Twisted Pulp Magazine Issue 001

You can finally breathe! The maiden voyage of Twisted Pulp Magazine has finally set sail! In this first issue, we do what we do best, collect articles, stories, comics, and art that focus on dark, mysterious, noir, and satirical content. You say, “That’s a tall order for one magazine” and we say… “yes, it is, but we’re doing it anyway. This issue features stories from Lothar Tuppan, Chauncey Haworth, Kara Kittrick, Mark Slade, and more as well as irreverent articles, comics, and featured artist Lissanne Lake.

    Contents

  1. Editorial: The Maiden Voyage
  2. A Post-Apocalyptic, Twisted Pulp Interview with Donald J. Trump… and Donald J. Trump.
  3. The Truth From Dubba Daddly (The World’s Biggest Liar)
  4. Willy Wonka Part 1
  5. “Oi, It Burns!” the Stupid That Burned the building to the ground
  6. The Camino Real by Lothar J. Tuppan
  7. Pan-dana 10 Steps To Cure Coron-er Virus
  8. The Fantastic Worlds Of Lissanne Lake
  9. Vampires of the West Coast Introduction: November 2019
  10. Vampires of the West Coast: Chapter 1
  11. Vampires of the West Coast Vignette: September 2007
  12. Rat and Miriam
A Post-Apocalyptic Twisted Pulp Interview with Donald J Trump and Donald J Trump

A Post-Apocalyptic, Twisted Pulp Interview with Donald J. Trump… and Donald J. Trump.

By Dr. Mary Von Rocksprocket

Hello, not-so-dear readers! This is Dr. Mary Von Rocksprocket, in my underground bunker, hiding from the destruction of the world that occurred when all the nuclear and social unrest style shit hit the fan, splattered all over everyone in liquid form (filled with maggots), entered our noses, ears, mouths, and… well you get the idea. I am now, breaking out of my radio imprisonment and finally moving into a more respected medium for communication: Journalism! The only downside is you can’t hear my laughter that I will now have to type out like a rabid tapir! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  But the upside is that my assistant Tiffany won’t be able to interrupt!  Or attempt to kill me within these pages… Wait while I double-check the lock on the door. Ah ha! Secure!!!!

Twisted Pulp is not quite the bastion of rigorous ethics and methodology that I once experienced in academia but then, what is these days? And, of course, that was before I lost my tenure due to the chinchilla / hooker / psychologist / drug dealer hybridization experiments. Narrow-minded idiots! Who doesn’t want a soft and furry, sexually available, person who will listen to all of your narcissistic ramblings while giving you drugs I ask you? Hmm!? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Now, where was I? Damn… 

Ah, Journalism! Yes! The respected 4th Estate that will keep the world from… oh… they didn’t do such a good job now did they? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Well, we will do better here dear Readers! Here, at Twisted Pulp, we will expose the truth behind Fish-Worship! We will track the wild SPAM beasts! We will distill the fermented fluids from the pineal glands of wasteland-wandering partisan politicians to create the most potent hallucinogenic substances in existence! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

And today, we begin with an interview! An interview with someone… well, two someones… both claiming to be President Donald J. Trump!

Dr. Mary Von Rocksprocket (MVR): President Trump and… President Trump, with so many people dead, as either carbon shadows or chemical goo, when all of civilization screwed the pooch it is amazing that you survived… and that there are now two of you—

Donald J. Trump I (Trump I): (interrupting)… Not really… Not really Mary.  May I call you Mary?  And why aren’t you a woman?  When I agreed to this interview it was because I thought you were a young, sexy, German lady.

Dr. Mary Von Rocksprocket (MVR): No. I’m a man. My father named me Mary.

Donald J Trump II (Trump II): So, you’re not a transsexual?

Dr. Mary Von Rocksprocket (MVR): No!!!! Haven’t you ever heard “A Boy Named Sue?”

Trump I: Of course. The Man in Black was a great American.

MVR: We can definitely agree on that! HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Trump II: We think you’re a very strange man.

Trump to Trump

MVR: You. Have. No. Idea!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Anyway! So, you were explaining how you survived World War III and why there are two Donald J. Trumps.

Trump I: Yes. You see, not only do I have Dragon Energy, I have a mixture of Planarian and Cockroach Blood. I injected that mixture, and bleach, into my veins on a regular basis for years before the apocalypse that was caused by Rosie O’Donnell reenacting her role as “Sheila” from Exit to Eden.

MVR: I’m going to have nightmares now that you have mentioned that! (Yelling off microphone) TIFFANY! Make sure I have lots of melatonin for tonight! And bourbon!

Trump II: Yes. Rosie O’Donnell caused the end of the world as we know it and she is the reason there are two of me.

MVR: Do tell.

Trump I: Well, after I was reelected, with a huge landslide in both popular and electoral votes—

MVR: I don’t remember that ever happening.

Trump II: That’s because of the fallout. It’s been affecting people’s memories and their ability to digest processed cheese products.

MVR: That… actually… that explains more than a few Velveeta incidents I’ve had. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Trump I: I’m going to call you “Moronic Mary” from now on. M’kay?

[Edited note:  Tiffany here readers… I like what Donny called him. I’m editing this piece now and the idiot formerly known as Dr. Mary Von Rocksprocket will now be called “Moron” in the transcript below! Yay!!!!]

Moron: I… NOBODY TALKS TO ME LIKE THAT!

Trump II: And, I am both somebody and nobody… because nobody’s perfect.  And I am hugely perfect.

Moron: I… That hurt my brain. Please continue with your story.

Trump I: As I was saying, after my landslide reelection, O’Donnell became even more unhinged than she had been previously. She dressed up as an extremely obese dominatrix, kidnapped me with the help of 1,000 boxing kangaroos, and held me captive. With ransom demands.

Moron: What was she demanding?

Trump II: She wanted me to dress up as Baby Huey and say, “I’m Sorry” while being sprayed with orange paint by Joy Behar. I of course refused. I don’t negotiate with terrorists. Or horrible, harpies.

Moron: That sounds… insane! Even by my standards! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Trump I: That woman is completely batshit crazy, yes she is.

Trump to Trump

Trump II: But it was during this time that the world didn’t have my leadership… and that’s what caused everything to break down.

