1. Before handling the body, tie a head of garlic to the lining of your coat. This is for protection: even her smell cannot touch you.
2. Dig a hole nine feet deep into good, solid ground. Nine is the number of days it will take for her soul to reach heaven. Pray she does not linger. Assuming she is not especially late or (heaven forbid) too early, she will wake the night after she is buried. Ideally, she will spend a night cracking open the wood of her coffin, and eight nights crawling her way up through the dirt. Also ideally, she will have at least a foot of ground left to go before her will runs out. Proper burial is the first line of defense.
3. In the days leading up to her burial, make a net to place in the coffin. Make sure it is made up of strong, convoluted knots. When she wakes she will have to stop and untangle each one before she can move on.
4. Bury her with an iron hook around her throat. When she wakes she will start forward, reaching for the net or, if mourning made you negligent, straight for the lid of the coffin. Struggle enough and the iron will strangle her. Even better: one wrong move and the hook’s spike will skewer her throat.
5. After nine days have passed, dig her back up again. Bring a wooden stake. Make sure it is very sharp, and preferably made of white oak. Bring a crowd of people—it is always harder to face monsters on your own. Spectators provide an incentive to not bend, to not cry.
6. In the event that she is dripping blood. That it is spilling from her mouth to pool in the bottom of the coffin. That it is staining the wood red. That she is bloated with it, her belly pregnant with rot, if the stitches that once sewed her mouth closed have burst and she is open, her body nothing but a gaping wound leaking and saturated with—
7. In the event that she is dripping blood, thus making her vampirism clear for all to see, strike once with your stake into the center of her belly. Only strike once: another blow will only bring her back again.
8. Do not be alarmed if she screams.
9. Do not be alarmed if her screams follow you, if they echo in your ears. If when you try to fall asleep at night the only thing behind your eyelids is the cursed husk that once was her body. It is an unfortunate truth that vampire slaying is sometimes followed by nightmares, nightmares made all the more terrible by kinder memories: how soft that now bloated flesh once felt, how salty-sweet it tasted, the shiver of those unnaturally long nails tracing goose bumps into your skin when they were freshly manicured and not crusted with blood. How those teeth—they weren’t always so sharp—sunk into your neck. It is an unfortunate truth that killing monsters sometimes comes with hard lessons. You may learn what it is to see a lover deflate so completely, crumple into herself after one simple strike, her neck already mangled and her hands tangled in rope. You may learn that all beauty rots, once it’s put into the ground. You may learn that garlic doesn’t always stop the smell.
Bankston Creech (she/they) is from Alabama but studies in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. She's interested in fantasy, horror, history, and lives for the intersection of all three. You can find them on twitter talking about queer monsters at @femmedirt.