Chapter 15

The Fortune Teller

 Gary leaned back and looked over the rail at the river below pondering whether or not he wanted to climb back down the hill to partake in some cooked coon.

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With one good leg it is a long and miserable trip for a vampire over four hundred pounds and he didn’t know if he was that hungry to risk it. Then a noise from down the road caught his ear as he looked into the creepy fog that now covered the bridge and from the dense air and mist he saw a black RV slowly creep onto the bridge from the left and stop next to Eleonora Kabloutchko and him. The side door to the RV opened with a pop, and then under its own weight, opened revealing a set of steps and a very dark interior. Gary looked at the drivers window and all he could see was a dark figure obscured by the dark window tint sitting behind the wheel.

“What the Hell?” Gary asked aloud. “How did they know we needed a ride?”

“I don’t think they came to offer us a ride,” Eleonora Kabloutchko replied. “That’s one of those Gypsy wagons.”

“That sounds a tad racist don’t you think?” Gary stated in a smart ass tone. “I think they call them fortune tellers or soothsayers or something like that now a days.”

The RV continued to pump out exhaust while the two vampires looked on to see if anyone was going to come out. Minutes pass and the smell of cooked coon fills the foggy air and still no one or no thing comes out of the RV.

“Are we supposed to go to it or are they supposed to come to us?” Gary asked.

“Hell I don’t know,” Eleonora Kabloutchko replied.

“Go over and see if there are instructions on the side of the RV.”

Eleonora Kabloutchko handed Gary the magic box and slowly walked over to the RV and looked along the side for any writing. She read, “Caution, high first step.” next to the door and nothing else. Not even a brand name as it looked like it had been spray painted black by an armature with a spray can. “I don’t see anything,” Eleonora Kabloutchko yelled back to Gary.

“Go inside, see what they want,” Gary yelled back.

“You’re nuts,” Eleonora Kabloutchko yelled back heading back towards Gary. Then she heard a voice calling from inside the RV.

“We have come to serve you, come inside,” the voice said through the open door.

Eleonora Kabloutchko stopped in her tracks and turned back to face the doorway. “Who are you?” she asked.

“Come in and I’ll tell you,” the voice said.

“You come out and tell me,” she replied.

A long pause then the voice stated, “I can’t, my oxygen tubing won’t reach that far.”

Eleonora Kabloutchko stepped closer to the RV and looked inside the best she could without entering the doorway. “This is as close as I get, now tell me what you want or I’m leaving.”

The voice from inside took a deep breath and replied, “I am a medium, I am here to help you on your journey.”

Stunned, Eleonora Kabloutchko cocked her neck like a rooster and replied, “How did you know about our journey?”

The voice from inside laughed, and coughed and laughed again and replied, “We are all on a journey of some sort aren’t we?”

Eleonora Kabloutchko looked over to Gary who shrugged his shoulders deferring to her better judgement. She looked back into the RV and said, “What makes you think we need your help?”

“This would be easier if I didn’t have to yell so much,” The voice said.

“I can’t catch my breath the way it is, yelling makes it for more difficult.”

“How do I know you’re not faking just to get me to come inside and trap me?” she asked.

“Fine, forget it, people like you never believe anything anyway.”

“Is this where I’m supposed to say, “oh no, I’m sorry, let me scamper inside so you can save me,” and then you slam the door shut and rape and kill me?”

“Here’s the deal missy,” the voice said now more strained to speak. “You pay me five bucks and I will tell you everything you need to know to have a successful journey.”

“If you are a fortune teller, tell me what my journey is, then maybe I will pay you five dollars for your advice.” Eleonora Kabloutchko stated in a superior tone.

Another long pause and a clank and clunk from inside the RV. “Sorry, I’m changing my oxygen bottle, this will take a minute.” Eleonora Kabloutchko stood in the fog with her arms crossed, impatiently waiting for the mystery man to respond to her question. “Ok, that’s better,” the voice said. “You seek something, there you go.”

“That’s the best you got?” Eleonora Kabloutchko asked mockingly. “I seek shit everyday. Could you be more vague?”

“Now you’re being a jerk,” the voice said. She could almost imagine the man shaking his head in disgust. “You are seeking the best route for your journey.”

Eleonora Kabloutchko thought for a second and realized that the answer wasn’t too bad. Not what she was expecting, but Gary did need a way to get past the cannibals in Benton to the power chair store seventy miles away. Maybe this guy was onto something.

“Ok, I’ll come in, but you leave this door open, you hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you,” the voice stated. Eleonora Kabloutchko looked back to Gary and said, “I’m going to see what this guy has to say. I’ll ask him the best way for you to get to Grant to get a new power chair.”

