by Bryan Smith
Dedication
For Lady Dynamite.
Chapter One
Austin, TX
One month ago
The pain was getting worse by the moment. Or at least that was how it felt to Quincy Carter some three hours into his ordeal at the hands of the three crazy chicks he’d had the misfortune to run into at the Dirty Halo Saloon.
The Dirty Halo was a lowdown Austin dive long frequented by lowlifes and bikers. In recent years, however, it had become increasingly popular with hipsters. They dug the noir vibe and the cool retro music on the old-fashioned jukebox. The soundtrack was oldies and rockabilly, the latter in the form of both vintage tunes and new stuff from bands carrying on the tradition. You couldn’t walk into the place these days without feeling as if you had stumbled upon an open casting call for a parody of a 50’s juvenile exploitation film. Two out of every three dudes in the place would be sporting chain wallets and pompadours. The rest would be affecting the greaser look, with slicked-back hair and leather biker jackets. The chicks mostly rocked the pinup look. Vintage dresses and heels, flawless hair, nails and makeup.
As a Dirty Halo regular going back to the late 80’s, Quincy had observed the formerly sleazy joint’s evolution from scary dive to hip hangout with a mixture of bemusement and resigned dismay. Many of the old school regulars had stopped coming around. Some, yeah, because they were just dead, but a lot of guys hadn’t been able to stomach the new poser vibe. But Quincy still dropped in once or twice every week. Partly because old habits die hard, but mostly because of the women. So many of them were beautiful in an almost otherworldly way, like images of old time Hollywood glamour somehow brought to life. Quincy was decades older than most of them and realistically he knew he had no chance of scoring. Well, old maybe he was, but he still had a lot of lust in his heart. He liked watching the women as they laughed and danced and flirted with the younger guys. He would fix their gorgeous images in his head and later go home and masturbate. Which wasn’t exactly fulfilling, but at least it was some kind of relief.
The only relief he craved now was for an end to his suffering. His whole body was aflame with unrelenting agony. He was bruised and battered. His flesh was leaking blood from what felt like a million open wounds.
Some parts of his body were…missing.
He whimpered and tried to swallow around the dirty sock that had been stuffed in his mouth. The triple thickness of duct tape wound around the lower portion of his head made spitting the nasty thing out impossible.
Their names were Lana, Desiree (pronounced Dez-uh-ray) and Echo. His trio of female tormentors. He’d struck up a conversation with the young women out of helpless curiosity. Though obviously not part of the old school crowd, the girls also hadn’t struck him as hipsters. All three were devastatingly attractive. Dez, a tall and statuesque blonde, had a particularly striking look. She was an absolute bombshell. Lana and Echo were brunettes and were nearly as stunning as Dez.
All three sported a number of visible tattoos. Dez had full-sleeve illustrations on both arms and was also inked in several places on her legs and neck. A lot of it was horror and gypsy imagery—skulls, zombies and sensuous images of veiled women. Another recurring image was the number thirteen, appearing in various fonts and sizes in several places on her body. Lana’s ink was nearly as extensive and just as varied, but the image that most compelled Quincy’s attention was the skull with wings on her chest. Clenched between the skull’s teeth was a thorny rose. Twin images of pistol grips were visible above the waistline of Echo’s denim cutoffs. The impression was of Old West style revolvers holstered in low-slung gun belts. Her tiny, midriff-exposing top made it nearly impossible to look away. She had such a scrumptious-looking stomach. He had longed to reach across the table and tug at her navel piercing.
The girls eschewed the classy retro look preferred by the pinup crowd at the Dirty Halo in favor of distinctly more slutty attire. Very skimpy attire. Shorts and tiny, form-fitting tops that exposed a lot of skin and left virtually nothing to the imagination. Quincy had been unsurprised to learn that all three were strippers.
He had enjoyed the early part of his interaction with the tattooed bombshells. They were funny and they laughed at his jokes. At the time he had been so proud of himself for having the guts to approach them. It had been early evening, and he had been a little liquored up already, as usual. The Dirty Halo wasn’t yet as packed as it would be later and he’d been unable to keep his eyes off the dangerous-looking yet wildly gorgeous girls, who were sitting at a table by the window. So he knocked back another shot of courage and sauntered over to introduce himself. Instead of making fun of him—as he’d expected—they invited him to sit and drink with them. And things had gone smashingly until he made the mistake of fixating on Echo’s odd name.
