|
|
IT WAS A little after 11:30 by the time I got back to my room, put some coffee on and sat down at my desk.
I was careful, extremely careful, not to go anywhere else in the apartment, not to do anything else other than use the washroom. I knew my weaknesses and that if I allowed myself to stray from the task at hand, I would end up distracting myself with other tasks, other duties, other chores that suddenly would seem important to get done.
I revived the laptop from its snooze and started at the backdrop on my screen. It was a simple photograph of the rolling hills of the Ottawa Valley in the spring, taken when I’d been hiking near Mont Tremblant in Quebec just a few months before I got restless and decided to hitchhike from Ottawa to the Big Apple to seek my fame and fortune as a writer.
Being a New Yorker and a successful author still seemed surreal to me, so far removed from the person I had been growing up. It was strange the way the mind could accept some things but still have difficulty believing others. During full moons I ended up turning into a werewolf. But that seemed almost normal, easy to accept, easy to digest, to come to terms with. The fact that I’d actually made it as a writer, that I’d actually succeeded in my far-fetched dream to live in this grand city, how successful I had become, how much money, fame, and fortune I’d acquired . . . I found that whole thing harder to believe whenever I stopped and thought about it. It seemed a much more difficult reality to accept. I mean, if my life were a novel, I was sure the reader would have no trouble accepting the fact that I was a werewolf.
But I somehow doubt, particularly knowing the writing industry the way that I do, that any readers who knew it as well, if not better than I, would balk at the thought that a young man could hitch-hike from a small Canadian city to one of the world’s largest metropolitan areas with a dream to become a writer, to succeed in that path – and that within just a few years of setting out, he hit the big time, he became a bestselling success story; his novels were being turned into movies and the readers simply couldn’t get enough of his tales about an antiques dealer who solved mysteries.
Yes, that and not the whole werewolf thing, would likely be the harder element to accept. If it hadn’t happened to me, I wouldn’t even accept it as a reality.
But I suppose that my success wouldn’t likely have happened if I hadn’t been bitten by that werewolf, if I hadn’t developed this supernatural ability with heightened senses.
That, more than my half-baked dream of hitch-hiking into New York to seek my fame and fortune, was what was ultimately responsible for my success.
So maybe, while at first seeming a bit far-fetched, it could be believed – so long as you bought the fact that I was a werewolf.
The screen saver started on my laptop screen, snapping me out of the mind-wandering episode. I realized what I’d been doing, that while I’d done my best to avoid doing physical chores and tasks in the apartment to keep me from writing, that I’d taken a daydream break.
It was amazing the things I could do to myself, the excuses and distractions I could generate out of thin air just to keep myself from writing, just to conveniently steer myself on these little tangents away from it.
But, enough I said in a firm voice in my mind. There’s a deadline to get so many thousand words written and get them off to Mack.
Time to get down to business.
I remember the teacher, Miss Davis, was a strict and domineering woman – I’d initially hated the way in which she kept putting a hand on my shoulder and telling me to stop whenever she caught me doing my single finger hunt and peck method. I’d argued with her many times of course, demonstrating, based on my years of self-taught typing, that my word count of 20 to 30 words per minute was still far superior than the other people in the classroom.
But she’d been adamant and wouldn’t let me get away with it. She kept stopping me by putting a hand on my shoulder, ripping the paper out of the Minolta typewriter, putting a fresh sheet in, then reaching down, taking my hands, and placing them in the ASDF, HJKL position on the keyboard and telling me to start again.
We struggled this way for the first few weeks. It wasn’t until I started using one of the electric typewriters – and maybe it had something to do with the slightly different angle of the keyboard itself – that I started to realize that I could type better following her advice. I actually started a bit slowly in my method. I initially began resting my fingers in the manner she’d wanted, but only used the first two fingers of my hand to type things out – I fooled her more often using this method, so the times she’d stopped to correct me started to reduce in frequency. But then after another week of doing this, and seeing my word count per minute almost double, I started adopting an additional finger into the process.
By the fifth week, I had started using all of my fingers and my thumbs in exactly the manner that Miss Davis had been adamant that I work on. And by the end of the second month, my word per minute rate hovering between 80 and 90. Not only that, but my typos were virtually non-existent.
