Dead Bait 4

by Weston Ochse

  “Feeling better?”

  “Took a Xanax to knock me out, so yes. Headache’s passed.”

  “Good,” Dennis said and eyed the bed. “Round two soon?”

  She brushed the question aside with a roll of the eyes. “Where is everyone?”

  “This boat’s 100 feet from bow to stern, baby,” he said with violent assurance. Teetering on defensive for reasons he didn’t understand. Sybil’s brow furrowed, and suddenly he knew he was close to blowing it. Shit. He couldn’t blow it. Not with the Austrian goddess. A year ago, he’d been jacking off to her Playboy spread—one of three issues he was able to stash in his garage without the wife knowing. But today she was ten feet away, and looking like his memory had projected her centerfold spread in front of him.

  Music wasn’t just another way to dream, it could actually create new realities if you believed in its power.

  “I mean…I know they’re screwing,” Sybil said. “I think Frank wanted me to join them. Left a note on my bag saying I should meet them when I wake up.”

  Dennis balled his fists as the anger worked through his system in tandem with the Colombian blow. He felt like finding Frank. Barbie, the 1982 Playmate of the Year, wasn’t enough for him? In a way, he was surprised Sybil hadn’t gone for it on the promise of starring in more schlock. A body like that would look good in loincloth, and they had not one but two barbarian scripts on his desk. Girls have done a lot worse for a lot less.

  Maybe Sybil was a more honest girl than he had suspected, and he suddenly felt guilty about making assumptions. Sure, Hef had already pawed her a half dozen times, but that was the cost of doing business in this industry. She also happened to be the goddess from his fieriest fantasies—gorgeous, with buku brains to back her scrumptious rack. She even voted Republican.

  Still, Frank was supposed to be restarting the yacht’s engine, not revving his own. What were they going to tell the girls if they couldn’t get it up and running? Sorry ladies, no Cannes this year, but we’ll make it up to you by putting you in the pictures? If they couldn’t get their latest sold, there would be no more pictures.

  The communication equipment also needed repair. If they couldn’t do that, it would be even worse because who knew where they’d end up? Dennis had taken a few navigation classes in pursuit of his Captain’s License, but he didn’t trust himself to remember a word. Something about using the stars in the sky to find your way home. “Just look for Polaris” or some shit. Was that the star that never moved? Was that even accurate? He couldn’t remember because he’d been too coked out to care.

  Why bother? This was the 80s. You shouldn’t have to use a fucking sexton when you float out to sea.

  “I guess it doesn’t matter where they are,” Sybil said. “I’m up and feeling better. Why don’t you and I go have some Mai Tais?” She watched him dress and, when he was finished, placed the white captain’s hat atop his head like she was decorating a Christmas tree. Then backed out of the doorway with a playful grin that dared him to follow.

  Dennis followed all right. His mind stumbled over subconscious panic, unable to focus on the wiggling ass leading the way. If Frank wasn’t worried about being stranded, he shouldn’t be, either. It was usually his yacht they were on, and they’d made similar voyages a dozen times without incident.

  Just my fucking luck, he thought.

  Sybil tugged loose her bikini strings. With a delicious grin, the straps slid off her shoulders. His eyes, among other things, bulged at the sight.

  On the yacht-wide PA, Pablo Cruise assured him that Love Will Find a Way, as if on cue. The cool Atlantic air pacified his fears about being lost at sea, at least temporarily, as the music promised everything was going to be fine.

  Sybil sauntered toward the Cannon’s bow, dropping into the rounded seat cushion that overlooked the sprawling blue void. She turned back with a smile and lifted a bottle of Asti Spumante that she must’ve planted there. “I was going to save this until you sold your film, but we’ll just get another.” She uncorked it and poured a little across her chest as Dennis got there, cupping her breasts in his hands and lowering his mouth to taste alcohol-soaked flesh.

  They could float all the way to Japan for all he cared. Life was meant to be enjoyed, and he wasn’t going back to his old one. Nope. He’d won. And after the next multimillion-dollar payout, Robin Leech might finally come calling.

