by Ed Kurtz
Charley gagged on the rising bile in his throat and looked away from the screen. Still, when the screen went white again, he could not help but turn back toward it, knowing full well that more horrors were on the way. He was right. The next show exhibited Elizabeth standing at the foot of the bed, a pained and obviously fake smile barely cracking her otherwise grim demeanor. Presently another woman, who was also completely nude, edged clumsily into the scene, obscuring the frame by stepping directly in front of the camera. A hand reached out and gave the woman a shove. Probably Chester Price in one of his many roles, this time as cameraman and director. The second woman stumbled forward, away from the camera with her back to the lens. She swayed back and forth and then pitched forward. Elizabeth had to grab the woman by the shoulders to steady her. The woman was stoned out of her gourd.
“Elizabeth laughed then, her mouth stretched open to emit what looked like a raucous, disturbingly genuine laugh. Charley sucked in his breath and held it. Could he have been wrong about the falsity of her smile? It did not seem remotely possible. This was, after all, a woman who he had seen being terribly abused in all of the previous loops. Perhaps this one was shot earlier, he considered, but still…
The wobbling wreck swayed again and Elizabeth simply gave her a push so that the woman collapsed on the bed. Her long, blonde hair spread out over her face like a flaxen fan, and her ample breasts bounced while she bobbed on the mattress. Elizabeth grinned wickedly as she descended on the woman like a predator on its prey. Charley grimaced at the scene, caught between righteous indignation and his own distressingly involuntary arousal. He shifted his stance and intensified his frown as if to argue in favor of the indignation with the film on screen.
Elizabeth busied herself between the woman’s jittering legs while the woman undulated and arched her back. Then, in the aftermath of a violent shudder, her hair fell away from her face. Charley lost his balance for a moment and seized the railing on the balcony to brace himself. The laughing, dominant woman was not Elizabeth. The drugged one was.
The one on top was her sister. She was Eve. And she was doing some very nasty things. To her own flesh and blood.
Charley’s face twisted up and his lips and eyes twitched. When, on the screen, a third woman was introduced into the mix, he pivoted to face the back of the theater and glared up at the bright, flickering light emanating from the projector. He did not know precisely who was running this horror show from up there in the booth, but he had an idea.
“Haskett!” he screamed. “Haskett! Goddamn it, get down here!”
No response came from the projection booth. Charley curled his hands into two tight fists and glanced back at the screen. He did not recognize the third, black-haired girl who had just entered the scene, but someone did. Haskett knew. Charley stomped up the steps to the curtain and raced back out to the upper landing. Just beside the soiled crimson curtain at the top of the stairs leading up from the lobby was a well-vandalized steel door marked Private—Employees Only. Charley grabbed the door handle and tried to give it a turn, but it would not budge. Locked from the inside.
“Shit,” he hissed. He sped back through the curtain and around to a spot beneath the smudged glass window from which the movies were projected. Even if somebody was up there, he would never be able to tell from where he stood, the light was so bright and blinding. So he climbed up on one of the red, rickety seats and hoisted himself up on its back. He then reached up to the window, took hold of the ledge with his fingers and strenuously pulled himself up toward the brilliant light. Once he had his arms anchored on the ledge, he determined that the window was on a hinge that opened outward from the inside. Instead, he punched it in, breaking the glass and snapping the hinge. He was still blinded by the incandescent blast from the projector, but even as he pulled himself through the small opening he could not hear anything in the booth apart from the flickering of the filmstrip.
Every muscle and tendon in his shoulders and arms throbbed from the strain of climbing into the booth the wrong way. He leapt out of the path of the light and tried to blink the bright white spots out of his eyes as he scanned the room. There were a dozen or so film canisters stacked all over the place, half as many unmarked cardboard boxes, and at least a week’s worth of greasy burger wrappers that smelled rank and rotten.
