The Juliette Society, Book II

by Sasha Grey

  But was it sent by friend or foe?

  Someone trying to show me the truth, or bury me in another lie?

  I’d be an idiot to go. It’s a trap, there’s no way it can be safe.

  And yet…

  Who would have sent this to me? And what are his or her intentions for me? Illumination or harm? Was it Lola? If so, why didn’t she send it to my phone or personal e-mail address?

  I grab my phone and scroll through the contacts, selecting Lola’s number.

  It doesn’t ring before telling me the number is no longer in service.

  That can’t be right. I received the message from her today. I look through my recent calls and select Lola’s number.

  Again, the electronic voice tell’s me that that number doesn’t exist.

  Was the witness ready to expose something darker than Bob’s involvement in TJS? Is there something darker? I search for Lola online, trying to find contact information.

  It’s like she never existed. Nothing, not even the original interviews I read, are to be found. Why would someone scrub her from the Internet, even removing her from website caches? There’s one place I have some evidence—other than the voicemail she left earlier. I listen to it again, finding solace in the warm tones of her voice, as though they somehow prove I’m not losing it.

  I go back to my other tab, but it’s timed out and booted me. I’d copied everything—sources must be cited so we can’t get sued—and kept it in its own file with the rest of my sources. I log in.

  Password Invalid.

  The red letters appear, and I check to see if caps lock is on.

  I try three more times, unsuccessfully, to log in to my account. What the hell is going on?

  Why would someone want to sever my connection to Inana and Lola? There’s nothing I would…Jack, I realize. Instead of cooling down and getting back in touch with me, what if Jack made good on his threat to take Gold down by going public with the information— or worse, went directly to him first and told him about his plan to go public?

  Jack’s exactly the type of young idealist who would give a corrupt asshole one chance to do the right thing himself, believing it would actually happen. My stomach swoops and my palms sweat.

  I pull out my phone to text Jack, but I don’t want any of this written down anywhere.

  Feeling sick, I punch in his number, half expecting it, too, to be out of service, but it rings three times before going to voicemail. I try again and again, but he doesn’t answer.

  There’s that saying, “thrown for a loop”? Now I get it.

  I don’t know who else to call about this, so I contact the one person I shouldn’t.

  “Bob DeVille speaking.”

  “Where’s Jack?”

  “Catherine, what a pleasant surprise. Excuse me for a moment.” I hear him breathe in and out a few times, and noise fades away as he takes his half of the conversation to a more private place. “What can I do for you?”

  I wonder if he told Jack about the hotel—everything about it, my reasons for being there—and the things I’ve done there while telling myself it was all in the name of getting a story, in an attempt to sabotage our relationship. “You’ve probably been waiting for this moment for four years,” I say. “How does it feel to have finally taken something from me, gotten your revenge?”

  “You’re really not making any sense. I haven’t said anything to Jack—what would I say to him? He’s been so preoccupied with his new…friend.”

  “You’re a bastard.”

  “He’s like the son I never had, and I’m doing my best to help Jack follow along in my footsteps.”

  “You son of a bitch.”

  “Careful,” he says with a laugh. “Do you remember what I said about hiding in the open? How no one truly believes rumors? No matter what you think you could do trying to take me down, I can’t be hurt by a scandal no one would believe. For what it’s worth, I think they’re a match made in heaven.”

  “Real comforting.” I have to wonder if tearing us apart was the only way DeVille could distract Jack from discovering his dark secrets, feeding him half-truths.

  “I did try to tell you when you came to dinner.”

  DeVille had hinted that I may not be Jack’s priority. Funny how I’d assumed DeVille was talking about himself.

  “With friends like these…” I hang up.

  What the hell do I do now? What would Inana do now?

  A calmness spreads through my belly like a shot of whiskey taken straight with no chaser.

  Is there something that needs to be done or exposed, or should I continue feeding my own journey? I can explore my sexual desires and just…be Inana for a while, at least until I figure out my next move. Why not? Win-win.

  Certain things only gain life through the people inside them at any given time.

  Airports. Shopping malls. Theaters. That’s why directors use them for post-apocalyptic shots in worlds taken over by flesh-eaters or emptied out after a large portion of the population has died from some unnamed disease—because they feel innately wrong and more than a little creepy when you take away the bustle of humanity.

  Certain places get too quiet, and you wonder when the aliens came and took everyone away.

  What’s looming behind you?

  I can feel the emptiness as soon as I get through the first door— before I use my black key in the second door and walk down the stairs.

  Silence, except for my own footfalls echoing in front of me. I want to take my shoes off and tiptoe so as not to betray my presence, but I sense time slipping by like grains of sand sliding through an hourglass, so instead of stopping, I rush ahead.

  The emptiness has a presence to it, like it’s waiting for me to make noise, make movement, help it hide in the shadows I create for it.

  The bar is empty, too, and without people in it, it feels cavernous, like a gaping maw of nothingness.

  If I screamed, would it echo? Or would it be swallowed up like I never made a sound?

  Where is everyone?

