As I worked my way up the stairs, fighting the urge to wrestle a little more room out of the confining area that somebody obviously hung like a field mouse considered the “crotch” of this suit, I worked to maintain the illusion that I knew where I was going and, more importantly, that I belonged there. A guy going Michael Jackson-level crazy on his groin or one who was sweating bullets and glancing around like a lost tourist was a good way of getting noticed in all the wrong ways. This stood true for almost all situations, but in ones like this—ones where almost everyone was packing some kind of heat and a good number of them knew your face and wanted you dead—the importance of going unnoticed was somewhat greater. Moderately greater. Okay, it was of the utmost importance.
Spotting a pair coming down the stairs, one looking familiar enough to possibly be a prior acquaintance, I moved to wipe my face in what I hoped was a casual, “Whoo! This heat!”-sort of gesture. Making it just personal enough to present itself as a social prompt while serving to hide my face in the instant we passed each other, the two grunted a set of insincere agreements—“Yes, chum. Quite hot, indeed. And a good day to you, as well!”—and continued on their way. Sighing, I issued a silent prayer of thanks for the heat, which made my sweaty brow and flushed features not as suspicious as they otherwise would be, and finished climbing the plush, carpeted steps. The second floor of the building, carpeted in the same scarlet as the staircase leading up to it, was a large square that served more as a balcony that overlooked the first floor. Doors occupied the outer walls, some open and offering passersby a view of various interiors—fancy private offices, libraries, and what appeared to be a trophy room loaded with shocked-looking animal heads—while others, most of them, were shut. A few people stood around the perimeter, seeming, at a glance, to be innocently chatting amongst themselves or overseeing the party below. Upon closer inspection, however, one might catch sight of an envelope slipping from one coat to another between those engaged in casual banter. And if one of those stoic party-watchers moved to whisper something into the collar of their coat and you happened to glance at the waistband of their pants at just the right moment you might see the boxy grip of something that looked suspiciously like a gun tucked therein. I rolled my eyes, and the act allowed me to catch a scurry of movement in my periphery that was so casual it could only have been intentional.
Glancing without actually turning my head, I watched as three men walked towards one of the closed doors along the adjacent wall from where I was standing. Casual as it all seemed, there was something excessive about the process—as though they were working a little too hard at being nonchalant about it—and I noticed after a few seconds that one of the men, the one in the middle, wasn’t matching the others’ strides quite right. In fact, I realized, he was outright working not to match their paces. Then I noticed the two outer men’s grips on either of the middle’s biceps; an otherwise chummy gesture revealing itself to be one that was actually quite threatening. They were, without making it obvious, dragging the middle man to one of the closed doors. Were I a betting man, I’d be willing to wager that at least one of those outermost men, if not both of them, had their free hands tucked inside their jackets with a Saturday night special cocked and leveled through a concealing layer of formality at their “buddy.”
The three reached the door, and the man on the far right, after an awkward “adjustment” with his free hand beneath his coat, made for the knob. The middle man moved to turn. The motion was still young, still subtle enough to be something as innocent as a moment of “Oh, I’ve forgotten something,” but I knew it for what it was. He was trying to make a run for it. The leftmost man shifted, a strange tilt that looked almost like he’d been caught in a momentary and unexpected breeze, and the middle man went still. His face, only partially aimed my way, was a mask of shock and pain. Then, sharing a quick glance around the area between them, the two outermost men grabbed the other—suddenly seeming to struggle a bit more with the chummy gesture—and escorted him through the now-open door.
And nobody else, having either missed the moment entirely or seen it as something entirely different, had a twinge of suspicion that they’d been present—some by mere feet—to a murder. It was, after all, just three pals retiring to a private room. Perhaps there was brandy and cigars to be had back there. Or maybe they wanted to deliberate over some business papers that one kept in there. Or maybe they were just a couple of adventurous queers who’d gotten a bit cock-crazy and decided they were so in need for a good, old-fashioned circle-jerk that anyplace—“THIS PLACE!”—was as perfect a place to bust a trio of nuts as any other. All of those were far, far more likely possibilities for the momentary scene than the possibility of some nefarious and lethal exchange. That one of the men seemed to struggle with something bulking up the inside of his coat made no difference. And that the other seemed to teeter under some sudden force—surely not the contained recoil of a silenced weapon poised under his own coat—might have just been the sudden loss of equilibrium in a man who maybe, perhaps had a little too much to drink. And if that middle man, forgetful and out-of-sync with his friends as he seemed, appeared to have some sort of stain on his undershirt a moment before vanishing into that room, well that… that must be a trick of the light, or perhaps a bit of spilled drink, right? Right?
And be careful how you answer, folks, I thought, glancing over the bannister and making a quick sweep of the first floor for any sign of T-Built, because when two of those three men reemerge from that mysterious room, it very well could be you who turns out to be their next third “buddy.”
Catching no sign of my target, I spared a second to glance back at that door and wondered what they’d do with the body. If the man they’d just dragged in there wasn’t already dead, I was certain they were, at that very moment, finishing the job. I wasn’t about to fool myself into thinking that it’d be the only business-related killing that would take place there—the Carrion Crew was quickly making a name for itself in the business of death, something that the Crow Gang had always worked to avoid whenever it could be—but it seemed a risky move to go around piling up bodies in a rented building.
