We Should Have Left Well Enough Alone

by Ronald Malfi

  “Brand,” the man said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “No brand?” The man spoke with little inflection. He had a tattoo of a spear etched into the soft well of flesh beneath his left eye. “Two hundred dollars.”

  “For what?”

  The man frowned. “You fuckin’ around, buddy?”

  Keanan shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Two hundred to get in,” said the man, “unless you got a brand. Which you don’t, otherwise you’d know what I’m talking about. So—two hundred.”

  “I…I don’t have…” He patted his clothes but knew he had roughly three dollars and seventy-five cents on him. “What is it?”

  Irritated, the man adjusted himself on his stool. “Turn and hit it, buddy. It ain’t my job to play fifty questions.”

  “I’m looking for someone.” The words were out of his mouth before he knew he’d said them.

  “Then it’s two hundred.”

  Is she in there? he wanted to scream. Is Casey Madigan behind one of those iron doors?

  The pumping music through the walls was making his legs weak. He frowned at the large man and turned, moving back through the darkness. He spent the next hour slinking up and down the destitute streets that ran parallel to the East River, his hands stuffed into his pockets, his mind reeling. He couldn’t go home—he knew this, felt it like a premonition. She would be there: on every wall, in every closet, crouched in the cover of every shadow. There…but not there. Not real. Back at home, she was nothing he could touch and taste. Only a figment bent on the destruction of his own sanity. Obsession, he was beginning to understand, was a very angry thing.

  Casey Madigan, he thought. Casey Fucking Madigan.

  In his own unconventional way, he loved her. It wasn’t just about attraction or lust. He loved her. He could feel her absence now like a fatal wound.

  He stopped inside Skiff Laundromat, pumped cash from the ATM machine, and ran back down the length of the alley like a child fleeing a schoolhouse on the first day of summer. His feet splashed through countless puddles; his tie streamed behind him like the tail of a comet. He passed a derelict man with one arm who scowled at him as he ran. As casual as he could be, he moved through the serene atmosphere of Façade and scampered down the darkened corridor like a hound fixed on the scent of a rabbit. As he had done an hour before, he descended the rickety staircase into the underground room. The tattooed hulk was still seated on his stool when he approached the mesh of steel doors.

  “Round two,” the hulk said.

  “I need to see her.” As if he owed this behemoth an explanation.

  “Two hundred.”

  Keanan rifled through a handful of greasy bills, produced four fifties, and held them out to the man. Expressionless, the man folded the bills into his leather wristband, stood, and slid aside a steel bolt that ran the length of the two center doors.

  “Only rule is to follow the rules,” said the man.

  “What rules?”

  “Pay attention.”

  With a forceful yank, the behemoth pulled both doors open, filling the outer room with a surge of thick bass and heavy drums. Lights spun and glittered behind the doors. The shapes of people moved in the darkness. A blast of hot air struck Keanan, forcing him to recoil, followed by the stink of alcohol, sweat, and sandalwood.

  “Welcome to Painstation,” said the hulk, and gave Keanan a forceful shove through the doors.

  Blinded by confusion, an army of hands groped for him, held him vehemently. He was toggled and jerked. Something wet was pushed against the top of his left hand while someone yanked his right shirtsleeve above the elbow. Someone shouted, “Bovine!” and he suddenly felt a world of white-hot pain erupt along the flesh of his right arm, screaming down to the tips of his fingers and burning up to his shoulder, where it exploded in a stroke of heat and pain throughout his chest. Like an injured animal, he tossed his head back and howled. He could smell the stink of his own burning flesh.

  Someone grabbed a swatch of his hair, yanked his head back until a patch of hair came out. He screamed. Music drummed through his body. Through bleary eyes, he managed to make out a black-hooded figure before him. Something was held up and glistened with iridescent light: a hypodermic needle. Moaning, he tried to struggle free of their grasps, but it was useless. A pair of hands stabilized his head. He felt the needle penetrate the flesh at the base of his neck and draw blood.

