Eat The Rich Before They Eat You
Bill Isenburg entered his suite and let out a sigh. It had been a long day full of virtual meetings, and the extended luncheon with the Prime Minister of Sweden had exhausted his energies, which he had been unable to recover even after an hour long massage and top-off. A quick glance into the bedroom revealed his wife resting on the enormous bed, her voluptuous figure almost a caricature, a living cartoon. There was no point at this stage of his life denying what he wanted—he wanted everything and he wanted more of it—and when he had married her after leaving his first wife, he’d saw no reason to keep the straight-laced stiff image. He was the richest man in the world, so why not act like it? He was currently wearing a pair of leather pants and a leopard-patterned swinger shirt that billowed around his muscled physique, enhanced the last few years through testosterone replacement therapy and weight-training. What he needed right now was a little bit of a nap or maybe some cocaine, but first he’d choke down a health elixir made from kale and protein powder and then he’d have a little drink and make a decision on whether he wanted to continue the night or wind down.
Having managed to finish the disgusting concoction and then retreated to the bar, he was in the process of pouring himself a long shot of Scotch when he felt the distinct feeling of being observed. He knew instinctively that it was not his wife, so as subtly as he could he tried to push the emergency button on his smart watch. A cold, clammy hand clamped down on his, extraordinary strong, and he suddenly felt himself being launched into the air to land hard on the floor. The ceiling seemed to rock back and forth, and Isenburg felt himself being lifted again, this time into a chair where someone bound his hands with cord behind his back.
“That’s good. Now you can’t cause any trouble,” said a woman’s voice.
Looking across into the bar’s mirror, Isenburg saw nobody, even though the woman sounded as though she was right behind him.
“Who are you?” he asked, spitting blood out of his mouth.
“Don’t spit anymore blood out,” she said, her voice straining. “I can’t stand it, and this will be over quicker than it should.”
“The code to the safe is 8745,” he said. “There’s a lot of cash in there, along with a pistol. Just take it and leave.”
“I don’t want any money,” she said, laughing. “Those days are over, unfortunately. Would’ve come in handy in the past, of course. But I don’t need your bloody cash now.”
“Why can’t I see you?” he asked.
“Oh you want to see me, huh? I’ll let you have a glimpse.”
She swung her head in front of his, and Isenburg pushed back into his chair in shock. Her hair was matted and wet, and her skin was as ghastly pale as a corpse, but her eyes were vivid red and her teeth were sharp and protruding like the fangs of a predatory beast.
“I didn’t know if I could come aboard this ship, this ridiculous super yacht, but apparently no invitation was required. This doesn’t qualify as a home, I suppose. Who makes these rules? Hell if I know. There’s so much I don’t know, though.”
“What do you want?” Isenburg asked.
“What do I want? Beside peace, love, and understanding? I want to go back in time. That’s what most people would really want, not all of this ostentatious, vulgar wealth. They’d want to go back in time when they could fix things. But that’s not possible, not unless you got a time machine around here. You don’t, do you, Bill? At this point, I’d believe almost anything.”
He wondered suddenly if she knew about his wife in the next room. He must have glanced that way, since her eyes looked toward the bedroom before returning to focus on him.
“Oh don’t worry about her. She’s taking a long nap. She’ll be out for a while. I mean a long time.”
She smiled then, and Isenburg wondered what was wrong with this woman and what sort of bizarre dental surgery surgery she must have undertaken to have such a toothy denture.
“Do you care about her, Bill, or is she just another object to possess? A fetish in more than one sense? How much did all those enhancements cost? Pocket change for somebody like you, right?”
“Listen, there are hidden cameras and microphones in this room recording all of this. You don’t have much time. Just leave and they might not shoot you on sight.”
“Again with the negotiating, Bill! I’m not one of your corporate whores to be tossed scraps like a dog. Your security team is in pretty bad shape. Some of them are suffering from torn limbs, broken necks, loss of bodily fluids. What you need to be worried about right now is yourself, not me.”
She grabbed a chair and pulled it in front of him, and sat down, hunched forward. He could see the stained blood all over her fingers and the front of her tattered white shirt. She stared at him with those red eyes and again revealed all of her jagged teeth.
“Let me tell you my story. We have time. I was once a dutiful little software engineer plugging away at one of your subsidiaries. I was one of the people that kept your web server business running. Long hours but good pay. Nice benefits. A profit making branch of your massive conglomerate. So I’d been working for years, missed many a birthday, lost a couple relationships, but I’d stuck by the job and my performance review was coming up. We just had a successful roll out of the new cloud hosting servers, and I expected to be well-compensated. I had a nice little house picked out in one of the best suburbs in San Francisco. My boyfriend, who was also a computer engineer, was planning on proposing that night. What I’d worked hard for, what I’d sacrificed my youth for, was about to bear fruit. I walked into that review confident, radiant, smiling from ear to ear like an idiot. I see that manager sitting across from me, a dour expression on his face, and my confidence slips, but just a little. There was no way I wasn’t getting promoted. But then he opens his mouth and says ‘I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to let you go.’ ‘What?’ I exclaim. ‘It’s has nothing to do with your performance,” he explains. “We’re letting the entire senior engineering team go. Orders from up top. They think that the language-learning machines can do your job. Frankly, I don’t agree, but you know how it is.’”
