Four Smokers of the Apocalypse, Part 3

Four Smokers of the Apocalypse (Part 3 of 4)
an4@anon.lelnet.com

   Sunset came and went before they reached the Fraktor ancient Tudor Revival
mansion. The house had been in the family for almost two hundred years, and it
bore the signs of age. The white paint had begun to peel and the shutters were
a faded grey. It had a forlorn look, sitting out here at the edge of town on
the end of a dirt road. Mrs. Fraktor's old Lincoln Continental sat in the
driveway near the wheelchair ramp. On a good day Melissa could drive herself
into town to do light grocery shopping, and once a month she got her head done
at the Witching Sheer, every 17th of the month like clockwork at 2 p.m..
   Today was the seventeenth.
   Melissa hadn't show for the first time in three years, but no one had been
surprised. The general feel in town was that she would wither and die without
her son to be there for her. As if because she lived her life in a wheelchair
that she was defined by his existence.
   On the other hand, judging by how she'd looked at the funeral there was no
question she'd taken it pretty hard.
   All the old shutters were shuttered.
   The curtains had been drawn across the massive picture window the birds no
doubt smashed into with unwitting regularity.
   Sarah shuddered herself.
   It wasn't that the days were still bitter as soon as the sun sank off the
horizon or that the brief hard rains had made the day damp. No, the place had
a feel emanating from it, as though the age of the house and the land which
had always been Fraktor land- at least since the europeans had arrived- was
exuding some time-ridden stench.
   She could see that Tamara felt it as well.
   "Jesus," the younger woman said, taken aback by the force of it.
   But Sarah smiled. "I was afraid I was the only one getting the creeps."
   "You can feel it. It's like a weight. The air is heavy."
   "An imagination is a bad thing for a detective to have," Sarah said, quoting
her mentor.
   "Right now, I wish mine would crawl into some deep hole," Tamara said. "Are
we sure that we want to do this ?"
   "Right now I want to scrap this, go back to my place, open a few beers, smoke
and tell dirty jokes until it hurts to laugh- which tells me this is what we
have to do-"
   "I hate that feeling of responsibility, don't you ?"
   Sarah nodded. They walked up to the front door.
   There was no bell. Just a tarnished brass knocker which had seen better days.
It was too high up on the door for Melissa to reach and judging from the
condition of the yard, such as it was, she got the feeling that Jonathan
hadn't been the industrious type.
   At least not until he'd dug himself out of the grave.
   Sarah forced the thought down. She had good reason not to share all that
forensics had come back to her with, not with Tamara- not with anyone. But she
couldn't lie by omission to herself, and that was the damning thing right now.
She knew who the three partial prints they'd lifted belonged to, understood
what it meant that they'd found only one set of tracks- leading out of the
plot.
   She knocked, expecting no answer.
   The door was ancient, the sort of thick oak door which had been made to
withstand the axes and musket balls of the British and the natives, the sort
of door you could actually feel safe behind on most nights.
   The sound of the knocker echoing inside what might have been properly called
a great hall was eerie, unanswerable.
   It should have remained unanswered because Sarah's carefully honed instincts
told her that the coroner was going to be the next player on this particular
stage.
   She was wrong- in a sense.
   The door swung open on automatic hinges. Sarah had been here a few times in
the course of her life and that was the most amasing thing about the house,
that someone had managed to rig the massive door with a easy access crank and
motor setup for Melissa.
   Tamara drew her breath in sharply.
   When the door was finished with its slow, ponderous trip, they saw Melissa.
   Standing safely out of the way of the portal.
   To say that she looked wrong was the sort of understatement which would never
have held up in court.
   Her utter paleness, the skin of her face and neck like chalk viewed through
water, drew one's attention first.
   Pasty was too kind.
   But her complexion was less remarkable than the fact she was standing-
standing there, a strange look of unease on her face.
   Melissa Fraktor hadn't stood up in ten years and everyone knew it.
   "Ms. Homer ? What brings you here ?"
   Her words were unlike her appearance. The voice was rock steady, yet somehow
pleasant.
   In a decidedly unpleasant way.
   "Could I speak with you for a moment, Mrs. Fraktor ?"
   "Of course, detective. May I ask who this is that you have with you ?"
   "This is Detective Tamara Ungerston, ma'am. We have a few questions for you."
   When she started to smile, Sarah experienced an awful moment of surety that
the woman's face was going to crack like a porcelain mask struck by an heavy
hammer.
   But it didn't. Still, her flesh drew tightly over her cheekbones, as if taunt
muscles were ill-used to such a strange gesture. Yet she looked oddly radiant,
and Sarah realised it was because the woman suddenly looked ten years younger.
