The dim light of Old lady Romanov’s domicile, after entering from the bright light of early afternoon, caused Peter’s eyes to require many rapid blinks and several long seconds to adjust to. In that time, his other senses provided a few hints concerning his surroundings.
The pervading scent that permeated the trailer reminded Peter of his Uncle Rico’s chop shop. It was a not-quite-rusty, almost-metallic smell with hints of rot. There was a tang in the air too, but Peter couldn’t quite put his finger on why he recognized the smell. Music was playing softly within the trailer, but it was unlike anything he’d ever heard before - an old-style organ that seemed to simply repeat pentatonic minor scales with no consistent tempo. While the ‘music’ was a little eerie, the next thing his ears reported to his mind was downright upsetting.
“Ooh, Greg you spoil me! I didn’t even order delivery today.” The voice that had spoken was female, raspy, dripping with excitement and hunger.
Peter’s vision was clearing and he took his first squinty look at Old lady Romanov. She was, clearly, cosplaying some ancient vampire. In her trailer. By herself. She had to be. For one thing, ‘Old lady Romanov’ looked like she was perhaps 19 or 20. Her hair was a white so stark it could only be a wig. The sensual lips twisted into a grin as she eyed Peter up and down, and then again, were the color of fresh blood. Peter was a married man, and therefore knew that a woman rarely used makeup of any kind when they were at home with no plans of leaving or expectations of visitors. The low cut v of her black silk blouse showed off impressive assets wrapped tightly with bone-white skin. She wasn’t wearing pants at all. Instead, Old lady Romanov stood in front of Peter and Greg in nothing but her very revealing blouse and a pair of black panties.
“This one isn’t food, Roma.” Greg laughed, slapping Peter’s shoulder. It was the same shoulder he’d slapped earlier. Peter was sure it would bruise but resisted the impulse to immediately rub it. “Not today, at least. This is my new friend, Peter. We’re teaming up for a dog-hunt tonight.”
“Is that so?” Roma asked in her sultry voice, pouting as she approached Peter for a closer look.
She moved much faster than Peter would ever have guessed she could, covering the ten feet between them in a blur. The next thing Peter knew, this nearly-naked, very hackle-raising woman was sniffing probingly at his face from a mere inch away. He reflexively pulled back but, as though in perfect time with a practiced dance partner, Old lady Romanov moved forward as Peter moved back - ultimately retaining the same too-close proximity throughout the maneuver. When she moved down to sniff at his neck, Peter turned wide, panicked eyes to Greg.
“He’s a bit jumpy, Roma, so maybe give the guy a little space. It’s his first time meeting a vamp.” Greg stood behind Roma awaiting a response as Peter’s pleading expression intensified. “Oh! Just remembered, I did bring something for you. Picked it up off of Hal over at the docks about a week back. Kept meaning to bring it by, but you know what it’s like.”
Roma whirled, the motion wafting her scent over Peter, who had just released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and subsequently sucked in a lung full of the seductive perfume. But, who would just wear perfume while hanging out, by themself, in their home - which was in a trailer park? Whether perfume or some natural aroma, the scent was sickly sweet and somehow a touch spicy. Peter, wide-eyed, realized he had just suddenly and unexpectedly sprung a full woody and hurried to tuck little Peter into the waistband of his briefs. Looking up, he saw Greg’s understanding, even pitying expression.
“What is it?” Roma demanded, and then began throwing out possibilities without waiting for an answer. “A bezoar? Bag o’ blood? Oh! Is it a blood tart?”
“No,” Greg admitted. “Nothing quite so exciting. Or edible.”
Chagrined, Roma once again oriented on Peter, speaking to Greg over one shoulder. “Just put whatever trinket you brought me on the side table,” she said. Evidently, she was no longer interested in Greg’s offering. She smelled at Peter again, frowning as she did. “What is he?”
“He’s a…” Greg paused, eyeing Peter uncertainly. “I don’t know, actually. Peter, what do you do for a living?”
“Not his job, Greg. He smells human. Like, pure human without even a trace of any other known species, cabal or otherwise.”
