Heartthrob

12:00 PM. Time to wake up.

A sleepy blonde head shook itself free of the thick, cushy covers which surround it. The girl it’s attached to yawned, her bleary eyes blinking away slumber’s embrace. This girl is Esper James Price-Wynnfield: your average 23-year old office worker, living in your average hyperdense urban metroplex, eking out a living performing soul-crushing labor for the infamous ‘Man’ and whiling away her free time with trivialities and distractions. There’s just one small difference to set her apart from the average urbanite.

She rose to a stand, still nude save for a pair of ill-fitting boyshorts (she hasn’t grown much since her teen years), and padded over to the bathroom. Her apartment is pitch black from the heavy curtains over the window, but this didn’t bother her in the slightest. Daylight burns the eyes, of course. With the flick of a lightswitch she’s illuminated, getting a good look at herself: the pale, soft skin; the tousled locks, golden-pale save for black-dyed tips; the red-flecked emerald eyes that stare like hollow pits in her face. She looked like a wreck, or so she thought. And then, she smiled.

Thin lips pull back to allow a glimpse of her teeth - or rather, her fangs. Two rows of vicious, bladelike ivory razors fill her mouth, made to tear and consume flesh both cooked and raw. They had once been what you or I may bear, but irreversible fate had rendered them more apt for carnivorous exercise than a standard human's own. Indeed, she could barely even stomach other substances, save for poisons like alcohol; after all, you could rarely poison what was already dead.

Esper James is a ghoul. A flesh-eater. A walking dead. Ten years ago, a semi-trailer bisected her like a candybar and spread her caramel filling guts across the pavement. A beautiful chance at life turned to tragedy in an instant. She was scraped up and transported to the morgue, left to sit cold and dead and at peace, free of the rat race that was modern life. Here in Vitus, however, things don’t always stay the way they’re put when it comes to mortality.

She begins the daily routine slowly and tediously, the special electric toothbrush gently polishing and scrubbing her maw as she contemplates the night to come. She worked, as mentioned, as a secretary for a company called Tsang Solutions, who specialized in helping people like her (The undead, that is, or the ‘second-living’ as their PR campaigns would have you call them). What this entailed wasn’t exactly clear. Whenever she tried to dig deeper, however, wall after wall of propaganda, jargon, and security measures sprung up like weeds. After multiple roadblocks, she was content to leave it at that.

Teeth? Brushed. Then came the shower, and the dressing, and the pills; bleak little black things with a bright red X upon their surface. These were the suppressants for her appetite - the appetite for her fellow man; to consume, to ravage, to befoul and to eviscerate until her unnatural gluttony was slaked. The second-living were mandated to take these daily, with legal repercussions if the regiment wasn’t followed. Such repercussions began at fines, then went to community service, and then straight to lengthy prison sentences. Those who were too far gone would simply be taken straight to Tsang Solutions HQ, shuffled away from public view for eternity. Only dark speculation could reveal what happened to them past that.

Tsang Solutions took a pretty purse from the suppressant business, the price gouging making insulin look like a corner-store convenience. Some ‘independents’ went broke trying to keep up with their usage, finding their home or work on the street-corners just to pay the piper at the local pharmacy. The only way to avoid this brutal extortion was to sign on with the very people who produced the pills, Tsang themselves, a cruel racket that was futile to oppose. They called the pills Fix-Ate; Esper James thought it was sort of funny the first time she heard the name. Now it just made her weary.

A white blouse with a black tie and pencil skirt made her professionally presentable. Ebon heels and brown hose topped the look off and made her almost cute, if not for her exhausted eyes. Grabbing a plastic pre-wrapped package of the generously named ‘beef sashimi’ and a bottle of water from her fridge was the last task before she was out the door and plodding down the steps of her apartment. She stole a glance out of a smog-stained window as she descended the stairs, out at the heart of Vitus, at the hellacious scramble of city life, highways and alleys so clogged with constant traffic, the arteries of the city straining against themselves to pump even the most meagre trickle of vehicular blood through.

Her own heart, so cold and yet still beating, felt that much heavier in her chest from the sight.