  Screaming, he brought his arms up to his face, ready to fight the figures off him. But just as quickly as they had appeared, they vanished. Behind him, the steel doors slammed closed. In front of him, the darkness was crisscrossed by intermittent patchworks of light, pulsing to the droning bass-and-drum music. Shapes—human shapes—twisted and writhed in the blackness ahead of him. His heart skipped with each downbeat of the drum. Moving slowly against the wall, he made his way through the rave, his body jolted several times by fleeting shapes in the smoke.

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he crossed into a narrow antechamber that amplified his breathing. In pain, he curled against the stone wall and rubbed the scorched flesh of his right arm. It was swollen and tender and hurt like hell.

  What the hell is this place?

  He found it difficult to summon Casey’s face and body in a place such as this. Somehow, even in his mind, her perfection was corrupted by the stone walls and reams of incense smoke. He grappled with the fleeting visage of her face in his head, felt it slipping, slipping, gritted his teeth like an animal. Could he let her slide, let her get away? How could he go home then? How would he breathe?

  The passageway emptied into a black, concrete room cramped with velvet sofas and ornately carved statues depicting various sexual acts. The room smelled of lighter fluid. Iron vats hung from chains in the ceiling, draped with burning oil rags. A number of people littered the floors, sofas, and walls, coupling to beat the devil. To his right, a nude couple gyrated against each other like some refined piece of machinery. Further in the room, a shirtless obese man in checkered slacks had his face buried in the crotch of an impish older woman. In a throng of ecstasy, the woman moaned and ground her hips into the fat man’s face while twisting the twin bulbs of her nipples between her fingers. A third cluster of people—four or five of them in all, predominantly male—quivered against one another, their bodies accessible and erect, the amalgam of their bodies a mass of floating hands and rigid sex organs.

  Head down, Keanan pushed his way through the room to the corridor at the opposite side. A redhead with bad teeth wearing a leather basque nudged past him, leading a naked older man along with a leash attached to his testicles. “Siddy is in for the shit this time,” she muttered to no one in particular and grinning ear to ear.

  Keanan looked ahead and caught a glimpse of Casey Madigan passing in front of the doorway at the end of the hall. His breath seized. It was like a rush of energy—enough to revivify his mental image of the woman. He’d been wrong—her perfection was still strong here, even among the living refuse. And it was enough to get him moving again.

  He hurried to the end of the passageway and found himself in a small, box-shaped room that reeked of urine. A group of naked bodies had gathered in one corner and were administering electric shocks to some woman’s genitals. One of her tormentors cracked a whip along the backs of the other tormentors, drawing blood and shrill cries. He turned away in repulsion.

  Casey had disappeared behind yet another door.

  Is this deliberate avoidance? he thought. And would he ever be able to punish Casey for any intentional mistreatment directed at him? He tried to imagine Casey with metal plugs clipped to her labia while he toggled the switch to send current into her body, to rape her with current, but the notion only caused him to grow weak. He felt his crotch tighten.

  Someone bumped his shoulder, hissed at him with porcelain fangs. Shuddering, he pushed forward and slipped through the door Casey had vanished behind.

  He stood in a cylindri
cal hallway with a grated floor and a row of folding chairs against the wall. A number of chairs were occupied, mostly by people who looked very much like—

  Like me, he marveled. They look like me.

  Suits and ties and floral-print dresses. Casey was not here. There was a second door at the other end of the room. Had she gone out the other side? Reeling, he felt like Alice chasing the white rabbit.

  The small man in the chair beside him nodded timidly in his direction. “Lights are harsh.”

  He only stared. “Beg pardon?”

  “The lights,” the man repeated. He pointed to the bright fixtures just above their heads. “Very harsh. Hurts your eyes, coming in from the dark like that. I know.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Have a seat.”

  “Did you see a woman just come through here?”

  The man rolled his shoulders. “Seen lots of women. What’s your name? I’m Craig.”

  Keanan looked at him. He was a slight, almost comical man, with great knobby temples and huge eyes swimming behind the lenses of his glasses. He wore a tan blazer and a crooked brown necktie, dotted with what appeared to be mustard spots.