The walls were plastered with countless one-sheets and lobby cards, ghosts of double features past, from European fare like Cat O’ Nine Tails and Eyeball to homegrown sleaze like Blood Spattered Bride and I Dismember Mama. For his part, Charley had seen them all. His primary concern now, however, was the fact that there was nobody else in the booth besides him. At least, that was how things looked after his initial visual sweep. After a closer look behind the massive Kintoton movie projector, however, he discovered that alone was a relative term.
There, crumpled up against the wall between the projector and a tall stack of trailer reels, was Councilman Fred Haskett. He was slumped over his legs, which met at the knees before splaying out in opposite directions. His arms hung slack at his sides and his chin rested on his chest. His normally well-coiffed hair was mussed and hung down in strands over his face, but not enough to conceal the small, dark spot in the middle of his forehead. Charley cautiously drew closer and leaned over for a better look. There was a similar, albeit larger spot on the back of his head that was surrounded by flattened hair, wet and matted with congealing blood. A little lower, beneath the exit wound, Charley could see spongy fragments of brain matter and bone splinters caught in Haskett’s oiled hair. He gagged and stepped back. To complete the picture, there was a small hole in the wall behind Haskett, the paint and plaster spiderwebbed outward from the point of impact. Charley narrowed his eyes and took a deep breath.
Weird how little he bled, he thought.
There had not been a shot, not while Charley was there. Also, the yellowing blood in the dead councilman’s hair suggested some length of time had passed to allow it to congeal. Charley was no medical expert, but he knew blood did not separate in a matter of minutes. This guy was dead some time before he arrived, and he did not believe for a second that good old Fred pulled the trigger himself. Whether or not that might mean that the shooter was still lurking somewhere in the Harris he could not tell. But somebody had to have manned the projector.
Charley grunted, tumbled down the rubber-encased steps and blasted through the same door that locked him out from the other side. He could hear the familiar white noise of blaring horns and grinding tires and people screaming at the top of their lungs from the street outside, but within the walls of the Harris itself it was as quiet as a morgue. Charley decided he should check out the lobby and whatever other little nooks or crannies he might find in the place, but first he wanted to have a look at the balcony one last time. He returned to the darkness of the auditorium, past the dirty curtains, and froze where he stood before the curtains touched again behind him.
On the screen, in dull, washed-out colors and almost completely out of focus, the raven-haired girl screamed and thrashed on the bed. Her ministrations were useless; she was tied down in exactly the same fashion Elizabeth had been tied down by Chester Price. Above her loomed Elizabeth, her face twisted with worry and, Charley thought, more than a little sadness. Behind her, Eve slipped her hands through the crooks of Elizabeth’s arms and forcibly curled her fingers around the wooden handle of a knife. It was not a particularly large knife, the blade no longer than four or five inches. Probably a steak knife. Liz shuddered. Eve prodded her sharply in the side with two fingers.
Elizabeth leaned over the terrified girl on the bed, the sharp edge of the blade moving closer to the girl’s throat. But she started crying and bucked Eve off of her, dropping the knife on the floor and rushing out of the frame. The loop then made an awkward cut to a close-up of the girl from the top of her head to the upper periphery of her small, pale nipples. A feminine hand swept into the frame, the knife held tight in it. In an instant the blade dug into the soft, white flesh
just about the girl’s collarbone. Then the hand wrenched it back, cutting the neck open in a deep, ripping swipe that instantaneously erupted in a gushing fountain of dark red blood. The blood spread all over the girl’s neck and chest, and it pooled on the bed beneath her. Her mouth spread open with desperate, dying fear. She was probably screaming, or at least trying to. But the blood just kept on gushing out of the massive wound, spurting in high arcs when the carotid was opened up. All of this happened in the span of a single minute, at the conclusion of which the pretty, terrified young woman was dead.
The imaged fluttered off to white and nothing followed. That was the end. Charley struggled for breath.
