"Target Practice" by Eliot S. Ku

My son’s latest venture is hunting down and slaying vampires.

From my seat on the porch, I’m watching him fling wooden stakes at a propped-up life-sized cardboard cutout of my sister that has been sitting around collecting dust since we’d used it for her 40th birthday party, the last time I had any contact with her. 

My son’s getting better. Just now he nailed her body double directly between the eyes, although technically I think the stake is supposed to pierce the heart. 

I take a sip of beer and then a drag from my cigarette. Together, they taste just like life does after a certain age—what I hid from, but suspected all along, came true: my life held no grander purpose, and everyone has been a disappointment.

I’m tempted to ask my son how he’s going to be able to tell a vampire apart from a regular person, especially if the vampire is hiding in plain sight, but then I think that given his object of choice for target practice, he’s probably on the right track.

Ah, there goes the stake into my sister’s heart. At this rate, my son will soon be ready to take on his own father—no need for a cardboard cutout of him.

Eliot S. Ku is a physician who lives in New Mexico with his wife and two children. His writing has appeared in Whiskey Tit, Maudlin House, Carmen et Error, HAD, and Bending Genres, among other places. You can read more at www.eliotsku.com