Hot for Slayer

by Ali Hazelwood

“Look at you,” he murmured in his faded Eastern European accent, those yellow animal eyes raking down my skin. “Flushed and plump and beautiful. You just fed, didn’t you?” “Beautiful? Aww, Lazlo, I didn’t know you had a crush on— Motherfucker.” He jockeyed the blade back and forth in my belly, which, ouch. On the plus side, it gave me the opportunity to 7jerk in his arms and fake a seizure-like movement, which I used to retrieve my own dagger from my hip.

When he noticed my eyes on him, he lifted the blade up to his face. And with a smile that did not feel like a smile, he began to lick it clean of my blood.

O M G

I am going to kill you. I gasped. “What was that? Lazlo, did you just say that you’re going to marry me?”

He points at a spot above my head. When I turn around, there is a giant— “Spider!” I scream, running to duck behind Lazlo.

It may sound foolish, but I never get bored of watching 44the trees change, of seeing girls walk around hand in hand while giggling over a text from a crush, of finding a good poem.

Immortality can mean deep thoughts and philosophical pondering and the relentless pursuit of knowledge, sure, but for me it was always the opposite. I found it so easy, falling into the day-to-day. The humdrum. Staring out of the window with an empty mind. A crossword, a walk in the rain, a well-written book. Flowers blooming.

Still, I’ve learned to live in the moment, and to be happy, even on my own. I’ve learned to treasure little joys, like making other people’s lives better by lending a hand or a smile, doing small talk, laughing at bad puns.

“I might not remember my name, or anything about who I am. But I could never be near you and not know exactly what you are to me.”

“Do you, um, maybe wanna play cards?” He immediately puts the blade away, like sharing an activity with me is the only thing he has ever desired,

“There is nothing that I could discover about you, or about myself, that would make me want to do this any less.”

Doesn’t explain why his eyes, all of a sudden, seem so soft. Or the fact that instead of pushing me away, instead of hitting back with his own weapons and his own strength, he touches me tenderly. One hand lifts to cup my face, and he gently thumbs my cheekbone.

“Aethelthryth, nothing would make me happier than having you with me here, or in any other place that I will call home, for as long as I live.