Enigma: The Rise of an Urban Legend

by Ryan Schow

  Standing in front of the mirror, she appraised herself with a scornful eye. Black dress, heels, choker, earrings, extra bold makeup. Every time she had to serve the Hollywood elite as some sort of call girl, she did so looking the part.

  Her dignity was in tatters. What she did to serve this sick community, she tried not to admit that it wasn’t worth it. She knew it wasn’t, but admitting it was dangerous and depressing. She fell into a chair, then lost herself in another fit of sobbing before forcing herself to pull it together, redo her make-up and slap a smile on her face.

  Lennox was in his bedroom with his brand new dick and his testosterone pills obsessing over his porn. All Sabrina had to do was crack his bedroom door and snap a picture. It would be that easy. She could take just one career ending picture.

  If nothing, blackmail was a girl’s best friend.

  Lately all she could think about was getting out. Even if that meant getting herself killed. Which was possible. It happened in this town before. That’s what they said, anyway. They said, with the right prescription drug cocktail, you’re just gone.

  Could be at a party. It could be in some hotel room, at the bottom of a bathtub.

  Some socialite at a club ticked off the names of singers and actors who died this way. She was in a booze fog, though. Drinking away the pain. Whether this girl (whom she didn’t remember beyond the stories she told) was embellishing or not, she couldn’t be sure. The girl, this blabbermouth with gigantic eyes and spearmint breath, she was convincing.

  She called these unseen assassins “Star killers.”

  “Basically what it comes down to is this,” she said over the heavy music with a sloshing, tipping drink in hand, “you talk, you die. First it’s off to the psych ward for ‘recalibrating’ and then it’s you on some sort of drug spree which has you floating face up in a tub in some hotel room dead. That’s how it works.”

  Yeah, she was crystal clear.

  Dressed to the nines, dressed to fuck, Sabrina slipped off her heels, tip-toed down the massive hallway to Lennox’s room and eased the door open.

  There he was, that fraud. That boy who was a girl but traded her tits and vagina for fame and a giant, fake dick.

  He was sitting at the computer with his back to her, pants and undies in a circle around his ankles, left arm at work on himself while he watched a video of one dude doing nasty things to another dude. Slowly she lifted her cell phone and snapped a picture.

  Lennox’s arm stopped. He spun around as Sabrina was backing out of the room. How had he heard her? The picture mode was on silent. She hadn’t made a noise.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, harshly, his cheeks splotching with color.

  Her brain turned to jelly.

  “I just—”

  He stood and wrestled up his pants, his donger half-mast and still not working right by the look of it. Right then, her paralysis broke and what rushed forward was an onslaught of hatred. Hatred for him, for the industry, for what was done to her, for what she allowed them to do to her mother.

  Pointing to his dick, she said, “You can put it on, but you can’t make it real. It’s a prop, Lennox, proof you’re no Bieber despite what the charts say.”

  He charged her.

  She turned and ran down the hall, Lennox on her heels. He tackled her from behind, her knees, elbows and face crashing down on the tile floor. Growling, smashing her cheekbone and her ear into the eighteen inch Italian tiles, he said, “This is how you repay me?!”

  He scrambled his body on top of hers, pinning her face-down, hurting her, making it difficult for Sabrina to draw much of a breath.

  She begged him to stop, but he wasn’t moving. She couldn’t breathe! He snatched her cell phone. Moving, but keeping his weight on her, he turned on the phone, then worked a knee into the side of her face and leaned heavily on it.

  She could breathe now that he got off her back, but he was crushing her cheekbone and her ear into the tile and it freaking hurt. Half screaming, half sobbing, she screamed for him to get the hell off her. Lennox lowered the phone into her field of view. She found herself staring at the picture she took of him pleasuring himself.

  “This is cute, Sabrina. You taking snaps of me watching gay porn.”

  “You’re disgusting!” she screeched, saliva puddling on the floor around her mouth, lipstick smearing on the tile and on her face. The minute she got up, she was going to claw his eyes out. It didn’t matter if she wound up dead for it, that’s what was going to happen.

