Doug added. “They can’t expect anybody to actually pay for a shirt that says, ‘I (picture of an elephant) the San Diego Zoo.’ What does that even mean?”
    â€œOh, man,” said Jay. “Look at that line.”
    Doug looked up, but his glasses went foggy from the smoke suddenly rising off his cheeks.
    â€œAAH! Dammit!”
    â€œSorry.”
    It was still ten minutes until the doors opened, but they walked to the front of a grumbling line of fanboys, cosplayers, furries, goths, and a smattering of girlfriends that were there out of curiosity, or there to be supportive of their boyfriends, or maybe there because they had assumed they’d be a singularity—the only queen in the anthill, with all the power that implied. This last type was easy to spot, dressed in clothes so brazenly revealing they could pass for Halloween costumes. Doug knew there would be a lot of girls here who genuinely liked comics, too, though they never seemed to like the same kind he did. Still, it gave him