  I expect Bundy to pop up behind the bar with a rag and a gotcha smile, maybe a few other people from my past—Marcus, even, with his young face and hair gone white from the who-knows-what he’s gotten up to. How would he relieve his sexual tensions now that Anna’s no longer fulfilling his Oedipus complex?

  Something shiny catches my eye from across the room, in front of one of the mirrors.

  Just like that, I know I’m being watched. That this moment was always going to happen. That I’ve been led here by some unseen hand the whole time, like I’m nothing more than a pawn in a game of chess someone else is playing—and I never saw the black and white of the board beneath my feet.

  Only a queen I was trying to find.

  Or maybe a couple of them, in a quest for more power, more knowledge, self-knowledge.

  Gnosis.

  I crack my neck and walk to the mirror, my poise returning like a soft cloak of velvet. I am no pawn.

  Maybe that’s something that the rest of the players forgot.

  But I’ll be damned if I turn and run and miss out on whatever lies behind the mirror.

  I bend and pick up the coin. How old it is, I have no idea, but I know before flipping it over that there are two faces on it.

  I saw the same coin—or one identical to it—on a page in Inana’s diary. This one now belongs to me. There’s no heads or tails, no this or that. The Janus Chamber isn’t about or.

  It’s about and. This side and that. I am this and that. Dark and light. Strong and vulnerable.

  Cat and mouse.

  The people who find themselves granted access to the Janus Chamber are both sides of the coin.

  Is this the new key that will unlock more information? What test have I passed that I’m being granted even more access to something this big?

  How did they know I was going to be here right now?

  The mirror swings open.

  I step behind it.

  TWENTY-EIGHT


  SOMETIMES YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT fate has in store for you.

  And sometimes you walk into a room behind a mirror, take one look, and recognize the place.

  SODOM.

  SODALITY OF DOMINANTS.

  I don’t know if I could consider this coming full circle, or even where that nascent point is. A movie theater. A classroom.

  A dream inside a tired mind.

  Through the door to the right is a huge warehouse where everything on SODOM, the website Anna was on, was shot. How could I not have seen that this place was The Juliette Society’s?

  As I walk through a door into a hallway, there are more rooms that splinter off, devoid of people, but with equipment inside, doors left open.

  I recognize the equipment, the toilet with the drilldo, the machine where Inana lay in a puddle of her own come, shuddering and trying to see who would win in a battle of pleasure in woman versus dildo.

  Electrified cages shaped like people on all fours—like the one I was in the other night.

  Clawfoot tubs because they’re deep enough to be immersed in.

  Platforms with frames built to suspend.

  Platforms with frames built to restrain.

  Slings sitting around waiting for asses to climb into them.

  It’s a stadium where gladiators could come to fuck and watch each other take part in the wildest things their minds could dream up, but it’s all strange with no one using the equipment. It’s where the objects of pleasure and torture are stored before use. It’s the world’s kinkiest storage locker, but also a set—this is where things get filmed.

  Each one smells like stale come and sweat. And more than a little blood.

  Where are the people?

  I step inside the third room down. It’s empty as well, but somehow it feels warmer, and calm. It’s not waiting to be filled—or maybe it’s that it’s had enough.

  I’m sure you’ve already asked the question that occurred to me as well: Wouldn’t a smart girl, a reporter, especially after noting the practices and the sex club, wonder if she’s being played by being offered admittance? Yes. But then, perhaps that’s just the nature of the game—new flesh, new intrigue, welcoming the players willing to pay the ultimate price. And I was willing to pay the price for my own journey, for Inana.

  I walk back out the door and go the other way instead, because blood on the floor isn’t the way I want my journey to end. Through another door and up a hallway, I come to a red door.

  And I want to paint it.

  It’s closed, but I take a deep breath and twist the knob.

  And what do you know, I walk right into Bob DeVille’s office—or a room that’s set up to look exactly like it, right down to the lemony scent of the wood polish and the picture of Gena on the desk.

  He turns in his chair, wearing the mask he wore that night at the private mansion we fucked at, and part of me wonders irrationally if this place is connected to others via deep underground passageways. Whether it’s all connected, and all we would have had to do to find it was dig. That place had no name, either. But I’m not here for the logistics of it all. The hows. I’m here for the whys.

  I take a deep breath and squint at the wilder, bad, older version of my now-ex-fiancé. “Bob.”

  “What took you so long?” He smiles. “You’re late.”

  “I came as fast as I could,” I say wryly. “It might have been quicker if someone had just told me the truth.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  I walk forward. “You think this has been fun for me? I’ve lost things, people.”

  “You lost things that were dragging you down, holding you back.” He scoffs. “I’d have thought you would understand that, at least.”

  And I guess I do. “What about Jack?”

  DeVille shrugs. “He’s not a part of this.”

  “Thank you.”

  He raises his head in acknowledgment. “You were informed before about the mythos of The Juliette Society. Do you remember it?”

  “Yes. Like the Illuminati for fucking,” I downplay it, suddenly cavalier, because I don’t want him thinking this is easy because of who he is. I want him to work for it, to know that this is all my choice. What’s about to happen is only going to occur because I want it to.

