George Kuchar -- THE KISS OF FRANKENSTEIN

Mischa Listen, Coco: This was a lousy idea to come to these creepy mountains in search of garlic recipes. Garlic makes your breath stink. There’s nothing even remotely romantic about it.

Who said the restaurant business was romantic? Not me. It was your Uncle Gregory who suggested we open that Hungarian Hofbrau on Second Avenue. I’m just following my nose to track down some new recipes to make the joint more authentic. I’m just doing my business…. our business…so that we can make some bucks by making a few diners happy.

Well it stinks, this trek through these mountains just to delight the tummies of yuppies in search of their roots. I mean think about my stomach: I’m about to puke from all these curves in the road.

You certainly pay a lot of attention to the curves out there and none to those right here next to you, right here under your discriminating nose.

Coco, those curves have readjusted their routes because of your frequent detours into the ghoulash zone. Cut down on that plus the kasha and sarcasm, okay honey?

You see Mischa? You talk like me: in food terms, like honey, and get me my slippers cream puff. We were made for this business and we were made for eachother no matter how many bones we pick to chew eachother out.

You know I find you hot, Coco. Don’t doubt my love, not here on this muddy, rocky road that lures us onward with all the ups and downs of a Hershey highway. I hope we don’t get a flat because if we do our gooses are cooked.

What’s the worry? We have a spare tire in the back and I have one up front, right next to me. Listen, sweetheart or maybe sweet tooth would be more accurate, don’t lecture about excess baggage when you can use a little unloading too.

If you want me to unload you’ll have to suck and chew on this face you spoiled bratwurst!

Look, if you can’t control yourself at least try and control the car, sweetheart.

What’s left to break after being married to you? There’s just no pain anymore. It’s all numb. Everything. There wasn’t even a seven-year itch to kill the numbness. It takes something like this to get the juices flowing again. I suppose I should thank you for crashing, Mischa

Look, coming close to death is suppose to make us feel reborn and ready to live again. How about you and me turning this Eastern European garlic hunt into a second honeymoon? What do you say, loverboy? Only let’s forget making out in a car, especially when it’s moving. Let’s go find us a bed and breakfast joint for that.

That sounds just fine with me, honey. How about that castle over there? It looks big enough to be some kind of tourist attraction.

Maybe we can call the authorities about the wreck and then get breakfast, lunch and dinner in bed. I’m so tired Mischa, help me carry the cookbook up there. Perhaps the occupants have a local recipe we can introduce to America.

The trip is a tax write-off, partner. Now come on, It looks like a storm is brewing so let’s get whoever runs that kitchen to brew up a nice cup of coffee to steal the thunder from Mother Nature’s idea of a liquid refreshment.

The rumbling of thunder reverberates from the mountain peaks that surround them.

She’s gonna spritz us hard with a seltzer bottle, old Mother Nature ‘cause I can hear her belching up a hell of a windstorm. We better get a move on.

You take the suitcase and I’ll wrap the book in some plastic bags. We don’t want to make the ink run, erasing the magic ingredients that give our clientele the runs.

People worldwide pay top dollar for a colonic cleansing, Mischa. I’m not ashamed for filling that colon with only the best that intestines can evacuate. Now come on, the seltzer is starting to spritz, you clown!

The couple heads toward the looming castle as lightning flashes behind its turrets.

SCENE 3
The front door of Castle Frankenstein. Mischa knocks as Coco cringes from the wet wind.

The door opens and a dramatically dressed dame stands before them all decked out in the finest that American money can buy. Dame Frankenstein Oh my, American faces and what’s that you’re holding, a cookbook? Coco We’re not sales-people, mam. Our rental car went off the road and we need to get to a telephone to notify the authorities of our whereabouts.

Dame Frankenstein

Authorities? I’m the authority here. Do you know who I am ? I am Sheri Frankenstein.

Mischa Varsi and this is my wife, Coco. We own the Hungarian Hofbrau on Second Avenue.

