by Ted Minkinow
Turns out the only exorcise she planned on was of the horizontal variety. I think Helmet sensed my deep distress because he made himself visible. She left my place topless and screaming. I watched her stumble down the stairs and past Herr Doktor. He was on the landing below knocking on the hallway wall in search of hollow spots. The nosy faker. He never even looked at me after Exoria went bouncing past in half a birthday suit. I did see a faint smile and slight nod. I could almost hear his thoughts.
“The way things are done for weird Americans.”
My opinion of Helmet turned kind-of favorable after he exorcised the exorcist. I don’t know where he found Karl, though I should note he didn’t ask for permission. Just showed up with the mutt. And my contract with Herr Doktor forbids pets.
Helmet bent down and scooped up Karl’s rotting mush. He cooed encouragement no human could hear and stroked the pile of goo until the stupid dog transformed back into a cute spectral incontinent little floor pooper. How nice. Helmet gave me his most intimidating long, hard Nazi stare and then turned his attention to Sparky.
He snapped to attention and did that movie-type heel-clicking thing that came out sounding silent. If sounding silent makes sense. He gave a curt bow, took a pointed glance at where Sparky’s right arm used to reside, and then held out his own right hand for a shake. Sparky did the guy thing and attempted reciprocation.
It would have worked out better had Sparky’s right hand, along with the arm, not been melting in an abandoned parking lot in Wiesbaden. The ghost smirked in his sneaky-silent way, did an about face, and marched to the sitting room. Sparky found his way inside and made for the brown leather couch in my TV room. Not quite. I grabbed his shoulders and spun him toward the bathroom.
“Shower,” I said.
Sparky didn’t argue, I think he was still keen to avoid my questioning. He needn’t have worried because no matter how important his answers would be, I had the feeling they’d make me sick. So an extra-long Sparky-shower would allow me time to get things straight in my mind.
Sparky dumped his clothes on the floor.
“I’ll need underwear, jeans, and a t-shirt.”
“Right,” I said. “And peel you a grape while I’m at it?” And then, “You don’t pack for your trips?”
“I’m serious,” he said, “I don’t have a change of clothes.”
Did he think I was the maid? Of course he did. Sparky has a well-developed sense of entitlement. But I did feel kind of sorry for him standing there with one arm recently departed. And being nice is seldom fatal. Besides, unless I wanted him to put the bloody clothes back on I really had no choice. Still though, was his lack of packing more misdirection to get me thinking about anything but the reason behind Sparky’s visit and ultimately, the cause of the Blood Feud? Perhaps a milder version of the knife in the back? I didn’t know.
“You got it,” I said.
Sparky slid the plastic shower door closed—cheap, nosy, German landlord—and I headed to my bedroom where sat the three magic piles of clothes. Dirty and slightly stinky. Dirty and stinky. Biohazard. I retrieved fresh underwear and a passible Fender Guitars Custom Shop t-shirt from dirty and slightly stinky. For me. Sparky? He’d get a non-color coordinated ensemble out of the third and most deadly pile.
I sat down at the computer for a moment to check the news. Headlines from my favorite three news agencies were already waiting on the monitor. First I scanned the American liberal site where they still blamed George W. Bush for everything from teen pregnancy in North Korea to Pluto losing its status as a planet. The conservative site wasn’t much better. The BBC just reported the news. I checked the timestamp on the first page. Less than a couple of minutes old.
From what I’ve observed of Karl and Helmut, ghosts possess no ability to move objects in the living world. Give up your notions of poltergeists and rockers that creak without an occupant. Good for props, bad for facts. Helmet stood behind me stroking a sleeping Karl and scanning the pages over my shoulder. Yes, dogs are still lazy in the afterlife.
I admit to knowing less about computers than I do about how to apply eye shadow. Still, I don’t think computers know what you want out of them before you instruct them to do something. Do they? I glanced back at Helmet and wondered for millionth time. Remember how I said ghosts can’t move things in the physical world?
