Katie MacAlister: Much Ado About Vampires

“I don’t know,” Terri said, scooting closer, as if that would let her peer into my mind.

“This is very unusual,” Barbara muttered to herself, checking her digital camera. “We should document it. Yes. Documentation is good.”

“What’s the lady doing?” Patsy said, sitting on the couch next to my feet.

“She’s trying to stick my head back onto my body. Lady, that’s not going to do any good. No, you can’t tie it on, either. Ha. Told you so. Oh, don’t drop me in the mud! Sheesh! Like I wasn’t muddy enough? What a butterfingers. Now she’s chasing the oxen, who just bolted for a field. Oh, no, she’s coming back. Her arms are waving around like she’s yelling, only I can’t hear anything. It must be the shock of having my head severed by a cart wheel.”

“This is just too surreal,” Terri said. “Do you think she purposely ran you down?”

“I don’t think so. She seems kind of goofy. She just tripped over my leg and fell onto my head. Oh man! I think she broke my nose! God almighty, this is like some sort of horrible Marx Brothers meets Leatherface sort of movie. Holy runaway oxen, Batman!”

“What?” Terri and Patsy asked at the same time.

“She’s doing something. Something weird.”

“Oh my god—is she making love to your lifeless corpse? ” Terri asked. “I saw a show on HBO about that!”

“No, she’s not molesting me. She’s standing above me waving her hands around and chanting or something. What the—she’s like—hoo!”

“Don’t get upset,” Barbara said, taking copious notes. “You are in no personal danger. Just describe what you’re seeing calmly, and in detail.”

“I don’t know about you, but I consider a decapitation and barbecue as some sort of personal danger,” I said, watching the scene in my mind’s eye with stunned disbelief.

“Barbecue?” Patsy asked. “Someone’s roasting a pig or something?”

“No. The ox lady waved her hands around, and all of a sudden this silver light was there, all over my body, singeing it around the edges. Oh great. Here comes someone. Hey, you, mister, would you stop the lady from doing the light thing? She’s burnt off half of my hair.”

“This is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard,” Terri told Patsy. “You have the best parties!”

“It’s all in the planning,” Patsy said modestly. “What’s going on now, Cora?”

“The guy just saw me. He did a little stagger to the side. I think it’s because the lady tried to hide my head behind her, and my ear flew off and landed at his feet. Now he’s picking it up. He’s yelling at her. She’s pointing to the oxen in the field, but he looks really pissed. Yeah, you tell her, mister. She has no right driving if she can’t handle her cows.”

“This would make a great film,” Patsy said, looking thoughtful. “I wonder if we could write a screenplay. We could make millions.”

“Well, now the guy has my head, and he’s shaking it at the lady, still yelling at her. Whoops. Chunk of hair came loose. My head is bouncing down the hill. Guy and lady are chasing it. Hee hee hee. OK, that’s really funny in a horrible sort of way. Ah. Good for you, sir. He caught me again, and now he’s taking me back to my body, hauling the ox lady with him. Whoa! Whoa, whoa, whoa!”

“Did he drop your head again?” Terri asked, offering me the bowl of popcorn. I shook my head.

“No, he just . . . holy shit! I want out of here! Take me out of this dream or whatever it is! Wake me up!”

“Remain calm,” Barbara said in a soothing voice. “The images you see are in the past, and cannot harm you now.”

“What’s going on? What did the guy do? ” Terri asked.

“I want to wake up! Right now!” I said, clawing the couch to sit up.

“Very well. I’m going to count backwards to one, and when I reach that number, you will awaken feeling refreshed and quite serene. Five, four, three, two, one. Welcome back, Corazon.”

“You OK? ” Patsy asked as I sat up, gasping, my blood all but curdling at the memory of what I’d witnessed.

“Yeah. I think so.”

“What happened at the end? ” Terri asked. “You looked scared to death.”

“You’d be scared, too, if you saw a vampire kill someone!” I rubbed my arms. Goose bumps ran up and down them.

“A vampire! You’re kidding!” Patsy gasped.

“I wish I was. He just kind of pounced on the woman, fangs flashing, and blood everywhere, and then she collapsed and he had blood all over his mouth. It was horrible. I never, ever want to see anything like that again. Man alive! I need a drink!”

A half hour later, Barbara the hypnotherapist left, but only after giving me her card and telling me she wanted to interview me at length about my regression session.

I said nothing, just nodded, not wanting to remember the horrible scene.

“What really gets me is that the whole bit with me being run down and killed didn’t bother me,” I told my friends as we sat over a couple of bottles of wine. “But that man, that vampire . . . brrr. I’ll never forget the look on his face as long as I live. It was like he was in hell. I’ve never seen such anguish before, and then he was just on her, biting her. Urgh. It was terrible.”

“What did he look like?”

I thought, trying to separate the last images of him from the earlier ones. “Tall. Muscular. Dark hair. Green eyes. Squarish chin. Handsome, really. The kind of guy if you saw him in a mall, you’d do a double take.”

“Sounds like my neighbor,” Patsy said, getting to her feet.

“You have a handsome neighbor you’ve been keeping from us?” I asked her.

“Well, I don’t see him very often. He works at night or something—I never see him during the day. But he’s gorgeous, really gorgeous. He likes to swim in the nude.”

“We’re your oldest friends,” Terri said. “You owe it to us to share gorgeous men who swim naked.”

“How,” I said, my mind slightly muddled because of the wine, “do you know he swims naked?”

Patsy hiccuped. “If you happen to be at the east side of my fence pruning the hedge, there’s a bare spot where you can see into his backyard, and the pool.”

“I wanna see,” Terri said, tipping over.

“You have had way too mush wine, misshy,” I said, pulling her upright. “But I agree. I want to see the naked gorgeous neighbor.”

Patsy glanced at the clock. “Normally I don’t see him until closer to midnight, but a little fresh air will do us good. Tallyho, ladies!”

“We’re off to get a fox,” Terri said, giggling as we clutched each other and staggered after Patsy, who carried a bottle of wine with her, pointing it toward the backyard.

It took a good ten minutes to get to the spot Patsy had mentioned, but only because we all had to troop back into the house, one by one, to use the facilities.

“Sucks having a tiny bladder,” Terri said, wobbling slightly as she returned to where Patsy and I were lying on the grass, sharing the last bottle of wine. “C’mon, let’s go find that neighbor.”

There was no one in the pool.

“Dammit,” I said, clutching a tree that stood next to the neighbor’s house.

“Well, that’s disappointing,” Patsy said. “Maybe he’ll be out later.”

“Antimacassar,” Terri said, taking a swig off the bottle.

“Huh?” I asked.

“I think she means anticlimactical,” Patsy said with great precision.

“Ah. Gotcha. Well, hell. I’m all keyed up to see a gorgeous guy.”

“I know!” Terri said, heading for the house. “Let’sh peek in the windows to see him.”

“Ter!” Patsy said, her voice hushed as she ran after Terri. “That’s illegal.”

“No it isn’t,” she insisted. “He’s your neighbor, right? That’sh not illegal to look in a neighbor’s house. You ever hear of Neighborhood Watch? We do it all the time. It’sh good. C’mon. Let’s peek.”