Blood is Pretty

by Steven Paul Leiva

  I followed the line of the rope pulling him. At the end I could just make out, coming like an apparition into the illumination of the fire, a tall, lanky man in a cowboy hat standing on the bow of a small cabin cruiser. He was pulling the rope hand over hand as he smiled. A spot of gold in his mouth glinted in the firelight. I jumped. The shock of the river’s cold might have rendered me senseless if I had not had as much adrenaline flowing as I did. I swam fast—the houseboat was just about ready to sink and I did not need to be pulled down with it—and in an opposite direction from the cabin cruiser.

  Responsibility for all this lay with it, I was sure of that, and I did not want to meet its crew under these conditions. I swam hard in a direction I felt would bring me to a shore, but I was disoriented, and had no idea if it would be the near shore or the far shore. A bright beam of light hit me. A powerful engine started up. The cabin cruiser was after me. I swam harder and harder. The sound of the cruiser expanded in my head like a balloon. I didn’t dare look back, and it was hard to fight the back-of-the-neck fear that the boat would soon be cruising over me, cutting me off from precious air, sucking me into its propellers. A rope slapped the water as it fell over my head. I couldn’t throw it off before it tightened around my neck with a violent jerk, which flipped me over on my back. In that position I now cut through the water as I was pulled quickly to the cruiser. I clawed at the burning rope, trying to break its grip, trying to open a passage for air. I was becoming light headed. Into my increasingly spot-filled vision soon came the upside down, cowboy-hatted head of the smiling man. I noticed again the gold teeth, as he said, in some kind of thick European accent trying for a twang, “In might over head, ain’t ya pardner?” Then the smiling man and all that surrounded him dissolved down to one last glint of gold, which quickly dissipated, as if washed away with black, black water.

  Chapter 8

  Merde!

  I woke up to the smell of straw and human excrement on the cold stone floor of a dungeon in a castle I knew—I did not think, I did not guess—I knew to have been built in the 14th Century. Worse still, I was convinced that I too was currently in the 14th Century—14th Century France, to be precise. It was disconcerting to be so precise as I lay there, shivering, trying to ignore stiff joints and sore muscles. I raised myself up to a sitting position. A sudden memory invaded. I threw my hand up to my neck. It was not raw, burned, or sore. But it should have been. The wet rope had cut and burned as it had choked the life out of me.

  That was a point.

  Was I dead?

  And if I were, why would either heaven or hell (it’s debatable which I qualify for) be 14th Century France?

  I looked around and saw various sizes of freestones mortared together to make up the gray walls that surrounded me. There was a small amount of light coming into the dungeon from a slit window about seven feet up the wall. I was wearing the clothes of a nobleman, although they were filthy and stinking. And my left leg was manacled to a long chain that ran along the floor and up the wall behind me to a large round iron fixture imbedded in stone about five feet up from the floor.

  Some part of my brain was struggling to wonder why I was not assuming that I had been thrown onto a movie set. Empirical evidence would have killed the assumption: These walls were made of real stone, not the wood and fiberglass mocking of Hollywood. Nor did the walls show 600 years of wear. These stones were fresh, if fresh is a word you can apply to stones. But the struggle did not succeed, the assumption was never made, I was accepting easily that this was real. That this was the 14th Century.

  Mark Twain came to mind, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. But that was satiric literature and this was—truth? And Twain’s hero was confused when he woke up. He did not know where he was—geographically or temporally. I knew both.

  That was important. I knew both. “Monsieur? Monsieur? I can hear you stirring up there. I know awake. ”

  It was a weak voice. Coming from the floor of the dungeon—from just below the floor, in fact.

  “Have they brought you water? Any water? Please, Monsieur, may I have some? Can you get some to the grate and pour it in?”

  In one corner of the dungeon was a small recess, which covered an iron grate in the floor. Beneath the grate was the oubliette, a coffin-like cell within this cell. There was an unwanted prisoner lying in there, someone to be forgotten, someone to be allowed to die a “natural” death of neglect and starvation.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Just Philippe, Monsieur. An assistant cook. ”

  “Well, I see no water, Philippe, so I’m afraid I cannot oblige. ”

  “A pity, Monsieur, a pity. Thirst is a hard thing. ”

  “Why are you here, Philippe?”

