“Give me your telephone.” She did. Mr. Clean entered his information into it and texted himself. “Within 24 hours, you will receive a text message from me. I have not put my name in your phone, so you will have to trust a strange number. Likewise, I will not reveal myself when your nephew returns. This is a dangerous town for good samaritans and Satanists alike.”
Shana's eyes showed gratitude while her lip quivered in impending sobbing.
“Good day, Shana. Thank you for making me save that man today.”
When Mr. Clean left, Shana vomited. She went into that Lakewood 7-Eleven and purchased a Monster Energy drink, knowing it would be the only taste stronger than her own spew. In fact, that made her vomit again, as soon the caffeine and sugar rush proved too much for her frazzled psyche.
Chapter Two
Suze and Nate dug the vodka bottle out of the freezer hours ago, and by now there was only a shot or two left. They had made desperate love on any surface they found themselves near between anxious crying bouts.
There was a moment when Suze felt a peculiar swelling in her heart. It was when Nate was inside of her as she was sprawled on top of the dining room table. That swelling was one she remembered from when they were trying to conceive, that irrepressible feeling that their coital unity, their simple biological ecstasy, their mutual quest for climax, was for a future greater than either of them could actualize alone, one filled with hope, joy. It was a pregnancy of its own, a pregnancy of the soul.
Nate felt powerful, masculine for the first time in god knows how long, as he lifted her ankles up to his shoulder and put them together, exposing a new angle of attached between his belly and her thighs. The wonderful sensation of losing control of half of her body to her husband doubled the electric delight of the penis' head rubbing in circles around her g spot, tapping it directly whenever Nate would slip out a little bit. Their minds travelled to a plane of cosmic chaos as they lost themselves and all of their earthly worries in a singular, pure pursuit.
Shana walked into the house around sundown to find them in the middle of this scene. She yelped a small yelp and backed out of view of the dining room. They had not noticed her, or if they had they kept going without a care to give. Shana, out of curiosity, out of her own grief-induced unmooring, inched her head around the corner of the doorway to the dining room. It had been years since she wondered what the act looked like between her sister and brother-in-law, and frankly she figured they were more or less asexual at this point. Not the case.
She saw her sister's face covered in sweat as if she had been sitting in a parked car during a heatwave. Her breasts fell to either side of her ribs and moved at their own rhythm, one contrary to the shared gyration of the lovers's pelvises. Nate's ass was desiccated, a little hairy, but his legs and arms showed definition. She never knew that Nate had a tattoo on the back of his right shoulder. It looked like the emblem for the motorcycle club he used to be part of: a skull in a crown of thorns.
Voyeurism always aroused Shana. Nothing is a bigger turn-on than the forbidden, after all. It wasn't that she fantasized about catching her sister in the act, but that there is a base, human drive which makes even the suggestion of the sexual an erotic experience. It's why they make sexy advertisements for cars and alcohol. The mind is remarkably vulnerable to such suggestion thanks to that pesky sex drive of ours. Once the erotic seed is planted, there are only so many ways to root it out.
It was dark when Shana's libido guided her out of the house. Contrary to Mr. Clean's advice, she bee-lined for Lake View Cemetery, a walk for which she somehow found energy despite her day walking more of Cleveland than she could possibly recall.
It was a humid spring night, the kind when the clouds form the kind of thick, grey blanket that the moon cannot shine through, which reflects the street light glow. It gave the typically nightmarish post-industrial scape of nocturnal Cleveland a pleasant, dream-like quality. It was a glow, a luminous gossamer which draped the bewitched city that May evening.
Shana didn't play any of her cemetery games. She didn't wander around looking for details that may have prompted lines of poetry when she was a teenager. She didn't speculate on the lives of the people buried beneath given gravestones. No, just as she darted for Lake View Cemetery, she darted for her post-life lover's stone cottage.
As she approached it, she saw a figure laying on the ground, squirming. The figure was in about as good shape as a horse with a broken leg trapped in a gorge. This broken creature, she would soon find, was the very subject of her recent infatuations, that beautiful vampire who bled machismo instead of red.