Trump I: That’s right! If I had been there we would still be living in the best of all possible, and AMERICAN, worlds.

Moron: Fascinating! But, how did this end with you being, well… two?

Trump II: She finally snapped. After days of trying to break my spirit (and let me tell you, better people than her have tried… like all of my ex-wives), she took a chainsaw and sliced me right down the middle.

Moron: How did you react to her brandishing such a weapon. I’m pretty sure I would soil my labcoat. And I might have already done that earlier. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Trump I: That explains the smell. No, I just looked the horrible, horrible, woman in the eye and said, “Bring it on! I’m the Duke of New York! A-Number-One! The Big Man!”

Trump II: And that’s when I became aware… right after she cut him in half.

Trump I: We quickly healed up and took her down.

Moron: This is, frankly, unbelievable.

Trump II:  That’s because you are a moron. Mary. Not a very nice man.

Moron: Tiffany! I can hear you laughing! Stop it!

Trump I: We split into two and became even more awesome than we were when we were one.

Trump II: And now I can refer to myself as the “Royal We” without looking weird.

Moron: I wonder what it would be like to have two of… ME!

Trump I: Well, I can tell you about one major benefit.

Moron: Please!

Trump II: Back when I was in college, I was playing a Yoga drinking game.

Moron: A what?

Trump I: It’s like Twister but it’s good for your health and your soul. Anyway, my friend Randy Roy convinced me to try sticking both of my thumbs up my ass at the same time.

Moron: Eeep!

Trump II: Which I did.  Because I’m absolutely excellent.

Trump I: But it was hard. I wasn’t able to spend time enjoying it as much as I would have liked.

Moron: I can only imagine (and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to NOT imagine this now).

Trump II: Now, we can do this for each other. As much as we want.

Trump I: We have added it to our MAGA platform: “Make Ass-Play Great Again.”

Moron: I…. I think that is all we have time for this issue. Thank you President Trumps for the exclusive interview. And, if I don’t succumb to drinking industrial strength cleaner-degreaser from the visions this interview has conjured up, I’ll back next issue for more hard-hitting, rigorous JOURNALISM as only Dr. Mary Von Rocksprocket [MORON] can bring you!  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Trump to Trump
The Truth from Dubba Daddly

The Truth From Dubba Daddly (The World’s Biggest Liar)

You know, a lot of people don’t believe me when I say, “I was there.”

A few weeks ago, I just happened to go into a lounge-type bar, just to kill time while I was staying in a hotel in Oklahoma. The place was completely empty except the bartender, a fortyish woman with pink hair and silver sideburns. I swear she was wearing a wig. One guy in a suit was slumped over at the bar nursing a tropical zombie.

You just won’t believe who was sitting there!

Adolf Hitler.

I swear on my mother’s grave. He was sitting there moaning and groaning about the state of the world today. How no one seems to like each other and can’t see each other’s side.

He said, “Why can’t we just love each other?”

Oh you say he’s been dead all these years and if he was alive, how can I understand German? Well, I just can. I can’t speak it. Like a lot of languages, I just understand human language. I asked him how he’s still alive. 

He said, “The government has been giving me Clorox treatments to keep me alive.”

I said, “Come on, Adolf. The U.S. Government is keeping you alive? For what?”

He said, “Advice on world affairs. Alas,” he sighed, drank his Tropical Zombie. “I’m at a loss anymore.”

I said, “So, what are you doing in Oklahoma?”

“Oh, I’m here for the Trump Rally.”

Dubba Daddly
Dubba Daddly
Willy Wonka Part 1 by Rob Lowe (Not that Rob Lowe)

Willy Wonka Part 1

By Rob Lowe (Not that Rob Lowe)

We currently are living in the #speakout movement and many stories have come out about many celebrities. There are some stories unfortunately that will go unnoticed. Some stories that will get pushed aside. I recently talked with someone who has tried to speak out about his story but nobody will listen. His name is Larry Furgenstien. Larry was born with dwarfism and was teased about it his whole life. He ran away at the young age of thirteen where he found other people with dwarfism. They formed a mini colony under an overpass off of I-95 in South Carolina. They were doing well for themselves until one day a limo pulled up. Out of the limo steps a man in plaid colorful pants, a purple jacket, a yellow top hat, and crazy hair. His name. Was Willy Wonka. Yes Willy Wonka—the same man who has graced us with candy for generations. This is part 1 of my interview.

Larry told me, “He (Wonka) came up to us and smiled and said he wanted to help us. And that if we came with him that he would provide us with shelter and food. So, of course, we went with him! We were tired of living under that damn overpass! We thought this guy might look crazy but hey its a place to live.” Willy Wonka took all thirty of the little people to his factory as they looked out the windows in awe. Larry said, “We couldn’t believe it! On the car ride over he was telling us that he works at his own factory and makes his own candy by hand. We didn’t quite believe him at first until we got to the gates and saw his name on the building.” At that point the limo stopped behind the factory and that is when all hell broke loose.

“The limo just kept driving around to the back of the factory. My buddy Ron at the time piped up and asked, ‘why aren’t we going through the front?’ Wonka just let out a little giggle as we pulled around back where about ten of these guys in suits and sunglasses were standing. At that point I knew we were in trouble.” Larry began to cry as he told this part of the story. He told me that the door opened as Wonka instructed all of them to remain seated. He saw Wonka go up to one of the men who was wearing regular glasses and not sunglasses. He whispered something to him and walked away into the factory. The men then surrounded the car and the man with the glasses ordered them all to get out of the vehicle. Larry went on to say, “Of course, we refused because we knew something was up. Then he reached into the car and grabbed my buddy Ron by the legs and yanked him out. We all started screaming and the car door was slammed shut. The driver locked up the doors and opened the sun roof as a can of sleep gas was tossed in. We all panicked but the roof was shut already. I looked out the window and all ten of those men were beating the shit out of Ron. I haven’t seen him since.”

After that bit Larry needed a small break. He was crying hysterically about losing his friend. He told me that they used to play Care Bears together. Join me next time as we dive deeper into the story that is Larry Furgenstien.

