Casting couch

Waiting with bated breath baited by incessant waiting, you thought I had plum forgot. Sorry, peaches, I remembered, oh, I remembered, but then I remembered that I had forgotten the kernel of the next installment. Or maybe even how to write; I can't remember. So if the quality has dipped not once, not twice, but thrice in this pastiche of noir parody, I blame you, not the Yugoslavs, for they are no longer -- pretend you didn't read that.

Leon awoke, groggy, finding himself sprawled out on an ottoman, his faux leather bomber draped over him like a makeshift quilt, which he found strange because this strange room strangely decorated to please none but an Ottoman princess was very warm thanks to the roaring fireplace.

The orange tongue flicking its glowing tip on brick of Byzantine porphyry, the girl with the coffin curl flicked her own as she leaned forward on the edge of a lushly upholstered couch, shadows and the slit in her lustrous, patterned gown straining under her curvy movement. She caught him eying her smooth, pale flesh, as white as the skin of, say, oh, a vampire, but we already covered that.

"Awake at last. One could say, reborn."

Leon's body both shuddered and tingled when she ostentatiously emphasized the last syllable. He struggled against the bonds of discovering a pithy response, though he was free to stand up and be counted. They were alone.

"Where am I? What happened?"

"You are in my....chamber. Mind if I smoke?"

Leon meekly nodded his approval after she had already lit her Winston-Salem, the flame illuminating her neon green irises. Lost and confused, he presumed that he had suffered a concussion.

"As for your second question, Paddy, come sit next to me and I'll reveal every little secret that your Irish heart desires."

She patted the plush surface, staring at him soullessly, purring like a lioness ready to paw her prey into bloody submission. Exhaling, the deliciously acrid smoke cascaded over her ruby red lips as her nails of the same color tapped a subtle rhythm on her exposed thigh. Hypnotized, and beginning to wonder if she was even a Daughter of the Bohemian Yugoslavs, Leon rose, rigid and, as coolly as his staccato gait could hide his fright, stopped not dragging his Irish heart around and carried it to the cushion so soft, all but holding it in his smitten hands for her to devour.

"You are wondering if I am even a Daughter of the Bohemian Yugoslavs."

"The thought has crisscrossed my mind once or thrice."

"I just love a man who says thrice."

Fidgeting, his suave exterior betrayed, of course it didn't help that he wasn't wearing his faux leather bomber, as vital to his secret agent mien as the blanket is to that of Linus, Leon's lips moved to speak but ceased just as quickly.

"Ah, yes, my dear, dear Paddy, what happened this evening. All of your queries shall be answered in time," she said, smiling. "I'd stake my life on it."

Tune in sometime next spring when we find out what role, if any, the diabolical Empire of Transylvanians has lurking beneath the barely-scratched surface, whether vampires, if they exist, which they don't, we already told you, are spearheading the nefarious plans, if they exist, of the diabolical Empire of Transylvanians and, lastly, if I can manage to keep the barely-there plot above running water, which in some folkloric strains, has been known to impede the progress of vampires.