by John Everson
Sweat broke out on her forehead, and her arms shivered as she stretched them above her head.
Something moved, a little to the left.
Cheyenne looked up and grinned.
Darin stepped down the basement stairs again, for the second time today. The hours seemed to pass faster and faster, it seemed. He dropped a dinner sack into Emilie’s room, and then Maria’s. They weren’t going to get excited about the menu; he’d brought the same thing he’d brought earlier today for brunch – PB&J with an apple. Simple and fast. Not much of a last meal, but, he wasn’t particularly empathetic in that way.
He needed to get in and out of here quick; he had things to get ready before tonight. He tossed a bag in Jenevieve’s cell, and then opened Cheyenne’s. As he did, something clattered to the floor. It apparently had been wedged into the crack of the door.
The crushed remains of the water tin.
He looked at it and then shook his head at the chained woman. She sat on a small rock ledge in the corner. Her eyes didn’t leave him. But she didn’t say anything.
“You’re going to be thirsty later,” he said, kicking the ruined cup to land at her feet. He tossed the bag after it. “Better eat quick; I’m leaving the lights on down here for five minutes, that’s it.” he warned.
Then he left to fill the water cups of the other women. He wasn’t replacing Cheyenne’s cup. She just made her inevitable outcome harder on herself, that was all.
Cheyenne got up as soon as Darin left. She had worked on the cup this afternoon until the tin handle had finally come free. Now she prayed that she’d bent it to the right size; she was only going to have a couple minutes to make this work.
She could just barely reach the doorway with the chain fully extended. But it was enough. She pulled the end-over-end bent tin handle and stuffed it into the hole in the wall where the lock would slip through. If the handle did its job, the lock would turn but the bolt wouldn’t really slide into place; it would be repelled by the metal stuck in the channel. And then, as soon as Darin left, so would she. Leave, that is.
She had toyed with the idea of just trying to run for it, but she didn’t want to go hand-to-hand with Darin. Better to leave without him knowing. Then she could bring the police back to help the other women and catch their kidnapper. And if the lock trick didn’t work, she could still always make a break for it the next time he came.
Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
She pressed the metal into the hole, and then went back to her place in the corner, quickly undoing the lunch bag and taking a couple bites from the sandwich. When Darin came back a minute later, he saw that she wasn’t finished eating, but that didn’t slow him.
“Sorry to leave you with dinner in the dark but, lights out!”
And with that he pushed the door closed. Cheyenne heard the key click in the lock and held her breath.
Please let this work! She prayed.
It took everything in her not to jump to the door and yank on it instantly.
Instead, she stayed sitting, and began to count to one hundred. It shouldn’t take him longer than that to have gone up the stairs and be on his way outside. If he got up the stairs, she was betting given his obvious haste tonight that he wasn’t going to come back downstairs for anything.
…96, 97, 98, 99…
Cheyenne stood up in the dark and carefully stepped up on the ledge. She felt carefully up the wall, and located the eyebolt holding the chain, and the screws in its circular base. She had managed to get all of them out earlier, and only screwed them back in halfway, so she could remove them easily with her fingers. The bottom one came back out like a charm, and then she quickly removed the top and the right side. She slipped the screws in her pocket, just in case.
The left screw stuck after two turns.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she hissed in the dark. She pressed her thumb and forefinger around it and tried to turn it, but her fingers only slipped around the cool metal.
“God damn it.”
Cheyenne climbed down and felt around on the floor until she found the cup. Thankfully, the asshole had left it; she hadn’t thought she’d need it again.
She stood back on the ledge and found the screw head again in the dark, and then traced the groove in its head with her finger. After a couple false starts, she had pressed the edge of the cup into the groove and twisted.
The screw turned around twice and clattered to the floor. The bolt and her chain fell forward out of the wall, almost cracking her in the teeth before she got a grip on it.
Cheyenne stepped down, left the eyebolt and its anchor on the ledge, and walked over to the door. It was pitch black, no light came through the cracks. But she found the knob easily. She’d paced this room a lot in the past twenty-four hours. She knew exactly how many steps there were to the door.
Moment of truth.
She put her hands on the doorknob and twisted and pulled at the same time.
The door moved a hair… and then caught.
“Fuck!” Cheyenne swore out loud.
“What’s the matter?” a woman’s voice called from somewhere down the hall. Cheyenne ignored it. She pressed one foot on the short span of wall to the left of the door, and then grabbed the knob again. She’d felt movement. She just needed to drag the bolt over the lip. It couldn’t be far into the hole, she’d stuffed it good.
She took a deep breath, steeled her leg, and pulled.
The door moved a centimeter. And caught.
“No, no, no!” she spat. Then she grabbed the door knob and yanked again and again with all her might, yelling “no” with every pull.
The door suddenly gave, and Cheyenne and her chain fell backwards with a clatter to the floor.
The wind was knocked out of her, and she gasped like a fish out of water, trying to catch her breath.
“What’s going on?” that voice came again from down the hall.
“Big escape plan in progress,” Cheyenne answered, but her voice was too soft to be heard outside the room.