Oi, It Burns

“Oi, It Burns!” the Stupid That Burned the building to the ground

By Phillip Lester Seymour Bangs Hoffman

British Rock band Deep Purple is known for hard driving drums, loud droning, melodic keyboards, heavy basslines, and loud, screeching guitars and vocals. But I bet you didn’t know the true story behind their classic “Smoke on the Water”, did you?

At this point, Deep Purple had one U.S. top 40 hit, a cover of Joe South’s “Hush.” They languished slightly, went through a lineup change replacing vocalists Rod Evans with Ian Gillian and Nick Semper with Roger Glover. They tried a musical change by combining hard rock with symphonic music, but it didn’t click. They shifted to what they are more known for today, basically (along with Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin) as Godfathers of Heavy Metal. 

After recording In Rock, Deep Purple was in financial dire straits. Overworked, with little to show for it.

And who came to their rescue?

You wouldn’t believe it.

Jerry Lewis.

Yes. That Jerry Lewis. The comedian who made it big in the late ’40s as a duo with Dean Martin and made a huge impact on the French (even to the point wanting to appoint Lewis as their President without holding elections) with a string of hit films such as the Nutty Professor. Lewis was feeling old and realized he’d lost that connection he once had with anyone under 12 and decided to embark on a tour as a psychedelic crooner.

But he needed a backing band. 

“A groovy band, sweetheart,” as he told one female journalist he convinced to sit on his lap, in 1970.

How that came to be was Lewis shared the same manager as Deep Purple, legendary confidence man, Chips De-oink.

This was just another less smart decision on the band’s part for trusting manager De-oink.

 Twenty minutes into the first concert in Swindon, U.K., Lewis had a tendency to delve into shtick, such as placing drumsticks up his nose and getting stuck, or getting into a fist fight with guitarist Richie Blackmore for telling the audience his surname was a reference to Blackmore’s family being slaves in Barbados. 

The band quit the tour that night.

Two days later, Lewis called. Saying, “I need youse help. A guy from Californ-i-a, called and said we go to Montreux. Two hundred thousand dollars, men. Come on, lil’ babies. Uncle Jerry needs your help for one more show.”

They agreed—but only if Lewis would not do his drumstick in the nose shtick or refer to Blackmore as the “Slave boy who can really play the Ukulele.”

They really shouldn’t have agreed.

One source claims, Lewis, once again, showed his ass to the band. Picking a fight with who he called “that pol-lock Frank Zapper guy who talks weird” Another source says, while at the casino trying to impress a Swiss girl too young to spell her name in the casino, Zappa walked in and proclaimed, “Some little Jewish guy leaked oil all the way from the entrance.” Pushing and shoving ensued. A fight broke out between both celebs’ entourage, while Zappa and Lewis crawled away to hide separately.

To get even, Lewis decided he would disrupt Zappa’s concert. He stole what he thought was a BB gun from the Casino security. 

In actuality, it was a flare gun.

Lewis fired and the flare zoomed by Zappa’s face, catching a beam on fire. The flames rippled through the roof. Zappa coolly called out to the audience, saying, “I don’t want to alarm anyone, but… we’re all going to die! Fire!!!!!”

Panic. Tramplings. Screams. 

Some members of the audience remember hearing a man scream, “Oi! It burns!” as he ran out of the building, climbing over people like a spider monkey from hell.

There you have it. The truth behind one of rock’s greatest anthems:  “But some stupid with a flare gun, burned the place to the ground.”

Deep Purple made out all right from this disastrous concert. Frank Zappa got a really cool story to chastise interviewers with. And Mr. Lewis? Well, he still hosted the MDS Telethon for decades. But Zappa got his revenge by secretly financing Lewis’ career ending film “Hardly Working.”

Pan-dana: 10 Steps To Cure Coron-er Virus

By Dr. Hillary Chestnut

One night, my husband Chestnut gulped down the last of his Budweiser and stopped watching a video of last year’s Nascar race at Talladega and said:

“I reckon you know more about that coron-er virus than anybody I know.”

“You think so?”

“Well,” he chewed a piece of bacon that had been stuck in his back teeth for two weeks and swallowed. “I know you know more about it than that Faoul-chee feller!”

I got to thinkin’ about that one late night and I come to a-clusion that Chestnut was right. For instant, flu shit didn’t come from no damn bat in china. No siree! It came from Spider monkees  in south America. Yep. You can lookit up on Google and it’ll tell ya fact-by-fact that I’m correct. Those little buggers peel the banana rinds and wear ‘em around their necks wherever they go Poopin’. Sexin’ their partners (which is usually their mommas, kinda like my cousin Brody and his trashy family) or just playin’ golf with coconuts they find in gutters on the streets. Then those stinkin’ spider monkees wrap the bananas back up and hang ‘em back on the trees, usin’ their spit to hold the rinds together.

Yep! It’s all facts there. I Googled ‘em on the dark web.

I’ve even come up with a better name for that virus. Pan-dana!

Here’s a step by step guide on how to cure Coron-er:

Step 1: Get drunk real fast by drinkin’ Dr. Pepper (a 12 pack), Nyquil, and Bourbon. 

Step 2: Fill a light bulb full of grape Kool aid and rub it all over your body. (Hint: that was a huge turn on for my husband Chestnut. The grape Kool-Aid smell set him off!)

Step 3: Avoid any George Lopez shows. Obviously because he’s from South America and cohorts with spider monkees.

Step 4: Don’t take a crap in the bathrooms of Taco Bell. Obvious reasons.

Step 5: Shoot. I can’t remember step 5. Oh, well.

Step 6: No banana daiquiris. They ain’t real fruit, but I wouldn’t take no chances.

Step 7: Eat fresh grass. Right after the lawn is mowed is the best time.

Step 8: Take Q-tips soaked in Clorox and swab yer own nose. Yep. Not only is it a home test and you ain’t got to pay nobody, it also meets up with that killer Coron-er and eats away the germs! Tested and turns out to be true!

Step 9: Do what me and Chestnut do every Friday after he gets off work at the Ciggertte outlet. Drink a 12 pack and turn up Metallica’s Ride the Lightning. Come Saturday afternoon when you wake up, you’ll find you ain’t got the Coron-er.

Step 10: Don’t eat bananas a-tall!

There you have it. By the way, I ain’t no real Doctor, they just call me that cause I cook the best Meth this side of Sunny Hills trailer park.

