Into Painfreak
Author: Gerard Houraner; Jeff Strand
Date: 2023-05-16 00:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

INTO

PAINFREAK

Edited by

Gerard Houarner

Necro Publications

— 2016 —

| — | — |

First Edition Trade Paperback

“Introduction: Why Painfreak?” © 2016 Gerard Houarner

“Welcome to the Mercy Museum” © 2016 Charlee Jacob & Linda Addison

“Henry-Tobacconist” © 2016 John Urbancik

“The Night Sitter” © 2016 Edward Lee

“Painfreak” © 2016 Gerard Houarner

“The Thick of Chaos” © 2016 K. Trap Jones

“Exclusive” © 2016 Randy Chandler

“He Who Whispers the Dead Back to Life” © 2016 Lucy Taylor

“The Reverend’s Wife” © 2016 Tony Tremblay

“Ownership” © 2016 Wrath James White

“The Danse Macabre” © 2016 Monica O’Rourke

“The Rut” © 2016 Gerard Houarner

“Coping Mechanism” © 2016 Jeff Strand

“Pretty Me Up” © 2016 Michael T. Huyck, Jr.

“Sacred Meat” © 2016 Jeffrey Thomas

“Aikiko’s Blade” © 2016 Colleen Wanglund

“Divine Red” © 2016 Ryan Harding

“Bondage and Godhood” © 2016 Jordan Krall

“They Deal in Pain, But Pleasure Is Better” © 2016 Chesya Burke

‘Sing Blue Silver” © 2016 John Everson

“Storming the Museum” © 2016 Charlee Jacob

Cover art © 2016 David G. Barnett

This edition 2016 © Necro Publications

LCCN: 2016955560

ISBN: 978-1-944703-15-8

Book design & typesetting:

David G. Barnett
fatcatgraphicdesign.com

Assistant editors:

David G. Barnett

Necro Publications

5139 Maxon Terrace, Sanford, FL 32771
necropublications.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, or his agent, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a critical article or review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper, or electronically transmitted on radio or television.

All persons in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance that may seem to exist to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental. This is a work of fiction.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

| — | — |

For my father, who's been claiming to enjoy my Investutech stories for years.

| — | — |

Dedication:

For Dave Barnett,
and in memory of

Tom Piccirilli and J. F. Gonzalez,
writers and friends

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Table of Contents

Introduction: Why Painfreak? — Gerard Houarner

Welcome to the Mercy Museum — Charlee Jacob & Linda Addison

Henry-Tobacconist — John Urbancik

The Night Sitter — Edward Lee

Painfreak — Gerard Houarner

The Thick of Chaos — K. Trap Jones

Exclusive — Randy Chandler

He Who Whispers the Dead Back to Life — Lucy Taylor

The Reverend’s Wife — Tony Tremblay

Ownership — Wrath James White

The Danse Macabre — Monica O’Rourke

The Rut — Gerard Houarner

Coping Mechanism — Jeff Strand

Pretty Me Up — Michael T. Huyck, Jr.

Sacred Meat — Jeffrey Thomas

Aikiko’s Blade — Colleen Wanglund

Divine Red — Ryan Harding

Bondage and Godhood — Jordan Krall

They Deal in Pain, But Pleasure Is Better — Chesya Burke

Sing Blue Silver — John Everson

Storming the Museum — Charlee Jacob

About the Authors

| — | — |

Why Painfreak

Many years ago, I wrote a story called Painfreak—another one of those erotic horror stories about the doom of sexual excess that were so popular in the ’90s era of AIDS terror. It was published in David Barnett’s publishing venture, Into the Darkness, and received an Honorable Mention in that year’s St. Martins Press Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, so I assumed the story didn’t completely suck. Eventually, it became the title story of my first collection, also published by Dave’s Necro Publications, which became a modest small press success, with some of its stories becoming part of longer works published commercially.

The idea of Painfreak, that supernatural sex club from hell, stayed with me. We writers love our little pocket universes. Over time it grew into a lively part of the fictional universe I play in, appearing every now and then in the stories of a particular supernatural assassin when situations demanded it. Through these tales, Painfreak became something mythical in my mind, a dark and magical place, a mine shaft dug into universal drives, desires, and monstrosities in search of a mother lode of horror and terror and essential truths about what we are, deep inside.

Or at least, in my ever-hopeful mind, the old and venerable club became a stage that might make a story a little different from everyone else’s sex club horror story.

All in all, Painfreak proved to be quite the little cornerstone in my tiny and irrelevant writing career. Something I could reach for when, for example, I needed a path into hell, or a place for terrible people to discover horrible things about themselves.

Fast forward twenty odd years later, and out of nowhere (well, certainly, from the other side of his death) Dave Barnett asked me if I’d be interested in editing an anthology of Painfreak stories.

Of course, I’d never imagined any such thing, and would never have proposed it. Who would care?

I’m eternally grateful for the opportunities Dave’s given me. What presence I have in the horror field is founded in large part by the work I’ve done for him. Maybe, being a DJ and all, there’s the possibility that he might have worked in a place like Painfreak and he likes to relive his wayward youth through these fictional brushes with sex death.

Once, just in case he’d never been there (which I find hard to believe), I made him the house DJ in the background.

You never know.

Anyway, my initial reaction, after the shock wore off, was mixed. Who am I to go asking for contributions based on a story I wrote a long time ago? What was Painfreak to anybody, that deserved its own anthology? The question is of course rhetorical—no one, and nothing.

But Dave has faith in the idea. He’s asked every now and then for a Painfreak novel, but I’ve never quite gotten the angle on a book about a “place,” a Haunting of Hill House for erotic extremism. I’m not much into haunted houses and such. So far, I’ve felt more comfortable exploring the place through the adventures of characters passing through, seeing what “comes up,” so the speak, out of the shadows.

I do enjoy the mystery of the place, with its possibilities of sex and death, creation and destruction, all rolled up into a friendly, cozy little Tardis-like environment you might call the oldest established permanently floating sex club in the universe, if you were inclined to musical mythical horror mashups.

So when I thought about it, and came to grips with the reality that a publisher who’s been around longer than many of the “big name” small presses, and who’s had an enormous impact on the field as well in this particular writer’s career, is now asking this particular writer if he’d like to do an anthology based on a key element of that writer’s universe, it seemed to be time to get real. Who else is ever going to give me that kind of chance?

There are other reasons to do a project like this. Like, for the sheer hell of it, of course. There’s the satisfaction of doing a piece of work that will hopefully please my old friend, as well as whatever readers who’ve stuck with me over the years. And, just as important, here’s an opportunity to work with old friends, and some new ones, in an amusement park I made. Plus, I get to help writers get paid—feed the authors!

There’s also the opportunity to relive the good old days, when my friend and co-editor GAK and I put together a string of Dead Cat projects, fiction and poetry, that were such a blast because of the people involved. I still feel that editorial rush every time Hildy Silverman sends me new copies of Space and Time magazine, where I can see pieces published that, as Fiction Editor, I recommended to her.

Perhaps most importantly, for my creative satisfaction, here’s an opportunity for other creators to make something more, something else, something better, of this oldest established permanently floating sex club in the universe.

So, after due consideration, I settled down to reality and, of course, said yes. So there you go and here we are—a collection of stories from old friends and new, many familiar to readers of the extreme, some not—I may have corrupted one or two and brought them over to the dark side, and for that, I offer no apologies. Hey, we’re all adults here. I’m honored that folks took the time to give this idea a shot and blow out some walls, air out a few corners, and kick some life into the old bird.

For those of you who might be wondering why I also have an original story in here, along with the reprint of the original tale, there are two explanations. A number of writers who had originally jumped aboard dropped out along the way for the usual reasons, from medical disasters to conflicting deadlines—welcome to the “romantic” world of a working writer’s hectic business life. As the project evolved I began to worry if there’d be enough material, and so we have the primary explanation for the story’s presence. The secondary one is the fact that I’d already been inspired by the stories that were already in, with an idea percolating and demanding to be served. I figured if I did a back-up piece and didn’t need it, I could always sell it to someone else’s anthology. I showed it to Dave, and the next thing I knew he’d put it on the board.

Turns out we have way more material than originally intended, so this extra one from me didn’t replace anyone’s tale—no writers were harmed or robbed or in any way deprived by its creation or in its presence. If anything, you’re free to mock it and tell me how badly my peers kicked my ass in my own playground! No harm in truth.

Of course, I wish I’d been able to gather more new and old friends. For some, like Tom Piccirilli and Jesus Gonzalez, the project made me miss them even more. For the rest, I hope there’s a next opportunity in the future to open the gates and play in a brand new dark and terrible wonderland.

Thanks to all the writers who supported this project, to the readers who have helped keep the idea live over the years, and of course thanks to Dave, for making it happen.

Gerard Houarner

NYC

September, 2016

PS—Here’s the Painfreak description I used in the guidelines for the anthology, for readers who may interested, now or later:

Painfreak is a floating, international and interdimensional club dedicated to fulfilling people’s deepest sexual needs and appetites. It appears unexpectedly, emerging in the abandoned places, the ruins and lost crossroads, the forgotten dead ends, in the heart of great cities and other places where people in numbers congregate. And then it vanishes, to return someday when enough people need it to.

Not everyone who goes in, comes out.

A short, thin Asian man, and a scarred, bald-headed giant serve as its gatekeepers, vetting those who want to enter by checking them for a referral, or the club’s bone mark on the back of the left hand between thumb and forefinger, visible only in Painfreak’s presence. No amount of money or treasure, no service to the club or its gatekeepers, can buy entry. Entrance is granted only by being accompanied by a club patron, or bearing a referral from a patron (the door men can tell when you’re lying), or having the mark given to all first-time visitors.

The club’s structure changes depending on time, place and culture, but in general entry involves a “long walk” through some kind of no-man’s territory and entry into a grand, opulent club space filled with sexual entertainment. Most club-goers never venture beyond this point, content to dabble in the tamer games being played, or to watch. These are the tourists.

Painfreak’s elite patrons, demons and angels, the desperate and the cunning, predators and prey, drift deeper into Painfreak, finding the back rooms and private chambers of corruption, perversion, rage, hunger, desire, pain. Sex is the doorway they use to reach their secret natures.

Painfreak feeds, and feeds on, the dance between the destructive and self-destructive. It nurtures the predator and prey in each of us, creates endless playgrounds to seduce and empower the innocent and the monstrous. It welcomes all gods and goddesses, all the creatures of mythologies known and unknown, the void and the fires at the heart of creation. Painfreak sits at the crossroads between appetites and self-annihilation.

Sometimes, people stay, by choice, temptation, or terrible error. Perhaps, they discover a new world or hell to live in. They may come back changed into something else, transformed from weak to powerful, or vice versa. Forgiven or cursed, avenged or betrayed. Burdened by the unknown, and by what they could have never perceived before they came to Painfreak.

They die. They leave Painfreak, and they come back for more. They haunt.

It would be interesting to have a story about Painfreak without anyone ever setting a foot in it—the effect on characters based just on the idea of it, the threat the possibility of its existence might pose on an otherwise realistic setting and character.

In conclusion, a theory:

Painfreak has always been here, always will be, wherever humans carry the burdens of their appetites and natures. It has had other names, other guardians. In the past, it may have been a temple, or a secret cave where there’d been none before. In the future, it may become something else. But its purpose, its service to the evolving hungers that drive humanity, remains the same. It is a shadow we cast, the shadow we fight or embrace, the shadow we are consumed by or become.

««—»»

That, along with the original story and some Painfreak scenes taken from other tales, are the chips the writers who follow were given to play with. Consider yourself invited, hold out your hand for the mark, and enter of your own free will.

Come to watch? Come to play? You never know.

Just remember, not everyone who goes in comes out.

Let the good times roll…

| — | — |

Welcome to the Mercy Museum

————

Charlee Jacob & Linda Addison

Admission only to Painfreak’s elite.

You who long to scrape secret answers
from moist doors in the halls of midnight.

Limbs, smiles full of bone on bone love.

When the great Cosmic Orgasms,
monologues of opening acts
proclaim your arrival, deeper
insurrections of flesh will whisper.

Main exhibit discovered in a bone canopic jar
around the end of the 23rd century…

See how hungry light turns from it,
like the forbidden face of God.

Listen closely, muffled screams
of radiant destruction vibrate
within, fed by your presence,
leaving an aftertaste, salty-sweet.

Human-shaped darkness avoids
reflection on its surface.

An appetizer of things to come,
a monstrous wind hissing from beyond.

This is the part where Creation
never speaks in its real voice.

| — | — |

Henry, Tobacconist

————

John Urbancik

What is this life? A series of otherwise disconnected events happen to, or get thrown at, a person? It’s tough to define life when you remember none of it beyond the past two years. Not the birth or the birthdays, not the lovers or the friends, not the rivals or the enemies. Thus, life becomes a series of burn barrels, highway overpasses, cheap bourbon, and broken women. Sex isn’t comfort; it’s the final braying screams of two or three abandoned souls, it’s the effervescence of disease, decay, and death.

This is his life. Everything borrowed or found or stolen—even his name, ripped off the ghost of an advertisement on the bricks of an abandoned building. Henry. Tobacconist. No one needs his name anyhow. There’s no such thing as conversation in this life. Maybe once. Maybe before. He doesn’t know and likely never will. But he feels it’s important to maintain a name, an identity, something he can use to refer to himself within his inner monologues. It separates his from the innumerable faces of strangers, concubines, and competitors.

It’s an early, dreary night, the rain threatening and promising but providing no relief from the miasma of the day, when Henry wanders down a familiar path and discovers something unfamiliar. He’s drawn to this alley, lane, whatever you might call it, possibly because of some past life, some fragment of memory thrashing in his underneaths, so he walks it often. He knows every lamppost, every storefront window, every flake of rust on the iron bars in front of the glass. Only the spiders change their webs every night. True workers, those. They know their own lives. Eat, fuck, spin. There’s an appeal. Henry’s heart, the twisted tumor in his chest, aches at the concept of such certainty of purpose. But not tonight. Tonight, he pauses to stare down the offshoot of an alley, through the murk and beyond the fogs—summoned by his mind and eyes?—at a doorway he’s never seen before.

Never is too big a word. He’s seen all sorts of doors, and this one scratches the insides of his skull. It doesn’t belong here. This whole alley has clawed its way from hell to impose itself on Henry’s otherwise mundane evening stroll.

He knows it’s not a stroll. He clings to the word anyhow.

Henry sneers at the door. His ribs vibrate as his heart attempts to escape. He doesn’t often use his voice, not to its fullest extent. He typically leaves words unspoken, forgets their meaning, leaves them to wither to dust in the crevasses of his mind. But tonight, he finds his full volume—not a yell or a shout, but nothing like his usual murmurings and mutterings. He states, with authority, “Take your vile atrocities, your arduous and onerous and odorous perversions, and burn.” He spits at the cement in front of his feet. He won’t take that first step. He feels contempt, not fear, and he hasn’t got the slightest idea why.

He turns from the door and leaves, hurries with the rest of his walk, retreats to his home under a bridge, a sanctuary of cold cement like a mausoleum. There’s room for one, for Henry and no one else, but there’s a woman nearby, an ugly woman he’s shared food with before. In this life, everyone suffers from varying degrees of ugly. Hers isn’t an unattractive homeliness, and his passions have been stirred. He meets her eyes, perhaps the first eyes he’s ever met—blue like an angel’s eyes, nothing street about them—and says, “Share my bed tonight.” It’s an invitation.

She grunts. It’s assent. It allows for a brief shared ascension from the horrors of ceaseless plodding monotony. A shared moment approximating the euphoric heavens.

Life, Henry thinks, belongs to those who are living. He’s a revenant, a ghost of himself, a neglected sack of blood and bones. He changes his routines, scraps with other nameless vagrants and transients, witnesses different pigeons alighting on different statues in different parks. This isn’t change. This isn’t real. In another life, not another world but the time before, under the guise of a more appropriate name not ripped shamelessly from bricks, perhaps he had lived in a suite of bedrooms with satin sheets and innumerable women dripping pearls and silks, an infinite supply of cash and never even the echo of a hunger craving.

Oh, there would have been other hungers, just not the kind that twisted his guts and impelled him to thievery and murder—a ceaseless need for more of something. European paintings? Caviar and cigars? Paramours and doxies? Something stirs inside, something deep—almost a recollection, almost a reflection. Once upon a time, even Henry himself could look into a mirror and see a man, straight and tall, powerful and confident and even feared, immaculately dressed and smelling of Bulgari.

He doesn’t like to dream of what might have been.

What made him abdicate? Why would he run?

He kills the rising memory. Slits its throat. Strangles it as it bleeds. He doesn’t want it, doesn’t need it, doesn’t care in the least. In his life, there are no deadlines. There’s no complacency. There’s nothing but the relentless struggle to wake up full of breath just one more day. Henry is slave to no calendar and no clock.

Yet he counts days. Two, three, six before he returns to the familiar paths he’s carved into his life. The spiders and their webs in the iron bars, windows that obscure rather than reveal, crooked steps on the fractured sidewalk, faded yellow lights. And still the door, the alley, insinuated into the course of his nights like it belonged, demanding his attention, requiring his submission.

Henry was not a man who submitted easily to anything. Not in this lifetime, not in any other. “Haunt me at your own peril,” he warned the door. Then he spit again, and turned and left.

The door plagued him. It interfered with his thoughts, with his rhythms, with his dreams. He and the ugly woman rutted and howled and raised ghosts from their graves. He had never felt so vibrant, but they were seeking something—different things. Whatever she sought didn’t matter; Henry reached for the impossible, the unattainable, the unimaginable, and the divine. He cried when it was over, and shoved her away, and shouted into the dark at gods and demons alike. As if sex of any sort could save him. It was too late for salvation. Too late for mercy. He needed to hurt someone or something, so he punched at the walls of his hole until he cracked the cement and his knuckles, until the red of his blood mixed with the gray dust, until the faintest echo of pain reached across the chasm of numbness he had excavated around himself.

He found words, just a few, to mutter at himself. “Henry,” his assumed name, “you ignorant slug, you ill-meant sliver of offal, you wretched donkey.” He sighed deep. This wasn’t a life for sighing. Such luxuries were reserved for the prosperous and the literati. He threw out one more description, an afterthought, the truest of them all: “Henry, you faint coward.”

He counted three more days. He didn’t like counting days. There were implications to counting. He wasn’t in a position to amass anything, certainly not days, and he wasn’t too keen on the idea of countdown. As though the future promised any alterations in the direction of his life. His future was set, not merely engraved in stone but soldered in steel: disease, decay, and death. The same that awaited everyone, affluent and destitute alike. The inescapable rigors of mortality.

The woman tried to talk sense into him as though she were capable of such a miracle. “You’re marked,” she told him, “by devils or saints, I don’t know.” He found her words useless. He dismissed her, but she refused to leave. “I will give you all you need.”

“Woman,” he said, using it as both title and curse, “you lack the carnal intricacies of common tourists. Your mind flutters like a damn butterfly, from discontent to dispassion to disdain. Have I taught you nothing?”

But he had, in fact, taught her nothing, and he fell through displeasure to contempt. He strangled the woman in her sleep. It was a mercy to them both.

Henry returned to the door.

He spit on the ground in front of him and waited and spit again. Finally, he crossed the line he’d set, arching his back so that he could stride. He intended to strike terror into hearts. He intended to achieve nirvana. To find his own personal rapture, and to inflict it upon willing if misguided collaborators. It wasn’t just sex; it had never been just sex. He took a deep, sumptuous breath, as though he had some right to it, before pushing through the door.

A wall of muscle under a bald cranium sneered down at him hungrily, as though Henry might just be his best chance for supper. An Asian man, short and thin, eyed him from the shadows. Henry lifted his left arm, out of habit or practice or memory, to show the mark unseen outside the dominion of Painfreak.

“Welcome back,” the Asian man said. They parted to allow Henry down the long corridor. The sounds of heavy bass and constant drums, the screams of delight and pleasure and pain, the scents of whiskey and masculinity, the allure of his favorite type of woman, all rose to meet him.

He shrugged out of the guise of Henry, that life of denial and desperation, and inhaled the ghost of himself. His shadow recognized him before he did. Before descending to the club, before falling back into that dreadful decadence—where he, of all people, saw things that would shatter angels—he whispered, “Painfreak, you magnificent pit, Abram is returned.”

| — | — |

The Night Sitter

————

Edward Lee

Jessica would discover the details of the entire matter only when the matter had ended. But what it began with was the SD card—

—and what she’d seen on it, what they’d done to that woman’s head.

««—»»

The client’s name was Roulet, Edmund Roulet. She’d met him one night web-camming; hence, the reason she thought of him as a “client,” though nothing sexual had ever transpired between them. He hadn’t asked for a show, or for her to masturbate with any one of her toys. No dirty talk, no “Have you been a bad boy?” He hadn’t even jerked off. Instead, he’d only talked to her for a few moments—“Ah, I see from your profile that you’re from Florida, so am I.”—“Really?”—“Two years of college and a CNA certificate? Impressive.”—“Oh, no car? But you do have a driver’s license—that’s great.” He was feeling around for something. Why would a webcam enthusiast care about her education and her driver’s license?

He’d turned his own cam on so she could see his face, and this Mr. Roulet’s face didn’t really reflect the face of a cam-site denizen. He could’ve been a retired college professor: white hair a bit disheveled, bald spot, spectacles, and a white beard to which the attention of some scissors would be a service. But there was no look of the perv about him, nothing resembling a typified Dirty Old Man.

“What do you want to see?” she asked. “I like you, let me give you an eye-party,” this, of course, because webcamming paid by the minute. “Wanna pussy-show? Around the World? I’ve got some big toys too. I can even fist myself.”

But none of this would do. Mr. Roulet had another motive for being on Jessica’s link, and what it boiled down to was this: “I’d like to offer you a job, Jessica, a night job, which should present no problem since most cam-girls are nocturnal.”

A night job? “I’m listening,” she said, suspicious.

“I’ll pay $500 a night for you to house-sit for me, every night, from dusk till dawn. I offer free room and board we well, if you’d prefer. The only additional duties will be to take out the garbage, retrieve my mail, and run errands for me in the car.”

I don’t know, Jessica thought. “Did you mean $500 a week?”

“No, no. Per night. I’ll have an auxiliary bank account you’ll have ATM access to, or I can transfer your pay each night to your own bank account, a recharge card, PayPal, whatever you’d prefer.”

She put it point-blank. “It sounds too good to be true, Edmund.”

“Please, if you will. Mr. Roulet. And please know that this is not in any way a sexual proposition—”

Yeah, right, she thought, not that sex would’ve been any obstacle. Jessica, by the way, was very inclined to transactional arrangements.

“—in fact, you’ll very rarely even see me,” his pixelated image went on. “I merely want an attractive young woman to sit up at night while I’m asleep.” He paused, typing something. “Tell you what. I’ll send my address to your profile contact, and how about this?”

The little counter at the bottom of the screen registered only two minutes so far. The site fee was two dollars per minute, but she only got half of that, and there was her total earned so far, showing on the screen: $2.00. This has got to be pure bullshit, she reasoned, but then more numerals appeared on screen: TIP: $500.00

“I’ve just sent you a $500 tip,” he went on. “I’ll expect you at noon. Take a cab or have a friend drop you off, whatever. And if I don’t see you tomorrow, I’ll take it that you simply don’t want the job, but you may keep the tip with my compliments.”

“Uh,” she said. “Wow.”

He showed her a big, genuine smile. “It’s been a distinct pleasure talking to you, Jessica, and I do hope I shall see you tomorrow. So, until then, or if not, I bid you a very good night.”

Mr. Roulet signed off.

««—»»

All that anyone had ever deduced about Mr. Roulet was that he was something of a sybaritic recluse, this judged by the always-full recycle bin of very expensive Scotch bottles and steady deliveries from gourmet restaurants. He lived unknown and to himself; in fact, he hadn’t been seen by any neighbors for quite some time. The constant presence of a new luxury sedan in his driveway only reinforced the consensus that he was a man of private wealth in spite of the incongruence of the physical state of his old eyesore of a house and untended yard. Neighbors regularly spied empty bottles of Macallan 21-Year-Old Fine, Glenmorangie Quarter Century, and Glenfiddich 30, all hundreds per bottle. The proprietor of the nearest liquor store claimed that every two weeks an attractive woman driving Roulet’s sedan would purchase one bottle of Remy Martin Louis XIII cognac for $2800.

So. The never-seen Mr. Roulet had something of a drinking problem to accentuate his agoraphobia.

He did, however, insist on the constant employment of a live-in house attendant/night-sitter, who was always a young woman of provocative appearance, and that made talk. But all anyone got out of them was that they rarely even saw Mr. Roulet in the house and that they obtained his supplies and house-sat and nothing else. In other words, even though some of these young ladies did indeed embrace leanings toward prostitution, no such activities had ever been requested of them from the curious Mr. Roulet.

««—»»

Jessica arrived just before noon, via taxi, at the address furnished last night. The cab fare was $62.00 but she only need pay the driver twelve due to his overzealous suggestion that she could reduce the meter by fifty dollars if she were willing to apply her mouth to a certain part of his body. About this, Jessica had no qualms.

Even before she’d checked out, she knew should would be accepting the room and board offer from Mr. Roulet. Sight unseen or not, she couldn’t stand her squalid drug-infested motel, and she was very weary of having to bend over for the manager (a back-door man) any time she was short on her rent, which was often. The police were now running stings on Backpage, and web-camming was bottoming out. She simply couldn’t make ends meet. Why had her CNA accreditation not rescued her from such seedy circles? Wouldn’t such a professional certificate enable to her secure respectable employment? Well, the answer is not far to seek. The only thing there were more of in Florida than old people were mosquitoes and certified nursing assistants. That fact along with a drug bust and a six-month stay care of the county department of corrections, did little to brighten the quality of her employability.

Moving into the house of a perfect stranger she’d met online might not strike one as a sensible decision but, one, desperate situations called for desperate actions and, two, she had nothing to lose in giving it a shot. Mr. Roulet wasn’t serial-killer material, was he? Strike when the iron is hot, her departed mother used to tell her as a child, which Jessica guessed was an axiom suggesting that one should never hesitate when presented with an opportunity. Well, the iron could scarcely get hotter than $500 a night for sitting on her ass. And if the entire gig turned out to be a sham, she’d walk out.

At any rate, here she was, at Mr. Roulet’s house.

And what a house it was. A fuckin’ dump, she observed, bags in hand as the cabbie departed. Mr. Roulet’s abode was a one-story salt-box with an untrimmed yard and short palm trees half-concealing it. The new black BMW sitting there presented still more oddity. And in the blue recycle bin, atop untold scotch bottles, sat an empty 224-gram tin of Kaluga-Malossol caviar. This is REALLY fucked up, she thought but, strange as it might seem, she was rather at home with that. Typically, everything in Jessica’s life was fucked up.

The drab front door presented a bizarre dull-brass knocker of a blank face: just two empty eyes, no nose, no mouth. After a shiver, she rapped on it, and the door opened, creaking in a manner that seemed appropriate of such a place and situation.

But here all that was ominous ceased, as Mr. Roulet revealed himself to be an amiable and seemingly harmless subject of study. The gray-haired and -bearded face she’d conversed with last night sat atop the body of a taller than average, obese man, past middle age. The 300-pound frame wore baggy slacks with suspenders, a huge short-sleeved white shirt, and Bruno Mali shoes. His eyes beamed, like a grandfather’s upon the entry of a granddaughter. “How delightful to meet you in person, Jessica. I’m so happy you’ve come, and happier still that, seeing you’ve brought your luggage, you’ve decided to stay. A wise choice. Why pay rent somewhere else when you can live here for free?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “I plan to save as much money as possible so I can go back to school.”

“How wonderful to encounter a young woman with goals,” he said. “However, before we go on, we must take care of this one preliminary,” and he proffered her a plastic cup with some powder on the bottom. Jessica knew what it was immediately.

“I’ll need you to urinate in that,” he told her. “Please understand that I never stereotype people but I must consider the statistical probability. Many girls who web-cam and engage in parallel professions have a proclivity towards drug addiction. I simply can’t have that here, and I hope you’re not offended.”

Jessica chuckled and raised her jeans skirt, beneath which no panties were evident. “I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Roulet. I’ve taken many a piss test in my time. No offense taken.”

He seemed startled. “Um, well, you can do it in the bathroom, for goodness sake.”

“I’d rather do it in front of you, sir. That way you’ll know I’m for real. Every piss test I’ve taken I’ve had to do in front of a bull-dyke prison nurse. Lots of girls would sneak someone else’s urine in in condoms. I appreciate this opportunity you’re giving me, sir. I don’t want you to have any doubts,” and, here, she parted her legs and peed unabashed into the cup.

“Your genuineness is intriguing,” he said, still taken aback. While she urinated, he did indeed watch for a moment but there was no trace of Piss-Freak in his eyes. Jessica was very familiar with this species of pervert and had urinated in front of her web-cam many a time.

Finished, she set the warm cup on the kitchen half-counter, then went around to wash her hands. “I was a drug addict a few years ago, Mr. Roulet,” she admitted. “But those days are over. I’ve got no kids, no psycho ex-husbands or boyfriends, and no pimps. And there are no shady characters in my life. In fact, there is no one in my life, and I’ve busted my ass to make it that way.”

Mr. Roulet’s busy eyebrows rose. “We seem to have some commonalities, Jessica, which pleases me much. Philosopher and Noble-Prize winner Jean-Paul Sartre asserted that Hell is other people. In the course of my life I’ve observed that his assertion in general is oh-too-true.”

Whoever this Jean-Paul guy was, she thought, he hit that one out of the park.

After noting the cup negative-for-drugs result, Mr. Roulet embarked on an exposition: he’d lived in this house his entire life, and the property it sat upon had been in his family since Florida had become a U.S. territory. In fact, the current structure had been built on the original tabby-brick foundation lain in 1822. Whence did these ancestors hail? “From the northern colonies. We were Huguenots from southern France”—he paused for a muffled chuckle—“Calvinists, originally.” After the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685 essentially sanctioned the government to execute all Huguenots who didn’t convert, the Roulets became desperate émigrés, fleeing first to the Massachusetts Bay Colony (where they were not well-received) and then to the Common Wealth of Rhode Island. “We were then kicked out of Providence in the early 1800s, for reasons…unclear,” he went on. “At any rate, my forebears settled here, exactly where we are standing now.” He seemed to grin. “I am the last linear male issue, so to speak, the last of a questionable yet captivating line.”

Jessica noted some innuendo in his verbal thesis but she didn’t care. Working for this man—however weird he really was—would give her the opportunity to turn her life back around, get back to her education and betterment, and finally sever all needs to consent to petty prostitution with disgusting slobs and never again have to debase herself before a web-cam contingent of sorry losers. She felt something now that she hadn’t felt in a long time: elation.

“Here is my room,” Mr. Roulet indicated, touching the knob of the door facing the kitchen entrance. “Hopefully you will never have a need to enter it,” he added with another vague, inexplicable grin.

Okaaaay…

Then he showed Jessica her own bedroom, accessed by a door at the end of the commodious—and very cluttered—living room. A small but quaint room adorned in old green wall-paper with wainscoting. An old four poster bed with a high mattress. An old dresser, an old nightstand, and an old framed engraving of some place called Bury-St. Edmunds, and English town, she guessed by the look of it. She’d never heard of the place.

“And never, for any reason, attempt to open this door,” Mr. Roulet told her. He indicated a narrow door next to the bathroom. “It’s perpetually locked, for safety purposes, an old closet in disrepair. I never use it so I’ve never bothered having a contractor here to fix it up.”

Jessica couldn’t gather how an old closet could be locked for safety purposes but to this notion she merely shrugged. Fine.

“The last time I was in it, I found quite a rats’ nest. I detest all manner of vermin, as do most. I dumped poison in, and had the door permanently closed,” but it was interesting how he’d said this, with a quaver in his voice, like a method actor missing his mark. Okay by me, she thought. You can have dead bodies in that closet and I could shit care less. All I care about is my $500 a night…

As she turned to follow Mr. Roulet back to the living room, she noticed an unevenness about the carpet just before this closet door.

Warped floorboards, perhaps.

More rules of the house were expounded upon: “You must remain in the house from dusk till dawn, every night. No guests, no visitors, no relatives must never be invited here, ever. Naturally, as a young woman I don’t expect you to curtail your social life for this job, but I’m afraid that this must be pursued only between sun-up and sundown—”

“I don’t have a social life, Mr. Roulet,” she informed him.

“Ah, another commonality, for neither do I.” He explained more: she could continue her web-camming from the house but she must never give the address to anyone. If she had “transactional clients,” that was fine, but she must engage in those kinds of rendezvous removed from the premise, and only between sun-up to sun down. “Dusk till dawn is my time; I need you here; that’s what you’re being paid for.”

“Understood, sir.”

Bookshelves dominated the living room, along with a few odd portraits—the old family line, Jessica supposed. A long leather couch occupied half of the other side of the room, fronted by a glass coffee table and also a large flat-panel TV. “It’s a 4k, whatever that means. Use the computer all you like; the Netflix password is taped to the table.”

Goodie! she thought.

Mr. Roulet stood poised in a manner which presaged something of a coming verbal tractate. “As you’ve ascertained, I’m a man of eccentric habits, but I believe this offends no one when practiced without pompier. As an antiquary and historical scholar for my adult life’s entirety, I’ve collected many old and unusual things—books and relics, mostly—which you now see filling this room,” and his hand gestured the abundant bookshelves and their wares, as some glass display cabinets housing trinkets of one sort or another. “The average person might, indeed, feel certain”—he removed an old grey book from a shelf—“that a volume of mathematical tracts published by Plantin in Antwerp only 100 years after the invention of the printing press would have considerable value”—he removed an Indian arrow head from a case—“or that a Clovis point, chipped by out of chalcedony by a Seminole Indian 13,000 years ago must be very expensive.”

“Aren’t they?” Jessica asked with a knit brow. “I’d think things that old would go for big money to collectors, museums, and all that.”

Roulet raised a finger, seemingly delighted. “Ah, you’ve alighted upon my point immediately, my dear. Here is the truth: there’s precious little in this room that has any significant value. It’s junk. That Plantin book? Aside from being perhaps the dullest book ever printed, might fetch 20 dollars at a book show. And this spear-point? One would think that something 13,000 years old would be worth a tidy sum but the fact is there are more of these things in America than there are Starbucks, Walgreens, supermarkets, and McDonald’s combined.” He put the Clovis point back. “It’s all worthless to anyone but me, for sentimental reasons as they’ve been in my family for centuries. However—”

Jessica thought she was finally getting the message. “The stuff’s worthless but the bad guys outside don’t know that, and they might try to break in and steal it. Well, don’t worry, Mr. Roulet. I’ll guard your stuff from dusk till dawn.”

“Excellent, I’m so glad you’re receiving my meaning, and my explanation of my habits,” the portly man went on. “Oh, and I feel I’m also obliged to let you know there are hidden cameras all over this room, but since you’re a cam-girl, I can’t imagine that to be a problem.”

“Not a problem at all, sir—”

“—but let me hasten to add, that’s only in this room and the kitchen. There are no cameras in your bedroom, nor in the bathroom.”

“Wouldn’t matter if there were, sir.” She suspected this information was added to make her think twice about stealing anything herself. “I’ve been watched on cameras doing everything from taking a dump, to smearing guacamole on my butt, to stepping on jelly donuts in my bare feet.”

Mr. Roulet, quite out of character, laughed aloud. “A woman of true perception. You’ve come to grips with the world’s irrationality and adapted yourself to it, to your own end.”

She laughed herself. “I guess you could put it that way.” But one element remained that she needed some elucidation on. “Just so I’m straight on this. If someone does try to break into the house at night, you’ll want me to call the cops, right.”

His eyebrows jumped. “No, no, you come and get me. Pound on my door till I awaken—I’m a heavy sleeper—and if I don’t rouse—” He lumbered to a small framed engraving of an old manor house in moonlight, with what looked like a cloaked figure in the yard, and he took it off the wall. Taped behind it was a key. “You retrieve this at once, unlock my bedroom door, and come in and wake me up.”

Cut and dry. “Got it.

“I’ll need you to use your judgment. Of course, a house this old will generate its share of noises: plumbing, creaking rafters, window frames expanding, the roof settling. You’ll know them when you hear them. Instead, what I’m most concerned with are unusual sounds, untoward noises, things that sound out of place or not-quite-right. Anywhere in the house, from any direction.”

He must be paranoid, she assumed. He’s paying five hundred a night to listen for noises? Suddenly, the man’s instructions were growing abstruse.

“Any odd noises from any place in the house,” he went on. “This room, your bedroom, the kitchen, bathroom, laundry room, the, the closet I showed you that’s always locked.”

Jessica nodded but, again, detected an irreducible falter, a quaver in his voice at this latest reference to the locked closet.

What is it with him and that fuckin’ closet?

Yet, again, she didn’t care and wouldn’t question it. This whole gig was about the money and how she could better herself with it.

“I understand completely, sir, and I want you to know how grateful I am for this opportunity. But—” She paused as if to recollect herself. “What if someone tries to break in some night when you aren’t here?”

“I will always be here, for I never leave the house. How’s that for eccentric, hmm?” He smiled. “In fact, I haven’t set foot out of this house in seven years.”

««—»»

Jessica settled into the new routine “swimmingly,” and suddenly her life was pleasantly arranged in “apple-pie” order for the first time in her twenty-six years of membership with the human race. From dusk till dawn she did work at her computer while keeping an ear out for Mr. Roulet’s “untoward” noises, which never revealed themselves. She would sleep early in the day, rise, and if there was a shopping list, she’d drive the car here and there to fetch the indulgences he requested, mostly exorbitantly priced Scotch and gastronomical items from gourmet stores and/or carry-out from high-end restaurants. Slabs of goose liver the size of birthday-cake slices, veal porterhouse steaks, pressed duck, oolong tea-poached Chilean sea bass, jars of truffles the size of meatballs, and the like. Once she’d brought back a steamed 12-pound lobster (12 pounds!), and once a $500 sashimi platter. And, every week, there was always the regular pickup of the aforementioned Louis XIII brandy.

During the first month of her service, she’d scarcely seen him. On rare occasions, he’d emerge from his room, take a book off the shelves, and return. Weekly, he’d leave a bag of laundry out for her to take to the cleaners. Obviously, he paid all the bills online. Thus far, all of his mail had been junk mail. She’d bring it in, leave it on the counter as directed, and while she slept, he’d come out, look it over and then transfer it at once into the garbage. Once a week a woman came and mowed the grass, and, odd as ever, another woman came every day to push a fertilizer spreader around the house. The lawn woman, named Judith, was in her early 30s, robustly figured without being fat, and had longish brunet hair turned to blond by the sun. “Oh, hi. You must be the new night-sitter.” “Yes, Jessica,” Jessica said. Judith was more tom-boyish than feminine, and generated something of a slutty cast: short jeans shorts and a baggy open necked t-shirt draped over massive breasts which the Florida sun heat immediately slicked with sweat, effecting quite a “wet T-shirt show,” for Judith never wore a bra. She was very much inclined for conversation, revealing that Mr. Roulet was “the best gig I’ve ever had, five hundred bucks a week he PayPals me, just to cut this postage stamp yard. I told him that I’d trim all the bushes and palm trees too for no extra cost but he doesn’t want me too. No fertilizer, no sprinklers, nothing, that’s why most of the yard is burnt. It’s almost like he wants the place to look like shit.” The same notion had occurred to Jessica more than once: a well-manicured and well-landscaped yard suggest affluence but what burglar would be interested in a house that looked like this? Jessica did not have lesbian proclivities but found it impossible not to look at Judith’s prodigious breasts, to which the sweat-drenched t-shirt clung like wet tissue paper. She asked, a bit impudently, “Has he ever hit on you?” “Don’t I wish!” Judith laughed. “The hot weather isn’t the only reason I wear this get-up. I’m no whore, but a guy that rich? I’d be spread-eagled on his floor in a blink.” “He’s never propositioned me,” Jessica said, “but if he did…hell, a girl’s gotta do what she’s gotta do.” “I hear that. He’s got little cameras outside, everywhere. Did you know that?” “I figured as much,” Jessica replied. “Told me he’s got them inside too.” Judith’s breasts joggled once when she huffed a laugh: “If he wants eye candy, I’ll give him all he wants. To keep this gig? Shit. It takes fifteen minutes to mow this little yard but I always take an hour, no matter how hot it is. Whenever I’m done, I take my shirt off in the backyard and hose off. I’m pretty sure he’s watching. Probably beats off, hope he does.”

Evidently there was a sexual side to the thus far non-sexual Mr. Roulet, an interesting disclosure.

Far more interesting, though, were the disclosures of Sharron, the “fertilizer girl.” Sharron was healthily slim, small perky breasts, an hour-glass figure, and legs that any man would holler over. She too wore very short shorts, and always a minuscule bikini top while working, which she always removed when pushing her Scott’s spreader around the fenced backyard—so, she had obviously come to the same conclusion as Judith: that Mr. Roulet was a voyeur, and Sharron had no hesitancy about emboldening her job security by practicing upon that conclusion. “But why do you only spread fertilizer around the foundation of the house?” Jessica asked. “Why not the entire yard?”

“It’s not fertilizer,” she said. “It’s salt.”

“Salt?”

“Mr. Roulet says that slugs infest the house if salt isn’t put down every day. I’ve never seen any but so what? I’m not about to tell him there are far better ways to keep slugs off. For $500 a day, seven days a week? I’ll do cartwheels in the yard dressed like Batman while whistling Dixie if he wants.”

So it seemed that Sharron made more money for less time than anyone—a dream job, and for something he could get neighborhood kid to do for five bucks.

“Have you met the maids yet?”

“Maids? No,” Jessica said, “but I sleep during the day so they may have come then.”

“Once a week three chicks from MAIDS R US come here and clean the kitchen, bathroom, and living room. All buck naked.”

“Wow.”

So much for speculation about voyeurism.

“But he doesn’t even watch them,” Sharron went on. “Stays in his room the whole time.”

“Probably watches on cameras. He must be bashful”

“Whatever. All I know is he saved my ass. I was practically homeless, living with scumbags and dope-slingers; my life was a pile of shit. But now? I got a nice new car, a great place to live, and a bunch of cash in the bank. Honestly, if that man pulled his cock out in front of me, I’d ask no questions, I’d just get on my knees and blow him.”

“Me, too,” Jessica knew. “Business is business.” Perhaps this was a universal perspective, today and for all of human history. The Powers That Be in this world considered average people to be “the little people,” and it was hard to make ends meet, doubly so for women. The contingent of society that label such activities as immoral were the “haves,” not the “have nots.” Every night Jessica did not have to sleep under a bridge was proof of initiative and resolve.

The last datum Sharron revealed was the manner by which she first came in contact with Mr. Roulet: web-camming.

Smooth sailing ensued for the first month of her employ. She sat up nights, spent time on the internet investigating various online courses she might want to take and school applications. She bid a hearty good-riddance to her web-cam account. She watched movies, and she started a mild regimen of exercise: sit-ups, push-ups, etc. She often spent her entire shift nude or just in panties. In the event that Mr. Roulet was observing her, she wanted to make damn sure he was satisfied with what he saw. Several times a week, she’d masturbate on the couch in the middle of the night, and would bring herself to genuine orgasm, not the kind she’d faked so often on the web-cam.

In that first month, she’d seen Mr. Roulet three times, for less than five minutes per appearance. And in that same month, Jessica had experienced absolutely nothing that might be considered “untoward.” No odd noises, no disturbances of any kind, and no evidence of prowlers.

««—»»

It was a Thursday morning, an hour after sun-rise, when Dawn concluded her shift, ate a bowl of cereal, watched ten minutes of local news, then went outside and put the garbage and recycle bin out by the curb. She spared a chuckle at the copious number of expensive Scotch bottles in the bin, then she spared a moment to notice the swath of salt that ran along the foundations of the house, shaking her head. She went back into the house.

No errands awaited her on the list; so she could either relax, go for a drive, whatever. She decided to go to the beach for a little while, before going to bed at noon. This had all the making of a nice, quiet, laid-back day.

After a quick shower, the stature of the day changed.

When she alighted from the bathroom, drying her hair, her heart surged. Mr. Roulet was lying on the floor, half out of his room. His bulky shape was shivering.

Fuck! She acted instantly, lunging, flipping him over, feeling for pulse. Heart attack, she could only presume. She didn’t know what to do save for what she saw on TV shows. She blew one short breath into his mouth, then straddled him to apply heart compressions. He lolled back and forth; it was as if she were straddling a manatee. Just as she thought, I don’t know what I’m doing! This big fucker’s gonna die! he seemed to stabilize a little. “You’re gonna be okay, Mr. Roulet,” she blabbered. “I’m calling 911—”

“No!” he gasped.

She called, then pulled on a robe. “No if’s, and’s, or but’s.” She got back down on a knee to make feeble attempts to comfort him. “They’ll be here soon, they’ll get you fixed up,” all the while thinking, if you didn’t stuff your face with caviar and lobster and drink like Charlie Fuckin’ Sheen, you wouldn’t be in this mess!

He pointed to his open bedroom door, gasping. “Amethyst. On chain. And leather pouch. On my dresser…”

What the fuck? He was probably terrified and insensible due to the attack’s reduction of oxygen to the brain. Hypoxia, she recalled from dim CNA classes. She went hesitantly into a bedroom—a huge, dark, commodious chamber—composed mostly of shadows which half-concealed bookshelves, old portraits, knickknacks, etc. She found the dark-clotted dresser. Amethyst, did he say? What the fuck? And a pouch…

There they were, the crudely cut semi-precious gem on a silver chain, and a small leather touch with drawstring. She inserted her finger in the latter, felt powder, and immediately considered heroin or cocaine. But it was more granulated and when she tasted a few granules on her fingertip she realized:

Salt.

She paused a moment before rushing back to her felled employer. She noticed a small unmistakable object also on the dresser: a 128-gig SD card.

Sirens blared outside. She darted back to the foyer, opened the front door, then returned to one knee beside Mr. Roulet. A crabbed hand snatched the amethyst and pouch, and he gasped “Thank you, Jessica…”

She grabbed his other hand. “Here are the EMT guys, don’t worry, Mr. Roulet, you’ll be fine in a jiffy,” and very swiftly two young medical attendants were in the house, lifting their obese charge onto a collapsible gurney with surprising ease, and were wheeling him out into daylight that had not touched his face in seven years. Jessica trotted after him. “I’ll locked up the house and follow you to the hospital, Mr. Roulet—”

“No!” he wheezed. “Stay here! I’ll call if, if—”

“There’s no ‘ifs’, Mr. Roulet. You’ll be fine. I’ll see you real soon…”

The gurney snapped into the back of the ambulance, the doors slammed shut. Jessica stood ineptly in the middle of the street, watching wide-eyed as ambulance sped away.

Of all the fucked up things, she thought. There goes my cash cow. What am I gonna do if he dies?

««—»»

Her most immediate notion was to go to the hospital right now and check his status. The modest medical data she’d gleaned from her old CNA classes made her think that he would probably survive. He’d been conscious when the EMTs took him, and he hadn’t looked like one at the foot of death’s door. And business was business, yes, but in spite of his being fat weird alcoholic glutton, Mr. Roulet was a nice guy in a world where nice guys were rarely found in stocking the shelves of humanities inventory. His death would slingshot her right back to web-camming and all the seediness that companioned it. Of course, she hoped he didn’t die, not only because that would terminate the best gig of her life but also because, simply, she liked the man.

But for whatever reason, he didn’t want her leaving the house.

I better say put. Calling the hospital for a status report, she knew, would be useless; these days no medical information about anyone would be relayed via the phone unless Mr. Roulet granted such access.

Idly, she looked around the living room and all its old books and relics. She knew that Mr. Roulet’s assertion that these possessions were all worthless was mere posturing. Rich men owned expensive things and some of this would certainly be valuable. However, Jessica knew she wasn’t crummy enough a person to steal.

If Mr. Roulet died…well, that was a bit different she supposed. And God knows what kind of valuables he’s got in his room…

His room.

The door to his bedroom remained opened from the mishap. Dare she enter for an expedited look around? Mr. Roulet could hardly object…

No second thoughts followed her back into the dark chamber. The opened door provided nearly all illumination but as her vision acclimated, the graininess began to divulge details: tall shelves, glass cases, undecipherable framed pictures. An immense antique bed. Imprints of other doors formed, no doubt the bathroom and a private kitchen. A bank of wide computer monitors behind a desk filled one corner, presumably Mr. Roulet’s work station and surveillance post for all of his supposed hidden camera, but the monitors were all off. An 11”x14” framed picture sat on the dresser, and she picked it up to turn it toward the light.

A wave of nausea accosted her; she winced, gagged, and put the picture back. Fuck…

It was a demented oil painting apparently, reminding her of the famous old paintings and engravings by Hieronymus Bosch and Gustav Dore: graphic illustrations of Hell. What Jessica had absorbed in that single glimpse looked like a bacchanal of nether worldly lust, a triptych panel suggesting the everlasting sins of the flesh in some deep recess of perdition. The vision shifted like vertigo in her head: a meld of concepts. Was it a cave, a cavern of some kind, lit by torches? But what the cave wall surrounded could only be a club or tavern or some such. What a fucked up idea for a painting, her thoughts murmured. Most fucked up, however, were the activities of the figures populating this appalling artwork. Gaunt and grinning demons converged among the nude throng, arms buried to the elbows in vaginas, rectums, and cranked open mouths. Other bulkish, craggy-looking creatures yanked off heads, arms, legs, breasts without discrimination, using taloned, dinner-plate-sized hands the color or slug-skin. Horns rose from their slab-like heads, their mouths jammed with fangs like shards of plate glass. But the inhuman were not the only participants: two men who were rotten but very much alive effected a double-penetration upon a woefully young woman; Jessica only hoped that it was a mistake of the artist that he’d depicted her as more adolescent than woman. Another female, just as young, had been fettered to a wooden table, legs spread so wide her hips must’ve been broken. Her face froze like the visage in Munch’s “The Scream.” She was outrageously pregnant.

But strangest of all was this bizarre “tavern” element to the scene, where in the background there was indeed a long bar top seated at which were keen-eyed customers, mostly of the human variety, all turned around on their stools, cocktails in hand, watching the abominable fete taking place at the center of the establishment…

Jessica gagged again at the recollection, going light-headed, then stumbled around in the bedroom’s dark crannies feeling for some evidence of Mr. Roulet’s fancy Scotch. Eventually, her hand fell on a bottle and she staggered back out to the kitchen.

“Holy fuck, holy fuck, holy fuck!”

She took a long chug off the bottle, her eyes widened, then she swallowed. The refined liquid burned down her throat and bloomed in her belly. How do people drink that shit? she thought, outraged, but a moment later the much-needed buzz kicked in.

Fuck. Who would paint such an awful picture? Kind of warped artist would even think of such a concept for a piece of artwork? And worse… Only a really warped person would want something like that…

Mr. Roulet.

And there was something else, wasn’t there?

She went back into the darkened bedroom, her motives on auto-pilot. It wasn’t to look at the picture again—God, no—it was for the SD card she’d seen.

The work of a moment had the card in her fingers and herself seated at the big computer screen before the couch. She snapped the card into the slot, and opened the file, and was never the same again…

««—»»

She sped to the hospital in an enraged daze. She no longer had a speck of concern for Roulet’s well-being, she only wanted to confront him. She couldn’t vomit anymore because there was nothing left to throw up.

It was as simple as this: that painting of the tavern in Hell and all its atrocious trimming was devised from reality, a rendition of an image in a photograph.

And the photograph had been a frame off the 4-hour SD card she’d found on Roulet’s dresser.

She hadn’t been able to watch the entire thing; she doubted if any sane person could. The place in the painting was real: the tavern or dance club or whatever it was, situated in some forsaken, Hadean grotto lit by torches of burning pitch. All the carnal and charnel horror of the painting unfolded before Jessica’s eyes High Def 1080p. The camera roved leisurely about as though it were the eye of casual onlooker. One atrocity after another, for hours, unrolled on the screen, all that she’d seen in the noxious painting and a hundred times more. Several spectators sitting at the bar seemed to nod to the camera as if the bearer were an acquaintance. Among such spectators were a finely dressed elderly couple, tonsured men in sackcloth surplices, a woman with skin as black as volcanic glass, her bald head beaded with intricate scars, her earlobes hooped and her neck extended half a foot past the norm via brass bands. One young modern couple kissed lewdly and fondled each other’s crotch; they wore matching shirts that read INDEPENDENT BAR next to whom stood a man in the regalia and helm of a Roman legionnaire, circa 100 B.C. All stared raptly at the horrific atrocities taking place on what would be the dance floor, some masturbating with nonchalance.

But then the camera ventured deeper, though a stone-arched corridor tinged white by nitrous encrustations. Fewer torches burned here, perhaps a good thing, forever every few yards a recess appeared, each revealing more atrocities and cacodaemoniacal sex acts which trebled the tenor of those in the club. The camera never lingered long over each revelation, moving in and out, in and out. The attendants here were clearly not human, for humans didn’t have great wings folded behind them, nor prick ears, nor horned heads. They seemed to be supervising the goings-on of more of those slab-like things she recalled most distinctly from the painting, those tartarean ushers with chisel-slits for eyes, flesh like slug-skin stretched tight over massive musculatures, mouths like knife-slits in clay. In each chamber, these things were either raping women to living-death, bare-handedly dismembering humans and unhumans alike; eviscerating, castrating, and exsanguinating others in place; and filling occupied bathtub-sized vessels with red-hot coals—all this while grinning in demonian glee.

The rest tried to recollect itself in her head but she forced it aside, parked in the visitors’ lot, and walked hurriedly into the hospital, unabashed by her parsimonious apparel (flip-flops, short cut-offs, and a yellow tube top) and not caring in the least that stock was being taken of her. “I’m here to visit a patient named Edmund Roulet,” she droned to an elderly woman at the info desk. “What room is he in?”

“Edmund Roulet, you say?” The woman seemed hesitant, off track. “Yes, uh, please have a seat. Someone will be with you shortly,” and then she picked up the phone in a manner that seemed furtive.

Jessica sat down in the empty waiting lounge, still nerve-racked. Why not just tell me what room to go to? Unless…

The inclination dawned on her now that Mr. Roulet must’ve died, and soon a doctor or nurse would come down to notify her. FUCK, I hope that fat sicko didn’t croak. I’ve GOT to find out what was on that card…, and it was then that the last bit of footage she’d watched shifted back into her head: the unseen cameraman wandering about in the rear coves of that diabolical undercroft. She’d already guessed that the “cameraman” could only be Roulet himself, and this was verified in the next few frames when the image crossed an oval-shaped mirror in whose silver veins could be seen the face and chest of a younger, slimmer Mr. Roulet, with a tiny lapel camera concealed on his shirt pocket.