Gary yelled back, “The towing company still hasn’t called me back. They might be able to fix it yet. You better wait, let me make a phone call.” Gary pulled out his cell phone and dialed up the towing company. It was late, but he hoped someone was still in the shop who could give him an answer. Nothing, no one was at the shop. “I got nothing,” Gary said in disgust. “Go ahead and see what this guy says.”

Eleonora Kabloutchko grabbed the inside frame of the doorway, put her foot up onto the first step and lifted herself up into the RV. She peered around the corner and saw a dark figure sitting in the back and heard the sound of an oxygen machine whining in the background.

“Come in and have a seat,” the man in the back said.

Eleonora Kabloutchko crept back slowly feeling for the furniture until she found the love seat facing the man with a card table in between separating them. She sat down and tried to use her vampire night vision to make out his face, but it was covered with old dirty bandages and he wore sunglasses and a old truckers hat that said, “Keep trucking” on the front.

“Just so you know,” the man said, “I don’t take debit cards, cash only.”

Eleonora Kabloutchko reached into her pocket and pulled out an old fast food napkin, some change and a bug she found interesting and kept. “I have fifty two cents,” she stated.

“My readings are five dollars,” the man stated firmly. “If you knew you didn’t have five dollars, you could have said so before you got in here.”

“Gary has five bucks, he told me he’s loaded.” Eleonora Kabloutchko replied.

With a deep breath of disgust, the man said, “Can you go get the five dollars from him and come back?”

“Yeah, hold on,” Eleonora Kabloutchko said and got up and crept back out of the RV and headed over to Gary who was sitting patiently on the cement railing.

“What’s the problem?” Gary asked.

“I need five bucks,” Eleonora Kabloutchko replied.

Gary dug out his wallet from his back pocket and fished out a five dollar bill from a stack of money so thick Eleonora Kabloutchko wondered how he got it in his pocket in the first place. “Here, take that,” he said handing the money to Eleonora Kabloutchko.

“If you have so much money, why don’t you hire someone to go get you a new power chair? I mean, wouldn’t that be easier?” Eleonora Kabloutchko asked.

“There are mountains to the left, there is a desert to the right, all there is, is a highway with cannibals or a river to get me to the power chair store and I don’t trust anybody else to do it but me. The last time I hired someone to do something for me they fucked me in the ass.”

“What did they do?” Eleonora Kabloutchko asked.

“I told you, they fucked me in the ass,” Gary replied.

“What did you hire them to do in the first place?”

“Mow my lawn.” Gary said flat.

“Alrighty then,” Eleonora Kabloutchko said, turned and walked back to the RV. She looked back at Gary for a second and back up inside she went. This time she knew where to go and getting back to her love seat was pretty easy. She tossed the five dollar bill onto the table and sat down. “There you go, five bucks” she said, “Now tell me what I need to know.”

“You’re journey will be long and hard,” the man said.

“It’s only seventy miles. Less than two hours by car.” Eleonora Kabloutchko replied.

“You will face many difficulties along the way,” the man said.

“I’ll give you that one.”

“You will meet new people along the way.”

“Are you going to tell me anything I don’t know?” Eleonora Kabloutchko asked.

“You may or may not succeed in your quest.”

“Now you’re just fucking with me,” Eleonora Kabloutchko replied. “And I may or may not beat that five bucks back out of you if you don’t give me something specific I can use.”

“You’re quest will be fulfilling,” the man said in an almost script like manner.

“I’m not making a trip to the liquor store to get a keg here mister. You have one more shot.”

The man sitting in the dark across from Eleonora Kabloutchko paused and she could have swore she heard him fart. Maybe it was the oxygen machine, she didn’t know for sure. But he seemed nervous and anxious and now she felt she was on the defensive. “I feel a “T” sound. Is there someone in your quest with a name that starts with a “T”?”

“No.”

“Is there someone who has a beard?”

“No.”

“I feel like someone passed recently, a friend or family member?” he asked.

“Are you asking me or telling me? If you’re asking me I want my money back.” she said pissed.

“Fine,” he said in frustration. “Just ask me a question and I’ll give you the answer.”

Eleonora Kabloutchko, now believing this guy is a total sham scoots towards the door a bit getting ready to leave without her five dollars. “One question, which route should we take to get to our destination?”

“Actually,” the man said, “It’s about the same whether you take the river or the highway. The highway has cannibals, but is faster, and the river is safer, but slower, so it all depends on your time frame.”

