Flesheaters and Bloodsuckers Anonymous: A Dark Humor (8 page)

            The salon steamed
inside with papaya, citrus and chemical scent.  A woman in the corner applied
nail polish to the acrylic nails of a largish client.  A dog sat in the chair
next to her with perfectly matched nails on its paws and a bow in its hair.  An
aproned man with long, pale-blond streaks in his hair swept up the floor,
turning off lights and equipment at unused stations as he went along.  Harold
watched him pick up a perfume bottle from one station, pull off the lid and
sniff at it.  He glanced side-to-side in a quick manner, then daubed a bit of
it on his wrists.  The man put the perfume bottle back and picked his broom up
to continue sweeping. 

            Maria’s voice
drew Harold’s attention as she helped her client from the chair.  Harold
enjoyed watching Maria work.  A master of charm, this job perfectly suited her
personality.  She handed the client a small gift bag of severely overpriced
products in tiny bottles and deftly took the woman’s money with her other
hand.  That would be her tip, Harold supposed.  She made a lot.  Her money
after all helped pay for the incredible number of salon and beauty supplies she
needed for her job and appearance.  Bonus cash, she called it.

            Maria saw Harold
at the desk when she sent her client off to pay for the salon treatment and
acknowledged him with a wave.  Her slightly cupped hand tuned into a crooked
finger beckoning him forward and he came to her like a moth to flame.  Maria
always made it easy.  Perhaps it was her body and those delicious curves.  Or
maybe it was the way she treated him.  Harold smiled inwardly, maybe he only
preferred women who bossed him around.

            “What are you
doing here?”  She cooed.

            Harold shrugged
and did his best to look nonchalant.  “Thought I’d drop in.  Walk you home.”

            Maria turned and
gathered up her things, putting away her equipment.  A bottle of the same
perfume the man sweeping up hair had sampled sat on the vanity.  Harold pulled
off the cap and took a good whiff to find out what made it so special.  He
smelled cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, an all-around holiday brew.  Maria grabbed
the bottle from him and put it in her purse.

            After turning off
the light to her station she slid an arm around Harold’s, real old fashioned. 
Harold loved that about her.  She could always make him feel like the man, the
one wearing the pants in the family, the king of the castle.  All that feminism
stuff during the seventies confused his inborn beliefs and even a vampire
needed some ego stroking.

            Maria stopped at
the receptionist’s desk to check her schedule for the next day. 

            “Kelly, can you
call and cancel this one?”  She asked pointing to an appointment.

            The girl gaped,
“Right now?”

            “I told Bethany I
don’t like this woman and didn’t want her anymore.  You must not have gotten
the message.”  She coos this, making Harold squirm a little even though he
wasn’t the focus of her attention. 

            “It’s so late,”
Kelly stammers, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to reach her.” 

            Maria taps the pencil
she’s holding on the book and the seconds stretch out.

            “But I’ll try.”

            Maria sets the
pencil down.  “Thanks, and if you can’t do anything about it I guess I’ll take
her this time,” she sighs, “Don’t schedule her with me again.”

            Kelly nods. 
Then, Harold held the door for Maria as they left, her arm once again ensnared
in his elbow. 

            Arm-in-arm they
wandered down the concrete and ice covered street with the other people. 
Harold saw no G-men or Bills following them.  His mind now at ease.  The way in
front of them parts by magic.  Individuals willingly acquiesce to the normalcy
of two people in coupledom.  They are a force to be reckoned with, symbols of
young love and they carried a special immunity against all of reality’s slings
and arrows.  No one dared to block their way or throw them dirty looks, not
even the guilty conscience following Harold. 

Chapter Five

            His seventh group
meeting and three weeks into his stay at the halfway house, no sign of anything
stranger than usual and no further inquiries by the feds, Harold was starting
to get a little bored.  

            Approximately
twenty or so zombs, vamps, weres and other creatures of the night sat staring
at each other.  Harold noticed the zombies assembled in the same section as
usual, one meeting after the other.  The new lady zombie from his first group
meeting looked pretty good; she retouched some of her skin with liquid powder
and a makeup mirror.  Since her “death” she’d lost a little color.  She now
wore a wig to cover the exposed section of her brains.  Donald applauded her on
her new changes last week, taking it as a sign she was adjusting well and
working towards being a regular human being again.  He neglected to ask her
what exactly she’d been eating, but Harold thought he saw her picking small
pieces of stringy meat out of her teeth. 

            Next to Harold,
Zork the slug kept grumbling under its breath, although Harold wasn’t certain
Zork breathed through its mouth the way humans did.  A line of small holes
running down the sides of Zork’s body closed and opened every minute or so. 
Harold felt oddly tempted to stick a finger in one just to see what would
happen.  More than likely he’d lose that finger to one pissed off slug.

            Zork wasn’t in a
good mood tonight.  On arrival, Harold found it on the snack table, face buried
in a tray of gingersnap cookies and growling at any who reached in to try and
grab one for themselves.  Not that there were a lot of takers for food in this
group. 

