Kzine Issue 2 Read online

  Well—she was right—the food was great and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I had studied several food reviewer’s questions and articles and knew exactly what to ask when I did Loretta Love’s interview. I knew that she loved to cook and was responsible for the bulk of the menu, concentrating first on the fresh fish, then the desserts and leaving the sides to the chefs. After the bulk of the interview, I was surprised when she asked me if I had liked the choice of desserts. When I said I hadn’t eaten any dessert because the bluefin tuna was so overwhelming and the sweet potato fries were so good that I had to wait a while and then mentioned that I usually liked to take a short walk before eating dessert her next statement shocked, stimulated and shook me to my bones. If I hadn’t of been sitting down I might have collapsed when she cooed: “Well sugar-pie you just get up now and I’ll take you for a little ride and then we can talk a little walk into my house and I’ll show you some real dessert.”

  - 3 -

  The Love-Bug Queen

  “Love Bugs are small flies that are in the process of mating when they swarm over the roads. So usually there are two individuals: the large one is the female and the small one is the male. The female usually gets her way and she drags the male around with her.

  “Like cute little migratory birds, lovebugs signal changes in the seasons from spring to summer and again from summer to fall. Moreover, if they were larger, people could easily see and admire their delicate features, particularly the big round eyes of the males. Wilhelm Rudolph Wiedemann named the lovebug genus Plecia in 1828, so his concept for the term may never be known. A reasonable guess, however, is that he applied the Greek verb “pleo” intending to mean “to sail” (Jaeger, E. C. 1955). Lovebugs sail from flower to flower much like butterflies and in smaller numbers could be perceived as beautiful.”—Norman C. Leppl, “Living With Lovebugs.”

  I stopped at the passenger-side door of her 2011 Rolls-Royce Ghost and nodded towards my slightly beaten and battered, decade-old Ford F-150 pick-up truck. “Ah, my truck, ah-er, I mean maybe I should …”

  “Get in honey—and remember—I own the lot.”

  I nodded involuntarily and wondered what I was getting myself into but then felt a shiver run through my veins like I hadn’t felt for quite some time when I glanced over and saw Loretta Love’s milky-white thighs—as she had hiked her dress up over them—while she glanced in the rear-view mirror and pulled out of the parking lot. We drove for at least a minute or two and the silence was starting to spook me as I searched my mind for something to say that would sound natural and unassuming but couldn’t. “Nice ah-num-er car Loretta,” I said, realizing how lame it sounded even before I said it.

  But Loretta Love just smiled thinly, a smile that told me she had heard it a hundred times before. “Yes, they call it the Ghost, the Rolls people thought I might like it,” she replied, going no further than that, not explaining how or why or what Rolls-Royce people she was referring to.

  A minute of silence was broken when she pulled into a long, winding driveway that snaked its way around a enormous growth and variety of trees, shrubbery, plants and flowers that seemed to go on forever but then it got dark—really dark—all of a sudden and I reached for my piece and I almost panicked when I remembered it wasn’t there, I had left it in my truck, feeling that there was no need to wear it, especially inside the restaurant, one of the worst decisions—as it turns out—that I ever made. But—just as quickly as it had gone totally dark—it lightened up again and when I turned my head I could clearly see that we had just driven through a tree. It was nearing 8:00 p.m. but we were on daylight savings time and it didn’t get dark until nearer 9:00 p.m. Loretta giggled heartily at my reaction. “Hee-nah, honey that’s a Red Maple, one of the biggest in the State of Florida—ain’t it just huge though?”

  “Ah-num-er-nah yeah, yeah it sure is … man scared the … well … impressive Loretta, really impressive,” I said, realizing my voice had almost gone hoarse. You could hear the ocean in the distance. I knew she lived in a huge mansion overlooking the Gulf of Mexico because I had read several stories in old newspaper articles—some published as late as just last year and some dating back to the failure of a Grand Jury indictment against her, going back almost thirty years.

  “So, here we are,” she said, pushing an automatic garage-door opener that was attached to her visor. It opened what looked like an eight-car garage and when she drove her Rolls Ghost inside I could see there were seven other cars inside, all Rolls-Royces. There appeared to be white lines painted in each and every space and Loretta quickly pulled into the vacant one and pushed her remote control button to close the large garage-door.

  We got out and I exhaled a fairly audible gasp of breath. “Man, you sure do like Rolls-Royces then, huh? What—I mean—what kind ah Rolls are these?”