Manhattan Island! Oh please, please forgive my bad manners, as I’m use to dealing with the local peasants and the burgermeister. I hate those local yokels as much as I hate the trailer trash back home in the States.

We actually were searching for something a little more exotic in the dessert category. Well, what I mean to say is that my wife and are trying to hunt down European recipes to expand our current menu at the restaurant.

This trip we’re on is sort of a pilgrimage for the palate. You know, trailblazing for the tummy. My husband and I take our work very seriously.

And so do I, for you see we are sort of in the same line of business. You deal with the dismembered denizens of dairyland and I too wear the butcher’s apron in this house, this House of Frankenstein. Please enter and let’s cook-up something interesting.

Do you feel sorry for me, burdened with a family name that brings shivers to many, answering my own door like one of the peasants down in the valley?

You don’t look like a peasant, Ms Frankenstein. And we much prefer having you respond to our knocking than a creepy hunchback servant with rotten teeth.

A dinner tray is heard to crash to the ground. Mischa and Coco turn to find a creepy hunchback with rotten teeth standing at the entrance to the diningroom.

You stupid, bungling, horse-face! That was my great grandfather’s china. It’s not enough that I’ve got to eat that crap you cook but now I’ll have to choke it down on paper plates you hunchbacked hooligan.

Ms. Frankenstein, please, it was my fault. I shouldn’t have been so free with my tongue.

Your tongue is your meal ticket, woman of the Hofbrau. I pay that shmuck good money to do what you do for a living and all I get is gassy slop that makes me bloat. Do you think it’s easy for someone like me to wear a dress like this when my stomach is so full of fermented foulness that I can’t even bend down without releasing a cloud of vile vapors into this sanctuary of science. Yes, I said science for my ancestor was not a madman but a genius of the highest caliber. His blood flows through mine just as the lightning flowed through his greatest achievement, animating it with immortal life. Do you think I would be content being fueled just by gas so that the only thing stirring deep within my body would be a coil of vibrating intestines to fibulate my rectum? No, not I, Sheri Frankenstein, heir to the House of Frankenstein. I dream the dream of my ancestor and I refuse to lie in bed all night from indigestion and then fall victim to nightmares because of his suped-up burritos.

It turns him on. My husband, the Count Malachi of Morovia, is kinky Eurotrash, I found that out on our honeymoon and it’s been that way ever since. Ask any of the townsfolk, they’ll tell you. It’s no secret in this province.

Constipated? You call me constipated when I haven’t once, in all the years we’ve been married, been able to retain the protein you’ve derailed into my digestive track. Ours was not just a fruitless union; there was no caviar or champagne either. No romance just kinky kitchen capers and Wesson oil binges.

Was there no cooking knowledge handed down to you from this, the man you looked up to?

Victor Frankenstein was a homosexual necrophiliac who enjoyed buggering a butchered behemoth from the grave. His atrocities live on in the marital union that my dear wife and I find ourselves in. We are not only children of the night but gargoyles of the gutter. There is no room for us in either heaven or hell so we live out the remaining years of our lives here, in perogi purgatory,

If only you could make a decent perogi, things might be different between us. I’d be able to swallow that, but no, you’ve got the dough and your meat is all cheesy but I wouldn’t eat what you had to offer if you were the last Man of La Mancha.

You see! You see! She complains about my Mexican food yet she craves the fiber filled fullness that seeds all senoritas with a splash of deviltry. Sheri prefers evacuating her plumbing after a plate of chimichangas than doing it my way, the way of the rubber hose.

Shut your filthy mouth and cleanup the mess we’ve made. Mr. and Mrs. Varsi run a professional kitchen in the city of New York and if they would be so kind to prepare a sampling of their entrees they can avail themselves to all that Castle Frankenstein has to offer.

Since I married that mistake the villagers call me Dame Freakenstein. They mock the nobility of my bloodline.