“Is that your real name?” he’d asked her.
An expression of boozy mirth froze on her face. “What do you mean?”
The other girls got real quiet.
Though aware of the dizzyingly abrupt shift in their demeanors, he had been a touch too intoxicated to perceive the need to back off the subject. Surely it was no big deal. He figured it was the kind of thing she must get asked all the time.
So he had fixed Echo with a supremely goofy grin, placing a cupped hand to his ear as he said, “Echo-echo-echo…” He laughed in a way that was too loud and too desperate. “It just doesn’t seem like it could be anyone’s real name. You know?”
Echo and her friends just stared at him in utter silence for at least a full minute after his joke fell flat. In retrospect, the smart thing to do at that point would have been to apologize and get out of there. But that desperate part of him hadn’t wanted to give up on making friends with the sexy trio. So he just sat there, sweating and wilting in the silence.
Then, at last, Echo laughed. “That’s pretty funny, Quincy. I’ve never fucking heard that one before.”
“I’m s-sorry,” he stammered, belatedly attempting to apologize. “I just—”
“You just owe us some more drinks. In fact…” She leaned across the table in a way that emphasized her amazing cleavage. “…I think you should buy all our drinks the rest of the night.”
And so things had reverted back to the previous level of boozy camaraderie. The festivities continued for a few more rounds of drinks. And then Dez invited him to party with them at the hotel where they were staying.
Quincy was strapped to a chair in the musty living room of a very decrepit house in a poor area of town. From where he sat, he could see a sagging blue sofa that was missing a cushion. Directly across from the sofa was a boxy Magnavox television with a cracked screen. He saw bookshelves that had once been lined with books and knickknacks. The books and knickknacks had been swept to the floor, perhaps by some junkie in search of a hidden cache of money. Gauzy curtains on the windows blocked a view of a tiny yard surrounded by a chain-link fence. He had glimpsed the shabby exterior of the house prior to being coaxed inside by the girls. How stupid he had been not to realize something was up at that point. Supposedly they were staying in a nice hotel in town, yet here they were entering this shithole in what he knew was a drug-infested, high crime neighborhood. But he had been too in awe of them. Too drunk. And, yes, too dumb.
Fun gave way to horror almost immediately. A savage beating got things underway. He was a big guy, but there were three of them. And they were younger and far more fit. They punched him and slapped him, bouncing him around the room like a pinball. Then Dez landed a kick to his balls that sent him mewling to the floor. She wore white platform go-go boots. He felt like he had taken a cannonball to the nuts. A sturdy old chair was dragged into the room from some other part of the house. They used two entire rolls of duct tape to secure him to it. And then
the real torture got underway. It had gone on until roughly half an hour ago. He had been cut on and beaten so mercilessly that he only hoped for a swift end to it all. He knew they planned to kill him. He didn’t understand it, but he had come to accept it. He just wanted his pain to end.
But they had abruptly ceased torturing him and gone off to another room to confer about something. Then, without a word to him, they left the house. He heard their car start up and drive away.
They were coming back. There was no doubt of that. He could give the police extremely vivid descriptions of all three girls. No way would they chance that.
The extended time alone was a different kind of torture. All he could do was think and be perfectly aware of the hopelessness of his situation. He still couldn’t fully grasp why this was happening. He had made a lame joke about the one girl’s name. He hadn’t meant it as an insult. It wasn’t fair he was suffering for something so insignificant. They were psychopaths. There was no other explanation. They were bad. Evil. He had known men like them. Grifters and hardcore criminals from the Dirty Halo’s old days. Vicious bastards who’d cut a guy’s throat over pennies. But you didn’t expect that kind of thing from women. Especially not pretty women.
Stupid, he thought. I’m so fucking stupid.
