“It’s hard to find someone to deliver meals to Mr. Adams,” the supervisor at Meals on Wheels had explained. “He has leprosy, but it’s not contagious. It came from research on mutant strains of the organism. Unfortunately, he is disfigured.”

And she was used to disfigurement. The accidental fire at his job had scarred her husband beyond recognition. He lived two painful years until his damaged lungs could gasp no more, her empty house a vacated tomb now, the loneliness a web. Relief at being spared the sight of her husband’s struggle a heavy guilt.

“I’ll be glad to take Mr. Adams his food,” she had said with a faint smile.

She walked up to the house. There was a note on the screen door: Meals on Wheels please come in and set the food plate on the kitchen table. I promise I will not come out until you have departed. Thank you for your kindness.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BLOG

Timothy C. Hobbs is the Vamplit published author of The Pumpkin Seed, Charles is a drinker of human blood and an eater of human flesh, a monster dressed in the skin of a man, and The Smell of Ginger, it’s Halloween in Jasper, Texas when Butch, Suzy and their dad encounter two spinster sisters who have been waiting eternally for children to call their own. His new book, The Music Box Sonata will be released in September.

Join Vamplit’s Summer Reading Program and read for free.
Learn more >>

The front door was open behind the screened one. She stared through the screen and saw the kitchen was straight ahead. She went in, taking the plate to the kitchen table. For some reason she had expected the home to be cluttered and dirty, but everything was neat. No dishes piled in the sink, no overflowing trash can.

No soiled robes or tin cups filled with alms.

As she walked back through the living room she noticed a fan on an end table pushing the warm, mid-summer air around, a console television in the corner opposite a Lazy Boy, and a love seat. Shades were drawn over the windows.

She listened for any movement in the house and heard none. She shrugged her shoulders and left.

* * * *

After two weeks of delivering his food, she finally saw Mr. Adams.

She found him sitting in the Lazy Boy. He was wearing a plastic Halloween mask of Karloff’s Frankenstein monster. She felt her stomach tighten, waited, and then realized he was asleep.

His breathing was a steady, noisy rattle. He wore a tan robe. His feet were in oversized house shoes to accommodate the skin nodules and swelling. The hands slightly out of the robe’s sleeves were covered with similar nodules; the fingers short and blunted, the skin color a reddish brown with patches of gray.

She wasn’t certain what to do. She coughed slightly, clearing her throat. She saw an immediate jerk of his hands. He turned his face toward her. She saw the faintest glint of his eyes.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said hoarsely. “I must have fallen asleep. I take medication.” He stood up from the recliner and swayed as if dizzy. He steadied himself and added, “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “I was more startled than frightened. I didn’t expect to find you there.”

He scrutinized her from behind his mask and found an attractive, older woman. She was dressed casually. Her face held an aspect of gentleness he was not accustomed to from anyone confronting him. It was typically repulsion and fear he found in those faces.

“I must apologize for the mask,” he said. “I found it on my lawn last year after Halloween. Discarded by some disappointed Trick or Treater, I suppose.” He sat back down. “Forgive my not standing. The weight on my feet can sometimes be uncomfortable.”

“Is it very painful?”

“Not really. The disease affects nerve endings producing an anesthesia of sorts. It’s just that if I stand too long, there is a possibility I’ll fall because I can’t feel my feet.”

She felt empathy for him. Obviously he was an intelligent man who seemed kind and thoughtful.

“Would you mind if I set up lunch for you?” she asked.

He hesitated a moment. “Oh, I don’t want to be an imposition. Besides, you wouldn’t want to watch me eat. It’s not very pleasant.”

She smiled and went to the kitchen. She unwrapped the foil from the food plate. She glanced up and found him standing on the other side of the table.

“If you’ll tell me where I can find the plates and silverware,” she said. “I’ll warm this in the oven for you.”

* * * *

She no longer brought him meals. She cooked for him instead.

He rarely took off his mask. The first time had shocked her: the skin folds over the forehead, the collapsed nose, the thickened earlobes, the eyes scarcely visible through the puffy lids. There were no eyebrows remaining.

“A real Frankenstein,” he had chuckled through his damaged larynx.

But her shock was brief.

She went to his bed, their sex not standard by any means, his genitals shrunken and made useless long ago, but he managed to thrill her with his deformed fingers and lips, her orgasms moving her into oblivious rapture.

* * * *

“Are you certain?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she answered, extending an arm.

He pulled the suspension into a tuberculin syringe, slid the tiny needle just under the skin of her forearm, and injected the solution.

“Didn’t hurt at all,” she said.

“The culture should be viable. This mutated strain of Lepromatous Leprosy has an accelerated incubation.”

She smiled and held a cotton ball on the injection site. When the minimal bleeding ceased, she got up and went to the kitchen table. She removed an object from a plastic sack on the table’s top.

“I had to go to a lot of novelty shops to find this.” She placed the mask of Elsa Lanchester’s creature bride on her face, the top of the mask extended to show the wildly spiraling black and white hair.

“The Bride of Frankenstein,” he said, a smile growing underneath his own mask.

“Your constant companion,” she said, walking to him with open arms.

998 words

In what story swept with lies
Shimmers daylight’s sunny skies?
On what threat that seems so dire?
What the stake dare piece the sire?

And what temper, and what lust,
Takes the vampyre and breaks a trust?
And when thy fear began to die,
What dread fang? and what dread eye?

What the spellchecker? what the leap?
In what coffin was thy sleep?
What the novel? what dread soul
Dare its conscience take its toll?

When the night threw out their dead,
And evil banish’d from their bed,
Did the author smile to see?
Did society who made Dracula make thee?

Vampyre! Vampyre! shining bright
Above the forest filled with light.
What authorial pen or style,
Could tame thy evil purgatory?