Into Painfreak

by Lee, Edward

  Alec hooked a thumb at Rob and announced, “He’s with me.”

  The hidden second man leaned out, dressed in black pants, white shirt and a charcoal vest. He was of Asian descent, and Rob thought he might say, “What is your pleasure, sir?” like Hellraiser, but he said nothing as he pressed a stamp against Rob’s hand. It left no visible mark.

  The hulk stepped aside and they walked between him and the Asian to a door at the back of the chamber. As Alec opened it, acoustics changed immediately from a faint rumor of revelry to the mouth of waiting madness. They entered a long corridor lit by cone-shaped lamps, every third or fourth one burned out.

  Alec read his uncertainty as the door slammed behind them with resounding finality. The depilated Andre the Giant safely locked away, the leer returned. “Come on. It’s the last night. She’ll be here.”

  II.

  Rob first saw her at the building he worked, which held both offices and medical practices. He and the other office employees (but not supervisors and managers, no way) were ordered to park in the rear lot so patients could have the spaces nearest the doors. Thus he was literally running late that morning to the lobby, only to find the cruelty of the elevator gods in the form of an excruciating wait. It was empty when it finally arrived. He muttered, “Well, of course,” when he heard clattering steps in the lobby after he pushed for the sixth floor, but he held the door for the late arrival and altered his life.

  The elevator gods smiled on him after all when Anna rushed inside with a final staccato beat of her shoes on the tiles. He first noticed her hair, shoulder length auburn against the silk of an emerald blouse. His pulse settled after his hundred-yard dash but it took off again with the certainty he would like the rest of her too. The door jolted his hand a bit more aggressively than when he first stopped it, as if it resented his first intrusion. Rob yanked his arm away theatrically.

  “Nearly lost a limb,” he said.

  He hoped for a polite smile but was taken aback by her expression. It had to be wishful thinking, because for a flicker he saw pure hunger. Then it was gone, like a sequence of frames cut from a splice of film. He rationalized it as a projection of his own attraction (the polite term in his self-analysis, although “crippling lust” held closer to the truth), and understandably so because it was like the birth of every past crush in his lifetime at once with a fireworks burst of thoughts that all began with I must. He still saw her through the prism of eroticism, and never mind it hadn’t really happened, couldn’t possibly have. The full lips and bedroom eyes conjured an intensity of desire previously unknown to him. Her black skirt was tight, just above knee length, on a figure some would find too thick, even if they’d be only too happy to see the fullness of her chest unhindered. In his euphoria, he failed to ask which floor she needed and she reached to push for the seventh with a left hand bearing no ring. Not engaged/married and not here for a doctor’s appointment. By all rights his smile should have broken his face.

  He forced himself not to stare at her directly and toned down the wattage of his smile from “escaped mass murderer” to “nice normal guy.” He hoped they would get stuck for about six hours, but it was over in twenty seconds. The elevator gods gaveth and tooketh away. Premature evacuation. As he reluctantly stepped out, he bid her a “Good day” with a chagrined smile, an Internet meme lost to the ether. He berated himself the rest of the day for the idiotic exit, imagined her thinking, That’s not a knife…this is a knife. God, what a loser.

  But that feeling remained, like he was either still going up in that elevator to the thousandth floor or else plunging all the way down.

  He had plenty of time in subsequent days to bemoan his limited window for opportunity. For all the imagined conversations and consummations, the divine Red remained more specter than flesh. Seeing her must have been a schedule anomaly because he saw no further trace on his way up or down, lunch break included. Another chance encounter on the elevator would only afford him the first through sixth floors to forge a connection, and asking her out so abruptly could only end in hashtag creepyguy. Especially when his most creative opener so far was “You know what you never see anymore? Guys handcuffed to briefcases.” He was stumped. He needed an in, something better than the weather, the misery of devoting forty hours per week of a finite existence to pie charts and spreadsheets, and the dearth of guys handcuffed to briefcases.