He saw a dim glow of headlights through the gauzy curtains as a car pulled up to the curb out front. Their car. It was a black Impala from the 70’s. A big car with a powerful engine that made a lot of noise. Its throaty rumble resonated in the street outside a few more moments before it ceased. Shortly thereafter he heard a buzz of feminine voices and heels clacking on the sidewalk. Quincy’s heart pounded as the voices drew closer. Then a key rattled in the lock and the door came open.
He pissed his pants as they came inside.
All three girls entered bearing paper sacks. Dez shifted the sack she was carrying from one arm to another and he heard a clink of glass. Liquor store purchases. For them, this was a party. They weren’t just doing this out of a sense of payback for a perceived slight.
They were doing it because they enjoyed it.
Echo pointed at his stained crotch and said something demeaning. Then they were all laughing like escaped lunatics. Which, come to think of it, maybe they were.
Lana kicked the door shut and followed the other girls into the living room. Dez removed several clear bottles from a sack and set them on the floor. Vodka and grain alcohol. All very high-octane stuff. Quincy had to wonder why so much of it.
Echo emptied another sack of what turned out to be hardware store purchases. A hammer. Nails. A Black & Decker power saw. And an acetylene torch.
Quincy’s chest hitched and he struggled to swallow. A bleak, black hopelessness engulfed him. He was in hell. This house was hell. And these three deceptively beautiful girls were Satan’s emissaries on earth.
Lana removed six-packs of cold beer from another sack and nodded at him. “Look. It’s crying again.”
All three looked at him then.
And giggled like schoolgirls.
Echo swept her handbag off her shoulder, snapped it open and dipped a hand inside. It came out gripping the same straight razor she’d used on him so extensively already. It was still wet with his blood.
She made her hips sway suggestively as she crossed the living room. Her eyes glittered with savage amusement. She flicked the straight razor open and grinned. “This is going to hurt. A lot. But be a good boy and stay still or I’ll make it hurt even more.”
She leaned over him and wedged the sharp end of the blade behind his right ear. With her other hand, she tugged his ear outward and began to saw it off his head. And Quincy couldn’t help it. He screamed behind the gag and bucked in the chair. Echo screamed at him in response. The blade came away from his ear and slashed across his face, a deep gash that split his cheek open to the bone. Blood soaked the sock stuffed in his mouth and made him gag. His heart pounded more furiously than ever. His body’s relentless drive to survive pushed him beyond the brink, shattering what little remained of his sanity.
Echo’s pretty face contorted with rage. “I told you to stay still.” She leaned close to him, spraying his face with spittle as the volume of her voice increased. “And I fucking meant it!”
Dez was standing next to her now. Her hands were on her shapely hips, her large breasts thrust brazenly outward. “Do as she says, pig, or she takes an eye next.”
Quincy whimpered.
Blood was still spurting from his slashed cheek. He kept swallowing it as it leaked into his throat. The new wounds hurt. They throbbed relentlessly. Just like all the other open wounds. But this latest cut had gone deeper than most. Maybe he would bleed enough to lose consciousness. It was all he could hope for at this point.
Dez snapped a hand across his face, rocking his head savagely to the side. He screamed behind the gag again.
“Look at me, bitch!”
Quincy wanted to defy her. Wanted to close his eyes and never see any of them again. He wished they would cut his eye out. Hell, both of them. But something primal within him wouldn’t allow him even this gesture.
So he looked at Dez.
But he couldn’t look her in the eye. The intimidation factor was just too high. It was like looking into the devil’s eyes. So he focused instead on one of her countless tattoos, an image of a Halloween black cat crawling up the side of her neck.
“You’re going to obey Echo this time. Nod if you understand.”
Quincy nodded.
There was nothing else he could do.
Echo went back to work on his ear. This time he gritted his teeth and closed his eyes as he expended every last bit of remaining will he had in an effort to remain perfectly still. His eyes came open again the moment he felt the last strand of tissue connecting his ear to his head tear loose.
Echo displayed the severed ear for him, pinched between a thumb and forefinger. Then she smiled and held it close to her mouth. “Hey, pig, tell me if you can hear this. My name really is Echo-Echo-Echo.”
