Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror (16 page)

Guy stared at him without blinking, as if ghosts forgot to blink. His mouth hung open, his hands lay in his lap, palms up. He looked like a child waiting to be fed.

Tony closed his eyes and trawled for memories, eager to put Guy to rest. The specter’s talk of emptiness and predators had only made his own need for Lisa stronger. And if this ghost could not help him find her, at least its guilty presence would not distract him while he caught up to Lisa and tried to win her back.

Names from his own adventures as well as Guy’s returned to him, and their faces. Anne, Shanelle, Kiko. Thurman, George, Larry. Episodes he hadn’t thought about in years came back: sex on the dorm roof, in the closet while others listened and commented outside, using the early model video recorders the college owned. There were the games of humiliation, the games of pain, and the entertainments in costume. Simple and complex, he had repeated them all with Lisa. But he had discovered them first with the disposable partners he and Guy had enjoyed. He began to talk, and as the memories rushed out Tony opened his eyes and looked up, letting the words flow, the past catching up to him.

And as the past flooded him, the darkness beyond the fire seemed to lighten. He began to see what was happening between the fires. He looked away, at first. He spoke quickly, felt as if he were babbling, but Guy did not interrupt or ask him to be clearer, only sat and watched him with his blank expression, his dull, lifeless eyes. The more he talked, the clearer the air became, until he could not help but see the expression on the face of the squirming woman being hauled by giggling men up to the ceiling on a hook and length of chain; until he could see the sweat running down the body of the man suspended at an angle by his outstretched arms and legs, desperately thrusting his erect penis into a fat, laughing woman dancing wildly to the electronic howl of a band that had just started playing; until he could see the broken bones pushing against muscle and skin, warping the smooth lines of the bodies of the two wrestlers fighting and screaming in a pool of water to the cheers and jeers of a few people standing near.

Blood spurted from a nearby atrocity and sprayed across his face, tickling his lips. Shocked, he raised his arm to wipe the blood away, to spit and rub his skin and shield his face from any more splattering. A sudden impulse made him stop. The blood was hot on his flesh, like Lisa’s sweat mingling with his own when they made love. His tongue darted out like a snake’s, licked his lips as he would Lisa’s body. He tasted coppery saltiness, then swallowed. Surprised by his act, he shuddered. The emptiness within him yawned, threatened to take him. Expecting a surge of fear, he was even more surprised when he became excited by what he had done. His erection pressed against his pants’ zipper, as if he had just heard the click of Lisa’s heels on ceramic tile.

Blood. He worried for a moment that it was contaminated, tainted by Death. Death’s blood. He thought of Guy, dead, a ghost, and of the times he had given in to Guy’s nagging and participated in his sex games by disinterestedly watching him with his lover. Kissing, stroking, mouthing, they had ended by swallowing each other’s cum.

An electric shock of pleasure passed through him as he described the scene he had just remembered to Guy. He put himself in Guy’s place, and in the scene his lover was not another man, but Death. Death’s bloody cum was on his lips, in his mouth, in him.

The stream of his words faltered, his memories stumbled over one another. The emptiness that had driven him to follow Lisa into Painfreak blossomed with the promise of secret fulfillment. He saw clearly into the void around which he had lived his entire life. The games, the costumes, the mix of pain and pleasure he had pursued with such desperation were suddenly nothing more than shimmering veils hiding his true desire. He did not want to fill the emptiness with sex. He did not want to master, or be mastered by, pleasure and pain. He did not want to feed the hollow hunger with experience, sensation, life. He wanted to surrender to the emptiness. He wanted to be consumed by Death.

Tony stopped talking. Moments later, the electronic howl of music changed, became louder, erupted with sudden energy as if the band had found its groove. A roar like a raging beast echoed through the cavern, deep and raw and edged with the ragged wail of electric guitars. Buried in the roar like a dim heartbeat was the frantic pulsing of drums and bass. Feedback screeched, pierced ear and mind and thought. Tony doubled over in pain, pressing his palms to his ears. Through tears, he saw the elderly couple nearby, pointing to him and laughing. They looked away. He followed their gaze to a crude cage construction surrounded by a frenetic mob trying to tear down the walls to reach the band playing within.

