by Carver Pike
“Quaint,” Gabe replied.
“Quiet,” Haylay agreed.
Later the three of them sat on Haylay’s mattress with the lantern in between them. They ate noodles out of large sheets of tin foil.
“I’m exhausted,” Gabe admitted as he kicked off his shoes.
“You need to rest. How long have y’all been up?” Haylay asked.
“Since you crossed through the mirror, when was that?” Ivy asked while trying to think back to the day. “That was a good night.”
Gabe laughed.
“With no sun I’m not really sure. “I think maybe three days. I slept a little the first night, restlessly, but I did get a few winks in.”
Haylay pointed at the noodles Gabe was eating.
“Good stuff, huh?” he asked. “The chino who cooks them is a customer of mine. We’ve gotten rather used to the trade system if you know what I mean. He keeps me full and I keep him happy.”
“That’s kind of gross,” Gabe said.
“Hey, I’m guessing it was never necessary for you to sleep your way to a full stomach,” Ivy said.
Gabe shook his head “no.”
“Then don’t knock it if you haven’t had to try it,” Ivy reminded him.
Haylay passed out on his mattress, enjoying the comforts of his own home. Gabe sat against the wall near the sink and Ivy lay down on the floor next to him and rested her head in his lap.
“I don’t know if I can sleep,” Gabe said.
“I know something that would tire you out,” Ivy flirted.
“I’m serious.”
“Me too.” She ran her hand up his thigh and put it on the crotch of his pants. “Come on, Gabe. This is what I do. I’m having a hard time controlling my urges.”
“I’m in love with Lisa.”
“Love has nothing to do with this. I want you and don’t kid yourself, you want me, too. I can see it in your eyes. You’ve been staring at my breasts for the last hour.”
Gabe looked down and knew what she was talking about. Her top was dangling down a little and most of her left breast was in clear view.
“Just like that,” Ivy said when she caught him looking again.
She got up on all fours, crawled to within an inch of him and whispered into his ear.
“Just fuck me, Gabe. I’m not asking you to kill anyone or set fires like the other images do. I’m not violent. I just need sex…all the time. It’s like a drug to me. And I need it now.”
She squeezed his crotch one more time.
“Besides, is it really cheating when I look just like her? We’re practically the same person…only I’m way sexier.”
“How would you feel if we were together and I hooked up with Lisa?”
“You did, remember? We were together before Lisa even had the balls to talk to you, back when you didn’t even care about her. When you think about it, you were my man first. Now fuck me, Gabe. Throw me down on the floor, spread my legs, and fuck me ‘till we both come. I want you. I want you to hurt my pussy.”
For fuck’s sake. He wanted to. God did he want to. She was so beautiful, so much like Lisa, only much more verbal in her desires. But she wasn’t Lisa. No matter how much he wanted to believe she was and no matter how much she wanted him to believe it—she wasn’t Lisa.
“I can’t,” he said. And you know I always cared about Lisa.”
“But you didn’t want to fuck her,” Ivy argued.
She was right. Kind of. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to fuck her. He hadn’t given it much thought at all.
“So technically, hooking up with Lisa was cheating on me,” Ivy said.
She was good. Everything she said made perfect sense, and the fact that he was dying to give in and ravage her didn’t help the situation.
“I can’t,” Gabe said. “It really hurt her when she found about you the last time.”
“And how did you feel?”
Good question. It hurt seeing Lisa in pain. He didn’t answer. She waited a few seconds and then frowned and bit at the inside of her cheek, the first real sadness he’d ever seen from her.
“And have you asked how I felt?” she asked.
Gabe shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. I just figured…”
“That I didn’t have a heart? That I’m just a sleazy image who didn’t have a memory or real feelings?”
It was clear that Ivy was truly hurt and angry that Gabe wouldn’t give in to her. She swung away from him and lay back down on the floor. She rested the back of her head on his lap and stared up at the ceiling.
“You’re an asshole,” she said.
Gabe didn’t know what to say. He stroked her hair. She didn’t pull away.
An hour had gone by and Gabe was still trying to fall asleep. Ivy had moved to his side and was resting her head on his chest.
“Still can’t sleep?” Ivy asked.
“Every time I close my eyes I see everything that’s taken place. I see Sergio trying to escape the figments. I see T-Nate screaming in pain and Dozier just before the explosion.”
“I’ve had to fight through a lot of really bad memories in my life. You know how I learned to fall asleep?”
Gabe looked down at her, waiting for her suggestion.
“I learned to think about a white wall. Only a white wall. Concentrate on keeping that wall white. If something else seeps into your mind, go back to the wall. It works, but it takes some time,” Ivy said.
“Thanks. I’ll try that.”
