 
My Wholly Heartbreaking Heretic

Danielle Peterson

Copyright 2012 by Danielle Peterson

Smashwords Edition
Chapter One

"You ever spent time in the South? You sound like you have," said my elderly client. I seem to remember that his name began with an R. Ronald? Let's go with that.

I murmured an affirmative, although I was far too preoccupied with easing the vacuum tube out of his television to elaborate any further. Yes, I, Young Master Toupinier, (disinherited)heir to one of the largest sugar plantation in the American South, reader of law, and immortal, spent several years in the late 1960s and early 1970's repairing televisions. What can I say? I grew weary of law, and of mill ownership, and of law again, and then...oh, lots of things. Dozens of lifetimes of occupations and jobs and careers. I even plied my expertise with the human viscera as a surgeon. It all becomes so awfully tedious after a while.

But one of the few pinpoints of felicity in my long summer has been the steady advancement of technology. I am "that guy", the one who religiously buys every iteration of the iPod and the PlayStation-hell, I've even bought a Zune or two. My fascination with said devices was sparked back when records were still made of shellac and could be broken like plates. I learned how to repair televisions after Ma Bichette and I split up in 1966 (I recall that I saw _The Naked Prey_ at the cinema the day after she left) citing that she was "tired of looking at your melancholy face everyday for the past twenty-five years, Rémi, I just need a change." Don't cry for me, however, as I was just about fed up with her nonsense as well.

I could wax poetically for pages and pages about my reflections on what it's like to go from grainy black and white to high definition, but I am sure you get my drift. It's the bee's knees (oh, I love that absurd idiom and I wish it would come back into style), to say the least. But really, that's all rather incidental to this particular story. It did not matter what I was doing at the time, the time being the autumn of 1970.

I am certain that you picture me in some sort of garish leisure suit or something, but you can just go right ahead and stop yourself. I wouldn't be caught dead (ha) in something so ungainly. Instead I weathered the fashion chaos in a uniform of all-American blue jeans and perfectly mundane work shirts and T-shirts. You cannot truly appreciate a cotton T-shirt until you've worn a cravat day in and day out for several decades.

I moved to Reno after we separated. No particular reason why I chose Reno; I had never been there before. I don't remember my exact thought process, I probably just chose the city at random from a map or some such. I am not a big gambler, I get my thrills elsewhere, but the desert and the dry heat were a nice change. After a hunt I would retire to the vast wilderness of sand and stone with nothing but my turmoil and a case of Hamm's. There, ensconced safely in an empty womb of silence and ethereal, torrid heat, I could vent properly. I'd put down a few six-packs of beer (remember pull tabs on cans?) in rapid succession and before I'd know it I'd be hollering to all the gila monsters and scorpions how it wasn't worth it, how no love, no matter how divine, could be worth it. Ah well. C'est la vie.

Back to my story.

This fellow, Ronald, he was a right old bastard. First thing he said to me was that I looked like his son. Second thing he said was that his son was a dirty pinko who wasn't welcome at his home anymore. What can you say in response to that? I'm sorry I look like your communist son? I try not to mix business with murder, as it tends to require me to skip town sooner than I would like, but I started to get that itchy trigger finger, so to speak, and Ronald only continued to rub me the wrong way.

Even though it had been a good fifteen years since color broadcasts began, Ronald had stubbornly held on to his black and white set. That alone caused me no grief; to each their own, but by this time vacuum tubes were already starting to get phased out. I tried to explain to Ronald that he might want to just buy a new color set as opposed to having to get the burnt out tubes replaced every few months. He dismissed my suggestion, not with good grace or even indifference, but with sheer indignation that I would dare to suggest that he do something new. Then he conjectured that I was a homosexual because I smoked (and still do smoke) Benson and Hedges cigarettes (when you can't die there's really not much motivation to not smoke). He was really starting to grate on my nerves, but while I crouched down on the floor, fixing his relic of a television set, he decided to ask me about my travels in Dixie.

"You ever been to Georgia?" he asked.

"Yeah," I replied as noncommittally as a could.

"Where abouts?"

"Oh, all over," I said tersely, trying to communicate that my work required concentration.

"I'm from Bibb County. Ever been to Macon?"

I smiled despite myself. "Yeah."

"When?"

"Sixty-one," I answered, but didn't specify that it was 1861 when I was last there, not 1961.

He then proceeded to bitch about the late President Kennedy, and how that he was a communist and a traitor. Ronald was obsessed with communists, even more so than the average person was at the time. His diatribe morphed into a lecture about how FDR was a communist, how Eisenhower was a communist sympathizer (which is a completely different thing, I guess) because he refused to authorize a nuclear strike against the North Koreans, and how pretty much everyone but himself was a stealth Marxist.

I tuned in and out of his soliloquy. The repair itself didn't take too long, but it was rather slow going because I was attempting to calculate how long it would take local law enforcement to piece together that it was the television repairman who was slaughtering residents.

While the vast majority of all aspects of life have gotten considerably easier and accessible, getting away with murder gets harder and harder every year. Which is great news, of course, for most people, but it is a imposing annoyance for myself. First it was fingerprints I had to worry about leaving behind. Then it was DNA evidence, or hair, or fibers from my clothing. Now there is a security camera on every wall and streaming webcams and it makes me nostalgic for simpler time when my hunts could be dismissed as a werewolf or gypsies or something other than the epic serial killer that I am.

Whenever I can, I dispose of the body. I realize that this is deplorable, as it gives families no closure and perpetuates false hope that said victim is alive, but I'm a selfish monster who feeds on the living to continue my own miserable existence, so what do you expect? Some kind of cage-free, organic, fair-trade heart market? It's an ugly business, and as I mentioned in the previous volume I try to assuage my culpability by selecting 'worthy' meals, but I never do feel good about it, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Ronald was a prime candidate though. He lived alone; his wife had run off with some communist, (oh, now years after the fact I get that I should have suggested that that was why his 'son' looked like a communist) and based upon his disposition, which was remarkably abrasive, I guessed that he didn't have guests coming by unannounced. Granted, an unpleasant personality and propaganda-induced paranoia doesn't really warrant a death sentence, but the new moon was about ten days away and I needed to make a selection.

"You're not planning on stealing my tube there, are you?" he pressed me.

I had absentmindedly put the kaput vacuum tube in my toolbox. "Well, no, but there's not much you can do with it. It's burned out." I pulled it out of the toolbox. "It's trash. I suppose if you want to collect garbage, by all means, keep it."

He snatched the vacuum tube from my hands. "Don't you tell me what's trash and what's not! What I do with my own property is none of your business!"

A tentative glance around his home demonstrated that nothing was trash to this man, no matter how burnout out or rusted or obsolete. A common enough affliction among people who lived through the Great Depression (not myself, however, I move around far too much to accumulate many permanent possessions). I shrugged and handed him the contested glass tube. I always found them attractive from an aesthetic point of view; a beautiful little sculpture of glass and nickel and tungsten and science and progress. I even like the tidy little prongs at the bottom. So symmetrical.

He gently held it between his fingers. I snapped my toolbox shut and rose. I was forming a rudimentary plan in my head for next week, namely that I would kill him in his bed in the wee hours of the morn, abscond with his body in the trunk of my car, and then carve him up in a remote canyon in the desert that I had appropriated as a makeshift butchery. With any luck his neighbors would presume that he had been crushed by a pile of garbage.

Ronald pulled out a wad of dirty dollar bills from his back pocket and carefully counted out my fee. I did not need the money. You would not believe how much interest a person can accrue over the years. But just because I didn't need it, didn't mean I didn't want it. It was not greed so much as a pleasant reminder that I am competent at playing television repairman or farmer or whatever I was amusing myself with in that particular 'life'.

I had a rather dull car at the time, as to befit my status as a tradesman. It was a light blue Ford sedan with a mismatched passenger side door in a darker blue hue that had been presumably salvaged from a junkyard. It had a radio though, which was all I required, and that evening after leaving the job I got bucket of chicken for diner. My typical evening schedule was downright boorish when compared to smart diner parties and gentleman's clubs (actual clubs, not bawdy houses). I would watch television and drink beer and fall asleep on the sofa most nights, not even bothering to sleep in the bed. I was not seeing anyone and was enjoying the lone wolf lifestyle to some degree. I hadn't heard so much of a peep out of Ma Bichette since we split, other than the compulsory notifications of address changes that we exchanged. In the last note she sent me, about a year previous, she said that she would be without a fixed address for a while. As far as I was concerned, she could do whatever she wanted. I had a nice little suburban nest with a beige and brown sofa in a plaid design, an icebox full of grape Nehi, a brand new color TV on which to watch the golden age of ridiculous-premise sitcoms, and a rather impressive record collection. I didn't need her.

But we are doomed and blessed to be together. Forever. Whether we like it or not. Sure, we are allotted breaks, but we must always rebound into each other's bloodstained embraces.

Her avenue back into my life was innocuous enough. A postcard that encouraged me to remember the Alamo. I do, albeit rather vaguely, and as I stared at the glossy photograph I must have sighed before I even read the back of it, for there was no one else on this planet who would bother to send me a postcard. I flipped it over.

Mon canard,

Look here, huh? Full of tourists! Mostly whiny little children and old people. What's

happened to this country? Being on the road is fun though, I am getting all kinds of

ideas and meeting all kinds of people. I will be coming by in the middle of August

for a you-know-what. I need to discuss something with you as well.

Kisses

That is verbatim, by the way, although translated from French. One of the few possessions that I have held on to continuously for the past two centuries has been a battered steel lockbox with all of the correspondences she sent me. Not that her writing is terribly insightful or anything, nor do I like to reread them through the glasses of nostalgia and sentiment, yet I cannot bear to discard them as I have with so very many other things.

I wandered back up my driveway from the mailbox on autopilot. I wasn't love struck or moon eyed or anything as maudlin as that by her announcement that she would come flouncing back into my life. My mind was at war with itself. One side was the omnipresent faction that existed only for Ma Bichette; the part of me that could not wait for her to show up at my pleasant little ranch-style home and then have her live out a humdrum tableau with me like I have always wanted. On the other side, however, was the nagging notion that this was only going to end in more heartbreak and frustration for me, as it has so many times before.

That apprehension was not a new suspicion by any means, but I felt it more keenly this time around. I had a nice little life here, and I didn't want her to obliterate it. But, alas, I also cannot deny my attraction to her either. She does...things to my brain, I guess would be the best way to explain it. I'm not particularly proud to admit it, but it does go a long way in untangling the mess of decisions I make.

Red was her color du jour, it would seem. Ma Bichette drove a stark red Mercury Cougar that couldn't have been older than year. She emerged from it late one August afternoon, the sound of the door slamming shut resonating throughout the neighborhood. She wore a short red dress, a shade lighter than her car, with a sharp line of white piping running up the side. Her hair was set in spiral curls. Different from the last time I'd seen it, but it was a nice look for her. Modern.

I glared at her in consternation from the porch. I had decided that this was not a reunion. This was a meeting between two people with mutual interests. It was not a rekindling of a fire that would burn eternally. It was not, I affirmed to myself as she winked at me from the curb.

"Mon canard!" she shouted at me. "It's nice to see you again!"

I nodded. It was so nice to see her again. She hasn't aged a day since...How beautiful she is. "Did you have a nice drive?" I asked. What a terribly mundane thing to say. We had been to Hell and back together and I couldn't think of anything more interesting.

She slapped her palms against the trunk of her car. "Can you get my bags?"

I paused. We hadn't even exchanged much more than a dozen words and she was already making demands. Gentleman that I am, however, I hurried across the lawn to assist her.

Ma Bichette grinned at me as I approached. "Rémi," she said, but I shook my head.

"Please, I go by David these days," I reproached her.

"David," she repeated thoughtfully. "That's okay, I suppose."

"I'm glad you approve," I said sarcastically.

"Well, hello David," she said and kissed my cheek. Softly. Her touch managed to make me feel warm, even on that scorching hot afternoon. "Help a lady with her bags?"

"I'm here, aren't I?"

She smiled and opened the trunk with the keys. "Just get the leather one, that one has my clothes, and that big white one," she said as the trunk rose. "All the other stuff can stay in the car. I won't be here but a few days at the most."

I relaxed instantly. So she wasn't planning on reconciling with me, which would be something that I seriously doubt that I would have had the wherewithal to resist. "What's so important about this one?" I asked, as I pulled the white one out from under a blue train case.

"It's full of cash," Ma Bichette answered plainly.

"Ah, of course." I hefted the baggage out of the trunk. "Help yourself to vault, did you?"

An unnervingly crafty expression fell upon her features. "No, of course not. Why do you assume that?" She reached in into the trunk and snatched up the train case.

"You've threatened to do so on many occasions. And what else would you be doing with a suitcase full of cash?"

"So I must have acquired it through criminal channels?" she asked in mock indignation.

"No, no," I replied. "I'm sure there's a legitimate reason you are barreling through the highways of America with a suitcase full of cash."

"Oh mon canard, you always know how to make me smile."

"I don't suppose you want to tell me how you got your apparent well-gotten gains," I said as we walked to my door.

Ma Bichette nodded. "That's what I came to talk to you about. I'll tell you after we eat." She hesitated. "You have got it, right?"

"Mmm-hmm." I had gone back to Ronald's house two nights before in order to harvest his heart. It wasn't even necessary to conduct my typical elaborate body abduction. His bedroom had been a virtual rat's nest of old newspapers and books. It was a minor miracle that he hadn't died in fire yet, especially considering he had a habit of smoking in bed, judging by the overflowing ashtray next to his bed. After smothering him with a pillow and removing the heart, all I did was gently knock over a pile of newspapers and set it ablaze with my brass Zippo. There had been a report on the local news that morning about the totally accidental house fire, complete with a curt little reminder from the fire chief to not sleep in a bed surrounded by a metric ton of newspapers. Sometimes you get a freebie.

Said heart had spent the last few days soaking in a marinade of virgin olive oil with a touch of balsamic vinegar (just enough to give it a tangy taste, not enough to overpower the mellowness of the olive oil), as well as some rosemary and garlic. It's an old recipe of my mine and I know that Ma Bichette fancies it. It's great roasted with some potatoes, but the weather was obliging so I planned to barbeque it that night. The richness of the oil-based marinade pairs very nicely with fresh greens, so I had a head of butter lettuce and some spring onions and tomatoes in the icebox. Couple that with some chilled white wine and you've got a supper so nice it's possible to forget it's beasty roots.

Now that we had gotten the (un)pleasantries out of the way it was time to shift all of my nervous energy to another problem, although this one was not so much of a mortal sin as it was awkward. Did she plan on sleeping with me? Where should I set down her bags? In the guest room or in my room? She was walking in front of me, and I couldn't help but to observe, very dryly and scientifically, her perfectly perfect legs. I tightened my grip on the handles.

Ma Bichette opened the front door and graciously welcomed me into my own home. I dropped the suitcases on the living room floor. Let her figure it out. Either way was okay with me. I've learned that I can't control everything, and when I do try to control things it goes badly. Very badly.

She glanced around my living room. "It's so nice to be inside a proper house," she announced, and set the train case down on top of her other two bags. "I've spent the last, oh, damn near a year, travelling around and sleeping in camps and communes and ashrams and all manner of filthy places," she said and then plopped down on the sofa.

"What on Earth is an ashram?"

She shut her eyes, tired from the long day of driving. "Dirty. There's chickens running all over the blasted place, thinking they own it."

"You've dealt with livestock before," I said, and sat next to her. I ached to put my hand on her leg in a nonchalant manner, like I had countless times before, but I wavered and instead put my hand on my own leg.

"That doesn't mean I have to like it. It's the second-half of the twentieth century, people shouldn't be mucking about with chickens anymore. People should be in space. Which is where I am from, by the way."

Part of me has been concerned that either one of us might crack from the considerable mental stress of unwarranted immortality. Ma Bichette seemed like the most likely candidate; whereas I have my good old fashioned self-loathing to keep me sane, she had this unwillingly thrust upon her. The human mind was not designed to process all the accumulated mental debris that builds up over centuries. I did not voice my misgivings, however, as if I was incorrect she would been upset that I suggested that she was insane.

"Space?"

Ma Bichette opened her eyes and stared directly into mine. "Yes. Well, to be exact, Nibiru."

"Is that anything like an ashram?" I asked, trying not to let the growing worry for her sanity show on my face.

"It's Babylonian," she answered, rather condescendingly. "It's not a planet, at least not as these mortals understand it. It's a passage way between heaven and earth. It's where goddesses such as myself step in between realms and realities. Should I want to, I could exist in all dimensions, at all times, through the gateways of Nibiru. It hasn't got a fixed location, but it's beyond the eyesight of man, even with these sophisticated telescopes and satellites."

Her explanation left me speechless for a few moments. I stood up. "I'd offer you a drink but you've obviously had enough."

"I haven't even gotten started." Ma Bichette kicked her sandals off and pulled her feet up on the sofa. "Did I ever tell you how that the Sumerian gods made man to serve them as slaves?"

I shook my head, relived. She had dropped her spooky staring and was now being her usual glib self. "Must have slipped your mind." I went to the kitchen and opened the door to the icebox. "What do you want to drink?"

"Anything cold. Like I was saying, yeah, the Sumerian gods made mankind for slave labor, except they aren't really gods. More like they are inter-dimensional super beings. I'm one of them."

"I see," I said as I returned from the kitchen with two bottles of 7-Up. "Am I as well?"

She shrugged. "If you like." She popped the cap off on the edge of the coffee table.

I sat back down next to her. "I am not signing on to anything else again without hearing all of the details."

Ma Bichette leaned against me. "I don't want to explain it right now, I'm tired. I've been driving since six this morning."

How lovely it felt to have contact with her, if only just through our clothes. I ignored my vow to let her decide what course our relationship would have in this particular incarnation and I grabbed her hand with mine. "Just give me the gist of it. You can't come in here, say these absolutely mad things, and then say that you are too tired to explain any further."

She squeezed my hand back. "I'll do whatever I want," she tauntingly answered.

I sighed and leaned into her as well. "Obviously. But I would appreciate it if you let me in on your scheme."

"Don't worry, I will. Let me take a nap until supper, alright?" she replied. She sounded terribly drowsy. She fell silent and I presumed she had fallen asleep. I began to wonder if I could stand up and turn the television on and keep it at a low volume when I heard her call my name.

"Hmm?" I asked, feeling her drowsiness infect me.

"I can't stay with you," she murmured and shifted against me to get comfortable. "I have to go to Oregon." She squeezed my hand again. "I have obligations there."

"That's all right," I answered her. "It's not like we haven't got all the time in the world."

She snorted something halfway between a derisive laugh and a resentful rebuke. But she said nothing else and fell asleep after a moment. I got up and turned on the television. It was a western I believe, but I'm sure you're just gutted that I can't remember what particular series it was.

At sunset I lit the coals on the barbeque and then sat on the patio, drinking a beer and pondering what sort of lunatic scam Ma Bichette was running this time. Claiming to be a Sumerian goddess and running around the country with a suitcase full of cash was not a clear-cut hustle by any definition. Whatever it was, however, it was certainly too complicated for me to want to get involved with. But, well, we don't always get what we want, do we?

After a while I heard the distinctive sound of the sliding glass door being eased open. "Did you have a nice nap?" I asked without turning around.

"Yup," she answered with her normal bounciness. "I feel tons better. You want to hear my plan now?"

I gestured towards the empty white plastic lawn chair across from me. "Please enlighten me."

Ma Bichette took a seat. "Very appropriate choice of word, enlighten. That's all the rage now, enlightenment. There are hordes of people looking for it under every rock they can find. Traditional religion is no longer effective, these new devotees of 'truth' want it dressed up in bright saffron robes or dusty with ancient superstitions. I can offer them both."

