Love Me or Kill Me

by James P. Alsphert

  “—Remember? Let’s not discuss it, Jane,” I said, admonishing her. “We came in here to hear you croon a tune or so. Ready?” I got out a Lucky Strike and lit it up. Cass watched me intently. “Either of you two want something to drink?”

  “Yeah, I’ll have a beer, thanks,” Jane said.

  I looked at Cass. “Oh, I can’t touch alcohol. Ruins my head. I don’t even see how you can smoke that terrible stuff—inhaling it like that into your lungs. I think smoking is a kind of suicide—a death-wish when people secretly want to hurry along their demise.”

  “Well, aren’t we particular and judgmental? Look, lady, I pick my poisons, you pick yours, okay? What made you think I’m all cozy and happy with my life? Maybe I want to hurry things along a little.”

  She winced a little and then looked away. “You’re right, I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”

  Jane launched into a medium tempo version of Keepin’ Out of Mischief Now and I wanted to make her stop. It was a song Honey had sung one night not all that long ago—in fact, Jane Slaughter had certain tone qualities and inflections that reminded me of Honey a lot. Anyway, the rowdy men in the Bucket of Blood loved it. In sixteen measures of music, Jane had ‘em eating out of her hand.

  The music ended and the men went wild. But Cass had noticed my face as Jane sang. “Who was she? Did you break up or—”

  “—I told you earlier—I don’t want to talk about it. What the hell’s the matter with you girls? I’d appreciate it if you would just…I have my reasons. Let it go at that, okay?”

  “Okay…” Cass had a tone in her voice that made me think for an instant, that she could easily be jealous of other women in my life. Or maybe it was just a crazy notion I got from her voice when she spoke, or the mood I was in from being here in Cambria and standing in a room filled with mostly noisy men who couldn’t give a shit about Jane Slaughter’s singing, in the long run. They just wanted to ogle the face, tits and hair as she sat there at the piano. A pretty girl will do it every time!

  Jane sang a few nice tunes that night. I told her so and she was very grateful that someone had noticed her talent instead of just her body. It was about eleven-thirty when we left The Bucket of Blood and I was thinking how glad I was we didn’t get shanghaied—when I spotted three men in the shadows over by the parking lot. I told the girls to go back inside the tavern, but they refused. I backed them up against the outside wall of The Bucket of Blood. “Now look here,” I whispered firmly. This can go several ways…but I’ve got a feeling those goons over there intend to give us some trouble. They’re the kind of gangsters who play for keeps, you two, so don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.”

  Quickly Cass grabbed both our hands and we fled back into the tavern and out the back exit, almost unnoticed in the crowded, smoke-filled room. Once in the alley she asked us to follow her. “Where in the hell are we going?” Jane asked.

  “Into Roc Rava’s vegetable garden,” Cass answered. We ran down the alley until we came to a back gate to a little house with a metal stovepipe and a rickety old greenhouse beside it. We got to the back door and Cass knocked. It looked to me like it was made out of matchsticks. A shaking little man with a wonderful smile came to the door. He was wearing black britches, old leather shoes with dirt all over them, an olive green flannel shirt with suspenders and a hat.

  “Cassie! Com-a visit old Rocco…come in,” said the nice old man with the shaky voice. It appeared as if he had a palsy of some kind and his hands trembled as he stood there welcoming us. “I have a bigga Zucchini for you, eh?” He got out a pocketknife and before anyone could say anything, he led us to the middle of his garden patch. He deftly clipped a large green zucchini squash from its vine. “Now…dissa guy…you tak-a him-a home. Gonna tast-a real-a good!”

  “Thanks, Rocco.” Then Cass finally said, “There’s someone chasing the three of us. Could we hide out in your place for an hour or so?”

  “Dat’s-a nice-a. Rocco need-a sleep. Get uppa early. Stay…as-a long-a you wish-a, eh?”