Surprised at his answer, Eleonora Kabloutchko perked up and said, “Wow, that was dead on, the first thing you got right. How did you know we were heading to Grant?”

“My brother owns the towing company and he told me about the chair they fished out of the river. How else do you think I knew you were out here? I don’t drive around in the fog all night for no reason. By the way, you’re chair is fucked, bent frame and the electronics are fried from the water.”

“I paid you five bucks....never mind,” Eleonora Kabloutchko said pissed and got up and left the RV.

“What did he say?” Gary asked as she walked over to the side of the bridge where he was sitting.

“He said your chair is toast so if you want to get another one, you better start making plans.”

“Who does...?”

“His brother owns the towing company and told him.” she said in disgust.

“Oh, that makes sense,” Gary said under his breath. “You up for road trip?”

Chapter 16

The Quest for the Chair

6 am and Gary, Eleonora Kabloutchko and the two trolls are sleeping under the bridge when Gary’s cell phone starts playing “Smoke on the Water” his favorite message tone. Gary reads the caller I.D. and opens the message from his wife Julie who is back at his house wondering where he is. The text message reads, “Where the Hell are you?” with a frown faced icon at the end.

“Who is that?” Eleonora Kabloutchko asked groggy but awake.

“It’s my wife, she wants to know where I am.”

“You have a wife?” Eleonora Kabloutchko asked.

“It’s sort of an open marriage, but yes, I am married,” Gary replied.

“Why didn’t you call her last night to come pick you up?”

“I did, she didn’t answer as usual, probably drunk or getting laid.” Gary stated as a matter of fact. “Took her till now to get back to me.”

Eleonora Kabloutchko rubbed her tongue across her teeth and felt the plaque that had been building up and felt dirty. Her hair was a mess from sleeping on the ground and her clothes hadn’t been washed since the day she escaped from the hunters. “I need a shower,” she said in disgust. “This living on the run business sucks.”

“Go hop in the river,” Gary said.

“Why? So I can smell like fish and sewage? No thanks.” She listened to the river water moving past her from the sandy bank and looked over at Rita and Ury snuggling together in the tall grass next to the bridge pillar. “Can I use your shower?” she asked.

“I suppose,” Gary replied. “If I can get my wife to come out here and pick us up.”

“Will she care if you have a young woman with you?” Eleonora Kabloutchko asked now feeling better about a shower.

“She might actually, she’s a complete gold digger and might see you as a threat to her cash supply.”

“Text her back and have her pick us up, I need to clean up bad.”

Gary pushed his thick fingers on the pad of his phone and wrote out a message to his wife and hit send. A few seconds later a message appeared and Gary responded to it.

Then another and another until Gary set the phone aside and said, “She’ll be here in an hour, with the van, with my spare wheelchair.”

“Good,” Eleonora Kabloutchko said with relief.”

“I’m curious,” Gary asked leaning back on his hands with his one remaining leg propped out in front of him a few feet from the camp fire. “How long have you been running around? I mean, are you homeless?”

“I broke up with my boyfriend a little over a year ago and I’ve been on my own ever since,” she replied. “I live the life of a nomad basically, breaking into houses, feeding on the owners, stealing their clothes, using their showers.”

“And you got away with this for that long?” Gary said impressed.

“I almost didn’t get away with it the last time,” she replied. “I came very close to getting caught by a couple of hunters with their fucking dogs. To tell you the truth, I’m sick of living like this and I want to find a place to live.”

“Kind of tough when they have a hunting season for us,” Gary said with a smile. “They don’t seem to think we fit in too well. Nobody wants a vampire living in their neighborhood, makes the property values go down.”

“So where do you live? You have a house right?”

“I live in a big house with a gate and guard dogs and a paid security guard and all sorts of alarms and shit. It’s not against the law for a vampire to fight back you know, and I don’t make it easy for them. It’s the dumb asses who run around thinking they know their shit that get whacked, stuffed and displayed in someone’s trophy case.”

“But that means your trapped in your own house? That can’t be much better.”

Gary took a deep breath and shifted his massive weight on the sand. “I usually don’t have a problem most of the time. People like me, I’m sort of the town clown and I tend to buy a lot of rounds at the bar so people usually look out for me. When that game warden came into the bar, everyone was surprised, not just me.”

“If you are so popular, then why didn’t anyone follow the game warden out here when he dumped you in the river?” Eleonora Kabloutchko asked.

