Scarves - PART III
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Starting the Row
I looked carefully at every scarf I saw and there were many, but only a few colors. There was the blue-green scarves, the orange-pink ones like Mia, the brown-teal, the greyscale ones and the red-black ones. But the fans for the Frankfurt football team wore that scarf, so they don’t really count.
I pinballed off those walking in the platz, recreating a tried but true clichéd movie scenario. Apology, bounce. Apology, bounce. I twisted and turned the wrong way to find myself swept up in the current of protestors moving towards the center of town. Too many voices to comprehend, too many people to move in any direction but one. Out of the corner of my eye I saw colors blue and green, orange and pink, brown and teal, and of course the khaki and green of the authorities. 2000 students marching into a small sealed off corridor. We were cattle being herded together to receive the bolt-gun between the eyes either by the authorities.
I started to shove and push my way through the crowd, not caring about the repercussions. My only concern was getting the hell out of there. The idea of causing a stampede, trampling over some innocents never came to mind. I hope that no one but myself got hurt. Falling twice, I scraped up my chin, chipping a tooth and slashed most of the skin off my left hand as I landed on an empty green bottle that should have been placed in the proper recycling bin. To avoid any questions I took my zip-up off, wrapped my hand tightly. That would be my one smart move of the day.
Turtle returning from work was greeted with small pools of blood throughout the suite, “Don?”
“I’ll clean that up in a minute.” I said from the bathroom, trying to downplay the scene. My hand was under the cold water, picking out small shards of glass, when Turtle rounded the corner. “What happened?” she asks, pulling at my hand to survey the damage.
“Nothing. I fell down.”
“And your chin?”
“Doesn’t matter. We have to talk.”
“No, we have to get you to the hospital.”
“Absolutely not.” I was afraid of the questions they would ask plus I hated the idea of needles in my hands. With no bandages and pink bathroom towels, I took one of Turtle’s clean white T-shirts and started to dress my hand. There was no way I was going to wear a pink mitten.
“Are you going to tell me what the hell happened?”
“You’re not going to believe me, but…” I told her everything and as foretold not a word did she believe. And who could blame her. It was a preposterous story of vampires and scarves; no sane person would even spend a second thinking about it. Fortunately for me, Turtle is not a sane person. She proved that by taking me with her to Europe, so for the rest of the night she pondered and vexed about what was. Never truly believing, but never dismissing it as the rambling of an eccentric lover.
When my head touched the pillow that night, I introduced myself to dreams like an overzealous salesman. The excitement of the day, along with the loss of blood had rendered me useless. The last thing I recall was Turtle kissing my forehead and reassuring me that all would be all right. The windows were left open permitting the cool breeze of the night to lessen the humidity of this sticky September evening. The Europeans have neither use nor consideration for screens or air conditioning, thus an open window truly is an open window.
At exactly 3:47 in the morning a truck slammed its brakes passing CheckPoint Bratwurst waking me from my deep slumber. Pushing my pillow down I went to put my arm around Turtle and crawl back to sleep when the glow of the streetlight revealed a figure sitting on the bed. The light captured the edges of his form as he sat perfectly still except his finger that was tracing Turtle’s figure pulling the sheets down along as he went. He spoke sotto voce, “Erkläre mir, sie schmecke so zart, wie sie fühlt?”
I did not move only watched his hand run from Turtle’s shoulder down to her hip revealing naked flesh. As his hand crept back up along her body, his head began to lower towards her sleeping neck. Needles began to prick along my spine as the room filled with a miasma of lust and fear. The sodium lights glinted against his pallid skin, his lips parted baring long ivory teeth. His breath cooled Turtle’s flesh instigating goose bumps to rise and fall across her flesh. Pausing only for a moment to lock eyes with me, discerning if I was repulsed or stimulated, he exposed his tongue to lick the salt off my love’s skin. In that instant a resounding thump resonated through the room as Turtle cracked the monster’s head with the clock radio. The radio roared to life with a Wings song as the vampire lunged for the window. “Ich erfreue mich in ihr für Jahrhunderte. Und Sie…”
Aroused from my fascination, I sprung from the bed after the fiend, only able to seize his scarf. Even in the radiance of a streetlight I could tell the scarf was black on black.
Turtle sat in bed with the covers tightly wrapped around her torso, pointing towards the window, “Was that…?”
“I think so. But how did you know it wasn’t me?”
“He, it, smelled of hard boiled eggs. You hate eggs.”
“Nasty little things,” I peered out into the courtyard looking for any sign of him. A six-story drop, on a secured facility, and he was nowhere to be seen.
“Don?” I continued to look out the open window holding the scarf in my hand. “I think you should come away from the window,”
I spun around expecting to see another devil in the bed with Turtle, but fortunately the only devil was her, “What? What is it?”
“I don’t think the entire city of Wiesbaden needs to be able to describe your manhood.”
As the adrenaline subsided, I realized I was indeed without boxers. Playing it off, I waved to the after-hours people, closed the windows, shut the curtain, threw the scarf over the mirror, placed the radio back on the veneer nightstand and stayed up till morning holding Turtle tightly as Paul McCartney sang, “Someone’s knockin’ at the door, Somebody’s ringin’ the bell, Do me a favour, Open the door and let ’em in.”
To be concluded...
Labels: fiction, scarf, vampires
posted by Don Taylor @ 12:00 PM,
