Things to do before I die

            "Did you get any sleep last night?"  The blond woman with a white hotel towel wrapped around her head, and another one around her body, emerged from the bathroom.  She walked over to the other woman, a red head with long hair and bangs of about the same age, sitting in a chair by the open window, looking out at the darkened city, six floors below.

            "No."  The red head said, flatly.  "I kept going over my list in my head until I finally got up a few minutes ago."  Reaching over to turn on the small table lamp she picked up a single sheet of yellow lined paper and held it in her left hand.

            'Things to do before I die by S. A. Walker'  The blonde read the neat script of the top two lines over the other womans shoulder.

            "Have you done it all?"  The standing woman laid her hand on the others shoulder, gently.   It was a rhetorical question.  Over the past six months, since the red head had chosen this way to go, they had been over and over the list, checking each line in detail until all was accomplished.

            "Yes."  The red head said.  She laid her right hand over the other woman's.  The crimson painted acrylic nails were a stark contrast to the white french tips of the blondes.  As she looked down at the two hands, juxtaposed, she thought they looked like drops of blood on the snow but kept that thought to herself.  This was hard enough without adding to it.

            "I need to get dressed.  Are you wearing that?"  The blonde walked back into the bathroom.

            "It's not like I'll need it again."  The red head shouted.  She felt the worn, torn, gray sweat pants and the much too large Central State College tee shirt in stained white.  The pants she had for years, the shirt a hand me down from a friend in college.  They were in the rag bin in the garage when she decided they would suit her for one last use.  The note was still in her hand.  Starting at the top, as she had done so many other times, she began checking off each task in her head.

            The first one was update will. That was six months ago.  Within two weeks she had the new version stamped and filed in her safety deposit box, with copies at her attorneys, and with Jocelyn; now dressed in a white silk slip and bra, blow drying her hair in front of the mirror in the bathroom.

            Second on her list was meet with attorney.  For some reason her attorney that handled her will never made her feel comfortable when it came to property law.  She had another lawyer in town for that; a woman from church that kept her office spotless with every file in neat order behind her mahogany desk.  After telling the older woman what she needed it took only a week to draft the quitclaim deeds and get them filed with the county.  Now everything was arranged:  her property, car, and furniture in capable hands.

            Next was the hardest one.  She had to write letters to all her family members, and Jocelyn's, explaining what she had decided and how it was to be done.  Some of her family agreed that it was the best course, but her son, a freshman in college, called the woman insane and threatened to take court action to refrain her.  In the end he simply resigned himself to the fact that there was nothing he could do about it and told her she was already dead in his eyes.  That was four months ago and they hadn't spoken since.

            Her parents took it much better than either women expected.  Her father said whatever she thought was best and hugged her.  Her mother cried for a long time at finally realizing she was at last going to be at peace.  They called late last night to say their prayers would be with her.

            Others took it in different ways.  Those that she worked with knew for some time of her decision and threw her a party.  There were gifts, small and easily disposed of, a cake, and a bottle of wine.  Even her boss who was usually reserved and standoffish hugged her and said theyd be thinking of her today.

            The last item on the list was make peace with God.  That was the hardest.  As a Catholic the church took a dim view on what she was undertaking, however, in the light of recent sexual scandals in the priesthood, she and Jocelyn both felt that there was much that the church needed to rectify within itself, so they could not caste stones at this very personal choice.  Her priest told her in confession the week before that God would forgive her for all her choices and decisions and in the end if she were a true and honest Catholic she would eventually reach Heaven.  At the time it didn't make her feel comforted, but at that point in her life she didn't care.  Now she looked forward to someday seeing her friends and family as a better person.

            "We need to be going."  Jocelyn said from the door.  She was dressed in a dark blue Dolce and Gabbana pantsuit with a white silk Hermes blouse and black Manolo Blahnik pumps.  As she glanced at the Lady Rolex that the woman at the table had given her on their tenth year together she picked up both purses and opened the door.

            "I guess so."  The red head stood and walked out into the hallway.  "I'm not getting any younger."

            The drive to the clinic was uneventful.  The traffic at five in the morning in Trinidad Colorado was very light and the few miles to the parking lot took only eight minutes.  When the two women walked into the clean, sterile waiting room a young nurse of about thirty looked up from behind the front desk and smiled.

            "Walker."  Jocelyn said.

            "Steven Allen?"  The nurse asked, picking up a file from the desk.

            "No."  Said the red head, throwing her list into the trashcan by her feet.  "Stephanie Ann."

Victim

            He parked the truck a little after four.  A small Toyota pickup, with a broken mirror on the drivers side, the yellow truck looked out of place among the clean, newer models behind the mall.  Dressed in torn jeans and an old army jacket left over from his brother's short stint in Desert Storm the boy, no more than twenty or twenty one, sauntered, if anyone still uses that word, into the rear entrance by the nail techs, their incessant chatter of foreign languages a din to his ears, and sniffed the air.