“Good question,” Gary replied with a curious look on his face. “That game warden is an asshole, it’s one thing to tell me when a hunter is near, but it’s another to expect my friends to get involved in a law enforcement case. Once they find you in an unauthorized hiding spot, they have the right to take you to the edge of town. It’s not illegal to be in town, but they don’t want you running right back into the same spot they found you.”

“That makes it easier for the hunters as well?”

“Yes it does, and that’s why I chose to sleep under this bridge instead of hobble back to my house with one leg. Plus, once the sun is up, they can’t hunt anyway, the time frame is from sun down to sun up and as of right now, I am no longer on the menu.”

Gary looked at the clock on his phone and heard the grumbling from his empty stomach. “What are your plans after your shower?” Gary asked Eleonora Kabloutchko.

“I don’t have plans remember? I’m a nomad, a fucking cave woman.”

“You’re still invited to go along with me to get a new power chair if you want. We can call it a business arrangement. I’ll pay you a fee to be my personal body guard for the trip to Grant and back and feed you along the way.”

“What about your wife?” Eleonora Kabloutchko asked.

“What about her? I can hire anybody I want. She doesn’t own me.”

“You said she might get jealous and think I’m out for your money.”

“Tough shit,” Gary said kicking the sand with his one foot. “If I’m going to get to Grant I have to get through Benton first and Benton is full of cannibals. At least that’s what I’ve heard.”

“You can take the river and avoid Benton all together,” Eleonora Kabloutchko replied.

“Yeah, but that would take all day, to get there, and I’d have to call the power chair store and have them meet us at the bridge and take us in and then return us with the chair and blah, blah, blah and that would be a huge hassle. I’d rather drive, it would take a little over an hour to get there, and the power chair would fit right in the back of my van like the old one did. I have a specially modified van with a lift gate and everything, pretty nice.”

“So the cannibals don’t bother you?” Eleonora Kabloutchko asked.

“Don’t believe everything everyone tells you honey,” Gary said with a smirk. “I’ll believe there are cannibals when I see them. And if there are cannibals, that doesn’t mean they chase you down like zombies and eat your brains, it means you run a slight risk of being eaten if you piss one of them off. I plan to drive though town like any other town, drive the speed limit, use my blinkers and fade into the background. We should be through Benton in less than ten minutes and on our way to Grant. It would be no worse than driving in a big city at night in a drug infested crime ridden area of town with a big white van with a wheelchair ramp on the back,” Gary Patrickled. “You’ll be my wing woman and fend them off for me.”

“Who else is going?” Eleonora Kabloutchko asked.

“Me, Julie, you and I thought about asking the trolls over there if they wanted to go along. I don’t think they get out much and it would be nice to take them out to lunch since they fed us coon last night.”

“I can see why you’re so popular,” Eleonora Kabloutchko smiled. “You seem like the kind of guy that would give your shirt off your back even if you didn’t have a dime to your name.”

***

Julie picked up the group and they headed down the highway towards Grant on their way to the power chair store. In the drivers seat was Julie, still mute from the damage

Gary did to her vocal chords when he turned her, and riding shotgun was Ury the troll who’s feet dangled from the seat unable to reach the floor. In the second row of seats sat behind the Julie was Rita, the other troll and to her right was Eleonora Kabloutchko the young vampire. In the rear, in the specially modified wheel chair accesses port, sat Gary, the diabetic vampire strapped into his spare wheelchair. It was a relatively short drive to the first town of Benton, only thirty miles away, but the crew were nervous of what they had heard about the cannibal break out and no one was talking much.

Then Gary spoke up and asked Eleonora Kabloutchko a question. “So what happened between you and your boyfriend that you ended up on the street?”

Eleonora Kabloutchko tried to act like she didn’t hear the question and watched the scenery pass by the window of the van.

“Hello?” Gary asked not liking being ignored.

“He kicked me out,” She replied with her eyes glued to the window.

“Well, we got some time, can you elaborate?” Gary asked trying to get comfortable in his smaller unpowered chair.

With a sigh, Eleonora Kabloutchko turned to face Gary and said, “What the Hell, nothing like pouring salt into an old wound right?” She paused and started the story.

“Paul and I were living together for the last two years in his parents basement. We had met through a friend of his and we hit it off right away and I think I moved in two weeks later. His parents didn’t really seem to be bothered by the arrangement and for the most part we got along pretty well. Heck, his mom and I used to go shopping all the time and for a while I thought we were like best friends.”

“Then what happened?” Gary asked realizing there was a twist to this story.

“We got engaged.” Eleonora Kabloutchko replied.

Furrowing his eyebrows, Gary asked, “Since when is getting engaged a bad thing? I would think she’s be happy for you.”

