existence, or rather, flower-in-the-bunker existence. If fresh veggies and soy milk had been in her life, she would have been at least five-foot-eight . I shouldn’t dwell on the negative. At least my head isn’t bigger than my body.
“I figured you out, you fascist dunderhead. You hate cute, petite girls because they stole some action from freak hags a million years ago when you were born.” She swallowed hard. She didn’t measure up to the voluptuous vampire one bit. “Weren’t you like Andre the Giant back then?”
Speechless but about to blow up, Gwendolyn’s mouth opened and closed, waiting for words of anger to erupt. The girl had hit a sore spot. “You, you…”
Poe sat up and eyed her pack peeking from behind the counter. It contained her only other gun. She dove for it.
Only a foot more and she could have snatched the pack. A luminous stiletto heel kicked her mid-back, making her eat carpet fuzz. She tried to get up but the point ground down on her lower spine like a cigarette getting snuffed of life.
“And vhere do you zink you’re going, ugly moose?” Gwendolyn’s shoe lifted its pressure, landing a blow on Poe’s left kidney. Inexorable pain stung every nerve in her body, leaving her curled like a roly-poly.
“I’ve been vaiting for such a moment. I am obdurately bored and vouldn’t you know it, dateless for 267
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two years?” She kicked the pack until it clanged against the small hipbath.
“So take up knitting,” said Poe barely above a whisper. She yearned to give the dead wench a piece of her mind, but the kick to her side depleted her. “The butt floss is so over already.”
“Can’t hear you. Vhat’s ze matter, short and ugly, you don’t know how to speak English, or vhat?”
Poe took a deep breath. This fucking S.S. troll is such skidmark! Poe was about to answer her until a kick on the side of her head made her much-abused left ear ring. All she could manage was a pithy curse and a grunt.
“Vhat vas zhat?” Gwendolyn demanded. “Vhat did you just say?”
Poe shook her head to clear her hearing and tried to rise on all fours. “I said who’d want a used up hag like you when there’s a fresh, minimally used thing like me around.”
The good trait about Gwendolyn was her inability to deliver a quick repartee. For one so old and wise with experience, she was easily stumped. Then again, her ready use of violence to shade her shortcomings nearly always saved the day. With a terrible scream, the vampire grabbed a fistful of shorn hair and pulled Poe to her feet.
Poe almost laughed if it weren’t for the burning pain in her scalp. She was going to lose whatever hair was left on her head.
Tearing up, Poe replied, “Quadra-breed, thank you very much. There’s nothing uglier than an outdated racist bitch whose pea-brained head can’t figure out that this is California.” She inhaled a sharp 268
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breath as follicles screamed for mercy. “This is our state.”
With much discomfort, Poe twisted her body around until she faced the much taller dead. Follicles began ripping. Crying, Poe hugged the walking corpse like she was her sweetheart. Gwendolyn’s cold, jiggly breasts cushioned her face to near suffocation.
“A lesbian!” Gwendolyn screeched, trying to separate the girl from her. “Let go of me, you dyke!”
There was a hissing at first then smoke eased out from between their intertwined bodies. Gwendolyn with a look of panic in her eyes and bleated out in the language of her mother country, “Umri v layna! You vitch!”
Through the flimsy material, the vampire’s flesh burned as if chemicals had been thrown at her. Her perfect breasts and stomach hissed from contact with Poe’s shirt, still wet from when she had wiped the goo off her arm. Sometimes it pays to be a slob.
“I love your goat, too, Gwenny!” Poe untangled her hair from Gwendolyn’s grasp and dove behind the counter. The portable DVD player crashed into the hip tub while Poe hit her funny bone along the tub handle.
“You fire zhat thing at me and bid adieu to your friends,” Gwendolyn cried while pulling off the gauzy material of her nighty from her singed skin. “Haven’t you noticed how quiet it’s been ze past two days?
Leeches are forbidden to shoot. It’s so zhey can pin point vhere any noises are coming from.”
Weak and vomitous from the kicks to the kidney, Poe dipped her