She got down on her knees next to him and heard an other-worldly moan. The agony rang as a high-pitched bleating sounded like it should have been octaves lower, like the cry of a bear that just huffed a balloon full of helium. Baker's eye lids were opening just enough to expose his crystalline eyes, and shutting in split seconds before Shana could discern what direction they were pointing in.
In her hands, Shana held Baker's head and brushed his hair with her fingers. Not a word was uttered, she couldn't imagine that he would understand a word of what she said, much less gather the speech up to respond. She just ran her fingers through his scalp and cooed.
After a few minutes of this gentle treatment, Baker started to come to. “Sh... Sh... Sha...”
Her finger found his lips to shush him. He groaned lower.
“In. Please. In.” The door to the mausoleum was just slightly ajar, as if Baker had opened it just enough to crawl out.
Naturally, it took considerable effort for Shana to move the stone slab, the mausoleum door. There were a number of positions she tried but whenever she was able to exert adequate pressure, her feet slipped against the graveyard grass. The best luck came when she took off her shoes and dug her heels into the dirt, shoving all of her weight against the slab with her shoulder. It budged just enough for her to drag another being in.
Baker was weak, incredibly weak, the kind of weak you see in a movie when a man has been crawling through the desert for days on end without water. There was one thing she knew may help the pathetic creature.
Shana had no purse on her, and her pockets were empty save for a phone and keys. One key looked sharper than the others and with it, she began carving at her thigh. The key scratched away the surface layer of skin in the area she tried, but little more. With fury, she dug deeper to no avail. Shana was ready to use the key to chip off a fragment of the stone door, she really was, but her hand felt something sharp when she went to go prop herself up. The top digit of her ring finger bled, and the pain was so surprising that for a moment she forget how advantageous her discovery may be. Upon one look, she found shards of glass on the ground, and grabbed the biggest one she could find, unquestioning of from where they fell.
The shard made quick work of opening her skin, and she dragged the vampires mouth to her lacerated thigh. The vampire instinctively lapped and lapped. The tongue movements got no quicker, just kept going. The sign that he was gaining energy, in fact, was that he was able to slither up to her and put his entire mouth around her thigh to suck her syrup more efficiently. When she started to feel light headed, she grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head up to her crotch. A strong sniff of her mellow vinegar made the vampire just a bit more alert.
He nuzzled her cotton panties and could feel the puff of her pubic hair against the tip of his nose when the fabric made contact with her vulva. Baker pushed the narrowest part of the garment to the side with his nose, barely touching his tongue to her lips as he moved his chin up. In a tease, he let the panties slip back into place. She knew by his games that he was revitalized. He repeated the previous motion, but this time giving a big, puppy lap as he raised his chin, making sure to poke her clit with the now-moist, ever chilled tip of his nose. Shana let out a low roar.
Finding a good grip around his cheeks, Shana dragged Baker's face up to hers in order to taste herself on his tongue. No better melange had ever been mixed on
her palette. They kissed short, sensual kisses, taking turns gently sucking on one another's lips. Baker sat askew on his hips, making mouth congress with Shana and fingering her sopping pussy with his cold, dead digits. Whenever he would pull his index and middle finger out from inside her, juice would drip on the mausoleum's stone floor.
Shana reached for his member but he playfully turned away. She lent a seductress' chuckle and reached again. This time he ran his fingers up insider her so quickly that she lost control of her muscle movement. She reached a third time and hit the spot to find...
Nothing.
Nothing.
There was no throbbing priapism, just nothing. Not even a flaccid lizard, just nothing. Baker undid his jeans to show her the patch where the sunlight had sizzled off his dick just the morning before. He pointed to the hole in the skylight, but Shana's attention was lost to terror. She gathered up her pants in panic. On the way out, her thigh collided with the granite podium on which Baker sleeps, inciting her second shiner of the day.
Once again tears lent a sheen to her black eye and through this small torrent, she saw Tom, standing there right by his car. Some godawful music was playing.