“I thought so too, but as soon as she found out she stopped talking to me. Well, not completely, but I could tell something was wrong and she avoided me like the plague.

The only times we ever spoke was when we had to talk, like about Paul, or the laundry, or bills, things like that. Turns out she wasn’t all too happy about her only child getting married and possibly moving away from mommy. Hell, he was twenty two years old, he should have moved out by then anyway.”

“So then what happened?” Gary asked.

“Well, I found out what she was doing while she wasn’t talking to me, she was cooking up a plan to get rid of me and it’s an ugly story. One night, when Paul was at work at the night shift, she comes downstairs and asks me to come up to talk in the living room. I said, “Sure” and when I get up there, the living room table has a bottle of wine and two glasses sitting on it. I’m thinking I’m about to get into some pretty heavy discussions with my fiance’s mom about Paul, and this is her way of breaking the ice.

So I sit down and we start talking.”

***

1 year earlier

“How are you and Paul getting along?” Blanche asked pouring wine into two tall glasses.

“Fine,” Eleonora Kabloutchko replied, curious as to what was going on.

“We’re working on the plans for the wedding right now.”

“Oh, how’s that going?” Blanche replied feigning a smile.

“I’ve been working on a guest list and he’s going to talk to the minister after work about booking the church. He’s really excited about this and I’m surprised how much he’s offered to take care of. I mean, usually it’s the bride that does most of the planning.”

Blanche handed Eleonora Kabloutchko a glass of wine and motioned for her to take a drink. “That’s wonderful. Paul has always been such an attentive boy. I raised him right.” she said almost pissed, then recovered and took a sip of wine.

“I have a book with wedding gowns downstairs, do you want me to get it?

We can look at it together?” Eleonora Kabloutchko asked.

The question was like throwing a dart at Blanche’s face and the pain was almost as real.

“Maybe later,” she said taking another drink. “I have more wine and we have all night.”

For the next hour, Blanche and Eleonora Kabloutchko took turns talking about Paul and the wedding plans drinking and finishing off the bottle. Blanche replaced the bottle with another and the two continued to chat becoming more and more relaxed with every hour and every drink. For a while, Eleonora Kabloutchko thought that maybe she had misjudged her future mother in law and they started to laugh and giggle like school girls.

Then the wine was replaced with shots of whiskey, and as it approached the midnight hour, Blanche moved over to the couch where Eleonora Kabloutchko was sitting and offered to show her the one secret she knew most everyone was unaware of. In an intoxicated state, Blanche smiled and asked, “Did you know I had a tattoo?”

“No way,” Eleonora Kabloutchko replied shocked. Blanche was a very conservative over bearing protective mother so there was no way she could imagine her with a tattoo.

“I want to show it to you,” she said and unbuttoned her pants and pulled down the zipper. With a tug on the sides of her jeans, she pulled her pants down to her knees and slipped her panties down exposing her recently shaved pubic area where a faded tattoo

of a rose lay just above her clitoral hood.

“Oh my God,” Eleonora Kabloutchko said in disbelief. “When did you get that?”

“About two years after college a friend of mine talked me into getting this. I wasn’t married at the time and she had several tattoos and wanted me to be like her. So she talked me into it. I said only if it’s in a place nobody would see.”

Blanche continued to hold her panties down and expose the tattoo and most of her shaved vagina and looked at Eleonora Kabloutchko to judge her reaction.

“You want to touch it?” Blanche asked.

“It’s a tattoo,” Eleonora Kabloutchko replied. “Doesn’t it feel like skin?”

Blanche reached over and gently grasped Eleonora Kabloutchko by the right hand and placed her finger on the tattoo and rubbed it gently in a circle. Eleonora Kabloutchko didn’t offer any resistance and was almost in a fog after all the alcohol they had consumed. Blanche then slowly slid her finger down to her vagina and pushed her finger inside the lips of her labia and made the same rubbing motion. Eleonora Kabloutchko then took over the rubbing herself and Blanche let go of her hand and reached behind Eleonora Kabloutchko’s head and pulled her in close for a kiss.

The two women locked in a drunken kiss and began to make out as Eleonora Kabloutchko fingered her fiance’s mothers pussy.

Neither one said a word as Blanche removed Eleonora Kabloutchko’s shirt and bra and pushed her back on the couch. Blanche took Eleonora Kabloutchko’s breasts in her mouth and sucked her nipples as she squeezed them feeling the warm firm young breasts. Eleonora Kabloutchko laid back and enjoyed the attention and tugged at Blanche’s shirt trying to take it off. Blanche sat up and quickly removed her top exposing her breasts and then with a smile stood up and removed the rest of her clothes. She signaled for Eleonora Kabloutchko to stand up and she knelt down unfastening Eleonora Kabloutchko’s pants and removing them allowing her to step out of her jeans and move closer to the couch.