Unless, of course, the Carrions had gone and bought this place.
That thought brought a full-on, panic-induced shudder down upon me. It was bad enough to think that I was tromping around what might as well have been a castle occupied almost entirely by people who’d celebrate the chance to kill me. To imagine, however, that I had infiltrated a hornets’ nest—given my enemies the proverbial home field advantage—was nothing if not crap-in-your-pants terrifying. And if they had managed to acquire this place and make it their own, then it didn’t matter who they killed, how they killed them, and they sure-as-shit didn’t have to worry about where they put the bodies.
My heartbeat drummed in my chest, and I realized, too late for my own good, that I was sprinting across a shaky bridge on the way to panic. All of Danny’s talk of danger and suicide struck me, and I nearly made a scene by toppling over. By some miracle—I certainly wasn’t doing myself any favors in the realm of grace at that moment—I stayed on my feet. I glanced around, worried that some hawkeyed guard actually worth the wages he was earning might have seen me stumble and was in the process of noting my profile, but saw that nobody had cared enough about me to notice my blunder. This made my paranoia spike, my hunger-induced anxiety amplifying the effects a hundred times over, and I was suddenly certain that nobody was looking because I’d already been made; somebody had already spotted me, recognized me, and ordered the guards to let them handle their unwelcomed guest. Why else would they not bother even glancing my way? They knew that one of their higher-ups was about to come sneaking out of any one of those closed doors and put a silenced bullet right through my…
Sweet fucking hell, Jason! I scolded myself, You trying to give yourself a heart attack and end yourself before these Carrion cocksuckers have a chance to do it for you? Calm the fuck down!
And so, knowing it was ei
ther that or risk making myself a target, I did. I calmed the fuck down.
****
I’d snuck in with my unknowing entourage somewhere around eight-fifteen in the evening. Since then, I’d done my little double-oh-seven dance through most of the lower level and then climbed a stairway into Hell—Led Zeppelin had it wrong; so very, very wrong!—just to watch the casual assassination of a man who, despite the total lack of response, was surrounded on all sides by potential witnesses. These potential witnesses, both members of the Carrions as well as people of interest for them, either didn’t notice what had happened or were Oscar Award worthy actors when it came to not blinking in the presence of death.
Hell, I’d blinked—I’d almost thrown myself to the floor in an anxiety attack—and I was there to commit premeditated murder! If anybody in that place had an excuse to be indifferent to the subject of killing it should have been me!
I was either the world’s worst would-be assassin, or these assholes were just next-level awful.
Or, third option: you were caught, you were killed, and now you’re in Hell and surrounded by the worst sort of demons.
I paused at that, caught in a momentary existential hiccup and looking for some sign of reality, and then decided that I likely wouldn’t find any one way or the other. Either I really was where I thought I was and it wouldn’t be any more insistent on itself or this was a constructed illusion and the powers that brought it into being knew better than me how to make it appear real.
“If this is the Matrix,” I muttered to myself, “then I’d better get a cool bullet-time scene out of all this.”
Nobody laughed, because nobody heard. The loneliness that accompanied this realization, not the fear of being caught or the worry of being outgunned, made me regret not bringing some sort of backup. It seemed silly the instant I thought it, but the growing possibility that I might die paled greatly in comparison that in that moment, whether I died or not, I was by myself. Worse yet, like a mechanical hum that you’re only just becoming aware of, it occurred to me that the feeling stretched back much farther than I could readily identify. How long had I been feeling this dizzying sense of isolation? How long had my nonsensical ramblings fallen on deaf, nonexistent ears? How long had it been since I genuinely felt a sense of companionship that didn’t seem thrust upon me; that I personally sought and embraced?
A cold chill tickled the back of my neck—a still wind that I knew in an instant wasn’t really there—and I turned. There, at the opposite end of the vast, all-encompassing “balcony” that the second floor represented, and looking back at me was a ghost that typically only made her appearances on the streets when I rode.
There’s your answer, kid, I thought, though I “heard” it in my father’s voice.
Then, this thought coming to me in Michael’s smug tone: Guess you been lonely for as long as you been crazy.
“T-BUILT SENDS HIS CONDOLENCES, PRESLEY!”
I sighed and looked down; looked away from the symbol of my loneliness and pain, and I called myself every awful name anyone had ever thought to call me and more. I’d snuck into this place somewhere around eight-fifteen, done my little double-oh-seven dance, and then climbed a stairway into Hell. I’d had a breakdown, pulled myself out of the abyss, reminded myself I was crazy, and—I dared a look at my watch and cringed—I’d done it all in only twenty minutes.
“Twenty minutes,” I muttered to myself, realizing it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet.
The party—this “fundraiser” as the Carrion Crew was calling it—was barely in full-swing, and I was practically ready for a ride in a white van to a pretty palace with padded walls and a “hug me” jacket fitted just for me.