One more chamber would be examined before Jessica, clenching in nausea, would turn the screen off.

Like a floating eye, the camera drifted into the next appalling, stone compartment. Women, clearly, were the victims of choice in these chasms, and the woman in question now had been lain out on a stone slab (nude, of course, and semen-covered), shackled down, and convulsing as the slug-fleshed denizens applied some sort of bucket-like apparatus over her head. Etched pictographs, geometric glyphs, and words in an unknown language covered the helmet-like device. Obviously, some occult science was taking place as other gathered round to spectate, including one of the horned, perfectly bosomed she-demons with wings and also an old oriental man with clasped hands and keen eyes. The woman bucked on the slab; smoked poured from around the opening of the device, and muffled screams could be heard—screams of such tenor and hideousness that they could never be accurately described. A moment of tense anticipation rose in the room until finally the smoke subsided and the screams degraded into sluggish blubbering.

When one of the monstrous acolytes removed the “bucket,” it could be seen that the entirety of the woman’s head had been collapsed; hair, nose, ears, and mouth still intact, but as if her skull had been removed, leaving a slack, quivering flap of flesh with eyelids that opened and closed over nothing. What had become of her skull?

The skull, still complete with roving, lidless eyeballs, was removed from the “bucket” and then placed on a wall of shelving alongside dozens of other such flesh-denuded heads. Now a spectator, an ordinary human man, climbed onto the slab to commence fornicating with the quivering, skull-less victim. It was at this time-stamp that Jessica snapped the SD card out of the slot, turned off the screen, and tripped away to vomit.

“Miss, miss?”

Jessica’s fugue-state of memory dissipated like fog, and through it she saw a tall, broad-shouldered man with short, greyed hair, dressed in a well-tailored suit. It was not the doctor or nurse she expected, but a police detective with his badge clipped to his jacket pocket.

“I’m Lieutenant Spence of the Metro PD Homicide Section.”

“Homicide?” she muttered. “So he’s—”

“I regret to inform you that Edmund Roulet is dead. Cause of death is as yet undetermined; however, it’s clear that it was murder via some mode of extreme and unrepresentative violence.”

This was far more than she expected. She stared up at the immense, well-dressed man.

“If you’ll follow me, please,” he said.

Up the elevator they went, with Jessica droningly answering his salvo of questions. “No, not a friend, really, I was his house-sitter and I ran errands for him.” “No, I don’t think he had any direct acquaintances, and no family.” “No, in fact, he never left the house. He told me he hasn’t for seven years.” “I’m an ex cam-girl and, yeah, I know what you’re thinking but, no, nothing romantic or intimate ever happened between us.” “My overall impression? He was a recluse interested in anthropology and mythology and stuff like that. He was a nice guy.” “No, nobody ever visited him at the house. I almost never saw him.”

More cursory inquiries followed as Spence nodded to a uniformed cop posted in front of a patient room. Before Spence opened the door, he said, “I need you to identify the body. I need to know that he is the same man on his license.”

“I don’t get it,” Jessica said. “Isn’t his face the same as the face on his ID?”

Spence looked at her deadpan. Then he led her into the room.

Jessica looked at the man in the bed beside the plaque which read ROULET, EDMUND, screamed, “You gotta be shitting me!” and ran back out of the room.

Still deadpan, Spence walked out to where she leaned gasping against the wall. “Fuck!” she bellowed.

Spence’s brow rose. “That’s him, I take it?”

“Yes…”

“How can you be sure?”

“The chain around his neck, the amethyst, and the leather pouch in his hand. It’s salt.”

“Salt, amethyst?”

“He asked for them when the ambulance was coming.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. He asked for them so I got them.”

“Hmm.” Spence pinched his chin. “His fingerprints aren’t on file, but we’re checking with his banks. Dental records, of course, will be useless.”

“Forget all that shit. It’s him,” she said, staring at the wall opposite.

“Over the course of my career, I’ve seen many bizarre things. But I’ve never seen anything even close to this.”

Yeah, but I have,” Jessica thought, because atop the body in the room there was no head where a head should be, just a skull-less sack of flesh, bearded, slack-mouthed, slits for eyes behind which no eyeballs existed.

“And you say he asked you for salt and amethyst?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know why?”

Some kind of protection, I guess. But why say that? “No, I can’t.”

Spence went on, “There are security cameras all over this hospital but my people checked them all. No one ever entered that room except for a few doctors, and shift nurses. I don’t know how that’s possible.” He squinted at her. “Did he have any enemies that you know of?”

“It sure looks like it,” Jessica whispered, “but not that I know of.”

Spence contemplated this with soulless eyes. “I need to ask you one more thing, and I need you to come back into the room for just another moment.”

“My, God,” she croaked.

“It’s important.”

Jessica followed him, teeth grinding. She forced her gaze away from the remains of Roulet’s head, but it was no here that Spence directed her attention.

There was a pen in Roulet’s right hand, and one the bedsheet by his side, he’d written this word: PAINFREAK.

“Do you have any idea what that is?” the detective asked.

“No,” Jessica said.

««—»»

Jessica stayed in a motel for the three days the police were examining the house. When she returned, she cleared the infamous yellow police tape off the front door, and found the inside in fair order, though much had been taken: all of Roulet’s computers, a good many books from the shelves, even her own laptop, which she was told would be returned “when the investigation was complete.” Dustings of purple fingerprint powder were evident. Though she only ventured a little way into Roulet’s darkened room, it was clear the chamber had been turned upside down. Several of the murky pictures on the wall were gone, confiscated, and so was the appalling painting on the dresser.

Oddest of all was that narrow door next to the bathroom, the door sealed, Roulet had claimed, because of a past rat infestation. Police had taken the door down (and made no neat job of it) but no closet exited behind it, just house-frame and very old plywood. No evidence or a former rodent problem could be seen, no old cakes of poison, etc. It was a door to nowhere, and its location made no sense. The uneven carpet just before it had been pulled up, and the cause of the unevenness easily viewed. Not warped floorboards (the bare floor was concrete) but instead an inch-thick layer of salt.

More salt. He’d had salt spread around the house spread every day, and even took a pouch of it to the hospital with him. A quick Google search on her phone verified her earlier idea: that salt was thought to possess protective properties such as absorbing negative psychic energy and warding off malevolent spirits. Ancient magic circles were made of salt. No unholy being could enter a salt-circle. He blocked that door with it, and kept a circle of it around his house, she reasoned. And the thing he feared the most never got him here. It came to the hospital instead…and got him there…

Oh, well…

She supposed she would be able to stay in the house until the power was shut off, or some legal authority sealed it for probate, but the month-plus of salary she’d earned thus far was all in the bank and would cover rent somewhere for several years. Things could be worse, she thought, but not for Roulet.

««—»»

She knew it was some inner-monitor which goaded her to stay for a while: the inclination that there was something she should wait for, which proved correct several nights later, a stormy, rainy night, of all things, and at midnight.

She came awake in the old four-poster bed to a rustling sound from beyond her room. She felt no inkling of fear when she rose and walked out, wearing only panties. The matter-of-fact thought entered her head, They’ve arrived.

The front door stood open. A bald oriental man in a black suit was perusing the bookshelves. Jessica had seen him once before.

“Please excuse this intrusion, miss. I’ll be brief. How this rendezvous concludes is entirely up to you.”

“You,” she said. “You’re from that place.”

“Indeed, I am, and here am I, here to reclaim what is mine.”

“So. The salt around the house doesn’t work?”

“Well enough, except when it rains.” He smiled sharp as a knife. “Edmund Roulet was steadfast with his locks and guards, but they only suffice here. We knew it was only a matter of time before some necessity forced him to leave this place. And this place, I’ll add, is something of a sacred property, one of many ancient, disused ingresses. The land this house sits on is one of them. To us, time is rather insignificant; however, that portal”—he aimed a long-nailed finger at the torn down closet door—“has existed for thousands of years. Roulet new all about it. He was, you might say, a hereditary member, the last of a long line of valued patrons. But he violated the rules, and that is unpardonable. He took from us, so we took from him.”

“He deserved to be murdered?” she questioned.

“Oh, but he hasn’t been murdered at all. In fact, Roulet is very much alive and always will be,” and then the man snapped his fingers, and another man appeared from Roulet’s bedroom, a tall man, cloaked in black, with a face that was a mask of scars.

In his hands he clasped one of the “helmet”-like objects, a thing like a bucket crawling with glyphs. From inside, he withdrew a wet, skinned skull, complete with lidless eyeballs.

“Brother Roulet will be with us always, in a very special place,” said the oriental man with a grin. But then he turned solemn. “You are an innocent, and it’s my deepest wish that we need not use our device on you, in which case you would be joining your former employer forever.”

“I think I know what you want,” Jessica said. She disappeared to her room then returned, the SD card tweezed between index and forefinger.

She placed it into the man’s opened hand.

His eyes deeply searched hers. “How rare and wonderful, to encounter someone genuinely honest.” His hand closed over the card. “Thank you,” and then he made a silent gesture to his escort, who took Jessica’s left hand and pressed something against it. As precisely as she stared, she could not visually decipher what that something was. There was intense, momentary pain, a sizzling like a red-hot brand, but when she jerked her hand away, no mark of any kind could be seen on it.

“Think of that as a tourist passport,” said the oriental. “You are always welcome among us in our domain.”

Now the tall, scarred man was wielding an ordinary broom and sweeping a path through the salt before the opening where the closet door had been taken down.

“I sincerely hope to see you again, Jessica,” and then the oriental and the scarred man stepped into the oblong opening and melted away until all that remained were the old two-by-fours of the wall-frame and plywood.

Jessica blinked. She rubbed her hand. She was pretty sure she would be entering very soon.

| — | — |

Painfreak

————

Gerard Houarner

Fear knotted Tony Lambert’s stomach as Lisa hopped out of the cab which had stopped in front of the closed Brooklyn warehouse half way down the block from his hiding place under the Belt Parkway. Once again, she was going to Painfreak.

Lisa, anonymous in her black rain coat and hat, trotted through the night’s light drizzle to the loading docks. Her slim, petite figure danced in and out of the light from the occasionally functioning street lamp. He had followed her from her girlfriend’s apartment to the floating club’s latest secret location a week ago, and had watched her enter every night since then. He had not yet gone in after her. The fear in his stomach warned him not to pursue her any further. Guy had said people didn’t always come out from Painfreak.

So far, Lisa had. Of course, Guy had called the both of them tourists, not players, the night seven years ago when he had introduced Tony to the club and they had met Lisa. Players took the real risks. Like Guy, who Painfreak had claimed with AIDS. Tourists just watched and wished they had the guts to join in the fun. To give themselves up, surrender to their fantasies. Tourists were afraid to go all the way. Guy had been right; Tony and Lisa had given up the club circuit, and Painfreak in particular, after they met. But they were still alive.

Except now Lisa had left him and gone back to Painfreak. Tony didn’t know why. They had started living together the night they met, and they had married soon afterward. In the seven years since, Tony had never been tempted to chase after another woman. Lisa had paid her share of the expenses, never complained or mentioned kids. They had lived quietly, with few friends or family to distract them from their private games. And it was the private games, like the milder ones at Painfreak and the scene to which it belonged, that had kept him faithful to Lisa. They always had sex the way Tony liked it. The way he always thought she liked it. Fantasy not quite over the edge. Love with costumes and devices out of video porn movies and catalogs; games without points; roles and body parts. It had been enough for him and, he thought, for her. He had no idea what other desires had gone unfulfilled in Lisa, any more than he knew the source of the fear that kept him from following her in.

He knew only that he was afraid of finding out.

Tony pressed himself against one of the Parkway’s steel support beams, as if trying to draw strength from the vibration of cars passing overhead. Cold metal stole the warmth from his hands and face. The susurration of tires on the wet highway pavement overhead whispered to him as Lisa knocked on the steel rolling gate at one of the bays. She waited, perfectly still, looking down. A side door cracked opened. She held out her hand toward the darkness in the entrance for a moment. She nodded and slipped into the darkness beyond the doorway.

Tony shuffled his feet. Thunder rolled in from Manhattan; lightning flashed. Soon, the drizzle would turn to hard rain. Soon, perhaps tonight, Painfreak would move. Vanish from the city altogether, re-settle for a while in Paris, Bangkok, Berlin, Los Angeles, or some other travelers’ city. Guy had said clubs like Painfreak were only an idea that stayed on the mind of a big city for a little while. The various social scenes from which such elite clubs erupted did not have the energy to sustain the kind of activities that went on inside. There were only so many players at any given time, in any given place. Once depleted of energy, the idea simply moved to another mind. Another city. Lisa might be swept away with the scene and find herself lost in a strange land. Or, driven by whatever pain and desperation that had brought her to the club in the first place, knowing the club might be out of her reach for a long time, she might make the move from tourist to player. And even if she emerged once more, unscathed, and returned tomorrow night to find Painfreak gone, Tony doubted she would come back to him. He would still not know the source of the pain and desperation that had made her suddenly abandon him, refuse any contact with him, and flee to Painfreak. And if he did not find out, then she would be lost to him forever.

The warehouse stood silent in the abandoned business district. No lights escaped its windows. No music, or any other sound, drifted along the street to him. Tony glanced back at his Lexus parked behind him by the service road curb. Water dripped from the highway into shallow pools, splashed on to concrete. The city waited around him, vast and enigmatic, offering neither encouragement nor menace. He had to make his move on his own. Tonight. Or give up Lisa.

He took a step, then another. He left the comforting darkness under the Belt Parkway, crossed the service road, hit the sidewalk at a steady pace. He tried not to think about where he was going, what he was doing. He tried to keep his mind on Lisa: on her strong legs, gentle hands, her wide mouth and full lips, the way she laughed, and sighed, and turned her head away from him after they were both satiated with sex.

Tony hunched his shoulders against the rain and the breeze, which had chilled and grown brisk. Cold rain trickled down his neck. The warehouse loomed over him, but he still was not at the loading docks.

Thinking about her reminded him of the barren apartment, the loneliness he felt sleeping alone. He missed her sitting on the sofa, reading, while he watched television. He missed her cleaning up in the kitchen after he cooked their meals, and coming back from the laundry with their clothes bundled in sacks, and pulling out coupons as they shopped in the supermarket. He missed the click of her high heels on ceramic floor tile, the play of muscle under skin when she tightened straps and flicked a crop or whip, the way leather and latex hugged her body. Without Lisa, he was empty. He could not give her up.

He realized suddenly, as he put his foot on the concrete step leading to the loading dock, that it was emptiness driving him into Painfreak. The hollow feeling within him had been growing since she left without a word days ago. Each failure to re-establish contact with her had sucked another piece of his inner self away. She had not gone to work in a week; Tony had called her line and waited outside her office building. She had run away from him outside her girlfriend’s apartment building. She had the doorman warn him the police would be called it he persisted in trying to talk to her.

He wondered how he had coped with the terrible, raw and aching hole at the center of his being before he met her. It was the pain of that emptiness that was overcoming his fear, making him return to Painfreak to find what he had lost.

On the loading docks, Tony took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Though he was afraid, the desperation of pain was stronger. And now he had something to tell Lisa. He understood there was more than fear inside him. Surely, she could relate to his emptiness. Perhaps, he thought as thunder rumbled nearby and the rain suddenly began to pour, she felt the same way. Empty. Missing something essential. Perhaps he had failed her in some unknown way. Perhaps he had driven her to Painfreak with his failure.

He had words, now, other than the pathetic: please come back, don’t leave me. He had questions: are you as empty as I? What are you looking for in this place? How can I fill your emptiness, as you’ve filled mine?

Fist trembling, Tony knocked on the gate. The steel rattled. A gust swept rain across the open dock. The side door opened, and Tony approached the darkness.

Shadows stirred; then a tall, wide form separated itself from the blackness and blocked the entrance. A thick-necked, bald-headed man crossed his arms over his chest and looked down on Tony.

Tony reached into his pocket for money, then stopped and stared at the doorman. He had a few more scars on his face and hands, and he was dressed in gray and black instead of the more colorful styles fashionable on his first visit, but there was no doubt the doorman was the same as when Guy had brought him in. It did not seem as if he had aged.

Someone reached out and grabbed Tony’s right wrist while he was pulling out his money. Strong fingers wrenched his hand back and twisted, paralyzing him in a painful joint lock. Tony knelt to escape the agony of tearing muscles and ligaments, then looked up. A slightly built Asian man dressed in a dark suit and turtleneck regarded him impassively while the doorman, his arms still crossed, stood behind him. Tony’s money fluttered away on the breeze.

“Referrals only,” the Asian man said softly. “Please leave.”

“My wife just went in—” Tony began, but then gasped as the Asian man twisted his hand a fraction more.

Wrong answer, but what was the right one? Guy had led him in the first time, talked to the doorman. No money, but what? The hand. Like Lisa, he had shown the doorman his hand. There had been a hand stamp, with invisible ink, to allow patrons to leave and return the same night. Both Guy and Tony had been stamped, but that was so many years ago. Stupid to even think—

“Been here, Guy brought me, long time…”

The Asian man released him, and the doorman gently helped him to his feet. They gazed at the back of his left hand. The faint outline of a bone mark glowed on his skin. Tony searched for a UV lamp, but found only blackness beyond the two men.

The Asian man stepped back while the doorman pressed a stamp down on the back of Tony’s left hand. His flesh tingled, and he remembered the sensation from his first visit. The doorman stepped aside and motioned him to enter.

“Always show the mark,” the Asian man said reproachfully before melting into the darkness.

Tony nodded and hurried into the warehouse, his heart beating fast and his wrist still throbbing. All those years he had worn Painfreak’s mark without knowing it had been burned into his flesh. Lisa had worn it as well. He had no doubt she had known about the invisible bone on her hand, just as she had always known how to find the club. A pair of secrets she had kept from him, like the unfulfilled dreams that haunted her, like the pain that was driving her back to Painfreak. He wondered how many marks she wore on her hand.

The narrow corridor he followed was dimly lit at the opposite end by a single bulb over a tight, winding set of metal stairs that led down. Seeing no other way to go, Tony descended the stairs. Bass pulsed up the stair well from the club’s speakers, sending tremors through the steel hand rails. A repetitive, mechanical tune echoed through the wider hallway he found at the bottom of the stairs. He headed toward another distant bulb, and the music became louder, bass beating inside of him like a second heart; cold, synthesized notes drawing his thoughts into an endless, pointless loop. At the steel double doors under the bulb, Tony shook his head, wiped his palms against his thighs, and pushed a heavy door.

The music washed over him like a cold wave of water. Something in the music, like the combination of electricity crackling and a faint feedback whine, made the short hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Things had changed since his last visit. The music was different, for one thing. And he didn’t remember seeing so many cages.

Seven years was too long away from Painfreak to return.

Tony walked to the long bar — battered tables of different heights and widths set end to end, behind which two naked barkeepers patrolled — and found an empty storage drum to sit on. Something whimpered inside the drum as his weight made the walls pop. He shifted uneasily on the warm metal. Nails or claws scratched feebly at the barrel walls. A new variation in Painfreak’s perversions, he decided.

The male barkeeper came to him and set down a tall Styrofoam cup of what looked like frothy fruit punch. Tony reached into his pocket and remembered he had lost his money. He turned to hold his empty hands up in a gesture of apology. The barkeeper shook his head, wiped his palms together in a gesture of dismissal and moved away. Tony didn’t remember paying for any drinks the last time, either.

He took a careful sip of the concoction, aware from news reports that drugs might have been mixed in with the punch. The sweet scent of tropical fruit masked for a moment the warehouse basement’s stale odors. Tangy flavors danced on his tongue, before a slightly bitter aftertaste and a spot of cold numbness told him there was a potent spell hiding behind the drink’s seductive enticement. Shaking his head, he put the cup down. Cocaine had been the drug of choice in his day, when things had seemed simpler.

Tony scanned the bodies jumping, gyrating, hurling, convulsing spasmodically on the dance floor. In single cages suspended at varying heights from the ceiling, naked women and men, some locked two and three to a cage, writhed and sweat and rattled the bars to their prisons. Colored lights pulsed with a stroboscopic effect on the crowd, illuminating for an instant individual faces contorted by ecstasy. He was not surprised Lisa was not among them. They were both too old for this nonsense. How could Lisa stand it? Over 30, now, and slowing down, neither one of them had the energy or the stamina anymore to throw themselves into such a bacchanal. In fact, meeting each other had been a graceful means of leaving the world of clubs and scenes and parties for both of them. Was it the adventurousness of youth that she missed? The daring? Was she trying to recapture the feeling that came from being young and living life on the edge? His appetites were no longer as keen or as sharp. Watching the frantic motions of the dancers and the twisting cages, he understood that now more than ever; he had limits. He did not want to abandon himself to music screaming around him or drugs humming from within, or join in tired, panting games that tried to capture dreams of sex and power and life and death. He did not want to dance on the edge. He wanted only Lisa.

The emptiness twisted inside of him as he imagined her as weary of the scene as he was, but wanting something else, something more. His grip on the cup tightened as he imagined her feeling that she had made the wrong choice in leaving with him that night, that she should have stayed and gone deeper into Painfreak. He shut his eyes against the moment’s vertigo, as he imagined her needing to go over the edge, to fall into the emptiness. To enter Painfreak and never come out.

Without thinking, he took a long swallow from the cup, then quickly put it down when he realized what he was doing. He wiped froth from his lips and pushed the cup away. When he looked around, he noticed an older couple standing against the wall, watching him. They were both stout, dressed in formal evening wear, and glittering with jewelry. The woman smiled and nodded to him, a hungry glint in her eye.

Tony remembered seeing their kind the last time. They were not tourists or players, Guy had said when Tony asked about the ones who looked so completely out of place in the club. They were the ones who paid the bills, made the arrangements, worked the bureaucratic magic that enabled Painfreak to appear and disappear without a trace. They were the part of the urban mind that sensed the need for Painfreak in the fabric of the city’s life. They did more than just make arrangements and watch; they filled their own emptiness when other danced on and over the edge. They fed, and when there was nothing more to feed on, they arranged for Painfreak to move on.

More and more, Tony remembered why he had abandoned the scene. He shuddered and looked away.

And found Lisa.

He saw brown hair cut short, a head bobbing up and down in a familiar rhythm, a quick profile that showed the long line of the forehead and nose. Lisa, slicing through the crowd, heading toward a door on the other side of the club floor.

Tony was up and on his feet, shouting her name. The music drowned his voice. Lisa vanished for a moment as he pushed his way through the dancers, frantically searching for her. He caught a glimpse of the older couple standing against the wall; they were laughing and talking to another elderly pair while pointing in his direction.

Someone who might have been Lisa went through the door. Tony staggered as a teenage girl slammed her body into his back. Her raw-edged howl bored through his mind before hands dragged her back into the dancing pack, lifted her into the air, and carried her to the center of the floor. Tony cast a final quick glance for Lisa, then went through the door.

He passed through a series of sound baffles made of strips of plastic and material hanging from ceiling pipes. He emerged into a darkened cavern lit by hazy fires. Tony froze, looked up, expecting to see stars through the thin smoke. Street grating set into the vaulted ceiling reassured him he had not been transported to some alien world. The place must have been a municipal storage depot at one time, like the ones inside bridge supports and off subway tunnels. Abandoned, the cavern had been transformed into an incubator for Painfreak’s more serious games.

Tony coughed from the smoke-tainted air, and he massaged a tearing eye. The music was absent; in its place, human voices cried out, wailed, shouted, screamed, singly and in small groups. Their rhythms were random, the volume nowhere near as high as in the club’s dancing area. Other noises mingled with the voices; metal grinding on metal, chains rattling, water splashing, the hiss of escaping gases, the soft thump of crashing bodies, wood splintering. Or bone. The sounds chilled him, though the cavern was hot and stuffy.

A few people ran past him, their naked feet slapping on the concrete floor. They faded quickly into the gloom, but he had seen enough to know none of them had been Lisa. Tony began trotting to the nearest fire.

He had almost reached the flames when he became aware of someone running alongside him. Startled, he turned, anticipating seeing Lisa.

The tall, thin man was naked, and his long, white hair trailed behind him as he kept pace with Tony. His face was bony, beardless, and his eyes were black in the dim, flickering light. He smiled, acknowledging his discovery. “I never had the chance to show you the back rooms,” the man said, and his smile broadened. “You and Lisa hit it off so fast the first time you came here.”

It wasn’t Guy. Guy was dead. The toothy smile was his, as was the jutting jaw and the body that had been flesh draped over bones even before AIDS claimed it. The man’s voice sounded like Guy’s, sarcastic and dry, on the edge of a caustic observation. But it couldn’t be Guy. The cavern spun once around Tony, and he nearly fell.

Tony stopped beyond the fire’s inner circle of light, and the man coasted to a stop a few steps later. They faced each other, the man putting his hands on his hips. Through his body, Tony could see the flames jump as if through a translucent curtain.

“See anything you like, sailor boy?” The man wiggled his hips.

“Who the fuck are you?” Not believing, never, it wasn’t possible.

The man pouted. “I could understand you forgetting me if we’d fucked, Tony. But damn, after two years of rooming together, I figured the sexual tension between us would’ve made me memorable.” The man exploded into hysterical laughter, holding his arms across his stomach and stamping a foot repeatedly. “Nothing like unrequited lust to bring back the dead,” he said after catching his breath, and laughed again.

Tony circled around the man and approached the fire. It was Guy. Alive, or dead, but still Guy. Not possible, but real. Suddenly, the world did not feel so solid or tangible.

“College was a long time ago,” Tony said, measuring his words carefully. He glanced at the figures at the periphery of the fire’s light, trying to deny the fact that he was talking to Guy as he searched for Lisa.

“Oh, please, stop acting like a tourist bitch,” Guy said, his good humor gaining an angry edge. “I’m the fucker that’s dead, asshole.”

Tony wandered to the other side of the fire, trying to put distance between himself and the apparition. Guy strolled languidly around the fire after him. Tony glanced at the cavern entrance, a distant gray splotch in the darkness. He thought of emptiness, of Lisa.

“I’m sorry about what happened to you, Guy.” Was he really talking to a ghost? “But I’m here looking for Lisa.” Tony started to turn, desperately pushing the idea of Guy, of talking to a ghost, out of his mind. Lisa. He was after Lisa. That was his anchor to what was real.

“You always were looking for a bitch, Tony,” Guy said in a mocking tone. “That’s why you liked rooming with me. Didn’t give a shit about what the guys said. I was a good bitch to you, even if you never touched me, even if you never let me touch you. And I made your other bitches feel good when they came over. Mister sensitive and self-confident, so masculine you could relate to a homosexual,” he said, rolling his eyes, shoulders, hips, snaking his arms up and down, “and not feel threatened. Ooooo, they really ate it up, didn’t they?”

Tony’s face flushed, and he turned back quickly as a flash of anger washed over his fear. “Why don’t you spare me the helpless faggot routine, Guy.”

“And if they freaked when they met me, you knew they weren’t going to be any fun, right? Too uptight and serious. They’d start in on your image and reputation, like I was going to drag the both of you into a social gutter. And I would’ve, too.” Guy laughed, but he kept his gaze fixed on Tony. “No, you liked the ones who asked if you ever watched me have sex with my lovers, who were curious about how gays did it, who’d listen to you talk about leather and cock rings and fist fucking.”

Tony jabbed a finger at Guy. “I used you, and you used me. You liked it when your little studs played seduction games with me, or when the two of you sat back and made fun of me while I was in the house. And you knew things were wrong when your prick got jealous and macho around me. You didn’t mind it when I got some of those wackos off your tail, either.”

“You know how I love it when you get angry, Tony. Sure you don’t want to find out what the real thing’s all about?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Only as a last resort.” Guy waited a moment, then smiled. “Just like old times, right?”

Tony’s anger evaporated. Guy was right; he had fallen right into a petty argument they had re-hashed hundreds of times, a standard eruption of pent-up frustrations that built whenever two people chose to live together. Only now he was arguing with a ghost. His fear returned, stronger than before. To fight it he had to close his eyes and picture Lisa, on his bed, waiting for him with a seductive smile. He had gone too far to run away. He was too close to her to give up, just because a ghost from his past chose to haunt him in Painfreak.

His fear would not go away.

Drugs. Hallucinogens in the drink, in the smoke from the fires, giving life to memories brought up by his return to Painfreak. A bad trip.

Reason calmed his fear to a manageable level. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. He could handle what was going on. It wasn’t real. Just play along, he told himself. Remember Lisa.

“What a pair of predators we were, Tony,” Guy said, stepping by the fire light’s edge and sitting cross-legged on the floor. “To tell you the truth, I can’t even give myself a good fuck anymore. Why you don’t sit for a while and help bring back the good times? It’s the only way I can get off nowadays.”

“I can’t,” said Tony. “Lisa left me, came here. She’s looking for something, I guess, but I need her. I have to find her, make her come back.”

Guy shook his head from side to side. “I know where she went. I can lead you to her, if you sit with me for a few minutes. That’s not too much of a price to pay, is it?”

Tony hesitated. He listened to the sounds, stared into the darkness between the fires. There were exits at the far end of the cavern, and Tony imagined a network of tunnels spreading out under Brooklyn and the rest of the city. Lisa could be anywhere. Real, or unreal, there was a chance this vision of Guy might help.

He sat down next to his old roommate.

“You look worse than a tourist, Tony,” said Guy, with a touch of sadness. “You look like prey. What happened to you?”

Tony sighed and passed a hand over his face. His palm and fingertips came away slick with grimy sweat.

“Please, don’t tell me,” Guy continued, breaking into a chuckle. “Please don’t tell me you fell in love.”

“Not quite. Not in love. But I fell into something.” He searched for words to capture what he had with Lisa. “Safety, companionship. Maybe I just fell into sex. But there’s nothing now, there’s just emptiness.”

“That’s all there ever is, especially for people like us. You just don’t realize it. You don’t know the emptiness…how deep it runs. That’s why you never made the move to being a real player. But don’t feel bad. Even I didn’t understand the emptiness completely when I was alive, and I was a player there, toward the end. We thought that empty feeling we had was a hunger for something other people could give us. It didn’t bother us most of the time ’cause we thought we were filling ourselves up every time we came. What a pair of sharks we were, cruising our own little scenes. You know what it was that let us live so well together? We were the same kind of people underneath all the bullshit. Predators. We went after the same kind of people. Hollow little nobodies who didn’t know their asses from their pricks, or cunts. But the beauty of us being together was that we had our own little territories. You went after the cunts, and I went after the pricks. Tell me about those times, Tony. I want to remember; I want the details. There’s nothing inside of me anymore. No feelings, no memories. It’s all shadows and emptiness.”

Guy stared at him without blinking, as if ghosts forgot to blink. His mouth hung open, his hands lay in his lap, palms up. He looked like a child waiting to be fed.

Tony closed his eyes and trawled for memories, eager to put Guy to rest. The specter’s talk of emptiness and predators had only made his own need for Lisa stronger. And if this ghost could not help him find her, at least its guilty presence would not distract him while he caught up to Lisa and tried to win her back.

Names from his own adventures as well as Guy’s returned to him, and their faces. Anne, Shanelle, Kiko. Thurman, George, Larry. Episodes he hadn’t thought about in years came back: sex on the dorm roof, in the closet while others listened and commented outside, using the early model video recorders the college owned. There were the games of humiliation, the games of pain, and the entertainments in costume. Simple and complex, he had repeated them all with Lisa. But he had discovered them first with the disposable partners he and Guy had enjoyed. He began to talk, and as the memories rushed out, Tony opened his eyes and looked up, letting the words flow, the past catch up to him.

And as the past flooded him, the darkness beyond the fire seemed to lighten. He began to see what was happening between the fires. He looked away, at first. He spoke quickly, felt as if he were babbling, but Guy did not interrupt or ask him to be clearer, only sat and watched him with his blank expression, his dull, lifeless eyes. The more he talked, the clearer the air became, until he could not help but see the expression on the face of the squirming woman being hauled by giggling men up to the ceiling on a hook and length of chain; until he could see the sweat running down the body of the man suspended at an angle by his outstretched arms and legs, desperately thrusting his erect penis into a fat, laughing woman dancing wildly to the electronic howl of a band that had just started playing; until he could see the broken bones pushing against muscle and skin, warping the smooth lines of the bodies of the two wrestlers fighting and screaming in a pool of water to the cheers and jeers of a few people standing near.

Blood spurted from a nearby atrocity and sprayed across his face, tickling his lips. Shocked, he raised his arm to wipe the blood away, to spit and rub his skin and shield his face from any more splattering. A sudden impulse made him stop. The blood was hot on his flesh, like Lisa’s sweat mingling with his own when they made love. His tongue darted out like a snake’s, licked his lips as he would Lisa’s body. He tasted coppery saltiness, then swallowed. Surprised by his act, he shuddered. The emptiness within him yawned, threatened to take him. Expecting a surge of fear, he was even more surprised that he became excited by what he had done. His erection pressed against his pants’ zipper, as if he had just heard the click of Lisa’s heels on ceramic tile.

Blood. He worried for a moment that it was contaminated, tainted by Death. Death’s blood. He thought of Guy, dead, a ghost, and of the times he had given in to Guy’s nagging and participated in his sex games by disinterestedly watching him with his lover. Kissing, stroking, mouthing, they ended by swallowing each other’s cum.

An electric shock of pleasure passed through him as he described the scene he had just remembered to Guy. He put himself in Guy’s place, and in the scene his lover was not another man, but Death. Death’s bloody cum was on his lips, in his mouth, in him.

The stream of his words faltered, his memories stumbled over one another. Suddenly, the emptiness that had driven him to follow Lisa into Painfreak blossomed with the promise of secret fulfillment. He saw clearly into the void around which he had lived his entire life. The games, the costumes, the mix of pain and pleasure he had pursued with such desperation were suddenly nothing more than shimmering veils hiding his true desire. He did not want to fill the emptiness with sex. He did not want to master, or be mastered by, pleasure and pain. He did not want to feed the hollow hunger with experience, sensation, life. He wanted to surrender to the emptiness. He wanted to be consumed by the emptiness, by Death.

Tony stopped talking. Moments later, the electronic howl of music changed, became louder, erupted with sudden energy as if the band had found its groove. A roar like a raging beast’s echoed through the cavern, deep and raw and edged with the ragged wail of electric guitars. Buried in the roar like a dim heartbeat was the frantic pulsing of drums and bass. Feedback screeched, pierced ear and mind and thought. Tony doubled over in pain, pressing his palms to his ears. Through tears, he saw the elderly couple nearby, pointing to him and laughing. They looked away. He followed their gaze to a crude cage construction surrounded by a frenetic mob trying to tear down the walls to reach the band playing within.

Tony got up, but the music kept him hunched over. Had Lisa wanted to play in a band? Had that been her fantasy? The band members were shadow forms prancing and miming and sawing the air with their instruments, lost in the passion of the moment. He had no idea if she was among them or their audience. He took a step toward the cage.

A cage wall fell, bringing down one musician. The mob spilled into the stage space as the other walls collapsed. One by one, the instruments died. Last to go was the pulsing bass, quivering with a life of its own before drowning in the squeals and cries of the mob fighting for any morsel of meat.

He heard bones crack, flesh tear.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Guy said, standing beside him and looking at the orgy. “It’s all so…romantic, don’t you think? Art and death and, hell, even audience participation.” He giggled.

Tony took another step toward the mob, then stopped when he felt Guy’s touch on his arm. It was not a solid touch; Guy’s fingers felt like a cold breeze blowing against his skin.

“She’s not there,” he said, suddenly serious. “That’s not her game.”

“What is?” Tony asked.

“Is that what you want to know? Or do you want to find out what yours is? I can show you that, too.” He stroked Tony’s arm, and the cold tightened his skin, seemed to burn in the bone of his arm. “Want to be a player, Tony?”

Tony groaned as the emptiness reached for him. He wanted it, he wanted Lisa. “Lisa,” he croaked, trying to hang on to the crumbling edifice of his past desires and pleasures as his future called to him.

Guy tsked. “Well, you never really were the truly adventurous type, Tony. You would never have found Painfreak on your own. Not like Lisa. She’s been on the scene since she was 15. She never told you? I used to see her around, when I was still around. Surprised the hell out of me when she latched on to you. Last chance romance, I think. One final try at a normal life with a guy who could give her at least a little action. Oh, what would my old therapist say? An abused child, obviously. Running away from something terrible, running back into it from the long way around. Dear, dear, the story of all our lives, I’m sure.”

Tony pulled his arm away. “Fuck you.”

Guy came up next to Tony, careful not to touch him. “Say something like that again,” he whispered into Tony’s ear, “and it might come true.”

Tony stepped back and glanced to his left and right, looking for a direction to walk in. He shivered from the cold Guy had brought with him, and the cold in his words.

“No? Turned down again? Right. I really tried to seduce you once, didn’t I? After we graduated?”

“You tried to move in with me when I got my own place,” Tony replied. He remembered the panic in Guy’s voice as he had offered himself, promised to do whatever Tony wanted, just so they could continue being together, continue playing their games together. Fear had leaked from every pore in his body, as raw and powerful as Tony’s own when Lisa left him. Graduation, expectations of the adult world, Tony moving out had all sharpened the edges to Guy’s panic. “I kicked you back into the elevator,” Tony continued. He had had his own panic, his own burgeoning emptiness, to deal with. “To make up, you took me out to Painfreak.”

“My shrink’d say that was a very hostile move. Couldn’t get to you, so I brought you here for Painfreak to seduce you. Damn, but I wish I could remember that elevator scene. I wonder what I used on you. No, no, don’t tell me. Imagining it will entertain me no end, at least until your next visit. Maybe then I’ll ask you to tell me about it.”

“I’m never coming back here after I get Lisa out.”

“Of course you’ll be back. What else are you going do when Lisa’s gone?”

Tony recoiled, looked away from Guy. He moved off in a random direction, searched out the next fire, headed for its flames. Guy caught his arm, and the cold staggered Tony. Painfreak’s bone mark glowed on Tony’s hand.

“Don’t go off half-cocked, lover. You’ll miss her moment as a player. Here, let me show you.”

Guy pulled on Tony’s arm, dragged him past women pounding on the bodies of men stretched out and tied down to the floor with wild, dancing steps; past a woman bound, blind, gagged, being raped by another woman with a dildo strapped across her sex; past men wrestling one another in shallow pits, breaking each other’s limbs, biting off pieces of flesh, licking the blood spilling from their mouths; past a man with a bloody machete across his stomach, reclining among the severed heads of women and busying himself by pulling out the tongue from one head’s mouth and running her blue lips across his skin.

Guy stopped before another pit, but held fast to Tony’s arm. Below, two naked women approached a nude fat man whose spread-eagled limbs were held fast by manacles to stakes. One woman sat behind his head and secured it between her thighs. Her leg muscles bulged as she applied pressure, and he twitched and choked as his eyes widened. The other woman settled herself on his face, covered it completely, and began to move her hips.

“Lisa,” Tony whispered. He leaned forward, but Guy’s cold grip kept him frozen in place.

Lisa looked up as her hands massaged her breasts and she thrust her hips harder into the face trapped under her. Her eyes saw through Tony, as if he were as much a ghost as Guy. Sweat filmed her body. A smile, sweet and self-involved, danced across her lips. The fat man’s body jerked, spasmed. His hands grasped at something elusive in the air. His back arched, and a desperate, muffled moan escaped from the pit. Lisa threw her head back, gasped. The fat man collapsed, and his body became slack. Lisa jerked forward and cried out. She slid off the man’s face and fell to the ground, eyes closed, smiling to herself. The other woman raised her hips, twisted her legs over until the man’s neck cracked, then released him. She moved over Lisa, straddled her, closed her thighs over Lisa’s face.

“Lisa,” Tony called out. His voice was still a whisper, Guy’s hand still served as a cold anchor.

Lisa’s hands fluttered in the air. Her legs twitched like caught fish thrown on a dock. The woman bore down, hunched forward, used her hands to keep her thighs pressed closed over Lisa’s face. Lisa’s struggles weakened until her last feeble movements finally subsided. The woman remained over her, locked in a tight embrace.

“Lisa,” Tony cried out as he fell to his knees.

The woman rose, took Lisa by the feet and dragged her up a ramp. She was heading in the direction of the machete man when Tony lost sight of them. He realized then that Guy had released him and had vanished. There was only the cold ache in his bone and muscle to remind him of the ghost’s hand.

“Come along, dear,” an old woman’s voice said behind him. Someone tapped him gently on the shoulder.

“I think you’ve had enough for one night, young fella,” an old man said, slipping his arm under Tony’s to help him to his feet. “Time for you to go home. There’s always tomorrow night, you know.”

The old, well-dressed couple who had been watching him throughout the evening bracketed him as he stood up. They each hooked an arm around him and helped him walk away from the pit. The woman’s diamond bracelet bit into his flesh. Tony felt like a child being taken home from the playground by his grandparents. Would there be milk and cookies in the kitchen? Bed time stories tonight?

Tony tried to remember his grandparents and found that he could not.

The elderly couple guided him back to the cavern entrance, took him through the sound baffles, helped him maneuver through the dancing crowds in the outer club. At the steel double door entrance to the club, the couple released him.

“You come right back when you’re feeling better,” the woman said. She smiled, and cracks widened in the caked make-up covering her face.

“We’ll be here another couple of nights,” said the old man. He patted Tony’s shoulder in an amiable, fatherly way. His breath was stale, like the air in a predator’s den. “Of course, you can always come along when the place moves. There’s always a need for help. Lots of turnover, you know.”

The couple looked to each other and laughed as they gently pushed him to the doors. Tony leaned against metal, felt it give, and found himself in a hallway under a single bright light bulb.

A taste of ash was in his mouth as he made his way back to the loading docks. Exhaustion made him rest for a few moments on the stairs, but the faint echo of Painfreak’s dance music finally drove him on. He passed no one on his way out to the loading dock, where the rain had stopped and dawn had lightened the sky. The ground still was wet, the air humid. Tony glanced over his shoulder at the warehouse entrance. The two doormen returned his gaze. Behind them, Guy hung upside down, suspended by his feet on a length of chain, swinging back and forth like a clock pendulum.

“Do you feel it?” Guy asked, his voice pitched high, almost hysterical.

And in that moment, the emptiness within him opened up like a bottomless well. Tony felt himself standing by the well, leaning out over the edge, wind whistling by his ears. He licked his lips, searching for the taste of blood. His erection strained as if it wanted to break out of its confines and search for satisfaction.

“You want it?” Guy teased. “Tell me what that’s like, to want it. To want the nothingness. The extinction. Tell me first, what that emptiness is like. It’s so hard to understand when you’re in it. Tell me what the void is like, from the outside. Then tell me what it feels like to want it.”

“Tomorrow night,” Tony answered, his voice quavering. After you show me the games I’ll really like. After I become a player.

“Tomorrow night, sir,” the Asian doorman replied, with a slight bow. Guy was gone.

Tony went back to his car and drove home. He did not bother picking up his mail or answering his telephone messages. Though his fear was gone and he was tired, he still had trouble falling asleep. Excitement kept him up. He began to relax as he gently stroked the back of his left hand with his thumb.

Slowly, he fell asleep while caressing Painfreak’s invisible marks on his flesh.

| — | — |

Thick of Chaos

————

K. Trap Jones

The fucker was fast and knew the city well by the way he weaved between the alleys. Not sure why I didn’t take off the trench coat while giving chase. Damn thing was about as useless as a parachute on a speed boat. I’m not saying I would’ve been able to catch the asshole, but it may have reduced some of the where the fuck did he go moments after turning the corners. Breathing like a fat man during the first stretch of a marathon, my knees nearly buckled as I rounded a fire escape. I considered it a blessing to see him standing against the wall of a dead end. With nowhere to go, a much needed pause allowed me to lean over with hands on knees. Due to my lack of epic speed, there was always time to debate as to whether the bounty equaled the level of cardio required to catch a fugitive. Chasing a runner typically ended up as a crapfest with my ass on a stool somewhere eating a cheesesteak. The element of surprise was always my greatest ally. If I could get my meat hooks on someone prior to running, well, it was an easy payday without unnecessary sweating.

“Show me your hands,” I said through heavy breaths.

His head sagged in disappointment from being caught.

“You know the drill.”

While raising his arms, a dull light shone from his left hand. It was small, but enough to catch my attention within the darkened atmosphere of the alley. Glaring over his shoulder, he grinned.

“What the fuck is that?” I said.

“Haven,” he whispered through a smile highlighting his meth cracked yellow teeth.

“Look, man, I’m tired and hungry, so if we could cut through the bullshit,” I responded, walking towards him.

He remained still, laughing hysterically. With eyes fixated on the glowing mark, I reached for his arm to rotate it behind the back.

“How ’bout a ride?” he said, licking his lips.

“What did you say?”

As I held his arm, he grabbed my coat and lunged towards the wall. My eyes betrayed any rational thought as his head funneled through the brick, disappearing. My feet followed the forward progress as my hand vanished. It was a fucked up experience, defying every rule of logic. My mind completely shut down as my face inched closer. Flinching for impact, I sealed my eyes shut. Through the brick I went, releasing the grip of both him and reality.

When the blurred vision stopped, insanity revealed itself in the form of a long tunnel, packed to the brim with people. I use the word people loosely. At first glance, I thought I entered some sort of sadistic costumed event. As I stood there behind a large man with metal spikes protruding from his bare back, I quickly chalked it up to being a dream because nothing else made sense. With every breath he took, the metal tips sunk beneath the skin then came back out like a damn human blowfish. From behind, I got pushed by a creepy looking female alien thing. Her elongated forked tongue was licking one of her four bare tits. I couldn’t help but stare until her mouth widened revealing a shit ton of sharp teeth. I quickly backed away and couldn’t get the sadistic vision of her giving a blowjob out of my head.

My patience was growing thin as the line wasn’t moving and more people were entering through a series of blue hazed doorways. My mud caked boots stepped to the side, bypassing the others. As I walked, I felt the dismay through the various tones, but I didn’t give a shit. I was in no mood for some crazy ass young person’s rave. I wanted the fugitive and get paid, simple as that. Little did I know my night was about to take an off road detour through the thick of chaos.

Filtering out into a circular room, the lines from multiple tunnels all merged into one point where a large door resided. Providing crowd control and entry into the door was a giant of a man, bald and scarred to blistering perfection. Beside him with a noticeable difference in height was frail, thin man of Asian descent. Much like any other club in the city, I walked right up to the front showing my credentials as a bounty hunter. I could hear the others bickering in strange ass languages as I stood face to belly with the giant. Gazing upward, I looked straight into the nostrils before the smaller one grabbed my coat.

“What you doing?” he said in a strong Asian accent.

My neck did a complete swivel downward in order to look at him.

“I’m not sure where the fuck I am, but I’m looking for someone who came this way,” I announced, holding my id card to his face.

Staring into the wide chest, I groped my beard. Sweat was rolling down the bare skin of the giant, filling every sunken scar littering the flesh.

“Law? There is no law here,” he laughed, tossing the card aside.

I blocked the entry like an L-shaped plumbing pipe at a burrito eating contest. The whole place became tense as the giant began breathing heavily. It didn’t take a life coach to understand that he despised me and was getting pissed.

“You gonna let me in?” I replied with a stern voice, not backing down.

“Only two ways to enter,” the thin man explained.

The giant grabbed my left hand.

“One—no mark.”

The giant palmed the top of my head, rotated my neck forcing me to do a complete 180 as the crowd backed up.

“Two—no one likes you, which means no referrals.”

The horde was going ape shit and desired blood to be spilled. I was definitely fucking up something more than a typical Saturday night party.

“You go now, hippy law dog.”

The giant fingers sunk into my head, compressing the skull. An instant migraine clinched my vision as he suspended me from the ground as if palming a basketball. Reaching up, I clutched his wrist in hopes to reduce the amount of weight my neck was burdened with. The gathering parted like the red sea as he pushed me into a different tunnel. Wasting no time, he tossed my ass through the first blue hazed door. The blurred vision occurred again, but soon left as I collided with someone or something. My lungs immediately collapsed as all the air siphoned out. My eyes slowly opened, revealing a barren red wasteland. Choking for breath, I saw the earth where the moon should’ve been. Bony crimson beings exited the dirt and I was slow dancing with one of them. The lack of air forced my legs to give out. As a result, I fell backwards through the haze pulling the creature with me. Lying flat on my back and pathetically wheezing, I pushed the alien aside as the advancing line stepped over me. After puking up everything my stomach could offer, I managed to get to my feet. Once the blood flow returned, it immediately boiled in anger by being manhandled like a prostitute with no money to give a pimp. Walking back to the front of the line, I unleashed my revolver and pointed the barrel underneath the giant’s chin.

“I want in,” I announced, watching the massive hands.

“Go ahead, shoot him. Really pisses him off,” the thin man stated, checking the hand of a serpent being.

“Don’t fuck with me, noodle man.”

“Open mouth,” he said with a nod.

The giant leaned his head down. Grasping the barrel, he placed it within his own mouth.

“Under chin no good. Bullet could miss brain. Place gun in mouth. Proper technique is important; minimizes mistakes.”

“What the fuck is this place?” I said, confused to all hell.

“Pull trigger and I tell you,” he answered, still checking for marks.

The sweat of my palm suctioned against the handle.

“You’re bluffing,” I said with a twitching arm.

“What is bluffing?”

“I’ll blow his damn head clean off,” I continued, cocking the hammer.

My fingers felt the teeth grinding against the barrel. His breath was adding condensation to the metal while the tongue flapped to catch the excess drool going down the chin. I took on the same not giving a shit attitude the giant was emitting. The thin man kept checking hands for admittance. Laughter from the crowd added to my rising temper as well.

“Alright fucker, you wanna play? I’ll play,” I said, pulling the trigger.

The bullet ripped through the giant’s skull, wedging into the ceiling. The nostrils became a blood faucet as the pressure swelled his eyes. A small moan of death leaked passed the drooping tongue. I shielded my eyes from the liquefied brain raining down. Silence spilled over the crowd. With the barrel still within the mouth, the gun followed the massive body down as it slammed against the ground, shaking loose dirt. I expected some sort of reaction from the man, but he didn’t turn around. Even the crowd went back to normal.

“Well done,” he said, facing the other way.

I could only look at his beady little head with confusion until I heard a groan. The large arms of the giant shifted, pushing itself up from the ground. Staring into the hollowed face, I watched as the pupils refocused. Shaking his head, the giant swallowed. Seeing me, his lip curled in disgust. On all fours, he was still taller than me. With the strength of a dinosaur, he did a death roar splitting apart my grimy beard, forcing my mouth to close so I didn’t swallow any of the bile he emitted. A heavy gulp was all I could muster as he rose to his feet. Every single muscle in his chest tightened in preparation to pound my body into chum. Forming an enormous fist, his arm touched the ceiling. The pain train was pulling into the station and I was holding a first class ticket.

“Enough. Back to work,” the thin man ordered.

The giant’s anger fled as he turned his attention towards the awaiting crowd.

“What the fuck?” I mumbled.

“He’s immortal; no death for him,” he explained, folding back the black robe of a reaper to check for the mark.

I offered no words in response. I just stood there covered in the giant’s brains with a blank stare similar to how I looked at the chalkboard during math class.

“Come here, law dog.”

Wiping the blood from my face, I mindlessly stood above him. Grabbing my left wrist, he pulled up the sleeve. As if searching for a pulse, he indented two fingers.

“Very interesting,” he stated. “You have potential.”

Letting loose of the wrist, he stepped aside.

“Welcome to Painfreak,” he announced as the door opened.

I stumbled forward into a thickened grey haze. The smog danced around, toying with all emotions. Everything felt comfortably numb; a surreal purgatory between good and evil, right and wrong. When the haze faded, a wide area appeared. When I say wide, I mean kicked out further than the legs of pit rat whore at a truck stop. Like a disturbed ant pile, everyone was constantly moving. I had to train my vision to focus on one area, just to make out what the hell was going on. Within the vast room, I sought refuge at the only section I could somewhat relate to—the bar.

The stool felt real nice as I shook off the ass beating I received from the giant. As fucked up as things already were, it was about to get downright nasty. A goblin bartender came scurrying on the bar top wearing a filthy white apron. With a rag in one hand, he spit-shined a glass and placed it in front of me. The yellow mucus clung to the rim.

“What’ll it be?” he said, picking a scab on one of his long ears. A thick strain of pus collected around his tongue as he ate it.

“Something capable of erasing these memories,” I replied, gazing around.

Fetishes from the deepest trenches of hell ignited the place. I think the only thing that would’ve shocked me was if there was a nun in the place. The sin was too dense to swallow and too tangled in gore to rationalize. A mutilated corpse was staked to a wooden table as a group took turns slicing small flesh morsels, collecting them on plates. A set of couches was the scene of a crazy fucking orgy. Some twisted creature looking thing had what appeared to be a cow udder for a belly, but instead of nipples it was dicks. Four fine looking female demons were pounding the shit out of him in unison. Just by looking into those two small areas of the place, the meaning of the word fetish was butchered and left to die.

The sloshing of a dark brown liquid within the germ infested glass caught my attention. From underneath the bar the goblin retrieved a bowl full of plump maggots swimming within their own brine. With snot dripping from his noise, he fetched one and plopped it into the glass.

“Tip it on back,” he said with a grin.

“Cheers to the unknown realm of chaos,” I said, holding up the glass.

I was about to gulp it down when fate altered the path with a hand touching my shoulder.

“Well, well, what do we have here?” a slurred voice blurted out.

Back in the real world, if I was preparing to drink and someone interrupted me, I would’ve been wearing their neck for a hat within seconds, but I gladly put the glass full of liquid shit back down on the bar.

“I get the shoulders, boss. They’re nice and broad,” a little fucker stated, leaping to the bar top.

With characteristics of a dissected person who was put back together wrong, the small dude dwelled within a whole new zip code of putrid. Another one about the same size climbed up on the other side.

“Only if I get the legs,” the other one replied. He was real close to me when I turned, so much so that I jolted back when I caught a glimpse. The face was comprised of different decayed sections of skin all sewn together with barbed wire. He was a melting pot of races, but if that wasn’t enough, the flesh pieces were decayed and rotting. Both of their ribcages were used to hold a series of daggers like a pin cushion.