  “You have no idea the meaning of disgusting, bitch. You gave them your mother. How is your sacrifice not more disgusting than a former girl liking to look at guys? As far as I’m concerned, you killed your mother. Not them. So don’t judge me. And don’t take your stupid issues out on me.”

  He erased the picture, dropped the phone, then rolled her fighting and screaming over on her back.

  “Keep this shit up and I’m going to hurt you,” Lennox growled, pinning her down in spite of the new position. “Be cooperative and it’ll be the opposite. We only have a few more months together anyway.”

  The minute he moved off her, she raked at his face with fingers turned to claws. He ducked away just in time, leaving her vulnerable.

  The punch to her stomach was far better than the brutal punching of her boobs which was far better still than the solitary smack right across her face—the one he really got behind. The one that knocked a string of snot clean out of her nose. Whatever dreams of retaliation she had, he quickly squashed.

  “After tonight,” he said, standing up and finger combing his hair back into place, “you’ll wish that seeing me looking at other guys was the worst of your concerns.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, getting her bearings back, feeling every bit the wreck he’d made of her.

  Reaching down, he jerked and yanked up the hem of her black dress—which she fought to keep down—saw she was wearing panties, then ripped them off even as she cussed and kicked at him for his efforts.

  “You’re not going to need these,” he finally said, throwing them down the hallway with a snarl. To keep his small nipples from becoming larger female nipples and rounded breasts, this transgender nightmare took extra testosterone pills and worked out three times a day. That he would tell her something was worse than him left her unsettled.

  And she was right to be unsettled, because the first thing Sabrina was told to do when she arrived ten minutes late at the party was to take off all her clothes and gather up the guests’ poop on collection plates for later.

  2

  MacDonald Highlands housing development sits in the hills above Las Vegas with views of the valley below, specifically the strip, which looks amazing at night if you can afford the multi-million dollar price tag. Most people can’t. Inside the Dragon Ridge Golf Course and Country Club is some of Vegas’s most expensive real estate, and for one residence, it’s a gathering place for the elite, an eleven thousand square foot mansion where celebrities eat, mingle, then perform their perfunctory duties to the Dark Lord.

  Sabrina had never been to a party with less security before, but in all fairness to the guards, they were three beefy guys with shoulder holstered guns, ear pieces and the kinds of no-bullshit looks that say they’d rather shoot you in the face than hear about your weekend, your latest movie, or heaven forbid, your freaking kids.

  Of course, this wasn’t some public gala, or a wedding, or some publicity event with paparazzi and stalkers and little kids dying to get sneak peeks at all the celebrities.

  Still, limos like the one they were arriving in were pulling up to the house by the half-dozen. Most of the guests had already arrived as evidenced by all the parked cars. There were Bentley’s and Ferrari’s, there were Maybach’s and Lamborghini’s and a pair of Aston Martin’s, and parked in between these James Bond signature vehicles was a brand new Fire Engine red Acura NSX.

  Lennox told Sabrina on the way here that parties like this were not the ex
ception but the rule. As in, what she’ll see there, this kind of thing goes on all the time all over the world in places like these with people like these.

  “Our host, this evening, is Douglas Stonewick,” he said when they first got into the limo. “The man directs some of the most famous pornos these days, and a few that aren’t.”

  “I don’t watch that crap,” she mumbled, still pissed off about being beat up earlier.

  “In One End, In The Other is his most famous piece, but not among critics. His work with fecal matter and underage children seemed to not only showcase what he’s been able to do in the world of sex and pornography, it infuses in one an even deeper wisdom of the dark arts and sex magic.”

  “I just can’t take the cheesy lines, or the look on guys’ faces while they’re trying to act and hold a boner at the same time. It’s really gross.”

  “The minute you mix art and human sacrifice, you’re going to enrage the critics,” Lennox said, dismissive, not even looking across the limo at her anymore, “even those as propitious as yourself.”

