by Edward Lee
Restaurant manager Vera Abbot has come to The Inn to embark on the job of her dreams. But from the day she arrives, her dream turns into a harrowing nightmare. She hears strange footsteps, sees faceless figures in the dead of night…and is tormented by erotic dreams in which a hideous stranger makes love to her.
The past never dies. It only sleeps, waiting to unleash a new cycle of bloodshed and terror. For The Inn is a breeding ground for unspeakable atrocities. And now the time has come for Vera to be initiated into its secret world of depravity and horror—whether she wants to or not!
THE CHOSEN
By Edward Lee
Smashwords Edition
Necro Publications
— 2012 —
— | — | —
THE CHOSEN
© 1993, 2012 by Edward Lee
This digital edition © 2012 Necro Publications
Cover, Book Design & Typesetting:
David G. Barnett
Fat Cat Graphic Design
http://www.fatcatgraphicdesign.com
a Necro Publication
5139 Maxon Terrace • Sanford, FL 32771
http://www.necropublications.com
— | — | —
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
— | — | —
For Jasmine Sailing
— | — | —
The author, though in debt to many, would like to particularly thank the following cool people: Adele Leone; John Scognamiglio; Doug Clegg; Jack Ketchum; and Chara Mattingly (for all the great names!).
— | — | —
PROLOGUE
Zyra withdrew the ice pick from the man’s throat. Her big eyes widened, sparkling. She loved to watch them bleed out.
“Ooo, lover,” she whispered. “That’s sweet.”
The naked body thrashed between her legs. Zyra leaned over and pinned him down, to watch his death throes more closely. Each raving beat of his heart emitted a thin jet of blood from the puncture, most of which shot up onto her breasts. She’d timed it just right—she liked irony: the points of three matrixes all touching at the same precise moment. It seemed to give the deed more meaning. It seemed to give it truth.
“Come on, baby,” she’d said earlier when they’d come in. A dump, she thought, glancing around. Lamplight blazed to reveal smudges on the walls; the room smelled of grease and old fried food. From a dark velvet portrait, Elvis sneered.
The redneck burped, fascinated as he pawed her impeccable physique. Zyra kicked out of her jeans, peeled off her top, and then hauled his pants off. She felt excited and hot. She straddled him right there on the tacky do-it-yourself carpet tiles.
“That’s right, baby. You just lay back and let Zyra make you feel real good.”
He beer-burped again, struggling under her to get out of his flannel shirt. Crooked teeth showed through his grin as he looked up. “You shore got yourself one hell of a killer bod, hon.”
Killer bod, she reflected. She could’ve laughed.
“Oh, yeah…yeah,” the guy began blabbering; Zyra promptly reached around and inserted him into herself. Not very big, she lamented. In her line of work, of course, she was used to much bigger, but he’d do. This was business, after all.
Her spread buttocks slid down, deepening the meager penetration. She thought of riding motorcycles as she leaned forward and ran her hands over his hairy, fat-layered chest.
“Good gawd, hon.” His eyes bulged in ludicrous ecstasy. A ball of lint filled his navel. “You shore’s shit feel good. Ain’t had me a scrap like this in a coon’s age.”
A coon’s age? She massaged his fatty pectorals as though they were breasts, while her own breasts swayed before his stupid, cross-eyed, redneck face. Poor little lover, she thought. He wouldn’t last long; they never did with Zyra. “That’s it, baby, that’s it,” she cooed.
His big rough fingers fiddled with her nipples. They plucked and pinched. His hips began to tremor; his face looked like a twisted balloon. Not yet, she commanded herself. He began to groan. Then—
Now.
Zyra’s climax released in a burst of vivid, hot spasms, when she felt the redneck’s own climax unleash. Ooooooo, she thought.
That’s when she jammed the ice pick into his throat.
He attempted to scream but succeeded only in gargling. Zyra smiled and held him down—she was a strong woman. He bucked beneath her like a just-gelded mule.