"Ma bichette, look, you can't go around telling people about our beginnings," I sternly began to lecture her. I was not worried about the neighbors overhearing since we conversed in French.

She dismissed me with a wave of her hand. "I am not, don't worry."

That did not exactly put me at ease. Clearly she had some grand scam in mind that revolved around her inability to die. "Don't worry?" I repeated. "You can do whatever you want, but when you begin to put my own anonymity in danger-"

"Oh, it's always 'me me me' with you, isn't it Rémi? Rémi wants to be with Geneviève forever! Rémi will do anything! Rémi is in love and that's all that matters!" Ma Bichette cried out indignantly. "Don't worry, you have nothing to do with this. I haven't mentioned you to anyone and I won't."

She had shamed me into reluctant compliance with her supreme weapon; the reminder that I had made her a monster. I had a flurry of objections remaining, but I kept silent. "Fine, you can play your little game. Why did you even come here?"

She sighed, apparently as unhappy that she had brought up my mistake as I was. "I don't want you to interfere, that's all, should you hear about it."

"Hear about what? Can you just tell me?"

"You know that Manson fellow, right?"

I nodded. I am going to presume that you have a passing familiarity with him as well. If you don't, well, I'm not your damn wiki, look it up yourself.

"When I read about it in the papers I thought "wouldn't that be grand?' To have devoted slaves willing to mindlessly do anything, at my word, for no reason other than I said so?"

I did not want to point out that she was more or less describing myself. That was too emasculating, even considering our extreme intimacy. And I was trying to distance myself from that pathetic role as I matured. So there's that.

Ma Bichette continued with her explanation. "I don't want them to kill for me, that's too risky. They'd get caught. No, I want them to live for me."

"Why would they do that?"

"Oh, I fabricate something about being born of the pre-time sea and to prove it I lie submerged underwater for about an hour. That pretty much convinces everyone I'm a goddess, if they are too stupid to suspect it's a trick of some kind." She fidgeted absentmindedly with a bottle cap. "Of course, it's a lot more elaborate than it sounds," she added. "I wear this white robe and nothing else, and I have this long prayer in what I say is Babylonian that is just made up gibberish. Sometimes I stab myself in the throat beforehand with this fancy dagger, just to really drive it home."

"You always did have a flair for the dramatic," I commented. "And so what, they pledge themselves to your service? People are easily impressed, it would seem."

She rolled her eyes, not at me but at her followers. "You don't know the half of it. Just because I can do a few tricks they believe everything I say. I don't do miracles on their behalf, I don't cure anyone, I don't cause rain to fall in the desert or flowers to bloom in the snow. I just don't die. That's it. If you didn't know what you know, you would assume that it's a trick, albeit a good trick, right?"

"Yeah," I agreed. If I was not undead myself there would be no amount of visual evidence someone else could perform to convince me that such things are possible. I would presume it be an illusion, like making the Statue of Liberty disappear.

"Fools and their money are soon parted," she quoted the axiom. "Not just their money, but their time and their labor. I started doing this back in January. I bought a vineyard in Oregon last year, but that was sort of a failed project because I didn't have enough cash on hand to pay laborers. I was just about to sell it when I thought of this plan after reading about that Manson fellow in the paper. Why not have a little fun, I thought. They work there, for free, because their goddess tells them to do so. They live there as well. And here's the best part. Because it's a church and they donate their time those fools aren't subject to any sort of labor laws."

I imagine that her scheme sounds terribly cynical and cruel, but that's what she has become. Jaded and aloof, Ma Bichette seeks only to amuse herself, to find something to occupy her time lest she be actually be driven mad by boredom. She chooses to perceive the world as her playground, and while you might be eager to condemn her for doing so I invite you to live for two hundred and twenty-five years first.

I was not appalled by her plan. I agreed with her that if someone was stupid enough to believe that she was a Sumerian space-goddess just because she could take a few machine gun rounds to the face, or whatever parlor trick she was demonstrating, well, they maybe deserved to be a slave. I've seen worse reasons to enslave people.

But being appalled and having reservations are different. Ma Bichette did not completely comprehend the advances in technology that had occurred in middle of century. No longer could we just ride out of town and into another territory if our situation got dicey. There was now a collective memory and consciousness achieved through telex and nationwide media outlets and just better organization and communication. We had no choice but to adapt, but Ma Bichette is stubborn and serious changes usually take a while to sink in.

"Do you really think that's a good idea? People might start asking questions. Police people. Government people. Tax people," I reminded her.

She shrugged. "What are they going to do me? Put in prison? Handcuff me? I'll escape easily enough. There's nothing they can do to me."

"That Manson fellow is on every newscast and newspaper from here to the Orient. You think living forever is hard? Try doing it under a microscope."

She rolled her eyes, this time undoubtedly at me. "I'm not going to do anything outrageous, like sending them out to kill. Nothing illegal, just pick grapes and press them and such."

"And have them shower you with awe and praises while doing so," I commented.

She shrugged. "You say that like it's a bad thing."

"Ma bichette, if this gets to the point to where I hear about it, I think it will have gotten out of control." I sighed. "Where did you even come up with all this nonsense about goddesses from beyond the moon?"

"Books about the ancient world. I didn't really make any of it up myself, it's just a bunch of hooey that I've read about." She struck a dramatic pose. "Look, couldn't I be carved in a stone relief and buried under sand and rock for three-thousand years?"

"No, because you are from space. Wait, no, you're from Louisiana. I keep forgetting because you keep changing your mind on who you are." I stood up and poked at the coals with a stick. "Why can't you just be you? I could-" I stopped myself before I poured out my heart to her for the umpteenth time. I would have told her that she didn't need a legion of mindless slaves or her own religion or whatever absurdity she was compelled to pursue this time around. I could give her all the attention and love she so desperately desired, but...ugh, even typing this I realize how pathetic it all sounds. I have literally lost track of how many time I've tried to convince her of the above. Everything I have, I offer her, but it is never enough.

"Well, unlike you, I am not content to live as a simple laborer. What are you doing now, huh? Digging ditches?" she jeered, as was to be expected the moment I started to get uncomfortably close to the truth with her. I think that she honestly does not know what she wants, and her perception of what she needs to be happy grows more and more muddled each year.

"Repairing televisions," I answered in a measured tone. "And you'd be much better off learning an honest trade as opposed to these insane ideas that are going to get the both of us in trouble."

"You worry too much," she answered sweetly. Her pleasant disposition had returned in a blink of an eye.

"You don't think," I accused her, growing a bit impatient. "How can this result in anything but disaster?"

"Disaster?" Ma Bichette scoffed. "You're such a killjoy. What could possibly happen? I just want to have fun, mon canard. Even if one of them runs to the police and goes 'there's an insane space goddess who is making me work' what are they going to do about it? My followers are just filthy young men and-"

I perked up. "So that's your recruiting tactic," I leveled with so much jealously it even alarmed myself. I know it's an awful double standard that it's perfectly acceptable for me to bed and wed as many women as I want when we are separated, but the thought of her with other men...it boils my blood. We have a tacit understanding that if she does feel the abhorrent desire to know another man she does not mention it to me.

"Are you insinuating that I am having it off with these morons?" she asked with amusement. "That wouldn't be in character of Ninsutu, Sumerian goddess of agriculture, would it? To fraternize with her laborers?"

"Well why else would they follow you to a your own private little plantation, huh? Unless you're bribing them! With your...charms!"

"Because I am offering them enlightenment, mon amour, not because I'm flopping them. It would ruin the whole mystique, wouldn't it?" Ma Bichette stood up and walked over to me. She slithered her hands under my shirt and caressed my bare skin. "Besides, goddesses only consort with gods."

"I'm not playing your game, ma bichette, I thought I made myself clear. Not even to win you back into my bed for the few hours you'll be here."

"I miss you," she breathed into my ear. "I can stay a few days, they'll wait for me."

I shrugged. "I don't feel like it."

"What do you mean you don't feel like it?" she questioned, taking offense that her mere touch didn't trigger earth-shattering lust in me.

"Just don't." It was true. While I wouldn't have minded some no strings attached rumpy pumpy, well, just that concept alone is more far fetched than the whole space goddess thing. Especially with her. Honestly, do you think that a woman who would amuse herself by role-playing as a Sumerian deity is the sort who would not generate intense and searing waves of drama after said relations? I can tolerate said drama when I want and I do enjoy it in a perverse way (perhaps that is what keeps me from drowning in ennui, as opposed to treading water in it like I do), but her whole scam was just far too convoluted and weird for me to want to have any part of. If she had just been cruising around America, butchering people like a proper ghoul should, well, that would have been different, but damnit, I just wanted to stay in my two-bed, one-bath with attached garage and not have to deal with her shenanigans for a decade or so.

Ma Bichette removed her hands and awkwardly held them at her sides. "When can we eat?"

She sounded so disappointed I nearly dropped my resolve, but I preserved. "These coals should be ready in a few minutes," I said while poking at them with a pair of tongs. "If you want to go get the meat you can, it's sitting in the icebox."

Little miss sourpuss avoided anything resembling congenial conversation for the rest of her visit with me. I suppose that she was upset with me since I wasn't on board with her mad plan and I wasn't open to her manipulation at that juncture in my afterlife. For probably the first time in our relationship I had refused her sexual advances, and I don't believe she knew how to interrupt that. As I write this I am texting her over the issue, as she is at her bakery. According to her, she thought I was sleeping with someone else at the time and she felt inadequate. Fancy that. I suppose that I shall have to validate her when she gets home from work tonight.

Uh, that sounds terrible, doesn't it? That I am just lying about the house, frittering my time away by writing my memoirs while the lady of the house supports us with her hard work and ingenuity. It's supposed to be acceptable now, gender equality and all that, but I am an old fashioned man in many regards. Sure, I may embrace technology with eager arms and strained eyes, but my apparently antiquated masculine role as provider is deeply engraved on my psyche. I haven't yet decided what I am to be on this go-around, aside from author (which isn't really a job as much as it's an hobby). My lack of direction and clarity is eating at me, and it certainly doesn't help that Ma Bichette requested that I fold and put away the laundry this morning. I have never been less pleased to lady's underpants in my life.

Anyway, she only stayed with me for the night, dallying only long enough in the morning to eat some breakfast and ask me if I intended to live in Reno for some time. I did and I told her thus, and then without so much as polite goodbye she left. I watched her drive off and I could see the reflection of myself in the window scowling.
Chapter Two

I certainly have used a lot of words to say "Ma Bichette has some crazy plan exploiting hippies and I am a television repairman", didn't I? I've been told before, by many different people, to shut up and get on with it. I will make an effort now, in the remaining chapters of this volume, to do just that. No promises though.

The rest of the year passed well enough, I suppose, save for a messy fight I had with a victim outside of a rough bar near Pyramid Lake. Ever take a crowbar to the head multiple times? Instant regenerative abilities or not, that smarts something awful. I managed to wrest the iron bar away from him, however, and I must say there is nothing like that surprised look on his face when he realized I wasn't dead. The fight drew attention, however, and I was forced to flee before my harvest. I was quite concerned that I would be identified as the perpetrator and would have to bolt, but that wasn't the case (see, I am simplifying things, believe me, there was a story there).

I celebrated my good fortune by deciding to have a pool dug in my backyard. I finally got around to it in February of 1971. So, from August to February I hadn't heard so much of a peep from Ma Bichette, but neither had I read in the newspaper that there had been another rash of cult killings, so I put it out of my mind.

I didn't start making house calls until noon at the earliest. The excavator came over early, however, and I observed it with my usual wide-eyed wonder while drinking my coffee in the kitchen. It was loud and mighty and then and there I decided that my next identity would involve heavy machinery. I enjoy those blue-collar jobs much more than the white-collar ones; when you're sitting at a desk all day you've got nothing to do but ponder your own mortality, or, in my case, lack of it. But when you're actually, you know, working for a living, you can manage to forget things for a while. Oh, a welder, that's another thing I haven't done yet that I want too. I need to look into that.

My creamy piss-yellow telephone rang sharply, jarring me out of my thoughts.

"Sunshine Repair," I said distractedly into the phone, wondering what sort of inappropriately cheery name to give my future excavator enterprise.

"Mon amour," Ma Bichette breathed into my headset. "How are you?"

"Fine," I answered cautiously. Last time we had seen each other she was a bit peeved at me, you'll recall, and now she was being as sweet as diabetic's heart.

"I miss you," she cooed.

I paused before answering. Again, my brain was forming up into two factions; the side that knew she wanted something from me, pretty desperately at that, since she had forgone our usual re-correspondence routine, and the side that was excited that she was missing me. "I thought you had lots of company up there," I said after a moment or two of contemplation.

"Oh, I have, but they are just servants and I can't really connect with them. I'm sure you know the feeling, all these inferiors around." Despite her honey sweet attitude she couldn't resist making a barb on my behalf, apparently, by reminding me that I had been on the better half of the unpleasant social structure that had only recently begun to be dismantled.

"That's not necessarily true, darling, and I think you should try harder," I replied quickly. The still-functioning part of my brain was beginning to win control of the situation, and I do hate it when she starts trying to manipulate me without even so much as a compulsory round of fornication. "Call me back when you have tried." I wasn't going to really hang up on her, but I wanted to see her reaction. Turns out it was quite satisfactory.

"No!" she suddenly said. It looks like she yelled, with the exclamation point and all, but she didn't. I could hear the restrained urgency in her voice, however. "Mon canard, I just wanted to talk, that's all."

I sat down at the Formica topped kitchen table. "What about?" I wasn't trying to, but I think I sounded fairly cross. "Has your little wine scheme gone south already?" I absentmindedly traced my fingers along the spangled-gold pattern on the tabletop.

"No, it's doing quite well actually," she answered, the pride on her accomplishment drowning out her thinly-veiled desperation. "I'm about to bottle my _vin de primeur_ , Rose Acres Pinot Gris, and I'd like you to have the first bottle, that's all mon canard."

I seriously doubted that was all, but her offer melted the cockles of my heart or some such rubbish like that. "Really?"

"Really. The only stipulation is that you must come and fetch it yourself, I don't want to risk sending one of my babies through the post."

Hahaha, fool that I am, thinking that she didn't have any ulterior motives. But I was blindsided by her ostensibly honest gesture of goodwill. Is it really so bizarre, I reasoned at the time, that she would want to show off her vineyard? As we are both French and immortal, does it not stand to reason that we are both wine snobs? "A Pinot Gris as a _vin de primeur_ , isn't that a touch ambitious?"

I could hear her smile over the line. "Yes, but I am not afraid of challenges. They were the vines that were growing here when I came, and I am afraid I just couldn't wait to put out some bottles. Will you come to me, mon canard?"

"Yes," I said, almost against my own will. Her voice, it sounded so close, even though she was five hundred miles away. If I shut my eyes I could imagine that she was next to me.

"Excellent. Come as soon as you can, mon amour. When is that?"

I was too wrapped up in my own fantasies to take note of her uptick in desperation at that last line on anything other than a subconscious level. "Oh, um," I said dully as I reached for my agenda and flipped through it hurriedly. "Next...Wednesday is the earliest I can take a few days off."

"That's eight days," she whined. "You can't come sooner?"

"I'd have to cancel a bunch of appointments," I explained. "I don't like doing that, it's just plain rude."

She sighed. "But it will take you a day to drive here," she said.

"I'll fly. Salem's got an airport, right?"

"Shall I pick you up?"

I hesitated before answering. Although I am certain she was merely being cordial, I did not want to be dependant on her, because I have found that the moment I relinquish control is the moment she takes it. If I asked her to pick me up, I would no doubt be surrendering any sort of dominion over my visit, which would already be dominated enough by her since it was on her turf. On the other hand, she would probably throw herself into my arms and kiss me the moment I deplaned. (Oh, for the days when you could be picked up at the gate itself. Also not be treated like a criminal for having the audacity to make your way through security with a modicum of dignity.)

"I'd hate to trouble you, I'm sure you have your hands full overseeing your...whatever you want to call them-"

"Bootlickers," she answered curtly.

"Yes, them. I'll just rent a car."

For the sake of brevity I will skip ahead to the flight itself. While nowadays the majority of people have been on an airplane at some point, some forty years ago the opposite was true. I, of course, had no fear of a plane accident. Which isn't to say I wanted to experience one, but I am more worried about having to explain why everyone was burned or whatever to death and I escaped the accident unscathed as opposed to the sheer terror that such an incident would prove to be to the other passengers.

On this short flight I sat next to a young woman who bummed half my pack of cigarettes off me, the whole time anxiously describing to me a recurring nightmare she had since childhood about an airplane crash. I was a little annoyed that she was abusing my generosity by requesting so many cigarettes, but the poor thing seemed so genuinely scared that I couldn't really dislike her. As we were nearing McNary Field she requested one final cigarette before we landed. I lit it with gentlemanly aplomb, then said to her "You don't necessarily die if there is a crash."

"No?" she asked as the plane began it's descent. It turned towards the sun and a flood of blinding light hit the windows.

I nodded. "You could just become a vegetable or lose a leg or something," I darkly said. "And death isn't he worst thing."

Her face paled and she ignored me for the rest of the flight. The reason I include this little exchange is because it's likely that the poor lady is still alive (presuming she didn't die in a plane crash) and I would like to apologize. We both ended up at the same rental counter and she gave me what I believe is called the stinkeye until I got my Nova issued to me. (Goodness, cars were certainly something else back then. I look at the ugly little cars that litter up the roads today, and as fuel efficient that they be, I couldn't imagine talking a woman into pleasuring me in one of those. It's so uncouth.) So, dear lady, in the unlikely event that you are reading this, I'm terribly sorry I probably added to your nightmares. But, you know, you did bogart half my pack of cigarettes. Obviously I wasn't annoyed enough to hunt you down later, so consider yourself lucky.

The weather in Oregon in February? Abysmal. At least when it freezes and snows it's pretty, but when the mercury hovers at just above freezing and you're pelted with buckets of icy rain? There is no beauty in that. I cranked up the heater on my rented Nova and tore off across vineyards which probably are gorgeous when in bloom, but at the time they were just bleakly stark and grey.

Rose Acres. It sounds painfully generic, but she chose the name of the vineyard to match with her identity of the bullshit goddess from space. Ninsutu means cosmic rose, according to her (true meaning of the name lost to the ages, of course, if it ever meant anything at all). As I approached the vineyard I saw a group of people clustered in a circle in a clearing between the naked branches of the dormant vines.

I pulled into the driveway and drove slowly up the bumpy dirt road. Surprisingly, no heads turned in my direction, but the at the sound of the car door slamming shut a figure about a foot shorter than the others briskly emerged from the group. Ma Bichette's talents and charms do not transfer so well to outdoorsy sorts of things, so she had a look of weary frustration on her face.

"Two hours! I have been telling this morons for two hours how to properly transplant a vine and they still haven't gotten the hang of it! Strung out on drugs? More like strung out on stupid!" she shouted in French at me as a way of greeting.

I had expected something warmer, based on her telephone call the previous week, so I cocked my head. "What?"

She tossed a shovel on the ground and ordered one of her 'bootlickers' to pick it up in English, which he did without a moments hesitation. "I am happier than a pig in shit that I am not paying these idiots!" Except that she didn't say pig in shit, she is a classy lady and doesn't use vulgarities outside of their appropriate setting. I'm just translating approximate meanings into English.

"I can assume we are free to speak privately like this?"

"Oui." Ma Bichette had forgone fashion and was wearing a thick tan work coat, which was several sizes too big, and mud incrusted canvas pants. "Not exactly the grand draw that I was back then, eh?" she said with a smile as I took in her decidedly common outfit. "Hideous, but you try instructing a bunch of troglodytes in a field while wearing a lace chemise."

