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.”
“Tomorrow night,” Tony answered, his voice quavering. After you show me the games I’ll really like. After I become a player.
“Tomorrow night, sir,” the Asian doorman replied, with a slight bow. Guy was gone.
Tony went back to his car and drove home. He did not bother picking up his mail or answering his telephone messages. Though his fear was gone and he was tired, he still had trouble falling asleep. Excitement kept him up, until he began to relax as he gently stroked the back of his left hand with his thumb. Slowly, he fell asleep while caressing Painfreak’s invisible marks on his flesh.
Lover Doll
Wayne Allen Sallee
“Lover Doll” was first published in Little Deaths, edited by Ellen Datlow and published by TOR in 1994.
‡
Wayne’s most recent collection is Fiends By Torchlight, which was published by Annihilation Press in 2007, and one of the original stories, “High Moon,” will be reprinted in Best Horror of The 21st Century: The First Decade (Wicker Park Press). “Rail Rider” appeared in J. N. Williamson’s The Illustrated Masques (Gauntlet Press), and his novel, The Holy Terror, and a collection from 1995, With Wounds Still Wet, are available on Kindle (CrossRoads Press). His meta memoir, Proactive Contrition, and Can I End Now? are both exclusive works published in Germany by Blitz Verlag. He is currently writing a crime novel, City With No Second Chances, and a series of dystopian stories with their beginnings set in the recent future fraught of our current political climate. His website is www.wayneallensallee.com and his blog is www.frankenstein1959.blogspot.com.
† † †
This is my favorite story in that the first part is almost entirely true, drawn from my childhood in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago.
She is asleep.
It is Memorial Day 1994, and perhaps it is fitting that I dwell on my past. Our past.
I stare out the window, the one facing east. Where dawn will eventually take away the night with cancerous washes of summer sun and lake breezes. The plasma-coloured digital clock blinks in three-second intervals. It is 4:57 a.m.