Your ancestor did leave a long line, of blood, through this terrain. His exploits are very well documented in the horror literature.

My husband proves that decadence need not be attributed to the fairer sex. Perhaps I should phrase that differently since sex with him was neither fair nor even remotely okay. It was a wifely chore I endured like mopping or sanitizing the commode. It was definitely far less satisfying than housework even though the costuming was similar what with rubber sheaths being worn to protect the hands and other extremities from abrasive fluids.

I grant you that marriage is not always a shatterproof sacrament, but surely there must’ve been something that glued you together in the first place?

My husband can stitch a corpse together nicely so he was allowed to be my mate, my soulmate. The other mate I have has no soul.

I beg forgiveness for you see, weary travelers, the research done by my ancestor, Victor Frankenstein, did not die along with his earthly vessel of virility. The spiritual side, the evil that was Frankenstein, was purified in the fires of hell. The heat from those fires now cooks my carcass, for that is what I am without his dream of everlasting life: a carcass as putrid with the stench of mortality as the fallen bovines that litter the pastures of this poisoned precinct. For this is a land made barren by paltry puerileties.

Follow me and hang onto your sanity as tightly as you grip that cookbook of yours. I am about to show you the legacy of a lunatic. A living legacy of death defying proportions massive enough to fit the scope of Victor’s victorious vision. Come this way please.

SCENE 6
Dame Frankenstein and her guests enter a secret laboratory filled with archaic, electrical equipment.

Why this is absolutely astounding! It reeks of science yet hints at a more occult wisdom, like alchemy.

Alchemists sought to turn the plebeian into the precious and that is what I too have attempted to achieve in this, the laboratory of my mentor, Victor Frankenstein.

Are you telling us that the monster lives, that the creation from the crypt once again walks this earth in all its gargantuan grossness?

No my dear, the original creature is still dormant in the vaults beneath this castle. Its brain was hopelessly homicidal and must never be allowed to reanimate the jigsaw giant it inhabits. But if you recall, my beloved Victor created a mate for that brute and it is she that I have attempted to resurrect from the ruins.

Yes, her grotesque groom destroyed the union before it could be consummated because she hated him. But it was doomed to begin with because that stupid assistant, Fritz, had given the female cadaver a man's brain by mistake, rendering the poor creature incapable of desiring intimate relations with the monstrous male.

But why would you want to bring back such a botched experiment, especially after the tragedy it inspired?

Bits can be sewed into chunks and chunks can lump together nicely when necessary. The volumes you see on the shelves of this laboratory contain the knowledge needed for such operations and, as I said before, my husband is a surgeon of some note. Plus I, Sheri Frankenstein, have a degree in biosferics.

A specialized course in electrical biology that’s given at Leipzig University.

But for what purpose would such a tortured monstrosity be brought back into the world? Surely such a deviant damsel could only bring shame and ruin to an already demoralized community such as yours.

A community without morals would be a more apt description of this town. You see my dear, I, as the Baroness Frankenstein, need a lesbian relationship to bring back the zest to a stagnant state of sordidness: my marriage. Malachi wants a three-way and he wants the newcomer to be of the same sex as yours truly. The women in town find us both disgusting and have no interest in appeasing our dark hungers. You both, as restaurateurs, must understand the exotic tastes that sometimes surface in a world of jaded appetites. I have been alive for many decades and my husband also bears the weight of Father Time’s sandbox. It has buried both of us in an avalanche of acrid aridity. We are in essence completely dehydrated of desire for one another despite the elaborate and revolting fantasies being employed to get the juices flowing. What you are about to witness is our greatest fantasy yet.

Dame Frankenstein moves over to a draped area of the chamber and pulls a chord.

The sight that reveals itself to the startled guests causes them to gasp in horror.

The Bride of Frankenstein stands in hideous hibernation amid the wires and test tubes.

Coco buries her face in Mischa’s chest as their host looks on proudly at her greatest achievement.