Bye for now!

The Fantastic Worlds Of Lissanne Lake

Lissanne Lake

A Gallery Of From One Of Leading Cover Illustrators In Publishing

Lissanne Lake has been a full time freelance illustrator for over thirty years.  She earned her bachelor of arts in illustration at Jersey City State College, and then went to work in advertising in New York for a number of years before turning to illustration and fine arts.

Since then, she has done art for over two hundred covers, including covers for best-selling authors such as Terry Pratchett, Thomas Disch, Raymond Buckland & R.A. Lafferty. In addition, Lissanne has created numerous paintings for magazines book interiors and other products and publications.

In 2001, she published her own tarot deck jointly with Raymond Buckland, the Buckland Romani Tarot, for which she did all the art, and is working on another. Recently, she has painted 4 large murals for the cities of Jersey City and Hackensack

She lives and works at her home in North Bergen, NJ, and has always been a NJ resident.  To see more paintings, visit her Facebook page The Fantastic Art of Lissanne Lake.

The Horse Thieves
Vampires of the West Coast Introduction 2

Vampires of the West Coast Introduction: November 2019

It was the second full moon since the crisis began, and Portland waited anxiously to see if it would happen again.

The streets were deserted just before sundown – men and women dragged all their possessions indoors, causing no end of fighting where ownership was disputed. They locked and barricaded entrances, and stacked whatever they could in front of windows, for they did not want anything to look inside. Then they covered their ears and selected hiding places.

Hours passed. Seven thirty, eight thirty, nine-thirty, and silence reigned. A mother shut her eyes tight and squeezed her children close. One of the toddlers lost bladder control, crouched in the pantry all evening, but they all understood that they must not move.

Looters spotted it first. They were out on the streets, hoping to pick up some much-needed food and water while the rest of the fools were indoors with their superstitions. It looked like a dog encrusted with filth, eyes fused shut by caked-on gore, ribs hollow and draped in sagging skin. But it was as large as a bear, and when it opened its jaws, two glowing eyes, disturbingly human in appearance, stared out from deep in its throat.

It moved with haste that no man or animal could emulate, and screams of panic escaped to the ashy clouds. The entire city could hear their cries.

In the neighborhood of Goose Hollow, in an apartment where six families were sheltered, mute terror turned to active panic as the head of one woman, who a second ago had seemed just like them, burst free of the body, levitating about the room trailing organs and screeching like a banshee.

Across the river, in Laurelhurst, a survivalist peeked out from under the curtains to see what was happening. In the distance, framed against the moon, was a great bulbous spider, its thin legs ten stories tall. He dropped to the ground and whimpered. This was not the post-apocalypse he envisioned.

And, in a university housing block near the stadium freeway, John clutched Erin tight. Someone was banging on the door.

“Let me in!” that someone cried, their voice desperate, yet oddly flat and affected. “Please! You don’t know what’s out here!”

Erin wanted to help, but John whispered no. He didn’t think that the voice belonged to a person anymore. How did he know? Just a hunch. But it was clear the rules of the old world were to be scrapped, and caution, even superstitious caution, was now the order of the day.

Eventually, dawn came, and the sleepless city dwellers commenced their daily efforts to survive.

Vampires of the West Coast Chapter 1

Vampires of the West Coast: Chapter 1

“Have you ever spoken to a monster before?”

I shook my head. “Only the human kind.”

Sergeant Raja didn’t smile. “It’s not the same. Not the same at all,” He said. “For your first time, it’s best to keep it short. Five minutes, maybe. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t get near the glass. She can’t smell you, but if you upset the vampire it’ll make our jobs harder.”

I nodded. We stopped at a gate, and he punched in a code on a glowing keypad, beckoning me to follow. We were headed into the bowels of the old bunker now. The guards who were not armed with automatic rifles carried transparent feudal-looking melee weapons. “Ghost weapons,” they were called. Exactly what made them special or how they worked was highly classified, but they were for killing monsters.

The fortification was dim and austere, with a smell like a recently cleaned morgue and wallpaper that peeled like sunburned skin. The creatures had to feel right at home. This place was spooky enough for any halloween monster.

“I do really appreciate this opportunity, you know,” I told the sergeant. “I know it can’t be too often that you let people in here for something like a dissertation.”

He chuckled. “You suppose correctly. Medical dissertations, certainly. Mostly we do biological research here. You’re the first political science grad we’ve had. But your husband had the idea and I could never say no to him.”

I smile. “Oh it’s not so hard, start crying and he’s putty in your hands.”

Sergeant Raja frowned.

“I’m joking,” I said. I didn’t think that method would work out for him anyway. Sergeant Raja had two emotions – forthrightness and righteous indignation.

At last, we arrived at a cell block on the lowest level, kept even darker than the others. The grimy orange industrial bulbs barely illuminated a path.

“Here we are. Specimens. For obvious reasons, we only use low-powered lights in this area.” Raja stretched out a hand, indicating that I was to continue into the darkness alone.

“You’re not coming with me?”

“I don’t think you’d get much out of her if I accompanied you. But there’s nothing to be afraid of. She can’t hurt you. You told me you’re not attracted to women?”

“That’s right.”

“Then you’ll be just fine. If you feel the least bit uncomfortable, just call out, we’ll stun her with the bright lights. I set up a chair for you in front of her window. The adjacent cells are shuttered, so the other monsters won’t bother you.”

Still, I was reluctant to proceed. In fact, in the end, the only reason why I did was I would have been embarrassed to have wasted everyone’s time. This place – it was everything you screamed at characters in a horror movie to avoid. It was cold and dark and miserable. Torture happened here. It was literally full of monsters.

Yet I went.

Best to get this over with, I thought. You’re going to have a dissertation about something real. They’ll be quoting your work for years to come, I thought.

I walked faster and faster as I made my way down the hall until eventually I all but threw myself into the plastic folding chair they’d placed in front of the cell.

The window was dark too. Lights at the windowsill would allow me to see the creature within, provided she came close to the glass. I reassured myself that everything she did would be monitored by night vision cameras.

