by Schow, Ryan
“Well, then,” Jamison said, overly joyous, “let us proceed with business.”
With no wasted movements, Brice situated herself in the nearest armchair unblinking, unsmiling. Warm air from the heating ducts moved a lingering cloud of cigar smoke into Brice’s face and eyes; she didn’t seem to notice. The way she held Jamison’s eyes, so fearless and barren, so sharp with intensity, caused him to look away.
“That was a veritable massacre that took place at the previous Van Duyn residence,” Jamison said, “don’t you agree?”
Brice didn’t move or blink. She simply sat attentive. Like a robot. “Had you provided Monarch Enterprises with the proper intelligence, this could have been avoided.”
Jamison felt his smile falter. The blame for bad intel was his and Warwick’s responsibility to shoulder, but admitting fault was a weakness neither Jamison nor Warwick would have any part of. It simply made for poor business relations.
“A current photo of the girl was provided. Yet your asset not only killed the wrong girl, he slaughtered an entire family,” Jamison replied.
“We could have discussed this on the telephone, Mr. Jamison. I don’t see the reason for flying me across the United States for—”
Irritated, Warwick cut in. “Your organization has been flawless in its delivery of human inventory, but this…this catastrophic mess you created is highly unacceptable.”
“Your asset,” Jamison added, his own tone rough with hostility, “murdered four people. That’s a lot of collateral damage for not even fulfilling the contract.”
“I agree,” Brice said.
“You agree?” Warwick said, his demeanor snide, condescending. “Just like that?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’ll also agree your asset failed to verify the target before eliminating her,” Warwick added. Jamison watched his friend’s face swell with rage, the vein in his forehead becoming a thick and pulsing thing.
“The intel was bad,” she said.
“Let me tell you something you ice cold—”
“Warwick, please,” Jamison interrupted. “Let us maintain an air of civility.”
Brice proved to be unshakeable. Jamison had seen Warwick at his worst and people squirmed like they would leave their own skin behind just to get out of the room. Yet Brice never even flinched. How was this possible?
“I believe we are owed a more detailed explanation, Miss O’Brien,” Jamison replied, an anxious sweat dampening his armpits.
“We don’t leave witnesses.”
Warwick slammed her with his most disapproving glare. As if he hoped to burrow into her brain and drown her with fear. Jamison saw him do the same thing to break his teenage victims, right before he killed them. Brice had yet to produce one single human expression. Her nerves were forged in steel. Against Warwick’s most intimidating posture, her mouth didn’t even move but to speak and even then, her voice inflection was monotone at best.
Warwick clenched his fist, shifted hard in his chair. He hated being ignored. “The bottom line is we didn’t pay for your boy to kill the wrong girl.”
Brice finally blinked and Warwick looked encouraged. At this point, it was anyone’s guess whether Warwick would snap or not.
“We paid for specific results, and you failed to deliver on those results!” Warwick boomed. His over-tanned face, complete with wrinkles and the swelling of abuse, was practically quivering with rage.
“As I said, Mr. Bundy, I cannot be responsible for bad intelligence.”
Dread tore through Jamison’s insides like spun barbed wire. He started to speak, to smooth things over, when Warwick opened his briefcase. Jamison was rendered speechless at the sight of the green and white dart set with the blood-stained gold tips. In a flash, Warwick zinged the first dart at Brice O’Brien.
4
The dart sunk into the bare flesh of Brice’s arm. The wound did not bleed. To Jamison’s absolute horror, Brice remained perfectly still. She didn’t move; even her expression remained unchanged.
“I am no stranger to pain, Mr. Bundy,” she said in that flat-line voice. “I am not one of your little girls. I will not cry or beg for mercy.”
He buried another dart in her left breast and a third in her shoulder.
“How about now, Miss O’Brien?” he said, becoming increasingly discouraged by her complete lack of either fear or pain.