  If not married, he knew odds still favored her having an attachment to another man (unfortunate), or even a woman (also unfortunate—also exciting). All the same he savored the obsession, the mystery of wanting without knowing. His days had already become so indistinguishable from one another in the same way they always did at his jobs before, but now simply waiting on the elevator was loaded with potential. She was an escape to which he may yet find his way.

  Odds and ins.

  He could almost appreciate the irony when he found Alec at his desk days later—an interruption in the routine he loathed, but also an intrusion on his favorite new custom of disappearing within himself in the search for success with the divine Red. They dispatched Alec from the temp agency to act as a floater, so Rob’s supervisor needed him to show Alec the ropes of his daily responsibilities. The process served to underline their banality. Alec looked on with barely concealed boredom and pity. This all reached its nadir on a visit to the copier room where they found the machine inoperable with a message on the LCD to contact a service technician.

  “We’ll have to go up to the seventh floor,” he said, with a burst of inspiration. “They have a copier.”

  He hoped they did, anyway. Regardless, he now had an excuse to go up to the next level and wander the Red territory. They took the stairs up and found no corresponding copier room, but Rob knew just the person to ask. He led Alec through the aisles of a cubical maze, painfully aware of their otherness here and expecting someone to stand point and cry, “Outlander!” He managed to locate the copier at the end of one aisle, and fortune favored him—her cubicle stood adjacent to it. He couldn’t approach her to ask her about it now, at least without looking like a complete idiot, but he would see her for longer than an elevator ride, at least.

  To observe her in such a dull setting seemed somehow profane, but it didn’t stop him feasting his eyes as surreptitiously as possible at the profile view of her in a strapless sage dress. It felt like a real video game power-up, restoring his depleted life force. There was a name plate on her cubicle too. Red the divine was Anna. Knowing her true name enhanced the sacred fantasy. He enjoyed a last lingering look on their way back to the stairs.

  While she never noticed him in stalker business mode, his voyeurism hadn’t gone unnoticed by all.

  “That girl an ex of yours or something?” Alec asked on the way down.

  Rob answered automatically, “What girl?”

  “The only one you were staring at, Captain Creepo.”

  His aggravation was offset by the darker possibility Alec fancied her and wanted to test if she might be available.

  Before Rob figured out a response, Alec continued.” It’s just that if you’re interested, I saw her out the other night.”

  Rob stopped with his hand on the door, frozen by the prospect of his coveted “in.”

  “Where?”

  III.

  Painfreak swallowed them, as if the corridor had been its esophagus. Now—belly of the beast, utter maelstrom. The pulse became a shudder that squeezed Rob’s vital organs with each thud. Music lost structure and coherence at this volume, with only an occasional audible lyric for guidance—Am I not your golden chain? Prisms of light fragmented the interior into a living stained glass window, the moving tapestry of bodies on both ground and upper levels awash in reds, blues, yellows from overhead in rotational bursts of colored lightning. The carnality of undulation and abandon seemed like a detail from a Renaissance painting of Hell.

  Anna was here.

  Anna was here?

  Disparate concepts in the audio and visual bedlam. Not
something conveyable by any cell phone video or selfie.

  Rob wondered who the people were, where they came from. Did they live the sort of sane and measured existence he did, waiting for this bacchanalian reprieve from the meaninglessness which buffeted their daily lives with a quiet fervor equal to the shock and awe on display tonight? It was beyond comprehension he was supposed to go back to work Monday and be complicit in the madness of an orderly single file walk through life on the way to oblivion.

  Rob tried to follow Alec, the pulse now like rapid fire from pillars of speakers. Strobes interrupted the flow of colors and the world became a series of still images, each one to match the throttling beat of the music. He felt disembodied, drifting past all the faces and their range of expressions. Delight, lust, loathing, fulfillment. Some were naked, men and women alike. One man gyrated behind a bent over woman, her breasts dangling and swaying as she bounced her ass around. Maybe it was dancing, but they were also definitely screwing.