Vibrant- but fragile.
   They walked into the living room and sat down, Fraktor in an old easy chair
and the two detectives on a couch.
   Melissa opened an humidor and extracted an Italian cigar which Sarah thought
she recognised as a Savanelli.
   "Do you mind ? I find that a cigar after tea is very calming."
   The detectives shook their heads, becoming more amased by the moment. She
snipped the end off the cigar and relished the act of lighting it. When it was
burning properly, she drew on it and exhales a thick, bluish cloud of smoke.
   "Feel free to smoke, ladies."
   Normally, neither of them would have. But things were already so weird that
Sarah found herself thinking What the hell ? She nodded to Tamara and both
women lit up, although it did little to relax either of them.
   Melissa held the cigar at arm's length and regarded it lovingly.
   "You know, it had been over a year since I'd had one of these. Peitro used to
come home from a long day of teaching, sit down on the couch with me, and we
would light two of these cigars and talk about our days. After he died, I lost
interest. But this morning I had the strangest urge to smoke again, so I
called that nice tobacconist and he had these set over. Wouldn't take my money
either. He put the most wonderful card on the box, offering his condolences. I
must admit I've been quite evil- this is my third."
   Sarah inhaled sharply at the use of the word evil. That was the word which
best described the feel of the place. 	
   She pulled more cigarette smoke than she'd thought possible into her lungs,
but it felt good, very good.
   There was something evil all right, but it wasn't that this woman was smoking
a cigar. No, there was some smell that Sarah could just barely sense,
something underneath the cigar smoke, in fact perhaps something which Melissa
was using the cigar smoke to cover up. But as she couldn't immediately
identify it she forced it to the back of her mind for later consumption.
   "You're here about Johnny, aren't you ?"
   Tamara looked at Sarah as if to say `See, that wasn't as hard as we thought.'
   Sarah, who simply drew on her cigarette, said nothing, wanting to see where
Melissa would take this of her own accord.
   "I knew that somebody would come. Well-"
   Melissa paused, drawing deeply on the cigar. She didn't inhale the smoke bur
rather filled her mouth with it, and when she finally released it, she was
sporting a wan smile.
   "-part of me knew. The rest had decided that Johnny's visit last night was
nothing more than the fevered pitchings of an overworked and otherwise
underused imagination."
   As she spoke, it seemed to Sarah as though the years were still falling away.
She hadn't looked forty-five standing in the door way. She no longer even
looked thirty-five, and could have easily passed in the under-thirty crowd
without too much head turning.
   "You- it may sound awful, but I didn't want Johnny to be real. The thought
that I might be going mad, yes, that I could deal with, but that my son had
risen from the earth-"
   "Exactly when did you see him ?" Sarah asked, because it was a simple
question which might just allow Mrs. Fraktor to focus on what had actually
happen.
   "Night. It was nighttime. I can't seem to remember the details, but he was
here, in the house. He had such a look on his face."
   Although Melissa was drawing on the cigar, she seemed entirely lost in
thought, her eyes turned towards some inward place. It was a strange sight,
but the inattention was not to be wasted. Sarah made a slight hand gesture to
Tamara, who immediately got up and walked quietly out of the room, intending
to search the place in the way they'd discussed.
   Except that Melissa Fraktor came back to herself then.
   "He's not here now," Melissa said, a tinge of sadness in her voice as she
turned to study Tamara, who was holding her cigarette by her mouth like a
teenager caught out smoking by her mother. "You're welcome to look around, but
I know he won't be back."
   "Thank you, Melissa," Tamara said, and began to prowl.
   "Did he say anything to you while he was here, Melissa ?"
   Sarah's question hung in the air for some time before Melissa formed an
answer.
   "You know, he did say something. But I can't remember what, not for the life
of me. Mostly I remember waking up this morning and think that it was such a
wonderful day I might just not need that stupid old wheelchair of mine. Talk
about having an albatross about your neck. And I was right. You know what I
did this morning ?"
   She leaned forward conspiratorially in her chair, placed the cigar in her
mouth, and drew deeply on it.
   This seemed to satisfy her, and Sarah inhaled as well, glad again for the
calming effect that it had on her.
   "I took a shower. On my own, without help. It's been ten years at least since
I stood on my own two feet and felt hot water running down the length of my
body."
   As she said this she took the cigar from her mouth with her right hand and
ran her left along the arc between ribs and hip. It was sensual, exciting, and
Sarah found herself echoing that sexuality, as though it was inside her as
well, like the feeling she got when she thought about smoking in the privacy
of her own bedroom.