  He holds his hands out to the sides. “If you know the name of a secret society, it’s a pretty ineffective secret society, isn’t it?”

  Indeed. “Sort of like how if you see a chameleon, that means it’s a pretty awful chameleon. Tell me something I don’t know. Where’s Max? Where does he fit into all of this?” I’d thought it was Max who was the more powerful man of the two, and yet Bob is here in Max’s empty club, not Max.

  I impressed Max and leveled up to Bob. But who’s the final boss?

  Bob continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “There are protectors of our society that have taken notice of you.”

  “Is that a good thing?” My heart pounds in my chest with a strange validation. We all like to hear that we’re unique and noteworthy, even if it’s to a secret society built around kink and wealth.

  “It can be.” Bob’s voice comes from behind me, and I turn, disbelief at what I’m seeing morphing into a scared laughter and utter confusion, turning back , my mouth agape at the Bob sitting behind the desk, pulling the mask off.

  Are they twins or is one a double? Who have I been dealing with this whole time?

  I face the one who came in behind me. “Which one are you?”

  He shrugs, undoing the buttons of his shirt. “Does it matter? Who are you?”

  Inana. I smile. “Limitless.” I raise my hands above my head, letting him strip off my shirt. Maybe it seems like a strange thing to do, but I’ve already fucked one of them and almost killed the other— what’s the harm in doing both at once?

  Maybe I’d done both to one of them and never before met the other.

  If you could have sex with yourself, would you? In a way, I am DeVille and always have been.

  Either way, a balance needs to be made.

  Limits have to be broken.

  They cage me between them with their muscular bodies, closing their arms around me until I am held against them, locked in an embrace for a moment like puzzle pieces snapping into place. It feels violently right. So good it hurts my mind.

  One article at a time, clothes are lost. Even before, when I thought he was anonymous, that first time, I was attracted to him.

  Like attracts like. We smell the depths of depraved imagination and come up licking our fingers with the juices dripping down our chins.

  Where one body stops, another begins.

  They go at me, one from the front and the other from behind, and I just know that the way they’re lavishing attention on me, making me the star of the show, means I’m going to have to pay them back in a big way.

  The steady licks become my world, and I look from one to the other, marveling at the identical faces.

  Is there a good one and a bad one? Which one do I know better?

  I urge them both to stand, and I kneel and go back and forth, tugging, licking, sucking, in a frenzy to make them lose control with pleasure.

  One lies on the floor. The other pushes me on top.

  I slide down onto his cock, bracing myself for the other Bob to ram himself home inside my ass at the same time.

  Double penetration.

  It was always going to come down to this. Him and him and me. I brace my hands on his chest, but the one fucking my asshole from behind takes my wrists, stretching them above my head until my tits jut out and he’s holding my weight.

  Bob’s stronger than he looks.

  I grind down harder onto their cocks, more swiveling my hips than anything, letting the one behind drive the rhythm for us all. No point fighting gravity when it feels this good to give in to it.

  We rut and gyrate and grind, an unholy trinity of grunts and moans.

  I lose track of time. I lose track of myself.

 
; I’ve never been impaled like this before, both holes at once, so deeply it feels like I’m going to be permanently damaged, but if anyone quit I’d kill them for stopping.

  I see stars. I see atoms. I’m infinitely small and pantagruelian huge all at once, wrapped in thick strands of semen that bind us all together.

  And that’s when the one below me moves his hands from my breasts to my collarbone to my neck. The one behind me holds me in place. I don’t try to remove his hands. Instead, I lock mine around the neck of the one in front of me as well.

  This time, as his hands close, his eyes stay kind and gentle. He smiles as I tighten my grip involuntarily when the orgasm flickers at first deep within me, then turns to a raging inferno of molten heat as we fuck and fuck and fuck. My hips nearly dislocate with the power of their thrusts, and still I wish for more, urge them harder with shakes and shimmies of my ass, desperate to come, but the edges of my vision are going darker and darker.

  I need to come before I disappear.

  If you could be anyone, why be a pale imitation of the person you want to be? Why should I be Catherine when I can be Inana? Inana wouldn’t care as much about my troubles—like worrying about my job or errant fiancé. They’re petty and not as interesting as her exploration; at least, they are since I realized everything I thought Jack was is a lie. And yet, there’s something tugging at me, my ego, maybe, that wants to remain myself while experiencing the things, the growth Inana did.

  I want to be the best Catherine I can be, not a pale imitation of Inana. One already existed. It’s time for another to rise up.

  I went because I wanted to, not because I was trying to save my relationship with Jack, but because I crave the lust and the desire and the exploration of who I can be with these people. Maybe it’s dragging me deeper in and closer to more danger, but I’ve got nothing to lose.

  No one to lose but myself. In a way, I’ve already sacrificed Jack, and he sacrificed me…we just have different motives. But I realize that I’m more like Bob than I am like Jack.

  And that brings a smile to my face. Miles to go before I sleep, and all that jazz.