She looked at Jamison—who was horror stricken—and then back at Warwick with the same plastic expression, and then she said, “With all due respect, Mr. Bundy, you paid us to fulfill a contract and we were not able to do so, therefore, we will be refunding the fee.”
With the darts still buried in her arm, her breast and her shoulder, she reached into her bag, withdrew a leather bank-deposit bag and set it on the table next to her. Completely professional. Perfectly poised. Like the darts weren’t even in her.
Warwick, desperate for the upper hand, for the overwhelming need to feel dominant, over-handed the fourth and final dart, striking their guest directly in the forehead. The dart impacted her skull with an airy thump, then sagged a bit, tenting the woman’s skin outward. Only Brice’s eyes moved, and only to look up at the dart now lodged in her forehead.
“You fool!” Jamison roared, red-faced and springing to his feet.
“At least it wasn’t the gun,” Warwick explained, clearly displeased by the events. “And there’s no blood, yet. So I’d say it’s a win/win.”
Brice cleared her throat and they both turned to her, surprised to find not the slightest trace of emotion on her pale, inhuman mask of a face. Then something happened. Her face shifted ever so slightly to the left and something passed behind her eyes. She was deathly quiet for a moment, and then she flutter-blinked and expression touched her features for the first time since their meeting began.
“If your attempt to intimidate us or make us suffer our boy’s failings includes pitching a dart into our head, Warwick Bundy, then the next time I suggest you throw it a little harder to compensate for the thickness of our skull. Even our boy knows that.”
A bloom of red boiled to the surface of her head wound, making a single crimson drop, like a red tear leaking down her flawless, porcelain skin. Standing up, she slowly and methodically pulled the darts from her body, starting with the one in her forehead.
Jamison stared at her in utter disbelief. Did she just refer to herself as “us” and “our?” He prematurely crushed his cigar in a nearby tray, spilling ash onto a two hundred year old table as he was unable to turn away from the sight of her. Or whatever she was.
“See, Jamison,” Warwick announced with the sadistic grin, “I told you she would bleed.”
Collecting all four darts in her right hand, Brice remained fixated on Warwick. Heading straight for the door, she stopped only to drive all four darts into Warwick’s shoulder with the kind of brute force one would not expect from a woman her size.
“Your toys, Warwick,” she said, forcing a grunt of pain from the man. Jamison saw in his friend’s eyes how he chastised himself for reacting so vocally. Her being tougher than him was going to do a number on Warwick’s confidence, and this scared Jamison. Mostly because he knew what was about to happen.
As Brice reached for the polished door handle, Warwick wheeled his pistol around and blasted her twice in the back of the head. Thick pieces of meat and splashing blood coated the polished walnut door. Brice O’Brien slammed face-first into the door, then dropped in a heap on the hardwood floor.
Warwick was pulling the darts from his shoulder when Jamison finally found his voice and breath. For a second, he was sure he was having a heart attack.
“Why in the world did you do that?” Jamison asked, his conviction failing him.
“That woman scares the shit out of me,” Warwick said. It was the most honest thing Warwick ever said. “Don’t worry, we’ll salvage this thing. And Savannah Van Duyn—the real one—if we ever find her, that little tart is going in the ground. Mark my words.”
&
nbsp; 5
More than ever, it was critical to preserve the corporation’s arrangement with Monarch Enterprises, irrespective of Brice’s violent and rather untimely demise. Shelton Gotlieb, Brice’s closest associate and most obvious predecessor, answered the phone on the second ring.
“Hi Shelton, Warwick Bundy here.”
Shelton didn’t say anything and Warwick assumed there just might be something wrong with everyone over at Monarch Enterprises.
Warwick says, “I’m calling to tell you Brice won’t make it home as scheduled.”
“Has she missed her flight?” Shelton asked with a touch more personality than Brice exhibited when she was still breathing.
