"Felicity Volkmann's Last Tape" -- A Story for Halloween.
Oct 31 '04 (Updated Nov 03 '04)
The Bottom Line This "real life" Halloween story, in a slightly different format, was read publicly at the Edinburgh Castle, 950 Geary Street, San Francisco, on Thursday, October 28, 2004.
"Felicity Volkmann's Last Tape"
by Macresarf1
Thankful to escape the idiot arguments of customers about the Bush-Kerry Election, I had closed the coffee shop for old Ralph early, and climbed the outside stairs to my little apartment. It was raining, and my black paper hat got soaked -- my witch's hat. When I shut the door behind me, I saw my daughter, Patricia, just back after three years in jail, asleep on the couch. The TV was still playing the Hammer horror flicks on Turner Movie Classics. I looked at her a moment. Asleep, she always seemed so innocent: My little girl.
"But you're 32, Pattie," I whispered to the room, which smelled of makeup and cats. "Where did the time go?"
"Gottes Willen," my grandmother would have said. The one who survived the bombing of Hamburg.
I tiptoed into the bathroom, closed the door, turned on the light and turned off the fan. The message on the phone machine by the commode was typical. My ex-husband was drunk again, rambling on about how I hit him in the face with a bowl of oatmeal, ten years ago. When I reached behind my green peasants gown, a low-necked job, to loosen the damn miracle bra, I stared up at my 47 year-old face in the mirror. The dye from the hat had run down my features, spoiling the sexy green and yellow paint I'd applied for my Halloween face.
More hours of my life wasted, I thought.
The whole place was cold.
Shivering, rubbing cleansing cream around my eyes, I gripped the blue box of things Pattie had brought down from the old house in Greenock. I opened it with a key I'd carried round my neck for over thirty years. Covered with fine dust were a lot of cheap costume jewelry, a small, ancient Webcor reel-to-reel tape recorder, and half a dozen battered audio tapes.
My eyes chanced on the one I'd wanted. One more listen, my tired mind told me. I carried the machine, an empty reel, and a carton marked "Confessions" quietly out into the kitchen. Wedging a chair under the doorknob and turning on the gas stove for some warmth, I plugged in the machine, threaded the tape, and sat down, with a kind of Halloween fear and excitement -- the most sexually seductive feeling a woman can have -- to listen to my past.
First, almost in the moment, I read the label on the reel before I pressed, "Play."
"Audio tape index: October 1973:
Side A: 0-150 our monthly slumber party: sound -- bummer -- result, Wow! Led Zeppelin
Side B: 005-100: Lotta stuff on my folk's fights -- a crack up!
100-220: How I spent Halloween -- shi*t -- you know it."
Not wanting to waken Pattie, I was thankful that the male bayonet from my CD player earphones fitted into the grimy female receptacle on the Webcor. As the pitted plastic reels began to turn, giving off an eerie, high pitched wheedling sound, I twiddled some dials on that old, once "state of the art" recorder, cutting down the hum, making the strangely familiar voice remarkably clear in my head, between the earpieces.
---------------
Whirr-r-r . . . click . . . click . . .
Hi, Freddy, you bull sh*ttin' crumb. I don't know why I'm talkin' to you tonight. My
Mom's out at one of her school board meetings, you know. Ralph, Mom's new hole-
stopper -- You met him? A real creep. He's out in the garage, messing up what Dad
used to call, "our wood shop."
He's gettin' juiced. Better than gettin' me-e-e.
Ha ha.
And I'm all alone in my bed smokin' weed 'n burnin' incense. I got Jefferson Airplane turned way
up . . . I'm gettin' high. Don't you wish you was right in here between my legs?
Wiping your prick on my peachy silk sheets, huh? In my spotless new peach colored
room, you f*ckin' crumb! Pat Newly was here tonight . . . and he makes you look sick.
. . . Ahhhh-h-h! . . . Ahhhh . . . .
