“Excuse me,” he says, “but who the fuck are you?”
“Umm,” I say, and drive a right hook across his jaw. He collapses to the linoleum, out cold. Still, though, there’s no telling how long he’ll be out, so I grab him by the shoulders and drag him to the trapdoor, letting his dead bodyweight drop hard into the tunnel.
The laundry room is extremely white. Washers and driers are spread out against the walls, each of them currently active. Thank God there had only been the one guy in here. After that last punch, my fist is throbbing.
“Hey, who the hell are you?” a voice says from behind me.
Crap.
I spin around to spot another man in a white apron. This one’s holding a laundry basket, which he promptly drops to his feet. I reach in my jacket and pull out my machine gun, pointing it straight at him.
“Not a word!” I shout, and gesture to the opened trapdoor. “Get in.”
“Wh-what?”
“Get in the hole! Now!”
The man peeks in the hole, then looks back at me strangely. “Why?”
“Because otherwise I will shoot you in the face. With bullets.”
It must be a good enough reason. He sits down and scoots off the edge of the hole, dropping down into the tunnel. “Okay,” he says, “now what?”
“Just start walking. Eventually, you’ll come across a redheaded girl named Molly. Tell her I said hi.”
“What?”
I lean over one of the nearby washing machines, unplug it, and tilt it over onto the hole. It is just big enough to cover the whole thing without falling through.
I can still hear the man shouting underneath it, but he’s much more muffled now. It’ll have to do.
I return the machine gun to my jacket pocket. I wonder how long it’ll be before I have to take it out again. It very well may be back in my hand as soon as I walk through these doors. There’s just no telling.
Well, one way to find out.
I push through the doors of the laundry room and find myself in an empty hallway. So far, so good. Sneaking down the hallway, I turn into yet another hallway. I repeat this action three more times before finding another door that leads into a wide, expansive room occupied by the population of a small town. The chatter of hundreds of people hits me all at once, and I have to take a moment just to recover from it all.
Good God.
I move over against a wall, behind a few tables where people are dining over beer and meat. The room is vast, bigger than I could have ever imagined. People crowd around slot machines and craps tables. Their expressions show horror and disgust, yet they’re so emotionally involved, they can’t leave.
A woman suddenly steps in front of me. She is all skin except for her three-inch long skirt and bra. She practically shoves her tits in my face, blocking my path.
“Hey there, stranger,” she says.
“Uh, hi,” I say to her breasts.
“You lookin’ for some company?” she asks.
“Excuse me?”
“You want your dick sucked, mister?”
“Um...not presently.” I step around her and quickly head toward the crowd of people circling a large steel cage in the center of the room.
The prostitute shouts, “Have it your way, faggot! You and your fuckin’ teddy bear!”
I push myself into the crowd, not stopping until I’m almost right against the cage wall. Inside the ring, two scraggly looking men are fighting for their lives. Both are covered in blood. Their ribs are bruised and beaten. Discarded teeth litter the floor. They have no weapons, only their fists.
I am able to watch for a few minutes before I have to look away. “Jesus Christ,” I whisper. Everyone else is cheering, pleading for more bloodshed. This is entertainment. This is what makes their adrenaline run, this is what makes them hard. Repulsive. The sound of fists pounding against flesh makes me want to vomit.
“Yeaaah, bash his fucking skull in!” shouts a young black kid standing next to me, and my jaw drops.
“Aerosol!”
The kid stops, looks at me quizzically. “Dickhead, that you?”
“Yeah.”
“You remember your real name yet?”
I nod at him. “It was Dickhead after all.”
“Wow, I’m a good guesser,” he says, and returns his attention back to the bloodbath in the cage before us.
This is sick. Vile. I try to push myself away from the cage, but run face-first into a huge biker’s chest, bouncing off him like he’s a brick wall. He looks down at me with his scruffy biker beard, eyeing me up and down.
“Fuck’s the matter with you?” he says.
“This is disgusting, you all should be ashamed of yourself.”