            There was fear from the people in the mall.  Not just the fear of being alone late at night, or the fear of dying without ever knowing true love, but a deeper fear of rejection, disapproval, and failed decisions.  The air was ripe with it, emanating from the children with their parents, the teenagers in their packs like wolves looking for a lost sheep, and the aged, with wrinkled faces, spotted hands, and thick glasses.  But here was also blood.

            He couldnt identify where he smelled it, but the blood was in the air.  It was all over the mall.  Quickly he walked through the wide confines past the GNC, where two bulk bunnies were discussing the best steroid alternative, past the Abercrombie & Fitch, filled with emaciated model wannabes in designer jeans and opaque white tank tops, and the food stands selling recycled death, packaged as chicken, steak, pizza, and fish. As he walked past the open metal doors of the Hot Topic, the music inside making the hair on the back of his hands stand at attention with disapproval, he smelled the blood again.  This was different blood.

            Sitting briefly by the kiosk that sold dark glasses and cell phone covers of all the major and minor sports teams, he saw the object of his search.  She was standing in the back, waiting on a customer.  To anyone else she would be just another pseudo Goth, those lost generation children who all kept their skin so pale, their hair so black, their makeup so thick, and their ideas so dark, so they could be different, while being just like the rest of the sub-culture.  From the back she looked to be about sixteen, her hair hanging limply to her shoulders; her jeans tightly wrapped around a yet juvenile frame.  She was young, so very young, but the blood was rich from her and he could smell it.

            Too soon he could feel the pull of the moon on his skin.  Looking up through the skylight he watched the last few rays of day fade into twilight.  He knew he had to leave soon or be discovered and he fled, not quickly as to be noticed, but languidly, enjoying the ripples of power beginning to rise from his loins, his arms, and his legs.  He had only been in this form a few times, having been bitten in late summer, when the smell of flowers and cut grass floated on the breezes of evening.  It had been his brother who infected him, having been attacked in Iraq, five years before.  The boy was lucky to still be alive from the bite.  It had been the first time his brother had let a victim live, only drawing back at the last minute after the muted cries of the youth stirred something almost primordial in the older man.

            She came out of the mall at closing.  There werent many that used the back exit and he was glad of that.  This would be his first kill and he wanted it to be perfect.  He could feel the stiffness of his body longing for her.  He would play with her before concluding.  In the end the outcome would be inevitable, but there was no reason to rush it. After his brother had regained his mortal sanity they had talked about rushing things.  About being so caught up in the hunt and the moment that they lost all sense of proportion.  He would do this right, not just rip and tear like he had read in the pulp fictions and had seen on Buffy, but rend with dedication and purpose.

            In the shadows he now watched the others pass by. They never saw him, crouched under the apple trees by the nail salon, his dark fur and glowing red eyes kept out of the lights from the passing cars and trucks as the others exited the lot.  He could smell their longing for death.  There was blood there also, but it was tainted blood:  the blood of drugs and alcohol and sex.  It was deaths blood that flows monthly and that must be purged to allow new, cleaner blood to flow.  It was not HER blood.

            When he was certain she was alone he began to hunt.  Paralleling her movements, down one row of cars as she moved down another he smelled her without seeing her.  He knew she was the one to take.  She would be the perfect one, so young, so clean, so virginal in her black clothing, her black hair and nails, and her black eyes.  It was the antithesis of the Madonna, the mirror image of the pure, she would appear in another life, his life, her death.

            The moon was at its brightest when he made his move.  She paused with her key in the door as he moved with the wind to his face, keeping his scent from his prey, as his kind had done for thousands of years.  There was a tingle in his fur when he reached out swiftly to grasp the throat of the young girl, still unaware of his presence but there was also something amiss.

            Suddenly there was pain.  Inches from her face, his fangs bared, his claws exposed, his fur burned.  Something shiny in the moonlight, not seen before.  A pentagram on a chain around her neck.  His mind reeled as the skin singed under a silver rope.  She was now looking at him, smiling.  Her hand on his muzzle, the silver rings on her fingers searing his flesh: the same fingers that quickly attaching the collar of that hated metal.  It was too late for him to understand his danger, or to take his last chance for escape.  He was trapped, and in that trap, his fate was sealed.  As if in a final plea for release he howled once at the moon but there was no one to hear him.  That was the rule set forth centuries before when game was less plentiful:  one creature, one city.

            A few seconds later a security guard in a golf cart, his flashing yellow light alerting everyone within sight that the Mall was secure, stopped at the young girl, holding the leash.

            "Are you okay?"  He asked.

            "Yes sir."  She said.  "Just walking my dog."