The music seemed impossibly loud to Carrie Carstens; it assaulted her ears, attacking from all directions as she paid her five dollar cover and descended the steps into the heavy air of the crowded club. She always convinced herself she was prepared for the high-energy techno-pop crap and the high-energy people who listened to it before she left her apartment, and yet inevitably she was caught off-guard when she actually entered the superheated, subtly erotic atmosphere of one of the city’s many dance clubs.
Shy and retiring by nature, Carrie didn’t haunt these places because she loved the music or the social aspect or even because she wanted to get laid. Carrie visited the clubs because she had to. She had no choice. It was a compulsion.
Tonight she had selected “Klub Elektro,” a crowded zoo complete with the pulse-pounding bass beat of the synthetic music she had come to despise, the typical glass/mirror/aluminum décor she had come to despise as well, and the typically eclectic clientele she didn’t feel any affection for, either.
Carrie eased down the steps (three of them, carpeted, have to remember that if she found who she was looking for—she wouldn’t want him to trip going out the door and draw unwanted attention), and across the crowded floor, zig-zagging around tables and chairs and patrons all the way to the bar. She smiled at the young female bartender with the bright purple streak running through her spiky blonde hair and ordered a drink. Club soda, of course. Nothing stronger. Getting drunk would prove counterproductive if she happened to luck out and find the dude.
The chick behind the bar appraised her openly as she handed her the drink, exuding sensuality, running her eyes up and down Carrie’s body and wetting her lips lasciviously with her tongue. It was obvious what she was after, Stevie Wonder could have seen it, but Carrie wasn’t interested.
She accepted her drink with a smile, tipped the bartender well, as always, and sipped slowly as she made her way toward the rear of the club. She always headed to the back when she was hunting. Standing against the wall, Carrie pretended to enjoy the music like everyone else while her eyes surveyed the crowded club, concentrating especially hard on the dance floor. She figured the dance floor would be where her target would make a move on his unsuspecting female victim if he was here.
Carrie Carstens would much rather have been home asleep in bed than listening to music she could barely tolerate in the middle of the night, wedged in among people she didn’t know, looking for someone she was unlikely to find, but again—she had no choice. She had suffered through the dream once more last night and it had been a doozey. Of course, it was always a doozey, because it was always the same.
Some nights the dream ended earlier than others; it all depended upon the amount of time it took for Carrie to wake up screaming, drenched in sweat, shaking and begging for mercy, but the dream itself always took the same form. The man looming above her, his hand clamped over her mouth so she could not scream and could barely breathe. The man ripping her clothing off, tugging her panties down her legs, roughly, over her hips and off, forcing her legs apart and lowering his disgusting body onto and then into hers. The man doing vile, nasty things to her; things that made her literally sick to her stomach to think about, even now, years later.
So Carrie didn’t have any choice; not really. She had to enter these places, these plastic, artificial techno-rock dance club places. She didn’t care about the music; didn’t care about anything, really, she just wanted to watch the crowd. Because Carrie Carstens clung to the hope that one of these days against all odds she would get lucky and find the man who had done those horrible things to her.
She was certain she would eventually find him. She had to. She had a score to settle.
Halfway through her second drink—another club soda, of course—Carrie caught a glimpse of a young man who made her skin crawl and her stomach clench in instinctive fear and immediately she knew. The terrifying visceral reaction made it clear. This might be the guy. Tall, close-cropped brown hair, snappy dresser. Good with the ladies. Great dancer. She felt a jolt of panicky electricity surge through her body as she jostled her way through the shifting crowd for a closer look. She couldn’t take her eyes off of him.
Her drink sloshed over the sides of the glass; she didn’t care. Men and women glared at her as she elbowed her way past and she didn’t care about that either. She had to get a better look at the tall guy with the close-cropped brown hair, because if it was who she thought it was—
Carrie’s breath caught in her throat. Her eyes widened. Her stomach tried to evacuate its contents but she choked down the nausea, swallowing hard.
It was the guy.
The room was dank and stuffy and the man—his name was Burton Daniels and he was a twenty-three year old investment banker trainee with a high-powered firm uptown—began to stir in his chair. Carrie waited patiently for him to awaken. He would have one hell of a massive headache when he finally came around, but otherwise would be fine, relatively speaking.
At least for the time being.
While she waited for Daniels to regain consciousness, Carrie thought about tonight and how she would finally lay the past to rest. The man would never haunt her dreams again. She would finally be able to sleep. She could stop haunting those disgusting clubs with the disgusting people who looked at her in ways that made her skin crawl. She could stay home.
It had been even easier to lure him away from the club than she had expected. Carrie slinked up to him on the dance floor, rubbing her body against his by way of introduction—curvy parts against curvy parts—ensuring she had his full and undivided attention. She had worn a platinum blonde wig, cut in a style completely unlike her own, so there was no way Burton Daniels would ever recognize her, she had been sure of that.
And he hadn’t. Plus, it had been quite a long time since he forced himself upon her, doing all those horrible things to her; he probably had forgotten all about it, but she most certainly had not.
After getting him interested—it was so easy to do—Carrie had taken control of the situation immediately, grabbing Burton Daniels’s hand and pulling him to the relative privacy of a back corner table, miraculously empty, as soon as the song ended. What song it was, she had no idea. They all sounded alike to her anyway, so what did it matter?
Carrie had purred and pouted and postured and batted her eyes, oozing slinky sexuality and pretending to hang on Daniels’s every word, something she knew men loved; they were so self-involved and egomaniacal, impressed with their own perceived importance. She knew she could ensure his interest by feigning undivided attention to whatever senseless drivel came out of his mouth.
She asked him his name and what he did for a living and then oohed and ahhed over his answers, as if she thought being an investment banker trainee was the coolest thing ever instead of what it really was—a lame attempt by a perverted weasel to gain acceptance in the real world by his ability to make a lot of money.
From there it had been simple. She closed the deal by pretending to be drunk and easy and horny; ready to go someplace “private and cozy.” Before they left, however, Carrie insisted on buying Burton Daniels one last drink, which she purchased from the same purple-headed bartender, who again came on to her while she waited, again without saying a word—at least not out loud—and again without any luck.
Burton Daniels had waited at the table in the back corner of the club while Carrie got his drink, undoubtedly congratulating himself on being the luckiest fucking scumbag in a gigantic room full of fucking scumbags, and undoubtedly passed the time waiting for his drink by picturing the nasty, vile things he was going to do to this beautiful, hot-to-trot young thing who had been smart enough to choose him to take home over all the other men in the meat market.