Game of Death

by David Hosp

  I’m losing strength as he rides me from behind, his fingers at my throat, his body pressed against mine. My vision begins to narrow and I realize that my time is slipping away. I’m tempted to let go and slide into oblivion. I feel tired and warm and relieved. They say that these are the sensations that a drowning victim goes through just before death takes them, and I understand it now.

  As I drift off, I hear her in the background, screaming through the gag, begging me to fight. It is the only thing that keeps me tethered to reality, and it inspires one last burst of strength. I muster every ounce of remaining energy to swing my elbow back behind me.

  François clearly believed that I had fully succumbed, and the thrash takes him by surprise. He slips from off my back and lands with a crash against the dresser. I gasp and suck in a lungful of air, and it’s the most painful breath I’ve ever taken. The second breath is better, though, and I scramble up to grab the gun on the bedside table. This time I spin and point the gun at François before he climbs back on top of me. He is rubbing his head and trying to get to his knees. ‘Stay there, motherfucker!’ I scream at him.

  He stops moving and looks at me. I fight the pain and get to my feet and he struggles to his knees. His hands are raised in front of him. ‘I was right,’ he says calmly. ‘You and I are the same.’

  Without thought, I raise the gun above my head and bring it down hard and fast across his face, ripping the skin over his cheekbone open. He topples over, falling against the dresser again. A set of handcuffs rests on top of the dresser, and as he lies in a groggy stupor on the floor, I clip one of the cuffs against his wrist and the other on the radiator pipe.

  ‘That’s right!’ he shouts, smiling as he struggles to his knees again. ‘You need me!’

  I kick him in the chest and he tumbles back against the wall. The blood is pouring down his face from the cut I’ve opened.

  ‘That’s it! Take your revenge!’

  Hearing his voice stokes my rage, and I point the gun at his head.

  ‘You know the truth, just as I know the truth,’ he coughs out, raising his head to look at me. ‘You know it, because you have helped to create it! You wallow in it, don’t you? As you crawl through the dark fantasies of those NextLife users who are just starting to search for the truth of who they are, you know that we are all evil – that we need evil to be who we are supposed to be!’

  I plant my left foot and kick out with my right, catching him in the chin. To my surprise, it brings forth a ripple of laughter.

  ‘That’s right! Take my place!’

  I grab him by the hair and hold his head up, driving my fist twice into his face.

  ‘Yes, Master!’ he screams. ‘More, please!’

  I can hear Kendra breathing hard behind me, and I turn to look at her. She looks so beautiful, and her eyes are flashing, her skin flushed.

  ‘More!’ François screams behind me, and I spin at him, kicking him again and again. I look back at Kendra, and she is breathing even harder, and she gives a nod.

  I square myself to him and see that he is on his knees again, his back straight, his erection straining and twitching. I’m so disgusted; I raise the gun to his head again. ‘Yes!’ he screams. ‘Do it!’ I pull back the hammer on the revolver, and at the sound his body convulses and his face contorts in ecstasy as the orgasm consumes him. He lets out a primal groan that morphs into a scream. ‘Do it!’ he begs. ‘Free me, and take my place! Please!’

  I feel like I may throw up. My finger tightens on the trigger for just an instant. I think about the girls he’s killed. I think about what he would have done to Kendra if I hadn’t been here. He deserves it, I realize. No one deserves death more than him, but I can’t do it.

  I release the hammer on the gun and let my arm drop slowly to my side.

  ‘No!’ he screams. ‘No! Fuck you! Let me go free!’

  I throw the gun into the living room. His obscenity-laced tirade fills the air, but I block it out and walk over to the bed. She is lying there, her breathing evening out. I take the gag out of her mouth, reach up gently and release her wrists from the restraints. ‘Are you okay?’ I ask her. It’s probably a stupid question, but I can’t think of anything else to say.

  She nods unsteadily. ‘You?’

  I don’t bother to answer. She puts a hand up to the bruises on my face, pulls me in and kisses me.