“No, not the couch,” Blanche said motioning for Eleonora Kabloutchko to come closer, “On the floor,” She said taking Eleonora Kabloutchko by the hand and pulling her down.

When Eleonora Kabloutchko was on her hands and knees, Blanche laid on her back on the soft carpet and signaled for Eleonora Kabloutchko to spin around and face in the opposite direction. She then wiggled her body towards Eleonora Kabloutchko and wrangle herself under the young woman with her face looking up at the young pussy just inches away. Without saying a word, Eleonora Kabloutchko lowered herself down and together the women buried their faces into each others vagina’s and began to lick and suck with a harmonious humming that filled the room.

For ten minutes, the two women embraced in each others pussy and both felt the warm pleasure of each others tongues. It felt so right to both of them and Eleonora Kabloutchko felt that Paul’s mother was a better lover than he was with his four inch erect penis. “Do you have a vibrator?” Eleonora Kabloutchko asked pulling her face from Blanche’s pussy. “I have several,”

Blanche said and rolled Eleonora Kabloutchko off her naked hot sweaty body. Blanche got up and quickly walked to the bedroom and rifled through her secret drawer and located her stash of sex toys. The toys she never used with her husband. She returned to the living room, sat down and showed off her toys and how she liked to use them when she was home alone.

Eleonora Kabloutchko, excited at what she was watching, grasped the exposed end a vibrator which was already deep inside Blanche and took control of the in and out motion kissing her on the neck as she went. From her neck she found her mouth and the two women kissed passionately as the vibrations tingled inside Blanche and on the fingertips of her now lover Eleonora Kabloutchko.

The clock on the wall now read 2 am and the two women were exhausted from the lesbian hook up. Eleonora Kabloutchko rolled off of Blanche and removed the vibrator after she was sure Blanche had cum for the third time and switched off the unit. “What about you honey?” Blanche asked. “Don’t you want to try it?”

Eleonora Kabloutchko could barley keep her eyes open she was so tired and thought about letting Blanche fuck her with the vibrator, but closed her eyes and laid back on the carpet and moaned at how tired she was. “I’m sorry, I can’t stay awake,” she said lying naked on the floor.

Disappointed, Blanche took the vibrator from Eleonora Kabloutchko and set it in the basket with her other sex toys and started gathering up her clothes. “Maybe next time?” she asked.

“I don’t think there can be a next time,” Eleonora Kabloutchko said quietly trying not to anger Blanche.

“I think this was a one time thing. We can’t let Paul know what we did, not like I have ever done this before. Not that I didn’t want to try at least once.”

Blanche stood up, bent over with her breasts hanging down like bags of fat and picked up her box of toys from the carpet. She stumbled back into her bedroom and shut the door with a firm bang and that was the last Eleonora Kabloutchko heard from her. Eleonora Kabloutchko rolled over on her side, collected her clothes in a pile and headed back downstairs to her bed where she fell in a heap and fell asleep.

In the upstairs bedroom, Blanche sat down at her computer and checked the video from the two camera’s she had in the front room recording her sex with Eleonora Kabloutchko. Both camera’s recorded over two hours of hot steamy lesbian sex and now in her more sober state, she set the start and ending spots for the recording and began to render the video onto the hard drive. She figured about ten minutes of the hottest parts would do and when the video was done rendering, slid in a recordable DVD and burned the video to disc.

She sat back and watched the time bar as it showed the progress of the DVD video burn and smiled knowing that when her son came home from work in a few hours, this video would be made available for him to watch. She didn’t care to hide the video and surprise him, she didn’t care that she was in the video, all she cared about was that her son would see her and his fiance’ locked in a sixty nine on the living room floor and cause him to end their engagement.

Present time, back in the van “That’s one Hell of a story,” Gary said in shock. “How long after he saw the video did he kick you out?”

“He didn’t have too kick me out, I left on my own when I saw him and his mom watching the video that morning. I don’t think he even seen me standing behind the couch when I came upstairs. I slipped back downstairs, threw some clothes in a bag and took off out the front door. Never turned back.”

“You never gave him a chance!” Gary said. “He may of told his mom to go to Hell and left with you if you would have given him a chance.”

“It was embarrassing, and on video. It would follow me forever and I couldn’t live with that. If he wanted me back, he could have found me, I didn’t go that far.

