Owl Dreams

by John T. Biggs

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Hashilli ran over a list of clever statements, things that might impress Marie so much she’d let him fill her up with babies. He’d tried the best ones already, and they failed miserably. As far as Hashilli could tell, women’s passions were mostly fueled with small talk. Things that made them cry also made them hot. But some sad topics gave them headaches. That explained why drug companies manufactured aspirin as well as birth control pills, but it wouldn’t help a magic man get laid.

  Tricky business, distracting women long enough to fertilize their eggs. Bring them flowers, give them chocolates, buy them jewelry, all while maintaining an erection. Act romantic—think nasty thoughts. It was a pornographic juggling act.

  Women had it easy. They played hard to get, then when the time finally came, they just lay there pretending to enjoy themselves. A few grunts and moans and a little hyperventilation. That’s all it took. Mother Nature is a bitch.

  In the old days a witch would waste no time on courtship. He’d hold his woman at knifepoint while they both sipped an herbal aphrodisiac. Chemical motivators were quick, unlike romance, and highly predictable. Too bad Grandfather hadn’t taught him herbal magic. Hashilli’s next best hope was western science, and he had little confidence in that.

  American scientific wizards devoted their lives to perfecting bad ideas. Neurologists studied the chemistry of the brain in order to make tranquilizers. Physiologists analyzed the mechanics of menstruation so they could render healthy young girls sterile and make reproductively incompetent women give birth to litters. Physicists observed the nuances of subatomic particles and used their newfound knowledge for bombs and video games. Aerospace engineers launched satellites devoted exclusively to cell phone service and high definition television. So little to admire in the accomplishments of western science.

 

  Hashilli had been amused when the Nobel Prize in Medicine was shared by two pioneers in the chemistry of Viagra, but now he understood the importance of the work. One hundred milligrams was the maximum then surprise Marie Ferraro at the cabin. His plan was elegant in its simplicity. The only critical issue was the timing. It would take an hour for the Viagra molecules to open up the vascular floodgates of his penis. Then he would charge through the front door, and take her where he found her. He would seem like more of a gentleman if he escorted her to the bedroom and ravished her on the high tech air mattress he’d purchased for that purpose, but the time for social niceties had passed. He had to complete the act before Marie could talk the tumescence out of him.

  Was she doing it on purpose? It was hard for Hashilli to make a rational judgment about sexual motivations. He hadn’t experienced any of those since his teenage years, and even then, his drive had been as pale and weak as green tea.

  He didn’t know how Marie was able to send him into a frenzy of lust. Part of it was the things she said, and part of it was the way she said them. Her scent played a significant role in Hashilli’s level of desire, but surely the woman couldn’t control that. Her facial expressions, the way she crossed her legs, the way she swayed as she moved across the room. Everything about her worked together.

  Marie filled Hashilli’s mind with images from X-rated movies and dialogues from steamy romance novels. He’d devoted time to both these forms of entertainment, not for titillation, but for enlightenment. He’d always wanted to understand the motivations of ordinary people so he could exploit their weaknesses. Hashilli watched human mating rituals the way a biologist observed the courtship behaviors of exotic birds. He’d seen what people do and what they say, but had never understood why until he found himself caught in the sticky residue of sexual attraction.

  Like a mouse in a glue trap. Wriggling and struggling didn’t lead to freedom; it just made him tired.

  Within seconds after swallowing two one-hundred-milligram blue tablets, Hashilli felt a tingling sensation in his groin. It had to be a placebo effect, the expectation of success, but he was satisfied with that for now, anything that kept him rigid enough to complete the distasteful act.

  It was interesting—copulation didn’t seem so undesirable while his penis was in its reproductive-ready-state. He imagined what Marie must look like naked. Best not to think of such things in too much flawless detail. An unanticipated birthmark, an unsightly scar, a collection of varicose veins on the real Marie might upset the applecart. Hashilli wondered how many times he would have to ravish her before a baby witch was conceived. No matter. He parked his SUV, crowded the pill bottle into his pocket beside his erection, and made his way to the aluminum jon boat hidden in the cattails. Maybe those old men with their chemistry sets deserved the Nobel Prize after all.

  Walking with an erection was difficult. Hashilli had some dim memories of the experience during his postpubescent years.

  Homo erectus. Interesting name for primitive man. He wondered if he had inadvertently discovered the reason early humans walked in the Leaning Tower of Pizza posture that is so frequently represented in speculative anthropological illustrations.

  By the time Hashilli navigated his boat halfway to the cabin, he’d already begun to wonder how long he could perform before the Viagra lost its punch.

  At that moment his stamina showed no signs of having limits. God bless those little blue erection pills. He pictured himself taking her in all manner of positions, some only vaguely within the realm of possibility.

