by Jay Smith
Mark frowned. "Oh Denny. You went and pulled your dick out already. Fine. Let's cut the shit. What do you really want?"
Dennis leaned forward and lost all trace of casual conversation. Though he tried very hard, I caught a whiff of desperation over his cheap cologne. "You know what I want, Mark."
The tension in the room spiked. The two men were polite in their silent posturing. I looked back and forth between them for a moment, the rumpled, unkempt lawyer unflinching against the chiseled ego in a tailored suit across from him.
Mark rubbed a temple and said, "Winston. Would you give us the room for a few minutes? Have Eris give you a tour of the upstairs."
Dennis sat back in his chair and folded his arms. Mark turned away from him just a moment to confirm he had asked me to do something and expected me to respond.
"I'd like to know what the hell's happening."
Mark nodded, "And what's about to be happen is best handled without you knowing details that may complicate your involvement in a larger legal matter. As your attorney, I advise you to abstain from this discussion. Trust me, this is something you don't want to hear, Winston." He glanced at the hallway like he'd rather be throwing me there. "I'll summarize when we're done."
I offered my best, professional smile, stood up and headed for the front lounge and the stairway.
Out of sight but lurking at corner of the kitchen by the hallway, I overheard them start a different conversation. Their voices carried nicely up the plaster wall, echoing up the hallway to the front of the house.
Dennis said, "He should hear this. He's part of this, too."
Mark chuckled. "He's a useful idiot, Denny. Parker's last fuck you to the process."
"It makes him dangerous. To all of us."
"He's my client. He's also on the safe side of ignorant. If he crosses over and tries to play games, I'll be the first to…"
"Aeternus First."
Mark huffed. "Yeah, all right."
"Good. When that happens: give me his shares, show him the underside of a bus and everything Kline has disappears forever."
"But we don't want all of it to disappear, just the part we want to disappear. I think you –"
"Lord Wynncase!" Eris's voice blasted from the speaker next to my head. "How can I serve you?"
Off the top of my head I asked, "Can you show me a floorplan of this place?"
"Call up Harrisburg Safe House Design on your Magic Book. Your access should provide you an interactive map of the facility and all its amenities. Are you looking for anything in particular I can help with?"
I called up the information on my Magic Book. The layout for the house didn't make sense at first. At least the property wasn't limited to the three-level rectangle representing the footprint of the townhouse. "No, just trying to get some ideas for later."
"I see that your personal preferences folder is blank. Shall I access your Aeternus dossier to recommend activities for your stay?"
Even the first floor looked wrong. The narrow hallway linking the front room to the kitchen left space behind the walls. The map indicated there was another room on the main floor but I didn't see a door. Given the older style of the house, it might have been the dining room. The map gave no clue as to what it was now or how to access it.
"Lord Wynncase?"
"Hang on. How do I get in the secret room on this floor?"
"There are no secret rooms on this floor. You may access the gallery and ballroom from the basement through the door under the main stairwell."
The map bent my brain a little. I also noticed that the more I conversed with Eris, the less genuine she sounded.
"Eris?"
"Yes?"
"Can I ask you something?"
"Yes, Lord Wynncase?"
"Where are you?"
"I don't understand the question."
"Physically, where do you work?"
"I support the Harrisburg Safe House."
"You're not a real person, are you?"
"There's no need to insult me, milord. I am an interactive agent. AOAI five-point-two with an independent Turing Quotient of 52 and a Networked TQ of 89. Would you like a tour of the facility?"
"Yes. Please. You monitor the house and control all its functions?"
I headed up the stairs. Eris's voice followed me along the system of wall-mounted interactivity panels. "That is correct. I monitor the house for intrusion as well as quality of service and experience. In the event of fire or other emergency, I am connected to all local…"
"Thanks. I get it."
At the top of the stairs, the layout of the townhouse remained familiar and simple joining with a hallway that ran the length of the townhouse. With the shades down at the front and rear windows what little brightness provided came from one of four track lights positioned along the ceiling outside each of the doors along the hall. Each light provided just enough illumination to reveal an earth-tone hallway with rich forest green carpet. A modest accent chair positioned to look out over the back yard and a decorative pedestal at the front.
"You are entering the second-floor private area. Currently there are no occupied rooms. Each of the four rooms represents a particular theme conceived and designed by Mistress Sarah Hunter with furnishings and equipment by Brute Force…"
"Eris, can I listen in on the conversation in the parlor?"
"No, Lord Wynncase. You do not have permission to join that channel."
"I'm sorry, I don't understand. What do you mean 'join that channel'?"
"You do not have permission to monitor public area conversations."
"But some people do?"
"Do what, milord?"
"Do some members have permission to monitor public area conversations?"
"Of course."
"Is someone listening to the parlor right now?"
Silence.
Dead fingers tickled up my spine. "Is someone listening to this conversation right now?"
Eris remained silent, which answered the question for me. In the few seconds of quietly standing at the top of the stairs, I tried to come up with a way to back away from the conversation. Before I could try, a spot light at the far end of the hallway rose over a bedroom door and I heard a heavy CLUNK just before the door opened into the room a few inches.
