"Just what?"

Phillip folded his arms and picked his nose with the ulna protruding from his stump.

"Phillip!" Mom chided. "Manners!"

"Arrghhhh," his father concurred.

Phillip stopped picking.

"I hate brains."

Mom took a deep breath, and blew it out of the bullet holes in her lungs.

"Fine. Finish your small intestines and you can be excused."

Phillip made a face.

"I don't want to."

"But Phillip, you love intestines. Don't you remember when you rose from the grave? You'd stuff yourself with guts until they were slithering out of your little undead bottom."

Phillip stuck out his lower lip.

"I don't want to eat this stuff anymore, Mom."

"Arrghhhh," said Dad.

"See, Phillip? You're upsetting your father. Do you know how hard he works, hunting the living all day and night, to bring back fresh meat so you can eat? It isn't easy work - he can't move much faster than a limp, and most of the humans left are heavily armed and know to aim for the head."

Phillip stood up. "I don't like it! I don't like the taste! I don't like the smell! And most of all, I don't like eating people I used to go to school with! Last week we ate my best friend, Todd!"

"We're the living dead! It's what we do!"

Phillip's father shrugged, reaching for the child's plate. He dumped the contents onto the edge of the table, and then lowered his face to the organs and b.u.mped at them with his teeth - the only way he could chew.

"I don't want to be a zombie anymore, Mom!"

"We don't have a choice, Phillip."

"Well, from now on, I'm eating something else." Phillip reached under the table and held up a plastic bag.

"What is that?" Mom demanded. "I hear roughage."

"It's a Waldorf Salad."

"Phillip!"

"I'm sorry, Mom. But this is what I'm going to eat from now on. It has apples, and walnuts, and a honey-lemon mayonnaise."

"I forbid it!"

"Arrghhhhh," Dad agreed.

"I don't care!" Phillip cried. "I'm a vegan, Mom! A vegan! And there's nothing you can do about it!"

He threw the salad onto the table and shuffled off, crying.

Dad shoved a piece of duodenum down his throat, then patted his wife on the bottom.

"Arrghhhh."

"I know, dear. But what can we do? Blow off his head and eat him for lunch tomorrow?"

"Arrghhhh?"

"Good idea. I'll fetch the shotgun."

Mom limped in the general direction of the gun closet.

"Waldorf Salad? Not in my house."

Written back in college when I thought good writing had to sound flowery and imagery was more important than story. I was wrong on both counts. I can't help noticing, looking over this collection, how many stories of mine have some sort of religious foundation or overtones. That's what happens when you're raised Catholic.

She comes at night.

I push the rocking chair to the balcony so I may watch her, antique cherry that squeaks and protests much like my old bones. This affords me a towering view of my back yard; the hedges trimmed to lollipops, the fountain cherub eternally spitting water, the ocean in the distance.

The sun takes a lazy bow and exits, raking orange and purple fingers across my acres of thick lawn. Years ago, it was champagne c.o.c.ktails and croquet. Now, I can't even recall the last time I walked the grounds. An acquaintance, deceased like most, once described men as fine single malt - fiery and immature when young, mellowing with age.

I am finally palatable.

The portrait of my younger self hangs above the fireplace, stern face and eyebrows tempered with resolve. Eyebrows that have grown gray and bushy and without direction.

Once, I would settle for nothing less than crushing all opposition.

Now, I'll settle for some honey in my tea.

I watch as the mist arrives, a soft, ethereal blanket, glowing in my yard lights.

She always comes with the mist, and I feel my pulse quicken, warming me. I drop the blanket from my lap - I don't need it anymore.

The first sight of her is magic. Awe and wonder, feelings known only to the young and to me. Worth more than I have ever earned. She is clothed in translucent blue, the color of the moon, a robe that moves like silk. Her face is always peaceful, her movements sure, and I am both enthralled and pacified. Her dance is nature and life, ebb and flow. Slow, languid turns and comfortable poses, arms always beckoning, the tune known only to her.

Beneath my balcony she stops and smiles, as she has for many years.

"Dance with me."

Tonight I shall.

I grip the armrests of my rocker with gnarled hands and tremble to my feet. The thousand pains that plague my days, the gagging pills that keep me beating, the nights of disquiet - all nullified by my resolve. I finally have the strength to know I have none left. The hand has been played, and folded.

Legs shaky, a yearling, knock-kneed and wide-eyed, I lean over the railing. Into her arms I fall, and break...

And then I am free. I bow to my Lady, and take her hand. "May I have this dance?"

The music is crisp in my ears, light and airy. I embrace her, and we waltz on the mist, above my lawn, away from my empty prison. Through the cherub and the hedges, across the beach, over the sea to chase the sun.

Her mouth flutters closer to mine, soft lips parting.

Black teeth. Sharp.

I cry out, my voice m.u.f.fled by her hungry kiss, ripping at my face, peeling, pulling.

