Malachi pinned Livia’s wrists together behind her back and yanked her so close she could smell his drunken, drug-fouled breath. “I thought you were something special. Now I know you need to be punished like the rest of them.” She screamed as he whipped piano wire out of a pocket and wrapped it around her wrists. He silenced her screams with long, malicious, malodorous kisses.
Lucas, however—who was wobbling to his feet—tackled him. Malachi was fast, wiry, and fought dirty, but Lucas had the strength of his chiseled muscles. Wrestling on the floor, Lucas threw drunken punches, while Malachi scratched and kicked. Since her wrists were wired behind her back, Livia could only watch. She didn’t even notice the unlocked door swing open.
“Children, get up.” Alan Hakim stood in the doorway. He wore a Hawaiian-print shirt—all multicolored coconut trees, pineapples, surfboarders, and bare-naked women—1960s tie-dyed Levis, and red flip-flops. A yellow straw boater was cocked jauntily on his head.
His pistol was also pointing . . . straight at them.
Oh no, Livia thought, it’s a goddamn, no-shit .45-caliber Magnum Desert Eagle—the most powerful automatic pistol made. Her crazy, gun-fetishing ex—the creep who had played Perchik in Fiddler on the Roof—had one just like it.
The room froze.
“Malachi. I expected to see you here. I saw you pawing on my golden girl today.” His voice was as level as the Desert Eagle, but his ruddy face was crimson with rage. “Even went to the trouble of wiring up her hands so you could force yourself on her against her will. I’ll deal with you in a moment.
“But Lucas—this is a surprise. Thought you’d try your hand at taming the vixen, did you? You’re out of your league, son.” His voice wavered now. Keeping the gun aimed at Lucas, he took a sideways step toward Livia. “This minx heeds only real men, namely moi—a man with five decades of proven experience around the feminine gender, a man who can—”
“What are you going to do, you leather-skinned, arms-peddling, al-Qaeda-sucking perverted old pimp?” Lucas snarled from the floor. “Spank her with your truss? She’s been with me all night.”
“Is that right?” Alan moved closer to her, pistol still extended. “Was my golden girl a bit of a tart?” Whipping around, he aimed the quivering gun in her direction, and she whimpered in fear. His voice softened: “Did they seduce you with visions of fame and glory, promising to make you a star? You told me you want to entertain the world.” His voice took on a harder edge. “Let me tell you a secret. No one in this town makes it big . . . unless Alan Hakim says so!”
Trembling, Livia nodded her head in frantic agreement, her eyes all the while locked on the pistol. Its muzzle’s maw gaped big and black as a dug-up grave—a midnight grave. “It wasn’t like that. It was—”
“Shut up!” Alan bellowed. His body heaved with deep breaths, and Livia braced herself for the explosion that was sure to come. But there was nothing—instead, an interminable silence.
She opened her eyes, and then the strangest thing happened—the invincible producer, the man who controlled everything and everyone in his power, lost it. A goofy grin and a faraway look replaced the rage in his expression.
“You know, none of you would be here if it wasn’t for me. Especially you, Malachi, you deceiving, ungrateful, sadistic, heroin-shooting bastard. That sickening schlock you call art has made me a pretty penny—but I’ve peered into your pit viper’s soul. I guess that’s why I’m so delighted to—”
BANG! Alan fired an ear-cracking Magnum slug into the twisted heart of Malachi Chung.
The bullet hole was big enough to drive a Hummer through.
Livia dropped to her knees, shaking. With all her strength she tried to break out of the wire binding her wrists.
“And you, you shit-for-brains piece of redneck white trash,” he growled at Lucas. “When I found you, you were a nineteen-year-old hick straight from the trailer. If I hadn’t given you a chance, you’d still be in the fields of Kentucky picking cotton. I made you! And I can take it all away!”
“That’s what you think—”
BANG! A super-powerful .45-caliber Magnum bullet blew away the gorgeous face of this year’s People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People” cover boy.