“No. She is currently stuffed in the trunk of my Rolls Royce. Her body is wrapped in plastic and wadded newspaper is stuffed into the bullet holes in her head and face so she doesn’t leak all over the carpet. Her passing was unfortunate.”
“It sounds unfortunate, Mr. Bundy.” Not a trace of concern. Not outrage, or even hostility. Warwick couldn’t stop thinking about how strange the man was. Not even concerned for his associate’s death.
“That’s where you come in,” Warwick said, pushing forward.
“I’m not sure we really have anything left to discuss, Mr. Bundy.”
“We do, Shelton. We very much do.”
Warwick said everything he needed to say and when he was finished, compensation was discussed, expectations were set, and agreements were finalized. Although Shelton came off as a man of selective words, what Warwick came to enjoy most was in knowing he would be so much easier to work with than the late Brice O’Brien.
Before hanging up, Warwick said, “I’ll be returning your original compensation, plus an extra ten thousand for the inconvenience, but this time, instead of a quick and clean kill, I want Savannah Van Duyn to suffer a miserable, messy death. And I insist we document the entire affair on video.”
Shelton said, “You know there’s more than just me in this organization. Our benefactors, they’re not men to be reckoned with. They’re an inhuman, terrifying species. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
The subtle tremor in Shelton’s voice reminded him he was dealing with a real human being, not Brice. This was a good sign.
“I trust you’ll find a way to work this out,” Warwick said, confident. “All I want is Savannah Van Duyn in pieces at the bottom of a sewer. And the video evidence to prove it. Do that and we’re square. Fail me and you will find the other side of me to be much less pleasant.”
After a long pause, he said, “With all due respect, if anything goes wrong on either of our ends, we’re both dead men.”
“Just find her, Shelton. Find her and get it done.”
Gotlieb’s New Slave
1
Four hours ago, she stood nearly naked in front of the mirror and said, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” And then she waited. Because she got no reply.
Lost in her reflection, as she had been this entire afternoon, her eyes failed to show her reality. Instead, she only saw the princess reflected in the mirror. Not the emaciated skeleton of the girl she truly was. In her mind she saw loosely curled hair that was long and full and luscious, not the platinum colored mess hanging limp on her shoulders. Her breasts were not small pushes of flesh; rather she had the fairy tale bust of a Disney princess, complete with worlds of cleavage. All over her mouth, crusted in her hands and fingernails, she could not see how the blood had dried, or that her hair was now streaked with the brownish flakes of an earlier massacre.
No, she saw herself as beautiful, standing in a satin white dress with slender hands and manicured nails, and the most perfect pair of ruby red slippers.
Looking directly at her naked, swollen belly, her eyes were unable to comprehend the way it stuck out, or even that she was still full from earlier. Instead, what her lying eyes saw was something else entirely. Something that made her want to cry with joy.
“My baby,” she whispered.
Somewhere a cell phone rang, muffled but distinct, drawing her from her reverie. She did not answer it. She let it go to voicemail instead. It rang through three more cycles before something inside pushed her to take it from the man on the floor.
She leaned down, pulled the phone from the man’s front pocket, then pressed a button and listened.
“Hello?” the male voice said. “Who is this?”
“Who are you calling?” she said, short, sharp. Her stomach was grumbling. The sloshing around, it was a low, rolling feeling, very upsetting like turbulent seas, but thick and meaty.
“This is Shelton Gotlieb calling for Robert Seabird. Is this…”
“Natalya.”
“Natalya, where is Robert?”
Her eyes dropped to the man below. “On the floor.”
“Can you put him on the phone, please?”
She looked at the mirror, saw the fantasy on the other side and she wanted it. She craved it. Why couldn’t she have it right now? “I want to go through the looking glass,” she said into the phone. “Do you understand me right now?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
“The mirror won’t talk back to me,” she said in a baby’s voice, “and it won’t take me in.”
“Natalya, put Robert on the phone.”
“He can’t talk,” she barked.