The hand on my shoulder spun me around on the stool. Those other little bastards didn’t hold a drop of piss compared to what greeted me. A large, barely clothed man beast was standing in front of me. Just like the others, he was all stitched together from torn pieces of human meat. It was a jigsaw of pain and smelled god awful. A small breeze of gout rattled every single one of my nose hairs. His cold hand stretched up my neck as his wandering eyes looked me up and down.

“Pardon my rudeness,” he said, releasing me. “My name is Tank and these are my associates; Grunt and Loco. We’re collectors,” he explained, tilting his head upright to combat the loosening stitches.

Grunt was massaging my shoulder while Loco’s hand was rubbing my leg like a teenager on a movie date. The aroma was burning my eyes and made me rethink the drink I should’ve consumed.

“I’m not for sale,” I stated, turning around to fetch the glass.

“Sale? You got it wrong. We don’t buy, we take,” Tank chuckled, spinning me back around.

I was growing tired of being touched and quickly devoured the drink in hopes to subdue the bubbling anxiety. The thickened liquid caught against my tongue, forcing me to chew in order to swallow. My throat wanted no part of it and fought back through a series of sporadic coughs. The brown substance flew from my mouth and splattered across Tank’s butchered chest.

“Gut him, boss! Gut him real good,” Grunt announced, trying to secure my arm.

Tank unleashed a massive machete customized with sharpened bone fragments aligning the edge as Grunt and Loco each extracted daggers from their torsos.

“Don’t cut the legs. I’m growing today,” Loco said with a smile, still rubbing my thigh.

The tip of Tank’s blade lifted my chin.

“Make no mistake, I am God here. Everything you own is mine, everything you are is mine,” he explained, rubbing the blade across my face.

“Everything,” Grunt eagerly repeated.

“The time has come for you and me to become one,” Tank said, scratching one of the several opened wounds on his chest.

“You and us…you meant you and us, right boss?” Loco said.

“Shut the fuck up stupid or we get nothing, just like last time,” Grunt replied, pointing the dagger at Loco.

“Silence you two! We will divide him evenly. I don’t care about the legs or shoulders. I only want the neck and head. I’m due for an upgrade; this one is killing me,” Tank explained out of frustration, propping up his drooping head again.

My beard rested on the metal as the blade indented the skin. The blood drenched edge stuck as it pulled away. The wire stitching of his shoulder stretched as he raised the weapon. Grunt and Loco were trembling with excitement. Their uneven arms were eager to retrieve my severed limbs like kids awaiting a piñata to split.

“Clean slice, right at the neck base. Shoulders should be good, huh boss?” Grunt explained, pulling my hair in order to open up the side of my neck.

“I’ll support the waist. Don’t want these nice, tall legs to break when the body falls,” Loco added.

I reached the apex of my ability to calm nerves. The scale of my frustration was tipping to the side of going bat shit crazy. Between the different hands clawing me and the nasty ass aftertaste of whatever it was I drank, something was about to give and it was the cork of my insanity bottle. Time slowed as the bone machete was returning down to my neck. The fragments were whistling as the blade sliced through the air. Leading with the glass, I lunged forward sinking the brim deep into Tank’s throat. Ducking, I felt the momentum of the blade pass by.

“Oh, fu—,” Grunt said before the metal severed his head completely off.

Holding Loco, I ripped apart his midsection at the crease of two flesh pieces. Tank reached for the glass, but it was lodged pretty good, filling up with darkened, crimson blood. My hand sank deep into his massive belly where I clenched a large section of barbed wire. Pulling it unstitched his entire midsection. The rotting entrails poured out like I had won the jackpot. I didn’t possibly think the smell could get any worse, but as the intestines and stomach bounced off my boots, I could only shake my head in dismay. The room cared less as Tank slumped to the ground, but the strangest thing happened next. The sound of cracking bones emitted from floor. Prying apart the ribcage, a soul flew upwards and was quickly joined by two others.

“Well, that sucked,” Grunt stated.

“We need to sneak up on them better,” Loco added.

“It ain’t over,” Tank explained, giving me the stink eye. “We’ll see you soon.”

Sitting there with three mangled corpses at my feet, I signaled for the goblin bartender because there are certain times in life when it’s better to experience them while piss poor drunk. After a few rounds, I didn’t mind the rim job aftertaste and got used to opening my throat up for the thickened gulp. My goal was to be two sheets to the wind as quickly as humanly possible.

“Gus,” a voice whispered.

I turned but no one was there.

“Help me,” the voice whispered again.

The creepiness factor was approaching level ten. It shook my spine, but I was alone.

“Over here,” the voice said.

There she was or at least some kind of vision of her. Down the bar, Sam was there in a flowing white gown. The fabric danced within the smoke. Taken from me during a botched hit on my life, Sam was everything to me; my stability within the sludge of society. She balanced all the wrong in life.

“Help me,” she screamed, disappearing down a hallway.

I wasn’t there for her when she needed me. I was working late when the fucker hit the apartment. The vision of her lying naked in a pool of blood scars my eyes even today. I gave in to the insanity and ran down the hallway, chasing after her. Weaving through a mob, I kept the sight of her long, brown hair until she entered a closed door. With a hand on the handle, I kept telling myself to keep it together, but damn if temptation didn’t sink the buzzer beating winning shot. A deep breath conjured up from my lungs after I noticed 8A was scratched within the door; the same as my apartment. Over the years, I tried to block out the vision, but nightmares are fucked up like that.

Nothing good came from hesitation so I opened the door. Instead of a bloody mess, I saw a man ripping Sam’s dress; she was still alive. A small table sat by the door where various weapons were piled up. Adrenaline kicked into full gear as I clutched a spiked baseball bat. The man didn’t even see me coming; he was too busy trying to cut her. I swung for the fences against the back of his head. I heard the skull crack as the spikes dug in deep. His neck trembled as I dragged him from atop Sam with his limp body following the bat. With a boot against the back of the neck, I pulled the bat for release, but ended up ripping the head off. Holding the bat with the severed head of the man who killed my girl was beyond satisfying. It was the best trophy a suffering man could ask for.

“Thank god you’re here,” Sam said, crying hysterically.

I’m not an emotional person by any means, but damn if my heart didn’t receive an extra kick from the whole thing. Her embrace watered my eyes to the point where I was short of breath. She kissed my neck and sank her hand down my pants, stroking me like only she could. I pulled both her knees up, wrapping the legs around my waist. She shoved her tongue down my throat as I pressed her against the wall. My belt couldn’t get unbuckled fast enough. My erection tested the boundaries of the zipper. The feeling of being inside her was forgotten over the years, but it all came back to me. The deeper I went, the more she moaned. There was not a chance in hell I was going to last long. Her legs slid down my thighs as she kissed me one more time. With that, she vanished. I went out the door and returned to the darkened hallway. I took one step before stopping.

“Help me, Gus,” Sam’s voice whispered again.

Without thought, I barreled through the door, coming upon the same scene. The table of weapons was there as I reached for a double-barrel shotgun. Grabbing him by the shirt, I pulled him from atop Sam. Shoving his head through the drywall, I held him by the throat.

“Open your mouth,” I said, pressing the barrel against his lips.

He didn’t open wide enough as I shoved the barrel deep inside, breaking his front teeth. His muffled screams vibrated down into the barrel, but I wasted no time in pulling the trigger. The head collapsed. The eyes melted away as the forehead split apart. Chunks of bone and hair collided against the wall and ceiling. The headless corpse slid down into a lifeless pile. Covered in blood, I felt Sam hug me from behind before twisting around in front. Standing over the dead man, she managed to pull my pants down in no time. Her crotch grinded against the man as she took me inside her mouth. I was not known for being an all-nighter; I was usually good after one shot, but it felt like I hadn’t had sex in a long time. To my pleasure, everything was working and willing to go. Afterwards, she vanished again, leaving me behind with the post orgasm shimmies.

I exited the door and waited.

“Help me, Gus,” Sam whispered like clockwork.

Inside, I reached for two pairs of brass knuckles and pummeled the living fuck out of the man. I didn’t stop until his skull was caved in and his facial features were turned to mush. Straddling him, Sam hiked up her dress, pleading with me to fuck her from behind. I lost the battle with temptation as I grabbed her waist. Her spine straightened with every deep thrust. While pulling her hair, she matched my intensity by shifting backwards. Afterwards, she vanished again. A bad taste lingered in my mouth as I stared at the beaten man. The faint essence of reality revealed itself as the room reset. The blood and any remnants of the scene disappeared. The hesitation I experienced upon entering the room was the same leaving. I knew her whispers would be waiting. I was fucked up in the head. The pattern was tormenting the shit out of my thoughts.

“Help me, Gus,” she said as I stood in the hallway.

She wasn’t real; she wasn’t alive.

“Please, I need you.”

With strained eyes, I walked away from the door.

“Don’t leave me.”

I collided with every patron I passed, stumbling like a drunk in a parking lot after last call. The goblin bartender had a glass of the putrid shit waiting for me. Fuck it all; fuck everything I held on to. The excess brown liquor sloshed down my beard as I summoned for another. The room became smaller. Everyone’s fetishes squeezed into my personal space as the walls spun and warped.

“Save me, Gus.”

“Get out of my head!” I screamed, slamming my forehead against the bar.

“Easy, partner,” a voice sounded.

Sitting next to me was a sharply dressed man pushing over a red liquid filled shot glass.

“Nothing can be that bad. You’re alive and your soul is well, is it not? Troubled dreams are only troubled if they are allowed to be.”

“This place is…”

“This place is whatever you want it to be; what you need it to be.”

“Who are you?”

“Oh, I’m known by many names; some good, some not so.”

“What’s up there?” I replied with a slur, distracted by the upper labyrinth of levels.

“You must control chaos first—a rite of passage away from being a tourist.”

His fingers were hot to the touch as he stopped my hand from taking the shot glass.

“Some other time, Gus. Your soul is not ready,” he said, gulping down the crimson liquid.

As he turned, I saw the craziest of tattoos; a black pitchfork extending up his neck. One of the prongs entered into the mouth. Another merged into an eye and the last one twisted into the ear. His cane struck the ground causing him to vaporize into a red fog. Seeping upwards, he merged with the smoke. Not hearing Sam’s voice anymore, I fist bumped the goblin bartender and made my way to the front. Exiting through the door, I stood at the outer perimeter of the entry room. Hundreds of people were waiting to get in.

“Hippy law dog,” the Asian man said.

Lighting up a cigar, I didn’t want to turn around, but the giant’s grip on my skull forced me.

“Leaving so soon?”

“Yeah, well…”

“Tired of fucking and killing already?”

“You got the name right; it’s certainly filled with pain and freaks.”

“We are in the pleasure business,” he said with a grin. “Before you go, I have something for you.”

He reached for my forearm and I was hesitant to give it up, but once again the giant made the decision for me. He damn near broke my elbow as he twisted the arm over. The thin man pressed his palm against my outer hand.

“This may sting a little.”

It didn’t sting; it fucking hurt like I was being disemboweled with a dull, wooden spoon. My eyes bled; my vision turned red with torment.

“Fuck off already!” I yelled, feeling my skin melting.

“See you soon, yes?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Nonsense, nobody gets bored of fucking and killing.”

The giant palmed my face as he led me down the tunnel. Tossing my ass like a bag of garbage, he threw me within one of the blue hazed doorways. I collided with a dumpster and landed in a puddle of city sewer water. Thankful my cherry was still lit; I propped my ass up and enjoyed a few tokes. A slight sting on my left hand revealed the glowing entry mark tattooed within the skin. Exhaling, I was at ease; a serene haven of contentment.

“Help me, Gus.”

Fuck.

| — | — |

Exclusive

————

Randy Chandler

Transcript:

REPORTER: This is Richard Decker, investigative journalist, formerly with The New Orleans Bugle, now freelance. Today is the 20th day of October, 2016. With me is a woman known to me only as Selene. She contacted me via email three days ago after reading an article I co-wrote with Gerald Horner (now deceased) on the subject of an underground phenomenon sometimes referred to as Painfreak. Also present is Selene’s, uh, escort—

SELENE: Bodyguard. Otto.

REPORTER: Otto, her bodyguard.

SELENE: And don’t forget my babies, Isis and Osiris.

REPORTER: And her two…Doberman Pinschers, sitting like statues on her left and right.

SELENE: Beautiful, are they not?

REPORTER: Yes, and maybe a bit intimidating.

SELENE: They are such sweethearts, our noble guardians.

REPORTER: [clears throat] Per prearranged agreement, I met Otto in the French Quarter where I was blindfolded and brought here to this apparently abandoned warehouse to meet you face to face. I was not allowed to bring my cell phone because of its GPS capability. The first obvious question is, why do you think such cloak-and-dagger measures are necessary?

SELENE: Like the fictional Fight Club, the first rule of Painfreak is: You do not talk about Painfreak, not publically. But Painfreak is not fiction. It is demonstrably, painfully real. The second rule of Painfreak is: Break the first rule and you will be silenced, permanently.

REPORTER: So, you actually believe that by playing the role of whistleblower and exposing the truth of Painfreak you will be placing your life in danger?

SELENE: Absolutely. No question about it. Painfreak has eyes everywhere. Eyes that see those things that want to remain hidden. Occult eyes that see deep into the dark, under the covers, behind the fog, beyond supposed stealth. They could be watching us right now, Mr. Decker. When your story appeared in the newspaper, you no doubt fell under their watchful gaze as well. If not before then. Your article revealed a bit more than has ever been brought to light, which is why I contacted you. Painfreak won’t be happy about that.

REPORTER: Why take the risk then? Why put your life in danger to further expose this thing called Painfreak?

SELENE: This patch over my eye? I don’t wear it to be radically chic or to appear dangerously fashionable. I wear it because they took my eye. Look. You see what’s behind the patch.

REPORTER: An empty socket.

SELENE: And that is not all they took from me. My left hand? How many fingers do you see?

REPORTER: One.

SELENE: Precisely one. The rest are stubs. And you see which one they left whole. The middle finger. My hand is Painfreak’s sign-language message for “Fuck the world!” And that is exactly what it does. Painfreak fucks the world by drawing the sickest fucks to itself, offering them all manner of perversions and depravities, giving it to them in spades, in blood, in pounds of flesh, titillation, mutilation, humiliation, castration, degradation. And when it suits, assassination. What most of the sick fucks don’t know until it’s too late is that they all have to pay the piper sooner or later. Painfreak takes it out in trade, and it trades in flesh. In blood and guts. Blood suckers and blood fuckers. Painfreak sucks the spirit dry like the psychic vampire it is. The ones that survive are the true Hollow People, empty inside except for their addiction to all the horrors Painfreak has to offer. And it always offers more. It is a veritable wellspring of carnal horrors, an ingenious source of darkest deviations, ever capable of devising unspeakably innovative methods of torturous atrocities.

REPORTER: So, your motivation is…revenge.

SELENE: What do you think, Mr. Decker? See what else Painfreak took from me?

REPORTER: You don’t—My God, that’s…they removed your breast.

SELENE: Only the one. They left the other as a lonely reminder, to mock me with its asymmetry. As you can see, I had lovely tits.

REPORTER: I’m sorry.

SELENE: And surely you can tell by this hideous scarring that this was not done by any kind of surgeon. No physician would botch an operation with this sort of butchery.

REPORTER: I should hope not.

SELENE: It was done by one of Painfreak’s own, a dapper man in a brown suit, expensive shoes, a butcher’s apron and a taste for torture. Not that I am a mere innocent victim of Painfreak. I dealt out my share of pain and suffering in my earlier excursions there. I saw much worse than I dished out and I confess I found all of it to be most stimulating. But after they subtracted vital parts of my anatomy, I had a very rude awakening. I didn’t so much mind losing my fingers but when they eventually took my eye and my breast, it was as if I’d come out of an epic trance, horrified by what was done to me and also at what I had done to others. In a sense, I could see better with one eye than with two. And I saw that this is what I have to do. I have to spill the beans about all the spilled guts and blood, the lives ruined, all of it. An atonement of sorts. You see?

REPORTER: Yes. I understand. But how exactly will you expose Painfreak? Won’t it take more than going public in an interview? What will you do to make anyone believe you? That Painfreak article I did was little better than filler for the Features Desk, rumors and unsubstantiated speculation about a bizarre urban legend. Nobody really took it seriously. My editor certainly didn’t. That’s why I left the Bugle. According to my editor, that piece was on a par with pure tabloid journalism. What can you offer as proof that it’s all true? Pardon the cliché but you have to show where the bodies are buried. Don’t you?

SELENE: That’s where you come in. Isn’t it obvious?

REPORTER: What do you mean?

SELENE: How far would you be willing to go for the most sensational story of your life? As you say, it will take more than an interview. With your consent, I will be your escort and take you into the bowels of the beast so you can see for yourself. Because you have good credentials as a respected journalist, people will be more apt to believe you. What do you say, Mr. Decker? Are you ready to experience Painfreak firsthand?

REPORTER: I, uh, I suppose I would have to be. But what’s the risk? Won’t it be dangerous for you to go back? What if they want to take more vital parts of your body? If they have eyes everywhere, what if they already know you plan to go public?

SELENE: That’s why I have Otto. Of course, Painfreak could easily dispatch him in a heartbeat if it so desired. I’ve seen bigger men than him mercilessly impaled. Christ, Vlad himself couldn’t have done a better job of it! But Otto is tolerated because he has a talent for mayhem. Unleashed, he’s a berserker on rampage. Painfreak brings out the unholy beast in him. But he is completely loyal to me. He would die to protect me. But he won’t have to. I honestly believe Painfreak has taken all it wants of me. I trust my instincts on that. And I would know if they were already onto me. I have a sixth sense for such things. And you, Mr. Decker, as a first-timer, should be fine. They didn’t start cutting on me until my tenth visit. That was when they took my fingers. The only thing you have to worry about is how you will handle seeing all the things you will see in there. It can be…extremely traumatizing for the average person.

REPORTER: I’ve been on assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve seen my share of slaughter.

SELENE: That may serve as something of an inoculation but I promise you that nothing in your experience has prepared you for what you will experience in Painfreak. No human is ever immune.

REPORTER: OK.

SELENE: But before we enter, I should give you a little more background.

REPORTER: Wait. You don’t mean we’re going today.

SELENE: Of course we are. The longer we wait, the greater the chance we have of being discovered. Sorry to spring it on you with no warning but this is the safest way. Do you mind if I smoke?

REPORTER: No, no, go ahead. I would too if I hadn’t quit.

SELENE: Otto? Cigarette please.

[lighter clicks, a flame flutters, fanning air]

SELENE: [exhaling] Thank you. We are at a crossroads, my friend. Literally and metaphorically. This warehouse stands on the site of a legendary crossroads where several historic personages are said to have come in moonlight to make deals with the Devil. The Creole witch Marie Laveau is said to have found her way into Painfreak on this very spot. She later ran a brothel with a secret room that led directly to Painfreak. I don’t know if all that is fact or part of it urban legend but I do know that Laveau was more than a witch, she was a Voodoo priestess. And I know that door to your left is an entrance to Painfreak. But first, the background I spoke of.

The place—if it can be called a place—has had many names. Down the dirty years it was often called Mermaid Inn, after the alehouse in East Sussex, England, favored by bloodthirsty cut-throats and smugglers in the 1700s because of its secret passages and tunnels they used to escape the law. The original Mermaid Inn was a mysterious portal to this place we now call Painfreak. And we mustn’t forget the Hellfire Clubs in 18th Century London and Ireland. It was said they worshiped the Devil, but they maintained that they themselves were the devils.

In ancient times Painfreak was known in various languages as the Underworld. As I’m sure you know, many cultures have their versions of some form of an underworld, be it myth or religion—if there’s any difference. It wasn’t until late last century that the name Painfreak came into use, thanks in part to the works of a horror writer working the underbelly of his chosen genre. Odd thing is, he got an amazing lot of it right. No doubt his muse had Painfreak roots. No telling what it will be called a couple of hundred years from now. Something suitable to the times, but not too trendy. Something unexpected but apropos—apropos in unexpected ways. Whatever it wants to call itself, that’s what it will be.

It’s important to remember that Painfreak is not static. It changes moment to moment, time to time. You’ve looked into a kaleidoscope? The little telescope-like toy that shows you shapes in a variety of colorful patterns, all done with colored bits of glass and tiny mirrors? Painfreak is like that. It presents a kaleidoscope of carnage with ever-changing gut-wrenching displays of depravity and daemonic mosaics, interlocking the sacred and the profane. Unlike a kaleidoscope, it isn’t an illusion. Painfreak is not a smoke-and-mirror magic trick. It is an actual materialization. A dimensional manifestation. Or as I like to think of it: a metaphysical infestation. Which is how it can appear anywhere, at any time, with entrances all over the world if you know how to find them and gain access.

Sex is the usual hook for newbies. No matter what your perversion or weird fetish, Painfreak provides satisfaction. Whether you have a taste for pain or the desire to dish it out, you can get what you need. Gangbangs, rape, buggery, torture, bestiality? No problem. You like to fuck kids; you can do that without fear of judgment or incarceration. Snuff your thing? You can see it live. You can do the snuffing yourself if you find the right room. I once saw a woman fucked to death by a horse. That stallion’s huge cock tore her up. I wish I’d never seen that, that poor skanky chick disemboweled by a horse dick. I still have nightmares. That was when I was getting pretty deep into it.

The deeper you go into Painfreak, the more otherworldly it gets. Some believe it’s a playground for gods and demons and other unearthly beings. After all I’ve seen there I don’t doubt it. It would explain a lot.

REPORTER: If all you say is true, what good would it do to expose it to the public? Painfreak can’t simply be shut down. Can it?

SELENE: You do understand. And you are right, Painfreak runs itself. It doesn’t rely on any governing body or board members or such a thing. It isn’t run by people. It runs people, uses them to suit its needs as it satisfies the needs of those it runs. The most I can hope to accomplish is to simply warn people about it and make them understand how dangerous it is.

REPORTER: Yes, but by going public with all the grisly details, might you not also end up attracting more twisted souls to Painfreak? The sick fucks, as you call them, a new generation of sick fucks who otherwise might never have heard about it? Aren’t you concerned that you might be doing Painfreak’s bidding, playing right into its hands?

SELENE: Very good, Mr. Decker. I have thought of that. I weighed it carefully, for days, and in the end I concluded that it is a worthy tradeoff. Warning away the innocents is my main goal in this. Any twisted souls and sick sadistic fucks our exposé might attract will eventually be used up by Painfreak, in one way or another. I’ve seen more than one murdering sadist become possessed by demons. And trust me, Painfreak does not have on-call exorcists standing by to cast them out. Those possessed pawns burn brightly for a time, outdoing themselves in brutalizing others but in the end their own bodies are much worse for the wear and tear. The end up rotting in their own foul juices, their souls already dead, bodies falling apart piece by piece.

[a dog growls]

Hush Osiris! He always gets a little agitated when we are about to breach the realm to which he and Isis stand as guardians. There, there’s a good boy. Yes, he is.

I think that’s enough background for you. So, unless you have any further questions, Mr. Decker, shall we make our entrance?

REPORTER: No, I do have a few more questions.

SELENE: Fire away then.

REPORTER: The people—the victims—used in the, uh, killing rooms, where do they come from? How do they end up at Painfreak? Are they abducted off the street, out of their homes?

SELENE: I don’t have unlimited knowledge of the way Painfreak keeps things going. I doubt any human does. But based on what I’ve seen, it’s clear to me that some are lured in by deceptive means. With kids it would be easy. With hookers even easier. Junkies, ditto. What I’m saying is that I don’t believe Painfreak does what it does outside of Painfreak. All the wet stuff happens within. Though it may sometime spill over into the world outside.

REPORTER: Wet stuff? You mean—

SELENE: The sex, the torture, the bleeding, the killing. The spilled bodily fluids. Painfreak is supremely cunning. Seemingly supernaturally so. If it wants to lure you in, it will find a way. Everybody has a weakness.

REPORTER: And Painfreak finds just the right hook.

SELENE: Exactly. What’s the matter, Mr. Decker? You look worried.

REPORTER: Shouldn’t I be?

SELENE: Not if you do what I say. When we get inside, follow my lead. The less you say the better. You are my guest so I will be responsible for you. Whatever you may see, whatever you may hear, never interfere with anyone’s activity, no matter how shocking or disgusting it may seem to you. Understood?

REPORTER: Understood.

SELENE: Good! It’s time to go. Otto, the door please. Of course, this is not the door to Painfreak. It is the door to the door to Painfreak. You’ll see. The actual door is a thing to behold, an oak-and-iron beauty worthy of a great castle.

[loud click, door creaks open]

REPORTER: So…we just…

SELENE: Walk right in. I’m afraid you will have to leave your recording device behind. Such things are strictly taboo in there. And when you first enter, don’t be alarmed by the uncanny sensation of the world folding up around you. It passes rather quickly. Then you will receive your mark and we will proceed to the dark heart of Painfreak. And your life will never be the same.

[rustling, bumping sounds, as something brushes against microphone]

[dogs barking, then whining]

[footsteps echoing, fading to silence]

End of transcript

NEW ORLEANS BUGLE

October 25, 2016

More Body Parts Found Near French Quarter

Sanitation workers discovered human remains behind the Voodoo Lounge on Rampart Street Tuesday morning, and police say the severed foot and limbless torso may be matched to other body parts recently found several blocks away on Canal Street, including a hand and an ear. Investigators said that the dismembered parts appeared to be that of a man and that the rate of decomposition indicated that the mutilation happened recently.

THE TIMES-PICAYUNE

November 1, 2016

Dismembered Man Identified After Severed Head Found

Body parts discovered in several locations in the French Quarter and the historic Tremé neighborhood have been positively identified as reporter Richard Decker. His head was found by a groundskeeper in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, at the tomb of infamous Voodoo queen Marie Laveau.

Investigators declined to speculate on the alleged Voodoo theme suggested by the fact that the victim’s limbless torso, severed foot and penis were discovered days earlier behind the Voodoo Lounge, adding that they had found no evidence that Mr. Decker was ever seen inside the nightspot.

Mr. Decker was a reporter for The New Orleans Bugle until recently, when he left there to pursue a freelance career after a dispute with his editor.

“Richard was obsessed with a story he was working on,” City Desk editor John Delacroix said, “an urban legend with supernatural overtones known as Painfreak, but I thought his time could be better spent on more serious issues. In the end, he wouldn’t let it go and decided to leave the Bugle instead.”

Before he left the newspaper, Mr. Decker did see his urban legend story published by the Features Department. His co-writer on that story was Gerald Horner, who shortly thereafter was found hanging by the neck from a doorknob in his apartment, an apparent suicide.

The police say they have no leads, adding that as ghastly as this case is, it nevertheless will be conducted the same as any other homicide investigation. They declined to comment when asked to confirm an earlier report that they had found a recording of an interview Richard Decker conducted on the last day he was seen alive.

| — | — |

He Who Whispers the Dead Back to Life

————

Lucy Taylor

I woke up when the violet-eyed dog that had accompanied me into the New Mexico desert sank its teeth into the back of my hand. I screamed and rolled over, barfing the dregs of that last tequila shooter onto a cactus and frightening a couple of lizards.

I gaped at the dog. “Where’s Winter?”

The beast thumped its black, bovine tail. It wasn’t any species of canine I knew, but a tufted-eared creature with wide-spaced human eyes. And those eyes were imploring me to follow.

Nine hours earlier, I’d been slamming shooters on the patio of a Santa Fe bar when I spotted Leo Winter, the man I’d been looking for. A Navajo drifter and medicine man of dubious repute, Winter had recently passed through the Navajo Nation, a predator in full stalker mode, spouting off about energy vortexes, sexual bliss, and orgasms everlasting. He’d found an easy mark in my younger sister Verna. She was nineteen, and a few months before, had been the victim of a horrible crime. Since then, she’d barely spoken and seldom left the house, so when she ran off with the self-proclaimed shaman, I hoped maybe she’d found what she needed.

Then I learned more about Leo Winter and wished to God I’d tried harder to stop her.

Rumors circulate fast on the rez. Word spread that Winter (whose real name was Leo Nez and who used to sell flutes to the tourists at the Four Corners) was into some seriously dangerous shit: sorcery and skull-fucking and selling his soul to those darker angels who traffic in such. And while he’d come up in the world—his current persona was that of a high end Santa Fe dealer in Native American art—his true home was a fabled fuck palace called Painfreak.

Which was where I guessed I’d find Verna.

Beside me, the demon-mutt gave a death rattle growl and trotted off toward a distant, blood red mesa.

I lurched to my feet and followed.

««—»»

Painfreak’s a bitch to get into. There’s a hand stamp at the door and, before that, a rather arrogant question would-be visitors use to identify themselves to those who’ve already gained access. Winter shared this with Verna and she, in turn, divulged it to me—maybe thinking I’d like to try out Painfreak myself. So, when I saw Winter on the Plaza that morning, I drained my drink and sauntered over, trying my best to look like a woman who knew what she was doing and wasn’t scared out of her wits.

Winter was admiring a pair of Tony Lama boots in a fancy men’s store while a couple of female tourists were covertly taking his picture. Not hard to see why. His long, ink-black hair flowed to the belt of tight Levis; his narrow waist supported a massively muscled upper body. I had a mental picture of him squatting by glowing black rocks in a sweat lodge, naked and oiled. A dangerous image. I banished it.

“Hey, I wanna ask you something,” I said, and he looked up sharply, maybe thinking I was just another out-of-towner needing directions to some local attraction. “Do you fuck as good as you look?”

His eyebrows, chunks of obsidian above raptor black eyes, bunched above a prominent nose. “Go home and sober up.”

“I am sober.” Well, mostly. All right, not so much. But I’d needed to chill, and the tequila shooters in this town are fucking sick.

Winter turned away, and I caught his arm. Like grabbing a baseball bat. “You took my sister Verna. Got her locked up in some crazy sex club’s what I hear. Painfreak it’s called.”

His expression didn’t change, but the atmosphere did: a jolt of energy sizzled through me, hot and electric, like I’d been hit by the shock wave of a distant explosion.

“You’re Verna’s sister. Cory, right? Yeah, she talked about you. Said you’re a lush who likes to fuck and get high.”

“Man, that’s hurtful.” I said and started to laugh. Couldn’t help myself. “Thought you were a badass., Winter. If the truth’s supposed to scare me off, you gotta do better than that.”

He seemed surprised, like he wasn’t used to being talked to that way. Squinted up at the sky, then looked back at me.

“How about we go for a drive?”

««—»»

We drove southwest in Winter’s Range Rover, taking 550 toward Cuba (that’s Cuba, New Mexico), his weird-looking dog glowering at me from the back seat.

Out here the land turns brutal fast. Miles of blistering sand and shriveled plants against a backdrop of striated, red and white cliffs. Fifty miles into the heart of all this heat-blasted nothing, he pulled over and pointed.

“See that mesa to the north? That’s where you’re going. And you’ll have to walk from here. Sorry.”

“Are you fucking crazy? I’ll have heatstroke.”

“You want to find Painfreak, don’t you? But maybe you don’t. Not really. Maybe you want me to drive you back to Santa Fe?”

I barely remembered exiting the Rover or the mongrel tagging along. I watched the dust cloud from the SUV with rage and despair. What stretched before me was an arid deathscape of parched shrubs and sand-swept arroyos, the stillness broken only by the occasional skittering of lizards and barbed, translucent scorpions with segmented glassine bodies.

At some point, I fumbled in my back pocket for my flask and my hand brushed the knife I always carry. Just in case something happens, you know, because in my life, it usually does. I let the knife be and opened the flask. Thought I’d take just a sip to steady my nerves, but finished it off, ended up falling-down dizzy. After I collapsed, the cur mistaking my hand for a chew toy spurred me on, but by the time we reached the mesa, I wondered if it had all been for naught.

I was expecting a pleasure dome of debauchery or a floating fucktopia on some virtual Caribbean Sea—what I found was an adobe casita squatting frog-like at the base a mesa whose sandstone cliffs were as creviced and cracked as the grotesquely scarred face of the freak guarding the door.

Said giant inspected my bloody hand. Stupid me, I figured he was going to offer first aid. A fucking Band-Aid at least. Instead he lifted my hand to his mouth, licked off the blood and nodded like a wine taster acknowledging an especially good vintage. I looked at the bite pattern on the back of my hand and realized this was the ‘stamp’ Verna had told me about.

Mutilation was my admittance to Painfreak.

««—»»

The casita opened into a rock tunnel lined with eerily-lit hollows where hazy forms grappled and grunted. Troglodyte sex. Feral rutting. Here a trio of nude women swarmed over two men decked out in the furry, fake hides of fantasy creatures; there, a bald beauty with a tattooed scalp inked ivy vines onto the swollen cock of a sweat-drenched, shivering masochist. Blue light slanted from recessed niches in the walls, where elastic shadows ghosted. Behind me, I could hear the click of the dog’s claws on stone.

A rock staircase descended to a high-ceilinged chamber where the cavern opened like a belly and arched doorways glittered with a facsimile of colored glass. Lovers nested in hammocks high off the ground; their groaning and cooing echoed off the walls like a gigantic dovecote. The moist air swam with scents: sandalwood and frankincense and, now and then, the sharp, jarring whiff of decay. Unlike those who frolicked higher up, the lovers here were elfin and agile, otherworldly in their contortionist abilities.

I tried to imagine my sister in this bizarre and sensuous world, timid Verna, prone to depression and rumination, skittish of men and protective of her virginity until last summer when a trio of Barrio Aztecas up from Ruidoso used her for a gang initiation. The memory of what she’d told me about that night was unbearable; instinctively, I looked around for distraction. In Painfreak, it wasn’t hard to find.

Beside a cluster of moist and dripping stalagmites hunched a monkish elder whose robe was open to reveal a double-headed penis which two supplicants, female and male, were lustily fellating. I watched and then, as if entranced, moved in and took a turn. I expected to feel something from the encounter—mild arousal or even disgust—but I felt nothing.

The old man seemed to sense my disappointment and advised me, in the plummy tones of a TV evangelist, to continue farther into the cavern.

I obeyed him, but soon after, the way was blocked by lurid, stained-glass panels bolted into the rock walls. At first, I looked around in consternation, unsure of what to do, until I watched several people penetrate the barrier with no injury or difficulty. I discovered if I held my breath as though diving into a waterfall, I could wade through the gorgeous, scarlet and emerald-colored ‘windows’ and partake of what was on offer within. The options for erotic dalliances appeared unlimited. The panels nested one within the other, each tinted window the entryway to yet another curiosity or orgy or Kama Sutra coupling.

I meandered through a series of these small, erotic wonderlands and was stunned to realize I’d forgotten Verna for long periods of time—if time, indeed, was even a relevant concept in Painfreak.

One of the limpid panels unsettled me so much I couldn’t bring myself to enter: shadows resembling moths or dragonflies flailed in a silver web. I found it powerfully disturbing and was backing away when a dark hand, manicured and mapped with ropey veins, fell over my shoulder. Spinning around, I stared into Winter’s feral eyes. No longer the well-dressed art dealer, he stood before me, naked and bestial-looking.

“Still searching for your sister?” The contempt in his voice was virulent. “Or are you too distracted by all that Painfreak offers?”

“This sideshow? I’m already bored. Just show me where my sister is.”

“She’s far away, but closer than before,” he said, relishing my confusion. “When she first came here, she was nervous—as most are—afraid to go beyond the upper chambers. Now that she’s delved the deepest parts of Painfreak, she’s utterly depraved. She won’t stop until her very soul’s corrupted.”

“Save the woo woo bullshit for someone who’s buying it,” I said. “Just take me to her.”

He sighed—a teacher at a lagging student—but led the way, still downward, into a sloping labyrinth of granite and sandstone tunnels. Inside the claustrophobically tight maze, I felt his energy began to flare. Distracted and unnerved, I tried to keep my mind on Verna, but everything I saw aroused desire, made my thoughts blur into one another like a rain-soaked watercolor.

We passed through the Room of Dreams, where naked women and men lay on pallets, eyes open but apparently asleep. A few masturbated or made love while entranced, their darkest and most private dreams writhing across their flesh for all to witness. Dogs like the one who’d led me here squatted by their feet or crouched hungrily on a belly or breast. When one of the sleepers twitched or moaned, the demon hounds bayed furiously, a sound like tolling bells.

A blonde with a slash of a smile glided toward me. She was a doll molded from marzipan, white as a sweet store confection, sugared and oiled and perfumed. A dazzle in her ivory skin, she cruised among the writhing bodies in her flamboyant nudity, eyes narrowed, sizing up the edibles in this lavish buffet of flesh.

Her indigo gaze sought me out.

“A newcomer,” she said, pronouncing the word like a succulent “May your stay be fruitful.”

A milky, sweet voice, so at odds with the predator gaze. I wanted to touch those sugarspun tits, those broad sturdy hips, but was afraid her flesh would be sticky, like taffy, that peeling free would cost me some skin.

Leo Winter had no such qualms. He mashed her to his chest, walked a leg between her thighs, entered and pillaged her in one swift stroke so cavalier I thought she’d protest. Instead she melted against him, merged utterly. I stood there rapt, filled with lust and envy.

As I walked away, but the woman called out laughingly, “Go deeper!”

I thought she was giving Winter instructions; then I realized she was talking to me.

“Plunge into Painfreak as if your life and death depends on it. Consume its corruption. As much as you can stand.”

“I’ll leave when I find Verna.”

“You’re free to do that, of course” said the sweet store goddess, whose raised rump Winter was pounding. “Or you could stay and fuck yourself to death, you know. Some do.”

Her fervor seemed authentic, which disturbed me all the more.

I went ahead, threading my way beside an underground river that vanished periodically among the rocks, then reappeared in a fierce hiss of spray and waves. In places the water gleamed dark red. I wondered if it was blood.

I heard a chuckle and turned to find Winter walking with me. “Many ask about the color. It comes from the red sandstone that formed the cave system, but I like to think it’s something more, the red thread that binds us to our carnal appetites.”

The river crashed around some rocks and swept out of sight, into the next leg of its subterranean journey. Ahead, a fall of boulders blocked the way. Suddenly I found myself peering through a murky, water-spattered glass at the same winged creatures—giant dragonflies or cave bats—I’d seen before and found so frightening.

Winter nudged me. “Go on.”

This time I felt I had no choice, but pressed my forehead and palms firmly against the facsimile of glass. It didn’t give. What if this time the glass was real, I thought, and slashed my eyes when it shattered? As I considered this, one of the creatures slammed against the pane feet first, bounced off and arced away, giving me a glimpse of painted toes. I pushed inside, the translucent pane exploding into a thousand silver drops. Winter glided in behind me.

Before I could register what I saw, a drop of blood landed on my wrist and dripped off a finger. I looked up and saw not dragonflies, but naked men and women impaled on hooks and swinging from their grotesquely tented skin, human kites whose aerial displays were controlled by minders on the ground maneuvering their tethers.

But for her long hair billowing behind her, I would not have recognized my sister in her hook and tether snare. Blood rubied the air behind her as she soared. Her eyes were closed, her face serene and luminous as a full moon.

Others swooped and dove around her, but such was the areal choreography of the minders on the ground that no one collided. Only occasionally did hands reach out in passing and fingers brush. Whenever that tiny connection was made, I saw wild longing in the faces of the flyers.

I called Verna’s name, but she showed no sign of recognition.

“Bring her down!”

I hoped the man controlling Verna’s tether would lower her, but now there was no one there, no minders at all. Verna and the others seemed suspended by their will alone.

Winter whispered in a language unknown to me, and Verna angled earthward, a look of complaint and bafflement on her face. I grabbed her, appalled at the limp weight of her tortured body. Her eyes gleamed like polished agates.

“Come with me,” I said. “Can you walk?”

She blinked. “Cory? What? Where are you doing here?”

“I’m taking you home.”

“But I can’t leave.”

“Of course you can.”

“No!” She turned beseechingly toward Winter. “Don’t let her do this! I want to stay—with you!”

I shook her. “Verna, don’t be stupid! He’s not your friend. He talked you into coming here so he could use you.”

“That’s not true. He saved me!”

“From what? Boredom? Abstinence?”

“Death!”

I had no answer for that, so I went to work on the hooks, sliding them free of the skin as carefully as I could. It was a bloody job and had to hurt like hell, but I knew my sister had endured worse.

“You think I’m delusional,” she said.

No point in denying it. I nodded. “But I’ll get help for you. So you can put Painfreak in the past. Painfreak and…everything else.”

“We never talked about it.”

I cringed, knowing what was coming. “The Barrio Aztecas? I thought it best to let it be. To forget.”

Her laughter was a mix of derision with hysteria. “You never understood how horrible it was, what they did to me, how afterwards I wished I’d died. So one day I said to hell with wishing. I went out to the greenhouse and looped a rope around a beam and climbed up on the ladder. Stepping off was easy—I pretended I was a little girl jumping into Papi’s arms—but then it hurt so much! I tried to get my feet back on the ladder, but it was on its side. I tried to undo the knot, but it was buried in my neck. All the blood was in my head and pushing out my eyes. I’d bitten off the end of my tongue, and all I could think was what I’d look like when you or Mami found me, how I wished I could undo I, how I’d give anything to just undo it. But then I heard him—” She looked at Winter. “—he was whispering, reciting spells, casting out words that had life in them. I held onto that voice like a hand. I followed him here, out of Death, to this amazing place, just the two of us, to Painfreak.”

I stared at her with horror and the growing understanding that Winter had pitched my sister into some dark hole of insanity, mindfucked her into believing she’d been resurrected to a place where even hanging on hooks by your own skin seemed an improvement on what you’d had before.

I grabbed her arm and twisted it until she screamed (she wanted pain, I’d give it to her!), then hauled her toward the tunnel Winter and I had come through. She felt boneless, feather light, but the strength of her resistance was startling. Winter blocked the way. “Leave her. This is where she belongs. And you’re going to stay here with her.”

Maybe it was Winter’s idea of a suggestion, but it was my idea of a threat. When he took a step closer, I let go of Verna and grabbed my knife.

I still believe I didn’t mean to cut him, but then again, there are a lot of things in life I never meant to do, and most of them still happened. And maybe Painfreak twists people somehow, ups one’s capacity for violence as well as desire. Hell, maybe I just wanted to. But the blade was hungry for that beautiful flesh and unzipped a crease from bellybutton to sternum. I felt a thrill almost like lust, when he clutched himself and blood bubbled up between his fingers.

Our eyes met; I expected rage, but what I saw was closer to pity.

Verna screamed and struggled as I muscled her through the translucent pane toward the tunnel beyond. Ahead I saw the hybrid dog. The beast bared its fangs, so I let go of Verna and reached for the knife. It was gone.

Agony exploded through my rib cage. Verna yanked out the knife and slashed me again. I tried to fend her off, but her strength was demonic, the blade biting bone and butchering the meat of my chest.

Verna watched me crumble. I still don’t know if what she said next was something I dreamed as I lost consciousness or a curse she invoked at the end. “There is no sex after death,” she said. Then her haranguing voice grew distant; her face receded to the size of a thumbprint with a tiny smudged ‘o’ for a mouth.

My thoughts unraveled, my body disassembled itself like a poorly executed idea sent back to the drawing board. Separate identity was an unhinging joke, a vast and hollow emptiness.

Except…at intervals of what felt like eons, sound penetrated. A muted language imbued with scents and textures, each syllable a geometry of desire.

As a child, I used to climb the trellis outside my house to get to the upstairs window. There was a skill to finding purchase, to choosing rungs that weren’t too far away or too splintery to hold me. Like the trellis, these faint murmurs could be navigated, too.

The sounds called forth lurid visions. I was an Aztec warrior and Winter my male slave, groveling and butt-fucked for my pleasure. Then I was female again, mating with him under the open canopy of a savannah wide as the horizon, lush with wild grasses. I was Winter’s preening, incestuous mother, his twin brother and his vengeful concubine, his victim and sometimes his killer. Always, whatever the relationship, we inhabited each other’s flesh. We were soulmates and hellmates, bound to a wheel of desire as diabolical as any medieval torture device.

My soul, spirit—whatever it is—sloped back into my flesh like a snail inching into the muck.

I opened my eyes to the world of Painfreak and heard Leo Winter say, “I never answered your question.”

“So answer it.”

We fucked like the damned, which we probably were, like our final wish was to open up each other’s skins, infest each other’s blood and bones, and feast on the remains. Lust existing only for the purpose of spawning more lust, and I wanted nothing more than this—sex and death, the cycle everlasting. I reached for Winter’s hair, intending to drive him deeper into me, but…nothing. I was untouched, and my skin was screaming.

Above me, I heard laughter that ended in a sob. “It doesn’t end,” said Verna. “He didn’t bring you back to be kind. He wants you, and it won’t stop. Ever. Get used to it. You’re part of Painfreak now.”

Maybe.

But I’m stubborn—you can ask Verna. Tell me I’m not free to leave paradise and I’ll gnaw off my foot just so I can crawl back to hell. And almost had to, because finding the way out of Painfreak is no easy task. The distractions are multitudinous, the urge to stay enthralling.

The demon-pooch went with me, then turned back at the door of the casita. I checked to see if its teeth marks were still on my hand. They were.

««—»»

It’s been years now since I was stabbed to death by my poor, deranged sister and Winter lured me back with his mad energy. He still inhabits me—sometimes he takes me in my sleep and fills me with wild dreams; sometimes he provokes unbearable desires.

So I run, because that’s what I’m good at. To get as far away as possible from Painfreak, I answered an ad for a job teaching English in Tokyo and started a new life. Didn’t hook up, didn’t watch pornos, didn’t even look at the hardcore manga and anime.

But one’s own nature, in one form or another, has a way of catching up.

I’m on the subway platform late, when a slender young man approaches me. Bows formally.

Behind him shadows uncoil around a hauntingly familiar form as—.

—he clears his throat and starts to speak in over-enunciated English, laying out the words like coins across a counter.

“I saw your hand…”

The train’s kissing close, the platform’s edge a leap away.

“—that scar—?”

The rippling shadows disgorge a tail-wagging mutt with violet eyes. It glides to the young man’s feet, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Do you fuck…”

I cut him off. “Shut up. Don’t ask.”

The train pulls up. I take his hand. “Why don’t we go find out?”

| — | — |

The Reverend’s Wife

————

Tony Tremblay

The Reverend Jones touched his index finger to his forehead. He then slipped it to his chest. After a quick tap, he moved it to the left, but stopped midway. For the first time in his life, he was unable to complete the ritual. Please God, forgive me.

He stood before a door that was insanely large for a residence. It was made of steel—the metal tarnished and creased in places. Small, round dents pockmarked the surface. Locks, both keyed and numerical, lined the left side. In the center was a knocker—a simple cast iron ring—flaked with rust.

Jones beseeched God once more, lifted the knocker, and let it fall. Seconds later he heard the sound of a bolt sliding. The sound repeated twice more, followed by the clicks of locks disengaging. When the door opened, Jones gasped and took a step back. An abomination of man stood before him.

The largest person he had ever seen took up the width of the doorway. He had to weigh at least 500 pounds. He stood over seven feet tall with scars crisscrossing his face. Bald, his pate reflected the sunlight. He had small black eyes, a flat nose, and his ears stuck out at 45-degree angles.

“You Jones?” The giant asked in a guttural voice that was as ugly as his features.

“Y—yes.”

“Come.”

When the giant man stepped aside, Jones crossed the threshold. As the Reverend walked into a living room the sounds of bolts sliding and locks engaging echoed in his ears. When the giant had finished securing the entrance, he followed Jones in.

“Sit,” the giant grumbled. Jones did as he was told. The giant sat in a love seat opposite him. Jones marveled at the strength of the springs.

“Start talking,” the giant commanded.

“It’s—it’s my wife. She’s been missing for two days.” Jones expected a reaction, but the giant stared at him without speaking. He swallowed and continued. “She was walking home Tuesday afternoon after getting her hair done when she disappeared. We live in a small apartment behind the Unitarian Church—it’s only a fifteen-minute walk from the hairdresser’s.” He struggled to control his voice from cracking. “I went to the police early Tuesday evening when she didn’t arrive. They said it was too soon to file a missing person’s report so I came back early the next morning. I walked the route with Officer Linson, he’s is a member of our church and our friend, to see if we could find anyone who might have seen her. Officer Linson spied a surveillance camera hanging from the Goffstown Pawn Shop, so we went in to see if we could view the footage from the day before. The owner of the shop obliged. When we played the recordings, all three of us saw what happened to my wife.” Jones stifled a sob.

The giant nodded for Jones to continue.

“A small person, walking with a crooked gait—it could have been a dwarf—went up to my wife as she was walking home. They spoke for as long as ten minutes. At the end of the conversation, the dwarf pulled out an object. We couldn’t tell what it was from the recording. My wife backed away but he grabbed her hand. He opened it and forced her palm down. He placed the object on top of her hand. My wife must have been in shock because her whole body shook for around five seconds. Then, he led her by the hand to the entrance of the brick building in front of them. She didn’t resist. They walked in, and then…nothing. We sped up the recording. She never walked out of the building.” Jones leaned forward and mumbled a short prayer. When finished, he sat upright.

“The three of us left the pawnshop and rushed over to the brick building. There was no entrance, only a solid wall. We pressed against the bricks and searched for any sign of a hidden doorway, but there was none. All the bricks looked equally weathered, and we saw no fresh mortar. There was an entrance on the right side of the building, but it looked nothing like the one on the recording. We hurried back to the pawnshop to re-watch the recording. Clearly, the entrance was there, and it shows her going in. When we fast-forwarded it to our search of the building, we discovered that the camera had stopped functioning when we had left the pawnshop. There was only snow.

“Officer Linson took the video chip and told us he was headed back to the police station. The pawnshop owner and I went back to the wall to search for anything we might have missed. That’s when I saw the card.”

The giant raised his head.

“It was wedged in a gap between two bricks where the entrance should have been. Neither of us had seen it earlier. I plucked the card from the wall and it had only one word on it. I was puzzled, so I spoke the word out loud. Painfreak.

If the giant recognized the word, he didn’t express it.

“The pawnshop owner asked me to repeat it. When I looked at him, his face was drawn. “Your wife is in dire straits,” he told me, “and you have little time to get her back.” I questioned him, begged him to tell me more, but he refused. Instead, he advised I come see you. He told me your name is Rex and I should bring money.” Tears streamed down Jones eyes. “Can you tell me what’s going on, Rex? Can you help me? I’m…”

««—»»

Rex lifted one of his immense hands, raised an index finger and placed it against his lips. If he didn’t hush the Reverend, he knew the man would keep jabbering on. He needed a few moments to think.

Painfreak. He’d heard rumors of a nightclub called Painfreak, but he had always dismissed them. The talk was that its patrons were nightmarish—perversions of humanity—and that it was sadist’s paradise. People said it was vast and was located in a time and space different from ours. The entrance to the club was ever changing. Nobody knew when or where it would appear. Part of the mythos was that not everyone who entered Painfreak left Painfreak.

The Reverend’s story intrigued Rex. On its surface, the job was very different from the mundane hits he was usually assigned. As a freelancer, his specialty was government commissions—taking out the scum that the local police or Fed’s didn’t want to bring to trial. He reported to no one, the work paid well, and it provided an opportunity to release his baser instincts without the prospect of incarceration. He loved his work and he was known—and feared—for his unique methods of inflicting pain. Working with the government meant periods of feast or famine. When times were slow, Rex would take on outside jobs. These non-government contracts did not hinder his enthusiasm when it came to inflicting pain.

Despite his appearance and line of work, Rex had his principles, and he strictly adhered to them. He abhorred the mistreatment of women, children and animals, and he harbored compassion for those he deemed innocent or wronged. The Jones woman met at least two of these criteria.

Rex made up his mind. He would talk with the pawnshop owner. He was obliged to thank the man for the reference, but more importantly, he would need more information about Painfreak.

“Two thousand dollars up front, and no guarantees,” he croaked.” If I bring her back within a week, it will cost you another eight grand. If I can’t find her within that time…tough shit.”

The Reverend reached into his back pocket and removed a billfold. The man opened it up and carefully counted out hundred dollar bills. There was plenty more in the billfold after the Reverend removed twenty of them and handed them over. I should have asked for more. That’s a lot of money for a man of the cloth to possess. Will the heating fund be a little lighter this year, Reverend?

His hands shaking, the Reverend also removed two photographs and placed them beneath the bills. “These are pictures of my wife, Betty. They’re fairly recent. My phone number is on the back of one of them.”

Rex reached out, took the money and photos. He glanced at the pictures. Betty was mousey—squat, overweight, with her hair brown and cut short to the shoulder. Her heavy breasts sagged to the bottom of her rib cage. Her face was neither attractive nor ugly, with no distinguishing features. Rex placed the photos and money on a small table next to the love seat. After a brief silence, both men stood. Rex pointed to the front door and the Reverend, with his head lowered, walked toward it. Feeling guilty about the money? After he unlocked the door and threw the slide-bolts, he opened it and the Reverend passed through. “I’ll be in touch,” he grunted.

The Reverend didn’t look back.

««—»»

Sixteen hours had passed since the Reverend had paid him a visit. It was dark enough for Rex to travel. In daylight, it was impossible for him to avoid the stares and horrified reactions of people. He climbed into his Hummer and drove to the pawnshop. The owner must have expected him—he could see bright light streaming from the gap between the front double doors.

Much like Rex, the pawnshop owner was an enigma to the townspeople. The owner was seldom seen in the shops or restaurants, and he never advertised. If someone wandered into the shop in pursuit of second hand goods, they always left disappointed. The only wares on the shelves were esoteric artworks, foreign language books, and mechanical contraptions that defied simple description. If any would-be customer lingered too long, the owner simply mentioned how costly the items were and that was usually enough to goad most of them to leave. If that didn’t work, he had other ways. The word in the street was that the owner was an occult practitioner and Rex knew this to be true. The pawnshop owner had approached him over the years for assistance, and Rex saw firsthand the methods he had used.

Rex parked his Hummer a block away and walked back to the pawnshop. The doors were unlocked. He opened them as wide as they would go. With a little effort, he pushed his girth through. Inside, he ignored the shelves of goods and proceeded to a long counter in front of the left wall. The pawnshop owner stood there with a frown, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Good evening, Rex.”

“Evening. Thank you for the reference.” His voice sounded like a car driving over gravel.

“You’re here, so I assume you took the job. This is going to be a bad one, Rex. No one who goes into Painfreak comes out quite the same—if they come out at all.”

Rex cleared his throat and growled, “Can you get me in?”

“I think so. Stand on the sidewalk in front of the brick building across the street.”

“Now?”

“You don’t have much time—it might already be too late. If I can bring the entrance back, I’m not sure I can hold it here too much longer after you go inside. You get in, Rex, and then you get out as soon as you can.”

