by Novo Dé
“Well count my lucky stars; didn’t think it was gonna be today that I’d see your cute little face around here after our little text exchange,” she says with a touch of southern-bell flare.
“It needed to be today.”
“Rough day?” she says scrunching up her nose.
I begin to nod, slowly.
“Rough morning,” I confirm.
Lydia takes in a deep breath, and looks up at me and smiles.
“Oh Tybalt. My little Tybalt,” she says looking me up and down. “My favorite little client. It’s been too long. Really. I’ve missed you. Tell me – How are things these days?”
“Not too great.”
“Yeah, I heard. Just thought, maybe, things were a little better by now.”
A little shocked to hear she already knew, I remain silent for a moment.
“Oh c’mon, you know I hear everything Tybalt. I have to. It’s my job,” she interjects, reading my expression.
I nod again, slowly.
“Well that does help to explain a little more as to why you’re here today, at my doorstep. So let me guess. The usual, little No-Name?” She finishes with a flare of her brow and spunky turn of her head.
I nod again, slowly.
“Oh Tybalt. I thought you were off the stuff,” she says squinting her eyes at me. “Or at least trying to quit.”
“Yeah me too.”
And Lydia smiles, lips together.
“Old habits die hard, right?” I start again.
Lydia smiles even bigger, full and bright now.
“Lifestyles, Tybalt, lifestyles die hard, especially after you find yourself.”
And we both smile.
“So what can I do for you today?”
“I was hoping to come in, and then…down.”
“Straight to the point. I like that. Alright then. Follow me.”
She turns and walks into the entryway of the House, which is a small rectangular room in and of itself, as I follow behind, the first of many security clearances. We don’t walk but a couple of feet into the house before she turns around and puts a hand out towards me.
“Alright sweetheart, that’s far enough,” she says smiling. “First things first, I’m going to ask you the same question I always ask you before entering the House. And remember, I’ll know if you’re lying.”
Lydia specializes in analyzing micro-gesture discrepancies.
“Of course.”
“Does your presence today have anything to do with the police or any form of law enforcement that we should be aware of?”
“No ma’am.”
Lydia stares at me, deep into my eyes, analyzing, her head slightly off to the right. Holding my gaze, she then slowly begins to turn her head to the left, her lips slightly parting.
“Excellent,” she says, smiling again. “CHARLIE?”
“Yes ma’am,” a female voice quickly responds, from above.
“Have you had enough time to analyze the imaging data?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“And? Find anything?”
“No ma’am. He’s clean.”
“Excellent.”
Each House is equipped with built-in imaging technology in the framing of all doorways that are situated between the outside and the inside. All applicable imaging technology is utilized: X-Ray, MRI, CT, you name it.
The gatekeepers are looking for recording devices, weaponry, guns, knives, really anything that the House owners don’t want in the House, be it a cop posing as a buyer, or a gangbanger just wanting to start some shit with someone on the inside.
“Alright now drink this,” she says, handing me a small plastic cup with a blue liquid.
“What’s this?”
“Oh right. You haven’t heard. Well, at about the same time as your little trial there, the DEA5 began to utilize moles with what we’ve been calling, ‘Smart Tissue,’ nanotechnology that has video and audio recording capabilities that can be hidden in the body’s organ systems, like skin for instance. Undetectable with our doorway imaging. Luckily, we caught wind of this from the people we have working on the inside before any of our House operations were compromised.
That little blue drink you’re holding there. Yeah, that’s our defense against it, our counter-measure if you will, to their technology. Complementary nanomachines found in that liquid, linked to our House’s CHARLIE, allow us to detect if you have any of this ‘Smart Tissue’ in your organ systems, specifically your cardiovascular or cardiopulmonary systems.”
“But I don’t have any—”
“Oh Tybalt. This, this isn’t up to debate honey.”
“I, I’m just not sure about…”
“Look. I’m going to make this real easy for you. You want into the House right?”