  He went at Sybil like an animal, fueled by the cocktail of coke and Asti that reduced his mind to mush. Screwing the woman of his dreams was a blur. Her body was soft against his, and her legs wrapped around him in a loving way that only encouraged him.

  By the time he finished, spilling on her thigh after slipping out in a clumsy attempt to prolong the gesture, the blue sky was no more. It was as if they’d sailed to the edge of the world and found only darkness beyond the yacht lights. He grunted and groaned his finishing cries and she moaned “no, no, no” before her own whines settled into frustrated acceptance and their muscles went limp together.

  “Let’s just enjoy the evening sky,” she said, not wanting to hear his excuses.

  Dennis looked up and saw a thousand glowing stars trained on them like leering eyeballs while the ocean beneath heaved. He stumbled upright into brisk night air as Olivia Newton-John’s Magic greeted the darkness with pop atmosphere.

  This time the music brought no relief. There must’ve been interference from another ship’s intercom, because the speakers pushed through static, drowning Olivia in a wave of crackles. A faint hum surfaced, gaining on the static and pushing Ms. Xanadu off the air entirely.

  Here was new music, steady and melodic. Ancient—almost as soothing as his mix but unlike anything he’d ever heard.

  “What the hell is that?” Sybil said, sliding her long tanned legs through the thin bikini bottom.

  Dennis was far too disoriented to acknowledge the question. The veil of lust had been lifted and his chemical high receded. His thoughts reshaped into something resembling priority. Time to start thinking about getting this hunk of junk moving again.

  “Frank,” he called and wondered why there was still no response.

  Sybil moved closer to the railing, her arms covering her breasts as she squinted into the night. “I think I see something.”

  He turned to tell her to stuff it, but his irrational anger was stymied by a silhouetted landmass in the distance. Was it France at last? Had they made it? Beneath them, the rocking water intensified. The stalled vessel lifted and ebbed toward the island on a steady crawl.

  “Where are we, Dennis?”

  “France,” he said with the kind of certainty that wouldn’t fool a conch shell.

  Sybil snuggled against him, crystal blue eyes swiveled up with an affection that made his knees buckle. Her fingernails pierced his arm as she shook.

  Drifting in off the sea, a pleasing voice called out, somehow blaring through the yacht’s speakers while filling the night sky. An inescapable song.

  It invaded Dennis the way a bedroom voice seeped inside your unconsciousness and manifested within your dreams. He wanted to ask Sybil if she heard it, but it was far too beautiful to interrupt.

  He trained his ear and held his breath as the island loomed closer.

  The song rose and fell, scored by ethereal strings he could not identify, and sung in a language he did not understand. This tongue was more than exotic, it belonged to an age long past.

  Sybil pushed away, clamping her palms over her ears and bending over like the auditory invasion was killing her. She tried to speak, and maybe she was, but Dennis either couldn’t hear or wasn’t listening. He was a captive audience, and this new music was the only thing that mattered.

  That’s when Sybil launched at him, throwing a frustrated shove that sent him staggering.

  The fugue spell broke and Dennis was suddenly furious. He raised his hand to her, and felt the urge to slap the stupid vulnerability off her face. But the music came for him again, a warm burst in the center of his ches
t that made the anger dissipate. The voice locked him in place, growing louder as the current continued to ease the Cannon straight for it.

  Sybil came and went, stomping off and returning more than once, each time bringing a different declaration or interrogation: Frank and Barbie are still missing! How can that be? What if they went overboard? Dennis don’t you care?

  He should care, but nothing seemed as important as the music.

  Music had never steered him wrong.

  The island had become a sizable landmass before his eyes. Dennis felt a swell of excitement at the thought of reaching it as the boat buckled. The electric hum signaled the dropping anchor and interrupted the honeyed sound. The Cannon was locked, trying still to inch toward the music like a leashed dog in heat.

  What had Sybil done?

  Just like the whore wife whose name he was beginning to forget, she too was sabotaging him.

  “What is that?” Sybil cried from the sun deck above.

  Dennis turned with rage in his eyes, and found her pointing to the nearest outcropping of rocks.

