Psychostasis

by Ezra Blake

  He turns to the group of officers, and for the first time, Ash notices their driver among them. He’s still wearing his sunglasses. “Fernando, I asked for no more of these.”

  “She wasn’t like that when I found her.”

  “Escort her to the gym, please.”

  It doesn’t take much direction for the officers to lead her out of the room. She has no idea where she is. While they gawk, Latzke continues down the line, reducing each terrified captive to about twenty words. What is Ash going to say? I can take a beating?

  The next prisoner, a tan woman with huge brown eyes, just starts sobbing. “Proszę pana, ja nie mówię po angielsku! Panie, proszę, miej litość!”

  A guard, more muscle than man, wrenches her off the wall and drags her away kicking and screaming. Weighted terror settles over the group. Latzke inches ever closer to Ash. What is he supposed to say?

  “Sir, I exist to please.” She’s ten spots ahead of him. Her hair is blue. He’s out of time; he needs to think fast but he can’t think, can barely keep his eyes open. She says, “I have a tight ass and pussy and no gag reflex, and I love having my little titties beaten black and blue.”

  Ash blinks. He can’t say anything like that.

  Latzke smiles and slaps her breast with his riding crop. “Rank two,” he says. “Next.”

  He’ll tell the truth. That’s what he’ll do. I’m not good at anything. I just want to die. Or maybe he won’t speak at all. Maybe they’ll kill him on the spot. But what about Jake? What’s Jake supposed to do without the gun?

  Latzke goes down the line, handing out mostly threes and fours. Three more people speak poor English, and they’re all sent to four, along with one woman who’s significantly uglier than the rest. Does he want a low number? He should have watched the video.

  A familiar voice snaps him out of his trance.

  “I have a photographic memory. I can name every gland and organ in the human body and explain how it works. I’ve performed a successful nullification and nephrectomy, and I’m Latzke’s fucking employee.” Elliot takes a step forward, out of line. His arms are crossed, chin raised. “And I suck cock like a pornstar.”

  Latzke’s grip loosens; the riding crop droops at his side. “Alvarez?”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling you all.”

  He turns to the rest of the men, the officers, and says, “Please choose a delegate to assign ranks. I must take care of this.”

  Chaos ripples through the auditorium. The men in suits are arguing, the naked prisoners crying and talking and shouting, who is he? Why does he get to go?

  “Schweigen!” Latzke barks. The room falls silent. “Elliot, collect your guests.”

  He leads them through the empty, echoing gymnasium and back to the tent, where they retrieve their bags and an assortment of other people’s clothing. Elliot shimmies into a pair of women’s slacks and stares at Jake as he tugs on underwear, socks, and the most garish windbreaker he’s ever seen. He’s hairy, peppered with tattoos of varying quality. Although his dick looks like any other dick in the world, Elliot can’t look away.

  Jake checks the pockets of every pair of jeans in the stack. It takes fucking forever. Elliot about to say something when he finds his own pair—not special in any way—and yanks them on.

  They shake Latzke’s hand like aliens imitating human courtesy and then make their way to the gate, exchanging nervous glances while Latzke texts.

  “Es tut mir Leid,” he says, to his phone. “This process is not for you.”

  Elliot shrugs. He had a whole introduction rehearsed, and now he can’t even think of a clever way to say okay. The silence gathers like leaves in the gutter between them. Elliot fiddles with the aglets on his sweatshirt. The others, at least, have the good sense to stay quiet.

  “I didn’t know you guys did…this,” Elliot says.

  “The work requires a certain disposition.” Latzke thumbs his glasses up his nose, cold gaze shifting to the gymnasium in the distance. From here, nobody would suspect the buzzing hive of human misery just inside those doors.

  “It’s not a problem,” Elliot says.

  “Good.”

  “I mean, I can…do that stuff.” He bites his tongue. He sounds like a fucking imbecile.

  “Good,” Latzke says, finally meeting his eyes. “I don’t have time to give you the tour tonight, so you and Ashton will stay with my clients until dinner. As for your guest...”

  “I’m Jacob Caruso, son of Arthur Caruso.” There’s a note of mockery in his voice that Elliot hopes will be lost in translation. “I’m the head of a major narcotics operation. Biggest in the city. This stuff—” he gestures toward the building “—doesn’t even phase me.”

