Dr. Van Helsing, carrying his valise, emerged from the upstairs bedroom.
“Miss Mina, I’ve been thinking it over and sometimes I am a pompous blowhard and have a quick temper and ….” His voice trailed off as he looked down into the entry hall to find it empty. “Hmph. I’m talking to myself again. Well, good. I didn’t want to apologize anyway.”
Claustrophobia came through the double doors, creeping and cringing as though she were trying to sneak out unobserved. After she carefully shut the doors she looked up to see Van Helsing on the balcony.
“Hello, herr doctor.
“Oh, hello, bimbo. Do you know where Miss Mina and Mr. Harker are?”
Giggles erupted from behind the game room door. Claustrophobia smiled nervously.
“Jonathan is preoccupied at the moment, and I don’t know where the young lady is.”
“Too bad. I must look for her myself.” He began to descend the staircase.
Claustrophobia rushed over to stop him on the bottom step. “Please. I must speak to you.”
“I’m in a hurry,” Van Helsing retorted with his usual German terseness. “Make it fast, bimbo.”
“Please don’t call me that.” Tears welled in her eyes—her dead, vacant eyes.
For the first time in many years, the professor actually felt regret for his rigid no-nonsense comportment. “Very well.” He even allowed himself to become a wee bit delicate. “Claustrophobia.”
“Thank you very much.” If she had any blood to rush to her cheeks, Claustrophobia would have blushed. “Oh dear. Now that I have you here, face to face, I’m having a difficult time coming up with the right words to describe my feelings.”
“Try. Hard. Quickly.”
Her ample bosom rose and fell at an alarming frequency. “I just love it when you’re brusque.”
“It comes naturally.” He shrugged immodestly.
“I know. It did with ‘him’ also.”
“May I venture a guess that ‘him’ is Sigmund Freud?”
“Ja.”
Van Helsing strutted closer to her, thinking thoughts he had not thought in a long time. “Then may I venture another guess that what you have difficulty saying is that you’ve got the hots for this old German doctor, eh?”
“Ja.”
“You flatter me.” He tried unsuccessfully to hide his pleasure. “No one’s wanted to get into my pants for years.”
“I’m so embarrassed.” Claustrophobia went to the sofa and collapsed.
Van Helsing, without any hesitation, sat next to her, crossed his legs and pulled out a notepad and pencil to begin taking notes. “There, there, my little streudle, no need for embarrassment. I think it’s sweet. If you don’t mind telling, how old are you? I mean, how old were you when you died?”
“Nineteen. It was just last year.”
Taking a deep breath, he put his pad and pencil away, and gently lifted her legs into his lap. “Nineteen years old. And since she’s dead, I couldn’t legally be tried for contributing to the delinquency of a minor,” he muttered. “Suddenly I feel like a dirty old man.”
Claustrophobia sat up and flung herself into his arms. “Please hold me.”
“You got it.”
They embraced tightly, their hands running rampant over each other’s bodies. She opened her mouth as though to engage in a little tongue wrestling when she exposed her sharp canines and attempted to take a nip out of his neck. Van Helsing jumped to his feet and quickly hopped to stand behind the sofa, placing as much space as possible between him and Claustrophobia.
“Oh, drat,” she whined, “I didn’t mean to do that.”
His heart melted again, and the doctor found himself rushing to her side to comfort her. “I know.”
“You believe me?” she asked with pitiful hope.
“For some strange reason, yes.”
Raucous laughter from the game room broke the intimate moment. Claustrophobia walked to the double doors, her jaw hardening. “Susie Belle’s so loud and vulgar. I hate her.”
“She’s an American. What can you expect?”
The nubile vampire turned to look at the old man, her cute little double chin quivering in mental anguish. “She and Salacia are always saying I’m too plump. Do you think I’m plump?”
“Yes!” Van Helsing exploded in orgasmic ecstasy.
“What?”
He rushed to her again. “I love plump under aged girls!”
“Oh. Thank you.” A smile flickered across her full though pale lips. “But I still hate Susie Belle for saying I am plump. And when I’m around her I can’t help but act like her and Salacia. She was just as bad.” She paused to look into the professor’s eyes. “I’m glad you killed her.”
“I didn’t kill her. She was already dead.”