I nod.
“Well then. Down the hatch.”
No one was allowed to stop the movement.
Realizing I have no choice, I drink the liquid and wait for a moment.
Nothing happens luckily.
“See. You’re just fine.”
“Guess so.”
“CHARLIE?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Find anything?”
“No ma’am.”
“Excellent. And trust me, if the FEDs ever do get to you, never agree to that kind of Immunity; you don’t want to know what we do with the people we find with ‘Smart Tissue,” she says, smiling again. “It’s to the seventh circle with them.”
“No ma’am,” I say back to her.
Fuck. That.
“Ok, one last thing, and then we’ll get to payment. I need to, ah, take a little time to analyze your DR Image from the last 6 months.”
“Of course.”
Lydia taps her NCL, and grows silent, concentrating on analyzing my entire existence from the last half of the year, moving through all of the Imaging Algorithms to look for even the smallest detection that I could be a threat to the House.
House gatekeepers utilize the highest DRIs they can hack, usually a federal issued DRI. Watching her, you can tell she does this for a living, everyday – the musculature in her ocular orifices strong – you can barely even make out any of the tics, barely any of the eyes gestures, movements, the lids barely oscillating.
“O.k.,” she says to me with a warmth in her voice. “You know you’re smart Tybalt, being ‘out’ for so long, you ah, you’re imaging, you’re like a ghost in there.”
“So we good?” I say back.
She nods.
“We’re good. So. How would you like to pay today Tybalt? The usual?”
“Yeah, just put it on my credit, under one of the department stores close.”
“You got it.”
She taps her NCL a couple of times, blinks repeatedly, and then looks up at me, and smiles again.
“Right this way.”
I follow her into the main core of the house, the area that splinters off into all of the regular rooms of a home, connecting the kitchen, dining room, living room, a staircase, and then of course, the backyard. In front of the backyard door lies two security guards, one on each side. Another fucking cliché to behold. Both are in black suits, with black ties, bald, with matching cream ear pieces. Their gaze sharp.
“Boys you remember Tybalt,” Lydia says as we approach the guards.
Both say nothing, simply nod at me.
“Tybalt, you mind moving over to the side a bit?”
I do as instructed.
“Alright boys…” Lydia says to the security guards.
Both look at each other and tap their respective NCLs at the same time. A hatch opens from the floor, downward, revealing the loveliest of staircases, draped in red plush.
Lydia looks at me. And then motions to the staircase with her arm and hand, looking back at me to meet my gaze, leaving her arm extended.
“Enjoy,” she whispers.
Walking down to the first circle of the House, I have the same feeling I always have on my descent, which is to sa
y, the opposite feeling I have when walking up to the House from the outside – a strange calm.
It’s an otherworldly sense of peace, a sense that ‘nothing can do me harm here.’
A feeling of safety; A feeling of being ‘at home.’
Walking off the last step, I look around a bit, take in a deep breath, smile, and then whisper to myself.
“Home sweet home.”
The depths of the House, which is to say, the true Anonymous House, the boring piece of real estate on top simply acting as a decoy, a rouse, to what actually lies beneath, is modeled with nine circular descending subterranean basement levels, a nod to the ‘Nine Circles of Hell,’ found in the first part of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, Inferno.
Each level, or circle, is thematically categorized accordingly with the ‘Nine Circles of Hell’ as well.
Limbo – the first circle – where our journey begins, where I’m standing now, and where I usually reside, is a lot like a high-end New York City Night Club. Dark lighting. Cold colors mainly. Blues, greens, purples, with a hint of red throughout. Leather. A shiny, circular bar in the middle. Large, T-shaped rooms, that off-shoot from the main circular corridor, for a little more privacy. Beautiful, Lingerie-clad men and women, dancing for your entertainment, some in cages hanging from the ceiling. Long-legged, almost model-like, cocktail waitresses. And the boom of music in your ear. However, given the hour, Limbo’s fairly ‘dead’ at the moment, with only a few patrons about. But it’ll pick up as the night lingers on.