Hi, Freddy, glad nobody's gonna to hear this but me. I keep these tapes on a shelf I
built in the cold air return under my bed. I got my stash in there, too . . . I can just
reach down . . . Hmmmmm, good sh*t! Got . . . a couple of Thai sticks for special
occasions, like tonight.
Uh-h!
YEAH-H-H!
I have to call the gang, Freddy. You don't know the gang, Freddy. You don't know a
FUH-H-C-KIN' THING, Freddy. You sh*t. All you know is your big f*ckin' pr*ck. I timed
you once, Freddy . . . twenty-two seconds (giggles). Twenty-two seconds. Then your
big fu*ckin' pr*ck was a worm. I coulda stepped on it.
RALPH was better! Mom's Ralph was BETTER! Had to hold me down with both hands,
and he could hardly find -- "GOD'S GIFT," he called it -- under his hairy, fat belly --
But Ralph was better. HE WAS!
I asked you, Freddy, to do me again an' you said, you didn't have time. You yawned. I
was "Ready for Freddy," you bastard, and you YAWNED IN MY FACE! YOU F*CK-ING
BASTARD! That's why I joined the gang, I think. Now I got all the time in . . . what'd-
you call it?
. . . Free time, I guess. Lots-a-f*ckin'
We witches call it, The New World Order, "Sexual Revolution Time." Since our first Acid Trip, we're all into that Nazi lore, good ganga 'n stuff . . . maybe some Morning Glory seeds.
Glad nobody'll hear this, Freddy, because I been doin' bad sh*t! I'm just goin' to
keep this tape in this blue hole in the floor underneath my sack n' play it on my little machine to remember Halloweens past.
I can see it! I'm a little old lady -- all wrinkled and yucky . . . oogh! -- and my grand children toddle up an' say:
'Hey, Grandma, how'd you spend Halloween in the olden days?'
Well, sweeties -- you nasty-as*sed little snots, I'll say -- Let me tell you a story.
You listenin,' Freddy?
Listen, godda*mit! I can always tell this story to Pat Newly. He'd be REAL
Interested in this one. And he's a re-e-al gentleman.
[Riffle of paper.]
'Once upon a Halloween, the witches of Endor sent me, the gorgeous Cynara, to
Greenock High School. I was told to off a sh*ty b*tch. I was glad to do it for the Coven. She was a real fink, one of those who talks too much, to the wrong people . . . She talked too much to me.
'Listenin' Freddy?
'Remember Camilla? the Mexican slut gave you a blow j*b? Yuck, I
hate that. How it tastes. 'N you said -- I-I-I -- smelled 'a FISH!'
[Inhale . . . Gasp.]
ANYWAY, I'd say:
'You know what I mean, kiddies? You know how it is when you're playin' house an' some fink tells on you?
'You gotta GET 'EM, kiddies.
'For five weeks, I per . . .pe-rused my mission. Every day I looked for a chance to kill this fink.'
The trouble with the f^ckin' little b*tch is she was one of us. We had let her into "The Jump Our Bones Club," which you don't know a f*ckin' thing about!
She knew she had broken the rules 'n she had her defenses . . . her defenses up.
She knew our tricks and spells.
Our problem was we could never force her to take the TREATS. She was on her guard, ya know?
That's why she required "personal attention and special handling."
'Seven days a week, I followed the little C*CKSU*KER or had one of my sisters check
her out.'
Every hour -- Well, I mean we had to sleep sometime -- Our Familiar expected
that, at least . . . .
'Was I was in a f*ckin' sweat? You know it. Last two weeks, nothin' but f*ckin' sweat. What if she told?
'She was per-pet-u-ally with someone: Mr. Graylin, Mr. Edwards, that strange kid,
Blinkey Meyers, her mother . . . someone!
'Luckily, beginnin' this year, I took that office practice class, you know? doin' work for Mr. Graylin's secretary. So this very morning I'm goin' along the hall pickin' up the attendance slips for Mrs. Winston -- the Supervisor with the cob up her a*s -- 'n I'm all cool in my new Northface jacket. But I'm sweating, kiddies.'
