Just another freak show, he thought.

  As he gazed at the crowd, as he watched those watching him, he did what he always did, what many in the crowd had noticed throughout the course of this outrageous trial:

  He opened his mouth, just a little, and the tip of his tongue poked out as he unconsciously ran it back and forth along his upper incisors. He did this for perhaps ten seconds—

  And then he opened his mouth a little more, as he always did. Now his roaming tongue stopped at his massive canines—teeth that projected down from his upper jaw like mighty ivory stalactites—

  Wet, gleaming tongue sliding down one of the freakishly long stalactites—the right one, in fact—down, down this massive fang, stopping finally at the tip. There it paused, and, like an elephant’s curious trunk, gently tapped the tip of the tooth. Tapped it hesitantly, as if testing it. Tapped it carefully, as if fearful of it. Tapped it again and again and again...

  “Aaron, can you please recount for the court the events that led to the killing of Annie Hox?”

  The long tongue retracted like a frightened turtle and his lips slammed shut and the young man turned his attention away from a frowning older woman sitting in the second row—a woman who seemed to be staring at him almost sideways, as if afraid to look the devil in the eye. Aaron Parker settled his gaze onto the smooth-shaven face of the defense attorney.

  “Where would you like me to begin?” Aaron asked shyly, speaking in such a way that his lips barely moved, a way that completely concealed his teeth.

  “At the beginning,” said the attorney.

  “The beginning...was a long time ago,” said Aaron.

  “Remember, Aaron, this is a new jury. They haven’t heard your case.”

  The young man chuckled softly. “All they had to do was turn on the TV.”

  “Please, Aaron, just tell us your story.”

  The young man inhaled deeply and motioned vaguely to his mouth. He said, “I suppose it all started when they grew in.”

  “They, Aaron?”

  “My teeth, of course.”

  “Thank you, Aaron, now will you please display your teeth to the jury?”

  Aaron felt his pulse quicken. He was always aware of his own pulse. Vigilantly aware. And it quickened now because showing his teeth went against his every instinct. Showing his teeth inspired questions. Showing his teeth induced ridicule. Showing his teeth had often gotten him beat up, and worse.

  “Please, Aaron, this is important.”

  Dance for us, monkey boy, thought Aaron.

  Not wanting to see their reactions, he closed his eyes and turned his face toward the jury box. And opened his mouth. He might not have seen their faces, but he heard the gasps. And he heard their fervent whisperings.

  I am more than my teeth.

  “That’s quite enough, Aaron,” said his attorney. “Thank you.”

  Now they know you’re a freak, thought Aaron.

  Yeah? So what else is new?

  He closed his mouth and slumped back in the chair, trying unsuccessfully to hide, and found himself staring up once again at the defense attorney. The man was indeed good-looking: muscular neck, strong jaw, square shoulders. Aaron went back to his clean-shaven neck, which was roped with thick muscle. And he kept on looking, searching really...

  Ah, there it is.

  The man’s jugular vein, pulsing steadily, strongly. Aaron’s stomach growled. Loudly.

  The attorney heard the young man’s stomach growl, saw the laser-focused intent in the young man’s eyes. He paused in mid-pace.

  Jesus, he’s staring at you again, he thought. No, he’s staring at your neck.

  The attorney, despite himself, swallowed.

  But Aaron was no longer thinking of the attorney. Indeed, as he gazed upon the man’s neck he found himself thinking of Annie Hox. Specifically, her blood. Her sweet, salty, precious, delicious blood.

  The young man felt an immediate swelling in his pants.

  The attorney, who found the young man’s gaze disconcerting at best, stammered slightly as he spoke again: “So, your problems began, Aaron, when your teeth grew in?”

  “Yes.”

  “In particular, the canines.”

  “Yes.”

  “The canines—often called cuspids, dog teeth, or fangs—are generally the longest of the mammalian teeth. Most species have four per individual, two in the upper jaw and two in the lower, all separated by the shorter and flatter incisors.”