"Will you join me in the Penance Suite?" Eris's voice sounded from the far end of the hall.
"Who's asking?" But I was already walking forward toward the door. "This isn't Eris talking." It was the voice, but the brain behind it had changed.
"Very good, sir. Perhaps we should talk."
~
If not for the cheesy plastic wall coverings intended to give it the feel of a castle dungeon, the rest of the room was lovingly designed to make one feel totally in control or at someone's mercy, depending on where they stood. In some ways, it looked like a sinister motel room with a queen-sized canopy bed covered in black silk and red satin pillows with black iron posts at each corner framed by iron spikes around the top. A single black chain dangled from an iron O-ring mounted to the ceiling over the bed and hooked to the wall over the head frame. A flat screen television hung from the wall by the door. A doorway to one side looked to be a bathroom. There were no windows. For both decoration and amusement, the walls offered a variety of lashes, paddles, feathers, a riding crop and a defibrillator for good measure.
No one met me inside the room. I stayed close enough to the door to grab the inside knob if necessary. The thought of being led into a dead end and locked in – it was a dungeon, after all – weighed on my mind.
"This is festive. Do you have anything in a brighter shade? Like a jungle room or…"
The television clicked on and slowly brightened to cast a dull, bluish hue over the gray room.
"You said you wanted to talk, stranger. Let's talk."
Black screen.
A time code appeared at the bottom of the screen. The television took my full attention.
After a few seconds, another title
card appears behind the time code with a date two years prior. It is replaced by another card, a legal disclaimer asserting that all participants in the following motion picture were over the age of 18 with documentation on file somewhere.
Another title card.
SAUTERNE SENSATIONS presents
Cheap keyboard music pretending very hard to evoke Game of Thrones.
A bad overlay title card:
THE PUSSY HUNTER, PART IX
Raw, badly lit digital video. The hum of an air conditioner in the background. Rustling noise off-camera, maybe the director moving or house cats. No establishing shot. We set the stage inside an upscale-looking tropical home, camera pointed at the impressive front door. The shot is empty for several seconds as the music fades and a white title over light background colors reads:
STARRING
A trio of well-built women, naked except for Marti Gras masks and some ridiculous thrift store accessories supposed to represent "exotic fantasy" lingerie, walk in slow-motion across the shot in a dreamlike parade of bouncing and flexing sexy bits. Each one is frozen for a moment in frame to introduce her.
Tall, tan, and brunette with a trim, athletic build.
THE BARONESS
"Eris, turn off the porn, please."
Her voice replies, "Oh, but you need to see this, milord."
"No, I don't."
Black, short, with a curvy backside.
MAIDEN SHADE
Finally, Jessica Rabbit as a sorceress.
QUEEN EZRIN OF ZORR
Wait, what?
Focus restored on the front door.
I'm sure I've seen that place before. Ezrin?
Nothing happens for a few seconds until a cat steps on the keyboard to announce the sudden awkward dissolve revealing – who the fuck? – a dude in a black leather jacket over a black turtleneck and black jeans, black boots, black ski mask and black gloves. Also, black ski goggles.
AND ??? AS…
THE PUSSY HUNTER
He is partially hidden by the dark wood of the front door as the camera tries desperately to find a balance between it and the whitewashed walls of the room. The Pussy Hunter steps forward, his heels clunking off-time with the music as he exits the shot.
"Why are you showing me this, Eris?"
"Because it is the truth you need to see."
"That Ezrin did a porno? Not exactly shocked."
After another pause, Eris answered: "You really have no idea about things. Even now. What have you given up to still be this ignorant of what's right in front of your face?"
The movie continued. "Who the hell are you?"
"A ghost in the machine. That's all you need to or ever will know."
The video plays on with Maiden Shade standing in a dungeon set identical to the room in which I stood. A pale, thin man, naked except for a black hood, lies face down on the bed, strapped to the bed posts as Maiden Shade paces the bed awkwardly fingering a cat-o-nine tails. Bad dialogue ensues.
"Why are you showing me this," I asked.
"Maybe I just thought you were bored."
"Cut to the threat or your point."
Silence.
The woman straddles the man's hips and makes some limp strokes with a whip across his back. Sound effects try to add impact to the lash. Their shifting and shaking on the bed reminds me of Carla's last starring role.
The screen went black as Maiden Shade laced barbed paddles to her hands.
There was a long pause before the screen lit up again. It was a still-shot of the same porno, that tall, tan, brunette with a dancer's body. The point of her chin and her pouting lips. The title card read "THE BARONESS".
Carla.
The television screen flickered, then displayed video of in-world scene from Aeternus, a photo-realistic dungeon of stone with torches ensconced all around. Three naked female avatars were tied to tables and X-frames in the room while two male avatars and a female with a strap-on violated them. At first the video was silent as the figures played out the animations but after a few seconds the sound of screams overloaded the speakers. They crackled with real voices crying out and begging for mercy.
