The Last Dance

The Last Dance

The music was loud in his ears; the large bandstand was filled with musicians. A trumpeter stood, his cheeks red, as he blew a snappy tune. Red, white, and blue, confetti littered the floor, and patriotic streamers hung from every surface. The crowd was giddy. Why shouldn’t they be? It was victory after all.

He walked through the crush of people. His eyes fell only on one fair lady. Her blond hair was cut to shoulder length; her dress was a striking pink. A thin bracelet twirled around her wrist, catching the spotlights from above.

“Shall we dance?” he asked, pushing his way into the crowd around the punch and cookies.

Her smile was breathtaking, all dimples and pearly white teeth and laughing eyes. “My pleasure, soldier.”

They whirled across the temporary dance floor. Her feet skimmed across the ground as light as any fairy princess in silver slippers. His arm fit snugly around her narrow waist. His lips touched the glistening pink temptations. She was perfect; his breath caught as they kissed. He knew this was to be his bride.

****

The orderly lifted the needle from the old, scratched record, stopping the strains of “Midnight Serenade.” Most of the residents had already returned to their rooms. Three wheelchairs were parked along the wall; their occupants had long ago fallen asleep. The orderly touched Mr. Olson’s thin, dry hand.

“Sir, it’s time to go back to your room.” She shook his shoulder when there was no response. “Sir. Mr. Olson.” Nothing. She stared at his immobile chest and felt for a pulse at his neck. The skin was cool, almost cold to the touch. There was no pulse. “Martha!”

The orderly in eggplant scrubs swiveled, her short blond bob swishing as she turned. “What?” Her voice captured the irritation of everyone forced to work late.

“Mr. Olson is dead.”

“Call the doctor.” Martha returned to sweeping up the spilled chips and dropped cups.

The Futility of Garlic

The Futility of Garlic

The sun was low against the upper windows when I heard the scrape of a key against the lock. It wasn’t loud, but to my ears hypersensitive after a day of silence, it was as loud as an air raid siren. I scrambled to the front door, poised to flee as the Master was felled by the fumes of garlic. The door swung open, and I charged the opening, my feet scrabbling for purchase on the marble floor, my small frame ineffective at a football tackle. 

The Master caught me easily, his hands closing around my wrists. He swung my body back inside before I had half cleared the threshold. He was dressed for work, more formal than I had seen except on television. The starched white collar of his dress shirt rose high on his neck. Only the edges of his cuffs showed beneath the dark suit coat. I caught a glimpsed of his cufflinks, golden dragons, as his fingers ground into my wrists.

“Not very hospitable, boy.” He smiled, a feral twist of his lips with a terrible glimpse of sharp teeth. “I prefer my house not smelling of a second rate Italian restaurant.” He pushed me back as he spoke, his hot breath licking the side of my face.

I struggled, tried to kick him, jerked helplessly in his grip. My strength was but a fraction of his. I was no more effective than a kite struggling against tornado force winds. My head smacked the corner of one of the many paintings. I swore I heard a collective hiss from the family with the parasols in the opposite frame. The Master drew my hands over my head, pinning me to the wall like some helpless butterfly in a scientific collection. His weight leaned against me. His eyes, bright with unearthly sparks, burned through me. Shifting, he brought one hand to my throat, his fingers threatening the very means of my life giving air.

“You struggle. How refreshing. I thought you would be too weak for fun. The timid make poor playthings.”

“Get off me!” I wanted to shout more, but the pressure on my throat was forcing me to concentrate on drawing whatever air I could into my lungs. With each breath, the Master’s scent was filling my nostrils and overwhelming my lungs. I felt woozy and dizzy as if I had drunk too much.

“Drink in my scent; drink in my feel.” 

His voice was strangely mesmerizing. My knees felt weak, and it was only his strength that was keeping me upright. He smiled again, predatory and seductive. His thumb stroked down the side of my neck. His lips, too hot for any human, bushed my delicate skin. I shuddered and screamed as his teeth broke the surface.

****

I woke to a man sitting on my bed, a cup of steaming broth in his hand. “You, my friend, have a bad habit of passing out. I’ve arranged to have your doctor admit you for testing tomorrow.” My Master smiled and ruffled my hair. “It is probably still the effects of that nasty cold you caught, but crashing to the floor every day has to stop.” His fingers glided over my neck, and I flinched, remembering the teeth against my throat. “Is this still sore?” He leaned forward and studied my neck. “Silly man, cutting yourself while sniffing your own roses. It’s too wild to believe.” He smiled, his eyes dancing in his lean face. “I’ll never give roses to a sick man again.”

