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Vampires didn’t usually get timers. For one, most timer stores were not open in the middle of the night. Probably more importantly, though, a timer was a lot less of an interest when you could turn it on and have it say 600 years. Or, more likely, have it blank out because your soulmate was already long dead. It was an amusing curiosity for humans with their tiny lifespans, but for a vampire, it very rarely made sense to bother.
Unless you were desperate. And Nandor was definitely getting there. He stared at the glossy pamphlet and the two humans it pictured on the front: bright, glowing smiles and matching timers on their wrists, hands clasped. That was what he wanted, that kind of joy you get only someone who fills your heart with light and tender feelings. Someone to pledge your devotion to as they do in kind. Nandor was lonely, even if he didn’t want to admit it to any of the assholes he lived with. He wanted someone to spend eternity with. “If Ryan (24) and Michaela (23) can have this,” he said, reading the pictured couples’ bio with just a tinge of bitterness. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“No reason you shouldn’t,” said the timer shop employee. She dropped the gun she had just used in the sterilizer and picked up a new one. “Okay, you are up, Mister…” She looked down at her clipboard. “Mister Relentless.”
“Oh yes, that is me!” Nandor said, maybe a little too enthusiastically. Once he had resolved to do this, Nandor was proud that he had been able to set up the appointment all by himself. It hadn’t been easy. As he was currently familiar-less, he had to do all of the research, find local timer businesses in the yellow book and call their facilities to inquire as to their hours. Because of daylight savings, this establishment, with its unusual hours, was the only one that could accommodate him.
The employee, whose name tag read Azra, stared at his formal attire and heavy robe. She waved the piercing gun in his direction, then turned to insert a fresh timer. “You’re going to have to take some of that off. I need your entire left forearm exposed. Sit down.”
After removing his cape and giving it an awkward fold that was more rolling it in a pile that would stay on the seat he had been waiting in, Nandor moved over to the pumpy hydraulic chair. He gave it a little spin while Azra’s back was turned, then started to roll up his sleeve.
It would be easy enough to hide under his clothes, Nandor thought to himself. His sleeves were normally long and billowing. It wasn’t that he thought there was anything wrong with getting a timer; it was just those dickheads Laszlo and Nadja did not have an ounce of classical romance in them, and they would tease him mercilessly if they found out about it. Well, Laszlo would, Nadja would probably just openly pity him, which was worse. He didn’t even want to think of the ammunition it might give Colin Robinson.
None of them understood the emptiness he felt.
Nandor had been married before, of course. He had 37 wives, and most of the time they were enough to keep him from feeling lonely. He loved most of them, but doubted any of them were the true match to his soul. He had never considered things like that back then; there was no time. Now Nandor had had nothing but hundreds of years of time. Did he even have a Bella to his Edward, or was he doomed to walk this Earth alone in darkness forever? He sighed, staring at the photos of success stories framed upon the wall, then was startled out of his thoughts when he felt something wet on his arm.
“It’s just an alcohol wipe,” Azra said, smiling and dropping it into the trash. “You are jumpy. It’s okay, it doesn’t really hurt. Just a little tiny-” She tapped the inside of his wrist with her finger nail. “Prick! And then it’s done.” She was really cute herself, tiny with a massive ponytail of tight brown curls. There was a timer prominently displayed on her own wrist, counting down with 7 years, 13 days, 2 hours and 2 seconds to go.
“I was pleased to be able to come here at this time,” he said. “It is unusual. All of the other timer establishments seem to close hours earlier. I work at my regular human job at night.”
Azra was now looking at Nandor’s face with consideration, her face having lost some of that shiny customer service facade. “I understand that some people keep…odd hours.” She paused, then looked down to mark his wrist with a felt-tipped marker. “We don’t get many of your type in here.” The pen dragged purple in two x’s over his skin. “But I’m glad when we do. It can be a comfort, after being alone for so long.”
“What?”
“Huh?” Azra picked up the gun and continued as if she hadn’t said anything. “This is the insertion gun. I have just inserted your timer here.” She pointed to it. “The gun pierces the top two layers of your skin and also releases the locking mechanism so that the timer is secured firmly right above your wrist. Once fully inserted, you should hold down this button-” She pointed to the one on her own timer. “For five full seconds. At that point, the light should come on. It could take fifteen to thirty seconds to boot up. Once it boots up, it should display a countdown clock that leads to the exact moment you will meet your soulmate. Numbers will display only if your soulmate also has a timer. If your soulmate does not currently have an active timer, the countdown clock will be blank. There are no refunds regardless of the result of your timer. Are you ready?”