  Latzke squints at him for a moment, and then back to Elliot.

  “I was under the impression that you would bring your mother.”

  “Yeah, I mean—” Elliot’s mind is churning, spitting out words before he can get a good look at them. “It’s like you said, she wouldn’t approve. I know this wasn’t what you were expecting but I promise he’ll work hard. You want this guy on your side.”

  The car arrives, then. It’s the same car that brought them here, this time driven by a wide-eyed woman with a smart black bob. She rolls down the window and smiles.

  “Valencia,” Latzke calls. His voice dips as they draw nearer. “Joren is at the desk?”

  “Yes sir,” she says.

  “And the drivers—”

  “We have four en route, sir. It won’t happen again.” She winces a little, flashing rows of shiny white teeth. “Sir, ah, your father called. He wants to meet with Dr. Skinner.”

  “I’ll call him back,” Latzke says. “Thank you, Valencia. Take them to the guest house.”

  The best course of action is clear: Jake should listen and ask questions. He’s balls-deep in some sort of Illuminati sex cult, and the more he knows, the better off he’ll be—but he doesn’t say shit on the drive to the guest house. He’s full of that restless come-down ache and his eyes are dry and burning, his head pounds, his joints feel all thin and rusted-out and fuck sex anyway. Fuck the Illuminati. Fuck whatever he and Ash were to each other; fuck violence, danger, excitement. The most exciting thing in Jake’s world is the promise of a hot meal and a soft bed, and that’s what he pictures in his bumpy half-dream, leaning on Ash’s shoulder in the back seat.

  Twenty minutes later, the car rolls to a stop. He blinks and blinks and jostles Ash out of the car. They haven’t arrived anywhere. If there was ever a walking path here, it’s long since been absorbed into the underbrush.

  “This way,” Valencia says, and takes a few mincing steps into the forest.

  They trudge through conifer trees, stark and angular, their slim cones only just maturing. Every sound sends shivers of foreboding up his spine. As they walk, it strikes him—far too late—that he doesn’t even know which direction they drove after leaving the airport, that he couldn’t place them on a map if he tried.

  “Where are we?” He asks.

  “In the Jägersberg–Schirknitzberg nature preserve. We have an agreement with the city.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Here,” she says.

  A stone facade rises through the trees. The guest house is marked by a semi-circular porch with opposing staircases and six dramatic columns, and although it’s distinctive, Jake’s understanding of architecture spans the limited gamut from crumbling row houses to cold, unwelcoming skyscrapers. He couldn’t guess the era, style, or cost of a house like this, but he knows one thing: it isn’t real. It’s a fairy tale. Nothing real has happened since Ash died.

  Valencia raps on the arched wooden door. “Thank you for your patience,” she says. “Please wait here for a moment.”

  Jake takes a few steps back. He checks on Ash—still alive and mostly awake—and then leans against a tree and settles into his skin. There’s a woodpecker around here somewhere, tapping away, slurping up insects. Its jackhammer beak echoe
s from every direction at once. Jake’s hand is on the back of Ash’s neck. Stroking.

  An older man with red hair answers the door. He wears a beige, slim-cut suit and a wallpaper tie. “Valencia, willkommen,” he says. “Sind Sie auch Chauffeur?”

  “Ja, vorübergehend.”

  He glances at them over her shoulder, leans in, lowers his voice. “Wer sind Sie?”

  “Ich glaube, sie sind deine Sklaven.”

  “Three of them,” he murmurs, more to himself than to her. He fixes his gaze on the tree line for a moment. Then he claps his hands, waves them forward, and says, “Marvelous. Please, come in.”

  Elliot pushes past them to enter first. They step into an eclectic, open-concept sitting room. It’s furnished with antique carved tables and contemporary sofas, teal and burgundy and cream and oak, like someone moved into a museum with a van full of items stolen from a corporate office. Maybe the house is part of their welcome package.

  Or maybe it’s a Hansel and Gretel type situation, and he should avoid licking anything no matter what. He makes a bee-line for the sofa and sinks, sinks, sinks.