"I could never pull that off, I'm too shy about my breasts."

She giggled demurely. It's not part of her act, I really do make her laugh. I think. I pray that I do. "I wish that I could kiss you, but I can't in front of them. I'm supposed to be celibate unless it's with my celestial consort." She raised her eyebrows ever so slightly at the last few words. "However, should you choose to claim your rightful throne..."

"Can I also have a stable of dim-witted followers of the opposite gender who will obey my every word?"

"No, you have to have men too, that's the way it works, that's why I haven't got any other women here," she said earnestly, always eager to explain to me what's on her mind. "Well, obviously the real reason is that I don't need the competition. But, I tell them it's because men were formed of the manure of the sacred solar cow and women were formed from the tears of the supreme mother when...oh, I forget, something silly." Ma Bichette grinned. "I'm making one of them write this all down because I can't be bothered to. Anyway, men are the designated tillers of the soil and women are doing all of the things that take them far, far away from me and my little slice of heaven on Earth."

"Hm, in that case I'll pass." I tore my eyes off of her divine visage and glanced at the dozen or so young men grouped behind her some forty feet away. All were dressed in work clothes as well, but considerably shabbier and more thread-worn than hers. They stared back at me and I couldn't not help but feel a bit perturbed. "So, yeah," I said and turned my attention back to my unholy monster bride. "They don't seem surprised to see me. What did you tell them?"

"That I was expecting a guest. We don't get many, as you can imagine, I want to keep prying eyes away from this place. I didn't tell them a thing about you, except for that they are not to speak to you unless spoken to and they are to not interfere in anyway when we are together. Basic rules for visitors." Unconsciously, she made a move towards me, but stopped herself just in time. "Of course, I can't control all of their thoughts, so what they infer via our interactions is up to them."

I smiled sourly. "You're not going to get me to play along with this," I muttered and leaned against the car.

"It's a free country, you can do whatever you like," she answered and trotted up to the commonplace-looking house that was situated on a grassy (well, dead grassy at that time of year) knob. I followed her up to the house.

"It doesn't stink in here like I thought it would," I complimented her. Other than a whiff of some sort of petrochemical odor wafting in from the back porch (nothing sinister, I think some sort of chemicals having to do with winemaking) her house smelled, well, like nothing. Not even like her.

"Yeah, they aren't allowed in the house," she said and ushered me into the living room. "Ideally I would make them shower everyday, but the hot water heater just hasn't got that capacity. Do you expect me to go without bathing?"

I shook my head. "I wouldn't dream of it."

"I bet I know what you dream of still," she said. "Sit down, mon canard, I'll fetch you up some refreshments."

I obeyed her and sat down on the floral patterned velveteen sofa. "You don't let them in the house at all?" I hollered at her as I hear her bustle about with cabinets and dishes. "You're a cruel mistresses, ma bichette." I pulled out my lighter and began casting my eyes about for an ashtray.

"You would know all about that, wouldn't you?" she shouted back. "Don't smoke in here, by the way, I don't want that smell lingering after you go."

I rolled my eyes and stuffed my lighter back into my pocket. I was comfortable enough with her that I did not feel obliged to politely offer help, so I flipped through an issue of a trade magazine for wine makers until she came in with a tray carrying the wine bottle and it's accoutrements.

"The labels aren't ready yet, I need to go pick them up tomorrow," she said and set the tray on the coffee table. She handed me the green bottle and I accepted. Normally I enjoy the sensation of a chilled bottle of wine, but my hands were just this side of numb so I wanted to set it back down as soon as possible.

"Open it, that's the man's job," she ordered me and handed me the corkscrew. "Slowly."

I twisted the corkscrew in just as I always do. If she wants to micromanage literally everything she can do it herself. "How long has it been fermenting?"

"Since..." she counted on her fingers "nine weeks," she said after a few moments of calculation. "For this batch at least."

I nodded and pulled the cork out with one fluid motion. Immediately she took the bottle from me and poured out two perfectly equal amounts to clunky cut-crystal wine glasses. You know the sort I am talking about, I'm sure; if you're about thirty your grandparents had them lying around their house and if you're about fifty your parents had them. Not much to look at, but they have a nice heft to them, like a beer stein.

She handed me my glass. "To my one true and eternal love," she toasted.

The crystal glasses clinked together, and I said nothing to her declaration. I must had one of my characteristically brooding looks on my face, however, because she rolled her eyes and sighed. "Yes, I meant you, Rémi. Don't torture yourself so, mon amour. Even if I hated you, I'd have to learn to love you." She leaned back into her seat. "It's not like I have much choice in the matter, have I?"

I sampled the wine before traipsing through the minefield she had just presented me with. It was redolent of pear, which would have been better in the summer time of course. I don't really get the point of making a _vin de primeur_ of a white wine, because by the time the season is right for it it's regular wine. I guess that goes to show that Ma Bichette truly is mad. "When will you let that die?"

"Oh, I didn't mean it like that," she said casually. "Just in a practical sense. I mean, just how many other immortals are running around? Some, I'd imagine, but I haven't run into any yet. And I said 'if' I didn't love you. Because I do, mon canard."

That is an excellent question that she raises. Exactly how many undying people are there? It's not like there's a Facebook page or anything to join. Obviously Alava knew what she was doing and there was an established ritual and such, so logically there must be more of us, but other than the one I ran into a few years ago, I haven't met another. I think due to films and books and television shows (especially within the last twenty years or so) people may have this impression that there is some hidden cabal of some iteration of undead beings running the show, as it were, from behind the scenes. That idea is just as ridiculous as the Masons or the Jews covertly ruling the world. We apparently don't have the organizational skills, for one.

Before I could respond, however, Ma Bichette scooted closer to me on the sofa. She had taken off her heavy jacket and underneath she wore a frustratingly modest woolen sweater. She rolled up the sleeves and then leaned backwards and drew the curtains closed.

"Do they ever get mouthy or anything?" I asked.

She put her head on my shoulder. "One did," she answered and didn't elaborate on it.

I am sure you can deduce, what with the wine and close proximity to each other, what happened. And, I am also fairly certain that you can deduce that since she drew the curtains in advance, she had planned it. Immediately after I asked her that as I drew out a cigarette.

She propped herself up on the floor up with her elbows. "So what if I did? Is that a bad thing? And what did I say about smoking in here?"

"Ugh, not even now?" I protested, but relented under her authoritarian stare and put it away.

"Not now, not an hour ago, not ever," she reiterated with a warm smile.

"So, is this what you called me up here for? Because if so, I'm flattered."

"Mon canard, is it really so hard for you to believe me when I tell you I miss you? If I really wanted to, I would disappear from you, forever, but I always come back to you, or accept you back."

"I am not staying here. I do not want to have anything to do this." I felt it vital to stress that to her. No matter what, I was determined to not get entangled in her commune of hopelessly astray souls. I might be a damned monster, but even I am not blasphemous enough to get wrapped up in Ma Bichette's manufactured religion.

"I am not asking you to. There's no reason we have to do everything together, right?" She snaked her arms around me and kissed me; she finds that a much more effective way to restrain me then any ropes or chains ever could. "I just missed you," she breathed in my ear. "I love you, Rémi, I miss you when we aren't together."

She has spoonfed me many, many lies over the years, that cannot be denied. I think that she never lied about that though, purely because I know it's possible to fall in and out of love and then back in and then back out, pretty much perpetually, as easily and naturally as the seasons change.

"Don't you love me still?" she asked me.

I nodded and wrapped my arms around her. "Yes, yes I do mon cherie," I answered and kissed her. I love her and more. Each and every possible emotion, positive and negative, at some point I have felt them for her.

"I need someone I can trust," Ma Bichette said slowly as she laid her head on my chest. "I need an equal, and you are my only equal."

I closed my eyes. Of course she needed something. But I was more than willing to provide it to her. She had rocked my world, so to speak, and I was vulnerable to her orders. "Quel est votre souhait, ma déesse?" (I will continue to write the more mortifyingly romantic things in French, partially because everything sounds better in French, and partially because odds are you won't understand exactly what I said and still perceive me as a cool cat as opposed to a fawning boy.)

"It's not important right now." She sighed happily and squeezed my hand. "I'll tell you later."

We laid there for a while in rapturous reprise; until the (sur)reality of the situation demanded her attention. In this case it was a knocking on the door. Ma Bichette groaned and sat up. "I told those simpletons to leave me alone," she said with annoyance and started to wriggle back into her clothes.

"Maybe it's not them. Didn't you say they aren't allowed in the house?"

"They are allowed to knock. Usually it's because they've run into some minor problem that they work out." Ma Bichette arose. Gracefully, always so gracefully. "Stay here," she ordered me.

She shut the door so I couldn't hear anything more than a muffled conversation. I figured that private time was over so I got dressed as well and then waited for her to finish. "-my personal business! Not for you to know!" I heard her shout. Curiosity got the better of me and I waltzed over to the door and put my ear against it.

"Your Worship, I did not mean to insinuate anything, but there have been concerns about the visitor is all, and it's your safety we are worried about," groveled the young man.

I rolled my eyes. I suppose I should say that I could not believe that she had apparently told them to address her as "your worship" but, yeah, I can totally see that. Perhaps one day she really shall go mad and believe herself to be divine, as the groundwork for that has already been laid.

"My safety? Have I not proven to you that my mortal form has nothing to fear?"

"We have discussed it, Your Worship, and we are afraid that he is a shedu in human form sent by Nanna to spirit you back to the celestial palace. Did you not warn us of that last week in your prophesy?"

Well, all that nonsense aside, I am proud to say that I actually knew what a shedu is due to my classical education. It's akin to a sphinx, a mythological beast of ancient cultures with a highly unlikely combination of animal parts. In this case it's an ox with the head of a man and the wings of an eagle. That little factoid has been rattling around in my brain since before indoor plumbing was available. Bullish comparisons to my genitals aside, I can't imagine what would lead them to conclude that I was a chimera from space.

Ma Bichette was beginning to get a bit flustered, no doubt torn between wanting to keep her asinine story straight and wanting to push her subordinate back into his place. I could hear it in her voice, and when she starts to get thrown off-balance she usually charges in, guns-a-blazing, in the hopes that her display of strength will win her the upper hand back. And if I know nothing else, I know her.

"You forget your place! You dare to challenge me? To double guess my judgment? What goes on in my sacred cloister is none of your concern! Be gone from my sight!" The front door slammed shut and I eased open the door that was separating us.

"Having problems with your flock?"

She jabbed a finger at me. "Don't you start, too!"

I shook my head. "How long do you think you are going to be able to keep this up? Sounds like you are already losing them."

"No, they just need a reminder, that's all." She glared out the window. "I am not good with their names, but I am pretty sure that his name is Andrew."

"I'm surprised you haven't all renamed them."

"To gain a name from me is a reward," she said distractedly. "It's a reward that costs me nothing and that I can give them that makes them feel incredibly special. It's good to have little incremental incentives to goad them into working harder and believing more blindly."

I opened the front door. "Is it allowed for me to smoke on the porch?"

"Fine, yes," she answered and I could tell she had more on her mind than my simple request.

She is more than capable to come up with her own plots, so I leaned against the railing in the near-freezing temperatures and lit my cigarette. The one who had knocked on the door, Andrew she said his name was, had hoofed it back to his comrades and they clustered together in the gathering gloom. They threw glances of suspicion in my direction every now and again, and rightly so, as I was compromising their worship's celibate integrity or some such foolishness.

I can understand how Ma Bichette found the whole farcical situation amusing. No doubt you've drawn the parallels between what she was doing and antebellum plantations, and I think that the majority of the kick that she got out of this was that she was a woman of color with a dozen white young men as her de facto property. This wasn't the first time I'd seen her stroke that particular chip on her shoulder, but it was certainly the biggest and most obvious incarnation of it. While she had always technically been "free", she hadn't been treated equally (anti-miscegenation laws being the original problem in my first volume). But she's not the type to take that sort of thing lying down and I've had to physically restrain her on several occasions from murdering the tar out of an offender.

Well, whatever floats her boat. I, however, was hoping that this particular scheme would blow up in her face sooner rather than later and she would come slinking back to me, full of gentle coos and that lovely smell of hers. Ma Bichette tends to be humbled for a few years after she is proven wrong, and maybe then we could have a period of domestic tranquility until we grow sick of each other. I would never purposely sabotage her plans; however, this is not so much out of love rather than the fact that I did once and she took it very badly when she found out.

The door opened behind me. "When you are good and ready come upstairs, I've got something to show you."

I nodded and once I finished my cigarette, I ascended the narrow wooden stairs. Ah, that's it. Have you ever seen _Night of The Living Dead_? The old one, in black and white? Her farmhouse was almost exactly like that. I love that film. I love films in general, but I think that is another story.

I heard the distinctive humming of a film projector from a room and wandered in. Ma Bichette was setting a reel into place with a look of pure concentration on her face. I must admit, I was intrigued. Ma Bichette tends to be a late adapter to technology (she only recently ditched her positively ancient Nokia for an iPhone I bought her) so to see her with technology that I didn't shove into her hands certainly piqued my interest. "What's that for?"

"You'll see. Turn off the light switch."

I obeyed and with a few muttered annoyances from Ma Bichette an image of (who else, really) her popped up on the wall. The footage was filmed at either dawn or sunset on a grey winter day. I hate (lie, I love) to nitpick, but I believe her gauzy linen gown was more indicative of ancient Egypt than Babylon. I wasn't so concerned with that inaccuracy as I was with the fact that her nitpicks were clearly visible under the sheer gown.

"Oh, I don't like that one bit," I muttered.

She clicked her tongue. "What did I tell you about small incremental rewards?"

The eerie silence of Ma Bichette vamping it up as much as a respectable goddess could for half a minute or so was deafening. "So, this is your act?"

"The short version."

Onscreen she daintily bent over into the hard earth and when she straightened back up there was in her hands was primitive looking stone knife. "You don't bleed," I commented as she stuck the blade into her throat. "That makes it look like a trick."

"Goddesses don't bleed," she said plainly. "That's an authentic reproduction of a real Babylonian knife, I stole it from a museum. Along with some other stuff." Her projected double ripped the blade out with a flourish. She stuck it in her arms for good measure a few times, then the film ended and the sound of the celluloid slapping around on the spent reel cued her to flip the light back on.

"Remember we had a discussion last year about keeping a low profile?" I said.

"Yes, I remember."

"Oh, good, because I am sure you have a really good reason for having extremely incriminating footage of yourself dressed up like some sort of mentally ill child while committing suicide," I drolly said.

"Mon canard-"

I cut her off, irritated with her constant flouting of my expressed wishes. "Don't give me that cut and dried burlesque act of yours. You might fool those simpletons out there with it, darling, but I know you better than I know myself. May I guess what happened? Your real motivations for summoning me here?"

She set her gorgeous lips in a pout. "If you're going to be like that, all presumptuous and mean, fine, go ahead."

I tore the film off the reel in a hissy rage. "You need something from me, right? You need someone you can trust. So you order me up here to do it, and it's got something to do with this damn film, hasn't it?"

"You're a regular Charlie Chan."

I took my lighter from my pocket. "Your career in movies is officially over," I said as I applied flame to film. To my surprise she didn't protest, but instead directed me to drop the now blazing reel in a metal garbage bin.

"Very good. Do you want to guess what act two is? In which the hero endures many perilous encounters to save the maiden?"

"Maiden? Is there someone else involved?" I jeered at her. I know I'm coming off as rather rude, especially considering we had just coupled no more than half an hour ago, but honestly, it was now apparent that she had lured me up to do her bidding and not just because she loved me.

It goes to show how much she wanted me to do her bidding that she didn't morph into a blistering ball of anger and slapping at my last comment. "There was another reel," she explained quickly and set her hands on my shoulders as I looked up from the smoldering remains in the garbage bin.

I sighed. No sense in fighting the inevitable. "Do you know where it is at least?"

"I know who has it." She rubbed my shoulders and then put her hands around my back. "I can't go get it myself, I can't leave here. I need someone I can trust, mon canard, I need the only other person on this planet who has ever been there for me."

"If I find it, I'll burn it," I acridly said.

She hesitated before replying. "Please don't, I need it for...something."

"Why would you even film that?" I asked with naked weariness.

"Look," she began to explain, "clearly it wasn't the best of plans, can we just leave it at that?"

I turned to face her. A shadow of some nameless sadness flickered in her eyes for a moment, but as soon as I saw it, it disappeared, only to be replaced by a forced and tired seduction.

"Who has it?" I asked her. In retrospect that wasn't what I should have asked.

"A little bastard who thought he could use me," she answered sourly.

"Why can't you just make more? You've made another one, apparently, just make some more. Let this one go."

She shook her head quickly. "This one is special. I can't redo it. You have to believe me."

I sighed. "Ma bichette, what's so important about it?"

She kissed me before she answered. Not one of your normal kisses either, the sort that if you see it on television or film you get a touch embarrassed to be intruding on such an intimate moment. "Rémi," she breathed instead of just answering my damn question, "bring me back the film and you can go. I won't bother you with this goddess garbage again," she bargained with me.

"What makes you think I want that?" Ugh, space gods preserve me, that's exactly what I wanted. But when a woman has her arms wrapped around you, her breasts pressed against your chest just enough that you can almost feel her soft breathing (but you can't, you can only imagine it, and then you recall the sound of her up-tempo breathing during earlier said coupling), and is eye-banging you like there is no tomorrow, you (and obviously I mean myself) cannot tear yourself away for all the sane reasons in the world.

Well, it's must be obvious to you that she was giving me the run-around for some reason or another. I was fairly confident that it had to do with the reason why she had made the films in the first place. She was evasive about it, more or less daring me to beat it out of her. Later that night I regained control of my senses, however, and told her that if it was so very important for her she could do her own leg work.

"I have my own life!" I shouted at her. She had convinced me to take a walk around the vineyard after dark. It was a clear night, so aside from the chill it was a pleasant enough walk. "I can't drop everything because you have some whim that needs to be fulfilled!"

Ma Bichette walked a few paces in front of me. "Don't shout," she dryly said. "You're excitable enough as it is."

"Let me summarize my day for you, my darling," I said, although I did lower my voice at her urging. "I got up at five this morning, had a delay at the airport until noon, got here at five, been made love to for an hour straight, then told I have to go fetch for you for reasons that are still elusive to me. Did I mention the crazy people? Because God forbid I leave out the part about all the morons who believe you are literarily divine! How am I not supposed to be a bit agitated?"

"Relax, mon canard, have a cigarette," she said serenely. "You don't have to leave tonight."

"I don't _have_ to go anywhere," I promptly replied. "You seem to think that I'm another one of your mindless drones who will do anything for the promise of some of your forbidden carnality. Been there, done that, and I'm not about to run off on some wild goose chase to have another shot at your celestial gates. So unless you give me a fantastically sound reason as to why I should go and chase down one of your mistakes, I will head back to Reno tonight."

She turned to me and smiled. I could see her so clearly in the moonlight. Exactly the same as she looked two centuries previously, one century previously. Her sparkling eyes narrowed a bit at me, but her slightly plump lips stayed in the same calculated grin as she outlined her fantastically sound reason. "If that footage is leaked to the world at large, yes, people will be shocked," she said so quickly that I am certain she had this little speech of hers planned out in her head long before I asked. "And if people find out about me, I will be forced to tell them about the obsessive and slightly deranged man who turned me into a monster against my will. How would you like that, huh? You think people don't like that Manson? Try spending the rest of forever after you've been exposed according to my narrative."

I shook my head. "No one will believe you," I answered after a moment. "They'll call you schizophrenic or delusional, but they won't believe you for a second. Immortals, ma bichette? There's no such thing," I scoffed. "Might as well say we are loup-garous or mermaids."

