knocking off the point. Other than grinding a little enamel off of the neighboring teeth it was a rocking success, if I do say so myself. I could run my tongue over my fangs without slicing through the skin, and they looked only slightly longer than they did when they had only been eyeteeth. Score one for the unintentional handyman. I flossed out the grit, polished them up with toothpaste and hit the sack for what little sleep I would be lucky to get, pleased to have solved at least one problem.
And when I saw myself in the morning, those fuckers had grown right back into vicious little points again.
So now, right next to my floss and my electric toothbrush is my handy-dandy defanging tool. Just before I brush every morning, I grind them down to a manageable roundness. And every night when I come home, there they are again, sticking out of my lips like I never even touched them. They fall into the same category as everything else at this point: something I obsess over even when nobody else would probably even notice. And though it wouldn’t seem likely, this makes it worth the extra trouble to manage them. I keep waiting for the day when the haze lifts, and all of this is finally seen by everyone. There I’ll be: pale and cold, with pointed ears and a mouth like a human piranha.
I’d rather the fangs be kept in check for that moment.
It’s not just about self-preservation, either; ultimately, carving down my monster nibblers will help others, too. You see, I have this daydream about me and Chloe, and what happens on the day after she realizes how perfect we are together. I’ve had it since shortly after we started our drive-by flirtation at the copier, which has given me plenty of time to work through the details and refine the flow. It’s a slow motion rom-com montage, schmaltzy and clichéd as anything you’d find on late-night cable. But I don’t care how schmaltzy and clichéd it is.
It’s my dream and I’ll have it the way I want it, thank you.
At any rate, as the dream goes: during an afternoon in the park across the street from our office, while chasing our rascally retriever Baxter and the Frisbee he’s snatched away, after we make our mad dash into the corner café to get out of the sudden unexpected downpour that has made us laugh like madcaps as we cover our heads with newspapers, and while we’re waiting at the counter for the barista to bring us our cappuccinos, our eyes lock, she leans in and goes for The Kiss. But now, instead of The Kiss she’ll be caught up in The Bloody Freaking Mess That Permanently Disfigures the Lips I Love. Now instead of ending in a slow fade as we amble home love drunk, hand in hand to our two bedroom walk-up, it ends with a trip to the ER when she slices her tongue wide open on my goddamned teeth, sharp as woodscrews because I forgot to grind them down and buff them smooth before we left for the park.
Bastards.
So, I’m keeping myself defanged. I can deal with just about anything This has to throw at me, but if it blows my Hollywood kiss with the woman I love, vampirism and I will have some seriously messy shit to sort out. And it won’t end pretty.
For vampirism, that is. I should be fine.
I think.
POST 20
Lifted
I know it’s probably futile for me to be overly concerned about personal fitness. After all, many major parts of me are undead… whatever that means. I still walk, I still talk. I still digest things, for the most part. Most of the major functions are in place, so something vital is kicking around in there. It must be the living parts of me worrying that my age-suspended early-thirties self needs every advantage it can get now that it’s stuck where it is. Forever. When I was fully living, I was content with a long-distance relationship with fitness, a little lazy guy looseness challenging my waistband; there was always tomorrow to hit the gym if I could pull out of my lazy state and blast the fat to a slightly lesser presence around my mid-section. And then This happened, and suddenly I’ll always be fighting a losing battle when it comes to my appearance – the pallor, the drawn face. The teeth of a pit bull on steroids. The hair loss