“I am a human,” Peter offered, despite not being asked. “And this may blow your mind, but you are too. And Greg, the big guy over there, also human. We’re all fucking humans. What the hell is wrong with you people? Vampires, werewolves? Seriously, did Renea put you both up to this or something? Because if so, you should know that I’m ready for this joke to be over. You got me. You all got me really really good, but I am starting to get the creeps, I want a glass of whiskey, I want to pet my dog and make a normal dinner and spend a normal evening with my wife who, it may shock you to hear, is also a human.”
Greg Van Helsing and Old lady Romanov exchanged an amused glance.
“Sorry,” Peter said. He took a deep, calming breath only to find that the following inhalation refreshed Roma’s seductive scent and, once again, his little Peter into a full tilt boogie. He didn’t even tuck it in his waistband this time.
“All good, mate. Listen, Roma and I have something we need to discuss privately. How about you just gather your wits in here and we’ll be back in a couple of minutes, alright?”
Peter nodded in a stupor, located Roma’s couch, and sank into it. He stared into the dusty glass covered coffee table, mind reeling, and wishing he had not agreed to spend the afternoon with the crazy man he’d met on the internet.
“Don’t go anywhere, now. I’ll know if you do…” Roma said threateningly.
Old lady Romanov snuck a glance at Peter’s woody, smiled deviously, and then the pair of weirdos left him in the living room, if it could really be described as such, and disappeared down the hall and through another door. He only caught the barest glimpse of what lay beyond, but Peter was pretty sure trailer houses did not have basements. He shook his head in some vain attempt to clear it. Perhaps it was really he, and not the ‘vampire’ and ‘monster hunter’, that had lost his marbles.
With the visually striking ‘Old lady’ Romanov occupying the majority of his perception when he’d entered the dimly lit home, Peter hadn’t taken a look around the place itself. Left by himself in a strange place, he got up to have a look around. It was spacious, he realized now that he thought about it. Moreso than he ever would have guessed when looking at it from the outside. It wasn’t as big as the living room in his own home, but very nearly. It also had a hallway with two doors on either side, one of which he knew opened into a stairway lit with candelabra to a basement - which was a quandary all on its own. He ran one finger along his chin, confused. As he thought over the logistics of exactly how this trailer home was so spacious, his eyes drifted back to the coffee table, eventually landing on a wooden contraption about the size of a softball.
Curious, he leaned over the coffee table to realize he was looking at a puzzle box. Peter almost squealed with excitement. He loved puzzle boxes. So much so that he had been gifted dozens of them throughout his life for birthdays and such. At this point in his thirty-one-year-long life, he would consider himself an expert at recognizing and even solving any and every puzzle box. Yet even Peter Mayhew had never seen something quite like this.
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“Heh,” he laughed to himself, amused. “It isn’t a puzzle box. It’s a puzzle dodecahedron.”
Unable to restrain himself, Peter sank back into the couch and picked up the contraption. He held it close for a solid inspection before beginning the process of solving it. It was unlike any other he had ever seen, including videos of unique versions he’d watched on the internet. There were gears and mechanisms placed asymmetrically throughout and, on the few bits of its uncovered surface, there were incredibly detailed, tiny depictions of… well, he wasn’t sure. They almost looked like some bastard combination of Sanskrit and Japanese Kanji to him. As he turned the device over and over, slowly taking in as many of its intricacies as he could, Peter was starting to see a pattern to their placement though, without knowing whether any given symbol was rightside up, he couldn’t be sure. Satisfied with his cursory inspection, Peter began pushing and pulling on the mechanisms and trying to turn the gears.
After a minute or two of poking, prodding, and pulling all of the parts that looked like they should move, Peter moved on to poking things that did not look like they should. He started with one of the calligraphic symbols, delicately pushing it with his pointer finger. This action did get a response from the box, but it was a far cry from anything Peter was expecting. Yanking his finger back as he dropped the box, Peter briefly saw a needle retract back into the box - now sporting a droplet of his blood on its hollow tip. He sucked his bleeding finger, the needle had penetrated deep, almost to the bone. If it had been any thicker than a hair’s width, the bleeding would have been much worse. As it was, Peter’s finger only released a few tiny droplets of blood. Still, it throbbed with pain and Peter glared down at the puzzle dodecahedron sitting innocently on the coffee table for a moment.
