Super Born: Seduction of Being Page 7

  “Mystery Female Weds Twenty Couples”

  (Scranton) Twenty couples had planned, for over a year now, that February 20th was to be the day they were married in a mass group wedding to benefit the Lackawanna Branch of the Pennsylvania Association for the Blind. The event was to take place at the Lackawanna Station Hotel with the renowned, Reverend Thomas Price presiding. Just before the event was to begin at 1:00 p.m., all gathered were informed by an unidentified woman that Reverend Price had been arrested for child abuse and that the clergyman had appointed her to take his place.

  The woman wore a black formal dress, but also wore a black mask to cover her eyes, and she sported a brightly colored bow in her blond hair that had been taken from one of the wedding gifts.

  Rather than disrupt plans made by friends and family members, the couples went ahead with the wedding ceremony. The mysterious woman in black disappeared promptly after pronouncing the final couple man and wife.

  “Enigmatic Woman Corrals Local Reverend”

  (Scranton) A lone woman, unknown to anyone, walked into Central Police Station in Scranton today pulling a duct-taped and embarrassed Reverend Thomas Price behind her on a dog leash. The young woman, described only as blond wearing dark clothing, did not stay to explain but, instead, merely handed the leash and a few assorted dog treats to the officer on duty. Taped to the reverend were several videotapes, the contents of which were not immediately released.

  At this hour, Reverend Price is still in custody.

  * * *

  I was beginning to love her sense of humor. Not only did she help people, she had a way of taking the seriousness out of things with her humor. Visualizing her exploits made me smile. Remembering her so close to me at the bar made my chest feel like a hollow pit of longing. Crap, was I pining? Is this what pining means? Who pines anymore, really?

  It was clear that the B.I.B. had surfaced again…and again. Luckily for me, writers on different beats handling what seemed to be minor oddball stories weren’t making the connections of these events. They weren’t looking for her the way I was.

  I remember being struck by the new way she was appearing. Before, she had remained hidden and mostly unseen, appearing only at night. Now, here she was out in open daylight, unconcerned about being noticed. She didn’t seem like someone who would shoot an antler-wearing RFD like poor Ed just because he was a witness to her flying around with a beer truck full of criminals. But as I’d learned during my brief, painful relationship with the Nelson twins, women can be unpredictable. They can just change their minds…take your TV or screw your best friend…friends…or worst of all,take your beer. But for some reason, the B.I.B. seemed different. Whatever dangers she might pose, the more I thought about her, the more I wanted to be that damn cat nestled against her breast, purring…forever.

  Chapter 7

  Spinderella (Because It Deserves Its Own Chapter)

  Certain another brain would do me a great deal of good, I gathered everything up on the B.I.B. and headed for Dr. Jones’s apartment. Now I had some good news to counteract the bad news about Jennifer Lowe.

  I’d seen the complicated scale drawings and had to wonder why he was trying to hide them from me and what they were all about, “Hey, Doc, you building something special there? Is that for our little project?”

  “Yes, it happens to be a new idea I’ve had,” he said as he locked the drawer and then backed against the desk.

  “Does that mean I get some James Bond electronic shit to work with?”

  “Something like that. It’s very technical. Not something I expect you’d be interest in. ”

  Jones’s answer left me more than a little curious, perhaps even a bit insulted. But he was the one paying the bills, and I figured he knew what he was doing so my concerns drifted away like a happy little bird. “Dr. Jones, what’s wrong? Something happened?”

  He stared at the ground and took a few deep breaths. “My friend,” he started, his voice breaking, “Demitri…I received an email relayed through my colleagues in Oxford that Demitri is dead…” He paused and shook his head. “He wrote me four days ago saying that he had found Olga Settchuoff ,and that he hoped to meet with her any day. He was very excited that all his work had paid off, the proof was so close…The next thing I know, I received a second email saying that he was found dead by Russian authorities… an accident, they said. But I…I know better.

