by L.C. Barlow
Chapter 30
WELCOME
I am free.
I fear, yes. I am so lucky to fear.
And taste it.
And eat it.
And live meaning.
I remind myself of these things as I sit here, in the car. They are driving me, to where I don't know. Perhaps to hell. Yes, that would be nice. Anything is nice tonight. I will make it so.
For I am everything and nothing. Alive and dead. Full circle. And nothing will break me anymore.
What is that sound? Is it my heart? How slow it did beat, but now it quickens.
I am thirsty again. The old wants course through me. I thought they were gone, but they have arrived on a silver platter, and a demon points to the ones I chew.
Something is out there. It glistens in the night of ice and chain and blood, and my body tightens as though Patrick is near, but he sleeps, and I am far away. But we are all together, we are always together. I know that now. A bullet, a knife, a wound, a coffin, they will not separate me from the world.
The car pulls into a drive, and we exit.
Where are we? I search. It is the woods, and yet we stand before a club as though in a city full of restaurants, businesses, and blushing people in the cold. But we are not in a full-fledged city. We are nowhere, and yet here it is - a building, so steep and deep.
We enter that building, and there is a long dark hall in which a fat black man sits on a stool, and when we arrive, he stands. There are five of us, and four move on ahead, but the youngest one stays with me, this man named Asher, and he holds me still while the bouncer takes out two markers.
The first marker is black. My head is pushed to the side, and I feel the marker's tip against my skin, crawling up and down, then side to side, as the black man pushes it against me.
"What are you marking me for?" I ask, but he does not respond.
Another marker he takes, after he blows warm breaths upon me like a wolf, and he marks me just the same, covering his previous tracks, but what color of this marker is, I cannot tell. It smells different. And then this smudging ends.
"Come," Asher tells me, and I move forward, behind him, through a doorway, into yet another dark hall.
This new hallway has black lights and a mirror at the end, and when I see myself in the purple luminescence, I remark that on my skin is a glowing cross that covers my neck from jaw to collar. It is haphazard and slanted, but a cross nonetheless, and though I stoop to inspect the blue-ish white fluorescence, Asher grabs me, and pulls me further in, and now I notice the bass and the fast music like I'm in a body with notes for blood.
No more black lights. These lights are bright, and there are people everywhere, many naked, many in leather lingerie, and the floor below me illuminates them from below like mannequins, showing their sex, but these plastic figures move, beautiful as they are, and become grotesque as they brighten with red. I look below me and the floor, as white as it was, now squishes with red that flows as I walk, as though my very steps make it bleed. The crimson washes forward with the beat of the music, leading to the boy ahead of me like a red brick road.
I touch my chest. Flowing through me is no longer the pulsation of my heart, but the beating of the bass that weights the air. It seeps into me, and it is too loud. I reach into my pockets and pull out my ear plugs. I stuff them into my ears, but it's as though I don't have them at all.
I look round.
Some people are fucking on tables. Some are drinking while they fuck at the bar. Others are on chains being led round like cattle or dogs, and the entire place speaks of a sex I do not know, have never had, will never understand.
As I walk, following Asher before me, many close in, touching my neck, inspecting me, where the cross is branded in. They smile, knowingly. I want to ask them what it means, but then they grab me.
A woman kisses me, and then Asher is pushing her back and pulling me forward to a larger, gaping room with no windows, but tall, tall vaulted ceilings.
Three tiers of balconies surround me, filled to their brim with strange naked people and their raucous calls. They are watching me closely.
I look round myself to inspect the scene. There are tables on the ground level filled with people in all manner of sexual release, and I look at them in the midst of this sex like they are animals, until the largest thing in the room catches my eye. It's so large I nearly miss it, hanging from the room on the wall across from me. This is not a secular group, I realize. Or, it is the most secular group.
Across from me is a Christ crucified, but erect, a giant penis protruding in the midst of his struggles and pain. His head is upturned, his eyes distant, but he enjoys. Anyone can see how this wood is carved to be so. And I ask myself, where the fuck I am.