            Harold could
number the individuals in group who were actually able eat food without it
being rejected on one hand.  Zork, of course, ate just about anything, up to
and including people.  Its system didn’t tolerate salt.  Harold learned after
someone brought a container of salt for the kitchen table last week only to
have it thrown out by Zork, but it seemed to tolerate salt in small amounts in
food products.  Harold guessed the slug lived in almost constant irritation
from the sodium it encountered on a daily basis.

            After Zork were
the werewolves.  Rufus nearly ate him at the first group meeting, then missed
group entirely the second, third and fourth meetings during a full moon.  When
the clean cut, dark haired, business suited man walked up to him at the snack
table during their fifth group meeting Harold didn’t even recognize Rufus. 
He’d undergone such a complete transformation, both in body and mind.  Rufus
apologized in a slick English accent for throwing a benny and they shook
hands.  He said, Harold caught him at a bad moment… A very bad series of
moments.

            Even more
surprising, Harold learned Rufus and Zork went to the same weekly game of
poker, barring full moons.  The werewolf invited him to drop in the game
sometime.  The encounter left Harold with a slightly revised view of Rufus.

            A couple of
others were werewolves.  Many he didn’t recognize from his first meeting and
whom were also drinking coffee and eating small snack items.  One ate
continuously from a box of doggy biscuits in his lap. 

            One very thin
almost skeletal creature sat by the zombies.  He’d noticed it around the
halfway house a couple times but Harold never got close enough to tell if it
was an anorexic zombie or gulp, an actual skeleton wandering around the house
in clothing and a hat.  It crept him out in the worst way.

            Harold’s thoughts
were interrupted when Donald came in and found his usual spot at the center of
group.  “Today we’re going to try art therapy to release our inner demons and
find out who we really are inside,” he said.  A pile of art supplies with a
couple of canvases and large paper rolls lay next to him.  Harold even noted
deluxe boxes of crayons.  Snazzy.

            “Everyone come
and grab some art supplies.”  When no one moved Donald picked up a box of cheap
oil pastels and some newsprint, handing it to the vampire beside himself. 
“Come on now.  Don’t be shy.  We’re all at the same level here.”  Members of
the group moved forward reluctantly to pick odds and ends from the pile of
supplies.  Harold hung back waiting for the crowd to clear. 

            Zork snorted,
“This is so friggin’ stupid.”

            Harold grumbled
along with him, but overall group didn’t seem quite as stupid as he thought
when he first joined under pressure.  Life in the dark wasn’t so great.  Donald
just seemed to be giving everyone here a little hope for some light.  “You want
me to grab supplies for you?”

            “Knock yourself
out, I’m not going up there.”

            Harold meandered
up to the art supply pile.  Most of the good stuff had been picked over.  He
squatted down to look through it.  Donald smiled down at him and the others who
were still pawing through it, a demented father overlooking his brood.  It left
Harold with a sour taste in his mouth not unlike the taste of blood, tangy and
metallic.

            Avoiding Donald’s
gaze, he got away with a short easel, a set of bucket paints, a flat
canvassette, large sheet of drawing paper and some chunky graphite sticks. 
Harold sat down with the stuff.  He’d picked up the easel for Zork since he
figured the slug wouldn’t have an easy time holding a drawing board.  After the
slug told him off for it, Zork proceeded to tell him to set up the darn thing
since the crap was designed by humans anyway.

            Meanwhile, a
large bald man with olive green skin hulked into the center of the group, an
ogre. 

            Everyone stilled
in fiddling with their supplies to watch wide eyed when Donald directed the
ogre to pull off his robe, the only piece of clothing he was wearing.  The
cloth hit the ground and suddenly they all found reason to look everywhere but
at the naked creature.  Zork screamed dramatically and pressed eyes against
each other. 

            “I’m not looking,
I’m not painting it,” Zork repeated.  “My eyes,” it groaned.

            The slug’s drama
queen antics did nothing to deter the ogre or Donald, both of whom ignored the
group’s discomfort.  He directed the ogre to a platform in the middle of the
area and spent several minutes arranging lights and positioning the creature,
finally settling on “thinker” position with the lights creating a long shadow
across the floor, over a row of members and melding into the darkness of the
warehouse beyond. 

            “Okay everyone,”
Donald clapped his hands together, disrupting several bunches of discussion the
group had fallen into while he was distracted.  A zombie jumped from her chair
and promptly fell apart on the floor.  Donald sighed and waited several more
moments while those next to her helped her body parts back into the chair
again. 

            “Okay group, this
is Mort.  He’s kindly offered to be our model for tonight.  I’d like you all to
use your chosen supplies to draw or paint a picture.  This picture can be in
any style or theme you’d like, as long as it is your own.  Let your own inner
self show through.  We’ll all show off our work and explain what inspired us
about the subject, our tools or what we felt while working.” 

            “Everyone ready? 
Great, let’s get started,”  Donald said, signaling the start of a race to draw
while simultaneously avoiding laying eyes on the man’s dick.   

