Grampire

 

        Kimmel Hertz hobbled down his gravel driveway on his daily pilgrimage to the mailbox. It was an average sized driveway, but Kimmel wasn't an average age. He was one hundred and two. "One hundred and three, come Tuesdee," he was fond of saying on any day of the year, as if his birthday were a weekly event.

        He didn't use a cane ("Don't need no crutch for Mercatroid's sake!"), and, as a result, it took him an average of twenty minutes to make it all the way to the end. But, he enjoyed it. In his day, it was running five miles a day, but that was when he was a much younger man. Hell, Einstein was still alive when Kimmel ran the half marathon at age nineteen. Probably still reeling from his new fangled theories. Kimmel had read up on all of that in the science magazines, and had disregarded it all as hogwash. Relativity, ahhh, it was all garbage. Of course, Kimmel had also bought a Tucker when they first came out. Three headlights… now that was something worthwhile!

        The gravel crunched underneath his slip-ons. A car went by and honked. He raised his hand, but by that time the car was long gone. It had only been teenagers trying to get a rise out of him anyway, but Kimmel had thought it was his cousin, Harold. Kimmel thought every car that honked was his cousin, Harold. Harold died in 1975. Fell through the ice.

        After nine more minutes of "the geriatric shuffle," he made it to the mailbox, which his wife, Helen, had painted to look like a large-mouth bass (the door being the mouth).

        "What've ya swallered today, bass?" he said, as he always said, and opened the "mouth."

        Inside were two envelopes and a small, wrapped box. He took the envelopes out first: Sears coupons. ("Worst thing Roebuck ever did was hook up with Sears," Kimmel liked to say for no apparent reason.) The second envelope was the electric bill. He shoved them both in his front overalls pocket. Then he saw the small parcel, way toward the back. He reached in, thinking only of the bee sting he had gotten in 1964 while reaching into the back of his mailbox on Green Street, and snatched the package as quickly as his aged hands would comply. No sting. That was because he sprayed it with Raid every Wednesdee. Can't be too careful with bees.

        He brought the box out into the light, and squinted. In small black letters, it said, "Hand Car." The rest was covered with postage. Puzzled, he held it up to his ear and shook it. There was a small rattle.

        "Hand Car," he said. "If that don't beat all." He shoved it in with the envelopes, where it stuck out like an oversized pacemaker.

        Twenty-three minutes and a bucket of sweat later, he opened the front door and walked into the house. It was hot in there too. Helen always kept the heat at eighty degrees, even in June. And then she covered up with a blanket—only she called it an afghan. The same way she called the couch a Davenport.

        Kimmel unbuckled his overalls, and let them drop to the floor, where he slowly stepped out of them. Now he was only in his V-neck ("A neck needs to breathe.") and his boxer shorts, and it was still hot as the devil. But turn down the thermostat and Helen pitched an awful fit, so he left it where it was.

        When the overalls hit the floor, the small package rolled to his feet. He had forgotten all about it. He forgot about a lot of things. About Harold falling through the ice, for one.

        Bending over hadn't been an option since Clinton left office, so Kimmel got his trusty gripping stick, and pulled the plastic trigger. A small claw, on the other end, clamped onto the box, and he brought it up to his other hand.

        "Ha! Gotcha, ya sonuvaharlot!"

        Painstakingly, he ripped into the wrapping and let it fall to the floor onto his overalls. Then he opened the cardboard and pulled out the contents. Recognition came after a rather nonplussed expression.

        "Oh! M' teeth. Goody!"

        In his hand were the new dentures that Dr. Gibbons had promised that he would send by mail, since it was such an effort for Kimmel to travel outside the vicinity of his yard.

        Kimmel licked his gums, and, for the first time that day, realized that he was toothless. His old dentures had been missing for a week (stuck in the crack of his armchair, although he would never find them), but every day he forgot to notice that they were gone until he tried to eat something more solid than a banana. Now, he smacked his lips in anticipation of the new set of choppers.

        "Peanut brittle, here I come!" He giggled.

