by Barry Smith
“Come, let’s go home.”
They walk back the same way they came, down the driveway and up the street, to the parking lot of a grocery store where they had agreed to rendezvous with the others they had come with. Of the entire company of ten, the Covay brothers are the last to arrive; the first eight have simply rested on their bicycles, and quizzed themselves on the teachings of the movement which they follow.
When their numbers became complete, they put on their helmets, and mount their bicycles, in pairs of two, before riding into the night in circumspect fashion, embarking on the long ride back to the temple.
Along their route, is a warehouse, with all its lights put out and several trucks parked at its loading dock. As the Brothers of the Missionary near it, they hear scornful laughter and drunk words being shouted into the night,
“Oh, here comes the Zion Squad.”
Loitering around the trucks, are armed HB-17 members guzzling beer.
“Where ‘em bottles at? Let’s throw ‘em at these faggots,” suggests one, as he staggers in a drunken stupor.
“Yeah, let’s!” and with that, shards of glass are rained on the boys.
“Quick!” shouts Tyler to the rest, “Lower your heads and accelerate out of here!”
They speed from the vicinity, sustaining wounds to their arms and legs. They may have sustained severe head injuries, if it wasn’t for their safety helmets they had on. Three members of the HB-17 chase the Brothers a short distance, down the street, still hurling curses and bottles at them. When the Brothers have ridden out of reach, the blinking lights, from their bikes, slowly disappears into the abyss of night.” “The HB-17 members return, still laughing and making jokes.
“Fuckers shoulda stayed, I would have pumped their bodies full of lead.”
“Or better still, strip them naked and send ‘em home with their balls dangling,” suggests another.
“Yeah, would love to see ‘em preach like that!” utters a third, before all three erupt in a loud, discordant laughter.
Snip. Snip.
Two barely audible, suppressed sounds are heard, followed by a reduction, by two, in the number of drunk fools that bellow like hungry bulls. The lone survivor, oblivious of the happenings around him, continues to joke when he notices his comrades have gone silent. He turns, with unsteady steps, to find them lying supine on the asphalt, with bloody holes between their eyes.
“Shit!” he exclaims, with widened eyes, “Shit! Alert the boss! We are under…”
A sniper, several rooftops away, pulls the trigger of his gun, disallowing the rival gang member from finishing his sentence and alerting his mates.
InfliXion members materialize from the shadows, and quietly encircle the trucks and building, taking out HB-17s one at a time, with their silenced pistols. The HB-17 members can hardly put up a fight; they have been caught unaware and dead-drunk, not to mention that they are completely outnumbered by the InfliXion.
Damien Estrada, the thug at the vanguard of ‘Operation Takeback’, leads four of his men down a flight of stairs to the basement, where they were told by a captured member where their leader would be, just before Damien shot him in the head.
They come to an austere wooden door, which Damien boots open. Behind it, is a tattooed man at a desk, with numerous fat wads of dollar bills spread across it, and a large aquarium behind him.
“Damien, to what do I owe this displeasure?” asks the man, with a cigar hanging from his lips.
“Did you really think you could fucking get away with this?” thunders Damien, while aiming his gun on the unfazed man.
“Look Damien,” begins the Columbian, “I only got two words for you. Fuck off!” Then he reaches for a pistol, which is holstered under his table, and takes his aim at Damien, with an agility that rivals that of a leopard’s.
But Damien, already having the upper hand with his aimed gun, curse:
“Go burn in hell!” then he sends the HB-17’s leader jerking backward violently, as he riddles his body with bullets.
“Motherfucker,” mutters Damien, as he and his men go back upstairs, leaving the office smoky and silent, with the only sound being that of the water in the fish tank, seeping onto the floor through the bullet holes that had shot into it.
***
“Shit! That was amazing,” confesses Lydia, as she lay on the bed and watch Ryan dress.
“Well, that’s what you get for teasing me so naughtily,” winks Ryan.
“So, you plan on staying here all-night-long?” asks Ryan, while tying his shoelaces.