It's Halloween an' I gotta' come through for MY SISTERS!
'So I step into the auto shop . . . an' it's like fallin' in a pile of sh*t. [And you know what kind of sh*t I'm talkin' about, doncha, Freddy?] There's The B*tch! What's this? She's the only girl in the class today, an' seems to be her turn on the GREASE RACK.
'The boys are all makin' a fuss over her. Ole Pat Newly (usually looking for a quick feel, a place to bury his dong, or at least someone to steal him a six pack) is helping her climb under this big f*ckin' Ford station wagon on the lift.'
Mr. Krinkler, the shop teacher -- you take auto shop yet at Greenock? He's
giving the same lecture for the twenty-third time -- stickin' in crappy stuff about Tricky Dicky 'n Watergate, about how he taped some sh*t, lied about it, and now he was going to be damned to Hell -- but I can see he wants to slither back to his office and a Hustler magazine he keeps in his "locked" bottom desk drawer.
'The horny old creep didn't realize that all you have to do is take out the top drawer
to get to the bottom one. Pat showed me one Saturday when he had the key to the
shop 'n was replacin' the brakes on his Dad's Camaro.
' The old f*rt gives me his fatherly, "Gee, I'd like to screw you if I had any balls,"
smile.
'"Okay," he says, "PAT! you take the lift up for our young beauty, Camilla, while I get
the absence slips for this "Miss Business Leader of Tomorrow" here."
'I sidle up to Pat just as he presses the black button on the post. The rack slow-w-
ly begins to rise above the b*tch.
'"All right, you guys," Ole Krinkler calls. He's furiously writing out cut slips on the
corner of his desk, back in that stinky office of his. He never has 'em ready. "You
guys start your assignments. Page 23 in the Manual. Remember, gentlemen, Camilla's just another grease monkey under that car. Think of her as Mar-tha Mitchell! Remember her, in my notes?"
'He gives me a wink.
'What-the-hell-that-mean?
'"At least until we fix to take more notes, Felicity?" he says. "Do you take notes in your classes?"
'I wink back. I-dun know.
' But with the other eye I'm watchin' the c*ck-teasin' b*tch. She's all agush and dainty fingers, but now she's wrestlin' a new transmission on a big come-along under the Ford. Even I know that's bad news. She should have the old one all the way out first.'
[You, dear Freddy, showed me that at the gas station last summer, before you popped
my cherry on your ever-lovin' coke machine next to the men's room.]
'Then, sh*t! I can't BELIEVE It! The little b*tch leans back over the new transmission
an' between the old one. She's got her fat little a*s pokin' out at every guy in the
class, only they ain't lookin.' They're on . . . PAGE 23! It's perfect.
'So I rub my tits against Pat's chest an' I say, "Would you like to come over tonight?"
'He lights up like an American Band Stan' an' he leans forward with this sh*t-eatin' grin. It took only a moment, and a thought, to bump the green button.
'Then, I entwined my fingers in front of Pat's face.
'The lift begins to turn direction with hardly a change in sound.
'"Seven o'clock?' I ask.
'It's comin' down. I can see the little b*tch's tw*t begin to shift as she realizes
something is wrong, but she doesn't know what.
'"Okay, then," I say, head back, battin' my perfect, mascaraed eye lashes, an' I walk into Krinkler's office to pick up the cut slips.
'All convulsing, gasping, giving little crooning sounds, Camilla is trying to turn over.
'"See ya,' Pat says. He leans back on the post, his eyes still followin' me, still with
the big sh*t-eatin' grin.
'I get the slips and am out of the shop -- near out the room -- when I hear Krinkler's
shout. He's in a panic. You shoulda heard it, seen it!!
'"Newl-l-l-l-y!"'
(giggle.)
'Then the SHRIEK!!