With a pen and pocket-sized notebook he always kept handy, Peter copied the symbol he’d poked and drew a frowny face beside it. Next, he used the pen to gently poke at the rest of the symbols, but nothing happened. He poked the first symbol again, this time with the pen. Nothing. Wincing, he hesitantly pushed another symbol, this time with his middle finger.
“Mother son of a…” he cursed quietly to himself as he received another small puncture wound.
Angry at the device, but unwilling to accept defeat, Peter copied the second symbol on his notebook and added a frowny face. There were 13 of the markings on the device, and Peter’s fingers were all throbbing when he touched the final symbol with his left-hand pinky. He braced himself for the pain that was likely to follow, and then pushed. This one, the last one, did not stab him. Instead, it was depressed into the device only a fraction of an inch. With his finger still held on the square-shaped indent, Peter found he was able to slide it in two directions - which he arbitrarily labeled ‘up’ and ‘down’ based on the way he was holding it. As far as he could see or hear, nothing at all happened when the symbol was slid entirely in either direction. He frowned when he realized that the next logical step would be to touch the other symbols again, this time with the depressed symbol slid into one of its two alternate positionings. He was going to get stabbed a lot today.
When Greg and Old lady Romanov returned, Peter was standing over the coffee table, swearing loudly at the puzzle box in his hands. All of his fingers red to the first knuckle, smeared with his own blood. There were a handful of torn out pages from a pocket-sized notebook laid out in rows on the coffee table, each filled with notes and sketches. Focused on his task, Peter didn’t even look up as they entered. Roma looked him over with amusement and Greg burst into laughter.
“I told you this guy was great,” Greg boomed. “Peter, what the hell are you doing?”
Finally, Peter looked up from the puzzle in his hands. “What sadist came up with this puzzle box? Who the hell makes a puzzle box that stabs people?” he demanded.
“Who the hell keeps playing with a puzzle box that stabs people?” Greg asked, still chuckling as he pointed at Peter’s bloody fingers.
“Puzzle box,” Roma said, eyeing the device consideringly. “I suppose it is. It is much more than that, though.”
She approached, looking closely at the puzzle box. Her eyes widened. “You… It’s changed. What…” she trailed off, looking at Peter questioningly. “The item in your hands is an artifact that dates back to the time of humanity’s first written languages. As far as I know it hasn’t been opened since it was created. I’ve spent years trying to work it out, off and on, of course. I’ve never been able to get it to do anything but stab me when I touch the oracle bone script symbols. You’ve been here for, what, ten minutes? And you’ve got the gears moving? What did you do?”
“Oracle bone script?” Peter asked. His eyes narrowed as he tried to recall where he had heard that term before. “Isn’t that an ancient Chinese written language? Like, ancient, ancient?”
“It is,” Roma confirmed, now looking at Peter appraisingly. “Who are you, really?”
“Peter Mayhew, puzzle solver extraordinaire,” he declared, lips curled downward slightly. “You’re saying this thing is, what, like 3,000 years old?”
“Something like that. You don’t think you can solve it, do you?”
“Oh I’ll solve it,” Peter said with resolve. The damned thing had stabbed him over 30 times already. He was going to solve it. “It may take a while though. I’ve never seen anything anywhere near as complex, or violent, as this thing. Oracle bone script…” he thought aloud, trailing off into an incomprehensible mumble as a new clue to solving what had just become Peter Mayhew’s newest obsession had been presented.
“Well, Peter Mayhew,” Roma said. “If you do, your reward will be quite generous. You can even keep the artifact once it is open, but whatever lies within belongs to me. Understood?”
“What?” Peter asked, perplexed. “Oh. You think it’s got something inside of it? Sure, you can have it. Of course. It’s yours. I just want to solve the puzzle. Can I take it home with me? I don’t see this being a one-day project. Not even for me.”
