Grief-stricken as I was, I admitted to myself there were many, far worse, ways to face death.
By the time I put Father’s affairs in order and returned to Atlanta, Carole had departed. She left a vehemently worded note blaming me for all of our difficulties. After enduring ten years of her inexplicably hateful behavior, I was glad to be rid of her. The preceding decade destroyed memories of the happier times. To this day the thought of her stirred resentment. Admittedly not like it once had, and I knew I should let it go, but I couldn’t help it.
For the next half-century or so I counted the years by kills. Every eleven months on average, selected in strict accordance with Kutzu’s principles. “Take criminals and prostitutes first. Mentally deranged who are running free next.” I often wondered if humans would appreciate knowing we culled their gene pool.
After Carole I didn’t let anyone get close. A few tried. Either I took them as prey or simply left.
In 1962, I enrolled at Brown University in Rhode Island as an Electrical Engineering student. Previously I was a firefighter and worked on construction of Hoover Dam. I also worked as a chemist in World War Two and a journalist for the next fifteen years. I decided enough time passed for the trauma with Carole to have composted and I wanted to try living again.
That comprised my outlook on the Fourth of July weekend, 1966. I prepared to enter my final year at Brown. Two friends from summer class and I drove to Cape Cod for the Jazz Festival. We rode in Jamie’s white ’61 Impala convertible with the top down. I drove while the two of them shared a bottle of vodka. The radio volume, turned as high as possible, blasted away above the noise of the air rushing overhead. An invisible sonic bubble of Beatles, Motown, and girl group songs accompanied us down the road.
The next afternoon found us at the oceanfront. We set up a canvas pavilion in the sand with beach chairs and a cooler full of beer. Chuck and Jamie took off in the direction of volleyball games that offered likely female prospects, while I stayed in the shade of the pavilion, content to guard our base and pass time by reading a copy of Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. Meanwhile the AM station broadcasting from speakers at the nearby refreshment stand retransmitted the medleys we listened to during the trip.
Skeeter Davis mourned lost love, proclaiming the end of the world as a sudden burst of sand sprayed in my face, quickly followed by the excited presence of a young blonde woman in a two-piece bathing suit.
“Oh, I am so sorry. Did any sand get in your eyes?”
I picked up the beach ball that raised the offending sand and presented it to her. “No,” I answered peevishly. “The book and my glasses blocked it.”
I lowered the sunglasses, getting my first close look at Lois Sutter. Surrounded by a bubble of curly, bleached blonde hair tucked under at the ends, a small round face engaged my eyes. A button of a gently flared nose drew her lips toward the middle of her face, shaping the mouth into a pouty red triangle. Wide-set sapphire blue eyes straddled the nose. They demonstrated a detached dreamy quality I adored all the time we stayed together and remember to this day.
The tinted glasses prevented her from observing where my gaze fell. Slowly I took in the remainder of her. Fleshy white shoulders tapered to a healthy waist and back out to full hips ending with strong legs. At the angle she knelt, the suit top uplifted and presented two white breasts. My gaze drifted down to her sex. Small dark pubic hairs curled around the crotch of the bathing suit. I inhaled to assess her readiness for sex. She was a virgin.
“Please, I feel so bad about what happened,” she said. “My family is staying at a house right up the beach. Join us for a drink or a bite to eat.” Before I had a chance to answer she took my hand, pulling me upright with determined strength.
Minutes later I met her family. She had five sisters, a mousey mother, and a domineering father who regarded any male his girls brought home as one step above road kill. He relegated me to the asphalt with the rest.
Before leaving we made plans to continue the promising relationship begun by the chance trajectory of a beach ball. In the fall Lois entered as a freshman at Connecticut (Conn) College in New London. A paltry fifty miles separated us. As soon as she completed freshman orientation we met every weekend.
I never needed to rent a room. Between the junior Naval Officers from the Submarine Base in Groton, across the river, and the seniors at the Coast Guard Academy, an extensive network of parties at one or more of the houses they rented continued through the weekend. No one much cared if you crashed for the night in an upstairs bedroom.