  “Oh, a mere trifle, Monsieur, nothing so grand as your offense. I stole some food from the kitchen for my brother’s family. Just a little. But he broke his leg and cannot provide. What else could I do, Monsieur, I ask you, what else?”

  “And what is my grand offense?”

  “O—o, still claiming innocence, are we? At least I have had the courage to confess. And I am but a Villein, not an elevated noble, such as you. But then, a little bread, a little meat, what’s that to spying?”

  “Spying?”

  “For England. How could you? The uncultured, filthy pigs!”

  “Philippe, you are little better than a slave who is going to rot in a hole in the ground. Snobbery does not become you. ”

  “See, Monsieur, this is your undoing. No patriotism. If we do not believe that even a French slave is better that an English Lord, then how are we ever going to raise ourselves out of the Feudal system?”

  It was bad enough that the situation was surreal, but now the conversation was getting that way. “Philippe, shut up. You are but a figment of my imagination. ”

  “Tell that to my thirst, Monsieur, it might help. ”

  With difficulty I brought myself to a standing position. Was the difficulty a figment of my imagination as well? It certainly didn’t feel like it. The stiff and sore essence of the difficulty felt quite real. But like Philippe’s thirst, if I could convince my imagination of it, maybe it would help.

  “Aaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!”

  The cry came from the outside. Deeply curious, I squeezed my hands onto the bottom ledge of the slit window and painfully drew myself up to take a look out. I held myself up no longer than five seconds before I fell painfully to the hard stone floor. But I had gotten an eyeful, and now had a memory retention of what I had just seen that was not only clear and detailed—but in color. I had but to close my eyes and I could see it all again, as if in playback.

  It was a view of the lower bailey, an open-air section of the castle. It was busy with workers who were tending the horses in the thatched roof stables attached to the inside castle wall; tanning animal skins; making bate; sharpening swords on a huge grindstone being turned by one man, while another sat up on a platform a good six feet high and held the blade to the stone; stacking—

  How did I know about bate? A combination of water and dog excrement used to soften skins. Certainly I may well have read about it once, but how did I know without hesitation what the man at the rear of the bailey was doing as he stomped his feet up and down in the big wooden tub?

  And the cry of pain… ? In thinking about it I instantly heard it again. It came from the blacksmith at the forge in the center of the bailey. It seems he had dropped a red-hot horseshoe on his right foot. He was hopping up and down on his left. Several people couldn’t help themselves and were laughing at this bit of cartoon humor. The blacksmith continued to hop, his back to me—or to my memory—slowly turning towards me.

  This bit of cartoon humor, I thought again.

  The blacksmith turned full face towards me.

  How very strange it was.

  The blacksmith was Daffy Duck.

  I shook my head violently.

  Whatever was going on, whatever seemed to have control of my perceptions,
I should just sit here and wait it out. That was my thought. But my feeling, a strong, obsessive feeling, was that I had to escape. That was my duty. I had to escape.

  “Philippe, any way out of this dungeon?”

  Came the weak voice from the floor: “You are, Monsieur, I think, asking the wrong man. ”

  “Yes, I can see that. ”

  “But my dear Papa always told me, ‘A chain is but as strong as its weakest link. ’ He was, of course, speaking of his particular profession. ”

  “And what was that, Philippe?”

  “He was a sausage maker, Monsieur. ”

  Theft may not have been the only reason they had to throw Philippe into the oubliette. But he had a point. I started to inspect the chain that bound me, looking at it link by link, and, sure enough, at about three quarters of its length from my ankle to the iron fixture embedded in the wall, was a link whose solder point was separating. I gathered up the chain in a tight grip and pulled and hung all my weight on the one weak link. The effort was hard, sweat flowed quickly, the deep breath I had to take in after each try seemed to burn with the smell of excrement, which I now noticed was piled in a dark, moist corner. Finally the link separated wider. I stopped and tried to slip the link below it through the separation. It did not quite fit. I made one more deep pulling effort; failing to mute the loud grunt I was compelled to sound out. The link gave and I fell to the floor, a bundle of sweat and pain.