-

The sidewalk outside was only slightly less congested than the roadways, with throngs of bystanders hanging about like packs of wild animals. Like any smart resident of Vitus, Esper James kept a knife on her person: on her inner thigh, tucked into a garter, a foldable blade five inches long sat uncomfortably cold and heavy; however, she dreaded the potential of ever needing it’s unfeeling company. The fear was as much for herself as for whoever she may raise it against - pills could only do so much.

The streets of Vitus were littered with debris from constant construction and demolition, the careless citizens, and the ash from the factories. In a world where death was an inconvenience, people seemed to care less and less for their own safety and health. Go figure. She stepped over empty beer bottles and shattered glass, spent cigarettes and crumpled bags from Dougals’ Snack Shack. A vagrant panhandler shook his tin cup at her; she looked away without a word, breath tight in her chest, words caught in her throat.

Past crowds of leering humans and sneering vampires Esper James went, ducking between punks, vagabonds, and doom-sayers along the way. She could feel their eyes clinging to her when she walked: nicely dressed, only five-foot-four and walking alone in the bad part of town: she was a delectable hunk of meat dangled for starving beasts. Whenever a hand brushed her hip she tensed; whenever someone so much as looked at her she felt her cool blood run cold. More than a temptation, however, Esper James was an oddity - ghouls were the most uncommon type of second-living, their very creation an aberration in the metamorphosis of a vampire. A freakshow to the living, and a step below the ruling dead.

And then, like that, she was at the door. Two glass panes with metal handles shaped like a vampire’s fangs stood before her, the word ‘TSANG’ engraved into the surface in flowing traditional script. Her watch beeped. A minute late. Ten minutes of pay docked. Esper hurried inside, past the receptionist who barely looked at her, past the middle-managers who sneered at her and jeered as she nearly tripped on her own feet, and past the security guards who snickered as she struggled to slide her pass correctly.

The interior of Tsang Solutions was just as imposing and deceptively monolithic as the exterior. On her first day she had been lost for an hour, and promptly given the scolding of a lifetime once she finally arrived at her workplace destination. Nowadays she could navigate the compound blindfolded through sheer virtue of wanting to avoid such an experience ever occurring again.

Into the elevator Esper James went, steel doors closing behind her with agonizing slowness. Tsang HQ had stairs, of course, but they were hell in heels; her office (her boss’s office, technically) was on the 38’th floor anyways.

The office itself was a majestic, if dour and dark, locale: black marble and gold trim dominated much of it, run through with dark wood trim and flashes of red in the decor. The wage-slaves of the lower decks never got this high in the towering structure; this luxury was one of the only ones she was afforded. Rounding the corner to her manager’s office, she ran head-first into something cool and firm and tall - as she stumbled onto her ass, her eyes locked onto a small metal name-badge that said “JUDAS”.

“You’re late.”

-

Through three sets of doors, in a small office of mahogany and crimson with bars on the window, two women now took up residence. One was taller and stood proudly: she wore a dark grey suit with red button-up and black tie; her hair was dark black and long and straight, like a waterfall of ink; her eyes were a deep crimson, her skin a gentle almond. She was lanky but leaned towards curvy where it counted, and her features were sharp, elegant, and well-rested. This was Judas, EJ’s manager and direct supervisor - she was important, powerful, beautiful, and confident. All things EJ was not.

The other woman was, of course, EJ. She sat in her chair at her desk, the large leather throne far too big for her. It only accentuated how small the blonde felt before the ravenette, the former’s eyes glued to her feet, the latter’s boring a hole into EJ’s head. Two pairs of black high-heels faced one another in the silent office air, the sound of soft classical music drifting in over a hidden radio.

“So. Esper James. This is the…”

“Fifth.”

“Fifth?! Fifth! The fifth time you’ve been late to the office this week. Let’s not even address this month, for Heaven’s sake. There is obviously a serious problem here, isn’t there?” Esper James was silent for a long time, or so it felt; in reality, it was a few minutes. Judas drummed her fingers against her bicep, tapped her foot, and furrowed her brow - EJ just felt a droplet of sweat bead and roll down her forehead.

“Y-Yes…”

“Yes what?” Judas' eyes narrowed further, her stilletto-clad toe tapping against the carpet with dull, thudding rhythm.

“Yes, m-ma’am!”