“Wish I could, but I can’t. Gotta finish my shift,” sighs Lydia, as she drags herself to her feet and picks her underwear from the floor.
“Well, I could walk you back to the bar,” offers Ryan.
“Nah, you don’t need to do that; I’m sure you’ll want to find Brent, but thanks for the offer anyway.”
When they are both fully dressed, they walk out of the room and at its door, they part ways; with Ryan promising to keep in touch with Lydia. After she has gone off, Ryan turns in the direction he had seen Bryce walk off, and begins to go from door to door, peeping through each eye hole in search of Bryce.
He happens upon a particular room, where several overlapping moans of ecstasy compels him to look. Inside, are four men with four women. The orgy, the brush of skin against skin, and the vocal evidence of sexual satiation, all arouses Ryan again, despite the fact he has just been pleasured a few minutes before. To prevent himself from barging into the room and joining in, Ryan resorts to his poetry:
Damn, that’s hot, all that flesh on the ground.
Humping and pumping in this slippery mound,
As I watch and I stare, wiping drool from my chin;
It’s this itch I must scratch, so let me join in.
I can taste the mild salt from everyone’s sweat,
Crawling and panting like somebody’s pet.
As we sniff and explore, immersed in foreplay,
Like animals to meat, we devour our prey.
Who to fuck first? Well, I guess it depends.
A mosaic of flesh has no beginning or end.
Hot breath on my skin, from everyone breathing.
He fucks her, she fucks me, every hole is receiving,
Every moment intense, no erection is withering,
Every thrust that we must has the ladies all quivering.
I think I’ve lost count, was it three, maybe four?
My appetite is unending; I think I want more.
But I feel the end coming, from that feeling beneath;
Another explosion of ecstasy has made me complete,
Erogenous zones tapped, every fantasy evoked
This debauchery spree has left us all soaked.
A female voice screaming “Noooo!” soon interrupts Ryan’s self-medication.
“What on Earth was that?” thinks Ryan, as his hands left his crotch, and his feet move instinctively, in the direction of the scream. He traces the sound to a utility closet, with a blue door, and a spray-painted number, ‘’.
In all the corridors, that door is the singular steel door, with the others being wooden. Ryan takes hold of the knob and turns it;
“Locked. Of course.”
He reaches into the inner lining of his jacket, and produces a pocket knife, with which he intends to pick the door’s lock.
“Here we go.”
He inserts the knife into the keyhole, but is stopped by the sound of footsteps, approaching the door, from the other side. He deftly retracts his blade, and hides in a dark corner.
After the jingle of keys, two men engaged in a conversation, walks out laughing.
“That should teach her a lesson,” says the bespectacled man in a lab coat, glasses, and carrying a box filled with an item Ryan cannot discern.
“Sure did,” the terse response belongs to the second man; he is much more imposing than the first, in stature, with a broad chest and massive biceps; he is tall, Caucasian, wears h
is hair in a long pompadour-shag style, and has an eye patch over his right eye. He locks the blue door behind him with both hands, while a 12-gauge shotgun swings from his left shoulder. To Ryan, he looks to be some sort of brute, not the brainless kind that could easily be manipulated; but more like the clever, strategizing kind, like an enforcer. After the door has been secured, the duo heads down the hall, in the direction of the main club.
Coming out of hiding, he stealthily made it back to the door to see if, by some turn of luck, it was left open.
“Aw, come on!” sighs Ryan, as he tries to jiggle the locked door open. His attention is soon drawn to several drops of a crimson-red liquid on the floor, leading in the direction of the two that has just exited the closet.
“What’s this?”
He reaches down, smears the liquid against his right forefinger, and brings it to his nose,
“Blood?”
A door directly behind him suddenly opens, prompting Ryan to rise quickly to his feet, and rub the blood on his fingers against his trousers; he is already conjuring a lie to give as an excuse if asked, for one, when Bryce stepped out, haphazardly dressed and drawing up his zipper.