  Jizz on the dance floor. Great.

  Rob thought of the times he’d been with women in far less adventurous positions and how he could have superglued his dick inside them and still managed to slide out in mid thrust. He admired these precision fuckrobatics with reverence and envy through a filter of blue light, then red.

  He’d lost Alec. He suspected Alec brought him here simply to enjoy the culture shock, but Rob considered him his guide if not his friend. He pushed past the bodies more urgently, hoping to catch sight of him. There didn’t seem to be anywhere you could stand apart from this carnival once you abandoned the corridor, though there had to be a bar somewhere. Upstairs, perhaps.

  An oasis of normal fluorescent light beckoned from one corner. A bathroom. Rob switched his trajectory. His eyes and ears needed an intermission.

  The attention-span deficit simulation of so many strange faces was like someone flipping through a thick paperback with their thumb in about two seconds. Nothing really registered. So how would Alec have noticed Anna? Rob didn’t doubt he would have himself, but Alec only seemed to see her as merely human.

  If she came, he knew he’d find her. If. He couldn’t picture it, but wanted it. Anything to see her, and never mind conversation was impossible in this pandemonium. They could save that talk for later, back in the other world, because this was the connection that would allow it. It seemed like the entire city populace was crammed inside, but Painfreak was still a curiosity known to few. After tonight it moved on to parts unknown, not to return for months. Years. Ever. She had to be here one last time, and she had to see him. Chances were she had to be into some pretty weird shit to be here, and it could only help his cause for her to know he knew this and was pleased with whatever it was.

  There were cages hung overhead with men and women inside. He’d barely noticed with the challenge of maneuvering through the crowd, but tried to angle so he wouldn’t be directly underneath the one nearest the bathroom. The rapid fire pulse withdrew to an insistent steady beat. The woman inside the cage writhed in rhythm. A focused beam of yellow light dispelled all the subtleties. She wasn’t naked, dressed in black shining leather, but her breasts were exposed and she wore nothing from the waist down. Thin chains from the top of the cage ran down between her legs like cables to a power strip. She slumped against the corner bars (the cage shook slightly and Rob took another couple steps to the side), and the slack on the chains pulled taut. Her labia were pierced with four or five rings and there were hooks attached to them from the end of each chain. She slowly slid down the bars until the chains vibrated like bass strings and dropped to the floor. Three snapped away like living vines, pieces of raw, glistening flesh speared on their hooks, and as the blistering pulse resumed and the strobes reengaged, blood dripped through the bottom of the cage on the heads below. One man stuck out his tongue as though trying to catch the first snowflake of winter.

  Jesus Christ…I should have just learned to hack Anna’s fucking Facebook.

  Rob pushed on, stomach rolling. A new song began on a much quieter note as he reached the bathroom. It was still plenty loud with the open door and poorly insulated walls, but he felt like he leveled up in life—it was his first unisex bathroom. He was relieved he didn’t actually plan to use it when he noted the line of men at urinals to one side with no dividers, all occupied. They stood closer up than usual, probably for a better illusion of privacy. If such a thing mattered given some of the things in plain sight just beyond the wall.

  One man’s head tilted back in a pleasure far more profound than that afforded by an emptying bladder.

  Wait a minute…there aren’t any urinals.

  Another man zipped up and walked out a bit dizzily (with nary a glance toward the faucets). Before someone rushed in to occupy the vacancy, Rob saw three holes in the wall, one atop the other, apparently for the convenience of insertion for differing dick heights. Two fingers protruded from the middle hole with long nails, painted orange and black. Unnaturally long fingers that could probably touch their own wrist. As they withdrew, Rob focused more on the slivers of blood collected below each opening before the sight was eclipsed by the buttocks of a man short on shame and shirt alike.

