Nadia and Sketcher - Part II (an excerpt from "Killing Tom")

Jack hailed a cab outside the Brass Ass and Nadia waved at her friends, who giggled on the other side of the big picture window. “They laugh a lot,” Jack mumbled, crawling into the cab. “They must be really happy people…”
Nadia slid in next to him, smoothing her dress against her long legs as she did, which made Jack frown. He would have like to have seen some more thigh. “My friends like to laugh,” Nadia said. “They prefer to smile than to frown.” Her accent drove Jack nuts – her accent and her long polished-alabaster legs.

The cab pulled away and headed away from Wrigleyville and toward Lakeshore Drive and the high-rises that lined the lake. They kissed in the back of the cab and Nadia proved quite adept at sweeping Jack’s hands away from her alabaster thighs and presumably alabaster breasts. He had learned that she was a dancer – ballet and such and not the lowbrow pole-dancer variety – and he assumed that this skill contributed to her keen reflexes. “There is something I need to tell you,” Nadia said.

“What is it darling?” Jack asked, slurring his words as she deflected his wandering palm.

“I have a twin brother,” Nadia said.

“Awesome,” Jack said. “I’m sure he’s a fine fellow.”

Nadia laughed, rebuffing a crotch move. “He’s irascible.”

“Well,” Jack offered. “Some folks are irascible…” Jack ran his hands up Nadia’s thigh and thought for a moment that he heard mumbling from Nadia’s underwear – of course, he was drunk. Nadia deftly parried the maneuver. “It’s not like he lives with you, right?” Jack bit at Nadia’s neck and she pushed him away.

“He does,” she said.

“So?” Jack said. He looked at her face and smiled. “You look like that Russian tennis player – the pretty one…”

“He is always with me,” Nadia said. “My twin, Sketcher.”

“Sketcher?” Jack said. “Like the shoe?”

“Yes,” Nadia said. “Like the shoe.”

The cab pulled up in front of a building on Lakeshore, just north of Diversy. Jack fumbled through his money until Nadia could sort out the proper bills to pay the driver. They walked through the lobby to an elevator. “This place,” she began, her accent begging him to listen. “Used to be a hotel back in the twenties – then it was turned into apartments – little small apartments…”

Jack shrugged, falling even more in love. “Who needs more than a little small apartment, really?”

The elevator door opened and they waited for the door to close. Jack immediately began pawing at the dancer – the ride was only four floors, he had no time to waste. “Is your brother home?”

Nadia laughed. Jack once again thought he heard a voice – he figured it was the old elevator squeaking its way to the top floor. Or the booze. “Yes, he will be there,” she answered. “He is always there…”

The elevator door opened and Nadia led Jack down the hall, he banging into the walls all the way to her room. She opened the apartment and Jack stumbled in and fell into the couch before she even found the lights. “Jack,” Nadia said, her face the picture of solemnity. “I need you to meet Sketcher. It can’t wait any longer…”

Jack smiled dumbly, his eyes at half-mast and rolled his finger in a “get on with it” motion. Nadia stepped closer to him, standing between his spread legs, and began to strip. “Hey, wait a minute – what about your brother?” Jack asked, glancing around the room, half expecting an alabaster assassin to steal around the corner and slice his throat like a cold cut.

“He is here,” she purred, lowering her briefs. Jack stared at Nadia’s hands as she pulled her underwear down, to reveal something that resembled a mammoth penis, only with a face. Jack screamed and Nadia put her hand firmly over his mouth. “You need to shut up,” she said. Jack stopped screaming and nodded, his eyes glued to the little face that waved between the sexy dancer’s legs.

Nadia slowly took her hand away from Jack’s lips. “This is Sketcher.” Jack nodded and felt like throwing up.

The thing looked unearthly. It was like a little human head attached to a small neck – at the girls groin, right around the place where a penis might have grown. It was completely bald and had alluring blue eyes and two small holes where a nose would have been had the head been of normal size, and a small little mouthful of straight white teeth. “Nice to meet you,” the little head/penis-thing said, in an amazingly clear tenor voice.

“Jack,” Jack said. “Pleased to meet you…”

“I don’t shake,” Sketcher said with a chuckle. Jack looked him over. He had no arms or hands.

“This is your brother?” Jack asked Nadia, gesturing at the head.

“This is Sketcher – my brother – yes…”

“How in the fuck does that work?” Jack asked.

“He is a parasitic twin of the rarest form,” Nadia said.

The little head began to bob around and turned red with anger. “I hate when you use that word – I am not a parasite!”

Nadia nodded patiently at her parasitic little brother. “This is a term for a twin that has not been completely absorbed by the host twin – which is me. Sketcher should, by all rights be dead – no more than a third nipple or a sixth toe.” She glared at her lively appendage. “That’s what you are – a sixth toe!”

“I AM NOT A SIXTH TOE!” the little head screamed. Jack was amazed at how aggressive the little neck could thrash the little head around. “It’s my intelligence that got you through high-school, you whore!”

Jack noticed that while Nadia maintained an Eastern European accent, Sketcher sounded like he had been raised on the South side of Chicago. “Hey, hey,” Jack said. “No need to be mean, here…” He had suddenly become the moderator between a sexy, blond dancer and her angry parasitic head/penis twin-thing. It didn’t even seem abnormal and worst of all, Jack still couldn’t wait to have sex with Nadia.