“Oh, thank goodness it’s you” sighs Ryan, but then smiles knowingly, “Guess you got some action too, huh?”
“Damn right, I did!” brags Bryce, while buckling his belt, “And…” he whispers while drawing in closer to Ryan, “…I didn’t have to pay for it; so there goes our ‘Hooker Theory’.”
As Bryce speaks, a male dancer limps out the room Bryce had been in; he walks as though he has been shot in the leg, and as he passes Ryan and Bryce, he says:
“Wow! Thought I was the best in the game, and always up for a challenge, but I lost this one big time, and I do mean ‘BIG’!” and with that, he continues on his way, and before he turns off the corridor, the dancer says, ‘Oh, and by the way. My name is Christian,’ as he continues around the corner.
The two stare on, in his direction, in silence, for a few seconds, before Bryce speaks up;
“That was Christian.”
“Hahaha, yes I heard. And does his challenge mean what I think it means?” asks Ryan, before turning his gaze to Bryce, who smiles and shrugs his shoulder in response.
“I never would’ve guessed,” continues Ryan, “You’re definitely the toughest ‘Butt Pirate’ I’ve ever met.”
“I like’em how I like’em,” replies Bryce coolly, in a manner similar to Dirty Harry’s.
“You ready to get out of here?” asks Bryce.
“No, not yet. I heard some screaming coming out of this room,” responds Ryan, before returning to the steel blue door and pressing his ear against it, “Maybe it’s some of that bondage shit.”
“Can I help you gentlemen with anything?” booms a baritone voice somewhere in the dark. Both men raise their eyes only to find the guard from earlier, approaching them menacingly, while reaching into his jacket for an item.
“As a matter of fact, yes!” replies Ryan, “My friend here, and I, are a bit lost; we were searching for the exit when we wound up here.”
“That looks like the door you came in through?” asks the guard with a suspicious look.
“I wouldn’t know what the door looked like, you know, we were pretty stoned and itching to have a good ol’time,” responds Ryan, while laughing convincingly.
“I hear ya,” replies the guard, while pulling his hand from inside his jacket, “The ‘Bliss’ here is the best in the entire nation, and we get a lotta horny bitches too. Exit’s this way.”
He then turns and walks towards the exit with Ryan and Bryce following, both heaving sighs of relief.
***
02:24.
That is the time the alarm clock on Ryan’s bedside table read, as he tosses around in his bed; something he has been doing ever since he got in his bed. He had dropped Bryce off at his place before driving to his own place, all of which constitutes a rather long drive. He forewent dinner, and plunge right into his bed, hardly taking off his clothes but four hours later, he is still wide awake.
“Damn it! Why can’t I go to sleep?” thinks Ryan.
He knows why.
The scream, the drops of blood, the blue steel door,, the one-eyed man; they had all bore their images into his head, and he couldn’t go to sleep because of that. He has decided to put the piecing of the facts he and Bryce have gathered, off till morning; but the events of the night keeps rising to the surface, forcing him to dwell on them.
“You know, screw it!” he says aloud, “I’m going for a drink.”
Ten minutes later, he is walking, after getting dressed, towards a bar in his locality he had noticed earlier, while returning from Bryce’s. He finds the bar after some seconds of searching, walks in, and before he can take a seat at the counter, he hears someone call out to him,
“Swett! Don’t you have to be in the office in five hours?”
It was his Captain, Lloyd McCormack sitting at a corner table, along with Commissioner Munson and Father Kraven. They are dressed very informally, in t-shirts, jeans and sneakers, and are waving Ryan over to join them. He obliges them, at first finding it odd that his superiors and a religious leader are at a bar drinking in the early hours of the morning, before remembering he had come there for the very same thing.
“Just go with the flow, Ryan,” he told himself, before easing into the ongoing conversation.
“How do ya find the place, Ryan?” asks McCormack, referring to the apartment the force had allocated him, “The place too fancy for ya?”