“What happens if I don’t?”

“You might still be able to leave. I just don’t know where you’ll wind up.”

Rex knew this job could be the biggest mistake of his life. But the lure of Painfreak, with its rumors of sexual abandon and unfettered carnage was too deep to ignore. He had to see this place. “Let’s do this.”

««—»»

Every passing car slowed. The occupant’s eyes widened and their heart rates accelerated when they caught a glimpse of what stood on the sidewalk across the street from the pawnshop. Their headlights revealed a giant—as big or bigger than any pro-wrestler or comic book movie character they had ever seen—standing still, his gaze set on the bricks before him. If he turned his head and the angle were right, they could see his face. Engines were gunned, some cars leaving rubber in their wake.

Except for an occasional sweep of his head left or right, Rex stared at the brick wall for maybe an hour. Fatigued, he closed his eyes for a moment. When he reopened them, the entrance to Painfreak filled his vision. He breathed deeply, and before he could step toward it, he felt a pull on his pant leg. He looked down and saw a little man bent at the waist. The Reverend’s assumption was correct. It was a dwarf.

“Hey there, big fella,” the dwarf squeaked, “you want to go someplace where your wildest sexual fantasies come true?”

Rex raised an eyebrow and stared at the little man.

The dwarf continued in his helium-high voice. “Big guy like you, hell, you would fit right in! We got girls. We got small girls with big tits and big girls with small tits. We got boys, too, if you want. You like boys? We got big boys with small dicks and small boys with big dicks. We got other things, too. Things you never dreamed of…and maybe some you have.”

While Rex’s mind went to images of things he had dreamed of, the dwarf removed a metallic object from his pant pocket.

“Ahh,” squealed the dwarf as he spotted the massive erection forming in Rex’s pants. He held up the object. “Your admission. You’ll have to bend over a bit and give me your right hand, big fella.”

Rex obeyed, and the dwarf pressed the object to the top of Rex’s wrist. Electricity flowed through his arm. It dissipated before it reached his elbow. The dwarf pocketed the metal object. “Big guy like you, you hardly felt that, I bet. Let’s go!” he announced in a voice that brought to Rex’s mind fingernails on a chalkboard.

Together, they passed through the doorway, where they were met by a tall thin Asian man. “Your right hand,” the Asian demanded. Rex held it out, palm down. The Asian waved a wand over the back of his hand. Rex cocked his head when a symbol resembling a bone came into view. The Asian nodded and then gestured with a sweep of his arm toward a hallway leading into the club.

Rex looked down to his side to see if the dwarf would follow, but he was gone. He eyed the hallway, pitch black and as quiet as a mausoleum. He stepped forward.

“Welcome to Painfreak.”

Rex jumped, then crouched at the sound. The dwarf’s voice had come from somewhere above him.

««—»»

After no more than three steps down the hallway, Rex’s senses were assaulted. Dance music enveloped him—the vibration digging its way through his pores. He cringed—the pain from the booming audio traveled through his ears and pierced his brain. The down-beat was worse—it pricked at his eyes like needles while the bass jackhammered the top of his skull. Why hadn’t he heard it when he was wrist-checked by the Asian?

This is Painfreak? A dance club?

Rex compartmentalized the pain. He concentrated on his surroundings. Hundreds of people were dancing under strobe lights, their bodies vanishing and then reappearing in time with the rhythm. The flashes disoriented him and he fought to maintain focus.

A majority of the dancers were nude or semi-nude. Breasts and penises bounced, the flaccid ones lagging behind the beat. Of those clothed, some were wearing costumes and masks.

The smell of fish and bleach permeated the air.

Rex advanced toward the center of the dance floor and bulldozed anyone in his path to the side. No one seemed to care. Those who fell reached out to him. Their hands snaked up his legs. When they reached for his cock, he ignored them or brushed them aside with his tree-trunk arms. Some of the fallen ones would not be deterred—they clung to his legs. He dragged them along. He stepped on some, others fell off. If they cried out, he didn’t hear their wails.

Rex pushed on. His gaze swept over the costumes of the dancers. Both sexes wore bras adorned with metallic accoutrements. Woven into the fabric were spikes, fragments of saw blades, and razor wire. The objects glistened with moisture when the strobe lights reflected off them. He had no way of knowing what lay beneath their masks, but a grin formed when he imagined that they might be more hideous than he was. He reached out to pull the mask off the closest dancer, but stopped short when there was a tap in the middle of his back. With his arm suspended in air, he turned. When he saw who it was, he took an involuntary step away.

It was Brian Stone. Only, Brian Stone was dead. Rex knew this because he had killed him.

Two years ago, Stone bludgeoned his wife with a hammer and then had stuck the handle up her ass. She bled to death. Stone claimed he found her that night when he came home from playing poker with some pals. He told the cops she was cheating on him, and that’s who they should be looking for. Everyone knew he did it, but the cops couldn’t crack his alibi or get enough evidence. They wanted Stone to disappear. When the detectives showed Rex the pictures of Stone’s wife lying on the floor, dead, with the handle sticking out of her, Rex was only too happy to accept the job. He beat Stone to a pulp—repeatedly slamming his fists into the man’s face until a portion of the prick’s skull broke off. His brains still stained the sidewalk.

Now, Stone showed no sign of the beating.

Rex’s chest tightened. Not in fear of the dead man—for Rex feared no one—but because the images of what Stone had done to his wife rushed at him like a chained dog.

Stone must have noted the recognition in Rex’s eyes. The dead man smiled, and then motioned with a shake of his head for Rex to follow. Rex weighed the invitation. Without waiting, Stone turned and walked off the dance floor. Unlike his own entrance into the club, the crowd parted for Stone. Rex decided to follow. They passed a long bar against a far wall, two people deep with customers ordering drinks. Stone turned at the bar’s end and opened an oversized door. Rex entered, and when Stone closed the door behind them, the music cut out.

They were in a small, well-lit room, facing each other with only a few feet separating them. Another oversized door loomed at the opposite end.

Rex grunted, “You’re dead.”

“Yes, I’m dead. Only, in Painfreak, I’m not dead.”

Rex cocked his head to the side. How can someone be dead but not dead?

Stone continued. “We know why you’re here. She’s in a room through that door.” Stone lifted a hand and pointed. “Before you open the door, Rex, I’m here to tell you that Painfreak thinks you are making a mistake. She belongs here. And so do you.”

Stone’s words only fueled Rex’s hatred for the man. Nobody tells him what he should or shouldn’t do, especially a woman-beating shit-heel like Stone. What kind of place brings people like Stone back from the dead? Rex balled his hands into fists. One of the pictures the detectives had showed him flashed in his head. He saw the hammer Stone had used to kill his wife. Clumps of flesh, painted red and brown, clung to the handle.

Rex howled at the image and lifted his arms high. Stone’s eyes went wide and he leaned back.

The giant brought his arms down.

Tuffs of hair and bone fragments exploded from Stone’s head. Rex continued to pummel the once dead man until his neck vertebrae wedged deep in his upper torso. Stone teetered for a moment, and then toppled over sideways.

“Fucking stay dead.” Rex mumbled.

He turned from Stone’s body, walked to the door on the other side of the room, opened it and stepped through.

In the center of the small room hung a naked woman. She was bound with rope and suspended upright. Her stretched arms and legs formed an X. Four men surrounded her. They were thin, bald, with skin as pale as a cancer patient. One was positioned behind her, another faced her so close their noses touched. A third man rubbed against the woman’s left thigh. The fourth man stood next to the woman’s right thigh with a knife. The man drew the blade across the meaty portion of the woman’s thigh. With his fingers, he parted her flesh until the blood flowed freely. Then the man plunged his penis into the wound. Rex squinted and shook his head as he stared at the man.

He swung his gaze to each of the pale men. They all pumped into the woman, their asses in constant, rapid motion. The woman’s body had too many cuts for Rex to count, all of them dripping with blood and semen.

Rex lifted his head to see their victim’s face. Her eyes were tight, and her mouth was open. Her tongue hung limp over her bottom lip. It was the Reverend’s wife. He strained to hear if she was aware of what was happening to her. He heard it—a single, continuous, anguished note coming somewhere from deep inside her.

He walked toward the men fucking her.

Rex couldn’t remember a time when he had wept—even as a child he had kept his emotions in check. He took a deep breath, hung his head and closed his eyes. His shoulders sagged as he exhaled. His eyes moistened. Scenes of his mother’s torture by her boyfriend seeped into his head. Rex saw himself as a child, forced to witness the depravity. He tensed at the recollection. His hands opened and closed into fists.

Now was not the time to revisit those memories. He blocked out the images, and his mind raced to the present. When he opened his eyes, they burned with fire.

Hands the size of melons gripped the biceps of the pale man closest to him. Rex squeezed. The man’s bones crushed under his grip. With little effort, he tore the man’s arms out of their sockets.

The man continued to pump into the woman.

Rex blinked and took a step back. What the fuck? Rex dropped the man’s limbs, reached out, and wrapped his fingers around the man’s neck. He pulled. The head separated from the body with a slurp. Blood sprayed, adding another layer of gore to Rex’s face and chest.

It wasn’t enough. Rex fumed. Why the fuck won’t he die?

Rex pulled the man out of the woman and onto to the floor. His size twenty-two shoes stomped on the body until it was a bloody sludge. Piles of viscera mixed with bones littered the floor. They did not move. Rex turned to the other three. They had paid no attention to the death of one of their own. If anything, their assault on the woman grew more fevered. Rex tore into them. One by one, he repeated the tactic on the remaining three. When finished, his pant legs were soaked red to the knees.

Rex surveyed the carnage. What could have passed for a smile stretched across his face.

The woman groaned. It brought Rex back to the reason he was here. Had he had time, he would have bathed in the blood and devoured their organs, but he had a job to do and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could remain in Painfreak before he was trapped. He searched the floor for the knife the men had used to cut her, but he couldn’t see it. Using the toe of his right shoe, he moved the piles of sludge aside for a better view. The knife revealed itself under a mashed organ. As he bent to pick it up, he heard a sound above him. He lifted his head and frowned. There was no ceiling. In its place, a dark void. As he stared, he saw something move within it. Seconds later, an object, attached to a thin white rope, slipped down through the ink. When it touched the floor several feet away, Rex stood upright, the knife clenched in his hand.

It was a woman—naked, tall, hairless, and as pale as the four men he had killed. The thin white rope hung slack as it stretched down from the void and disappeared behind her back. A web of sorts, he mused, no doubt spun from her ass. She stood still for a moment, and then stepped forward, closing the distance between them.

“Rex,” she spoke, her voice low and thick. “You do not want to take her away.”

He took a step back, and bumped up against the woman tied in ropes. She groaned, but then went silent.

Rex eyed the pale woman—not so much in fear but out of curiosity. “Why not?”

The woman had come to within inches of Rex. She stopped, raised her arms, and then wrapped them around Rex’s head. “Because, Rex…,” Her lips didn’t move, but he could hear her voice, “…you may leave Painfreak, but Painfreak never leaves you.” She raised her head and then pressed her mouth against his. Her lips parted and her tongue probed.

Rex stiffened. His body vibrated as if four hundred and sixty volts of electricity poured through him. Pictures played in his head. They were scenes of exquisite debauchery, and he had the lead role in all of them. Rex could taste blood, and he could smell his victim’s shit. He saw himself surrounded by women, all of them offering themselves to him, their sex dripping with anticipation. Above it all, a whisper called to him. It was the pale woman’s. Her voice breathy as she implored, “Stay with us.”

Stay with us.

Us?

Rex bit down on the woman’s tongue. In his head, he heard her shriek, and the images of the debauchery vanished. She lowered her hands and pushed off him. Blood bubbled from between her lips. Rex shook off the remnants of her physic hold and spit what was hers back at her. The thin white rope pulled taut and she was lifted into the darkness. As he watched her rise, he raised his fists to her and growled, “Us? There is no Us! Nobody owns me!”

He turned to the trussed woman. Starting with her leg restraints, he cut them, and worked up to the ties that bound her arms. He slung her over his shoulder.

“No,” she pleaded.

“Shut up,” he answered, “I’ve got you now. I’m taking you home to your husband.”

Rex retraced his steps. He waded through the piles of mashed organs on the floor and opened the door.

Walking through the room, he glanced at the mess that was Stone. Still dead. He exited that room and was back at the bar on the dance floor. The music drove spikes of pain into his head and the strobe lights played havoc with his perspective. He searched for the way he had come in. Taking a few moments to adjust to the lights, he thought he had found it. As before, the crowd clamored for him. They reached out, grabbed at his legs and ran their hands over his body. A few attempted to remove the woman from his shoulder. He answered with a punch that snapped their limbs or stove their skulls. He barreled his way through the dance floor, kicking, pushing, and stepping on anyone in his path. When he made it to the end of the room, he saw the dark hallway. He stopped before entering and turned to take one last look at Painfreak. Though the music droned on and the strobe lights flashed, no one in the crowd danced. They were still, and they all faced him. When the strobe lights flashed on, he saw their faces. They grinned. His headed clouded. They were pulling at him. Once more, it was the woman on his shoulders who brought him back around.

“Leave me alone,” she begged. She was disoriented, her voice weak. Rex ignored her, blinked at the mob, and then he spun around. He walked into the hallway.

The music stopped and the lightning bolt echoes from the strobes disappeared. There were no signs of the Asian man or the dwarf. Rex walked to the door at the end of the hallway, opened it and stepped outside.

It was dark, but the surroundings were familiar. He stood in front of the brick building and could see the pawnshop across the street. Its lights were off. He carried the woman to his Hummer and drove home.

Rex entered the house and carried the woman up to the second floor. He placed her on his bed. She was conscious. Her eyes fixed on his. Neither said a word. His gaze wandered over her body. Her wounds trickled red and white onto his blankets—except from between her legs. There, a puddle formed beneath her. A snapshot of the men fucking her flashed before him. He saw her bound, the knife cutting her thigh, their frantic pumping.

Rex envied their single-minded purpose.

“Why did you take me from there?”

He lifted his gaze in response to Betty’s question. His hoarse reply came quick. “Your husband. He paid me to bring you back.”

Betty arched her back and spread her legs wide. “I don’t want to come back.”

Rex focused on the gap between her legs. Betty was small, too small. He would rip her apart.

After a moment, he murmured, “There’s something I have to do.”

Rex pulled Betty’s picture out from his pocket. He walked to the phone and dialed the number on the back. After three rings, someone answered. Rex spoke.

“Reverend, I’ve got Betty. Come over in an hour, not before. The front door is unlocked, let yourself in.” Rex hung up the phone. He disrobed and approached the bed.

“We are going to have company soon.

Betty grinned. “I can’t wait.”

| — | — |

Ownership

————

Wrath James White

Lord whisked the scalpel through her flesh in deft, rapid strokes, carving forgotten runes and symbols, more from instinct than memory, as Miyu continued to moan, and scream, and masturbate with her one free hand. In his intricate designs, he used the welts and cuts caused by the whip, the bleeding avulsions left by the reed-thin rattan cane he’d lashed her ass and thighs with, slicing and cutting with the scalpel to connect wound to wound. Soon, the tapestry of bleeding lines formed hieroglyphics in languages that were ancient when mankind was new.

Miyu’s eyes were glazed, far away, sparkling like Christmas lights as adrenaline and endorphins coursed through her. She never once attempted to free her other wrist or her ankles from the leather restraints. She was enjoying the endorphins too much, the euphoric waves of dopamine flooding through her bloodstream.

“Ooooh, yes. Don’t stop, big man. Hurt me! Hurt me!”

Miyu loved the high she got from pain. The sweet intoxicating nectar of agony. She was enjoying all of this…until she wasn’t.

It was some type of twisted mercy that made Lord bow down between Miyu’s muscular thighs and lick her engorged clitoris, sucking it, flicking it rapidly with his tongue until she began to tremble with the first tremors of a tremendous orgasm, adding an avalanche of her juices to the blood soaking the red satin bed sheet. Lord sucked her tender labia, eased his tongue deep inside her to lick the inner walls of her sex, fucking her with his tongue as she continued to convulse in ecstasy. He knew these few orgasms, no matter how delicious, would be small payment for the agony to come, but it was all he had to offer.

“You will be my doorway,” Lord said, as he traded the scalpel for a large bowie knife, plunging it to the hilt in Miyu’s sopping wet vagina, seizing the hilt with both and hands and ripping the blade violently upwards, slicing her open from her sex to her stomach. She’d had no time to scream. Lord wasn’t sure she would have anyway. He wasn’t certain she could even distinguish her own murder from the salacious agonies he’d given her for the last couple hours.

Blood sprayed everywhere, raining down upon them like rainwater, a meaty red deluge pouring from the yawning maw gaping in Miyu’s lower torso as Lord sawed his way up through her sternum and cracked open her ribcage. He reached into her chest with both of his gigantic hands to pry her apart and open the door.

“I told you bitches I’d be back,” Lord said, smiling triumphantly as he stood, stepped both feet into Miyu’s vandalized corpse, and descended the stairs into Painfreak.

3 hours earlier.

“Because she is mine.”

It was really that simple. Sophia was his slave, his submissive, his slut, and that made her his responsibility, and she was in danger, even if she was too deep into sub-frenzy, too busy chasing that next endorphin rush, to know it. She was in way over her head.

Lord stalked through the streets of Las Vegas like a great, black, tidal wave. An irresistible force, kicking in doors, twisting arms, and breaking jaws, looking for his submissive. He was looking for the hell-spawned nightclub/ dungeon that had swallowed up his property somewhere in San Francisco and spit her out here.

He’d spent enough time at Painfreak in his twenty-plus years in the S&M and bondage scene to be familiar with its rhythms. It would be here. He knew it. And no matter what it took, he would find it.

Las Vegas had fallen to ruin since the recession. The people here were broken. They had lost their homes, their jobs, and their marriages. Desperation and despair permeated the atmosphere all around like a sweaty film of existential malaise. Even the tourists that still trickled in came like vampires to suck what life remained from its desiccated carcass, or snuggle beside it in its grave and wait to be picked clean by the local scavengers.

It cried out for extreme distraction, a screaming orgasmic escape from reality, and the normal disease-ridden street whores weren’t enough to satiate its thirst for debauchery. The swinger’s clubs could not appease its hunger for excess. The bars and casinos could not suck its soul out fast enough. Even the local dungeons and BDSM groups, now packed with sadists and masochists eager to exchange their pain for another’s, to torture themselves and others into forgetfulness and absolution, struggled to keep up with the growing influx of deviants, and faltered as their members demanded increasingly violent and prurient diversions, straining and bursting the limits of safe, sane, and legal. The City of Sin was starving for sex and violence on a plateau far beyond its typical mass-produced, vaudevillian iniquities. The starving hole in the pit of this city was a siren call for Painfreak.

Lord searched in the old seedy part of Las Vegas Blvd, where the peep shows and strip clubs with ten-dollar lap dances and twenty-dollar blowjobs still proliferated. Empty crack vials, condoms, and heroin balloons competed for space on the sidewalk with cigarette butts and broken glass. You could get married, drunk, high, pick up a prostitute, or gamble away your life’s savings all on the same beer-stained street. Hallow-eyed addicts, and worn and wounded whores shuffled zombie-like, squinting and scowling in the early am sunlight, like ghouls startled to find themselves caught outside their graves at sunrise. Their hunger urged them forward, not satisfied by whatever sins they’d indulged in the night.

Lord was not a fan of sunlight either. The dark suited him better. His midnight complexion blended in with the evening shadows and he felt himself one of them. The night was an extension of his being. But the club would be more dangerous after dark. Painfreak was a nocturnal predator that slept during the day. At night, it harvested pain and innocence, devoured souls, much as Lord did. But Lord considered himself the hero in this story.

He’d taken many lives, broken many more hearts. But it had all been consensual. He gave the lost and lonely what they desired, and sometimes agony and death was what they wanted most. Who was he to deny anyone the lusts of their darkest hearts? The more he tried to convince himself he was different than the club’s owners and infernal occupants, the less dissimilar they both seemed. But the fact that Sophia’s fate would be no less agonizing with him than inside Painfreak was a secondary consideration. The point was that she wore his color, his wolf’s head brand on her inner thigh.

She’s mine, and she has the book!

The Stratosphere Hotel loomed overhead, casting its long shadow over the twilight streets while the morning sun slowly chased back all other shadows. Lord walked among the damned. Their ravenous eyes crawled over his ebon flesh, searching for some morsel of generosity. Money. Sex. Conversation. A simple smile. He had none to spare.

Even well into his forties, Lord was still an impressive figure. His six-foot-six, 230+lb body was still lean and hard with muscles bulging beneath his leather trench coat. The only signs of his age were the two inch-wide streaks of white in his goatee, and an overall hardening of his face and eyes. His gaze held a cold wisdom that old warriors acquired after years of sustained battle. As if his very soul had grown callouses to protect itself.

Lord was shirtless beneath the black leather trench coat. Even in January it was sixty degrees in Vegas, though the strong wind dropped the relative temperature another twenty degrees. His coat flapped in back of him like raven’s wings. Between the two slabs of black granite that formed his pectoral muscles hung a simple silver chain adorned with a dried rattlesnake head. He had accumulated a few scars over the years, some from battle, some from violent, primal sex. A lightning bolt of keloidal tissue ran from beneath his right eye down his cheek, neck, chest, to just above his right nipple. That had been a fun night. Lord absentmindedly traced the scar with his fingertip, remembering the dominatrix who’d given it to him. She had cut him, then he had cut her, and then he had cut her some more, and some more, until they’d ended the evening fucking in a pool of blood while her husband watched, masturbating while suspended from the ceiling from metal hooks. She had been a succulent morsel who’d soon bowed before him and become his slave—as had her cuckolded spouse.

Sophia, on the other hand, had been an innocent—comparatively. She was no virgin, but she was a virgin to the pleasure of pain. She was new to the world of deviant sex. Her experiences had been limited to the positions commonly found in internet porn. But she had wanted more.

She’d been haunting San Francisco’s bondage and kink clubs. The ones South of Market and in the Tenderloin district, trying everything with everyone, from rope play and predicament bondage to whips, floggers, paddles, and knife, electrical, and fire play. Every night she was with a different Dom or Master, until Lord took notice of her, and brought her into his fold. Lord introduced her to salacious agonies she’d never imagined herself capable of, and she’d gobbled up every torment he’d subjected her lovely flesh to, then begged him for more. She was a pain-slut, an endorphin junkie, and she was going to get herself killed, and worse. Much, much worse. It wasn’t just that she’d gone to Painfreak without him. She’d taken the book with her, The Book of a Thousand Sins, and Lord knew exactly what she intended to do with it.

Lord found what he was looking for on Industrial Avenue, a block down from the self-proclaimed “World’s Largest Strip Club”, adjacent to an old furniture warehouse. It was a large nondescript structure of gray stucco and stone with blacked out windows. The place looked no different than the other buildings in the area, deliberately innocuous. The exterior changed from city to city, but the interior was always the same, updated every so often to keep up with style trends, but essentially unchanging. Lord could smell the blood, the semen, the hellfire. It singed his nose hairs and fired something deep within him that only came out during intense scenes, when he let the animal inside take prey. It awakened the dark, violent, predator inside. This was the place. Painfreak.

A ten-foot high chain-link fence surrounded the building. There was barbed wire on top that looked brand new, giving the place a secretive, forbidding appearance, yet the front gate stood open for anyone to walk in.

Because it knows very few would. And those few were more than enough to keep the club alive.

Lord pondered the fact that he repeatedly anthropomorphized the club, ascribed a will and a motive to it, along with appetites and desires. It was how he’d always thought of it…a living thing within whose entrails they indulged and celebrated their lusts. The people who worked there were merely parasites riding it like ticks. The regular members, like Lord himself, enjoyed a more symbiotic relationship. It fed their passions and perversions, and it, in turn, fatted itself off their dark sexual energies. The tourists, however, they were merely snacks, hors d’oeuvers for the beast that was Painfreak.

The club was the true monster. It was Lord’s rival for Sophia. Not any one of its patrons or employees, but all of them, the collective whole. And if any of them got in his way, he would not hesitate to make them casualties even if he was not entirely sure how to accomplish such a feat when it came to the club’s more Luciferian denizens. The ones who lorded over the lower chambers of Painfreak. If she was down there, getting her out would be—challenging.

Several cars were still in the parking lot, though there were no other signs of activity within or without the building. Lord walked around to the back and found a red door beside the loading bay with a small black placard, no bigger than a business card, just above the doorbell on the left that read “Painfreak”. He rang the doorbell.

A skinny Asian man with Fu Manchu facial hair and a notoriously sour disposition, cracked open the door. He squinted against the morning sun and snarled in disdain, as if he took sunlight as a personal insult.

“We’re not open yet. You know better than to come here during the day.”

“Make an exception. I need to see someone,” Lord said, pushing the door open. He could have been more diplomatic, but he’d been here often enough to know sweet-talk would get him nowhere.

A big bald guy with tribal tattoos mixed with traditional American tattoos covering much of his muscular bulk, stepped forward with his arms folded across his chest, barring Lord’s way. The man filled the entire doorway from frame to frame, even when he turned sideways. It was a mystery how he managed to get in and out of the tiny door. He must come in through the loading dock, Lord thought. The man resembled an old wrestler from the mid-eighties who’d called himself “The One-Man Gang”. He’d been one of Hulk Hogan’s many nemeses.

“Okay, what can I give you to let me pass? You know, besides an ass-kicking.”

The man smirked, amused by Lord’s threat, but not the least bit concerned.

“Just turn back around and come back tonight, Sir,” the hulking bald man said.

“Do you know who I am? What I am?”

The Asian man stepped up and poked Lord in the chest.

“Yes. We know exactly what you are. The rules still apply to you. Come back tonight or get banned for life.”

Lord looked past the skinny Asian guy, and appraised the big bald guy behind him. The guy was as much fat as muscle. Built like a power lifter, big arms, big chest, and shoulders, equally big belly. Lord believed he could take him, but was far from positive. None of the employees at Painfreak were exactly what they appeared to be. And if he failed, he would be banned from the club, and there would go any possibility of rescuing Sophia. Even if he fought his way past the two doormen, there were others inside he would have to best, and they would get more difficult the deeper he ventured. Eventually, he would be stopped—permanently. Caution was definitely the better part of valor.

Lord stepped closer to the big, bald guy, locking eyes with him, trying to see into the man’s spirit and take his measure. The big man’s eyes were black pools of obsidian that reflected nothing back. Were it not for the circle of white around the man’s irises, he would have thought he was staring into hollow pits. Whatever the man was, he wasn’t human, not anymore, if he ever was. Lord was the same height as him, and just as broad, though easily a hundred pounds lighter. Every fiber in his being wanted to test himself against the big guy, alpha male to alpha male. He wanted to see if the man had any guts, and what they looked and felt like.

“Fine. I’ll be back. Believe me. I’ll be back.”

“Wise choice,” the Asian man said.

The big guy only snickered again.

Lord turned and walked away, feeling wretched for not accepting the challenge, even though he knew he had made the wisest choice. It wasn’t what his heart wanted. His soul called out for combat and death. But he knew there was another way. Painfreak had its followers, fans, and acolytes, but so did Lord. He took out his cellphone and sent out a group text. Hundreds of submissives of every race and gender, most unknown to each other, in dungeons and bedrooms all over the country, and all over the world, shuddered in fear or squealed with excitement as Lord’s text was received. He had been planning this moment for more than a decade. Now, the time had come to transcend. There were other ways to enter Painfreak besides the front door, ways he didn’t even know if those two assholes were aware of. All Lord needed was a sacrifice…a big one.

««—»»

“Talk of the Desert” was about the seediest strip club/peepshow on the Las Vegas strip or in all of Las Vegas for that matter. Most of the women who worked there were prostitutes, drunks, crackheads, and meth addicts. Both of the bouncers were high on pain-killers and juiced up on testosterone and human growth hormone. One was a large Samoan with dreadlocks a thick beard and a neck the size of most people’s waists. He looked like he could bench-press a dump truck. His friend was a big white guy with the face of Jim Carey and the body of Lou Ferrigno. Lord kept an eye on both of them as he scoured the club for just the right kind of whore. He was looking for bruises, welts, burns, cuts, rope burns, anything that might suggest the predilection for pain.

The place was so dimly lit, it was difficult to discern the features of the naked women slithering between the tables, eyes unfocused and sparkling with amphetamines. They were pale silhouettes, illuminated briefly by roving spotlights and flickering disco balls. That was undoubtedly by design. In the red and blue strobe lights, they did not look nearly as unappetizing as they no doubt did in full light. In the darkness, they were reduced to tits, thighs, hips, and asses. Those were the only parts that mattered to the average customers anyway. From the features Lord could make out, it would be a blessing not to see more of their faces.

Lord found the darkest corner, just beyond the flicker of the strobe-lights and the glow from the dim bulbs behind the bar. Immediately, like hungry piranha, strippers from several different parts of the room began to slink toward him.

“Wanna dance?” Asked a slender bleached blonde woman with perfectly round fake breasts that sat up on her chest like scoops of ice cream. Her face was a maze of wrinkles, and her lips were swollen with collagen. But other than the damage her plastic surgeon had done to her, there were no other visible bruises or marks.

“No,” Lord replied, turning to look at the next woman, a Hispanic woman with big, floppy, tits, wide hips, and a thick waist, hair dyed with streaks of burgundy. She smiled revealing a mouth full of crooked and rotting teeth.

“You wanna dance?”

Again, Lord inspected her for signs of masochistic tendencies, and again, other than a swollen jaw, probably the result of a poor choice in domestic partners, he found nothing. Lord waved her away.

A muscular Asian woman came next. She was just over five and a half feet tall and had the arms and shoulders of a boxer or mixed-martial artist, the thick muscular legs of a gymnast, and the beginnings of a six-pack. She was built like a warrior, like she was hardening her body for battle. Her face was lean and angular, manly, with an oversized jaw and forehead, obviously the result of too many testosterone injections. Even naked, breasts and vagina fully exposed, she could easily have been mistaken for a male to female transsexual, just not a very convincing one. A man transitioning to a woman would have undoubtedly taken greater care to appear more feminine. Even when she began to sway her chiseled torso to the music, grinding her muscular ass in the air, she still gave off a distinctly masculine air.

What caught Lord’s eye, however, was the micro-branding of an Aztec sun on her upper thigh, the intricate Kanji symbols carved on her chest, arms, and stomach in delicate thin lines, obviously the work of a steady hand and a scalpel, the seven silver rings pierced through her labia, and the whip marks on her back. On her neck she wore a rolled steel choker, a collar. Someone owned this powerful beast of a woman, or at least thought they did.

“Sit with me,” Lord said before she could entreat him to pay for a lap dance.

“Do you want a—”

“I said, sit!” Lord growled, pointing to the empty seat beside him. The Asian woman dutifully complied, slipping soundlessly into the chair. The other strippers who’d been headed toward his table turned away to find other prey.

“What is your name?”

“My name is Jade.”

“No. Not the name you use to get twenty dollar tips from desperate Asiaphiles. What is your real name?”

“My name is Miyu.”

“Japanese?”

“Yes.”

“But no accent?”

“Born right here in Las Vegas. My parents moved here from LA. But I can do a Japanese accent if that’s what gets you off.”

Lord reached out and traced one of the Kanji symbols above her left breast with his fingertip. Then did the same with the sun burned onto her thigh.

“This. This is what gets me off. Tell me where you got them.”

“Are you going to buy a lap dance?”

“No. No, I’m not. But I might just take you with me to Painfreak tonight if you can convince me you’re ready for that level of—intensity.”

Miyu smiled. Then leaned in to whisper into Lord’s ear.

“Do you think you can break me, big man?”

“Oh, I know I can. The question is, will you enjoy it? Or is cell-popping and light blood-play the furthest your limits stretch?”

Miyu laughed again.

“You do say all the right words, don’t you big man? If I was into guys, I’d be all over you.”

“Oh, men may not be your preference, but this wouldn’t be the first time you’ve played with a man. I’m sure I won’t be the first man to bring you to orgasm either—or subspace. But, I will be the best. I will be the one you remember when you are old and feeble, breathing through a respirator, counting down the seconds to oblivion. This night, will stand out from all the rest. You may forget the sound of your mother’s voice, what dress you wore to the prom, your grandmother’s face, the name of the first girl you finger-fucked, but I promise you, you will remember every detail of this evening as if it were yesterday. You will masturbate to these memories for the next fifty years—if you live that long.”

“You think much of yourself.”

“I know my strengths and weaknesses.”

“And what are your weaknesses?”

“My greatest strength, is in hiding my weaknesses.”

“Touché’,” Miyu said. “Painfreak, huh?”

“Heard of it?” He asked.

“Rumors.”

“Ready to see the reality?”

Miyu smiled coyly and nodded.

“I think I am, big man. Give me a few minutes to get changed.”

The two of them stood and Miyu scurried off to a hidden room behind the DJ booth. Lord stood, watching the carnival of flesh parading through the flickering lights. A curvaceous, pockmarked woman with stretch marks on her flopping breasts, and dimpled blue-veined thighs gyrated on stage to a hammering techno beat. Lord closed his eyes and inhaled the powerful fragrance of sweat, sex, perfume, alcohol, amphetamines, and infection. They all smelled like prey. From the bouncer glaring at him from the front door, to the waifish, raven-haired, barely-legal bartender, to the woman with the pendulous breasts cavorting on stage. He wanted to consume them all, to fuck them to death, make them scream, cry, orgasm, and perish in agony.

“Okay, I’m ready,” Miyu said, curling her hard body around Lord’s tree-trunk arm and hugging it tight.

“We’ll see.”

They walked out the door together into the harsh glare of the sun.

“It doesn’t open for a few hours. How about we go to your place and get acquainted in the meantime?”

“How do I know you’re not some kind of serial sex killer who picks up girls at strip clubs and rapes and murders them?”

“Well, you don’t really. Do you?”

Miyu laughed.

“You really suck at instilling confidence in a woman, you know that, big man?”

Lord smiled, but did not reply.

“Okay, I’ll trust you. Just promise me you’ll at least make me cum a few times before you torture and kill me?”

“How about I make you cum a few times while I torture and kill you?” Lord said, while letting the smile slip from his face. Miyu laughed.

“It’s a deal. Let’s go. My place is just about two miles from here. I hope you can fit in my little KIA Soul, big man.”

“I’ll manage.”

In just a few short minutes they arrived at Miyu’s apartment building. Lord was feeling anxious. It would still be several hours before the club opened. He needed something to relax him and take the edge off.

“Show me your toys,” he said moments after walking into her apartment.

“Damn. You really aren’t much for small talk are you?”

“We talked enough at the club, don’t you think? Let’s see what you’re into.”

Miyu’s smile broadened. She bounded into her bedroom and began rummaging through her closet, returning with a large rolling suitcase.

“I’ve got a lot of stuff,” she said.

“So, I see.”

Lord walked over to the suitcase and crouched down before it. He unzipped it and began pulling out various instruments of torture and pleasure. He held up a spiked truncheon, shaking it in the air to test its heft. It appeared to have been weighted at the end for added impact.

“So, what are your hard limits?”

“I’m not into water-sports or scat, and no anal.”

“I’m afraid I must insist on fucking you in your ass. You have worked quite hard with all those squats you must do in the gym to make your ass a muscular marvel. It would greatly disappoint me if you were to deny me that pleasure.”

Lord held up a stainless-steel butt plug with a base shaped like a wolf’s head.

“Do you always carry butt plugs around with you?” Miyu quipped.

“Yes. I do. Disrobe and bend over.”

“We aren’t done negotiating,” Miyu protested.

“Oh, we’ll pick right up where we left off. After you do what I say. This is non-negotiable.”

Miyu folded her arms across her chest and stood there tapping her foot. Lord stood and stared down at her, towering more than a foot above her. He slowly reached out and wrapped a hand around her throat. Miyu did not resist, raising her head slightly to allow him a better grip. Lord tightened his grip, squeezing her windpipe shut and applying pressure to her carotid artery. Miyu made a soft choking sound then wheezed, gasping for air. The sound of her choking put steel in Lord’s erection. As Lord squeezed tighter, Miyu’s hands went to her throat, her eyes widened and she began to visibly panic. He pulled her closer to him, staring deep into her eyes. He kissed her softly on her lips then let go of her throat and grabbed her by the shoulders, spinning her around so her back was pressed tight against his hard abdominal muscles, the back of her head buried between his pecs. He reached around and seized her by the throat again, this time with slightly less force, not choking her, just squeezing firmly. With his other hand, he rubbed her breasts. His hardened manhood throbbed against her.

“Need I repeat myself?” Lord asked.

“No, Sir,” Miyu said.

Lord took a single step back from her, and Miyu obediently dropped her pants and bent over, grumbling under her breath. Her ass was one big, round, muscle, the powerful, oversized gluteus maximus of a sprinter. First Lord lubed his thumb with saliva and slid it into her rectum, fucking her tight little asshole with it while she grunted and hissed, gritting her teeth against the uncomfortable invasion. When her sphincter finally relaxed and opened up for him, Lord withdrew his thumb and replaced it with the wolf’s head butt-plug.

“That’s much better,” he said, admiring his handiwork. “Now, remove the rest of your clothes and lay down.”

Miyu stood and pulled off her shirt and bra. She glared at him angrily, even as she complied.

“You’re an asshole. You know that, big man?”

“You like it. You’re not even into guys, but you like pain and humiliation. Every bit of that turned you on. You are dripping all down your thighs. That’s what makes me sexy to you. Not my body or my cock. Just knowing that I will hurt you, and humble you, that I will dominate you like you have never been dominated before.”

Lord drew back a hand and slapped her to the floor. Miyu dropped onto her belly, and Lord placed a boot on her neck.

“Are you more comfortable down there on the floor? Look at me, Miyu.”

Miyu’s lip was split and bleeding, but when she looked up at Lord, her eyes were cloudy with lust.

“Tell me everything you want me to do to you. And I want you to masturbate while you tell me. What are you into?”

“I want you to flog me with the heavy flogger, as hard as you can. Really put your back into it. All your strength, like you were driving railroad spikes. That’s what gets me into subspace. Then, once the endorphins are flowing, I want to be whipped and caned up and down my back, ass, and thighs, until I’m bruised and bloody. Then I want you to cut me. After that, if you want to fuck me, you can. I won’t care anymore at that point. You can rape my asshole all you like if that’s what does it for you, big man.”

Lord nodded. Then reached down and picked up Miyu, placing her on her feet and bending her over the bed.

“I think I’ll start with the bullwhip,” Lord said, reaching back down into Miyu’s toy bag and removing a five-foot, red and black, paracord bullwhip.

“Ooooh! Yes, Daddy! Make me bleed!”

And so he did.

««—»»

It took a moment to orient himself. The smell of sex, incense, blood, and candles was the first thing Lord was aware of. He had made it. He was inside Painfreak. The floors were all tiled in a red and black volcanic rock. The walls covered in black satin. Black, red, and white candles were everywhere. And so were the bodies. Some were still grunting, sucking, licking, and thrusting, fucking unselfconsciously in every corner of every room. Most were chafed and bleeding, sloughing off skin from the relentless friction of flesh abrading flesh, unable to stop themselves, lost in prisons of ecstasy. Others were still “playing” branding, cutting, beating, and burning each other with various devices, some Lord recognized, many more he didn’t. The inferno was continuously reinventing itself. It would take an eternity to catalog all the devices of pleasure and torture that could be found in the club. For every two or three people that were still either fucking or playing, Lord counted half a dozen more laying still, dead or exhausted. It had been a good night at Painfreak. Soon the staff would come to drag the dead ones down to the lower chambers. None of the others would even notice it when it happened. The removal of bodies was done as casually and unceremoniously as a waiter clearing tables for the next guest.

The few people not entwined in the flesh of others, stared suspiciously at Lord as he passed from room to room. These were the regulars. Some were staff. Some had once been patrons of the club who’d themselves been carted down below after a night of overindulgence. Lord was ready to kill them all again if he had to. He had to find Sophia. She was his property, and this club could not have her.

It took what Lord estimated to be a full hour to reach the main ballroom. The cavernous room was decorated like a medieval torture chamber. The walls were covered in black crushed velvet instead of satin. The floors were black granite streaked with silver and white veins. Wrought iron chairs, cocktail tables, and fixtures, along with the black candles flickering from several dozen wrought iron candelabras gave the place a carefully cultivated medieval, almost satanic, appearance. This room, no matter how often they changed it, always seemed familiar to Lord.

Here, the staff had already done their work and cleared out the deceased. All that remained were a few lonely souls, waking from a night of debauchery as if from a dream. X-shaped Saint Andrew’s crosses lined the walls. A huge inverted crucifix took center stage. Lord immediately recognized the woman chained to it. Sophia. Though her back was to him, he could see the tattoo on her neck, his brand on her thigh. It was her.

Sophia was being flogged mercilessly by a large, naked, full-figured woman in thigh-high leather boots. Her body was full and succulent, all smooth thick curves without a single stretch mark, wrinkle, or roll, like the body of a voluptuous teenager. Her skin was completely white, as if she’d been drained bloodless, and totally unblemished. Not a scar or a freckle. Her breasts were large and did not droop even slightly. He could tell they were real by the way they flopped and jiggled as she swung the heavy flogger, but each time they bounced they would return to their perch high on her chest. She had thick opulent hips and thighs, and a perfectly round ass that was easily twice the size of Miyu’s. Her arms and shoulders, however, were knotted with hard muscle that bulged with power and effort as she beat Sophia bloody.

With each “Thwack!” of the flogger, blood splattered and flesh tore. Lord stepped closer and could see that the flogger had twenty or thirty, three-foot-long falls made of thick alligator skin, and a dozen or so made of barbed wire. The woman wielding the flogger turned her head slightly as Lord approached the crucifix, providing him a view of her profile. A coy smile played across her lips and Lord stumbled. He knew this woman.

“Hello, Lord. It looks like you lost something. Does this belong to you?”

She held the Book of a Thousand Sins, pointing with it at Sophia whose back, ass, and thighs looked like bleeding hamburger. Sophia’s head was rolled to the side, and as Lord stepped closer, he could see that her face had been removed, the skin peeled completely off so that he was looking at raw pink muscle and white cartilage and bone. Her pupils were dilated, eyes fixed heavenward as if in a religious rapture. Without lips, she appeared to be smiling insanely. She was convulsing, in shock from the pain and blood loss. Lord was impressed.

“Mistress Anja.”

“I am flattered that you remember me.”

“What are you doing here?”

“You mean why aren’t I burning in hell? The same reason you aren’t.”

“I’m not dead.”

“And when has that ever mattered? The inferno is all around us, all the time, every second of everyday. Life is hell. You know that as well as I do. No, you aren’t getting sodomized by a horde of demons right now because of this book. This book that you stole from me.”

Lord shrugged. “You didn’t need it anymore. You were dead, remember?”

“No. I was very much alive. I descended into the inferno bodily. Alive and screaming. As will you.”

Lord laughed.

“Nope. Ain’t gonna happen, sweetheart. I’m not afraid of your demons. They can’t touch me.”

“You mean they couldn’t. But you don’t have the book anymore now do you?”

Lord shook his head and let out an exasperated sigh as malformed, vaguely human shadows slipped into the room and began to coalesce into nightmarish parodies of humanity. Demons. They wore flesh draped over their infernal souls like costumes. Meat suits adorned with animal horns, antlers, scales, claws, fangs grafted into their flesh to make themselves more lethal and hideous. Some had a multitude of limbs. Some had more than one head, often one human and one animal. Most had sex organs from different species hanging between their thighs, often of both sexes. They had designed themselves to be mockeries of creation. Their very appearance was blasphemous. Lord had seen them many times before. Yet this was the first time he had no fear of them. He turned his back to them, and smiled malevolently at Anja. Her own smug, triumphant expression faltered.

“Anja, you never understood who and what I was. I don’t need the book anymore. I’m so much more than that now. You always wanted to be an arch demon, to sit at the right hand of Satan and rule over hell. Am I right? Better to rule in hell than be a slave in heaven, right? You knew you were destined for inferno, so you thought the book would give you a leg up on the competition and grant you an honored place in hell. How’d that work out for you?”

“Splendidly!” Anja said, turning to face him. She was gorgeous. Hell had definitely changed her for the better. She looked fifteen years younger than she had when Lord tossed her into the pit.

“Me? My aspirations were much grander. I wanted to be a god.”

The demons began to shrink away. Howling and shrieking in mortal anguish. Some exploded like hard-boiled eggs in a microwave. Others burst into flames. The rest fled, still screaming in agony.

“What the fuck is going on in here?” It was the bouncer, the big guy. He started heading toward Lord, then abruptly stopped and shuffled backwards with his hands held up in surrender. The Asian guy who worked the door with him was nowhere around. Obviously, he was wiser than he appeared. Anja was still looking around confused.

“What the fuck did you do?” She said.

Lord held out his arms, expanding, growing, filling the room with his essence until every shadow, in ever darkened corner, was him.

“I have transcended, my dear Anja. Human faith, it is a powerful thing. When focused, it can make Gods of men. Such is how deities are born. Six hundred souls all sacrificed to me, on my command. It only took one text. Even your Satan has not accomplished such a feat in more than a millennium. You wanted what was mine? You wanted to own me? Now, I own this entire place. Painfreak, and everything in it, is mine!”

Anja trembled, she moaned, stricken with fear. Black tears wept from her eyes, as her very soul cowered and submitted. Lord stepped forward and reached out for her, seized her by the throat, and lifted her off the floor. “Including you,” he said.

“I am your god now, Anja. I always have been. You have always been my property, even when you thought you were free, when you thought you were the dominant one. You have always belonged to me. Worship me.”

He dropped her to the floor. She fell limply like a discarded Raggedy Ann. Sobbing and trembling she crawled forward on her hands and knees, then reached out and kissed Lord’s feet as he towered above her, grown to the size of a titan. His smallest toe was now as large as her entire head. Keeping her head bowed, she held up the blood-drenched flogger to him.

“Yes, Lord. I am yours. Do with me what you will. Punish me.”

Lord lifted the flogger from her hands. It was like a child’s toy in his hands. He tossed it aside. Instead, he freed his cock from his pants. His massive organ bobbed in the air above her head.

“Rise and worship!” Lord commanded, and Anja sat up and took her deity’s cock in her hands, and eased it slowly down her throat as it continued to thicken and lengthen. Soon, it filled her throat, clogging her windpipe as it continued to expand and grow.

“Uuuurrrlgh!”

Anja clawed at her throat, raked her nails over Lord’s thighs and testicles as he began fucking her throat with a cock that was now nearly as long as she was and half as wide. Her neck ruptured, splitting like a banana peel. Blood poured from her nose and ears as his cock pulverized organs and battered her intestines. She shuddered and convulsed, dangling from the end of his impossibly large organ like a spent condom. He tossed her aside and picked up the book of sins from where it lay beside the inverted crucifix—beside Sophia’s corpse. Kicking Anja aside, Lord wrenched Sophia free of her shackles and gathered her in his arms. He stroked her hair tenderly, then knelt down and put his lips to hers breathing life back into her. She blinked several times, looking around in a panic.

“It’s okay, Sophia. Your Lord is here. You are safe.”

It was almost dark again. Almost time for the club to reopen for a whole new crowd of deviants and sinners. They would come for sex, for pain, for ecstasy and death. The curious. The desperate. The deranged and debauched. And they would all bow to their new Lord.

| — | — |

The Danse Macabre

————

Monica J. O’Rourke

The woman was tied to the chair, naked, spread-eagle, untrimmed pubic hair poking out. Sweat coated every inch, from her long thin neck to her bony feet, dampening the fine blonde hairs on her mostly taut stomach. A small paunch revealed she’d once been a mom.

Sophia, holding a leather strap, looked terrified, her flesh pallid, sweat creating a sheen on her as well. Her long red hair was pulled into a tight ponytail.

The man was unseen, but she knew he was there. She knew what he looked like, so she wondered why he bothered hiding. No need to hide. She’d hired him, after all.

She knew what he wanted.

Still, he needed to speak, explain, because knowing and doing weren’t the same thing.

“Do it,” he said simply. “Do it, Sophia,” he repeated, slightly louder.

Sophia raised the strap, feeling it in her palms. Lightweight for the most part, but with some substance. She glanced in his direction, but he was still hidden by shadow. She heard his chair creak beneath his weight.

Sophia chewed her lip and lowered her eyes. There was no way she could do this. No way she could inflict pain on another person no matter what she’d done. He had to be joking.

“This isn’t a game,” he said, following the natural and logical procession of her thoughts. His voice increased in volume and tone.

She nodded. Her nose ran, and she wiped the snot away with her forearm.

His voice seemed to echo in the large room, reverberate off the walls. “Do it!” he said, pissed.

She cowered. No. She couldn’t do it. She’d have to take her chances and—

“I’m not fucking around here.”

“I know!” she cried, but she didn’t know. Because this was just plain nuts. “I can’t! I’m not—”

“Not what? That kind of person? Not a monster?”

Tears dripped off her chin. “I’m not.”

“So you can hire people to do your dirty work, and you think your hands aren’t dirty?”

He approached her in the dim lighting. His thin body seemed to become one with the shadows.

He snatched the belt from her hand. He raised it and struck the bound woman with it three times, across her breast, across an arm, on the back of her neck. She cried out but kept her mouth closed, emitting a sort of garbled hmmph.

“You see? This is easy.” He offered it back to Sophia.

She blanched. “I-I’m s-sorry,” she stammered. “I can’t! Please, Mr. Tony—please.”

Mr. Tony seemed to weigh his options. He wiped a handkerchief across his mouth and exhaled deeply, calming his breathing. He stared into Sophia’s eyes, leaning closer.

“You’d be surprised”—he reached into his pocket—“what a person is capable of with the right motivation.”

He pulled out a small device that Sophia couldn’t discern.

He fingered the object. “It’s downright amazing what a person can accomplish.”

This is it, Sophia thought miserably. Her price for disobeying. This was what she got for inviting this psychopath into her life.

The woman in the chair barely moved, even when she’d been struck. Her complexion was the color of rice, marred only by pink stripes that were slowly fading.

Mr. Tony trailed the reed across the woman’s flesh, goose bumps forming in response. He twisted a nipple, hard. She screamed out loud this time.

“Your turn,” he said to Sofia.

She didn’t want to do this. It wasn’t fair—this wasn’t what she signed up for. This wasn’t why she’d answered that fucking ad. She wanted revenge, but she didn’t want to cause the pain.

Mr. Tony smirked. An unsettling giddiness lingered behind those cold, dead eyes. “Last chance,” he said.

Once again she was the coward, able to hire the attack but unable to carry it out. This was bullshit anyway—just what was she paying for?

Mr. Tony lifted the device and pressed a button. “There are people listening to me right now. Waiting on my command. People willing to do everything I tell them. Do you understand?”

Of course not. She stared at him, her mouth slightly agape.

He said into the device, “Break the first one.”

Sophia heard a snap—and then something that drained every drop of blood from her body.

Her little girl wailed.

She knew her child’s sounds, knew every grunt and groan and whimper and cry to ever come from her tiny body. She knew the horrified, desperate cry of pain that came from her baby.

“What did you do?” Sophia shrieked. She threw her palms over her ears in a desperate attempt to block out the unimaginable sound.

He handed her the reed. She reluctantly accepted it in her shaking hand and it dangled from her fingers.

“Oh nonononononononono…” she babbled. “Not my baby. Please…”

“Three strikes. Now!”

Sophia lashed out, striking the woman in rapid succession across the back. The woman didn’t flinch.

“There wasn’t much strength in that,” he said, lifting the device. “Number two.”

He held it up for Sophia to hear. Invisible faces broke another bone on her child’s body.

“No!” she screeched, anguish making her look deranged, a wild animal. The look of hatred on her face made Mr. Tony smirk. Such frustration! Delicious. Desirous.

This was more like it. It was what they wanted.

“Why are you making me do these things?” she demanded.

“Because people don’t know what they’re asking. They don’t understand the damage”—he waved at the blonde—“at the—”

“Who cares?” she cried. “That’s why people hire you! So we don’t have to do this ourselves! Fuuuuuck! I could have done this myself! I didn’t need you!”

“Yet you hired me.”

“I didn’t know!”

“Now you do.”

Her fury seemed to frustrate her even further. “You’re fucking fired!”

“Ah,” he said, shaking his head, “you don’t want to do that. If I’m no longer in your employ, there’s no telling what might happen. No one would be safe!”

“She…she didn’t do anything all that bad.”

“Yet you hired me to torture her.”

“I thought—I thought it was worse! At the time. I imagined it was worse. I, I—”

“Now comes the double talk and backpedaling.”

“No! I meant—”

“Stop talking.”

He pulled a rolling cart out of the shadows.

“Revenge is a messy business,” he said matter-of-factly as he pulled away a white cloth, revealing an array of devices. “It’s not what people expect.”

Tears built up around Sophia’s eyes. She stood perfectly still, her brain unable to process what she was seeing. This didn’t make sense. That was the problem—the lack of logic, the lack of sanity and conformity and the everyday.

But those had been her daughter’s screams. There was no mistake there.

The thought sucked her back to the present, still unable to come to terms with what he was saying.

He grinned. “People with money can buy what they want. They hire someone else to do the dirty work—clean the house, raise the kids—amiright?

“But,” he added, holding up a wire hanger, tracing the rounded edge of the handle menacingly across the blonde’s neck. “But sometimes even money doesn’t cut it.” He tapped her cheek with the edge—but then slipped out of his suit jacket and hung it on the hanger.

“But why? Why are you doing this?” she demanded.

“Someone else paid more.”

“What does that even mean?” she yelled. “Paid more to do what? No one even knows about this.”

“Shall we continue?”

“Continue what?” she cried, frustration mounting to impossible levels, terrified he would hurt her, more terrified they would hurt her daughter again. There had to be a way to stop this. Had to be a way to reason with him, to get through to him.

“I’ll double what I paid you if you stop this!”

He smiled. “Not even close. Now, would you like to select your first implement?” He waved his hand dramatically over the table.

“Stop ignoring me!” she shrieked, grabbing fistfuls of hair and dragging her hands down her temples. “Oh, God, please!”

“Here’s how this will work—”

“Son of a bitch!” She fell to her knees, doubling over, pressing her forehead against the floor.

“Sophia, please. Enough with the dramatics.” He tried to pull her to her feet, but she was a pile on the floor.

“Would you like to go for broken bone number three? I can’t guarantee this one will be a finger.”

Sophia glanced up. “I hate you.”

“You’re nothing if not predictable. Now get up.”