  We thanked him and we sat in the dark of Rocco Rava’s little kitchen. Then something strange happened. The front door swung open quietly, squeaking on its rusty hinges. Then the room began to have an eerie glow about it as an orb about the size of a cantaloupe entered under its own power and approached us! It seemed to be brass or some similar metal and glowed more around it than within it. Jane and I were rather startled, but Cass stepped forward to greet the suspended object. There also seemed to be a slight hum to the orb. “Hello, Mother,” Cass said. “Yes?” There was a silence as Cass was obviously receiving some kind of communication from the orb. “I see. Where can we go, then?” Another silence filled the room. “I can—but they won’t be able to tolerate the vibration. And I won’t leave them behind. Cable and Jane both deserve to live. Why should I be responsible for their deaths?”

  Things weren’t sounding too hot for Jane and me. “Whatta ya mean…deaths?” I whispered to Cass.

  She glanced at me quickly. “Oh, nothing. We’re just trying to figure out a way to keep from being captured by those men out there. Mother wants to help.” Who was I to say, but I thought ‘Mother’ was near dead some time ago on a Los Angeles street. So maybe the disembodied spirit of Saturnalia was on our team and seeing things from a different perspective. Who in the hell knew anymore? I noticed that Jane wasn’t any too comfortable with the unfolding events, either.

  Then Cass registered surprise in her voice. “What? Let them do that? Oh but Mother, that’s taking such a chance. You know humans—you just never know—yes, I see…Oh….I’ll ask them, that’s the least I can do.”

  The orb reversed its direction and exited as it had come, leaving us once again in the darkness. “Mother thinks we should let ourselves get captured—I’m not too clear on her thinking about the situation—”

  “—Shit, Cass—those mugs will rape and kill us both—you know that! And God knows what they’ll do to Cable. I say we make a run for it. And does anybody know just who in the hell they are?” Jane exclaimed.

  “My father’s people—hirelings, sent to do his bidding.”

  “Oh, that’s swell—just what I need—to be back in the loving arms of your Dad. Ol’ Cronus-Gor won’t be mild or neglectful this time, I suspect. Yeah, Cass, I agree with Jane—let’s make a run for it.”

  “Okay, I’ll go along. We’ve all got to agree or it won’t work.”

  “What won’t work?” I asked.

  “Synergetic compliance—our agreement will form an energy with no opposition—and it becomes much more powerful when going in the same direction with the same purpose.”

  “Oh, why didn’t you say so?” I laughed, not understanding a whit of what Cass was trying to explain.

  There was a long wooden stairway that led up to a grade school at the top of the hill at the intersection of Bridge Street and route 1, Main Street. We decided to take it. It was very late and the local environs felt like a ghost town after dark as we sprinted out of Rocco Rava’s garden. But our efforts were for naught, for as we exited I could feel a hard object hit my head and I was out on the pavement, hearing only a little outcry from Jane before I totally blacked out.

  The Monster of Piedras Blancas

  “Probe him,” I heard a cruel sounding male voice echo. I tried to open my eyes. Everything hurt. “Tell me what he really knows. And if he knows nothing, we’ll throw him to the sharks—as I promised our leader.” I sensed there were two presences in the room. Then they proceeded to walk down a corridor that echoed their footsteps. I felt helpless and didn’t have a clue as to where I was.

  Then I heard a voice calling to me. “Cable…Cable! It’s me, Jane. Where are you?” She was speaking through a pipe vent from some other location. “Are you okay? Please…talk to me…how can I ever grow up to be the first female private eye if you’re dead? I heard what that terrible man said.”

  I crawled toward the sound of the pipe that came out of the wall about four feet above an
old sink that was no longer functional. I boosted myself up to get my mouth close to the pipe. “Jane…! It’s me…I haven’t got much time…are you okay, kid?”

  “Yeah, they haven’t molested me yet—or beat me up. They seem to want you. I don’t know why they’re keeping me.”

  “Because you know too much already…where’s Cass?”

  “I don’t know, Cable…I fear the worse…and I’ve got menstrual cramps.”

  “I hope she’s okay…her father wants her back, now that Saturnalia is gone. I think old Cronus-Gor wants me, too. I don’t know what the hell the probe thing is—but it doesn’t sound good—and something doesn’t make sense.”

