Wrong Side of the Coffin: A WIPpersnappers Anthology

Ladies' Night

Ladies' Night

by C. Garrett

"Don't eat it. I seen her spit in it when she had her back turned."

He says it in a whisper—a boy, teenaged, big, blond curls flattened except on the sides by a MAGA hat. He meant only for the three other boys at his table to hear him, I'd venture. They snicker in the same, secret, sacred way and cast over-the-shoulder glances in my direction.

What they don't know is that I can hear them, even as they start to pick through their plate for likely lugies, even as the one in the far corner calls me a fat bitch under his breath.

If I had spit into their food, they wouldn't be miming vomiting to each other as they all four dig into the same quadruple plate of hashbrowns all-the-way. They'd be falling out of their booth, writhing in pain from the venom.

But they don't know that either, and I need the tips.

"How're those working out for y'all?" I ask, sweet as the hot syrup going unused on their table. "Anything else y'all'll need?"

Laughter goes around their booth: their quiet joke.

"Nah," says the curly-headed boy. "We're good."

But as I turn to walk back to the counter, one of them throws a napkin at the back of my head. It sticks wetly into my ponytail.

"Hey," says the fat bitch boy. "Ain't you gonna refill our drinks?"

I cock my head to the side instead of cracking one of theirs.

"Sure thing, hon."

And I pick up the pitcher of iced water.

The shittiest thing about being a vampire is that I still have to put up with this crap. That's something the stories really undersell you on. It's not all big, sweeping mansions and cravats and endless, blood red wine. There are some nightfolk around these parts who live it up like that—who take over old plantations on the historic registry, hire normal folk to run tours glossing over the horrors of slavery during the day, gloss over their deaths in the same way when their usefulness and blood runs dry. But what they don't tell you is folk like that have been doing it for decades—centuries, even. It's the years that turn you rich, not the turn itself.

I guess I never thought of it until I got bit by a girl at a bar and woke up dead and just as broke as ever.

I top off the boys' waters, careful not to spill ice over the side onto their table. I've seen their kind before, so I know they're shit tippers even on a perfect tab. Immediately, I hate that I know that—that I have been doing this long enough to know that. The air shifts as one of them mimes spitting behind me when I turn to the other side of the booth. I wonder what he'd do if I told him that before I was pouring free waters on an eight dollar table of four I was a librarian.

Probably the same thing he'd do if I told him I could kill him as quick as I could fill his drink—laugh, and then mime spitting again.

Teenage boys. Simple creatures.

But that's what it's like on the night shift in a town like this one—just close enough to the city that the kids have pocket money passed from their parents, just far enough away that there's nothing better to do than to go to Waffle House too late on a Thursday night.

$2.13 an hour for this.

I doubt I'll tip out.

Back at the counter, I get to my side work, sorting half-clean cutlery into half-clean cups. Fork, knife, spoon. The boys move on, mouths full of hashbrowns and weekend plans for a field party their mothers don't know about. I've been at this—the undead thing, not the cutlery—long enough to tune them out. They'll be here for another hour. At least, they were last week, when one of them was generous enough to leave a twenty for the table.