by Jay Smith
Alan rose from his throne and walked to the left edge of the platform. Each courtier rose and shook hands with him down the line. When he reached me, he gave me a two-hand shake and mumbled something while looking very serious. Cameras flashed all around us. It was just another photo op.
Then he was gone.
My phone vibrated against the china dessert plate. I'd missed the last four texts from Ezrin. Picking up the phone I tried scanning the crowd for her but the flash spots in my eyes lingered. I gave up trying to read the screen and closed my eyes a moment.
Of course she was backstage waiting for me. Ezrin handled me into an elevator. The doors slid together tight and the roar of the crowd ended leaving only a persistent ringing in my ears.
~
Some memories of the night are clearer than others. I remember the stink of cigarettes and cheap beer mixing with the hot night air as we were rushed out of the van into the street. A crowd of weirdos, freaks, and geeks stared at us. Some cheered, others leered, and a few glared at us from behind the velvet ropes and beefy bouncer types in 4x black polo shirts.
Camera phones flashed and I heard names of the courtiers rise above the noise as Ezrin pulled me along toward a dark alley. I couldn't focus on more than a gray stone façade that made me think of a Halloween fun house four stories high. The crowd had to enter through the front but we were headed toward the doorway glowing orange in the distance. Lord Roderick waved at the crowd but kept moving quickly for the door. A dozen people around me helped cut through the night air. Traffic along the street rolled by, horns tapped in greeting or blared in annoyance. It was the only other sound to rise above the crowd. In the alleyway, that sound turned into a haunting echo between the stone walls of our destination and its neighbor, toward an unrelenting bass I could feel from the street.
From there, it got hazy.
Inside. Cold. Bright. Backstage of a theater. Wood frames and panels painted black. The smell of sawdust and fresh paint. Caricatures of famous people glowing under black light. We keep moving. Old wood. A remodeled church. Instead of pews, an open dance floor. Hundreds of half-naked shapes slithering and grinding, jerking and leaping to a wall of noise I can't decipher into music. My ears ache, my eyes water from the smoke and a cloud of cologne rising from a naked fat man in a sailor's hat standing and staring before a broad-brush cartoon of Vladimir Putin penetrating the President of Turkey.
Still moving. Down a dark corridor. I feel the noise through my body but the assault on my ears ends. Just enough light reflects off the sequins in Ezrin's dress and I follow her close. Two shapes off to one side grind into one another on top of cargo boxes. I hear one screaming as I pass and assume it is in pleasure. From above me on suspended walkways lighters flash in the darkness like summer fire flies and die away. Tiny curls of smoke rising from the dying light. Someone behind me steps on my shoe and pulls the heel from my foot. I try to crouch down but lose the shoe. I feel people tripping over it through the floorboards and I waddle forward on a sock and one shoe. I lean in to try and tell Ezrin I lost my shoe, but we turn and move into the light again.
Curtains part and the music plows over me again, hitting with physical force that makes it feel like we're walking through wind. Harsh spotlights burn my pale skin like the Vegas sun. Squinting doesn't help me as I stumble forward onto a stage. In the gulf behind the bright lights a crowd cheers and I have to cover my ears to stop the pain. I smile so as not to offend. I'm overwhelmed. The only thing I can see with any clarity is a four-story stained glass window far off in the distance, though I have no sense of scale. My head vibrates from the sound causing the lights to shimmer and quiver like wave forms.
I'm put into a line with the other courtiers. Someone slaps me on the shoulder with my missing shoe. I slip it back on. Ezrin shoots me a confused look. I smile at her and take my place like this is the start of the weirdest chorus line or political debate ever.
We're off again. Ezrin pulls me back into a processional and into the dark hallway. I keep my footwear this time all the way to where the sound doesn't hurt and the light is subdued. People step up and shake my hand. I don't know them and can't hear what they're saying. Ezrin uses her arm as a cattle scoot, driving us through a small cluster of well-wishing strangers who might be special guests of someone even more special. It is dim and currents of weed compete with tequila sweat. I'm sweating myself. Ezrin's grip is slippery and she clamps down hard on my wrist to keep me moving toward a sunken lounge made of giant pillows and short tables. There's a hookah over to one side where Lord Roderick heads and a team of leather-clad servants on the other carrying bottles of various shapes and sizes.