“Freddie ready,” Nandor said, sticking out his wrist and shaking it around. Azra reached out and extended his other wrist, the one with the purple markings, and held it steady.
“Like I said, just a prick.” She placed it against his skin. “One, two-”
On three, Nandor almost jumped back. It was a quick process, and now it was attached to his wrist. Azra leaned forward and pressed a tiny button on the side, and together they watched it blink to life.
27 hours, 54 minutes, 17 seconds.
“Oh,” said Azra.
“Is that good?” said Nandor, still not entirely confident that he understood the technology properly. When he had first heard about them, he had assumed them fictional and then assumed them some kind of witch’s spell. However, with the help of Marion, the librarian at the Great Kills Library, he had been able to connect to the World Wide Web and read all about the timers. Informational sections and warnings on the official website, forum posts of personal experiences, scientific data that he had absolutely no understanding of. The stories were what kept his interest. He wanted a story.
“It’s soon,” Azra said. “That means it is tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.” Well, that was a story. Shit.
Guillermo was young when timers became a thing. They were just suddenly everywhere, which they kind of had to be. There was no point to the product if a large majority of people didn’t buy into it. His mother was not one of those people. She laughed at the idea of soulmates, and laughed more when little Guillermo asked her if his dad had been hers. “Your greatest love story should be with yourself,” she said, cupping his cheek and kissing his forehead.
After he left, Guillermo’s mother had purged all pictures of his dad from their photo albums and Guillermo had rescued his favorites to keep in a red pencil case in his bedside drawer. His father with his eighties mustache and mirrored aviators as he held Silvia de la Cruz’s then-tiny waist. Silvia held a cigarette delicately between two fingers and had placed between his two lips to smoke. Guillermo had never known his mother to smoke.
There were the wedding pictures, Silvia smiling so wide under her multi-layered tulle veil and her permed, Aquanetted crown. Pictures of her pregnant with him leaning an ear to her belly, pictures of them sending secret smiles to each other in the background of Guillermo’s birthday party.
Guillermo was not exactly sure when these kinds of pictures stopped for good, but he was ten when his father packed up most of his things and moved to California. It was confusing and felt like Guillermo’s life had gone from normal to broken apart in the span of a few days. His father promised there would be summer visits, and his mother seemed to want to rewrite their entire history, as if his father had never existed.
That first summer visit, Guillermo learned more about why his father left. He learned about his father’s timer, and he learned about Teresa, with her bright red lipstick and dyed black hair and a ball python named Artemis. He was angry at them for breaking up his family, but it was undeniable over the three weeks he spent in the small Fresno apartment his father and Teresa shared- they were soulmates. He had never seen his father like this, and the resentment couldn’t override his curiosity. Soulmates were real, they could be identified and Guillermo wanted to know as soon as possible so that he didn’t make the same mistake his parents did.
Guillermo’s father and Teresa liked to go out a lot, places Guillermo wasn’t allowed. He watched a lot of TV and movies during his visits because of this. His dad didn’t really seem to care what he watched the way his mother did. She never actively told him to turn something off, but the way she clicked her tongue and spoke of things being spiritually harmful made Guillermo feel so guilty that he turned it off anyway. Teresa had a stack of VHS tapes that Guillermo had never seen. He spent weekdays they were at work and weekend nights they were out partying alone, with a bowl of 3D Doritos and the VCR to keep him company. Lots of classic horror, Edward Scissorhands, Hairspray, The Thing. Rocky Horror Picture Show he watched in stops and starts because he kept having the feeling someone would open the door and admonish him for watching it. Maybe his mother, a priest, Jesus Christ himself?
His favorite, however, was Interview with the Vampire. Antonio Banderas as Armand was a revelation, in more ways than one.
Guillermo got his timer as soon as he was able to- legally, he could have gotten it at fifteen, but he had to wait until he was sixteen and five months. That was how long it took him to get his first job and earn enough money for the device. It had been his main goal in working in the first place. Working at Carvel sucked and his manager was an asshole and the other employees were weirdly cliquey, but it was all worth it the day he was able to count out the two hundred and fifty dollars he had saved from his paychecks that he needed to get his device installed.
He had been nervous, of course. There was always the off chance that he didn’t even have a soulmate. There was also no guarantee of when- the timer could come on and it could be fifty years. Guillermo had heard of that. Fifty years.
