by Robert Essig
Audrey nodded, grabbed her suitcase and followed him out the door.
7
Rich made it to Los Angeles in record time. He’d never been there before and wanted to check out the Hollywood strip. Death Fraud was playing a gig there at the Whiskey. After this show there was a three-day break before playing again in San Francisco, and then the tour would head further north to Washington and then into Oregon. It would be nice getting to those cooler northern states after the brutal heat of Southern California.
Rich took the Hollywood walk of fame with newfound confidence, stepping on the names of actors he knew and others who were lost in the sands of time. He looked at people and knew that he could own them. They were nothing more than flesh and blood and could be taken out of this world in a moment’s notice.
The bums sickened him the way Jeanie had when he first followed her. He was disgusted by the tripe that wandered the streets of Hollywood eating food out of garbage cans without a shame in the world. Many of them were rich kids whose parents lived in the hills. They found something liberating about living on the streets, something Rich could never understand. He had half a mind to lure one of them into an alley and slaughter and eat them, but he wasn’t that confident. He would probably fuck up and get arrested for murder.
What Jeanie did wasn’t murder. It was something else altogether. For Rich it was his becoming, and he could feel it within, tickling the back of his neck as it yearned for a feast of flesh.
He viewed people differently now. They looked like sheep as they waded through one another going in and out of shops that sold key chains, t-shirts, sunglasses, stickers, and everything else people didn’t need that said Hollywood on it to prove that they, in fact, had been there. They were expendable—all of them.
But the time wasn’t right. He couldn’t do anything without Jeanie, and he wouldn’t be seeing her until after the show.
Rich was starving, but food didn’t satiate his appetite. All he could think about was the apartment last night and the junkie’s mutilated body on the floor. He had accepted the invitation even though he did vomit. Tonight he wouldn’t retch. Tonight he would share Jeanie’s secret and his becoming would officially begin.
***
Jeanie sat on a couch in a pot-smoke filled hotel room. She didn’t indulge in drugs these days. The thrill was gone. But old habits died hard for others, and Dano Grue liked the ritual of smoking weed more than the effect it had on his brain.
“You’re sure they’re not tracking us, right?” asked Dano.
“Yes,” said Jeanie. “Like I told you, my brood consumes the remaining soul residue. If they come across one of the bodies there’s no trace left behind, nothing to lead them to us. We’re safe, Dano. Trust me.”
Dano stubbed out the roach and placed it into an old film case with the others. It wasn’t like he needed to save old roaches to smoke later, but it was just as habitual as smoking the stuff. He nodded. “Okay, I trust you.”
Jeanie didn’t worry about her old tribe the way Dano did. She wondered if it was a mistake telling him about them. He was thrilled to achieve true power through her magnificence, but deep inside he was still scared and weak. Her power was lost on him. He had just as much power through an audience night after night. He didn’t need the young groupies after the show. In fact, they didn’t do a goddamn thing for him. Not the way eating human flesh satiated Jeanie. It was the means for her to remain on earth, and she wasn’t going back to the In Between or Hell. Her tribe would bind her suffering body at the crossroads for all the demons of hell to rape as they passed. It would be an eternity of pain and suffering if she were to go back on a permanent basis.
And they were always following, but she covered her tracks very well, changing her façade from time to time to throw them off if she sensed them gaining on her. In time, she would have a new tribe and she would return to the In Between to take what she decided was rightfully hers.
For the time being, she would abandon the burnt out groupie look for something sweet and innocent, and when she did she would have to kill Dano Grue and feast upon him. She would take great pleasure in that because she was beginning to find him to be quite an annoying little man trapped inside the body of a rock star. She’d rather see the egotistical side of him, but no, around her he was always fearful of her tribe and whining about how hard life was. What a fake! Sometime it was all she could do not to tear him limb from limb and spread his blood across the walls just for the fun of it.
She decided to leave the hotel. She’d see him at the show, around the groupies and his band mates, and he would act like God’s gift to the world, play it up as if he was the best thing since sliced bread, and she would sit in the background waiting for the perfect loser to come along. Only tonight was going to be different. Tonight Rich would bring dinner, and she would do for him what she thought she wanted to do for Dano when she first met him, before she found out what a pussy he was.
“I’m out,” said Jeanie. “I’ll see you at the show.”
Dano nodded. He would likely call in several of his groupies and hangers-on and have a little party before show time. It was the only way he could make it through his depression and general fear of just about everything. The man oozed insecurity and Jeanie found herself doubting just why she thought she could share her truth and something as special as becoming with him. It was too late by the time she introduced the eating of flesh, and he’d been killing and consuming at least once a week since the beginning of the tour, as if it was actually doing something for him. She would have to make her move before he became sloppy.
Rich was different. He could actually see her in her natural state, and that was something she had not experienced in her duration on Earth. He was special, and she had absolutely no doubts that he was man enough to share her secrets. He may have vomited last night trying to eat flesh but that was to be expected with a human. As soon as he began to transform he would find eating flesh to be second nature.
