Logan’s mouth tastes sweet, familiar, and when I realize what the flavor reminds me of, I pull away. “Have you been drinking the moonshine?”
“Yeah, why? You don’t approve?”
“No, it’s just . . .” But there’s too much to tell, standing here at the bar. “Nothing. Let’s go dance.”
“Sure you don’t want to go to the Loft instead?” He nibbles at my ear.
“The Loft?”
“Where we went last night?”
“Oh, gotcha. Can we bring Syd?” I tease.
“Fuck—seriously? Hell yeah.”
“But first—” I kiss his lips. “We dance.”
§
The red, digital clock above the exit sign says it’s nearing one a.m. as Logan and I take the dancefloor, and Syd has already snagged her throne, queen of the turntables. I’m finding that my and Logan’s schedules don’t work well together. I have to be to the dorms in a few short hours, for a twelve-hour day of sad, hard labor. Lack of sleep and a hangover won’t help matters.
But with the pumping trip-hop and jungle beats of my new, sexy friend, Syd, gyrating my every cell, I’m more alive than I’ve been . . . maybe ever. Logan grinds me and rubs my body, and I lose myself in Syd’s musical world. When I recognize a slow, trance-y mix of “Something,” by Azedia, I find Syd gazing at me from her tables. She wants me. I rub my body for her while I dance to her beats, never breaking her gaze. She bites her bottom lip, winks at me, then drops a white ball of some sort to the floor in front of me.
When I pick it up, I discover it’s a crumpled piece of paper. I look to her for permission to open it now. She consents with a nod, so I unfold it, and read the words scratched there, in what may be crayon.
For one of the Tunnels best kept secrets,
meet me in the Wet Room at 3
boy toy can tag along
xoxo Syd
When I show the note to Logan, he holds me against his erect penis. “Goddamn,” he says in my ear. “I love this place.”
§
Of course Logan already knows where the Wet Room is.
At three a.m., Syd leaves the tables to the other DJ and heads through the crowd to the bar level. Logan and I follow, stopping at the bar—which is open all night, apparently—to grab more drinks. Logan orders two vodkas, paying one ration point each for them with an eye scan.
“So, you don’t like the moonshine?” Logan wraps an arm around my waist, straddling me as we walk. He takes a sip of his drink over my shoulder, and droplets of cold condensation shower my skin.
“Someone . . . told me not to drink it,” I say, sloshing my own drink onto my hand. “Fuck.” I gulp it, set the cup of ice on an empty table. “Have you noticed anything strange the day after?”
“Yeah . . . no p—”
“Pain,” I finish for him.
“Yeah. I thought it was just me.”
“No, same thing happened to me, and Sheryl-Dean, the woman I work with in the dorms. She’s the one who told me to stay away from it. And she . . . she knows things she won’t tell me—a lot of people here do. Something’s fucking going on.”
“Like who? And more importantly: what?”
“Sheryl-Dean, Kelly, Jade, maybe . . . I just don’t trust this place, Logan. We need to be careful. We need to stay on guard, and be ready to bolt at the slightest sign of bullshit. We have to keep Missy safe, and we can’t do that if we’re mind-fucked.”
“I’m already mind-fucked.” He licks my neck, then leads me up another ramp in the back right corner. This time, the light that welcomes us is blue. Halfway up the carpeted ramp, there’s the sound of trickling water and some ambient music with good bass, that might as well be called “fuck music.”
Nothing could prepare me for what appears beyond the top of the ramp. The whole place is covered in white tile that shines blue under the lights, and everywhere I look, there’s water pouring, spurting, and spraying from various pipes, fountains, and other nameless orifices. There are pools, benches, seating areas, and scattered throughout, mostly naked men and women just fucking in plain sight.
Most alarming, though, is the amount of black bubbles on the walls and ceiling. And to prove they aren’t trying to hide that they’re watching, two actual cameras on ceiling mounts travel through the place—little robot paparazzi, closing in on the areas where the action is getting good.
“You into voyeurism?” Logan asks me with a smirk.
“What the fu—?”