From the tiny puncture, the streams of blood emitted with a considerable velocity—it reminded her of a squirt gun. Squirt, squirt, squirt, on and on. This bizarre synchronicity fascinated her: his ejaculation exiting in time with his blood…
“Ready for my surprise?” she whispered. This was not a reference to the ice pick—as if that weren’t surprise enough!—but just another aspect of her demented lust. Weren’t writers always writing about sex and death? Zyra viewed this as a…literary pursuit…to further her orgasms as uniquely as possible—during the final convulsions of his life.
It seemed thrillingly perverse!
When she was done, she whispered, “Hope it was as good for you as it was for me.”
She leaned up. Blood dripped off her nipples. On a silly impulse she placed both hands in the center of the redneck’s chest and pushed down once very hard. A thread-thin stream of blood launched out of his throat and shot across the room. Wow! Zyra thought. The blood drew a high line along the wall and hit Elvis in the eye.
“I’d love to stay and chat, baby, but I’m afraid it’s bye-bye time for you.” She jammed the ice pick deep into the base of his skull and jiggled it around. The redneck stiffened once, gurgled a final objection, then died.
Muffled thumps beat from the bedroom. Zyra smiled when she heard the stifled shrieks. Lemi was in there taking care of the redneck’s little girlfriend. They’d come onto them at the bar, some frowzy hole called the Crossroads. Peanut shells carpeted the sticky floor; a country and western band ineptly twanged chords from the stage. “We all’s swingers,” the redneck had offered after the second pitcher of Carling. “How ‘bout yawl? Think ya might like ta come back ta our place fer a little partyin’?” “Sounds good to me,” Zyra had said. “Sure,” Lemi had said.
“And it was plumb one rat nass party,” Zyra now mocked. She was always talking to herself, or to dead people. “Thank ya much, yawl.” She sauntered nude into the bedroom. Lemi’s muscles tensed as he wrapped duct tape around the girl’s mouth. He’d already tied her hands behind her back. “Christ, Zy. You sure made a mess of yourself. Get cleaned up, will you? We’ve got to pop this blow stand.”
Zyra shook her head. “It’s blow this pop stand, Lemi. Get your quips right.”
He glanced up from the girl’s shagged head. “What’s a quip?”
So stupid, Zyra concluded. All men were. Her pretty bare feet left scarlet footprints to the bathroom. She showered quickly, turning her face and breasts into the cool spray. “Blub, blub, blub—bye,” she gestured, and watched the redneck’s blood swirl down the crusty drain.
She put her clothes back on as Lemi inspected the girl, who he’d lain out on the bed. He appraised her meticulously, like a housewife fussing over which melon was the ripest at the Safeway. “Hmm,” he considered. He rubbed some of her mousy lank blond hair between his fingers. “What a rat’s nest. We’re gonna have to do something with this.” Then he patted her buttocks. “And I’ve seen better asses,
that’s for damn sure.”
“Quit complaining,” Zyra scolded, buttoning her fancy inlaid blouse. “We’re lucky to have her at all.”
“And look how skinny she is—Christ!” Lemi turned her over, frowning. “Practically just skin and bones.”
“We’ll get some meat on her.”
“Hope so.” He gave one of her breasts a squeeze, and seemed more satisfied. “Decent pair of tits, though, for such a lightweight. Firm” He patted her pubis. “Nice bush, too.”
“She’ll do just fine, Lemi,” Zyra exasperated. “How was she? You tried her out, didn’t you?”
“’Course I tried her out. Not bad. Tight.”
Zyra rolled her eyes. “Shit, Lemi, an elephant’d be tight, as hung as you are.”
Lemi chuckled. “She was pretty fiesty at first. But once old Lemi boy got in there with the rig—that took the fight out of her and fast. Not a half-bad tumble, as far as girls around here go.”
Zyra shook her head again. Men could be such pompous assholes, like having a big dick made them special. Zyra figured Lemi had more brains in his glans than his skull. She took a moment to look down at the girl. Zyra tried to feel sorry for her, but why should she? It wasn’t her fault it was a cruel world, was it?