  The door swung open and a large voice exclaimed: “That you are a pig you have proven by your acts. But must you grunt like one too?”

  I looked up through stinging sweat and saw the jailer. He was large—or so he seemed from my lack of advantage—and faceless. Literally. I blinked. He had a curved white slate for a face. I blinked again. The white slate began to vibrate like water in a cup sliding across a table. At the same time, hate as raw as I have ever known surfaced in my mind and screamed just as the vibrations coalesced into the smiling face of the man on the cabin cruiser, that gold tooth son-of-a-bitch!

  I leapt up at him with murderous fury, wrapping a length of the chain around his neck. He started to call out, but I cut it off with a jerking pull on both ends, tightening the chain around his neck like the wet rope had tightened around mine. He threw his body back, trying to get me to loosen my grip, but I just fell with him and landed on him still pulling, still straining to squeeze, to smash, to pulverize into pulp the skin, the flesh, the arteries, the ligaments, and the cartilage of his neck. It was not about cutting off his air. It was about cutting off his head.

  Then the body stopped its struggle and laid there, a quiet sack of flesh and other organic material.

  “I don’t believe that murder is so bad. It’s who you murder that counts on the tally sheet of morality. ”

  It was an old voice, reverberating from somewhere outside of this 14th

  Century France. An old voice that once had been very important to me that… The face! The smiling, gold-toothed face melted—or faded—or vibrated away, back to the curved white slate!

  “Help! The spy escapes! The spy escapes!” It was Philippe, screaming from under the floor, expressing an admirable sense of French patriotism. I looked for a way to quickly shut him up. There was only one. With my un-manacled foot I slid a nice pile from the dark and moist corner over to and over the oubliette’s grate.

  “Merde!” Philippe gagged out.

  “Exactly. ” I said as I ran for the door.

  Escape. It seemed almost a physical concept, and it battered me. I jumped up the stairs beyond the door, grazing my right shoulder as I made the sharp right turn to continue up, finding at the level of the squint—the small peephole that looked into the dungeon—another faceless jailer. I kicked him in the groin without thinking, and smashed his egg-like head into the wall. Up more flights of stairs, then I burst into the jailer’s room, which was empty. I opened the door to the outside and ran into the lower bailey. It was empty, completely devoid of people, animals, everything. Yet the sounds of bustle were there, movement, voices, and the grind of the grindstone. I closed my eyes. There! There was everything as I had seen through the slit window. But in re-play again; again Daffy was hopping on one leg, dancing to the slapstick tune of his pain. I opened my eyes. Sound. No people. I ran for the gates that led to the drawbridge. There were a few guards in place. But so in place they were like mannequins, lifeless and still. But at least they had a face —the same one on each guard.

  Run! Escape! The feeling was overwhelming. I ran to the drawbridge, which was down. I looked out over the country, down the gentle green slope that led to a river and the woods beyond it. I ran across the drawbridge. Make for the woods, was my thought. In my panic I dropped the chain I was still attached to, and just as I was hitting the dirt path, I tripped on it and fell hard onto the transparent, super-glass floor of the commute-tube connecting the main living quarters with Labs 3, 4, and 5.

  I looked down through the floor. A massive school of fish was passing beneath me, caught in the illumination of the tube. I got up, no longer stiff and sore, feeling energetic and—and serious. But I was still wearing the dirty and stinking clothes of a 14th Century nobleman. I was still manacled. Then, as I inspected this fact, the clothes seemed to un-weave before my eyes, the manacle and chain faded to nothing, re-weaving began, and soon I was in a clean, comfortable ocean green jumpsuit.

  It was 2026. And I was at the Cousteau Oceanographic Institute somewhere in the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

  A klaxon! A warning!

  “We have had a cetacean breach of the security perimeter. We have had a cetacean breach of the security perimeter. Evacuate all commute-tubes!