“I did not know how it was, Bill. I knew that they were replacing people with AI, but I didn’t think it would come for me, not in my moment of triumph. As I walked home that evening, I got a call from the hospital. My boyfriend had also been fired, and in his dejection, he had neglected to pay attention when he crossed the street. He died before I could even get to him. And guess what? His company was also a subsidiary of yours, Bill! I didn’t even realize it until after he died. Do you know who issued the vast directive to destroy the lives of hard-working people like my boyfriend and I? You, Bill Isenberg! You and your billionaire cronies who need more money even though you're richer than literal nations.”
She placed one of her lean, emaciated hands on Isenburg’s bald pate.
“I always wanted to do this,” she admitted, rubbing his head. “Do you think there’s any luck for me? Or is it all for you? After being fired and losing my partner, I drove out to the Golden Gate bridge in the early morning and planned to jump into those icy waters. I parked near one of those old World War Two gun bunkers that line the hillsides around the Bay. I was just starting to walk toward the bridge when I saw someone in the derelict fortification. I just noticed his hand, long and skeletal like these” —she held up her claws—“the first two fingers pinching a cigarette, which glowed in the early darkness of the morning. A suicidal urge made me approach. Maybe it would be better, I thought, to be strangled inside a bunker rather than flail in the cold darkness of the Bay. But he didn’t strangle me. When I looked at him, I could tell what he was. He saw I was desperate, and he made me into what you would call a monster. Do you know what a revenant is, Bill? It’s an undead, vengeful spirit. I am the vengeance of all the people you’ve fucked over in your ridiculous life. Did you really think you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us? Did you think one man was meant to hold the power and wealth that you possess? You break all of the natural laws of the universe. And so I guess it’s time that we do so as well.”
She opened her mouth of jagged teeth and cold, festering death poured out onto Bill Isenberg’s face. But I’m so rich he thought as she eased closer toward him. I can never die.
The door burst open and Isenberg saw something emerge from the monster’s torso. Is that a stake? She slumped forward, red eyes wide with surprise. A faint death croak whispered something that he didn’t bother to hear as he shook her off of him with disgust.
“Christ, what took you so long?” he complained. “Untie me.”
A hulking security officer walked toward him, brandishing a crossbow. In a moment, he had freed Isenburg, and the billionaire stood up, massaging his wrists.
“Apologies, sir. She incapacitated most of our team. Thankfully, we had a prior warning from our intelligence branch that a vampire was targeting men of your economic stature.”
He displayed the crossbow but Isenberg had no interest in examining it.
“Vampire? What do we do with it?”
“It’ll have to be decapitated and burned,” said the officer. “Are you all right, sir? Did she bite you?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “We’re not going to dispose of the body. I want her secured and taken to one of our science labs. I’ll make the calls. You just make sure she can’t escape.”
He watched as the security officer put the vampire in handcuffs and dragged her from his quarters. Isenberg went back to the bar and poured himself a nice shot of Scotch. Maybe he really was too rich to die. Maybe inside that walking corpse was the secret to immortality.
“Damn, it’s good to be me,” he said before the whiskey burned his throat.
“Did you say something, honey?” croaked a voice.
He turned around and saw his wife in the doorway of the bedroom, her throat a jagged mess of exposed flesh, her chest stained red.
“Alicia…” he stammered.
“Don’t I look pretty?” she wheezed. “Tell me I’m pretty, Bill. I can’t see myself. Why can’t I see myself?”
“You look…” managed Isenberg.
She held up her hands which were now long, skeletal claws. Her eyes were vivid red, and as she tried to scream, she revealed a mouth of gleaming white fangs.
“Why am I so goddamn thirsty?” she moaned. “Is this how you feel, Bill? Are you always thirsty for more? I am insatiable. I feel as though I could drink the blood of millions. Did you hear me, Bill? I said I could drink blood!”
“Just wait a minute, honey, let me call someone,” he said.
He thought he might be able to make it to the door, but she lunged and seized him, and suddenly he was on the floor and she was on top, a grotesque perversion of the female form, and as she tore his throat out he wondered how this could be happening to him, the ego, the self that threatened to swallow the world. I’m too rich… he tried, but then the world was black and there was nothing but the icy void to stretch his meager spirit into nothingness.
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