  Pointing at a woman.

  A buxom outline stood beneath the moonlight on an edge of stone like a sculpted statue. Two hundred feet away, but her shimmering catlike eyes were clear as day. Her shoulders bucked and her chest rose as her song purred in the air, somehow amplified by his speakers.

  He wanted to call to her, and was about to do it when Sybil’s palm curled around his mouth. She was stronger than she looked, hooking her other hand under his shoulder and dragging him across deck. Her skin, previously so pleasing, repulsed him like touching a rotted banana peel.

  Dennis fought, but the music had done more than lull him. His eyelids were heavy, his muscles lax. He wanted to push her away and rush right back to his personal concert, but Sybil had other plans.

  She pulled him inside and closed the door where the music persevered. The reflective eyes on the rock watched with a gleam that might’ve indicated a smile.

  “What have you done, Dennis?” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand as she asked, and backed away, brandishing an icepick like a weapon. Her leather jacket hung off her shoulders, but the gold bikini bottom was the only other article of clothing she wore. Even in distress, she was ready for a photo shoot.

  Everything about her irritated him now.

  “I found them, Dennis.” She motioned to the aft sliding door. He stared at her before understanding she wanted him to look.

  Dennis got to wobbly feet and shuffled to the glass. The engine compartment was open, the inside latch covered in blood. From here he saw Barbie’s severed head. Her dead gaze staring from the top of a pyramid of mutilated body parts.

  That’s when he remembered. He’d heard this song before. It came as a whisper on the wind, late this morning, little more than a tickle in his brain. Its suggestion had been no less powerful, though. Taking the fire axe in his fists was palatable as he strode aft and found Barbie riding Frank like he was a bucking bronco.

  He’d wanted nothing more than to kill her, and she broke and cracked apart like firewood, only the spurting mess was ungodly. The hungry blade decimated her breastbone and the blow flung her aside, tearing the weapon from his hands because it was embedded inside her. That’s when he knew Frank had to die next. Unarmed, Dennis did what came natural in the moment: he jammed his thumbs straight through his friend’s eyes.

  The worst part had been the thrashing struggle as fingernails scraped warm bone at the back of Frank’s skull. It took a long time for life to vacate the body—the entire length of Christopher Cross’ Ride Like The Wind, to be exact—and Dennis couldn’t help but fixate on Frank’s shriveling penis as it reverted back into a flaccid pod. Life’s indignity never more clear than in that moment.

  Is this all there is?

  He’d rushed back to his cabin then, eager to shower. Xanax had Sybil out cold on the sun deck above, and that time needed to be used wisely. Hacking two bodies into pieces and then stashing them tended to be messy.

  Tears streamed off Sybil’s chiseled cheeks as the blade in her fist wobbled. Blood dripped from her earlobes and rappelled down her golden earrings.

  Dennis realized there was only one way to get back to the music. It was a craving, the way addicts got all twisted and manipulated by chemical addiction, and it had to be enjoyed without distraction.

  He took a step, and Sybil was wound so tight she slashed at him. The crazed look in her eye begged him not to try again. He did, and the blade caught his wrist as he lashed out, gasping at the sudden spring of pain while she dashed for the door. Her bare flesh sprinted past the window darting for the bow. Beyond her, out on the rocks, glimmering eyes narrowed with waning patience.

  Dennis knew what he was supposed to do. He returned to the deck, stalking this bitch to the music that swirled through the ocean breeze. It scored his pursuit as if this were a movie where characters could hear the music that accompanied their actions.

  He found Sybil with her back to the sea. The blade raised high. Sputters tripping past her lips. At fifty feet, she managed to scream, “Keep your distance!” That didn’t deter him. She tried supplementing her threat with “I mean it!” But her voice was lost in the wraithlike melody that filled their ears.

  That music pulsed and Dennis’ fillings shook. He approached his prey with a slow skulk and tried to smile in a way that belied his predatory intent. “Take a drink with me,” he said as he neared the cushions that had been the spot of their lovemaking. He lifted the bottle of Asti and took a quick swig. It was tepid.