"When I'm finished with you," one breathless male voice growled, "I'll spill your guts all over the floor and fuck your sister in the blood!"
It was difficult to tell which avatar spoke as crosstalk made it hard to understand anything.
The game camera moved in on the brunette chained to the wall. As the camera moved in, text appeared over the avatar's head.
The Baroness.
She was being assaulted by a character called ZEKE2320.
That close, a small volume meter appeared over each of their heads as they spoke. Baroness, naked except for her tattoos, topped out her meter screaming while Zeke gasped his way through threats and insults, calling her a whore and a slut as the animation played out. He began speaking in tongues, grunting and spitting until he came. The online figure erupted in a violent spasm overflowing the Baroness' body with a fountain of white liquid. She screamed in agony "It's too much! Too much!"
And then Zeke was gone, vanished in a vortex of magic sparkles leaving only the fading drops of his animated semen dripping from the air to the stone floor. Baroness' avatar continued shaking and spasming as though still under attack by an invisible monster. But a sudden change in animation saw her standing on the stone floor.
The screen went dark.
"Better pay than McDonald's," Eris said.
"So what?"
"Have a seat, hero. The time for animations is over."
"What the fuck does that mean?"
The screen brightened slightly to display a dark video beginning. A logo in the upper left of the video screen indicated it was an "EtherVid" which meant nothing to me at the time.
The first few seconds were too blurry to stabilize, but I could make out the sound of a burring engine idling down and stopping. An emergency brake zipped into place just before the video shook violently, the microphone picking up the odd thumps and clicks of being taking in hand.
When the image settled down, it focused on what looked like an old roadside motel in the desert, remodeled into a cheap apartment block. I couldn't see anyone else in the lot and only a vague shadow of the person holding the camera slipping in and out of frame. None of this made any sense until I recognized Carla's beat-up Dodge Charger in the parking lot in front of one of the apartments.
The camera lingered on the license plate for a moment before moving forward toward the apartment. The front door hung open, caught on a thick, jagged piece of a glass wedged into the jamb.
The twang of Toby Keith and a steel guitar grew louder as the camera operator stepped inside. There, the operator took time to pan across a world of old furniture peppered with burn holes and tabletops cluttered with dirty dishes and thick layers of dust. The rest of that glass ashtray lay scattered around the front of the apartment, on the seat of a crappy armchair and in a window box of dead flowers. Empty liquor bottles and crushed cigarette ends littered an old, brown carpet. The room felt like the party ended months ago and no one bothered to clean up.
"What's this," I asked.
No reply.
The camera moved to an old desktop computer in the kitchen area. As it appeared the most recent and frequently used, it was free of dust, but not cigarette stains or crumbs. The music coming across the video was loudest here by the computer speakers. The quick, jerky movement continued through the apartment. It panned quickly across a worn kitchen chair on its side and over a hideous, starving artist painting resting in pieces on the floor of a hallway beneath its hook. It stopped when it reached the hallway that led to a bedroom at the back.
The music playing died away as the person with the camera stepped slowly back along the hallway, replaced by the sound of mattress springs and breathless grunting. Finally, the camera lens focused on a woman's face staring up at the ceiling.
"Carla."
The image lost focus and shifting arou
nd for a moment until it settled into a crystal-clear image of her pale dead face. Her head bobbed against a thin pillow as her body shifted against the weight of someone just out of frame. More of her body became visible. She was naked on the top of her sheets and blankets. Her open shirt and bra were torn and rested underneath her. Her lips parted slightly as her head turned to one side. Her right hand slipped off the bed revealing three blue stains with weeping holes in her forearm.
Carla was on her bed.
And she wasn’t alone.
The last time I saw Carla Gugino-Baron, she was staring off to one wall of her bedroom outside my view. Her eyes fixed on something I'll never know or understand. Her head bobbed loose with the motion of her body under the weight of someone rocking back and forth just out of shot.
Carla wore no mask and played no role. As the bed quaked, her limp body shook, breasts bounced and her legs spread further apart until one bent at the knee to fall over the side. A single cigarette burned to the filter in an ashtray on her nightstand. Suddenly Carla's body shook violently along with the entire bed as something grunted and growled like a man at the gym with something to prove… and everything fell still.
Carla was no dancer; she was no actress. She was an object. I held back the bile and looked away until the light from the screen died and looked up.
A plain, black title card flashed "Carla Gugino-Baron" Underneath, "RIP" and the screen went dark again.
"So many people, Winston. Go to the police and we'll pick one to do with worse. You must know what lurks beyond your little sex parties and dirty deals. You cannot leave now. Like another Winston famously said – when you find yourself in Hell, keep going."
And that was it. The television shut off.
"Did you kill her, Eris?"
Eris answered immediately. "No. But I know who did. Would you like to know?"
"No. Just tell police. She deserves that much."
"Deserves what, exactly, Lord Wynncase? What do you know about what she deserves? Is it because she was a real person and not some faded memory?"
"Who was she to you?"
"She was a cancer on the order. A cancer on the world."
"So you let her die."