“Come with me, babe. You're done with him now.” Mr. Clean was right. Lake View Cemetery was a place to keep away from.
Chapter Three
Some mornings you just can't wake up. Coffee may make your limbs jitter and sunlight may make you squint, but there is a heavy daze which prevents you from being a full human being. This is the sensation that Shana felt during her ride in Tom's car. In one respect, Tom's car was the last place she wanted to be, but in another, she couldn't imagine a single setting where she would want to exist. Existence in totality seemed like a burden. Just days ago, life seemed so sweet but today it was as bitter as a cunnilingus in a nursing home.
Despair was the simple fact of her life. Her soul: a tundra. Eternal love was an eel that wriggled right out from her fingers. Slimy hands were all that was left, and she had no idea how she could ever get a grip. Sensual pleasure would never feel so good again. Well, she could always place a dildo in the freezer, but a sex toy is not the same as a singular man.
Tom was blathering about something other. “Like, that's your issue babe, you don't think about me. What am I, some fucking doofus? This is just like the time you lost the DVD I was supposed to return to Netflix. I still haven't seen the newest Leprechaun movie.”
Cleveland's blooming trees blurred into one slow-moving mass. Children playing on its sidewalks were faceless and the people standing on street corners waiting to cross, standing in front of stores hosing down sidewalks and gabbing with one another, may have well have been lifeless statues erected by the city in some grotesque tribute to life as it once was.
Shana remembered a story that she read in college, an ancient Greek myth about the courtship of gods. Eros had shot the god Apollo with a golden arrow, and Daphne, a nymph, with one of lead. Apollo's arrow made him fall madly for the nymph. Daphne's made her revile the god. Apollo's courtship made Daphne's life hell, and one day as he was in pursuit of her, Daphne pleaded to her father for reprieve. The father turned her into a tree. Shana wished she was a fucking tree.
The car pulled up to a motel.
“Oh, sorry, we should have picked something up, you want anything?”
“No,” replied Shana, with minimal effort used to force air through her larynx to even make a sound.
“Well, I've got some whiskey in the room. You can get a mixer from the vending machine.”
“Ok.”
“They've got Faygo. Woop woop!”
“Ok.”
The room was a mess. What did she expect? The bedsheets look like a raccoon had been scavenging through them for garbage and it was hard to tell but it looked like there was urine in a ginger ale bottle. The television was left on and some Mexican soap opera was playing. Tom didn't know a lick of Spanish, he was probably just enjoying the revealing dresses. She noticed a pile of crumpled cocktail napkins, a sure sign that Tom had been cranking the hog for likely as long has he had been staying at the motel.
“Want some of this Old Granddad, babe?” Shana shrugged and grabbed the two clean glasses that sat besides the bathroom sink. Tom was taking a swig from the bottle on her return, but she placed the glasses down beside each other on the writing desk, grabbed the bottle from Tom's mouth, and poured two fingers of bourbon in each.
She examined the bottle. “Old Granddad. 100 proof. Strong stuff.”
“Babe, it got lonely. You were with that...” Shana's look said, “yeah, that what?” “You were with that vampire and I was just getting torn up.”
A perfunctory nod was all the acknowledgement Shana gave.
“Plus, my old granddad is one of my best friends!” He cackled to himself like a buffoon while Shana downed her glass of straight whiskey and poured another for herself. Tom frantically followed suit as if issued a challenge. Shana drank her second glass of straight whiskey slowly as Tom poured his. She had a hunch that the longer she drank for, the longer Tom would pour, and she was right. Shana poured her third glass while Tom downed his massive second. It was a petite amount that she gave herself, just enough to elevate the buzz into something more serious. When Tom slammed his glass to the table, his feet moved a little as if standing still was too much for balancing.
Tom noticed Shana's black eye. “Hey, your face is fucked up.”
“And yours?”