  “What is this place?” Keanan asked. Peering down the row of foldout chairs, he saw their occupants sitting motionless, their eyes focused on the blank tiled wall in front of them. Could they see something he could not?

  “Waiting room,” said Craig.

  “For what?”

  “Sim-Sim.”

  “The fuck is that?”

  “Simian Simulation. Have a seat. Wait shouldn’t be too long tonight.”

  A bit cautious, Keanan eased himself into the chair beside Craig. The small man proffered a delicate hand, as if to shake. Keanan didn’t take it.

  “Craig,” the man repeated.

  Agitated, he said, “Keanan.”

  “Craig’s not my real name, of course. No one here uses their real name.”

  “Right,” Keanan said.

  “Oh.” Craig’s eyes widened, his thin lips forming a surprised circle. His skin reeked of Skin-E-Dip ointment. “That explains it.”

  “What does?”

  “Your arm,” Craig said. “The brand is new. You can tell the way the flesh puckers up like that. See the difference?”

  Craig rolled up his right pant leg. He exposed a burn-mark in the shape of a gothic “P.” The mark was blue-black and flush like a tattoo. Keanan examined his own mark. It was the same as Craig’s, only more vivid. The skin surrounding the brand was red and inflamed, puffed out to nearly the size of a golf-ball.

  “I’ve been coming here for a year now,” Craig said. “You’re obviously new. That’s what I meant.”

  Keanan peered down the length of the room. Like zombies, the people only stared straight ahead.

  “Why the hell do you come here?” he asked.

  Craig offered a timorous half-smile. “I’m sorry?”

  “This place.”

  “Painstation,” Craig said.

  “Painstation,” Keanan repeated. In his mind, all he could see was the vague, capering form of the woman he loved—the object of his deepest obsession. In the event of a sudden romance, what would she allow him to do? Would she let him do it all? He’d want to taste, to inhale every inch of her body, every part, and to do so with no reservations. He would love her body in any presentation.

  “I come here just for the simulation,” Craig said. “I’m not like those others out there. I don’t think I could ever be that way. But simulation is different. Let’s us all be as free as we used to be, as we ever wanted to be.” He chuckled nervously. “Almost like a blessing, in this crazy world run by kings and politicians.”

  The door at the opposite end of the room opened and a beefy-looking figure dressed in a black cloak and hood stepped inside. He tapped the closest two zombies on the shoulder and motioned them to follow him back through the door. They did without a single word.

  “Who’s that?” Keanan whispered. “Death?”

  Craig laughed nervously, twisting his fingers in his lap. Keanan caught the slight bulge of an erection there and quickly looked away in disgust.

  “You’ll like it,” Craig said, his voice cracking. “It’s really something else. It’s like nothing in the world you’ve ever seen. Nothing like you’ve ever been a part of. Ever been skydiving?”

  Confused, Keanan shook his head. “You?”

  “Gosh, no,” said Craig. He ran a nervous tongue along the length of his upper lip and adjusted his eyeglasses. “Don’t need to. This is much better.”

  “Sim-Sim,” Keanan mused.

  “It’s something so special,” the strange little man reiterated.

  The door opened again and the man in the black cloak stepped into the room. This time, he walked the length of the row of chairs, eyeing those seated before him through the nylon veil of his hood. He paused in front of a plump woman wearing a large gold cross, pointed at her. She stood and moved toward the door, exited the room. The cloaked Goliath continued down the row and stopped between Craig and Keanan. His index finger professed itself, hung in the air like an unfinished thought, then pointed to Craig. Silently, Craig beamed. Goliath’s hand rotated and the finger then fell on Keanan. In a twirl of robes, the cloaked hulk turned and advanced toward the door again.

  “Come on,” Craig said, visibly excited. “It’s both of us!”

  Keanan stood and followed Craig through the door at the other end of the cylindrical room. Surely Casey must have passed through here. It could be the only explanation as to her disappearance. Yet, unlike the others—and himself—she hadn’t taken a seat and waited to be summoned. Perhaps she’d been a member for longer than Craig. Perhaps for years.

  This isn’t a fucking country club, he thought.