Sophia took a deep breath, stood up, and steadied herself. She stared at the silent blonde—surprisingly silent.

“Is she even alive?” Sophia asked. Hell, if the woman had died already, then maybe all this—

Mr. Tony slapped the blonde in the back of the head and she coughed and tipped forward. “Apparently so.”

He picked up a scalpel and waved it under the blonde’s nose. He gripped Sophia’s elbow and pulled her closer. “Listen to me,” he whispered in her ear. “Let’s slow down. I know you believe I’m for real, that I’ll do what I say.”

She slowly nodded, her heart pumping in the base of her throat. Blood rushed her brain, a confusing waterfall. She fought to hear his words before the blackness could steal her mind.

“You will feel it…” he crooned, “like a lover…caressing you, adoring you…do you understand?”

“No…”

“There’s a fine line…you’re terrified, but you will easily slip into ecstasy. You have to trust me.” He took her hand. He gently, almost erotically pried open her fingers. He laid the scalpel across her palm. He wrapped her fingers around it, squeezing gently.

She shook her head, wanted to stop…but part of her wanted to see this through. Needed this to end.

He guided her hand, a light tough, barely there, in front of the blonde, who finally seemed to realize the reality of her own situation. Whatever state of denial she’d been hiding in was no longer an option.

The blonde screamed even before the scalpel violated her flesh.

Mr. Tony guided the blade, gently directing Sophia’s hand. With precision they severed the nipple and flicked it across the room. Blood streamed from the fresh wound, coating the blonde’s torso in sticky fluid, dripping from their hands and the scalpel.

She wouldn’t stop screaming. Mr. Tony grabbed a ball gag off the table and shoved it in her mouth to muffle her screams.

He released Sophia’s hand.

Sophia stared at the bloody scalpel, at the hysterical woman in the chair, and for a moment she felt pity, compassion, remorse. The violence made her gag.

But just as quickly Sophia imagined this woman fucking her husband, stealing their money through gifts that asshole she’d married had mindlessly handed over, the bitch’s twisted influence on their daughter—and the compassion disappeared.

Slicing into her hadn’t been difficult at all.

“Do it,” he said forcefully, his words throaty, hoarse.

But she wasn’t there yet. The bloodlust dissipated, and she lowered her hand, dropped the scalpel.

He shook his head. “Well, I’ll tell you—you’re starting to get on my last nerve. I’m known for my patience—”

“Clearly,” she muttered.

He coughed into his hand and shot her a look. “—But don’t try me.”

“What do you want?” she asked yet again, hands outstretched in a pleading gesture that even she knew was futile. But what? What? Her mouth was gummy and dry. Her mind and body wanted to separate, as if her mind had abandoned all hope and wanted to get the fuck out of here.

“Sophia.”

His voice snapped her out of her bizarre little fugue. “Can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

But she wasn’t talking to him. “Can’t,” she repeated, barely, but…can’t what? Can’t do this? Or can’t leave? Was there a way to save herself? Maybe if she just walked away…she could get help. Help for her child, help for this miserable cunt tied to the chair.

Her daughter—wait. Daughter? What daughter? Nope, there was only Sophia, only her mind desperately wanting to be anyplace but here. Any place. Seriously. Any—

What would he do to Sophia, kill her?

Unlikely. But did it matter?

This was nuts. Things like this didn’t happen when you were rich. When you had stocks and bonds and real estate and Swiss bank accounts and horses and cars and summer homes and jewelry and tons of money in tons of accounts, this shit did not happen. You could buy your way out of any fucking—

“All right, Sophia. Let’s start again. Look at me.”

She refused. Instead, she stretched out her arm, her hand leading the way, searching for a way out. She knew he was right behind her, about to stop her. Breath came in gasps now, sweat trickling down her temples, down the small of her back.

He wasn’t following. She made her way around the circular room, searching for a door, handle, knob, window…ending up where she’d started, where she had once imagined the exit stood.

Now…nothing.

There wasn’t even a knob on the goddamned door. There wasn’t even a real door—just a panel.

“Let me out!” she shrieked, her cheeks almost purple, every ounce of air now expelled from her lungs.

She collapsed to the floor and gasped. “What is this place?” She glanced in his direction but only saw darkness. “Why are we here?” she pressed, confused, distraught. Lost.

“Pain,” he whispered, “comes in all forms.”

“You’re a freak!”

“You don’t know the half of it.” He chuckled. “You have ten seconds to get back here.”

Mr. Tony started the countdown. When he reached five, he said, “This time you’ll get to watch.”

“What?” She raced across the room.

“Fourthreetwoone!”

“Fuck you,” she growled. He was never planning to allow her to make it back in time.

He powered on a small monitor on the table.

An elderly couple were tied to chairs. Both were slumped forward, tight cords of rope holding them up.

Sophia recognized them. “No…” she whispered.

“Let’s start small, shall we? After all, we expect to lose our parents. It’s the natural way of things. Not like losing a child…”

This had to be a trick.

“You choose. Which one lives and which one dies?”

She looked up at him. Huh. What did he say? Oh no…did she leave the garage door open? The goddamned cat was going to get out. And what was she going to make for dinner? Chef was off. Maybe order pizza. Yes, that would work. She had to get going. She looked around for her car keys.

“What are you doing?”

“Car keys…” She looked on the floor behind the sofa. The cat was always batting them under there. Maybe they were on the kitchen table.

Suddenly he was in front of her and slapped her hard across the face. Her head snapped back and she cried out, stumbling a few feet.

“Can’t have you checking out so soon, princess! There’s too much on the line. Now answer my question.”

She looked at him and then at the monitor. “What?”

He slapped her across the face again. “Are you with me?”

She started to cry.

“Who lives and who dies?”

“No! I can’t!”

“Pick one or they both die.

“Go to hell!” she shrieked. “I hate you!”

“Do you?” He smiled. “You have no idea what hate is. What we have here is love. Love! Trust me, there is so much love here. Now pick one.”

“I can’t!”

A hulking masked accomplice appeared on the screen from the background and held up a gun.

Sophia rushed to the screen, touching their faces, as if feeling flesh and bone. “God, no! No!”

“Pick one!”

“I can’t!”

“Wake them up!”

But the couple on the monitor were already stirring.

The woman looked around and sobbed, finding herself bound to the chair. She begged for her life.

The old man pleaded, offering the gunman anything he wanted.

“Such a shame,” Mr. Tony said. “Clearly they want to live.”

“Please don’t do this. Please have a soul,” Sophia begged.

Mr. Tony slowly shook his head, more in disbelief than in response. “You have five seconds to choose.”

“I’ll kill the blonde!”

“Five, four, three—”

“God I’m so sorry, good-bye, Daddy! I love you forever!”

Mr. Tony rolled his eyes. “Really? Maudlin to the end.”

“Go to hell!”

“My friend,” Mr. Tony said into a receiver, “please begin.” He looked back at Sophia and pointed to a chair. “You might want to sit.”

“Please don’t do this.” But the look in her eye had changed from soft desperation to something else…something feral. Her breaths became pants, but she wasn’t hyperventilating. She was trying to control her rage.

The corner of Mr. Tony’s lip curled.

Sophia plopped in the chair, and Mr. Tony turned the monitor in her direction. He placed the receiver on the table, and when he spoke, the masked man clearly heard him. Mr. Tony stood behind Sophia and rested his hands on her shoulders. She flinched but didn’t move away.

He moved closer, his lips dusting the edge of her ear. “We don’t have much time,” he whispered. “I need you to understand.”

The old couple had not stopped begging for their lives or pleading with the gunman for mercy, but the sounds were muted, in the distance now, barely registering in Sophia’s ear. The scene played out in slow motion but like a movie…she was watching a movie scene, not reality. These were not her parents; they were two old people wearing her patents’ clothing and hair and skin.

“Why are you doing this?” the old woman begged. “Please! Please!”

The masked man lifted a plastic gasoline container and doused the old man with the liquid. The victim coughed and sputtered and screamed when he realized it was gas.

Sophia looked back at Mr. Tony. “Understand what?” she asked in a voice that brought good bumps to his flesh. “What do you need me to understand?”

The gunman lifted his Zippo and held it in the air like an Olympic torch.

“Get on with it,” Sophia whispered, leaning forward. “Do it!”

“Do you think I’m bluffing?” He squeezed her shoulders. She didn’t flinch.

“I don’t care.”

The masked man lit the lighter. Seconds later he tossed it on Sophia’s father’s lap, and the old man exploded into flame.

He screamed his wife’s name as the fire consumed him, melting the clothes off his body, destroying his lungs until the screams were consumed, the thin outer layers of skin frying and peeling off as the flames danced, the thick dermis shrinking and splitting, a layer of yellow fat leaking out.

His attacker kicked over the chair, charred flesh and clothing scattering. The body was coated in the greasy residue of immolated flesh, a smoldering pile of bones and layers of skin that the flames weren’t hot enough to completely destroy.

His wife was hysterical, screaming and retching and trying desperately to move, to get away, to comprehend the horror beside her. Her eyes bulged in their sockets, the normally opaque sclera tinged red from exploded blood vessels. She screeched until she was hoarse, until her mottled skin changed from deep crimson to blue, until she sagged forward, dead—heart attack? Fear?

The gunman seemed dejected. He leaned forward, shrugged, and lowered his Zippo. His shoulders slumped and he looked up at the camera.

“Oh.” Mr. Tony seemed just as shocked.

Sophia tilted her head as if to catch the view from a different angle.

Mr. Tony cleared his throat. “Well that was unexpected.”

Sophia turned her head to look back at him, her expression cloudy. She slowly started to rise. “How can you be so cavalier?” she asked quietly, her voice so tiny, almost insignificant. Not a whisper but calculated. Saving her strength. Saving her voice.

“I’m not cavalier. Believe me! I appreciate it all. Ever nuanced detail, my dear. Every effort. Every approach. Every time you smile or cringe or have any kind of reaction, it’s a thing of beauty.

“Do you understand now?”

She nodded.

“Pick up the scalpel.”

She shook her head, her breathing deep, her shoulders moving with each breath, a lioness resting over the body of a fresh kill.

“Pick it up.”

“No,” she growled.

He changed the channel on the monitor. Her daughter appeared onscreen. “I’ve run out of options. Remember when I mentioned the natural progression of death? I could kill every person you ever loved, and you would mourn their deaths. What do I have to do to get your attention!”

He had her attention.

And Sophia didn’t need a scalpel.

She stumbled over to the blonde in the chair, who had grown so pale from blood loss and shock than she practically glowed in the dark, an odd translucence.

The woman groaned and shook, vomit trickling out of the corners of her mouth around the ball gag. The blood on her severed nipple had dried and congealed, and Sophia slapped the breast several times, starting the blood flow again.

Mr. Tony leaned in, excited, watching intently. “Oh yes,” he moaned, clasping his hands, nodding. “You finally understand. The pleasure. The pain…”

Sophia ignored him.

“You destroyed my life,” she barked at the blonde, who wildly shook her head and tried to lean back and away from Sophia. Spittle flew from Sophia’s mouth when she spoke. “You couldn’t keep your fucking hands off my husband, that scumbag piece of shit. You both destroyed everything I love. Are you enjoying my money, you cunt? Did you enjoy fucking his brains out?”

The woman shrieked into the ball gag, and Sophia threw back her head and laughed. When she looked down again, her red-tinged eyes took in the naked blonde, scanned her from her eyes to her feet, coming up again to rest on her pussy.

“And this,” Sophia whispered, kneeling now, caressing the blonde’s inner thighs, fingers slowly trailing up her legs, stroking the blonde’s pussy, her fingers gently separating the folds of flesh, thumb massaging the clit, fingers working their way deep inside. The blonde fought the feeling, trying not to get excited, to not feel the pleasure Sophia was bringing. Sophia went deeper, up to her knuckles now, four fingers fucking the blonde, working faster and faster, playing more furiously with the clit, spreading and narrowing the fingers inside her twat, trying to bring her to climax.

Mr. Tony was fascinated watching, not understanding why Sophia was trying to get the woman off. But he enjoyed the show and was tempted to join in.

The blonde cried into the gag and threw back her head. Sophia used her forearms to spread the woman open even further while still fucking her with her fingers. Then she leaned down, her mouth replacing her fingers, sucking the folds, pulling the lips apart, exposing the clit. She blew on it and it grew even fatter, more swollen, and she licked it, played with it with the tip of her tongue.

Sophia looked up. “Is this what he did? Is this how he fucked you?”

The blonde looked down sharply, brought back to the now. She looked as surprised as Mr. Tony by the question.

“Does is feel good?” Sophia screamed before she dove back in, before she plowed her face into the blonde’s cunt, before she savagely tore into the flesh with her teeth, her hands prying the lips apart, practically folding the edges inside out, her teeth serrating the flesh, the clitoris and chunks of pussy in her mouth. She spit them out and went back down, chewing, ripping, severing what she could, the blonde flailing but not getting anywhere, her hips wildly gyrating as she tried to escape.

But her movements were futile as Sophia continued destroying her sex, ripping out chunks of tissue and sinew and veins and anything else she could grasp. She picked up the scalpel and shoved it up her twat, savagely fucking her with it until her groin was a mound of freshly ground beef, chopped meat, a pile of twitching flesh.

The blonde hunched forward, held up by her restraints, blood pouring out of her destroyed cunt.

Mr. Tony’s eyes were wide, bulging, and he cried out, shocked and titillated at the same time. No one had ever reached this point so quickly. No one. Passion mixed with blood lust was an amazing combination. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with her.

“Now…” he purred, coming up behind her, “we have an understanding.”

“Do we?” she whispered. She stood, the blonde’s fluids dripping off her face.

“You’ve seen what I’m capable of, and you know how it makes you feel. This has always been about you, Sophia.”

“I know,” she said, nodding. “Now I know. You have nothing I want.”

She looked up at him—but just with her eyes. Her face remained staring at the floor…but her eyes…her eyes took him in. her eyes were filled with an animalistic fury that made him lick his lips. He smiled at her, small at first, taking in the deliciousness of her savagery, her low-key glances…and his smile widened as he anticipated her actions, knowing full well how beautiful the dance can be, even the danse macabre, knowing that look, that pure, unbridled, unrelenting passion. Beyond beautiful. Beyond exquisite. It was a rare and amazing thing, an exotic treasure, a blue rose among weeds.

“I can give you things you didn’t know you wanted,” he moaned, caressing her cheek with his middle finger.

“You already have,” she crooned, pulling his finger into her mouth, sucking deeply before releasing it. “You’ve shown me…shown me things I never expected to see.” She fell to her knees again and slowly worked the button and zipper on his pants.

“You see,” she said, pulling out his cock, her tight grip rolling it in her palm, quickly bringing it to life, “you showed me things I can never unsee. I want to repay the favor.”

Mr. Tony prided himself on his ability to read people, and he was rarely fooled. He’d played this one so well, so expertly, so by the book—his book—bringing her to the edge and back…how many times? until he fucking owned her, until she understood the beautiful pain in exquisite death. Until—

She bit down hard on his dick, the severed tip falling out of her mouth, blood gushing, mixing with the tons of fluids already soaking into every crevice of the room. She didn’t enjoy it; there was no bloodlust, no savoring the salty-sweetness bullshit everyone seems to say about tasting blood. There was no flavor and no passion, just a gush of blood that made her gag and retch and spit out. There was no beauty here, no exquisite nothing. There was Sophia, filled with a different kind of bloodlust now, remembering clearly what had been done to her mother and father and baby girl, and the savagery that took over was one of ferocity, not passion, and clearly even the asshole on the floor must know there was a difference, that the two were not interchangeable. Maybe now that he was the one twitching, it would finally sink in. This was not Sophia experiencing a new humanity. This was Sophia finally lashing out.

She was filled with passion, all right.

Mr. Tony had gone into shock almost immediately, clearly unprepared for her actions, clearly not as equipped to judge the human condition as he’d believed.

Sophia shook her head, rough, catching a glimpse of her new reality, regrouping. There was no turning back. This motherfucker had killed her parents.

Under normal circumstances she probably would have been too small, too weak…but the adrenalin was still rampant, and Mr. Tony was slumped over, cradling his cock.

She landed on top of him and they tumbled together, her straddling him like a rapist. She slammed him into the floor, pinning him down.

He gasped, saying something, having finally regained his voice, but she never gave him the chance to finish.

She screamed shrilly, filled with indignation as she sank her teeth into his throat, ignoring his fists pounding her back and head, his fingers clawing at her face.

She screamed louder as he dug his fingers into her eye sockets, trying to get her to release her grip.

She shook the shit out of her prey until she finally pulled away, tearing out a huge chunk of meat in the process, chewing into an artery, the gaping hole in his throat a pumping geyser that subsided as his heart slowed.

She shrieked—a long, mournful, painful cry, knowing this was the end, knowing she had gone too far.

Sophia reached out, but she didn’t care. There was no life. Not anymore. Didn’t wonder what to do next. Didn’t think about how to escape or how to get help or even how to get out of this room with no door. She curled up on the floor and waited for death.

When she’d laid there long enough—minutes? days?—and the adrenaline had stopped flowing and the pain in her eyes finally kicked in, she realized she didn’t want to die.

But she had no idea how she’d gotten in here, and when she’d explored earlier—before he killed her parents—there had been no door, no discernable exit, no escape that she could see at the time.

So—

Then what?

She sat up. “Help!” she screamed, long and drawn out, filled with sobs and cries and fists pounding the floor until she collapsed, exhausted. She hoped her final thoughts would be of memories of her daughter.

Something touched her in the silence. She assumed it was a hallucination, or her imagination, until a hand touched her cheek, stroked her hair.

“Who are you?” she asked, too weak to react, too weak to be more concerned.

“Give me your hand,” the familiar voice said. But she knew she couldn’t really have recognized his voice. She had ripped his throat out. He was dead!

“No,” she cried, cowering, pulling away but getting nowhere. “I killed you!”

“Come inside,” he said, wrapping his arms around her, pulling her up. “They’re waiting for you. You have so much potential…”

She tried to struggle but realized the futility. She could barely see. She had nowhere to go.

“They’ve been watching…no one could have guessed the depths of your passion. Come with me…”

Sophia let him lead her through a door. She felt warmth on her face, a comfort that had been lacking in her life, a feeling of acceptance and bliss. Through her blurry vision she could make out their forms, could discern smiles and an overwhelming feeling of welcome.

Was this home? Yes, she decided, whatever this was…she belonged here.

| — | — |

The Rut

————

Gerard Houarner

They didn’t greet him like a tourist, of course. But neither did they welcome him like one of the regulars, the predators hunting prey, the tourists addicted to atrocity exhibitions, the prey who survived and returned, again and again, to writhe on the altar’s edge of their annihilation.

“Welcome back, Mr. Taggert,” the Asian man said, his glance at the mark on his hand purely perfunctory. “She’s already arrived,” he whispered, with subtle reverence.

He wanted to believe they recognized him year after year because he was someone special, destined to become a father of monsters. But outside of dreams, he understood they remembered was only because he was a regular as one of the oldest of the tribe’s Queen’s suitors. No different from any of the club’s potential victims.

The tribe and its ritual were only a sideshow in the eternal enormity of Painfreak, a peculiar little thread of doomed appetite, drawing its own audience and followers outside of their kind, serving to drive the regulars further along on their journey to an inescapable ending.

And even their brief claim to territory was shared with other tribes of their kind, with Queens and Ruts of their own. He was barely a flea with a name.

Mr. Taggert smoothed the creases of his custom black Super160 fine wool suit. “The others, how many are already here?” Taggert asked. He’d wanted to arrive late to skip the sniffing and posturing, and avoid giving the sharper new challengers the chance to assess his vulnerabilities.

“Good luck,” the Asian doorman said, already turning his attention to an approaching visitor.

In the emptiness of their vanished familiarity, the other one, the scarred giant who always accompanied the Asian man, looked him up and down, as if they were rivals preparing to spar.

Any of the Queens he’d pursued in his years in the Rut would have loved a buck like that. In the old days, their children might have ruled empires. But in these days, too many children by such a creature would have set their kind back hundreds of years.

Against a man like that, Taggert would never had had a chance at the Queen. Hell, he’d never have lasted as long as he had, still trying to plant his seed in that ripe and fertile garden of the future.

He bowed his head, relieved neither of Painfreak’s doormen belonged to his tribe and moved on, passing through the open garage door, picking his way through piles of old, rotted skids, the stacks of moldy boxes, his hand made Italian lace-ups splashing into pools of fetid water.

Head to the red. Taggert didn’t need to follow the club’s hard-core adherents to the red light, dim, hidden around a corner and behind bundles of plastic tarp. He could track paths, find doors, pick the road at the crossing that needed to be chosen. These were only some of the gifts he brought to the Queen, the tribe, his kind.

He passed through a door, down two flights of stairs. Footsteps faded ahead of him as anxious patrons hurried forward. He took his time. He didn’t know how many more times he’d have this chance. He attended to every scent—sweat, sewage, flowery perfumes, skunk scented smoke, rust—and felt his heart beat faster.

Blood was already in the air. And sex. Even his own scent, marking his territory.

His kind. The Queen. They were all there.

Here.

Last year, Painfreak had been in Tokyo when the season started. He’d come close, that last time. The closest he’d ever been in all his years in the Rut. He’d had the Queen in his arms. She’d had her eyes closed. He’d been disappointed, thinking she should have welcomed him, been more willing, rather than passive, waiting. He’d anticipated a triumphant welcome. Instead, he’d found a shadow in his arms, elusive even in the moment of his victory.

She’d known he would not be the one to take her that day.

The last rival he’d put down in Painfreak’s labyrinthine back rooms had recruited allies among the club’s visitors and inhabitants. An unusual strategy, one that had never worked before, at least in the stories and traditions.

Those others, Painfreak’s most ravenous so desperate to taste an exotic and elusive prize like the Queen, to dare her retribution and claim the rare prize of a violation denied to most, had pried him away from her. His rival returned to take him down, pummeling him on the floor while the Queen followed her nature and fulfilled her suitor’s bargain with his allies, giving them all the pain and pleasure they’d been promised.

When Taggert stopped fighting back and the Queen had finished with her offerings, his rival took the prize.

She’d accepted his competitor as easily as any of the other suitors who reached her in years past. Taggert had recognized that the child they made would be useful, a girl or boy capable of manipulating others for the survival of their kind. The modern world required all kinds of skills, in order to survive. A gift to the tribe.

If it didn’t come out as a monster.

The boy hadn’t survived the mating, however. That was always the trick, with Queens. When bucks were young, they didn’t care as much. He hadn’t. But as a mature buck, with fewer Ruts left to him with every new wound and passing year, he’d come to value a future. In his dreams, he even helped the Queen raise the cub along with all the others she’d delivered, somehow splitting time with her in her many dens in and out of Painfreak, and his own family.

That would be his gift to the tribe—surviving Ruts, Painfreak, even the Queen, and carving a place with his caring for a Queen’s brood, another skill worth carrying into the future.

But dreams lied, as experience taught the tribe. Blood and power kept them separate from humanity and following their own path to a future that was theirs for the taking.

Taggert shook off the past. Best to keep sharp. Wounds took longer to heal, these late years of his prime. His rivals wouldn’t miss him if he finally took enough to have withdrawn from the Rut with the other failed bulls next year. Or try one last time, half-broken, to end his days in the bleak and lonely shadows of their kind’s sacred mating ground.

The music told him he’d arrived. The steady rhythmic thumping washed over him as he opened a rusted steel door and entered the club.

Men and women glanced at him, appraised his worth, squinting so that their gaze might penetrate bone and flesh and spirit to find appetites to share. Someone offered him a drink. A voice whispered in his ear, “You look like an animal.” A hand settled over his crotch, feeling cock and balls.

“I bet you fuck like a horse.”

“You like pain. I know. And I love you for that.”

Like mosquitoes, they swarmed him, trying to suck life and blood, drain his strength. Predatory instincts urged him to lash out, desire tempted him to draw them in, taste them, take their offerings, play with their lives.

But now was not the time to graze or to play. Painfreak was not the place for satisfying appetites and exploring pleasures. Not for him, not for his kind. They were free of such burdens.

Painfreak was sacred ground, the place where their kind came from, the ground from which they were created and came into the world. The place where their tribe came to be reborn.

The world, and his purpose, came into focus. He was no young buck, to be so easily distracted.

Across the dance floor, he caught another suitor slipping into the back rooms with a flash of a pony tail, dressed in black. A young buck, moving too fast, too eager for his first Rut. That could have been him, a very long time ago.

But focused. That should be him, now.

The Queen’s scent cut through the meat stench, focused him. But there were no others moving through the crowds, appraising rivals, sniffing out their first challenges, tracking old rivals and challengers. That time had passed. In the back rooms, the first pairings were already charging at one another, the rest were searching. The herd had moved on; the tribe was in its sacred time.

No posturing or dancing, no wasting of energy. Straight to it.

He cut across the dance floor, shedding the parasites. Desperate hands slipped from the smooth fabric of his suit. Voices faded into the barbed rhythms and melodies insinuating themselves in thoughts, and in feelings.

He barely noticed the doors and veils he passed through, the entreaties and seductions of those he passed, as he cut through the club’s out layers.

“Please,” a man said, dropping his drink and tugging at his arm, “hurt me.”

“Let me make you scream,” a woman said.

“I’ll kill you if you don’t—”

But he was already gone, the threat less than puff of smoke, climbing over the grinding engine that manipulated a man and a woman trapped inside, their limbs and bodies turning, twisting, rubbing, penetrating in a slow, grinding ballet of simultaneous dismemberment, breaking, and copulation. The attendants let him pass through, focused instead on the IV lines and medical readouts of the participants. The audience members barely glanced at him, dismissing him as soon as the understood he was not a participant in the scenario.

The pair moaned in their intimacy’s ecstasy. Taggert imagined the pain, the despair, upon which they floated, into which they would soon drown. Like the Queen, perhaps, when she delivered a fresh monster.

He scrambled through the last of the machine’s grinding mechanisms, letting the Queen’s scent guide him through another doorway. Another smell, stronger, musky, choked him with its thick, soupy intensity.

He braced himself for a charge, scanned the shadowy hallway he’d entered. Grunts and snorts sounded from a nearby alcove.

A man and a woman emerged, young, thin, skin stretched across their skulls like cellophane over leftovers. They looked him up and down as they passed.

“Don’t bother,” the man said.

“They’re not even close to fucking,” the woman added.

Looking in, he saw a pair of bucks locked together in an embrace, each trying to tip the other over with legs sweeps. They hammered at each other with forehead blows, their fingers dug into flesh. A young one, and an older suitor, like him.

The old one looked weak, the younger one, too stiff. He’d take either of them, if they met later.

He went deeper into Painfreak, surprised no one had challenged him yet. Maybe they were intimidated. He was grateful for the rest.

Captives hung from the ceiling, bound and trapped in cages. In one, a man offered himself to another who’d climbed up and was hanging on to the bars. The prisoner didn’t ask for release, his visitor never offered to unlock the door. The cage swung wildly, knocking into others, their prisoners looking out with yearning at the savage fucking.

“I can do things to you your wife will never do,” one of the prisoners shouted to him.

“I can be the child you dream of,” another said.

A figure darted out from an alcove, androgynous, veiled, though boils crowded around its eyes. “I can make you into what you need to be for me,” it whispered.

Taggert grunted, flared, but the creature stood its ground, though its eyes grew larger, pushing back the boils to take in as much of what he was as it could.

He pushed past the cages, containing his rage. Immune to most of Painfreak’s provocations, the corruption of family pricked at vulnerabilities he didn’t want to face. His wife, his son and two younger daughters, they were his anchors to the human world. They channeled his instincts, focused his survival instincts. They camouflaged what he really was, what his seed was truly capable of producing.

Dragging them into Painfreak sullied everything they meant to him, to his place in the world and in the tribe. Success in humanity’s jungle fed his strength, and his stature in the tribe.

There were young bucks who tried to do their duty without a foundation in humanity. The learned tribe’s stories and traditions, but found other truths in them, old interpretations, from the days when their kind had been bound to Painfreak.

They visited other tribes and planted their seed in them while playing out mock challenges, as bucks came from other tribes to visit their sisters and test themselves against strangers to win their own Queens. So many could not live the two lives, in and out of the tribe, in and out of the world outside their kind. They remained tied to the world that made them, but the children they sired rarely reached or became a Queen. It was as if they lacked an edge, as if bonding with a human, making children with them, cracked open barriers to the depths they could reach, the power they could call on.

It was no wonder the tribe’s sisters so often produced viable Queens from their human husbands, rather than children from bucks outside the tribe, or much more rarely, from within the tribe.

Taggert glanced back at the cages before turning a corner. If there was time, if he felt like it, maybe he’d come back this way and visit that creature. See if he could make it fit into one of those cages. Perhaps, it would be a celebration of at last having his seed accepted by the Queen. Or, it might relieve the frustration of another failure.

No. He shook his head, pounded a wall with his fist. Forget all of that. He had his human family. This time, he’d prove their kind needed what he offered. As a mature buck, he wouldn’t have many more tries before the Rut left him behind.

He passed open rooms, some empty, others occupied by players performing acts for themselves, for the few witnessing for their own needs. Blood and semen mixed with sewage drawn from well holes, with meat, vegetation, with sacrificial creatures and insects massing to feed, with flowers and the glitter of jewels in candle and torch light, provided beds and veils and aromas and mood.

The old ways, the memories inherited by blood, the rites of passage of his kind, took on the flesh of the now and for an instant, distracted him. Rooted him in a different time, another world in which he’d never lived, but which still lived inside the small part of him that was purely, indomitably of the kind born in and set free from Painfreak countless generations ago. The world of monsters born and bred in the bowels of Painfreak, in its heart, womb and spirit.

It took so little to belong to the kind. But it took so much to pay back Painfreak, to surrender the occasional daughter capable of delivering pure breds, to follow the old instincts and fight for the honor of keeping ancients, and their birthplace, in the world.

Painfreak needed what it needed, to keep the engines of its existence running. Freedom, for its children, monsters from them. Fear and lust from the humanity on which it fed.

He took all of it in, the past and present, the futures both likely and impossible, and let it all buttress the bones and muscle taking him one more time through the Rut.

A young buck, blindly eager for a challenge, stumbled to stop in front of Taggert. He smiled, brushing long hair from his eyes, and curled his fingers as if they were claws.

Taggert remembered the boy’s initiation. He’d beaten his father several times in the Rut, lost to him once.

He growled. Straightened. Bared his teeth. In that moment, he was his own ancestor, a creature at home in the womb of his making, a stranger to the life he had now.

His challenger froze. His eyes opened wider, his lips twisted, half in rage, half in terror.

In that young face, Taggert saw a reflection of all that he was capable of being.

The young buck turned and fled, hardly worthy of the Rut. Taggert had challenged three times before winning his first match.

He shook his head, as if memories of unlived pasts were nothing more than snowflakes coating the hair on his head. He held on to his human wife, the son and daughters who might one day manifest and join the tribe, one to Rut, the other two to be mothers to their tribe and their kind, perhaps even a Queen, and a mother to monsters.

An urge to keep moving focused him. The Rut’s reality sharpened his attention. His children showed no signs of possessing another nature. Unlike his father, he would never see a child take his place in the tribe. The Queen was his last chance to contribute to the tribe’s future.

He took a deep breath. The Queen, her scent, the bucks—

A powerful blow to his left side knocked Taggert off of his feet. He flew into one of the alcoves, slipped, fell. Hands grasped his limps, fumbled with his belt and zipper. A hungry mouth sought his, kissing his shit-covered face. Voices whispered:

“Don’t fight me,”

“Be what I want you to be.”

“Turn me into what you want me to be.”

A bloodied buck, fresh from a challenge, rushed after him. His eyes blazed with a fierce hunger. He licked his lips, even as sewage sprayed his face, and tossed aside Painfreak’s denizens with little effort so he could get to Taggert.

This one was younger, but just entering his prime. His father had long retired from the Rut, and had beaten him every time they met. His mother was dead. They’d met once, years ago. He’d filled out, earned a few scars.

Taggert recognized the expression, the drive that possessed them all. He tasted the Queen, too, in the shit on his lips. She was passing close by, perhaps on a floor above or below, or a corridor adjacent to the one they were in. Her scent, wafting through vents and pipes, teased him. He could almost hear the snuffling of monsters following in her wake.

He beat back the men and women trying to drag him into their orgy, raised a forearm in time to deflect a kick to the head by his challenger. He grabbed the leg, turned at the hips, pulling his rival out of balance.

They staggered together for a step before Taggert let him go. They faced each other. The people in the alcove retreated to the walls and entrance. More came over from up and down the corridor, as if their fight were a special event, a fresh perversion not to be missed.

They charged each other at the same moment, knocking heads like football linemen, with a crack of bone instead of helmets. Their arms locked into holds as they settled shoulder to shoulder, like sumo wrestlers, shoving, shifting, sliding on the slippery floor to shift position and find new angles of attack, or ways to pull each other off balance.

They snapped at each other. Taggert pulled away from a neck bite, caught his rival ear. He bit hard, his opponent stiffened. He pulled his head back, the other buck went with him. Pushed. Taggert gave way, drawing him off balance for an instant. With a twist, and a trip, Taggert pulled him down.

He landed on top, but his challenger worked to throw him off. Taggert moved to stay on top, did his own work for a choke, landed a few elbows, finally over committed on a throat punch and nearly wound up on his stomach.

He rolled, they both scrambled to stand up first.

“Take that shit off,” someone from the audience shouted.

His fine clothes were ripped and ruined, as were his opponent’s. It was time for a more intimate struggle.

They stripped. The audience encouraged them to embrace. To fuck. To bite and pull and suck.

Again, they charged each other, and this time his rival’s youthful quickness caught him. Taggert lost his balance, flipped through the air. But he kicked out, heel first, landed a blow on bone. It was enough to give him time to regain his footing.

They clashed again, hands slipping on blood-slick flesh. Taggert threw short, sharp punches and elbows strikes, close in, careful with his footwork, putting his weight behind them. The boy winced as a rib cracked.

Taggert worked his advantage, upper cutting to the jaw, countering a knee and throwing his own up into the hip, the belly, the lower ribs.

The buck backed up, didn’t charge. Taggert waited, stood tall.

“Are you going to fuck him, now?” a woman asked.

Taggert held out his fists. The challenger looked down. Taggert walked away, leaving the audience to surround his rival. They sank into a mound of writhing flesh.

He’d taken comfort in Painfreak’s embrace often enough after his defeats. But the audience didn’t let him leave without trying to seduce him into their company.

“Let me be your slave.”

“I can give you what you need,”

“Taste this,”

To each, he answered, “If you were my Queen, I’d say yes. But you’re not.”

The alcoves vanished, the corridor walls closed in, the path turned and circled and twisted, rose and fell, and at the second junction Taggert realized he was in one of Painfreak’s mazes. Sometimes, they were backwaters where challengers became trapped, losing their chance for the Queen. Taggert had lost his way more than once.

But this time, the Queen’s scent was strong. He was getting closer.

Visitors were few, and those who were coupled or in groups gave him no attention, lost in their own winding passions. The single ones ignored him more often than they begged for release, or for the way out. They huddled deep in corners, far from lamps and torches. Having been lost, and having found his way out, he understood those who chose not to escape. They were the ones his ancestors left behind in Painfreak.

He ran into two more challengers in the maze. The first was an old friend who’d beaten him regularly when they were young, but hadn’t healed well after one close approach to the Queen and never recovered. Taggert beat him, with his fists until his hands were swollen and cracked and bloody and his challenger stopped fighting back.

Through a blood haze, Taggert looked up to see the Queen looking down at him from a window to a parallel maze path in the wall. The opening was barred, but large enough to see her court of monsters, twisted, demonic, haunting reflections of humanity, passing behind her.

She was the third Queen he’d tried to win over the years. He’d stopped counting those years, but not the Queens. They didn’t last as long as the strongest of their suitors.

“Do you remember me?” he asked.

She didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure she was really looking at him, or at indistinguishable bodies fighting for her.

He’d been close the last time, but she hadn’t acknowledged him. He’d never had the chance to look her in the eyes. He’d never been closer to any Queen in all the Ruts he’d joined.

Except, perhaps, in his dreams.

Through the window, she became a shadow, then mist, a figure of mystery and sex, a promise of sensations, ever changing yet immutable in her essence. Another of Painfreak’s seductions. Her court of monsters slipped away into darkness behind her, yet she lingered.

Taggert stood, pushing his fingers through the bars. Her eyes were the last to fade, the image of twin black moons receding into a starless sky. She seemed to promise that he could create whatever he desired, even if she had to mine his depths for him to find those lost and secret weaknesses he’d never dared to drag into the light. She seemed to promise that he could satisfy each of those desires, through her.

Passion woke and crashed, fulfilling Painfreak’s purpose. He closed his eyes against the promises—what he’d make could never be what he wanted. All these years in the Rut, all that had come from his kind’s teachings, all that he learned from surviving so long when so many had died or retired and that kept him strong in the world’s and in Painfreak’s illusions, protected him.

What he desired had to come from without. From her, and only her.

“I’m coming for you,” he said.

She laughed, then said, “You’re all coming for me.”

She vanished beyond his reach, again. Tears welled in his eyes, as the feeling of defeat overwhelmed him. He backed away from the window, took a breath, roared a challenge. A test, she’d only been testing him, to see if he was worthy.

He was close. So close. He tasted her in the air, felt himself in her, already, thrusting desperately, savagely, whether she wanted what he offered, or not.

He staggered off, cutting deeper into the maze, chasing the Queen as he’d done all his life.

The last challenger was a beast. Younger, but scarred and knotted from wounds and blows. Another he’d fought, but had lost to more often than beaten. Bigger than him, a touch slower. Vulnerable in the legs, in his balance. One of those who liked to take whatever a challenger had to give.

Taggert charged him, as he’d done in the past, when he’d tried to shake his balance by attacking a fortress’ foundations rather than the tops of towers. But this time, he slowed as he came near, barely grazed the man, instead turning, circling as the beast turned around. He went around once, barley eluding the giant’s grasp, leaned his shoulder into the back of the man’s knee.

They both went down, but his opponent wasn’t used to toppling over. His conquerors usually took him out with strikes to the eyes, the throat, but Taggert had rarely been quick enough to be effective.

The beast rolled, recovering faster than he’d hoped, but slow enough for him lock a tight hold of his neck. The beast sank fingers into his arms, smashed him back into Painfreak’s maze wall, cracking stone, but Taggert held on, pressed tighter, until he slipped under the last of challenger’s chin and jaw trying to hold him off.

The beast recovered far more quickly than Taggert did, and for a moment he thought the man would take advantage and finish him. But the man only cocked his head to the side, as if taking a last, long look, and walked away.

He’d have many more chances at the Queen. As Taggert stood, body aching, the maze spinning around his head, he understood there wouldn’t be a next time to prove himself and all that he was worthy of his species.

He found her in the center of the maze, a wide circle large enough to host a couple of tennis courts. Light filtered down from rough-hewn vents above them. Naked, she stood her ground like a challenger to, not a recipient of his gifts. Her hair stood like a black halo around her wide face, and her eyes were narrowed, as if she were studying a slab of meat for spoilage.

Her children were hidden away in the maze, waiting for a new brother or sister to be conceived.

“I’m here,” he said.

“Are you asking for permission?” she asked.

He moved forward.

“Do you ever wonder what happens to the Queens you tried to fuck?” she asked.

He hesitated before taking another step. “No,” he said.

“Their children eat them.”

He stopped, checked the other entries to the circle. “They haven’t eaten you.”

“Not yet.”

Another test, he wondered. Or foreplay. The traditions didn’t speak of what happened after a victor won his Queen, other than the obvious.

“Why doesn’t she eat them?”

“Oh, she does. At least, the ones who don’t run away quick enough.”

“Good for them.”

“It happens sometimes with the girls who don’t become Queens, the strong ones who stay in the tribe to make strong sons and don’t go off to gather a following of their own kind. Their children eat them.”

The men didn’t talk of those kinds of things, but he’d heard the stories. Mothers often died young. His mother and sister both did.

“Did you eat your mother? The ones who reach the Queen, they sometimes have.”

“No.”

“Did she eat your brothers and sisters?”

“No.”

“Good for you.”

“We don’t talk about these kinds of things,” he said.

“Mothers talk.” She bowed her head. “Sometimes, we talk about what happens to fathers, too. Especially the ones who sire Queens with their wives, and then come after them in the Rut.”

“Did you eat your father?” he asked.

She smiled, to show the sharpness of her teeth.

Motion called his attention to the clearing’s periphery. Too late, he heard something behind him even as he stared into darkened entries behind the Queen and to his left.

He was flying through the air before he registered the impact. He was face down on the hard rock before pain fired up and down his back. His face smashed once, twice against the floor as a weight crushed his back and pushed the air from his lungs. He gasped, flailed, until he couldn’t move, anymore. Until blackness spilled into the center of the maze and clouded over the lighting and walls and the dusty floor, and his gasps for breath sounded like rocks tumbling over him in an avalanche.

He thought it odd that his own scent, one he usually ignored, was so strong, in this moment of helplessness. He croaked, from convulsing guts to burning lungs to raging throat, and even as he knew that was the last sound he’d ever hear the mystery of his scent nagged him, tugged at his consciousness, made him fight for one more moment in the world.

At last the weight lifted. He rolled over, air filling lungs now, rushing, pumping through heart and blood, illuminating the world again, grounding him back among the living.

His scent, but not quite.

He faced the Queen. Her eyes were on his conqueror, a slim figure, in black, hair gathered into a pony tail, the young buck he’d seen slipping away as he’d entered Painfreak.

That familiar scent.

“Don’t call my name,” his son said. The boy didn’t bother looking back.

Why would he, Taggert thought. The Queen’s eyes were on him, and nothing else.

Coughing, still trying to regain his voice, Taggert stumbled through the questions he wanted to ask—why hadn’t the boy manifested before? Had he been hiding, from his own kind, from his own family, all this time? With no teachings, no support, who could have sponsored his invitation into Painfreak and the Rut?

Too complicated, the questions choked him. He managed to whisper, “Why are you here?”

To his surprise, his son heard him. “For the Queen.”

“Why?” Taggert asked, the word containing all of his questions, even the ones he couldn’t yet put into words.

“Because I have something to give to our kind.”

“You never said anything.”

“That is my gift.”

The Queen spread her arms wide. The boy stepped to her. They embraced. She ripped his clothes from him as he tried to hold her, to force his kisses on her. But she writhed and slipped and tore away cloth until he was naked, and bleeding from her markings.

A few young bucks appeared at the entrances to the maze’s center. Behind them stood some of the Queen’s children, monsters, and a scattering of young boys and girls, some old enough to have come from the previous Queen.

They were witnesses to a change. Honoring the birth of new ways, the start of another tradition.

Taggert drew himself up into a kneeling position. He recognized two of the bucks from the tribe, participants and losers in the Rut. Friends of his son. Conspirators, against the tribe’s old ways, against their fathers and mothers.

More than once, he’d asked his son why he couldn’t be like his friends, and every time, his son had answered, “I can’t be like the rest of you. It’s not in me.”

He’d thought his son only human, but now, he saw his son as the next of their kind.

The Queen fell back as his son threw her to the ground, and she seemed to surrender as he jumped on top of her, penetrated her with a cock that seemed more stone than flesh, bit her on the neck as if to force her into submission.

The Queen’s children remained still.

They thrashed and the boy pumped eagerly, even as the Queen raised her hips in rhythm to all that he had to give.

And then, in a moment, she was on top, still taking what he had to give, arching her back, fingers interlocked with his, gazing into the light from above, into Painfreak’s soul, her mouth open as if to scream, but never screaming, never uttering a sound, only breathing, only fucking, in and out, in and out, taking seed into her womb, taking pleasure from the annihilation of an old way and the birth of a new path. A better path.

Through envy and jealousy, through the rage born in betrayal and the terror of bearing witness to change, Taggert saw that it was him, and all the rest of the Rut’s participants, who had lost their membership in the tribe.

His son was the future. His child with the Queen would be what their kind was evolving to become.

They’d all come a long way from the monsters released from Painfreak’s depths. They’d traveled far in humanity’s shadow.

His son, without Taggert or anyone else in the tribe realizing, except for some few other young bucks not yet ready to be what they’d been born to be, was the next step in their kind’s journey.

The enormity of the change stunned Taggert. When the Queen at last looked down on his son, bared her teeth, and devoured him, first his hands, then his arms, then his cock and balls and finally back up to his throat, his face, and finally, after ripping open his chest, his heart, Taggert felt nothing. Not the horror of the flesh of his flesh being devoured, not the joy watching his conqueror fail to survive the Queen’s passions.

He felt alone, as if at a crossroads, abandoned, all roads closed to him, like a sacrifice tied to a post waiting to be consumed.

The Queen stood. Her children, both monsters and near human, entered the space and finished his son’s remains. The young bucks, some bruised and cut from their defeats, quickly followed. Careful not to interfere with the Queen’s children, they dipped their hands in his son’s blood and painted their faces in their hurried retreat.

A new tradition, fresh from the womb.

A gift. His son’s gift.

The Queen looked to him, this time. Her gaze locked with his. For that instant, under her attention, he mattered. He’d helped make something of value to the tribe, to the future of their kind.

He wished his wife was still alive. He wished he hadn’t killed and eaten her, as his kind sometimes did when a human wife or husband had no further use in fulfilling the tribe’s destiny. She would have been revolted by her son, but maybe in some human, perhaps human woman’s way Taggert could not imagine, she might also have been proud.

As he was proud, at last, and satisfied, even if he’d been beaten, even if the Queen had taken another man’s seed.

Because a part of him was his son, and somehow, through the union with a fully human woman, Taggert was a part of that son who’d beaten him and the tribe and everything that his kind was, in that moment, to prove himself worthy to cut a new way, a better way, through the world.

His son was the next step in their evolution, more than human, more than monsters.

Taggert wished he could stay, to see what the Queen would give birth to, to help her and her children raise the future.

The Queen appeared before him, arms at her sides. “Do you want to follow your son?”

The honor of her attention, the choice she gave him, robbed him of words for a moment. In that moment, he understood there was no place for him at her side, now, or in the future. Now was the time for the sacrifice at the crossroads to be consumed.

“Yes,” he said, tears welling in his eyes, not in sorrow, but in joy.

“Your seed is great,” she said. “I thank you and your line of mothers and fathers. It’s not often father and son both find a Queen. And a son never overtakes a father. I’m sure what comes from me won’t let me eat it.” She laughed at his expression.

Taggert wiped his face, not sure what he’d felt, or what she’d seen.

“I promise to raise the child for as long as I can, and teach the others to care for it when I’m gone. I hope, like you, the child grows to make more of its kind. I hope, like you, that we’ve truly taken another step away from this place.”

She looked up at the ceiling, and whispered, “Though we will never walk so far away from you, Mother, as to forget what you are to us.”

The Queen looked back to him, helped him to stand. He took in his arms, and she yielded to him, as she’d done with his son, as he’d always dreamed she’d do. He kissed her, on her bloody lips, tasting his son’s flesh in her mouth, and squeezed her. His cock rose and stiffened, her hands guided him into her. And before he realized it, she was kissing him, on the neck, face, lips, eyes.

He didn’t feel the fall to the ground, didn’t see how she climbed on top of him, pinned him to the hard, unyielding earth. He’d slipped out of her, she’d only been teasing him. She didn’t want his seed. She’d taken everything she’d wanted from him, already.

But he had her touch, and her eyes filling his vision, and the sharpness of her teeth in his flesh.

Pain made him close his eyes. She pulled away, let him see her for the last time.

“We eat more than our children,” she whispered to him. “We eat our husbands, our wives, our suitors. We eat the worthy and unworthy. But what glory will rise from what survives.”

He kept his eyes open as she took him, piece by piece, for as long as he could, even when the children returned to feed on him as they’d done with his son, as if it was his seed in the Queen, his life that had given him a future.

And before Taggert closed his eyes for the last time, he saw again the hanging cages he’d passed, the bars like teeth holding in their prisoners and all of their poisoned words and doomed lives, and he felt a wisp of freedom pass through him, as if his cage had been opened, as if he was an ancestor, an ancient monster released from Painfreak facing the light and open spaces of an eternal future instead of the darkness of an eternal end.

As if he’d arrived at last and forever in his most secret and treasured dreams.

| — | — |

Coping Mechanism

————

Jeff Strand

“Hey, how’s it going?” said Brett, shaking the small Asian man’s hand.

“It’s going quite well. Do you have the mark?”

Brett shot him his most winning grin. “Mark? You mean like a 666 on my scalp?”

“No,” said the Asian man. “That is not what I mean.”

“I was just kidding.”

“I’m sure that you were.”

“Nah, man, I don’t have a mark. She does, though,” he said, gesturing to Denise. “Look at all of those sweet tats. Show him the one on your arm, babe. Check that out. It’s a unicorn with two horns. Is that subversive or what?”

“It’s very artistic.”

Brett nodded politely to the much larger doorman who stood there, arms folded, unsmiling. “I’m sure we can work something out.” He shook the Asian man’s hand again.

The bill dropped to the ground.

“The mark or a referral,” said the Asian man. “Those are your only options.”

Brett bent down and grabbed the bill before it blew away. It was a hundred bucks! What was wrong with the guy? Brett was young, handsome, dressed for success, and he had a hot chick with him. He could get into any other club he wanted. This was bullshit.

He decided not to rush straight to the “This is bullshit!” argument. Better to try to reason with them first. “I just wanted you gentlemen to be able to go out and buy yourselves something nice. I’ve got a referral. Mike sent me.”

“I know no Mike.”

“What are you talking about? Everybody knows a Mike.”

“Sir, we are extremely busy. If you don’t meet the criteria, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“What do you mean, you’re busy?” asked Brett. “There’s nobody else around. It was impossible to find this place. C’mon, what’s the big deal?” He put his arm around Denise. “My friend is dying to check out Painfreak. We’re not a couple of degenerates. You can’t tell me you don’t want to see her in action.”

The doorman, still frowning, stepped forward in an intimidating manner.

“Okay, okay, fine, whatever. How do I get a mark?”

“I can’t help you.”

“This is bullshit.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

Brett’s face was burning. These assholes were making him look like an idiot in front of the lady. He didn’t care if Denise liked him, but he didn’t want her to see him being disrespected.

“We’ll be back,” he said.

“And if you have a mark or a referral, you will be more than welcome to pass through the door,” said the Asian man.

Brett took Denise’s hand and stormed away. “You said it wouldn’t be a problem,” she said, as they walked through the alley.

“Well, obviously, I was wrong. I didn’t know they were gonna be stuck-up jerks. I slipped the guy a Benjamin! Who turns down a Benjamin? That’s messed up.”

“I don’t think white guys get to call them Benjamins. Maybe we could try someplace else.”

Brett shook his head. “Hell no. I’ve heard the stories. The stuff that goes on in there is mind-blowing. Kinky, freaky shit you can’t get anyplace else. I’m not missing out on that. No way.”

Denise was silent for a moment. “How about this? Same fee, plus you cover a hotel room. You can do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t leave marks.”

“At Painfreak I could leave marks. That’s the whole point.”

“Well, you can’t get into Painfreak right now, and I can’t wait around all night for it to happen. I was offering you another option instead of going home and tugging it yourself.”

Brett glared at her. “I’ve got plenty of options before I’m reduced to whacking off. Plenty.”

Denise shrugged. “That’s cool. But I’ll need the money now. I’m not going to hang out with you all night unless I know for sure I’m getting paid.”

“Then fuck off. I don’t need you. I only hired you because I figured they’d let me in if I brought a hot chick, but apparently, you weren’t hot enough.” He took out his wallet and removed a twenty. “Here. For your trouble.”

She plucked the bill out of his fingers. “You’re a dick.”

Brett immediately regretted sending her away as he watched her walk off in her tight skirt, but he definitely wasn’t going to call her back over and apologize. Sure, an hour with her would be a hell of a lot better than going home to Maggie, but he still had his heart set on Painfreak.

He had no idea how to get a mark or a referral. The guy who’d told him about the club was on the other side of the country in Portland. He hadn’t said a damn thing about any mark, just that it was hard to get in. Brett didn’t even know the guy’s name.

Shit.

The women there don’t care what you do to them. I don’t just mean spanking and candle wax and the stuff you can get at any BDSM club; I’m talking biting so hard that you draw blood. I’m talking about beating them to the point where you leave the place not sure if they’ll ever walk again. It’s allowed! Everybody’s cool with it! They watch you do it, dude!

It sounded unbelievable. No, Brett didn’t think he’d ever want to beat a woman severely enough to leave her permanently disabled, but the thought of letting himself loose in that environment, one where there was no judgment no matter how loud the screams, had appeal beyond anything else he could imagine doing in his lifetime.

And yet two uptight assholes standing in front of the door were keeping him from living out his fantasy.

He didn’t have a backup plan. He’d never considered that showing up with an attractive woman and greasing some palms wouldn’t be enough to get him in. Should his bribe have been more? Should he have brought two women? What was it going to take?

Screw it. He’d just ask.

Even though it had literally been less than a minute since he left, it was difficult for him to find his way back to the Painfreak entrance. He must’ve been so pissed off that he took a wrong turn, although he couldn’t remember taking any turns.

But he found it again. The tiny Asian guy and the big bald scarred dude were still there, not looking busy. Brett grinned to show that there were no hard feelings as he walked over to them.

“Be straight with me,” he said. “What’s it going to take to get me in there?”

“You’ve already been given that information,” said the Asian man.

“How much? Throw a number at me.”

“You’re wasting your time and ours.”

“Did I offend you with the hundred bucks before?” Brett asked. “If so, I apologize. I don’t know the going rate. Give me a number and we’ll see what we can work out.”

“I’m going to ask you to leave. If you do not heed my request, you’ll be forcibly removed.”

“No. I don’t accept that. You said I could get in with a referral, right? Well, give me a starting point. Just point me in the right direction and I can get somebody to vouch for me, no problem. There’s no reason to make this difficult.”

“We do not make these decisions based on their ease or their difficulty. There are rules. Inflexible ones. If you cannot abide by them, perhaps Painfreak is not for you.”

Brett wanted to punch the little fucker. Knock a couple of his teeth out and then barge right through the door. Unfortunately, though Brett was confident in his ability to take out the small guy (unless he knew Kung Fu or some shit like that) he could easily envision a scenario in which the larger guy twisted his arm behind his back and not-so-gently escorted him away from the building.

“No way we can resolve this, huh?” he asked.

“It would not appear so.”

Brett didn’t think that dropping to his knees and begging would do any good. Though he wasn’t going to give up, for the moment he had to accept that he was pretty much screwed.