“Hey!” Syd waves at us from another bar area, where she stands with a topless bartender with electrical tape X’s over her nipples.
If I wasn’t nervous as hell I might be excited as we weave around couples and groups going at it. There are black kidney-beaned shaped areas amidst the white tile which appear to be cushioned, because all of them are claimed by people fucking. One girl lies beneath a flowing stream of water letting it flow onto her pussy while another one straddles her face. Two cameras are there, mounted to the tile wall beside them.
I guess Syd can tell I’m nervous when we get to her, because she takes my hand and leads me to the bar, and she sticks out her tongue to reveal two orange pills. Without hesitation, I take them from her tongue with my lips, and my stomach flip-flops at the taste of MDMA, and the wet satin sandpaper of her tongue. I linger on her wetness, and when I retreat, dizzy from a head rush, she motions to Logan. “Are we sharing?” she teases, lighting a joint.
I lean over to Logan and transfer one of the two pills to his mouth, then I chew mine up and try not to cringe at the bitterness.
“Where’d you get all this?” I ask her, taking the offered joint, and my stomach flip-flops again. “And thanks, by the way. Fuck, it’s been a while.” I puff at the end of the joint, cough my ass off, and pass it to Logan, who takes a hit, managing to curb the cough that wants to expel.
“Rudy’s,” Syd says. “And you’re welcome.”
“I knew it!” Logan punches his palm. “I fucking knew it.”
“But keep it hush,” she says. “He stashes shit away for VIPs; stuff he doesn’t offer everyone.” She smoothes a strand of hair from my face. “So, welcome to the VIP club.”
“Does that stand for ‘Voyeurism in Progress’?” Logan jokes, and we laugh, but I’m still confused as fuck.
A look at the blue digital clock across the room tells me I have two and a half hours to not be fucked up anymore. Somehow, I doubt that’s happening.
“So . . . what’s with the cameras?” I ask.
She chuckles. “I’ll tell you in about twenty minutes.”
Twenty
Twenty minutes later, I’m high as shit, rollin’ my ass off, sitting in Logan’s lap with his hands roaming my body. Chain-smoking, guzzling vodka like it’s water on top of the X and the weed, and I can’t wipe the stupid smile off my face. Everything tastes, sounds, smells, and feels so good.
“Did you get these from the vending machine?” I hold up my half-smoked Camel to Logan.
“Yeah. Seven RPs a pack, which kinda sucks ass. Singles are three for one, though.”
“Nice, I need to get some. That’s awesome.”
“No shit, right?” He kisses my neck.
Syd returns from chatting with a guy in black fatigues in the corner, but instead of stopping in front of me, she snakes up my body until her lips are inches from mine, then she hovers there for a few seconds, pressing her beautiful breasts against me. We’re the only folks in the room with clothes on at the moment, but I’m thinking not for long.
I grip her neck and pull her into me, and we’re fire and gasoline, gasping for air between deep-throat kisses.
“Thank you for playing Azedia,” I tell her in one of those breaths.
“Thank you for loving music,” she says, breathless as me. “Nobody really loves anything anymore, you know?”
“Yeah . . .”
“So . . . you ready to learn one of the Tunnels’ best kept secrets?”
“Sure am.”
“All you have to do is play—and let them watch. They’ll give you fifty ration points for it. Sometimes more.”
I laugh, because I’m too fucked up to compute how fucked up that probably is.
“Seriously?” Logan asks.
“Who’s watching?” I take her plump ass cheeks in my hands, and trace the denim hem that disappears between them, and butterfly wings flap against my heart.
She glances around with a shrug and a chuckle, like “who cares?”
“Everyone, I assume,” she says. “Everyone who’s left, anyway.”
“Fuck it, I’m game,” Logan says over my shoulder.
“Sorry, hot stuff.” Syd touches the tip of his nose with her finger. “But I’m a strict vagitarian.”
“Damn. Okay.” He shrinks, wounded from the rejection, even rollin’ his ass off.
“You can have her when I’m finished with her.” She winks, then kisses my neck. “Do you mind if I fuck your girlfriend?”