Lust – the second circle – is where you’ll find all your sexual fantasies come to life, a level of decadence found only in movies, fictional tales. Here, it’s very much real. The main area is setup much like a strip club stage, for all your, more, superficial needs and visual splendors, whereas the off-shooting rooms contain the darkest of your desires. Feel the need to fuck a teenager. Participate in an orgy. Experiment with bondage. Have an affection for a species outside your own. If you can afford it, anything is possible in the second circle.
Gluttony – the third circle – is where you’ll find the people that seek out their pleasure in the extreme. Here, you’ll find the real drug addicts. The lifers. The kind of drug addicts that not only look for a pill, a powder, a smoke, a huff, a snort, or a needle to get to their high, but also adrenaline, suffering, pain. Self-induced, self-inflicted, naturally, they cut themselves, bleed, brutalize their extremities, their core, their face, gagging when needed, whipping, flogging, binding, and my favorite, suffocation. The latter examples hinting at worlds of that of sadomasochism. But, it goes beyond that world, pushing it to the edge. If you just want a little S&M, stay on the second level. Because these kind of ‘highs’ people seek out is beyond anything else. Remember Lydia, her hooks in her back, for body suspension. She would always say to me, ‘you know nothing of pain, and because of that, you know nothing of true pleasure.’
Greed – the fourth circle – is where you’ll find all the low-life, degenerate, piece-of-shit gamblers. Modeled like a casino, you can find every form of gambling that a simple large room can provide: Poker, Blackjack, Craps, Roulette, all the fan-favorites, with slots lining the walls. The off-shooting rooms provide the lesser known gambling favorites, utilized with CHARLIE monitors: sports, dog-racing, horse-racing, and even fixed-odds betting, for gambling that involves the most mundane of life’s activities, like betting on the outcome of your favorite bull-shit reality t.v. show.
Anger – the fifth circle – is where you’ll find unlicensed, bare-knuckle boxing and mixed martial arts, but of course, with a twist – the match goes on until only one man or woman comes out alive, with no formal rules in the ring. So every match is a death match.
Heresy – the sixth circle – is where you’ll find a black market of sorts, for all the things you can’t get in a store or a mall or really anywhere else for that matter, without the insecurities of an actual black market. Here, you can find contract killers, contract kidnappers, and contract thieves, as well as harvested organs, and rare, precious animal furs that are now illegal to own; I mean if you can think it, you can find it and buy it here.
Violence – the seventh circle – is where you’ll find the real dark shit. The seventh circle is where you can pay to hurt, torture, and yes, even kill, another human being, be it a man or woman, adult or teenager, toddler or even a fucking baby, any way you’d like.
Enough said.
This level, of course, has the most security, is the strictest to access, and the most expensive to even start thinking about. It’s for the richest, most un-human, fucked-up fucks.
Fraud – the eighth circle – is where you’ll find the second black market of sorts, specific to manipulating and/or falsifying documentation, be it digital or the now old-fashioned, but still utilized, hard-copy, as well as manipulating or falsifying digital representation imaging, data found on the internet, or information between neurological communication links. It’s a hacker’s paradise.
And Treachery – the ninth and final circle – is where you’ll find no one. It’s a restricted area, only for the people on the inside, the employees and all the other people behind the curtains running the operations of the House, said to be a lavish, office-like level, where all the strings are being pulled, to make sure the right people are coming in, the money is flowing, and the products always plentiful. It’s like their employee-lounge, said to be equipped with exit strategies for the team in case of an emergency or raid by law-enforcement.
Before acquiring a little Anonymous to fix, well, my fix, I head over to the Limbo bar, to complete my Anonymous House ritual. It’s good to have a warm-up before the big game. Finding a spot at the middle of the bar, I sit and motion at the bartender to come over with a splaying of my first three digits and a nod of my head, held long at the end.
