"A Paranormal Assignation on St. Valentine’s Day" by E. W. Farnsworth
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A Paranormal Assignation on St. Valentine’s Day
by E. W. Farnsworth
The Blue Velvet Bar had an unsavory reputation as it catered to losers and lowlifes of the classless members of society. An acquaintance had frequented the place until two bikers took issue with his attendance at “their” bar and sent him to the Emergency Care for a concussion and thirteen stitches. I was feeling sorry for myself at a loss for a St. Valentine’s Day date and figured on having a one or two cold ones among the regulars before calling it a lost night.
When I arrived at the bar at ten-thirty PM, the place was full of smoke and shoulder-to-shoulder guests with everyone talking at the top of his lungs above the juke-box’s booming noise. All the tables and booths were crowded to capacity, and the bar rail had barely enough room for my size-fourteen feet planted toe to heel. I stretched over the bar to take a gander at the clientele in case some lonely lady might be amenable to my buying her a drink.
“What will it be, stranger?” the barkeep asked as he ran his wet cloth over the area in front of me. His smile was not friendly, and the word “stranger” was a trigger for his regulars to take special notice of my being an outsider. Muscular bikers on either side of me pressed together so close I smelled their body odor and foul breath amongst the ambient beer fug and nicotine.
“A boilermaker, barkeep,” I ordered with determination, and I laid a $20 bill on the wet surface. He swept away the cash as he turned to fill my order. Meanwhile, I heard the threatening jingle of biker chains on either side, and I thought about my acquaintance’s concussion. As I calculated which of my antagonists I should slug first, I heard a shrill voice from behind me saying, “Cut the man some slack, Butch and Nigel. Back off right now. I looked in the long mirror at the lovely image in the cowgirl costume. Nigel having given her room, she slipped into his place beside me.
I said, “Bartender, make that two boilermakers, the second one for my comely companion, whose name is . . .”
“Violet Weyand, Mister. Call me Vy. That’s good of you. As these bikers will give us only as much time as it takes to drink one round, we’d better be quick. It’s a nice night to walk and talk outside anyway. Ralph, we’re going to drink and run if you don’t mind.”
“Whatever you say, Vy!” With a wink, he set the two glasses of beer and two shots of whiskey on the bar. Vy and I dropped the whiskeys into our beers and then threw the brews back in single swigs. She gestured for me to follow her out the side exit, the customers parting for her in the same way as I imagined the Red Sea had done for Moses. It was clear she was well known here.
Outside the silence was, by contrast to the bar, profound. We walked towards the old cemetery without saying a word. “Those bikers might have been a problem for me, but you knew just how to handle them.”
She finished lighting her cigarette with her butane lighter and shook her head. “Just wait a few minutes. Those two will be following us—maybe with a few of their buddies, and they’ll be looking to make serious trouble. Are you fit to wrangle?”
“I reckon I can hold my own out here in the open. I did not intend to make this a violent St. Valentine’s Day, but I’ll take what comes. When the bikers come after us, just stand behind me.” She smiled and blew smoke through her nose.
As if signaled by a distant ambulance siren, we heard the music of the bikers’ chains behind us. I let Vy walk a few steps ahead and turned to deal with our assailants. The two bikers seem to have grown a foot taller than when they stood at the bar and their eyes glowed like bright coals. They moved to the right and left of me swinging their chains in circles. I saw they were carrying saps in their opposite hands, so they were not going to be easy targets.
I felt Vy’s hand on my shoulder. “Stand perfectly still,” she whispered. Then she did a little shuffle, releasing two long tentacles in the process, which whipped the chains from the bikers’ right hands. When the bikers switched attention to their saps, her tentacles dropped their chains with clunks. I watched her tentacles grasp the hands holding the saps. I heard sick crunches and then screams of agony. The saps hit the sidewalk.
Vy surveyed the wreckage and asked, “Shall we continue our walk? Or have we had enough fun this Valentine’s Day? If the latter, why don’t you walk me home?”
The bikers now were rolling in the street howling and beside themselves with pain. Vy had retracted her tentacles, and she pointed the way to her dwelling. When we reached the entrance to the cemetery, she said, “Sorry, but this is where we must part.”
“We have hardly gotten to know one another, Vy.”
“Yet you know enough to see I am not your type though I am just the kind of girl to have had as your Valentine this night.” She kissed me on the lips but her lips felt cold. She smelled vaguely of brimstone, but her garments smelled faintly of patchouli. Before I knew it, she had run off to enter the little crypt in the graveyard and closed its iron door from the inside. I ran to the crypt to try the door, but it would not budge. I suspected she knew of a secret lever that allowed her to come and go as she wished.
Around the crypt’s door were the names of the interred, and amongst those listed in stone was Violet Weyand, with two tentacles interlaced around it.
A Paranormal Assignation on St. Valentine’s Day