  Aaron almost smiled. “If you say so.”

  “Would it be accurate to say that your adult canines grew in too long?” said the attorney.

  This time, Aaron did smile. “I would say so.”

  The attorney now moved over to the defense table, picked up an index card, and read from it: “Abnormal or excessive canine growth is a rare phenomenon, afflicting one in eleven million. It’s considered an atavism, or a throwback gene, something that was necessary to our species hundreds of thousands of years ago, but not so much now.”

  “Lucky me,” said Aaron.

  “How old were you when your adult canines grew in, Aaron?”

  “Seven.”

  “Did the other kids ever call you names?”

  “Of course.”

  “Kids can be mean,” said the attorney, frowning, nodding sympathetically. Personalize the examination, he thought. Humanize the killer. Reach out to the jury. “Cruel, even. What sort of names did they call you, Aaron?”

  The young man had spent a lifetime trying to forget the names, trying to forget the nightmare that was his childhood. But here, in this courtroom, there was no forgetting.

  Not after what you’ve done.

  And so he dutifully answered the question: “Aaroncula was a favorite. So was Scarin’ Aaron. But mostly they just called me Fang.”

  “Did not the kids at your school come up with a song?” asked the attorney.

  “Yes,” said Aaron. And thank you for reminding me of that, asshole.

  “Would you sing it for us, Aaron?”

  As the young man cleared his throat, the crowd leaned forward. This isn’t ‘American Idol’, people, he thought. Now, ‘American Vampire’ is a different story...

  He grinned inwardly and in a sort of sing-song voice, he sang: “Vampire, Vampire with his teeth he popped a tire.”

  The attorney smirked, and some in the courtroom actually laughed.

  Yes, funny, isn’t it?

  When the attorney seemed to remember that he was in a court of law, his expression returned to one of dour professionalism, and he asked, “How did you feel, Aaron, when the other kids made fun of you?”

  “Like a mutant. I felt hideous. Kind of like I do now.”

  The attorney held his gaze. “Did you believe them, Aaron? Did you believe you were a vampire?”

  “No, not at first. Hell, I didn’t even know what a vampire was. I went home one day and asked my mom what the kids were talking about and she told me. As she did so, I remember seeing the hurt in her face, and the shame of being poor and not being able to fix my teeth.”

  “You had no dental insurance?”

  “We did, yes. I think. But nothing cosmetic, from what I remember. The removal of the teeth was a personal choice and the insurance wouldn’t cover it.”

  “So, you had to live with them? Your teeth, that is.”

  “Yes.”

  Aaron spied a small woman sitting alone at the back of the courtroom, huddled to herself and weeping silently. His mother. She caught his eye and tried to smile bravely. He nodded to her reassuringly. His teeth weren’t her fault, after all. One in eleven million. Dumb luck. But he knew she blamed herself for his deformity.

  “And the kids continued to make fun of you throughout school?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Would you say relentlessly?”

  “Yes,” said Aaron. “Every day. Dozens of times a day, if not hundreds.”

  “And,” said the attorney carefully, turning to the jury, “like a child who’s told he or she is stupid or wouldn’t amount to anything—”

  “I began to believe it,” said Aaron.

  “You began to believe what, exactly?”

  Aaron knew the attorney knew the answer. This show was for the new jury. Just play along, thought Aaron. The man’s trying to save your life, after all.

  “I began to believe I was a vampire.”

  The lawyer let the words hang in the air. Aaron didn’t move, didn’t need to turn or look up to know that he had everyone’s attention.

  The lawyer, he knew, was building an insanity defense. I’m not insane. I just love blood.

  Slowly, he licked his teeth...

  “How old were you, Aaron, when you started to believe you were a vampire?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Was there one defining event?”