All the bartenders are dressed in black, it’s always black, black formal wear to be exact, from head to toe, minus a suit jacket.
“Sir?” The bartender sounds.
“I’m gonna start with a scotch, a ah, I’ll take ah, Macallan 12-year, please.”
“Excellent choice sir. Would you like that neat or on the rocks?”
“Neat. And then let’s follow that up with a No-Name, low dose.”
“Right away sir.”
Within minutes, the bartender slides me a whisky shaker with my favorite scotch. I always have a Macallan before I partake in the adventures of what an Anonymous House might bring. I think it’s my dad in me. He was always a scotch drinker. Guess there will always be a part of him in me, no matter what, no matter how hard I fight it.
Sipping on the whiskey, I look around to examine my surroundings.
“Home sweet home," I whisper to myself again. My Anonymous House, my...little secret society.
Concentrating on the scotch now, I close my eyes as a world of bliss enters my senses, a unique experience after years of developing a palette. It’s defined by its sweet and smooth nature, and hints of fruit and chocolate. The perfect appetizer for a meal like Anonymous.
And speak of the devil. As I was thinking it, the bartender, not a psychic, simply a well-observer, noticing that my drink is half gone, slides me my requested dosage of No-Name, housed in its own small glass box with a wood bottom.
Anonymous Houses go to extreme lengths to make sure every last detail of their operation radiates with elegance.
Gets you wanting to come back.
Finishing the whiskey, I slide it towards the bartender, and as I’m beginning to slide the box toward my center of vision, a new sensation for the moment takes hold, a call to nature.
I leave my order at my spot and head to the nearest bathroom. You may be wondering why someone like me would leave something like that out in the open. Trust me, no one dare break the rules here.
Walking into the Men’s Room, I make my way to the first open urinal. I always gravitate toward the first available, near the door and the sink, parallel to the urinal line.
And th
is being the umpteenth time I’ve had to drain my bladder, my body and mind of course go on autopilot for the excursion, letting my subconscious drive the motor function of my upper extremities for the expulsion needs of my bladder, as my conscious thoughts are off thinking about the little glass box waiting for me at the bar.
After making sure I get every last drop out, I zip, I button, and tuck, and make my way to the bathroom sink to wash up, my hands first of course, but my face could use a splash as well. It’s the alcohol, the scotch. As I get older, the less is needed to be overcome with that feeling of drowsiness.
After a thorough lather and rinse of the hands, I look around to find a stack of their usually scented, hand towel selections, only to realize that I’ve stumbled into the bathroom at the perfect time when they’ve just ran out and there’s been no new shift in the linens.
No system is perfect.
As usual, when this happens, all us men move on to plan B: whip the hands over the sink to get as much of the remaining water off, equally allowing the air to do a little of the drying at the same time as well, and then a series dabs on the fronts and sides of the pants, followed by large sweeping motions over the buttocks, first the dorsal side and then the palmer.
Knowing the linen situation, I keep the faucet stream light, applying a little to my fingertips for my face; it’s gonna have to be a light glaze of water over a full splash. If I focus on rubbing my eyes well enough, it usually has the same effect I’m looking for, that ‘wake up’ feeling.
As usual, when this happens, all us men move on to plan C: A utilization of our shirt for drying purposes. I untuck my shirt once more, place my hands on the inner lining of the shirt, from the bottom, and pull it over my face, fully dabbing my skin from the forehead down until I reach my nose, exposing the top half of my face, my eyes, bringing me to a stop, where I then look into my own eyes in the mirror, and stare.
Breaking the trance, I look down, and drop the shirt back to my waist, but before the shirt completely falls, my peripherals catch something in the mirror, something on my skin, near the far right side of my stomach, right above the waistline. Probably just a bruise, so I let my fingers do the investigating.