But surely this madness must stop. That thing is no improvement over your husband.

The odor will vanish as soon as I throw that switch over there. Electricity will ionize the air and the aroma of ozone will mask the offending stink. You know my husband actually enjoys the pungent stench of sensuality. He’s kind of like a dog that loves to roll in dollops of desiccated dumpings.

Don’t throw that switch, Sheri. Think of the consequences: the ugly stain of crimson calamity that these creatures have brought to Castle Frankenstein.

The only crimson calamity in this castle is my lips. You know I can’t see very well anymore and there’s no decent mirror in this dump because of Count Dracula. He had them removed as they reminded him of his immaterial nature. I got the same impression when I gazed into one too. I would be standing there holding that phallic cylinder of Hazel Bishop lipstick and think: why bother? The red outline would only delineate where that orifice of missing teeth is situated on this prune-like head. That’s what I was, a pitted prune, the pits removed by a vengeful vermin named Ginger Vitus. She caused my face to collapse into a morass of pumice textured folds completely devoid of any natural lubrication.

The only thing greasy to adorn this brittle shell, which houses my spiritual nature, was a swath of Preparation-H that oozed inside a cleft which once dripped with wetness of orgasmic origins. Now the dimpled mounds that rim this cleavage swing low under the pull of gravity, which seems to dislodge every dingle-berry that nature granted my otherwise fruitless body. They crash earthward and crunch under the cracked soles of hammer-toed extremities, mapping my progress through the years with excrements of time instead of increments. They don’t tick; they plop a path around the sundial.

Plop, plop, plop, and then every once in awhile an alarm goes off in a flatulating fracas of melodic malevolence, tainting the environment with an excruciating exhaust of exhaled eternity. Oh I was in bad shape and I knew it.

The research of Victor Frankenstein, specifically his findings in regard to the electrical enervation of herbal essences.

Then his notes are similar to the pantry practices to be found in New Age agendas?

They were a hybrid of sorts, a mixture of energizing edibles and embalming emollients.

It’s true, you see we want the diners to leave our restaurant in a state of rejuvenation after a plate of keilbasa and not feel all cramped in the guts with Transylvanian toxins.

Why, we can all make a fortune marketing this kind of Carpathian chow while you can come back to America and be able to shop at Neiman Marcus instead of Bloomingdales. Would you like that, Sheri?

To return to your country as a spokeswoman for varnishkish and veal? Do you think that would honor the Frankenstein name? Did Victor die so that I could release his scientific diary to the world as a Fanny Farmer Cookbook? And you call me mad? Why you silly, goofy gringos, I’ll pull this switch right now!

She takes hold of the switch and almost pulls it down except that Coco and Mischa jump her and a struggle ensues.

That’s it, Mischa, we’ll call them burgermeisters and put lots of onions on top.

Make sure you fry the onions in chicken fat to give it that European zing, okay?

Don’t be a fool, Malachi, this isn’t a brawl, it’s a business deal. We have in our hands a breadwinner not a breadbasket

With the kind of money we’re talking about you can hire real treats to fudge around with the Mrs. and you won’t have to settle for that dead meat over there.