  There was, of course, and the attorney knew it, and Aaron walked the courtroom through it, as well. It had happened one day when he cut his finger. Aaron was making dinner for his family. He liked to make dinner, liked to cook. Hell, he liked doing anything that kept him indoors and out of sight. He was chopping onions and wiping his eyes and not paying attention—when the blade went straight through the side of his index finger. It hurt like hell. The cut was to the bone. And there was blood. Lots of it. And as he bled, he just stood there at the kitchen sink, dripping, doing nothing to staunch the flow of blood.

  “And what happened next, Aaron?” asked his attorney.

  “I tasted it.”

  The attorney sucked in some air—and so did a lot of other people in the courtroom. One or two even turned their heads.

  Wimps...

  “You drank your own blood?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  The lawyer paused and turned again to his notes, and Aaron’s tongue darted out between his canines. Like a snake’s tongue. In and out. In and out. Another bad habit, and one his tongue had seemingly evolved to accommodate, for it was itself now long and narrow. If Aaron wanted to lick the bottom of his chin he could.

  “So what did you do next, Aaron?”

  “I began cutting myself.”

  “And sucking your own blood?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you only cut yourself?”

  “No, sometimes I used my teeth.”

  The attorney paused and looked pointedly at the jury box. Aaron knew what the look was meant to say. The look was meant to say that Aaron was clearly crazy, and how could they possibly condemn a crazy man to death?

  I’m not crazy, thought Aaron. I just want blood...

  “So, you bit yourself?” asked the attorney.

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Mostly my wrists. But my whole arm was and is fair game.”

  The attorney looked slightly ill. “And then, what would you do?”

  “I would suck my blood, of course.”

  “Like a vampire.”

  Aaron nodded. “Like a vampire.”

  The attorney gave the jury another knowing look. “Aaron, could you please show the court your arm?”

  Aaron fought his initial reaction to rebel, to hide, and instead sighed deeply and unbuttoned his cuff and pushed up his sleeve. He displayed his forearm for the jury to see. Nearly hairless, his pale arm was crisscrossed and dotted with puffy white scars, some fresher than others.

  “Would you say, Aaron, that you finally found a use for your teeth?”

  The young man grinned. “You could say that.”

  “Aaron, could you please describe for us the process of biting yourself and drinking your own blood.”

  And so he did. Once Aaron punctured his flesh with his own teeth, he would draw the blood straight from his veins and into his mouth. Often he would gargle the blood and swish it around like fine wine. When he was done sucking and drinking—or, feeding, as he referred to it—he was left with the most incredible hickeys, hickeys that would last sometimes for months.

  “Of course,” said Aaron, finishing his recounting, “I always kept my arms covered in public.”

  “To hide the scars and hickeys.”

  “Yes.”

  “Some of these wounds look fresh, Aaron.”

  The young man nodded and pointed to two scabby holes just inside his elbow. “Sure. I was sucking here just last night, in jail.”

  The attorney looked like he might have thrown up a little in the back of his mouth. The man, a true professional, obviously fought through his discomfort. “Do you ever get sick after sucking your own blood, Aaron? Surely, this can’t be healthy.”

  “All the time. I was sick just last night. Puked blood everywhere. Looked like something from a Stephen King novel.”

  “But you continue doing it, even when you get sick?”

  “It’s not easy being me,” said the young man, grinning.

  “Aaron, did you ever seek any kind of professional help?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because there’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “But you think you’re a vampire.”

  Aaron grinned broadly, purposefully exposing the long, slightly curved sweep of his upper canines. “Maybe I am, counselor.”

  The lawyer looked again at the jury box, his expression almost smug. See, it seemed to say, is the kid loony or what?

  “Aaron, when did you first meet Annie Hox?”

  “When I was seventeen.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “And where did you meet her?”

  “I met her at one of my jobs. I was working as a security guard for a warehouse. The graveyard shift, of course.” Aaron smiled. “Annie worked there as well.”

  “What attracted you to her?”

