Dracula, Ergo, Terror!

  Chapter 7

  Meanwhile, at a community college north of Madison, Wisconsin that has nothing at all to do with the rest of this story, a frail individual named Quarl sat at a wide white table that was covered with newspapers. Seated around the table were several other thin, frail, and pallid individuals, all of whom carefully applied paint to their model birdhouse kits.

  Quarl’s slightly bearded face was capped with a rasta hat that contained his dreadlocks, and his expression was one of quiet study as he took in the details of his birdhouse and gently dabbed at the roof with a plastic paintbrush, applying a careful stroke of cloud yellow, the hue of a sweet onion.

  Whimsically wandering about the room was Lisa, a slender woman with thick circular glasses and long braided gray hair. She wore a floor-length denim skirt and smelled strongly of turpentine and cat. She smiled and nodded approvingly at the ten students who all worked diligently on their birdhouses (all except for Billy, who followed his own artistic direction and was instead applying strawberry stickers to a cream-colored shoebox).

  Lisa made her way to Quarl and observed him as he carefully mixed different pastel colors of peach, rose, and lavender, and then stroked them on the birdhouse, following each usage by softly cleaning the brush in a plastic cup filled with warm water.

  “That’s wonderful, Quarl,” Lisa sighed.

  “Thank you,” he replied.

  “Just wonderful.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Painting is wonderful.”

  “Yes, yes, it is. Yes.” She nodded. And smiled. Quarl smiled too as he applied a soft creamy orange to the doorway.

  “Wonderful.”