        Kimmel Hertz failed to notice that his brand new dentures came equipped with fangs.

        He went into the bathroom and applied a liberal amount of Polygrip to the plastic "gums" and then popped them into his mouth. They were a bit awkward at first, but after a few test bites, they felt pretty good. He smiled once into the mirror, blind as a bat, and saw lots of white so he was satisfied.

        Kimmel's stomach gurgled just then, and he patted his belly.

        "Got them teeth in none too soon," he said, and shuffled out into the kitchen for a snack.

        There was no peanut brittle. Helen had picked the tin clean again (a scavenger she was when it came to sweets), so he put the lid back on with a grumble and opened up the refrigerator. He scanned the shelves.

        "Ahh. Ring Bologna!" he said, and clicked his new dentures a few times. Helen hadn't gotten to that, at least. She didn't eat meat. ("Was a Veggie-tarian when I met her in 1928, and she'll be a Veggie-tarian when they close the lid on her.") Kimmel scooped up the package, unwrapped the tube of meat, and set it on the cutting board. With a sharp knife, he cut it up into five bite-sized chunks.

        He rubbed his hands together. They rasped like old sandpaper. And then he put one of the slices into his mouth, relishing the smoky flavor. He chewed it thoroughly, liking the way that the new teeth hacked it up nicely and efficiently. They would do just fine, they would! He ate up the rest of the bologna and put the cutting board under the faucet to rinse off the crumbs.

        "My good Lord, he's doing a dish!" Came a wavering voice behind him.

        "Ah, cut it out, Helen" he said.

        Helen ambled into the kitchen, wearing two sweatshirts and a shawl. Kimmel grinned at her proudly.

        "Notice anything?" he said.

        Helen, having a might better eyesight than Kimmel, noticed the fangs right away, and gasped.

        "Why, Kimmel! What on Earth have you put in your mouth??"

        Kimmel's smile faltered. "They're m' new teeth. Don't you like 'em?"

        Helen scowled. "They're awful, Kimmel. Just awful."

        Kimmel shook his head in disgust and waved a dismissing hand at her. "Ahhh. You don't know nuthin' about orthodontry. And take that blimy shawl off. You're making me sweat just to look at ya."

        Helen reluctantly slipped the shawl from her shoulders and set it on the counter.

        "You happy now, you old yeti?" she said.

        And then Kimmel saw his wife's bare neck, and a very strange feeling came over him. He suddenly felt feral and very thirsty. Saliva rushed into his mouth, and his eyes went blank.

        "Come over here, Helen. I want to show you m' new teeth. Up close." He licked his lips.

        Helen saw the crazy look in his eyes and started to back away, feeling her way back along the dining room table with one palsied hand.

        "Kimmel? Why you lookin' at me that way? You been in the sauce?"

        With a speed he hadn't possessed since his marathon days, he breezed across the room and sunk his dentured fangs deeply into his wife's extremely wrinkled neck and quickly relieved her of a few pints of blood. She sank to the floor in a crumpled heap. When she came to, she would no longer be a Veggie-tarian. In fact, she would dine exclusively on raw Porterhouse, and the occasional paper boy, but that was later.

        Now, Kimmel stood there with blood dripping from his fangs and stared down at his wife. She wasn't moving, so he grabbed his gripping stick and poked her a few times.

        "Helen? Helen, get up for Mercatroid's sake!"

        But, she was out for a while. So, while he was waiting, Kimmel thought he would clean up a bit. He gripp-ered his overalls and set them on the wash, and then he gripp-ered the paper from the parcel and put each piece into the garbage. Then he came across the actual box that the dentures had come in, and he looked at that funny word that was written there again. "Hand Car" it said, and then the rest all covered with stamps.

        He began to pick away at the stamps and was pleased to see that his fingernails were now very long and sharp. He peeled away the last of the postage with ease, and then read the full inscription. Typed there in black ink, it now said: "Hand Carved in Transylvania."

        Below him, Helen rustled.

        "Finally," Kimmel said. "I thought you was gonna sleep all night!"