“Fancy? I’ve seen doghouses better than that place!” laughs Ryan, “But it’s all good, Cap, Everything works, “Just trying to get familiar with the area. I had challenges remembering where my apartment was tonight. But to my surprise, it’s a good thing that you also had Gloria installed in my car, to show me the way home. ”
“So, how did tonight’s investigation of A Wicked Haven go?” asks Captain McCormack
“Gentlemen,” begins Munson, cutting McCormack off, “I didn’t come all this way to hear you talk about ‘Wicked Haven’. You are hereby ordered to desist from all talk relating to work. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Sir!” chorus Ryan and McCormack jocularly, before laughing and sipping their drinks.
As the night drags on, Ryan learns that Munson and Kraven are old friends, whose friendship began in their college days; they attended the same church, Terence’s father’s Baptist Ministry, when they were young, which Terence later took over from his father, after he succumbed to cancer.
“How did you come to be so popular, Father? I’ve always wondered,” asks Ryan, while sipping his beer.
“Well,” begins Terence, “I guess the public took to my open-minded and artistic approach to religion.”
“Artistic?”
”Yes, the Disciples are very keen when it comes to the performing arts. Most of our messages are conveyed through song and dance pieces.”
“Why is that?” asks Ryan, who is now beginning to feel his buzz.
“Well, it seemed people were tired of the usual speeches regarding salvation, so we thought we would give them something somewhat ‘unorthodox’; not to mention, it has kept our members productively engaged. We also adopted positive attributes from multiple religions, from all around the world, to better our movement. And our color ‘blue’, is a symbol of hope, for all of mankind.”
“Kraven!” interrupts Munson, “Stop beating around the bush and answer the detective’s damn question.”
“Oh, right! I’m sorry,” chuckles the dreadlock-haired man, “All the stardom is probably due to my first gospel album, which earned a lot of success. You could say I had a musical background, gospel singing precisely, much like my mother, Maybell Kraven; you may have heard her singing the lead at the Grand Temple Opening.”
“That was your mother?” asks Ryan in amazement.
“Indeed, the best any man could ever ask for,” he pauses before continuing, “Anyway, I used
the popularity gained by my debut album to spread the word. I know many see the Disciples as fanatics or a cult with psychopathic indoctrinations, but that is far from what we really are; we are like-minded individuals with a common faith. Our outreach has helped proselytize three of the nation’s most populated cities. It is amazing that a little mid-western Baptist group was able to accomplish so much. All the fame and glamour; that’s just secondary but what is most important is…”
“Bullshit!” interjects Munson, pretending to cough into his hands, “This guy has always loved being the center of attention; on the football field, at church choir, you name it; he just had to be in the spotlight.”
Kraven laughs before admitting, “Ok, you’re right. I did like having some of the attention.”
“Yeah, ‘did’ and ‘most’,” replies Munson sarcastically, as all four men laugh.
“Come on now, Munson that was the younger me; I’m a little more humble these days…”
After some time has passed.
“Gentlemen, it’s getting late, I should call it a night. Thank you for the beers.“
As Ryan walks back to his apartment, he finds his nerves soothed; drinking with the others has taken his mind off his cases. “They weren’t at all like the serious-minded men he saw during the day. Father Kraven in particular, has impressed him; he is quite the lowly man, very humble and meek, not rubbing his accomplishment in their faces, and not self-righteous either. After the brief discussion about his rise to fame, he never brought up any topic regarding religion during the course of the gathering.
“I had a good time,” thinks Ryan, as he reaches his apartment, opens the door, locks it behind him, and hurries to his bed to get a few hours of sleep before morning.
Chapter 3
The Guilty Pleasures Showroom at Quist is abuzz with activity, as auditions are being held for the additions to the ensemble of male and female dancers. On stage, after two grueling qualifying rounds, the last group of dancers are finishing-out the 3rd round of competition, and soon, it will be time for another cut. At the back of the room, on an elevated platform, is seated a panel of four judges headed by Sage.