A Vampire's Rotten Heart

A Morbid Fascination With Plastination

"I got him, Marvin."

Dave placed me on the ground.

"So soon? How wonderful!"

Marvin raced over to the duffle bag and unzipped it. He stared at me with his big, unnaturally white grin.

"Ha, ha! How horrifyingly beautiful!"

He grabbed me by the shoulders and yanked me out.

"Don't tell this to X, but I think I might like this one better."

He dragged me to an unfriendly-looking chair in the middle of the room and strapped me down. He pulled the silver charm off my neck, and I suddenly became much more aware.

I was situated in a deep, dark room, surrounded by vats of foul, unknown chemicals. A row of tools lay before me, all covered in a caked-on layer of blood.

    I started thrashing around and hissing. No way was I gonna get taxidermied today!

    But the restraints didn't budge.

    "Beautiful! Beautiful! I'd like to see that kind of energy when you're in the case!"

    I snarled.

    "Now." He turned to Dave and started pacing back and forth. "I had SO many ideas for this one! But I wanted to juxtapose him with X. And if X has his heart on display, I was thinking that this one should have his brain on display!"

    Dave bit his lip. "Are you sure you want to do it to him alive?"

    "Of course!"

    "May I ask why?"

    "The eyes, of course. If I were to kill it right here and now, its eyes would fade into tiny pinpricks. Doesn't have as much of a draw as when they've got lights in them."

    It felt very different being referred to as "it".

    "Does it really make that much of a difference?"

    "Yes."

    Marvin grabbed a rusty tool from his repertoire. I recognized it from Pete's shop. It was a bone saw. The cold metal pressed against my scalp.

    And then I felt it.

    An unbearable, searing wave of pain shooting though my skull.

    Marvin cut through the skin of my scalp fairly easily, and he was beginning to saw away at the bone. I screamed.

    My eyes watered. This is what death felt like. Or at least a wish for death.

    Blood and tears dripped down my face. I looked up at Dave, shaking.

Dave's eyes were wide.

"Marvin, this is too much."

He stood up. Marvin kept sawing.

"Marvin, listen to me.

Marvin sawed faster.

"LISTEN TO ME!"

Dave stomped his foot.

"Don't you think he deserves to die with dignity?"

"Not really, no. He's a monster."

"A monster that used to be a man."

"You agreed to it."

"I didn't know it'd be like this!"

Neither of them gave me a chance to speak for myself.

"Can't you see how much pain you're putting him in?"

"Can't you see how little I care?"

Blood continued to stream from the open wound on my head. Some of it flowed into my mouth. Some of it poured off my chin. Just seeing the sheer quantity of it made me woozy.

The world began to spin and turn black. This was the end. This was it. I tried to hold on for dear life, but the longer I held on, the worse I felt.

My stomach felt like it was being turned inside out as I watched the blotches of blood form on my shirt. I was dying.

I screamed at the top of my lungs and thrashed about one last time. I vomited blood and acid all over myself and the chair.

And then I was out.

——————————————————

When I woke up, I was lying in the middle of the snow. I was in a dream, wasn't I?

Dave was standing over me.

I sat up and looked at the ground. There was a huge puddle of red where my head had been. It was bright. It was fresh. And it was way larger than it had any right to be.

I collapsed right back into it.

Dave knelt down and put his hands on me.

"It's okay. I got you. I got you." He gave me a slight smile.

"And there's something else I've got."

He placed the duffle bag next to me and unzipped it.

    Inside was the plastinated corpse of an eight-foot vampire, his whole torso sliced down the middle, his chest flayed open, revealing a bright, red, crystalline heart.