  “His body was sent to his relatives in Moscow, but now they have to delay the burial. It seems three teams of morticians have been working for days trying to get rid of the smile on his face. A dead man with a huge grin – can you imagine it? Too ghoulish. So, then, they decided on a closed-casket funeral. Now, they can’t close the lid…” Now Jones was really pushing himself to speak. “It seems that his penis is frozen erect, twisted into a corkscrew shape…the morticians have never seen anything like it. They can’t get pants on him. They tried turning him on his side, to no avail. What a tragic end for such a great man of science. Not to mention the best bocce player I have ever known .”

  “Wait! Does this mean…”

  “Exactly, my astute friend. Woe to us all, Olga has perfected the mythical Spinderella move, and it turns out to be deadly.”

  “How can that be? I thought it was just a story…” As a tale told by many a pervert and by many card-carrying penis-hating lesbians, Spinderella was both myth and legend, a story that lived in men’s wet dreams and nightmares. It’s on video if you want to rent it, but the short version is that a virginal young beauty’s fairy godmother blesses her with an unusual gift. She likes it on top and is able to spin around, pinwheel-like, while she does it, giving her wildly exciting orgasms and doing the same for her partners, if they don’t die in the process. It seemed innocent enough as a porno legend, but now, with Dimitri’s demise, it was a deadly reality.

  Then I thought for a moment. “Wait. Doesn’t that chick, Olga, have to be in her late sixties by now?”

  “I see you understand the import of this event. We have various birth dates for her, but they all put her in either her late or early sixties.”

  “An old broad tears him up like that?”

  “No, no, my friend, do not underestimate her as Demitri did. That old broad is lethal…obviously. If so, what is a younger version capable of? There is no way to control the Super Born. No, it is too dangerous to continue. We have opened Pandora’s box, or at least Olga’s. You must stop searching for your B.I.B. To find her would be certain death…maybe a happy one, but still a certain one.”

  It all was crashing in my head like waves going in opposite directions. I had arrived at Jones’s apartment excited to tell him about the new sightings, and now he’d hit me with this deadly news of Demitri. Jones was obviously resigned to the end of his research, but I could not bring myself to believe that a woman who saved cats and married people could also be a cold-hearted killer, accidental or not. I had almost convinced myself that she could not have killed Ed, but now this news reopened that can of worms. Then the worst fear hit. If he stops looking for her, he’ll stop giving me bundles of cash, and I’ll have to find a job—what a friggin’ nightmare!

  “Sorry, Doc, but we can’t stop now. We’re too close.”

  “That is what Demitri said.”

  “But we now have this information. We can be more careful.”

  Jones shook his head and threw his arm down at the ground in frustration. “I don’t know…Well, there is one thing that could make this work. If by chance you have had any contact with the B.I.B. if you have been with her and you are still alive. That might give us hope of continuing…Have you been with her per chance?” he asked closing in on me with keen interest.

  I became trapped between the truth and my dreams of being with her. It made me stammer while trying to choose the right answer, the one that would make Jones want to keep up the search. My hesitation convinced him I had been with her or at least that I knew more than I was telling.

  “Ah ha! Yo
u have been with her! You old dog!” With that his attitude changed immediately 180 degrees. “I knew it! All I had to do was cast a little doubt and out pops the truth.”

  “No, I haven’t...I’ve only been with her in my dreams.” I sensed the tiniest of openings and pushed ahead. I showed him the newspaper articles, and got worked up talking about them “How can a woman who does these things be a killer? And look, she’s starting to do it in daylight, like she’s not afraid to be seen and known anymore.”

  “Or maybe she just has to be home at night to feed a sick mother or something.”

  I ignored him. “If she’s not afraid to be known, then she’ll have no reason to kill anyone who finds her out. Maybe she even wants to be recognized now. And if I know what she can do, I can stay away from those situations,” I lied.

  “You are both persuasive and brave,” he said. Boy, did I have him fooled.

  “It’s my job. We can’t stop now.”