It was still a disappointment, however, when it flickered on and started flashing blank lines. This wasn’t the end of the world- it just meant his soulmate didn’t currently have a timer. It was anticlimactic, though. He had spent all of that money and didn’t really have anything to show for it. He hadn’t even told his mother about his plans. If he had a time to share, it would have been an easier conversation- see, look, there is someone for me and this is exactly when I am going to meet them. Isn’t that worth it? Instead, Guillermo took to wearing long sleeves even though it was the middle of summer. And he waited.
And waited.
And waited.
He graduated high school still showing no countdown. He met his first boyfriend, Adam, at work around the same time. Adam thought romcoms were brain rot, Valentine’s Day was an invention of the Hallmark company and timers were a scam. He once teased Guillermo so hard about seeing the Twilight series on his bookshelf that Guillermo hid them under his bed after his boyfriend left. He seemed to like Guillermo enough, though, and Guillermo liked being liked. He liked having someone to hold his hand out in public and he liked having someone to text on his breaks and he liked being able to say, “Oh, just hanging out with my boyfriend,” when asked about his plans.
Still, the blank timer grated at Guillermo. He had to know. How could he fully settle into a relationship with this big unknown in the way? After a summer of vague suggestion, more direct wheedling and a few fights, Adam relented. Guillermo booked the appointment and they went together to watch him get the timer. He held his breath as they waited for the numbers to blink to life, and wondered if this could be his moment.
It was not.
Their relationship didn’t last long after that, most likely because, after all of his reluctance and insistence that timers were bullshit and meaningless, Adam was suddenly all in about meeting his non-Guillermo soulmate just three months from then.
Guillermo started college and needed to pay for it. He had quit Carvel because fuck working with your ex, plus he was sick of frozen dairy and needed something closer to school. He met a friend in his introductory sculpture class that worked at Panera Bread and said she could get him on there, too. If Guillermo had thought that people were shitty about ice cream, it was nothing compared to how ballistic they went about their You Pick Twos. Within a month he was so sick of terrible teenagers who arrived in messy hoards, his power-tripping managers and flaky coworkers who would let the mac and cheese explode in the microwave every goddamn time, if they even showed up.
Still, it was work, and it wasn’t particularly hard. He could turn his brain off and daydream while going about his drudgery, often the only way Guillermo made it through shifts.
It was a terrible Tuesday evening and some woman was bitching him out about the condiment level on her sandwich. Apparently it was ‘sloppy’ and ‘mayonnaise-soaked’, even though she had 100% asked for extra mayo when Guillermo took her order just a few minutes before.
“I just would think that I come in here often enough to have a sandwich made properly every once in a while. It’s frustrating because it makes me feel disrespected, I’ve spent a lot of money here and I know it is not you in particular but I am just so frustrated with the service here. It has been slipping and it feels like you don’t care, you guys are asleep at the wheel-”
“I’m sorry, I really can get a manager for you if you’ve had trouble.” Guillermo looked around for his shift leader, Eric. He was absolutely nowhere to be found, and Guillermo could only stay rooted to the spot and continue to take what this lady was dishing out if he had no one else to tap in. He tried to look over at his coworker, Abby, but she avoided his gaze. You’re alone on this one. Guillermo felt himself start to zone out.
“I’m not trying to make a scene; I just want some basic consideration. I need to know that-”
There was a beep.
Angela of the sloppy sandwich stopped mid-sentence. She and Guillermo both stared at his arm, the source of the extremely distinctive beep. All of the annoyance Guillermo had felt was immediately traded out for a tidal wave of anxiety and disbelief. His timer...his timer had just registered a countdown. He started to hold his arm out. It was shaking noticeably. The customer leaned forward slightly, distracted from her former rantings and eager for a peek.
“How long have you been waiting?”
“Three years,” Guillermo said, voice unsteady. “Three years. Three and a half, really.”
“...well, are you going to…?”
Guillermo nodded. His felt like he might vibrate out of his body, this was what he had been waiting for, but now that the time was here and he was going to find out and he would always share this moment with Angela-who-had-been-yelling-at-him-about-her-Bacon-Turkey-Bravo. He flipped his wrist.
27 hours, 54 minutes, 17 seconds.
“What?!”
He had a day. He had a fucking day.
“A day!” Angela said, and then by some miracle, turned and went back to her table to eat her sandwich that she had been complaining about so passionately just moments before.