I have a drink in my hand with no idea how it got there. I don't want it but can't put it down anywhere. Ezrin takes it. I want to strip out of my costume. The place is just too damn hot. There's a creepy, pale woman in the corner with short, pink hair. I can't tell if she's eighteen of sixty but she has a muscular dancer's body. She wears nothing more than a series of polished leather belts intersecting to cover her chest and crotch but just barely. She's carrying a cluster of black balloons. She looks at me like a predator at the end of a leash or behind bars but that divider does nothing to make me feel safe. The expression on her face says our meeting is inevitable.
Naked people arrive and walk through the group. They're young and pretty, boys and girls with big smiles and eyes full of hope and just a bit of devilish sparkle. They make eye contact to see who wants them and they split off in different directions into the arms of different courtiers and the entourage. Ezrin waves off a pretty brunette who heads my way, puts me into a chair and hands me a wooden cup.
The world settles down a bit.
~
"It's just water," she whispered. "Hydrate."
"My head feels like its dipped in cheese."
Ezrin nodded, "Yes, that's Fondue Head. Very common. It'll pass, milord." She winked at me and scanned the room.
"Who is the weirdo with the balloons?"
Ezrin scanned the room twice. "Who?"
"Pink hair, costume made of straps…behind Lord Woe and Mal Rees."
She shook her head. "Oh. She's…"
Someone – then a bunch of someones - screamed behind me, drowning out what Ezrin had to say. But when I turned my eyes back toward the mystery balloon lady she was twenty feet closer to me, still staring, still holding the same pose.
"Gah!"
She drew closer with grace and precision giving the illusion of gliding toward me. My nerves tingled and my heart raced as tiny, yellow eyes appeared in the dark corners of the room, blinking and peeking down at the private partygoers, finding something tasty. The Shadows, possibly summoned by the pale, cadaverous lady, had come. I couldn't imagine who among us, rolling in the throes of sexual or drug-induced bliss, would agree to join them in the next world. I looked around the room, mindful of the white shape approaching slow, wondering when Ezrin would step in between us, shifting in my seat and twitching just like I did on the night my medication set my skin on fire. I felt nothing, but my body wanted to escape the room while part of my brain held it to the chair.
Shadow Usher.
Yellow worms broke through the drywall around me, thousands of tiny carrion consumed the wood, discoloring the black into gray-brown gashes spreading across them like wet mold. Their efforts sounded like a fat mouth slurping and sucking soup.
Red ants marched by the thousands like a precision army across the floor, their tiny feet on the concrete creating a sound like hot grease on a griddle. They climbed the furniture, creating bridges from the cluttered table to the sofas, weaving a blanket over the Lords, Ladies, and Whores. Their shapes collapsed down to the fabric and when the ants disbursed, left nothing but bones behind.
The worms opened the walls, excreting an acid that burned through the cinderblocks. Instead of the hot, Vegas sky, they revealed a cold swirl of stars turning and tumbling. I had to look away as the hotel tumbled through the space.
I turned back to the Shadow Usher. She stood in front of me, expression frozen in that placid, curious gaze that did not falter or blink.
"Who are you," I asked, a bloody mist rising from my lips.
She did not speak, could not as Ezrin explained somewhere in the distant past.
The Shadows around me laughed and waited. They did not emerge from their shelters, but now they were all looking down on me. Waiting.
The Shadow Usher tilted her head. Her pale skin did not look like make-up. Her flat stomach and muscular arms were ashen at their darkest. Cold radiated from her skin and I felt the chill feet away. She took a single balloon from the group in her long, bony left hand and held it out to me, tilting her head and softening her expression just enough to be perceived as a gentle offering.
I reached out to take and when I looked back at her to thank her – an automatic gesture to be sure – I saw my mother's face.