  “Yeah, why would they want to kill you if you’re still valuable to them? Maybe this creep that does the talking is talking out of the side of his mouth. You know some lunatics—power-mad because they want to take things into their own hands.”

  Just then, I heard someone coming down the corridor towards me. “Talk to you later, babe. Hang in there…” A big man in a light-blue outfit came in with a large syringe needle spurting its stuff on the floor. I was weak and he grabbed me and plunged that thing into my arm. Soon the room was spinning and again, I hit the floor. I don’t know how long I was out, but when I finally did come to, some guy was making me drink some water and wiping my perspiring face at the same time.

  “You are a strong young man, Mr. Denning, and defiant. My name is Paddy Straight—and I’ll get straight to the point, if you’ll pardon the pun. I’m here to help cure your insanity. You see, you’ve lived under delusions for quite some time. Frankly, we’ve made very little progress with you over these past months.”

  “What in the fuck are you telling me, Straight? That I wasn’t with two beautiful women tonight, or I wasn’t at The Bucket of Blood or staying at the Bluebird Motel in Cambria?”

  “Not only is none of that true, but you’ve had nightmares, other delusionary imaginings, such as experiencing some creature you keep calling Saturnalia, or fearing an imaginary husband-god of hers—and even further back, you have fantasies about lovely young women who don’t exist. Let me see…there was this wonderful fantasy you dreamed up named Honey Combes—now what an inventive name that was, wasn’t it? And to fulfill your lost mother’s love and passions, you conjured up a little Latin number named Adora Moreno. There is a long list, but you get the gist—I enjoy rhyming—don’t you?”

  If I didn’t know myself better, I would think I really was going nuts! But they hadn’t heard Jane’s voice through the pipes. I did, didn’t I? Yeah, and there was Jane and I burying the thug at the Leffingwell dump. Oh, yep, no one could fool me. “So just where the hell am I, if you don’t mind divulging that little bit of information.”

  “Not at all, Mr. Denning. You are here at Shady Oaks in Los Angeles, not far from where you grew up. You’ve been here for some time.”

  “How did I get here?”

  “Well, as we blend fact with fantasy, your recognition of yourself and your real life ends with getting hit on the head while you were a policeman, inside a vault…by some deranged mortician’s assistant, one Dr. Sandor, who unfortunately has since passed away. You were honorably discharged from the police force and sent here to be with us. It seems the concussion you received with your injury, damaged parts of the systemic brain areas that strangely affect your ability to divide reality from fantasy. In other words, you have become a marvelous storyteller, Mr. Denning. The other side of that, though, is that you believe your stories to be true—when in fact, they are very detailed, colorfully portrayed fictional adventures, produced by a very fertile imagination.”

  This guy was starting to get to me as the crap the other guy had injected me with began to do its trip on my head…spinning me around the world in five seconds or less. “Damn you’re clever, Straight…clever and cagey as hell. Talk about being…a—a professional…I’ll bet old Gor loves you.”

  “There is…one peculiar item, however, that has us stumped here at Shady Oaks. In one of your dreams, just before you became unconscious, you have repeatedly spoken of a golden capsule, part of another adventure shared with a Chinese fantasy, one Lei-Tao. You attributed many special properties to her, but for whatever reason, we cannot discover why you stop when it comes to your unveiling the content of this magic capsule. I think you called it The God of Our Fathers or the like.”

  “Of course this is all part of my fantasy, right—I mean, just another imaginative trip to dreamland, right?”

  “Of course. That’s why it’s curious that you should conceal—or shall we say, not reveal the simple content of that clever dream. The best we can get out of you is the supposition that you learned from Dr. Sandor, that the golden capsule contained not only the constituents of cosmic Creation itself, but also the why of it. Now, wouldn’t that be fun to hear you espouse on? Delightful, I say…”

  I was getting more and more into the effects of the drug they had injected me with. “Delightful…yeah, delightful…” Then I pretended to completely fade away. Straight lifted my eyelids to see if they were pulled up and away. I learned to fake that pretty well in the police academy.