“She’s not my girlfriend.” He pops a cigarette from his pack and lights it, taking a long drag.
Syd pinches the tiny black zipper between my tits, unzips it slowly down my abdomen to my panty line, revealing thin, black lace. “Then she can be mine for the night.”
She peels the black latex fabric from my shoulders until my breasts are exposed, then she removes her tank and bra to show off those luscious, perky D cups I’ve been lusting over for years. They’re not real, but I could care fucking less. I take a cherry, pierced nipple into my mouth and play with the barbell with my tongue for a second, before she pulls away to remove my boots, and my socks.
As Syd, Goddess of Music, slips my Trinity bodysuit from me, both mobile ceiling cameras in the room rotate their lenses, as if they were alive, and as perverted as the rest of us. It’s obvious now where the real show is.
I fumble with the button to Syd’s shorts, then yank them from her panty-less frame to her black vans. She kicks out of her shoes, then leads me, fully nude, and in front of who-knows-who, down a short ramp and into a shallow pool. Oh gods, it’s so warm . . .
She seems to have an exact destination in mind. We move farther away from Logan than I was expecting, though still in his line of sight, when she stops at a little waterfall, where a drunk chick sits fingering herself.
“Move.” Syd splashes water onto her with the side of her foot, and the chick sputters an array of curse words before rising on unsteady legs. But when she sees who it is, she says nothing more, and saunters to the next source of flowing, luscious, warm water.
The cameras follow us, and though I’m feeling exceptional, and the hottest chick in the world wants to fuck me, the fact that there are people watching it—and I don’t know who they are—gives me the panic sensation behind the euphoria, a sign of an impending bad trip.
I try to ignore them as Syd sits me on a padded black spot in front of the waterfall, risen about an inch above the water line. It’s easier to ignore the mysterious watchers when she slips a silky finger inside of me, kissing me soft and slow. She licks her way down my stomach, and the cameras move closer, one hovering above her head and one above mine, as she engulfs my pussy with her mouth.
When her wet lips touch mine, I close my eyelids, melting into the penetrating pleasure. In the background, faintly, “Feel So Close” by Calvin Harris plays just over the sounds of water, the electrical noise of the cameras, and the moans of pleasure from the other people fucking all around us.
Syd moves up my body again, with vigor this time, and she kisses me hard, pushing my head through the waterfall, to the dark space behind it.
“I have to tell you the truth,” she whispers.
“Uh, okay?” My heart pounds from the unexpected words. “The truth about what?”
“What happened that night.”
“I don’t underst—”
“It was my fault they all died.” And she drops her head for a moment before sucking in air for the rest. “The people here contacted me before the end and told me to come DJ for them. They wanted me to ‘up the quality of life’ for the people here, and I told them to fuck off. They said if I didn’t . . . there would be consequences. And there were.” As she speaks, she continues to finger me for the cameras, a cover-up for her confession, same as the waterfall, I’m seeing now.
“They went there that night and killed everyone, made it look like someone else, and told me—” She fights the further onslaught of tears, lip quivering. “Told me I belonged to Vine now, and that as long as I followed his rules, no one else would have to die.”
“Who’s Vine?”
“The guy who runs this place. And everything now, I assume.”
“I thought Deuce ran the place.”
She shakes her head, adding two more fingers inside of me. I moan and nibble her lip.
“He works for Vine. They all work for Vine.”
“Okay, and what are his rules you have to follow?”
“Total compliance. Total compliance . . . or death.”
“Holy shit.”
“Thank you,” she says, and breaks down in a brief sob. “I just wanted to . . . to thank you for surviving that night.”
Before anything else can be said, Syd pushes me out from beneath the waterfall to meet the waiting cameras. She joins me, kisses me furiously, and her body hiccups from the sobs she’s covering up. I lie her on her back, finger her, and kiss her ear. “We’ll get out of here,” I whisper. “I promise.”
There’s splashing in the water behind me, and I find Logan coming toward us, naked, and stroking his cock. He doesn’t wait for permission, he just gets behind me and plants it deep.
