A Cold Drive and A Warm Night-Chapter Eight

He grabbed her hand and she jerked it away attempting to break his grasp but, he didn’t let go, and she fell backwards towards the fireplace but, also pulling him over backwards.

Both fell into a tumble on the floor in front of that fireplace. He said "I saw this in a movie.”

He started to laugh looking at her saying “Are you ok?”

“Sure" she said "I’m fine I think.”

They both looked at each other for a long moment and he began to laugh again.

”I see I really bowled you over and made the earth move too.” he said jokingly.

 She laughed.

”Now we in a real fix I think” he said smiling, looking at her sideways “that last strike probably hit the big branch on my shade tree and that big branch probably landed right across the lower drive-way, and that, my dear process server, locks us in here for extra day.

”Of course” he continued “ if that tree branch fel, and no one, you or I, heard it…”

”It might not have made a sound at all.” she said finishing his thought.

“Well” he said, “if your being here is not accidental it must be that secretly you are really a monster in disguise… come to suck my blood…”

He rose on his elbows slightly “and have come here to eat me, and steal my manuscript; the authorities will find me here in a few days a mangled zombie near-dead person…Aaah!”, he yelled, standing suddenly and she flinched laughing, “they will find me with a decaying red rose in my mouth, maybe a silly smile on my face,  and yes tracks, yes tracks in the snow, and a cryptic message from me trying to tell them who made me, made me undead.”

With that he made a monster face and stood making stiff, stealthy monster movements his face scruntched up.

 
The sheriff will say “What kind of monsterous animal could have done this?" (I intoned a Peter Lorre accent from Casablanca and the Maltese Falcon and continued my narrative.)

“The tracker will look up from the tracks in the snow and say to the sheriff, “It was a woman. I am prêt near sure of that.”

“How do you know it was a woman?" the sheriff will say exasperated.

The tracker will say:

"Lookee there sheriff these tracks where made with three inch stiletto heels by a woman wearing black leather pants, and sporting an ugly color red lipstick with a huge sexual appetite for blood."
They both laughed.

”Hey” she said, “you tell a pretty good story.”

“Yep definitely a woman,” I continued in the voice of the  tracker saying "you can see the credit card imprints she was carrying in her wallet-fresh off a buying spree at Macy's. Gollley!

Jenny was laughing hysterically.
        “The sheriff says,” Jenny stood continuing the story, pretending to inspect the make-believe tracks,
“Poor devil never had a chance. First the thing she probably shape-shifted and  tricked him into taking her into cabin pretending to be lost, and then,.. “

He continued the story “Then she turned into Shera the hungry Avenger barely hiding her crazed desire to jump his bones because she was hungry, very hungry and being male he would realize only too late that female wolves like to eat too."

"She asked him what’s for dinner comma, Don?"

"But poor guy," Jenny said seriously "did not understand that he was to be dinner and last night, yes last night, she pounced  upon him and he couldn't tell the difference between erotica and being eaten alive, between fangs plundging deep in his neck and esctacy.

With that, Jenny made a pouncing motion, her hands extended making a mad clawing motion toward my throat.
I shrieked putting my hands to my throat saying “Couldn’t tear those hands away, could not get away. The creature was too strong for me. The cheap perfume was overpowering.
I fell, my lungs seared to black, my will gone.”

“And she” Jenny continued, “Had her way with him all night, sucking all of the blood out of his body, drop by drop, leaving him a limp dish-rag."

We both laughed and laughed-hers a soft alto and mine a baritone, seeming to push back the raging storm outside.

I turned to her and said suddenly quietly, “Too much you think for the book?”

Jenny laughed. "Yes, I do sir, too much for the book. A bit  over the top I think.”
 

They both fell silent appreciating that they shared a sense of humor that seem similar.

“So” he said “you know there is a tradition among writers, that if some one reads a manuscript before the writer has given that person express permission to read the manuscript there is a seven year jinx of  bad luck, just like the breaking the mirror thing.”

 “Really” she said smiling slowly, “I had not heard that.”

“And” I said continuing “there is only one cure, one thing which can break the curse, save the writer, and save the manuscript. You know what that is?”

“No” Jenny said "tell me what is the one thing that can break the spell.”

“If it is a man, I said, he, of course, would have  to die.

But if it is a lady, there is something different.”

“Oh what might that be?” Jenny said warily. thinking oh here comes the line. She decided to let him proceed; this might give her insight to who he really was.

“What the lady has to do" I said "is to offer the gentleman her hand."
 

“Hand" Jenny said “hand in what marriage?”

“No not so fast" I said chucking, "No, her hand. Go ahead, offer me your hand.”

Jenny stared down at her hand and soon I reached for it and gently lifted it, looking at it for a moment, and then looking directly into her eyes, I kissed her hand.

Jenny started at first from the warmth of his mouth, his lips which gently settled in between her ring and index finger.

She had never in her entire life had her hand kissed.

He lifted his mouth and looked at her intently.

“See this means” I said “all is forgiven.”

Jenny, still taken aback, the warmth of his mouth still on her hand, and said “weakly, well I am glad of that."

She turned slightly away from him, saying “What happens now?"

As soon as she said it she realized it was the wrong thing to say, sounded like a come on, She quickly corrected herself,
”I mean does the lady have to do anything else to break the curse?”

“Again Stupid” she thought to her self, "you need to have your mouth taped shut.”

Behind her she heard him say, “No nothing at all, it’s all about magic and nothing else.”

There was a long silence and she could not see his expression and wondered what his eyes would tell her if she looked.

But she didn’t look.

Moments later she suddenly felt his hand on her shoulder and she turned toward him, hearing herself say. “You are a nice man.”

”Yes" he said, facing her, "and I am glad we have met."

Yes, she said “me too.”

She turned away slightly, and after a pause, asked quietly, “Tell me kind sir what is non-sex love-making.”

She shouldn’t have asked, she knew she shouldn’t have asked, but she had blurted it out without thinking about it.

She was relieved that he had not taken it the wrong way and he quickly said, “Well it’s Tantric in origin and involves,,, paused, did you read very much of the manuscript?”

“Nope” she said "only a few paragraphs Thor sent a thunderbolt and that really distracted me what with your kung-fu hold on me.”
She smiled a smile which he looked at and softened and smiled right back at her.

“Well,” he said quietly, and sincerely, “it’s complicated.”

End of Chapter Eight of Eleven Exerpt Chapters