by Ella James
My lungs freeze mid-inhale. Did she just say The House?
The bouncer looks from me to Lana. “Let me see your stub.”
Laura and Lana reach into their pockets in unison. They turn their right hands in exactly the same way and dig into the pockets of their pants with exactly the same motion.
“You guys must be triplets,” says the bouncer.
There’s a round of yeses; one from me? Maybe not… I’ve mashed my lips together, pancaked, like a fish, and am drawing air through my nose in frenzied breaths.
Luckily, their attention is still on Mr. Muscles with the left-lobe earring and the perfect teeth.
“Yep,” he says, holding up Lana’s ticket stub. “You’re here to see Edgar. Follow me, and I’ll make sure you get there. Are you all donors?” he asks as he starts walking. He looks over his shoulder, and Lana and Laura follow, tight on his heels.
“We are,” Lana says. “Well, I am. These two are just my beneficiaries for tonight.”
Laura glances at me and makes a face, and we pick up our pace to keep up with Lana and the club guy.
The torches throw shadows over Lana and the broad-backed guy, adding another dimension of movement to their walking; making me feel dizzy.
Maybe you were hearing things, Leah. Or not. The House? It’s hardly a unique name. It could just be the name of a certain area within the club. Maybe one that’s decorated like a quaint little house or something. I don’t know.
But still, I can’t seem to get a good, deep breath.
I begin to tremble, little vibrations starting somewhere near my throat and spreading outward, everywhere.
Laura notices and drops back beside me, grabbing my hand as Lana chats it up with club guy, who leads us into another hallway—this one lit by torches, too.
Between the shifting shadows, I make out something on the wall that nearly stops my heart: a leaves and branches.
This hallway’s walls are painted like a forest.
No. No, no. No NO!
I can hear the club guy talking about the artist as Lana exclaims over the beautiful yellow aspens, but they sound so far away. I try to rally, to argue with myself again, but my mind chooses that very moment to send my visual memory careening through my head.
I can see the painting on my room’s wall perfectly, maybe even better than if I was looking at a photo.
It looks almost just like this.
Cold fear grips me. I’ve been clean for more than a year but maybe… Maybe I’m going crazy.
Oh Jesus, what is wrong with me?!
Laura’s hand touches my arm, and I notice I’ve stopped walking.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks me softly.
“Nothing.”
Two steps ahead of us, Lana is going on about how unfortunate it is, the way religion stigmatizes “the sex act.”
“You hear her?” I ask Laura in a raspy voice.
She nods and seems placated. I watch her eyes shift away from me and up toward Lana.
I grab a deep breath and try to focus my attention on the floor. It’s stone, colored dark orange and gray. Were the stones at The House gray and orange?
I think they were.
Fuck.
Just stop thinking, Leah!
I refuse to look at the wall or floor from this point forward, but instead keep my eyes locked on Lana’s shoulders. When I find my gaze wandering to the club guy’s muscular back, I take that as a good sign that my PTSD-fueled panic is blowing over, and relax a fraction.
It’s probably all inside my head.
Okay, maybe not all—there are some definite similarities, like that David statue—but probably mostly.
When I get home, I need to book a special appointment with Cynthia immediately.
I curl my hands into loose fists to mask some residual shaking as I listen to Laura talk about the agony of her “two-week wait.” She’s trying to conceive for the seventh month in a row and beginning to feel pessimistic.
She debates the merits of a certain kind of lubricant that’s supposed to encourage swimmy sperm.
I nod as she tells me about the special supplements she’s slipped into Todd’s bottle of multivitamins.
Super Sperm Plus.
“That’s an idea,” I agree.
She doesn’t want him to think his sperm is sub-par, but maybe it is.
Maybe, I agree.
Or it could be her eggs.
No, I tell her. Not her eggs.
Sentence by sentence, step by step, the conversation calms me.
