arachnid. It was rubbing its pedipalps and chelicerae together, savoring the moment before the predatory pounce. While I contemplated if this creature would run me down if I made a break for it now, the bartender jabbered on about their evening specials. There was a moment between him finishing and me responding, when I calculated there was no leaving Bettie’s Asylum until that arachnid fell into a food coma following his master feast. I order their ‘Psycho’ burger a few tropical apéritifs to dull the pain should the massive tarantula turn to me for dessert. Once my burger came, I ordered a vodka based dinner cocktail and a digestif. The food was indeed marvelous, and the drinks too. After a while, I noticed the arachnid had ventured off somewhere, and the woman he sat above was gone. During my whiskey based digestif, a semitransparent Curie appeared and reasserted their recommendations for D.D’s. I was feeling thorough relieved to make it through dinner alive, and was ready to celebrate. So I agreed to let the apparition lead the way.
D.D.’s was an eerie lounge not too much further up the river. It had tiger print carpet and black padded booths. Human trophy heads hung above the booths in place of Buck heads. A world worn guitarist played Blues riffs from his stool near the entry way. The doorman and bartender were splattered with blood, and they spoke with some ancient accent. I was seated and given a menu. Their drinks were sensational cocktails named after porn stars or zombie movie heroines. A Kung-Fu Zombie film was playing on the television. I watched the film until a waitress floated in from behind me. She wore a black, backless, floor-length V-neck evening gown and emanated an orphic allure. Though she never looked up from the floor, our minds locked and I gleaned fragments of her history. She was born before time as we understood it, had witnessed genesis along with the countless complications that ensued. She saved select civilizations and condemned others, and the only reason art was invented was to capture her likeness: Ghostly pale and devilish, with a gaze that crushed your will and instilled hers. She impassively took my order; she wasn’t interested in men, only their blood. I ordered something containing Absinthe. I am an Absinthe connoisseur, and it is hard to find in bars, let-alone one mixes cocktails with it. The waitress coasted behind a divider of black velvet curtains, and emerged instantly with my drink. With a touch of contempt, she set it down. The drink was a translucent yellow, served in a champagne saucer with a cherry garnish. One sip made you levitate, and a second set ailments ablaze and rendered them ashes. I had several. They unleashed my mind to slither into the atmosphere, leaving my body an empty dipsomaniacal vessel anchored to the chair. I became nothing going nowhere to no end. By the time mind and body had reunited – it could have been hours, or days later - I found myself back at the hotel, completely uninformed of how I made it back.
The following morning was excruciating. The Sun was so bright that it slathered virtually everything to a yellowish hue. And the void of sound the voiceless day trippers made was being substituted with an obnoxious static, that made it impossible sustain any sort of concentration. I did not even think about work; it was difficult enough to recall that was why I had come to Minneapolis. My reflection looked more decrepit, too. The whites of my eyes were almost red and dry, and my skin appeared to be fading to a pale green. All rationality told me to stay indoors, sleep this foulness off before driving back to Chicago the next day. No doubt this hotel had room service like any other; even if I decided to waste the day away, it could be done from the comfort and safety of my rented bed, in front of my rented television set with pay-per-view channels featuring the same programs I got for free back home. However I knew that I could not leave Minnesota without having some concept of what was happening just inside its Southern border, that undefined strangeness which had the potential to stretch thru the line between Minnesota and Wisconsin, and even down into Illinois and beyond. Forget whatever the original assignment had been, I was now on a reconnaissance mission. I threw on some fresh clothes and sun glasses, and roamed the streets while the sun was still up, hoping to find answers. But the locals had gone mute, or at least inaudible in the ambient static, which naturally was louder outside than in the hotel room. No one even responded when I began pushing them into each other out of frustration. They merely regained their balance and pressed on whatever path they had been inching at. They would be no help. If I wanted any type of lead that reveal some clues, then it had to be at what I assumed was the heart of the beast. Since it was barely dusk, I decided to walk across and up the river.