“I see you’re a trifle saddened,” Alan said, turning to Livia. “Probably think you should call 911.” Silent laughter shook his shoulders. “Doesn’t really matter now. No use checking their pulses either—or poking mirrors in their mouths, giving them mouth-to-mouth, shocking them with fibrillator paddles. These boys are deader than beached carp, deader than Nebuchadrezzar’s nuts, deader than the dark between the stars. Irrevocably, irretrievably, terminally, totally DEAD!”
A moan arose from Malachi’s crumpled body. His extremities jerked as life oozed out of the bullet wound in his chest. Spooked, Alan silenced him with another Magnum round to the neck. He shuddered, then kicked the lifeless figure. When Malachi failed to react, he returned his attention to Livia.
“Now then! Where were we?” he continued, glancing around the apartment as if surveying it for the first time. “A Hefty bag—do you have one?” Livia nodded, unable to form words, her hands still wired up behind her back.
He darted into the kitchen, haphazardly slamming drawers and cabinets until he discovered the box of garbage can bags under the sink. Fingers shaking, he wiped down the gun with Mr. Clean and the tail of his Hawaiian-print shirt, then dropped it into the bag.
“Yes, that’s it,” he muttered as he sealed the plastic. “We’ll find a nice river for you.”
“What are you doing?” Livia asked.
“Escaping—my jet can be ready in fifteen minutes. A deserted desert island. St. John. No, Fiji! No need to risk getting wrapped up in this hassle.” As he related the plans for his getaway, his speech became increasingly incoherent but his plan still had a maniacal logic to it. Even in extremity, Alan Hakim had a knack for taking care of business—a desirable trait for both a producer and a murderer.
Then he remembered her role in the evening’s misadventure. “And you—you have to come with me!” The brilliance of this solution made him giddy with satisfaction. “Yes—that’s right! We’ll run away together!”
Her breath froze in her chest. “No,” she said, shaking wildly. “No, no, no. I don’t want to go. I’m staying here. I want to act.”
“Acting is clearly no longer an option. Anyway, on our desert island I’ll have no other means of entertainment. You can act for me—only for me.”
“But I don’t want to go to Fiji.”
“Take comfort in the fact that you have no choice. I can’t let you stay here and bungle my escape.” He pondered the situation. “In truth, you’re as implicated as I am. We are in your apartment, and I’m assuming witnesses saw you with that foolish child tonight.” He held up a finger, remembering something relevant. “As a side note, don’t even think about calling anyone or trying to escape. Not that you have the ability with your wrists wired up like that—quite a beneficial twist, I must say. I have several more bullets in this gun and no reservations using them on you should you misbehave.”
He nodded toward her bedroom room. “Now sit in there while I make the arrangements. You have five minutes to decide what you want to take, then I’ll pack for you.”
He whipped out his BlackBerry and started dialing.
Dazed, she sat down on the bed in front of the damaged vanity.
“Lucas,” she muttered under her breath. His star power was no good to her now. “Malachi?” she groaned softly. She would never be his leading lady. “Jenny!!” she wailed mutely. But for once, Jenny couldn’t help her. Then, more urgently: “Isis!!”
The goddess appeared, her cheeks flushed with excitement. “This is getting really good,” she said, smiling with mean merriment.
“This is terrible!” Livia moaned. “Do you derive some sick pleasure from watching this?”
“Me and the others—you know, in the heavens,” she explained, “we’re all loving it. S
o dramatic.”
Livia fumed, imagining gods and goddesses enjoying her life’s tragedies like they were a soap opera. But there was no time for carping complaint.
“What do I do next?” Livia asked.
“Well, it seems to me you have three choices,” Isis said. She flashed a toothy grin. “I love it when things come in threes.”
“Yeah, well, what are they?”
“Simmer down, Liv. First, naturally, you could take him up on the offer. Be whisked away in his private jet, settle down for a discreet life in Fiji and whatnot.”
“But I don’t want to live on an island! I want to make the movie! I want to make a hundred movies!”
Isis whistled low. “Well, I can tell you this: With the director and Julius Caesar dead and the producer on the lam, you’re gonna have to put that dream on hold. So on to option number two.”
Livia closed her eyes, still trying to assess the situation.