“Well, whatever you did to her, I’m glad you did it.”
“Thank you.” The hardened old doctor felt his heart dissolve into a pool of gelatinous sentimentality. If truth be told, the last serious love of his life was a girl who ultimately dumped him for his erstwhile rival in the psychological arts, Sigmund Freud. She eventually married the Austrian and bore him several children, a fact that did not go not unnoticed in Van Helsing’s deepest consciousness. In fact, the doctor had a secret he would never reveal, forever locked in his mind and the registration files of the University of Dusseldorf. After being rejected by his love, Van Helsing dropped out of school for a year to pursue a career in grossvater tanz, a traditional German folk dance performed at weddings. He decided to go back to his academic studies after being soaked with steins of beer poured on him by a particularly unfriendly wedding party in Bavaria. A nearby barmaid rescued him from the embarrassing situation. Ever since then Van Helsing eschewed affairs of the heart except for a lingering affection for barmaids.
“And I really didn’t want to take Jonathan’s trousers away from him,” Claustrophobia continued, inching closer to the professor. “Funny, I don’t even find him all that attractive. After all, what does he have that you don’t? Just silky wavy hair, a strong jaw, sinewy muscles—“
“And who needs all that?” He wanted to end this conversation because it reminded him that in Sigmund Freud’s youth he was considered quite a handsome hunk.
“But you have a brain, a beautiful, sexy, strong brain.” She ran her fingers through Van Helsing’s gray, thinning hair.
“Yes, I know.” He started having those feelings again and he liked it.
Again she bared her fangs and tried to rip into his throat, causing the romantic moment to evaporate.
“I’m sorry, but you have such tempting blood vessels bulging from your neck.”
He pulled out a handkerchief to wipe her saliva from his skin. “You must watch your impulses, my little lieberkase.”
“It’s all ‘his’ fault, you know.” Claustrophobia turned spiteful.
“Count Dracula.” Van Helsing prided himself on deciphering insinuations.
“Ja. I was a happy barmaid going to my weekly—“
“Barmaid, did you say?” His heart began to race again.
“Ja. Why?”
“Nothing, my little weinerschnitzel.”
“Anyway, I was happy going to see Dr. Freud once a week trying to get over my fear of enclosed places when ‘he’ came into my bar one night.”
“Dracula.” He restrained his urge to pull out a pen and pad.
“Ja. I knew something was wrong when he said he didn’t drink…beer. There’s something wrong with a man who doesn’t drink beer. You drink beer, don’t you?”
“It’s mother’s milk to me.” He smiled with great sympathy.
“Good,” Claustrophobia said with a smile, causing her dimples to impishly appear in her cheeks. “Then when I left work that night he accosted me in the alley, and my life hasn’t been the same since.”
“My poor little dumpling.”
She took him by the hand and led him to the sofa. “And now I must spend my days cooped up in that wretched coffin. I can’t stand being closed in like that. And I can’t drink beer anymore, only…” She could not make herself say the word blood. “Oh, take me fast, before I get the urge to bite you again!”
Claustrophobia leapt into his arms, toppling him down on the sofa where they kissed passionately. After a few minutes of rolling about, she tried to bite Van Helsing’s neck again. He flew from the sofa to a safe distance from her.
“You almost got me that time, my sweet sauerbraten!”
Flinging herself back onto the sofa, she put one arm over her eyes. “Oh, it’s no use! We’ll never be able to—to…what is that word meaning to complete a love affair?”
“Consumate.”
“Oh good. You knew it. You’re so smart.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Is there no hope for me? Must I go through eternity terrorized by that coffin by day and frustrated in love by night?”
Van Helsing went to his valise and opened it. “Yes, my little black forest cake, there is hope.”
“I knew you would help me.”
“Unfortunately.” He took the stake out, quickly stepped to Claustrophobia and plunged it into her heart.
She sat up abruptly, her eyes wide open. “Thank you, my love.” Her body collapsed back on the sofa.
Van Helsing slowly walked to the front door, opened it and returned to the sofa where he lifted Claustrophobia by her arms and began to drag her outside.
“Me and my rotten luck. An under aged barmaid eager to get into my pants, and I have to drive a stake into her breast. And what a breast! And now I have to dig another grave. Ugh. I’m getting too old for this vampire hunting business.”