"Try me. I'll blow my brains out in front of each and every scientist and doctor that they can find to prove my 'divinity'. Even if they lock me away in a boobyhatch for a while your name and face will be attached to mine." She turned from me and continued her walk down the path. "Besides, a nuthouse might be fun for a while."

"Tell me what this is all about, why you're being so..." I threw my hands up in frustration. "You're being a hundred different kinds of irrational!"

She didn't break her pace. "I know."

"What's so important about this?" I pleaded with her. "If anyone sees it, they will think it's a trick. Don't worry, no one will come for you," I tried to console her. My poor little doe. Whenever something is deeply affecting her she is compelled to cover it up with posturing and arrogant rebuttals. I don't suppose it has something to do with being raised in the backrooms of brothels, I suppose it has _everything_ to do with being raised in the backrooms of brothels.

"I need it back!" she shouted, louder than I had shouted earlier. "Curse you and your questions, I need it back!" She then instantly clammed up.

"Come on, ma bichette, you shouldn't have all these secrets from me," I said and picked up my pace so I could be along side her. "Am I not your beloved? Geneviève, I love you more than I could ever say, even now, even now though you are keeping secrets and manipulating me. You don't need to be a goddess to those idiots back there, or to the whole world, because you have me, and I will never stop loving and worshiping you."

She stopped suddenly. "Rémi, please, please just do this for me. Please don't ask me why I need it back so badly. I just do, alright? Please, please, I need you to do this," she beseeched me, and the cavalier tone of her voice was noticeably absent. "Do not make me beg."

"I need to know what the big damn deal is," I repeated for the umpteenth time. "Don't make a fool of me. I don't want to be a cog in some master plan of yours. Why won't you tell me?"

She dropped to her knees suddenly. Always with the theatrics. "Mon amour, s'il vous plaît, accordez-moi ma prière. J'ai besoin de toi, mon héros, mon champion, faire ce que je vous prie." I will grant her the same dispensation that I grant myself when it comes to overly quixotic dialogue. She grasped my hands and kissed them.

I sighed. "For the love of God, ma bichette, get up." I no longer had the energy to struggle against her. Her fortitude and determination outstrips mine. We had gone from cajoling to threats to downright mortifying behavior and I didn't want to witness her next performance. "Get up, what if one of your idiot boys sees you like this?"

She shook her head. "Agree, please. I need you."

"Fine," I agreed. If it was so direly important to her I could rationalize away her manipulations and drama by the simple fact that my little doe is very battered and fragile, emotionally and mentally, and that I must remain the stalwart salvation in whom she found safe haven in so long ago. Oh, the half-truths and distortions we tell ourselves to explain away our mad endeavors.

She arose. "Merci," she repeated several times and hugged me.

"Who has it?" I asked wearily, strapping myself in for what was more likely than not going to be a gigantic pain in my ass.

Ma Bichette did that facial expression were the mouth goes diagonal (I'm sorry, I've got no idea what that's called). "It's a complicated story," she said after a moment of thought.

"Oh, I've got no doubt about that."

She started to walk down the path again and I followed. "Around Christmas one of my followers got a big stocking full of sudden cynicism from Santa," Ma Bichette began. All the desperation and mania had drained from her voice. "He up and disappeared. Didn't tell anyone where he was going, what he was doing, or why he left. I wasn't too upset about it. I expect some of them to wise up sooner or later. But when I went to go watch my film a few days later, it was gone. He had left a note that said that I'd get it back when I had paid him back for all of his time and work. He said he would contact me when he was ready."

"What does he mean by that?" I was concerned that it was a vaguely sexual threat; after all, she did entice them with her sensual charms.

She shrugged. "No idea. Money I figure, but then again why didn't he steal the projector or the television or any of the other nice things I've got? Anyway, I'm certainly not going to wait for him to tell me what he wants and I'm certainly not going to do it for him."

"Right," I said sarcastically. "It's not nice of him to exploit somebody."

She must not had been able to appreciate the irony because she just nodded her head enthusiastically in agreement. "Very ungentlemanly of him."

"What's the guy's name?"

"Eugene Muller," she said.

"And you don't know where he went? How in the hell am I supposed to find this guy?"

"I know where he's from. Small town in Kansas called Dighton," she explained.

I stopped walking for a moment. "You want me to go to the middle of nowhere and what? Just start making inquires?"

Ma Bichette sensed me stop and turned around. "It'll be fun. You've played at being all kinds of humiliating jobs, why not play detective for while?" With that she condescendingly tapped me on the nose like a little boy.

I glared at her. At that moment I hated her more than I had ever hated anyone. I resented her for commanding me to go and solve her problem for her on my own time. I loathed her for her presumption that I once she had lied and manipulated me enough that she could still enough mileage out of my guilty love to twist me into whatever shape she wanted. I gazed back at her beautiful face and all I could feel was anger.

"You manipulative harpy," I spat at her. "Is that all I am to you? Someone you can use up like you use up everyone else you come across?"

Her smile evaporated and she smacked me across the face. Granted, it's not like it hurt (and me getting smacked in the face seems to be a running motif in my writings) but it was like having the veil ripped from a gorgon's face. "You turned me into a monster," she hissed at me.

"I'm sorry," I breathed instantly. I was not tempted to dissuade her from her valid anger. It was an impulse. I was sorry. I am sorry. I am so sorry, my love, for what I did to you. I should spend the rest of our eternity atoning for having made you into an undead cannibal without your permission. Please, Ma Bichette, please believe me when I say I'm sorry. This is all half lover letter, half confession. I don't know if I shall ever achieve absolution, and what's more, I don't know if I deserve to.

"You're right, you're sorry, as am I," she said, her voice sharp with pain I couldn't even begin to imagine. She stared at me, all affection and allure driven from her eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, but whatever words she had to intended to speak faltered. She gaped at me for a few seconds, and when she did, even all her anger and hatred was driven from her eyes, and all that remained was stark anguish and sorrow.

She turned from me and fled, dashing down a row of bare vines. I stood where I was. Perhaps you think I should have given chase, but that enterprise would have been as fruitless as the vineyard currently was. What would I have said? What could I say that had not yet been said a thousand times? I watched as her petite figure sprinted over a hill.

Once Ma Bichette had disappeared from sight I lit a cigarette and inhaled it in no more than three drags. I was committed now to carrying out her will. It was no longer an option.

I spent the night sitting up in the parlor where we had our relations earlier, alternating between staring at the empty spot on the rug where we had lain and the television, which was showing black and white movies I couldn't be bothered to follow. I disrespected her wishes and smoked heavily, ashing into an empty soup bowl. No doubt that she would be mad about that, but it would just be a drop in the bucket.
Chapter Three

Ma Bichette did not reappear that night. A mortal man may have been worried that his mortal woman had gotten run over or attacked or some other horror, but I knew she was avoiding me on purpose. The thought crossed my mind that she had sought refuge with her followers, but I dismissed that when I recalled her blunt contempt for them.

At dawn I arose. I fixed myself something to eat. There was not much to chose from as Ma Bichette is obsessed with her weight to some degree. Weight-gain is possible for us, so when she is shopping only for herself she only has all sorts of bland and healthy things in the pantry, like granola and apples and what have you. I mean, don't get me wrong, I like vegetables plenty, but I also like sausages and butter. I made do with oatmeal (no sugar in the house though) and looked out the kitchen window as I ate it. Even though I knew I was in a lashing for smoking in the house by a woman in a presumably terrible mood, I still awaited her return like a loyal dog would his mistress.

She didn't return. I ruminated over how upset she must have been for a while, then decided to take some sort of probably futile action. Wondering in the back of mind if she really had enough of a hold over them for them to work without being told to, I wandered down to the refitted stable.

While living in what is basically a barn can't be pleasant under even the most mild conditions, living there in the tail end of winter must have been a particularly specific kind of hell. A few planks of plywood had been nailed up, seemingly at random, and padded with asbestos insulation. I paused to knock, then remembered that I certainly didn't need to announce myself to enter the servant's quarters. I threw the door open and surveyed the room.

Two young men, both bearded and wearing multiple layers of filthy coats and hats and gloves, turned their attention to me. "What do you need?" they asked in a sullen tone. Clearly they didn't respect me, which is just as well because I despised them for their stupidity and/or the lust they held for Ma Bichette.

"Have you seen..." I had blanked on the ridiculous name she had assumed for herself. I tapped my fingers against the doorjamb while trying to recall it. When we had split up last time she was calling her Deirdre, but she usually changes it (as do I) after a split. As stated before I didn't want to blow her cover, so I merely stop talking and hoped that they would get my drift.

They glanced at each other before answering. "We haven't seen her," the one with the thinner beard answered.

"We thought she was _with_ you," said his partner in puerility, their shared insinuation distinctly evident.

I smiled. "She was, yes," I answered and traced my finger along the doorjamb in what I intended to be a very provocative manner, but probably came off as just odd. Since I was so sick of the whole underhanded nature and flat-out weirdness of the situation it took quite a bit of self control not to brag that I had been freely getting on and off for the past two hundred years what they were willing to slave for. Granted, I had to do a fair bit of drudgery as well, but I'm much more dignified about it.

"I seemed to have lost track of her," I continued, casting my eye about the cramped and dark barracks. They didn't even have proper beds, just some mattresses scattered on the floor. It's awe inspiring, what she can convince men to do when she puts her mind to it.

"Who are you?" asked the one with the thinner beard.

"I don't think you are supposed to be asking me questions," I answered. "Now, you tell me places where she likes to go or I'll tell your mistress you've been naughty and she'll excommunicate you."

"There is no excommunication!" said Thin Beard. "There is only death!" He said this with such apparent reverence I was taken aback for a moment.

"Whatever. Look, I have actual business with her, so tell me where she is," I pressed.

"She's probably entered into a state of empathetic unity," he answered with an air of undue wisdom. "You'll have to wait."

My eyes fixed on a pitchfork that was lying against the wall. I got the urge to impale myself with it and then demand that they treat me as a god as well and answer my damn question, but instead I just reached into my jacket and pulled out my cigarettes. "Where does she go when she does this?"

"You don't get it," he sneered at me. "She has left our sphere. You will have to wait."

"Fine, well, when she phases back into existence, tell her I'm doing what she wants and I'll be back as soon as possible." I turned and left. It was clear she didn't want to talk to me. Even though she was hiding, I made a exhaustive effort to locate her on the vineyard. I didn't find her, and each of her followers that I came across claimed they hadn't seen her.

I left a note explaining what I was going to go do. On the back I drew a little sketch of her (drawing is one of those things that a proper classical education teaches you. Mostly useless now, but mastery of some sort of artistic ability was a part of the expected repertoire of gentleman). I drew her standing on a cloud, wearing a toga and preparing to chuck a lightening bolt. 'Work harder!' I captioned the sketch. 'You'll never earn my love this way!"

I drove back to the airport and called an associate of mine back in Reno and told him that due to a family emergency I would be taking time off. He agreed to pick up my clients for the time being. As I hung up I hoped that I wouldn't be completely engulfed with this and that I would be able to return to my satisfactorily average lifestyle once I had finished.

I took a flight to Wichita that evening. I've never spent much time in Kansas, I haven't got much of an opinion on the state. It's flat. Lots of farms. Smells nice in the morning, but I've always had a soft spot for prairie air. It reminds me of a short lifetime we spent together in South Dakota, of a few years of happiness before it all came crashing down. Ah, how my heart weeps for what could have been.

Unless this Eugene Muller had a damn good explanation for pilfering Ma Bichette's apparently precious video reel (which was possible, after all, she's a devious con artist and it's not entirely unlikely that he did have a good reason) I would be harvesting him in a little more than a week. At least, I hoped to have tracked him down by then. I had no experience with investigation, aside from what I'd seen in films and television. I had no authority to back up my words and since I look like a philosophy major fresh out of college and not a grizzled war vet, I did not think I would be able to intimidate people into telling me where Eugene was. I needed a lie to legitimize my hunt. On second though, 'lie' is too strong of a word. I needed a cover story.

It was late when I got in and I spent a sleepless night in a hotel, lying in the bathtub, wondering if Ma Bichette really was resentful enough towards me to end it once and for all. The thought of really losing her forever and having to spent the rest of my long days on Earth alone made me shiver no matter how much hot water I poured into the increasingly cold water. If I didn't have her, I had nothing. With her there were no lies and false names and subterfuge and "oh, darling, I don't know why I have blood all over my saddle" poker faces. Even if I was no longer attracted to her sexually I would still be attracted to her everything else, the everything she is to me.

I should have been coming up with a plan of action, but all I could process was the gripping nausea in my stomach over the memory of Ma Bichette turning and running from me. She had never done that before. Yes, she had slapped me before and told me I was a bastard and a monster and all manner of unpleasant truths, but she had never just given up on chastising me. I worried that something had finally broken in her, that her ceaseless optimism had been exhausted and now all that remained was unbearable despair. And I had done it to her.

I lowered my head under the waterline. When my lungs are filling with water it hurts for a while (oddly enough it stings the back of my eyes) but once they are completely full the discomfort ends. I attempted to conjure up some sort of plausible back story for looking for Muller but Ma Bichette had given me no additional information on him. I called her when I first got into Wichita to get more info, but the call was received by one of her bootlickers, who informed me that she didn't wish to speak to me. I rebutted that he wasn't supposed to be in the house and he promptly hung up.

That set my resolve. I was going to be the conquering hero, not one of her sniveling peons. I was going to be the one who Got Things Done. I was going to prove that she needed me and that she had no choice but to love me.

It was going to be about a half-day's drive and I therefore direly needed some rest, especially considering I hadn't slept at all the previous night. Luckily for me, drugs still work (remind me to tell you sometime about how much opium you can take when you can't die) so I inhaled from a cloth soaked with ether until I passed out. Old-fashioned, yes, and remarkably dangerous for everyone else, but it does the job well enough. If the fact that I use drugs from time to time is what shocks you about me, well, you've got your priorities severely out of order.

I regained consciousness midmorning the next day, although I laid on my side on the bed for a while and stared out the window while floating in and out of coherent thought and lucidity. Aside from the occasional drug induced hallucination (that particular incident I saw multiple blue and red orbs flitting about my room like bees after I awoke, but much like being undead, psychedelic hallucinations are something that you learn to manage after a while) I readily admit that I am not as...well, inventive is a nice word for it, lets go with that. I am not nearly as "inventive" as Ma Bichette. I approach things with steady and deliberate reasoning. Dighton is a small town and unless he'd been exiled the residents were likely to circle the wagons around him if I, as an outsider, posed a threat. I could not make my rouse too specific either, since I didn't know much other than Ma Bichette had enraptured him at some point last year and he had that reel of hers.

Muller wouldn't have left and joined a counterculture cult, even on a temporary basis, if he was satisfied with his home life. Hell, I was a young man myself once, and I rejected my father's way of life for a comparatively exciting career in law and life in the city. There was no guarantee that Muller was even in Dighton, of course, and it was just as likely as not that no one knew hide nor hair of him. Considering that I had no other clues, however, it looked like I was going to have to make it work somehow. I have every confidence in myself and my abilities, issues with Ma Bichette not withstanding. If I had to tear apart everyone in Kansas to please her, well, so be it.

A decent ether binge works up quite an appetite in me, and after a large breakfast of hotcakes and fatback I began the drive with yet another rental car. I decided to pose as a young man with wanderlust who had met Muller during his voyages. I was going to say that I knew him in California, as they all seemed to have drifted through there at some point or another. I was just going to say that I knew Muller, that I was driving from California back home to Wichita, and I thought I'd pop in and say hello. Simple enough, but the simple things work best.

I was a bit concerned that I didn't have that typical counterculture look down. I shave everyday (long gone are the days of the elaborate sideburns and assorted whiskers, which is just as well because I've never been able to cultivate much of a beard anyways) and I didn't own any clothing that made me appear to be a member of the counterculture. I had jeans and a white T-shirt on under a flannel shirt and heavy denim coat for that trip. I didn't look like a hippie because I am sure as shit not one.

Perhaps you find yourself wondering what I do look like. Fair enough, we've come this far together and I suppose it's not a secret or anything. Describing one's self objectively is a challenge, but I shall do my best. First off, I'm just shy of six feet tall, medium build (which means I am neither fat nor thin), no identifying scars or tattoos. I've got light brown wavy hair, which is always styled as fashion dictates. One nice thing about eternal youth is that I never fret about going grey or bald. I've got hazel eyes and, well, all the features that a face usually has. It's hard to describe a nose or a mouth unless there is something wrong with it, and thankfully that isn't the case with myself. Ma Bichette says I have a squinty look about me, but I don't really know how that translates. Narrow eyes? Whatever. I'm pureblood French, both my parents emigrated from France (my father from the Saintonge region, but I do not know about my mother). I would be hesitant to describe myself as handsome, both since that sounds particularly vain and because I don't know what counts as handsome anymore, but I'm not terrible looking. Ma Bichette has called me more or less everything on the list of awful things, from cheat to monster to pervert, but never ugly, so I would presume that the thought has never crossed her mind. And who knows us better than our loved ones?

It seemed colder there than in Oregon, although it may have just been my perception since I was far away from her, yet again. I daydreamed about her joyous reaction when I returned her film to her. Only her warmth would comfort the aching cold that lingered in my flesh, even with the car heater cranked. All would be forgiven, I told myself. No more anger, no more bitterness, no more resentment; just over this treacherous pass lies the land of milk and honey. It's pathetic, but I don't think I could function if I stopped believing that one day I could mend our threadbare relationship and make it like new again. To have her back, the way she was before, back when we were mortal...ugh, I am letting my self-pitying whiney claptrap leak again. Back to the story we go.

I rolled into Dighton just around dusk and checked into a motel. I was not expecting much excitement from a small town, even though it was a Friday night, and I was not disappointed. I probably would have been able to sleep without the ether considering I had been hopping around the country for the past few days like some sort of deranged travelling salesman, but what the hell, I was on vacation. I wouldn't say I exactly enjoy the hallucinations brought on by toxic amounts of ether, but the aberration that the episode brings is a welcome change of pace.

The next morning I set out to hunt my quarry. There was only one address for a Muller in the local directory; a Mr and Mrs Franklin Muller. I presumed they were his parents, and I prepared myself for my usual routine of blowing sunshine and daisies up their nether regions. While shaving (with a straight razor, I've not transformed into a complete plebian) I kept having the lingering suspicion that this was not going to bear fruit, that I would fail her again. I pushed aside my doubts; I made no joke earlier when I said I would tear everyone in the state limb from limb if I had to. I have one ultimate goal-to satisfy her.

I decided not to call upon them too early in the morning, so I was forced to watch a fair amount of Saturday morning television while biding my time. I don't care for cartoons though, so I believe trying to hustle things along may have cost me there. Perhaps the Mullers were not morning people.

The address was a rectory for a church. I don't recall what particular denomination, but I was raised Catholic so every church other than a proper one is, to me, just another batch of heathens. Might sound very condescending coming from myself, unholy monster that I am, but I like to imagine that I have some authority on the issue. As a mortal, lingering doubts about the nature and even the existence of God and the afterlife nag at the back of your mind; I, like many, pushed those thoughts aside, afraid that if I examined them too closely I would be forced into conclusions I didn't want to make. However, I have been given a definitive answer, my faith has been reinforced. These things are, no matter how much I now wish they weren't.

Of course it's no fairy tale either (it is much, much more complex than that), so I didn't burst into flames or melt when I stepped onto the consecrated ground. I could see my breath in the crisp cold air and I exhaled slowly. Physical proof like that, undeniable biological evidence that I still "live", it's a salve to counteract what I mentioned above, the conclusions that I just don't want to have to make.

