Introducing: Reverse Vampire
Why they needed to do it wasn’t important. Science! Innovation! Showing up Aesop and Bam Stoker in one fell swoop!
No; the reason why didn’t matter. What mattered was that it worked, and what mattered was the thirty-year-old man who sat where a small, fuzzy fruit had once been.
That had been a few days ago. He’d sat on the floor of the experiment chamber, blinking stupidly and staring off into space, too shocked to respond, move, or think. It had taken those few days of prompting and pushing to get the man to finally start responding to his environment with slow, clumsy movements and halting speech. It had taken him a good seven tries that morning for him to tug on a shirt. He forwent shoes altogether and shuffled to the lunchroom with bare feet, watching the way his legs moved and occasionally curling his extra toes.
They’d wanted to name their successful experiment. After all, they couldn’t call him a fruit bat in this form! Someone had mentioned Dracula, another Edward, someone mentioned The Count. When they’d asked the recently-changed bat for his opinion, he had to think on it for a few minutes before finally spitting out the first thing that came to mind:
He had been thinking about fruit. Fruit attracted fruit flies. Annoying bugs.
It had earned him a few looks. Then again, everything he did earned him looks.
Bugsy wandered into the cafeteria, blinking and rubbing his eyes as he examined the room. He’d had opportunities to look at it before, but he was always amazed at how much he could see! His attempts to echolocate with this body proved a monumental failure, and he didn’t even need to do it! He could make out so many details! There were a few chairs arranged around circular tables, and bright lights overhead, and a bowl of fruit on the counter, which he made a beeline for with hungry eyes.
Next to the bowl, from which he selected an orange, there were a few cartons of chocolate milk with straws stuck through the opening. Bugsy examined them curiously before selecting one and carrying it carefully to the nearest table. His fingers are all close together! It was both convenient and extremely difficult to maneuver.
He stared at the orange before placing it aside, reaching for the carton.
There was something inside, something that smelled sweet. It was some weird liquid…a kind of nectar, maybe?
Bugsy sniffed around the edge of the carton before eyeing the straw. He poked it with one finger. He pushed it and wiggled it and made it turn in a circle before sitting back in his chair. Alright. So far, his experiments had done nothing to show him how to operate this weird stick. As he sat there, someone else walked in, taking a carton and closing their mouths around the stick as they walked back out.
If Bugsy had his old, pointed ears, they’d be twitching like mad.
That’s how you did it, then! He bent forward eagerly, clamping his smooshed-in mouth around the plastic stick. A few seconds passed and nothing was happening. Bugsy frowned and bit down on the straw. How had…?
Maybe he had to hold it in his hands, like the other person had done!
Bugsy reached for the carton, fumbling with his new fingers to get a good grip and lift the milk off the table. He managed it without making a mess, and he began to gnaw at the straw. Nothing was coming out! His ears would be drooping at this point if he had ears that could droop! He sighed out, through the straw, a huff of frustration.
The liquid inside bubbled and frothed.
Bugsy blinked, staring at the carton with wide eyes.
“Did I do that?” he asked no one in particular. Just to experiment, he blew into the straw again. More bubbly sounds came from the carton. How peculiar!
“So…air can go-…hmm!” He clamped his mouth around the straw again and began to blow, hard. Of course, no one could blame him for the mini explosion of chocolate milk that exploded all over his shirt and the tabletop, which he had no way of foreseeing. But Bugsy was hardly shocked by the outcome. Instead, he merely licked his fingers, savoring the odd taste of this thick, brown nectar. Then he stood, wobbling on too-long legs to retrieve a new carton.
Round two! He couldn’t do much worse than he already had.