Tony got up, but the music kept him hunched over. Had Lisa wanted to play in a band? Had that been her fantasy? The band members were shadow forms prancing and miming and sawing the air with their instruments, lost in the passion of the moment. He had no idea if she was among them, or their audience. He took a step towards the cage.

A cage wall fell, bringing down one musician. The mob spilled into the stage space as the other walls collapsed. One by one, the instruments died. Last to go was the pulsing bass, quivering with a life of its own before drowning in the squeals and cries of the mob fighting for any morsel of meat.

He heard bones crack, flesh tear.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Guy said, standing beside him and looking at the orgy. “It’s all so … romantic, don’t you think? Art and death and, hell, even audience participation.” He giggled.

Tony took another step towards the mob, then stopped when he felt Guy’s touch on his arm. It was not a solid touch; Guy’s fingers felt like a cold breeze blowing against his skin.

“She’s not there,” he said, suddenly serious. “That’s not her game.”

“What is?” Tony asked.

“Is that what you want to know? Or do you want to find out what yours is? I can show you that, too.” He stroked Tony’s arm, and the cold tightened his skin, seemed to burn in the bone of his arm. “Want to be a player, Tony?”

Tony groaned as the emptiness reached for him. He wanted it, he wanted Lisa. “Lisa,” he croaked, trying to hang on to the crumbling edifice of his past desires and pleasures while his future called to him.

Guy tsked. “Well, you never really were the truly adventurous type, Tony. You would never have found Painfreak on your own. Not like Lisa. She’s been on the scene since she was fifteen. She never told you? I used to see her around, when I was still around. Surprised the hell out of me when she latched on to you. Last chance romance, I think. One final try at a normal life with a guy who could give her at least a little action. Oh, what would my old therapist say? An abused child, obviously. Running away from something terrible, running back into it from the long way around. Dear, dear, the story of all our lives, I’m sure.”

Tony pulled his arm away. “Fuck you.”

Guy came up next to Tony, careful not to touch him. “Say something like that again,” he whispered into Tony’s ear, “and it might come true.”

Tony stepped back and glanced to his left and right, looking for a direction to walk in. He shivered from the cold Guy had brought with him, and the cold in his words.

“No? Turned down again? Right. I really tried to seduce you once, didn’t I? After we graduated?”

“You tried to move in with me when I got my own place,” Tony replied. He remembered the panic in Guy’s voice as he had offered himself, promised to do whatever Tony wanted, just so they could continue being together, continue playing their games. Fear had leaked from every pore in his body, as raw and powerful as Tony’s own when Lisa left him. Graduation, expectations of the adult world, Tony moving out had all sharpened the edges to Guy’s panic. “I kicked you back into the elevator,” Tony continued. He had had his own panic, his own burgeoning emptiness, to deal with. “To make up, you took me out to Painfreak.”

“My shrink’d say that was a very hostile move. Couldn’t get to you, so I brought you here for Painfreak to seduce you. Damn, but I wish I could remember that elevator scene. I wonder what I used on you. No, no, don’t tell me. Imagining it will entertain me to no end, at least until your next visit. Maybe then I’ll ask you to tell me about it.”

“I’m never coming back here after I get Lisa out.”

“Of course you’ll be back. What else are you going do when Lisa’s gone?”

Tony recoiled, looked away from Guy. He moved off in a random direction, searched out the next fire, headed for its flames. Guy caught his arm, and the cold staggered Tony. Painfreak’s bone mark glowed on Tony’s hand.

“Don’t go off half-cocked, lover. You’ll miss her moment as a player. Here, let me show you.”

Guy pulled on Tony’s arm, dragged him past women pounding on the bodies of men stretched out and tied down to the floor with wild, dancing steps; past a woman bound, blind, gagged, being raped by another woman with a dildo strapped across her sex; past men wrestling one another in shallow pits, breaking each other’s limbs, biting off pieces of flesh, licking the blood spilling from their mouths; past a man with a bloody machete across his stomach, reclining among the severed heads of women and busying himself with pulling out the tongue from one head’s mouth and running her blue lips across his skin.

Lisa was not among any of the women.