  “You, you, can’t stop now. I can stop anytime. Look, it’s Two-For-Tuesday at The Banshee and I’m not going! Tomorrow is Ladies Night at Skelly’s, but they won’t see my boney ass!” he said proudly, pounding his chest. “Besides, Mom would kill me if I ended up dead in a coffin with a twisted flag pole in my pants and with no straight “A” PhD grandchildren mourning me by her side. You go on. Maybe you feel safe. But if you must, I will be telling you over your grave that it’s your doing, not mine.”

  I considered it a victory and decided Jones (and his money) would jump back on board at the first sign of progress. On the way home, I thought about Ed, I thought about Demitri, but most of all, I thought about the B.I.B…and the Spinderella move. She wouldn’t kill me, would she? My brain said that light up ahead’s a bug zapper; my heart said it’s the moon.

  * * *

  I don’t think my karate teacher liked me very much. I don’t think he figured a working mom who only had time for one lesson a week and no time to kiss his butt (which was as big as his ego) made for a serious student. Sensei, as we called him—I think his wife did too, and probably even he did, when he looked in the mirror —didn’t spend a lot of time teaching me. What he spent a lot of time doing was making fun of any little thing I did wrong. They said sensei meant “teacher “ or “master” in Japanese, but I thought it meant a-hole. Sensei was an ex-Marine, built like a rock—a muscular, late-thirties guy with hair that had started to go bald, yet which he wore long, in a ponytail behind him. He spent his time with me in the class of white belt six- to eight-year-olds teaching me kata, mock battles incorporating karate moves. It bugged him when I wanted to move onto advanced techniques and skip the basics.

  He’d say, “It takes time to reach that level. Perhaps in five years or so, if you work hard and come here more than one day a week, you can reach that level, Grasshopper.” I couldn’t believe he used lingo from an old TV show like that. Anyway I didn’t have the time. I needed advanced techniques today, so sit on this, Sensei Grasshopper.

  I came to class early most days and left late, learning from some of the other students who had black belts and seemed to live at the school 24/7. One in particular named Amy seemed to get a kick out of how fast I was picking up even the hardest techniques. She was a short, brown-haired fifteen-year-old girl who had been kicking and punching since she was four. You could tell I made her feel torn between helping me and following the sensei’s approach, but seeing an old lady like me learn so fast was clearly rewarding to her, so she bent the rules for me.

  Amy taught me the hammer fist blow and several types of kicks that I had seen her use to win a tournament and I thought would be useful when the B.I.B. was fighting hand-to-hand. Amy took the time to show me things Sensei would not, and she was always very patient with me. She was about Paige’s age, so I guess I turned a little motherly on her.

  We had just finished a session in a back corner of the dojo when she laughed and wiped the sweat off of her pimply adolescent face. “Wow, you sure picked that up quick. I’m gonna have to watch out for you.”

  “Yep, I’ll bet I’m really gonna be somethin’ when I grow up.”

  She snorted a little laugh. “You already are somethin’…for a mom anyway. My mom thinks I’m crazy to want to go to a karate tournament instead of Homecoming. I can’t imagine her doing what you do.”

  “Your mom doesn’t know how good you are. She’ll see one day.”

  “I’m not good. That woman in black, she’s good. You hear about her? The lady in the mask? She knocked out that nasty old reverend and turned him in. I wish I could meet her, but she’d probably kick my ass .”

  So I did: I gave her a front kick right in the butt.

  “What was that for? “ Amy asked, with a little laugh.

  “I’m the Women in Black and I’m kicking your ass!”

  Amy snorted again. “You’re funny. You wanna be my mom?”

  When I looked at Amy’s face, I saw every mistake I had ever made with Paige. The fact that her mom didn’t understand her daughter’s interests hit a little too close to home for me—I’d heard Paige tell me something along those lines too many times . “Listen, Amy,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulders, “can I come to your next tournament? When is it, and where?” Then Sensei called her and she had to run, quickly.

