Gwendolyn Kiste
Relationship Status Ten seconds after Jack changed his relationship status from ‘Married’ to ‘It’s Complicated’, his phone chirped. Then it chirped again. And for the next two hours, it didn’t stop chirping. He considered changing his name and number too. But then Vianca couldn’t call and remind him to pick up Eve on Friday. Jack loved how every time she left a voicemail, his ex still intimated a Transylvanian accent just to make him laugh. Despite their split, he couldn’t miss that. When he finally checked his profile, one-hundred-and-seventeen comments awaited him. “I didn’t know I had that many acquaintances,” he moaned. It was bad enough convincing his friends that dating a vampire wasn’t some fad. It was even harder corralling everyone for the midnight wedding. It was abject misery when none of his fraternity buddies would let their kids play with his beautiful (and human and entirely harmless) daughter. But in the eight years he spent with Vianca, nothing was worse than reading the virtual gloating over their breakup. ‘i told u not to date that bloodsucking trollop’ ‘She prolly broke your heart cause she doesn’t have one. Not a beating one anyhow.’ ‘I heard she cheated on you. Time to talk to your doc about VTDs. LOL’ ‘What happened? Did she leave you for Dracula?’ On top of everything, Jack worried Vianca’s family might stumble onto the sanguivoriphobic display in their newsfeeds. Even if he sometimes descended into the “I-want-to-toss-my-ex-into-the-nearest-sunbeam” stage of grief—especially when his daughter Eve called to say goodnight and Jack heard Vianca’s new beau tittering in the background—he had never minded her family. And while his social life might improve if he purged his friends list of the undead, he couldn’t bring himself to delete them. They loved Eve and deserved the chance to see all her coming-of-age benchmarks. Plus, it wasn’t as if they could attend festivities like her first day of school given the sunlight-equals-dust situation. So Jack sent a message to apologize for his friends’ behavior. It was easy to find the family on his list. Since they didn’t show up on film (or in pixels), none of them had real profile pictures. A crow represented his ex-mother-in-law, an old castle was his ex-father-in-law, and a sunset—complete with a requisite ironic caption— belonged to his ex-sister-in-law. As usual, they responded in minutes. ‘Oh, honey, I’m so sorry about everything you’re going through. Vianca made the biggest mistake of her un-life when she left you.’ ‘Son, you’re still part of our family as far as we’re concerned. Let’s go out for cigars soon.’ ‘I’m having a Sunday dinner. You should bring Eve. My heartbreaker sister is coming too, but right now, we like you more.’ AFTER THE PAUSE VOLUME 2 ISSUE 1
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