She touched her palm to her belly, soothing it as she imagined the child growing inside her. That moving around, it was her baby boy stretching his legs. She could see the way her belly was full, and she just knew she was with child. When had she become pregnant?
It didn’t matter.
“And why not?” the man asked, irritation bringing an edge to his voice. “Why can’t Robert come to the phone?”
“Are you going to take my child?” she said in her adult voice.
“Natalya, why can’t Robert come to the phone?”
“He’s dead.”
“Dead? What happened? How did he die?”
“We ate him.”
“You—”
“We were hungry. He doesn’t feed us.”
She was rubbing her swollen belly, not seeing the lines and splotches of flaking gore on her lily white skin, not seeing the leopard print bra and the skimpy panties Robert forced her to wear for his own carnal enjoyment. Hers was the negligee of a prostitute, not a princess.
Especially not a princess with child.
“I’m going to name him Charles,” she said, feeling the baby really kicking now.
She refused to look in the mirror anymore. She refused to see what she really was. Feeling the betrayal of being…her…stuck in this false life and not a real princess, she realized something was wrong with her head. At least she had her child.
“Who are you going to name Charles?” Shelton asked.
“Um, we don’t feel so good,” she replied using her baby voice again.
That’s when she dropped the phone and fell to her knees, holding her stomach, wanting desperately to feel the baby moving inside her. She started to cry real human tears at the thought of throwing up her baby.
The convulsions mowed her over, her body looking the same way a cat coughing up a hairball might look.
The skinny middle of her clenched and pulled her organs so tight. So very, very tight. Violence forced the sloshing child up her throat, and she was devastated. Lost in her misery, overwhelmed.
She heaved up a liquid shot of warm, red bile. And a half-digested flap of skin that made her think maybe she wasn’t pregnant after all. She spit things out on the blood soaked carpet, hoping she would see a leg, or a tiny curled fist. Anything to prove her little Charles was real.
Instead, her eyes found Robert, the real version, not the fairy tale version of him. These new eyes saw flesh eaten from his face, and a kitchen knife buried to the hilt in his throat. One of the ones from earlier—a sadistic, violent presence deep in the shadows inside her—he made her drink from Robert’s throat. Said they sho
uld eat his soul.
Suddenly the entire baby shot up her stomach with a rushing, fluid force, and that was when she knew for certain that what was charging up her throat was no baby.
It was no baby at all.
When she started to vomit, the meaty red juices hit the carpet in sickening display. This wasn’t her mouth miscarrying her kidney bean embryo. No, these were pieces of her handler’s face coming up.
With each explosive surge, she felt her swollen belly emptying out, flattening. The dream of becoming a mother to a child died. Soon the purge stopped.
Things drained from her eyes—water, tears—and her mouth and body were panting, sweating and moaning.
The voice in her head came out of her mouth, telling her things she might have already known.
“You’re no princess, princess,” her mouth said. She shook her head, the baby voice speaking, saying, “I am.” But the other voice using her mouth to tell her things she could not understand said, “You’re not even real.” But she was real.
She just knew she was real!
The walls inside her mind were crumbling, different versions of her life crashing into her brain, flooding her senses, threatening her sanity. She started to laugh, but it sounded like crying. Her brain hurt, and her head was swallowing her soul, sucking her deep, deep, deep inside herself.
Then she was falling. Backwards into darkness. Deeper, deeper down.
On the way down she felt something brush by her, a warm energy, a spirit. She knew this presence as Gem. She knew when she finished falling, she would land in a bed with soft sheets and fluffy pillows and absolute, perfect nothingness.
This was safety. This was home.
“Remember,” Gem’s soft voice said, delicate as rose petals. “Remember to forget.”
And she forgot. And it was dark. So she slept.
2
Shelton rifled through Natalya’s grey, three inch thick programming manual sitting on his desk. Finally he found the page: the coding page outlining her basic programming.