That's when I notice there are other such crucifixion figures, but they lay on the floor, and women are pleasuring themselves with them.
"Come on," I hear, and I look ahead across the too bright room to where Asher calls me. "Is this our man?" he yells to me, and he points. I can barely move my gawking eyes to where his finger leads me, but as I walk and the crowds move back, I see a head of white hair sitting in a chair at a table.
He faces away from me, but from my vantage, it appears he holds a card hand. At the table with him are three members of my group. They are talking, but as I approach, their eyes shift to me, and they quit speaking.
I forget the music as the blonde man is forced to turn round, to see on whom their attention is placed. I hope to see Alex.
He turns. It is not Alex, but I do know this man. It is Julian.
The shock on his face is as great as how I feel, and I walk to him carefully, making sure that the table resides between us. "A blast from the fucking past," Julian says. "You're supposed to be dead."
I moved my hands out, motioning towards the hell around me. "I think I am."
Julian smiles, his smile fades, and he looks to the leader of this group that has brought me. "Jas, you told me she was dead."
I wondered at that name. Jas? But the man he looks to only turns to me and says, "Is this him?" I shake my head.
"No," I say. "But he's as good as Alex. He'll get you to the man you want just the same. The people you want." That's when I notice that Julian as well has a cross painted on his neck.
"What do these mean?" I yell to him under the flashing lights and music, pointing to my neck and his.
Julian smiles, and he does not hesitate. "That the club permits us one victim." He sucks his teeth as though cleaning them of sugar. "It also means that if we die, no one will ever know. They have an incinerator." And it seems he sighs and resigns himself, that he has made a connection I have not, but there is so much to take in.
"You're fucking kind of club," I say, and I sweep my eyes across the expanse. The five men that have brought me here are conversing amongst themselves. They call another man over, and they speak with him.
In the meantime, two very large and intimidating bouncers lift Julian from his chair and hold him. I notice that Julian is well built, but not large. Still, he has grown since the last time we spoke - the night when the box spoke to me.
I wonder if I look different to him as well.
Then Asher is there with me, and the music has stopped, and the lights have stopped flashing. In the instant silence, the crowd of people scream in wild roars. They are exhilarated.
"You said you wanted Alex to kill. Well, this is the best we can do," Asher says, and for a moment I do not understand.
I see weapons of all sorts being brought into the room, tables being moved, and those weapons laid out in a line.
"You get the chance to fight Julian fair," he says, but he grimaces when he states this.
"What?!" I yell at him. "What do you mean 'fair?'"
Asher shakes his head. "This is how it runs. You choose one weapon. He chooses one weapon. No guns. You fight."
I looked at Julian's tall and muscular figure. "Look at me!" I scream at Asher. "I'll die. I can't fig
ht him."
Asher raises his hands, will look at me no longer. "That's what Jas has bought tonight." He walks away from me. I stand there stunned, my heart racing, my blood coursing, and then the two men close to Julian pat him down and move away, leaving him in the center of the room. Julian smiles, and the two men come to me. They search me as well, and they take my black jacket from me.
"How is this fucking fair?!" I yell to them. "Look at me!" They say nothing.
They want me dead, I realize. This takes it off their hands, gives them a show.
I watch the chanting crowd and realize that I am done for. I am shaking. And I consider slitting my own throat as soon as I can grab a knife.
I try to step to the man who first abducted me, first took me to that room, showed me that file, called me interesting - this man they call "Jas" - but the bouncers will not let me, and they usher me to the line of weapons across from Julian.
I eye hatchets, knives, maces, katanas, all manner of items. But of course, there are no equalizers, no guns. I pick up a medium-sized knife. Julian picks a katana. When we both leave the stand of weapons, one of the bouncers looks at my knife like, "Really?" but I don't respond.
We stand fifteen feet from one another, our weapons in our hands, and Julian does not look supremely sure of himself, but I am fairly certain he will win. Yes, he will win, I know. I am too small, but I will try, swim forth into the fray, and die. This is the night. I try to make it feel wonderful.