She said, "They will burn you out from the inside, eat what's you and leave just the machine. They're coming for you, Winston. Coming to make you a machine."
~
The clock beside my bed read 3:47.
I'd thrown up and my shoulders hurt. My stomach ached, but not from a bad tummy. Shifting in bed strained the same muscles that probably worked overtime to help me puke.
I didn't feel hungover.
A cold arm slithered over my side under my blanket and my body went numb. Her body pressed against my back, but she was not cold. Soft and warm, two firm breast against my shoulders and a pair of thighs against my ass.
It wasn't Ezrin.
My dick stuck to the sheet as I shifted in bed. I carefully reached down and felt the thick mess of post-coital slime – a thin layer dried to my inner thighs and pubic hair.
My calves burned. My bladder swelled.
Between the warm bed and the cold floor of the bathroom my memory painted the scene several times.
A pink wig topped the lamp beside the Shadow Usher – Miranda? Amanda? Mira? Anna? – and wow, it was a party.
My room was arctic and I demanded we make it that way so we could be warm under the blankets. Ezrin was there – with someone she met at the party. Was it her real-life husband? I couldn't remember. But they were in their chambers. Two other people were shacked up in the living room. An annoying couple who kept asking if we wanted to just pile on in the living room.
I pissed for a full minute staring at a bunch of black latex balloons in the shower, washing the spermicide and body fluids off my junk, and remembering an albino woman singing pagan hymns to me in Latin.
We ran into Asq Dhole again at some point and he tried to start shit. Ezrin handled him, but he screamed at me, condemning me for ruining his life. Perhaps a bit harsh – or just cruel – I replied that this was his opportunity to finally GET one.
That's when the guilt took root and began growing in my stomach. At some point in the night, I made the decision to fly home. There was an itinerary in the kitchen. I also received a summons from Mistress Huan in the night:
Alan Horus wanted to see me tomorrow at his home.
Chapter Fourteen
The morning after was a casual affair. Someone had the forethought to arrange a family-style breakfast delivered at dawn. Despite the long night, everyone was up early, tired but smiling. We were cordial.
Evendorr, Ambassador for the Aelves who I'd met at dinner, walked around the suite naked seeking a bowl of fruit and a cup of coffee. Her partner – loud and sexually aggressive the night before, rolled off the sofa and crawled to the guest bathroom to get himself together.
Ezrin emerged from her chambers into the main room. She took time to compose her face and hair. I admit I was curious who she had with her. I still couldn't remember. The guilty expression she shot me on her way to the kitchen could have been about something either of us did the night before. There were still some gaps, like the worms had chewed through them inside my brain.
That thought brought me back to what my mother – or the image of my mother – had said to me. Before I could put those thoughts together, I felt the soft, warm embrace of my own guest from behind.
"You were delightful, my dear," she whispered into my ear, licking the lobe before pulling away. She was Rule ~63 David Bowie fallen to Earth.
Evendorr approached me with open arms, her hard nipples poked me with such a strong hug. "Thank you, Lord Wynncase. You're a god damn rock star."
Ezrin stifled a laugh from the kitchen.
"Do you still have to go home today," she asked. Evendorr was tiny, maybe five feet nothing. Sweet and smarter than anyone in the room. She worked in the IT testing lab for Aeternus with Lord Woe.
"Yeah. I think I should get my things in order."
"You're coming back, right?"
"Yeah. Assuming Alan Horus doesn't throw me out for what I did to the Lizardos last night."
It was a sore subject. Everyone made a face like I might just be right. No one followed up on it and I moved on to the subject of food.
The door to Ezrin's chambers opened and I turned probably a little too eager to see who would emerge. I expected Ezrin's real life husband. I didn't expect a young female stranger in a rumpled peasant dress. She looked nervous like we might turn out to be spies for her parents or minister. Ezrin reached out to her and waved her into the kitchen where the two hugged. The girl's head came up to Ezrin's shoulders and that's where she left it for a moment. Failing to make sense of it, I just enjoyed the sincerity of the moment before turning my attention to the bowl of fruit and pots of coffee.
