[turn the world on]
by not jenny.

"A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do."

Her mother, squinting into the mirror, mascara wand in hand. Caked on black lashes, garish red lipstick. Hair teased practically to the ceiling, and the bottle of Aqua Net empty on the counter. Fuck-me pumps. Words slurring and lisped, taking one last slug from her bottle of Jack Daniels. "Sometimes, good tits and a tube of lipstick are all you got, baby-cakes."

Her mother, the modern American gal. The fucking Mary Tyler Moore of the trailer park.

Lilah works hard at school, spending night after night huddled in her bed reading. Math, history, literature, mythology: anything she can get her hands on. The librarian gives her indulgent looks every time she comes in, sneaks her all the newest Nancy Drews.

Eyes her mother's chest every time she. Sometimes, she hears gasps and moans coming from behind the reference desk. Her mother's raspy smoker's voice, the librarian's soft baritone. "Oh, yes." "Baby baby b-a-a-a-a-b-y-y-y-y-y."

Nancy Drew discovers a bomb in a clock; Lilah discovers that she can keep as many library books as she wants. Now. Walk them out of the building without so much as a library card. She starts collecting. Nancy Drews, yes, and Hardy Boys in sturdy blue. A copy of the Bible, a book on the Salem Witch Trials. Vampire lore, demonology, magick.

"Honey baby, sweety, run out and buy Mommy some smokes, will you?"

Law. Contracts. She highlights a section on emancipation.

"No one likes a know-it-all."

Rips it out, sleeps with it beneath her pillow. Fingers the words.

"Boys don't date girls who are smarter than them. Just, I don't know, stop trying so damned hard all the time. Take home ec or something instead of rocket science. Shit, I need another beer."

Mens rea, post hoc ergo propter hoc, [u.s. has a legal system based on precedent, this is called...]. The [name] demon eats song, the [demon] lives according to strict legal standards, basing its decision-making solely on reason and rational thought. The vampire kills, mindlessly, but is also human. The dichotomy fascinates her, reason and emotion. Humanity and pure evil, all in one.

She prays, nights, to become a vampire. That a tall dark stranger will slip through her window (never mind that she would have to invite him in, never mind the leaps in logic) and sire her. That they would travel the world, visit the opera houses of Europe, the Moscow Ballet; destroying anyone who got in their way.

Her first kill would be her mother; she imagines the blood, sickly sweet from too much alcohol, tastes it in her dreams. Wakes up some mornings biting into her own flesh.

The thing about the law is that it is malleable, easily manipulated.

It looks cut and dry (very very dry), but. Appearances can be deceiving, and sometimes it's important to look one way and act another. So she starts watching her mother get ready at night, studies the way she applies mascara, mouth open and eyes like fish. Studies the orange- red lipstick clashing with her skin, the bright pink blush in tight little ovals. Learns what not to look like.

Starts experimenting with hair dye, styles. She looks bad with bangs, but really likes having them. They add versatility; make it easier to change one's appearance with minimal work.

She practices in the mirror, alternately glaring and laughing. Everything an illusion and an allusion to something else. Her law books becoming creased and highlighted; her smile becoming more and more sinister. She likes this new self, this stronger Lilah.

Her mother calls, late at night, drunk. "Lilah, honey sweetie darling, Lilah-baby, won't don't you ever visit your mother, hmmm? Bab-y-y-y-."

She excels in her classes; her professors glowing profusely and sometimes, under the table, she hears them sigh her name when they come. Manipulation 101, her first lesson, learned at the makeup counter of the master: fuck him, and he'll give you the world. How To Get What You Want 102: blow him and he'll even thank you.

Know your shit, yes, but even more important is the application.

Everything, in life and in law, is based on what came before. Precedent. In 1880, a vampire named Drusilla sired a young man named William. Called "The Bloody" for his bloody awful poetry. That man killed two slayers. Facts. Dates. Faces. Know your shit, apply it.

Own the world, hold millions of lives in your fist, and squeeze. Just for the fun of it, just for the rush. Hell, it's what all those men did to her mother, isn't it? All those men who called them whores and trash and sluts, all of those. Now they come to her, and she laughs.

Hell, she can afford to. She's Lilah Fucking Morgan, and they don't have a clue.


fin.



[once more into the fray]