I gaze up at her through lidless eyes, milky with red.

Her maw finds my soft belly, bites, probes deep.

I am tugged into the ground by looping coils of innards.

Down.

Down.

Down to heat so strong the very air sears, baking raw flesh without ever killing nerves.

We dance again on rusty nails, on white coals and fish hooks, my bowels roping us together for eternity.

For another dance.

And another dance.

I almost didn't write this story, because the subject matter is downright disturbing. But I couldn't get the idea out of my head, so I made this humorous rather than straight horror. After writing it I put it away, convinced it would never see print. Incredibly, it was picked up by Cemetery Dance for an anthology of extreme horror. Along with The Confession, this is something I sometimes wish I never wrote. You've been warned.

The night began like any other night at the Galaxy Trailer Park, everyone on lawn chairs in front of Freddie's big double-wide, sharing a bottle of Evan Williams whiskey and setting fire to any squirrel stupid enough to wander into Billy's box trap.

They'd caught three so far, at the cost of one peanut per squirrel. Zeke would yank them out of the box with a leather work glove, sprinkle some of Erma Mae's fancy smelling nail polish remover on its fluffy tail, and then touch a Marlboro to the critter. d.a.m.n things ran so fast, they looked like bottle rockets shooting across the lawn, squealing all the way. One even made it all the way up a tree and into its nest, setting that ablaze, little flaming baby squirrels leaping to their deaths and bouncing when they hit the sod.

Good clean American fun.

Jim Bob walked over, a spit covered stogie dead in his lips, smiling like the way he did when he got his weekly check from the gubment, or like that one time when he s.h.i.t in a box and mailed it to the local porker department because they gave him a ticket for having that rusty Ford up on blocks on his front lawn for over six years.

"Guess what I got me, fellas?"

"A small p.e.c.k.e.r?" Freddie cackled. Billy thought this was so funny he squirted Evan Williams out of his nose.

Idiots, Jim Bob thought.

"No, you jacka.s.ses. I got me a vampire."

More giggling. The giggling turned to guffaws when Zeke, in a show of wit usually reserved for men with more teeth, said, "Well, now...that really sucks."

Jim Bob waited for the laughter to die, showing extraordinary patience, especially considering he broke his ex's nose for sa.s.sing back with less conviction. He looked at each of them men in turn, giving them his quit f.u.c.king around stare. It only took a few seconds for respectful silence to ensue.

"Here's the deal," Jim Bob said. "You all know 'bout them killings, right?"

The group nodded as one. Some nutbag had been cutting off nogginsaone a weekaof neighborhood church-going folk. The heads hadn't been found. Last week it was dear old Mrs. Parsons who got herself killed. She had been one of the few women in the community Jim Bob respected, and he often played Mr. Fix-it in her townhouse for eight dollars an hour and homemade apple pie.

"Well, I caught me the killer," Jim Bob said. "Out in the woods, south of Rooney Lake, by that overgrown cemetery. I was hunting c.o.o.n, discovered this old shack. Outside, in a rain barrel, were all eight heads from the eight people been killed."

Jim Bob paused. Every eye was locked on him, respectful.

"So I go into the shack, and it's got one of them, whatchmacallits, caskets inside. I opened it up, and sleeping in the casket was an honest-to-Christ vampire. Fangs and all. She'd been cutting off the heads, see, to hide the bite marks on the neck. Pretty slick, I gotta admit."

"What'd you do?" Zeke asked.

"You gotta put a stake through the heart," Billy said. "I saw this movie..."

"I'm telling this story," Jim Bob snapped.

"Sorry, Jim Bob. I'll shut up."

"You do that. Anyway, I was thinking the same thing. Put a stake in this b.i.t.c.h."

"b.i.t.c.h? It was a lady vampire?"

"h.e.l.l yeah. And a pretty piece of tail too. Big old t.i.tties, and legs that looked like they could wrap around you and ride you until your b.a.l.l.s fell off."

"So, what'd you do?"

"I'm getting to that. I was thinking about staking her, but she seemed too d.a.m.n pretty to kill. Plus, since the Missus left, I haven't tagged a piece of a.s.s."

"You cornholed the vampire?" Freddie asked.

"Can you guys shut up and let me finish the d.a.m.n story? Jumpin' Jesus on a pogo stick! Do I have to staple your flappers shut?"

"Sorry, Jim Bob."

"Sheesh. Anyway, I'd been riding my 4 by 4, so I hitched a chain up to the casket and dragged it back to my trailer. It was getting dark, and I had to hurry in case the little vixen woke up."

"Did you make it?" Zeke asked.

"No, you idiot. She woke up and killed me."

Silence from the group.

"h.e.l.l yeah I made it, you jacka.s.s. And I brought her inside and tied her, nekkid, to my bed. Then I gave it to her."

"The stake?"