  I hear the police at the door and I’m aware of the commotion, but none of it penetrates – not fully, at least. For a moment I am found, and I give in to the feeling.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  ‘He’s fuckin’ crazy.’

  It’s two hours later, and I’m sitting in an interrogation room at the police station in the Back Bay. Killkenny is sitting across from me. He shakes his head and pulls out a cigarette.

  ‘I thought smoking was banned in the station house.’

  ‘We make exceptions.’ He lights the tip, takes the smoke into his lungs and puts the ash into a half-filled paper coffee cup.

  ‘Can I get one?’

  ‘I thought you quit years ago?’

  ‘I make exceptions, too.’

  He nods and tosses me a cigarette. It’s been more than a year since I’ve had one, but the world feels lost to me, and at the moment smoking seems a trivial vice.

  ‘He hasn’t said a comprehensible word since he was taken into custody,’ Killkenny says. ‘He’s talking – it’s just that it doesn’t make sense. It’s all about divine retribution and the coming awareness. Gibberish!’

  ‘He thinks the world is turning to darkness,’ I say. ‘He believes that’s the fundamental nature of man. It’s the way we’re supposed to be.’

  ‘Like I said: crazy.’

  I take a long, deep drag. ‘Is it?’

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  I shrug. ‘I’ve seen the shit that people do online, when they think no one is watching; when they think it’s all safe. You wouldn’t believe where the mind takes these people. It’s darker than you can imagine.’

  ‘I’m a homicide detective. You don’t need to tell me about the demons of our darker nature,’ Killkenny says.

  ‘Maybe not, but I still find it hard to digest.’

  ‘Listen, having a few psychos online doesn’t foretell a revolution.’

  ‘It’s not a few psychos. People like to tell themselves that, but it’s not true. It’s schoolteachers and librarians and doctors and waitresses. It’s everyone at every age. Fifties, sixties – it doesn’t matter. And the kids?’ I shake my head. ‘The kids are being raised on it now. They have 24/7 access to graphic visual images of sex and violence and depravity. It takes more and more to shock us – to turn us on, or put us off. People think nothing of putting online videos of themselves beating the shit out of other people. I remember a few years ago there was a video that went viral of this street kid. He cold-cocks this other guy out of nowhere – knocks him out with one punch as the guy passes him on the street. And as the guy is lying unconscious on the sidewalk, the kid pulls out his dick and pisses on him. And someone’s shooting a video of this, and you can hear a bunch of people laughing in the background. And I thought to myself at the time: who are these animals? Now I’m realizing that those animals are all of us.’

  Killkenny finishes his cigarette. ‘You’ve had a bad day.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘You’ll feel differently in the morning.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ I finish my cigarette and throw the butt in the coffee cup. He and I both get up and walk slowly to the door. When we get there, he pauses.

  ‘I actually had one other question I forgot to ask,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘François was pretty fucked-up. Beaten, I mean. Cuts on his face, bruises on his ribs. Shit, he was practically coughing up blood.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You said in your statement that you fought with him, and that’s when you hit him.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Was that
it?’ Killkenny’s watching my face closely. ‘You didn’t hit him after you had him cuffed?’

  ‘No,’ I lie. ‘It was just when we were fighting.’

  ‘Okay.’ He grabs the doorknob. ‘Because, you know, no one would blame you if you took a lead pipe to the guy a little, after you had him down. The guy deserved it.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ I say. ‘It was just when we were fighting.’

  ‘Gotcha.’ He opens the door.

  ‘Is Kendra still here?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The girl.’

  ‘Oh, right, the hooker. No, we ran her home a little while ago. We asked if there was someone she could stay with, but she said there wasn’t. Sounds like she’s pretty much on her own. She seems pretty tough, though. I’m sure she’ll be fine.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I’m sure she’ll be alright.’