Guy stopped before another pit, but held fast to Tony’s arm. Below, two naked women approached a nude fat man whose spread-eagled limbs were held fast by manacles to stakes. One woman sat behind his head and secured it between her thighs. Her leg muscles bulged as she applied pressure, and he twitched and choked as his eyes widened. The other woman settled herself on his face, covered it completely, and began to move her hips.

“Lisa,” Tony whispered. He leaned forward, but Guy’s cold grip kept him frozen in place.

Lisa looked up as her hands massaged her breasts and she thrust her hips harder into the face trapped under her. Her eyes saw through Tony, as if he were as much a ghost as Guy. Sweat filmed her body. A smile, sweet and self-involved, danced across her lips. The fat man’s body jerked, spasmed. His hands grasped at something elusive in the air. His back arched and a desperate, muffled moan escaped from the pit. Lisa threw her head back, gasped. The fat man collapsed, and his body slackened. Lisa jerked forward and cried out. She slid off the man’s face and fell to the ground, eyes closed, smiling to herself. The other woman raised her hips, twisted her legs over until the man’s neck cracked, then released him. She moved over Lisa, straddled her, closed her thighs over Lisa’s face.

“Lisa,” Tony called out. His voice was still a whisper, Guy’s hand still served as a cold anchor.

Lisa’s hands fluttered in the air. Her legs twitched like caught fish thrown on a dock. The woman bore down, hunched forward, used her hands to keep her thighs pressed closed over Lisa’s face. Lisa’s struggles weakened until her last feeble movements finally subsided. The woman remained over her, locked in a tight embrace.

“Lisa,” Tony cried out as he fell to his knees.

The woman rose, took Lisa by the feet and dragged her up a ramp. She was heading in the direction of the machete man when Tony lost sight of them. He realized then that Guy had released him and had vanished. There was only the cold ache in his bone and muscle to remind him of the ghost’s hand.

“Come along, dear,” an old woman’s voice said behind him. Someone tapped him gently on the shoulder.

“I think you’ve had enough for one night, young fella,” an old man said, slipping his arm under Tony’s and helping him to his feet. “Time for you to go home. There’s always tomorrow night, you know.”

The old, well-dressed couple who had been watching him throughout the evening bracketed him as he stood up. They each hooked an arm around him and helped him walk away from the pit. The woman’s diamond bracelet bit into his flesh. Tony felt like a child being taken home from a hard day at the playground by his grandparents. Would there be milk and cookies in the kitchen? Bedtime stories tonight?

Tony tried to remember his grandparents, and found that he could not.

The elderly couple guided him back to the cavern entrance, took him through the sound baffles, helped him maneuver through the dancing crowds in the outer club. At the steel double door entrance to the club, the couple released him.

“You come right back when you’re feeling better,” the woman said. She smiled, and cracks widened in the caked make-up covering her face.

“We’ll be here another couple of nights,” said the old man. He patted Tony’s shoulder in an amiable, fatherly way. His breath was stale, like the air in a den abandoned by a predator. “Of course, you can always come along when the place moves. There’s always a need for help. Lots of turnover, you know.”

The couple looked to each other and laughed as they gently pushed him to the doors. Tony leaned against metal, felt it give, and found himself in a hallway under a single bright light bulb.

There was the taste of ash in his mouth as he made his way back to the loading docks. Exhaustion made him rest for a few moments on the stairs, but the faint echo of Painfreak’s dance music finally drove him on. He passed no one on his way out to the loading dock, where the rain had stopped and dawn had lightened the sky. The ground was still wet, the air humid. Tony glanced over his shoulder at the warehouse entrance. The two doormen returned his gaze. Behind them, Guy hung upside down, suspended by his feet on a length of chain, swinging back and forth like a clock pendulum.

“Do you feel it?” Guy asked, his voice pitched high, almost hysterical.

And in that moment, the emptiness within him opened up like a bottomless well. Tony felt himself standing by the well, leaning out over the edge, wind whistling by his ears. He licked his lips, searching for the taste of blood. His erection strained as if it wanted to break out of its confines and search for satisfaction.

“You want it?” Guy teased. “Tell me what that’s like, to want it. To want the nothingness. The extinction. Tell me first, what that emptiness is like. It’s so hard when you’re in it to understand. Tell me what the void is like, from the outside. Then tell me what it feels like to want it.”