  “Oh, they’re all Ghosts,” she said waving her hand back and forth as if to signify the entire group of cars. They all looked to be relatively recent models and were all shining brightly. I noticed most of them were either black or red and three of them were a combination of those two colors.

  “Ghosts,” I said, why ghosts? I mean …”

  “Oh, I don’t really care about why car companies name their cars; let’s go upstairs shall we?”

  “Ah, yeah, yeah sure let’s—”

  “Right here we go Jay-Dee,” she cooed, and I could see that she was standing in front of an elevator.

  We got in and the elevator shot upward, stopping on what was the fourth floor. Getting out we faced a huge bedroom—an enormous bed in the corner of the room—and a wall of windows facing us. I stepped into the room and shook my head—the room was huge—it looked to be about a hundred feet long and almost the same width. There was a kitchen on the other side of the room, away from the bed, and a bar just across from the bed, a few feet from a large sliding glass-door that led out onto a porch. I walked over to the sliding glass-door and slid it open. It opened onto a huge deck that wound around the entire fourth floor. Loretta joined me on the porch and I could see she was pleased at my reactions to her home and especially this floor. You could see the ocean was just about a hundred yards or so away and you could also see that the sandy shores were vacant and that there was an absence of homes or buildings of any kind for as far as the eye could see. “Nice view,” I said, as I walked up to about a four-foot high steel railing. I noticed she had followed me onto the railing and we smiled at each other. “No-um-nah-er-ah, homes around here then huh?” I knew she had owned a hundred acres of land but had split it off into ten-acre parcels. I only wondered why there were no homes when you could obviously see for quite a distance.

  “No,” she said, “my house sits on ten acres and I have a no-build clause on the surrounding ninety acres for the next fifty years.”

  “Oh, I see, yeah, man-oh-man Loretta, what a view you have here and the house is sure nice and clean, you ah, clean it yourself … uh … I mean—”

  “Oh, you silly thing,” she replied. “The help lives on the second floor; most of them are on a little holiday that I let them take, occasionally. The walls and ceiling are two-foot thick and completely soundproof also. Would you like a drink?” She had walked back through the sliding-glass door and was reaching for a bottle of what appeared to be whisky. Do you like Scotch Jay-Dee?”

  “Yeah, I do, I see you have Johnny Walker, Red or Black label?”

  “Neither sweetie, it’s Johnny Walker Swing,” she replied, pouring two glasses full. I took the proffered glass and took a sip.

  “Ah, very sweet “Loretta, “very sweet,” I said, “but not nearly as sweet as you.”

  She smiled and sat her glass on the bar. She walked over to me and encircled her arms around my neck. I have to admit I felt the heat in my groins when she cooed: “Oh you’re such a catch and call me Lo’ Love honey.”

  “Low love … low …?”

  “Yes, all my really close friends call me that.”

  “Oh, I see, am I a close friend then?”
>
  “Well, you are very close right now,” she replied and placed her lips against mine. Her breasts crushed against my chest and within five minutes we were climbing under the red and black, silk sheets underneath the red and black covers on her red and black bed—sans clothes—and I noticed—just before she began kissing my neck and working her way downward —that there was a large red-and-black silhouette of a love-bug on a canopy that was spread across the top of the bed and attached to four, large mahogany bedposts. It was the last thing I remembered for the next twelve hours—which is when I woke up, stuck—as it were—to Loretta Love.

  - 4 -

  The Game—Sandcastles in the Sun

  The attribution to the other of an incapacity to form a human relationship was and is the basis for the diagnosis of schizophrenia.—R.D. Laing (1927-1989). Wisdom, Madness & Folly: The Making of a Psychiatrist, 1, 1985.

  When I woke up the first thing I felt was a weight inside my head—I am not really a heavy drinker but there’s no way that a few sips of whiskey would account for the hangover I was experiencing—and when I woke up I didn’t even know where I was. It wasn’t until I felt the backside of Loretta Love that I realized there was some sort of a strap that was tying us together. It was tied around my lower back and my body was jammed against her buttocks and—I mean—the thing is, we were both naked. I wondered how long I had been like this. I moaned slightly and tried to get up but it only caused my body to jam itself against Loretta’s backside even further and she moaned and woke up. She began moaning and if I hadn’t of heard it myself I wouldn’t believe it if you told me this story. “Oh-uh-oooh bay-bee, bay-bee love-bug that you are, do what only you can do … more … more … we can stay like this until we die … we only have twenty-four more hours.”