This meant I took the New Haven railroad to New London to pick her up on Friday at five or so. First we’d catch Happy Hour at Dante’s, a watering hole down the street from the school, later moving on to wherever the party circuit carried us. The evening supplied ample opportunity for private time among the hives of dark rooms in the large drafty houses. On Saturday we spent the day shopping or at a movie with occasional excursions to New York or Boston. At night the party caravan resumed. On Sunday we ate a late morning breakfast at the school cafeteria or at Dante’s, spent an afternoon in the park when the weather warmed, or simply hung out in her dorm common area. Evening Vespers at five o’clock completed the weekend and back on the train to Providence by six-thirty.
Our lovemaking went pretty far but not all the way. I used the full range of techniques in my inventory to beguile those white cotton panties off. Marathon petting sessions conducted at parties, in dark rooms as The Supremes purred from the festivities on the other side of the wall. With my enhanced senses gauging her building response I hoped to take her beyond self-restraint, but no matter how aroused she became, when I reached for the bra fastener or panty waistband a rapidly deployed hand blocked me with a huskily worded, “No, please stop. I’m not ready.”
She lied, of course. Every fiber of her being screamed out for it. How she withstood the pressure and dealt with the abiding tension that remained when I returned her to the dorm testified to her adamantine Catholic faith.
“You mean you’re telling me you haven’t split those uprights yet?” Jamie asked. He reduced all of life’s events to a football metaphor.
“That’s right,” I answered testily. With graduation less than two weeks away and the tension of finals behind us, the two of us hung out in the apartment he shared with Chuck. “She’s determined to save it for marriage. She calls it ‘saving her angel food cake.’”
“You ought to marry her. You could do a lot worse,” he said, leaving the room to address a Dagwood sandwich assembled from the eclectic, often less than fresh stores residing in their refrigerator. In my apartment, located on the ground floor, I kept stores of a different kind, a lot fresher, too.
I proposed right after graduation. A few weeks before, I’d accepted a job at the Electric Boat Company located in Groton, a few miles downriver from the Submarine Base. Electric Boat, or EB, built nuclear submarines for the U.S. Navy.
“Oh my God,” she squealed. “For real?” We sat in the front seat of my new Ford Mustang. “Mother will be so excited, and Pa, well, he’ll just have to get used to it. There’s the church to reserve, deciding who will be bridesmaids…”
“Wait,” I exclaimed, cutting short her excited narrative. “No Lois, I mean let’s get married right now, tonight.”
She stopped cold. “Pa won’t like it. He’s always wanted big weddings for us girls.”
“He doesn’t like you marrying me no matter how we do it. Let’s get married now and deal with a church service later. Your father will come around.”
Three evenings later in the furnished half of a duplex we rented, with Chuck, Jamie, and Jennie, Lois’s best friend from school to witness, we married in front of a female Justice of the Peace. The main feature of the duplex—besides being within walking distance of the EB gate—was the workshop in the backyard, perfect for storing prey.
With Procul Harum wailing “A Whiter Shade of Pale” quietly in the background, she reclined before me on the rickety
bed of our master bedroom. Eyes glowing with anticipation, her breaths came with short anticipatory urgency. I knelt on the mattress with my shaft fully erect between us. The sight startled her but she recovered and tentatively reached for it. Later we joked over the panic she felt at the thought of it entering her.
“It’s so smooth,” she said when she lightly passed her hand over its length. “Like silk.”
The pale brown nipples of her breasts rose when I kissed or licked them. From them, my tongue skirted the outline of her body, shoulders, around arms, back to side of ribcage, and down to waist, leaving a hot moist wake. I paused, feeling her breaths gain speed in punctuated gasps. I judged she was close to being ready. Continuing from the waist, I outlined the soft white hip.