“You ain’t from around here, are you?” he asks, placing his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it tightly.
My reflexes respond instantly, and my knee drives up into the man’s crotch, sending him to the floor. Fortunately, the bloodbath occurring in the cage is enough of a distraction for the rest of the casino’s patrons to not notice my lashing out. I quickly jump over the fallen man and head back out of the crowd, bumping into the prostitute I’d previously brushed off.
She gives me a mean look and goes, “Oh, if it ain’t the faggot.”
Off in the distance I hear, “Larry, what the fuck you doin’ on the floor, man?”
“You’re in the wrong building,” the prostitute says. “We ain’t got no manwhores here.”
“Some jackass hit me in the balls!” the biker yells from the crowd. “I’m gonna kill him!”
I offer a pathetic smile at the prostitute. “Who says I’m one of those, huh?” I say. “You know what, why don’t we go someplace privately so I can prove exactly what I am?”
“Hmmph,” the prostitute says. “Suppose you don’t have any cash?”
I pull out the $2000 casino chip I’d taken from the trench coat back at the river. The prostitute’s eyes brighten like she’s just seen the face of God.
“Mister, follow me.” She grabs my crotch and leads me away from the bar, through a few crowded lobbies and hallways, up an elevator, up a set of stairs, and through a door marked ROOM C. The room itself is quite small, just big enough for a bed, and not a nice bed at that. Just a dirty old mattress on the floor, and against the wall there’s a toilet. A sink is built in next to it, with a mirror right above up.
The woman locks the door behind us, smiling big and stupidly. “Can I see that chip again, please?”
I hand it to her. I have no need for it, anyway. I never plan to spend a dime in this miserable place.
She holds it up close to her eyes, rubbing its texture. “Wow, this sure is something.”
“What’s your name?” I ask her.
“Mister, for this kind of dough, you can call me your personal wet dream.”
“Okay, whatever,” I say. “Look, I don’t really want to do anything.”
“Nonsense!” Wet Dream laughs, and pushes me on the bed. Donut falls to the floor. “I am going to give you the best time of your life. Trust me, honey, I’ll be worth every penny...”
She takes her bra off, letting her tits drop down a few inches over her flat stomach. Before I can respond, she leaps on my lap, pushing her chest in my face. One of her nipples gets sucked into my mouth, and for a moment I can’t even breathe.
Wet Dream thrusts her breast harder into my face, and I’m squirming underneath her, trapped. In an attempt to get her off of me, I reach around to grab her, but only end up squeezing her amazingly crafted ass. Jesus Christ, now I have an erection. This isn’t good, this isn’t good at all.
“Oh, what ever do we have here?” Wet Dream says, reaching down and rubbing her palm against my spitefully increasing hard-on.
“No, please, stop,” I try to say, but her goddamn tit muffles my voice.
She begins unzipping my jeans, reaching her hand inside and grabbing a hold of my cock, and I know I can’t let this continue, I really can’t, except okay, maybe just a
little longer, Jesus, just a little longer—
No!
Regretting it immediately, I swing my fist around and punch the woman in the side of the face, sending her flying off my lap and against the hardwood floor. I sit on the bed for a moment, completely frozen, my cock still sticking out of my zipper.
Wet Dream lies on the floor for a moment, rubbing her red cheek, and smiles. “Baby, I didn’t know you liked to play that way. Oh, honey, we are going to have some fun.”
“What? No...”
“You want to hit me, baby?” She stands up on her knees, lowering her head down on my lap. “I’ll let you in on a little secret...pain makes me orgasm, like, so hard. Hit me again, baby. Make me come.”
Her tongue slides out of her mouth and attempts to make contact with my stupid penis, but I push her away. This time I zip back up.
“No,” I say, “this isn’t what I want.”
“Well, what do you want then, baby?” she asks. “Do you want a whip? I have a whip. I have tons of whips, oh my God, you don’t even know.”
“No! Dammit! I don’t want any whips. I want information.”