I remember at that point wanting to hug this woman, whom, by the end of the school year, I’d grown a massive schoolboy crush on.
It was funny. She was this prim and proper teacher straight out of a stereotypical sketch of a teacher. Not all that attractive, with her hair curled into a tight bun, always wearing non-dramatic and stale looking pants suits, and barely smiling, always having a serious look on her face.
And at first I’d hated her – hated the sight of her, hated her deep husky voice, hated the way that she constantly corrected me, constantly wouldn’t let me type the way in which I’d taught myself.
She basically broke me, broke the habit of years, the bad habit that I’d taught myself and thought was the better way.
But by the end of the year, I’d fallen in love and in lust with her, admired the smart way in which she dressed, enjoyed listening to the smoky husky voice. Spent many an hour in her classroom listening to her, watching her, and fantasizing about walking up to her, reaching up and releasing the tightly wound bun of her hair, letting it spill down over the shoulders of her suit jacket, then marveling as she undid her jacket, then her blouse, and slowly, carefully, guided my hands to her breasts, gently placed my fingers to just the right positions and then slowly, methodically instructed me in the proper manner in which to touch and please her.
Oh, how I’d lie awake at night dreaming about Miss Davis, imagining her guiding my hands not only to her breasts, but to all those dark and mysterious places that occupied so much of my adolescent mind where you could touch a woman and make her squirm in pleasure beneath your touch.
Miss Davis, my first genuine love. Sure, there had been teachers before her, younger, more beautiful and sexy even, more approachable, more loving in their manner. But Miss Davis, my prim proper and strict typing teacher. She was the one I loved the most over the years.
Because before her, I thought I was good at typing. But after her, after her strict insistence about the way that I typed, I became a much better writer – because for the first time I was beginning to approach the ability for my fingers on the keyboard to almost keep time with the thoughts racing through my brain.
To this day, I think if I saw Miss Davis, I’d likely get the same boner that I often had sitting at the typewriter in her class and watching her move about the room, constantly stopping to adjust the hands of the pupils in her class.
And, to this day, no matter how old she was now, I would still imagine her having this double life – that of a strict and uptight teacher, barely cracking a smile during the day. But at night, beneath that mask, beneath that persona, being a hot, sensual and desirable woman, capable of making a man scream in pleasure, of teaching him things about his own sexuality that he didn’t realize existed. I believed this in my heart, as if, like my current self, her sexuality was some supernatural ability that she possessed, that lied dormant most of her days under her skin, just itching for any opportunity to present itself.
I, of course, caught myself again. But the memories of Miss Davis, the thought that someone’s outward appearance could sometimes mask the true person who lived beneath the skin (something I, as a werewolf, was continually aware of but didn’t pay much attention to, the way one doesn’t often stop to think about the “given’s” in their life) inspired an idea for the Bronte novel. I looked at the last words I’d written . . .
Bronte focused on the overturned mug on the kitchen table, the coffee spread out over the surface of the table, and dripping in thick black drops to the floor.
This was bad.
. . . and I knew where to go next.
But even worse was the thing that Bronte didn’t want to see, didn’t want to look at. It was something subtle within the rich dark pool of coffee that had dripped onto the floor – a subtle yet detectable swirl of crimson. And beside that, very small and almost lost in the pattern of the retro 70s style linoleum floor, were two tiny drops of fresh blood.
He stood there a moment, taking it in, when something out of the corner of his vision caught his attention.
About four feet away, and in the direction of the hallway that led to the living room and basement, was another tiny droplet of blood.
Crouching, he took a couple of steps in that direction. As he got closer, the next droplet of blood, this one another four feet or so further down the hallway, seemed to rise out of the colorful marble floor pattern.
A couple of more steps, and there was another dot of blood – again, almost like the result of dipping the tip of a pencil into a can of rich red paint.
Unfortunately, though, Bronte had seen more than his fair share of blood over the years, so there was no mistaking the source of the liquid trail he was following in his house at some ungodly hour in the morning.
But worse than that was the strong likelihood that the blood came from the woman he hadn’t seen in ten years but who still haunted the deeper, darker fantasies that he tried to keep buried – the woman whom he had imagined spending the rest of his life with but whom he’d lost. Gwendolyn, the high school typing teacher, the one who looked so ultimately prim and proper, in her dress, in her social manner, but who was a passionate and sensual beast of a woman, capable of a transformation unlike any other he’d ever seen in a single person before, able to bring him to heights of passion and ecstasy that he hadn’t thought were even possible.