I scanned her file one last time, just to settle my nerves. Anna Tsybukin . . . born in Russia, grew up in Portland. Published a poem about being gay when she was 11. Became a corporate Nurse for Nike after a stint in the ER. Married to Nadia Wilhelm, a criminal defense lawyer. Friends described her as smart, responsible, caring but nosy. A mom friend.

“Hello?” I said. “My name is Erin Forest. I’m a graduate student in sociology at the University of Portland. It’s been arranged for us to speak together.”

And then, as if emerging from the depths of the sea, an outline of a woman appeared, framed in the incandescent twilight. Lit from below, her bright red eyes twinkled like hellfire stars. Her crimson hair was long and ragged, hanging down to breast level. Her skin was colorless, her features gaunt and feral.

Could they have made this set up any spookier? I wondered.

She leaned her elbow against the glass, but said nothing – only eyed me hungrily. After a few seconds, I realized with a flush of horror and embarrassment, that I had been looking her right in the eyes for several seconds. It was hard to help – she was so inhuman it was mesmerizing. Furious with myself, I tore my gaze away.

“Anna?” I asked. “Can you hear me?”

“Of course.”

“Ah, sorry! Yes. It’s just you didn’t say anything, so I thought-” Realizing that I was babbling, I caught myself. I’m sure I was blushing furiously – not always what you want to do when facing down a bloodsucker. “I have a couple of questions for you.”

To my surprise, the creature smiled, revealing, yes, fangs. “You’ll have to forgive me if I act a little strange. I don’t socialize much. And they keep us starving, I’m afraid. So we don’t break out. A few milliliters would be all it would take to restore my strength – they don’t dare give even that.”

Milliliters. Of blood. This person in front of me drank blood. I was having a conversation with something that had a human shape, yet was essentially a giant animal. A vampire bat on two legs.

I had no idea what to say to her, so I settled for, “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” She gave a strange, almost-joyful laugh. “You’re not what I was expecting at all. It’s adorable.”

Now I was sure that I was turning red. “Adorable?” I spluttered. “Thank you, I guess? Listen, the reason I’m here-“

But Anna the vampire wasn’t done with the topic. “You don’t get compliments much, do you? Or when you do, you don’t trust them, because they’re from someone you know. A compliment from a stranger – even someone like me – I can tell you take that seriously. What a perverted view of things.”

“Perverted?”

“Trust your friends. Hug them close, while you still have human arms.” Like milk, her voice turned bitter in an instant.

“When you’re trans like I am, you never know when people are just trying to make you feel better.”

When I first came to Portland, sometimes women would be suspicious of me because I still looked like a man – revealing my gender identity put them more at ease. Of course, things had changed a lot since those days.

Anna laughed softly. “I didn’t even know. Your voice could definitely be a woman’s voice. Your features are very feminine. You have nothing to worry about. You know, I attended a protest in Portland years ago – a national bill that would have removed certain protections for trans folk. I’m sure you remember.”

“I do,” I said. “I might have been at the same one.” I might have passed her in the crowd. Of course, she would have been normal back then. No fangs, no appetite for blood. It was too surreal to contemplate. I had to steer the conversation back on track.

But the same thought appeared to occur to her, and she wasn’t going to let it go. “You know,” she said, with a nasty smile, “only people with a strong conscience can become vampires. I’ll bet that If I bit you, maybe you’d become like me. Would that help you with your research?” She bared her fangs to punctuate the thought.

“If I call out, they’ll turn on the lights!” I said, rather more frantically than I intended. Her threat had spooked me, I would admit it. For the briefest instant, I imagined myself standing on the other side of the glass and it was enough to make me shudder. “Look, I was just hoping we could have a civil conversation.”

“Your wish is my command,” she sniffed. “What did you want to know, anyway?”

“You’ve killed people.”

“Obviously.”

“But you didn’t kill anyone for several years. They allowed me to read parts of your history. Your girlfriend, Nadia, fed you. In return, you protected her. Even fought off a demon that threatened the neighborhood.”

“More’s the pity.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The reason we monsters are losing the war here in the west is because so many of us didn’t even realize we were fighting.”

“You mean, you tried to coexist.”

“Is that what your research is about? The possibility of coexistence? I’m surprised they’re even letting you write about that.”

“It’s about the existence of ethics among monsters,” I told her. She’d hit a bit too close to the truth. I had, in fact, wanted to write about coexistence. My academic advisor, Emma, told me there was no way.

“What a stupid topic. You come here and rub my sins in my face? It’s obvious why I kill. I’m a vampire, I do it because I’m hungry. Make no mistake, if the glass were gone, I’d kill you in a heartbeat. Not because I hate you. It would be involuntary.”

“I’m not interested in why you killed. I’m interested in why you didn’t.”

She shrugged. “Because Nadia didn’t want me to. I tried; I really tried. She tried too. Technically, a vampire can survive by peacefully drawing blood from a few donors. Practically speaking, it doesn’t work.”

I wanted to ask her to explain, to get more answers, but I could hear Sergeant Raja’s footsteps. My time was up.

“Listen, I’d love to talk to you again. Before I do, I want to give you a copy of my introduction to the dissertation. If you don’t mind doing so, I hope you’ll read it and give me your opinion next time we meet.”

“You know that I have to do whatever you say, right? I’m kept alive only because I’m useful for research. You don’t have to be so polite.” she said.

I nodded and produced the papers from my bag. It was titled Vampires of the West Coast: Monster Ethics and Society. There was a thin slot that could be used to push small items into the cell. I passed the fifteen pages of dissertation I’d written so far through it and into a collection tray below.

Anna smiled, and once again I accidentally met her eye, sending a vibration of warm terror through my being. In a surprisingly soft voice, she replied. “Don’t worry, I’ll read it. Better than the usual dissections. I look forward to your next visit.”

Raja put his hand on my shoulder. It was time to go. It was only as we did I noticed that my hands were shaking like two epileptic starfish. No wonder he told me not to make eye contact.

Four years ago the world changed. This was how most newspaper articles began these days – except for articles in less serious and more casual journals which usually said instead “four years ago the world went to shit.”

Both were accurate. And both were pertinent – no matter whether one was discussing international politics or gardening, it was always worth pointing out that all the rules were rewritten four years ago when climatologists discovered that damn temple.

