She awoke and the clock said two am. She felt better, still a bit woozy, but better; still sick but getting better. The man seemed to have a doctor’s touch because usually when she got sick she was sick for at least three or four days. She could sense that this would not be the case this time.
The storm outside continued and did so with the eerie thunder claps roaring on.
She got up heading for his small bathroom in the dim light; had to go. Besides she was curious to see what he had in his medicine cabinet. She did not move immediately listening at first to see if there was any noise coming from outside It was very quiet.
She wondered what he was doing out there.
She got up, noticing the cold in the room had increased and tip-toed over to the cracked bedroom door to get a look at what he was doing.
She could see he was at his computer, asleep. She could only see the back of his head but she was sure he was a tired man sleeping.
Now she could make her way to the bathroom more confident that he would not catch her rummaging through his medicine cabinet.
The cabin was so bare, no photos, no pictures, nothing. The medicine cabinet was the best bet as to who this man was.
Creeping, yes creeping, she entered the small bathroom which was pretty bare in itself and headed right for the medicine cabinet like it was a treasure chest.
Opening it she saw there the usual items, shaving cream, razor, deodorant, but surprisingly, five plastic containers.
She looked over her shoulder to make sure he wasn’t creeping on her and started to look at what at first she thought were drugs. But no, they were vitamins; yes vitamins. “Aha” she thought to herself what kinds of vitamins did this man take?
Her trolling revealed the following:
A box of vitamins labeled Anafranil. What the hell was that she thought. She looked at the inside drug information most drugs came with and found it was made in France and was a nootropic, that is a drug designed to help you stay awake without any drug feeling or effect. “Taken by 50 million Frenchmen.” It was not a prescription drug and apparently freely available in Europe but had been successfully shut out of the American market by greedy drug companies. She would have to look that one up later. She decided it was a kind of no-doze for the French.
Next were run of the mill vitamins, some vitamin C but high dosage, some vitamin B, some D3, some RNA-DNA, some B12 and a few others.
This was the medicine chest of a writer she thought, all vitamins aiming to help with concentration.
Nothing else of note. He was clean.
She looked over her shoulder again and crept toward the cracked door to the fireplace to check on him.
She peered out to see he was still asleep.
Unable to resist she crept over to stand behind him, to get a look at what he was working on. After all who can resist a sub-title of “Sex and Love-Making for Newly-Weds.”
”What the Ding-Dong” was that she wondered.
She reached over his shoulder from behind, her finger gliding over and downward to the space bar which she knew might bring up what he was working on last.
She could smell his smell, that mixture of man, outdoors, and wood-smoke.
Her slight touch brought up the screen quietly and she began to read intensely interested in what chapter 21 had to say for itself.
It read:
“He took the palm of his hand and began to move it in slow circles just above the skin, but not touching the areola but oh so close that she could feel the electricity jump the gap between his palm and her skin. She bent up to reach his touch but he moved slightly away, driving her crazy."
Suddenly a huge thunderclap shook the tiny cabin and he jerked awake and grabbed her hand.
Chapter 8
Who Was That Monster?
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 with her.
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 fell, 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 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 one of the undead.”
With that he made a monster face and stood making stiff, stealthy monster movements his face scrunched up.
The sheriff will say “What kind of monstrous 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 asks 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 plunging deep in his neck and ecstasy.
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 herself, "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.”
Chapter Nine
A Cold Drive and A Warm Night- Chapter Nine
On impulse she extended her finger tips, something she had done in camp as a young girl. It was her camp cabin’s signal of life-long friendship. She did it without thinking.
And quickly I reciprocated without even understanding what it meant. It was a very heart-warming moment between us, ten finger-tips touching amid the silence of the moment.
It seem fitting to Jenny to offer it. After all the man had likely saved her life and through it all seemed to be a genuine human being.
That moment was shattered by her cell-phone ringing.
She made an involuntary yelp and started to look for her purse, which he had placed beneath the coat rack.
She glanced at the caller id. It was her Dad.
Involuntarily, she started to head for the bed-room to take the call privately and she freaked when, just at that moment, another thunderclap roared through. The cabin felt like it rocked. She wondered if this storm could cause a landslide, if lightening did in fact hit the ground.
I didn’t know who it was on the phone then, because I myself was feeling a bit woozy and preoccupied with the thought "Damn could I be getting what she had?"
“Swell.”
But her phone ringing meant that the crews had been out most of the night de-icing the town’s one cell-phone tower. Most of the time he had been lucky to get a signal at all up high on the mountain and most times he had to find a spot just outside the cabin to get a call and yet another spot to receive a call.
I started to feel worse and forgot about Jenny for a moment and decided to get to the bathroom and get some cough syrup into me and to see what else I could find to head off what was starting to feel like flu symptoms.
I passed in the bedroom, and Jenny was sitting on the bed and she looked up quickly.
“Sorry I said," I need to get something from the bathroom.”
She nodded and I passed through feeling like things indeed were going to get cozy if I got sick. Even a day or two downon the mountain mattered since there were not going to be any rescue crews coming up for a least a day or two. The town months ago dropped the copter rescue program for lack of funding.
I could hear Jenny saying to her dad, “I am fine Dad. I am fine. You have my number and I have yours if anything comes up we can get in touch. Yes, yes." she said.
“I came out and said. “Good that the line is back up if even if only for a little while.”I guarantee you it will go down again. It is like that."
“Yes," Jenny said, "I barely could hear my Dad; he kept going in and out, breaking up.”
“Did you tell about your plan to suck my blood?” I said smiling.
”No I did not Jenny replied “That is something only between us And you look terrible" she added, "you're getting sick too?
“No I said, well maybe, I am getting the feeling that something is going on”
“Sit." she said, patting the bed.
“I will take care of you. How’s that? Fair is fair."
“Yes,' I said sitting beside her “fair is fair.”
I sat beside her and she put her palm to my forehead and clucked like a brain surgeon," saying "looks like plague to me."
I laughed but it hurt my head to laugh and I winced.
"Yep, she said plague for sure. Lie down." she commanded.
I was getting a bit weak and obeyed.
She lay down beside me and in a very gentle voice said "Tell me where it hurts, and tell me about this Tantric thing.”
”It all about how two people" I said slowly, beginning to fade "have to get used to each other’s bodies before they even make love, do foreplay or any of that. Animals understand that, people have forgotten it. Sorta like Amish bundling." He paused.
"Bodies have to become friends even before love is possible."
“How is that done?" Jenny said.
“Oh," I said, drifting, finally I remember saying, “I will tell you later, feeling woozy.”