   
   Jonathan sat up in bed.
   They'd done nothing but rut for the last half an hour. As soon as it had
gotten dark out, he'd made his way from Monica's basement, where he'd slept
like a rock, to her bedroom.  
   It was neither fucking nor making love but rather had been a bridge between
the two.
   Of course, it hadn't really gotten intense until he'd bitten her and drawn
some of her blood. The sickly sweet hot taste of her had been enough to get
him going, really going, and it was only now, after the third time, that he
felt as though he needed a break. She'd seemed mildly disappointed that he
didn't have another go in him, but this was the first time they'd ever done it
more than once, so he was surprised he lasted even that long.
   For her part, she seemed ready for another ten sessions at least.
   But she didn't seem to mind, either. Rolling over, she snatched her
cigarettes off the nightstand, and lit one with her usual grace. As she drew
on it Jonathan found the impossible happen. He began to stiffen again. 
   He should have know better than to think that Monica wouldn't notice. Her
free hand immediately went to him and a patient, rhythmic stroking ensued.
   "It really turns you on when I smoke, doesn't it, little man ?"
   That was her pet moniker for him, little man. He supposed it was just a
comment on his youth and lack of experience, and the very sexy way she said it
kept it from being in any way offensive. Still, there were times when he
wished she'd kerb the nickname once in a while.
   "I- of course it does," he said, as her hand performed unreal magic on his
formerly limp and aching genitalia.
   "Well then, when are you going to smoke for me ?"
   He looked into her deep, ageless eyes and tried his best to smile, although
the question was as much a request as anything else which came from Monica-
which was to say it was an order of sorts.
   "Smoking is bad-"
   "For you ?" Monica's inhale was so deep he expected to hear her lungs implode
with a muffled pop. But they didn't. Instead she held the smoke for a long
time and then exhaled, coating him with her smoke, the moment so prolonged and
intense that he ejaculated into her waiting hand. Before she spoke she licked
the cum from her fingers, her long tongue savouring every particle of wetness
as if she were starved.
   "When are you going to accept that the logic which would make you say
something like that is meaningless to you now. You can smoke a million
cigarettes if you want and never worry- except that I won't be able to keep my
hands off you."
   She inhaled again, making a show of it, making him want to fuck her again.
Yes, he could admit that it was just mindless fucking, but when she brought
that long white cigarette to her mouth all he could think about was driving it
home again until she screamed, until she tore those deep scratches in his back
which had always hurt until he'd come back to her last night.
   Then again, he was sixteen, and he understood that was most like the sex that
boys his age had- minus the blood and the pain.
   Now, the pain itself felt grand.
   "I knew the day I had you hooked. You were playing tennis- gym class. I was
standing with Rebecca- Ms. Klendendorf. She and I were smoking, and you
couldn't take your eyes off me. Joey Clatter hit you in the side of the head
with a serve and then threw his racket down. He was so pissed off and you were
so embarrassed. I remember how the frame of your glasses cut the side of your
head and the blood glistened in the sunlight. It was one of the few times I've
ever been glad for the sun. The way that red streak ran down over your jaw and
dripped on the ground, forming a little puddle."
   "A waste of good blood," Jonathan said, stroking her face.
   "I knew right then I could have you."
   "How is it- how can you walk around like that-"
   "Wanting to ball a kid ten years younger ?" she asked, kissing him on the
cheek with her perfectly smoky lips.
   "No. The sun. I thought-"
   Monica smiled her seductive smile. "It takes a lot of years before your skin
really loses it's tolerance to the sun. Fifty or sixty years at least. By
then, people start to guess what you are if you're not careful. It's not a
legend, but it's close enough to one, in a way. The older ones are the ones
who are best known and most affected."
   "I'm not sure I understand." 
   "You should be sure you don't, little man. It takes years to understand it
all."
   "It would really turn you on, just to see me smoking a cigarette ?" he asked
innocently. That was what had attracted Monica to Jonathan, what was still so
attractive about him. Monica loved teaching in general because even the jaded,
cynical ones were still relatively innocent. In comparison. They didn't spot
the lies and the half-truths nearly as quickly as they thought they did.
   The truth was, time was getting short. She'd let them put Jonathan in the
ground for the simple reason that she wanted him to herself, and she'd gone to
a great deal of care to select one who wouldn't be missed- or so she thought.
Of course, he hadn't bothered to cover up the hole he left, and then he'd
headed straight home to Mommy- her fault for not schooling him on what to
expect, she supposed. But if the activity she'd heard on the police scanner
was any indication, time was not just short. It was fleeting.