I turned my head to see a vase of red roses on the dresser. Each blossom was perfect, shiny red petals glimmering against the silver vase. I stared at the roses, noting the flowers only in passing as my eyes fell on the painting behind, a night sky with a bat against a golden moon. The bat’s wings flapped once, silently and almost invisibly. I fell back against the pillow and shut my eyes. This couldn’t be.

The End

Garlic and Pizza

This is a continuation of "The Salesman."

Garlic and Pizza

I rose and padded to the window. The sun was pouring through its old-fashioned panes and splashing light in a hopscotch pattern across the floor. I didn’t remembered going to bed last night, or at least not clearly. A doctor had come in a long black coat, carrying a battered bag. Standing by this very window he had muttered and mixed and peered at the strange bubbly concoction in the glass. He had insisted I drink the golden colored liquid. Its taste I couldn’t describe—bitter yet sweet, cold yet followed by a strange warmth. I must have fallen into a deep slumber after the draught for I couldn’t remember the night passing.

It was, without a doubt, morning now. The sun was high overhead, illuminating the overgrown garden below. Roses climbed a shattered trellis, their blooms blood red against the green leaves and peeling white paint. Tall purple flowers escaped from beds and spilled into the dandelion filled grass and threatened to drown out the privet hedges. A fountain of an unrecognizable goddess stood surrounded by a crumbling stone path, water trickling from only one side, vines with great shiny leaves impinging on the other and mixing into the carved hair reminiscent of Medusa and the snakes.

I rubbed my eyes. It must have been the blow to the head that had sent my imagination off into such flights of fancy. It was a garden that needed a lawn man, not some mythical nightmare with hideous statues ready to spring to life. Real life, I told myself as I searched for my watch on the nightstand amongst the white doilies and framed photos of rigid men in dark suits and women with pensive looks in long dresses and holding parasols. It was already ten. I was hours late for work, and I hadn’t sold any vacuum cleaners. The Master had promised to buy one, but I wasn't waiting around for my money. 

What work? I was sure to be fired after yesterday’s performance and today’s non arrival. I grabbed my clothes from the dresser and hurried toward the small attached bathroom. I could at least return the case and the display model. With enough groveling, maybe I could even convince the ogre, better known as the manager, to give me another week. It wasn’t as if they were losing anything. I was paid on commission, and I wasn’t exactly raking in the sales.

Showered and dressed, I made my way down the long corridor to a grand staircase. A crystal chandelier high over my head splattered light onto the marble steps and illuminated the three paneled tapestry of knights and dragons in a ghostly splatter of dimness despite the brightness I had seen outside from my bedroom window. Descending the steps, I tried the front door. The door refused to budge, a deadbolt firmly in place with no key. 

I turned back; most houses had secondary doors in the back or even in the cellar. I passed the door to the study; it was closed. I knocked, the rap of my knuckles echoing in the empty hall. The door handle turned. The room stood empty with only a few glowing embers in the grate. I stepped back and jerked the door closed. Something about that room made my heart hammer in my chest and a cold sweat appear on my brow. It was a study, decorated in a ponderous out of date masculine style, but still a study. Never mind I wasn't looking in again. Even my quick glance had proven that escape through that room was impossible.

I continued down the hall, trying not to notice the somber portraits where the eyes seemed to follow my motions. It must have been the knock on the head; I must still be confused. I rubbed my temples, fingering the small knot. I winced as my fingers probed harder. It was sore, but hallucinating inducing?

"Stop it!" I shouted at the paintings. 

God! I raked my fingers through my short hair. I was losing it--talking to paintings. I hurried down the remainder of the hall, not looking at the paintings in their gilded frames. I wasn't much of a mansion expert; I grew up in a small suburban ranch house, but the kitchen should be in the back.

The kitchen was in the back, overlooking a kitchen garden now full of leaves and downed limbs from a gnarled apple tree. It had real windows, without bars, set over the kitchen sink. I opened the window and drank in the air from outside, filling my lungs with the smell of nature instead of the ancient must of the house. A door of heavy wood and oversized brass locks stood next to the massive black range. I tried the door, knowing the absurdity of it before my hand pulled on the knob. It was locked, and the windows were too small for my torso. I circled the kitchen again and then frantically tore from room to room.