  “You have to get the engine running,” Sybil said. Her eyes were no longer crystal blue, but bloodshot cherry red. “Please, Dennis, the noise is killing us. It’s squeezing my thoughts...my head feels like it’s about to crack.”

  “You’re right,” Dennis said. “It’s awful.” But it wasn’t awful. He glanced toward the rocks, at the singer. Her high notes were hooks into his soul, stirring him from a distance. In that instant he was back on I-95, miserable, save for his car stereo. The music propelling thoughts about the future. Seals and Crofts making him realize it was out there, ripe for the taking.

  That’s how he felt today.

  He smashed the glass bottle of Asti on the yacht’s railing and gripped the neck like it was a hungry knife. Sybil’s gorgeous eyes popped wide as he stepped to her, catching a defensive icepick stab through the top of his hand. There was probably pain, but the music wouldn’t allow him to feel it. Instead, he jammed the bottle’s jagged edges up through her jaw, forcing it into her mouth while warm blood coated his arm.

  With a heave of strength he wouldn’t have thought possible, he pushed up so the entire bottleneck disappeared inside her head. Her mouth gaped and the dark glass at the back of her throat twisted up like a drill, boring into her brain. Blood squirted from her eyes to escape the pressure, while brain matter oozed from her ears and nose like a runny bowl of Quaker Oats.

  Sybil landed against the bow’s tip and her arms dropped over the rails, half-propped like a disheveled scarecrow. The once flawless figure was a lifeless husk that stared through Dennis with cold apathy.

  There was immediate regret, but that notion was buried deep. He didn’t have time to contemplate it further because he was already looking toward the rock, desperate for his favorite singer’s approval. She glided from one edge of the natural stage to the other, her song pitched high. Musical gauze wrapped his thoughts so this act of annihilation became nothing but a hazy memory, and easily disposable.

  A slat of moonlight caught the rock, bathing her in a heavenly glow. She was a nude figure moving without the sin of shame. She lifted her arms to the sky and spread them in a slow and commanding motion.

  There was only one thing left to do.

  Dennis went back to the anchor control and retracted it, allowing the boat to drift again. The anticipation in his body was like nothing else. The Cannon neared the outcropping, and he understood why the music was so loud. There was more than on
e singer. His soprano was close by, maybe fifteen feet off the starboard side, and Dennis was spellbound as he floated past. Their eyes locked, and her face changed in the shifting moonlight. Sickly pale skin. Eyes like nothing from this plane of existence—lit with a color he had never seen, light and dark all at once. When she opened her throat wide to hit a high note, her tongue was forked.

  He didn’t judge. This was the most beautiful sight.

  Land was less than a hundred feet off, pocked by the silhouettes of a half dozen songstresses. Some were perched on their own rock stages, and another stood expectantly in waist-deep water—arms outstretched in welcome.

  This was more than a dream come true. This was actually paradise.

  Dropping anchor made sense now as he could easily swim the rest of the way. But it was already too late. Deep down, he knew that. And wanted this.

  Beneath him, the Cannon’s hull scraped along rocky shallows, the fiberglass hull protested the sweeping current lassoing the yacht, tugging it close. The ship’s bottom could only warble so much before giving, and he wasn’t surprised when the splintering cracks were loud enough to feel. That physical distress signaled a loud echoing puncture and then the Cannon was really in trouble.

  The music in the sky stopped, every voice silenced at once.

  Shining eyes lit the night, each pair locked onto him. The woman in the shallows waded in up to her shoulders and Dennis thought he saw her wink before vanishing beneath the Atlantic.

  Splashing water sounded behind him. Dennis turned and found a blotch of moonlight looking down on the rock cluster like a spotlight. Only his soprano was missing, and a quiet ring of water radiated outward, as if its performer had never been there.

  Or had suddenly slipped away.

  Diving bodies splashed all around him, and Dennis whipped back to survey the shoreline. His welcome party had vanished, and he imagined a half dozen women knifing through the water on a path toward his sinking boat. The hairs on his arms rose and a spike of terror crashed into his heart.