I knocked on the door to the rectory. I hoped they would not notice the discomfort that my thoughts were giving to me. I cast my eyes about nervously. I blew it. I looked so shifty-eyed they probably thought I was there to rob the place.

"Can I help you?" Mrs Muller was a heavy set lady, the sort that could probably knock you senseless if you tried to steal her purse from her.

"I know your son," I blurted out. "Knew him, at least, and I was coming though here on my way home. To Wichita." There was a large cross on the wall behind her and I was getting distracted. Walls of fire, lakes of fire, burning alone, forever, even longer than the forever I have now...I began to breathe faster.

She probably thought I was high. "Eugene?"

I couldn't take my eyes from the cross. Typically I am not affected like that by religious symbols, but a combination of the general theology that Ma Bichette had got me thinking about and the horrible feeling I had the night previously in Wichita had provoked a fresh tide of immortal terror in me. "Yes," I answered quickly. "I knew him when he was in Oregon. I'm going home. To Wichita."

"Eugene isn't here," she answered. "Hasn't been here in years. If that's what you come for, you best be moving on."

"Where is he?" I asked, probably too eagerly. I shake my head now that I botched it so badly, but at the time I was in the throes of one of my existential crises.

"I reckon you'd have a better idea than I have," she answered. I knew she was lying, no mother would refer to her child's mysterious absence with such a cavalier tone.

"I haven't seen him since around Christmas," I said and looked directly into her yellowed eyes, hoping to relieve myself with the cold comfort that I would be forever twenty-six and never grow decrepit. It didn't really work, but the guilt that the Schadenfreude brought on revived me. I can manage guilt.

She shook her head. "I don't know where he is, young man."

"David," I said. "David Crandall. Pleased to meet you, ma'am." I snapped out of my visions of Hell...if I can save her, if I can soothe her, then maybe... "I apologize, I'm a bit out of it, I've been driving all night. I just want to get home."

"Then you best be heading on home, isn't too far now," she informed me. She had every right to be suspicious of me.

I nodded my head ever so slightly. I had lost this round, but I formed a second plan almost immediately. "You're right. If you see him, give him my regards." I turned and walked back towards my car. I didn't stop or even slow down, but I noted the times for services posted on the door. The next service was tomorrow morning.

I'll skim past how I killed time until Sunday morning. It would be as boring to read as it was to experience. Come Sunday morning I waited until the church bells fell silent, then slipped in the back door (they didn't even lock it) and began to rifle through their belongings. I found a pile of letters and shifted through them as speedily as I could, but none of them were addressed to "Father" or "Mother" or signed "Eugene". I figured I had an hour at best and I wasted ten minutes searching through those letters and another ten flipping through what turned out to be handwritten theology notes (my eyes caught the words "eternal hellfire") and then I skimmed their address book, again fruitlessly.

I didn't want to start adding to the charges against me by using physical force to get a minister and his wife to tell me the location of their son so that I could go terrorize him on the orders of my extremely blasphemous partner in fornication and murder. I was lost in thought for a moment or so to the distant sounds of the church organ. Someone was singing an off key solo and I shook my head in derision at the amateur hour those Protestant heathens disguise as worship.

My gaze fell across a recent photograph on the mantel. I picked it up. A young plump woman who bore a striking resemblance to Mrs Muller was arm-in-arm with a young man in Army dress. The seventies were an absolutely brutal time for fashion, so I couldn't be completely sure, but I was fairly certain it was a wedding photograph. I opened the back of the frame but there was no further information. I felt like I had already pressed my luck enough that day, so I retreated back to the motel until nightfall.

One would be tempted to describe one's self as a creature of the night in my circumstance, but that's hardly apt. I can't see any better and I still have a regular sleep cycle. Certainly it's easier to kill at night, but unless it's the new moon you're more likely to find me watching _The Daily Show_ from the comfort of my living room than out skulking about in cemeteries or abandoned mental asylums. (Now I've got that song from _The Rocky Horror Picture Show_ stuck in my head, great.) The benefits that the cover of darkness provide, however, are not inconsiderable. While I fear no mortal man there are extensive annoyances in getting caught, and I recognized that I was probably already on the radar for my performance the day before.

I slipped into the library, using my bewitched hands to open the locked door. (If you didn't read the first volume or don't remember, that was a procedure I had done when I was immortalized). Again, I shall not bore you with the details of searching through back issues of the local newspaper (I will bore you with other details, and parenthetical sidebars). After a mind-numbingly boring search through a newspaper where it's a big story when grain elevator malfunctions, I found what I was looking for.

Miss Doreen Muller became Missus August Short not even year previously. According to the wedding announcement, Mr Short was redeployed to Vietnam as a communications specialist shortly after their wedding. The same photograph that I saw at the rectory accompanied the article. I studied the grainy black and white photograph, although in my head I was seeing the one from her parents house.

She wasn't a looker, and I'm being charitable. Please do not think me to be shallow, I'm just stating a fact. The cogs in my mind began to turn. She might know where her brother was. She was a likely lonely woman. There is not a woman alive or dead I could not charm into bed. (I'm not bragging, it's just practice, anyone can get good at it.) Oh, I wasn't going to sleep with her; I had no desire to since when I reconcile with Ma Bichette I can't imagine why I would ever want another woman. I was just going to pump her for information while I was subliminally suggesting to her that I would...well, I don't really like to talk about the particulars, it isn't proper.

According to the directory and local maps I pulled out, which were difficult to read since I was trying to keep light to a minimum, Doreen lived in an even smaller town called Grinnell to the north of Dighton. I hoped she was doing nothing on Monday because I intended on dropping in on her under the guise of having a wrong address for a distant relative, acting all confused as to what had gone wrong, then asking her if I could use her bathroom, then working from there. If she had seen her mother or talked to her in the past two days it was likely that she knew all about David Crandall's suspicious actions. I never really cared for that name anyway, I picked it at random while filling out a driver's license form. Naturally I would prefer French names, but they have been rather uncommon in America in the past hundred and fifty years or so (it's funny how politics work out) and when you're an undead cannibal it's best to blend in the best you can. I've got multiple absolutely wonderful middle names that have used in the past, my full name being Rémi Benoît Thierry Étienne Toupinier (ugh, I cannot tell you how much I loathe having to make accent points on keyboards configured for the bare-bones alphabet that is English. Toupinier is supposed to have accent marks as well, but I've just given up on that). What can I say? Back before there was electricity you entertained yourself with whatever you could come up with, and inventing long and complicated naming conventions for your children was one way to pass the time.

Speaking of passing the time, let's jump ahead to Grinnell. The photograph in the newspaper didn't do her justice, Doreen was much more pleasant looking in person than on film. She smiled at me when I knocked on the door. She had the same dirty blonde hair that her mother had, as well as the same unfortunate barrel shaped torso.

"Oh, I must have the wrong address," I said with faux disappointment. "You aren't my cousin."

"Probably not," she said. "Sorry about that, you look tired. Did you come a fair piece?"

"Drove all night," I said and smiled back at her. With women like her, raised by a minister, no doubt modest, already married, the name of the game is subtlety. To be forward is a gross insult to her, and what's more, if she immediately consciously recognized her own carnal needs she shames herself for them, and will withdraw from the conversation immediately. The trick is to let her own subconscious fill in the blanks; a lingering gaze here and a double entendre so opaque it's only recognizable in hindsight there and she's mine. Time is important as well, the longer I hack away at it the easier it is, but I didn't have that luxury.

"Who are you looking for? I know most people here, I could probably point you in the right direction? But first, why won't you come on in? It's just freezing out there." Poor girl. So helpful and kind, they make themselves victims so easily. I don't like doing it, but let the sin fall upon my shoulders and not my little doe's, as this was all my ultimate doing.

I accepted and she gestured for me to sit down on the sofa. "How about some coffee, mister?"

"Where are my manners? Name's Stefan Lefevre," I answered. I tend to regress into a bit of an archaic drawl when I speak English for more than a few words. Not that I am complaining, women love that sort of thing. I figured it would be easier to slip things by her than it was by her mother, so I added that I had driven straight through from Fargo (I had spent time there in the past so the location just popped into my head).

"You must be beat!" she exclaimed. "My name's Doreen Short, but everyone calls me Reen," she introduced herself. "You have yourself a sit-down, I'll wrangle you up some coffee and we'll figure out where you are supposed to be."

"That'd be lovely," I said and sat on the sofa.

"Lafevre, you said your name was? I don't know any one 'round these parts named that," she continued from the kitchen. "Do you take sugar?"

"Yes, please," I answered and glanced around her living room for any further information on Eugene. My eyes fell upon a family portrait. I recognized the mother and Doreen, but there was two younger boys in it as well.

Doreen came out from the kitchen. "What's your cousin's name?"

"Robert Moreau," I replied. I really did have a cousin by that name, but he's long dead, of course.

"Hm," Doreen said thoughtfully when she handed me my mug. "There's the Moorhead's out by the old rail line, could that be them?"

I grinned at her. "I doubt it." I caught her eye and gazed at her longer than a stranger should, but she didn't look away. "To tell you the truth, Robert and I have never really gotten along. He probably gave me a false address as a joke."

"Some joke," she said. "Do you want to look through the phone book?"

I was going to have to start working her. "Oh, I couldn't trouble you further," I said. I began the politeness duel, whereupon I show what a polite person I am by refusing help and she counters by offering me even more assistance, and I am then bound to accept her help because I am so polite. The Japanese have a word for it, I believe, but it escapes me at the moment and I don't feel like looking it up (I'm doing other internet stuff at the moment).

"No trouble at all, I'm happy to help," she said. "But first finish your coffee, you look exhausted."

I did appear weary; I had purposely stayed up all night to cultivate that appearance. I had bungled her mother so badly that I was leaving nothing up to chance with her. I know I am coming off like a serial killer or something (well, I am, but not recreationally), what with my calculated and targeted friendliness, but I had a job to do. I can be a perfectly cordial person by nature, but at the time I needed impersonal efficiency, because the more I think about what I do, the more I just want to curl up into a ball and cry. I went though some years of that, and it's not pleasant. It produces nothing but more agony and Ma Bichette finds it very unsexy.

I sipped my coffee while she fussed over me and my bastard of a cousin. Robert was a bit of jerk, but I had last seen him when we were children, so I couldn't say what sort of man he lived and died as. I complimented her on the coffee, which honestly tasted atrocious, but it was Kansas in the early seventies, what could I expect? Ma Bichette says my expectations are too high in regards to food, but I am not going to apologize for a sophisticated palate (says the man who eats human hearts). I complimented her on the biscuits and jam she then offered me and feigned astonishment that she made the strawberry jam herself. That isn't difficult with modern appliances, you know what's difficult? Making pawpaw preserves in the middle of the Ohio wilderness in a log cabin over an open fire and mason jars aren't invented yet. But everyone likes to feel valuable and special.

Over the next cup I asked Doreen about herself. Not about her husband, but about who she as an individual was. She said she worked part-time as a seamstress, not because she needed the money but because she needed something to do. I told her she should design her own dresses since she's clearly very creative, creative being a nice word for the macramé owls that hung from the wall. Doreen was in a high school production of _Ten Little Indians_ and I expressed shock that she hadn't pursued acting further. I know, I was laying it on extra-thick, but the poor thing was just starved for male attention and couldn't see past my blatant flattery. She insisted that I stay for lunch, probably so I could tell her more about what an enchanting siren she was, and I accepted.

During a lunch of Waldorf salad I broached the topic I had come there for. I mentioned that Robert had always been a bit jealous of the good relationship I had with my brother (I had no brother, only a sister) and that's always been a point of contention with us since he and his brother have a terrible relationship.

Oh, lonely Reen, who wanted someone to talk to on that cold winter's day, who's husband was on the other side of the world repairing telephones for the military, who was helpful and friendly and more than hospitable, you gave me exactly what I needed without any additional prodding. I know it's quote from a television show, and a campy one at that, but in another reality I could have called you friend.

"I got two brothers," she said chirpily. "Bill, he's in college to be an architect, and Eugene is working on his act down in Vegas," she informed me.

"Is he a singer?"

"No, a magician. Mother and Father, well, they don't like that very much, but he's always been real good with card tricks and hiding birds in his pants. He preformed at the fair once and he made nearly twenty dollars!"

"A magician," I echoed slowly. Some of the pieces were falling into place.

She must have mistook my tone of voice for derision and was quick to defend her brother. "He's really good! He told me that he's got a job in a casino now, and that he's working on something really big. He's going to be famous, and he'll be on TV! When August gets back we're going to go see him!"

I nodded my head. "Las Vegas is really something," I said. I had gotten what I needed and I saw no need to press her for more information and possibly arouse her suspicions. I had been to Vegas in the early 1950s at Ma Bichette's urging (naturally). She wanted to see Sinatra and loose hundreds of dollars at craps, which she assured me understood the rules for, but I don't believe she does. I had to suppress a laugh; this was getting stupid, even by the standards of what Ma Bichette usually gets up to.

"Have you been there?"

I described to her what it was like, although not too specifically since that would perhaps belie that I was there nearly twenty years ago. I mentioned the heady atmosphere of gambling and that I had stayed at the Desert Inn, but not how Ma Bichette and I had gotten absolutely loaded on brandy before going on the Hoover Dam tour, and then dared each other to jump off a spillway. "It won't hurt," she whispered into my ear while fishing through my pockets for the flask. "Not for long, anyways. I'll do it with you, it will be exhilarating." I almost did, but it would have attracted too much attention. Nor how to console herself after losing nearly one hundred dollars on one hand of blackjack (something like a thousand dollars today), Ma Bichette spent twice as much on jewelry, then modeled just the jewelry for me back at the hotel room. I have these memories, a dozen lifetimes of them, these narrow and wilted slices of joy to prop myself up with. I would not share my intimate recesses with Doreen, I only share them with you now as a way of restoring them.

"It sure sounds nice," Doreen said wistfully, and then absentmindedly glanced out the window at the dismal frosty prairie.

I shook off my memories of our trip to Las Vegas. To wrap myself in a shroud of static dreams of my little doe was unforgivable when she needed me in the here and now. "It's surely something. I'm thinking on making another trip there before too long."

"You should see my brother's act," she blurted out. Dear sweet Reen, how you eased this weary wander's burden. "He's at the Landmark."

I had what I needed, but I couldn't just barge out, that would have been rude and should her and her mother compare notes they would no doubt make the connection and possibly warn Eugene that someone was looking for him. Oddly enough, that wasn't my first thought, however. My initial reaction was that Eugene Muller was a terrible stage name, but perhaps that's because I have had so much familiarity with pseudonyms. I strung her along for a while longer, finally ending the performance by saying that I really did need to get going, that I needed to call my mother to get the correct address, and she lived in Virginia, and I wouldn't dare dream of running up her telephone bill. I would use a payphone in town.

"If you ever come back this way again, please feel free to stop in and say hello." Reen, you must be over sixty by now, and I never did come that way again. And if I had, I would not have come by, because I never age, and I would not have been a welcome visitor so much as I would be a haunting specter of things your minister Father wouldn't dare admit exist. That the cursed and forsaken forever wander, and that they are not ghouls but pleasant looking men and women who have grown so tired of forever pacing this imperfect world of pain and loneliness and isolation that they resort to hyperbolic melodrama to get their point across.

I was not being completely dishonest (I'm usually not, to weave in parts of truth lends a vital tinge of authenticity that pure fabrication lacks), I really did have to make a telephone call. As much as I would have loved to call my mother, I could not, for she had passed through the veil of death when I was an infant. I have so many things to ask her.

Anyway, I drove up next to a payphone in the center of the bustling metropolis that was/is Grinnell and combed through my pockets for change. I was only able to scrounge up a few coins so it would have to be a short call. My success blotted out my earlier setback and I could almost feel myself radiating with pride as I flipped through my wallet looking for the slip of paper with Ma Bichette's number on it. I had done good; I had begun to pay off my massive debt. I had pacified my conscious enough to have earned at least a week straight of being able to fall asleep without ether or a quart of rye or whatever else happened to be on hand. Yeah, I don't sleep very well when I'm alone. In bed with her, well, that's one thing, it bestows an artificial serenity, but I wasn't doing all this with the express purpose of getting back with her. I did it out of guilt. Massive, massive amounts of guilt.

A rusted pick-up truck slowly drove past me and the elderly gentleman driving it glanced at me. We locked eyes for a moment. There is always this splinter of terror when I make eye contact with a stranger; that they know what I am, that they can see the iniquity that stains my soul and that they see me for what I am. But, obviously, that's just guilty paranoia. He drove on by, no doubt immediately forgetting his unwitting brush with immortality.

The telephone rang dully as I gazed out across the frost encrusted prairie. I don't mind the cold so much, you can protect yourself from the cold with layers of insulation and cozy fires and a copacetic woman to bundle with. It's just the eternal hellfire I dread. If I get lucky it'll be a river of boiling river of blood; maybe I'll get used to it, like one does to a Jacuzzi.

"Allo, oui?" Ma Bichette greets telephone calls in French, regardless of whom she thinks may be calling. People find it either pretentious or charming, depending on the place and the time.

"I'm glad you picked up," I said, cognizant that I needed to keep the conversation short, but still yearning to clear up the bad way in which we had parted.

"Why wouldn't I? You're right, mon canard, it's not fair to order you around like that without explanation. I don't want to talk about it on the telephone, but later I'll explain."

I shrugged off her genuine bemusement and apology as I was too eager to tell her what I had discovered. "Ma bichette, I've tracked him down, he's in Vegas," I blurted into the receiver. I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly was more than what could be communicated over the telephone.

"Really? Oh, that's excellent," she said chirpily. "That's just...I mean I didn't realize...Oh, Rémi, that's great."

I smiled. It no longer mattered that she had utilized every trick in her book to get me to come out here because I had made her happy. No one else can do this for her, only I can even approach the ability and the opportunity to make her happy. "I'll get it for you as soon as I can. The moment it's in my hand I'll come up to you."

"Thank you," she breathed. "It means a lot to me."

"It's nothing, my darling," I said and I closed my eyes. I envisioned her gorgeous face, smiling wide with gratitude and her deep brown eyes sparkling as she thanked me. I didn't want anything as crass as obligatory intercourse from her as a reward for this, I just wanted her to be happy. That was, and is, my bounty and my jewel.

"Remember Vegas?" Ma Bichette asked.

"Yes," I said, keeping my eyes shut and focused on my reverie. "I do."

"You're good at this, mon canard. I'm sorry I was condescending about it, I know it bothers you."

"That's alright, ma bichette. I'll get it for you and bring it back as soon as I can." I opened my eyes and was blinded by the harsh daylight for a moment, as my eyes had been focused so clearly on the past. "Did you like my sketch by the way?"

There was a pause. "What sketch?"

"On the back of the note I left. You didn't see it?"

A longer paused followed. "No, I didn't."

I assumed she meant that she hadn't flipped the note over. "It was some of my better work."

"We have what, a week before _notre exigence_ , right?" Our requirement, she calls it. It's got a nice ring to it. I adapted to English more willingly than she did, so my euphemisms of "harvest" and "the hunt" tend to fall flat in the shadow of the innate nobility of French. If you only knew the struggle it was to get her to learn English, kicking and screaming, in the first place. Not out of an inability to do so, but she hates the way English sounds. She's fluent in it now, has been for at least the last hundred and fifty years, along with competency in several other languages, but she flat out refuses to speak English with me in private.

"Something like that."

She hummed to herself for a moment, her melody-less thinking tune that always sounds the same but I could not reproduce. "You know what? I want to show you my thanks. Don't worry about the heart, mon canard, let me procure one for you. Be here for it?"