And what about viruses? I’ve left the seat in frustration after spending hours clicking links to sites promising I’d won. Funny how the only prize they ever awarded came in the form of critical warnings from my virus software, and how my computer always ended up slow and useless. Even funnier how the little box healed itself during my work hours because every evening I found the same three news sites up and the computer purring. Could someone who died before the age of technology come back as a computer wizard?
I sensed shuffling behind me. Helmet impatient for the next news article.
“Do it yourself,” I said and stood up.
Helmet gave me his bored-Gestapo-agent-arresting-his-hundredth-collaborator look as he watched me walk away. The typical nothing from Helmet. You could get a better conversation out of a stone face on Easter Island. The liar. I’ve considered setting up one of those webcam things to catch Helmet in the act of IT services. But to what point? If he was keeping it all running and virus-free, why would I want to risk it just to prove I’m right? Because I’m a man.
Enough time without a beer in my hand. It looked like I’d miss the Friday night bar crawl with the bagger gang. I passed the bathroom door and heard Sparky singing an old Czech drinking song over the shower spray. A bit chipper for a guy who just lost a body part. And what about the Blood Feud?
I can handle myself orders of magnitude better than Sparky, and having Soyla concentrating full alien-feminine thought patterns on my demise would do a lot to dampen my urge for shower opera. More likely I’d give up showering altogether until that kind of insane threat worked itself out. So why not Sparky? I wondered about that.
Do I sound overly suspicious? Once you know Sparky better you’ll understand why even a text message from him should make you wary. What was he up to? The answer would likely never come, and if it did surface, it’d be something so asinine as to make any prior guess impossible.
He’d been in there for about twenty minutes. Herr Doktor controlled the water heater for the building and set it to some Euro-saving level that provided tepid water for about… Twenty minutes. Crapola. Cold shower for me. One towel. What were the chances Sparky brought his own towel? Zero. He didn’t even remember to bring his own arm. The word misdirection kept flashing in my mind. You know, Sparky working hard to make his visit appear casual.
Nah. Too much thinking for a Sparky thing. Now you can call me Sir Knucklehead of Paranoia. Was I turning into my father? Maybe. What could I know for certain? This: After the knife-through-lung thing from Sparky, the cage-fight with Soyla, and after standing between my flighty friend and certain death, my reward would be a cold shower. OK, two things. I’d also get to use a wet towel impregnated with arm goo.
Refrigerators in the USA are large enough to hold a week’s food for a family of twelve. Those in Germany can hold a single meal for a fasting Buddhist monk. I gave up trying to keep unimportant stuff—like any member of the healthy food pyramid—in the tiny box. Besides, I only knew how to cook one kind of meal anyway. The liquid kind. Solid food was found at the bratwurst stand in the town walking area.
I grabbed one of the dozen cold bottles and shut the door quickly. Didn’t want to risk altering the temperature of fine German pilsner once it’s reached perfection. When I popped the cap I got that serenity-inducing hiss of escaping air. I got something else, too. And it sounded just like my doorbell. Maybe there was something wrong with the bottle.
Chapter 9
Not a doorbell in the sense of an electronic chime due to a button outside my front door, but rather the phone thing that someone outside can ring. There’s a green button on the device. Push it and you
give access to whoever rang you. No clue at all who wanted in on a Friday evening.
You might think it was a babe returning for another try. First of all, thanks your confidence in me…but not a chance. The only person to ring the thing in three years was a Deutsche Telekom dude who’d arrived to hook up my phone. And three years seemed reasonable expiration for the statute of limitations governing expectations for the return of a forgotten tool. So, probably not Deutsche Telekom.
I considered not answering. Pretending like I wasn’t home. Kind of ridiculous when you think about it. Of course I didn’t need to pretend not to be home to ignore the noise. I mean, no law exists that says you must answer the buzzer. Though, give the EU time and they’ll probably cook one up.
It crossed my mind the person mind be a blood feud Centurion. Unlikely, because that sort of person wouldn’t employ so courteous an announcement. A Centurion would more likely rip the door off the hinges or break through the third story window like a supernatural Delta Force. Still, I could feel my heart quicken and the battle lust inching up my spine as I picked up the handset.
