Alecsander's Empire

This is an excerpt from a story that originally appeared in Loving the Undead: An Anthology of Romance. . . sort of, published by From the Asylum Books and Press. It was published back when I was using the pen name "Doug Graves." The book is out-of-print, but I'm hoping to get my hands on a copy to give away on Facebook. Stay tuned for details.

"I should have married Richard!"

Yes, you should have, he thought. He sipped his coffee, refusing to let her draw him into an argument.

"Just look at this place." She swung one meaty arm wide. "Everything's falling apart! The front burner on the stove is out, the garbage disposal's broken, the front window is cracked, the table is wobbly . . ." She reached out and gave the table a shake, sloshing coffee from his cup. "Richard could fix anything." She glared at him. "What can you do?"

He watched the coffee puddle make a run for the opposite side of the table. You forgot one: the trailer is starting to list starboard. He looked up at her and shrugged. "I'm doing the best I can with what I've got."

She scowled and snatched a roll of paper towels from the counter.

He watched her as she eased her bulk, groaning and popping, down to mop up the mess. Her hair was grey and thin, her scalp showed through in places. She didn't even bother to take it out of curlers anymore. She had taken to wearing only shapeless housedresses, which was a good thing, considering she didn't have a shape anymore. Now he understood why they called them "muumuus." And she sported more facial hair than the werewolves he hung around with in the wild nights of his youth.

The wild nights of his youth . . . he sighed and watched her struggle her considerable bulk out from beneath the table. Is this behemoth really the same beauty I met on that wild night, so long ago? The memory of that night could still raise his hunger: her long, red hair spilled in ringlets across the pillow, her skin milky-white as fine porcelain, her figure lithe and trim, swelling in all the right places beneath the sheet. He had already overindulged that evening--blood and cheap whiskey--and so he had seduced the great beauty he had stumbled upon. Four months later, she had hunted him down at his favorite jazz club and informed him she was with child. It wasn't until she was pregnant with their second child and packing on pounds like a sumo wrestler that he had an epiphany: was it even possible for a vampire to sire children?