I cry out, and dig my fingers deeper into Syd’s warm wetness. She moans, and the chain reaction of pleasure flowing from body to body amidst the storm of chaos brings me close to orgasm. Maybe it’s the way Syd gives herself to me, legs spread open wide, as if she’d take anything I had to give her—anything at all—or the way Logan pounds me like there’s a priceless treasure to unearth.
Whatever it is, when I make Syd cum, gushing white over my hand, Logan makes me cum, too. We both clench, gyrate, and moan from the waves, as Logan’s pulsing member sloshes through my own love juices.
When it subsides, we lie there for a moment, panting. Not only are the cameras on us, but every eye in the place sneaks a peek, awakened and aroused by our display. Even rollin’ my ass off, it’s awkward as fuck. I give Syd one last kiss, then help her sit up, and Logan sits behind me, straddling me. He pulls me closer to him as Syd lets her head fall into the waterfall, smoothing down her sexed-up hair.
My body grows numb and warm, when I find a familiar profile across the room. Sitting at a table by himself, wearing that same dark blue snow cap, and black suspenders over a long-sleeved, white thermal. Shit.
It must be the X. Or the lack of sleep, or the overall fuckedupedness of everything. But still—how is he here? I’ve only ever seen Murray when I was alone . . .
“Damn,” Logan says. “Guess I can mark that one off my bucket list.”
But his words are far away. I can’t help looking again to see if Murray’s still there, and he is—right beneath the blue digital clock that says it’s five sixteen a.m.
“Fuck, I have to be to the dorms soon,” I mumble.
Now that the euphoria from the sex has diminished, the peak from the X has started its climb down, Syd has given me more insight on what the Tunnels are about, and that I’ve hallucinated my war veteran ghost friend at an inopportune time, I’m having trouble breathing, and making sense of it all.
I rise from Logan’s lap. “I have to go.”
“Already?”
“Yeah. I need to change, get coffee and try t
o come down before I have to watch kids for twelve hours on no sleep.”
“Damn, I didn’t think about that. I’m sorry.” Logan stands and helps Syd to her feet.
“Sorry, hot stuff.” Syd shivers. “You’ll be okay, though.” She moves closer. “Password to get into Rudy’s is effervescent. He says if you have it, you’re sober enough to remember it, and say it, then you can come in. Tell him Syd said to hook you up with a little pick-me-up to get through your workday.”
“Thanks.” I kiss her again. “And I’ll see you as soon as I can.”
“You know where to find me.”
Twenty-One
My body shakes as I dress, keeping careful watch of Murray from my peripheral. He smokes a cigar, not looking at me, though he knows I’m here. Of course he does. But even this figment of my imagination has class, because he waits until I’m fully clothed and zipping up my boots before he glances my direction, taking a long puff from his fat cigar.
I hold his gaze briefly before I rise from the seat with Logan and Syd, also clothed now. Though there’s the urge to speak to him—especially after wanting him to return so badly the last time he disappeared—something tells me speaking to my imaginary friend in front of everyone isn’t the best idea. So, I ignore him. But there isn’t the hurt or disappointment on his face I’d expect. It’s as if he just wants to make a statement by his presence.
But what statement?
That Grace Vincent is a raging lunatic?
That when all is lost, you’ve got an imaginary buddy on your side?
Whatever the statement, mulling them over makes me sad. I don’t want to be crazy. I want more than anything to be normal, to live a normal life, and not need things inside of me to make me whole. I want more than anything to not need imaginary friends to cope with my insanity, and my screwed up existence. I don’t want to be this fucked up girl. I don’t want Missy to die because of me.
Masking my inner collapse with rubs to both Syd and Logan’s bodies, we part ways at the bar floor. Logan heads to sector three to get some sleep, and Syd heads to her tables for the third of three sets for the night. Trembles roll from my head, through my lips and limbs, and my legs shake as I head up the stairwell. A sob I can’t control escapes me, and then it pours out at the top of the stairs, and I brace myself on the wall beside OM Tattoos.
Tunnels and Planes: An Urban Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (The Night Blind Saga Book 3) Page 10