The books opened one at a time revealing

The books opened one at a time revealing empty pages where once there'd been masterpieces. Gridley smiled and glanced at the ink on her hands. She fingered a spiral on the floor

and watched the sunlight playing with the shadows on the curtains. A low humming came from the corner where Gridley's sister sat, stroking the furry tail of her pet cat, Tamsin

was astonished. The morbidity had it's own life here. Gloom walked around the place like a shunned teenager. Now I was going to add to the mournful still life by telling them

I was pregnant with a vampire-werewolf-zombie baby, and I, too, was a member of the undead. My flesh had already begun to rot, and my cognitive abilities had slowly diminished to

the point where thinking about Fermat's last theorem caused me to hemorrhage and my memories of receiving the Field medal faded. Would the zombie-were-vampire in my belly do maths?

I hoped my baby would grow up to be a great mathematician like his vampire mommy or a great musician like his zombie-werewolf daddy. Maybe he'd take after

his mutant freak grandad and become a tennis player, or follow the footsteps of his albino bigfoot uncle and go exploring the rainforest. I would have been proud. But he ended up

tits up in some Louisiana swampwater. 'GatorGrub' as the locals so colorfully refer to the dearly departed. He pumped gas for most of his adult life and spent the weekends

sacrificing it in the name of Steve Irwin. Normal-sized gators had failed to resurrect the aussie thus far. He thought this attempt would also be ill-fated, but then... "Crikey!!!"