  I find her going through the wreckage of her apartment. François and I did enough damage on our own as we tumbled about the place, but it’s nothing compared with what the police investigation has wrought. Fingerprint dust covers everything in the apartment. Drawers and closets and cabinets have been pulled out and searched and dumped. For what purpose, it’s not clear. It’s not as though there’s any question who the perpetrator was. They did catch him naked and handcuffed to the radiator, spewing hateful venom, after all. Still, I suppose that the investigative gods must be placated with the formalities of police work.

  The door to her little two-room mess of an apartment is open, but I stand at the doorway and knock anyway. She’s bent over a table in the corner, picking up the shards of glass from what was once a lamp. She looks over at me, straightens up.

  ‘Come to see the wreckage?’

  ‘I wanted to make sure you’re okay.’

  She laughs bitterly. ‘Who, me? I’m great. Haven’t you heard? I’m resourceful.’ She throws the glass into a trash can, sits down on the couch. ‘That’s what the cop called me. Resourceful. He said it in a way that made clear he was using it as a euphemism for slutty. Like it means I don’t matter.’ She looks out the window. ‘Maybe I don’t.’

  ‘You do, though.’

  ‘You’re sweet, but everyone questions your judgment. Hell, even I do. Josh can’t be happy with you, and you stand to lose millions if you can’t patch things up with him. Some might say you’ve lost your objectivity.’

  ‘Maybe I have,’ I admit. ‘Objectivity is overrated, though.’

  ‘I’m not the one for you, Nick,’ she says with a sigh. ‘I know you think I am, but you’re wrong.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She fights back tears for a moment, then composes herself. ‘Because I’m a whore. It’s time we use the word with each other, because it’s a word I’ll never escape.’

  ‘You will,’ I say. ‘If you want to leave it behind you, you can.’

  She shakes her head, but we both know there’s nothing she can say. After a moment she looks at me. ‘I thought you were going to kill him,’ she says. ‘When he was handcuffed, and you had the gun, I thought you were going to pull the trigger.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know. Maybe because it felt like that would be letting him win. It would have been giving him what he wanted. I couldn’t bear that thought.’ I sigh. ‘And I didn’t want to believe what he was saying – all that stuff about man being evil, about us needing evil to be truly happy. I didn’t want to make that true.’

  ‘I sometimes wonder how wrong he is, though,’ she says in a dreamy voice. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  She pulls her legs up underneath her on the sofa. ‘You saw the LifeScene he created using me, didn’t you?’

  I nod.

  ‘What was it like?’

  I shake my head. I don’t want to have this discussion.

  ‘I need to know. I need to make sense of all of this.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘For me? Please?’

  I sit across from her, trying to think of a way to avoid telling her. Nothing comes to mind, so I close my eyes. ‘You look beautiful in it,’ I say. ‘So beautiful.’ With my eyes closed, I conjure the images from that scene: the white ceilings, and the red door, and the canopied bed, with the curtains billowing. But most of all what I see is her, lying on the bed, the anticipation spread across her face. ‘Your wrists are strapped to the headboard, and you look so turned on.’

  ‘What am I wearing?’ she asks.

  ‘A choker.’ It’s the first thing I remember. ‘A black satin bustier, garter and stockings.’

  ‘No panties?’

  ‘To start, but he takes them off.’

  She is quiet for a moment, and my eyes are still closed. I’m pulling it all back. ‘What happens?’

  ‘The two of you have sex.’

  ‘Is it good?’

  I nod. ‘It is. But as you get closer and closer, he puts his hand on your throat, cutting off your breath.’

  ‘Asphyxiation heightens sexual pleasure,’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘It’s far more common than you probably realize.’

  ‘Maybe. I’ve never done it. In this case, though, he doesn’t let go. He keeps squeezing and squeezing, until you both explode. And even then he holds on, choking you. And when it’s over, you’re gone.’ I open my eyes.

  She’s watching me, and she looks flushed again. ‘So that’s what he had in mind last night. He showed up and he wanted me to play along, but I wouldn’t.’ It almost feels as though she wishes he’d been able to carry it through. ‘That’s it?’ she asks.