            And right off the
mark several turned to their work.  Zork straightened in its chair beside Harold,
wrapped eyestalks around each other and unwrapped them.  It deftly picked up
the paintbrush and began to work. 

            Off to Harold’s
right a couple of women, one a zombie, spoke softly while sketching.  One asked
another if they were supposed to draw
it
as well and received only a
shrug in return.

            Harold stared at
his own blank page.  Did he have a style?  He stroked the charcoal stick with
one pale bony finger, then put it down to rub it off his hands.  The dry
brittle piece reminded him of chalk he used to play with as a youngster,
sitting in the bright sunshine with now nameless neighborhood buddies,
scrawling on endless miles of sidewalk.  Harold never drew anything
particularly good, but it was fun drawing pictures and chicken scratch.  A way
of showing off the thoughts in his child’s mind. 

            Harold rubbed the
stick, pressing the powdery charcoal more firmly onto the pad of his finger,
then pressing it to the paper to create a smiley face of fingerprints.  Harold
smiled at the happy face looking back at him.  Using the charcoal stick, he
added more to his doodle and the face became a full-fledged stick person. 
Harold went further, drawing classic images from childhood; a house, sidewalk
and a smiling sun.  So engrossed was he in his own doodle drawing that he
didn’t notice Zork’s eyestalk peering over his shoulder.

            “They held you
back in art class didn’t they?”

            Harold started. 
He pulled away from the eyestalk peering into his own eyes. 

            “What?”  Harold
asked, straightening and rubbing his hand on his pants.

            “Looks like
something a kid drew.”

            Harold curled a
lip at Zork.  Its painting was unbelievable, actually out of this world.  If it
weren’t for the subject matter, Harold might have taken this for the beginnings
of a painting by a deranged, but professional artist.  A dramatic view of the
ogre crouched on the Earth sat over shadowed by a large, intimidating slug
which looked an awful lot like the slug sitting beside him. 

            “Zork, what?”

            Zork turned its
eyestalk back to its own painting and spent several moments examining the line
art.  The slug was now the artist turned critic, examining a great work for
flaws. 

            “You don’t like?”
Zork asked, innocently or at least as innocently as a mouth full of needle
teeth could allow. 

            “It comes across
as self-aggrandizing to me,” Harold said.  He took Zork’s brush from its place
on the easel and dipped it in some black paint.  “You know what this needs,”
Harold said as he twirled the brush in the paint, “a handle-bar mustache.”

            Zork’s eyestalk
snatched the end of the paint brush.  “Watch it, kid.  Don’t fuck up my art.” 
Harold and Zork grappled over the brush.  Harold poked the offending eyestalk
in the eye and Zork instantly withdrew with a growl.  The hurt stalk
disappeared inside Zork’s head, leaving a small stump and only one angry eye
and dangerous mouth to glare at Harold. 

            “Way below the
belt,” Zork said.

            “Well, it’s hard
to tell where below the belt is with a slug,” said Harold.  “Now, where do you
want me to add my own artistic contribution.”

            Zork told him to
shove it up his ass.

            “You can shove it
up your own alien butt when I’m finished here.  I know.  This ogre spends his
whole life in the dark.  You need a happy sun shining down on the scene,”
Harold said painting the sun in the upper corner of the canvas. 

            “A sun painted in
black doesn’t lighten up the ogre’s life,” Zork said as Harold painted.

            Harold graced the
sun with a smiling countenance and several long black rays of light, spending
an overly long amount of time making sure each ray was equidistance and equally
long.        “Well, maybe a black sun suits us all,” Harold muttered.  He
dropped the paintbrush in the water can and plopped back into his seat. 
Suddenly, painting stick figures and images from his childhood seemed pointless. 
Why dwell on the past?

            Harold stared
down at his own charcoal stick figures.  Compared to Zork’s work it really was
childish.  Harold lifted up the newsprint sheet to tear it up, but felt the
presence of someone behind him and nearly jumped out of his chair.  He did that
an awful lot with this group.  Those supernatural senses needed tuning up.  The
presence was Donald with a creepy grin on his bespectacled face. 

            “What have we
here?” He asked, pulling the newsprint out of Harold’s hand.  The move left
Donald’s neck wide open.  Harold’s eyes locked right on it.  He could almost
see the slight, seductive jugular pulsing under his skin. 

            Harold shook
himself, lips curling with faint disgust.  Where the hell did that come from? 
He did not want to eat Donald. 
He did not want to eat Donald
.  The
ruffling of paper being opened told Harold his experience was yet to end. 
Donald seeing his childish scrawl irked Harold even more.  His teeth twanged
with feeling and he clamped them together until his jaw hurt.  He knew what the
twinge meant and he was not hungry. 

            “Well, is this
your interpretation of the ogre, Harold?”  Donald asked. 

            “Not really.” 
Harold trained his eyes on the ground.  “Just warming up.” 

            “Warming up?”

            “Right-O.”

            Zork, the asshole
slug yawned at him and Donald.  It stretched eyestalks up to stare at the
picture Donald now examined.