A team of climate scientists from Oxford was doing a study of snowmelt due to climate change in Greenland. The team was so small that it didn’t even make the news that they were doing this – just assessing the damage from the latest summer. They discovered that a major new crack had appeared in the Greenland ice sheet. What’s more, they found there was something inside it.

This did make the news, although I didn’t remember seeing it. My husband does. “Unknown structure discovered beneath Greenland ice Sheet.” He swears he noticed it playing in the airport just as he was getting back from Afghanistan. In any case – it only took a couple of months before archaeologists found their way down to it.

The temple was like nothing they’d ever seen. It was apparently 150,000 years old – which raised a number of serious questions in itself. The contents were even more mysterious – presumably. The moment the doors of the temple opened, the entire research team died of causes unknown. All we have left is the notes they sent back to the States.

On that day, October ninth, two thousand and nineteen, an immense sound, a low rumbling, spread across the world. Every recording device on the planet – including NOAA’s deep sea hydrophones – picked it up. It didn’t cause damage but it was enormously unsettling. At the same time, approximately 3,000 individuals, all across the world, suddenly manifested their hidden monster genetics.

It was discovered later that these people were never “human” per se. They were the descendants of monsters who took human form to hide among the population. They were born to humans, grew up raised by humans, believed themselves to be so. But they weren’t. And on that day, we all knew it.

China and India were swiftly overwhelmed by a strain of ghoulism. The newly awakened monsters had a taste for human flesh, and the ability to transform others into creatures like them. The two most populous countries on earth collapsed within a year.

No one is exactly sure how nuclear weapons got involved but they did. Even now, news of the wide world only slowly trickles in, but it seems that with one thing and another the number of major cities in the world was reduced from roughly four thousand to maybe thirty.

I was twenty-two when this all started and a student at Portland State University. Fearful of the work world, and thoroughly enamored of my subject, I choose to stay in Academia and go for a doctorate in political science. Maybe I’d run for office one day. I didn’t know.

For about two weeks classes were canceled. Strange news stories were coming in: A small town in New Mexico is emptied of people. Figures in red robes flood the streets of Boston. The Senate passes a bill banning the possession of silver objects with no explanation. The only thing the stories had in common was that none of them made any sense at all.

And then everything just stopped. The internet, the power, the phone lines, they all went out. Deliveries stopped. The radios were full of static and the air was full of smoke. The city and the police attempted to keep order, but more and more they had to supplement with militias. John and a few buddies managed to keep our neighborhood safe – special forces training and all. But it was a challenge.

I’d stockpiled several years worth of hormones (and antiandrogens, though I’d gotten surgery at twenty and didn’t need them anymore). A couple of times we only survived because I managed to trade them to other Portland trans folk for food.

But there was never enough of anything – we were always cold and hungry, and almost every day John had to kill people who’d come to loot and steal in our neighborhood. A few here and there at first. One week raiders essentially laid siege to the university – we were out of bullets. John was the only fighting man left. He grabbed a knife and a wood ax and snuck out the window during the night.

When he came back, his clothes were shiny-wet with death. Thirty people, in close combat – something he’d never been seriously trained for. “Babe, I’m tired,” he told me.

And through all of it, there were the whispers. The rumors. “Why does no one come to help?” People asked. “The rest of the world has been overrun by creatures,” others answered.

Every full moon, we all hid inside, fearful because something was out there. People grew sick with radiation and died, so it was clear there was fallout in the winds. People would vanish all the time. If you left campus you were taking your life into your hands. Your soul too.

Things didn’t start to get better until the second spring. That was when the army arrived – or what was left of it. It wasn’t just US troops either – it was a sort of patchwork of warriors from all over the world who had tried and failed to hold their cities – consolidated for a last stand in the Pacific Northwest where the monsters were less organized.

And it worked – they kept the order. They put people to work again (John as a soldier obviously. I wound up teaching). The University became a staging ground for research on the specimens they brought with them. Soon there was food and medicine in the stores again. Life started to feel real again.

By now, we’d taken almost the entire west coast. The monsters were driven back. San Francisco may have been the capital of our new country – that was political compromise for you – But Portland was the bastion. It was where knowledge and culture had been preserved. Through unbelievable good fortune, I lived and still had a future.

The bunker was built into one of the many green hills that overlooked the Portland suburbs. It had been built by someone extraordinarily wealthy, right underneath his house. Not only was it designed to keep his family alive, but it had been built as a sort of post-apocalyptic zoo. The cages which now held vampires and werewolves once held lions and bears. Of course, now the owner was gone, as were his animals. The house was a ruin, as was the surrounding neighborhood. During the first years of the crisis the city outskirts had been largely been abandoned as indefensible. Even now this was still the case, except for military outposts here and there.

I walked my bike through the forest, then got onto the freeway back to the center of town. Most of the lanes of the freeway were now reserved for bike and pedestrian traffic. Only military and industry groups had vehicles. These outskirts were eerie, and the bike ride back always made me nervous. What had once been a town called Clackamas was now a tangled rainforest, the rooftops converted into quiet watchtowers.

It was daytime and this was one of the safest parts of the country, but biking alone along the highway I felt like monster food. Maybe Anna had spooked me more than I thought.

I only started to relax once I reached the city and was surrounded by people again. Downtown Portland was much like it was. Oh there wasn’t nearly as much vehicle traffic. And there were no large corporate buildings – the storefronts had generally all been raided by gangs back in the early days. But in the last few years local businesses had started to sprout up again. In a way, it was nicer than it once was. More authentic.

Of course, there were also signs of our fear. Floodlights were mounted on every building. Jury-rigged phone booths were installed on every street. They had large red buttons you could press that would activate loud sirens and wake the whole neighborhood in the event of monster attack.

John and I lived in University housing – after everything we’d done to keep the campus safe, people accepted that our small apartment belonged to us – no need for rent or landlords. Things could certainly be a lot worse I told myself as I reached the edge of campus. There’s hardly any smoke today. You can see the sun, though it’s hazy. A group of healthy-looking teenagers passed me, laughing and chatting and enjoying the air.