She pauses, eyebrow raised. “Information?”
“Yes.”
Wet Dream thinks for a moment, then smiles naughtily. “Oh, I see.”
I sigh. “I doubt it.”
“You want to know about the other johns. What we do. Like, what’s the craziest thing I’ve ever done.”
I shake my head, annoyed. “I would rather hear about your boss. Indigo.”
Wet Dream’s smile dies instantly. “I am not going to tell you what I do with him. That’s private business. Besides, he’d kill me if I talked about what he was like in bed. So, you’re just going to have to want something else, I don’t care how much money you offer me.”
“I don’t care what you guys do together. I want to know about where he is right now. I have some personal business to settle with him.”
Wet Dream looks at me, confused.
“So,” I say, “are you going to help me find him or what?”
“Um...” She scrambles to her feet, shouting, “Help! Guards! Help! Help!”
“Hey lady, what the hell?” I jump up off the mattress and run over to the door, grabbing a hold of Wet Dream before she can unlock the door. She lets out a loud screech and scratches her nails across my face.
“Get off of me!” she screams. “Help! Somebody help!”
“Stop screaming!”
“Help!”
She lashes her hand out at me again, but this time I catch it in mid-strike. “Look...” I say, and bash my forehead into her face. She drops to the floor, limp.
“I’m sorry.”
I drag her body over to the mattress and flop her down on her stomach. Who knows how long she’ll be out. I hope I didn’t kill her. Poor girl, her and her huge boobs deserve better than this miserable haven. Maybe once I take out Indigo, she’ll move on to a better lifestyle.
Well, at least she’s led me away from the crowded areas of the casino. Now I’ll have some quiet alone time to explore this godforsaken place in peace. I pick up Donut, unlock the door, and quietly slip out into the hallway. There are multiple doors, each one marked with a different letter.
I walk down and randomly open a door marked ROOM G. Inside, I discover a naked man tied up against the wall, limbs spread to their fullest extent. A woman wearing black leather is holding a blowtorch up to his scrotum. The man immediately begins screaming through his gag ball, and the woman gives me a mean look.
“Wait your turn!”
I close the door and continue exploring the hallway, vowing not to open another door with a letter marked on it.
This casino is too big, it’s going to take me forever to find what I want. I’ll be wandering these hallways until I’m dead of old age, if I’m not careful. It’s one after another. All of them housing random, ominous doors that I really don’t care to go through. Ezzy isn’t going to be in any of these rooms. Indigo is going to have her someplace secure, someplace a person won’t just stumble upon accidentally.
I find it startling that I don’t run into any casino employees. It seems to me they’d at least be passing through every once in a while, but no, the hallways remain empty except for my own presence.
After a while, just when dementia has begun to fully grow on me, I discover an elevator. There’s only one way to go: UP.
I press the button and inhale dreadfully as the door closes in front of me. The machine gun in my pocket feels heavy and hazardous as the elevator carries me up to my inevitable doom.
Then the elevator stops, and the doors slide open. I walk into a wall of darkness. I can tell by the way my footsteps echo that the room I’m in is large and epic, yet all I can see is black.
Except for the brightly lit object up ahead—the white sun in the center of a galaxy of darkness.
There’s no mistaking the object.
It’s a baby’s crib.
And coming from the crib is a baby’s cry.
chapter twenty-three
Ezzy.
My baby girl.
My legs take off at once, guiding me through the darkness and toward the light ahead. Ezzy’s in the crib. She’s really there. For a moment I had feared all I’d find would be a voice recorder. But no. Here she is, wrapped up in a blanket. Her crying ceases as soon as she sees me and Donut, and her sad face reforms into a smile of joy.
“Da-doo!” she exclaims, reaching her arms up for the purple teddy bear.
Oh sweet Jesus, thank you...
I reach down to grab her, but freeze in mid-motion when the darkness in the room disappears and is replaced with a menacing brightness.
Of course it’s too good to be true.