He walked away again, cursing under his breath.

Okay, he could figure this out. If he saw somebody else’s mark, maybe he could forge it. Or perhaps he could talk to one of the existing patrons and get them to give him a referral, or at least a solid lead on how to get one. All he had to do was wait around for somebody to come out of the club.

He leaned against the alley wall, took out his cell phone, and began to play Angry Birds.

Forty-five minutes later, nobody had walked past him. He wouldn’t be in any hurry to leave Painfreak either, but the club had to have some in and out traffic, didn’t it? Patrons had to leave eventually. Where the hell was everybody?

This sucked.

Nothing had ever sucked more than this.

This sucked on every conceivable level.

He wanted to punch the brick wall hard enough to shatter his goddamn fist.

He should’ve just taken Denise up on her offer to let him slap her around a bit before he screwed her.

Sure, he could find another hooker, but he was always paranoid that he might be propositioning an undercover cop. It was bound to happen eventually, and it wanted it to happen later rather than sooner.

He might as well give up for tonight. Fuck his life.

««—»»

“Have fun with the guys?” asked Maggie, his fiancée, as he walked into their apartment. Her idea of fun was staying in her pajamas and binge-watching television shows on Netflix.

“It wasn’t too bad,” he said, plopping onto the couch beside her. “What’re you watching?”

“Fuller House.”

Jesus Christ.

««—»»

Just before Brett was about to slide into her, he gave Maggie a kiss and smiled. “Want to try something different tonight?”

“What were you thinking?”

“Doggy-style?”

Maggie sighed. “Come on, Brett. You know I think that’s demeaning.”

“It’s not, though. It’s fun. If you’d try it, you’d like it.”

“I’m not some porn tramp. If you want me to be on top, we can do that, but if you want to make love to me you have to look me in the eyes.”

“All right, never mind. Missionary’s fine.”

««—»»

As Brett wandered through the dark alleys the next night trying to figure out where the fuck the entrance to the club had gone, he knew that Painfreak couldn’t live up to the experience he’d imagined. It simply wasn’t possible for anything to be that awesome. He was headed for extreme disappointment, but though he knew this on a conscious level, he couldn’t think of anything but Painfreak.

He’d pay anything to get in. He’d even blow those two guys, providing no video evidence was posted online. If they said he had to break every finger on his left hand…well, that might be going too far. Or it might not. He doubted the subject would actually come up.

Finally, he saw the Painfreak entrance. His hopes that there might be two different and more easily bribed doormen out front were quickly dashed. Same Asian guy, same bald guy, both wearing identical suits to what they had on last night.

Brett didn’t try to smile as he walked over to them.

“Hello, sir,” said the Asian man. “I take it you now have the mark?”

“Nope.” Brett had a sudden moment of paranoia, thinking that the gun he had wedged into the waist of his pants would go off accidentally, tearing a bloody path down his ass crack. He hoped that it didn’t actually come to pulling a gun on them, but if they were unreasonable, he’d have to do it.

“Then we have a problem.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to get a referral if I never see anybody but you two?” Brett demanded. “It’s not fair.” He was embarrassed by the way his voice cracked. He felt like a little kid about to have a temper tantrum in a grocery store because his mom wouldn’t stop in the toy aisle.

“Fair or not, that’s the way it is, and the way it will continue to be. You’ve taken up far more than your share of our time.”

“Nah, not yet,” said Brett, pulling out the gun. The Asian guy was definitely surprised to see it, but didn’t look quite as frightened as Brett would’ve hoped. “Let me through the goddamn door. Now.”

“That’s not how this works.”

“It’s how I’m making it work. Step out of the way.”

“We can’t change the rules, even to save our own lives. If you kill us, you still will not get into Painfreak. All you’ll have is an additional burden on your conscience along with the vexation of being denied entry.”

“I mean it. I’ll kill you. I am getting in there, whether you cooperate or not. You can step aside, or I can step over your dead bodies. I don’t give a shit which way it happens.”

“Then I suppose our lives are about to come to a tragic, wasteful end,” said the Asian man.

They didn’t believe him. Those two dumb fucks had no idea just how desperately he needed what Painfreak had to offer. Brett didn’t completely understand it either, but it was in his head and he couldn’t get rid of it and if he had to murder a couple of arrogant pricks over it that was just the way things were going to have to be.

Brett pointed the gun at the large man’s head, figuring that it would be better to kill him first.

He began to squeeze the trigger, then hesitated.

It didn’t feel like he’d hesitated very long, but somehow it was enough for the big bald scarred asshole to wrench the gun out of his hand. How had he moved so fast?

The large man shoved Brett to the ground. He landed on his butt, cringing as he waited for the man to point his own gun at him.

“Painfreak is not for you,” said the Asian man.

Tears of shame and frustration were beginning to form, and Brett decided not to bother trying to stop them. “Please,” he said. “I’ve got to get in there. I won’t stay long, I promise. I just have to see what it’s like.”

“I’m sorry. You are not welcome. It’s time for you to leave.”

“Please!”

The men said nothing. Brett stared at them for a moment, hoping to change their minds, but he finally accepted that it wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t getting into Painfreak. Ever.

He slowly stood up. “Sorry about the gun thing,” he said, wiping his cheeks on the back of his hand before he turned and walked away.

««—»»

“Roll over,” Brett told Maggie.

“Why?”

“I want to give you a back rub.”

Maggie rolled onto her stomach. Her ass looked great in those cotton panties, and as the man who was going to be her husband, he thought he was entitled to have some fun with it.

He gave her one hard spank.

“Ow!” said Maggie. “What the hell?”

“Just saying ‘I love you.’”

“Don’t do that.”

He spanked her again.

“Seriously, Brett, knock it off.”

“It doesn’t feel good?”

“You said you were going to give me a backrub.”

Brett raised his hand again. What was she going to do, break up with him? Maggie didn’t appreciate how good she had it, and if she had to deal with a sore ass every once in a while, well, she’d learn to cope.

He gave her the hardest spank yet. She let out a sexy yelp.

Then she rolled over, sat up, and punched him in the face. Brett was so surprised that he fell backwards, and then tumbled off the bed, striking his head against the wooden floor.

“I told you to stop it!” she said. “Get the hell out of here!”

Brett touched the corner of his mouth, which was bleeding. “So, what, you’re allowed to hit me but I can’t give you a loving spank?”

“Get out before I call the cops.”

“The cops? For real?”

“I need you to leave, Brett. Right now.”

Brett got up and walked out of the bedroom. He slammed himself down on the couch, grabbed the remote, and turned on the television.

“I need you to leave the apartment!” Maggie called out.

Brett started to protest, then decided, fuck it and fuck her. He went back into the bedroom, grabbed his jeans and shirt off the floor, got dressed, and then left the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

He took a couple of steps down the hallway, cursed, and punched the wall.

Then he punched it again.

And again.

Bones cracked. He didn’t care. It felt good.

He punched it over and over, leaving a red streak on the wallpaper.

Brett screamed in frustration as jolts of pain shot through his body with every blow.

He could hear Maggie next to him, sobbing. She tried to pull him away but he shoved her to the floor, then resumed bashing what little remained of his fists into the dripping wall. He liked that he could see bone.

He cackled with laughter as he continued punching the wall. Sure, he couldn’t get into Painfreak or have fun with his fiancée, but if his arms were mangled and useless, those disappointments would be irrelevant.

| — | — |

Pretty Me Up

————

Michael T. Huyck, Jr.

I dawdled on the pier’s concrete lip, one fingertip tracing a shallow pock on its surface. There were thrills here, layers of them, but not tonight. Not for me. Instead I had some bullshit headmaster game to play.

I could start it, go on in, but instead I stared across the placid harbor, its surface scuffed by the breeze but little else. I heard waves out past the breakwater and their sound swept me up. I never see water back home. Maybe marching into foreign battles, but we’re usually preoccupied then.

Then there’s these toes—I didn’t know toes back home. They were slim and tender bits, sensations foreign to this clefted chinny. The rest of the man attached to the toes matched, from his stubby teeth to his gangling legs wrapped in a blue second skin of cloth. Searching his skull space, I came back with the name Teddy. I could hear him, but barely. The only words I recognized were called you.

Beneath our feet the dark waters of Los Angeles harbor wafted a natural funk, like the center of the Druj Demana, and that was comforting. It was all comforting, if only because I wasn’t trapped between the academy’s gray walls anymore. Nor was I slinking through the battlefields of Plataea, Teutoburg, or Orléans. Honestly I’d fought in Los Angeles. It’s true. I knew the city of angels well enough. From the dark mountains out east to the yellow gloaming of the harbor’s sodium vapor lights, she was spitted, charred, and ready to serve. Beautiful and vital, I’d say I love her.

The harbor lights left the duotone landscape stark. About me immediately there were different types of man-made stone, the concrete and others, and beyond there was dirt, natural stone, and rails of steel lying in parallel lines. To my left stood a monolithic building hulking pier’s end, its face tainted by the sick illumination. In aged black letters the words WAREHOUSE NO. 1 stained one side of the facing wall, while PORT OF LOS ANGELES was centered near its pinnacle. I stood on Teddy’s soft feet and walked gently toward it. WAREHOUSE NO. 1 was obviously my target.

Inside, between the shadows, I found a wall of pallets and bags spanning the warehouse’s mouth, each stacked precariously on the other and rising over my head. They blocked my view of the rest of the warehouse, so I searched left and right for a way through.

“Behind you,” a voice said. I turned to see two men walking out of the dark beside the farthest opening and into the yellow pool of harbor lights near me. There was one small and one large, with the small one being thin and wearing dark clothing, sunglasses, and tightly-cropped black hair. The large one was little more than a shadow, even in the light.

Not human, I thought.

“Not bad for an academy washout. Did thinking that through hurt?” Not waiting for an answer, the little one motioned for me to present my right hand. I lifted it palm up and the big man motioned for me to flip it, so I did. The little man stepped up and produced a small metal plate landed on the end of a dark wooden handle. He lightly pinched the tip of my middle finger, then stopped and pointed at the faint glow of a bone on my skin. “One of you has been here before, so you know the rules. You’re both free to go in and return to Painfreak whenever you’d like.” He pointed behind me. “There’s the entrance.” I turned to watch a section of stacked pallets rotating out, mechanical parts grated together, to reveal bright blue and deep red lights flashing beyond. I walked in without another look at the two strangers.

The space beyond the door was dark, but it felt immense. The flashing lights momentarily revealed the occasional table and a loose throng bouncing together maybe fifteen meters off, their shapes frozen in the strobe, alternately stretched, crouched, or airborne. Most of the dancers wore masks, at least half of which were a wrinkled face, bushy eyebrows, and a tallish coiffure parted right. Off to one end ran a long bar beneath pale blue lights, its three tenders working another crowd, their faces intent and the mouths pressed tight. A sapphire glow stained the bar crowd, masked and unmasked, into monochromatic art. At the near end of the bar three short and rumpled humans stood watching the room, quiet and unengaged. Weird.

Past the far end of the bar a white light faded in and out slowly, which I recognized as a doorway opened and shut. That would work.

««—»»

I was caught during the game of tag, or at least that’s what Teddy said. On the far side of the door there’d been large rooms met by hallways tied to stairwells stringing floors to other floors, and it went on. The floors were concrete, like the pier outside, as was everything else. Pillars rose up from the ground, repeating over and over into the shadows.

I was tagged “it” within the first few minutes by a short brunette with deep brown eyes, olive skin, and a mirthless smile. She came out from behind one of the pillars and slapped me on the back, then jogged off to the right. I tried to follow her, but I lost my way in the repetition of columns, shadows, and interceding players taunting me. Then…nothing. Apparently humans have soft heads, because even the lithe chinny can’t be knocked unconscious. You have to take our head off. But here, inside Teddy, I was stuck with his noggin and that was used against me.

I awoke upright but tilted back, my arms draped out over a crossbar and taped at the wrists and shoulders, while my legs were strapped tightly to the wooden shaft running vertical behind me. A cross. These humans and their damn crosses.

There were others around, nude humans wandering into and out of my line of sight and, for the most part, ignoring me. They all held blades or chains or steel things for dragging and chopping, but there were other bits. One, a handle with a shaft and a flat tip, caught my eye, so I watched as it, and its conveyance, move along. Screwdriver! a voice said. It was Teddy, his voice now louder and easier to understand.

I didn’t want to listen to Teddy anymore and I didn’t want to think. I’d failed at my one and only task; my mission was a loss. Being on the cross proved that well enough, and the fact that I didn’t see my competition bound up cinched it. I was a maggot of the first order, just as the headmaster said.

What’s chlostis? Teddy asked.

“The fucking winner,” I said. “Shut up.”

One of the passing crowd paused before me, a stocky fellow with broad shoulders and a round belly. He held shears, fat- bladed and black handled. While the stocky one stared into my face another, this one with brown skin and gray hair, paused at his side. A third went to the stocky one’s opposite shoulder, her loosely-curled hair bouncing as she giggled. Within a minute a small crowd gathered.

Blood play, Teddy said in my head. I ignored him.

BLOOD PLAY! he said louder. Say it!

Swapping the shears to his left hand, the fellow’s meaty right grabbed hold of one of my feet and spread the two smallest toes from each other with his thumb. With a quick “snick” he took off the smallest of the two at the base. They were tender, I knew that, but when lightning shot up from the tip of my foot, through my knee, and didn’t fail until mid-thigh, I knew much better. The worst part wasn’t the first shot, but the ebb and flow of pain afterward, like my life was dribbling out on the floor.

MOTHERFUCKINGBLOODPLAYYOUMOTHERFUCK!!!!

The pain caught my attention, so I shouted “blood play” at the top of my lungs. I had no idea what that meant, but the spasms in my one leg played games with my command and control. Teddy was doing better.

The gentleman smiled at me while tossing my toe on the floor. Beside him the girl picked it up, sniffing the bloody bit.

We’re on show, you stupid son of a bitch.

“What’s that mean?” I asked. I didn’t think to get angry.

The man who took my toe raised one eyebrow at me while poking at my taut belly with the tip of his knife. I felt each poke and thought that I needed to respond somehow before he took another piece off.

“What does he want?”

Right arm. Left still hurts.

“What are you talking about?” The people in front of me looked left, then right. It occurred to me that I was the only one speaking out loud.

Say right arm. I paused again, but remembered the lighting. So “right arm” is was. As emphasis, I flipped my right hand as well. No use confusing the tubby fuck again He looked around, holding his shears up in the air, and a few of the crowd closed in. After words, most of which escaped me, he traded the shears for what looked to be a meat knife with a dark-stained wooden handle and a blade with a spider web of scars. The little girl ran off giggling with the shears.

After he rubbed the inside of my forearm until it warmed, he gave three quick slices with the knife. This time, instead of the shooting pains, I felt concurrent burning and tickling. It wasn’t bad.

Better now.

Teddy was right. This wasn’t only better than losing a toe, it felt good. Like a release.

It makes me stronger, Teddy said. We smiled at our benefactor.

The threat was reduced, and I could think again. I could think past the bolts of pain to something greater, like an option outside of exsanguination. It was then that I saw a couple near the edge of the light. One was a man built thin and hard, like hides stretched over bone, with slit eyes watched me from beneath a shallow forehead. Several lengths of rope, spotted and stained, lay over the back of his neck and ended on his concave chest. Some drooped even farther. In one hand he held a bundle of sticks and in the other a shiny tool. A saw. Beside him stood his paradox, a tall woman with effusive flesh, rumpled knees and a slouching belly, pendulous breasts and a wattles replacing her chin and neck. Even her earlobes dangled.

Him I had no idea about, but her I immediately recognized as the chlostis. She had the shape, certainly, but mostly she had the eyes. At first my heart burbled because I saw that it wasn’t over yet. Then I looked from one of my hands to the other. Not over, but not looking good. The chlostis wasn’t up on a cross.

What’s a chlostis? This time I spoke softly.

“I and another who failed the military academy are here in competition. The winner gets to graduate anyway and captain a legion.” That was about as simple as I could make it.

Sounds like bullshit to me.

“Might be. We weren’t given a choice.”

Let’s make the best of it, then. What are our options?

What did I have going for me? My human liked blood play and it made him stronger. Right now I could use stronger. Otherwise, the chlostis held the high ground.

He’s waiting for more. Tell him the whole arm. Teddy could really interrupt a train of thought, but I was getting used it. I liked the way he thought.

“Whole arm,” I said. It bought time. “Both arms.”

The other’s sore still.

“Tough.”

The man, who’d just worked his way into the crook of my right elbow, paused. I turned and winked at him and he winked back. Then he continued down my right arm, leaving a series of weeping slices. The tickle was gone, as was the sting. It was just warm. Fulfilling.

You want her?

“What do you know about her?” I whispered.

She’s an amp.

“What’s that.”

I free my blood, she frees her parts.

“Parts?”

Look at hands. Legs.

I don’t know how I didn’t see it before, as her right hand was a mess. Each finger on the right was, to some degree, missing and her left hand was gone, leaving compiled scars around its stump. The crowd was in the way, so I couldn’t see her legs, but I got Teddy’s point.

What do you know about him? The one in the amp?

“The chlostis? Big and stupid. Piles of bravado wrapped around an empty space. And a perfect warrior.” I paused for a second. “I have to beat him.”

At what?

“I don’t know.”

Useful.

He was right.

The man with the knife scrolled bloody work into my left arm now, but I saw the audience wandering off one at a time, hoping to find more interesting sufferers.

Turn them.

“Who?”

The audience. Amps are popular. Turn them on her.

I have to give it to Teddy, it was genius. I couldn’t do anything to win or lose this competition, whatever it was, but maybe they could. Maybe the audience could handle her like they would have handled me if I’d not listened.

Is the chlostis prideful?

“Oh yeah.”

My head lifted up to stare closely at her.

Let me do this.

“Not a chance.”

Do you know what works here? This is Painfreak.

I didn’t answer. What he said made sense, but you don’t just take a body and give it back.

Let me do this.

Instinctively I receded, trading places with Teddy and taking up room in his mind. It was a risk, but not a large one. I’m still stronger.

“Sal,” I said out loud, in what I presume was Teddy’s voice now. It was deeper, more fluid than mine. “From the hips up, pretty me. The full routine, and make a show of it? Make a show the way only you know how. And Sal?”

“Teddy?” Sal replied.

“The hips up.”

Sal stuck out his lower lip for a second, then sucked it back in and nodded. He cut off our clothing while whistling a happy tune, slicing with large gestures while Teddy and I nodded our head along with his music. The crowd started paying more attention, and souls came out of the darkness and from behind pillars. They couldn’t keep their eyes off of us.

“What’s a matter?” Teddy yelled across the space. The woman looked up, her dark eyes unblinking and her thin lips pressed. “Can’t take a little pain, chlostis?”

What are you doing? I asked.

“You said this is a competition, right? It’s not having to fight at all.” Teddy quit whispering to me and yelled across the space again. “You think watching will get…” Then he paused. “What? What do we get?” he whispered.

A legion to captain.

“…you think you’ll lead just standing there?” We yelled. “I’m fighting and you, you’re just watching.”

You know bravado.

“Audiences are my thing, but they’re hers too. She’s more popular than anyone. At least she was.”

The large woman was talking to the man beside her, motioning at the ropes around his neck. He stood beside her, head cocked. As they chatted, more of the people passing through gravitated to me and my cross.

“You got nothing,” Teddy yelled over at the chlostis, but she wasn’t paying attention.

What can this do?

“You don’t know what you’re doing here, right? I know what I’m doing.”

We have all the audience now. Why challenge them?

“If we do this right he won’t have legs to walk out of Painfreak on. Let’s give him a win.”

I had to muddle through it first, but it made sense. Whoever left Painfreak had to be capable of leading a legion into battle. We walked, and that took legs. We carried weapons, and that took arms. Teddy nodded our head.

Sal worked our belly now, making long, shallow slices back and forth. Our skin puckered along the edges, each dressed in occasional pearls of crimson. Our heart beat quicker. I wanted us to cry out now, to tear myself off the cross and help the scrawny man allot the chlostis out.

“Wait,” Teddy said.

Flat on the ground, the woman stretched at the urging of several ropes. Two were tied to her elbows and two more to her knees. The audience participated, with four kneeled around her on the ropes and the two largest ones taking spots at the top and bottom, one between her legs and the other at her head to hold her flat.

The skinny man took a single stick and wove it underneath the loop on the woman’s meaty left leg, slowly rotating the stick and cinching the rope.

We’re losing the audience, I said, watching two of my observers peel off.

“That’s okay this time.” Teddy’s confidence saturated our thoughts, leaving me comfortable.

The painfreaks pooled around us, some on me but more near the chlostis. The skinny man was starting with her left leg, and that damn leg brought in two souls for every one giving a damn about my seeping belly. Hell, I wouldn’t watch me either.

The thin man had been working a long blade, but he traded it for the saw. Her leg was smiling above the knee, with puffs of yellow fat dribbling on the floor and smearing into the pooling blood. Another man kneeled at the thin man’s side, one hand furiously working the thin man’s groin. A few feet away a woman on hands and knees guided a man in from behind. I’m not certain if it was the leg coming off or the audience participation, but we started losing what little audience we had and no one wandering into view made it past the show. Her show. Only Sal remained with us, and he kept working. I don’t know if he knew what was going on behind him. Watching the chlostis losing left me giddy inside and I needed to see more, so I jumped out of Teddy. Needing to be closer to the failing chlostis landed me in the large man at her head. My hairy hands sank into her fleshy shoulders, squeezing her to the floor. With her eyes rolled back and her mouth a perfect circle, she wasn’t going anywhere. And I knew, right then, that she no longer held the chlostis. He was gone.

Since I hadn’t put myself into Teddy, it hadn’t occurred to me that I could leave him. I just wanted to see what was happening, and there I went. It should have felt powerful, but I found it cold. This man offered nothing. He was empty, a void.

I searched the others around me, looking in their eyes, but there was no chlostis. That meant he was jumping harder and farther. Fuck! Letting go of the flab beneath me, I tried to stand while scanning the room for a sign, but the others blocked my view. Then I saw Sal working his knife across Teddy’s chest. The lines he cut now followed the angular shape of one pectoral. There was no one around him. I jumped to him, where I found a silly kind of satisfaction, the satisfaction you feel when you pike the enemy from behind and they never saw you.

Sal’s soul was whistling, just like his lips. I surveyed the room, but still no chlostis. Had he escaped?

Through Sal’s eyes I looked up at Teddy and found the chlostis. He looked down, his lips stretched into a grim smile. I panicked.

Had it been a trap? Did he mean for me to jump? Did he know? I crumbled inside as my mind took two parallel paths, at once both berating myself and struggling to discover what this meant. If I had Teddy, then left, then the chlostis had Teddy, did that make Teddy the goal? Was he what we were competing for?

Then I noticed Teddy’s eyes wavering, this moment slitted and black, that one wide and brown, then back again. I heard his voice, back on the pier. He’d said called you. Did he mean he’d called me into him?

Was that important?

Knowing I’d fail, I still tried to jump back into Teddy. There wasn’t a doorway and I didn’t budge from Sal. It was like trying to pick myself up off the ground.

Teddy’d called me, and then I left him. I had him, then lost him. Just leave it to a fucking chinny to fold a winning hand.

I took control of Sal and waved the knife in the chlostis’ face. I knew it was an empty gesture, but did he? Teddy’s face didn’t change, his smile painted on and his eyes alternating between anger and pain.

Then I had an answer. Maybe not THE answer, but an answer.

Kneeling, I cut the tape from Teddy’s feet, freeing them from the cross and each other. Then I stood and, with a quick swipe, I cut one arm free. Teddy fell to the other side, his legs limp, hanging by the other arm. When I cut that free he fell on his side looking past the scene around the woman and into the vast warehouse. I wondered if he was looking for the city or the sea.

That was it, then. It wasn’t much, but I’d taken everything from Teddy I had the power to take. No more blood, no more audience, and no more show. He was just a puddle on the floor. With that I walked back over to watch the skinny man piecemeal the woman.

She was limp now and the pool of blood bathed her lower body and half of the assisting crowd. Someone from the audience was trying to tighten the tourniquet on her stump, but it didn’t change the blood loss. Her skin was sallow and her face empty. The amputator wasn’t going to make it to her second leg and I could see the disappointment in the eyes around me. He was losing his audience, too.

It’s odd how inspiration hits you, like it jumps as well. What did I need to win here? I had no idea. But I did know the only thing which felt true was Teddy. He’d called me, and that’d never happened before. That’s what I needed.

One second nothing, and the next I was yelling at the thin man.

“You did it wrong,” Sal and I said. “You fucking idiot, you did it wrong.” I quickly jumped from Sal to a perky brunette standing across the crowd from me. “Wrong!” we said. “She’s dying and you’re wrong!” I wasn’t thinking the lines through and this wasn’t intended to be theater. I just wanted to get something going. Again I jumped, this time to the leg-holder working the whole leg. We stood up, looking down at the top of the scrawny man’s head, and I punched him as hard as I could. As a chinny that punch would have crushed a human’s spine, but as a dark-skinned old man it mostly hurt our hand. But my desired response was obtained when the others joined in.

“This isn’t why I came here,” said one woman, one whole hand clenching three finger stumps on the other.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you, dude?” It was another skinny man, this one with a young face and long hair. The lady on the other side of him pushed the scrawny man on the shoulder and he bounced off my leg. I stepped back as the crowd stepped in, wading into the dying woman’s blood to get some of their own.

Looking back over my shoulder, I saw Teddy on the floor with his back against the cross and his bloody arms crossed. Other than sitting up, he hadn’t moved. I shrugged and smiled. “You win some and you lose some, chlostis. I think this one is mine.” I jumped again, not even sure where I landed, and searched until I saw Teddy. Raising one hand and waving, I said “Mine, too!” Then I waded into the crowd that surrounded the scrawny man, everyone taking turns kicking new screams from his throat.

This had to work. It had to.

Since I couldn’t just sit there staring at Teddy, I walked around to the backside of the crowd, mostly hiding but occasionally peering out to see what Teddy was doing. For the longest time it was nothing, but finally he stood. It was then that I saw the dark-skinned man kneel over the shivering of the scrawny man and say “let’s take his leg!” Immediately the crowd boiled over, people fighting each other to grab an arm or a leg, to be a part of holding him down and making him parts. Looking over at Teddy, I saw he was trying to stand now, so I jumped again. It worked.

At first there was silence, but then I heard a sigh.

You’re back, he said. Nothing more.

“Sorry about that.”

Sorry is not enough. That was pure shit.

“I’ve fought beside them for an eternity, so I know. You didn’t even get an hour.”

Ever have one in your head?

He had me there, so I quit. He was right, sorry wasn’t enough.

««—»»

We were presented the night and we took it, but I don’t know how. I didn’t know then. I didn’t know anything other than I’d made it back into Teddy and had no intention of leaving voluntarily. No one else I jumped to warmed me the way he did, and for that I was thankful. I hoped the chlostis was lost, but I have no idea where it ended up.

We’d taken some stairs, leaving bloody stains behind as we walked, until we found a quiet room filled with naked humans. Sitting in the corner, my body slick with sweat, I pushed at random spots across Teddy’s body. My skin burned in the sweetest way, a sensation I’d never known before. It was…fulfilling. I had parts now that I didn’t know, parts I didn’t understand, but there were people here ready to understand these parts for me and it felt good.

The space was, I expect, somewhere in the eternity inside that concrete warehouse beside the sea. There was the concrete floor, but walls replaced pillars and rose into the dark overhead. Some of the humans danced in silence, close to each other, while others splayed in an ever-shifting blanket of flesh. The room was blandly lit, making it difficult to tell where one body began and another ended.

Sitting there beside me was another human, her face broad and framed with short, black hair. Above her tiny nose two eyes flared and her lips trembled. With one hand she worked the serpent (my name for it, as Teddy called it something else) between my legs until it warmed and stretched. She leaned forward, kissing the thin patch where her fingers had been, then following the kiss with a scrape of her teeth. Reflexively I grabbed the back of her head with both hands, but rather than pulling it off I pulled her face to mine. We pressed faces, I have no idea why, and she lowered herself on my serpent again.

That’s when the two dark-suited men came out of the shadows followed by the headmaster.

I pulled the girl off my serpent and pushed her off, trying to stand. The smaller of the men laughed, but the larger man and the headmaster just stood and watched me.

“Congratulations, chinny. You’ve won the competition,” said the headmaster. I nodded, being as careful as always with my words.

“I chose you specifically for this position. No one else would be right for it. The competition, that was a test for you alone. The other one, he was sacrificial.”

“Thank you, headmaster.” I expressed gratitude on the outside, but it felt like trouble in my gut. Chinnys aren’t chosen special for anything except reconnaissance. We’re sneaky.

“Don’t you want to know which legion? Where you’ll be fighting? Who you’ll be fighting for?”

“Yes, headmaster.” This was true, completely true. I did want to know.

“Here. Los Angeles.”

“Yes, headmaster.” What?

“This is where you’ll draft your legion and this is where we’ll fight.”

“We will fight, headmaster? A legion?” Individuals were sent to man’s world but, to my knowledge, never forces.

“Yes, we. You fight for me, chinny, and I fight for Angra Mainyu. I’m your daevu and you’re leading my first legion. We used to sneak among the humans, but no more. Now the strategy is changing. We’re moving in among them, then exploding outward. Today it’s only us, but tomorrow we recruit.”

A legion of humans fighting for Angra Mainyu? I didn’t see how this could end well, but I’d had that feeling for as long as I’ve been, and it feels like I’ve always been. I could continue.

“Follow us out, chinny.” The headmaster turned and the other two went next, but I paused. Only one thing wasn’t right.

“I’m called Teddy now, headmaster” I said. I doubt he heard me, but it was saying it that mattered.

| — | — |

Sacred Meat

————

Jeffrey Thomas

1: Punktown

It wasn’t as though there wasn’t already pain to be had in Punktown. Pain was the city’s quintessence. The wealthy and empowered, however—normally insulated from street level suffering—sometimes chose to experience pain on their own terms. Somehow it was more acceptable, that is desirable, to be beaten bloody by a beautiful mutant in a corset than beaten bloody by a homeless mutant in need of drug money. There was still a sense of control in such a situation, even when what drove the person seeking pain was the allure of loss of control. Some merely flirted at the edge of the cliff, while others plunged from the order of their clean existence into the wellspring of chaos, trusting it was a pool they could return from if they just kept their head above water.

Clubs and establishments for those with a taste for pain—either given or received, or both—were spread throughout the enormous city, which had been built by Earth colonists on the world they called Oasis but had since then filled with immigrants from countless other planets. Among those clubs that catered to jaded tastes was The Poison Apple, on Folger Street, where the nude dancers were dead bodies animated by a series of implants manipulated by a nervojockey. There were rumors of a similar club called Low where the animated corpses were those of young children. There were brothels both modest and grandiose, chief among the latter being the licensed and multi-floored Solon, in which whole levels were devoted to B&D, S&M. Yet still, with familiarity, sojourners into chaos might grow bored with even such offerings. Numbness returned; dissatisfaction filled sterile hours. There were those who were ever on a quest to discover the next thrill or flavor. To experience that much more.

Some of these yearning sojourners learned that a new place, a traveling place called Painfreak—most recently found in the city of Miniosis, and before that on far Earth—had made its way to Punktown.

2: Khi Ma Soo

Sinanese p-actresses were not uncommon now, and of course Bran Devoy found many of them attractive and exciting, because to his mind the blue-skinned women from the world Sinan—a planet existing in a dimension that abutted this one—were the most beautiful of the varied human and humanoid races. However, twenty years ago there had only been one Sinanese adult vid actress, who as a result had been quite popular, despite the mixed reactions those in the Earth Colonies had regarding the so-called Blue War on her doubly removed world. Devoy had developed a crush on her that came to exceed even those obsessive teenage infatuations he had harbored for mainstream movie actresses and music stars, images of whom had filled his wrist comp and sparked his fantasies in the privacy of darkness.

That once-singular actress was named Khi Ma Soo, though Devoy had known even then that might not be her actual name, Sinanese though it sounded. Sinanese skin tones could range from vivid to pale blue; hers was somewhere in-between. She was of medium height, not quite as petite as the average Sinanese woman, small-breasted and athletic in build, beautifully proportioned; one might even say graceful in appearance and in her movements. In her earliest vids, when she was presumably in her late teens, she wore her black hair cut shortish, sometimes with red streaks through it. She typically wore makeup then, too, and false eyelashes, maybe to make her slitted eyes with their single eyelids appear larger. In her earliest vids she portrayed schoolgirls seduced by teachers played by male actors Devoy felt were chosen because they would be easy for viewer to identify with: unattractive middle-aged men. Though, she was also seduced by a female teacher or two, or an older female student, and sometimes students who were of other than humanoid races and sexes. One of Devoy’s favorite vids from the early and most popular period of her career had involved her being ravished after school hours by a minimally anthropomorphic robot, supposedly a school janitor.

Devoy had lost track of Khi Ma Soo over the years. Later he came to realize there had been a large gap where she had disappeared from the scene. Had she married unsuccessfully in the interim? He knew he had. Devoy’s wife had greatly disapproved of p-vids, and that had been okay for a few years…while she was still having sex with him on a regular enough basis. But when his wife had ultimately left him (for another man; naturally), Devoy had dived back into that nocturnal realm of the net that had formerly provided him daily release from the stresses of school, then the stresses of work, and always the stresses of existence in Punktown. Not so much dived, as submerged himself utterly in a bathysphere.

It was then he rediscovered Khi Ma Soo. She appeared to have resurfaced in the p-industry in her mid to late thirties. Though still stunning, to him she looked a bit worn. Her thick, space-black hair was now quite long: falling to the start of her superbly rounded bottom, falling across the bodies of the men and women she bent over and administered to. Her breasts were a little less firm, she no longer wore makeup, her cheekbones were more distinct, the soft freshness of her teenage years behind her. This only made her more real to Devoy, less like the surgically or genetically modified or computer-enhanced p-actresses that abounded on the net. He believed he found her even more attractive than before, or was it just that he himself had grown older along with her, like a brother separated at birth? Whatever the case, his infatuation with her returned full force.

So much so, that he sought out every one of her previously unseen vids, every still image of her (not many of these being recent), until he could find no more in the net. Alas, there were no recordings of her to be found in the more immersive ultranet, wherein one could experience virtual sex that felt thoroughly like the real thing. God knows he looked there (and along the way, dallied with some other Sinanese actresses, but they weren’t Khi Ma Soo).

He watched and rewatched those vids he did save to his library, particularly the most recently discovered with the older Khi Ma Soo. Sometimes he felt a little flutter when she looked directly into the camera, as if at him. Especially, during those POV shots gazing down at her as she sucked upon a cameraman’s member. One of her signature moves, though, was to tongue a man’s anus while maintaining eye contact with the camera he held. Devoy found this act ugly and demeaning; he always hoped the men had washed first. He would never have asked her to do that to him, if she’d been his lover, his girlfriend, his wife, roles she had played in countless fantasies, multiply gifted actress that she was.

Her eyes had often looked drugged to him, even many years ago. He didn’t like that thought, especially if it meant she wasn’t doing these things entirely of her own free will. He didn’t like the idea of her being exploited, maybe even through fear of pain. Or was it just the narrowness of her Sinanese eyes, the way her eyeballs rolled under their skin folds to gaze upwards, that made her look that way?

Even as he was excited to release by the scenes he played, he found them equally disturbing, like a husband who masochistically invites men to have sex with his wife while he watches. He himself felt like a jealous husband. He might very well perform all these same acts with her, if he had the opportunity, but less brutishly. He would not claw his fingers into her mouth, pulling at her beautiful face like a mask, and thereby twist her head almost backwards while he took her from behind standing up. He would not place her bare feet (how he longed to lick their soles) on his chest and then lean heavily down onto her, so that her legs were bent back to the sides of her head. He wouldn’t squeeze the flesh of her haunches in his fists as he pounded her doggy-style, nor pound that savagely, nor pull her hair that hard, nor reach forward and take her by the jaw in both hands and pull her head back that far. Her anus was a round, ever-open hole, like a bullet hole, because another signature act for her was anal sex. That he would do…but not too often! Not too roughly!

He would not slap her bottom, at least not that hard. He would not spend himself on her face, that beautiful face, like a dog marking its territory. (Though numerous times he had climaxed at the precise moment her vid lovers did.)

She didn’t seem to like men kissing her on the mouth, never frenched with them, drawing away with a polite smile when they tried. Devoy liked that. Oh, but he would kiss her. Tenderly. Adoringly. It was like an act she had been saving all these years just for him.

She had a little dark gap at the base of every tooth when she grinned one of her wide, slightly goofy, rather shy smiles. He thought it might have to do with the old Sinanese habit of cleaning between their teeth with a toothpick. It was just one of the homely little details like that single pockmark on her forehead that had endeared her to him, that seemed to make her accessible; letters in a secret code only he cared enough to piece together and read.

What had she been like as an innocent child? Had she been happy; had she been loved? Or had she been orphaned during the Blue War? For her to have immigrated to Punktown twenty years ago, she had to have been one of the Jin Haa, the Sinanese ethnic group the Earth Colonies had supported, rather than of the Ha Jiin group that had then been the enemy. As a child she could never have foreseen the trajectory of her life. Did she ever reflect upon it now?

In her vids she sometimes grimaced with clenched teeth when the bastards rode her, their skin smacking against hers, and her moans sounded as much like pain as pleasure, and Devoy would be as upset at the thought of her suffering as he was aroused by these grimaces and moans.

He felt sorry for her, and he wanted to know if she were all right now.

The most recent of this latter period of vids he’d discovered was several years old, apparently.

He wanted more.

3: The Quest

He did everything he could think of to find Khi Ma Soo. Not just more vids, more still pictures, but contact with the woman himself.

He didn’t have much to offer if he found her. His job was just adequate, and he wasn’t handsome nor all that young, but he would kiss her. He would hold her. She would be appreciated as an exotic goddess—not just some sweat-damp slab of meat—by a one-person audience.

He wanted to tell her he didn’t really know her, but he loved her.

He scoured the net. Contact listings for Punktown’s citizens, going back years. Census reports (though these were inadequate, of course, in Punktown.). Immigration records. He scattered messages like notes in glass bottles. He tried to contact the outfits that had made or distributed her vids, but they either didn’t respond or, if they did, told him they couldn’t provide personal information regarding their talent. One man, a little more approachable or sympathetic, told Devoy he hadn’t seen or heard of Khi Ma Soo for a number of years now.

Devoy sought solace in other p-vids, compensation in ultranet VR sessions. One evening after work he sat at his home comp, affixed interface disks to his temples, and sank himself into the ultranet; his destination a VR brothel he had visited before. He shyly made his choice from the women lounging about in the showroom: a gray-skinned Kalian, with entirely black eyes and scandalously devoid of a traditional turban. Kalian prosties and p-actresses were hard to come by. He followed her into a spacious, classy bedroom like something out of a top hotel. The door closed behind him. Standing in the center of the pristine white carpet, the woman smiled at him seductively as she began to undress. “Have you ever had a Kalian woman before, Bran?” she purred.

“Yes,” he said shyly. “Well…not in the flesh.”

Sometimes these VR sex workers were merely constructs, but this brothel prided itself on having real live people on the other side of its avatars, themselves experiencing physical sensations. Problem with that was, maybe the woman on the other side of this Kalian avatar wasn’t a Kalian. Or young. Or even a woman. Then again, Devoy himself was using an avatar in the likeness of a popular young film star. Whatever the case, he could already smell the naturally spicy musk of her ash-colored flesh.

Meanwhile, on a bedside table stood a virtual bottle of his favorite bourbon. Resting beside it was a new bestselling novel from an author he liked. Soft blue outlines around these advertisements sought to draw his eye to them. A trailer for a new movie played on a VT screen covering most of one wall, but thankfully the volume was low and muted the explosions.

Devoy looked from the VT back to the woman and saw that she was unmoving, staring at him without blinking, as if frozen in the process of lifting one leg out of her panties. Balanced on one foot.

“Ah, hello?” Devoy said to her. A glitch?

He heard the room’s door unlock and slide open behind him and he whirled toward it, startled. He hadn’t ordered a ménage à trois.

“Forgive the intrusion, Mr. Devoy,” said the person who stepped into the sumptuous room. The door panel slid shut again after him. This individual wore the expensive five-piece suit of a business executive, his hands buried in his jacket pockets, but his head was nothing more than an oval of red metal without features. Devoy might have taken it for a mask or a close-fitting helmet, but the oval levitated a few inches above the person’s shirt collar. Devoy saw his avatar’s face reflected in its surface. The intruder’s voice sounded like a hypnotized man speaking in an echoy tomb.

“Did you hack into here?” Devoy demanded, hearing a quiver in his own voice. Was he going to be virtually robbed? It happened.

“You have been looking for Khi Ma Soo,” the stranger stated.

Devoy didn’t need to ask how this person could know that. His fingerprints would be all over the net. “Why do you ask?” he said, though the stranger hadn’t phrased his statement as a question.

“We thought you might care to know that you can be taken to her.”

Might care to know? Just as much as he might care to win the Punktown lottery and never have to report to his dreary job again. “Where is she?” he asked dubiously.

“At an erotic establishment, a club if you will, that goes by the name of Painfreak—newly arrived in this city,” the stranger replied in his uninflected voice.

“Does Khi Ma Soo work there?”

A tick of hesitation. “One might say that.”

“Well…that would be great, if it’s really true. So where is this place?”

“Painfreak is presently situated in the old Milagroso Products warehouse, in the Battery.”

Devoy knew the Battery was an area just off Industrial Square. Like Punktown’s more dangerous ghetto Warehouse Way, since the great economic crisis of thirty-plus years ago the Battery’s manufacturing plants and warehouses had been mostly shut down or converted into apartments. “What does it cost to get in?” he asked. This was one hell of an invasive advertisement. He’d be outraged if not for Khi Ma Soo, but he was still wary as to whether what was being promised were true.

“Money is not accepted for admittance,” said the stranger with the hovering head. “Guests are admitted only by referral. I am offering you that referral.”

“Yeah?” Devoy said, suspicious. What was the catch? He supposed this only meant there was no door charge, but that the entertainments within were individually costly. “Why?”

“Painfreak is welcomed wherever it travels by those who are in a position to see that its integration and operation occur discreetly. Powerful people of certain appetites. Appetites that are too often only dreamed of. These hosts of Painfreak extend their hospitality to others who share in their tastes for pleasure. Without there being a group, there would be no Painfreak.”

Hunger could be a lonely thing, Devoy would certainly agree. “When could I go?”

“When you are ready.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“I will notify the doormen to be sure to admit you.”

“Thanks,” Devoy said. “I’ll…try it. And you are absolutely sure Khi Ma Soo will be there?”

“You will find what you are looking for. Again, forgive my interruption, Mr. Devoy. I will take my leave now.”

The faceless stranger pivoted neatly toward the door. The panel whisked open, he stepped through the threshold, and when the door had closed Devoy heard a sound behind him. A giggle from the center of the room.

The Kalian woman said, “Don’t turn your back, Bran. No need to be shy.”

4: Painfreak

He hadn’t wanted to leave his vehicle on the street here, nor had he wanted to park at a garage and walk the remaining distance, since the only weapon he had on him was a legal stun gun that didn’t require a license. Thus he had a hovercab drop him off, and asked the driver—a Waiai with sunflower yellow skin, who seemed to navigate just fine despite his lack of eyes—how quickly he could return if he was called.

“One of us could be here in just a few minutes,” the Waiai assured him. Then his vehicle, the same color as his skin, was gliding away and Devoy turned to face the entrance of the former Milagroso Products warehouse, the holographic word RECEPTION floating just above it. Every so often a jolt of interference would skew it. The block-like building’s face loomed over him, a wall of petrified darkness, but a greenish glow shone out from the doorway.

Devoy approached the sickish glow, and when he had almost stepped into it a figure shifted sideways to intercept him. He started. The figure was a bulky silhouette of uncertain shape. When he got past being startled, though, Devoy could make out it was two men fused or grafted together somehow. Certainly not conjoined twins, for the main body was that of a huge and powerfully built Caucasian, his bald head and face scarred as if from countless bouts of hand-to-hand combat, whereas from the left side of his torso (where he was missing one arm) sprouted the upper chest, left arm, and head of a smaller man of East Asian ancestry. Their melded bodies were garbed in a single black jumpsuit. Both wore vision enhancement wraparounds.

“I’m, ah, Bran Devoy,” he said to them. “I was told you’d be expecting me.”

“Please extend your left hand,” said the Asian head of the double man.

Devoy did so, but almost drew it back in fear as the Asian man reached his one hand into a pocket of the roomy jumpsuit and pulled out a small black instrument that at first glance looked like a gun. He positioned its end over the back of Devoy’s hand, and an unpleasant tingling like a concentrated electric shock was felt between his thumb and index finger. He assumed a mark of admittance had been left there, that perhaps their eye gear permitted the two heads to see, though he saw nothing himself.

“You may enter, Mr. Devoy,” said the Asian man, and the hulking figure stepped aside to let him pass into the building.

Ahead of him in a shadowed recess was the reception desk for the defunct Milagroso company’s warehouse facility. To the left of this was an apparent office wing, but the door to it was shut and the door’s window dark. To the right, though, a long corridor led away to the distant thudding bass of music, like the throb of a gigantic heart, distant light strobing like the interior of a thundercloud. Devoy craned his neck to peer down this gloomy hallway toward whatever was going on beyond its end, presumably in the open warehouse area. It just sounded like any other dance club to him, and he disliked such scenes. Was he supposed to find the woman he sought in a crowded mass of thrashing bodies? The idea didn’t appeal to him, and yet if Khi Ma Soo was truly here he couldn’t turn back now.

“Can I help you, Mr. Devoy?” said a voice.

He started again, if only on the inside, and noticed what he hadn’t before: that a woman was seated in the shadows behind the reception desk. She rolled forward a little in her chair, coming into that weak green light. She was of the race called the Tikkihotto, who appeared very much like Earthers except that rather than eyes they had clusters of clear ocular tendrils. Lighted colored beads were spaced along each of her tendrils, but their material had to have been lightweight, since these strands still wriggled freely in the air. He had heard of Tikkihotto prosties who excited a client by inserting these eye tendrils into their anus.

“Yeah, well,” he stammered, “I came here hoping to find a Sinanese woman named Khi Ma Soo. I was told —”

“She can be found here,” said the Tikkihotto. She rose from her seat. She was nude, more of those lighted beads threaded through her nipples and labia. She came out from behind the desk and stepped toward the door to the darkened offices. She saw Devoy glance with confusion toward the hallway that culminated in noisy chaos, and explained, “That way is for tourists. This way is for players.”

He followed her through a murky maze of abandoned office cubicles, lit only by red emergency bulbs. Beyond the cubicles they came to a lift, and entered it together. He felt a delicious tremor go through him at being contained in so small a space with the naked woman. The lift descended one floor, and the door hissed open. They stepped out into a subterranean level, the ceiling of this corridor low and lined with pipes and bundles of power cables. Down here the booming pulse of dance music was gone; in fact, it was so quiet he heard an echoy drip of water from beyond an open doorway they passed by. His guide came to a stop in front of another door, pushed a button to open it, and gestured for him to go in ahead of her.

And just like that, after years of worshipping her from a removed, here she was. Khi Ma Soo. It didn’t seem possible, as though all along he had doubted she actually existed—as if she might only be a realistic comp construct, or a figment of his own imagination—but here was the fantasy in the flesh. He felt stunned.

To be fair, he was also a bit stunned by the tableau before him.

Two groups of three hospital-style beds were arrayed along one wall, and opposite them was a long work station covered in computer equipment, above which floated overlapping holographic screens. Several of the larger of these virtual monitors showed striated fields of pink and white dotted with purple, like alien landscapes seen from on high. These were apparently medical scans of the interior of the subjects who lay upon several of the beds.

A well-dressed, middle-aged human man lay in one of the beds with his eyes closed, interface disks stuck to his temples. The two beds immediately beside him were empty. The other three beds, though, were occupied by a trio of naked people whose wrists and ankles were pinned by restraints. One of these was Khi Ma Soo, her eyes closed also, her face slack as if she were asleep or under anesthesia. The person next to her, also restrained and unconscious, was a male Earther, a youth of maybe eighteen. The third naked subject—her head crested with a metallic-purple Mohawk—was a Choom, the native race of Oasis, who were human in configuration but for having lips cut back to the mandible’s hinges. Her jaw was presently so wide open it looked like it was tearing itself off, and from her mouth’s gaping cavern came a deep, drawn-out moan. She was twisting against her restraints as if suffering an intense nightmare.

Devoy’s guide swept her arm toward the sophisticated tech set up opposite the beds and explained in a pleasant voice, “We’ve introduced a horde of nanomites into her body. The gentleman lying there has been interfaced with them, so that he is seeing through their eyes, so to speak, collectively or individually as he prefers…as they crawl through the tiniest nooks and crannies of her body. What penetration could be more intimate? Within her, he can directly interact with her body in such a way as to stimulate the nociceptors.”

“What does that do?”

“It causes pain.”

The deep moan grew louder, ratcheting higher until it became a sustained whine. The Choom woman’s jaw snapped shut and she gnashed her multiple rows of molars, her eyes scrunching more tightly shut. Tendons stood out in her neck, sweat gave her flesh a sheen in the glow of the monitors. She arched her back up off the bed.

The Tikkihotto guide went on, “He can just as easily administer pleasure. A guest in this room typically likes to alternate between both.” She swept her arm again, gracefully…this time toward Khi Ma Soo. “Would you like to enter into the body of this woman, then?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbled, as if talking in his sleep. All of this did, indeed, feel dream-like.

He had not come here to cause Khi Ma Soo pain, surely. But might he bring her so much pleasure—tender, gentle pleasure, such as she might never have experienced before in all her years of offering up her flesh—that she would be grateful for it? Grateful enough to want him in her life? To love him?

The guide watched his hesitant face with her writhing tendrils, and before he could say more told him, “This woman is also in the next room. Perhaps you would prefer her there.”

He looked to her with a furrowed brow. “What?”

“Allow me to show you.”

They left the room, Devoy throwing a reluctant look back at the object of his quest. What more could his guide show him—he had found what he was searching for!—and yet passively he followed her, curious to learn what she had meant.

They entered another chamber further along the underground corridor, and the Tikkihotto said, “She is also in here.”

This new room must have been soundproofed, because Devoy didn’t hear the screams and pleading until the door had opened. This front part of the room was small, little more than a booth, but beyond the booth stretched a long narrow section. The walls of the booth were lined with weapons in brackets: a variety of rifles and handguns, power bows, a number of spear gun-like things. A neatly bearded Earther in his thirties, wearing only a pair of boxers and with interface disks pasted over his nipples, stood at a counter with a kind of crossbow tucked into his shoulder. He glanced over irritably at their intrusion.

At the far end of the longer section of the chamber, within a little alcove like an animated statue, a nude woman was shackled to the wall with her arms above her head, squirming and sobbing hysterically, a pair of interface disks fixed to her head. She was a Choom; in fact, with her purple Mohawk cut she looked identical to the Choom who was being tortured from within by a swarm of nanomites in the previous room. Two short bolts were stuck in the white flesh of her midsection, another having pierced all the way through her upper left thigh, like the lances of a picador, or the arrows in a martyred saint.

The Tikkihotto depressed a button to one side of the counter and a panel slid upward next to the Choom, revealing another naked woman shackled in another niche in the wall. As if aroused from sleep, the woman lifted her disk-fitted head and stared back at them. It was Khi Ma Soo. (But how could she have been moved so quickly from that hospital bed to this firing range?) She was too far away for Devoy to see her expression perfectly, but from here she looked tense with fearful anticipation. He couldn’t bear to have her lock eyes with his for the first time like this, so he whirled to face his guide.

“Oh no…no…I don’t want to kill her!”

“You’re distracting me, guy,” said the man at the counter. He turned his attention back to his target.

“Don’t!” Devoy began reaching out to him, thinking the man meant to fire at Khi Ma Soo.

The crossbow-device thwacked. Its bolt flew down the length of the firing range and struck the female Choom in the right eye. Her screaming stopped. The crossbow man went rigid and shook violently as if he were being electrocuted. He let out a long groan, the front of his boxers tenting outward, and Devoy assumed the woman’s disks had transmitted a watered-down version of her pain to him, upon the bolt having entered her body. But as her head slumped heavily, and her body expired, the signal was lost and the man glared at Devoy again.

“I wasn’t ready for that yet, momfuck. You spoiled my aim.”

Devoy was tempted to grab one of the handguns off the wall, but his guide pushed that button again, the panel descended to once more conceal Khi Ma Soo, and she ushered Devoy back out into the hallway.

“There are many more rooms in this facility I can show you.”

“You cloned her, that’s it, isn’t it?” Devoy said. Though he had come to find the real Khi Ma Soo, he was relieved by his realization. He couldn’t otherwise have withdrawn and let that man with the crossbow kill her next. Cloning—except for the production of soldiers and types of laborers—was illegal in Punktown. The people who had facilitated the coming of Painfreak to Punktown must have connections to the Neptune Teeb crime syndy, who were known for their illegal cloning services.

The Tikkihotto didn’t need to confirm it. “If this diversion isn’t to your liking, Mr. Devoy,” she simply said, taking him by the arm, “perhaps the next activity will be more to your taste.”

“How many of her are here?” he asked as he kept up with his guide, down the corridor.

“As many as you want there to be.”

The basement corridor came to a T. To the right, it kept on going, and steam hissed from a rupture in a ceiling pipe down that way. After a few feet the left-hand branch ended with a dented, paint-peeling metal door. The Tikkihotto punched a key, the door drew back with a grating sound, and they passed into a great room that had to have been a subterranean warehouse area. Riveted metal columns helped support the ceiling, which was crisscrossed with thick metal joists. Here and there, puddles of leaked water reflected the far-spaced overhead lights. The lights also shone on several large hulking shapes that lay on the warehouse floor, in the foreground. More such shapes were hinted at further back.

“What…what are those?” Devoy asked with trepidation, even as the Tikkihotto began walking him toward the nearest of these bulky masses.

He smelled something savory. The smokiness of something cooking, and there was a haze in the air that diffused the irregular light and made the deepest reaches of the vast room uncertain.

“Oh my God,” Devoy whispered, when they came to the first giant object.

