Blood Harvest (5 page)

Phillip sat with his back to the glass walls as he studied the accounts, computing the profits and losses for the club through the current date. The club was ten months old at this point and the profits continued to increase and surpass the previous month. This was extremely encouraging. Most nightclubs began to plateau or drop profits by the sixth or seventh month in existence due to another more grandiose club opening.
The Inferno
had set the bar so high nothing short of a Las Vegas mega resort could hope to topple it. This was the goal Phillip had set for the club and it seemed to be working.

Breathing a sigh of relief and pride with regard to the final numbers, Phillip sat back in his leather office chair. He loosened a button on his black silk shirt and spun toward the one way glass for a look down into the crowd below. Stretching his arms out, he gazed down and locked his eyes on a young woman who danced in a powerful undulating fashion on the main floor. She was wearing a fluorescent green, one-piece spandex mini-dress that gripped her body like a second skin. The dress was so short that each time she raised her hands above her head the dress would hike up over her and reveal her naked hips and pelvis. Feigning embarrassment, she would slowly pull down the fabric, which glowed brightly in the black lights. Then she would “adjust” her perfectly out of proportion, surgically enhanced breasts. Phillip watched as she giggled slightly while dropping her head to one side and looking up into the eyes of her gawking audience.

Her flamboyance was quickly making her the center of attention on the main floor. Phillip had noticed her earlier when he arrived at the club and made a mental note to congratulate the front door security for covertly getting her into the club in spite of her “under the legal limit” age. He could almost hear the cash registers “chi-chinging” all of the money being spent by her would-be suitors buying highly overpriced champagne in an attempt to get into her “lack of” pants.

He chuckled to himself as he stood up from the desk and stretched his legs. Smoothing out his linen pants, he walked away from the window toward the one quiet room in the entire building ; his own little spot of contemplation away from all external noise came in the form of a private executive restroom. This room was the one area in the whole building not subject to the music and lights of the club.

Outside on the street the line to get into the club extended two blocks down Sunset Boulevard. Eric Sims had been the head bouncer for
The Inferno
since it opened ten months ago. He was the one responsible for making the decisions regarding who gained admittance and how much money it would take to change a rejection into an approval. Eric pocketed the money a group of eight women slipped him as they entered the club, replaced the velvet crowd-control cord on the pedestal and looked out among the crowd to inspect the next customer in line. A familiar face replaced the spot in line where the last of the women had stood. Although familiar, the face immediately sent tangible rage and frustration into his core.

“Awe no, not you again!” Eric managed in a frustrated laugh.

The lanky figure standing in front of him was smiling and, as opposed to the shy and nervous disposition displayed on previous nights, seemed unnervingly confident.

“Listen man,” Eric said in an exasperated tone to the figure in front of him, “don’t make us throw your ass off the property again. Your money’s no good here so let’s not make a scene, all right?”

The figure behind the velvet rope was a spindly fellow. His skin was extremely pale as if he had been indoors too long. Actually, it appeared as though he had been locked in a dark room too long. Way too long. Running his hands through his greasy, unkempt black hair, the man closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, as if savoring the air as it filled his lungs. Reaching into a pocket of an oversized denim jacket he removed a metallic object which reflected in the lights of the club. Thinking it was a weapon, Eric was just about to call out a warning for the other bouncers and rush the man when he realized the object was a small digital camera.

Breathing a sigh of relief Eric said, “What’s this? Candid Camera?”

Slowly, methodically, the man raised the camera up to his right eye. Then, in a voice far deeper then would be expected for such a frail man, he said…almost hissed…

“Smile….”

It was at this point that the whole world went insane.

Phillip washed his face in the marble sink at the far end of the restroom. He relished the feeling of the cool water running over his face, which never failed to revitalize him in the early hours of the morning. He patted his face and hands dry with the expensive terry cloth towels embroidered with his initials in gold thread. Strange to love a restroom he thought, but he did love it. It was his sanctuary after all; he loathed leaving it, but there was work to be done. He had to make an appearance and case the joint. Pressing the flesh is paramount to the success of any business and this club was no exception.

Turning the doorknob, he took in one last moment of quiet before exiting the washroom and re-entering his office. As he surveyed sparkling sinks and other décor of the washroom, he caught the briefest shimmering of white light from the corner of his eye. It was in his peripheral vision where he perceived a distorted flickering of shadows as if someone had turned on an overpowered strobe light. Following the pulsation, or whatever it was, Phillip felt momentarily dizzy, as if getting a head rush from a rollercoaster. The feeling passed almost as quickly as it had come over him. The moment Phillip opened the door the peaceful serenity of this sanctuary restroom was stripped away as the pumping bass of the music rushed in with its dissonant sound. Moving over to his desk, Phillip opened a small office refrigerator and removed and popped the top off one bottle of Blackened Voodoo beer. The small New Orleans brew was his favorite and the one thing he treated himself to on a nightly basis. The public could wait. He was feeling good and he felt he had earned this moment of relaxation. Lifting the beer to his lips Phillip anticipated the fizz, foam and flavor of his beer when the club fell completely and hauntingly silent.

Phillip paused, the beer millimeters from his lips, and he looked up in wide-eyed confusion. Dropping his beer onto his desk, Phillip dashed to the window overlooking the club and gasped.

The partygoers, all of whom were dancing and cavorting as usual mere seconds ago, were now strewn across the dance floors in every manner of disarray. Some lay as if dead, others were quivering as though in the middle of some sort of seizure.

“What the hell?” Fear was quickly turning Phillip’s spine into jelly, but his mind went into action.

“Figure out the cause and react to control the situation.” This was a mantra Phillip used in times when he had to keep his wits about him. It had always helped him concentrate in order to make the best of any bad situation.