No outside doors and the windows were either small or covered with heavy iron grates. I ran up the stairs, hoping I could climb onto the roof and shimmy down a drainpipe. Here I was thwarted at every corner by rusted bars or locked doors. The house was vast and richly decorated with antiquities, but I hurried past the suits of armor and fearsome weaponry on the walls as well as delicate pottery vases and the grand piano with the sheets of handwritten music propped on the music stand.

Everything was locked up tight. I wrestled with the kitchen door; it looked marginally more fragile than the front door. I kicked it, jerked on the handle' and bashed my shoulder into the wood. On cop shows, the door always swung open, not here. My shoulder ached from ramming speed, but the door stayed stubbornly and firmly closed.

Phone. I could call for help. A phone hung on the wall, black and simple with a rotary dial. I started to dial 911, but paused before the second one. I was locked inside a house; the dispatcher would think this was a cruel joke. Who was locked in? This wasn't even my house; I didn't know the owner. I would probably be arrested for trespassing. I aborted the call and stood listening to the comforting buzz of an outside line. I was still inside the walls of civilization. I had a phone.

I dialed a number I knew from memory, not my mother or my girlfriend, but my favorite pizzeria. Truth be told I was currently on the downward slope in the girlfriend department, and Mom and I talked in stiff sentences at the required holidays.

"Can I help you?" a breathless teenager asked. They were always breathless; the pizzeria was hotter than Hades from the ovens, and they were flipping dough and chopping pepperoni at light speed.

"Yeah, uh yeah," I mumbled. "I'd like an order of garlic bread and a pizza with garlic sauce and extra garlic--lots of garlic."

"Anything else?"

"No, just plenty of garlic. Could I get a head of garlic?"

"Whatever you say, sir," the teenager said, the struggle between boredom and a strange fascination with my order vying for supremacy in his tone.

"I like garlic." The explanation wasn't needed, but I couldn't stop myself. It was a crazy idea. Demons and vampires didn't exist. Garlic, yeah, right. I'd watched too much bad TV.

The pizza arrived in thirty minutes exactly as promised in the guarantee. I'd warned the order taker that the driver would have to go around back, and she shoved the pizza box through the open window with a look of disbelief on her face. I made some feeble excuse about broken locks and a locksmith, but I know she thought I was certifiably insane.

"Whatever, sir," she said, snatching the large tip and scrambling quickly back over the overgrown stone path.

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her to call the police, but the entire story was insane: strangely locking doors, pictures with moving eyes, serpents crawling up the desk in the study. I wouldn't be believed; I would be institutionalized.

I ate the pizza; after all it was the best pizza in the city. The garlic cloves had been included, three large heads. With a quick search of the kitchen, I discovered a mortar and pestle. I ground each clove of garlic. I didn't have a true plan, but it felt right to use that ancient tool to make my weapon. I spread the crushed garlic in front of the two doors and down the hall to the kitchen and on the stair landing. Defenses fortified, I waited.

The Salesman

Dracula is the obvious inspiration for this short tale.

The Salesman

The case was only getting heavier in my hand. I had been lugging it through this neighborhood for half a day, and as the sun was dropping in the West, the houses seemed to be getting farther apart. They had been close together, neat bungalows with crisp curtains and bright yellow marigolds in identical window boxes. Somehow this last street had changed, or maybe it was just my tiredness and depression making me see the worst.

The last two houses I had past had been derelict. Instead of bright marigolds, there were weeds and peeling paint and sharply worded no trespassing signs. The final driveway was long and shrouded by massive trees, their great canopies blocking the fading light. I could turn back now. My job was finished no matter the results of this final house. I had failed for the second day in a row to sell any of the super duper, miraculous, miniature vacuums that I carried in my case. The little bungalows had been well equipped with every imaginable cleaning gadget, or so they said. The refusals were polite, but absolute, and they pulled the door closed with the practice of homeowners frequently faced with the over earnest religious type looking for willing or unwilling converts.

Not only would I get a pink slip today, but I would be ridiculed for my entire ineptness at selling the miracle dust zapper, found only in the sturdy traveling case. Its mighty magic couldn’t be bought at the local Walmart or Amazon or even late night TV for insomniacs desperate to hear the voice of the telephone operator. No, I had the miracle in my case. Get a special deal only today--buy the amazing dust zapper and receive the fabulous and wondrous boomerang broom for free. The last broom you’ll ever buy.

Ridiculous! Preposterous. Only the naive would ever consider such an obviously useless contraption. I’d spilled some rice yesterday, and the amazing and stupendous mini vacuum had sounded like a hippopotamus with bronchitis as it wheezed and labored to suck up the stray grains. 