“Yes?”
“Hey, y’all up there?”
It took me a moment to place the voice. Should have known immediately, though I tend to associate voices—even familiar ones—with places. Like, you might not recognize your mother’s voice in a strip bar. OK, maybe a bad example. Anyway, I’d never heard that distinct southern twang at my apartment. I responded.
“Ah, yes.”
The use of y’all worried me a little. Did the person mean y’all as in Sparky, Helmet, Karl, and me or y’all as in just me?
“Well, let us in.”
Bingo. J-Rod. The same J-Rod who was supposed to be crawling pubs in Wiesbaden with the rest of the bagger gang. Given the time it takes to for public transportation to cover the distance between the commissary and my flat, he must have left about the time I arrived home. It didn’t make sense.
“Us?” I said as if the two letters could combine to form another meaning.
A sudden spray of icy tingles covered my arm. I glanced back and saw Helmet standing at my shoulder and Karl still in his arms. The ringing must have awakened Karl and somehow the little idiot understood he might get some more visitors. Jackpot night for Karl. He relieved the pressure of his boiling excitement with happy sneezes. Icy tingles on my arm? Dog snot.
Helmet put the little freak down. Not knowing what else to do other than kick myself for not pretending I wasn’t home, I pushed the green button. Karl and I heard the loud click below as J-Rod and “us” came through the exterior door.
I banged on the bathroom door.
“Guests, Sparky. Get dressed.”
The shower ceased and my mind saw him reach for the only towel available. My towel. The selfish jerk. Him, not me, BTW. I walked back to the door to let J-Rod and us in and stepped in something cold and mushy.
“Darn it, Karl.”
Multiple visitors proved too much for his atom-sized brain and he’d deposited a pile of overflowing joy on the floor. Ghost dog poop isn’t supposed to stink. That’s my hypothesis. Ghost dog poop also doesn’t have physical mass. Despite the science I swore I smelled fresh dog crap and felt the stinky gel between my toes. Just like every other time I stepped into a floor sculpture by Karl. Why does something that never eats insist on dropping half its body weight three times a day?
Karl must have sensed my anger because he did the instant decompose thing in time with the knock at my door. Perfect. The little git could remain a rotting pile for the rest of his death for all I cared. But here came Helmet to the rescue. I answered the door.
J-Rod and “us” turned out to be the entire bagger gang. Surprise, surprise. Sister Christian walked into my place for the first time. I don’t know whose face registered more shock: hers or mine. Up to that point the only two people other than Herr Doktor and his Franken-Frau ever to walk through my doors were the Deutsche Telekom guy and the horny exorcist chick.
But there came Bonny Prince McDonald, David Smith, and I’ve already said I’d spoken to Jesus. I like saying that so you’ll probably have to put up with it a few more times. I meant J-Rod, of course. He came in last.
“D’ju fart Homey?” Back to Latino gangsta speak. Must have left his southern accent outside.
“No,” I said. “I think I stepped in something outside.” J-Rod looked down.
“You barefoot, Homey. Don’t see nothin’ on you feet.”
Times like that made me wish Karl were alive. So I could kill him. Of course I’m just joking. I actually adore it when a group of my friends breaks the seal on the hospitality force field around my inner sanctum. I like it more when one of them accuses me of floating an air biscuit in front of my work colleagues and then imply I’m lying when I defend my innocence. Thank you, Karl.
The five of us, make that six because Sparky entered the fray smelling fresh and looking good in my biohazard outfit, crowded into my foyer. Helmet and Karl would have made seven and a quarter but only Sparky could see them.
J-Rod spoke to Sparky. “Hi Karl.”
Sparky smiled and shook the hand J-Rod offered. A little awkward because J-Rod offered his right and Sparky shook with his left. I noticed Sparky had already managed to regrow his missing arm down to the elbow. At least I thought he did because, on closer inspection, he hadn’t donned the biohazard suit at all. No, that was one of my good sweaters with the right sleeve tucked into his pants. The front of his pants.