The bed was a welcome seat for Shana. She crossed her legs and leaned back on one elbow, glass of whiskey in the opposite hand. This was a rather comfortable repose considering the destitute nature of her current environs. She took in the molding on the ceiling, the yellowed floral wallpaper which couldn't have been changed since Reagan was in office. Fact of the matter was that Shana always found something inviting about a shitty motel. Despite its rancidity, or perhaps because of it, the place expected nothing of you. A nice hotel was a luxury, sure, but there was always the sense that you should be lounging in some stiff, waffled bathrobe instead of a t-shirt with no bra under it.
Tom plopped down next to her on the bed, making her whole body bounce and bit of the bourbon jump over the rim of her tumbler. “I've missed you babe.”
Silence.
“I thought I lost you,” he appealed. Shana replied to this with a nonchalant sip. Tom sidled up to her and looked at her scalp as he started playing with her hair. The shards that made up Shana's soul craved whatever contact that would come her way, and she let out a lamb's coo at the first experience of human touch. Tom leaned in to kiss her, the gentleness of which actually made it quite nice. After the first, she leaned towards him for a second.
“One second,” and she placed her hand against his chest. The rest of the whiskey went down her gullet and she chucked the glass to the floor. It bounced against the wall and she chuckled. Tom chuckled too. She pulled him down to the bed and they casually made out, sewing the initial stitches needed to mend broken hearts. On their sides, Shana pulled her head back and examined all of Tom's face. He hadn't shaven in a few days (of course) and his eyes were junkie sunken.
Shana remembered this man. They shared a quiet moment. She brushed his thinning hair with her fingers just as he did with hers a couple of minutes prior. She gripped his Avenged Sevenfold shit between her thumb and forefinger, pulling him towards her lips, her embrace. They snuggled tight and kissed for a while until Tom said,
“I killed that vampire. I killed him for your own good.”
There was no response and Shana made sure to keep her face out of his line of vision since those words alone made tears well in her ducts. He started pecking from her clavicle, up the side of her neck, to behind her ear. He paused briefly on the way when his lips met the scratch marks where the vampire tried to penetrate.
“You didn't kill him,” she breathed.
Tom gave a self-satisfied little huff like a boy who had just won a loogie contest. “Yeah,” he said in between pecks. “I bus
ted that, uhh,” the “uhh” vibrated her skull, “ceiling window? What do you call those ceiling windows?”
“Skylight.”
“Yeah. Climbed right up there and busted it.”
Shana reached under his shirt and felt his belly, his chest, softly scratching his tract of chest hair. “No, you didn't.” She slid her hand down the torso, which incited a little shiver. “You just burned off his cock.” She unbuttoned Tom's fly and travelled farther down. “He ain't got a cock anymore.”
“But I do.” And she grabbed it. It was not very hard on account of the whiskey. She started to stroke it with a backhanded motion and could feel it grow solid in her grip. Her hand constricted ever so subtly with each successive pull. He sprayed humid air all over the side of his face.
“Yes, you do. You do have a cock.” Shana felt Tom's hand slide up her shirt now, on the hunt for a breast to hold. When he found a nipple and flicked it against the tip of his thumb, Shana gasped and whispered, “do you want to know what that cock was like?” Tom's was growing ever tougher in her hand.
Lost in the moment, Tom did not respond.
“Do you? Do you want to know what that cock was like.”
Weakly, wimpily, “No.” It was the refusal of a man afraid of the truth. Shana felt Tom's member start to throb, and the shaft finally most of the way to tumescence. He melted, and as he cupped and rubbed her breast, she did too.
“It was ice cold.” She grabbed his free hand and guided it to the fly of her jeans. The hand was pushed down to the next button as soon as it had undone the one before it. She placed the paw between her the cotton of her panties and the warm skin of her lower abdomen. “Cold as an ice pop that you buy from a truck in the summer.” He fumbled through her bush to find the wet, warm flesh. “And just as refreshing too.” She gave Tom's erection a determined tug, not giving him a second to think.
But still, he processed the deceit. “Stop. Please.” So Shana let go of his hard-on just as he started to rub her. “No I didn't mean that. I meant...” But her return to action derailed him.
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