“Hey!” Isis snapped delicate, manicured fingers dangerously close to her eyes. “Keep it together! Option two. You refuse. You could escape—maybe out this window. But he said he’ll kill you, and after what you just saw, I wouldn’t take that threat lightly. Anyway, you’re on the third floor. I doubt you’d make it in one piece or even alive. And even if you do—well, I have a feeling he’d hunt you down. He’s obsessed with you now, and of course, you might always rat him out. Especially seeing as how you’ll be all over the tabloids after the paparazzi photographed your lovefest tonight. The cops will be on you like a bad smell.”
Livia groaned. “Can’t you make this go away?” she implored. “You didn’t tell me it was going to be like this. You didn’t say things would go all wrong!”
Now Isis’s eyes burned bright with anger. “I didn’t tell you what? I gave you ultimate beauty, ultimate magnetism. I gave you exactly what you wanted. You’re gorgeous. You’re seductive. Men give you anything you want. Isn’t that precisely what I promised you? Didn’t I also tell you the inviolable truth of invincible pulchritude? It is invariably, inevitably, unavoidably, irreparably, inextricably, incomprehensibly . . .”
“Bloodthirsty,” Livia whispered.
“. . . bloodthirsty,” Isis repeated.
“Yes, but—”
“But what?” The goddess’s eyes were now as hard as green glittering diamonds. Looking into them was painful. “You mortals can’t figure out what you want, not one of you. No wonder my old friend Circe turned you into pigs.”
Light-headed, Livia tried to organize her thoughts. “The third choice! You said I have three choices—what’s the third?”
Isis regained her serenity. “Ah yes, the third choice. Sometimes in circumstances such as these a terminal option is called for.”
She shook one hand briskly and stroked the palm with the fingers of the other. A thin snake appeared—brown and white with vertically pointed pupils bisecting the eyes on the sides of its head. She gazed fondly upon it before holding it to her face for a gentle kiss.
“Cleopatra used to amuse herself by testing poisons on prisoners and animals. She deemed the bite of the asp the least terrible way to die. Its venom brings heaviness to your body, without spasms of pain.” She moved her eyes from the snake and leveled them with Livia’s. “That’s why she chose it for her own death.”
Livia blanched at the suggestion. “You want me to kill myself?”
“Hey! You’re the one who’s in peril here. I don’t much care what you do. You’ve amused me, but I’m rapidly losing interest.”
“But I haven’t even acted in my first movie!!” Livia cried.
“I gave you a fair warning. My hands are clean,” Isis said crisply.
Alan’s voice thundered from behind the door. “What’s going on in there?”
“Don’t forget—” Isis raised a suggestive eyebrow. “Yours is not the only mortal blood the asp craves.”
Alan slammed the door open. He’d left the ammonia-scrubbed gun in the living room, but the determination in his eyes was no less menacing. The man was living a scene he’d produced a hundred times in movies, and he operated under a sense of control.
“Enough funny stuff,” he said. “You’re trying my patience, precious. We’re going now. What do you need packed?”
Isis had vanished. In her place, the asp sat quite still on the floor. Its wide-set eyes trained upon Livia, it anticipated her decision.
The asp somehow gave her heart.
She would not go down without a fight.
“No,” she said to Alan.
“What was that?” Alan said. He tore the thin comforter off the bed. Picked up a framed picture of Livia and Jenny and hurled it. She ducked and it slammed against the wall, then clattered to the floor.
Lying on the floor next to her was the same shoe that had shattered her mirror two nights earlier. She imagined launching it at Alan, watching it sail in a perfect arc before hitting his head. The sharp heel would slice a gash in his forehead, the blood oozing down his tanned cheek in a ghastly tableau worthy of Malachi’s movies.
Yet she was crippled by the piano wire still binding her tender wrists. Inexplicably the strange words came unbidden from her mouth:
“With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate
Of life at once untie: poor venomous fool
Be angry, and dispatch.”
The asp responded, leaping forward and sinking its venomous fangs into Alan’s ankle. Panic set in as Alan collapsed. In only minutes, the poison would work its way through his veins and the job would be done. The almighty producer had no control over this scene’s outcome.
