Carole Douglas - Dancing with Werewolves

I felt conspicuous as I crossed the wide street, but nothing much was happening down here. The sun had taken a dive behind the Western mountains. One of those faint twinkles in the foothills was Los Lobos. In an earthy flashback, Ric was sensuously edging my skirt waistband down past my belly button in some instant rewind in the sky and from the scrapbook of my memory.

Meanwhile, I was edging my laced-up oxfords, virginal white, over the glass-strewn sand that surrounded the Arabian Knights. The outfit from Deja-Vous was as authentic as it was ridiculous. The clerk, a pimply-faced punk, had winked, clicked his tongue, and noted that this getup was hot stuff among the geriatric set.

Right. White hose, white garter belt, and white cotton, waist-high, full-coverage panties-ick! I'd read that Elvis had gotten off on those but he was soooo over. My get-up was fifties kitsch, not to mention the dead-white uniform and the kinky little black bag.

But a reporter on the trail will suffer anything for a prime interview and Vilma had promised that I'd meet a mondo-big player from the vampire side of the WW-V wars if I played it right.

A mini-tape recorder was stashed under one the ridiculous steel garters…those things left welts on my thighs! Water-weight again. I had tucked a tiny notepad and pencil up my tight, short white sleeve. The whole outfit was undersized, with the blouse buttons straining to display my cleavage, but I'd been assured this was the exact right costume from the exact right film of the period.

The lobby was empty, dusty, and moth-eaten.

A shred of desert wind shuffled all the litter around. Gaming tables tilted on three-legged stands. Playing cards with their numbers sand-tattooed off laid false trails through the endless rooms.

I found a bank of elevators. Even back in the forties, Las Vegas hotels aimed at height. This one was only ten stories, but it had been a Tower of Babel in its time.

Litter snaked across the marble floors. I jumped, imagining rat claws.

What I saw was even worse: a trio of shambling figures in the long black coats of always-cold junkies. They slunk along the outer walls like mongrel dogs, cowed but ready to attack in a pack at any sign of weakness.

Their eye whites and fangs glittered in slivers of light from the streetlamps. One limped. Another gnawed compulsively on his own filthy knuckles. The third edged nearer.

I retreated to the elevator bank and paced along the closed doors, pushing dead buttons and wishing for a nail file. Let me in, let me in! My disguise would earn me a pass from the chief resident vamp, Vilma had assured me, but she hadn't mentioned the homeless, hungry vamps on the chief's perimeter.

They were coming closer, forming into a gang of three. One brushed its long, filthy nails at my arm. Undead Ted looked like the prince of vampires compared to these vagrants.

Above one set of elevator doors the floor number ten lit up.

I can't explain how spooky that was. One floor on one elevator. I'd been told something was here. Apparently, something had noticed that I was here and that I wasn’t going away.

The light descended slowly on the dusty gilt monitor. I pressed my back to those elevator doors and reached into the black bag, which made my circling vamps pause. Did I carry a wooden stake in my little black bag? Didn't I wish! Above me the numbers lit up in turn: Eight. Five. Three. Two. One.

A ting like a microwave finished cooking hit my ears. Any sound but wind here was shocking. The doors did what elevator doors are supposed to. Open.

My heart beat me half senseless. This was what I wanted, but it was totally spooky.

I backed inside and pressed the top button. Ten. The penthouse. That's where the story was. The vampire trio had decided to get bold just as the elevator doors snapped shut. One pinned a narrow finger in the closing crack, leaving a shriek behind as the car shot upward. A convex mirror in a corner of the elevator ceiling made me look like Jessica Rabbit, all mammary glands, all the time, in the distorted reflection.

The car zoomed upward with surprising, twenty-first century speed.

When the elevator door opened at the top, a weary man in a gray flannel suit was waiting for me.

He eyed me up and down with contempt and resignation.

"He's waiting for you. You'll have to pass through security. Let me see that bag."

I handed it over, feeling like any cowed modern airport traveler.

Wow. Inside was a stethoscope. A packet of hypodermic needles. A bottle of alcohol and lots of cotton balls. Latex gloves. And an instant camera. Weird.

"This way, Miss." He returned the bag to me unrifled.

The guy showed me through a plain brown door. The moment it shut I regretted being here in the worst way. The room was a giant shower stall, all white tiles and fluorescent lights. No windows, no obvious doors. I was totally trapped.

The lights went nova. A deep male robotic voice instructed me to turn with my arms extended. I quavered about the presence of my blouse-sleeve notebook, but didn't set off any alarms.

A section of tiled wall opened and I was in another chamber where a moving spray misted me from stem to stern. The odor was evergreen and eucalyptus and I had a sense of being scanned, as if by X-rays.

The next room was steam-filled and almost wilted my starched uniform.

I passed into yet another chamber, dim-lit after the glaring inspection room, and managed to rub my thighs together to activate the tape recorder.

"Nurse Wretched," a voice declared from an overhead PA system. I'd given my name as "Ratched."

"This is your patient."

The dim lights came up.

I was not alone. Really not alone. A half dozen clones of me-busty young women in tight white uniforms- flocked around a hospital bed accessorized with trees of IVs and other high-intensity medical paraphernalia.

The object of their attention lay sprawled on the sheets before me, Las Vegas's oldest living vampire, a scrawny, filth-brown man with nails the length of an abused pony's hooves and hair long and unkempt enough to make a supermodel's career.

My heart, and gut, sank.

I'd fought my way into this?

The rasp of heavy breathing magnified by machines surrounded me. My sister nurses grinned to show their sharp canine teeth. The breath sounds? Mine. I was the only breathing being in this place and I was being monitored as if I were the sick person.

"You're here to h-h-help me?" the skeletal figure on the bed wheezed.

I grabbed the stethoscope, finally understanding what a forgotten nest of undead this place was, my knees shaking.

"Breathe," I said, placing the silver circle on that hollow, filthy chest.

"You must be kidding."

"No. I can…read your state of health through this instrument."

The wild-animal glittering eyes focused on me. "And…my state is -?"

"Vigorous." I snapped the bag shut, determined to bluff my way through this. I actually believed it and he so needed to hear it.

The balloon-bosomed nurses arrayed themselves around him like chorus girls. He was used to flunkies, but was essentially a never-satisfied man.

I played doctor, rather than nurse, because only an authority figure could get anything out of this lecherous geezer. "I believe that unresolved issues from your past are hurting your recovery now. Why did the vampires lose the war?"

Even I sensed the instant suspension of all sensory devices: the security, the girls' phony solicitousness.

"Not lost," he huffed, clutching his bony chest.

I immediately applied the silver stethoscope head to it again. My medium. Silver. Even when it was chrome.

"Cold," he complained, writhing with the satisfaction of feeling something, anything. The surrounding nurses showed their fangs and backed off. Those shrunken gums grinned up at me, the teeth brown and sharp, like rusty razors.