"I'll be there, film in hand." Much like many of the skill sets we posses, cooking is one of things you get good at through the virtue of sheer practice. In the beginning Ma Bichette was not great shakes at it, but over time she's become an accomplished chef. I mean, she'd sort of have to be, she runs a bakery at present.

"Good. I love you, mon canard. See you soon."

She hung up before I could respond, no doubt dashing off headlong into whatever had just popped into her head. I hung the receiver up and walked back to my car. Again, for the sake of brevity I will bypass all the absolutely riveting details of driving back to Wichita, waiting at the airport (I tried to read Lord of the Rings but after the hundredth hobbit drinking song I left the book on the seat next to me and stared out at the tarmac for several hours), the connecting flight to Dallas, etc.

I took a taxi from the airport to an off-strip motel. I don't know if it is technically jet lag if you've only moved between three time zones on the same continent, but I was suffering from some subgenre of high altitude whiplash that evening. Instead of tracking down Muller as I should have, I laid on my stomach on the bed and staved of the typical guilty melancholy by bombarding my senses with whatever was handy; in this case, as in many, it was television. The Vietnam War was still dragging on, and had I been a young man I more likely than not would have been one of those earnest protestors; not the shiftless sort that Ma Bichette collected for her plantation, but put-together enough to provide well reasoned arguments about foreign policy in television interviews. I appreciate so much that enthusiastic expression of dissent now was (and is) something that was tolerated and accepted, and probably wouldn't involve a brick being thrown through my window and being called a 'nigger lover' by my charming neighbors for daring to mention in public that President Wilson was a racist embarrassment to the nation. Sure, he was dead by my hand the next month, his wife and children left destitute, but it still would have been nice if society had evolved enough by that point so that the only outlet for his barbaric behavior was poorly coded internet forums.

However, I watch the news, and all these bad things happen, and I am still stricken somewhat by the horror of it all, but I am held back from any further sort of action because I realize, with fresh terror each time, that I am one of the bad things. A rough estimate puts my kill count to twenty-seven hundred people and some change. That's...just awful. How can I live with myself? Short answer is that I have no choice. Long answer is I really can't, but I push myself forward for her sake. I stop, she dies the eternal death along with me.

Anyway, that's all a very philosophical and whiney territory, and I've already wasted enough breath with that sort of nonsense. I would find it boring to read, and I presume you do as well. Mercifully, after the news there was a movie, one of those delightful Toho films. This one concerned Mothra, my favorite. The part of me in which hope still lives wanted that this bit of luck, whereas I got to drown out my terrible thoughts with a favorite film, to be some manner of divine comfort; however, I know I didn't deserve it.

Chapter Four

The next morning I went to The Landmark Casino to track down where Muller lived, as I found no listing for him in the telephone directory. I had taken to sleuthing better than I had imagined and had begun to fantasize about what prestigious feats I could accomplish with the power of the law behind me. Of course, government jobs involve too much of a in-depth background check and I cannot apply for them, but it's fun to pretend. I wished that I had a fedora on which to pull the brim down while investigating, but they had been out of fashion for a while and I didn't even own any. (Take it from a man who wore hats when they were in style; unless you are a dapper elderly man or a time traveler, you have no business wearing a fedora or a trilby in this day and age. You look like a damn idiot.)

If you say that you are a journalist it's simply amazing how much information people will dump upon you to accommodate their own vanity and lust for the possibility of seeing their name in print. All you need is a little notebook and an economical blazer to win their implicit trust. I had to buy the blazer in Las Vegas as I had not brought one with me. It was light brown twill and I had wanted the suede version but I decided that it was a touch too gentrified for a field reporter. It took nothing more than a wink and an introduction ("I've left my cards back in Houston, but if you'd like I could scribble down my address," I offered and then wrote down the street address where I had lived briefly in 1921) and before I knew it the receptionist had wrangled up Muller's address for me.

Despite Doreen's insistence that her dear brother was a big shot, I garnered another impression of him when he opened the door of his half of a sterile duplex. I suppose I run the risk of insulting someone, but there was a time for magicians and by 1971 that time had passed. Stage magic was no longer entertaining since the world had become magic in and of itself. Earlier I mooned over television, and you don't fully grasp it as you were no doubt born into this age of wonder, but, well, people had been to the moon itself not even two years previously. Compared to that, a man pulling doves out of his pocket was just pathetically lackluster.

"You here about the van?" he asked me, as he opened the door. Could there be a more quintessential 1970's question?

I sort of wished I was there about the van. What a life of leisure that would have been, to have my concern be a van that I would perhaps tool about the southwest in until it ultimately broke and I was forced to face adulthood head on and perhaps get a job at an insurance company or something banal like that. I shook my head. "Eugene Muller?"

"Who's asking?" Muller wasn't as heavy set as his sister was, but he had the same sort of almost bulging eyes and dirty blonde hair. The first rule of show business should be thus; either be attractive or be ugly enough to be memorable. Muller was neither, and I was fairly certain I was about to rip out from him his only hope for success. (Rule number two of show business, and everything else for that matter, is don't screw with immortals.)

"I need to discuss something with you," I said, taking care to speak in measured, calm tones. A familiar flush spread throughout my body; a quickening of the pulse, a heightening of the senses, an awaking of a mania that controls me and fuels me and torments me, a mania that I am a slave to. It was another three days until I could harvest, but I anticipate it almost eagerly. For all my lucid derision of the abominable act, there is something so innately primal in the gratification of my dark ritual. I am hesitant to compare to sexual relations, since that is a positive act as opposed to literally ripping the life from someone for your own selfish sustenance, but still, there is that same subset of animal fulfillment in the act.

"Discuss what?"

"I would rather do this inside," I replied, and without waiting for an invitation pushed into his home.

"Who the hell are you?"

"David...something or the other," I mumbled and closed the door behind me.

"What do you want?"

I glanced around the darkened apartment. It was alarmingly like my bachelor lair. I don't like to be reminded of the overlap between myself and humanity. If I am not part of it, then what I do isn't so bad. "I won't take up more of your time than necessary."

Muller closed the door. "That scam artist bitch sent you, didn't she?"

"You shouldn't say such things about a lady, but yes, I suppose she did," I answered. "How did you know?"

"You've got that same spellbound look about that the rest of them had," he answered. "You must be her favorite though, she didn't let the other ones leave her sight long, lest they developed their own thoughts."

I infer that I was to be offended, but part of me was thrilled to be recognized as Ma Bichette's favorite. "That simplifies matters then. You know what I've come for."

Muller laughed. "She knows damn well what I want. When she gives it to me, she can have it back."

I had thought about it on the plane trip down, and while I couldn't quite piece together why she hadn't disclosed this to me, I had deduced that their conflict had a great deal to do Ma Bichette's little performances. No doubt Muller believed it to be a trick, and wanted to learn the secret of the illusion from her. "You want to know how she does her tricks, don't you?"

He nodded. "She tells me, I give it back. Simple as that."

"Well, if that's all you want, I can tell you how she does it," I said.

"You know how to as well?"

"Yes," I answered slowly. "What do you want to know?"

"Everything," he answered excitedly.

"Fetch me the film," I said, "and I'll teach you whatever she showed you. And more."

Muller stared at me. "I don't trust you to do that. I think you'll just take off with it."

"You don't seem to be as empty headed as the rest of her flock," I commented and pulled out a cigarette, not bothering to ask for his blessing to smoke in the house.

"I'm not."

I lit the end of it. "How then did you end up with her? Surely you know what sort of man she was looking for."

"I was at a seminar in Sacramento last year," Muller began to explain, keeping a wary eye on me. "Some of those new agers have inventive parlor tricks, or at least an exotic name or concept. I...appropriate them for my act. The older audiences like it, it makes all these new and scary foreign ideas laughable. So, when I need to come up with a new act I hit the road, undercover, scope out some new tricks." Despite his distrust he was more than willing to spill his magical beans. I figured he was proud of himself. It sounded like some stupid scheme Ma Bichette would come up with.

I nodded. "And you saw what she can do, and you supposed that was quite the trick to duplicate. What exactly did she do?"

Muller gazed at me. "I assume you know her whole list of tricks?"

"You don't know the half of it," I replied stoically.

"If I could shove a blade through my skin, but not a normal knife, something exciting like a scimitar or a katana, without a box or a scarf hiding the actual mechanics of the trick, if I could do that, I could stop doing matinees. Maybe even get on television." Muller smiled briefly at the illustrious future that he saw rise before him, but the smile faded when he realized he still had to learn to secret first.

"Let me guess. She told you if you came and worked for her for a brief time, she'd tell you everything you wanted to know, right?" I chuckled. "Honestly, you thought she'd give away her best stuff for a few months of labor?"

Muller shook his head. "I don't know what she wants, she's got a gold mine with her tricks but she doesn't do anything with it."

I shrugged and rolled up my shirt sleeve. "Once you get the hang of it, you can do pretty much anything that would cause bodily harm." I crushed the lit cigarette out on my arm, wincing as I felt the initial embers burn, but the pain abruptly ended.

Muller was nonplussed. "That's easy, there are salves that let you do that."

I didn't know if he was being honest or if he just wanted to see something more impressive to gauge whether or not I knew all the tricks as well. If you are curious as to why I even bothered with accommodating his demands, it's because I didn't feel like searching for the reel without his help. For all I knew it could be hidden under a floorboard or not even at the premises. To save myself frustration, I take the painful way out sometimes.

"Very well. Have you got knives? Not prop ones, real ones."

"In the kitchen," he answered.

"Go get them," I ordered and plopped down on the sofa. "And something to drink. I don't suppose you've got any bourbon, have you?"

Muller returned quickly with a boning knife and a bottle of Wild Turkey with a shot glass turned upside down on the neck. I poured myself a shot first. If you're going to be inflicting wounds on yourself, it's best to begin with some fortifying drink. No doubt you've noticed that I can still get intoxicated on various things, which doesn't exactly make sense in the context of the curse or whatever the proper name is for my condition. I've wondered about that as well. I've got so many unanswered questions.

"Salute," I said, and threw back the shot I had poured. I picked up the knife and examined it. It was a bit dull, but I had already wasted enough time. I set it back down, then poured another shot and drank it.

"Are you going to do it or not?" Muller asked.

"All in good time," I answered and tossed back my third shot. Judge me all you like, but I find it highly unlikely that you've been in anything even remotely approaching my situation.

"Until you find yourself face to face with it, you never really stop and think about what is inside your own body," I said and I picked up the small blade. "Lots of things, bones and veins and nerves, all stuffed in there as tightly as sardines."

Muller scoffed. "I don't see what that has to do with the trick."

I suddenly thrust the knife into my hand. The faster I do it, the shorter the pain is. "It's integral, you need to know where all the bones are, because if you hit one you're going to spend an awful lot of time mucking about. And not only does that hurt more than necessary, it doesn't look as clean." I tuned my hand around and showed him the tip that was protruding from the side. "It's much more impressive like this, don't you think?"

Muller nodded excitedly. "Yes, very impressive!" he exclaimed. The lack of blood only serves to confirm that it is an illusion, I think, and I was content to let that assumption continue for as long as possible.

I poured myself another shot. Manipulating the bottle was rather awkward since I had to take care not to bump the knife around. "Get the film."

Muller stood up and went to his bookshelf. He took a thick book from the shelf, reached into the gap, and pulled out the canister. "Yeah, yeah, here it is," he said as he handed it to me.

I recognized her spidery handwriting on the label. "Ma famille heueuse (sic)" it proclaimed in red ink. My happy family. I opened the metal tin to make sure that there was indeed film in it. "This is the one, right? Because I will be very unhappy if you are trying to pull a fast one on me."

"How many home movies you think I got laying around here? Yeah, that's the one. Now, hold up your end of the bargain." Muller sat down next to me and studied the knife in my hand.

"All right. First you have to die," I answered.

He laughed. "That's a metaphor, right? Your type loves metaphors."

"Believe me, I'm not that type," I replied drolly.

"Then how did you get mixed up with her?"

"That's a story for another time," I said. "Do you want to know how to do this? Then shut up and listen. You have to die first, actual death, soul ejected from the body, heart and brain and lungs stop, the whole shebang. It's not worth it. Stick to card tricks."

Muller leaned forward. "Stop bullshitting me. I gave you what you wanted, now you give me what I want."

I ripped the knife from my hand. "You don't want what I have."

"Don't tell me what I want and don't want. Show me how the trick is done."

"I showed you. It isn't a trick. I'm really dead. Undead rather, but I've never been sure on the terminology." I'm really not quite sure what to call myself. Immortal implies that I never died and I always had been immortal, but that isn't the case. Undead is an umbrella term for all sorts of mythical beings. I don't really like the moniker of 'undead' for two reasons; one being that it is applied to fictional things like vampires and zombies, and secondly, because it logically would be defined as not dead, which would mean everyone who is just normally alive. Unkillable I rather like, because it sounds fairly badass, but it's not really a word, as my computer informs me with a little red zigzag (it wants to replace it with 'inclinable'). Oh, the endless sufferings I must endure.

"Bullshit," he repeated again. "You don't really buy into all that garbage she's dishing out, do you?"

"Of course not." I was really starting to get annoyed by Muller. His suggestion that I was an idiot had touched a nerve. "If you want to believe that this is a trick knife, well," I quickly whipped the knife up to his throat.

Muller seemed too stunned to react. His wise guy routine has hit an abrupt end.

"Listen to me very closely," I said without changing the modulation of my voice. I was terribly annoyed by this whole business, but I believe that if I started exhibiting emotion I would go down in their memory not as the badass unkillable, but as the crazy person. Ma Bichette can go down, time and time again, as the crazy one, but not I. "If you want to believe that this is a trick, shall we try it out, right now? Because I am fairly certain that she expects me to kill you to cover all of this up. But, I like your sister. Doreen was quite nice to me and seems to think the world of you. I would not want to upset her."

"What do you know about my sister, you psychopath?" Muller growled at me. I had to admire his couilles somewhat.

"Nothing that you need to concern yourself with. I won't bother her anymore, presuming that you don't give me reason to. Do I make myself understood?" I don't like making threats against innocent people, and should push come to shove I wasn't going to do a thing to Doreen, but then again I had a knife to the gentleman's throat and I don't believe he would call my bluff.

"Crystal clear," he answered.

I pulled the knife away and set it on the table. "Excellent. I believe our business here is complete. Unless you have any further questions?"

"Get out of my house," he said clearly.

"Gladly," I answered. I picked up the bottle of Wild Turkey. "I'll be taking this for my trouble. You have yourself a good day."

"Wait," he interjected suddenly.

I had my hand on the knob, but my proper breeding stopped me from exiting before I had replied. "Yes?"

"You've got this incredible skill. Why don't you use it?"

I laughed. "Because I look like an old man in a top hat. Au revoir, Houdini."

According to my balance sheet (I had a little slip in my wallet in which I did calculations; add internet banking to the list of things that is handy beyond your simple mortal comprehension), I had pretty much decimated my credit card on last minutes flights by that point. Sure, I could have gone and gotten a bank draft or even brazenly stolen some money, but I had a few days to kill before I was due back in Oregon. Now that I had gotten the reel, the intensity that I had felt had subsided somewhat, although that may have had something to do with the bourbon I had been swigging.

I used the cash I had on me to buy a steak diner, a bus ticket to Reno, and a book to read on the bus ( _The Poseidon Adventure_. I liked it a lot, and coincidentally there was a character named Muller in it). On the ten hour or so bus ride back to my home I nursed the Wild Turkey and came up with many a beautiful and eloquent thing to say to convince Ma Bichette to come and live with me in Reno, things that I promptly forgot the next day. What can I say? I know she uses me and that I'm pathetic, but I can't help it. I was determined to get her to come back to me now that I had been reunited with her, but not determined enough to live on her farm; I have some tattered shreds of dignity. She deserved better than those filthy morons anyway. She deserves someone who will actually love her, not worship her from the dirt.

I stumbled into my house sometime in the early hours of the morning. My first instinct was to call Ma Bichette and try to convince her on the telephone to come down to me, without delay, and to abandon her latest trick. She doesn't really like that sort of thing, the romantic drunk dial, and I thankfully fell asleep on the sofa before I could call her. The next morning I showered and haphazardly grabbed a few changes of clothing from my closet before hitting the road.

I arrived at her plantation later that evening. As it was dark no one was working, but I saw cracks of light leaking from the stable. I believe she was expecting me to call once I had acquired the film, so she was understandably surprised when she opened the door.

"Rémi!" Ma Bichette exclaimed excitedly and threw her arms around my neck. "You have it?"

She smelled so nice. Not like perfume or anything as artificial as that, she just smelled so nice, like all good things should. "Of course I have, ma bichette."

She kissed me and smiled. "You are the best!" She kissed me again. "I didn't expect you to do it so quickly."

I smiled back, wanting to enjoy the moment before I started demanding my well-earned explanations. "You're so pretty when you smile," I said softly. Anything for that, the world for that.

"Come inside," she said and shut the door. The television was blaring in the next room, but she turned it off as we entered. She unbuttoned my coat and slipped it off my shoulders, the whole time making more declarations of joy.

I drank it all in; her warm touch, her cooed benedictions, her untidy hair that was pulled back in a lopsided ponytail. But that simple moment of sheer contentment could never last. We sat on the sofa. I reached into my bag and pulled out the reel.

"You knew what he wanted," I said as I gave her the reel. "Why did you tell me you didn't?" I could have berated her then, for the outright lies she told me, but at a certain point in a relationship you have to learn when to let things go if you want to continue said relationship.

She stared at the reel canister for a second before replying. "I was worried you would think it was silly and you wouldn't do it."

"Darling, it's very silly. It is probably the silliest thing that I have been involved with. But I still did it, didn't I?" I wonder when she shall get it through her pretty skull that I would do literally anything for her, regardless of the magnitude of silliness.

"It's very important to me," she answered and opened the canister with reverent deliberation.

"So I've gathered."

She looked up from the reel. "I suppose it's time to tell you."

"Please.'

"Before Maman died, she wanted to make sure that I would have a better life than she had. She didn't want me to be a whore like she had been." Ma Bichette never pulled any punches when it came to discussing her former career as a high-end prostitute. "So, one of the last things she before the cancer took her was to arrange my marriage."

I was stunned. She had never mentioned a hint of such a thing. "What?"

She sighed. "I never told you because, well, it just wasn't a good thing to bring up. Some men can get weird about that sort of thing since there's a lot of baggage involved. And then after we changed, it was all just so irrelevant."

"Still, you think you may have mentioned something at some point." I wasn't angry, just, well, surprised.

"Does it make a difference?" she asked, her eyebrows raised in expectant annoyance at the gall I had to be offended that she had never brought any of this during our two century-long on-and-off again relationship.

"No, it doesn't," I answered honestly. If it did not change my love for her that she spent seven years as a prostitute, it certainly couldn't bother me that she was married previously.

She smiled weakly and squeezed my hand. "That's why I never said anything. It was just a meaningless nothing that could be made into a problem. But yes, that's what happened. I was fourteen and my husband, Jacque, he was older than I was by a few years, but a free man and that's what she wanted, that I wouldn't get involved with anyone who was owned. He worked at a forge."

I don't want to get into the specifics, because this isn't a history lesson, but free colored Creoles had their own social structure and their own rules on who could marry who and what have you (which is ridiculous in any social strata, but that's neither here nor there) and no, it would not be done for a free-born woman, or girl rather in her case, to be married to a slave. If you're into social history it's very interesting, considering that some colored Creoles even owned slaves themselves, but, yeah, getting a bit off track here.