  “I don’t know that word, propitious,” she said, her eyes away from him and on the darkening skyline instead.

  “Of course, you don’t,” Lennox mused.

  She turned and looked at him. “So who’s on the guest list?” she finally said.

  Her scorched her with his eyes.

  “You don’t ask the names of people at events like this. It’s not a social function as much as it’s a gathering of those who have chosen to ascend the confines of a sane and rational world. This is not a sane or rational world we’re living in, Sabrina. Our playground is one of indulgence and obligation. You should know that.”

  “And what are we obligated to?” she asked as he crossed the divide and sat in the back seat beside her. She scooted away from him the slightest bit, her heart racing not only from their close proximity, but with the heat of violence still burning in her cheek.

  “You know why we’re where we are in the social food chain, why you’re so rapidly climbing the ladder to stardom.”

  “Stop being so goddamn vague,” she snapped, not meaning to, her emotions getting the best of her. She was outraged inside, but scared, battling that part of her who could smell the agitation just beneath his pores, right below that sensuous, ridiculously delicious smelling new cologne he was wearing.

  “What do you have on?”

  “Armani,” he said, like he was offended by the question.

  “Your cologne,” she said.

  All the hatred metastasizing in her heart softened a bit with the intoxicating smell of his new cologne. Her olfactory senses delighted in the midst of such poignant scents, specifically citrus, but also black pepper, lavender, cocoa, patchouli and just beneath that delicate combination, a wealth of amber and perhaps a touch of violet.

  “It’s Rock Rose, by Clive Christian, do you like it?”

  She absolutely loved it.

  “You smell like a pedophile,” she mumbled.

  First he grew very quiet; second she felt the tension in his body squeeze the air around them shut—to the point where it wasn’t breathable; and third he let out that breath and attacked her.

  He startled her with how fast he moved. Like a striking snake. Then there was a sharp pain in her ear as he grabbed hold of her earring. His lips were practically pressed into her ear, wet, angry, defiant. A meager whine escaped her lips. He twisted until she yelped.

  “You don’t get to give me your wholly insignificant opinion,” he snarled. “The days of you complaining, of you being a sour bitch with a smug response to everything, those days are over!”

  “You’re hurting me,” she squealed, which caused him to twist her earing more, to the point of tearing her skin. It was a piercing pain with bitter consequences.

  The limo driver looked up in the rear view mirror, but glanced away and said nothing. If the privacy partition would’ve been up, Sabrina had been thinking, would things have been worse?

  The partition began to rise and the clamoring of her heart beating violently against her breast nearly doubled. There goes the only possible witness to the unfolding crime.

  “You’re a dog, Sabrina, don’t you get that? You’re my dog, you’re the guests’ dog. You’re Douglas Stonewick’s dog if he wants to screw you, or film you, or make you eat buckets of your own shit, you’ll be that dog.”

  She started to speak, but he dug his thumb painfully into her ribs.

  “Lennox—”

  “If we weren’t going to this party,” he growled, leaving her to wonder how he was going to finish that awful thought.

  He finally let go of her earring. Shoving her face away, he crossed his legs, folded his arms and stewed. Horrified, her hands trembling uncontrollably, she put a hand to her ear, drew back a spot of blood. He wasn’t done, though. She could feel it: that uncontrolled thing festering inside him, writhing, wanting to make the world pay for all his success. For what he must have sacrificed for his fame and fortune. The boy had given away his breasts, his vagina, his femininity.

  The boy had given away his entire gender.

  When she thought of what it must be like to be a girl and not have tits, to have a useless sausage log and two fake nuts rolling around in a skin pouch between your legs when what you always wanted was the perfect Playboy pussy…it convinced her that Lennox’s hijacked gender was worse than her having to have sex with a bunch of guys and sacrifice her mother to the demons of Hollywood.

  For some reason—maybe it was hysteria—the thought of chicks with dicks made her chortle out an involuntary laugh, one she quickly stifled.