  The guy nearest to Rob slumped away with a look on his face like he’d banged his thumb with a hammer. The same holes stood revealed, but with shimmering coral flesh packed so tight against that some of it pushed through. The semblance of a soggy orifice awaited, the three access holes dripping a paler runoff. The new arrival literally slid across the tiles on his knees and crammed his mouth and nose into the raw maw. Nature abhors a vacuum.

  Rob sure could have used a toilet to puke his guts out, but he got the fuck out as soon as enough clearance freed up in the bottleneck of the doorway. He moved into the crowd like a man against hurricane winds, looking for stairs. The higher vantage point might help him find Anna.

  He followed along the wall as best he could, refusing to be assimilated. It would have been impossible to miss Alec, the one person standing still when it seemed the rest of Painfreak was being shaken like a snow globe. He was almost glad to see the familiar smirk. Rob worked over way to him. He’d subtitle conversation on his phone if need be.

  Somehow Alec maintained his protected circle for Rob to join him within it. The swarm went on, always maintaining five feet of clearance, as if Alec were an angel showing Rob it was a wonderful life.

  He mouthed three words: I found her. He reached down and a door suddenly opened in the wall.

  Suspicious as he was, Rob didn’t hesitate to go in. It was not well lit but a group people walked up ahead of them, so it seemed safe(ish). It was instantly much quieter in here when Alec shouldered the door shut.

  Once they were far enough from the cacophony to hear themselves think, Alec asked, “Where’d you run off to?” He said it with the feigned ignorance of a swindler working over a rube.

  Rob didn’t bother to hide his feelings. “Man, this place is fucked.”

  Alec laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “I knew you’d love it. I’m glad you came.”

  To Rob’s great annoyance he stopped completely. He was ready to sprint down the passage shouting her name.

  Alec abandoned the smirk for a brief appearance of sincerity. “I guess this is where we part ways, though. She’s gone.”

  “Gone? You said she was back here.” Actually he hadn’t, now that Rob thought about it.

  “She’s down there, yes.” He pointed. The hall stood empty now, as if the others vanished into a shadow. “But much further than last time.”

  Rob thought of the whispers and rumors of that other side of Painfreak, the one never uploaded to YouTube. The one rationally dismissed from the safety of an empty apartment as a ghost story. The one whose truth he would experience in the flesh if he continued.

  “I’d tell you what she watched last time if I thought it would stop you,” Alec continued, “because whatever it is now is far beyond your imagination. I’ll just say if you were turned off back there, you
really won’t like what you find if you keep going.”

  Rob considered. No, he hadn’t liked it—not Painfreak, but also not anything before it.

  Except Anna.

  I must.

  He kept going. He never turned back, although moments later the music surged in volume as if from an open door before the calm returned. Soon there was no pulse at all.

  IV.

  He was certain he’d been this way before, all those years ago. The magic seemed real then and undoubtedly was now. It was almost like he’d had wandered lost all that time.

  The hall wound longer than the building could have possibly held. It curved gradually, almost unnoticeably. He pictured it as an endless spiral drilling deeper into the earth. To either side, he found apertures in the walls with living dioramas of depravity. Their intensity escalated. He saw live sex shows involving gas masks, cat o’ nine tails, blindfolds, ball gags, pulley systems, with brandings, bloodlettings, bukakke baptisms. He vacillated between fear she wasn’t there and fear she was.

  Initially the defilements had their share of onlookers. The participants seemed too intent on the practice of their rituals to notice. There were fewer viewers the farther he went. Only one spectator witnessed a naked man tied down in cruciform to the floor, teased to erection by a dominatrix naked save for thigh high boots. Once his dick pointed to 12 o’clock, she worked the heel of one boot into his urethra. As her slave moaned and writhed beneath, she cocked one leg flamingo-like and stood with her full weight grinding into his stretched organ like she was snuffing out a cigarette. The arch of her foot mashed his scrotum flat. He smiled gratefully through tears of pain. The lone watcher worked his inches.