She felt around and found the ledge, and then picked up her “anchor” before walking through the doorway into the hall. It was like walking through ink. She moved her feet a couple inches at a time, and kept her hand outstretched, hoping to connect with the far wall with her fingers, rather than her face.
“This was not how I planned to spend my weekend,” she thought to herself.
Her fingers finally hit a cold stone surface, and then she used that to guide herself down the passageway. Somewhere, there was a stairway up…
CHAPTER 11
“IF YOU CAN REALLY open the door back to our world, now would be a really good time to do it,” Alex suggested.
Ariana didn’t respond.
The demon had been gone for a while, but Ariana had not spoken a word since they’d landed down here. Alex had crawled around the dark space, and found a few discarded odds and ends there, but nothing of use. And no exit but the chute up. The door at the top was solidly locked. She’d inched her way up twice and tried, to no avail.
“Why did you say you could open the door?” Alex prodded. “When he comes back, he’s going to ask you to prove it, and then what? Because you can’t, can you? At least, not here.”
“We’re still alive at the moment, right?” Ariana’s voice finally answered. “I had to give him some reason to get us away from the mob. If I hadn’t; we wouldn’t be talking about this.”
“So you postponed our deaths by an hour with a lie.”
“I bought us time. Does it matter how?”
“Well, I was kinda hoping you were telling the truth,” Alex said. “I’d like to get out of here.”
Ariana didn’t answer. Alex turned her attention inward.
“Malachai?” she asked silently.
“Whatever she says, don’t trust he
r,” came the response.
“Well, duh!” Alex said. “Tell me something I don’t already know. This is your world. What should we do?”
“I don’t know,” Malachai answered. “At the moment, you’re probably in the safest place you possibly could be here. As soon as you’re spotted outside of these walls, they will capture and torture you.”
“So we should stay in a hole or die?”
“Oh, they won’t kill you. Humans don’t die easily here, not unless you’re skinned too often or sent to the Cauldron. You’re far more valuable alive. The Curburide feed on pain, sexual energy and fear. Preferably all three combined.”
“So if they catch us they’re going to plant us in the ground like all those heads we saw?”
“Possibly. But not likely. You’re two young, attractive women. They will want to use that, not bury it.”
“Use it how?”
“Think about it,” Malachai said.
Alex didn’t like the image that came to mind. “Is there anything you can do to help?
There was a long silence. And then Malachai answered. “If it comes to that, I can stop you from feeling what they do to you. If I’m still here.”
“What do you mean if you’re still here?”
“Because I came over inside you, I’ve been able to remain that way. Hidden. You’re my Trojan Horse. But if they find out I’m helping you, they will pull me out. If that happens… you’ll be on your own.”
“They wouldn’t listen to you? You’re one of them!”
“If they pull me out of you while we’re on this side of the doorway between worlds, you will never see or hear me again.”
Alex felt the chill in that statement. She realized that Malachai was more of a prisoner right now than she was. And if he was discovered… well, then she was really doomed. She couldn’t move without him.
“But you’re a demon yourself. You’re one of them.” Alex said. “What did you do?”
“We have our own politics, just as you do. Let’s just say… my staying in your world for so long was akin to someone fleeing to Canada instead of serving in your army.”
“So you’re a demonic draft dodger?”
Alex heard a low chuckle in the back of her skull.
“Does that make you think less of me?” he asked.
It was Alex’s turn to snort. How do you think less of a demon?
“Careful,” he warned.
Without warning, her arm suddenly moved of its own accord and her palm slapped across her mouth.
She got the message.
“What the hell are you doing?” Ariana asked.
Alex was glad that Ariana couldn’t see her in the dark. But she’d barely thought that, when she suddenly found herself blinded and blinking. The door above had opened. Six fingers suddenly grasped her arm, and yanked her up and out of the pit.
Alex fell to the ground on her hip, as the fingers dropped her and bent to repeat the process on Ariana.
Alex sat up as Ariana rolled to her feet. She stood in a crouch at the end of the hallway. There was a closed door behind her.
“There is a hoard out there looking for you,” the demon said. “You’ve got five minutes to give me a reason not to take you out and hand you over to them. It could be worth a lot to me to be the one to have found you.”
“I told you before,” Ariana said, still crouched, as if ready to spring and fight the demon hand to hand. She was naked, weaponless, and half its size. It would be a short match. “I can help you open a door between worlds.”
“Hmmm,” the thing nodded. “That could be reason enough to keep you, if it were true. So show me.”
“What is your name?” Ariana asked. Her voice was sweet, as if ready to offer him the world.
“You can call me Elotan,” the demon answered.
“Elotan,” Ariana said. “I opened a door from my world to yours because I wanted to help you. I wanted the Curburide to come to our world and show people what the universe was really all about.”
Elotan laughed. “You wanted to show your people how it felt to have their skin peeled while they moaned in orgasm?”
Ariana nodded. “People are so stupid. They have no idea about the highs and lows of pain and pleasure. They hide from it. They pretend that it offends them, but then, once they get behind closed doors they abuse their wives and husbands. I wanted to let you come and show them all. I wanted to see them all ridden by the Curburide.”