  “She was different, special. She was one of the few people who accepted me for who I am. She was what some people would call a goth.”

  “As in gothic,” said the attorney, pacing slowly now in front of the jury box. “As in someone who dresses in black, paints their nails black, powders their faces white, and reads Ann Rice novels. In short, someone obsessed with vampires.”

  “Yes,” said Aaron, grinning at the stereotypical image the attorney drew. “She was that and more.”

  “Were you intimate with her?”

  As soon as he finished asking the question, a woman in the courtroom began sobbing. A familiar sobbing. Aaron didn’t have to look up to know who it was. Annie’s mother. A big woman, she had sobbed throughout the entire court proceedings.

  So much for my private life...

  “Yes, we were intimate.”

  “Did you love her, Aaron?”

  “With all my heart. Like I said, she accepted me for who I was. She loved my teeth. Hell, when we kissed, sometimes she would even lick them.”

  The attorney waited for the mother, who had burst into tears again, to settle down, and when she finally did, he asked, “Did you love Annie Hox, Aaron?”

  The young man thought back to the pretty goth girl who accepted him for exactly who he was, the pretty goth girl with whom he had opened up to and shared so much with, the pretty goth girl who listened to him attentively and treated him as if he mattered.

  “Yes,” he said. “I did. Annie was my savior.”

  “Then why did you kill her, Aaron?”

  The young man seemed to shrink in upon himself, as if he were slowly imploding. The attorney had noticed this curious display from the young man before. A defensive reaction, perhaps? As if the kid is trying to shrink away and disappear.

  The attorney didn’t know why, but the young man never failed to mystify him. And repulse him.

  Aaron was indeed trying to shrink away; in particular, from the horrific image of Annie dying in his arms. Now, from the depths of the witness chair, he ran his fingers through his greasy black hair and looked out across the courtroom to Annie’s mother. The woman was crying softly into her hands and rocking back and forth.

  “It was an accident. I never meant to kill her.”

  “Tell us what happened on the night she died, Aaron.”

  “We’d gone to a party. One of her friend’s goth parties.”

  “What did her friends think of you, Aaron?”

  “They loved me. Sure, I was still a freak, but I was a superfreak.” Aaron chuckled at his own play on words. “It was the first time that I could be me and not have to hide my teeth. It was the first time that I had friends.”

  “You were seventeen?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it was the first time you had friends?”

  “Yes.”

  The attorney nodded sadly. “Go on, Aaron. What happened after the party?”

  After a night of partying and drinking and smoking, Aaron and Annie had left together. They stopped at a Taco Bell, then headed over to a park to eat.

  “You both were drinking and smoking marijuana that night?”

  “Yes, everyone was.”

  “What time did you arrive at the park?”

  “Three, three-thirty in the morning.”

  “Thank you, go on.”

  “But we didn’t get much eating done. As soon as I stopped the car Annie was all over me.”

  “Had she smoked or ingested anything other than alcohol or marijuana?”

  “Yes. Ecstasy.”

  The attorney then reminded jurors of earlier evidence that verified Annie Hox had extremely high levels of MDMA, or ecstasy, in her blood system. “Go on, Aaron.”

  Or, as one reporter would later put it: what little of her blood that remained.

  Aaron continued: “So we ditched the Taco Bell and moved into the back seat and started...” He shifted in his seat. “You know, doing it.”

  “Doing it? You mean having intercourse?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened next, Aaron?”

  Pervert...

  “About halfway into it, Annie had an idea. She thought it would be hot if I sucked her neck. That is, if a real-live vampire sucked on her neck.”

  “So, she asked you to suck blood from her neck?”

  Aaron nodded. “I told her no and that she was drunk and high, and she said fine and started getting up off my lap. But I didn’t want her to get up from my lap. I wasn’t, you know, finished yet...”

  The young man actually blushed, and the attorney silently approved. Blushing shows the jury you’re still human, Aaron. “So, what did you do next?”