  To say I was dumbfounded would be an understatement. I inhaled deeply, even as my head throbbed—as the hundred-pound weight inside of it banged against my skull—and I veritably screamed out: “What the hell is going on Loretta?”

  “Why my little Plee-cee-ah Near-tee-cah—you are so crazy—Hardy was right about you wasn’t he, come now deliver me some more of your love-juice as you have been for the past twelve hours, my little lovey-buggy, don’t be so silly now, you know what we must continue to do —come now—we don’t have much time left—only one more day—so get with it!”

  I could barely believe my ears. I remembered—from my research that Loretta Spangler Love had graduated from the University of Florida, where she had majored in Biology but this gibberish she was spewing into the air made little sense to me—was she actually saying that we were love-bugs and not human beings or was it some sort of sex fetish of hers? “Loretta, could

  you please save this for like—you know—tonight. I mean I really can’t remember much of what happened last night—must have drunk too much Johnny Walker, y’know? How about taking this strap off of me and maybe we could talk over some breakfast, y’know what I mean?”

  She began twisting and turning the belt attached to her waist and removed it pretty quickly, much to my delight. My eyes were practically stuck together and I barely remember her walking to her dresser, she really did look thirty years old, even with her clothes off and I smiled even as I felt a tremendous desire for something to eat. “Well, so let’s get something to eat then Loretta and we can talk y’know?”

  I vaguely remember that she grabbed something from the countertop of the bar and walked back towards me. I figured it was some food but then—when she sat down on the bed next to me —I saw that it looked like some kind of syringe but I discounted it—I still wasn’t thinking straight. “Do you know who you remind me of?” she said and then answered herself: “My hubby: Hiram Love, yes you do. Do you know that we had this game too but he didn’t believe me either and he paid for it and do you know that he was Hi Love and I was Lo Love? Oh yes and he was very good to me too—he just didn’t understand that our time was so short but he paid for that but now he is back again but now he calls himself Jay-Dee and he thinks he is so smart that he can pretend that he is a food critic when Lo Love knows very well that he is not a food critic—no, not at all and so we will have to go now.” She smiled at me and I swear—to this very day—that both her eyeballs were small black-and-red love-bugs. That’s the last thing I remember thinking when I vaguely remember seeing a hypodermic needle in her right hand—just before she stabbed it into my left shoulder.

  ****

  I woke up lying on the sand. I glanced at my watch and it was just after one in the afternoon. We were on one of the sandy beaches of Sandy Isles but it was deserted except for myself and Loretta—who I saw in the distance where she appeared to be sitting on the beach making—of all things—sandcastles. Sandcastles on a sandy beach in the high noonday sun, which felt like it was 120-degrees. My mouth was as dry as I can ever remember and it felt like I had a dry sock inside of it, my tongue felt as if it weighed a ton and my skull—now—felt like it had a 200-pound weight inside it. I began a wail—at least to me it sounded like a wail—and, soon enough, Loretta walked over to me. I had what felt like the same contraption on that I had awoke with that morning, which was strapped around my waist and chest and then wrapped around a large section of a tree trunk on the beach. I struggled against it but the tree trunk seemed immovable and only rocked slightly back-and-forth, my 175 pounds providing little competition for a 400-pound tree-trunk or the contraption that was strapped around my body. “What the hell you got me here like this tied down with these … with these …”

  “Why what’s smatter Love-bug, its jus’ a lil’ ol’ bungee cord.”

  I tried to move around to see her face but she was standing over me and I could only see her legs and up into her bathrobe—she had no clothes on and neither did I. I was sweating and had sand all over me—sand and about a dozen or so insects, which I hoped weren’t ants or mosquitoes but I wasn’t itching or anything and then one—or should I say two—landed on my arm and I saw immediately that it was a love-bug. “What … where am I … wha’—”

  “Why Love-bug we’re at our beach house—don’t you remember—this is where you paid for not being the Love-bug that you were sent to me to be, come now Hi-Love—don’t play coy with me. This is where everything began—this is where the game began.”

  “The … the game …?” I said.

  She leaned down and dropped to her knees—looking me straight in the face—and I could swear that I saw those two love-bug eyes again. But then I saw there were love-bugs crawling all over her head and face and she didn’t even raise a finger to touch them or brush them away. I looked over and saw that there were about a dozen or so sandcastles on the sandy beach that stretched less than 100-yards before meeting a conglomeration of dangerous rocks and boulders jutting out towards the ocean—from both sides.