“Actually,” he thought as reality came crashing in, “the first thing I should do is get the hell out of here.”

This wasn’t the first time the unexpected or unbelievable happened in Phillip’s career. Of course, he never envisioned anything like this. Who could ever expect anything like this? He turned to leave and nearly fell over the two security guards who were previously watching the scene on the main floor. The two men were lying on their backs with their eyes open. One was drooling from a corner of his mouth and the other had fouled himself. The odor was beginning to seep through the office making the bile in Phillip’s stomach rise into his throat.

Turning away from the bodies, Phillip raced to the exit from his office to the first floor. As he ran down the stairs and through the doors the stench of sweat, urine and feces slammed into his nostrils like a slap across the face. He practically reeled backwards, but regained his composure and pressed forward.

Stepping over bodies he raised the lapel of his shirt over his nose in an attempt to block out some of the smell. The scene was the same downstairs as in his office. People were lying on the floor, most had fouled themselves in some fashion and all had their eyes open and fixed on some far away place.

Transfixed by the sea of bodies, Phillip forced himself to scramble through the club moving forward to the exit. His current position gave him a clear view of the soundstage where the DJ had evidently collapsed over his equipment. This, Phillip thought, was most likely the cause of the music system shorting out while leaving the club lighting intact. The animated lights still circled in kaleidoscopic patterns around the walls and floors. The black lights still illuminated bright colors in an electric fashion as if the music was still playing and nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Phillip pressed the lapel of his shirt tighter across his face as the smell was becoming almost palpable. He continued to hurry across the floor to the exit. The doors were only about fifty feet away at this point and Phillip was desperate for a lungful of clean night air, free of the fetid stink enveloping his Eden. He moved faster toward the exit doors. Only thirty feet or so now before he was free of the one place in the world he had, only moments before, felt most liberated and at home. The irony was not lost on him. He felt the crushing pang of sorrow and regret as he moved; his drive to escape overwhelming his sentimentality.

Suddenly, not ten feet from the exit doors, he noticed a familiar green glow to one side of the dance floor. He froze in place then slowly turned toward the glow as all thought left his conscious mind. Phillip lowered his hand from his face allowing the lapel of his shirt to dangle loosely to one side of his chest. As he moved away from the exit doors and headed toward the bright electric green glow on the floor he didn’t notice the smell anymore. His subconscious mind quickly erupted in fear, urging him to turn around and flee the scene, yet something drove him forward to that green glow on the floor.

He stared…at her.

It was the young woman he had seen from his office window in the fluorescent green spandex mini-dress. She didn’t look so alluring anymore. He was embarrassed at himself for having looked at her the way he had before. She looked so young now as she lay prone across another woman. He didn’t see her breasts anymore, or her body, or her dress. No, now all he could see was a little girl who had been the victim of some undetermined accident.

Unable to restrain himself, Phillip knelt down and placed two fingers to her neck. He felt a very slow and shallow, but steady pulse. She was alive! He quickly stood up and glanced over all the people in the club. They were all alive! He was sure of it.

The need to get help for all of these poor people sent him into motion. He stood, intending to sprint for the exit, and turned head on into another man who had been standing quietly behind him. The man was frail, but not short, and had a camera in his hands. Placing his index finger to his lips as if to “shush” him, the man turned from Phillip and glared down at the girl in the green mini-dress. Raising the camera up to his eye he began to take pictures of the girl like a photographer on a fashion shoot. Uncomfortable and confused, Phillip looked back down at the girl. Each flash exposed her flesh as her dress, which was not made to truly cover any of the more private areas of her body in the first place, completely revealed her to the man’s camera lens.

Rage welled up in Phillip. He lunged for the man grabbing his shoulder and spinning him around. The force of the spin practically sent the frail man into the air, but Phillip caught him before he could fall away.

“What the hell do you think you are doing?” Phillip screamed into the man’s face.


The man showed no fear. Only mild amusement flickered in his eyes.

“Now, where were you when the lights went out…or in this case, on?” the man chided in a deep guttural voice.

“Who the fuck….”

Phillip’s words caught in his throat as he frowned at the man, searching a face which he now felt he should recognize. The man looked somehow familiar, but he couldn’t place him.

Unseen by Phillip, the man slipped his index finger over a small button on his camera switching the setting from “flash” to “red eye reduction.”

“I know you, don’t I?” Phillip stammered.

“Not really,” the man returned in that too-deep-for-his-frail-appearance voice. The inflection in those two words made him sound cocky and confident.

Nothing made sense but somehow Phillip’s knees, which had been weak from fear the moment the sound turned off, were suddenly bolstered with strength born of anger and adrenaline.

“Are you responsible for this you bastard!?!”

“You want to know what happened?” the man calmly responded.

“What have you done!?!”

After a brief, yet incredibly uncomfortable pause the man said in a frighteningly deep hiss: “You’ll never know.”

“What…?” Suddenly fear returned full force along with confusion as the man raised the camera up and into Phillip’s face. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Nothing…Smile.” The deep voice sang the word out in the same manner a grandmother would while taking pictures of her grandkids. The man quivered with what seemed to be orgasmic delight as the red eye reduction strobe illuminated Phillip’s face.

Phillip saw the strobe and began to speak when he suddenly realized he couldn’t get any words out. He tried to protectively raise his arms, but his muscles failed him and they fell slack to his sides. He began to feel himself lose his balance; he couldn’t use his legs to catch himself as he began to drop. As he fell he was still able to control his eyes enough to look at the man who stood before him. He had lowered the camera from his face and was smiling with an ugly, wide-toothed grin. Phillip’s mind raced. All thoughts, words, memories, emotions flashed through his consciousness with such speed he couldn’t register or comprehend anything. His vision began to blur and fade to dark with the last sight he would ever see being that of the lanky figure with the wide-toothed grin.