He struggled to remember if he knew this woman. If only he could see her face! The moonlight made her hair and flesh look a silvery-blue, and he guessed she could be a blonde. Strangely, he found himself wishing she was the dark-haired woman from the diner.
His ejaculation interrupted his thoughts, the waves of his orgasm flooding his body. Weak and spent, he looked down at her, still struggling to get a look at her face. She sat up and raised a hand to her face, turning her chin into the moonlight to reveal a narrow, delicate jaw. With the tip of her middle finger she wiped lightly at the corners of her mouth.
Her job finished, she pulled up his pants, paused to pat his groin, and crawled back off the bed. She turned away from him and retrieved something from her pocket and lifted it to her mouth. Whatever it was, she returned it to her pocket a few seconds later.
He thought about calling her back as she opened the door, but fell asleep before he could do anything more.
* * *
Cassandra twirled the newcomer’s keys as she left his motel room. Her front pockets bulged with loot. From her left pocket she removed his wallet and cash and rifled through the wallet’s contents. She found it contained Timothy Wilder’s driver’s license, a few pictures, and the remainder of his money.
“Timothy,” she muttered as she stuffed the wallet back into her pocket. “A good, biblical name. Figures.”
In her right pocket she carried a tiny Tupperware container that she spat his semen into. With both items, she and her friends would easily be able to control him.
The wallet and keys served as simple material controls. He would probably not leave town without them. He would be stranded in Rapture at least long enough for them to decide what they wanted to do with him.
His semen, however, would give them absolute control if they chose to use it. In rituals dating back to the beginnings of humankind, blood was the most powerful bond to an individual. Proper use of the correct invocations would guarantee the spellcaster total control over the will and actions of that individual.
For males, however, the seed of their loins proved just as effective. With males being the slaves to their phalluses they are, semen was far, far easier to obtain. And, sometimes, more fun. She wondered if the spell she used to keep Timothy paralyzed had really been necessary.
She strode quickly through the lobby, her heels making a staccato clatter on the dark tiles. She hardly glanced at the old pervert watching her from the next room. He, like most men in Rapture, knew his proper place. Light flickered on the walls beyond the threshold, and she wondered if he was masturbating to one of his porn videos again. Because of his affinity for his palms, obtaining the aging motel manager’s semen had been child’s play.
And a lot less revolting for Cassandra’s twin sister, Genevieve, to collect.
Outside, she breathed deeply of the cool night air. She let it out with a heavy sigh of satisfaction. Humming gaily, she unlocked the beautiful Camaro and climbed inside. Hardly more than eighteen thousand miles had been turned over on the odometer. “This heap is practically mint!” she muttered. That would make it all the more valuable to Timothy, She chuckled as she slid the ignition key home.
The engine rumbled to life and purred seductively, the powerful engine thrumming through the floorboards. She revved the engine twice, then turned in the seat to back out. In the back seat, she noticed a small suitcase. She shifted back to neutral and opened it, then chuckled again as she realized it apparently contained all of Timothy’s clothing.
With a broad, satisfied grin, she pressed down the clutch, shifted, and backed out of the parking space. After a prolonged squeal of tires and a mirthful howl, she raced back into town. If it came to the point where they had to eliminate Timothy, Cassandra decided she would have to stake her claim on this beautiful car.
* * *
Tim awoke, sitting up quickly and scratching at his scalp. Sunlight shone brightly through the windows. He stood and stretched, wondering how he could have slept until seven o’clock in the morning. The dream came back to him, and he found himself examining the front of his jeans. Nothing seemed out of place…
It also did not take long for the previous day’s strangeness to come to the fore of his memory. The sooner he got out of this Godforsaken town, the better. A change of clothes, a hot shower, and he would be on his way.
He reached for his keys, surprised to find them missing from his front pocket, where he normally put them.
He looked on the nightstand first. Seeing nothing, he rummaged through the drawers, then removed the bedding from the mattress. Irritated, he dropped to his knees and peered underneath the bed. Still no luck.