   "Of course," Monica said, inhaling deeply.	
   Jonathan rubbed the scratches on his back- or the place where they'd been not
ten minutes ago. They were already healed.
   "Is it possible for you to get more turned on ?" he asked with that marvelous
innocence.
   "You have no idea-"
   He reached across her as she exhaled, bathing him in smoke. His penis had
started to stiffen again- he'd soon learn just how much his own sexual
appetite- and stamina- had increased.
   The pack of cigarettes looked awkward in his hands. He had trouble pulling a
single cigarette out, but once he had it in his hand, it looked much more
natural. Monica moved her free hand down between her legs and began slowly
massaging herself while she continued to smoke. Her own excitement grew
dramatically as he brought the tip of the cigarette down to the lighter flame
and lit it.
   She moved her foot to his penis and began stroking him with it as he inhaled.
   The look of surprise on his face was unmatched as he inhaled. There was no
coughing or sputtering, just the look of a man who'd just become a smoker for
life enjoying his first inhale. Monica went to her index finger only and
worked inside, finding her g-spot quickly as she always did while her foot
worked its own gentle magic. Each deep thrust of that finger was accompanied
by an inhale, and Jonathan matched her puff for puff.
   Still, he was wearing down, so she climaxed first as she finished her own
cigarette.
   He was quite hard now, smoking in furtive rushes snuck between jagged,
sexually charged breaths.
   After she stubbed her cigarette out she bent down and enveloped his penis
with her mouth. There should have been a small measure of fear in his eyes as
her elongated incisors tickled the shaft of his penis, but how could he know
what she was capable of if she was angry- which she most certainly was not.
Still, as he came she gave him a small, pinprickly love bite, just as he let
lose with a monstrous exhale which bathed her in sweet smoke.
   Blood jetted from the tiny holes, coating her mouth with the oily sweetness
of hot blood.
   Immediately she sat up and kissed him, wanting him to taste his blood on her
tongue, to become part of it again, and he obliged.
   They were wrapped in blood and smoke and sweat when they finally lay back.
Her head cradled in his arms, she lit another cigarette.
   "You shouldn't have gone to see your mother. I know why you did it, but you
may have traded her life for one day out of that wheelchair-"
   Jonathan watched her draw on the cigarette and smiled. "She knew it was worth
it. I sensed that as I did it."
   Monica smiled right back through an haze of smoke. He did have some potential
after all.
   "Speaking of things sensed- I know how you feel about Kim. And you know we
have to leave- tonight. That detective- well, the way you dug yourself up-
she'll come for me, and I don't plan to be here. I have a place up north in
the mountains- an old friend left it to me. No one knows about it. Not a soul
in the world. I was thinking that we should take Kim with us-"
   Jonathan looked perplexed. "Take her with us ?"
   "Three's more fun. You'll find I'm not the jealous type, Jonathan, and when
I- when I made you what you are, I saw how you feel about her. Ever since she
started smoking, you've been steadily more attracted to her, as though you'd
finally noticed that rose growing under your window."
   Jonathan couldn't deny it- to do so would have wasted time and he too felt a
certain urgency.
   "But- I take it you mean taking her with us as one of us, right ?"
   Monica hugged Jonathan tightly and supposed she'd have to give him a little
truth.
   "It doesn't have to be the way it was with you. I did that- I put you in that
deep sleep and let them bury you so that I could have you to myself."
   "You could have told me that I'd wake up three days later in a coffin six
feet under !" he snapped with some heat.
   All Monica could do was laugh.
   "The same fucking thing happened to me, Johnny. I feel bad, but mostly
because some nosy bitch decided to snoop around your grave. You have a whole
lot of time to get over it. Now, would you like to talk about taking your
little friend with us or not ?"
   Jonathan thought about- for the space of an heartbeat.

   Tamara was walking towards the back bedroom when the smell from the kitchen
caught her attention.
   It was like quick-fire decay, as though-
   The smell should have prepared her, but of course it didn't because she'd
never seen anything remotely similar.
   It looked at those Melissa had emptied out the freezer- at least of meat.
There were several thoroughly defrosted chicken breasts, a 20 pound turkey,
and some sort of beef product. All looked- desiccated was the only word which
could describe it. Each piece of meat was thoroughly thawed and that was what
was causing the smell but still-
   Tamara pulled deeply on the cigarette. She moved the smoke deep into her
lungs, exhaled tightly and slowly so that she could pull the smoke back into
her nostrils for a second trip downstream. It covered the first stench without
eliminating it.
