...Met By Moonlight... (excerpt)
Tired
as she was at the end of her shift, Kelly O’Shaughnessey barely noticed the
January chill that bit through her heavy sweater until her weary sigh raised a
cloud of steam. The strain of her
late-night hours as a waitress at the Kellerman CafÈ was getting harder and
harder to take. She tucked a stray
tendril of copper hair behind her ear and rubbed the back of her neck as she
walked to the beat-up Chevy. If
only she had a choice in the matter…. God
knows she needed the money, however, and it was sweet of Hank to
accommodate her request to work a shift not easily fit into the general
schedule. The other girls whispered
it was because he had a crush on her.
If so, he had never shown even the slightest hint of interest.
Too bad, because at this point in her life, she was just about ready to
settle for a warm body and a hand to hold onto…no matter what the total
package looked like.
Kelly
slipped behind the wheel of the battered green coupe and put the key in the
ignition. Turning the key produced
no effect whatsoever. Not even the
grind of a dead starter, or the click of a run-down battery. Nothing. “Damn
it!” she swore aloud. This was
the third time this week she had had a problem with it.
Pulling the hood release with a weary sigh, Kelly
climbed back out of the car. She
opened the hood and began to check the things she knew that could be wrong.
It was a short list.
“Hallo…it
appears you might be in a bit of a spot. May
I be of assistance?”
Kelly
whirled at the sound of the unfamiliar voice, banging her head sharply on the
edge of the upraised hood.
“Oh,
I say…do be careful!” The
stranger leapt forward, pressing her down on the bumper of the car.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m
fine,” Kelly replied dazedly, peering up at the figure silhouetted against the
full moon. “Who are you?”
“Oh,
I am sorry…. That was frightfully
rude of me. My name is Marcus
Wakefield. I know a bit about
cars—if you’d like me to take a look.”
Marcus moved into the harsh circle of
the overhead streetlight, and she stared.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, a frown creasing his brow.
“N-no…nothing…nothing
at all.” She gulped nervously.
“Oh
my…I had forgotten….” He
began to laugh merrily. “I must
have given you quite a fright.”
“No…that’s
okay.” She was beginning to
recover her composure. “Were
you… in an accident?”
One
side of his face boasted regally sculpted features crowned by a thick, wavy mop
of dark hair falling casually across one eye, with a well-trimmed beard
completing the frame. The other
side appeared poured from a can of partially congealed wax into a misshapen
mold. The expected features of eye,
nose, and mouth were in roughly approximate places, but they sagged in the midst
of a ruined landscape.
“No,
a video actually.” He reached up
and began to peel the drooping skin from the side of his face.
“We were filming down the road a way.
I was lazy and decided to leave on the make-up until I got home.
I’m a rock star. Well…to be honest, ‘star’ is probably a bit
over-stating, but we do have our following.
Maybe you’ve heard of us…we’re called the ‘Sticky Wickets’
because people are always in such a hurry to get out of our concerts.”
He paused, as if waiting for an expected response.