The girl’s eyes bulged in terror, her thin chest heaved. She whined beneath the duct-tape gag as Lemi lashed her ankles and rolled her up in the sheets. “Get the stiff,” he said. “We gotta…blow…this…pop stand.” He scratched his head. “What a dumb quip.”
He carried the girl out to the van. Zyra went back into the living room. That was pretty dumb too. Living room? Dying room, she thought, smiling. She could still feel a tingle between her long, firm legs.
The redneck looked pallid as jack cheese, now that most of his blood had drained out of him. Zyra picked him up by his ankles, and dragged him like a big bag of leaves out of the bungalow.
The air had some nip to it; winter grew close. An errant breeze braced her, whistling through the trees. Zyra rolled the corpse into the back of the van alongside the girl. Then she slammed the doors shut.
“Start her up.” Lemi shivered in his flannel shirt. “I’ll take care of the joint.”
Hurry up! It’s cold! She gunned the van’s engine, cranked on some heat. A few minutes later, the secluded little bungalow burst quietly into flames, flooding the grove with wavering orange light and heat. Lemi jogged back out and climbed in. “Let’s googie, Zy.”
“Boogie, Lemi. Let’s boogie—”
“Googie, boogie, I don’t give a shit. Let’s go home.”
Zyra wheeled the van down the long gravel drive. The flaming house shrank in the rearview, crackling.
Yeah, let’s go home. The main road took them toward the mountainside, into darkness, while the darkness took Zyra’s thoughts away into a silent, inexplicable joy. Every end is a new beginning, she pondered. It made her feel ageless.
“You know,” Lemi remarked, “I really like your hair that way. Glazed.”
“Not glazed, you idiot. Frosted. ” All she could do was shake her head and smile. It was hard to believe that men, however uniformly stupid, ruled the world.
“I can’t wait till things get started again,” he said, and relaxed back in the van seat.
Neither can I. The gagged girl in back shrieked in her throat. Zyra paid it no mind. It was a sound, among many others, that she’d long grown accustomed to. As she drove on, she got lost in more personal wonderings. It was a beautiful night. Crisp. Clear as crystal. The stars looked like a smear of luminous, cosmic spillage. There was beauty everywhere, if one looked closely enough…
Every end is a new beginning.
Indeed, this was their lot. They were always ending, and always beginning again.
The moon disappeared beyond the ridge when she turned up the narrow mountain road, toward home.
— | — | —
THE OFFER
CHAPTER ONE
The kitchen was a madhouse.
Busboys fought with waitresses over racks of hot silverware. The hostess double-timed, coming in for water glasses and bottles of Evian, while full garbage cans were quickly dragged away and replaced with empty ones. “Get me some clean broil pans sometime this year!” one prep cook yelled. “Eat me!” the beer-bellied dishwasher yelled back. Cute waitresses bustled in and out, lost in the deep concentration of wine-list memory, the specials of the day, and the perpetual balancing act of carrying six entrees on one tray one-handed. “These salads have been up for five minutes!” the cold-line cook yelled. “Get ’em out of here before I start throwing them!” More preps shucked oysters, made hollandaise from scratch, and butchered lettuce heads to bits simultaneously. The swingdoors banged open and closed with equal simultaneousness, flushing the kitchen’s hot confines with periodic wafts of cool, reviving air.
It’s a madhouse, all right, Vera Abbot thought. She stood at the end of the hot line in a three hundred dollar vermilion evening dress. But it’s my madhouse.
In a sense it was. The Emerald Room was the best restaurant in town, and Vera Abbot was its queen. A year ago they were lucky to do twenty dinners on a weeknight, now they were doing a hundred plus. It was more than good fortune—Vera had used her foresight, her management skills, and good hiring sense to turn the place inside out. She’d also worked her ass off. The kitchen was like a multipart machine where the failure of one component would shut down the entire works. It was Vera who kept the machine properly tuned. If you wanted the best restaurant in town, you had to find the best people, bring in the best food, and offer the best facility. Vera had done all of that, and had transformed The Emerald Room from a glorified steakhouse to a state-of-the-art dining room.
