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Sweat sloughed off my forehead like water from Aunt Mabel's cherub fountain, except the fountain left nothing to the imagination. Once again I cursed George, my boss, as I pulled the two double-oversized suitcases the last few yards down The Strip.

  Not that I'd been able to get a good look at the glitzy hotels and casinos and their often half-dressed patronage as I'd walked. I'd spent the last two hundred yards teetering on the verge of heat exhaustion. Everyone else who was baking in the Nevada summer along with me wore cool t-shirts with I HEART Vegas on them, and shorts—or barely existing bikini bottoms—with a great deal of natural air conditioning. Me? I had to wear the regulation three-piece suit because “Our customers like it that way.”

  To make matters worse I had to lug everything I could pack for the booth in two lousy double-oversizers. “Because we don't want to dip into the accounts for expenses” was George's other favorite expression.

  Anyway, I'd made it. Innovative use of the monorail and Shank's Pony had finally brought me to my destination. This was my first ever trip to Las Vegas and, if the heat didn't kill me, hopefully not my last. George had sent me here to represent the Deathly Buzzing's Marital Aids Company at the ParaPleasures Expo. ParaPleasures was the fifth, ever, expo of its kind and my first, ever, experience of a convention. So I was suitably nervous. Though I'd been told by a contact knowledgeable in our industry, with conventions, like men, size did matter.

  It probably explains why D.B.'s sales figures are so low, given we only have three employees.

  I paused outside the entrance to Dunvegas as a helicopter buzzed overhead and landed on its roof. A totally black aircraft with black tinted windows—obviously an important Vamp arriving for the Expo—it dipped, dropped its cargo and was gone before the public could peek up and say “Oooh!”

  Formerly the Mandalay Bay hotel site, the last owners had sold out in a hostile take-over and left the town running—with some of the new owners nipping, literally, on their heels. The old 3000+ guest room building had been torn down and rebuilt as this…

  Well, it kind of fitted into Vegas in a gloomy, dismal sort of way. Set back from the sidewalk by ten feet of dark, eddying water—and, no, I wouldn't recommend skinny dipping in there. Those eddies came from a variety of somethings very large, ferocious and hungry. The entrance to the hotel was a huge gothic effect, complete with a twenty foot tall, arched, gargoyle-mouth doorway.

  Aside from the myriad stone carvings of various mythological creatures engaging in some form of non-human copulation, the most imposing part of the gate was the huge white marble fangs. Twelve feet tall, the fangs, marked through with grey ribbons, had been polished until they reflected images like a mirror. Well, apart from where the Red Stuff dripped down from them, that is. I mean, I know it looked like the real thing but surely they wouldn't…

  The Red Stuff's journey ended as droplets splashed from the tips of the fangs into two large shallow basins set beneath them. A host of the local rat population had come out in force to drink the stuff and ended up stuck in the sticky rat traps the hotel workers had placed around the bowls. As I watched, a swarthy, goblin chef carefully selected about thirty or forty of these hapless creatures and took them into the hotel.

  I made a mental note not to try the famous Dunvegas Rats-on-a-Stick snack from their restaurant. No matter how much they touted it as a health food.

  Out in the 1.5 million gallon aquarium, some early arrivals for the convention were sporting in the water, making a big splash and entertaining the tourists. At least I hoped the kraken and mermaid were just playing—the location being a little too public, really, for them to be making caviar. As usual I was amazed the public could never see it as more than a clever special effect show. Would they ever wise up to the monsters literally tripping past them every day?

  Show over, the kraken reached out and snatched one of the hapless tourists and bit, crunchily, into the man's head. The crowd cheered. I don't know why, but Krakens were always ravenous after sex.

  Wiping the sweat from my forehead one more time, I pulled the double-sizers back onto their wheels and trudged the last few steps over the solid oak drawbridge, noting the razor sharp points of the portcullis as I walked beneath it. I moved quickly here, as the blades looked deadly enough to cause someone some real damage should it accidentally fall. Going by the detritus attached to some of the points, it already had. Two of the infamous Paranormal and Magical Security guards stood just outside the portcullis.

  The PMSers were known throughout the paranormal world as some mean SOBs. Once past the lethal device and guards, I felt relief as wafts of cool air, tainted with the odor of undead, washed over me.

  The relief lasted only a moment as I remembered my last encounter with a group of undead. God, I hope my parents didn’t show up this time. They loved to embarrass me when I met up with a bunch of Paras. The usual bunched up sensation in the back of my neck grew, only much worse than normal. I always stressed out at times like these, dreading their return.

  Wiping the grisly thought from my mind I stepped into the massive automated rotating doorway and passed two more PMS guards into the icy interior of the hotel foyer. Wow, it felt like stepping from the Sahara to the Antarctic. It felt wonderful. Later on, when I was stuck at the Expo booth, I'd been advised to wear thermal undies, but right now I wouldn't change the temperature setting for the world. My contact, Andre, who was a rather impetuous and knowledgeable satyr, explained to me once why the hotels for the undead cool the rooms to just above refrigeration level. Without wanting to seem rude let's say it helps, uhm, keep the body odor down—after all some of the undead, like zombies, are still rotting, you know.