“No. You may not. We’ve only just met and you’re a long way from earning that kind of trust. You may, however, return here tomorrow to continue,” Roma offered.
Peter reluctantly placed the artifact into Roma’s outstretched hand, eyeing it longingly even as she placed it back down on the coffee table. She grabbed Peter’s right hand, pulling it slowly toward her and then, without any request for consent or warning of any kind, put his index finger into her mouth. He quickly yanked his hand away from her.
“Whoa, lady. Let’s not go putting other people’s appendages in our mouths. I would have thought that would go without saying, but then we are in a trailer park. Are there different rules here or something?”
The throbbing in his other nine fingers remained, but the one that had been inside of Roma felt remarkably pain-free. He looked down at it to see that the blood had been sucked clean off. Which reminded him that Greg had claimed she was, in fact, a vampire. Peter reconsidered the possibility that he was telling the truth. Roma was able to elicit an erection simply with her smell, and had all of the tell-tale signs of the fictional species; was in possession of an artifact over 3,000 years old; might live in a spatial anomaly of a trailer house; sucked blood off of the finger of a complete stranger; was so sensitive to light that she had to black out her entire house - could she actually be a vampire? Regardless of his experience this afternoon, Peter didn’t believe it. Couldn’t. Not without proof.
“Roma,” he said cautiously, knowing that if this was indeed some elaborate joke at his expense, what he was about to ask was the punch line they’d be waiting for, “it might be rude and I feel ridiculous asking, but can you… can you prove to me that you’re a… that you’re a… you know?”
“A vampire?” she asked, tone teasing. Her lips quirked into a lustful smile. “I can prove it, alright.”
“Prove it without side effects, Roma,” Greg interjected as Old lady Romanov stepped even closer to Peter.
Roma frowned petulantly. “Fine.”
Old lady Romanov, the hauntingly beautiful woman who looked no older than 20, lifted her upper lip. Her incisors grew, extending to perhaps an inch long, in a flash. Peter had seen costumes and props that could do as much, and remained unconvinced. Seeing the skeptical look on his face, Roma sunk her fangs into her own wrist. Blood so dark as to be nearly black trickled from her chin as she released the bite and held her wrist up to him for inspection. In stunned silence, Peter watched as the clearly punctured, bone-white skin knitted itself together. He looked up to meet Roma’s eyes. She had one brow raised, corners of her lips upturned.
Peter opened his mouth to speak, closed it, turned his head to the side and narrowed his eyes as he attempted to rationalize what he’d just witnessed. It had to have been a trick, an illusion. If he were tasked with replicating the illusion, he wasn’t entirely certain he couldn’t pull off a convincing display.
“What’d I tell you?” Greg asked. “Skeptic. Look at his face. He still doesn’t believe you’re a vamp.”
“What if I were to…” Roma started to say, and then she vanished in a puff of black smoke that quickly dissipated, dispersing into the trailer home like steam from a boiling pot. “Disappear?” came her disembodied whisper.
It sounded as though her words were uttered directly into Peter’s right ear. He turned sharply to face the source of the sound, whirled all the way around wildly searching, but Roma was nowhere in sight.
“Up here,” the disembodied voice whispered, this time coming from above Peter.
He looked up to see a small black bat looking down at him. It chirped, somehow sounding amused, and then Peter was momentarily blinded by another puff of black smoke. When it cleared, Old lady Romanov was once again standing between himself and Greg. Blinking rapidly, Peter turned his look of frightened disbelief to Greg, who only nodded slowly, lips pressed together, in response. Wordlessly, Peter Mayhew resumed his seat on the couch - eyes glazed over. He ran his hands through his hair, elbows on his knees, mind racing with questions.
“So you’re a vampire,” Peter said, lips downturned. “I’m convinced. But one thing doesn’t quite make sense.”
“And what is that?” Roma asked, once again standing next to Greg. The two of them were smiling with amusement at Peter.
Peter stood up, erection bulging. He pointed at it with both hands. “Explain this.”