Not at first.

When he didn’t come around, I decided to leave town for good.”

“Not even a phone call?” Gary asked.

“My phone was worthless. She paid for it and cut it off as soon as I left.”

“What about your parents?”

“Not that desperate. Long story, not going there.”

“But you do have parents?”

“Yes, I do have parents,” Eleonora Kabloutchko stated flatly. “And a brother and a sister if you must know, non of which I speak to anymore.”

“Does it have anything to do with you turning into a vampire?”

“Like I said, long story, not going there.”

“I get it, mom and dad told you to not hang out late and with the bad crowd and then you get burned by your friends and instead of admitting they were right, you take off.” Gary stated like a father.

“Something like that,” Eleonora Kabloutchko stated staring out the window playing with the magic box they had found from the bottom of the river. Just then she noticed a abandoned car on the side of the road, and another and another. “What’s going on?” She asked and looked out the window on the other side and saw more cars parked on the shoulder abandoned.

Gary looked out the front windshield from the back of the van and noticed in the distance a faint but visible plume of smoke rising in the distant horizon. “What it that?” he yelled up to Julie who was driving. Julie put a voice amplifier to her neck and mouthed the words, “Don’t know” in a buzzing tone.

“Better slow down, I don’t like the looks of this,” Gary stated and as they came over a hill saw a line of abandoned cars lined up in the right lane parked for as far as the eye could see in the direction of Benton which seemed to be on fire. “Fuck,” Gary said, “Stop the van, I want to check this out.”

The van slowly pulled over to the side of the road and came to a stop.

Julie pressed a button and the rear hatch of the van opened and a hydraulic ramp slowly lowered Gary to the ground behind the van. He unclipped a belt and rolled himself back off the ramp onto the highway shoulder and towards one of the abandon cars. Eleonora Kabloutchko got out of the van and joined him.

“Doesn’t the sunlight bother you?” Gary asked.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” she asked back.

“Not really,” Gary replied.

“Me either,” Eleonora Kabloutchko said in surprise. “I thought I was the only one.”

The two peered into the drivers side window of the abandon car expecting to see the worst. What they saw was a box of tissues and an empty seat. No body, no broken glass, no damage at all, it was like they had disappeared from the face of the Earth.

“Where are they?” Eleonora Kabloutchko asked. “Why didn’t they turn around and drive back?”

“I think I know,” Gary said in a monotone looking deep out into the field adjoining the highway. Impaled on stakes six to eight feet tall, a small group of bodies hung upside down, barley in view over the tall grass. “Cannibals?” he asked pointing to the bodies.

Eleonora Kabloutchko walked around the car to get a better look and then jumped up onto the trunk and blocked the sun from her eyes taking a good hard look. She could see about six stakes with bodies stuck to them with clothing flapping in the wind. From atop the trunk, she looked back towards Benton at the row of cars parked on the highway, and for as far as she could see, the line didn’t stop. Benton was on fire and she was sure that they chose the wrong path to Grant. “We better head back,” she stated hopping off the trunk back onto the asphalt highway.

Gary pushed the wheels on his chair and spun himself around towards the rear of the van where the ramp was waiting for him. Eleonora Kabloutchko took hold of the hand grips and gave him a push helping him along faster to the van. The wind was warm and breezy and the area around them was very quiet except for the purr of the van engine.

“Why did they impale them?” Eleonora Kabloutchko asked. “If they were going to eat them, why not eat them?”

“Maybe they were making jerky and had to dry them out first,” Gary said lining his wheelchair up with the ramp. Eleonora Kabloutchko gave a good shove and the wheelchair rolled over the bump and up onto the ramp where Gary fastened the belt tight for the lift up back into the van. “Hit the button!” Gary yelled to Julie and with the buzz of an electric motor, the ramp rose into the air and placed Gary and his chair back into the van and clicked when locked in place. Eleonora Kabloutchko pulled down the rear hatch and shut it with a clank and walked around the van to her open door on the right. It was then she noticed the figures in the distance down the road on the highway walking towards them.

She turned and looked behind her at the road they had been driving on and saw two trucks parked about a half mile behind them blocking both sides of the path. A shiver went up her spine as she realized they were trapped and needed to think fast to get away. She stuck her face in the van and yelled, “There are people coming down the road from both sides, we need to get the Hell out of here!”

Ury, the troll who was sitting in the front passenger seat sat up and looked out the front window and grasped her seatbelt firmly. She swallowed hard and began to panic looking to the right and to the left for a way to get away. “What did you get me into?” Ury asked gritting her teeth.