Three dead bodies and a disoriented, intoxicated young woman: That’s what the police officers who answered the disturbance call on the 6100 block of Hollywood Boulevard found upon storming the run-down apartment. Details were released to the media the next day.
The public became instantly fixated on Livia, and overnight the Bloodthirsty Beauty was a global sensation. She had it all: looks, charm, and an unforgettable personal story. She was history’s loveliest murderess. The press were eating her alive already. They couldn’t get enough of her.
A seven-figure movie contract quickly followed.
The night of the signing, she and Raoul Diabolo, the devilish studio head who had signed her, partied until dawn. Afterward he passed out in the stretch limo from too many Xanaxes and martinis, and she returned to her Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow alone. On her arrival she found something better than a drugged-out besotted executive: a huge expensive gift basket overflowing with red roses, jars of caviar, tins of pate, bottles of Remy and vintage wines.
On top of the goodies was a large, oblong, diamond-studded sterling-silver Cartier case with a note on top of it signed:
“From Your Mysterious Admirer . . .”
It was from Raoul, who else? She knew it in her bones.
Oh, what could it be? Diamonds, gold, pearls?
She fondled and kissed it. She wanted the contents to surprise her. Averting her closed eyes, she held it to her bosom. She popped open the lid, lowered her head, and looked.
But when she lowered her gaze, all she saw was an empty silver gift box and the tail of the asp sticking out of her plunging black neckline.
Like the press and public, the asp was sucking the life from her. It just couldn’t get enough.
Alan’s widow, Toni Harding, slipped out of the bathroom where she had hidden and watched. She bent over Livia until their eyes locked. Her Chanel Number Five smelled like it had been applied with a paint-sprayer. Livia wanted to say so, but the asp’s venom had already paralyzed her mouth and vocal cords.
“I hope you like your present,” Toni Harding Hakim purred. “It’s a gift from me to you for stealing my husband.” She was really aging well. She looked even better than she had in the posters that had plastered Livia’s high-school boyfriend’s walls ten years ago. Has she gotten a face-lift? Livia wondered as the lethal poison coursed through her veins. Toni touched her French-manicured fingers
to preposterously plumped lips gleaming with gloss, then pressed them on Livia’s rapidly paling cheek. She strode purposefully toward the door.
What was that outfit she had on? Even as Livia’s vision faded, the ensemble looked familiar. A long white Grecian dress with gold embroidery, her only jewelry four wrist and ankle rings of simple elegant gold . . . just like the dress and rings Isis had given her.
Reaching the door, Toni Harding Hakim turned and said, smiling toothily over her shoulder: “By the way, doll, welcome to Hollywood.”
Livia wanted to howl with rage, but a firestorm of toxicity was coursing through her throat, lungs, heart, and brain. Still, in her dying mind she mustered a last, mute roar of protest. As her mental screech reached a furious, pain-racked crescendo, Isis and her fellow deities watched the climax of the show in ecstatic suspense. The heavens echoed with cackles as Livia’s spark of life dimmed, faded, and was gone.
Livia Mendelssohn: another warrior slain in the carnage of the savage, endless battle. Such is the price that fame exacts in that dark corner of the Twilight Zone called Hollywood.
EYE FOR AN EYE
Susan Slater
It is often said that “nothing ventured is nothing gained.” Edie Holcomb, divorced and overworked, longs for a weekend away. But her venture takes her far beyond her expectations . . . perhaps, beyond her imagination . . . on a journey to the Twilight Zone.
Sliding behind the steering wheel, Edie started the rental and quickly turned the heater to three before pulling a New Mexico map from the glove box. At least she couldn’t get lost. Ha! Her friends would laugh at that. She had been known to screw up going from point A to B in a straight line. But not this time. She shook out the map and traced the route with her index finger: Highway 64 from Taos, west across the Gorge, cross 285 at Tres Piedras, continue on 64, and follow the signs to Durango. Piece of cake. Yeah, right. What the map didn’t say was beware of wildlife. Was she taking a chance starting out well after dark? Probably. But as usual she was running late. Just another stressor. One she’d promised her shrink to work on.
More Stories from the Twilight Zone Page 30