I notice the hallway widen ahead, but I don’t care. Whatever this place looks like, however similar it may be or may not be to my memories of The House, it’s not, and I’m here to watch people have sex.
After that, we’re going back to MGM, where tomorrow in a ridiculous, Caribbean-themed ballroom, Lana will get married. And after that, I’ll leave. Back to Peachtree City, where I’ll continue selling my Intuitive ReDesign app and doing interior design consulting for rich Atlantans.
Lana and club guy reach the end of the hall first. I’m still talking to Laura—now about “the newborn days”—when my feet stop moving, and my eyes shift from Lana’s back to the wall out front of us.
Except it’s not a wall.
In the two-story space at the end of the hallway, there’s…a house.
A frickin’ house.
A one-story house, right frickin’ here at the end of a hallway.
The witch’s house!
I whirl around and try to breathe.
Oh, God. It’s the house from my room.
She’s dead! I want to scream.
Hansel killed Mother. She’s long-since dead, and you’re okay.
I turn quickly back around and start into my meditation. I’m Leah, and I’m right here. I’m Leah, and I’m okay. I’m Leah, and I’m right here.
“This is really interesting,” Lana is saying to club guy. “Kind of odd, too. The whole house concept?”
He shrugs, moving in sick slow motion. “You know, the whole Enchanted Forest thing and all. Little house in the woods. Kinda like Hansel and Gretel.”
Laura’s hand slips into mine, and Lana turns all the way around to look at me. She doesn’t say anything, but her eyes rush over me, wide and alarmed.
Do you want to go?
I shake my head and manage a weak smile. “It’s a great layout,” I say.
Laura squeezes my hand, and I feel a flash of rage for what she did to me.
Mother.
That bitch wasn’t a mother at all. She didn’t have a single biological child, and she damn sure wasn’t a mother to any of us.
“Come on in. This is where you’ll watch the show,” the club guy says. Through the doors. Into an amphitheater. Several levels, each one deep enough for couches and recliners.
My legs move mechanically. My hand in Laura’s feels so cold.
I don’t even notice the couch until the backs of my knees are touching the edge of its cushions.
“Enjoy the show,” the guy says with a wink.
All around us, other people find their seats, but I can’t really look around, because as soon as club guy leaves, Lana and Laura are on me like a couple of...well, concerned sisters, I guess.
“Are you sure this is okay?” Laura asks, at the same time Lana says, “I think maybe we should go.”
I shake my head. “That’s crazy,” I say in voice that’s an octave higher than my norm. I swallow hard and try to sound a little less unhinged. “Just because it’s a forest theme?”
“It’s called The House,” Laura murmurs. “We’re in the witch’s cottage.” She shoots a look at Lana, as if to ask her how she missed this fact.
Lana’s red lips press together and her eyes go soft. “I’m so sorry, Leah. I heard from a friend this Edgar thing is like, some special once or twice a year event. Sexy guy, crazy sex show. I don’t know… It sounded fun.” She rubs her forehead, looking rueful. “I didn’t read enough about it.”
“No one did anything wrong. Let’s just stop talking about it,” I murmur in a lowered voice, “before everyone in here notices.”
Mother Goose’s House of horrors became front-page news after Hansel killed her and all the so-called fairy tale children were freed. Odds are, everyone around is too busy staring at the empty stage below to be paying us any attention, but it never hurts to be cautious.
I’m on the left end of our little black couch, but Lana gets up, sits between me and the arm rest, and uses her hip to bump me into the middle. When we’re all cozy, I sit up a little straighter and try my best to seem unaffected.
Lana produces a program that seems to’ve come from thin air, and starts to tell us about the “performers” tonight: Edgar, this club’s owner, who apparently hardly ever performs anymore, but who made his name doing sex shows as a dominant.
“He’s got two partners tonight,” she says, wiggling her brows.
“A porn star and some rich heiress from Hollywood.”
“I’m surprised an ‘heiress’ would do something like this,” I say woodenly.