  Just how flexible was a woman like Marie? Hashilli would discover that for himself. The owls in the forest would be awakened by her cries of ecstasy. They would flutter around the cabin and perch in the trees. They would carry news of his exploits to the spirit world.

  He stopped for a moment to catch his breath. His chest felt tight. There was pressure behind his eyes almost as extreme as the pressure behind the fly of his pants. The dull harbinger of a headache found a home in the occipital region of his brain and worked its way forward. The light from the evening sun took on a blue tint that made Hashilli squint, even though his boat was in the shadows. Perhaps he should have started with a lower dosage.

  The side effects didn’t hamper his erection. It was larger than ever, if that were possible, and somewhat painful. There had been an obscure warning about erections lasting longer than four hours. Hashilli had brushed that off as false advertising. Now he wasn’t sure.

  Would sex metabolize the drug? He thought it might. He remembered reading something about stroke and heart attack and asking your doctor if you are healthy enough for sexual activity, but he couldn’t believe that would be necessary. Not for a man of power.

  What was the difference between an obsession and a hallucination? One was a thought process that was stuck in a single gear, and the other was a complex image in the portions of the brain devoted to the five senses. Every doctor of the mind understood the difference, and the famous doctor Moon was no exception. But witches knew that elements of the mind had borders as fuzzy and transitional as the late, great state of Yugoslavia.

  For a moment, as Hashilli’s trolling motor pushed him up the Kiamichi River toward his cabin, he thought he sensed Marie on the shore.

  There was a flurry of movement among the reeds, probably a muskrat or a beaver. Then he saw flash of color. Was it the color of Marie’s blouse? Hashilli couldn’t remember what kind of clothing she was wearing when he saw her last. There was only one consistent image of Marie he could hold in his mind, and that image was stark naked.

  With breasts that pointed at the sky and a butt that looked like two soap bubbles.

  He drew a deep breath. The Viagra had opened his nasal passages and activated sensory nerves that had been held in reserve for just such a moment. The scent of Marie Ferraro was in the wind. If Hashilli’s headache and his erection didn’t hurt so much, he could have pinpointed her location with the accuracy of a bloodhound. As it was he could not distinguish reality from fantasy.

  “Marie!” he called out to the disturbance on the shore. No answer, and the pressure cooker of lus
t cranked itself up another few pounds per square inch. At that moment, he needed Marie Ferraro more than he had ever imagined possible. Was this what ordinary people described as love? If so, he couldn’t wait to get the feeling out of his system. And there was only one way to do that.

  He cranked the trolling motor up to as many R.P.M. as the battery would produce and set a direct course for relief.

  Hashilli weaved his way through the underbrush much the same way a male cougar might approach a large, dangerous female who has come into season. He had never felt so aggressive, not even when he committed murder. He’d always understood sex and violence were soul mates. Creating life and ending it were two sides of the same coin, and when a man like Hashilli tossed that coin into the air, it was anybody’s guess which side would come up. He drew his pistol and approached the cabin, holding the weapon in two hands like a S.W.A.T. commander preparing to capture a dangerous criminal or a rapist about to have his way with an innocent woman.

  Was any woman really innocent?

  “Marie!” Hashilli’s voice cracked when he called her name. His salivary glands alternately ran amok then shut down completely.

  He charged into the cabin, crashing through the flimsy paneled door instead of opening it. He called Marie’s name again, sorted his genitalia into a more comfortable position. Most of the little cabin’s interior was visible from his position, and the object of his desire was nowhere to be seen.

  Hashilli saw the excavation in his kitchen wall. He walked over to the pile of lath and plaster on the floor and inspected the debris between hyperventilated gasps of country air.

  “Marie!” Hashilli’s voice squeaked like a rusty hinge that no amount of oil would fix. He charged through the cabin, inspecting and re-inspecting everything, opening cabinetry, searching behind canned goods in the pantry, looking behind every container in the ice box, as if Marie might have been reduced to the size of a Kosher dill pickle or transformed into an octagonal glass salt shaker.

  Gone.

  The woman had taken the magic bullet. She had in her possession the object that had transformed him from an ordinary human infant into a Choctaw sorcerer. He had to follow her. He had to get that bullet back before she worked mischief with it.

  Am I too late?

  It didn’t matter. Hashilli couldn’t follow her right then, no matter what the danger. The pressure of his lust had reached the boiling point. His groin throbbed even more than his head and there was just one way to let the pressure off. He knew exactly what he had to do; some skills are indelibly burned into the memory.

  Hashilli went through the pantry desperately looking for some product that displayed a picture of a woman. There was a box of Wheaties, the alleged breakfast of champions. On the box was a female gymnast completing an uneven parallel bar routine. She wasn’t Hashilli’s type, exactly, but she was better than Aunt Jemima.