Nightmare Magazine Issue 25, Women Destroy Horror! Special Issue

by Nightmare Magazine

  “He didn’t mention me by name,” I’d countered both times, as the phone cord wrapped itself around my wrist like a curly python, but Gerhard was adamant—I was his only client to appear in a Steppe Syster video.

  “But Ger, Westmisley only produces records, as in musicians . . . his people handle videos, he just oversees what they come up with.” As I pleaded with him, I squeezed the receiver anxiously, my skin crawling under the remembered pressure of Westmisley’s smoke-glass-shielded eyes.

  • • • •

  I suppose people who saw the “Love Victim” video assumed that my tattoo-slurping cameo was morphed, but that wasn’t “Edan’s style.” Or so said Kenny, the director, while everyone waited for Mr. Bandanna to finish embellishing Cody’s chest as he stretched out like a fallen Christ on the drum riser, bitching about how much the black paint-thin icing tickled as the glumly sweating tattoo guy spent an hour of studio time painting faux needlework between Cody’s nipples. There was only so much butt-wiggling for Kenny to do in that hour, so eventually he confided, “Great Scarface’s into sensation, albeit visually simulated sensations . . . he can’t feel a damn thing anymore.” Kenny whispered in his irresistible Capote-esque drawl, glancing towards the rear of the studio, past the terminator of on-set lights, between every word. After the third or fourth glance, I looked back towards what he was staring at . . . Edan Westmisley, or some of him. He was a featureless, dark slice of shadow against the murky studio shadows, with only the plump, convex ovals of his sunglass lenses reflecting the arc-light glare.

  “Looks like road-kill before it’s run over,” I whispered in Kenny’s hoop-lobed ear; he whispered in my thrice-pierced ear, “Oh no, Edan’s not road-kill . . . he’s an immobile, hulking beast that smashes and twists grillwork, before sending your car into the fucking ditch,” just as the suspended-in-darkness lenses drifted away to the clup-clup of his retreating lizard-skin boots. Once Kenny seemed sure that he was out of range in the huge studio, he added, “I’ve developed ‘shoulder eyes’ while working for him . . . all Edan has to do is stare at me, and my skin writhes . . . like getting a sunburn while staying dead-fish-white.”

  I thought Kenny was just blissfully melodramatic, but once Bandanna-Guy was finished and Kenny started flat-clapping his hands, begging for “Qui-et” as he cued the lights and the assistant director set the electronic clapboard, I heard that steady, rhythmic clup-clup echoing in the far reaches of the studio, a staccato wooden-heeled counterpoint to the fuzzed-out tape the band was syncing to . . . and while I could barely see those disembodied shimmering discs of reflected light hovering behind Kenny’s muscular, T-shirted back, they began to bore down on my exposed skin, the way light rays exert a trace of real weight—an unseen, yet measurable pressure. If Kenny endured “shoulder eyes,” I endured “body eyes” . . . and by the time I snake-slithered up that riser and tiny splinters dug into my exposed midriff, my skin felt as if it were being smothered, each pore screaming for air, and once Cody’s sweating, calloused hands hoisted me up for my tattoo-tonguing close-up—Kenny barked orders at the Steady-cam operator, but his voice seemed filtered, as if unable to penetrate Edan’s suffocating stare—I forgot Kenny’s directions about keeping my eyes open, and began furiously lapping and slurping up bitter black icing, not caring where or how furiously I licked, until Cody jerked back, yelping, “Hey! Watch the nipple ring, wouldja?” after my left incisor snagged the gold ring jutting out from his raisin-like nipple, and Kenny soothed, “Go with it, Codeee, make it work for you,” but all the while I couldn’t shake that hand-firm pressure all over me, as if Westmisley’s eyes were doing a King Kong on my Fay Wray skin, so I wound up licking Cody’s Adam’s apple before Kenny burbled, “Cut! Per-fect . . . it’s a wrap. Hon . . . Honey, time to get up—”

  Only, I didn’t want to get up, not with Edan still there, behind Kenny, I stayed on my knees until Cody hoisted me up by the armpits, roughly, and whispered, “Get lost, wouldja?” then stalked off to his dressing room, whining to Kenny, “She almost yanked my ring out, man.” I still couldn’t open my eyes, thugh, until Kenny shot back, “Just as long as it wasn’t in your dick . . . not that that’s big enough to pierce,” and under those playfully drawled words, I heard the ever-more-distant clup-clup of Edan’s boot heels, as he left the studio.