8
Audrey made small talk as she and Austin took the 5 freeway toward Los Angeles. She had thought their meeting at the fast food joint went rather well, but once inside the car she was getting strange vibes from him. He was hard to pin down; one of those people who wore a serious look on their face as if life’s turmoil was on their backs, and she supposed that was true. His own troubles could be very great for all she knew, and when she tried to talk to open him up, he played clam.
“So, you said you’ve been on the road for quite some time, huh? Why is that? Don’t you want to settle down?”
Austin gave her that stern look. It was a damn good poker face. He wasn’t showing any of his cards, not even the suits. He was cute, though, in that workingman way. Audrey had to admit that she had always liked a man with a few days worth of stubble. Most men anyhow. Some guys just looked disheveled, but Austin looked like the kind of guy who could star in a cologne commercial or maybe be seen on the cover of a romance novel.
“What?” said Audrey with a smirk. She knew what was up. He didn’t get close to anyone. He was afraid of commitment, maybe even afraid of rejection. He found it easier to keep his mouth shut and roll with the blows.
At least that’s what Audrey thought.
“Nothing, it’s just—”
Austin watched the road with eyes that seemed to search for something, perhaps the right thing to say to avert and uncomfortable question.
“I’ve just got a lot on my mind right now. Things have gotten a little weird as of late.”
“Hmm. So what’s your story? Why did you decide to make the road your home?”
“Honey, it’s a long story and we don’t have quite enough rode ahead of us for me to tell it. You’d be surprised to know—” Austin grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Back problems?”
“You could say that.”
Audrey looked forward again deciding to refrain from asking further questions, at least for a little while. They were passing Disn
eyland, which meant they had another hour or so depending on traffic. Los Angeles was notorious for its congested freeways.
Austin was a strange guy, but there was something about him she liked, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. He was pleasing to the eye, and if she could get him to talk, she was sure he would have a plethora of fascinating stories to tell. Based upon their conversation at the fast food joint she could tell that he had a good personality, but there was clearly something weighing on his mind. That was what was so off about him. He had troubles in his eyes.
###
Damn-it with the questions already!
Austin didn’t intend to come off as cross, but he had a lot of shit floating around in his head and he didn’t really want to discuss his past, present, and future with some chick that was hitching a ride. There was the pain in his neck, which didn’t seem to be getting any worse, aside from occasional moments when it felt as if someone was stabbing at the base of his back skull with a hot poker.
On top of that, he had witnessed a murder last night—a pair of murders—and he found that murder was hard to digest. There was little he could do without endangering himself considering the circumstances, but it was horrible and it played with his mind in terrible ways.
Worst of all was the woman-thing that killed the men in the alley. Whatever she was, Austin couldn’t help but wonder if there were more of her out there somewhere. He’d never seen anything like her, and that was running through his mind, too, particularly because of the parasite that his body had become host to. It was a part of her, which was cause for him to harbor fear. His body was a temple, and he didn’t like the idea of some foreign entity invading his sanctity.
And goddamn he didn’t know where he was going or why. There was a preternatural instinct to head north. He wanted to find the woman and confront her, fear be damned, but how could he? He hadn’t followed her last night. She had left before he noticed the things that swarmed over the dead body, before he decided to take one back to his hotel in a jar like a freakin’ idiot!
From the corner of his eye, Austin caught a glimpse of Audrey. She had finally hushed up. A beautiful woman hitchhiking could be a bad thing. It was good that she had sense enough to single out a man like Austin. She must have had some experience with people. Austin had a hell of a lot of experience with people, more than he could ever learn from. People were the same all over. It was just the culture that changed, and the customs. There were rogues, of course, but, wherever you go, there is always evil amongst the majority who want happiness.
Austin wanted happiness as well. Thing is, he didn’t know how to achieve it. Happiness is something that always seemed unobtainable, as if he was perpetually in its pursuit. In many ways he was. Sure, there were happy points in Austin’s nomadic life, but there was a lot of shit as well as confusion and even more boredom.
That’s why he began pursuing the strange avenues that crossed his path, such as the crawling parasites on the corpse. In some twisted bit of logic, Austin thought capturing one of those parasites would somehow lead him to happiness.
He was beginning to doubt that.
In fact, Austin was beginning to live in a state of doubt.
“Where exactly am I taking you?” said Austin, breaking the silence.
Audrey eyed him curiously. “You can drop me off at Hollywood Boulevard. That’d be fine. I know my way around pretty well.”
“You sure? Like I said, I’m just going north without a real destination. I can take you anywhere you want.”
“Hollywood Boulevard will do. I have a friend who’s expecting me. She lives right off the strip.”
“Fair enough.”
Austin took the next exit. He’d been through LA enough to know his way around. Sometimes every town seemed too familiar and some of them bore scars. LA was one such town. About three years ago Austin had met a woman at a bar. She wasn’t your typical barfly, in fact she was there for a celebratory drink after learning of a promotion at an up and coming recording company. They talked and drank and Austin felt so good in her presence. As the night progressed, they made it back to his hotel for a nightcap and made passionate love.