Judas’s fist slammed down onto the heavy wooden desk, the slap of flesh against timber resounding through the small room like a gunshot. Esper James flinched visibly, the hot, salted sting of tears starting to well within her vision. Her hands balled up at the hem of her skirt, pulling it up inadvertently, teardrops beginning to bloom upon the cloth. They were a sad little rain for a sad little girl, and they vexed her for the weakness and fright they showed.

She gasped aloud when Judas’s slender hand took her chin in thumb and forefinger, sharp black nails pressing softly into the secretary’s pale, forgiving flesh. Her gaze was raised to the horizon, while Judas leaned down to meet her - their faces were inches apart. EJ’s eyes went wide, previous shame and embarrassment replaced by visceral fear as her gaze locked with that of her superior.

“Esper James, I’m not a woman who lets such trivial problems interrupt my life. Do I make myself clear?”

EJ couldn’t nod quickly enough, the scent of Judas’s breath and perfume - blood, tobacco, dark berries, and cinnamon - giving a heady undertone to her fear-clouded senses. Judas nodded in affirmation, her expression softening slightly; her mascara’d lashes and vivid irises made her eyes look large and predatory this close, and it was no coincidence.

Judas opened her mouth to speak once more, and EJ tore her eyes away from the other woman’s only to catch upon her fangs: the canines of her mouth were slightly elongated, and her tongue was sharp and bestial, tapering to a pointed tip that she had topped with a silver stud. Vampirism’s tells were more subtle than those of a ghoul, but they were present all the same.

“As such, you have two choices, effective immediately. Either you will promise me to make it to work on-time EVERY DAY from here on out, or you will face instantaneous and irreversible termination. Termination will break your contract as well, and render you liable for the consequences. I don’t need to elaborate on what that entails, do I?”

She did not. Termination from Tsang wasn’t just a loss of a job - it destroyed you socially and economically. Officially, nepotism didn’t exist in Vitus and there was no conspiracy between businesses. Unofficially, losing a position at Tsang meant you were blackballed into the darkest places of the city, forced to work dirty and degrading jobs or slip into the allure of a thriving and dangerous criminal underbelly. Esper James Price-Wynnfield was not the type of girl to survive in such a place.

She swallowed hard, another stake of panic driven into her bleeding heart. Her life was already out of her hands; it had been since before she had died, to be truthful. Student debt, inability to find a job she could hold, bodily dysphoria which spread further than undeath, a strained relationship with anyone who still kept in contact with her… Her current job had been a shot in the dark to even land, and now she was on the verge of losing it all. She grit her teeth, choking back tears as best she could, though she knew her employer could see them rolling hot and salty down her cheeks.

“Y-Ye… Yes, ma’am. I promise. I… I won’t show up late anymore. Ever. You can… You can count o-on me.”

The words were broken glass in her throat, but what else could she do? Staring up at Judas was like facing an angry, testy goddess, and she'd say anything to appease that diabolical deity if it meant retaining peace and quiet.

“Good! Then we won’t need to resort to any extreme measures. Yet. Now, I have an appointment soon; I checked on your computer, since you weren’t here to tell me. Once I’m done with that, I expect you to take your lunch early to synchronize it with mine so you can accompany me. Got it?”

EJ nodded, the ill feelings in her gut tamped down by a casual lunch ‘invite’. Judas never invited people for things; she simply told them they were coming, and they came. It was one of the few friendly gestures she offered her coworkers, much less her secretary, but the ghoul knew it was still an attempt. To her surprise, Judas smiled with satisfaction - and then leaned forwards to place a soft, brief kiss upon the distraught secretary’s forehead.

Vampiric hormones shot straight into EJ’s system, a brief hit of dopamine to shatter the advance of her unease. She blinked away tears in dumbstruck awe that the gesture was even given, but Judas just laughed beneath her breath. “Don’t get used to that. I may be your boss, but I can’t stand seeing you bawl. If you’re going to cry, go do it in the bathroom like everyone else; in my office, you had better plaster a smile on that pretty little face of yours.”

And then she was gone, having released EJ’s chin, straightened herself, and walked away without even giving her pet ghoul a chance to respond. Perhaps it was better this way; another short burst of tears came in as EJ sobbed into the crook of her arm, the momentary euphoria she had received draining away to reveal the misery inside. She felt better, though, good enough to get through the day. Good enough to make it to lunch.