  “Don’t mind that pimpled twit, dear, he’ll never stop you from working,” Kenny began as I opened my eyes, as if it was Cody I was so obviously scared of; not wanting to spoil Kenny’ fantasy about Edan being hung up on him, I just smiled, nodded, and took the hand-down he offered me, before stepping off that riser and out of the studio, into the fading-but-real touch of sunlight on my oxygen-starved flesh.

  • • • •

  “—listen, kiddo, do I question Edan Westmisley and still expect to make any more deals in this charming burg? If he faxed me a request that I personally swab out his private vomitorium with my tongue, I’d glaaadly do so—am I speaking English to you, or am I jabbering in fucking Greek?”

  Privately replying, “No, Gerhard, you’d gladly do him if he’d stoop to dropping his pants for a third-rate wanna-be-like you,” I mumbled, “English, Ger,” before asking (even as my brain protested), “When did he want me there?”

  “Noon . . . do you realize that any other of my clients would already be at Westmisley’s as I speak, doing the knee-dance under his desk in gratitude? And swallowing every damn drop? If he hadn’t of asked for you in particular, I’d have called one of my other clients . . . what’s the matter, you scared of the stories about him?”

  Even though he had no way of seeing me, I shook my head of would-be-video-queen big-hair No; crazy producer stories were as commonplace as urban legends—didn’t Tina Turner once see Phil Spector pick up an apple core coated with cigarette ash out of a tray and eat it? The quirks and foibles of producers were the stuff of Rolling Stone’s “Random Notes” column, weren’t they? But the underground ‘zines, the grungy hand-Xeroxed jobbies sold at the bigger book stores, they had the real, fresh dirt on No-Eyes Westmisley: the overlord attitude with his engineers; the sudden, blackball firings; the kinky stuff his ex-lovers only hinted at; the way he circumvented customs with whatever fetishes or artifacts he’d glommed on to during that cancer-causing last jaunt of his; and how he’d beaten said cancer by going to Third World doctors who’d try anything, from whatever source, to heal what should never be healed . . . yet, despite all the weirdness he’d indulged in from the sixties on (long past the time when his fellow Fluxus members went respectable—like when Yoko made huggy-kissy with McCartney at the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame induction), Edan Westmisley was the original Teflon Dude, and never mind Ronbo Reagan.

  No union could touch him. No woman—no matter what bed or cell or worse she occupied—could blackmail him. Whether it was out of fear, or because he was so well-insulated (old money rich, from a peerage in England), no one knew for sure, save for knowing that Edan Westmisley was about as close to a god as a man could be and still need to shake his dick after pissing (or so Kenny advised me during a chance meeting outside of Spago).

  Yet, as powerful as Westmisley was, he’d said “Please” to the cut-rate agent of a would-be actress . . . someone who couldn’t do a tattoo-licking shot without almost removing a guy’s nipple ring the hard way.

  To get a “Please” from Westmisley was far rarer than gobs of manna dripping on the Walk of Fame . . . a courtesy he wasn’t obliged to give to anyone, for anything. But as Gerhard gave me directions to Westmisley’s office-cum-studio, I wondered just what sort of price-tag—be it actual or something less tangible—was attached to that unexpected show of civility . . .

  Now, I realize that Edan’s adding “Please” to that fax had nothing to do with politeness or any normal human civility, but was perhaps meant only to forestall suspicion.

  • • • •

  Genius Productions Ltd. was located out in the Hills, or almost past them, to be exact; to this day, I can’t find the spot on any
map. But then again, since I’ve never driven near the place again, let’s just say it’s Out There. Anyhow, if you were to drive past it unknowingly, you’d never realize that you’d just whizzed past the entire complex—not that the building was hidden by trees or by a fence (Edan detested the obvious, in all things). It was just that the place was so unassuming that it barely registered. Oyster-white stucco exterior, minimal smoke-tinted windows, three squat stories, flat tile roof, superbly earthquake-proof in that there was nothing to break off (and reinforced from within by double-strength I-beams, as Edan proudly informed me), with only a bizarre metal sculpture adorning the brownish stubble of grass directly in front of the entrance to indicate that it wasn’t a warehouse or sweat-shop garment factory.

  Yet, the sculpture itself was the key to both the identity of the building and the mentality of the man who designed and built it; from every angle but one, it resembled randomly staked Christian and Coptic crosses, of varying heights and widths, fanned out in a crescent shape across the lawn. But once a car was almost past the entire building, if you happened to look just so in the rearview mirror, the assemblage would suddenly meld together into a concave, seemingly smooth unbroken surface—save for the open spaces which read in reverse, since it was meant to be read in a mirror):

  GENIUS PRODUCTIONS LTD.