“Oh, shit,” he muttered, and checked his back pockets. His wallet was missing as well.
Kicking the furniture and cursing mightily, Tim’s anger with himself grew stronger and stronger as he tried to find his keys and wallet. He walked into the bathroom and nearly tore it apart completely in his search.
When he walked back into the main room he noticed a large black cat sitting outside on the windowsill. It sat lazily on its haunches, staring at him through golden eyes in mild amusement. Its long tail, stretched to full length on the narrow ledge, flicked periodically.
“What the fuck are you staring at!” he demanded of it.
The cat blinked as if shocked by his uncivil and downright rude manner. In an exceptional display of feline snobbery, the cat stood, stretched, and leapt from the ledge. He saw it saunter across the lawn and out toward the parking lot. It struck him then to check on his car, and he hurried to the window. The cat paused in the center of one of the many parking spaces, sat down and started licking a paw. Tim’s parking space, to be exact, now vacant. It stopped licking its paws long enough to blink at Tim. Tim scowled and the cat, apparently satisfied, walked off.
“God damn it!” Tim shouted. He ran for the door and reached for the chain, realizing at the last minute that the chain dangled freely. The thought that his late-night visitor the previous evening may not have been a dream after all surfaced at last at the back of his mind. He patted the room key in his pocket absently as he moved to the desk. He pounded the silver dome of the bell insistently.
“Hold yer horses, young fella!” the old man pleaded. “I’m coming!”
“Call the police!” Tim shouted. “My car and my wallet have been stolen!”
* * *
Tim paced the parking lot in anger for nearly half an hour before the beat up black-and-white cruised slowly down the access road to the motel. Even from a distance Tim could see the sheriff’s vast bulk filling the front seat. He pulled up behind Tim’s parking space, toying first with something on the seat beside him and then with the radio before finally opening the door.
It took the fat man a full thirty seconds to squeeze out from between the seat and the steering wheel, grunting and straining the whole way. Tim could have sworn he heard a faint pop as the sheriff came free of the door frame. His brown shirt was not quite long enough to reach down past the vast rolls of flesh cascading over his belt, baring a few inches of the reddened skin beneath. He vented a loud belch as he hitched up his belt.
Tim restrained himself from making any sarcastic comments. “Thank you for coming, sheriff,” he said as evenly as possible. As the fat man approached, Tim could see old stains splotching the uniform shirt and tie. The two dribbles of egg yolk oozed near his badge, probably only minutes old. His engraved black nametag read “McGruder.”
“You’re new in town, son. What’s your name?” the man drawled around the toothpick he chewed.
How observant. “Timothy Wilder, sir. I came in early yesterday morning.”
“I see. Been here since?”
“I stopped for breakfast at the diner, then came to the hotel. I slept ’til around seven this morning.”
“That’s quite a long nap, boy.” His eyes, barely visible beyond the round cheeks, narrowed with suspicion. “You ain’t on drugs, are you?”
Tim struggled
to keep his face plain. “No, sir. I had been driving all day and night until yesterday. I must have been completely exhausted.”
“Must have,” the man agreed, eyes still displaying his suspicion. “Where you from?”
“Chicago area. Look, are you going to ask about my car or what?”
The motel manager stepped up beside the sheriff. “Looks like city boy is a little impatient. Maybe he thinks he knows how to do a policeman’s job?” the sheriff asked him.
Tim threw up his hands. “Look, sir, I didn’t mean any—”
“Stop right there, boy.” The sheriff thrust a chubby finger into Tim’s face. “You don’t know how things work ’round here, so I suggest you shut yer mouth. Now, I can’t tie the car to you until I get the facts about you straight, can I?”
Tim choked back his frustration. “I suppose not.”
“Do you have a driver’s license?”
“It was stolen with my wallet.”
McGruder nodded. “Uh-huh,” he said mysteriously. Tim frowned. The motel manager looked on with genuine curiosity. “Do you have an address?”