“Fuck,” he sputtered quietly. “Oh, god. Oh, shit.”
In the context of the film itself there was no way to determine whose hand had done the actual deed, Elizabeth’s or Eve’s. But anyway he looked at it, Charley was quite certain of one thing: he’d just seen a snuff film.
A real, honest-to-god, bloody murder snuff film, and the girl he had begun to think of as his girlfriend was in the goddamned thing. His legs turned to jelly and his ass hit the cold, sticky floor before he knew what was happening.
Charley saw the Michael Findlay shocker Snuff during his first few weeks of venturing into the Deuce, long enough ago that it seemed like ancient history. The advertising material for the movie proclaimed that it came from South America, “where life is cheap!” The truth of the matter, as any sleazehound worth his salt could tell you, was that some ambitious distributor had just bought a run-of-the-mill slasher, tacked on some obviously fake snuff-like footage at the very end, and then had the balls to market it as the real thing. It was a classic grindhouse move, all the zing was in the posters and the trailers, none of it in the actual movie itself. But Charley thought it was brilliant. Brilliant enough, it turned out, that when Snuff made frequent returns engagements to various theaters across the Square, he was often in attendance.
He thought of the Findlay picture and its distributor’s wild claims now, sitting on the steps in the Harris balcony, and realized that he was never going to see it again. He’d seen the real thing now. And even though only minutes had passed since the horrific thing ended, he knew it had substantially changed him, who he was at his core, for the rest of his life.
As much as he could, Charley shook it off and rose to his feet. Poor Elizabeth. Came to the big, bad city from—where was it? Arkansas?—and she was supposed to have had her sister there to show her the ropes. Protect her. Not usher her directly into stomach-churning underground porno loops and snuff films. Charley crammed his jaws together and went back out to the stairs and down into the lobby. Jesus Christ, Liz, he thought. No one deserves a sister like that.
He made the U-Turn back into the shotgun lobby and immediately saw her. At the very end of the dusky, narrow area, in front of the grubby concession stand, Eve sat in a wheelchair with her hands folded neatly in her lap as if she were simply sitting in church.
“Hi, lover,” she said.
Ursula bounced on the balls of her feet in the backseat of the slow-moving taxi. The guy driving, a Sikh with a long, grayish beard, was considerably calmer. It might have been the thick aroma of incense that filled the car, but it did nothing for Ursula other than make her nose tingle.
“You think you could maybe step it up a notch?” she rasped at him. It felt like a hundred rusty needles were being simultaneously jammed deep into her throat with every syllable.
“Say again?”
“Faster? Can you go faster?”
The driver frowned.
“I do not control the flow of traffic, miss.”
He was right, of course. But a little weaving in and out of the available lanes couldn’t hurt. In fact, it would cut the travel time in half. And, naturally, also the fare. She folded her arms over her breasts and heaved a sigh.
The sigh hurt, too.
• • •
Charley fingered the small handgun in his pocket. Eve wagged a finger at him.
“Tsk, tsk. Why don’t you take your hands out of your pockets there, sport?”
Huge, calloused hands roughly seized him by the elbow and yanked his hands out. Charley tried to free himself, but Stanley’s grip was too strong.
“Terrific. You brought the gorilla.”
“Hiya, Charley,” Stanley said with an ugly smirk.
Thinking back to Stanley’s impromptu apology in front of the Lyric, Charley could not determine if the guy was really good at duplicity or just plain stupid. He settled on the latter. Then, as if he had been reading Charley’s thoughts, Stanley tightened his grip.
“Hey! Ease up, you dumb bastard.”
Stanley replied by way of spinning him around like a doll and punching him square in the mouth with a huge, heavy fist. Charley made a wet, mewling sound and dropped to the floor on his ass. His mouth filled up with blood, most of it from where his teeth cut into his cheek. It tasted like rusty nails.
He spit on the carpet and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket, worried that the bloodstain would never come out of it. He almost smiled at the inversion of priorities, given the circumstances.