  It was so perfectly executed it was chilling, even if a motorist noticed the solid version of the sculpture (including the squared-off words), it only remained solid-looking long enough to barely register the words before dissolving into a scattering of haphazard steel as soon as the car sped forward.

  But I didn’t feel privileged to have caught on to Edan’s single-glimpse-only sign, as I backed my Escort up and then drove into the nearly-empty parking lot to the east of the building; the selectiveness inherent in the design of that sculpture/sign galled me, perhaps because it gave no concession to unavoidable, human things like an eyelash getting in one’s eye, or someone blinking at that exact second, or something going wrong with the car, or with traffic. Happen to miss that fraction of a second of the sign’s wholeness, and a person might spend hours combing the freeway, searching for the elusive edifice just passed.

  But the true pre-eminence of Edan Westmisley was waiting to be revealed to me; the double-paned smoked doors in front of the building were operated by a sensor, like those in a store, so that in itself didn’t spook me . . . but the lack of anyone—security guards, receptionists, cleaning men with big sloppy galvanized metal buckets, wanna-be recording artists hoping to get past the non-existent receptionists—I mean—anyone, inside that stucco, steel, and glass edifice did get to me. In a major way . . .

  All I saw was a quarter mile of empty hallway, carpeted in the sort of plushy beige carpeting that mats down if you sneeze at it, extending in a straight line from where I stood to the back of the building. Which culminated in another door, this one industrial-steel-with-pneumatic-hinges (the emergency-only type usually seen in the rear of by-the-highway chain stores), and surmounted by a red-lit “EXIT” sign.

  “You’re quite cold, yaw’know, just standing there.”

  The voice was without a definable source, just simply there. But I was clued-in enough to realize that it was Westmisley’s languid, English-accented upper-class-twit voice (I’d seen that MTV interview Kurt Loder did with him just before he’d gone on that ill-advised yacht voyage and brought home a little more than a hold-full of illegal goodies), and nervy enough not to want him to realize how badly he’d frightened me, so I drew myself up to my full five-nine plus heels, smiled my toothiest should’ve-been-a-model smile, and forced myself to purr (didn’t Gerhard tell me how lucky I was to be here?), “And I don’t like being cold—”

  “Start moving and you’ll begin to warm up—” At least the disembodied voice had a slight hint of warmth in it by then. When he stopped speaking, he began humming, a tuneless, one-note drone that allowed me to figure out that he’d planted speakers in the walls, ceiling, even under the carpeting . . . which made me feel as if I was walking down his throat. As I walked, casually swinging my arms with each step (even though I would’ve rather hugged myself by then, purely for the security of it) down that diffusely-lit hallway—recessed fluorescents that cast less than forty watts per fixture—I noticed there were doors set into the cream-colored Lucite walls; the pin-thin outlines were unmistakable . . . as was the lack of knobs.

  Twenty steps down that runner of carpeting.

  “Warmer.”

  Ten more steps, slowing down near each door outline.

  “Much warmer—”

  Glance up, but still no cameras visible. Maybe in the fixtures!

  “Waaarrrmmmah—” The humming became a throaty growl.

  Two steps forward. Then one back. There. Just like with the statue outside, I didn’t see the unadorned embossed lettering over the one doorway until I’d almost passed by:

  “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes”—Virgil

  I might’ve been only a model-without-portfolio, an ass-or-boobs-for-hire body-double for straight-to-video flicks whose sole claim to semi-fame came during the increasingly infrequent airings of the “Love Victim” video, but I didn’t consider myself an uneducated bimbo, no matter what Gerhard thought. I’d finished high school, top third of my class, and had done a year-and-a-half of college, too. I couldn’t read Greek, but I’d heard of Virgil—not that I was ready to let Westmisley know that much about me yet.

  “Verrry waaarm—” I moved a foot sideways, to the right.

  “Hot—” The door slid open before me, gliding into the wall with a muted schwoosh of Lucite rubbing Lucite. Beyond me was yet more unmatted plush carpet, culminating in another blank cream wall. Smartass bastard. I trotted up to the unopened pocket door so fast Westmisley barely had time to blurt out “Boiling!” as the door opened, and I strode through the newly-revealed opening—

  —into what looked, felt, and even smelled like a pit, like a droppings-piled bat cave, or some ransacked ancient tomb still swirling with the dust of disturbed mummified remains . . . the contrast between creamy-bright nothingness and prodigal fullness finally smashed the last shards of my pseudo-hip L.A. woman veneer; I stopped so abruptly I almost fell forward on to the swirling arabesques of his Persian/Oriental carpet from the built-up momentum.