What do you know of my personal life you impertinent imp? How dare you equate your 21 st century impoverishments to the timeless treasures of this towering terrain? These mountains have nurtured corruption and death way before the Mrs. and I tied the knot (or should I say noose). Just like these muddy, boulder-strewn roads, life rolled some pretty big obstacles in our path but we licked them all (at least I did). Sheri never cared much for oral misadventures because of her bleeding gums (it made her think she had caused an injury to her partner). I suppose that is what got her interested in all this scientific, doctor stuff because we’re pretty isolated up here. She may have lost most of her teeth but not her marbles. The woman has quite a brain and easily mastered the dental arts along with the less ivory colored ones: the black arts. I dare say she is a witch, not in the libelous sense of that label, but in its medicinal meaning. She was able to re-inflate a sagging face and body with the knowledge gained from hunching over those Godforsaken volumes of Victor’s. I dare say that the osteoarthritis helped lock her into a more concentric arc of concentration as she learned to repair the ills Father Time had leaked into her gene pool. You see before you a reinvented woman, a woman of cultured values and skin (as some of it did come from test tubes). With the electrical apparatus that occasionally fogs this room in a cloud of ozone smelling mist, she was able to emerge from the gloom tingling with a current of muscle tightening amps that made those buttocks once again ride high and the bazooms to swell with silicone synergy. She did this all for me, Count Malachi VonSchlatzberg, international playboy of days gone by and nights awry. Nobility with no balls and no crown either. The rug that sat on my head was a magic carpet of Arabian camel hair that flew off to the Sahara every time the desert wind blew. Sheri’s fingers tried to tame that patch of galloping strands during moments of passion but the cranial humps sent the toupee in search of a greener oasis. My barren baldness offered no traction to the fur piece and no attraction for the fur-burgers that sizzled in their bikinis out there in the desert of desire. But Sheri ignored the loss that left my head without a steering system and grabbed on to my ears instead, pulling me to her as passionately as a Hindu embracing Ganesh, the gargantuan God of elephantine epiphanies. And just like that two-ton deity my trunk would swing from side to side in anticipation of the holy ritual we were about to perform. In her hands Sheri held the nuts to entice my trunk to its longest reach. She was a Karma Sutra kurva who spurned Christian chastity for Heathen hi-jinx. The fact that I was prone to wearing girdles did not deter her from the heat of the moment. Dear Lord, how she would let the latex squeak, squeal and snap as her hands ripped it from these love handles which hung precariously over the retaining garment like a white avalanche. As the girdle lowered my tummy fell in lumpy swells of rippled extravagance almost smothering the manhood that stood firm against its onslaught.

Well I want to hear the rest of it. Go on darling, I had no idea of the depths of your feeling in these matters, these matters of the heart.

Oh Sheri, Sheri, my cookoo Sheri. It’s all in the mind not the heart. You and I tried everything to make it work –every sordid fantasy that Castle Frankenstein could breed in this festering dankness. Not a shaft of sunlight was able to penetrate the centuries of dust that made these windows blind to the gold of a summer sun. Perhaps with a nice tan I could have been a better sight for the sore and sour eyes that now gaze upon me with such pity.

It is not pity I feel, darling. I feel so little these days that I can’t recall what pity is suppose to feel like. I do remember that my fingertips use to delight in the sinewy satin of your robe and how I use to pull the chord to expose that epidermis of exquisite elegance. Now when I pull the chord it’s like P. T. Barnum unveiling Jumbo’s poundage to the populace. I knew that at your age it was useless to go on a diet because only the legs and arms would get thin. That torso was immune to shrinkage and destined to bloat indefinitely no matter what the diet or volume of gas expelled. I thank you for keeping the expulsions to a minimum during our marital upheavals, Malachi.

Believe me Sheri, I held back so much in order to make what we had smell like a bed of roses; but roses have thorns and are vulnerable to the mandibles of beauty ravaging beetles. Japanese bugs.

You mean buggers, ravishing buggers likeYoriko. She was the first, wasn’t she Malachi? That teriyaki twat, coming into our kitchen to cook up trouble between us.

She had been trained in the art of the Geisha and I was helpless to protect myself from that Oriental octopus and her tentacles of temptation. They were like noodles her tentacles, all soft and succulent with the scent of sesame. Forgive me, Sheri, I could not resist the suction cups nor the tufts of virgin white udon that awaited my lips.

Tarnished silverware and a broken heart –all belonging to me. I blamed my feet for the whole affair, as hers were tiny and danced to fluted tunes. Mine waltzed to a Wurlitzer like river barges on the Danube.

I was sick of Strauss and Mozart, sick of the continent and wolfbane. I needed the aroma of cherry blossoms to perk-up my proboscis.