“Not at the moment. I’ve been living in motels for the past week. I don’t have a home.”
“Uh-huh,” he stated again. “Money?”
“None, now. There was a little over a hundred dollars or so in my wallet, and I had another ten or fifteen in my pocket.”
“What about your car?”
“It’s a black 1978 Camaro. Like-new condition, red interior. Illinois plates ALL MINE.”
“ALL MINE, eh? Selfish kind of man, are you?”
Tim’s jaw dropped. “I don’t see how that’s relevant! I’m not the criminal here! Some bitch sneaks into my room and steals my keys, wallet, and then my car, and you’re debating my license plates with me! And another thing: shouldn’t you be writing all this down?”
As the word “bitch” cleared Tim’s lips, the two men before him cringed perceptibly. McGruder’s face flushed red, eyes going wide. The motel manager seemed to curl in on himself, looking over his shoulders and up and down the lot. Tim, taken aback by their unusual reaction, wondered if they heard what he said following the minor epithet. He wondered if continued swearing would garner the same reaction and perhaps give him some leverage in the argument.
McGruder regained his composure. “I suppose I should.” He walked around to the other side of his car, pulled open the passenger door, and removed a battered plastic briefcase. He opened it on the hood and removed a small notepad and pen from within. “You know,” he began, coming back around the car, “you should watch your mouth in this town. There are many who would not appreciate your choice of words.”
“Sorry, I’ll be careful,” he replied bitterly.
“I’m not the one you need to apologize to. Now, why don’t you give me that description one more time?”
Tim did so, providing as much detail as possible. The officer asked him to slow down three times, and to repeat himself twice. He then complied with McGruder’s request for a retelling of his version of the events. At one point, the press of the pen pushed the notepad slightly into Tim’s view. He saw surprisingly (and disappointingly) little information on the page. Tim decided it would be best not to include the possibly real/possibly dreamed oral sex he received from the burglar. As he gave what little description of the burglar he had, however, the sheriff’s pen paused and lingered briefly over the page. He finally capped it and thrust it into a shirt pocket.
“Okay, Mister Wilder. We should have enough to go on for now.”
Please, Tim thought. Enough to go on my ass. How many mint ’78 Camaros could there be in this backwater town, anyway?
“Anything else?” McGruder asked him.
“No.”
The sheriff nodded. “Well, if that’s all…”
The motel manager placed a hand on the sheriff’s shoulder. “Uh, Jeff, may I have a brief word?”
“Of course. Excuse us, Mister Wilder.”
Tim crossed his arms impatiently as the two men stepped away from him and conversed in hushed tones. He caught the phrase “don’t you think I know that?” from the sheriff, his expression one of mild anger. A moment later, the sheriff turned back to him, forcing a small smile.
“Don’t worry. Mister Wilder. We’ll find your baby.” McGruder closed his notebook and threw it into his briefcase. Tim thought hard about offering a tub of grease, or perhaps a giant shoehorn, to the sheriff as he squeezed his bulk back into the cruiser.
“So, now what?” Tim asked the motel manager.
The older man shrugged. “Hell if I know. Checkout time’s at noon.” He abruptly turned his back on Tim and went back inside.
Tim scuffed at his parking space with the sole of his shoe, half hoping the oil stain on the asphalt did not come from his car, half hoping he would get his car back to fix the leak. With a sigh, he went back to his room to take a hot shower while he still had the chance.
The water relaxed, and he managed to keep his mind off the theft of his car. As he brushed out and dried his hair, he considered his predicament as calmly as possible. The first thing he would have to do is find a job, hopefully with an employer that could provide him with a little instant cash to get a place to sleep and, if he was really lucky, a change of clothes. Food would be another problem. He doubted a town this small would have a homeless shelter. Perhaps he could find a dry barn to sleep in. A hay bale and a horse blanket should be warm enough. But that would get him all smelly and dirty, making it that much harder to get a decent job. Unless he wanted to shovel horse shit or perform some other back-breaking, menial task.