I jump up, leaving Ezzy in the crib—still safe—and spin around. Ten feet from me stands an extremely tall and lanky man. He’s staring at me with eyes that are completely glazed over with awful looking cataracts.
“Indigo,” I whisper.
“Detective Oasis,” Indigo whispers back.
Behind him are about a dozen pale doctors. Harvies.
They stand between us and the door.
Gritting my teeth angrily, I say, “This is going to end with me walking through that door, so you best get out of my way while I’m still giving you the chance.”
Indigo laughs, but it doesn’t sound genuine. More like a broken machine on its last few minutes of life.
“You have no idea how this ends,” he says. It comes out almost like a snake’s slither.
“You may have everyone else conned, you bastard,” I say, “but I’m not one of your blind followers. Stand aside or I’ll...”
“You’ll what?” he asks, amused.
“I’ll fuck your shit up, is what I’ll do.”
It’s not the best threat, but I’m not a hero in an action movie. I’m just a confused lunatic trying to save his daughter.
“Oh, poor you, haven’t you realized reality is a mirage? Don’t you understand what’s happening, Detective Oasis? Your mind’s playing tricks on you.”
“You tried to kill me.”
Indigo shakes his head. “No,” he says, “I tried to improve you. Before, you were faulty. You were a sneak, a liar. I tried to make you perfect. And I failed. I do not fail often.”
He hasn’t blinked once the whole time he’s been looking at me. I wonder if he’s ever blinked once in his life. Evil like him, maybe it doesn’t have to.
“Save the shit,” I say. “Improve me? You’re a goddamn hack and you know it.”
He raises his eyebrow at me this time. “Take a look around you, Oasis. My harvies are real. You are real. You are being ridiculous.”
As if on cue, the harvies begin to flicker in and out of existence like dying light bulbs. Who knows who they had once been.
“Of course they’re real, you tyrant. It’s a shame you can’t see how much they despise you, too—how, deep down, they wish to kill you.”
“Some do,
” Indigo says. “Those ones are disposed of appropriately.”
“Like me.”
Indigo nods approvingly. “Like you.”
“I came back.”
“I’ll fix it.”
I spit on the ground and start pacing back and forth, creating a protective wall in front of Ezzy and the crib. My hand casually slides into my jean pocket and my finger presses down on the remote button Mercedes had given me. I don’t know if I’ve succeeded in actually distracting any guards, but I might not have another chance to trigger it.
“Admit why you’re really doing all this,” I say. “Tell me you’re doing it all for the money. I want to hear it from your own mouth.”
“But, Detective Oasis,” Indigo says, “you are mistaken. As you should very well know, this is all for our beloved Conundrae. He is our true Lord and Master. Soon He will rise, and we will be His family. Everyone else will be food. Don’t mock me, Oasis. I’ve killed you once. I’ll do it again.”
I burst out laughing. I can’t help it. “You actually believe this. The whole time coming here, I was thinking I was about to go up against a criminal mastermind. Instead, you’re just batshit crazy. You’re a psycho and nothing more.”
Indigo frowns. It’s his first sincere expression. “It’s a shame, really, that you won’t be alive when Conundrae does rise. It’d be almost orgasmic to me just to see your face when you realize how wrong you are. But you’ll be gone long before then, you and your cunt of a child.”
He hits a cord and he knows it. We stand, not even ten feet from each other, preparing to engage in battle.
A voice speaks up from Indigo’s waist: a small, black walkie-talkie.
“Uh, boss? You’re not going to believe this, but we’re under attack. A bunch of, uh, naked people running around here with weapons. They’re killing everyone. Holy shit, what do we do? What do we—ARRGGHHHH—”
Indigo fumbles for the walkie-talkie clipped to his waist, and in his panic, drops it to the floor. In the time it takes him to bend down, pick it up, and stand, I’ve already pulled the machine gun from my jacket and trained the sights on him.
His eyes widen. Caught.
The Mind is a Razorblade Page 20