They remained silent for a moment. Ivy stared into Gabe’s face and smiled as he tried to work on the white wall suggestion.
“Gabe?” She asked.
“Yeah.”
“Do you think that under different circumstances, you would have wanted to be with me? I mean not just sleep with me, but actually be with me?”
Gabe opened his eyes and stared into her beautiful face. She was stunning, and again he found himself thinking about Lisa and wondering how he’d ever gone so long without noticing her beauty.
“Without a doubt,” he answered.
He looked down, and with tired eyes, he smiled. Ivy returned the smile and then reached up and stroked his hair.
“It was making me sleepy when you were doing this,” she said.
She was right. It worked. Gabe finally drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 15 – Two Sides of an Opera
The Vulkner Theater was the center of all activity on its street that night in the Slums of York. It wasn’t often that organized entertainment took place.
On any other night, the main event would have been a rumble of sorts where those willing to partake in the fight did bloody battle in the middle of the street with anyone and everyone within reach. Planning didn’t really exist in the image world and even something like a rumble usually took place by accident.
In fact, brothels were the only thing in town that resembled some sort of organization and if the inhabitants of the Slums of York would only mirror their daily activities after the well thought out business plan of the whorehouses, they might’ve been able to establish a government and actually clean up their miserable city.
However, the desire to govern others was only the strong suit of a few throughout the city and those people were more likely to be dictators or gang kingpins than anything else. So anarchy was the norm and any time that people gathered at one centralized location, it was a true miracle.
Such was the situation with the opera night taking place at the Vulkner Theater, a building that only existed because a creative image had seen one on the other side of the mirror once before crossing back over, and made it his own personal mission to build it. Not until recently had anyone actually used it for performances.
Before Belgrave took it over, the place had been an abandoned playground for all the coral heads in town. Once Belgrave learned of Alleycat’s love of singing, he ordered the place fixed up. Everyone in town knew who Belgrave was. He was one of the dictator types. Alleycat herself was also known
by many and word spread quickly whenever she was putting on a performance.
Gabe listened to Haylay’s account of the theater’s history on their long walk to the show. With Ivy’s arm wrapped around his, they walked next to Haylay, hanging on every word, especially when he got to the part about the creative theater builder’s love-affair suicide.
Something about the man’s willingness to hang himself from the theater curtain over the guilt he felt for murdering the wife of his other version, on the other side of the mirror, Ivy thought was so romantic.
Gabe teased her for having a sick sense of romance as they reached the theater’s front steps.
Parked next to them were motorcycles of all makes and models. Tough looking guys smoked cigars and cigarettes on the sidewalk while their butch women joined them. Bottles of clear alcoholic liquid were passed around freely.
One man wearing only jeans and an opened black leather vest stood in the middle. He spread his arms out in the air and his fat hairy gut and chest poked out from the center of the vest. He took a swig of his drink and sprayed it out into a wet mist above him.
“It’s fuckin’ opera night, bitches!” the man yelled.
Gabe shook his head and grabbed Ivy’s hand.
“This might be harder than I thought,” he said.
“You thought it was gonna be a bunch of fancy old people in nice suits who really enjoyed opera?” Haylay asked.
“No, but I didn’t think this many crazy images would enjoy it,” Gabe said.
“They don’t,” Ivy said. “If the show’s being put on by the brothel, you can bet there will be a bunch of naked women on stage.”
“That explains it,” Gabe replied.
They walked through the street and up the stairs, right past the bikers with only one nudge from them. The biker who’d done the yelling bumped shoulders with Gabe, and turned to trash talk him all the way up the rest of the steps. Gabe did his best to ignore the guy and focus instead on the mission at hand. It wouldn’t help his cause if he got into a fight in front of the theater and either got killed or caused a big scene.
Once inside the theater they entered what must have once been a beautiful lobby, where an old fashioned box office sat, covered in a fading lacquer and riddled with bullet holes. Now, the room was covered in graffiti and crude drawings of sexual acts.
Gabe paid five royce each to an old lady with no hands sitting inside the booth. Gabe put his money into her mouth and thanked her as they entered.
“You gotta stop being so damned polite, baby,” Haylay warned him. “You think anyone else thanked that old lady after paying her five royce? Hell, no.”
“You’re right,” Gabe admitted.
They made their way into the main auditorium and that’s when Gabe’s nerves kicked in. The theater itself was old fashioned and looked to have been an important place a long time ago.
At present time, most of the seats were missing and people stood in their place. The few seats that remained were being used for the random sexual encounters taking place. Gabe looked to his right and saw a large biker sitting in a seat. A girl in a skirt was sitting in his lap, riding up and down in a sexual frenzy.