  The cloaked stranger stopped Keanan, Craig, and the plump woman outside another set of doors. Behind Keanan, built into the wall, were rows of tiny numbered lockers. With that same pointing finger, the cloaked stranger presented each of them with a number: “Seventeen,” to Plump Lady; “twenty-two,” to Craig; “six,” to Keanan.

  With a subtle jerk of his hooded head, the figure nodded in the direction of a copper plaque sealed to the wall beside the set of doors. He paraphrased the words: “Rules. Only one, and with no exceptions. This is an authentic simulation of simian life. You must behave in accordance to said environment. That is the only rule. Any violation to this rule, be it deliberate or otherwise, may result in punishment or revoked membership from the establishment.”

  Revoked membership from the establishment, Keanan thought. What the fuck is this all about, anyway?

  “Disrobe,” said the hooded stranger.

  As if reacting to the crack of a starter’s pistol, both Craig and the woman began tugging off their clothes. They moved as if in a frenzy, or as if to stay clothed for another second longer would result in their immediate deaths. At one point, Craig glanced in Keanan’s direction. A wealth of exhilaration had blossomed across the little man’s face. His breath came in quick, excited gasps. Beside Craig, the plump woman had stepped out of her pantsuit. She stood there naked except for her tremendous bra, her ample thighs pitted with dimples, the swell of her belly a network of red stretch marks. Her crotch was a wiry cloud of bristling pubic hair.

  “Disrobe,” Craig muttered beside Keanan. He was tugging his knobby knees out of his slacks. “Hurry.”

  Do it, that same prodding voice inside his head said. Casey Madigan did this very same thing, you know. We’re all a part of each other.

  With some reluctance, he began to undress and to place his clothes in Locker 6.

  A moment later, the three of them were standing before the cloaked gatekeeper as naked as newborns. From the corner of his eye, Keanan could see the stirrings of an erection between Craig’s legs. For some insane reason, it reminded him of childhood fishing trips to Saratoga Lake with his father.

  “Twenty minutes,” the cloaked figure said. He spun a combination lock on one of
the doors. Keanan heard the tumblers slide. The gatekeeper grabbed the steel handle on the door, depressed it, and pushed the door open.

  Again—more heat. But filled with moisture. Rainforest. A mist seemed to roll in through the doors. Eager to begin, both the plump woman and Craig hurried through the opening. Keanan tried to follow their example, but moved much slower. When he crossed the threshold, the doors were closed on his back. He heard the lock click.

  Before him lay a rainforest wonderland.

  For all he knew, he’d just been transported to the Amazon. Immense tropical trees, looming like towers, blotted an artificial sky. Wild ferns grew from the dirt at his feet. Before him, a slight decline in the earth led down to a carpet of lush grass and underbrush which, in turn, gave way to what looked like a mile of dense forestry. With the exception of the wall to his back, he could make out no other visible form of human construction: no walls, no ceiling, no flooring, no vents, no windows. Above him was actual sky—or so it appeared. And the light all seemed to be coming from a single simulated sun in the sky, almost as bright and as hot as the real thing. In the distance, he could hear running water and the caws of wild birds.

  This is incredible, he thought, standing in awe. There must be acres of vegetation here. It’s Eden.

  Craig and the plump woman were already down the embankment. Like apes, they staggered around incommunicative, dragging themselves through the make-believe forest on all fours. And to Keanan’s astonishment, Craig and the woman quickly attacked each other, dropping to the ground. Shrieking like animals, they commenced in rigorous copulation, their bodies thrusting with such audacity that it was almost frightening. Stunned, Keanan only stared.

  Movement deeper in the forest caught his eye. Squinting, he could see another couple mating in a succession of quick, reflexive hip-lunges. The woman screamed, threw her head back against a tree. Her partner bent and sank his teeth into the soft flesh just above her collarbone. She cried out in pain, her hands and feet clawing at her assailant, though her face boasted a twisted suggestion of rapture.

  He downed the embankment. More couples materialized the closer he got to the body of the forest. He paused once to watch a lone woman crouch, defecate on the ground, then scurry away.