It was indeed a giant. Devoy recognized the teenage boy from the nanomites room, but now grown through some magic of science to far greater size. The size of a midrange whale. He lay on his side in a fetal position, eyes closed. Drugged? Not dead: he was breathing. He gave off a strong tang of sweat, and a strong tang of blood, because a man was slicing into one of his fuzzed buttocks with a long bladed implement. What Devoy had first taken for dark pools of water were pools of blood. The man wielding the implement wore a rubber apron and goggles to protect himself from spray. His face and the metal column behind him were speckled with spatter. He was naked under his apron, but Devoy wondered if he wore interface disks on his nipples. He saw none on the titan.

Nearby was a wheeled table atop which were more cutting implements, indeed like the flensing tools of some ancient whaling vessel. There was also a chainsaw.

Devoy repressed a gag as the man in the apron completed excising a great slab of flesh from the clean, deep buttock wound, bright yellow inside with exposed fat. It fell to the puddle the man stood in. He set down his cutting tool and a woman came forward to help him lift the chunk of flesh onto another wheeled cart. Devoy took this nude, heavily tattooed woman to be another of Painfreak’s staff, like his escort. She wheeled this cart away, toward the source of the aromatic smoke. The cart’s wheels squeaked. In his slumber, the giant boy sighed.

“Are you hungry, Mr. Devoy?” asked his guide.

“No,” he said, clamping a hand over his nose and mouth. “Not like this, I’m not. This is…it’s…”

“It’s a form of communion,” she told him. “Haven’t you wanted to commune with the flesh of the one you crave? To have that person inside you, and be one with you? Haven’t you hungered to consume them?”

Devoy looked past the monstrous boy, toward another huge shape somewhat obscured by the smoke from wherever in the mist the meat was being grilled. He staggered toward the hulk and the Tikkihotto followed, smiling placidly.

He heard a grunt behind him, and paused to look back. While he waited for his meat to be cooked for him, the man in the goggles had removed his apron. Standing up, he was pumping into a new, small incision he had made with a knife in the front of the youth’s thigh.

Devoy continued moving toward this other giant. This blue-skinned giant, also lying curled on its side. The floor around it was dry, as yet.

With her hair spread out around her head like a great spill of ink, here lay an immense living copy of Khi Ma Soo. So immense that that pockmark on her forehead that he knew so well from her vids was like a crater in her flesh. Eyes peacefully closed, her lips slightly parted, her side rising and falling with her respiration. Surely she was drugged. If she were awake and alert, would she fight them? Crush them? Or would she merely hold the cheeks of her bottom open for them, as she did in her vids? Roll over into the next position that was expected of her?

“Does it have memories?” Devoy asked. “A mind?” When his guide didn’t answer him he spun toward her. “Is the real Khi Ma Soo in here somewhere?”

He now prayed that she wasn’t. Perhaps the real Khi Ma Soo had died some years ago, and her genetic material had been bequeathed or stolen. Or perhaps she was married now, and content, somewhere else in Punktown or even on Earth, or maybe she had finally returned to her home world. The thought of her being dead, or living far from him, hurt him as much as it extended a kind of hope.

“Why do you ask these questions?” the Tikkihotto said. “What does it matter? And be honest with yourself…do you really care?”

“I don’t want her to suffer,” Devoy said weakly.

“Want? No one needs to lie in Painfreak—to others or themselves. You need care only for fulfilling your longing, Mr. Devoy. Satisfying your hunger. We know that’s what you want; that’s why you’re a guest here.”

He moved closer to the sleeping giant. He wanted to kneel down in front of her mouth and feel her warm exhalations flow over him. He wanted to caress the wall of her cheek. Instead, after staring at her face for a few moments, he walked around behind her, reached up high and placed his hand flat against her thigh where it met her bottom. He ran his hand down her smooth flesh. When his hand descended to face level, he stepped right up against her, both his hands now on her, and he pressed his nose into her blue flesh to draw in its scent. He closed his eyes, resting his cheek against her.

Devoy pushed out his tongue, and licked her flesh in one long stroke.

He was aware of another cart of sharp implements a few paces away, their blades as yet unbloodied.

He wasn’t sure, just yet, if he wanted to cut deeply into her and remove slabs of her flesh to be cooked…to be consumed. Her blood making valentine-red gloves of his hands. Her blood filling his mouth. Or if he might want to cut an incision into the taut expanse of her belly, and push his way past her enormous coils of spilled intestines, so that he might secret himself inside her like a child.

He might do both those things, and more, but for now he just remained as he was, cheek against her skin, eyes closed in terrible bliss, and licked Khi Ma Soo again.

| — | — |

Aikiko’s Blade

————

Colleen Wanglund

She stood as still as stone, listening. Goosebumps were rising on her skin in the cool, damp air. The forest was black around her but up ahead in the clearing moonlight shone down on an abandoned temple entrance. This is where she had followed the man—the Ronin who had murdered the monks but left her inexplicably alive.

There was something wrong here, though. Aikiko listened intently. She heard the rustle of leaves in the wind but the birds were silent. Aikiko could feel it. She didn’t know what it was, but knew she would find out soon enough. She squatted with her back against a tree, eyes firmly on the clearing. She knew the Ronin would make an appearance. He wanted her to follow him. Aikiko would wait, hand grasping the hilt of her katana.

««—»»

The man had been brutal at the monastery, killing all but Aikiko. In the middle of the blood and viscera she raised her blade to face him but he had just laughed, beckoning her to follow. He was a Ronin, a master-less samurai now working as a mercenary, earning money wherever he could. They were becoming more common now. But why kill the monks? There was no treasure to be had. And why let her live?

Aikiko had been abandoned at the small monastery as an infant. The monks knew nothing of her mother except that she was from a local village and had disappeared after leaving the baby. She told them nothing of who the baby girl’s father may be. The monks had tried to find a family that would take the baby in, but the people of the area were very poor and would not accept a girl child. She would be nothing but a burden until she reached an acceptable age for marriage. Boys were what couples wanted and girls were usually drowned within minutes of birth. The monks named her Aikiko, meaning “bright child” and raised her as best they could. They taught her Bushido—the ways of the samurai and the use of the katana. She grew up to become a guardian of sorts, protecting the monastery from desperate people and Ronin alike. Her only loyalty as a samurai was to the monks. Times were hard with the local shoguns at war with one another. Now the monks were dead, her home destroyed, and only vengeance in her heart. She would make the Ronin pay with his life or die trying. There was nothing left for her now.

««—»»

Just before dawn Aikiko saw movement at the temple gate. Three men emerged into the clearing. One was the Ronin. The other two consisted of a tall bulk of a man dressed as a samurai and a slightly-built man dressed in discreet silk robes of dark blue. None seemed concerned if anyone was around waiting to pounce. Aikiko found this odd. The Ronin knew she would follow. Surely he hadn’t forgotten about her? The two others went back into the temple and the Ronin turned and looked right at Aikiko. He motioned for her to follow and headed out of the clearing into the forest. Shocked but intrigued, she followed the Ronin.

They traveled for a time with Aikiko staying some yards back. He never once turned to see if she followed but seemed confident, nonetheless. The Ronin finally stopped at a ramshackle hut tucked between two large trees and entered, finally looking behind to see if the girl followed. Aikiko stopped and waited. When he didn’t come out of the hut she slowly crept to the opening, katana unsheathed and ready to kill. Smelling the telltale whiff of smoke, Aikiko entered the hut.

The Ronin was seated in front of a small fire and motioned for Aikiko to take a seat opposite. She complied, laying the katana across her lap. She glared at him but only saw a tired and resigned old man seated across from her.

“I knew you would come,” he said.

“You killed my people. I am simply seeking revenge.”

“Don’t you want to know about your mother?”

The question startled Aikiko. This man knew her mother? And knew her?

“What do you know of my mother, or me?” She asked, incredulous.

“I waited as she left you with the monks. We then went together to the special place in the clearing. It’s called Painfreak,” he said.

Was this man her father?

“No, I am not your father,” he replied, seeming to read her thoughts.

“What is this place? Painfreak? Is my mother there? Does she dare come back for a daughter she abandoned?”

“Your mother is dead,” he said. Aikiko was silent.

“Your mother was in love with a man who would never marry her. He used her, then abandoned your mother to her fate. An unwed mother gets no sympathy in these times. She hid her pregnancy and then took you to the monks. She could not bring herself to drown you. The unbearable heaviness of her being drove her back to that place—to Painfreak—her low station in life, the rejection of the man she loved, and her overwhelming loneliness. It was a willing demise for her.”

“And the man who fathered me?” She asked.

The Ronin averted his eyes. “Dead.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe it. He may as well be, if he isn’t already.”

Aikiko knew the Ronin was lying and the man who was her father was in the place inside the abandoned temple. She was determined to find him and believed the Ronin was meant to bring her to him.

He got up to leave. “Stay the night. The fire is warm and the shelter will keep you dry.” With that he left.

Aikiko lay awake for a long time thinking about her next course of action. She would go back to the old temple to find her father—that’s exactly what he and the Ronin wanted. Revenge burned in her heart. When she was done with her father she would then kill the Ronin, as well, for slaughtering the monks and destroying the only home she had ever known. Aikiko finally drifted into a fitful sleep a few hours before dawn with blood on her mind.

««—»»

Aikiko awoke with a start and reached for her blade. Getting her bearings, she relaxed a bit. The Ronin had left some food and water for her. She had her morning meal and then left the dilapidated hut and headed back toward the old temple—Painfreak, as he called it. When she reached the clearing she hid in a small copse of trees at the edge and waited. For what, she wasn’t sure. Some sign of entry as she had seen the night before, perhaps. She would wait for the two men who had been with the Ronin when he left the temple.

««—»»

As dusk approached torches were lit at the entrance to the abandoned temple. Aikiko had not seen them being lit and assumed she had dozed off at some point. The big samurai and the little man in the blue robes were there. The bigger of the two was probably some sort of bodyguard. Even though he dressed as a samurai, he carried no sword. He didn’t need to. Aikiko moved closer to the clearing. The smaller man in blue looked in her direction. She felt goosebumps on her skin. She also felt suddenly overwhelmed with feelings of rage, despair, emptiness, and desire, drawing her closer to Painfreak. Taking a breath, Aikiko emerged into the clearing. The smaller man nodded a greeting. Hand on the hilt of her blade, she moved toward the entrance.

“You need no weapon against me,” said the smaller man, “I am here to help.”

Aikiko bowed her head in greeting. “Thank you.”

“The Ronin you seek has given you entrance to Painfreak, if you wish to use it.” He pointed to Aikiko’s left arm and she saw a faint bone mark. She was confused as to how it got there.

“I do not. I feel nothing but pain and sadness from this place. I do, however, wish to see the man who is my father.”

“I cannot compel him to leave, but I will see what I can do,” said the man in blue silk. He turned to the big bodyguard and whispered in his ear, who then moved through the entrance of the temple into Painfreak. Aikiko moved back to the edge of the clearing and sat, meditating on what to do if her supposed father actually showed himself to her.

««—»»

A few hours had passed before the samurai bodyguard emerged from the temple entrance and spoke to the smaller man. Aikiko watched intently and waited. The smaller man then spoke to her.

“The man you claim is your father will meet you here in the clearing presently.”

“Thank you,” said Aikiko.

Aikiko remained at the edge of the clearing, unsure of what would happen next. Eventually a man emerged from the entrance dressed as a wealthy merchant. His robes were silk and many shades of yellow and green, decorated with cherry blossoms and gold thread. He was tall and lean with a narrow face and eyes like a hawk. He seemed rather effeminate to Aikiko. He moved with grace and assurance toward the middle of the clearing. Aikiko closed the distance between them swiftly.

“I am told by a filthy Ronin that you are my father and the cause of my mother’s death,” she said to the merchant.

“I claim no child. You are a bastard that has intrigued me so I sent the Ronin to bring you here to me. She said you were mine but I didn’t believe her. Many men have known your mother. I am but one. When your mother brought you to me I suggested she drown you. What makes you think I am your father?”

Enraged, Aikiko drew her blade. “So you are calling me a liar and my mother a whore?”

“Yes, that is exactly what I am doing. Your mother came to this place of her own free will. She fully enjoyed all that Painfreak had to offer. The men, the drugs, the attention.”

“But she first came here because of you.”

“I cannot take credit for her stupidity. You, however, I think would enjoy Painfreak as much as she did.”

Aikiko aimed to take down this man who insulted her and her mother. The snap of a twig stopped her momentarily. She looked and saw that the Ronin had returned. Good. It would make things easy for her.

The merchant smiled at Aikiko. “Your mother took the seed of men, as well as their blood. She became quite ruthless with her own blade. Painfreak had entered her very soul and she reveled in it. Did the Ronin tell you that? I see that you, too, have taken to the blade. Maybe Painfreak is in your soul, as well.”

Aikiko looked to the Ronin and he smirked.

“You, girl, would enjoy yourself here. All of the pain and pleasure you could possibly endure. Maybe even at the hands of myself and this merchant,” he said.

Aikiko had heard enough, though she could not deny the pull Painfreak had on her. Maybe they were right and it was in her soul. Either way, revenge was what she wanted. The Ronin drew his blade but seemed unsure of what the girl would do. Aikiko feinted toward him but then struck at the man who she believed was her father, striking downward and slicing him open from shoulder to waist. Blood darkened his robes as he dropped to his knees.

“My mother is avenged.”

“Ha, you are just like your mother,” said the merchant. She swung the blade and cut off his head, which landed at the feet of the man in the blue robes standing just inside the doorway. The bodyguard took it away.

“You will suffer the same fate, girl. I spared your life earlier in the hopes that you would come to Painfreak willingly. You have instead chosen death. You will see your precious monks and your whore mother in the afterlife shortly,” said the Ronin.

Aikiko broke for the temple entrance with the Ronin right behind her. The small man stepped aside and let Aikiko enter Painfreak. She was overwhelmed by the feelings embodied in this place, but it did not stop her progress, seeking out a defensive position against the Ronin on her heels.

Aikiko ran down a long hallway and entered a large chamber, dim under the light of candles, stone walls and ceiling darkened with soot. The stench made her gag. It smelled of sweat, sex, and human waste, but no one else in the space seemed to notice. Many appeared to be smoking opium while others writhed together in multiple orgies around the chamber amid a cacophonous moaning. With nowhere else to run Aikiko turned and raised her blade, ready to face the Ronin. He, however, had stopped just inside the doorway to the opium den, enthralled with what he was seeing.

“Do you not see the pleasure you could take part in?” He asked, taking a few more steps into the chamber.

Aikiko saw no pleasure, only pain, hunger, and debasement of the soul. It made her sick to her stomach. The Ronin dropped his blade and began removing his robes, intent on joining a group near him, thoughts of killing the girl forgotten. Aikiko charged and ran him through with her katana, drawing across the Ronin’s body and eviscerating him. He merely looked down at his fatal wound and smiled, even as his guts fell to the floor at his feet.

“It seems, girl, as though you have ended me.”

She removed the blade and the Ronin sunk to the floor with no one nearby seeming to notice. Aikiko took one last look around the chamber, shaking her head. She walked past the small man in blue robes and the big samurai and left, disappearing into the forest.

Aikiko would return to the ancient temple in the clearing many years later to discover that Painfreak was no longer there. Maybe, she thought, it had moved on to claim more victims, finding comfort in the fact that not only had she avenged her loved ones, but that she also did not share her mother’s fate, though the memories of that day and that hideous place would follow her to the grave.

| — | — |

Divine Red

————

Ryan Harding

I.

He’d been to the building long ago, and there was a compelling symmetry in how it stood abandoned since, awaiting Rob’s return as an adult. It had been a haunted house attraction that October. He’d stumbled down pitch black corridors through what seemed an impossibly deep maze, from one horror spectacle to another. He remembered a graveyard wedding where the bride lifted her veil to reveal a rotted green face. That stayed with him, as well as a maniac in a bloody apron chasing Rob’s group out the exit with a hatchet. He had been scared but elated, and the feeling was not much different now. The place might still have been a haunted house, too.

Whatever commerce transpired on the block in the interim surely involved veins, lungs, throats, and cocks, for a soul-rot so deep no one ever razed it to build condominiums.

“Second thoughts?” Alec asked. Rob detected a hint of the trademark smirk he despised.

“Nope.” Technically true; he was closer to “twentieth.”

In the sickly light of the streetlamps, the structure seemed enormous, with colors and textures of ocher, brick, iron, and rust. It made him think of a diseased organ in some monstrosity. He heard the faintest pulse through the walls, like a heartbeat within the corrupted edifice.

There were no junkies, pushers, bums, or whores on the block. He almost wished there were, just to make it seem less like it was after the end of the world. Nobody else stood at the door to Painfreak.

“Not a very big turn-out,” Rob said.

This time Alec did smirk. “We’re fashionably late.”

Their limited interactions replayed through Rob’s mind like the clues at the end of a Saw film before the surprise ending reveal. Which in his case would be he trusted a stranger to take him somewhere called Painfreak, and was instead stabbed thirty-seven times and dumped in a building where ironically someone chased him with a hatchet twenty-five years ago. A gruesome end for our Darwin Award nominee.

He was pretty sure Painfreak was real, though. Self-proclaimed authorities online insisted it was some elaborate urban legend where charlatans spun tall tales of impossible depravities. Many more claimed otherwise, detailing experiences hardcore but hardly impossible. There were pictures and videos too, which skeptics dismissed as artifacts of anonymous clubs or raves. It seemed only too “convenient” Painfreak traveled randomly like some decadent circus so that people all over the globe could add to its mythos. Like Slenderman sightings, but with more sex and mutilation. Alec claimed it was all real.

Rob believed frauds nurtured the fantastic element but that a realistic incarnation existed—one he still probably wasn’t prepared for.

He’d had to come anyway.

Alec led them to a door which looked black from the street but turned out to be dark green. He knocked three times in slow motion. As the door swung wide, the faint pulse hit harder from somewhere beyond the front chamber, like the heartbeat of a beast in pursuit rather than extremis.

The bald man in the doorway was a thick-necked wall of muscle in a cream-colored button shirt with rolled up sleeves who could probably rip someone in half like wet newspaper. Alec’s smirk dropped away in record time. He dutifully proffered his hand. Rob momentarily thought the doorman had three arms because an extra hand seized Alec’s and relinquished him a moment later, apparently satisfying some prerequisite.

Alec hooked a thumb at Rob and announced, “He’s with me.”

The hidden second man leaned out, dressed in black pants, white shirt and a charcoal vest. He was of Asian descent, and Rob thought he might say, “What is your pleasure, sir?” like Hellraiser, but he said nothing as he pressed a stamp against Rob’s hand. It left no visible mark.

The hulk stepped aside and they walked between him and the Asian to a door at the back of the chamber. As Alec opened it, acoustics changed immediately from a faint rumor of revelry to the mouth of waiting madness. They entered a long corridor lit by cone-shaped lamps, every third or fourth one burned out.

Alec read his uncertainty as the door slammed behind them with resounding finality. The depilated Andre the Giant safely locked away, the leer returned. “Come on. It’s the last night. She’ll be here.”

II.

Rob first saw her at the building he worked, which held both offices and medical practices. He and the other office employees (but not supervisors and managers, no way) were ordered to park in the rear lot so patients could have the spaces nearest the doors. Thus he was literally running late that morning to the lobby, only to find the cruelty of the elevator gods in the form of an excruciating wait. It was empty when it finally arrived. He muttered, “Well, of course,” when he heard clattering steps in the lobby after he pushed for the sixth floor, but he held the door for the late arrival and altered his life.

The elevator gods smiled on him after all when Anna rushed inside with a final staccato beat of her shoes on the tiles. He first noticed her hair, shoulder length auburn against the silk of an emerald blouse. His pulse settled after his hundred-yard dash but it took off again with the certainty he would like the rest of her too. The door jolted his hand a bit more aggressively than when he first stopped it, as if it resented his first intrusion. Rob yanked his arm away theatrically.

“Nearly lost a limb,” he said.

He hoped for a polite smile but was taken aback by her expression. It had to be wishful thinking, because for a flicker he saw pure hunger. Then it was gone, like a sequence of frames cut from a splice of film. He rationalized it as a projection of his own attraction (the polite term in his self-analysis, although “crippling lust” held closer to the truth), and understandably so because it was like the birth of every past crush in his lifetime at once with a fireworks burst of thoughts that all began with I must. He still saw her through the prism of eroticism, and never mind it hadn’t really happened, couldn’t possibly have. The full lips and bedroom eyes conjured an intensity of desire previously unknown to him. Her black skirt was tight, just above knee length, on a figure some would find too thick, even if they’d be only too happy to see the fullness of her chest unhindered. In his euphoria, he failed to ask which floor she needed and she reached to push for the seventh with a left hand bearing no ring. Not engaged/married and not here for a doctor’s appointment. By all rights his smile should have broken his face.

He forced himself not to stare at her directly and toned down the wattage of his smile from “escaped mass murderer” to “nice normal guy.” He hoped they would get stuck for about six hours, but it was over in twenty seconds. The elevator gods gaveth and tooketh away. Premature evacuation. As he reluctantly stepped out, he bid her a “Good day” with a chagrined smile, an Internet meme lost to the ether. He berated himself the rest of the day for the idiotic exit, imagined her thinking, That’s not a knife…this is a knife. God, what a loser.

But that feeling remained, like he was either still going up in that elevator to the thousandth floor or else plunging all the way down.

He had plenty of time in subsequent days to bemoan his limited window for opportunity. For all the imagined conversations and consummations, the divine Red remained more specter than flesh. Seeing her must have been a schedule anomaly because he saw no further trace on his way up or down, lunch break included. Another chance encounter on the elevator would only afford him the first through sixth floors to forge a connection, and asking her out so abruptly could only end in hashtag creepyguy. Especially when his most creative opener so far was “You know what you never see anymore? Guys handcuffed to briefcases.” He was stumped. He needed an in, something better than the weather, the misery of devoting forty hours per week of a finite existence to pie charts and spreadsheets, and the dearth of guys handcuffed to briefcases.

If not married, he knew odds still favored her having an attachment to another man (unfortunate), or even a woman (also unfortunate—also exciting). All the same he savored the obsession, the mystery of wanting without knowing. His days had already become so indistinguishable from one another in the same way they always did at his jobs before, but now simply waiting on the elevator was loaded with potential. She was an escape to which he may yet find his way.

Odds and ins.

He could almost appreciate the irony when he found Alec at his desk days later—an interruption in the routine he loathed, but also an intrusion on his favorite new custom of disappearing within himself in the search for success with the divine Red. They dispatched Alec from the temp agency to act as a floater, so Rob’s supervisor needed him to show Alec the ropes of his daily responsibilities. The process served to underline their banality. Alec looked on with barely concealed boredom and pity. This all reached its nadir on a visit to the copier room where they found the machine inoperable with a message on the LCD to contact a service technician.

“We’ll have to go up to the seventh floor,” he said, with a burst of inspiration. “They have a copier.”

He hoped they did, anyway. Regardless, he now had an excuse to go up to the next level and wander the Red territory. They took the stairs up and found no corresponding copier room, but Rob knew just the person to ask. He led Alec through the aisles of a cubical maze, painfully aware of their otherness here and expecting someone to stand point and cry, “Outlander!” He managed to locate the copier at the end of one aisle, and fortune favored him—her cubicle stood adjacent to it. He couldn’t approach her to ask her about it now, at least without looking like a complete idiot, but he would see her for longer than an elevator ride, at least.

To observe her in such a dull setting seemed somehow profane, but it didn’t stop him feasting his eyes as surreptitiously as possible at the profile view of her in a strapless sage dress. It felt like a real video game power-up, restoring his depleted life force. There was a name plate on her cubicle too. Red the divine was Anna. Knowing her true name enhanced the sacred fantasy. He enjoyed a last lingering look on their way back to the stairs.

While she never noticed him in stalker business mode, his voyeurism hadn’t gone unnoticed by all.

“That girl an ex of yours or something?” Alec asked on the way down.

Rob answered automatically, “What girl?”

“The only one you were staring at, Captain Creepo.”

His aggravation was offset by the darker possibility Alec fancied her and wanted to test if she might be available.

Before Rob figured out a response, Alec continued.” It’s just that if you’re interested, I saw her out the other night.”

Rob stopped with his hand on the door, frozen by the prospect of his coveted “in.”

“Where?”

III.

Painfreak swallowed them, as if the corridor had been its esophagus. Now—belly of the beast, utter maelstrom. The pulse became a shudder that squeezed Rob’s vital organs with each thud. Music lost structure and coherence at this volume, with only an occasional audible lyric for guidance—Am I not your golden chain? Prisms of light fragmented the interior into a living stained glass window, the moving tapestry of bodies on both ground and upper levels awash in reds, blues, yellows from overhead in rotational bursts of colored lightning. The carnality of undulation and abandon seemed like a detail from a Renaissance painting of Hell.

Anna was here.

Anna was here?

Disparate concepts in the audio and visual bedlam. Not something conveyable by any cell phone video or selfie.

Rob wondered who the people were, where they came from. Did they live the sort of sane and measured existence he did, waiting for this bacchanalian reprieve from the meaninglessness which buffeted their daily lives with a quiet fervor equal to the shock and awe on display tonight? It was beyond comprehension he was supposed to go back to work Monday and be complicit in the madness of an orderly single file walk through life on the way to oblivion.

Rob tried to follow Alec, the pulse now like rapid fire from pillars of speakers. Strobes interrupted the flow of colors and the world became a series of still images, each one to match the throttling beat of the music. He felt disembodied, drifting past all the faces and their range of expressions. Delight, lust, loathing, fulfillment. Some were naked, men and women alike. One man gyrated behind a bent over woman, her breasts dangling and swaying as she bounced her ass around. Maybe it was dancing, but they were also definitely screwing.

Jizz on the dance floor. Great.

Rob thought of the times he’d been with women in far less adventurous positions and how he could have superglued his dick inside them and still managed to slide out in mid thrust. He admired these precision fuckrobatics with reverence and envy through a filter of blue light, then red.

He’d lost Alec. He suspected Alec brought him here simply to enjoy the culture shock, but Rob considered him his guide if not his friend. He pushed past the bodies more urgently, hoping to catch sight of him. There didn’t seem to be anywhere you could stand apart from this carnival once you abandoned the corridor, though there had to be a bar somewhere. Upstairs, perhaps.

An oasis of normal fluorescent light beckoned from one corner. A bathroom. Rob switched his trajectory. His eyes and ears needed an intermission.

The attention-span deficit simulation of so many strange faces was like someone flipping through a thick paperback with their thumb in about two seconds. Nothing really registered. So how would Alec have noticed Anna? Rob didn’t doubt he would have himself, but Alec only seemed to see her as merely human.

If she came, he knew he’d find her. If. He couldn’t picture it, but wanted it. Anything to see her, and never mind conversation was impossible in this pandemonium. They could save that talk for later, back in the other world, because this was the connection that would allow it. It seemed like the entire city populace was crammed inside, but Painfreak was still a curiosity known to few. After tonight it moved on to parts unknown, not to return for months. Years. Ever. She had to be here one last time, and she had to see him. Chances were she had to be into some pretty weird shit to be here, and it could only help his cause for her to know he knew this and was pleased with whatever it was.

There were cages hung overhead with men and women inside. He’d barely noticed with the challenge of maneuvering through the crowd, but tried to angle so he wouldn’t be directly underneath the one nearest the bathroom. The rapid fire pulse withdrew to an insistent steady beat. The woman inside the cage writhed in rhythm. A focused beam of yellow light dispelled all the subtleties. She wasn’t naked, dressed in black shining leather, but her breasts were exposed and she wore nothing from the waist down. Thin chains from the top of the cage ran down between her legs like cables to a power strip. She slumped against the corner bars (the cage shook slightly and Rob took another couple steps to the side), and the slack on the chains pulled taut. Her labia were pierced with four or five rings and there were hooks attached to them from the end of each chain. She slowly slid down the bars until the chains vibrated like bass strings and dropped to the floor. Three snapped away like living vines, pieces of raw, glistening flesh speared on their hooks, and as the blistering pulse resumed and the strobes reengaged, blood dripped through the bottom of the cage on the heads below. One man stuck out his tongue as though trying to catch the first snowflake of winter.

Jesus Christ…I should have just learned to hack Anna’s fucking Facebook.

Rob pushed on, stomach rolling. A new song began on a much quieter note as he reached the bathroom. It was still plenty loud with the open door and poorly insulated walls, but he felt like he leveled up in life—it was his first unisex bathroom. He was relieved he didn’t actually plan to use it when he noted the line of men at urinals to one side with no dividers, all occupied. They stood closer up than usual, probably for a better illusion of privacy. If such a thing mattered given some of the things in plain sight just beyond the wall.

One man’s head tilted back in a pleasure far more profound than that afforded by an emptying bladder.

Wait a minute…there aren’t any urinals.

Another man zipped up and walked out a bit dizzily (with nary a glance toward the faucets). Before someone rushed in to occupy the vacancy, Rob saw three holes in the wall, one atop the other, apparently for the convenience of insertion for differing dick heights. Two fingers protruded from the middle hole with long nails, painted orange and black. Unnaturally long fingers that could probably touch their own wrist. As they withdrew, Rob focused more on the slivers of blood collected below each opening before the sight was eclipsed by the buttocks of a man short on shame and shirt alike.

The guy nearest to Rob slumped away with a look on his face like he’d banged his thumb with a hammer. The same holes stood revealed, but with shimmering coral flesh packed so tight against that some of it pushed through. The semblance of a soggy orifice awaited, the three access holes dripping a paler runoff. The new arrival literally slid across the tiles on his knees and crammed his mouth and nose into the raw maw. Nature abhors a vacuum.

Rob sure could have used a toilet to puke his guts out, but he got the fuck out as soon as enough clearance freed up in the bottleneck of the doorway. He moved into the crowd like a man against hurricane winds, looking for stairs. The higher vantage point might help him find Anna.

He followed along the wall as best he could, refusing to be assimilated. It would have been impossible to miss Alec, the one person standing still when it seemed the rest of Painfreak was being shaken like a snow globe. He was almost glad to see the familiar smirk. Rob worked over way to him. He’d subtitle conversation on his phone if need be.

Somehow Alec maintained his protected circle for Rob to join him within it. The swarm went on, always maintaining five feet of clearance, as if Alec were an angel showing Rob it was a wonderful life.

He mouthed three words: I found her. He reached down and a door suddenly opened in the wall.

Suspicious as he was, Rob didn’t hesitate to go in. It was not well lit but a group people walked up ahead of them, so it seemed safe(ish). It was instantly much quieter in here when Alec shouldered the door shut.

Once they were far enough from the cacophony to hear themselves think, Alec asked, “Where’d you run off to?” He said it with the feigned ignorance of a swindler working over a rube.

Rob didn’t bother to hide his feelings. “Man, this place is fucked.”

Alec laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “I knew you’d love it. I’m glad you came.”

To Rob’s great annoyance he stopped completely. He was ready to sprint down the passage shouting her name.

Alec abandoned the smirk for a brief appearance of sincerity. “I guess this is where we part ways, though. She’s gone.”

“Gone? You said she was back here.” Actually he hadn’t, now that Rob thought about it.

“She’s down there, yes.” He pointed. The hall stood empty now, as if the others vanished into a shadow. “But much further than last time.”

Rob thought of the whispers and rumors of that other side of Painfreak, the one never uploaded to YouTube. The one rationally dismissed from the safety of an empty apartment as a ghost story. The one whose truth he would experience in the flesh if he continued.

“I’d tell you what she watched last time if I thought it would stop you,” Alec continued, “because whatever it is now is far beyond your imagination. I’ll just say if you were turned off back there, you really won’t like what you find if you keep going.”

Rob considered. No, he hadn’t liked it—not Painfreak, but also not anything before it.

Except Anna.

I must.

He kept going. He never turned back, although moments later the music surged in volume as if from an open door before the calm returned. Soon there was no pulse at all.

IV.

He was certain he’d been this way before, all those years ago. The magic seemed real then and undoubtedly was now. It was almost like he’d had wandered lost all that time.

The hall wound longer than the building could have possibly held. It curved gradually, almost unnoticeably. He pictured it as an endless spiral drilling deeper into the earth. To either side, he found apertures in the walls with living dioramas of depravity. Their intensity escalated. He saw live sex shows involving gas masks, cat o’ nine tails, blindfolds, ball gags, pulley systems, with brandings, bloodlettings, bukakke baptisms. He vacillated between fear she wasn’t there and fear she was.

Initially the defilements had their share of onlookers. The participants seemed too intent on the practice of their rituals to notice. There were fewer viewers the farther he went. Only one spectator witnessed a naked man tied down in cruciform to the floor, teased to erection by a dominatrix naked save for thigh high boots. Once his dick pointed to 12 o’clock, she worked the heel of one boot into his urethra. As her slave moaned and writhed beneath, she cocked one leg flamingo-like and stood with her full weight grinding into his stretched organ like she was snuffing out a cigarette. The arch of her foot mashed his scrotum flat. He smiled gratefully through tears of pain. The lone watcher worked his inches.

Past that, a circle of women surrounded a man bound to a chair, head tilted back with a funnel jammed in his mouth. The women vomited into the funnel with the kind of tandem precision rarely glimpsed outside of an aerial show. The recipient bucked in his chair. The lone watcher worked his inches.

The hallway light ceased, relegating it to the displays themselves. He saw no voyeurs as grislier scenes played out. He’d breached a membrane in the fabric of reality, because now he saw impossibilities; humiliations of the flesh that could never be. He passed the semblance of an orgy. To the left a goat-headed man thrust between the spread legs of a woman as she deep-throated the ridiculous girth offered by an elk-headed man on the right. She did this with the bone of her spinal cord visible where her throat was hollowed out, head slumped so it rested against her own back, face upside down, mouth agape. Each time the elk-man pumped, the tip of his penis poked through the ruin of her excavated throat like a Whack-a-Mole.

Her cheek bulged as she tilted her head to follow Rob’s progress, blinking rapidly as if he were the anomaly. Horribly, unmistakably alive but no worse for the wear.

He suspected the goat and elk heads weren’t masks.

Would Anna be a mutilated shell of her former self, unrecognizable as the one who seduced him so profoundly? He had to believe otherwise to keep going, the thought like a deleted psalm: Yea, surely I shall not find my obsession in a state of anatomical renovation with an abundance of cocks.

He found her at the next exhibit and could have wept to see her as merely a bystander. He wanted to run up and embrace her, though managed to remember despite his Odd-yssey he was still a stranger. Instead he savored her look of unbridled passion at the scene before her, possessed by it so completely she didn’t notice his arrival. She wore a white top with an olive skirt, the shortest one he’d seen her wear, as form-fitting as a second skin he would die (had died?) to see her shed.

Rob followed her eyes to her secret fantasy in Painfreak. All thought ceased as efficiently as if he’d been unplugged, but gradually he made sense of it; the what of it, if nothing else. He thought he saw naked men of varying sizes vanish into the floor, but as they crawled, he understood their hands and feet were missing minus a man still with one hand. Arms otherwise ended above the wrist, legs below the knees. None professionally done; they bled freely from tattered stumps. Their faces were blood-spattered in a fine mist. Above them dangled a human cylinder, formed essentially by female torsos with shortened arms and legs, their stumps of comparably amateurish quality. They looked turkey-like in the fashion in which they’d been strung upside down, straps around their waists to keep them a foot off the ground—the only foot available to any of them.

One of the crawlers clambered up the body of a blonde woman, awkwardly wrapping its upper limbs around her and planting the point of his shin into the underside of her breast, leaving bloody prints and smears behind. Blood trails ran in tributaries from the jagged stumps at her thighs. He scaled her until he attained the summit. Perched on her thighs with his abbreviated arms around the overhead strap and an eager face, he worked the point of his shin between her legs. It sank inside her almost to the knee. As if walking on stilts, he extended his other leg over to the body of a larger raven-haired woman, full ass prominently displayed. His other shin sank nimbly in the opening between her legs as well and he boosted himself up and out of the blonde, pulling the bloody appendage up like a boot stuck in the mud. His other stump slid deeper inside the second woman as he pushed to swing his free shin and bounce to the next in line, straining. The resultant hemorrhage didn’t seem to bother her. She moaned and sighed in the thrall of pleasure while he landed the other shin within the next crevice. Another man climbed awkwardly atop that initial blonde with the seeming object to circumnavigate in his shin-steps, a “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” of stump-fucking.

In the far rear corner, partially obscured by this amputated configuration, Rob saw a stack of severed limbs. Arms and legs cast off like clothes on a race to skinny dip. Someone volunteered to dismember them. He recalled the crawler who still possessed a hand.

When he pried himself from the morbid display of carnality, he found Anna’s passion surpassed the limitations of mere facial expression. She had one hand inside her shirt plying a breast, the other behind her skirt. She slumped against the wall, eyes wide open, transfixed by the interplay of amputated limb with waiting orifice. Even with nothing truly exposed, Rob looked upon her with desperate longing, enraptured by her ecstasy.

It clicked for him in that moment, his joke on the elevator (nearly lost a limb) forgotten as soon as he made it, while his whole world became her essence. And her brief lust, the merest hint of the one she succumbed to now. One that had been willing to enter the recesses of Painfreak for this moment, maybe conjured for her alone. Had it been someone else it might have been something totally different. Perhaps it also had something from him.

Rob entered the aperture, stepping over crawling forms who paid him no mind, stickiness beneath his shoes as he walked through blood, searching. It was back there, obscured by the seeping extremity pile, as he knew it would be. He yanked the hatchet from the mound of limbs and carried it back.

He found Anna where he left her, building to her apex, face flushed, beautiful, transcendent. For that, he would sacrifice. He hardly knew her beyond the identity he created for her, ideal in every way, but tonight demonstrated he barely knew himself. He would shape himself to her liking, an endeavor far more meaningful than any he had chosen to leave behind.

I must.

Rob knelt outside the exhibit and drove the hatchet through his wrist with the strength of conviction. His hand came away clean, soon anointed with blood. The pain was empowering. He crawled to Anna, a crimson snail trail in his wake, prepared to leave still more of himself behind. Now she saw him, blessed him with that look of infinite desire as he proffered his spurting stump. The smoothness of her pale thighs intoxicated him as her skirt lifted and she allowed him into the sanctum of the divine Red.

| — | — |

Bondage and Godhood

————

Jordan Krall

Ayman spent the last of his money at the arcade and had no money for dinner. That was the fifth time this week. The arcade machines had control over him especially the one in the center of the room, the one called PAINFREAK. It had held him in virtual bondage for the last six months.

One time he had spent his entire week’s pay on that game over one weekend. He was deeply ashamed of it and had cut down ever since but he still addicted to the arcade machine. His father had forbidden it but after the old man’s death, Ayman had all the time he wanted to retreat to the arcade district, the biggest in the nation. He was fortunate to have been born and raised in a city that housed one of the cosmonaut’s citadels. Ayman had never visited a citadel as it was reserved for the cosmonauts and their families. He was nowhere near that social class but was able to benefit from their lust for continuous urban development. That also meant the “relocation” of the undesirables who were in the way. Like Ayman.

He made his way through the markets, past the neon signs advertising trips to the moon, alcoholic food, and training manuals. But Ayman wanted a firearm.

The desire came to him in the night like a djinn made of steel and gunpowder, ordering him to give in to servitude. He had awoken with an erection.

Now he thought of the game as the center of his life, the source of his pride and identity. Two weeks prior he had gotten further than anyone in the entire arcade: he reached level 70 of PAINFREAK.

An Asian man’s face had appeared on the screen. It spoke in digital noise. “Congratulations, my brother.”

An explosive device appeared on the screen. Ayman had put his face close to the glass and smelled smoke. Now he needed to beat level 71. Now he really needed a firearm.

He also wanted a bomb.

And a car.

Ayman did not have a driver’s license but he thought he would be able to drive one good enough to send it straight into the government offices. He’d beat the level for sure. He’d be one step closer to the final boss in PAINFREAK.

When he turned the last corner, Ayman walked face first into a cosmonaut suit that was hanging from a wire. He was frightened but a surge of desire went through him as he perused the spacesuit. But why was it there suspended in midair like a prize waiting for him to claim it.

Was this blessing the next step to finality?

Ayman took the suit off the wire and slowly put it on, savoring the sensations. Someone of his social status could never become a cosmonaut. But now there he was, dressed like one of the enemy.

He put the helmet on and stared through the visor at the city, at the citadel.

Sparks in front of his eyes appeared and the Asian man’s face appeared. “Congratulations, brother.”

Ayman stayed silent.

The man spoke again. “Kneel and pray.”

Though frightened, Ayman obeyed. When he opened his eyes, a firearm was laying two inches from his head. He grabbed it and stood up.

Ayman knew all the entrances of the citadel. He had memorized it over the course of the last six months. It would not be so difficult to get in. The cosmonauts have become lax in their security. They were so sure of their superiority. Little did they know.

It took eight bullets to kill the three guards. A very successful move.

Ayman entered the building and realized that no one inside had seen the murders. Were they that arrogant? Did they not think it could happen?

He put the firearm away and blended in with the others walking in and out of rooms. Ayman saw an elevator and took it up to the top of the citadel. There was a stiff and emotionless cosmonaut in the elevator with him. He did not acknowledge Ayman. When they reached the top of the citadel, the cosmonaut walked out first, practically knocking Ayman down.

The top of the citadel was less awe-inspiring than Ayman had expected. It looked exactly like every other cosmonaut building, every other room, every other wall. He walked into the room and down a hallway where he saw a door that was different than the others. It looked like wet wood covered with strands of seaweed or hair.

As Ayman approached the door, he became more and more aroused. Lust and love, bondage and godhood, pleasure and pain.

Pain.

Painfreak.

Ayman opened the door. He could not describe the sight for he knew that to be blasphemy. Inside the room was not a room. It was paradise, the epicenter of holy sensuality, and in that paradise were the spoils of the game: 72 virgins.

They were more wondrous than he had heard but knew that describing it in words would be sacrilege as well as pointless. Humans could not comprehend, in word or thought, the majestic nature of this, the final conquest of PAINFREAK.

He thought of his father. He would be ashamed of Ayman.

Within the garden, a petite man appeared, that same Asian man from the game. He approached Ayman and said, “Your father would be proud… Who did you think got you entry?”

Ayman was confused but slightly elated as if a large emotional weight had been lifted.

The man said, “Now…you have been pushing the buttons for the last six months…but you have one more button to push. Just. One. More.” He pointed to a button on the front of Ayman’s spacesuit.

Ayman looked at it. It was so shiny. It begged for pressure. It wanted to be pushed. That was its ultimate pleasure. And it would be Ayman’s, too.

He pushed the button and as he perished, he heard the Asian man’s voice speak.

“Congratulations, brother.”

| — | — |

They Deal in Pain, But Pleasure is Better

————

Chesya Burke

The bed squeaked, rickety springs older than Ceely had seen in age moaning, seeming to cry under their weight. She bounced with the rhythm of his large, bloated body on her hers. Except there was no recognizable cadence, just sloppy, disjoined beats, met with equally repulsive grunts. He was sweating, the droplets landing on her lips, cheeks and eyelids. He always sweated, always grunted, always released inside her. Never asked one way or another what she wanted.

If he had asked, she would have been scared to tell him that she didn’t like the feel of it, the smell of it, the way that it made her feel. She would have admitted that she didn’t like the way his seed flowed into and then out of her, both seeming to want to infect and flee from her simultaneously. She would have been ashamed to admit that she was always sore afterward, had to keep a cloth down there to ease the infection that almost always occurred. Would have said that he squeezed her nipples too hard, and that he never waited for her to heal properly before he was ramming it into her again. But she never said anything at all. If she had said any of those things, she knew, it would have pleased him in unnatural ways. He so often found pleasure in her pain.

He finished, and didn’t slide off of her until the last drop of his toxic seed had drained into her. He was still panting when he sent her for the cloth to clean him off. It grew hard again as she washed, as she knew it would. This time was even longer and hurt her more. As he knew it would.

The only good thing was that he was old, like the bed, and his mistress, Sarah, was coming into town. And while Ceely would have to cook and clean for the woman, Sarah willingly took him into her bed, into her arms, into herself. The two women were not exactly friends, but they had an understanding this way.

Sarah understood her pain; she understood Sarah was a whore.

««—»»

Sarah had been there three weeks. She’d leave and stay gone for hours, not letting on where she went. Ceely’s husband was scared to ask, so he just yelled and screamed at the one thing he could control, Ceely. Other than that, Sarah ate a lot, slept a lot and liked to take Ceely’s husband into her bed at lot. The man liked for her to watch sometimes. The way that he touched the other woman was not so very different from the way that he touched his wife, but there was loads of difference in Sarah’s reaction and, if she had to admit it, Ceely’s as well. Making her watch was an insult meant to shame her. The man wanted to embarrass Ceely and she appeared appropriately contrite and upset, but Ceely never really felt the way he wanted. She was happy to simply know that she would not have to do it herself, at least in that moment, and though Ceely would never admit it even to herself, she found some kind of pleasure in watching Sarah’s pleasure. It was strange for Ceely, feeling tingling in peculiar places, while watching this woman moan and carry on. But she did. If there was any genuine embarrassment seen on Ceely’s face while watching the pair, it was from the revelation that she could possibly enjoy these encounters like a common street whore.

But there she was now, in these back alley streets, searching for the address on the small scrap of paper hidden discreetly in the palm of her hand. She found the door, and didn’t bother to knock before she entered. There was no point, someone like this would not need nor expect courtesy.

“Oh,” the woman said upon walking into room. “I didn’t hear a knock.”

“Oh, my apologies,” she should have knocked and was slightly embarrassed for not having done so now. She needed the woman’s help after all, no need to offend her over simple civility. “Are you Ms. Walker?”

“Yes. What do you need?”

“I…have a problem that I need to get rid myself of, because…um… it’s a bigger problem than I can handle on my own, you see,” it was the first time Ceely had uttered this truth out loud so she paused for a moment and looked at the woman who returned her gaze without blinking. “You know my meaning? Should I explain further?” Ceely had never spoken of this “problem,” not because of fear, but because she never wanted anyone to know. Ever.

“Are you sure?” the woman still did not look away. Her stare was uncomfortable and too familiar. Ceely did not know this woman, and would never have made her acquaintance if she had not sought out her services in that desperate moment. “Are you sure,” the woman repeated.

“Yes.”

She followed the woman into the back room, undressed from the bottom down and lay on the table while the woman examined her. It was cold. She was exposed to the world, or at least to the woman between her legs now at the end of the table.

“Have you tried to do this on your own?” the woman asked her, concern on her face. Some distress in her voice.

“No.”

“There’s so much trauma…are you sure?”

“Yes.” Ceely did not want to talk to this woman too much. She did not want the woman to know anything about her or who she was. She did not like the way she looked at her right now. The woman wasn’t every old, but she acted and her eyes told of years she probably would not see for many moons, perhaps several dozen or more. Ceely did not know if it was judgment or pity on the woman’s face, but either way, Ceely did not like it. This woman had no right to judge her. She performed cheap, back alley abortions for drunken school girls and broken prostitutes who let any man dump inside them for the right price. She was a criminal and yet she pitied Ceely? For shame.

She wanted to yell such at the woman, but she clinched her knees together instead, keeping her mouth shut, but her private places exposed. This man’s seed needed to be removed from within her before it grew into something worse than its father, and it was none of this woman’s business why, though it was probably more than evident to her at this point. None of that mattered to Ceely, she just wanted it done and over with. No matter the pain, no matter the cost to her purse or her soul.

The woman put her hands on Ceely’s knees and gently pried them apart, “You’re going to have to open these as far as you can. That’s right, just lay them wide open and rest them to your side. Okay…good. Now this is going to hurt a lot…I’m sorry.”

The abortion was not painful for her. It was pleasure.

««—»»

The pain came later. There wasn’t a lot of it, and it didn’t last too long, or at least as long as she had expected or secretly felt she deserved. The wicked woman who performed the procedure, had said that she had come early enough and that she would be just fine. She said some girls wait so long that she can’t really help them. She claimed that even she had her standards. Ceely wasn’t so sure about that, but she had kept quiet.

That had been almost a month before. Now Sarah sat across the table from her, staring. Ceely had just finished cooking the woman’s breakfast, and Sarah had come down to eat it instead of making Ceely serve her in bed. This was the first time the woman had stepped foot in the kitchen practically since she had gotten there two months before. Ceely ate quietly, looking up only momentarily to see the woman staring back at her. Now that things were quiet and Ceely had had a moment to steal a good look, she noticed that Sarah was quite beautiful when her face wasn’t contorted into the painful grimace of ecstasy. No wonder that her husband lusted after this woman. She was handsome in a way that Ceely was not. And she was available in a way the Ceely could never be, they both knew as they shared a table that morning.

This revelation did not make her jealous, however. Instead it intrigued her. She could see beauty in the woman, but she also found her attractive, found her body beautiful in a way that she had not experienced before. She had seen the woman naked, her soft skin, thickened thighs and wide hips. But now she saw more than just a tired old whore looking for somewhere to stay for a few weeks. Ceely felt no shame for how she felt about the woman.

But the woman’s glare did make her uneasy. She did not like the way she looked at her in that moment. As if she could see inside her, see her deepest secrets hidden from the rest of the world. Ceely looked away first. Did this woman know what she had done? Had she somehow found out? What did she want from her?

Finally, the woman spoke. Softly at first, then more intense. “Men deal in pain,” Sarah suddenly said to her. “They want to hurt and humiliate you. It makes them feel good to know that there are weaker people that they can manipulate. They want to break you. All of you, all of us.”

“Yes.” Ceely knew. They all knew deep down, didn’t they?

“The only thing that we can do is to find pleasure in what we can. Find a place that they cannot enter. A location that they cannot manipulate.”

“Like in your head?”

“Yes. In your head. But it’s more than that,” the woman said. “There are places, places that can teach you pleasure…and pain, if you like. Those things are so very closely linked, don’t you understand.”

Ceely did not know how to respond, but the question came so quickly, she couldn’t stop it, “Do you like the things he does to you? The way he shoves it inside you?”

“Like?” The woman seemed to think about this longer than Ceely expected. “I find it pleasurable, yes.” She smiled coyly, never taking her eyes off Ceely. “But it’s more pleasurable when I do it back to him. Those are the parts he doesn’t let you see.”

Ceely was disgusted, but mildly intrigued. Sarah had never sat down and talked to her this way and she wondered what she had done so now. Perhaps, as she had reasoned, she knew the things that Ceely had done to eliminate his seed from within her. Or perhaps the woman could sense that something was completely different in her. It didn’t matter, something different had occurred between them and Ceely would explore it. She had questions.

“How…” she stopped, not quite knowing how to ask what she so desperately wanted to know, needed to know.

The woman cocked her head to the side, “How what? How did I come to enjoy it?”

“Yes. I mean, no…no, why would you want to do that? Why would a decent woman like something like that?”

“You don’t like it?”

“No.”

“You don’t want to like it?”

“No!” Ceely did not raised her voice, it was undignified. But she was noticeably upset.

The woman stared at her. For too long. Too long. “There is a moment, right before he twist too hard, that your nipples are aroused, harden and you think, if you can just keep that feeling for a bit longer, you will understand what women moan about in the dead of night. There is a time, just as he’s finished inside of you and he grows soft, that you feel just the tiniest of tingling down there and you want more and more of that feeling.”

“No. I do not find pleasure in what he does to me. I am repulsed. Every moment of every time he touches me.”

The woman smiled. “I do believe this is the first time you have been honest with me. Let’s go.”

««—»»

Sun, Kentucky was like every other town in that part of the south. The buildings sat a little too close together in town, and a little too far apart outside of it. It wasn’t big, but it wasn’t too small either. The population poster read just over 4,000.

Ceely followed Sarah, walking behind her like a tethered child unsure of her destination. Of course Ceely had no idea where they were going, but it didn’t matter. She was out of the house and she enjoyed the fresh air and seeing people. He kept her locked away in the house as much as he could to isolate her. And she kept herself there out of shame. The two walked down town, stopping at the windows of the store fronts that caught Sarah’s eye, she seemed in no particular hurry. This was the action of a single, carefree woman, a woman bound by no man. Ceely did not understand it. Sarah didn’t talk much and that was just fine by Ceely, because she didn’t particularly care to be walking down the middle of down town conversing with the likes of this woman.

On Main Street, the stores lined the street like the rejects of a ghost town. The paint was chipped and some of the roofs showed wear and tear, but for the most part there was pride in those places. The people cared about the town, and they made it accommodating for shoppers, Ceely had always like it. She greeted a mother and her daughter coming out of a coffee shop, but did not look them directly in the eyes. She was not doing anything wrong, but most knew Sarah’s reputation and most women feared their husbands were next, or longed for her to come into their homes to relieve them of some of the pain, too, Ceely never really could tell which was the case with some of the women in that small town—too many ended up running into doors and getting black eyes for anyone to really know.

At the end of Main, a tall, broad building stood, as if watching over the town. The sign in front of the building read: Sun Police Department. It didn’t really look like a police station. It looked more like a converted cathedral of some sort. The old gothic looking building was large with stained glass windows that belonged more on a church than a jailhouse. The town was proud of it, Ceely knew, because it cost a fortune to maintain, but they had done it expertly. It had history, it had memories, and it was the center—the heart—of Sun.

“We’re going to the police station?” Ceely was confused.

“Just in the back, there’s a door. That’s where it is. In the basement. It’s down there.”

“What’s down there? What is it?”

Sarah looked down at her. The woman was a full foot taller than she. “You know I only come here to visit every few years. That’s when it comes back. When it’s needed again. When all of you women here simply cannot take it anymore. It comes to you. And I come to it.”

“What is it?”

“Painfreak.”

“I…I’m scared.” Ceely was not lying exactly, she just wasn’t telling the whole truth. She as more intrigued. Painfreak?

As they walk toward the back of the building, a tall bald-headed man stood in front of a door connected to the police station, but somehow completely separate from it. The man was huge and scared and intimidating. Ceely looked around, searching for the police who should be surrounding this place any moment.

“They don’t really see it.”

“Huh?”

“The cops. They don’t really see this place. I mean, it’s here, but it’s not here, ya know?”

No, Ceely certainly did not know. She tried to understand what her new found friend was trying to explain to her, but there was no way that it was true. She noticed that all of the cops stopped short of coming to the back of the station toward the alley that she found herself in now (I mean, why would they come back here in the first place? Maybe because all of the traffic that was coming in and out would be the first clue, Ceely.)

After answering her own imaginary question, she figured she’s just ask, “Why?”

“They don’t want to see it; they don’t see it. It’s that simple.” Sarah didn’t seem to be bothered by her questions. On the contrary, she seemed to welcome them, or perhaps even expect them. After a moment, Sarah walked up to the strange looking man at the door and held out her closed fist. He took her hand into his, perhaps searching for something itched into the woman’s hand that was invisible to Ceely in the dying light of day. Finally, he nodded and then motioned toward Ceely. “She’s with me,” Sarah said, not taking her eyes off the man.