  He swiveled around, burned her with his gaze, his pupils teeming with sharp, unsaid horrors. Something in him sparked and before she knew it, he was all over her, hitting her, cursing and howling in her ear. The crack of a fist on her face wobbled her. Then he did it. That rotten son of a bitch. He grabbed her earring and jerked it clean out, tearing her earlobe open.

  She drew a screaming breath, but he cupped his hand over her mouth and it hardly came out.

  He’d pinned her body to the seat with his, clamped his hand over her mouth until the initial jolt subsided and her screaming became sobbing. Slowly, shushing her with a finger to his lips, he removed his hand from her mouth, then gently, tentatively, he slid off the top of her.

  Weeping now in short, hiccupping breaths, Sabrina refused to look at him. He tossed her purse in her lap, making her jump, then politely said, “Clean yourself up, dog.”

  3

  When they arrived at the party, most of her blood had been wiped off the side of her neck, but some had soaked into her black dress, which was fine because the color made it nearly unnoticeable. She reapplied her lipstick, but with a shaky hand she hadn’t done as good of a job as she’d hoped for.

  Walking hand in hand with that asshole up the driveway of a multi-million dollar golf-course estate, she put every last ounce of energy and acting into generating an easy smile and an air of unruffled ease. It didn’t work. When they passed the guards and walked inside, they were met by a well-dressed man with hair like a bum, two diamond earrings, and a pair of rectangular pseudo-intellectual eye glasses.

  “Lennox, Sabrina,” he said, smiling, “I’m Douglas Stonewick, and I’m pleased to have you here.”

  Lennox shook the man’s hand while Sabrina held her breath in revulsion. Unlike her “boyfriend,” this man smelled horrible, truly salt-and-pepper repugnant.

  “Looks like you tenderized her a bit before the get together,” he said with humor in his beady green eyes and a predatory grin upon his lips. Reaching out, he swiped a finger across her neck, just below her ear and drew back a smear of blood. He sniffed it, then put his finger in his mouth and tasted her.

  “How enchanting,” he said, then stepped out of their way and waved his hand like a showman inviting company into the castle. “Make yourself at home.”

  A blonde girl about Sabrina’s age with average features but a great body l
inked arms with her and said, “We need her in here, Lennox. Everyone else is gathering in the dining room and on the terrace. Offering’s first, though.”

  “Thank you, Angelica,” Lennox replied warmly. “You look delectable this evening.”

  The girl smiled then whisked Sabrina away to do…whatever it was she was supposed to do at gatherings like this.

  In the kitchen, a robust woman with coarse skin, a broad Polish accent and sharp nails on sausage fingers looked at Angelica, then at Sabrina and said, “Why are you two wearing clothes?”

  “She’s new to this,” Angelica explained, which caused a great uproar in the woman. Sabrina’s heart couldn’t take much more of this. But then it happened. Angelica unzipped her dress along the side in front of the kitchen staff and God, and slipped out of her evening attire with nothing to cover her beneath. Her body was better than Sabrina first thought.

  Am I supposed to do this, too? Sabrina wondered. The dread mounted on top of the excitement of being beaten, and this left her feeling manic, on the verge of a full-scale meltdown.

  Angelica was looking at Sabrina, but she was looking at the kitchen staff, who weren’t looking at them. They knew the girls were undressing, but none of them looked? Was the staff trying to preserve their modesty, or were they used to this sort of thing among the upper crust?

  The Polish woman popped her head back in the kitchen, saw Sabrina dressed and clapped her hands so loud everyone jumped. “Now, girl!”

  “Zipper’s…in the back,” Sabrina told Angelica in a voice she wasn’t even sure she had.

  The zipper came down, the dress came off, and all she could do was stand there and cover herself. She snuck a glance at the Polish woman who was looking at her with a slash of a mouth and disgust in her eyes. In her native tongue, in a tone that was as scathing as it was clipped, she cursed and shook her head in dismay.