“Maybe they don’t eat trolls,” Gary said from the rear. “They’re supposed to be cannibals, not troll eaters.”

“For my sake I hope your right,” Ury stated. “If that’s the case, I’ll help them shove the stick up your ass and bar b que you Kansas City style.”

Just then Eleonora Kabloutchko had a thought. She reached back and grabbed the magic box from her seat and stepped back onto the highway examining it. She flipped back the lid and gave the side of the box a little tug allowing it to widen a bit. “I need help,” she stated looking at Julie in the drivers seat. Julie got out and followed Eleonora Kabloutchko to the front of the van where she motioned for Julie to grab one side of the box and pull. Eleonora Kabloutchko grabbed the other side and together they pulled the box about twelve feet apart.

Eleonora Kabloutchko motioned for Julie to set the box down and meet her back in the middle where they grabbed the other two sides and pulled them apart another ten feet creating a box ten by twelve by ten inches deep. Only the box was as deep as the eye could see from the front like a long, square cave with no end in sight.

Once the box was pulled apart, she tried to pull the end making it deeper on the outside but the wood wouldn’t budge so she had to come up with another idea. She drug her end of the now huge box over to one of the abandon cars on the side of the road and propped it up so it was facing towards the highway perpendicular to the direction of the road. From the back, it looked like a large unpainted billboard propped up against a car, from the other side, it was a tunnel they could drive through and escape from the dark figures closing in on them. She did her best to make sure the box was level on the ground balancing on its ten inch wide edge, hoping the wind wouldn’t catch the flat end and knock it over before they could get into it.

“I see what she’s doing,” Gary said. “She’s either a genius or she’s going to get us killed.”

Eleonora Kabloutchko and Julie ran back to the van and jumped in slamming their respective doors shut. Eleonora Kabloutchko pointed at the tunnel and motioned for Julie to drive into it quickly. Julie put the van in drive and made a wide turn facing the van into the box, which was now a tunnel they could hopefully escape into. “Are we all cool with this?”

Eleonora Kabloutchko asked before they drove into the box. Then a bullet smacked into the side of the van splattering on the bullet proof glass with a thud. Then another and another until it sounded like hail striking in a thunder storm.

“Let’s go!” Gary yelled from the back and Julie slowly pushed on the gas driving the van into the endless tunnel before them. Once the van was inside, it became dark very quickly and she had to turn on the headlights. Even with the headlights on, the tunnel was only visable for a few hundred yards and then turned black again.

“What’s going to keep them from following us?” Ury asked.

“I can go back and tip the box over on it’s face, that might keep them from following us,” Eleonora Kabloutchko replied.

“You do that and we go slamming backwards into the asphalt,” Gary replied. “Unless the weight of the van will keep it in place. We don’t know so lets go as fast as we can and outrun them.”

The van, still moving at about ten miles an hour started to slow as Julie was confused as to what to do. “Keep going!” Gary yelled, it’s too late to back out now, we are committed.” Julie pressed firmly on the gas and sped the van up to twenty miles an hour keeping an even spacing between the small clearance on each side. The deeper they went inside the tunnel in the box, the more the tunnel looked the same and the more confusing on the distance became. What seemed like a hundred feet could be a mile when you have no landmarks and all they could do was keep going forward and hope there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

Eleonora Kabloutchko turned in her seat and looked out the rear window past Gary’s head and watched as the light from the distance became dimmer and the entrance further and further away until it was gone. They were now trapped with only one way to go and no way out.

“How much gas do we have?” Gary asked.

“Enough to get to Grant and back,” Eleonora Kabloutchko replied not looking at the gas gauge behind her. “Did anyone bring any food or drink?” she asked.

“I got one of those huge two liter pop containers,” Gary replied. “Full of warm brewed tea.”

Rita, the other troll, silent until now finally spoke up. “I don’t think the trucks behind us were cannibals, I think those were poachers. The ones coming from town on the other hand, may have been cannibals.”

“Poachers?” Gary asked like it was a ridiculous statement. Then he thought about the game warden and realized it was a very real possibility. If the game warden spent so much time trying to evict vampires from buildings during curfew, he probably wasn’t as attentive to the people doing the hunting. For all he knew, that was the game warden doing the poaching. Corruption in law enforcement was not unheard of around these parts and it wouldn’t surprise him if the game warden was watching him the whole time since he dropped him off the bridge a few days ago. But then why not shoot him when he took him to the edge of town, if he was going to poach, he might as well done it then and there. All the witnesses worked for him.

  To be continued...