Free Women and Other Monsters by Bernard Schaffer Page B

shining brightly overhead and the hotel maids were pushing rickety metal carts along the hallways. 
     
    The blinds to Blake’s room had been duct taped to the borders of the window, and I could see nothing from the outside.  My driver’s license fit nicely inside the door’s frame, and I was a able to slide it against the lock.  After a few quick jiggles, the handle popped.  The room was totally dark as I shut the door and waited for my eyes to adjust. 
     
    The bed was empty.  I moved down the hallway, creeping silently toward the bathroom, when my knee slammed into the corner of a wooden coffin shoved between the bed and wall.  I had to cover my mouth and hop around on one foot until the urge to scream passed.        
     
    The coffin must have weighed over four hundred pounds.  I shoved the bed out of the way and wedged myself against the wall, pushing with my legs until the damn thing moved.  Finally, I got it close to the window.  I tore away the curtains, spilling light into the room.  “All right, you bloodsucking bastard.  Time to do some tanning.”
     
    I grabbed the coffin’s lid to lift it, but it was sealed tight, locked from inside and refusing to budge.  I guess after a few thousand years of being hunted by every angry villager with a flaming torch and pitchfork, you start locking your coffin lid.   
     
    It was a little while before I finally stopped sulking and decided I needed a new plan.  It took me a half-hour to put the room back together, but by the time I left, I knew what to do.
     
    ***
     
    Joe does not wave to me when I come into his parent’s natural foods store.  We haven’t spoken since I sold him a dozen of my mother’s penicillin pills and told him they were OxyContin.  He looks at me sideways when I walk up to the counter where he is counting out long, shriveled beef strips, and he says, “What do you want?”
     
    “Dude, I need your help.”
     
    “I don’t have any money, Rob.”
     
    “I don’t need money.  I need advice.  I have a question that is kind of out of the ordinary.” 
 He holds up one of the strips of meat and says, “See this?  It’s dried deer penis.  People grind it up into tea, but others eat it like its beef jerky.  I’m used to crazy.  So go ahead and hit me with your best shot.” 
     
    “I need to harness the power of the sun.”
     
    He considers me for a moment, then says, “Why?”
     
    “I’m trying to kill a vampire, but I can’t get him into the sunlight.”  
     
    “Cool,” he says.  He picks up a bottle of Vitamin D and rattles the pills around inside the container.  “Here, give him a few of these.  That should work.” 
     
    I slide the pills back, “I can’t give him vitamins, dude.  He doesn’t have a cold.  I need the equivalent of real, raw sunlight.” 
     
    “That is crazy.”  
     
    “Can you help me or not?”  Our eyes lock across the counter until he finally sighs and gets up from his seat.  He tells me to follow him and leads me past aisles of brightly labeled products toward the back of the store.  The shelves are filled with plants and roots marked with hand-written index cards. 
     
    He whispers, “It’s madness to try and harness the power of the sun.  What would you want to do with it, if such a thing were possible?”
     
    “Drink it, and force him to bite me.”  
     
    This amuses him at first, but then he snaps his fingers and begins rifling through the contents on the shelf.  “The amount of actual Vitamin D inside even a whole bottle of pills is miniscule compared to one single sunbeam.  What you’re really looking for is electromagnetic radiation and ultraviolet light.  Of course, it’s not really possible to consume either of those, so we have the next best thing.  Here it is.”  He removes a clear tankard of green-colored fluid from the shelf and shakes it.  The contents look clumpy, like mashed up broccoli floating in a dirty fish tank.  I