Then again, I had to remind myself that as the wife of an extermination operator, I enjoyed a lot of unusual privileges. The PCA made sure to keep its soldiers and police happy, but the average worker, skilled and unskilled, spent seventy hours a week at tough labor just for a stipend that barely covered backbreaking rents imposed by the landlords who cooperated with the military. The same landlords that, generally speaking, had controlled raider gangs in Portland until the army arrived.

Not to mention the plight of refugees. Even if you were a skilled and helpful person, it was never good to be another mouth to feed.

So the PCA wasn’t great for everyone. But compared to the earlier years? Life was good. Life was safe. I had a man I loved, who loved me back, and we were both spending our lives doing what we enjoyed. The memory of the wraith-like vampire in that dark bunker? It barely seemed real.

I locked up my bike and nodded to Carol, who was on duty. A mountain of a woman, she’d inherited only the most substantial of genes from her Samoan and Viking ancestors. She had a shotgun in one arm, and a cat in the other, although she wasn’t playing with it. It looked for all the world as though the cat had simply been issued to her – like her weapon and uniform.

“It’s for detecting ghosts,” she explained, as the cat tried to climb onto her face.

Our apartment was upstairs. John would just be waking up – after two months on expedition he could hardly be blamed for sleeping in. For three glorious weeks, I would have the man to myself.

He was sitting at a table eating “Mountain Cottage artisan steel-cut oatmeal” (read: freeze-dried mush in a bag) when I walked in.

“Hi honey, how were the vampires?” He asked. This was my line – it was what I asked him every time he returned from expedition.

“Dead,” I replied with a smile. This was his line.

Before I knew it, I was in his arms. All thoughts of Anna – her fangs, her eyes, her skin – forgotten. It was John time. Six feet tall with buzzed blonde hair. And he’d never lost his special forces muscle. Every time I saw his face I was reminded of a German Shepard – alert, eager, faithful, and a little bit dopey if I was being completely honest.

John was the first person ever to make me feel like a woman. We’d met when I was eighteen. I was still shaking off the cobwebs of transition and was only just starting to pass as female. And it was terrifying. I was working as a waitress in a kind of seedy bar back then and didn’t have the faintest clue how to deal with male attention.

So I took a self-defense class. That John happened to be teaching as a volunteer. One day, I happened to ask him how to make men back off.

He’d shrugged. “Tell them you have a boyfriend. It sucks that that works but it does.”

I must have appeared skeptical, because he added, “And if that doesn’t work, try this,” and he showed me how to “accidentally” break someone’s foot with a well placed stomp.

Two weeks later I pretended to trip and used his little trick to dispatch one of our problem customers. I got yelled at, but I didn’t get fired. The next time I saw him, he asked if he could buy me a drink to celebrate my victory, then jumped back in anticipation of a foot attack.

I took him up on it. Later I mentioned I’d seen “the Raid’ recently and he taught me some of the moves from the movie. Then the Raid 2 happened to be in a local theater so of course we had to go together. Eventually we’d had four dates before we even realized we were dating.

After we’d been seeing each other for six months, some superior of his decided that he was too valuable to waste on a desk job in the states. We decided to wait for one another. For years, we only saw each other at Christmas. Then as soon as he was done for good the world decided to end. Now I only saw him for a month at a time, and I spent the rest of my life worrying that he’d be killed.

Worth it. It was all worth it because of him.

“So, thank you for arranging this whole visit,” I told him. “I’m going to have one hell of a dissertation.”

“I still don’t totally understand why you wanted to speak with a monster,” he admitted. “But that’s okay. Any earth-shattering insights?”

I thought for a moment. “Vamps scary.”

“Anything else?”

“John pretty.” I kissed him. He was very warm. Another thing I loved about him – he was like a space heater.

“Correct!” he said. “A plus.”

And he carried me into the bedroom.

An hour later, we were both exhausted. The sun, outside our window, was hanging low – the color of a pink highlighter in the smoke. “Ugh,” I said, throwing an arm over my eyes. “I have to teach.”

“I swear, your schedule is so goddamn weird,” John said.

“Okay, soldier boy. It’s not that complicated. I teach sections on Mondays and Wednesdays. I teach my other sections on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The rest of the time I have classes. Saturdays and Sundays I teach pre-school.”

He gave a contented, cat-like sigh. “I’m just happy one of us doesn’t kill things for a living.”

“You know I’ve never minded what you do. I didn’t mind it when it was people. I especially don’t mind it now that it’s monsters. Far as I’m concerned, you’re a hero.”

“High praise from someone who once woke me up because you had ‘a scary nightmare about the military-industrial complex,’” he smirked.

A moment of silence.

“You know the vampire – the one you picked out for me to talk to?”

“Anna, I think.

“Did you know that she went years feeding off her girlfriend without biting anyone?”

“Of course. That’s why I wanted you to talk to her. She was probably a decent person before.”

“I didn’t know that was even possible.”

“Yeah, it’s not commonly known. A vampire bite is fatal – or worse. But if they draw blood in other ways, they don’t need to kill to stay alive. Sometimes they try to stay under the radar by mind controlling someone and leeching off of them. It makes our job really hard to track them when they don’t drop bodies.”

“True, but it sounds like Anna’s girlfriend was doing it of her own free will.”

He stood up, started putting his clothes on. “Maybe, yeah. Can’t imagine what was going on in her head.”

“Couldn’t there be harmless vampires, then? I mean, wouldn’t that be sort of the ultimate protection against monsters – having a monster on your side?”

“Erin, vampires need at least a pint a day to stay healthy and happy. No single donor can provide that without serious risks. Anna probably only lasted by killing raiders and stuff.”

“But if we could develop a pool of donors-“

“If we compelled people to give their blood we’d be no better than the vampires. We can barely keep our blood banks stocked, as is.”

“You sound like Anna.”

He gave me a pained look. “What did she say to you exactly?”

“She said coexistence was possible. But that it would never happen.”

John nodded sadly. “She’s right.”

I sat up. “Well, doesn’t that make you sad? I mean, god, it doesn’t have to be like this! I think you both are giving up too easily.”

“What I do isn’t exactly easy, Erin.”

“I’m sorry, that was a stupid thing to say, it’s just-“

“Do you have any idea how scary monsters actually are? No, you don’t – because it’s classified, but I think maybe you need to.” As if ticking off a list in his head, John launched into a speech.