As I moved my tongue up the inner part of the leg toward the “angel food cake,” she raised herself with a modest self-conscious smile, and slipped off the pair of silk panties she bought for the occasion. Gently I parted her legs to make room, feeling the heat from the brown curly thatch at the juncture of her thighs on my face. She gasped as my tongue dallied at the entrance of her secret center, hitherto unknown by man. The buildup continued as I moved on to other places.
At the proper moment, I rose on my elbows and faced her. “It will be all right,” I assured her, as she gazed back with an expression of pure trust and innocence. Reaching below and behind, I slid the head of my hot and eager maleness up and down the lips of her feminine opening, lubricating it with her secretions, and then placed only the tip inside.
When the pain she expected at my penetration didn’t occur she relaxed. Slowly I worked the rest of me in. Several times I asked if it hurt and she said no, but I felt a different pressure pushing back from inside. Suddenly something softly gave way. She winced once and gradually relaxed, accepting my entry. I covered her mouth with mine and let our tongues assert ownership of each other in the dark.
With my rutting urge satisfied I concentrated on learning about Lois. After her father disowned us, she quit college and found a job. A year later she returned to school on a part-time basis. We worked hard, determined to show Mr. Sutter we were a good match and could make it on our own.
Lois was attractive but not a head turner like Sam or Cynthia, or even Laura Teague. She presented the world a soft and curvy combination of round hips, full breasts, and legs. In shorts or a bathing suit the bottom half of her buttocks showed the beginnings of cellulite. I didn’t care because under the corporeal Lois lived another only I saw. Inner Lois was unselfish, thoughtful, and caring. She gave love, asking for nothing in return, never aged and remained always true. Her single request was I understand, for only through complete understanding of her complicated perfection would we reach permanence as a couple.
I tried hard, but when it came time to have faith in the entity Inner Lois, I panicked and lost it all.
The trouble started Christmas 1978. The whole family gathered. All of Lois’s sisters had married and six grandchildren filled the Sutter ranks. Her next younger sister Mabel, due in two months, casually remarked how unfortunate it was Lois and I had no children.
“It’s not for lack of trying,” Lois retorted.
“Don’t be crude girl,” chimed in Mr. Sutter.
“Well, you’re all right, aren’t you Lois?” Mrs. Sutter asked. “Medically, I mean?”
“Can we please talk about something else?” Lois squirmed uncomfortably, taking my hand.
Mr. Sutter had been drinking, making him liable to say anything. At one time or another over the years, all of us experienced his loose and often cruel tongue. “Balderdash,” he thundered. “This will be settled now.” Having made the patriarchal decree he stared at Lois with red rimmed baleful eyes. “Tell us true girl. Is there anything stopping you from getting pregnant?”
Lois paused for the longest time with her head down. “I’m fine,” she finally admitted, turning uneasily away and toward the Beacon Hill skyline visible through a parlor window. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
Every face in the room, except for Lois’s, confronted me. “Is anything wrong with you? Have you been examined by a specialist?” Mr. Sutter demanded.
Since emergence, I avoided medical examinations. No way to tell how different vampire blood and tissue, or sperm, might appear under a microscope. Feeling cornered and to get them off my back, I told the stupidest lie of my life.
“It’s not Lois’s fault. It’s mine,” I said. “Rheumatic fever as a child left me sterile.” The way Lois’s head slammed around in surprise immediately told me I made a terrible mistake.
She started crying. “You never said,” she uttered through her tears. “All of these years we tried everything, and you knew the answer the whole time…”
“I meant to tell you,” I offered, desperately trying to get out of the hole I dug for myself.
She lurched to her feet. “Well ten years ago would have been soon enough.” She ran from the room.
From then on, our marriage disintegrated. While I desperately tried to manufacture a plausible excuse for why I never told the Corporeal Lois the truth, I ignored the appeals of the all understanding Inner Lois. A number of times I promised myself and Inner Lois, too, I guess, I would, but I invariably lost courage at the last moment. I pictured her horrified expression at seeing me morph. No good, I decided, could come from being straight with her.
