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.