She shuddered at the memory. "He always stank so bad, like brimstone. Jacque was nice in public, that's why Maman set it up. But in private, oh, what an awful man he was. He was mad at the whole world, at everyone and everything, all the time. He didn't hit me, at least not at first, but he yelled at me and was just plain mean. And he showed me all of his anger. I didn't like him at all, but I was young and scared and had just lost Maman. I didn't know what I should do in that situation. I thought that maybe that's what a marriage was like," she said with a cynical laugh, "and that's why maybe Maman had never married. Because it would be better to be a whore and be reviled by your community but have your own money and not have to answer to some awful husband."

"Oh, ma bichette," I started to console her, but she just shrugged.

"It's all right," she said simply. "It was so long ago. So, before long I was with child-"

I did not want to interrupt, but that's one of those things that stimulates the lizard parts of my human brain into a reaction. "What?"

She ignored my interjection. "When I was pregnant Jacque started to be physically abuse. Nothing heavy, just a smack on the face here or a thrown bottle there. I realized that things were going to get worse. I was not going to put up with that. If I was going to be treated badly I might as well make a better living than I was. So after Baptiste was born I took him and just left the house one day and never came back. I knew the Madam of a decent place and spoke with her."

"Oh, ma bichette," I said again, picturing my beautiful little doe, waif-like and wandering the muddy streets of early 19th century New Orleans, tiny baby in her arms and nothing to her name but the presumably filthy dress she had on. That she spoke of her hardship with such straightforward plainness made me love her more. So brave and strong.

"It's not like a colored teenage girl with a baby had much in the way of options," she defended herself, mistaking my compassion for judgment.

I shook my head. "No, darling, that's not it, I just feel horrible for you, that's all."

"Really? But it was so long ago, and it's not like I was the only girl that happened to." Ma Bichette finds my normal levels of sympathy both mystifying and wonderful. She smiled. "You are so sweet, mon canard, to care about me before you even met me."

Sometimes she makes me want to throw my hands up and surrender to whatever heart-breakingly bizarre thought processes she goes through. "Of course I care, that's awful," I replied and squeezed her hand. "I wish you had told me."

Ma Bichette smiled. "Rémi, you're not the monster you think you are. You agonize so, but you've got the heart of lamb. You're no monster, believe me, I've known monsters."

"Go on," I urged her. For her sake I hoped that her son hadn't died, but considering that I had never even heard of him up until this point and infant mortality rates were very high at the time, well, it was not looking good for little Baptiste. This still all somehow tied into the film I had been sent to retrieve too, and I was eager to hear the rest.

"I got right into the life. I knew what to do, and all the tricks and stuff, as I grew up around them. I was starting to get popular and make a lot of money, but..." she trailed off. "That's no life for a child, and especially not for a boy. I had no relations to send him to and I didn't want him to grow up like me, to be uneducated and live on the margins of society. I know that that was a big dream for a colored son of a whore at the time, but, well, I am ambitious. I spoke to a girl I worked with who had a son as well. She knew of a group of Quakers all the way up in Pennsylvania, and they took in children in Baptiste's situation. They educated them, they taught them good trades, and they even treated them as equals. They are good people, Quakers, and I would never take from one of them."

The moment I realized that she had given up her son when he was just a baby my sympathy must have shown on my face, because her own face fell from it's façade into a rare glimpse of sorrow. "Oh, ma bichette," I found myself saying for a third time. I could think of nothing else to say.

"It's..." she was going to say 'all right' I believe, but she didn't want to continue the lies, at least not at that moment. "...it's all over, it's too long ago. I sent him there, and I never heard from him again. Of course I wouldn't hear from him, he was just a baby and couldn't write. I suppose he grew up to be a good man and had a good job, just he grew up as an orphan is all. I never mentioned it because I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to think about that I abandoned him twice, once when I sent him up there, and again when I became like this. I always thought that maybe, maybe when I was retired I could go and find him, but I couldn't after we changed. Because what would I say? My apologies that I sent you to an orphanage, and, oh, by the way I am a monster? He didn't deserve that, to have the mother he presumed was dead show up and announce that she was a murdering beast!" All of this came out very frantically and in a higher tempo than her usual speech, and the dawn of a tear glistened in her eye.

"I'm so sorry," I whispered, struck near dumb by my sudden realization of the scope of what I had taken away from her. "If it wasn't for me you could have gone to him. I wish you had told me, my darling. I would have sent for him."

She laughed shortly. "Yes, have him come home to live the life of a bastard and see his mother get murdered. No, it's better that he never knew me. I don't think he even remembered me, he was barely a year when I sent him up there." She had settled back into her usual veneer of control and blinked away the conspicuous tear. "What happened happened, and there's no point in feeling sad or sorry for myself."

I said nothing. Instead I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around her. I felt her relax and she leaned into me. She sighed and said "I'm sorry that I didn't tell you. I don't like lying, but I do it a lot because it's easier than telling the truth. I always have a reason. I suppose that doesn't make it okay."

I paused before replying. Of course I did not care for her lying and her manipulations, but after what she had told me, combined with the sort of life I already knew she had lead, I couldn't summon up the sentiment to chide her for her habitual deception. "Don't worry about what you've said or haven't said before, I love you," I said. I supposed that was a good middle ground, I wasn't condemning her nor was I telling her she should continue.

"I wanted to pretend it was a reoccurring dream, something that hadn't really happened but I still remembered," she murmured slowly. "But it is not. I can't convince myself of my own lies, even if I can convince everyone else. That is annoying."

"I bet. But you don't have to lie to me," I replied. "Doesn't it feel better to tell the truth finally?"

"No," she answered. "You can't give me back what I lost. No one can," she replied flatly. "It doesn't matter who I tell."

She was right, of course. There's this idea that if you purge yourself of your mental woes you'll 'feel better' to some extent. It works for me, I suppose, although I don't really 'feel better' after writing all this, as much as I hope that it will count as confession somehow. I don't really know if I deserve to feel better anyway. I don't know (although I certainly hope) if there is anyway she could ever really feel better about having had to give up her son, but merely telling me about it wasn't going to magically fix it.

To get Ma Bichette to agree it's better to appeal to logic than to emotion. "But now that you told me, I can maybe help. And it will be less stressful to try to keep it a secret any longer." I wanted to convince her to get in the habit of perhaps telling the damn truth more often than not.

"Yes, you're right," she answered with a bit more emotion in her voice. She pulled away from me. "It's good that you know. You should know. And you should know the rest of it as well, like what's on that reel."

I had briefly forgotten about the reel. "It's your descendants, isn't it?" I said after a moment of contemplation. "Votre famille heureuse."

She stood up suddenly, the canister held between her hands. "A few years ago I saw a baby who looked just like him, exactly like him. I thought that it would make me sad, but it didn't. It made me so happy to stop pretending that he was never real. I knew then that I had to find out what had happened. I went to Fallsington. The orphanage was closed a long time ago, but I spoke with a lady at one of their churches. I told her I was doing genealogical research," Ma Bichette smiled broadly. "I said I was looking for my great-great-great grandfather. She showed me their records, and Baptiste was buried nearby. He lived to be seventy-three, and was married and had five children. He owned a lot of land, so I think he had a farm."

This all sounds rather bleak, having outlived her only child by a century, but I had not seen her so happy for so long. She had finally reclaimed her son, even if it was belated. "That's wonderful," I commented, but she didn't hear me. Her eyes were focused on ghostly visions that were still tangible to her, even through insurmountable realities and mistakes.

"I managed to track down one of the lines," she said and she shook off her daydream. "In Boston. I went there. I wasn't going to say anything to them. I have no idea what I would say. I wanted to see them. I didn't want to scare them, so I waited until they had all left the house. I don't know where they went. I want to think they went to the zoo, or to the beach, or something fun like that. I went into the house. I wanted something of them, something that I would carry around with me, so I would never lose him again. I was planning on taking some of their photos, not many, just a few. But then I saw this. They had a dozen films. I hope they just think that this one got lost."

"And you bought a projector to watch it? And a film camera to make the film of you to convince me to do this in the first place?"

"Yes. I couldn't risk you not doing this. I had to make you believe your precious anonymity was at stake. I couldn't lose this. I couldn't lose them again."

I held my tongue. I'm certain you have a good idea of the gist of my thoughts at the moment anyway. Besides, any irritation I may have harbored melted away at the pure joy she radiated.

"Do you want to see it?" she asked me. She was nearly bursting with pride.

"Of course," and before the words were out of my mouth she left the parlor and sprinted up the stairs. I imagined that she was more eager to see it herself than to show to me, but I was understandably curious. I didn't run up the stairs like she did though.

Ma Bichette was carefully placing the reel onto the machine. "There's two girls," she explained hurriedly. "Pamela, she's nine, and Denise, she's seven. I don't know much about them, but Pamela got a hundred on her spelling test, they pinned it up on the wall. I'm so proud, she's probably a better speller than I am. Shirley is their mother, but the father, Marcus, he's mine," she said. "I think he works for the power company. I went through their mail and saw his paycheck."

She turned the projector on. "Shirley is holding the camera, I think," she narrated.

The scene was of a grassy backyard on a sunny summer's day. Two thin black girls, one in a yellow bathing suit and one in a lime green bathing suit, ran pell-mell across the lawn and jumped through a lawn sprinkler, until they noticed the camera, in which instance they immediately started to do cartwheels. The smaller one tried to push the older one out of the way, but the older one just shrugged her off.

"Here comes Marcus," Ma Bichette said, and on cue her however so many greats grandson ambled onto the screen. He had a cigarette in one hand, which he placed on an ashtray before lumbering over to his girls. Marcus walked with a slight limp, but he was fit enough to pick up the smaller girl and swing her around while the older one climbed up his back. The older one, Pamela, looked directly at the camera for a moment, no doubt responding to something her mother said. She then dropped to the ground and ran towards the camera, which followed her into the house, where she came back into view after few seconds. Pamela was hoisting a scared looking ash grey kitten above her head, which presumably her mother told her to treat more gently, because she immediately lowered it and then cradled it against her chest.

Denise, the younger girl, ran past the girl and her cat and promptly returned with a frightened looking kitten of her own, albeit a black and white tabby. She nuzzled it against her face with over enthusiastic affection, and received a few wild swipes at her face in return. Marcus walked past them into the kitchen. The scene abruptly ended.

Ma Bichette was silent for a moment. "I've watched that so many times, and I never get sick of it. I wish so much that..." she sighed. "Well, no sense crying over it, that won't get anything accomplished. I should be grateful that I have this. I am. I have this."

By the dim light of the projector I could see her looking at me in the darkened room. "I'm just happy you're happy," I said.

"Are you tired?" she asked.

I nodded slowly. I had driven ten hours, of course I was tired. Tired and cold.

"I'm going to watch this again. Go lie down in bed, I'll be in a minute." She removed the spent reel and set it back on the spindle to be played again.

I left her alone with her family, and I collapsed onto the bed. I lay there for a moment, trying to suppress my own demons. I have sired many a child in my many days. I am not as attached to them as I should be, however, for the simple fact is that I know I will outlive them during said siring. Should you take a puppy to the veterinarian and he tells you that it has some horrible canine disease and will die within a week, you can't let yourself get attached, no matter how much you feel that you should love it and cherish it. It will be nothing but dust before you know it.

The first time that Ma Bichette and I broke up I was wreck. I rebounded almost immediately with another lady and before I knew what happened I had three children with her; two boys and girl. I supposed that I would cross that bridge of explanation as to why I didn't age when I came upon it, but that opportunity never presented itself. They all were spirited away in a cholera epidemic. The task of washing them and preparing them for burial was my grim chore. The girl, Violetta, she was not more than two. She died with her soft brown eyes wide open and I laid coins upon them, lest they stare lifelessly out into oblivion. Some of our neighbors died as well, but the ones who survived looked at me with pity. Not what luck I had to live, but what misfortune I had to survive.

I heard the projector running in the next room. I exhaled slowly and rolled over onto my side. I chose this, she didn't. I don't have any right to complain.

I disrobed and crawled under the thick quilt. She hadn't changed the sheets in a while; she's never been big on housework. But I didn't mind, it was a welcome bouquet. The light from the hall streamed into the bedroom. I tried to sleep, but I could not shake the feeling of being so very forsaken.

The light turned off and I heard footsteps coming to her bedroom. I heard the distinctive rustling her undressing, then sensed her slip into bed next to me. I did not move from my position.

"Your feet are like ice," she commented and wrapped her arms around me.

I wasn't aware of anything else she said or did. I fell asleep almost immediately.

Chapter Five

The next morning at breakfast I was in a much less morose mood. I had slept well, and since Ma Bichette had been expecting me she had more palatable foodstuffs in the house. She made me a pan of sausages and eggs, rolling her eyes at my indulgences as I dug in while she demurely picked at her dry toast.

"Maybe you wouldn't be such a sourpuss in the morning if you ate something you like," I commented, while stirring sugar into my coffee.

"I would be quite the sourpuss if I got heavy," she answered sharply.

"Oh, I think it would be a quite nice change of pace. Perhaps then other men wouldn't turn their heads to you and I could have you all to myself," I answered jovially.

She grinned. "Maybe in another hundred years if I ever get tired of looking amazing."

"Do it now, turn into a pretty little pork stuffed cabbage," I teased her and cut her off a slice of my breakfast sausage, and then set it on her toast. Ideal lady figures have changed rapidly over the years, but Ma Bichette has always tried to maintain her petite figure. I should say that's because it makes her much less harmful looking to potential prey, but it's mostly because she's terribly vain. Sometimes I wonder how badly she would have dealt with natural aging.

She ate the little slice on toast while staring out the window at her followers as they dredged towards to vineyard. "I have lost control of them," Ma Bichette said after she finished eating. "What's the point of having mindless drones if they have their own minds?"

"What happened?"

"I never saw your note. Things don't just disappear, one of them must have took it."

I chuckled. "Oh, ma bichette, I don't think they fear you. That's no way to treat a goddess. I suppose they didn't tell you that I had told them to tell you I was going to Kansas either, huh?"

She sighed in irritation. "Nope."

"Ha. Well then, are you going to bring down the wrath of an angry god upon them?"

"They don't respect me, they just want to lie with me. Not only that, they can't even deal with you competing with them for my attention. They are like a bunch of idiot children," she shortly said. "I should kill all them, that would teach them a lesson."

"Of course they want to lie with you, ma bichette, I could have told you that. All that Sumerian and Ninsutu claptrap is just window dressing. You probably could have just told them if they work on your plantation they'd have a ten percent chance at you, and they'd accept that as well. They may actually believe you to be divine, but not omniscient, otherwise they wouldn't have stolen the note now, would they?" How brutally unfair being a woman is, because no matter what you do or say you are usually judged on your fitness as a sexual object.

"I wanted them to think that I was omniscient," she moaned and tapped her fingers against the table.

I shrugged. "You're not. I wouldn't suggest killing all of them though, I don't think we are likely to get away with that," I said while peeling an orange with a knife. You wouldn't believe how dexterous I am with a knife.

"Who did you speak to before you left?" Ma Bichette asked me. "I suppose he's the one who disposed of the note."

"How the hell should I know? It's not like they signed my dance card. There was two of them, actually. They both had beards," I offered as a vague description.

"They've all got beards," she answered with distaste. Ma Bichette doesn't care for facial hair on men (I don't know her opinion on it for women, however) as she says it isn't pleasant to kiss a man with facial hair. "Could you pick them out if I got you to look at them?"

"Probably."

She poured herself another cup of coffee. "I am sick of this. Being a goddess or whatever is much more work than I thought it would be. And all for so little reward."

I smiled to myself. My opportunity to draw her back into my web of mercilessly unconditional love was dawning. "Do you really want to kill them all? Because if you really want to, I'm sure we could arrange something."

"That will not be necessary. We just need the one for now. Even though they might be total morons, I think even they would wise up if we started butchering them one by one on a strict schedule."

The day after next was the earliest day we could harvest. Sure, having to take life to continue my own is the worst part of this whole arrangement, but the timing is easily the most annoying. Within three days of the new moon sounds like a generous window of time, but selecting the right victim and then having to harvest in that time frame is...well, it used to be stressful, now it's just annoying, much like I suppose a woman views her menstrual cycle.

"I will call them to the house in a bit," Ma Bichette said while gazing out the window at her herd. "You say which one, and we'll do it in a few days. Until then, let's do something fun. I hate hanging around this dump and having to babysit."

I smiled at her lazily. She had something in mind, I could tell. Even though she denied it, her reveal last night had taken a noticeable burden from her. Odd that something so silly culminated in making her so happy. "What do you want to do?"

"Have you ever gone skiing?"

I shook my head. "You?"

"Yes, a few times, in New York and Vermont." She leaned towards me and kissed me. "See, mon canard, there are still new and fun things to do. You needn't be so gloomy all the time."

"I'm not gloomy all the time," I refuted. "I'm not now." I kissed her back. "And," I said after yet another kiss, "you are better at frivolity than I am. I need you to lead me to it."

"You'll like skiing," she promised me.

It was okay, I suppose. Skiing that is. We went to Mount Hood and I would have enjoyed it more had I been better at, and not awkwardly flailing about when I tried to stand up on skis for the first time (to her credit, Ma Bichette managed to suppress most of her laughter). I've gotten better at it as time wears on, we go from time to time because she rather enjoys it. But what was better than okay was the few days we spent together, particularly off the slopes. Regarding exactly what was said and done and how many times the said deed was done, I do not want to go into too much depth, since it was only forty years ago and is still fresh in my mind (as opposed to the older memories, which I do feel the need to preserve better via the written word). However, there was this wonderful moment in our hotel room, completely unspoiled by any environmental or internal factors, where she sighed happily, laid her perfect head with perfectly messy hair on my bare chest and said to me that she wanted to come and live with me.

"I think that I should try to be the woman you deserve," she slurred, as we had drank quite a bit of her wine. "For a while, at least." She then burped like an angel would and turned on the television with the remote to watch the late show.

Her statement was more cryptic than I believe she meant it to be, but at the time I didn't interrupt it as such. I didn't have to deliver my pitch outlining all the reasons why she should live with me again. She wanted to. She wants to. After what I did to her, she still loves me. How extraordinary, like a miracle performed just for me, time and time again.

We spent more time at Mount Hood than we had planned, and by the time we arrived back, her followers were near mutinous. Ma Bichette had more or less given up on the illusion, so seeing their guru return with her gentlemen friend and saucy smile on her face must have been less than reassuring. I said nothing to them (because what I wanted to say would have been very uncouth) but she gave them a short impromptu sermon while I smoked a cigarette and leaned against the car.

"My most respected and beloved friends," she said in English (which is always a bit jarring for me to hear her speak), "I have very wondrous and joyous news! I have returned from a meditation session from the secreted temple of life. I have received a communication from my revered clan sister Tiamat. My astral forms of many beings require that my physical form of one chose a vessel in which to perform the greater ritual of tantra with!"

Ma Bichette gestured up into the heavens. "Rejoice with me, for this is sacred day that I have long awaited and long foretold. Today is the beginning of the first day of the reign of Enlil, lord of storms and fire! Hasten to the meeting place and prepare your hearts and minds to receive the intentions of the divine plane!"

I think she was awaiting a better reaction, because she stood in place, no doubt expecting the young men to run off in a hurry. However, they shuffled towards the stable slowly. You may be wondering why she is bothering to continue the act when it would have been more expedient and much less silly to just kill one of them and be done with it, but I think I have made it abundantly clear that she derives a lot of fun out of her little games, especially the ones that make her the focus of attention. Ma Bichette wanted to go out with a bang.

I had a bottle of barbiturates in my bag and while Ma Bichette changed into one of her ceremonial outfits (which was more Sally Rand than Sister Aimee) I crushed them up and mixed them into a bottle of cheap champagne. Not enough to kill them, as killing your followers en masse would not come into vogue for a few years yet, but just enough to whisk them away into the dream world where pagan gods could whisper into their ears or some such rubbish.