  “Oh, Chuppypoo what a lovely place! Have they made you an executive or did you come to meet a lovely girl?”

  Dear Lord, no…

  “Nice place son. How did you get in here? Break a window?” Dad, as usual, laughed at his lame joke which highlighted, again, the failure he perceives in me.

  “Hi Mom, Dad,” I mumbled softly, struggling to make my way to the distant reception desk. Hoping I could get there before Mom tried to set me up with yet another date with a stranger. God, I hope she didn't see Amanda Bast. Mom would be matchmaking within nanoseconds. Why on Earth did my folks always appear at these things?

  I don't understand the laws of paraphysics enough to explain it but Mom and Dad invariably coalesce when I meet with a bunch of paranormals like this. It's as if a gathering of magical entities generated a different sort of energy which dragged their little ectoplasmic goo blobs down from the spirit pot in the sky. Indeed, with this amount of paranormals around they looked almost solid for a change. Well, except for the wispy bit around their feet. Mom always lamented the fact that being a ghost and having no feet meant she couldn't wear the fancy shoes she liked.

  “I'm here for work, Mom,” I explained, hurrying to the reception area as fast as I could. Once in my room maybe I could persuade my parents to stay there.

  “Well, that's a shame, Chuppypoo.” She gave my cheek her 'affectionate pinch.' “Because there's a lovely girl over there, who’s just waiting for you to ask her out.”

  “Mooom!”

  Geesh, parents! I did get a good look at the woman, though, as she was heading in my direction. Blonde hair frizzed out in an attractive look that hinted at a kind of halo. Her lips had that tender look of someone dying to be kissed and her blue eyes wandered around the place as if she owned it. Given that she was snapping out orders, ten to the dozen, to the other staff present probably meant she was a manager or something. She was literally spinning on the spot now and then to talk to something I couldn't see.

  She was human as well. Going by the hints of thermal underwear I could glimpse beneath the cream blouse—nicely filled, but no more than a C-cup—and the burgundy silk pants, which incidentally matched perfectly with her lipstick.

  She looked so perfect and kissable my own little cock robin was standing up to take a looksee. This, of course, made my tight pants just
that little more uncomfortable. Not to mention my mom could probably see it. Man, why can't I just die and get it over with?

  “So, which painting you going to steal?” Dad asked, looking at the paintings scattered around the foyer. “I think that Van Gogh, there, should sell for quite a bit.”

  Exasperated, I dropped the suitcases and turned to face him.

  “Dad! Will you quit—oof!”

  Somehow the manager I'd seen earlier collided with me, leaving me in the now, perhaps enviable, position of lying on top of her on the floor. She'd somehow, instinctively I hope, wrapped her legs around my waist.

  Her eyes were glazed over with a dreamy look and her kissable mouth pouted in an even more kissable “O.” Even more disturbing, she was rubbing her crotch against my old cock robin as if she were trying to decide if I kept an iron bar down the front of my pants.

  “My, oh, my!” My mom stood beside us fanning her face with her hand. Embarrassed? As if!

  Geesh, I wouldn't put it past her to have arranged this little “accident” from the start.

  “That's my boy!” Dad chuffed proudly, patting me on the shoulder.

  While the young lady beneath me continued her dazed explorations of my South, the sharp click of official heels came to a stop on the marble floor—roughly five inches from my head.

  Straining my head back, to look up, I could see a sour-faced man in a concierge uniform.

  “Are you Roger Ing?” he asked.

  From around the foyer I heard a series of titters and chuckles. I ignored my dad's guffaw.

  “Regardless to what it appears,” I said, “I am Roger K. Ing.”

  The concierge acknowledged my answer with a sharp incline of his head.

  “Very good, sir. If you would be so kind as to follow me. Mr. Fritz, the owner, would like a word with you.”

  Damn, I hadn't even started the convention and already the world's most evil wizard wanted a word with me. I was dead already, I just didn't know it.

  “Okay, let me just…”

  Let me tell you, it's pretty hard to finish a sentence when a very attractive young lady is lying beneath you and suddenly decides to kiss the socks off you.

  I mean, this wasn't an ordinary sort of kiss, this kiss made my toes and, er, other things curl. This was a kiss that drew me soul and heart into a place where I didn't want to even dream of being. A kiss like this could almost make a guy fall in l, lo, lo, lo, lo, llllllove.

  All right, I said it! Phew!

  I may be a dead man, but wow, at least I died happy.

  “Mr. Ing,” the concierge said sharply. “Mr. Fritz is waiting.”

  Continued in Part 2

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  Touch Not The Ungloved Cat

  By Carolan Ivey