Guillermo turned to Abby to tell her that he needed to go to the bathroom for a moment, then didn’t even wait for her answer before turning on his heels to go hide out in a stall. He needed to catch his breath. Clear his head. Stare at his wrist for five minutes straight, just watching the numbers that were finally there tick closer and closer to the rest of his life.
Nandor’s nerves were shot. He had expected more time. Yes, technically he had had 747 years of waiting time already, but he hadn’t really figured out what it was he really wanted until like...a year or two ago.
Nandor was panicking. He really wanted to eat before meeting his soulmate, just in case. If they were a human, he didn’t want to sully their first meeting by the teeniest possible possibility of him eating them. After all, his was sure any human soulmate of his would be one tasty morsel indeed. Just for the sake of a non-awkward first meeting, it would be best for Nandor to slake his bloodlust first and then go meet his beloved.
Taking a look at his watch, he still had twenty minutes. That was plenty of time. He could just pick something up on the way...wherever he was going. How was he even supposed to know where to go to meet this soulmate? He should have asked Azra for more details. He still had the pamphlet in the inner pocket of his cloak, and he stood under a streetlight trying to read for further instructions. There were none.
There weren’t many people out on the street. It was the height of summer and a heat wave had everyone seeking the comfort of air conditioning. Even at this late hour, Nandor could tell that the heat was stifling. It wasn’t something he was truly bothered by, but it was obviously enough to keep his potential blood supply hidden away.
The minutes were ticking by, and Nandor was getting truly desperate. He was passing a grouping of many shops, but most of the doors were barred. He did see the light still on inside of a Gamestop, normally a plentiful resource for virgin blood, but his request to enter was just met with a, “No, dude, we’re closing, I’m sorry.”
He arrived at the business at the end of the brick line of stores. Giant posters of loaves of breads and pastries marked it as a bakery, as was the large sign above. Pan-era Bread. Their wares did not interest Nandor. What did interest him was the tall, spindly man out front smoking a cigarette, wearing a green apron and partial hat that signaled him as employed under the Panera Bread.
He didn’t look particularly tasty, and the smoke would likely give him a gross aftertaste, but he would do in a pinch. One quick drain and Nandor would be off to meet his soulmate.
“Hello, may I come inside?” Nandor asked, already headed towards the doors.
Spindly man, whose name tag read Eric, looked up at Nandor with an obvious grimace. He looked down at his watch and then blew smoke out of his mouth. “Yeah, I guess. We are technically open for five more minutes, if you really have to.” He dropped the cigarette and crushed it under his foot. Nandor opened the door with a cloaked arm and held it ajar.
“Please,” Nandor said, eyeing up the exposed length of his stubbly neck before looking either way to make sure that they were alone. “After me.”
Less than two minutes to go. Guillermo felt like his heart was going to break through his body. His eyes darted around as he walked the bags of garbage to the dumpster. He didn’t know how he would possibly meet his soulmate in the alleyway behind Panera Bread, and he didn’t think he wanted to, but he still kept a watchful gaze out as he swung the bags into the trash.
Back inside, he was now under a minute left. He walked to the front and stared at the front door. He didn’t know where Eric had gone, probably fucked off to go smoke and that was grand- Guillermo didn’t want him here for this. He felt a sort of calm come over him as he stepped out from behind the counter and moved closer to the entrance. There was no need to be nervous. This was all out of his hands. It was happening. It was his soulmate. They were probably just as nervous waiting for him. Guillermo peered out the glass. Thirty seconds to go, and he didn’t even see anyone approaching. The parking lot was empty besides Eric’s car. What-
There was suddenly a loud banging in the back. Guillermo’s head jerked around. Following the sound, he was led right to the walk-in freezer. The walk-in freezer? Who would even- but there were only seconds in the single digits now, so Guillermo knew this had to be it. His soulmate. The one he had waiting years to meet. Who hopefully had dreamed of and craved this moment just as much as Guillermo had, fantasized about every detail, ready to dedicate their life to-
Guillermo grabbed the freezer handle and pulled.
An intimidating figure of a man towered in front of him, dark and cloaked and terrible. Deep crimson stained his lips and skin and dripped from his facial hair. When he saw Guillermo, his mouth went slack and Guillermo could spot the pointed tips of two fangs. A drop of blood ran down the tooth, then landed on his lower lip. Behind him, Eric’s body lay motionless and broken.
Both of their timers went off.