I shivered as the wind rustled the leaves on the trees. It had been a hot day; I’d been sweating a few minutes ago. A storm must be blowing in. Rain spattered against my cheeks, and far off I heard the distant rumble of thunder. The house was in view, a massive three stories of stone and small barred windows. Two enormous locust trees flanked the driveway, my eyes drawn to their long and sharp thorns. Ivy climbed the porch railing and covered one side of the house, the dark green appearing to strangulate the very structure that supported it.

I looked back up the driveway. Rain was pelting against the cracked asphalt, and I scrambled up the few steps to the porch. I could take refuge here and pretend no one was home. I tapped on the door; a knock that wouldn’t have been heard by a person standing shoulder to shoulder with me. I avoided the brass knocker, someone’s attempt at humor. It was a dragon’s head with ruby red eyes. The talons of the dragon were perched below on the postbox, a tiny human grasped in one clawed foot.

The door swung open from my inaudible knock. A thin man, his skin hanging off his gaunt cheeks, stared at me. “May I help you?” His voice was hoarse, as if unused to forming greetings to strangers, but his manners were impeccable. He hadn’t yet threatened me with hidden firearms, vicious dogs, or a phone call to the police for trespassing; he hadn’t even insisted that he wasn’t interested.

I pressed my calling card into his cold palm. “I’m Victor with the Electra Vacuum Cleaner Company.”

“The master is fascinated by new inventions. This way please.”

A portable vacuum was hardly a new invention, but I followed the man into the house, standing still and stupefied as he shut the door and turned the key before pocketing the ancient piece of brass. The hall was enormous with a vaulted ceiling well above my head where a massive crystal chandelier sparkled with the light of real candles. 

He, the unnamed butler, must have notice my eyes on the candles. “Power is irregular here during a storm. I have made preparations by lighting the candles.”

“I see.” I didn’t see. The candles were impossibly high; It would take hours on a ladder to light them.

“This way, sir.”

I was escorted down the length of the hall, my shoes clacking on the white marble, my eyes and brain barely having a chance to register the pictures and tapestries on the walls.

“Chandler?” A man rose from behind a massive wood desk, his face even paler than his servant’s. “What have you here?”

Why did I feel I’d entered some haunted house that had escaped seasonal closing and was now peopled with the Adam’s family reincarnated?

“A salesman, sir,” Chandler, the butler said with crisp precision.

“Very good.”

Very good. No one said very good to a salesman. They showed me to the door. They didn’t settle down in a study that was consumed by an icy chill despite the calendar marked August and the fire in the grate. 

“Sit. Show me your wares,” The man behind the desk demanded.

I turned to set my case down when my eyes caught a flicker of movement. A serpent slithered against the table leg. 

Snakes. I hate snakes. I threw the case, spinning for the door. Chandler grabbed my arm, his grip unbreakable as his master advanced toward me. His lips were drawn back, showing a glittering row of sharpened daggers in his mouth.

“Be still. We have been awaiting you.”

****

I blinked. A man in a heavy firefighter’s coat and helmet stood over me. The room was illuminated with a veritable forest of lamps: desk lamps, table lamps, modern chandeliers with white canisters, and sparkly doodads that looked more decorative than practical. Chandler was in blue jeans and a polo shirt, and the master stood with a glass of water that he was pressing into the fireman’s hand.

A gloved hand grasped my wrist and felt for a pulse while a second person listened to my chest and shown a flashlight in my eyes.

“What day is it? Who is the President? What did you have for breakfast?”

Tuesday, Obama, cereal,” I answered without thinking.

“I see no damage,” the uniformed man said, removing his latex gloves. “I’d recommend you see your own doctor. You’ve had a bump on the head.”

“We will see to his medical needs,” the master said smoothly. His smile was broad and friendly with even and beautifully white teeth. “I hadn’t realized our rugs and furniture could be so dangerous.” He reached down and took my hand. “We’ll just get you comfortable in the bedroom while we wait for the doctor.”

For a second I saw that flash behind his eyes, but it was too late. My hand was trapped in his, and the paramedics were already at the door. I rubbed my forehead and blinked. 

It had to be the knock on the head, didn’t it?

Infinity

Infinity

She turned to stare out the translucent pane. It was always the same: dust and wind and a great haze of unbreathable gasses. Man, and it had been man, no woman had stepped on that lunar rock and successfully conquered Earth’s satellite. Her grandparents had vague memories of watching those few steps and the planting of a flag stiff with wire. 