“Werewolves?” he started. “Well, actually they can shapeshift into whatever they want, all they need is to put on a fur and they’re a super-fast bulletproof animal. Oh, and if you lock eyes with their human form, suddenly it’s you they’re wearing like a skin.”

“Witches? They look just like you or me, but if they get their hands on a strand of your hair, they can kill you from a distance, any time they want. And that’s just the weaker witches.”

“Oh, and ghouls,” he continued, “they look just like people too, at least until they get hungry for flesh and start rotting. They can pop off any limb they want and control them from a distance and oh, by they way, they can’t die. All you can do is seal them in concrete and hope for the best.”

“John,” I interjected. But he wasn’t having it.

“And can’t forget ghosts. They can’t hurt you physically, but once they start following you around it’s only a matter of time until you go completely crazy. And demons are even worse-“

“John!” I said. “You’re right. Enough already!”

He sat down on the bed again. “Look, I’m sorry. You care more than anyone else I know. About everything. And you’ve never met a minority you didn’t want to save. But we’re on the knife’s edge here. You know as well as anyone else that things didn’t start getting better until we went on the offensive – hunting down monsters instead of just keeping an eye out in the neighborhood. It’s awful, but welcome to the post-apocalypse. “

“I can’t accept that.”

He hugged me. “That’s why I love you. But you have to. Besides, I know what this is really about.”

I gave him a quizzical look.

“Trans people are going to keep getting their medicine. The estradiol at least would need to be manufactured anyway. The people making noise right now are just a vocal minority-“

“What, you think I identify with vampires because I feel guilty about needing medicine?”

“Don’t you?”

If there was one thing that annoyed me about John it was that he thought he was very perceptive. He wasn’t. Perhaps I felt more empathy for other outcasts because of my trans status, but it only took two seconds of critical thought to determine that vampires and trans people were not the same.

“There’s a world of difference! I’m a human being, for one thing. I can’t believe you even thought that! I want to stop the killing cause it’s wrong. And by the way, the vocal minority you’re talking about includes President Ochre and like half of Congress so-“

“I’ll protect you, Erin. From monsters, from people, whatever. No matter what. Everything I do. Everything the other soldiers do, it’s to protect you. Please, please, please try to remember that when you write your thesis. And be careful, because I think vampires are the worst monsters of them all.”

John was a hard man to upset, but I could tell he was a little more wounded than he let on. I understood what he was saying, and even accepted that he was probably right. But it didn’t feel correct. Me and my big mouth. Always being an activist, even when the world was ending. Even for stupid causes.

“I promise,” I said.

An uneasy smile crossed his face. “If it’s alright, can we not talk about this again?” he asked, somewhat sheepishly. “I just can’t go out there and fight at my best if I’ve got thoughts like this rattling around in my head. I know it’s important to you, but I have to be left out of it, okay?”

“Of course it’s okay. I shouldn’t have brought it up.” I kissed him again, then spotted my underwear lying in a heap on the floor and sighed. “I have to get ready for section.”

“Sounds rough.”

“They make you wear clothes,” I pouted.

“What? No one makes my girl do anything,” he cried. “Fuck the police!”

“Stop teasing.”

He held up his hands in a gesture of submission, but as I got into the shower, he added, “This is what democracy looks like!”

My man, ladies and gentlemen.

Vampires of the West Coast

Vampires of the West Coast Vignette: September 2007

If Anna was honest with herself, she kind of regretted sneaking out, and she definitely regretting buying the fake ID.  Two hundred dollars, to her least favorite classmate’s cousin, just so she could sit in a gay bar, by herself, too nervous to talk to anyone. 

She’d known she liked girls ever since she was nine years old, living in the foothills above the tiny Russian town of Fatezh, watching bootlegged copies of Kim Possible from the United States.

To their credit, the elder Tsybukins (her aunt and uncle, her grandparents, her cousins), had all known as well, and even in rural Kursk Oblast, that deeply homophobic wilderness, they’d loved her and made arrangements for her to travel to the states so she could be with her father. “You cannot be yourself in Russia,” they told her. “People like you are the future. And that future is in the United States.”

But that only led her here. She was the strange Russian girl in a strange city, and though men hit on her she had no friends. Her neighbors in the high-rise apartment were so loud at night and there were so many people at her high school that veritable rivers of students filled the halls with the ringing of every bell. All she wanted to do was flee back to the mountains. 

And now? The gay bar was so loud and it was filled with twenty and thirty year olds, and their gaze made her most uncomfortable. She’d told three people that she just wanted to drink alone. Anna huddled in the corner, listening to her heart pounding in her chest.

“There’s no way you’re 18,” a voice said, causing Anna to start. A doe-eyed girl with brown skin and a very long ponytail had taken a seat at Anna’s booth. Her nose was large and curved downward at the tip, giving her not just a beautiful appearance, but a striking one.

“Relax!” the girl chuckled. “I’m 16,” she stage-whispered.  “You go to my school don’t you?”

Anna wasn’t sure.

“Yes, you do,” the girl said. “I’ve seen you around. I suspected you were gay.”

“Why?”  

“You dress like a lumberjack, you sit like a boy, and you spend your lunch periods whittling with that knife you sneak in.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m gay,” Anna pointed out.

“No, but you told Mrs. Melvin that you thought Viola from Twelfth Night was gay.”

“People made fun of me for that.”

“They shouldn’t have! She’s obviously way into Olivia.”

Anna choked on her vodka.

“What is that, Vodka?” the girl crowed, noticing her drink at last. “The Russian girl is drinking Vodka? You are such a stereotype.”

“It’s not even good,” Anna admitted. “They had much better stuff back home.”

“Better? It’s fermented potatoes and water.”

Anna grinned, “Spoken like an American.”

The mysterious interloper stood up. “Come on girl, let’s get you a beer.”

Anna stood up too. “I’m Anna by the way,” she said.

“I know,” the girl said. “I’m Nadia.”

And then they stayed out until 2 in the morning, hopping from bar to bar, kissing in the corners to the wolf-whistles of strange men. And when they were done, they sat on Anna’s doorstep and talked until the sun came up.

Her dad grounded her for two weeks, and yelled at her to “wipe that dazed expression off her face.”

Anna barely noticed.

Vampires of the West Coast