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who got run through with a pitchfork."
She frowned. "Yes, and we have an account to settle on that matter." She
reached out and began unfastening the buttons on my shirt. "But for now we'll
do what we can about keeping you alive. Let's see if we can get you warmed
up." My shirt, still damp but turning crusty with blood, came off, and she
used it to sponge the area around my wounds. Then she pulled me against her
and down to the ground.
Her skin was covered with short, downy hairs like peach fuzz, and the feel of
her was like warm velvet. She wrapped her arms around me and slowly slid her
hands up and down my back, trying to pull the chill out of my semidead flesh.
The pain receded as I basked in the warmth that poured out of her like secret
sunlight.
It wasn't long before I felt a familiar stirring. A hunger was awakening.
Not now
, I thought.
But I needed blood. And that need was inescapable.
Undeniable. . . .
Except, as the feeling grew in intensity, it didn't feel like the bloodlust
that had become increasingly familiar of late. It was a different kind of
hunger, of need.
"Is this helping?" she murmured, her face close to mine.
In response, I touched my lips to hers. She answered in kind. The kiss that
followed was long, deep, and more satisfying than anything I could have
imagined.
"This is a bad idea," she whispered, finally.
"I'm just full of bad ideas," I whispered back.
She snuggled against me. "Are you warm enough?"
"I'm getting there."
She sighed. "You still need blood."
"It will have to wait."
"You don't have to wait. I can give you some of mine."
I flinched: the thought of taking a little of her blood seemed even worse,
now, than what Deirdre had seduced me into doing just days before.
"I can't," I said, falling back on the old standby. "Dr. Mooncloud insists
that I have nothing but normal blood. It might contaminate her research "
She shook her head. "I don't care about research. I care about keeping you
alive."
"I don't want your blood."
"You'd drink Deirdre dry but refuse a single swallow from me?" She looked in
my eyes and flinched.
"I'm sorry. I know that wasn't your fault." Claws extended from her
fingertips. "We can argue about this later." She drew a single claw across the
inside of her hand. Blood began to gather in her cupped palm.
"You've got to have something." She raised her hand to my lips. "Drink."
"If you take even one swallow," said a new voice, "then I shall be forced to
kill you both!"
I looked over and, at the opening of the culvert, I saw a familiar face.
The face of Death.
I swooned.
"Chris, what happened? Are you all right?"
"Daddy, Daddy, what happened to your shirt?"
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I look down and eventually realize that my shirt is half on, half off and
soaked with a witch's brew of blood, water, and mud.
"What happened to him?"
"Don't rightly know, ma'am," the fire chief is telling my wife. "My guess is
he got a lungful of smoke, staggered into the barn, and collapsed. We found
him there and the paramedics have been looking him over.
"Hey, Jim!" He motions to one of the firemen who was holding a breathing mask
over my face when I
woke up.
"We gave him oxygen," Jim explains as the chief moves off to direct cleanup
efforts, "but he's still pale and shocky. Take him straight to a doctor or the
emergency room and have him looked at."
"What about that bandage on his arm?" Jenny wants to know.
"Well now, ma'am, I was about to ask you the same thing. That's not our
handiwork; he had it on when we found him."
"Well, he didn't have it an hour ago." She looks at me.
"I I don't remember," I say. It is something that I will say for the rest of
her life.
"Will you help me get him into our van?" she asks the paramedic. "I'll take
him straight to the nearest doctor."
"I can walk," I say. When I prove that I can, I'm even more surprised than
they are.
"Daddy, are you going to go to the hospital?" Kirsten asks as her mother eases
the van around in a slow, tight turn.
"No, honey, we're going to go straight home so I can rest."
Jennifer gives me the Look. "We are taking you to a doctor."
"Seriously, Jen; I am feeling better!" And I am. The farther away we get from
the fire and the creepy old barn, the better (safer) I feel. "In fact, I'm
ready to drive now."
"Don't be silly."
We are back on 103 now, and the town of Weir is just ahead. "Tell you what,
though," I say, spotting an IGA Food Mart up ahead, "I could use a couple of
Tylenol. Why don't we stop here? It'll only take a moment."
My wife is a woman completely devoid of guile. More surprising: after nine
years of marriage, she still doesn't expect it from me. When she comes back
out with the tiny sack, I am sitting behind the steering wheel with the
driver's door locked. Kirsten laughs delightedly at Jennifer's scowl. "Daddy
tricked you, Mommy! Now he gets to drive!"
"I don't think you're funny," she says, climbing into the passenger seat.
"Oh, lighten up, Jen," I say, pulling us back out onto 103. We head east.
"You're a macho pig just trying to prove how tough you are." The words are not
devoid of affection as she says it.
"Not only that," I say, "but a penny-pinching tightwad who doesn't believe in
wasting ninety bucks and another hour in a waiting room with two-year-old
magazines just so a doctor can tell me to take some Tylenol and go home and
lie down."
Outside the town limits, I bring the van up to fifty-five miles per hour and
set the cruise control.
"See?" I raise my knees to the steering wheel. "Nothing to do but steer. And I
can do that with one hand.
With one finger."
"My, my, aren't we feeling better?" She smirks, but there is genuine concern
in my wife's eyes. I'll
always remember those eyes, just that way. Wide, cornflower blue they have a
way of shining in a very special way when she looks (looked) at me. "Now,
maybe you can tell me what happened to you back there in that barn?"
"Wh-what?" I feel an unexpected wave of dizziness.
"I hope that old man is going to be all right."
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My heart lurches in my chest. "Old . . . man . . . ?"
"Can't you remember anything?"
Don't want to!
"The barn?" The periphery of my vision is clouding, growing dark. My foot
dances for the brake, finds only the accelerator. A red tide washes over my
thoughts.
"Slow down, Chris; we're coming up on the highway."
Can't see it!
I'm groping in darkness for the cruise control release, for the brake. The
steering wheel slips out of my hands.
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Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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