Chapter 5: A Marriage of True Minds Admits Impediments, Name-calling Ensues

Later that night, Roquefort was greeting Lucretius as a guest in his palatial and badly-decorated home. Withers scuttled homosexually about, getting underfoot, and when he could manage it, under carriage. The tall, Heathcliffian vampire welcomed the tall, Byronic demon warmly, and apologized for his short, Stephen Kingian minion.
“By the lopsided testicles of the Minotaur, what happened to you, Roquefort?” enquired Lucretius.
“Voluptua’s back in town. I keep thinking she’s dead, but then she never is. Anyway, terrible news: a woman of infinite vengeance, cunning and bloodthirstiness is after me.”
Lucretius looked unsettled. “I’m sorry to hear that. I always thought you and Mrs. Thatcher got on rather well.”
“Not her, Lucy! Your old flame, Tarin the Righteous, is being a Righteous pain in my sculpted ass.”
“If you call me Lucy, I’m going to call you Cheesy.”
Roquefort bristled. “Roquefort is a fine, distinguished name and a fine, distinguished cheese, and I’d thank you not to disrespect either by such an ill-bred diminutive. Lucy.”
“It’s a French cheese,” said Lucretius, “and a stupid name.”
“Oh is it, you pansy relic of a fallen empire? You effeminate and frumpy piece of Roman history? Who was your father? A centurion? A plebs? A passing stranger too disgusted to gaze on your mother’s syphilitic face?”
“Who was yours, you froggy piece of new blood scum? You Vichy knobcheese?”
“Masters!” cringed Withers, “don’t quarrel. Dangerous women and over-educated priests walk the night. Let’s all hold hands.”
“Let’s never hold hands,” said Roquefort, “but the help is right. We must band together against these wretched humans. No hard feelings, old chap?”
“None whatsoever,” said Lucretius magnanimously. “Now tell me how Tarin is bothering you. I’ve just spent my evening trying to convince her to sleep with me.”
“Oh, bad taste, Lucy- I mean, Lucretius. Anyway, you know she’s had this bee in her bonnet about killing me and defiling my corpse and then scattering the remains to the four corners of the earth, thereby sending me to Hell to listen forever to the screams of the damned, hopeless and tormented in eternity?”
“Yes? What of it? Can’t be liked by everyone.”
“Quite. But do you know, old thing, if that pedantic and well-armed priest is helping her, I get rather nervous about her pulling it off. She’s quite unreasonable on that point, you know. Really wants to have at me, for no discernable reason.”
“She told me you ate her mother.”
“Yes, but these things happen, don’t they?”
“To the best of us.” Lucretius sighed and lit a particularly phallic cigar. “But look here. Tarin can’t defeat you without the aid of her ‘soul-mate’ or whatever the kids are calling it these days, him and the Wooden Stake of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Sometimes Y. It says so, in the un-nameable book of prophesies, bound with the skin of an Assyrian wood-smuggler.”
“Written in the blood of two-headed tortoises and smelling faintly of bad breath?”
“That un-nameable book of prophecies, yes. So why get your bits in a bother?”
Roquefort frowned and absent-mindedly kicked at Withers, who had curled up at his feet. “Well, what if she does meet him? Anyone could have the Wooden Stake of Thingumy Bob, from that meddling priest to the boy in the butcher’s shop. There’s men everywhere who’d be happy to share their wood with her.”
Lucretius smiled the evil smile of a man who has seen the unspeakable and invited it over for tea. “Look here. You want to be free of Tarin’s endless hunger for your dismemberment. I want to Tarin to be endlessly hungry for my member. The solution is as plain as the sensually aristocratic nose on my face. You’ve always had a way with women. Help me win her heart. Then her lithe, chain-mail clad form will be mine, and, as the book of prophecies says I’m not her soul-mate, you will be safe as a beautiful women sitting next to Withers.”
“Lucy, I declare you are ingenious as two ingenious things at an ingeniousness convention!” Roquefort’s Michaelangelic features lit up.
“Thank you for that Dickensian, nay, Shakespearean analogy,” said Lucretius. “That agreed, I propose we call it a day and reconvene tomorrow night. She’s not going to find her soul-mate in twelve-hours, lithe chain-mail clad form or not.”
“There is a tiny, un-noticeable fly in the ointment,” Roquefort said cautiously. “More of a gnat. A speck. A particle in a great sea of ointment.”
Thunder crack overhead and Withers howled at the moon. Far away, Hillary Clinton howled back.
“What? What have you done, Roquefort?” Lucretius eyed his old friend with completely justified suspicion.
“In a bit of a panic, I may or may not have asked Voluptua to distract them for me. You know. Show Tarin and the priest a good time, possibly, and I’m not saying I said this exactly, but I may have implied that if she killed them I would be slightly irritated rather than very angry. I just felt I should keep you abreast of that.”
Lucretius stared at Roquefort. “You aren’t serious.”
“Again, I’m not fully admitting to that conversation.”
Lucretius covered his face with a pale and shapely hand. “Sweet boiling martyrs of the fourth century A.D. Batten down the hatches, boys, hurricane Voluptua is approaching. Honestly, Rocks, that woman’s vagina is a veritable Charybdis, appearing placid and calm, but actually sucking innocent men into its gaping and insatiable maw.”
“Well, I haven’t had your classical education. It’s hard for me to spot these things. She’s not without her redeeming features, though.”
“Right, new addition to my fiendish plan. We get the priest on our side. We observe to him that Voluptua is creature of such insatiable depravity that he and Tarin must steer clear at all, repeat all, costs. I feel that this is one of the few instances in our long lives where we can legitimately present ourselves as the lesser of two evils.”
“God, how long has it been since we did that?”
“Not since the Borgias, my good man. Unless you’re counting the Reagan administration.”