“Well, it’s Edgar.”
“So?”
“He’s a famous dominant, Leah. Remember, I was just talking about that?”
I don’t, but I’ve been distracted since we’ve been here.
“What should we expect?” Laura asks. “I mean, in terms of…acts.”
Lana shrugs. “All I know is I can’t wait to see. I want to experience the carnal act as an outsider, something outside what I have with Roberto, just one final time. This is going to be perfect. I can tell.”
I look down at the stage, only just noticing that it’s divided from the audience by a very clear plate of glass.
“For privacy,” Laura says to me as a curtain inches shut in front of it.
“I thought the curtain should be opening now, not closing,” Lana muses.
I lick my lips and try to breathe past the pounding in my head. What will Cynthia say when I tell her about how weird this experience was? Will she want to do a drug test?
The next second, the lights in the ceiling and on the floor dim, the curtain opens, and my stomach clenches so hard, at first I think I’m going to be sick.
I blink because I can’t believe my eyes.
This is a joke.
A sick, sick joke.
The stage is split into two “rooms,” divided by a wall. In the room on the right, there’s a small, green mattress. Lying on it is a girl.
She has blonde hair.
Because she’s me.
It’s my room.
IT’S MY ROOM.
The other room is shadowed until a large figure walks in. Light spills over it, and there he is.
That’s him—Hansel—standing there without a shirt.
I get up and run.
CHAPTER TWO
Leah
I burst through the amphitheater door like a bullet, my arms wrapped so tightly around my upper body, my fingernails are buried in my triceps. I hit the stone floor with Fred Flintstone feet and shoot off down the hall.
I’m running in the direction that I think I came from when my face collides with something hard.
A chest.
I tilt my head up and look into a dark, attractive face, framed by longish hair. His eyes roll over me, the brows narrowing as he takes me in.
“Is something wrong, ma’am?”
I try to dart around him, but he grabs my arms and holds me still, firm but gentle as he looks me over.
I’m breathing hard, so hard I don’t think I can speak.
“Take a few breaths.”
I try to jerk away, but he shakes his head, torch light glinting on the Bluetooth in his ear.
“I need you to tell me if something is wrong,” he says again.
“Claustrophobic,” I half-sob.
There was a time— but. I let out a little sob and shake my head. “Do you have a bathroom? I just need a bathroom!”
With a hand on my shoulder, he turns me back toward the amphitheater doors and urges me forward a few steps.
“This is one of our dressing rooms,” he says, pushing open a door a few feet before the amphitheater. “No one is using it right now. I’ll put a passcode on it so you don’t get any randoms. You can get some privacy in here and get your bearings. Cool?”
I suck back a shaky breath and nod. “Thank you.”
“No worries.” He smiles, followed by a wink. “That’s what I’m here for.”
When the door shuts behind me, I step over to the first corner I see, where I slide down to the floor and draw my legs up to my chest. Then I pull them down, stumble into one of the granite stalls, and barf.
As soon as I’ve emptied my stomach, I shove a trembling hand into my pocket, pull the pill out, and push it into my mouth.
I swallow hard, then stagger up.
Instantly, I start to sweat.
I burst out of the stall and glance into my wild eyes in the mirror.
“What did I do?”
A sob slips from my lips.
I stumble back into the stall, bend over the toilet, shove two fingers down my throat, and start to cough up bile and lettuce from my cheeseburger. When I see the pill swimming in the toilet, I slam my fingers down on the flush lever and sink down onto the marble-looking floor.
“I didn’t do it!” I cry. “Didn’t do it… Oh my God. I didn’t do it…!”
My pulse throbs behind my eyes. Tears stream down my face. I wipe my mouth, then draw one knee up, breathing hard and fast.
Finally I stand up, walk out into the open space between the sinks and stalls, wash my hands at the long, pearly looking sink, and wash my face.
I take my time cleaning up with the high-end, vanilla-scented soap, keeping my mind blank with meditative chanting.
