Darrell Schweitzer - Full MoonCity

Fortunately, on Thursday Max didn’t take me to experience more sleaze. Instead we went to tour Ceaus?escu’s palace, about which much could be said, but I shan’t. Wonderfully, Max would be absent in the evening. Of course I could accompany him, but I pleaded a queasy stomach and headache. All that Disaronno.

At seven thirty I looked and saw a red Dacia parked outside the cottage. So I sallied forth.

Mihail Florescu, the dutiful son, looked to be in his late fifties, in cheap checked shirt and trousers, grey-haired and with a beer gut. Muscular, though. He welcomed me with delight, as did his mother, who bustled to provide some cubes of cheese and peanuts, while Mihail urged on me a big glass of orange juice. A plastic bucket chair for me. This time I’d brought a notebook. An oil lamp had been lighting the room, but now Mrs. Florescu proceeded to light the green candles as well, which produced blue flames.

“How can we help you to write?” asked Mihail, beaming. He meant “as a writer.”

“Thank you for giving me your time,” I replied. “Please accept a little compensation.” Thirty dollars. I drank juice while he disappeared the money, then began, “I’m curious about those flowers, particularly the little white bells. I hear that in this country they are associated with werewolves.”

Mihail looked blank, so I said, “Excuse me,” then mimed a transformation, which must have been successful because he rattled away to his mother, and she to him.

“Yes,” he said, “to keep away such things. My mother, all the dogs frighten her. Last winter, dog killed chicken.”

My throat and tongue felt dry, so I emptied my glass, and realised that the orange juice must have been mixed with some strong spirit, maybe home-made, for all of a sudden I came over queer.

I must have passed out briefly, for mother and son were standing over me, regarding me attentively, and Mrs. Florescu was rubbing a smelly ointment onto my brow and cheeks. God, how parched I was. I croaked for a drink, although I was also feeling a mounting urge to pee. Probably Mrs. Florescu’s toilet was a dark hole, and I could hardly excuse myself to use her garden, not with her vegetables there. I tried to clench myself tight, but my body felt incoherent. Suddenly I thought of the young Gypsy prostitute with such hunger for her flesh-oh, to be able to taste her, drink her juices. Which juices exactly? To my shame, spurts of pee began to pulse into my pants uncontrollably. A restless anxiety mounted. I was quivering-and then I found myself sliding out of the plastic seat, and glad to be nearer the floor on my hands and knees. Four limbs could support me better.

Dog rejoiced ragingly to be let out. Dog loped over empty wasteland. Moonlit. Twitching nose, taunted and teased. So thirsty. Dogturds pungent. Potholed roadway. Lapped stale rain. Wrong liquid! Howled .

In every man: a dog. Turn man inside out, hairs bristle out all over. Dog fell over, scrambled up. Fellow dogs lay curled, muzzles resting on bums. Reek of bitch in heat far away?

The thirst! Not for dog blood. Human!

In moonlit street.

Big stick or long gun. Hairless head shone. Hairs crowded wide and black under nose, above mouth. Dried sweat, and cologne, and a fart.

Hunting for dog.

Dog hid amongst dogs. Other dogs shifted listlessly.

Dog cowered. Whimpers escaped. Dog buried muzzle in bum. Familiar fragrance of inside-oneself, comforting.

Human came.

Attack, rip with claws, grip throat with teeth so sharp! No! Dog feared bang-bang. Dog cringed among dogs. Lone eye watched.

Rattle of laughter.

Human noise: “ So how do you feel now, Mr. Martin Fairfax ? How does it feel? ”

A camera flashed blindingly.

Head throbbing, I woke to daylight naked on that double bed beside the bench press. What a vile, terrible nightmare.

Then I saw my strewn soiled clothes, and discovered the state of my aching body.

I heard the crow of a cock. Was Max waiting patiently next door, drinking coffee?

At first I could hardly stand, weak as a decrepit old man.

Propelled by fear, I recovered some strength. Blessedly Rigby-I couldn’t bear to think of him any longer as Max-was absent.

I fled before even worse happened, wheeling my suitcase behind me to the nearest boulevard, flagging a taxi and saying, “Otopeni, v? rog ,” the name of Bucharest ’s airport, plus please . Of course the driver swindled me, though not grossly. And he wasn’t Madame Florescu’s son, even though paranoia whispered otherwise.

Rigby had set the trap cunningly.

Admittedly, his plan depended on such a crone as Madame Florescu living opposite his flat in such a home as she did. Although how exactly had Rigby located that particular flat? With Silviu’s help, in line with what special requirements? Rigby’s own research requirements, of which I knew nothing, yet which I’d let lure me like a bee to pollen!

Rigby must have paid the crone and her son quite a few more dollars than I did. And Silviu procured the hallucinogens, whatever those might have been? A cocktail of mandrake, henbane, LSD? Maybe some deadly nightshade and hemlock and mind-altering mushrooms thrown in?

No, how could Silviu, or Rigby, have known what to concoct? The crone must have known.

It couldn’t be, could it, that I had truly been transformed? That the crone had thought I wanted to be transformed because of my miming? I’m quite light and short-even so, how heavy a weredog would I have become?

Fortuitous, indeed, that the bloody murders took place!

I would probably have been beguiled by the crone’s cottage, even so.

What was Adriana’s part in the conspiracy, gasping and crossing herself in timely fashion?

Bitch! I thought.

Bitch seemed entirely the wrong term of abuse. Or maybe entirely the right one.

So how do you feel now, Mr. Martin Fairfax ? Such vindictiveness on account of a bad review. Rigby must have leaned on the editor of the mag, or maybe he’d read that early book of mine and the character’s name stuck in his mind.

So I departed Romania with my tail, as it were, between my legs.

After I got back home and had recovered myself, I googled using automatic translation and discovered that a man had been arrested for the murders in Bucharest. The presumed perpetrator was a Turko-German drug smuggler, Günther Bey, sporting tattoos featuring samurai sword fights. Red dye used for sprays and pools of blood, I suppose.

It seemed to me that if the Turko-German’s skin bore so much pictorial blood, it was unlikely that he felt a craving to replicate this upon the skins of unfortunate women. If he emulated Japanese gangsters, those people had a code of honour, only killing rivals and enemies within the fraternity.

Ovid had found half-a-Turk to fix up for the killings. It wouldn’t do for a werewolf or weredog to be responsible. Romania was a modern country now, a member of the European Union.

So did those murders result from a crone applying a potion and a salve? Maybe her own good son, Mihail, was transformed? No, that was absurd.

Judging from the news, no more such murders happened. If I related my experiences as a short story, this should reflect badly on Rigby, though obviously I’d need to disguise his name.

Sometimes bad luck just seems to gang up on you.

Take my situation on this past June 13. Things were lousy even before I turned into a shaggy grey wolf-man for the first time.

And I’m not even talking about the fact that I was two payments behind on the mortgage of my house here on the fringes of Beverly Hills. Back in the 1920s the silent-movie lover Orlando Busino lived in this sprawling Moorish-style mansion and romanced some of the loveliest actresses of the silver screen within these very walls. In the 1960s, the immensely, and briefly, popular rock group the Ivy League Jug Band staged excessive orgies here on a fairly regular basis. Obviously the roof didn’t leak back then, nor did the pipes produce ominous keening noises in the midnight hours.