mastercraftsman

Some of you liked my story-type journal entries, so I decided to write a real story. I got a little carried away and decided I might try to go ahead and write a zany gothic novel based on real characters in my life, right here in Charlotte. So here goes, chapter 1 of QUEEN CITY NIGHTS

1
The crisp clear air of the October night invigorated her. Her nipples grew hard under the thin black silk blouse she'd bought at a thrift store. Shifty gazes from the corners followed her out the buzzing door. The loud blast of Kid Rock faded as the door closed and she gazed up at the exceptionally bright full moon wih a knowing grin. Don the bouncer draped her spiked leather jacket around her shoulders and walked her out to her car. Don looked like Mr. Clean, except in a tight black muscle shirt. His bald head shined hot pink under the neon glow of the strip club's lights. He shot glances around to any possible stalkers, but knew everyone he saw pretty well for years. Not that Marty couldn't handle herself. Those Doc Maartins she strutted out in have kicked some serious ass. Four years in this seedy business and she's managed to stay out of trouble. She knew more of the underworld characters in this city on a level more intimate than their wives did. Or husbands. She was their fantasy. She was their priest. She sat in their laps and looked deep in their eyes like they were lovers, and Santa always wanted HER for Christmas. But no one here intrigued her. She played a couple dozen regulars at a time. These mealtickets all loved her, and in some way, deep down, she loved them too, all while despising this trait or that in every one of them. Familiarity breeds contempt....
She turned and tippy toed up and gave Don a kiss on the cheek. "'Night Donny." "'Night Marty. Give me a call if you wanna hook up this week at the Milestone. There's this awesome punk band from Ireland playing the next couple nights...." "OK sweetie, take care now...." she said as she got in and started the engine. He blushed then as she drove off, even though he knew she wouldn't call. She never did. He blushed like the little retarded boy he grew up with in Seattle. He grew up defending his friend on the playground. The Special Ed classroom was his homeroom, and he the guardian. Thirty years of streetfighting. It was all he knew. His nights of violence had saddened his scarred face, aged him even though he was in perfect health. He too was in love with Marty. He would die for her right now and be happy. This was the highlight of his night. All he looked forward to now was consuming a large quantity of Chinese take out and jerking off to his collection of porn, gradually losing it's appeal, before going to sleep in his little studio/gym. Marty's car was registered in his name and he'd swear she was his live-in girlfriend if the cops ever asked. His secret hope that she'd one day be exactly that kept him going, jaded as he was, but he was too chickenshit to ever tell her, lest it frighten her away. Best to keep things the way they are for now. He couldn't bear to lose her friendship. If he'd been born in the middle ages he would have been a selfless knight in shining armor, instead of a bulldog.
The Charlotte skyline glowed in her Honda's moonlit windsheild. Uptown was asleep at this hour. The engine was quiet. No one on the streets. Not even a bum or a cop. Like that episode of the Twilight Zone. A few leaves and the occaisional piece of trash rustled in her wake like sagebrush rolling through a wild west ghost town. Her long straight black hair whipped about in the breeze, with the windows down to air out. The sweet stench of cheap cologne, cigarette smoke, and sweat could evaporate from her porcelain skin a bit before she made it home to shower. But first, a little detour....
It had been four years since escaping from her psycho ex and moving to The Queen City. Living under the radar with no phone number. Hadn't filed a tax return or signed a lease either. She paid for everything in cash. Todd, her crazy ex, vowed he would find her. Said he'd teach her the real meaning of "'til death do us part..." He was serious and psychotic, and was eluding the FBI, but in fact he was an utter dumbass. He once wanted to get fucked up and decided to snort some acid. Trouble was he didn't want to have to buy any so he figured he could scrape off that white powder that crystalizes on battery terminals and snort that. Dimethyl Lysergic Acid is not the same as battery acid yo. Needless to say, Todd got fucked up alright. Not merely a completely paranoid brain damaged maniac now, but the lead poisoning neccessitated removal of large portions of his face and throat. Why did she ever fall for him... so naive back then.... He made her feel safe in the mosh pit, she guessed. He gave her a real black rose on their first date, and was not afraid to write her poems declaring his love for her beautiful breasts. He could headbutt motherfuckers and knock them out. Really knew how to romance a gal. Now every night is Halloween for Todd. With this nut after her and not being too concerned, Hell, what was some obsessed stalker? She was more worried about ESCAPING after popping a cap in someone's ass than the actual SHOOTING of any attacker. Her hand slipped into her purse to feel the cold steel of her .38 Special. She loved this. Speeding now up I-77 to Lake Norman. It got her heart racing and her senses heightened to that fight or flight state. For such a trivial thing, which has become a ritual. She unlocked the gate at Ramsey Creek Park and pulled ahead, locking the gate behind her. A year ago, she'd stopped by here just after it closed and noticed the lock wasn't locked. She took it to a locksmith friend, who made a key for it, no questions asked, and put the lock back. Since then, she's enjoyed this dark shoreline path along Lake Norman all by herself. Well, almost....