   "Fuck-" was all that she could manage without risking getting sick. She
backed out of the room quickly, filing the image away and swearing at once to
go vegan first thing in the morning.
   There was no question in her mind what purpose that meat had served.
   She staggered towards the bedroom, trying hard to maintain her cool. The
truth was, she had no real idea what to expect when she'd met Sarah. The
afternoon had passed, and it was a dreary day- the sort of day where one could
expect to be dragged into a messy murder investigation. But nothing had
prepared her for the charnel house quality of Melissa Fraktor's kitchen.
   She know knew what she expected to find in the bedroom. The discarded
wheelchair would be there- last night Melissa had rolled herself in there for
another morose night of sleep, after all, just hours before her miracle
recovery.
   But that wasn't what would freak Tamara out, she thought as she took one last
draw on the cigarette. No, the blood on the bedsheets would demand her full
attention.
   She stopped in the half bath in the hallway outside the bedroom and tossed
her spent cigarette into the toilet, reminding herself of the first few times
she'd snuck cigarettes at home, smoking in the bathroom with the fan on as
though that would irradiate the smell.
   It hadn't, and she'd been snagged two or three times before accepting that
fact.
   What she wanted was to walk out into the living room, light another
cigarette,  continue walking out the massive oaken door, and never come back
to this place. But that wasn't going to happen. For the first time in her
life, Tamara found herself staring down the very real possibility that there
was such an entity as destiny and that it was about to swallow her whole.
   She found the light switch easily. Too easily. She'd developed the mad hope
that the lights in the bedroom wouldn't work, that she'd be able to blame
electricity or the lack thereof for a little shoddiness in the investigative
endeavour.
   The overhead snapped to life with a flick of her finger- she'd even thought
to feel low, knowing that it would have been modified for Melissa.
   The bedclothes were turned back, disheveled, just as she'd imagined they
would be.
   The blood-
   Tamara had expected the blood. This wasn't her first murder investigation, in
fact, during her two years as a bluesuit her captain had saved her for the
gang-related shooting sprees precisely because he thought his pretty young
officer would crack. She'd seen pools of blood on playground courts and baking
into the leather upholstery of El Caminos. She'd seen men who were really boys
who were still handsome except for the fact that their faces had been blown
clean off by shotgun blasts delivered at point-blank range by desperate
junkies.
   But nothing like this. There was blood on the wall, blood on the fucking
ceiling, blood on pristine white sheets.
   It looked like Melissa had come in here to have her feast, but tamara knew
better.
   There was sticky, concealed goop on the phone on the nightstand. There was a
lampshade hanging half-cocked off a small table lamp which had once been
white. It was pink now.
   She couldn't take her eyes off the lampshade. It hung there at half-
attention, probably never to be put right again, stained and spotted and so
unnatural. It became her world, that little smidgen of disorder in this miasma
of unreality. Its fragile geometry compelled her to study. Then finally she
found herself moving towards it, drawn by the irresistible urge to right its
wrongness.
   Hallway there, she stepped in a pool of blood, leaving a shoe print in the
blood on the beige carpet.
   "Forensics'll have my shield for that," she joked, gallows humour all the
way.
   And that was when Sarah screamed.
   
   There was a space of lost time. Sarah couldn't really account for it. One
moment, Melissa was moving towards her, cigar in hand, seemingly intent on
something behind her, her eyes fixed on some nether region. Sarah had been
taking a puff on her cigarette, needing the simple calm she knew the smoke
would bring, and then she was-
   Melissa was on top of her. The strong smell of cigar smoke was in the air
around her head and she felt the slightest bit dizzy.
   And excited. Sexually excited.
   The first woman who had ever turned Sarah on was Monica Jones, and there was
no question that was a smoking thing, not a female thing. 
   Or so Sarah had thought. But Melissa hovering over her- closing down on her,
she understood all at once that the smoking angle was just a small part of
something else- something which would cut her life considerably shorter. The
teeth were barred and there was no doubt that Lisa MacDonough had been right
all along, as crazy as she might have seemed.
   The cigar smoke was hypnotic, almost paralytic. The look of lust in Melissa's
eyes closed the trap. Unable to move, Sarah's senses elongated. the cigarette
resting between the first two fingers of her left hand felt like a Jamaican
ganja stick. The feel of the rough fabric of the couch against the back of her
neck was like coarse sandpaper. And yet, it was as though Melissa herself was
as light as the proverbial feather, a bird-boned woman of graceful angles and
curves.
   She wanted what Sarah had, and a part of herself wanted to give it freely,
regardless of the consequences.
   The rest of her screamed.

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