Back at D.D’s right as starlight seeped through the twilight, the same employees from the night before waited just inside the door, like they expected my return. They wore the same clothes, and the same movie was showing on their TV set; the same Blues guitarist still jamming. They were oblivious to the fact that the sun had come up and gone down again, that the day had changed and it was a new evening - Time was one endless night for them. There was also the possibility to consider whether I had left at all. Maybe it was the same night, and I had walked outside only to turn around in Absinthe stupor and strolled back in. Truth was, one way or the other, that I found myself inside once more and they were ready to receive. The waitress escorted me to a table where a drink was already set. I did not say anything, just sat down and grabbed the glass. The mood in the place had changed radically. It was now grave and cold; inviting but with ulterior motives and evil forewarnings, as if the lounge were actually the lid of a massive ossuary and psychogenic outcries from the remains beneath bled through the floor, into the oxygen. I surveyed the place. There was not another soul besides the employees, who starred at me with flared pupils and licked their lips with elongated, blood-stained tongues.
I nervously gulped my drink, aiming to leave immediately. The early, brave detective I was that day crumbled in the vibrations of my timorous and fainthearted mind underneath at the foundation of me. There was no good reason to stay any longer. The best thing to do was leave before the situation became even more tense and unreal. The waitress flashed over as I stood up. She effortlessly forced me back down with one hand and slid another drink down with the other, wordlessly commanding I continue imbibing whatever the hell they were giving me. She would not walk away until I took a sip. That once distant, comely inamorata revealed herself as a jezebel. Her mind penetrated mine as means to subdue my anxiety, keep me calm so I would sit a while longer. But she did not account for this magick trick permitting me to see her thoughts too. Everything was detailed out of me as our minds joined as one: I had stumbled into a camouflaged abattoir. They were minutes away from locking the doors and devouring me. These freaks were not zombies like the people outside, they were vampires. They deployed tamed zombies as an igniter, pushing visitors to drink heavily because of the strange encounters. Extended stay in downtown Minneapolis meant elevated alcoholism, and victims ended up at D.D’s searching for stronger concoctions. Tranquilized by their unique cocktails, they were eaten alive. The zombies disperse at sundown because a vampire might make do with them for breakfast. Somewhere buried deep in the hippocampus of their mushy brains was the memory of fear. Immune to this incubus was Skyway. It was an asylum for precocious travelers who managed to escape. Belle found a way to suppress, even inoculate the effects.
I had to return to Skyway for any chance of surviving this trip. But three vampires now guarded the exit to D.D’s. I stood up, anticipating the waitress’ swift appearance, and asked to be shown to the rest room. Hesitantly she glided towards the Men’s Room, opposite of the front door, which from what I could tell was the only way out. I made a break for it, mindful that there were still two vampires to overcome. Unprepared for this flee attempt, the doorman and bartender floundered to stop me. I smashed my Champaign saucer against and bar stool and drove the sharp edges into the doorman. The bartender seemed stuck in place after that. I ran out the door and into the night.
Blue flashing lights came from multiple directions once I reached nearest intersection. They mus
t have been signals to my location, because the typically empty night streets were suddenly swamped with twisted junkies unlike what I saw during the days. These things were more coherent than the zombies. They chased me the whole way back across the river, up until I finally got inside Skyway.
Belle mindlessly wiped down the bar, as if she was not aware of what was happening outside. I unintelligibly tried to explain what I had uncovered about Minneapolis, and sweetly she patiently listened to every word I exclaimed. After I was done, hyperventilating from talking without break, Belle simply laid her soft hand on my shoulder and told me to Just pass through. That was the key to everything, she said: do not fret over whatever obstacle was thrust in your way, Just pass through. This incantation of hers made a silence drop outside, and nothing could be seen or heard around the place. Slightly more than embarrassed, I asked Belle if she would walk with me back to the hotel. It seemed safer to go with someone more cognizant and calm. She agreed, but