Not that he had much choice.
His thoughts grew increasingly negative and once again amplified his anger. He threw the hairbrush down and stopped himself from kicking the toilet at the last second, saving himself a fractured toe in the process. Turning back to the mirror, he thought back to a conversation he had with a coworker a few weeks past concerning karma.
He never took much stock in concepts such as karma before. But within a week of that conversation, things started going downhill. He inadvertently embarrassed his boss at work, bringing the woman’s wrath down upon him hard. He then discovered his wife’s affair, and subsequently found divorce papers on his desk. He lost his job, his marriage ended, and then he lost custody of the children, not to mention nearly every single scrap of material possession he owned.
Hoping to start fresh, he hopped into his car in search of new beginnings. This was America, after all. The West Coast for him would be like a newly explored frontier, rife with promise and possibility.
The morning’s events shattered his hopes like a sledgehammer to a shot glass.
If the tenets of karma was correct, he either did something really wrong in the past or something really good was coming his way. He found himself thinking hard what he could have done to deserve this fate so cruelly thrust upon him. Really, he could think of nothing. Despite frequent arguments with his wife he never cheated on her, nor had he ever considered doing so. Even following the divorce she was the vindictive one that shouted “I’ll have everything but your worthless testicles by the time this is through!” in front of the court building before countless passers-by. A chill ran down his spine at the thought.
At work, the purely political embarrassment he brought down on his boss was completely unintentional. He apologized, yet she quite literally jumped at the opportunity to spike his career permanently when it came, He harbored no thoughts of revenge there, either.
If something good was headed his way, he wondered what could be so wondrous that it would make up for the healthy, heaping bowl of steaming shit life just served up. No earthly reward he could dream of balanced this suffering. This was the stuff cheap novels and soap operas were made of, not real life.
With a sigh of resignation, he ran the tiny complimentary deodorant stick across his underarms, then, after brief consideration, stuffed the stick into his pocket. He also took two of the small b
ars of soap and the shampoo/conditioner bottle. Collectively, they would probably only last him three days at best, but three days of prolonging the stink was better than nothing. For all he knew a garden hose under cover of darkness would provide his next opportunity for a shower, but at least he would be fairly presentable if he landed a job interview.
He dressed and scanned the room for anything else of use or value. He should have requested a smoking room so he could get some matchbooks, knowing all the same that no amount of foresight would have prepared him for this. He picked up then tossed aside the stationery pad.
“Talk about desperate,” he snorted.
Key in hand, he left the room for the last time. The bang of the door echoed down the hall ahead of him.
In the lobby, the glow of the tiny television painted the walls. Tim pushed his room key across the faux-marble countertop to the old man. “Here. I’m checking out.”
“Sign here, please,” the man asked, jabbing a finger at a line in his already waiting guest registry.
Tim did so, “Look. It’s obvious I have no money, but would it be possible to put me up for a few days? I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.”
The man shifted uncomfortably on his high stool. “Sorry, friend. Rules are rules. That’s business. If I did that for every tourist that came through, I would soon be out of business.”
“I thought there were no tourists in Rapture.”
“What?”
“Never mind.” He shoved the signed receipt back at the man. “It’s not like you have an overabundance of visitors. Can’t you just spare one small room?”
“No can do. Sorry, friend. Rules are rules,” he repeated.
“Yeah. Thanks for nothing.” Tim moved toward the door. He went slow, hoping against hope the manager would reconsider and call him back and offering him a room key and an apology. When nothing came he walked out and slammed the door, this time hoping the glass would shatter and crash to the ground.
He stalked angrily back toward town. The vast green scenery no longer held a pleasant surprise, but the appearance of a vast cage or prison cell. On the street he regarded the pedestrians he passed as part of the conspiracy suddenly hatched against him for no apparent reason. Their sometimes shy, sometimes ignorant, sometimes friendly expressions had to be masks for some deeper, evil purpose.
Deadliest of the Species Page 3