A man I've never seen before steps between us. He is shirtless, but wears a tuxedo jacket and jeans. His hair is long, brown, and straight. He looks electric. He takes a microphone into his hand and says in a dramatic voice, "On the count of three, you begin. You have thirty minutes for one to kill the other, or both of you die." He smiles.
He raises his hand into the air, holding a three up with his last three fingers of his hand, and I steady myself. I know what I will do.
"Two," passes, "one," and then just as his arm drops down, I hold my breath, swinging the knife in my hand sweetly into the air and catching it, just like I was taught. It feels just like the old days.
I grab it by its tip, tilting it slightly to the right, delving deliciously into comforting habit. I hold that tip tightly, almost tight enough to cut me, and then my arm is back and chucking it forward, just like the night with the rapists in the woods, when they rose into the branches as though God took them from me, but Julian does not rise, no. He does not expect the first blow so soon.
The knife sticks deeply in his stomach, right below his chest, where the xyphoid processor lays. Yes, I know. I've cut many bodies there before.
The katana waivers, nearly falls from his hand, and I'm unzipping my jeans now. I'm ripping them off ferociously, and now I have them. I wrap them around my left arm, grasping them with my hand like a shield, and I move towards him. The crowds call, I think, but I do not hear them. The lights above us shine, showing Julian to me in a heavenly light. It is just me and him in a bright world, and he is faltering already.
I am upon him, like a wolf in the night, ready to consume him, rip his arm from his body, gnaw through it, bury him.
He tries standing, but his eyes are wide, and I know what that means. The shock has set in. As I approach him, he swings the katana quickly, but I hold my hand up with the jeans wrapped round, and though the impact makes me gasp in pain, I know that he has not pierced me. I stand and kick the knife further in, and Julian falls to the ground. I drop on him. I pry the katana from his fingers and pull it away.
I rip my knife from his flesh, wrench it free from the skin as if from stone, and I hear him scream. He is reaching for the katana again, but he is too slow! I have the knife. It's in both my hands, and I am bringing it down! I'm about to slam it into his throat and kill him. It will be...!
But as my arms are swinging upon him, I'm pulled back. There is something holding me, slowing me, stopping me, and I feel them pull. I cannot swing. Julian grabs the katana and swings it at me, and I feel its tip slice into my stomach as I'm wrenched from him. I scream!
Blood pours from my wound, and I am dragged across the floor. With my scream, there are hundreds of other voices, threading, intertwining, dangling with me, and then I'm being dragged, pushed, pulled across the room and into an elevator, and a voice whispers at my ear, "We need him. I'm sorry. You can't kill him."
I am hitting and kicking and strangling the man who owns this voice, but then he flips me around and holds me close until the elevator stops and the doors open.
My stomach hurts too much for me to continue the fight. I can feel things inside me threatening to slip through. He pushes me into another room, and then in a few seconds more I'm atop a table, and he's yelling at me.
It's the young one, I see. Not Jas, but Asher. He bends over me and yells, "Shut up and listen! You've got a second chance, if you play it smart! The boss may not kill you! Shhhh. Listen! He needs Julian. He's interrogating him now! But he will come for you, and he will question you, and if you answer correctly, if you give him what he wants!, he will let you live. He is impressed." And then this boy snaps his fingers, and there's an older man there with a smile in his eyes, and he begins to inspect me.
"This is Doctor McElroy," says the young man with black hair and blue eyes. "He will help you." I fight this Doctor off until I realized the amount of blood pouring out of me.
"Mmm, yes," he says. "Needs stitches."
And slowly, as the young man forces bitter pills down into my mouth, the Doctor sews me up, and against my will, I am calmer and still again. My muscles relax, my head swoons, but I am still aware - calm, but inside still bright, as bright as the room had been where Julian was.
Suddenly, I am clothed again, and sitting on a couch, and soon there are other men around me talking, whispering, drinking, laughing.
I fear, more than anything else, that when this boss arrives he will be Cyrus.