  I nod. ‘That’s it. The plot’s not particularly elaborate, and the staging is simple, but the graphics are overwhelming.’

  ‘You seem pretty . . . affected . . . by it.’

  ‘You’re very beautiful. It would be difficult not to be affected by it.’

  She stands up. ‘I have a lot of cleaning to do.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  She shakes her head. ‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t be very good company tonight. The cop was right, I am resourceful, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel things.’

  ‘I know. I want to help.’

  She nods. ‘I have to find a place to go. A hotel.’ She looks around the ruined room. ‘I can’t stay here. Not just yet. If I call tomorrow, will you meet me?’

  ‘Anywhere.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I stand and go to the door. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Nick, one question?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘How did you feel when you were watching the LifeScene? Did it turn you on?’

  It takes a moment for me to decide whether or not to be honest. In the end I figure we’ve been through enough that there’s no point in lying. ‘Yeah, it did. Particularly at the beginning. More so than anything I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘And later?’

  ‘I wanted to save you.’

  ‘Were you still turned on?’

  I have to think about that for a moment. ‘Yes, I was still turned on,’ I admit. ‘Even at the end.’

  She nods. ‘Thanks. You saved me. Now you just need to find a way to let some of the darkness out. Let yourself be the person you are without worrying that it will overwhelm all the good in you.’

  ‘That’s what you want?’

  She shakes her head. ‘It’s what you need.’

  It’s morning when I get home. It’s been two days since I’ve slept, and the world has taken on a dreamlike quality. As I walk I can feel the cartilage in my joints, slipping over the bone. My eyes move faster than my brain can process, so my field of vision has a jerky, disjointed quality to it.

  I walk up the steps slowly, open the door. Yvette and Cormack are sitting at the kitchen table. They both look up at me.

  Cormack is the first to speak. ‘You look like shit.’

  ‘Shit would be a step up from how I feel.’

  ‘Sit down,’ Cormack says. He goes to the cupboa
rd and gets a glass, pours three fingers of whiskey in it. ‘Drink this,’ he says. It’s probably not what a medical doctor would recommend, but I’ve never really trusted doctors. I sip the drink. ‘What the hell happened?’

  ‘We got him,’ I say. I figure I might as well lead with the good news.

  ‘François?’ Yvette says. ‘They caught him?’

  I nod.

  ‘Where was he?’

  ‘Kendra Madison’s house.’

  Yvette sucks in a lungful of air. ‘And you were there, too?’

  I look at her. ‘I went over to check on her. I had a feeling . . . ’ I can’t hold her gaze, and so I glance away. ‘Anyway he was there, getting ready to make her his next victim. I called the police. We got him.’ It’s the abridged version of the story, but I’m not convinced the detailed version will be particularly well received.

  ‘So it’s over?’ Cormack asks.

  ‘I’m sure the lawyers will try to have their say, but yeah, it’s over except for that.’

  ‘Hot damn,’ Cormack says. ‘Finish that drink up and get yourself some rest. You deserve it.’

  ‘What about Gunta?’ Yvette asks.

  I shake my head. ‘He didn’t have anything to do with it, except that I think he knew that François was screwed-up. I don’t think he was deliberately helping him murder anyone, though. I guess the cops will have to sort all that out.’

  ‘So the company will be okay?’ I’m surprised that Yvette would care about the status of the company, though I suppose – given the timing and the planned IPO – it’s on everyone’s mind but mine.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘It’ll take a PR hit, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to completely undermine the management team or prevent investors from being interested.’ I take another sip of whiskey. ‘Who knows, the publicity may even drive interest in the IPO higher.’

  ‘Have you told Josh yet?’

  I shake my head. ‘Given that he sent NetMaster over here with a knife just yesterday to have a talk with me, I’m not sure this news will sound best coming from me.’

  Yvette nods, looks down at the table. I have a pretty good idea what she’s thinking. ‘Is the girl okay?’

  ‘The girl?’ I’m not sure why I’m pretending I don’t know who she’s talking about.