'I don't want to miss it, so I peek back inside the door just in time to see that big
f*ckin' Ford transmission hit her in the gut. You wouldn't have
believed it, Freddy. So much blood and sh*t splashing over them all.
'"No more C*CK-SUCKING for you, Camilla," I whisper, under my breath.
'The guys are all standing around, their mouths wide open, wipin' crud off
themselves. Krinkler has Newly by the throat and his other hand is flopping around
the red "Stop-Emergency" button on the post.
'The lift keeps rising and sinking. The guys are turnin' away. One of them is spilling
his cookies. The b*tch's body is shuddering like a worm on a pin between the
transmissions. I clutch my cheeks to keep from breaking up.
'Perfect crime accomplished.'
Well, Freddy, 'sca-USE ME? And you better, under the circumstances, 'cause you're
never going to hear this. I'm gonna butt out now. Pat Newly was here tonight, but he's
scared sh*tless. Had to let him f*ck me to calm him down. The drunken coward. He don't know nothin.' The police interviewed us all, but they think it was an accident -- just like ALL THE OTHERS.
Hey, Freddy . . . omm-m-m-m-m . . . omm-m-m-m-m
(giggles) . . . (giggles) . . . You sh*tter!
(giggles)
I gotta pick out a black dress for the funeral 'n go down to the beach to see my Sisters. The moon's out over the water, 'n maybe we'll take a cel-ee-bratory swim in the breakers . . . .
[Click!]
[Sh-h-h- h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h . . . . ]
--------------------------------
The last fifty feet of the tape were blank. I sat trembling, the faint smell of gas from the stove in my nostrils, the hiss of it horribly loud in my ears. I rubbed the cleansing cream and tears from my eyes with tissues. Just as I turned off the machine, there was a tap on the door.
I took the chair away from the knob and let my daughter in.
"Did Daddy call?" Pattie asked, holding Shazama the Cat in her arms. "I smoked some of your grass, but I thought I heard him on your message machine."
"Yeah," I said, sliding the tape reel into the box marked "Confessions. "Yeah, Pat was drunk as usual."
"Poor Daddy," she sighed, pulling at a stray curl. "Who was that talking in here?"
"Just a tape from the box you brought down," I faced her, my back to the stove. "Slumber parties we used to have back in the olden days, 1973, when all your aunties and I used to engage in teenage devilment."
"Did I hear the name of your great love? Freddie, the one who was killed in Vietnam?"
"Yeah, I thought of naming you Fredrika for a while. He was drafted that spring." Self-consciously, I slipped the "Confessions" carton into a trick-or-treat bag pinned to my dress. "Freddy was one of the last to die."
"I'd like to hear it."
"Not tonight, darling baby. Mommie has to teach in the morning," I said, pulling a blanket, pillow and sheets from the kitchen closet. "Maybe, one day. I'm going to clean it up and put some of it in a memoir. How God works in mysterious ways. Saddam caught, Castro takes a fall, now Arafat dying. God's will! Perhaps our President will win yet."
Pattie yawned, just like her father.
"I'm going to put you in my bed. You shouldn't have smoked. Tomorrow, you have that new job I got you. Perhaps they'll have testing."
----------------
After we had prayed and she was asleep, I stood for a long time on the stairway landing, hugging myself in my old blue robe, clutching the tape in my chilled hand, looking out at the sea. It had cleared and there was a fresh breeze. The hunters moon was low and red on the horizon, the waters molten. I could have swam toward it and never come back.
I wanted to cry, too, but I never could, not really, not any more.
I tried to bring myself to throw the reel out into the water, but, F*CK IT! I couldn't do that either.
"Gottes Willen!"
THE END
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
macresarf1
|
 - Top 100 |
|
Location: San Francisco, Ca.
Reviews written: 553
Trusted by: 373 members
About Me:
7/1/08: Happy July4; Support Bush/Chaney Impeachment Hearings; Macresarf1's RED ROOM Author Page: Thanks Epinions:
|
|
|
© 1999-2008 Shopping.com, Inc.