  “Hempstead, make sure you record every word of this dummy’s blabbing under the influence of the dormitine. If he knows nothing, then Gor has got to know it as soon as possible so we can dispose of him.”

  “But why not just kill the women now?” Hempstead inquired.

  “Because, you idiot, the redhead is Gor’s flesh and blood daughter—presently—and he wants her back. The girlfriend knows too much, but Gor feels she may be useful to us—later. In the meantime, no person is to touch either of them without my permission. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Mr. Straight.”

  That night I found myself at the Bella Notte listening to a dazzling Honey Combes sing My Heart Stood Still. How the audience and I loved her, craved and raved for more as her music climbed the stairway to the stars. She had made it, she had ascended, reached the places where few go and did it before she was thirty. But now her heart had stood still. It was always harder to imagine a young woman gone than someone who had lived out her years. I didn’t want to do as Ralph Waldo Emerson had done. A few months after the death of his beloved young wife, he entered the crypt to view the corpse. The realization that exterior beauty could fade so easily, shocked him and stayed within his psyche as a traumatic moment for the rest of his own life. I listened to Honey finish and went up to her and held her, telling her how wonderful she was and that I missed her sassy wit and pert smile, bubbling personality and sensual female nature. Then I was pulled away and she faded into the mists of an also fading din of music and applause.

  I awakened in the same dark room with no windows. It was hard to tell whether it was day or night and I no longer heard Jane Slaughter’s voice coming through the pipeline. That worried me. Then Straight came back in to continue to pound at my sanity. I was on to his trick, but the damn drug kept me punchy enough to allow enough of a margin for self-doubt whenever Straight interrogated me. Was I really nuts after all—and had the last three years been an injury caused frenzied fraud? And of course, that was their ploy. So Straight began his daily tirade. “You are insane, Denning—nuts—crazy! You’ve got to come to it—realize you’re a nobody from nowhere and that the taxpayer foots the bill for your sickness here at Shady Oaks via the police department. For all intents and purposes, your life is over. So that we might help others who follow you with a similar malady, I’m hoping you might tell all that you’ve experienced. For example, did you dream last night?”

  “Oh, yeah, Straight—I dreamed you are the real dip-shit you are—how’s that for openers? I also learned that your approach is old-fashioned and creaks with lousy attempts to veil your real agenda here.. Your drugs dope me up alright, but it’s not going to get you where you want to go with me—to the revelation of the Fen de Fuqin. A lot better men than you have tried and failed, you slimy hireling.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Den
ning. The depth of your illness may require much more powerful doses of the dormitine. Have you become friends with it yet?”

  “Yeah, like I’ve become friends with you, fuck-face!” I tried to get out of bed and hit the bastard, but I was still too drugged. “Oh, there was another dream I had last night. Honey was singing at the Bella Notte before Frank Laggore killed her. She was singing My Heart Stood Still and guess what? It did…her heart stood still because crumbs like you are still out there in the jungle, vampire predators who themselves are the sick and emotionally degenerate of this world.”

  He thought carefully and then drew up a chair closer to my bed. “You see, Denning, these dreams—your insanity, that dark world your poor soul dwells within—these dreams are nothing more than that. You are insane. You are demented. You are a crazy man. You are so nuts that you have nightly dreams of people and things that never existed. There never was a Honey Combes, or a silly nightclub called Bella Notte or perhaps even a song called My Heart Stood Still. It’s rather like getting your dimensions mixed up. You cannot tell me what dimension you exist in anymore, can you? Dimension number one? Dimension number two? Or is there possibly a number three?”

  “Get me a 1929 phone book, Straight, and I’ll set you straight, pardon the pun. And another thing, Jane Slaughter and Cass better be okay or I’ll turn you inside out and grind you up myself.”

  “I’m sorry, we cannot provide you with any outside material that might negatively influence your dementia. During your drug-induced confessions, it is easy to see the pattern. Your sickness is expressed in traits such as sexual addiction, not to mention alcohol and tobacco. The fantasy of so many young and beautiful women lead me to observe how repressed and empty your early life must have been, battling for survival in the ghettos. The wretched misfits of this world such as yourself, are probably born a tad demented anyhow.”