I worry as well that the gash in my stomach has killed what the bright man placed inside me, and when I see in the corner of the room a dead moth, I crawl to it quickly. I touch it, wait, watch, and finally its wings flutter, and I feel utter relief as it crawls along the floor. I slip back to the couch and lay there, waiting amongst the men.
The young one comes to me and whispers, "The boss is here. Sit up." But I continue to slouch, inattentive on the couch, and then someone is in the chair opposite me, and I barely look up to take him in.
This man is not thin, nor heavy. He is of average build and thickness, but well toned, like they all are. He is older - in his forties, perhaps. He does not have a mustache. His face is clean, and he smells of cologne as he nears me.
All about him seems a movement of air, and when he breathes, the atmosphere breathes with him. His clothes are trim and rich. His hair dips below his ear in length, and it is wavy, slightly gray. His face is fairly flat, and his eyes are almond in shape. His skin looks thick, not soft, and his lips are large.
I refuse to say anything to him, and he looks me up and down as someone brings him a cool drink. He sips it and sets it on the coffee table between us, and still he says nothing until, finally, with a voice so smooth it almost sounds inhuman, he asks, "Where did you come from, that you learned to do that sort of thing?"
"A man," I say, but that is all.
"Mm?" he questions me, and again is that breath that moves the very air about him.
"A cult leader," I said. "That took me in when I was young."
"And he taught you these things?" he asks.
I nod.
"Did he frighten you?"
Nobody has ever asked it quite like that. "In the beginning."
"Did he beat you?" he asks.
I nod again.
"Did he torture you?"
"Some."
"Well, that is not what we do here. At least, not to our own."
"I've heard that before," I say, but this man does not respond.
He points to a man at my right shoulder in the room. "Jasper,
here, has read about you. He said you talked for a while with your psychologist as though this man who raised you had powers. Julian, when I interrogated him, said the same thing. Did he?"
I shake my head. I know what I am going to say before I even say it. "No."
The man looks at me as though he does not believe me and changes the subject.
"I apologize for taking your kill. It was rude, but I needed him. I did not think I needed you, but these recent events have changed my mind. Something about you is... intriguing." He opened his mouth as if to say more, but instead he smiled. "As for taking your kill and causing you injury, I can repay you for your troubles in plenty."
My stomach swivels uneasily like a fish suddenly awakened.
"Jacqueline, is it? Or Jack?" he asks.
"Whatever you prefer," I say.
He inhales deeply. "I will let you live for three reasons, Jacqueline." He numbers these on his fingers as he says them. "You did not lie to me, you did not die out there, and... I am curious to hear about you. You are... new in my line of work. That doesn't happen often. But..." he draws this word out with a weighty breath, and he moves forward in his seat. "You see these men in this room?" he asks, motioning around. I glance at them. "I hire them out. All of them. They kill. And they get quite rich. That is how they work for me. It is the only line of work I deal in.
"It's hazardous, of course, but lucrative. Would you be interested? It seems, at least for now, you have skills worthy of such an enterprise."
From my left I see the barest of movements, and it is Asher - the boy with dark hair - giving me the smallest nod. This is my hint.
"I swore I'd never work for another maniac."
"I am not a maniac," he replies. "I'm a businessman." I sit, uncertain, amidst the quiet group and do not know what to say.
"There are a few conditions, if you decide to concede," he continues with an edge to his voice. "I require all of my hires to be clean. You'll be drug tested weekly, for a while. You would have to move, of course, eventually quit school. But, in just a short time, you will be making enough money to where that won't matter."
"The state still keeps an eye on me," I say.
The man nods his head. "I am aware... Eventually, though, and maybe sooner than you think, they are going to remove themselves from your life."
He motions with his hand to the man who sewed me up just an hour before. "Quitting your line of drugs can be difficult, and Dr. McElroy would help you with that. He has legal prescriptions that you can take instead, and these would be monitored." He breathes deeply again, "They are safer."
I watch a moth flutter over him, bumbling like a butterfly, and it lands on the knee of his suit. I know what moth that is.
Though the man stares at it, he does not brush it away.
"Tell me," he says. "What is your answer, Jacqueline?"