  “Oh come now Hi-Love you know that when you bought this place for us in nineteen-eighty that we always came here to play our game—our love-bug game—sandcastles in the sun—we build the best sandcastles in Sandy Isles—the best in all of Florida—as only love-bugs can.

  “Ah-oh-yeah, yeah sure I remember,” I stammered—going along with her insane logic—as I desperately tried to think: “uh-ah, why’nt you untie me and we can ah-er-um-ah, play the ah-er-um-ah, the game again… the … the sandcastles in the sun game.” I put as much emphasis on the sandcastles in the sun game as I could because of the way she had seemed to be in a trance when she mentioned it but still didn’t think there was a chance in hell that she would free me.

  “Well, as you know the house is a long walk up the trail and that was what started our argument—you silly buggy you—you know why we’re here, the game always ended here, in the sand, on top of the sandcastles that we so craftily built and then laid our naked selves down upon. Oh, it was so, soooo good, and then we went into the ocean and washed off all the sand so that we could continue only as true love-bugs can and must … but … but then you … you got mad the last time … at the bugs … the love-bugs … be
cause you didn’t understand them—then! You called them ugly and I had to teach you a lesson and I know that now—now—I know that you understand them. Look, look at them Lovey-buggy, look they are so cute and they can’t cause any harm … not to anything … they’re … they’re so God-like … they’re—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I see that ah-nah-er, Lo-Love, could … could you untie me so we can … so we can play the game ah … again … the sandcastles in the sun game—”

  She stared at me—directly in my face—and this time I could really see love-bugs on her eyelids, they were all over her face and then she stood up and removed her bathrobe and she was as naked as I was. She had love-bugs all over her body; they just seemed to land on her everywhere and she didn’t lift so much as a finger to remove any of them—quite the contrary—she began whispering and moaning and bits of the previous night flashbacked through my brain; what there was left of it. She almost seemed to be in a trance, as she literally gyrated onto the sand and screamed for me to embrace her and mount her for our mating ritual until we passed into the next realm. I knew she was—as Ant would say—totally nutsoid now and I said a silent prayer that I wouldn’t have to end my days in a sandy-love-bug splattered mating ritual with Loretta Love. I know what you’re thinking—what a way to go—but think again, this woman was insane and I was starving, thirsty and drugged to the point of not being able to think straight or react like I would have had she not injected me with whatever she had injected me with. I watched her wriggle around for about a minute and my mouth felt like it had five pounds of cotton inside it. “Ah-ah-I need a drink of water,” I gasped, almost involuntarily, “I’m hungry.”

  It seemed to wake her up and she shook her head and stood up. She went around behind me and I could feel her loosening the bungee cords. I inhaled a deep breath and tried to gather all of my strength up because I realized that it would take all of it just to stand up. I felt her arms entwining me and then she actually helped me stand up. I asked for some water or something to eat almost in a whisper and I remember her simply smiling and winding the bungee-cord around my waist. She then turned abruptly and snarled: “You know males don’t eat … they fornicate until they can no longer do it anymore … now let’s begin where we left off Hi-Love …oh …” She turned and headed for the sandcastles and I stumbled after her, the bungee cord pulling me unwillingly along behind her. My mind was racing but before my occipital and temporal lobes could process any information or send it onward, I stumbled and fell onto the sand. I felt myself being dragged and looked up to see Loretta actually pulling me behind her—she appeared to be in a trance and the trance had turned her into something other than a human being—albeit a very strong other. She pulled me for about ten feet and reached down to help me up. When I was upright, she smiled wickedly and slipped the bungee-cord over my head and it slid down my back. I looked around and saw that the sandcastles were just beneath us. There was one enormous sandcastle—maybe three or four feet high—and the towers actually rubbed against the middle of my back. I was turning my head back towards Loretta when I slipped backwards and fell, the bungee-cord pulling Loretta down on top of me. She screamed and wailed and I could feel the love-bugs encircling my body, landing on me as if I was the landing strip at LaGuardia and they were the planes. They were all over Loretta and when she kissed me I could taste a mouthful of acid that I knew must be love-bugs. As famished as I was I spit them out. “Ah-uhh, these Gaa-ah-wad day-yum love-bugs are the most miserable pieces of disgusting shee-it that I’ve ever …”