  “We apologize for the mess,” the man says, gesturing to the open suitcases on the hall table. Hardly a mess. “We’ve only just arrived. I’ll be sending for groceries soon, if you’d like to add anything to the list.”

  “We’re fine, thanks,” Elliot says. Jake glares at him. He’d kill for a Hot Pocket or a bag of Doritos, but fuck what he wants, right?

  “Can I get you something to drink? Tea, perhaps?”

  “Water,” Ash croaks.

  “Water,” Jake agrees.

  “Christopher, darling, I’m sure there’s a pitcher around here somewhere.”

  They follow his gaze to the ghostly man lingering in the mouth of the hallway. He has one of those familiar faces that could be nineteen or fifty-five. Guys came to the psych ward looking like that—smooth but aged inside. A beautiful death mask.

  He nods and slips away, into the kitchen. The older man, clearly the one in charge, sits in the winged armchair next to the fireplace and says, “I’m Doctor Ivan Skinner. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Elliot Alvarez.” His chest puffs up when he says it, as though the name is supposed to mean something. “And these are, uh. This is Jake and Ash.”

  Christopher ducks in with a pitcher of water and a tray of crystal glasses, which he sets on the coffee table between them.

  Ivan nods. “A pleasure. You’re all welcome to stay for dinner—that includes you, Valencia.”

  She presses a hand to her chest and says, “Thank you, sir, that’s very kind. Unfortunately I must return to my post.”

  “Next time, perhaps.”

  “I would like that very much, sir.”

  Jake follows the conversation like a tennis match—wearily, with a sour taste in his mouth. He hates tennis. The two of them sound like his parents at those charity functions, reciting a well-memorized script of congeniality. He never got the hang of it himself.

  They begin a closing act of social niceties, she thanks Ivan once more, and then she’s gone. A grandfather clock chimes in the distance. Jake’s attention slips sluggishly over the furniture, along the fireplace mantel, to Christopher.

  “I won’t keep you too long with questions,” Ivan says. “We’ll have plenty of time for the interview over dinner. Do try to stay awake until then—afterward, you’re welcome to sleep through the weekend.”

  Jake chuckles politely. That must be on-script enough to shut him up, because Ivan rises and leads them down the hall, to a master bedroom. “There is also a guest room down the hall which you’re welcome to use,” he says.

  The room looks like a stock photo of the Ritz-Carlton. The bed could fit four people, easily, and Ash spreads himself across all of it. A gigantic, generic landscape painting dominates the east wall, opposing an empty antique dresser with a gilded mirror. The rug is far too beautiful to tread on, so he steps around it.

  “I told you he’d deliver,” Elliot says, once Ivan is gone.

  Jake scowls and sifts through his duffel bag.

  “Hey, I stuck my neck out for you back there, with Latzke. You could at least say ‘thanks.’”

  “Thank you for keeping me out of the slave trade, Elliot.”

  Elliot scoffs. “Just focus on the interview.”

  “I don’t even know what I’m interviewing for.”

  “They don’t, either,” Elliot says.

  Jake shoots him a scathing glance. “Yeah, because I wasn’t invited.”

  “What was I supposed to do, huh? Wait around for the FBI to raid your—”

  “Cut the shit,” he snaps. “The FBI was never after us.”

  Elliot presses his lips together, unzips his pouch of bath products, and begins arranging them by size on the dresser. “Well, who’s to say they won’t be?”

  “This is fucked up.”

  Elliot knocks over his bottles and begins sorting by color. “I did find a keylogger and my webcam is really lit up all the time,” he says. “The van was…embellished. And those calls were from Latzke.” He runs a hand through his dark hair, now gleaming with oil from their day of unwashed transit. “I didn’t mean to cause problems.” His voice softens like warm chocolate. “I had nobody else to ask.”

  “I’m not falling for that again.” There’s no malice in his voice. He feels pinched and wrung out. He hasn’t slept since before the plane, he’s starving, and besides, the grudge seems petty in the face of recent events. Maybe he’ll pick it up later. Maybe he won’t.

  He sits on the bed next to Ash. His faint smile is full of spit, dripping over his soft lips and down his chin. He places one feeble hand on Jake’s forearm.