With every pindrop of blood his heart sank even further at what he might find at the end of the trail. Then came the thought that whomever had done this to her might still be in his house. He instinctively lightened his step, moved back into the kitchen and considered his options for a weapon of choice.
There was the large carving knife from the knife rack on the counter. But he wasn’t used to wielding such weapons – hell, he wasn’t used to wielding weapons of any sort, and the thought of using it to defend himself against an attacker that might be hiding in his home was unsettling.
Not a good idea.
He opened the third drawer down and pulled out the wooden rolling pin that he could only remember using once a year, when he was doing his Christmas baking. He held it by a single handle, it fitting comfortably in his right palm and weighing just the right weight. This he felt a kinship with, could easily swing it, strike whatever target he needed, without worrying about stabbing himself by accident the way he might with a knife.
The rolling pin in hand, and feeling slightly more at ease tracking the blood drops down the hallway now that he had at least a perceived way of defending himself, regardless of the silliness of the situation. A roll-pin, after all, up against a thug wielding a handgun, was pretty much useless. He might as well be holding a string of flaccid spaghetti if that were the case.
But nonetheless, he did feel a bit more confident continuing with something solid in his hand.
The blood trail continued on past the entrance to the living room – he glanced inside, gave it the once over; spied the two most likely hiding spots, the nook between the Baldwin piano and the bookshelves and the space behind the wing-back recliner chair and the wall. Both spots were clear. He felt safe moving on, knowing the blood trail now had no choice but to lead to the basement.
The door to the basement stairs was open. He never kept it open (likely due to the subconscious childhood fear that the monsters living in the unfinished basement might come upstairs and get him) – more evidence that there was someone here, that the tracking of the blood would actually lead to something.
He paused at the top of the stairs before descending. From where he stood, despite the fact that there was no light on in the stairway, he could see the blood spot trail continue on the wooden steps. But, regardless of the distance each new spot was from him, they actually grew in size rather than shrunk the way objects in the distance seem to get smaller.
No, it was obvious that the blood droplets were turning into blood splatters – they were getting bigger and there was less space between each one.
He stepped down into the stairwell and heard a voice that he knew was Gwendolyn’s let out a whimper from somewhere in the depths of the darkness.
“Gwenny!” Bronte said, his fear suddenly shoved aside, replaced by concern for this woman that, regardless of how much time had passed, how many others there had been since her who held a place in his heart, that he still loved deeply and, he realized, without condition.
He raced down the stairs and just as he neared the bottom he slipped on something – as he fell backward, his left hand put out behind him to stop his fall in a slick yet sticky substance – he realized that the bottom stairs were coated with blood.
He landed partly on his left hand, left arm and the left side of his back, most of him, he realized, now soiled with the blood that pooled on those bottom stairs, that coated them almost like a fresh coat of paint.
“M-Max...” Gwendolyn’s voice a low whispered plea.
As Bronte lay on the bottom stairs, turning his head to where her voice came from in the darkness, the headlight beams from a car passing on the street outside swept across the basement in a quick search-light effect.
Within the simple flash Bronte saw two things that he imagined would haunt his dreams until his very last day.
A body, a man, a large man, lay face down on the basement floor not three feet from where Bronte himself lay. No, Bronte, realized, he couldn’t be certain if the man was face down or not. It was hard to really see any detail other than the fact that the man’s entire body seemed to be coated in blood. He couldn’t even tell if the man wore clothes or not, or what color the hair on his head was. He was simply a dark rich crimson color.
And a few feet beyond him, cowering in the corner, sat Gwendolyn. Her hands were coated in a dark thick fluid, as if she’d dipped them into a vat of chocolate. And her lips and chin were covered in the same color, as if she were a child and had brought fistfuls of that chocolate to her mouth in a mad fury of consumption.
Only it wasn’t chocolate at all. It was, obviously, that man’s blood.
“M-Max.” Gwendolyn repeated. “I need help. I’ve done it again.”
Like the first time he’d made love to her and been in awe of this other person who she could be under her clothes, in the dark of a bedroom, there was obvious some other, darker thing that lay beneath.
This was worse.