I’d told myself to calm the fuck down, and I’d only fooled myself into thinking that I’d managed to do it in a matter of seconds. No, instead I’d been using twenty minutes of ducking, dodging, and doing nothing to work myself up into a frothy lather of lunacy. I didn’t demons or machines to plug me into a fake reality—I’d gone and put myself there.
Sucking in a deep breath, I promised myself that things would change (if) when I got out of there. Once T-Built was good and dead, I was certain that the shackles that were holding me beneath the waters of my own misery would shatter and let me breathe the sweet air of happiness once more. It was there, I knew—Danny had been trying to tell me that for years, I realized—but a person could point and declare that shimmering light just on the other side of the water’s surface as “HAPPINESS” all they wanted, but if you could only stare at that divide—if you had no earthly way of even touching it, let alone crossing over—then what difference did it make? T-Built had taken my happiness and, in doing so, thrown an anchor over my neck and cast me into these cold, dark depths. His existence kept me down there. He’d die and, just like that, I’d be free and I’d be happy again. And then, yes, I could commit to making everything else better.
Everything would be better (if) when I got out of there.
Across the divide, at the other side of the second level, I felt the symbol of my loneliness and pain scowl back at me; disapproval a silent song that it wailed back in my direction. Ignoring it, I reminded myself that all of it—the ghost, the disapproval; all of it—was only in my head. I stepped over to the wide, elaborately carved wooden banister and scanned the first floor for any sign of T-Built once more. The party approaching full swing as the hour drew closer, and what was only a few minutes before an open and easily traveled area was now congested and writhing with bodies that were, with each passing minute, finding themselves pressed more and more against one another.
At this rate, I thought, this party will have to upgrade itself to a formal orgy by nine.
Then, just as I was beginning to question whether the son of a bitch was going to flake out of his own peoples’ event, I spotted him.
There, amidst the fat cats, suits, and degenerates, I saw T-Built.
EIGHT
~MIA~
I felt ridiculous. I was sure I looked great—I had goddam better!—but I felt ridiculous. And, judging from the glances I was getting and the way some of the people made a note of leaning in to whisper something to their neighbors, I had to guess that they thought I was ridiculous, as well.
I’d gone above and beyond for T-Built. I’d gotten exactly the sort of dress I imagined he’d want me in, and, in doing so, wound up spending nearly all of the two-thou he’d given me. Whoever heard of an eighteen-hundred dollar dress, anyway? Damn thing showed more than it covered! But it was red and sparkly; plunging neckline that let my bellybutton peek out like a snickering stowaway and a slip that rode so far up one leg I was certain anybody who watched me walking would be able to see a labia wave “hello” on my way by. Then, after buying the dress, I remembered T-Built’s words—“… wearing gowns and jewelry priced at no less than the contents of those envelopes,” he’d said—and realized it’d be in my best interest to have something shiny to hang between all the cleavage I’d be showing. And, of course, the only necklace that even remotely worked wore a taunting price tag of four-hundred dollars. After all that—after emptying the envelope he’d given me and throwing another two-hundred dollars that I really didn’t have to spend down for the gaudy, stupid costume—I’d then decided to take the extra step in leaving early. This, however, wasn’t so much my own decision as it was something Candy and I decided would be wise in the long run. Neither of us had been to this part of town, and so neither of us really had any idea of where we were going or if we’d have trouble finding the place. We’d caught the seven-fifteen bus—getting all sorts of awed and stunned looks from the otherwise casually dressed riders as we stepped on—and rolled in just before eight. Over an hour early; we were confident that we could get our flashy asses lost ten times over and still get there on time. We overestimated. The place—the place we were uncertain about; the place we thought we’d have trouble finding—might as well have had a spotlight shining down from the heavens with a big, bold sign written in s
tarlight: “HOOKERS, COME HERE!”
So it was that Candy and I arrived at the party—overdressed and overwhelmed—over an hour early.
And T-Built, heinous asshole that he was, wasn’t anywhere to be found.
“Figures,” Candy muttered when she’d made the same observation. “We give an A-plus effort and teacher’s not even here to hand out gold stars. I’m gonna go see if I can find a high-payer who’d be willing to buy me a drink if I let him slap me with his balls.”
Then I was alone, wandering around on my own. There’d be no reading—no escaping into fantasy worlds via the neutral glow of my cell’s ereader app—and no dimly-lit and rushed jobs for me tonight. Only ten minutes on the floor and I got the look from a man with a scarred face and an Eastern European accent. Two minutes later I was in a stuffy, leather-scented library on the second floor with a cock that, from my guess, was frequently bathed in cologne barreling with relentless fury down my throat. It was, once I got past the part where I was basically being strangled and choked at the same time, sort of nice; it certainly took a lot of the usually neck-straining work out of the equation to just be able to kneel there and basically let the guy masturbate with my face. After three minutes of holding my breath and stifling my gag reflex, the James Bond villain grunted some word I didn’t understand, buried himself to the hilt, and began a series of pants that sounded like a dying animal. I felt the tip of the condom begin to bulge inside my throat, only a few inches above my sternum, and it occurred to me with some distant and morbid intrigue that, had he not been wearing the condom, I wouldn’t even have had a chance to taste his cum.
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