The morning passed quietly. We didn't recap the night. We talked about the future and what was coming up in The Realm. Evendorr talked about working hard toward the opening of a new "grid" that she called "the size of New Jersey" which would support thousands of new players and artificial characters. She also called it revolutionary in its testing phase.
The Shadow Usher, whose name I promised to never share, said nothing. Whatever connection we had the night before didn't earn me any longing glances or a hand on my knee. She sat with perfect posture in her own chair, listening politely as Ezrin talked about opening a costume shop with a friend of hers who clearly wasn't the young woman leaning on her shoulder. That girl, Esther, was almost as quiet as the Shadow Usher and anything she did say or asked went to Ezrin.
I felt like we all had a connection, but maybe just one like being stuck in an elevator for hours or we survived a light plane crash together. As plates cleared, we all retreated to private rooms to change and politely leave. Evendorr checked on her friend who she discovered fell asleep on the toilet. After a few minutes, he was awake and stuffed a few slices of buttered toast into a small overnight bag for the walk or ride home. Evendorr thanked and hugged me again, asking me about the future in some off, non-committal way. Ezrin and Esther used that time to say their goodbyes so I never got a change to speak to the girl before she left.
Finally, Shadow Usher emerged from my bedroom in her pink wig, yellow contacts and a gray military uniform that looked like it came from a North Korean Big & Tall collection. Her body language changed. Instead of lithe and graceful, she had an edge and a precision to her movements and a hardness in her expression. She stepped up to me and stood tall, clicking her right heel to her left foot. She only nodded her thanks before turning and marching out the door, a small black bag swinging from her shoulder in perfect time.
Ezrin saw her out, shut the door and looked at me, waiting for me to say or shout or something.
"You okay?"
I considered the question, the need for a long hot shower and to pack. As if reading my mind Ezrin said, "Go scrape the uncanny off your body. I'll get your bag together. You have about twenty minutes before Huan gets here and ruins the vibe."
"What happened to me last night?"
"The freak out?" She said it like it was common knowledge.
"Bugs ate everything and then…this."
"You drank from the social punch bowl. I don't know what
you had, but I thought you were about to have a bad trip. Then – Punk Lady Death handed you a balloon and you were all over each other. I thought we were going to have to put a tube down your neck or tranq you. I thought for sure I was going to be going to bed with you or sitting by your hospital bed all night, but… the stuff is potent but has a quick half-life. It was out of you by three and from what I heard last night you were enjoying the fuck out of life for the first time."
"She licked my catheter scar."
"Ew!"
"On my chest, Ez..."
"Still! EW! Go shower."
I did. I didn't ask about Ezrin's date and I had no right to be jealous. On the other hand, I had no idea what last night meant to me or my overnight play date. I suspected that would work itself out. I felt relaxed as the hot shower burned away the sweat and sex from my body. As the details returned, I felt more comfortable about the night, even disappointed that the drug that killed my inhibition made it feel like a distant memory.
Ezrin was in my bedroom with the door shut when I emerged from the steaming master bath.
"Huan is here, so I'm in here with you."
Made sense.
I promised to see her again in a week and get her cell number. We hugged and I lingered on the lavender scent. Maybe a final lick of the drug in my system still worked on me but I wanted to kiss Ezrin. She knew it, too, and waited for me to dare.
We smiled and parted ways.
~
I met Alan Horus in his kitchen preparing a meal. He seemed tiny inside the vast chamber of marble and chrome. This was his staff kitchen, not the personal one he kept for his own use, of course. That might make him seem ordinary, even relatable. The picture he wanted to paint was a man still working with his hands, that he might be a man of wealth, but that was because he was smart and capable of many things – including cooking a meal from scratch.
Alan's attention focused on the three-gallon pot sitting on a low flame. As I approached, he added several ingredients and stirred them together with a wooden spoon. In his black jeans and black silk shirt open three buttons, he looked like a stage magician on a cooking show.