  Evacuate all commute-tubes!”

  But there was no time. I saw him just as the giant blue whale entered the illumination from the institute’s complex—a flash of huge. Then he slammed into the commute-tube about 50 yards ahead of me, neatly taking out a section. I lost my footing in the quaking, but that mattered little as water rushed towards me, then engulfed and caught me in its cold liquid determination to replace life-sustaining gas. The commute-tube was jettisoned from the main living quarters—part of the safety measures—and the water rushed me out of the disconnected end. I had grabbed a last minute breath, but how much good was that going to do me? I’m a strong swimmer, but could I reach any of the airlocks in any of the buildings before… ? Without a wet suit, I was quickly becoming numb. My eyes stung, I could not see. My chest was beginning to burn. Part of me knew that this could not be real, so I could not die. But it was not a part displaying any strong control at the moment. Death seemed inevitable.

  I was suddenly nudged with urgency. I opened my eyes. Of course, funny what panic will make you forget. It was one of the rescue dolphins. Qwerty, I would guess. I grabbed the left hand hold on his rescue suit, and then he sped for the closest airlock as I grabbed the mouthpiece of the attached oxygen tank and took a welcomed breath of wonderfully metallic tasting air. I relaxed. I knew Qwerty would do the work from here.

  The cold remained though, frigid, frigid cold. “Frozen stiff” were words that invaded my thoughts. I tried moving a little, just to prove those words wrong, and eased into the glow and warmth of the fireplace.

  “Isn’t that the greatest rug?” she asked as she brought over our drinks.

  “Vodka tonic. Lemon twist. ”

  “Thanks. And it is a nice rug,” I said as I accepted the drink, and then leaned back upon the huge bear head.

  “My grandfather shot it. ”

  “Self-defense?”

  “Oh, no. He loved hunting. He hunted once with Theodore Roosevelt and

  Ernest Hemingway in Africa. ”

  “On the same safari?”

  “Of course. ”

  “Highly unlikely. The old Rough Rider was dead by the time Papa got to Africa. ”

  “Reeeally?”

  “Really. ”

  “Uh —- uh. ”

  She seemed stumped. So she took a sip of her d
rink. Which was amusing to watch for like the dungeon guard she had a curved white slate of a face. The drink went up to it, was tipped, but no liquid ran down her lack of visage.

  “Well—so—uh—you want to fuck?”

  Despite her look, it was hard to think of her as an egghead. Her cute, Kewpie doll voice, and general lack of historical grounding, worked against her here—although she did fit comfortably into the concept of an empty shell. It was a lot to put up with just to get warm. I decided to concentrate, see if I could make a change. Whatever this was I was in it had a quick response time. Almost immediately the curved white slate of her face began to vibrate. It was a distinct pleasure to soon have Anne Eisley before me, now wearing the plum chiffon outfit she wore for Crane, although it was no longer a gown. It was very short.

  “Don’t drink too much,” she said in Anne’s own exciting voice. “I want you emboldened, not embalmed. ”

  I looked her over with great appreciation. “I don’t need a drink for that. ”

  “Are you calling me an intoxicant?”

  “Well, you raise the level of something in my blood. ”

  She smiled. “How sweet. ” She fell very slowly, and with incredible control, to her knees, keeping her back straight and her breasts riding high under the sheer chiffon. I don’t know if you would call them proud—but I certainly was.

  She smiled at me with her aquamarine eyes, tracing and stroking my face with looks alone. “You are the most handsome man I have ever met. ”

  “You’ve led as cloistered a life as that, huh?”

  “Don’t joke with me. Other women may say they want a man with a sense of humor. But I want a man with a sense of musk. ”

  As if to prove her point she gently laid her hand on my right thigh and smoothly parted my silk robe, which I just then realized, I was wearing. Then her hand approached my now bare thigh and graced the follicles of hair and the most outer nerve endings on my skin with the very tips of her fingernails. An urgently demanding effect was derived from this cause. She sighed (I couldn’t have said it better myself) and leaned into me, closing her eyes and parting her lips as I prepared…