She walked down the hot line, minding her high heels over the black slipmats. “Ready for the good news?” she asked the bulky figure at their dual Jenn-Aire ranges.
Dan B. jerked his gaze up from a pan of sautéed soft crabs, his tall white chef’s hat jiggling. He had every burner going with a different entree, not to mention the prime rib and the duck in the ovens. He smirked at her with a look that said Maybe it hasn’t occurred to you, but I’m kind of busy right now.
“The governor’s liaison just called,” Vera announced. “He’s bringing in a party of ten in twenty minutes.”
“Tell him to go to Burger King!” Dan B. close to yelled. “I’m running eighteen dinners per half hour since seven o’clock, and now he’s bringing in his stuck-up cronies? Christ, those guys eat like pigs! Last time they ordered two entrees each!”
“You can handle it, Dan B.,” Vera assured him. “You have my absolute and unhesitant faith.”
“I don’t want your faith,” the big chef sputtered. “I could use a raise, though, and while you’re at it how about getting me some secondary so I don’t have to do the jobs of three men six nights a week. And how about…”
Vera traipsed off, smiling. A good chef was never happy unless he was complaining. Dan B. was the best chef she’d ever known. No matter how well Vera ran the place, it didn’t amount to much unless the orders were superlative every time.
“Hey, gang!” he yelled. “Governor and his fat pals’ll be here in twenty! Get ready to bust your humps!”
The entire kitchen released a wave of moans.
Good staff worked best under pressure. The line preps didn’t even look up as she passed—they were too busy. Successful staff management involved the maintenance of respect and acknowledgement. Vera had pulled off both. Her employees respected her without fearing her, and they knew that good work would be properly acknowledged. They also knew that bad work would be properly acknowledged too, with a prompt invitation to take their skills elsewhere. Vera had honed The Emerald Room into a model of excellence, and in doing so, its reputation only attracted the most serious to its payroll.
“Would you please get me some clean broil pans!” the hot prep whined again. “You want me to start cooking the fucking fish under my Zippo?”
“You can co
ok it on my fat ass,” yelled back Lee, the dishwasher. His long hair swung in wet strings at his shoulders as he slammed full racks into the machine one after another. Then he rushed to the conveyor exit, madly unloaded the clean dishware, stacked it, and carried it to the shelves. Lee’s long hair and tremendous beer gut made him look like Meat Loaf on the skids. Vera dismissed his shortcomings: he drank on duty, griped to no end, waged nightly wars with the cooks—but he was a great dishwasher. Vera pretended she didn’t see the carafe of Wild Goose Lager that he’d secreted behind the machine.
“Like I don’t have enough to do,” he complained to himself. “You dumb fuckers make all the money and I do all the work. One day I’ll put my foot up all of you’re a—” He paused as if shocked, only then noticing Vera standing by the rack stand. “Oh, uh, hi, Vera. I, uh, I didn’t see you there.”
“Hello, Lee. Happy at work?”
“Oh, yes ma’am,” he stammered, then slipped away to carry more broil pans to the hot prep. Vera could easily put up with his manner. Any guy who would wash dishes all night, steam-clean grease-laden floors, and wade waist-deep in dumpsters—all for six dollars an hour—was worth putting up with.
She passed the coffee station. The kitchen’s din faded behind her. Going from the kitchen to the dining room was liken to going from one world to another. Humid heat traded places with cool calm, the racket of the dinner rush gave over to quiet conversation and light Vivaldi from hidden speakers. The maitre d’ was expertly pouring Perrier-Jouet for a table of state legislators. A troup of bussers prepared a large banquet table in back for the governor’s party. A smug critic from the Post meticulously sampled an assortment of appetizers: Oysters Chesapeake, grilled Muscovy duck, Crab Meat Flan, and a tuned-up variation of antipasto. He did not look displeased.