When I’m sure I’m clean, I sit down on one of two peach-colored couches, set my twitching hands on my lap, and try to think beyond the foggy feeling in my head.
Hansel is here.
I’m pretty sure it’s him.
I won’t know for sure until I see his arm, but it just... It has to be.
And it makes sense. It makes this place make sense.
Why else would it look so similar?
That stage set…
Holy shit.
I bite down on my lip until I taste my own blood.
I can still see the woman lying, legs spread, on the green mattress. My mattress.
He remembers me.
Oh, God. That was Hansel.
I start breathing faster.
Do not hyperventilate, Leah!
I jump up, look around for something to put over my mouth. Seeing nothing else, I grab a hand towel from the sink and shove it into my mouth as tears start flowing like a faucet.
After what happened—
After how it ended—
I wanted you. I missed you!
How many times did I—do I still—dream of him? When my addiction first started, I drove out to Colorado and tried to find him.
Someone who would understand…
But there was nothing. No sign of the boy who was my companion in hell for months on end.
Hansel!
What is he doing here? Hansel is a sex-club owner? How the fuck am I supposed to take this?
I start to cry again—quiet, tired weeping—because I want to see him and I’m scared to.
I pace to the door, because I want to go back to the show; I want to see him, but I don’t. I can’t.
I’m standing directly in front of the bathroom door when it swings open, knocking me in the forehead so hard I fly back toward the sinks.
“Holy hell.” A tall, brown-eyed, red-haired girl wearing what looks like red ballerina gear grabs onto my shoulders.
I wriggle free of her and hold up a hand, squinting through my swollen eyelids.
“Tell me you’re not performing tonight,” she says when she gets a look at me. “Your eyes are a hot mess!”
/> She takes the towel from my hand and frowns at it, then me. “Are you okay?” I feel her eyes on my red jeans, on my black Star Wars shirt. “Do you even work here?”
“No.” I rub my forehead, then step over to the couch, where I sink down and fold my arms around myself. “I left the show,” I tell her tiredly. “Some guest services or whoever let me in.”
She glances into the mirror. Then at me. She makes a face like she’s considering what I said, then turns toward the stalls and opens a small door beside them that I didn’t notice at all until this moment.
She pulls out a dainty, black iron chair and pushes it over to the sinks. She plunks down in it, unzips the little black athletic bag she’s been carrying on her arm, and pulls out a turquoise makeup bag.
I run my eyes from her hair—it’s wild and damp—down her swanlike neck, over her perky breasts, spilling out of her red leotard, down her sparkly red tights, to her red slippers.
“Are you performing with Ha— Edgar?” I croak.
She laughs and turns toward me. “I wish.” She shakes her head, looking wistful. “He hardly ever does this anymore, you know?” Her gaze flicks over me again, as if she’s trying to make sense of who I am and what I’m doing here. “You see him in there? He’s really good.”
I nod. “Is it…a show? It’s not real, what they’re doing?”
“Oh, no.” She looks down into her bag and pulls out a pencil. She starts shading her eyebrows, hardly even bothering to look into the mirror. Her hand works quickly as she slides another glance at me. “His private life is very private. They say it’s messed up, but he makes all his subs sign gag orders. Don’t tell,” she says in a low voice, “but I’m thinking of trying out.”
“Trying out?” My stomach goes cold, like I just swallowed liquid nitrogen. “There are…try outs?”
“Oh yeah.” She nods, and moves the hand holding the brow pencil from one eye to the other. This time, she’s looking at the mirror. “I’ve never done it before, but there’ve been two try outs in the last few years, and one of my friends tried for the last one. You sign an NDA and go through a process. If you’re chosen from there, you interact with him. Let him dominate you.” She grins. “I’m really doing it only for that. I want to experience him. Edgar is a legend here in Vegas.”
I rub my lips together. It’s so weird, him going by Edgar.