They had been dating for several weeks before things blew up. As it turned out, she hadn’t gotten a promotion at all. She was living in an apartment on the outskirts of Venice Beach playing Austin like a fiddle by meeting him in the lobby of a condo she supposedly lived in. She had been a part time house cleaner and had the code to get into the building, not to mention a key to the condo she used to clean. She even had the audacity to bring Austin into the stranger’s condo and they’d made love on the bed.
When things crumbled, she told him that she had lost her job. Her excuse was that the men were pigs, she couldn’t get any help from HR, and that her only choice was to leave. This infuriated Austin, so he went down to the record plant and confronted what should have been her manager, only they had no record of her working there. In fact no one had a clue who the hell she was.
Austin was crushed to find out that her life was a lie. He felt stepped on, lower than a black gum stain on Sunset with an old cigarette stuck to it. She said that their love was strong and that they could be happy together, that he had all the money in the world and they could be happy together!
She was a leech. Hollywood is full of them. This caused Austin to hold true to his defenses and not let anyone in. This was why he had been closed up so tight with Audrey.
They pulled onto Hollywood Boulevard. It was just as Austin remembered. He never was much of a Hollywood fan even before the incident three years ago.
“You can drop me off right up here.”
Austin nodded. “I’ll pull over as soon as I get a chance.”
“You might as well take your next left and get off the busy street. The drivers here can be brutal.”
Austin nodded again as he flicked his turn signal. The ride was only a few hours long, and he hadn’t said a lot in that time, but he felt like there was something between he and Audrey, however small it was, and that frightened him. It had been a long time since he had even considered the prospect of dating, yet he was about to ask her out to dinner.
He pulled the car over and put it in park with the motor running. He wanted to ask her, but something inside was blocking him. He didn’t want to get hurt again. It was far easier and safer to just spend the night alone and have a nice private dinner brought up to his room on a pushcart.
“You staying here for a while or heading further north?” asked Audrey. She stood outside the opened door ducking to look Austin in the eyes. She wore one of those smirks of hers, one that Austin could really get used to. That facial gesture said so much.
She wanted to see him again.
Damn! How could she want to see me again?
There was something about her. He wanted to go the easy route, wanted to leave and forget about giving beautiful women rides, but being a man of many passions, Austin said, “I’ll be at the Wheeler Hotel.”
Audrey’s eyes raised. “The Wheeler, no less. You don’t mess around, do you?”
Austin grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s a long story. Ask for me at the front desk, I mean, if you, you know, if you maybe want to go out sometime.”
Her eyelids raised. “Are you asking me out on a date?”
Despite the pain and fear, Austin grinned for the second time that day. “I suppose I am. How’s seven o’ clock?”
Audrey nodded. “Okay, seven o’ clock at the Wheeler. You’re talking about the Wheeler on the strip, right?”
He nodded. “That’s the one. I know I don’t look like I have the money to stay there, but it’s a long story.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that, it’s just . . . Well, I’ve never been in a big hotel before. I always thought snooty businessmen, actors, and politicians stayed in those places.”
“They do. In the Wheeler, I’m one of a kind.”
“I’ll see you at seven.”
A
ustin waved and she shut the door. He watched as she walked the opposite direction of Hollywood Boulevard. The Dr. Hook song “Baby Makes Her Blue Jeans Talk” jumped into his mind and he smiled for the third time that strange day.
It would be the last time he smiled for quite a while.
9
Austin drove to the hotel. They didn’t know him there, not the man at the front desk at least, and he was quite a snobby little bitch if Austin ever saw one. Probably harboring animosity toward the clientele since he would never be able to afford a room at the building where he spent so many hours working.
“You don’t have reservations, sir, and we’re booked for the night. I’m afraid you’ll have to go somewhere else.”
The little man’s voice was whiny and he had a lisp on him worse than Rudy Giuliani. He liked being in a position of power, only he was either stupid or didn’t believe Austin was who he claimed to be.
“I’m Austin Wheeler. My father is the CEO and founder of the Wheeler hotel chain. There’s always a room at every one of these hotels for me, and if there isn’t, some heads are gonna roll. It isn’t your fault, at least I don’t think it is, but there should always be a room open. It’s company policy at every single Wheeler hotel in the entire world. In Tokyo right this second there’s a room waiting for me, if I so please.”
Mr. Tight Lips rolled his eyes. “Well, I’ve never heard of that policy, sir, and I cannot just give a room to anyone who claims to be related to Mr. Wheeler.”
“Look at my ID, then you—”
“I’m not going to look at your ID card, sir. It’s easy to fake, you know.”
Austin rubbed the back of his neck pushing his finger into the flesh like a deep tissue massage. He was beginning to feel lightheaded.
“Calling the heir to this hotel a fake is a foolish thing to do. You should do yourself a favor and call one of your managers. Ross still works here, right? You bring him down here and he’ll recognize me on the spot and you’ll be lucky if I don’t tell him to fire you.”