Then he stood aside and let them by, Ceely still following Sarah like a duckling waddling after her mother. The mother that would teach her about all those naughty things she did when she hoped no one was looking—or more likely, when she wished they were. More and more Ceely began to relish the thought.

There was a hall. A long hall with lights lining the floor, leading them down a long corridor. Sarah walked slowly, deliberately, as if she was expecting someone to jump out at them around every corner. Ceely wasn’t sure if the woman was afraid or so excited that she had become overwhelmed. Both thoughts made Ceely anxious.

Finally, they reached the end of the corridor and it opened up into a large room with beds lining the walls, and tables in the center. There were people seated at the tables, talking, drinking, touching, too intimately to simply be friends. But then as she glanced at the beds against the walls she saw large groups of naked bodies on each of the beds. At least four or five people per bed. In the moment, she saw Pearl Hardwick, on her knees, surrendering like a dog to a man that was not her husband.

Without thinking, Ceely marched over to the woman, incensed. “Pearl Hardwick. Pearl Hardwick, you stop that, this very mom…”

Before she could finish, Sarah grabbed her arm. “Don’t do that. Not here. Your moral superiority went out the door the moment you stepped into this place. Either get it together or learn to find pleasure in pain that that man inflicts on you every night for the rest of your life.”

Ceely yanked her arm out of the woman’s grasp, but she did not move to approach Pearl again. The woman continued as if she was unbothered or had not heard her friend.

Sarah looked down on her, angry, then she walked off, somewhere into one of the back rooms. Ceely watched her go, but she was too afraid to follow. There was screaming and laughter, pain and pleasure in those back rooms, Ceely knew.

She knew.

As she got ready to give it up and leave, someone touched her. She turned to see him staring at her. She knew him, but it took her a moment to realize who he was. Oh, she remembered, this was her paper boy. Tommy had been delivering her papers for almost three years.

“Ma’am. You don’t need to be back there.”

“Oh, I’m…I’m not going back there. I just…”

“And you shouldn’t be leavin’ neither. Let me show you things.”

“Tommy…you’re just a boy…I can’t. How old are you?”

“Old enough to get into here, ma’am.” Ceely didn’t know exactly how old that was, but she guessed that a place like this, somewhere between heaven and hell and pleasure and pain, didn’t exactly seek verification.

“Let me do for you what he cannot.”

Without a word, she followed him into a private room. The room was perfect, everything she had ever imagined that her first time would and should be like. As a young girl she had had fantasies about this room and here it was in the flesh. Candles lined the walls, flickering back and forth to a soft breeze that was undetected. Ceely did not spend much time search for it, as she knew that it probably did not really exist.

Instead, she focused on the boy…the man before her.

Before she could think not to, she kissed him, slowly, letting her entire body embrace the emotion. His tongue found its way to her lips, searching. When their tongues met, a sharp chill shot up her legs through her body. She wanted to fall into what she was feeling right in that moment, she needed it. She wrapped her arms around his neck, feeling him, touching him, wanting him.

He kissed her right cheek, and then down her neck, unbuttoning her blouse, then stopped staring into her eyes. Her husband had never done that before; he had never cared. Suddenly the new man picked her up, and carried her over to the bed.

A million and two things rang through her head, but none of them staying for longer than a millisecond. She thought about actually, willingly making love to him, she thought about having his hands on her body, touching her, she thought about how it was a sin to have sex outside of marriage. But none of it mattered, because she wanted him in that moment and for once, she was going to have what she wanted.

“What do you want?” he asked softly in her ear.

No one had ever asked her that before. “Do…things to me. I…want…”

“I know. Mostly you want me to ask permission. This place tells me, I know.”

As he laid her down, she caught a scent of his soap and cologne, which excited her even more. He caressed her breast through her shirt, pinching at her nipples. She shivered in pleasure, then she tore at his shirt, lifting it over his head, and touched his chest, the tiny hairs, mingling between her fingers. She pulled him closer, wanting to feel his weight on top of her.

He kissed her one last time, and then stood up. She was breathing so hard, she thought her heart was going to jump out of her chest. She held her hand out to him, and he squeezed it, leaned down, kissed her one more time, and whispered into her ear, “I’ll be back.”

When he came back to her, he smiled, and held up his hands, and showed her what he had. His eyes twinkled, and he smiled again. “Get undressed.”

He watched her as she slowly took off her clothing, reveling her naked pink body to him. She reached out and helped him take off his pants, feeling naughty and excited at the same time. Then he handed her the large sheet of plastic he had brought back with him. It was huge, big enough for her to wrap herself in.

He draped it over her, leaving most of her body completely covered, then knelt over her, leaned down and kissed her again and again, but through the plastic. It covered her face, but just as she felt she could not breathe, he seemed to sense it, stop, open it for her to recover and close her within it again. She was asphyxiated, but elated. The sensation of suffocating and suddenly catching her breath again just as she lost it once more, was indescribable.

It was torture, beautiful. Painful, but desperately desired.

It was Painfreak.

She pondered for a moment leaving just long enough to go home, bashing her husband’s skull in for everything he had done to her and escaping back to the labyrinth of Painfreak. Perhaps one day she would even do that. But for now, she would not leave this place. Not by choice. Not by force.

| — | — |

Sing Blue Silver

————

John Everson

She came in a silver limousine. Stepped out onto the empty street in a black chauffeur cap, and a black formal jacket. Black hose. Heels that could be used as weapons. As she walked towards the curb, Aaron saw that her jacket hugged something a bit less formal—a blue satin corset with silver thread. Formalwear taunting night wear. She was Asian, as he’d requested.

“Mr. Ogden,” she said.

“How did you know?” he asked.

Her lips pursed in unspoken amusement. She said nothing, but glanced slowly back and forth down the broken street. There was nobody else in evidence. One streetlamp still worked a block away, though it flickered randomly, as if on the brink of extinction. None of the buildings appeared habitable. Roofs caved in, windows boarded. It was an abandoned place. A place for the lost.

His chauffeur bowed faintly, and then opened the rear door of the car for him. Aaron slipped across decadently soft dark leather seats, and sighed as he settled in. There were some comforts he could still appreciate, if not as he once did.

“There is vodka in the bar,” she said. “And bourbon. Whatever you like.”

He nodded, and fingered the door of the small refrigerator/bar custom fitted to the space along the sidewall of the vehicle. A cable of light illuminated the bottles from behind.

“Why are you out here,” she asked. Her voice was soft…but clear as bell chimes. It reminded him…

“Just remembering days gone by,” he said.

“Memories or fantasies?” she said.

He snorted. “Memories of fantasies fulfilled,” he said. “Twenty-five years ago, this was the place to come to if you needed…something different.”

She nodded. “If you knew where to look.”

He frowned. “You weren’t even born twenty-five years ago.”

She said nothing. The car idled. He poured himself a bourbon, neat, swirled it around the bottom of the glass. The interior lights made the liquor glow; liquid fire. There’d been a time that he’d come here, to this neighborhood, after 10 p.m. on any given night, and waded through writhing bodies to a back room where a Japanese girl lay in wait for him, surrounded by candle flames and silver chains and finger hooks and…

“Where do you want to go now?” She asked, finally.

Aaron laughed. “Places that don’t exist anymore. Maybe they never really did.”

“Give me an address,” she said. “I’m your driver for the night. I will take you wherever you want to go.”

He sipped and thought. He had taken a taxi here, because he’d wanted to walk in the past for a while. But the memories here were all dust and broken glass now. And so he’d called for a special ride. The kind that offered a sexual pot of gold at the end of the itinerary. But first you needed to take a ride. That was part of the fun, right?

He shrugged, and spoke an address on the south side. She looked in the rearview mirror at him, as if to offer him a second chance, but said nothing. After a moment, she put the car in gear and drove. He enjoyed his bourbon in silence as the streetlights blurred by.

“You are restless tonight,” she said. He didn’t question her perception, or how she had it. She was right. He nodded.

“What are you looking for?”

“Things I can never have,” he said. His voice cracked slightly.

“You?” she said. Her voice betrayed incredulity. “You can buy whatever you want. Go wherever you like. You have the means, or you would not be in my car.”

Aaron closed his eyes. “There is only so much money can buy. At a certain point, you die anyway.”

The car pulled off the main road and down a dark street. They were in an industrial district; the lights of a refinery pierced the night to the west, while the east was lined with a railyard. The car slid along the tracks for a minute, and then came to a rest in a lot after crunching gravel.

She said nothing, but opened his door and stood at attention waiting for him to exit. Aaron levered his weight across the seat and used the top of the door to pull himself up. It had gotten harder to sit, stand, lay down over the years. It crept up on you. One minute, you were cracking a whip. The next, you were cracking.

“Would you like me to come in with you, or wait outside?”

“Come in,” he said.

She nodded, and walked with him to the door. A sadly listing neon sign proclaimed “Adult World” above the door. The words “Beer and Boobs” flickered on and off beneath. There was scratched but legible white paint on the door itself that warned: Nobody under 21 will be admitted. Ever.

“This doesn’t seem to be the sort of place someone like you would come to,” she said. Her voice almost whistled against the low thud of a bass beat inside.

“You wear a suit, but that doesn’t mean you become the suit,” Aaron said.

They found the stinking breath of old beer and a horseshoe-shaped bar inside. And a small black raised stage, with pink neon lights along the side. A gold pole was decorated by a bleached blond with sagging breasts and a tattoo on her ass that while stretched and jiggling clearly said “Bite Me.”

Three greying white men sat on one side of the bar while a Mexican couple flanked the other. The couple were as thin as the old men were fat. The young man wasn’t shy about feeling up his woman in front of the rest of the bar. It didn’t matter to her; she was looking at the stage, watching the gone-to-seed dancer writhe suggestively to the crooning howl of Axl Rose and “November Rain.”

Aaron pulled out a stool at the hump of the bar, between the two “crowds.” The chauffeur stood next to him, at attention.

“Sit,” he commanded, dragging out the stool next to his.

He ordered them both a Budweiser, which appeared to be the only beer the sleazy dump offered, and then leaned back against the rounded edge of the bar to watch the dance of the fading flower on stage.

“This is not your kind of place,” the chauffeur said. Her arm slipped around his shoulders, and she fingered the white collar around his neck. “I don’t think what you’re looking for is here.”

Aaron shook his head. “Not anymore,” he agreed. “But it was once. Everything’s different now.”

“Not everything,” she said. “You’re still the same.”

He laughed. Bitterly. He knew better.

“Why did we come here,” she asked softly. “What memory drew you?”

Aaron took a sip of his beer, and grimaced. He set it back down on the bar. “Once, there was a back room,” he said. “Most people here in the strip club area had no idea. But it was a place where you could have whoever you wanted. Do whatever you wanted. In the morning, they hosed the place down, and took whoever wasn’t moving down to the canal.”

“Girls died here?” she said.

Aaron shrugged. “Girls, boys…it didn’t matter. It was all sushi.”

She looked at him with a sidelong glance. She said nothing.

“Have you ever been to Tokyo?” he asked.

She shook her head. No.

“Pity,” he said. “I always ask for an Asian chauffeur, because sometimes…”

“I am sorry to disappoint,” she said.

He shook his head. This time, he didn’t grimace as much when he drank his beer. “In Tokyo, once, I went to an adult sushi club. Not far from the Tsukiji fish market. It was all very genteel and mannerly at first. We sat around the table they directed us to. Eight strangers, three men on either side, a couple at her feet. She was naked, but covered in slices of tuna, mackerel, salmon, crab and abalone and…she was a rainbow of fish. Each of us ate the appetizer that covered her breasts and her belly and her thighs…but then it was time for the main course. And the waiter brought us the fileting knives. And a number.”

“A number?” she said. “Did you have to eat in order?”

He shook his head. “Everyone got to have one slice from the main course…our young sushi girl. But only one could have a slice from the rarest part.”

“And the numbers were a lottery?”

“Yes,” he said. “The girl on the table would call a number from 1 to 8, and that was the person who was allowed to carve from between her legs.”

“She chose her murderer.”

Aaron shook his head. “No, no,” he said. “She didn’t die. She bled, yes. But she was paid well. And she went home, eventually, a piece of her, now a piece of us.”

“So…you wanted to ruin her for all other men?”

“I wanted her to be part of me,” he answered. “A connection like that is so rare.”

“Did she call your number?”

Aaron didn’t answer immediately.

“Did you eat her…sushi?”

“Not the special cut,” he said. “But she called my number next.”

“Next?” she said. “What did she call you for?

“To breed her,” he said. His voice was quiet…nearly silent.

“You had sex with her, there on the table?”

He nodded.

“In front of a group of seven other people, one of whom was probably chewing her labia in his mouth at just that moment?”

He nodded.

“And you liked it moist and bloody, didn’t you?” she asked.

Aaron blinked. And then frowned. And then nodded.

“It was the most amazing feeling I have ever had in my life.”

“They don’t make sushi like that in America, huh?”

He shook his head. “They didn’t then.”

“You brought it here, though, didn’t you?”

He nodded. “That was just one of the things that happened at this club,” he said. “You needed a special invite to get into the back room.”

“Maybe it’s still there, you just aren’t invited?”

Aaron shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

He stood, and threw a $10 bill on the bar. “Come with me.” He led her out a side door, and they walked to the back of the building, closer to the train tracks. His breathing grew loud as they walked. The ground there was overgrown with grass and four-foot tall weeds. Bricks littered the weeds, and nearby, the remains of the walls those bricks had once belonged to were in evidence.

“After the fire, it was all over.”

She looked at him in askance. “Fire?

He pointed at the broken slabs of concrete that once had been part of a foundation, and chunks of blackened brick that had fallen from mostly, but not fully, leveled walls. “Some people knew we were doing something different out here,” he said. “And as always, they tried to stop it. There is always someone who feels you’ve gone too far.”

He sighed as he looked at the ruins of what had once been the back room of the strip club.

“Why are you out tonight,” she asked him.

Aaron stared at the weed-covered bricks, and shrugged. “Why not?” he said. “Some nights I can almost taste it, just from closing my eyes. It haunts my dreams. My entire being yearns to taste it one more time, before I let go. But it’s all over. Gone. Washed away. There are no more sushi girls.”

“How do you know?” she asked. One of her palms massaged his back. “I may be your sushi girl.”

Aaron laughed. “You only get to be a sushi girl once.”

“Maybe I saved it for you. Your whore and yet your virgin.”

He turned and pushed past her, walking back towards the car. “What’s wrong with you,” he mumbled.

She managed to slip around him, and was there to open the door when he reached the car, huffing with lost breath. It was harder to move now than it once had been. Harder to do most things. Some days Aaron wondered if cancer was eating him up from inside. Colon. Stomach. Pancreatic. Liver? Things hurt. But he didn’t see a doctor. He would die when his time came. He had no drive, no desire to try to extend it. When the best was behind you, what was the point, really?

When they were both back in the car, she said, “You stopped coming here. And the other places. A long time ago.”

Aaron nodded.

“Why?”

“I got married,” he said. “I thought I’d found that connection. I thought I’d found the one who could really go there with me. I thought I’d found her.”

“But she was someone else?”

He shrugged. “She was someone. But not the someone I thought. Sometimes I thought she was someone who only wanted my checkbook. But I know that wasn’t fair.”

“What happened to her?”

“Breast cancer,” he said. “Fitting somehow.”

“And so…you are alone again?”

He nodded.

“And looking for that connection…that special spark.”

He nodded again.

“That sushi.”

He laughed out loud. “I think the world of sushi has gone away.”

“Nothing ever really goes away,” she said. “It just waits behind closed doors.”

“Whatever you say,” he answered. “I just wish the reality could answer. Once I knew of a club that was so decadent…some nights they hung people on crosses at the entrance. Try finding a place that un-PC today.”

“That is brave in any era,” she said. “It must have been a very hidden place.”

He nodded. “Only certain people knew about it. Some people who came brought others as…coin. A payment in flesh to get inside.”

“I know of such a place,” she said quietly. “I can take you there when you are ready.”

“I’d be interested in seeing it,” he said. “Though I can’t imagine it is anything like the place I once knew. They called it NightWhere and it was only open one night per month. You could only get in if you were invited and you could never find it if you weren’t. It was never in the same place as it was the month before. I went there for many years.”

“Where there are humans, there are places like that,” she said.

He shook his head. “Not like this. Sure, there are bathhouses and sex clubs and brothels in every culture in every time. But this…the things that happened there. There were perversions that I had never even thought to imagine. Sex that was the end rather than the beginning. People came and did not leave.”

“If I take you to the place I know, you may not leave,” she said.

He shrugged. “If it was anything like NightWhere, I would never want to leave again. I have no energy to search for that feeling anymore.”

“Don’t you still want to kill the girls and make them cry?”

He snorted. “It was never about killing,” he said.

She shook her head. “No, not killing,” she agreed. “Connection. A soul kiss of Thanatos. The fleeting fulfillment when two are one. Always a bitter pleasure, for you can never hold on to the passing.”

Aaron’s eyes widened. Nobody had ever vocalized the ghosts of his past so perfectly. Not that he’d spoken to hardly anyone about the violent pleasures of his past.

“You’re too young to know such things,” he whispered.

She lifted her cap and bent her head low, so that he could see the roots at the top. There were traces of grey there. “I am older than you think,” she said. “And I have desires of my own.”

She replaced her cap and settled into the driver’s seat once more. “Where would you like to go next?”

««—»»

“You loved her,” the chauffeur said. She stood behind him in the night. The moon slipped in and out of clouds above, lending an eerie light to the gravestones below.

“I gave it all up for her,” he said.

“You loved her,” the chauffeur said once more.

He nodded. “I did. But still, we never completely connected. She never understood me. Not really.”

“Nobody ever really does,” she said. “We are all separate in the end.”

“I put myself in a box for her,” he said. “Tied it up, and hid it on the top shelf of a closet. Always there…but always hidden.”

“Is that when you stopped going to your club? Your NightWhere?”

He nodded. “She humored me, and went a few times. She enjoyed the attention, but never understood that the bar and dance floor at the front were just window dressing for the real reason people were there. She tried bondage play there a few times, but she never had an interest in going through the inner door to The Red. When she said she didn’t want to go anymore, I stopped. And soon the invitations stopped coming.”

“Is that when you began to go to the secret room at Adult World?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No. That was before. That was actually where I met her. That was why I thought we were truly one mind. But her need was different than mine. She needed to be seen, to be desired. Nothing more. I didn’t understand that at first.”

“And when you did?”

“I tried to go back, but it was too late.”

“Why?” she asked. Her hands massaged his shoulders from behind.

“You just saw,” he said. “The places I knew are gone. Rubble. There is nothing left of the past.”

“Time moves forward, not back,” she said. “Say goodbye and drive with me.”

The grave stone in front of him looked much the same as those in the rows all around them. But Aaron read his dead wife’s name on it; spoke it out loud. He let the Born and Died dates linger on his tongue as he remembered the times when he had been inside her, and the times when he had paraded her for others to envy. And the times when he had sat right next to her on the couch, arm around her shoulder, and still felt as if he were alone in the room.

He touched the smooth edge of the granite, and nodded. Then he turned towards the small Japanese woman in her “fuck me while I drive” chauffeur outfit. “Take me to the place you know,” he said. “I am ready.”

She turned and walked ahead of him to the car, opening the door for him once more.

««—»»

They drove in silence, and Aaron poured himself another bourbon. The streetlamps and traffic lights turned to blurry trails as his eyes filled with tears. Once he’d given away a part of himself hoping to be filled in turn. But all that had happened was that his emptiness grew larger, deeper…until he was nothing but a gulf. A vacant man in a false skin. He had pretended to be something he wasn’t for so long, he no longer knew what he was. He wasn’t the man he’d pretended to be, but he wasn’t the man he once had been either.

The car left the main road behind and slid through an alley. He didn’t recognize the neighborhood, but the rent was definitely declining by the block. Apartments were flanked with pawn shops. Windows were boarded, but people moved on the sidewalks outside. The buildings were not deserted, only desolated. They pulled down another alleyway, and then the car rolled to a stop. His door opened, and when he stepped out, he saw there were entryways to a couple of bars, as well as an old neon arrow that pointed from the second floor down at a doorway. The sign above the red glow proclaimed “Peep Shows 25 Cents.”

She motioned for him to head that way. “What you are seeking is there.”

Aaron shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “It’s degenerate, sure, but not exactly the kind of place…”

“Did they keep your secret room on a bright, busy street?” she asked.

He couldn’t argue that point, so he stepped forward, and she opened the blacked glass of the door for him.

The place smelled like mildew and ammonia. It was small, dingy, close. Something sexual occupied every space the eye could roam, from vibrators to dildos to Spanish Fly pills to crotchless panties. There were only three rows of shelving units crammed into the narrow room between the four walls, all of them overflowing with porn DVDs and each section labeled with the particular kink catered to: MILF, Lesbian, Bondage, Gay…

An old oriental man behind the counter leaned forward as they stepped inside. The chauffeur approached him, and extended her hand. The cashier took it in his own, and appeared to study it for a moment. “I’d like a coin,” she said.

He said nothing, but reached below the counter, and then placed something in her hand.

She turned to Aaron, her dark eyes strangely bright.

“This way,” she said, moving down the aisle towards the back of the shop, where a sign read “Adult Arcade.” She led the way down dirty tile steps into a lower level. At the bottom, a line of wooden booths had been constructed out of plywood, and painted black. Thin doors opened into the booths, and next to each was a small glass display window that featured the DVD covers of the movies that presumably played in each booth. The hall smelled of old urine, and Aaron shook his head when she approached one of the booths.

“No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

She stood impassively at the entryway to a booth and waited for him. The DVD covers next to the door showed a line of naked men, all holding their cocks out with their hands. A big-butted brunette was kneeling at the center of the line, both of her hands as well as her mouth occupied.

Aaron sighed, and stepped past her into the booth. She pulled the door closed behind them. This was it then. All of her talk would amount to a blowjob in a seedy peep show booth? He felt his body deflate. This was worse than he could have imagined.

The chauffeur pushed a coin into the slot next to a video screen mounted in the ragged plywood wall. But as soon as the screen came to life, she turned around and pointed to the door they’d just entered. Her arm brushed his as she did; they could both barely fit in the space at the same time. He trembled at her touch. Maybe a blowjob wouldn’t be the worst thing.

“Open the door,” she said.

“Huh?” he said. They’d just stepped in. The movie had just begun playing on the screen behind them.

“Open the door.”

He did, confused before he turned the knob, and even more confused after.

The dingy hallway outside the peep show booth was gone.

Instead there was a long corridor in its place, leading away from the door. It was blindingly white, though he could discern no actual light fixtures. The walls themselves seemed to glow.

“Come with me,” she said, and led him down that long walk. He followed, and eventually the door behind them disappeared. When he glanced back, there was nothing to see but white.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “How did we get here?

She extended her hand and showed him the tattoo between her fingers. “The man at the front of the store gave me the coin…because I have this mark. Nobody can enter Painfreak without this,” she said.

“Painfreak?”

“It’s the place you’ve been searching for,” she said. “It’s a place known by many names and there are many doorways, though all of them are well hidden. You’ve seen an aspect of it before, in your NightWhere. Once it was all you needed. Now, it is all you need again. And that needing…that’s the only time one can find entrance. The need must be strong enough. Yours was.”

The corridor ahead changed. With every step, the white dissolved, giving way to strobing colors and laughter. And throbbing music and moans. Aaron could see motion, figures dancing; the vibration of a bass drum made the hair on the back of his arms shiver. Rhythmically.

“I don’t understand how we got here,” he said.

“You called,” she said. “I came.”

Before he could answer, they were there, in the club with the others, the long white road behind. She shed the cap and jacket, tossing them to the wall. Then she stood in front of him, corset shimmering in the moving club lights, the black hose of her thighs catching the colors and sparkling darkly with the rhythm of the beat. She slipped her arm around his waist and drew him close to her, rocking her small pelvis to his. He smiled and gave way to the motion, though he didn’t know the song.

A blond girl in pigtails danced her way next to them; she wore black leather boots and red panties, and nothing else. Her breasts were pendulous; bouncing with every beat of the drum. She jiggled them against his arm, and tried to cut in. He resisted, and the girl shrugged, leaving him with a wet kiss on the cheek.

“You should go,” the chauffeur said, pointing at the throng of people. “Dance and lose yourself here.”

He shook his head. “I’m not looking for emptiness. I have that already.”

“You want more?” she asked.

He looked around, acknowledging the titillation factor of the sex-on-the-dancefloor gyrations, and then nodded his head. This drunken debauch did nothing for him anymore. It really never had; he had always gone quickly to the next level. The level that toyed with pain. The level that put life itself on the razor’s edge.

“Follow me,” she said.

She led him through rows of half-naked dancers. They passed an area where men and women were chained to walls and racks, as others took turns making their marks with whips and flogs. They passed couches where men mounted men and women smothered men with the deltas of their thighs.

When they reached a wooden door so large and old it looked medieval, she turned to him and cautioned. “If you pass through this, there is no turning back. In Painfreak, every person must find their level. If they go too far, push too deep…some never return.”

“What is beyond the door?” he asked.

“Pain,” she said. “And pleasure. Dark lusts fulfilled. Thirsts quenched. Souls bled…what do you desire?”

“Something more than this,” he said, gesturing to the revelers in the room around them.

She nodded, and lifted a round iron ring pinned to the front of the door. It was surrounded by four heads carved in the ancient wood. Each featured a different expression—one laughing, one crying, one screaming and one blank—the absence of all emotion or expression.

The door opened and they stepped into a dark hallway lit by glowing red embers on either side of a stone path. The waves of heat were palpable. The chauffeur turned, and placed her hands on his shoulders.

“Are you ready to leave it all behind,” she asked. Her eyes were wide, and serious. “There is no holding back here, no reservation. To get it all, you must give up all.”

He nodded. “There is nothing else for me now, nothing more to hold me back.”

She nodded, as if she had expected that response. “Then remove your clothes. Shed your false skins and inhibitions at this door. Carry nothing of your society in here. This is the place for primal. For indulgence. For violence. For transcendence. Bring no binds that hold you back.”

She removed her hands from his arms then, and reached behind her back to loosen the ties of her corset. After a moment, Aaron began to remove his shirt. As the chauffeur removed her hose, he undid his belt. When he hesitated, she was there, and pulled down his zipper for him, dragging the pants down his thighs, and then loosing his underwear from his hips with her thumbs. The wilted slug of his manhood slipped free, and her face moved past, so close he could feel her breath on his testicles as she dragged his pants down, down, and off.

When he was completely nude, she stood, with both of their discarded garments in a pile in her arms.

“No turning back,” she said, and then threw the clothing onto the coals. They smoked, and then quickly caught flame. As they did, she slipped her arms around his back, and raked it with her nails. “Welcome to Painfreak,” she said. “This is the place you have dreamed of all your life. The place you tried to create in your secret room.”

She leaned up and kissed him. Her tongue was hot, and sharp in his mouth, and he felt his entire body stiffen, rising to life. Waking from a sleep of years.

Her hand slipped down his side and found his own. She turned and led him down the path of fire, and into a room of blood.

Screams erupted from every side as they walked through the room. There were beds made of leather straps, the straps tight enough to support the weight of a body, but with enough gap to allow the blood to seep through freely. Because this was where those who wanted to feel the pain in their pleasure came. And those who wanted to give it.

Aaron stopped near one bed where a woman lay on her back, wrists bound together above her head, ankles tied apart to force her thighs to remain open. A hirsute, brown-skinned man straddled her. At first glance, it was a typical bondage scene. Until you looked at his fingers. Which each wore a steel cap on their ends…and each cap was tipped with a tiny barb. As he shoved his cock inside her, he drew his fingers down her body, opening red ribbons of feeling across her breasts and arms.

She screamed, and yet moments later, wrapped her arms around him, drawing him down to a hungry kiss. When he raised himself up, his chest hair glistened with her blood.

Aaron walked past orgasmic women with breasts stretched taut by hooks and men with testicles weighed down by heavy chains or cocks impaled by metal skewers. At one bed, three women held a man to the bed, as a fourth dragged a knife across his inner thighs. She stifled his screams with her crotch as she felated his obstinate erection.

They left that room, and entered a strange mechanical place that whined with sound. The scent of hot metal and oil permeated the air, and bodies bound by chains and iron rods moved back and forth, pulled and stretched by engines that revved and sighed. Men with skin burned red pulled against the chains, desperate to gain just one more foot, to reach the prone bodies of the women waiting just out of reach. Like the men, the women were bound and naked, streaked with black machine grease, but they appeared desperate to welcome the bodies of the men. Every few minutes, the men would gain a foot on the chain and mount one of the women, fast and hard before being eventually yanked back to the line. It was a strange sight, a half dozen naked men, cocks sprung, pulling against the machine to reach the nirvana of glossy vaginas that lie tauntingly just out of reach 90 percent of the time. A bell sounded, and chains went slack, and all of that muscle suddenly released. The entire line of bodies slid into gear and slapped together wetly; the clank of the machines now augmented with a chorus of groans.

“Farther in,” she said. And he nodded.

There were other rooms they passed, and scents of boiled flesh and excrement and the sounds of steel and wetness.

And then they came to an empty room. With an empty bed.

The chauffeur reached down to a small table and came back with her fingers curled around the haft of a thin, silver blade. She presented it to him.

“You have waited long enough. I have waited my whole life.”

She lay down on the bed, and slipped her wrists into round leather hoops. Aaron saw what he needed to do, and bound her ankles with the restraints that dangled at the foot of the bed.

“You are sure,” he asked.

She nodded.

He bent over her and kissed her, and she filled his mouth with urgency. He answered, kissing her eyes and cheeks and breasts, covering her with his bites and licks. The memory of the girls he had once had in the secret back room of the club came back to him. He remembered the things he had done to them with his knife, and his cock. Only in those moments, had he ever really felt complete.

“Take me,” she urged him. “Eat me,” she whispered.

He chewed on the gummy tips of her nipples and bit her belly until blood flowed. But when she whispered once more, he could restrain the knife no longer.

“Sushi,” she said.

He lay between her legs and touched the blade to the thin petal of flesh trembling there. It seemed to breathe, gasping open and closed, desperate for fulfillment. Longing for completion. Aaron fingered her flesh, tantalizing it, letting it moisten. The longer he toyed, the more she glistened. And when she’d reached what he felt was the perfect flush of pink, he drew the blade down, and carved.

The chauffeur screamed, and tried to close her legs. But they were locked in the stirrups he’d fastened.

Aaron stood. Naked. Paunch sagging. Cock fully erect, rubbing against the hair near his bellybutton. Blood dripping from the flesh between his fingers to splatter and run down the silver hair of his chest.

He held the petal of her sex up to the light, where she could see, and then let it slide into his mouth.

Warmth. Salt. Perversion. Desire. Dream.

He lost touch with the world in that moment, floating on the wave of taste and texture and the audible music of faraway screams. He shivered with lust and laved her broken flesh before crushing it with his teeth.

The nerves of his mouth burned with a fire that he could not have explained. Pleasure. Perversion. The taste of her flesh.

Aaron bent and gripped and brought the knife down again, and the chauffeur cried out again in a note of agony that only made the taste of her in his mouth even more exquisite. Only in violation could he feel fulfilled. He brought the sliver of sexual flesh up and held it above his lips before letting it fall, like fiery sugar to his tongue.

Rapture.

The space between her legs flowed in a red tide. Release.

Aaron tasted heaven. A dream so long denied. So darkly wished for. And yet still…

…as the initial taste and electricity in his nerves eased…he found it wasn’t enough. It was a taste of heaven, but not what he truly sought. What he yearned for. He didn’t want the feeling to be fleeting.

“Lie down,” the chauffeur demanded. While he had savored the forbidden taste of her, she had released herself, and undone her ankle restraints. Now she stood before him with blood-streaked thighs and bruising, well-bitten breasts.

“Lie down,” she said again. Aaron complied. He laid down on the thin leather straps of the bed, and felt the warm wetness of her blood stick to his skin.

The chauffeur locked his ankles in place, but then also reached up and brought a chain across his wrists. He had left her wrists free, and she had held herself back, as he’d carved into her most intimate flesh.

She did not give him the choice. His wrists were locked.

And he didn’t care. He gave himself up to whatever she wanted, whatever he had left. He had tasted her and…

She raised the blade so that he could see. “My flesh to you, your flesh to me,” she said. And then she brought the blade down to slice just below the head of his penis.

The pain was hideous.

Aaron screamed. And strained against his bounds.

But to no avail. The blade moved against him, as her fingers gripped the mushroom head of his manhood between them. He felt both the frisson of penetration, and the ripping as flesh separated.

And then the chauffeur was leaning in, over his chest, with a bloody sliver of skin and flesh hanging above her mouth. She had peeled the skin off from around his shaft. Degloved his penis.

“Your flesh for mine,” she said. “A communion.” And the skin of his manhood disappeared into her mouth.

She undid his wrists then, and his ankles. Aaron looked down to see an angry red stake where his cock had once been, and part of him laughed, while part of him cried. The pain was excruciating. And yet…somehow distant.

“You have looked for connection all your life,” his chauffeur said. “I have looked for the same. That’s why I took your call tonight. Together we can reach that place. Your blood in mine.”

She slipped one leg over his lap, and bent to kiss him, the iron taste of him still fresh on her lips.

“Will you be mine?” she asked.

Aaron looked into the brown endless eyes of her, so exotic. So erotic. He nodded. “I will,” he gasped.

She moved her pelvis over his, and let his mushroom head find purchase in the slippery gore he’d made of her sex. When she was sure, she let go, and allowed herself to be impaled by his bloody spear.

Both of them screamed, as he slipped home.

The pain and blood only lubricated their orgasm, which came quickly, violently, a series of wild waves on a shore of fire.

Aaron opened his eyes and saw hers looking back at his, both of them haunted and aghast.

Afraid and amazed to have finally found…

“Yes,” he said. Only that.

She nodded, and smiled. And closed her legs with him still inside. Their wounds kissed and wept. And he held her close, arms locked around her back, pulling her as tight as flesh allowed.

««—»»

When he awoke, the next morning…or night—there was no division of time in the depths of Painfreak—she was there still, hips pressed to his, breasts wet with sweat against his own. The room flickered with the shadows of fires unseen, and the chauffeur’s arms remained around his neck.

“Hey,” he said.

She smiled, brown eyes pools of beauty and need and desire. He didn’t want to ever look away, but he did try to shift, to separate himself from the heat of their long embrace. But she came with him. As his thighs moved, they dragged her along.

“What?”

He looked down the brown silk of her waist and saw the place where his flesh entered hers. His cock somehow, unbelievably anchored inside her. Aaron pulled his hips back, and shifted his weight. Instead of leaving her, he saw her pubes stretch and move with his own. The skin of her groin lifted with his motion, skin pulling, but not letting go.

“We are one,” she whispered. “Just like you always dreamed. Completed at last.”

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Your flesh to mine,” she said. “We ate from each other…and gave back to each other. We are connected, for eternity. Two now one. Truly and deeply.”

He tried to shift his hips again, and her waist and legs moved across the bed. It was going to be difficult to walk this way.

“This is fucked up,” he whispered. She only smiled and he realized that he could actually feel the emotion that surged behind her lips. Her thoughts were in his head: wave of relief. The pure excitement of knowing that a lifelong, terrible emptiness was finally filled.

He realized the feeling echoed the surge of his own bitter heart. He was suddenly, strangely completed. Content. He stopped trying to pull away, and instead kissed her deeply, and wondered if they could simply stay that way, lips and groins locked forever. Aaron closed his eyes and saw through hers. He looked old…but younger than he’d felt in years.

We won’t be leaving Painfreak will we, he thought.

A warm surge of bliss served as her answer.

He realized in that moment that while she was inconceivably part of him, he didn’t even know her name. But she read his mind.

“My name is Aaron,” she said. She moved her arms up and around his shoulders, and pulled him even closer. “And I won’t ever leave you,” her mind whispered inside his own.

“I will always love you,” he said.

Or she said.

It didn’t matter anymore.

| — | — |

Storming the Museum

————

Charlee Jacob

As if the naked blade,
gleaming only in darkness,
cancer zip pop
cinders fagged in fire.

“Good bye! Good bye!”

Each soul blazing
that old Gethsemane yarn.

Having reached the Special Nirvana
that old black magic is bubbling
at Hell’s gateway.

All tongues flick greedily
at the mention
of the current Reign of Terror.

Incestuous as the thrice ancient Pharaohs
seeking a decaying warmth
from a nameless dead star.

All sufferings

its promise of reflection.

This their way out
or is it only a blind alley?

Their path of following
the too beautiful
and the too hideous.

The primordial stew of anti-desire
in nosing the alien sphincter
in front of you.

And ahead?…A dead end.

All pretenses stripped.

There is sight of bleeding prophecy,
a noise of shrieking jungles
drunk upon the rancid flavor of a warm gun.

It makes a certain sniffing physics
as the mob of nanosouls
storms the museum
to demand everyone claim
but one lost yet seething drop
from Morat-Sade’s bath.

| — | — |

About the Authors

Linda Addison

Linda Addison, born in Philadelphia, PA, is an American poet and writer of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Addison is the first African-American winner of the HWA Bram Stoker Award, which she won four times for her collections Consumed, Reduced to Beautiful Grey Ashes (2001) and Being Full of Light, Insubstantial (2007) and How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend (2011) and Four Elements (2014).

Website: http://www.lindaaddisonpoet.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/linda.d.addison

Amazon  page: http://amazon.com/author/lindaaddisonpoet

Twitter: http://twitter.com/nytebird45

Instagram: http://twitter.com/nytebird45

Pinterest: http://instagram.com/nytebird45

————

Chesya Burke

Chesya Burke has written and published nearly a hundred fiction pieces and articles within the genres of science fiction, fantasy, noir and horror. Her story collection, Let's Play White, is being taught in universities around the country. In addition, Burke wrote several articles for the African American National Biography in 2008, and Burke's novel, The Strange Crimes of Little Africa, debuts later this fall. Poet Nikki Giovanni compared her writing to that of Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison.

Burke's thesis was on the comic book character Storm from the X-Men, and her comic, Shiv, is scheduled to debut in 2016.

Burke is currently pursuing her PhD in English at University of Florida. She's Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of Charis Books and More, one of the oldest feminist book stores in the country.

Website: http://chesyaburkewriter.wordpress.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ChesyaBurke

Twitter: http://twitter.com/ChesyaBurke

————

Randy Chandler

Randy Chandler is the author of the novels Dime Detective, Daemon of the Dark Wood, Angel Steel, his story collection Devils, Death & Dark Wonders and of two previously published novels Bad Juju and Hellz Bellz (all now available on Kindle). He also co-authored Duet for the Devil with the late t. Winter-Winter-Damon and has contributed short stories to numerous anthologies. Recently he became associate editor at Comet Press. Randy has been an Indie magazine editor/publisher, a freelance book reviewer, a mental health worker, a gas-pump jockey, an ambulance attendant, a soldier in Vietnam, and a funeral home flunky. He often haunts fields of carnage where angels and devils do battle.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Randy-Chandler/e/B003UNAHVG/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/randy.chandler.7

Twitter: http://twitter.com/randchand

————

Charlee Jacob

Charlee Jacob is an American author specializing in horror fiction, dark fantasy, and poetry. Her writing career began in 1981 with the publication of several poems under the name Charlee Carter Broach. She began writing as Charlee Jacob in 1986. This native Texan is best known for her graphic explorations of the themes of human degradation, sexual extremism, and supernatural evil. Her first novel This Symbiotic Fascination (Necro Publications, 1997) was nominated for the International Horror Guild Award and the Bram Stoker Award. Her novel Dread in the Beast tied David Morrell's Creepers for first place for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel of 2005, and her poetry collection Sineater won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Poetry Collection in 2005 as well.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Charlee-Jacob/e/B00JI02IS0

————

John Everson

John Everson is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of eight novels of erotic horror and the macabre, including his latest, the Fountain of Youth thriller The Family Tree, as well as the Bram Stoker Award-nominated tour de force Nightwhere, the Bram Stoker Award-winner Covenant, its sequel Sacrifice and the standalone novels The 13TH, Siren, The Pumpkin Man, Violet Eyes. He also is the author of four collections of short horror fiction, including his latest, Sacrificing Virgins.

John shares a deep purple den in Naperville, Illinois with a cockatoo and cockatiel, a disparate collection of fake skulls, twisted skeletal fairies, Alan Clark illustrations and a large stuffed Eeyore. There's also a mounted Chinese fowling spider named Stoker, an ever-growing shelf of custom mix CDs and an acoustic guitar that he can't really play but that his son likes to hear him beat on anyway. Sometimes his wife is surprised to find him shuffling through more public areas of the house, but it's usually only to brew another cup of coffee. In order to avoid the onerous task of writing, he occasionally records pop-rock songs in a hidden home studio, experiments with the insatiable culinary joys of the jalapeno, designs book covers for a variety of small presses, loses hours in expanding an array of gardens and chases frequent excursions into the bizarre visual headspace of ’70s euro-horror DVDs with a shot of Makers Mark and a tall glass of Newcastle.

Learn more about John on his site where you can sign up for a direct-from-the-author monthly e-newsletter with information on new books, contests and occasionally, free fiction.

Website: http://www.johneverson.com/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/johneverson

Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/johneverson

————

Ryan Harding

Ryan Harding is the author of Genital Grinder and the co-author of the upcoming novel Reincarnage, as well as a contributor to the multi-author collaboration Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road, all from Deadite Press. His stories have also appeared in the anthologies Excitable Boys and In Laymon's Terms, the chapbooks Partners in Chyme (with Edward Lee), A Darker Dawning and A Darker Dawning 2: Reign in Black, and the magazines Splatterpunk and The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B01N1HSDZ5

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ryanhardmorbid

————

Gerard Houarner

Gerard Houarner works by day as what could be described in Layman’s Terms as Arkham’s Recreation and Recovery Director. He’s had over 280 horror, fantasy, and science fiction stories published in the last 40 years, with some assembled in 6 collections, and 67 receiving Honorable Mentions in various St. Martin’s Press/Night Shade Year’s Best anthologies. He’s also had five novels published by both the small and commercial press. His latest, the The Sting of Wonder, The Seed of Faith will be available soon. He has served as Fiction Editor for Space and Time magazine since 1998. At night, he continues to write, mostly about the dark.

Website: http://www.cith.org/gerard

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Gerard-Houarner/e/B001KCRFAA

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/gerard.houarner

————

Michael T. Huyck, Jr.

Michael T. Huyck, Jr. is a short fiction writer and editor who's published fiction and non-fiction in scores of publications since the mid-1990s. His stories have been included in magazines and anthologies such as Space and Time, Horror Garage, Mindmares, Cemetery Dance's In Laymon’s Terms, and Necro Publications Into the Darkness. He edited fiction for Carpe Noctem—a gothic lifestyles magazine—and wrote non-fiction for Speculations, SFWA’s The Bulletin, and the two-volume library compendium Supernatural Fiction Writers. A collection of Mike's short fiction, Of Dark and Yesterday, was published by Crossroad Press in 2015. He's also working on a novel that's been requested by a popular small press.

Outside of writing, Mike is a happy husband and a gloating father. He has been both an airman and a sailor, was once a bouncer and a business owner, and today he's a senior manager with a multinational corporation responsible for nuclear facility operations. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he's a fan of animals, off-roading, and beer. Never together, though.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Michael-T.-Huyck-Jr./e/B009OWUNIE

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Nukegumby

Twitter: http://twitter.com/Nukegumby

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/list/5338585.Michael_T_Huyck_Jr_

Internet Speculative Fiction Database: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?8345

————

K. Trap Jones

K. Trap Jones is an author of horror novels and short stories. With inspiration from Dante Alighieri and Edgar Allan Poe, he has a temptation towards narrative folklore, classic literary works and obscure segments within society. His short stories have appeared in various anthologies and magazines. His novel, The Sinner won the 2010 Royal Palm Literary Award. He is also a member of the Horror Writers Association and can be found lurking around Tampa, FL.

Other Novels: The Sinner, The Harvester, The Drunken Exorcist, One Bad Fur Day, The King's Ox, The Crossroads.

Website: http://ktrapjones.wordpress.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ktrap.jones

Twitter: http://twitter.com/ktrapjones

————

Jordan Krall

Since 2007, Jordan Krall has written professionally. He writes Weird Fiction, horror, crime fiction, apocalyptic literature, bizarro, and non-genre fiction.

He has been published by Eraserhead Press, LegumeMan, Bucket O'Guts, MorbidBooks, Black Rainbows, among others.

His book Fistful of Feet was called “a great homage to the spaghetti western” by the Spaghette Western Database and was recently published in a German-language edition by Voodoo Press.

His work has been praised by such authors as Jeff Vandermeer, Edward Lee, and Tom Piccirilli.

Jordan Krall also runs the cult fiction small press Dynatox Ministries as well as the Weird Fiction imprint Dunhams Manor Press. He has published such authors as Wilum Pugmire, Joseph Pulver Sr, Daniel Mills, T.E. Grau, Nicole Cushing, Robert Price, Thomas Ligotti, Seb Doubinsky, and lots more.

Website: http://jordankrall.wordpress.com

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Jordan-Krall/e/B002BMBTXW

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jordan.krall

Dynatox Ministries: http://dynatoxministries.com/

Dunhams Manor Press: http://dunhamsmanor.com/

————

Edward Lee

Edward Lee is the author of almost fifty novels and numerous short stories and novellas. Several of his properties have been optioned for film, while Header was released on DVD in 2009; also, he has been published in Germany, England, Romania, Greece, and Austria. Recent releases include Bullet Through Your Face and Brain Cheese Buffet (story collections), Header 3, Witch Water and the hardcore Lovecraftian books The Innswich Horror, Trolley No. 1852, Pages Torn From A Travel Journal, Going Monstering, and Haunter of the Threshold. One of Lee’s creative ambitions is to one day write an effective M.R. James pastiche.

Website: http://www.edwardleeonline.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/writeredwardlee

Twitter: http://twitter.com/edwardleeauthor

Message Board: http://horrorworld.org/msgboards/viewforum.php?f=51

————

Monica O’Rourke

Monica J. O’Rourke has published more than one hundred short stories in magazines such as Postscripts, Nasty Piece of Work, Fangoria, Nemonymous, and Brutarian and anthologies such as The Mammoth Book of the Kama Sutra and The Beauty of Death. She is the author of Poisoning Eros, written with Wrath James White, Suffer the Flesh, What Happens in the Darkness, and the collection In the End, Only Darkness. Her books and stories have been translated and published in Germany, Greece, and Russia She works as a freelance editor, writer, and book coach.

————

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Monica-J.-ORourke/e/B00AOO3SLU

Facebook: www.facebook.com/MonicaJORourke

Twitter: http://twitter.com/monicajorourke

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/search?q=monica+o%27rourke

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Jeff Strand

Jeff Strand is a four-time nominee (and zero-time winner) of the Bram Stoker Award.

His novels are usually classified as horror, but they're really all over the place, from comedies to thrillers to drama to, yes, even a fairy tale.

His book Stalking You Now is being made into the feature film Mindy Has To Die.

Because he doesn't do cold weather anymore, he lives in Tampa, Florida with his wife and cat.

Website: http://jeffstrand.wordpress.com/

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8D3F0

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/JeffStrandAuthor

Twitter: http://twitter.com/JeffStrand

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Lucy Taylor

Lucy Taylor was born in Richmond, VA, and never really got the South out of her system, as evidenced by the flavor of Southern Gothic in many of her works. She’s the author of seven novels, including Dancing with Demons, Spree, Nailed, Saving Souls, Eternal Hearts, and the Stoker-award winning The Safety of Unknown Cities. Her stories have appeared in over a hundred magazines and anthologies, including The Mammoth Book of Historical Erotica, The Best of Cemetery Dance, Twentieth Century Gothic, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and the Century’s Best Horror Fiction.

Most recently her work has appeared in Exotic Gothic 5, The Best Horror of the Year #5, Of Devils & Deviants, Nightmare Magazine, Jan. 15 (“Blessed Be the Bound”) and Axes of Evil.

Her most recent collection is Fatal Journeys, horror stories set in exotic lands, published by Overlook Connection Press with an introduction by acclaimed horror author Jack Ketchum.

Taylor lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a land full of mystery, romance, and the macabre. It provided the setting for the novelette A Respite For The Dead, published by Omnium Gatherum Press in Sept. 2014.

Taylor’s dark fantasy story “In the Cave of the Delicate Singers” was acquired for Tor .com by editor and anthologist Ellen Datlow for Tor’s June online issue.

At various times in her life, Taylor has worked as a dance instructor, a bartender and waitress, an English teacher for Berlitz Language School in Tokyo, an artist’s model, secretary, newspaper reporter, editor, and freelance travel writer.

Taylor’s love of travel has led to many adventures (not to mention ideas for plots)! She’s been on safari in Zimbabwe, jogged with a troop of baboons in Zaire, ridden a camel in Coober Pedy, Australia, hangglided in Queenstown, New Zealand, gotten married on a beach in Fiji, scuba dived in St. Lucia, lost her passport, plane ticket and wallet in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, pony trekked in Iceland, and confessed her sins to a priest in Paris.

She is currently at work on a collection of stories with New Mexico settings.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/LucyTaylorAuthor/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/LCTaylorAuthor

Blog:   http://darkfantasy.us/dark-fantasy-blog.html

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/40567.Lucy_Taylor

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Jeffrey Thomas

Jeffrey Thomas is an American author of weird fiction, the creator of the acclaimed milieu Punktown. Books in the Punktown universe include the short story collections Punktown, Voices From Punktown, Punktown: Shades of Grey (with his brother, Scott Thomas), and Ghosts of Punktown. Novels in that setting include Deadstock, Blue War, Monstrocity, Health Agent, Everybody Scream!, and Red Cells. His stories have been selected for inclusion in The Year’s Best Horror Stories (Editor, Karl Edward Wagner), The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (Editors, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling), and Year’s Best Weird Fiction (Editor, Laird Barron). Thomas lives in Massachusetts.

Website: http://www.jeffreyethomas.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jeffrey.thomas.71

Twitter: http://twitter.com/Punktowner

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Tony Tremblay

Tony Tremblay is an author of genre based fiction and non-fiction. You can find many of his stories in the collection, The Seeds of Nightmares published by Crossroad Press, and the newly published novella, Steel published by Book's and Boo's Press. Tremblay was a horror fiction reviewer for Horror World, Cemetery Dance magazine, and Beware the Dark magazine. He is also the host of a horror themed talk show on cable television called, The Taco Society Presents (also available on YouTube). The author lives in New Hampshire with his wife.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Tony-Tremblay/e/B01FCI4Y2Y

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/tony.tremblay.75

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John Urbancik

John Urbancik is the author of Stale Reality, Darkwalker, and The Corpse And The Girl From Miami. His business card proclaims: “Writer. Photographer. Adventurer. Man.” He sold his first story shortly before the end of the last millennia. He is about to begin a third series of Inkstains, in which he writes a story a day every day by hand for an entire year. He’s been spotted on at least five different coasts on three continents; he’s traveled by boat, car, motorcycle, horse, elephant, and camel; and he may be across the street from your house right now.

Website: http://www.darkfluidity.com/

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/John-Urbancik/e/B0088D6M4Y

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/urbancik

Twitter: http://twitter.com/JohnUrbancik

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Colleen Wanglund

Colleen Wanglund is a writer, reviewer, book junkie, metal-head, and a fan of horror and exploitation films, especially films from Southeast Asia. She is a mother and a life-long New Yorker. When not at work writing fiction, she’s usually curled up with a good book and a cup of tea or watching movies. She can be found on Facebook and Twitter, and has a fledgling blog (It’s Not All In My Head) at balzertown.com/sweetcolleen. Her debut novella, Fukushuu: Damaged Woman of Violence is available from Dynatox Minitries at lulu.com, and she has a short story in Dark Tales from Elder Regions: New York, available on Amazon. Colleen is a regular contributor to Cinema Knife Fight as the Geisha of Gore and to Dark Discoveries quarterly magazine. She is also a book reviewer for MonsterLibrarian.com and an Asian film reviewer for VCinema.com, as well as a sometime-contributor for MoreHorror.com.

Website: http://cinemaknifefight.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SweetColleen

Twitter: http://twitter.com/SweetColleen

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Wrath James White

Wrath James White is a former World Class Heavyweight Kickboxer, a professional Kickboxing and Mixed Martial Arts trainer, distance runner, performance artist, former street brawler and professional bad-ass who is now known for creating some of the most disturbing works of fiction in print.

Wrath’s most recent books are Something Terrible co-written with Sultan Z. White, 400 Days of Oppression, Voracious, and Prey Drive (Succulent Prey Part II). He is also the author of Sacrifice, Pure Hate, The Reaper, Skinz, Like Porno for Psychos, The Resurrectionist, Yaccub’s Curse, Succulent Prey, Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town, The Book of a Thousand Sins, His Pain, and Population Zero. He is the co-author of Teratologist co-written with the king of extreme horror, Edward Lee, Orgy of Souls co-written with Maurice Broaddus, Hero co-written with J.F. Gonzalez, and Poisoning Eros co-written with Monica J. O’Rourke.

Wrath lives and works in Austin, Texas.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Wrath-James-White/e/B003TT0O78

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/wrathjw

Twitter: http://twitter.com/WrathJW

Table of Contents

- Why Painfreak

- Welcome to the Mercy Museum ———— Charlee Jacob & Linda Addison

- Henry, Tobacconist ———— John Urbancik
- The Night Sitter ———— Edward Lee
- Painfreak ———— Gerard Houarner
- Thick of Chaos ———— K. Trap Jones
- Exclusive ———— Randy Chandler

- He Who Whispers the Dead Back to Life ———— Lucy Taylor

- The Reverend’s Wife ———— Tony Tremblay
- Ownership ———— Wrath James White
- The Danse Macabre ———— Monica J. O’Rourke
- The Rut ———— Gerard Houarner
- Coping Mechanism ———— Jeff Strand
- Pretty Me Up ———— Michael T. Huyck, Jr.
- Sacred Meat ———— Jeffrey Thomas
- Aikiko’s Blade ———— Colleen Wanglund
- Divine Red ———— Ryan Harding
- Bondage and Godhood ———— Jordan Krall

- They Deal in Pain, But Pleasure is Better ———— Chesya Burke

- Sing Blue Silver ———— John Everson

- Storming the Museum ———— Charlee Jacob