Ma Bichette came downstairs, swaddled in a heavy dressing gown. "You sure that it won't kill them?" she asked. Not out of concern for them, but for herself, as she did not want to cause a national news story.

"Ninety-nine percent sure," I answered. The barbiturates had been my idea. She had just wanted to abduct Alan (that was the bearded one who had given me the most amount of sass mouth) after her swan song with them, but I thought this would be better, as no one would actually see us take him. We can work well together as a team, Ma Bichette and I, but unfortunately that doesn't mean we always do.

She shrugged. "Good enough. How's my hair?"

"Historically inaccurate, but other than that, fine." I'm fairly certain perms were not invented three-thousand years ago. Her lovely (artificially) wavy hair was pulled back loosely, and secured with two primitive-looking lion shaped pins, one on either side of her head.

"And the rest?" Ma Bichette dropped the robe.

I was speechless for a second. It was black length of silk the breadth of my hand, and she had wrapped it about her parcels of prime real estate. Save for a few gold bracelets that she had chosen to accessorize with, that was all she had on.

She grinned. "If it makes you pause I'm sure it will convince those morons to drink my draught."

I shook my head. "This, this here," I said while gesturing at her, "this is why they want to have sex with you."

She rolled her eyes. "I don't wear it all the time, you prude. It isn't even a real outfit, it's a torn-up sheet. I made it just now." Ma Bichette set the adulterated champagne bottle on a tray and then began to place a motley assortment of juice glasses on the tray as well.

I blinked. "Wait, why have you got black silk sheets?"

"I haven't got them anymore, have I?" She picked up the tray. "I'll come fetch you when I need you."

I watched her walk out towards the stable, which apparently had a room for 'services' sectioned off from the rest of the building. Yes, dressed like that, in such a salacious manner, and after telling them that tonight she would select one to...ugh, I can't bring myself to type it. Needless to say, they would do anything she said, and having a sip of champagne before she announced her decision was but a trifle to ask of them.

Originally, I did not have designs to possess her in the quotidian way that other men of my era (and other eras, naturally) wanted to possess a woman. She was/is a rare and beautiful thing, full of tenacity and fire, and I understood that trying to control her would be a failing proposition in many ways. At best she would leave me, and at worst I may actually succeed, and in the process extinguish from her the core elements that make her who she is. However, as she walked out that filthy barn to drug and harvest them, a lust for their blood, all of the blood of those young men, for daring to think of sullying her with their puerile lechery, frothed up in me.

It was intoxicating. I didn't care if they saw me. They had seen her, and that was enough. Now, I realize, that she exploits her sexuality for her own personal gains and she has no problem with it. But I have a huge problem with it, and I could not remain idle while they mentally degrade her. Ma Bichette need not do that anymore, she has me, and I will do whatever I can to save her from herself.

I briskly walked towards the stable and unceremoniously threw the door open. All eyes fell upon me. It's rare that I get the drop on Ma Bichette, but when I do I am almost proud of myself. "It's over," I told her in French so they would not understand us. "Now. Let us slaughter them all, let us end this dirty game, let us escape now."

She stared at me with extreme annoyance. "The Oarsman, shepherd of souls, son of Kek, consort of Erishkegal, father of Erecure," she babbled in English, reciting a pantheon of culturally mismatched deities while struggling to come up with a story on the spot. "He has informed me that I should not dally any further." She began to pour the spiked champagne into the glasses while shooting me icy daggers.

"Look at them," I hissed at her. "Animals. No better than dogs in heat."

"Females go into heat, not males," she retorted in French to me, calm overcoming her. No doubt she was flattered that I was making such a chivalrous stance. "Nothing will happen, particularly since you are here."

Ma Bichette could handle them without me, I'm well aware, but the fact that she made the effort to both allay my concern and soothe me when she very well could have been upset? It makes me melt for her more. "I-" I began to say, to try to vocalize more insecure and panicky thoughts about her imagined...oh, how her past profession haunts me, even to this day. I don't hold it against her, never against my poor little doe, cast out, an orphan, a child bride with a child, but I certainly could charge the beasts who only wanted to use her.

"It is but another act, another charade, to get what we need," she murmured to me while meticulously pouring out evenly matched portions for the attendees.

"I don't like it," I said loudly, still in French, although they stared at me still. "I want to be your only one."

"You are, mon canard. Do you get jealous of the cow when I milk it? Do you think that I pine for the chickens I braise?" It must have been very distracting to try to pacify me while also maintaining her poise and elegance and wearing what amounted to an oversized ribbon.

"He informs me that the predetermined moment of inception draws near, ever near, and that Enlil's revelation shall soon pierce the curtain of the primordial ether," Ma Bichette said to them. I wonder if they caught on that the Oarsman and the Goddess were bickering in an archaic French dialect, and not the spoken form of Cuneiform.

"Oh, it draws very near," I muttered, and left the room via a door that connected to the quarters of the young men. I located a shovel lying next to the pitchfork I had seen earlier, and gripped it tightly in my hands.

What I did that evening can be explained by several factors. Factor the first, it was smack dab in the middle of the cycle and I was already very agitated. Usually I devour the heart on the first possible day so I am not consumed with the mighty hunger that increases steadily as the new moon is born. (You don't want to catch me on the last day of the cycle, I more or less have lost any semblance of sanity or reason). You know the feeling when you have quit smoking and all you can think about is cigarettes and you begin to do bizarre things like pantomime smoking and chewing on the ends of pencils to help alleviate your desire? Multiple that by every year I have been alive and you may begin to approach the ballpark of aching lust that consumes me, come the new moon.

Secondly, Ma Bichette. Of course. My sweetest little doe who still labors under the misconception that she must exploit her sexuality to get what she wants. She even does it to me, still, when all she would need to do is ask. And when you love someone, sometimes you must protect them from the horrible things that they do to themselves. I saw in their eyes their presumptions, their carnal lusts, and I could no longer abide them to continue to draw breath when they had defiled her so in their thoughts. I knew what she was capable of, what unimaginable delights she can induce in a man, more than they could ever guess, and I was tormented so by flashes of visions of what they wanted from her.

I marched back into the room. One of them was approaching Ma Bichette, who was holding out a glass of the spiked champagne to him. Without a word I advanced on him and then swung the business end of heavy metal farm tool into his head. He was killed instantly, his soft pink brain exposed to the dim light provided by a few bare light bulbs in the ceiling.

She locked eyes with me and sighed. "Good work," she said sarcastically while the rest of them gasped in thunderstruck horror. "We have to kill them all now, are you happy?"

"Do I look happy?" I swung the shovel again, this time wildly in the direction of the kneeling adherents. The spade made contact with the jaw of one and he screamed in horror as the spell was broken.

The scream spurred the rest of them to action. I swung again, this time striking one in the legs as he tried to flee. I had lost all sympathy for them as unique and sacrosanct human beings. Instead they were just vile things who wanted to do despicable things to Ma Bichette. He stumbled and I whacked him in the back of the neck. I looked up from my fresh kill just in time to see Alan (the sassy be-bearded one from earlier) rush out the door.

"Shit!" I yelled (very ineloquently) and yanked the shovel out of the newly minted corpse.

Ma Bichette ripped the shovel from my hands. "I will deal with the rest of them! You go get him!" She shouted at me before pushed me out the door and slammed it behind her.

I gave chase. It was a moonless night (being the new moon and all) and I heard him rather than saw him, zeroing in on his terrified panting as he sprinted across the slight rise of the vineyard. I dashed across the muddy earth, slipping a few times and scampering up, looking less like the sort of monster a man should flee from and instead like...well, much like the dirty morons in the first place, albeit sans beard.

"Help!" I heard him yelp from a few yard in front of me. "Murder!"

He was closer than I thought. "Quiet," I hissed at him. "I can hear you better when you yell." I did not want anyone to hear him.

He was heading for the main road. Off in the distance I saw a pair of headlights coming towards us. I swore again. How could I let my emotions get the better of me and make everything so complicated yet again? If he got to the road things would get messier than they already were. I pushed myself forward with the strength of pure will.

Alan was running with the zeal that comes when you fear for your precious life. I was pursuing him with the zeal that comes from the fear of being iced out of a codependent relationship. The perceived safety of the headlights drew closer. I exerted a burst of speed and tackled him, slamming him into the slush and the mud.

I think that it's a fitting metaphor that I won that footrace, that the things that destroy you are often so much more powerful and tenacious than your own good sense. But there I go again, complaining about things I do to myself. How can I expect to be allotted understanding and mercy if I continue to exist by doing monstrous things?

Alan moaned and struggled to save himself from me as I pinned him into the muck. The road was some fifty feet ahead of us. He made a valiant effort to reach out to the light, to signal that he needed help, but it was all too easy for me to push him back down. The car sailed by, blissfully unaware of the dark rituals that we committed, off to continue their lives unhindered by the boundless depravity that is my world.

I do not relish a messy kill. Alan wanted what I wanted, but I had gotten there first, some two-hundred years previously. It could have been me. All of my victims, they all could have been myself. I'd say a little piece of me dies along with them each time, but I haven't really got thousands and thousands of pieces of myself to throw away. One grows numb to it, feeling but only a tingling prick of remorse at the moment of the kill.

Having to improvise is never fun. I knelt on his back and pushed his face into the mire, muttering that he should just stop fighting and accept it, that there was nothing he could do anymore, that it would all be over soon, and that he would soon be somewhere much better than the dirty little shack he had been living in for the past year. I don't often do that, speak to them that is, but I was on a bit of an emotional high (so much more destructive than an ether one) and I needed an outlet.

Once he stopped moving I crouched down and felt his neck for a pulse. I've had a few victims try and pull a fast one on me in the past and this was a situation that needed to be properly managed. When I was assured that he was indeed dead, I sat down in the mud as well, breathing quickly and trying to regain some composure before I trod back up to Ma Bichette. You may think it irresponsible of me to leave her with ten or so young men who were fighting for their very lives, but she is more than capable of handling herself. Ever see a mongoose go to town on a cobra? She is agile and coordinated and ferocious. Oddly enough, she was not like that in the beginning. Before our first breakup she was much more shy about killing and I had to do all of it myself, but...something happened after our first breakup. Something in her changed. But now is not the time for that story.

I meandered through the rows of vines back towards the stable. I heard no yells and I reasoned (correctly) that she had slain the remaining followers. I pushed the door open and stumbled in.

Ma Bichette stood in the midst of scene of the near-unimaginable carnage in which we are both accustomed. I do not want to get too graphic, both because I believe that gratuitous violence is in poor taste and because I just haven't got room to write it all, but suffice to say there was a great deal of blood. I had not seen such carnage in a long time (I prefer less messy ways), and I was taken back for a second.

She looked at me. Her outfit had fallen off and she wore nothing but blood. She laughed. "And you say I'm dramatic!"

I shook my head. "I'm sorry, I-"

"Yeah, I know, you love me too much," she said.

"I told you I wanted nothing to do with this, and yet you insisted," I said to her, taking a breath between each few words. "Why do you feel the need to keep punishing me?"

She picked up one of the glasses that had miraculously managed to not be spilled during the slaughter. "I'm taking this," she said, then reached down to one of the corpses. It was mangled so much that she had to exert little effort to pull the heart out. "And this. And then I am going to bed. Have this all cleaned up by the morning and then we'll go to Reno."

I shut my eyes. In that instant I cursed everything that had even been, that had led me to this moment, that had lead me to supplicate myself before her. Then I opened them, she was gone, and I had an awful mess to clean up.

Epilogue

Once, when I was young boy, my reward for learning my lessons well was being allowed to accompany my father into New Orleans when he had business to attend to. I had my own pony, a black and white creature that I called 'Chou', which literally means cabbage, but can also mean darling. I must have been eight or so, and I had a smart little dark green coat and city business breeches and, to my eight year old self's endless delight, my own pair of black leather riding boots. Father would go about his business, myself in tow, obediently quiet, until the end of the business conversation was reached. Then they would always remark upon how sharp young master looked, and my father would urge me to repeat some part of my lessons, be it a verse from The Aeneid or a list of the Byzantium Emperors. They would compliment my father on having such a smart son and I felt like the cock of walk.

It left a powerful impression on me and is still one of the nicest memories I have from my childhood (I don't mean to say that I had a bad childhood, in fact I dare say I had an excellent one, what with being the pampered son of a wealthy plantation owner and all). I was wondering how many, if any, memories the students would have of today, today being June 21st, 2012, and the last day of school in Boston. I usually would not be pondering such things, but I was literally face to face with every single sixth grader who would be advancing to middle school today.

Oh, don't bother wringing your hands in fear. Neither of us would ever go after a child, that's just awful. I suppose you are wondering why I was at an elementary school for the better part of today. Well, ask yourself this- what (or whom rather) drags me into things I normally would not do?

A bit of an explanation is in order. For the past few years Ma Bichette has been stalking (that's really the only word for it) her descendants online via Facebook. Stalking them in the most positive sense of the word, however, because every so often she calls me upstairs to her computer to have a look at an album full of people she's never met but whom she cares about dearly. Under multiple false identities she watches all their shared videos and likes all the pages they like and even repeats to me the painfully insipid axioms they post as images. That's why she moved to Boston in the first place, to be physically closer to them and to understand their sphere of existence better. I want to tell her that this will only end in heartache, as they shall wither and die, yet I cannot bring myself to do so. She more or less radiates happiness and just being around her is so much more pleasant than it has been in the past. Almost like it was before we died. I cannot bring myself to kick that from under us.

So, long story short, she follows the elementary school that Kelly, daughter of Denise, the younger girl from the film, goes to. A few months ago they made a series of hopeful requests for support and donations from the community for their upcoming 'funday' for all the graduating sixth graders. Ma Bichette nearly tripped over herself to offer the services of her bakery, Petite More, to donate cupcakes. The school was so delighted to have such an enthusiastic business owner who was willing to donate her time and goods, that they didn't find anything suspicious about her demands. Ma Bichette somehow knew what a 'funday' was, or at least that it involved games, so she stipulated that each child be awarded a little token or ticket or some such trifle to be exchanged for a fancy little cake. The tokens would be rationed out, one at a time, so that "I don't get mobbed."

They agreed to it without hesitation. I knew nothing of any of this, however, until just a few days ago when Ma Bichette asked me if I had any plans. I was planning on changing the oil in my car, but that could wait. There was an almost electric corona of anticipation clinging to her; she was going to see one of her descendants, in the flesh, at so long last. She said she needed help setting up, but I can divine her true intentions. She wanted me to see them too, to share with me her joy.

There was not too much to set up, just a table and some boxes of cupcakes and a plastic banner that she set up. We were in view of a field were dozens of overly excited children ran around after a colossal ball, trying to get it past the goal line of the opposing team. I felt like I was at the zoo. They pushed and yelled and darted around like entertaining animals. I had nothing to do with distributing the cupcakes and since apparently you'll get shot on sight for smoking on school property, I had nothing to do but watch them run about like little maniacs.

"That's her! That's Kelly!" Ma Bichette whispered to me excitedly after giving a little boy in a Patriot's jersey a cupcake in Patriot's colors. "Pushing the ball, now, in the puffy pink skirt!"

I squinted towards the field. "Are you sure?"

"Yes!" she gasped with delight. "Look at her! She's so good at pushing the ball!"

"She's a genius," I agreed dryly. I took the ticket that an eager girl with short black hair and braces was waving at Ma Bichette, and then gave her a cake. We were speaking in French, of course, so the girl stared at us in wonder for a moment before scuttling off to play with her friends.

"Why won't she come here?" Ma Bichette fretted for a few moments. I was not clear on how the children got their tickets, just that they did, so I shrugged.

"I'm sure she'll come, ma bichette. What child could resist sweets, hm?"

She nodded her head slowly. Her gaze was fixed with laser like precession on Kelly, leaving me to pass out cupcakes. I was bored and made an effort to match the cupcakes to the children with some sort of appropriate criteria. They were polite, for the most part, and I felt sort of like when you feed a carrot to a horse. It is a good feeling, because that horse would not have been able to get the carrot itself with those big ungainly hooves it has. The horse appreciates it and you can see it expressed in its big, soft eyes.

I ended up manning the booth for the most part after Ma Bichette spotted Kelly, which, come to think of it, is probably part of the reason why she wanted me there. Kelly's team or group or what have you stopped playing on the field and then scuttled off to the gymnasium. Ma Bichette was clearly unsettled, but I had figured out by this point that they got their tickets in the gymnasium, and told her as such.

"I'm actually going to talk to her," Ma Bichette said. To my surprise she sounded nervous. "I don't know if I can do this."

I squeezed her hand and smiled at her (she had introduced me as her husband that morning to the frazzled looking coordinator. Forbidden love was exciting at times, but it's also so nice that you can be in an interracial relationship now and people don't even bat an eye). "You've done just fine with the other ones, just be normal, all right?"

Ma Bichette shook her head. "She isn't normal, she's special." She reached under the table and opened a Tupperware container. Inside was a cupcake that Ma Bichette had festooned with multicolored icing and candied flowers and sparkly sugar crystals and all manner of girly things to the extent that it looked like what a unicorn might cough up if it was a heavy smoker.

"That's...something else," I commented.

"I went in early to make it," she said and bit her lip. "Do you think Kelly will like it?"

"Would you have liked it at her age?"

Ma Bichette smiled, so purely and innocently, that I could see the innocent and pure child in her still. "Yes, I would have never forgotten it."

I glanced up and caught sight of Kelly walking briskly towards up. "Now, here she comes," I warned Ma Bichette. "You'll do fine."

Kelly read the banner and paused thoughtfully. "That's a joke, isn't it?"

"Yes," Ma Bichette squeaked. "Aren't you clever?"

"I read a book where a girl ate petit fours. She was from colonial times. Do you have those?"

Ma Bichette shook her head. "No, I'm very sorry, I haven't. I could make them though, sometime, if you come by my shop."

I had no doubt that she would do so. There is a fine line between friendly and creepy, however, and I eyed Ma Bichette warily, lest she stray into the later category. But she smiled and changed tact.

"So, you're going to high school, right?" Ma Bichette asked.

Kelly was flattered by all the attention this apparent stranger was paying her. "No, middle school."

"What..." Ma Bichette paused, and I could sense in her an urgency to jam a thousand questions into one short exchange. "What is your favorite class?"

"Reading. I took a test and they said that I read at the ninth grade level. I did a book report on 'To Kill A Mockingbird' and the teacher gave me one-hundred and ten percent," Kelly said proudly.

She seemed a bit like a know-it-all, but, I sort of am to some extent as well, so I haven't got any room to talk.

"I never read that," Ma Bichette said. "Is it good?"

Kelly shrugged. "I guess. I liked 'The Hunger Games' more, but Mom said I couldn't do a book report on that."

"Well, I've got an hundred and ten percent sort of cupcake," Ma Bichette said as reached under the table and pulled out the extra-special cupcake.

Kelly's eyes widened. "Really? I can have that?"

"I think such a clever girl who got a pun that most adults don't get deserves something special," Ma Bichette said and placed it in Kelly's eager little hands.

"Thank you!" Kelly said and scuttled off to show her fancy treat to her peers.

Ma Bichette stared after her as she ran off. She said nothing.

"Are you okay?"

She nodded. "I want to get closer to them," she said softly as Kelly approached another group of girls on the other side of the field. "I have to."

I noticed a boy approaching and meted out his cupcake before answering her. "Are you sure? What are you going to tell them? Ma bichette, you will have to abandon them at some point again. You must realize that. Are you ready to do that?"

She didn't answer me.

Visit wordswithdani.com for more information about this series and the author.

Stay tuned for volume three!