“And you?” Elotan said. “What about you?”
“I want to be one of you.”
“Do you?” he asked. His voice was icy. Dangerous. Without breaking his gaze on Ariana, Elotan reached out and grabbed Alex by the arm. He dragged her across the ground and shoved her back down the chute to the pit. The door slammed as she hit the bottom. Ariana didn’t follow.
From upstairs, Alex heard a shriek. It did not sound like a cry of pleasure. Then she heard Ariana scream, “No, please.” The demon’s voice boomed something unintelligible, and then another door slammed. She still heard Ariana’s voice, but it grew faint.
For a few minutes, she didn’t hear anything. But then the hitching, impassioned cry of a woman enthralled in the rhythm of sex broke the silence.
Alex squirmed at the thought of what was happening upstairs. She didn’t want to know.
Ariana screamed.
Then moaned again.
The walls couldn’t hold back the conflicting sounds of pain and pleasure, though they seemed far away. Alex was glad that she didn’t have to watch whatever Elotan was doing to Ariana, as much as she despised the woman.
“Time to practice what you preach,” she said to the darkness around her.
CHAPTER 12
THE DEMON GRABBED Ariana by the hair and yanked her to her knees. She looked up at his dark skin and felt her stomach shrink. She knew this position, and knew where this was going. Already the thick rod of his sex was standing taller from where it hung between his naked thighs.
“I don’t know why you’re here or how you got here,” he said. “But I’m not going pass up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
He pulled her face close, until the barbed head of his cock was pushing against her lips. “Make me feel good, and I won’t kill you. Yet,” he said.
“I don’t know if I can,” Ariana whispered. His girth was wide; more than a mouthful. And the spines! A crown of thorns surrounded the head of his penis. The barbs were retracted, pointed back towards his groin now, but she had a suspicion they wouldn’t remain in that position when he was fully aroused.
“Take it,” the demon commanded.
Ariana thought back to the very first time she had read from The Book of the Curburide. To the very first man she had killed, in a hotel room in San Francisco. She had teased men with blowjobs and sex in order to slice their necks and release their blood so that she could see the demons. The Curburide. The masters of sex and pain. She had craved to learn their secrets, and to watch them work their torture on humanity. She had yearned to be rewarded as their queen, the wicked woman who had been brave enough to open their passage between worlds.
Now she was here, in their world. Not a queen. Just a naked woman on her knees.
Ariana let the bullet-shaped weapon press past her lips. It was hot against her tongue. Smooth. The demon looked gnarled and scarred by a thousand fights, but his sex was unblemished, a powerful tube of skin that slid easily into her mouth even as she was forced to open wider to accept his thickness. It was still growing inside her, as she tasted the tip and put a hand on the demon’s hip to steady herself. She slipped the other around the base of him, and marveled at the silky smooth feel of his bare skin. She’d thought from the look of him that he’d be rough, a gravel and sandpaper monster. But he felt like silken steel.
For a moment she relaxed and let his evil coc
k slip deeper into her throat. She teased it with her tongue and traced the strange spiny ridges that grew out from its bullet head. He tasted… strange. She couldn’t describe it. Not foul at all. She’d expected a gross bathroom taste. She’d expected taking a demon in her mouth would be like licking a toilet. But it wasn’t that at all.
He tasted like spice. Not sweet, but faintly exotic. It was slight at first, but as he moved within her mouth the flavor grew richer, heated. Ginger and bitter chocolate. She pulled him inside her farther, no longer fearful of the reward, but craving it.
The demon moaned and pressed a heavy hand to the back of her head. “Not yet,” he said. “Not here.”
And with that, he yanked her hair and pulled her away from him. As he did, the barbs on his cock resisted, and suddenly the spice in her mouth scalded. Fingers of fire dug into the top of her palate and raked cuts in her tongue. Ariana couldn’t help but scream.
As she did, her mouth opened wider and the demon shoved her away. He released her hair, and Ariana fell backward to the ground. She pressed a hand to her lips. Her palm came back warm and red.
Elotan laughed. “Get used to it,” he said. “You and I are going to spend a lot of nights together.”
Ariana’s mouth was on fire; she could feel her tongue swelling. “But I can’t,” she mumbled. She spat a wad of blood and saliva on the ground.
Elotan grabbed her hair again and opened the door behind her. Then he dragged her into a small room. Flames flickered from holes in the walls, illuminating paintings of strange scenes. Frames made of long, white bones constrained visions of dark skins twined and bent in bizarre ways on beds of blood and broken skulls. Humans were there in the mix, sometimes shared by two or three demons. One painting showed four men serving as the living furniture of a parlor; they bent in unnatural angles, as dark creatures stood around in groups of two or three, seemingly enjoying a cocktail party atop the human furniture.
Ariana couldn’t see more, as Elotan roughly tossed her to the bed. She hit her head on the frame and yelped, and the demon slapped her thigh. “Welcome to your new throne, my queen.”