  “How do you make it look so easy?” Chris asks, looping his tie over itself for what must be the fifth or sixth time.

  “Practice.” Ivan straightens his shirt cuffs in the mirror. He’s been dressed for half an hour—Chris took that long to coordinate something passable. Since Ivan wouldn’t help, he eventually gave up and settled for simplicity, a dark gray suit with a light gray tie. It still looks wrong.

  “It’s not like I’ve never done it before.” He huffs, unravels the tie again, snaps it out straight. “The first time, sure, but after number three or four…”

  “It’s an occasion,” Ivan says. “We haven’t hosted in months. Plenty of time to forget.”

  He allows the limp silk to droop between his hands. In the mirror, Ivan is less socialite and more demigod of etiquette: his shoulders back, hair coiffed, sleeves and inseam measured to the millimeter. Chris looks like he’s eight years old and attending a funeral.

  “I guess it’s just.” He grimaces. “This is all so elaborate. You’ve done so much and of course I appreciate it, but they seem like…I dunno.” He turns away from the mirror. “Like kids.”

  Ivan steps closer. This walk-in closet is itself large enough for a dinner party, but the racks are mostly bare, and Ivan’s footsteps echo on the stone floor. When the Soviets built this place in nineteen-whatever, it wasn’t a closet. Maybe barracks. Weapon storage.

  “You’re afraid to disappoint me,” Ivan says quietly. He lifts Christopher’s glasses from his face, polishes them with his tie. “You’re afraid you’ll humanize them.”

  Chris nods mutely.

  “When a smoker lights a cigarette, knowing it will someday kill her, does she still consider herself a person?”

  He swallows the lump in his throat. He doesn’t trust himself to speak.

  “An obese man eats himself to death. Does that make him inhuman?” He asks. “There is one single factor which unites our species across social caste, generation, millennium…” Ivan pushes the glasses back up the bridge of Christopher’s nose. “To kill—to die—is the most human endeavor of all.”

  He averts his eyes and wraps his tie around itself once more. “What if I can’t?”

  And Ivan kisses his forehead, caresses his cheek. “You can,” he says.

&nbs
p; Then he steps back, unbuttons one cufflink, and backhands Chris across the face. The sound is a gunshot; his ears ring and his vision splits in two. He stumbles forward into Ivan’s waiting arms.

  “You can,” Ivan says. “You will.” And he knots Christopher’s tie effortlessly around his neck.

  NOWHERE TO HIDE. LEAVE IT INSIDE.

  “For how much longer?” Elliot asks, prodding Ash’s bare stomach. The purple bruises are nearly black in the recessed lighting of the master bathroom. “He already carried it across the Atlantic, Jake. Isn’t that enough?”

  “I’ll know when.” Jake yanks a few threads from the hem of his rancid T-shirt. “Besides, we could be out of here tomorrow. We need it with us.”

  “I thought we were taking care of him.”

  “This is fucking killing me,” Jake says. “Believe that. But we’re going to need it later.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me, but look at him. He’s—”

  Gripping weakly at Jake’s wrist, clawing at a wisp of lucidity. Ash opens his mouth to say something Very Important, but all Jake hears is NOWHERE TO HIDE. LEAVE IT INSIDE.

  “I just—I can’t,” Jake murmurs. “I’m sorry. Just wait a little longer, I’ll give you more painkillers.”

  And Jake picks open the wound and pours powder inside, and Ash lies on the granite tile with his eyes open and his clawed hands at his sides. He stops responding to his own name.

  The end is nigh! Someone must die!

  Jake swallows the urge to respond.

  Though the shower is large enough to fit an entire family, he’s still surprised when Elliot joins him, nude and unreserved. His tits are small, saggy, dusted with hair. Jake doesn’t look, even though they’ve already seen each other naked.

  Elliot jostles past him. The back of his hand skims across Jake’s cock, and Jake flinches; he can’t help it. “Oh, I’m sorry.” A disparaging smile. “Does this make you uncomfortable?”

  He doesn’t answer. The touch kicks off a cascade of engrossing mental imagery: Elliot on a staticky security cam, reclined in a bed of shadows. He lies still and limp as Lucas knocks the bed frame against the wall.