I kept quiet, hoping it would blow over but it never did. The shine and enthusiasm departed from the manifold interactions that made a relationship strong. More and more we went through the motions. I came home from work to find she had already eaten and my supper waited in the warming oven. In the evenings we retreated to different rooms, pursuing separate activities, and rarely had conversations. The whole time Inner Lois appealed to me to trust the Corporeal Lois with the truth but—damn me—I couldn’t.
One day I came home from work to find Lois and her father waiting at our kitchen table. Mr. Sutter shook my hand stiffly. Lois cried silently.
“I have a paper for you to sign,” he said, placing a single white sheet on the table.
I glanced at it. “What’s this?”
“It is an Agreement to Annul.”
“Do they still do that?” I lamely asked. “I thought annulments went out with the Middle Ages.”
“Marrying my daughter without telling her you are unable to have children is enough in the eyes of the Church.”
I locked eyes with Lois. “Do you want this?”
She silently nodded yes.
A year later she married in a large white wedding. It was the talk of Boston.
For nearly forty years I told myself it ended as well as it could have. This belief provided a bleak comfort against the lonely decades that followed, but when Sam told the part of her story concerning the revelation of her lycan nature to David, my long held belief turned upside down. She had enough faith in the strength of their love to take the chance, whereas I failed to understand what Inner Lois, with her unreserved love, tried to tell me.
Could I learn from past experience and not repeat my mistakes?
Chapter Seventeen
The Woman Who Bore Triplets
After nearly taking out the night guard at the complex gate, I leaped from the car and bounded into the apartment. Forgetting to turn off the ignition or headlights, we found it with a dead battery and out of gas the next morning.
Bertie set Sam up in our room, filling it with light by adding lamps from the rest of the apartment to the ones already there.
“Can’t have too much light,” she explained, passing in a busy pale blue blur.
On the dresser she arranged plastic bins and a pitcher of water for cleaning the newborns before wrapping and placing them in their individual bassinets. Sam reclined in the bed, propped by pillows, with feet in a set of stirrups Bertie improvised from odds and ends she bought from a medical supplier. A blanket draped over Sam’s knees for modesty. When I entered, I surveyed the scene and spotted Bertie, under the b
lanket, bent over between the sharp crook of Sam’s blanketed knees and separated legs, examining what went on underneath. The heavy smell of blood hung in the room. Sam’s blood, I realized with a rising panic. At Bertie’s urging Sam took short rapid breaths.
“Now breathe out, love,” the muffled East End voice directed from under the blanket. Sam exhaled deeply. “That’s wonderful.”
Bertie withdrew from the partial shelter of the blanket tent, stood, turned to me, and cheerfully said, “She’s doing wonderfully, sir. Her contractions are three minutes. She’s dilated to seven centimeters. It shouldn’t be long.”
Leaning down I inspected the part of Sam under the blanket. Her vaginal lips were swollen, red, and slightly parted. Blood trickled out, staining a pad beneath. Frantically I tried to recall the information Bertie taught me about the birthing process. Was the bleeding normal? Did Sam have to be in so much pain? What happens next? I must have asked Bertie a dozen times in the first fifteen minutes if everything was all right. Each time she reassured me with polite, concise answers, gradually proceeding toward annoyance.
After the birthing, when I took a moment to think on it, I understood why midwives preferred the fathers remain safely out of the way in waiting rooms or bars.
“It’s about time you showed up,” Sam growled, noticing me for the first time and forgetting she insisted I not stay home that night.
“Stay focused dear,” Bertie quietly interjected.
“How do you feel?” I asked lamely, taking her hand.
She smiled weakly, adjusting her position with a sound of bed linens grinding together. “What do you think? I feel like doo-doo.”
“Are you sure we shouldn’t call for help?” I asked Bertie.
“Sir, you know what Doctor Ortiz said.”
“I don’t care! I want Sam and the babies to be safe.”
“But what if…”She bit the sentence off. No doubt she planned to say something like, “What if they came out looking like a lycan or vampire? Or worse a blend of the two?”
The Other Kind (The Progeny of Evolution Series) Page 20