She cut the ignition and coasted in neutral to a dark corner of the parking lot, just like she always did. In this state her emotions got kind of sharper too. As in painful. All the memories flooding in. A tear streaks down when she thinks about her dismal love life. Marty was a surviver though. She could do without sex in her line of work. She often nearly had an orgasm giving a guy a lap dance. If he was hot and shelling out a couple hundred bucks, why not enjoy it? But she was lonely under all the happy bullshit she fed everyone all the time. Forgetting which story she told to who and when, but graceful enough still to gain their trust and make them feel SPECIAL. She could read people; knew what made them tick. Just being alone in all this silence and looking out on the water got her morphing back into shy Kristen instead of outgoing Marty, her stage name and alter ego. Kristen, pensive and quiet, and secretly voyeuristic, sat in the shadows with her binoculars under the trees near the rocky shore, like she did most nights this past year. Only the glow of her cigarette was visible, until she exhaled a lungfull of smoke, whiter than normal because of the cold, and waited.
There. She could barely make him out. Just a dark shadow, floating on the fog in silence, blacked out with no navigation lights even though there was no one else for miles, like he always did. She first noticed him in the spring, and was curious about this intruder on her private vista. It was scary and exciting. She often spied into people's lives through their windows at night, inventing in her sharpened mind each and every detail. She hid in the shadows some nights for hours, others only long enough to smoke a cigarette before heading home. The Mystery Man didn't appear until long after the Republicans in their waterfront villas went to sleep one night, just as she was leaving. Almost didn't see him until she heard what sounded like a squawk from a police radio carry across the water. She'd quickly peered into the blackness to just barely see him get up and walk to the helm thingy and turn off the sound which carried so far. He sat back down and waited. What was he waiting for? She remembered waiting for a couple of hours, seeing him walk around on the bow looking through binoculars every fifteen minutes, then disappear below. Maybe some drug deal going down, she'd thought. Then, magically, what looked like a couple of glowing volleyballs tied to each other bubbled up and bobbed on the surface....
The moon was high up and the few whispy clouds cleared, illuminating the scene. The surface was so calm it looked like glass. She focused in and could see him clearly. He was thin and shirtless that Spring night, poised like a baseball pitcher about to wind up, but instead of a glove in his left hand there was a small coil of glowing rope. He had dark hair and a goatee, with tattoos all over his body. He was definately agile, throwing a grappling hook that whipped straight out with it's line fluttering and corkscrewing gracefully through the moonlight, with the pearlescence of a shot of jizz. The grapple glinted, sparkling in her lens, a flash sailing over the two glowing balls, until he stopped it abruptly mid-flight with it's line taut. It dropped perfectly just beyond the line between the glowing balls, penetrating the surface with barely a chirping sound. His arms began to blur, pulling and coiling like a human windmill. The line was flailing about and she peeked over her binocs. In the distance it looked like a lightsabre battle in a Star Wars movie. Back through the lens she could see his well defined abs shining from the water spattering on him. The glow in the dark line flopped down into perfect coils on deck behind him. As the two balls slithered across the surface to his strange looking boat, she could hear his even breaths and swishing water, timed with his arm movements, like a swimmer's, carrying over the silent lake. Clouds had drifted in then and blacked it all out. All the glowing things were stashed away. She heard a bit of grunting and heaving, and a few splashes, but couldn't see anything more. It was the only time she had seen him so clearly. Most of the time it was too dark and he just sat out there. She couldn't see him but she could hear him occaisionally, and when he motored off she thought she could hear the engine run for awhile and then shut off instead of just fading into the blackness, but it was hard to tell. Inventing stories in her mind was just no use. She had never seen anything so strange and was baffled. Fantasies of him began to consume her over the months. She shared her lonliness with him on those nights he was out there. She'd always wait until he was gone before she went home, where she would masturbate thinking about her Mystery Man and have the most intense orgasms ever. She'd hadn't seen him again, until tonight. It was cold now, and a fog blanketed over the surface slightly, it's smokey whiteness reflecting the moonlight even more. Tonight's the night, she thought. Just who exactly ARE you, Mystery Man?


...Chapter 2 coming soon...