She was no cherry honey. A kumquat maybe, but that’s as sweet as it gets. Kumquats are sometimes served in a dish if ice cubes. A frigid and fast delicacy that goes well with hot nuts.

She punches him in the solar plexus. Coco and Mischa watch in shocked amazement as the battle proceeds at a fast clip. Suddenly a brutal punch from Sheri sends Malachi wheeling into the switch, which he accidentally pulls while attempting to regain his balance. The electrical equipment jumps into high gear and sparks shoot into the bolts on the neck of the bride of Frankenstein. She jerks to life and lunges at the closest one to her: Malachi. A struggle between them ensues as Sheri, Coco and Mischa huddle together in the laboratory. They seem to bond in a natural manner.

Look, I’ll grab the Frankenstein diary; you get your husband and head upstairs.

This is no time for questions. We can chat while shopping at Neiman Marcus, now get going!

Mischa and Coco exit and climb the stairs while Sheri reaches for the Frankenstein notes. Malachi pushes the bride of Frankenstein away and rushes up to Sheri.

You want to start a new life without me, huh cutie? Well here, start it with a new face!

He grabs a bottle of acid and splashes it in her face. Sheri screams as her face is eaten away by the caustic solution. She stumbles into the grip of the hideous bride who throttles her by the throat. Malachi starts to laugh uncontrollably as the bride rips away the dress from Sheri’s torso and they wind up on the floor in a heap of tangled flesh. Malachi becomes increasingly excited by this spectacle and drops his robe to accentuate the “erotic” scene. His laughter turns to a lascivious drool as the women continue their struggle amid crashing instruments of science.

SCENE 7
Mischa and Coco enter the kitchen in a breathless panic. They search for a Japanese cookbook.

But what about the car: it’s wrecked. How the hell are we going to get out of here?!

I’m sure they have a stable in the rear. We’ll go by horse and carriage, like in Central Park, darling.

Here it is, now where the hell is SHE with that other book? Get down there and see what’s keeping her.

Coco flips the pages of the Japanese cookbook in delight as Mischa scrambles downstairs. As he enters the laboratory he’s shocked at the spectacle of the two females battling it out on the floor in a state of semi-nakedness. Suddenly a semi- nude Malachi sneaks up on him from the rear and hits him over the head with a blunt instrument. Mischa falls to the ground unconscious.

SCENE 8
Coco finishes browsing through the cookbook and calls down to Mischa

Hey, what’s up with you two? Come on, there’s a let-up in the storm. Now is the time to go!

Here you are, sweetheart. I know that when you awaken from your beauty rest you will forgive my haste in consummating our wedding night so early, but everything is just perfect right now that I couldn’t wait, my lesbian wildcat!

Malachi gazes at the jumble of females slugging it out nearby as he mounts the fallen husband of Coco.

SCENE 10
Coco impatiently proceeds into the dining room to call down to her cohort.

Suddenly she looks up to find a Japanese woman staring at her with a crazed expression of unbridled hunger.

She looks down at the cookbook in her hands and then up again at the disheveled oriental

Yoriko raises a meat clever and approaches the now terrified Coco who backs against a wall in a screaming frenzy. The flash of a descending meat clever silences her shrieks as it chops away savagely. Malachi enters the scene in an agitated and drained condition, the robe of satin clumsily draped over his bloated physique. He yells down to the noisy threesome in the cellar below.

I’m sure the last of the Frankenstein creations has a lot of wild partying to catch up on. Maybe she’d like some privacy.

He slams the cellar door closed and bolts it. Then he turns to the Geisha girl with the bloody meat clever.

That’s not a bad pile of white meat my comely kumquat. We’ll have to cook it a lot less than Sheri. I’m afraid she’s rather overdone, especially around the kisser. Come here my sake-saturated succubus of Sodom and Tempura.

Malachi takes Yoriko in his arms. They stand together in the murky chamber of horrors as the storm outside flickers in fleeting flashes.