Kiss of death
A thriller about a boy with a fatal kiss, and the women who need it.
His mother’s
infidelity visits a curse on Felix, who can’t kiss anyone, or do anything else,
without killing her. Although he’s a successful financial adviser he considers
suicide, till he meets a terminal patient who wants out, and helps her out. Now he’s found his
niche, stockbroker by day, mercy seducer by night. The police are watching—what
can they prove? But he can't have the girl he loves.
When Otto
brings his young wife Anita on a day trip to an island, she wants to go to the
beach. It’s hot! But he wants to climb to the monastery.
She gives in. Mule-driver Manos watches them pass, and yearns after her.
Half-way up, she rebels, takes off her clothes and runs in among the trees, daring him, teasing him. He calls to her but she’s gone, and he gets on with his uphill trudge. Manolis happens by with his mules, spots her, and follows her to a spring she’s bathing in.
“I know who you are,” she says. “I read about you in the guide book.
You’re a satyr. And I am a nymph. I do have cuture.” Otto comes back for her
and sees them, recoils from the sight and, climbing the monastery steps, heart
thumping, dies.
After dark she finds his body and sits with it, waiting for help, for
dawn. Otto grabs her ankle. No he didn’t. He looks at her. She screams. No,
he’s just lying there. He pulls her down to him and rapes her. No wait—this is
not real. No wait—yes it is. No wait—
Dawn. Has this happened? “Oh, Otto, I hope you didn't make me pregnant.
What would come out?” But she is pregnant, and stays on with Manos. What
comes out is Felix.
In high school a girl corners him. And dies. The islanders believe he has the evil eye, and run them off. Manolis half-blieves it himself, and Anita angrily abandons him and takes Felix to her home town—
—where she works as a waitress. "Get a girl," she says. "Don't believe all that guff." So he gets a girl. And she dies in his arms. Her parents are distraught, Anita is distraught, and a police inspector comes around wanting to know what happened.
So does Felix, who wrings the truth out of his mother. Now he has nightmares about Otto who, like Hamlet’s father, wants to make his son a sword of vengeance.
At high school the other kids have heard, and won’t go near him. He doesn’t dare even touch Caprice, the girl he's in love with. Which is not something she can accept or understand.
"What is it, a kiss?"
"A kiss. A caress. An intention."
"An intention to what?" She reaches her hand across the table for his.
"Careful."
"It would be romantic, to die together."
"What makes you think I’d die?"
He's a bright student at university, but without Caprice, without any love
life, it isn’t much. At graduation, his embarrassing guilt-ridden mother. On
the stock exchange he’s a wunderkind, climbing fast. So what? Come night, he
gets drunk and stands on his building roof, daring himself to jump.
At the stock market he’s a wunderkind, very successful, and climbing fast. So what? Come night, he gets real real drunk and stands on the roof of his building daring himself to jump. But he can't.
Goes to a bar. A woman, also drunk, says, "Ever tried to kill
yourself? Couldn’t do it, huh? Neither could I." She’s dying and wants
out, and takes him home—and he has his first sex with another human being. In
the morning, she’s dead.
But he is alive! He goes straight to a chemo clinic looking for his
next lover. And finds her. And finds another. And another.
Now he has his niche, financial adviser by day, mercy seducer by
night.
The inspector is on his trail, the morgue is filling up with mysteriously
dead women, but what can he prove? In Felix’s dreams his father coaches him. “I
like the way you’re handling this.”
When his mother visits him in his fancy office he introduces his boss
Jack, who immediately flirts. “This is a mother?”
She is miserable about what she’s done to Felix’s life, so over lunch he tells
her his secret. She is horrified. “Do they know
they’re going to die? Talking about it isn’t the same as wanting it!”
“Each case is different.”
“You’re making the decisions for them!” But she’s
curious. “How long does it take?”
He puts cash by his plate, and counts more out for her. “Ten
minutes, half an hour. It varies.”
“Is it when you kiss them?”
“Kiss, touch—anything that’s warm with desire.”
With an accusing whisper, “Do you make love to them after
they’re dead?”
He gives her the money and gets up. “Got to go.”
But life isn’t perfect. Caprice, who has never married, is still out of
his reach. She doesn’t know about his night job and, passionate that they sleep
together, puts a sword between them à la Tristan and Isolde.
Only with Bald Woman does he decline to follow through. Motorcycle tough,
she has made her chemo baldness part of her butch style. But
close to death as she is, she’s just too alive to kill. Word is out, though,
and she wants that kiss.
In a dream Anita finds herself back on the island, begging
Otto to lift the curse. "Lift it yourself," he says. "Otto,
please! You don't want me to do that!" He laughs.
So when Felix has lost everything and shows up dead drunk,
she puts him to bed, and gets in with him. And he wakes up with his mother’s corpse.
But the curse is lifted—for the moment.
Kiss
of death
A thriller
about a boy with a fatal kiss—
and
the women who need it.
Robert MacLean is an independent filmmaker. His The Light Touch is on Amazon Prime, Tubi and Scanbox, and his 7-minute comedy is an out-loud laugh. He is also a novelist, a playwright, a blogger, a YouTuber, a film reviewer, a literary critic, and a stand-up comic poet. Born Toronto, PhD McGill, taught at Canadian universities, too cold, live Greece, Irish citizen. No brains, but an intellectual snob.
“I was beastly but never coarse. A high-class sort of heel.”
No comments:
Post a Comment