Now it was supposed to be their turn, the generation raised on technology. A cell phone had more computing power than the entire roomful of mainframes that had crunched numbers for the lunar landing. She ran a hand down her face, wiping the sweat and grime from her forehead to her chin. Water for washing had long since run out. They were supposed to build a self-contained camp; none of the brilliant minds, who had organized this expedition, had foreseen the potential for the unmanned supply ship’s fatal malfunction that led it to crash land far from the target area. It was still transmitting telemetry, but it might as well be as lost as the sailing ships of yore for all the good it did.

Two teams had tried to reach it. One hadn’t made it over the cliffs; they weren’t trained mountaineers. The other had stumbled among the wreckage too weak and too short of oxygen to even find the emergency oxygen. They’d died huddled together against the perishing cold of a Martian night. Merrill’s last radio transmission would be forever scorched into Hannah’s soul. 

She’d known surprisingly little of her fellow shipmates. They had been selected during a country wide search and had only trained as a unit for two weeks before departure. Training had been undertaken by the various corporate entities underwriting and controlling the mission. The capsule might have a large U.S. flag on one side, but the corporate logos were far more important. The shreds of her space coveralls still sported the patches of a worldwide conglomerate more known for ready to eat food than engineering prowess. 

Merrill had been a quiet man in his thirties, recruited for both his scientific knowledge and his adventurous background. He’d biked around Asia on a school holiday and kayaked in the Arctic. Hannah was far from stupid, and it was obvious to her that proper looks and exciting back story had played as important part in the selection of team members as more concrete qualifications. They had been a pretty bunch for modern corporate promotion—half traditional white America, the other half an exotic mixture of shades, but none too black. There was all important African heritage needed for successful advertising campaigns in the supposed modern melange, but it was disguised with straight hair or sharper features of mixed race.

Merrill had been one of their brown members, perhaps corporate America’s most coveted class, the American Indian. Nothing sold more goods than a relationship to America’s first and most persecuted people. A tiny percentage donated back to a Native charity made everybody feel good, the benign fruits of capitalism. Merrill had babbled semi-incoherently into his radio his final night, speaking to a wife who wouldn’t hear the transmission for days and then only it its most sanitized version. He’d spoken of the children he had yet to father and the son only now starting in preschool. He’d named his future children that night, and Hannah hoped that had been passed on. He’d hoped for an Albert and a Marie; names that even the least educated would recognize. His voice had become more raspy, more painful, and finally faded into the nothingness of this God forsaken place.

“Hannah?”

“Robert.” Robert was tall and blond and had been Hollywood handsome. Most of his striking beauty was now lost under dull eyes and shriveling muscles. He ran his hand through his snarled hair that rested in dirty blond waves on his shoulders. Hollywood never had gotten the lost and the desolate right. They weren’t dramatic heroes of rugged individualism and shining morality; they were lost and battered and dreamed of going home for the most mundane reasons.

“I think we should try.”

“And die like everyone else?” Hannah ran through the names in her mind: Merrill, Jonathon, Andrea, and Cora.

“Is this better?” Robert stared at her. He was used to getting his own way; he was used to everything working out in his favor. He’d been captain of his baseball and basketball team, a top scholar at Yale, a promising scientist already bantered about as a future Nobel winner. He didn’t die in a hunk of plastic and metal on a rock.

“Longer,” Hanna said simply.

They both knew there was no hope of rescue. There was no rescue ship, not even the availability of unmanned drones to drop supplies. Redundant capacity damaged profits. Months from the gala of initial blastoff, they were probably all now forgotten except by the few waiting at home for news that would never come. Radio contact had been lost in a violent windstorm weeks ago and never recovered. Hannah would already have been mourned and buried in her small town, and Robert probably had a building named after him at Yale.

“I’ve studied the terrain. I think we can make it.”

Hannah wanted to believe his enthusiasm, to do rather than to wait.

“We have enough oxygen.”

By whose calculations? Walking on perfectly flat terrain without impossible cold, they had enough oxygen. This wasn’t a walk down Main street. 

“There are supplies. It isn’t far.”

And so what? This was beyond a deserted island in the sea; no rescue was eminent. It was only dust and cold and a homesickness for a world that she would never see again.

“I won’t die a caged rat.”

“To die out there is better than to die in here?”

“Yes.”

Hannah rose and folded the sheet of paper, marking the date with a pen that spluttered and faded as the last loop closed. Paper, a finite and poor media, all that was left. With two fingers she made the scissors of the childhood game. Scissors cut paper and rock crushed scissors.