Great. Now all of my bagger buddies would wonder about my friend with the perpetually itchy nuts.
“His name’s Sparky,” I said.
“Oh,” said J-Rod. “Where’s Karl?”
It was like J-Rod had summoned forth a tiny love demon. Karl reconstituted in full tail wagging and nose sneezing mode. I knew I needed to take quick action to avoid another icy baptism.
“No Karl here,” I said.
“Then who I hear you talking to, Homey?”
Good question. No answer. Good thing Sister Christian stepped forward and introduced herself to Sparky.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said.
Sparky gave a slight bow and actually kissed her hand. Barf. Sister Christian didn’t seem to mind because she returned a 100-watt smile. How come I never got one of those? Karl indicated approval by squirting on my kneecap.
“Hey homey,” J-Rod said. “I think maybe you piss yourself.”
Had Soyla already killed me? I mean, was I in hell?
We all stood in the tiny space like animated garden statues. I wouldn’t have closed the door even if Bonny Prince McDonald hadn’t been blocking it. I’ll look up how to spell claustrophobia later. Let’s just say things were so tight with sweaty bodies that I half expected a Kiss concert to break out. And was that smoke I smelled?
The timer for the stairwell clicked off the lights and I knew by the odor of tobacco that Herr Doktor lurked close enough for nosy satisfaction. I was done with it. Uninvited guest, uninvited guests, a Nazi ghost with a blasé attitude regarding his free-range, house-crapping dog, and now my nosy septuagenarian German landlord relishing the confusion with fake tsk-tsk noises from somewhere in the shadows. Enough. I barked into the darkness.
“Commin see here, butthead,” I said.
I’m pretty sure the first part is passable German. The butthead bit the old coot probably understood as bitte—please. He wouldn’t expect an American to get the pronunciation right anyway.
I heard J-Rod say, “Shouldn’t a said that boy” nearly in synch with Sarah Arias stepping into the light.
Chapter 10
I beat myself up all the time for the stupid things I’ve done in a long lifetime of suboptimal decisions. That’s a PC way of saying I often think with the wrong head but at least possess sufficient self-awareness to call my idiotic moves or ignorant statements by their true names. I don’t tend to look at myself through rose-colored glasses. Here’s the point. I forgave myself for the verbal boo-boo. I did not inten
d to call Sarah Arias a butthead.
She didn’t seem to care as she walked past the crowd and into my apartment.
Ah, Sarah, come on in. Don’t worry about the small things. Like an invitation?
I bet you’re wondering about all the literature regarding inviting dangerous entities across the threshold. My observations over the centuries tend to make me think it’s all grist for the fiction-writers’ mills. Even so, I wished all those intricate supernatural handshakes and evil-being courtesies were true as Sarah Arias whisked her unfiltered body past an astonished me.
On the positive side, Sarah Arias’s blatant sense of entitlement propelled the others out of the foyer and into the larger sitting room. Well, I call it a sitting room because all I’ve ever done in it is sit. I also call it the TV room, and the fall-asleep-watching-live-streamed-college-football-and-thus-be-late-for-work-the-next-morning room. I doubt that last description will ever become an aisle name at a home improvement store.
In additional to my skills at turning small spaces into multi-functional living areas, one other thing about the introductory part of that night bears mention. Everyone passed around, over, or through—as in the case of the Bonny Prince—Helmet and Karl as if they didn’t exist. I guess technically they don’t exist. OK, not important. Back to the point. Everyone passed around them as if they didn’t exist except one person. Sarah Arias.
I swear I saw her pause and glance into Helmet’s face. I know Helmet saw it too, because for one thing, he took a quick step back. The other way I knew Helmet detected the glance? How many times has a person stood face-to-face with you and you didn’t notice? I’m not asking trick questions.
She saw Helmet. That meant she could probably see Karl too. Interesting and a little spooky. I assumed something about a vampire’s turbo-charged sense of sight made seeing my two roommates possible. People with normal sight-range? No. Sarah Arias was no vampire. Remember the repellant stink thing regarding vampires of different Centuria? Sarah did not stink.