  As I steadied myself, I became aware of—

  —Eyes. Everywhere around me. Square-and-triangle Kachina doll eyes, tight-lidded slits in the faces of African fertility figurines whose bodies were little more than knee-to-chin engorged vaginal lips. Glass and plastic orbs set in the nappy heads of mounted game animals, more than a few of them from extinct or endangered species. Pin-prick gargoyle eyes, unblinking in their stony intensity. Wrinkled, fine-lashed lids drawn tight over the sunken orbs of several shrunken heads which hung by frazzled, beaded topknots. Blanc concave pupil-less eyes in chipped Grecian and roman statuary fragments. Frosting-bright sockets in Mexican sugar skulls. And peep-holes set in the gold and silver irises of the rows of gold and platinum records which formed dividing lines between the shelved antiquities and oddities covering the walls of Westmisley’s office.

  And reigning supreme in that silent, frozen freak show was Edan Westmisley himself, his purple-wattled, burst-capillary red-and-mottled-grayish-tan full moon of a face suspended over a bridge of semi-clawed, torturously-linked fingers under his ill-defined chin, his eyes protected with those oval smoky glasses, his carefully-brushed and dry-sprayed graying hair (a wig, perhaps?) a glowing nimbus over his ruined features . . . but despite the almost heavenly way his neatly side-parted hair seemed lit from within, the effect wasn’t angelic in the least.

  His immaculate gray Italian silk suit, starched-till-it-shone white shirt, and burnished pewter-tone tie didn’t register on my consciousness until a few disoriented seconds had passed (I did know his boots were lizard skin, as Kenny had claimed); precious seconds during which he was able to survey and . . . catalog me with those near-hidden, impartial, appraisi
ng eyes of his. As if I was yet another item he could buy, then mount on those cluttered walls of his . . .

  That much I realized when he smiled; not a friendly, glad-to-meet-ya smile, but a stiff rictus of those purple-tinged lips, which parted to reveal a fence-like double row of white, flat-surfaced teeth . . . seeing that pseudo-smile, I knew that whatever words came through those bloated lips, past those hard-edged, perfect teeth, wouldn’t convey one iota of whatever a jaded, world-weary man like Westmisley might still be capable of feeling, if, indeed, he felt anything for anyone at all.

  I think I smiled in reply; I don’t recall much besides him pointing out a chair, and me easing into its spongy depths, unable to speak . . . unable to think, actually. Drumming his blunt-tipped, crescent-clawed fingers (each ridged nail perfectly manicured, save for the tip of the left forefinger, which was missing above the last joint) on top of his empty, black-wood-surfaced desk, Westmisley said without preamble:

  “Lovely . . . how you licked away that buffoon’s tattoo . . . I could almost hear the uppermost layers of flesh parting from his chest . . . an exquisitely painful moment, especially the way the chap winced until his eyes fairly watered—”

  “I snagged his nipple ring with my incisor,” I blurted out, my face flushing at the memory. “Kenny said he’d edit it out, but—”

  “But he didn’t . . . I assume you can figure out why.” There was no question mark punctuating his voice, as if positing that I should know such a thing. Directly behind his left shoulder, a particularly rabid-looking Indonesian carved mask leered at me until I felt incredibly exposed, vulnerable, and found myself babbling, “Not really . . . Cody seemed to be so piss-upset about it, I just figured Kenny would edit it out—”

  “As he intended to do, until I told him not to. That flash of pain in the guitarist’s eyes was precisely what I wanted. The object, as it were, of the entire tattoo-removing scene. The act leading up to it was only a means to a most specific end . . . after all,” he added, his Twit-of-the-Year tone growing softer, yet darker, with each carefully enunciated syllable, “I could have had that sequence morphed in less than half the time it took that tattoo artiste to embellish that blubbery fool’s epidermis with frosting, and probably at a comparable expense. The resulting faux tattoo, and you as well, were fungible . . . all I ever had in mind was seeing that unfeigned twinge of agony in the chap’s eyes, accompanied by an unrehearsed grimace of pain about the lips. Nothing more than what might’ve been accomplished by a swift, clean thrust to the uncapped groin . . . but via a more aesthetic route. A small tidbit for the visually jaded.”