Vampires Never Get Old - Zoraida Cordova Page 0,44

about my father’s actions,” Ms. Williams says toward the end of the five-minute video. “I hope everyone who called them such will think about why they could ever believe murder to be a kindness instead of a monstrosity. Why were you so easily convinced that my life meant nothing? Why did no one ask what my life meant to me?”

Ms. Williams states that this will be her last communication and urges authorities not to search for her. As she is still a minor, however, a search is indeed underway.

Grant Williams has not issued a response to his daughter’s revelations, though he was reported to have been rushed to a local hospital last night with what authorities are calling “mysterious injuries.”

A source close to the Robertson County Sheriff’s Office said charges of attempted murder against Mr. Williams are “possible but unlikely without the cooperation of Grace Williams.” Meanwhile, an online petition calling for Mr. Williams to be removed from his teaching position has reached 50,000 signatures. We will update this story as it evolves.

THE MAGICAL CURE Or Embodying the Vampire Myth

Zoraida Córdova & Natalie C. Parker

A good vampire is hard to kill. There are methods, of course: stakes, beheading, sunlight, holy water, a werewolf bite. Sometimes silver will do it. But for the most part, vampires are both impermeable to harm and quick to heal. They possess superspeed, strength, and heightened senses and, in some iterations, can even fly. In many cases, transitioning from human to vampire can save your life à la little Claudia in Interview with the Vampire. In this way, vampirism is imagined as a cure for a mortal illness (like the plague!) or a fatal wound. But this is a slippery slope, and we might also see vampirism imagined as a cure for all illnesses and disabilities in a way that alienates the people for whom chronic illness and disability is a part of their identity. Magical cures suggest that the only way to live with disease or disability is to always wish for something else. Kayla’s story is in conversation with that very idea—Grace is transformed into a vampire, and while she receives some of those enhanced magical senses, her body remains her body. Being yourself, even when undead, is pretty powerful.

If you were turned into a vampire, what is one thing about yourself you wouldn’t change?

VAMPIRES NEVER SAY DIE

Zoraida Córdova & Natalie C. Parker

BRITTANY

I honestly don’t know why I did it.

There aren’t many things I can say that about anymore. I am not impulsive. Perhaps I used to be, but temerity is a luxury of youth. Of mortality.

I have neither.

Maybe that’s why I joined Instagram. To feel a connection to the things I’ve lost. Or maybe I just wanted a hobby and Instagram seemed as good an option as any other. Better, because all I had to do was pick a name and I could be whomever, whatever I wanted to be.

Perhaps I wanted to find a place where I wasn’t in charge. Where I wasn’t Brittany Nicolette Fontaine, Vampire Premier of New York City. Where every moment of every day wasn’t a consideration of power. I suppose it’s naive to think there is no power to be found on Instagram, but it certainly wasn’t mine, and I enjoyed that for a while.

In spite of being unable to fully participate in the generation of the selfie, I find a vicarious kind of joy in consuming the curated lives of others. There is something soothing in knowing that none of us is exactly what we say. The Brittany I share online is not real, and the truly wondrous thing about this era of social media is that no one expects that she is anything but a myth. A fabrication based on something real. A layer of Chantilly lace over porcelain, sun-starved skin. Like my watery reflection in the tall windows of my apartment.

I step up close, until I am only a breath away from the glass. Even then, the girl who stares back at me is blurred, a series of impressions diffused by the light that sifts up from the city beneath me like cold, pale flames. Beyond a stubborn slip of trees that obscures the roads below, the river winks past. It is a ribbon of darkness trapped between pervasive rows of yellow traffic lights that grow up like crops. A space between spaces.

Before this moment, I’d been happy to exist in that liminal space between what is real and what is not, between what