The girls were delirious with laughter after that. The bloodthirsty lovelies looked like a vision torn from the darkest depths of nightmare country. There was a demented, perverse, funhouse aspect to what he was seeing. It almost seemed like a hallucination. Like something that couldn’t be real.
That impression changed again when Echo tossed his ear over her shoulder and came at him again with the straight razor. The blade sliced into the skin just below his hairline. Blood spilled down his forehead and over his squeezed-shut eyelids. Quincy’s whole body shook again as he felt the blade cut in a straight line toward his temple.
She’s scalping me, he thought. Oh, dear God, she’s scalping me!
Echo laughed as Quincy sobbed and swallowed blood.
“Come on, pig, let’s get a look at your brains.”
Quincy opened his eyes and squealed as he felt her start to tug the loose flesh away from his head. Through a vision stained crimson by the spilling blood, he saw Dez uncap one of the big vodka bottles. She took a single deep swig from it. When Echo moved behind him to slide the blade into the flesh at the back of his neck, Dez ripped the triple thickness of duct tape from his face, extracted the blood-soaked sock and jammed the open neck of the vodka bottle into his mouth. He spluttered, choking on it, spitting what he could of it out even as the alcohol burned the gash in his cheek. But it was useless. He couldn’t stop her from jamming the long neck of the bottle all the way to the back of his throat.
“Drink, bitch!” she screamed at him. “Drink it all! Fucking drown, pig!”
It was just the first bottle. Not all of it got into his lungs, but plenty did. Dez had the second bottle open by the time Echo finished peeling his scalp from his head. He tried to resist, but they forced his mouth open.
And he drank and drank.
And drank some more.
Bottle after bottle.
Until he was dead.
Chapter Two
But before all that happened�
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The front door was unlocked when Lana arrived home from a rare afternoon shift at the Booty Boutique, the Tampa strip club where she worked as an “exotic dancer”. She nudged the door open and stepped into a dark living room. She frowned as she groped for the light switch. Blaine’s car was parked out front, same as always on a Monday afternoon. He worked nights at a warehouse, and Sundays and Mondays were his usual days off. It wasn’t like him to sleep the day away on those days. He was usually up practicing his music and trying to write songs. So maybe he wasn’t feeling well. He’d been complaining of headaches lately.
Lana found the silence and darkness mildly curious, but these things did not overly concern her. She was tired from dancing and wanted to nap for a couple hours before heading back out to the club later that night.
Her normal shift was ten p.m. through the wee morning hours. Which was the best shift because all the guys were shitfaced and loose with their money. But today she had been covering for a friend who had a sick baby. Lana was happy to do the favor. Extra hours meant significant extra cash, even during daylight shifts. And you could never tell when some showoff businessman might roll in with some associates he wanted to impress. Today she had hit the jackpot. A big, florid-faced man in an expensive suit and an oversized cowboy hat entered the club shortly after lunchtime. In blatant defiance of local anti-smoking ordinances, he had a big, smelly cigar wedged into a corner of his mouth. Accompanying him was an entourage of several other cigar-smoking douchebags.
It took every ounce of will Lana had not to laugh in the Boss Hog-looking motherfucker’s face when he introduced himself as “Big” Ted Wilkinson and immediately asked for a lap dance. But that was the job. You danced for any and all of them. Didn’t matter how they looked. Fat or skinny, young or old, ugly or handsome, if they had the cash, you had to make with the booty shakin’.
And anyway, this guy oozed money. He took an immediate shine to her, throwing so much cash at her she offered to escort him to a VIP room for a private show. He declined and instead slipped a scrap of paper into her garter. His number was on it. She could call him any time she wanted for a “proper date”. Again, she had to call on a hell of a lot of willpower not to laugh in his face. Not because she considered the prospect of seeing the man outside the context of the club laughable. He was rich as fuck. Of course she would consider it. What was funny was the idea of a “proper date” with the likes of him. Flirting with a tattooed and multiply pierced stripper in a place like the Booty Boutique was one thing. In here guys like Big Ted were hidden away from the judgmental eyes of their more straight-laced colleagues. In public was another deal altogether. Take away all the booze and the showoff aspect and…well, clearly it wasn’t going to happen. But no-tell motel sex in exchange for a large amount of cash?