  “I’ll text you,” she said, running to meet his command.

  Fifteen minutes later we lined up for our class. As I was only available this one day a week, due to my part-time job, my choice of classmates was limited. There was Robby, five years old and more interested in the lights than his teacher; James, sixty-seven months old (as his mother put it), with his runny nose; Megan, almost eight, with thick glasses and a weak defensive posture; Michael, not “Mike”—eight years old, the cocky leader of the group; and finally, at the end, Allie, thirty-three years old (or 397 months or so), who towered over the others in her class but tried to slouch to make the others feel more comfortable.

  Sensei—ex-Marine, current asshole—walked before us, inspecting our stances as we stood in white, loose-fitting karate jackets, pants, and white belts. He grunted something in Japanese, which I had learned meant take a ready position, so I did.

  “Last week I promised you that we would be sparing in our next class, and that time is here. I want you to take everything I have taught you so far and use it. But remember; don’t hit one another. Show me that you could connect your punch or kick and then I will give you a point. Actually hit someone, and you lose a point. First to three points wins. Got it?”

  Robby spun around for no particular reason, James picked his nose, Megan nodded, and Mike…Michael pumped his fist with excitement.

  “You two, get in position,” he said, gesturing to Michael and I. I pointed at myself in disbelief—me, fighting an eight-year-old? “Yes, you. Do your best. Michael is very aggressive.”

  I looked at the ground and then at little Megan’s unspoiled face and knew I couldn’t defy the sensei in front of his students. Even though I thought it was a bad idea, I assumed the sparring position. Sensei put a red flag on my belt and a white one on Michael, in order to identify us for scoring. Then he told us to fight.

  Michael screamed, “Hiiiyaaa!” and came running at me in a ball of flailing arms and legs. I couldn’t bring myself to hit the poor child, but he no qualms about hitting me and landed a kick in my groin. Sensei threw up his arm and pointed at Michael. I was expecting him to lose a point for hitting me, but instead Sensei shouted, “Kick point white.”

  “What?” I asked. “I thought you said no contact!”

  “There was no contact, just a clean kick that could have hit you. Get back to position,” the Sensei instructed me.

  Clean kick? It sure felt like contact. Let me give you a clean kick right in the…I thought. I got ready for the second point.

  Sensei lowered his arm and grunted to start the second round. This time I wasn’t going to let the little twerp have a clean shot, so I easily blocked all of his screaming attempts at kick
s and punches with my forearms. I was trying to figure out how to tactfully get a point without breaking the poor kid’s spirit when Sensei through up his arms and said, “Punch point white. White leads two…” He pointed at me. “…to zero.”

  I wanted to yell, “What punch point white? Are you watching this match, the one right here? He never came close to hitting me!” I briefly glanced over at Amy, who had a surprised look on her face. She gestured a punch technique for me to try. I knew she wanted to shout, “Hit the little munchkin!” but she didn’t.

  Sensei readied us again and signaled for the fight to start. I knew Michael was a kid and I would eventually let him win, but my pride made me certain it would be hard for me to let him do so. Quickly, I slipped past his charge and delivered a hammer fist to within a inch of the back of Michael’s head and held it there, waiting for the sensei to call “Punch point red!” But I heard nothing. Michael began a wild attack, all of which I blocked while I maintained eye contact with the Sensei.

  “How about punch to the head, point red?” I asked as I continued to defend myself against the little tornado.

  “I said, use everything I have taught you so far. Hammer fist is an advanced technique that I have not taught you. Therefore it does not count. Try something you know instead.”

  I turned to the Sensei and was about to say, “I don’t believe this!” when Michael gave me a front kick in the crotch and I heard the dreaded, “Kick point white! White wins three to zero.”

  Michael pumped his fist madly while his mother leapt to her feet and cheered. Amy sat with her mouth open, partially in shock at my defeat and partially stunned by Sensei’s treatment of me.

  “Beaten by an eight-year-old. See, you need to come more than once a week,” Sensei scolded me.