On another seat, a woman sat with a man on his knees in front of her. The man’s face was somewhere up her skirt.
On yet another seat, a girl was naked from the waist down, straddling a guy who only had his zipper open. Her pants were in a heap on the floor.
Other couples were going at it in different places and all of the single people stood around either watching them or ignoring them all together, partying wildly on their own.
The entire theater was full of over three hundred loud and violent thieves and killers. They smoked, drank, snorted, and shot up as they waited for the show to begin. A fight broke out next to Gabe, but he quickly sidestepped it in time for one of the guys to hit the floor, knocked out cold. The fighter still standing looked at Gabe and threw his hands up.
“You want some too, fucker?” he yelled.
Gabe backed away.
“Nah, I’m alright,” he replied.
The fighter laughed and reached over to snatch the drink out of his friend’s hand.
“You keep lookin’ at me and you ain’t gonna be alright,” the guy threatened. He walked away with his friend, both of them laughing.
As soon as the two jerks exited, in walked a large biker guy, smoking a cigar. He strutted past them and nonchalantly smacked Ivy’s butt and gave it a firm squeeze. Ivy didn’t have the patience or self-control Gabe had. She quickly spun around.
“Hey baby,” she said.
The man turned and looked at her. He flicked ashes off his cigar as he reached down with his other hand and gave his balls a squeeze. With his hand still gripping his nuts, Ivy kicked him with all her might. The guy fell to his knees, holding his groin in pain. His cigar fell onto the floor where another guy scooped it up real quick and shoved it into his own mouth. The biker’s eyes rolled back.
“We gotta get out of here,” Haylay said.
“Where are the dressing rooms?” Gabe asked.
Haylay glanced around and then pointed to a staircase that led up to a hallway on the second floor.
“I bet it’s up there,” he said.
***
On the other side of the mirror, Cutter had quite the date night planned. With his main squeeze, Lisa, clutched firmly in his arm, and a fresh set of new threads on, he strutted through the front door of the Delecroix Opera House.
As with everything else he’d come across recently, Cutter was amazed by his surroundings. On the dark side, opera houses were a place to have organized havoc. It was a place to sleep with other people’s girlfriends and slit more than a few throats all at the same time if you wanted. It was a place where even the meanest sons of bitches let their guard down from time to time.
However, there at the Delecroix Opera House, rich pansies in fine tailored suits escorted their grandmothers by the hand and even the most beautiful of women looked as if they hadn’t been fucked in years.
The silent glances and quiet murmurs of the rich and fabulous were enough to turn Cutter’s stomach. He was surprised to feel slightly nervous, a feeling that he couldn’t remember having in a long time.
In fact, the last time he felt that way was the first time he met Alleycat. What a sexy motherfucker she was. What a tiger in the sack, too. Man, what he wouldn’t give to roll around with her tonight.
Instead, he was stuck with this plain Jane wrapped around his arm. She’d narrowly escaped his savage sexual advances the night before by throwing up on him. Even he wasn’t gross enough to take the chance of being puked on while he gave it to her. He’d been about to rip her panties out of the way, too.
So Cutter went to bed with a boner for the first time in years. But he wouldn’t tonight. On this night, he would kill the woman he crossed through the mirror for. He would slaughter the bitch known as Allie and then give it to Lisa good.
Lisa pulled away from Cutter just a bit, and Cutter gave her arm a painful squeeze that made her wince.
“Stay close. I ain’t gonna tell you again,” Cutter whispered angrily into her ear.
They sat in the audience and the stillness was driving Cutter nuts. He’d never been in a place that was so quiet in his life. He missed the wild crowd he was used to and was yearning for a hit of coral. Even a drop of some good liquor would be nice. He liked his senses to be a bit skewed and even trusted them more when he had a slight buzz. He was used to his mind running on auto mode.
Lisa’s eyes darted back and forth and she shifted in her seat uncomfortably. Her constant moving was getting on Cutter’s nerves.
An old woman in elegant attire sat next to Cutter. Her light grey hair surrounded her head like a helmet. She glanced over at Cutter a couple of times and then sniffed the air loudly. She looked over at her husband and gestured with a tilt of her head that the smell was coming from Cutter. Cutter, never the type of guy to avoid confrontation, turne
d his head and stared right at her.
“Never smelled a real man?” he said loud enough for both the woman and her husband to hear. “Clog your nose if you don’t like it, you old bitch,”
The old woman gasped and her husband looked shocked. He opened his mouth to say something, but then saw the look on Lisa’s face. She shook her head to warn the man against saying anything and he backed down. Cutter grinned at them and yanked her out of her seat. He pulled her down the aisle.
“The time is near. Once she’s dead, I’ll take you back with me to the dark side,” Cutter said.