Stanley said, “Get up.”
Charley did, slowly and keeping his gaze on Eve. Her face was stone; no expression at all. But she stared right back at him. There was something like hate in her eyes, although he could not begin to imagine why she should hate him. He frowned at her.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he asked her. His tone was plain, as though he was asking where she kept the salt.
“Me? What makes you think there’s anything wrong with me?”
“You’re kidding,” Charley groused, wobbling as he struggled to maintain his balance. “Incest is kind of a big deal, I think. Murder, too. Rape, probably, to judge by the obvious fear in some of those girls’ faces. I mean, Christ—is there anything you wouldn’t do for money?”
Eve smiled. It made Charley flush hot with anger.
“No, not really,” she said. Her smile abruptly vanished as she diverted her gaze to Stanley. “Get that video camera out here already, will you?”
Charley arched an eyebrow and looked back at Stanley, who nodded and made for the door behind the concession counter.
“Give me the gun first, you stupid fuck.”
Stanley flinched. Here was a guy who clearly did not appreciate being called out on his mental inadequacies. He fished a small revolver out of his coat pocket anyway and handed it over to Eve. She curled her small, dainty fingers around the grip and aimed it effortlessly at her erstwhile lover as Stanley disappeared behind the door.
“You gonna shoot me now?” Charley asked angrily.
She gave a short laugh.
“Jesus, I hope not. That wouldn’t make for very good cinema, would it?”
His eyes widened and his mouth hung open.
“Christ,” he rasped.
“I mean, how would you dig all those gory horror flicks you always come down here for if the killers just shot their victims? That’d be boring as hell, wouldn’t it? That’s why those things are so goddamned bloody, Charley. Because sickos like you can’t get enough of the carnage.”
Charley began shaking, no matter how hard he tried to get it under control. He hated that Eve could clearly see how terrified he was.
“That—that’s fake, damnit. Corn syrup and latex. I know the fucking difference.”
“That’s just the point, though. Do you have any idea how many psycho sons of bitches you’ve been sitting with in the dark all this time? How many of these nutcases are twitching in their sticky seats, disappointed with that difference?” She shifted in the wheelchair. “Fake only lasts for so long for people like that. After that, it’s time to go looking for the real thing.”
“And that’s what you provide.”
“Partially, yeah. In the big scheme of things, I provide everything you can’t get anyplace else. You want to see some bitch get nailed by a golden retriever? Won’t see that
at the Cameo. None of the porno shops are going to touch that shit. But I got it. I got girls getting pissed on, shit on, and for that extra peculiar connoisseur I’ve got girls getting cut to ribbons. It’ll cost you, but when a man gets that special itch…”
“You’re disgusting.”
“How am I disgusting? This is capitalism, you moron. The people demand a product, and the entrepreneurial capitalist provides it for them. At a price, of course. That’s America, baby.”
“You make the U.S.S.R. look better and better by the minute.”
She smiled out of one side of her mouth. Presently the door clicked and Stanley came lumbering out with a massive black device, a VHS recorder mounted on a black and silver tripod. He knocked it against the doorframe and then, after clumsily shutting the door, he knocked it on the concession counter. Eve rolled her eyes and exhaled a frustrated sigh.
While Stanley righted the tripod and fiddled with the controls on the camera, Eve said, “It was a hell of a thing getting our hands on that puppy. No more film development. No muss, no fuss. Except for all the blood, of course.”
Charley felt an icy shiver run down his spine.
“Let’s make us a movie, lover.”
Chapter 32
Ursula tumbled out of the cab at Forty-Second and Eighth, having tipped the driver around one hundred percent but far too harried to think twice about it. Her cash flow was at the bottom of her priority list at the immediate moment. Money came and went—if anyone knew about that, it was her. She’d been working the city for almost ten years now, the Square for four, and she was well aware of the fluidity of finances.