“You look good,” the beardy werewolf says into my ear. Thinks they’ve got a low, grumbly-sexy voice. I think different, but my thoughts don’t matter right now.

“Really?” I say, lining my dry lips with a tiny brush of lipstick. They watch me, yellow contacts flashing green under the disco-teal lights. The bathroom is too small for two.

“Yeah. You’re a professional, aren’t you?”

“Hm?” I respond, jaw locked as I colour my lips—the ‘professional’ way, or so they claim.

“It’s cool. There are so many people who love dressing up and that kind of thing, you know? But I see you all the time on campus. You dress like this every day. People think you’re one of those professional cosplayers or something.”

Cosplay. A meagre word. It feels like a dead seed in my hand. All shell, no sprout.

I carefully part my hair in front of the mirror.

“Your parting is off.” More unwanted commentary.

“Really? I don’t see it.”

My fingers poke around my forehead as they lift my velvet cape, sniffing it. Their charcoal-painted nose burrows under the fabric.

“What are you doing?” I yank the cape away. “This thing is delicate!”

“Relax!” their voice twists into more of a mid-range register. “Smells like old people.”

“What do you have against old people?”

“Nothing,” they lift their paws up. “Nothing at all. As long as they can keep up, I’d be down.”

To eviscerate every creature at this party. It would be too easy. Too messy? Maybe. Younger me wouldn’t have cared. Younger me would’ve been able to handle the bites, the everywhere-fluids, the cacophonous howls and shrieks of creatures who wanted to eat me up.

But now that I am old and decrepit and clearly incapable of tousling with a whiny, attention-seeking pup, well—actually.

They somehow take the silence as an invitation, grazing their rubbery fangs against my neck.

“It’s better if I do it,” I say.

“What do you mean?” 

“Erotic neck-biting, that’s more of a vampire thing. Werewolves would just tear at your flesh.”

I bring my lips to their neck. Sweet. The blood underneath smells like red candy and fizz. I bite—gently, first, and then not so gently. It splatters out, like when you poke your soda top from the wrong angle with a straw. 

They spill all over the floor like a sad, cheap cinema cup, too.