Still

by Charlee Jacob

  Clay noticed a woman standing behind him in line, wearing a dark brown velvet suit and topaz galoshes. She smiled down at him invitingly.

  Both Nika and Clay were given the same speech about their Great Auction tickets. Apparently not everyone’s invitation had this.

  “I’m surprised there’s no metal detector,” Pete mentioned to Nika.

  “Are you kidding? Most of these folks have piercings and infibulations, chastity belts and ball gags, sharp silver dentures and golden butt plugs. And then there’s all the stuff you can see.”

  The woman in brown galoshes followed Clay inside. He looked across his shoulder and pushed the speed in his chair to escape velocity.

  “Guys,” he called out to his friends, “wait up!”

  Sodom Disneyland.

  Peter tried not to stare, glad no one could see his eyes for the dark glasses. He might’ve been blind for all they knew.

  Through the main hall capered masquerades of Tiberius, Caligula, and Messalina…to each of whom had been attributed the sole creatorship of the original Videre cult. He saw Ghengis Khan. There were Mongols, Moguls and TonTon Macoute. Gilles de Rais and Elizabeth Bathory, Torquemada and Moctezuma, Henrich Kramer and James Sprenger. There were de Sades, Chaka Zulus, Aleister Crowleys, and Hitlers.

  He noticed posters up, depicting some artist’s impressionistic interpretation of the Beta shroud, Peter’s own former obituary legion. Nika touched his wrist lightly, seeing them, too.

  The three carefully made their way, but the various throngs kept pushing them into one room or another.

  In the first room stapling procedures were under way. Scrotum edges were fastened to thighs. Lips were put together, sometimes the ones on the mouth, sometimes the labial variety. Butt cheeks were stapled shut snick snick! Listening while observing could cause a permanent facial tic.

  A young woman lying on a table with her legs spread wide saw them standing in the doorway.

  “Dr. Noll, hi!”

  Nika managed a wave. “Hello, Jasmine.”

  Neither Pete nor Clay said a blitherin’ word.

  In the next room someone practiced sewing breasts together—or balls—or vaginas. Silk thread and square knots. It reminded Peter of the allografts and he wished he had morphine right about then. Was any of that medicine in Clay’s bag for pain?

  The third room was for docking. The three of them stumbled in and found pairs of men standing close, masturbating. One of each pair would draw back his own foreskin while the foreskin of his lover was elastically pulled over the end of his cock. Then the two dicks, having been secured together, were caressed until the foreskins rippled to and fro over the glans. Moans of rapture multiplied until the four walls seemed to hold the thunder of tidewaters.

  Nika gaped, enthralled. Pete and Clay avoided each other’s eyes as each practically convulsed back out into the hall.

  The fourth room had a thick-necked, muscle-bound man standing with his back to a wall, his wrists and neck manacled to it. He wore a prison uniform and his erect cock was sticking out the front. On his shaved scalp was a crude tattoo of a woman being bisected up through the cunt by a wolf with a sword for a dick, drops of blood painted across the skull. A line of both men and women waited while another woman bent over a padded chair in front of him. He obliged her roughly from behind.

  “Isn’t that Simon Tripp?” asked Clay, his tone subdued.

  “Who?” Peter wanted to know, never having heard of him.

  “Raped and murdered thirteen women along Highway 101,” Clay explained. “Sent letters to the newspapers saying he was a triskadekamaniac, meaning a lover of the number thirteen. Said he’d already done thirteen beside Lake Michigan. Chicago police have so far been unsuccessful in getting him there for trial, now that he’s in San Quentin with several consecutive life sentences. He’d said after this he’d move to the Gulf of Mexico and do the same thing. Then on to the Atlantic coast. Said he had thirteen locals chosen. Each would have thirteen. But he got caught.”

  “So what’s he doing here?”

  “It’s called ‘hybristophilia’,” Nika interjected. “These people are aroused by partners who’ve committed brutal crimes.

  “The Night Stalker always had lots of groupies who wrote to him and visited him in prison. So did the Hillside Stranglers. The notion of an all-powerful beast capable of anything appeals to those with fear of intimacy in other situations. Suffering from low esteem, sometimes they perceive being ‘taken’ as a form of love which isn’t to be denied. Murder and rape to them is an ultimate expression of passion. But it can’t be any old sadist—it must be someone who has achieved infamy for their outrages.”

  Peter had a doubtful expression. “But all these in line? How’s he supposed to…?”

  “Keep it up?” Nika guessed after his question trailed off. “Drugs administered to keep him priapic. It must have taken a person with a lot of money and influence to get Tripp here today. And he’s thrilled. Look, he’s doing her so hard, she’s bleeding.”

  Peter argued, “Maybe she’s on her period.”

  Clay stroked his forehead as he cleared his throat. “That isn’t her vagina.”

  Nika had stood behind Peter but he’d moved. Now Tripp saw her there and grinned even as he continued to pump the buttocks before him. “Hello, Dr. Noll. Good to see ya.”

  She nodded. “Simon.”

  Then she slipped back out the door, wishing she hadn’t worn such a revealing gown.

  They found themselves in rooms where naked bodies wrestled in a shit pit and where golden showers or milk showers were submitted to. There was an enema room, a vomit bath, and a pool filled with the unusable parts driven in by the trailerful from the nearest meat packing plants. In another room—more of a salon, people lounged on velvet sofas as, from hidden recesses in the ceiling, blood was let over them. What—or who—provided that blood was a mystery to Peter and his friends.

  Anything and everything.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Pete saw some guy screwing a teddy bear in a corner. But then he looked again to discover the stuffed toy was actually a severed dog’s head, an eye popping out as the man thrust deep.

  Another time he caught sight of two people getting it on in a closet, the door ajar. A woman had another lady propped up, the first’s hands under the second’s ass, long hair unbound over each other’s faces. Then Peter caught a whiff, saw the lividity, and knew she was dead.

  Neither Nika nor Clay appeared to have seen these two activities.

  They took refuge in a dealer’s room. Booths sold everything. Nika found herself investigating—at arm’s length—as the Sybian was demonstrated. This was similar to the mechanical bull found in cowboy bars, except the sandle horn was a dildo, vibrating at variable speeds. She suppressed a smile as her teeth were set on edge.

  “Dr. Noll!” this dealer cried out cheerfully. “I’m amazed… How about a free ride?”

  Up she went without sufficient hesitation. Here was a patient offering her this dazzling experience, spritzing the horn off with an antibacterial spray and covering it with a fresh sanitary cover. Would she have accepted such a thing a couple months ago? Would she have ever done anything to compromise either a patient’s well-being or their view of her as a total professional?

  I suppose I’m now what anyone else in this field would label a ‘co-dependant’.

  She didn’t remove her thong but straddled the machine, inserting the horn between the upper part of her thigh and the edge of the fox fur. The dealer turned it on, slowly at first, giving her a shiver. It rose and fell, rose and fell, turning, spinning her through resonating dimensions that exploded before her eyes and between her legs. Her heart hammered as the horn reverberated through her vaginal muscles, pulsing through her pelvic bones, palpitating each vertibra in her spine—one at a time—until a full kundalini effect was achieved. Her blood boiled and froze by turns aboard this surrogate dragon.

  She didn’t know if she’d cried out. She only
knew her lips had parted and rainbow colors had escaped, each hue arcing with a different note of music. The Sybian had stopped and it was several quaking, palpitating minutes before she’d realized that. She sat there, her equilibrium still spinning and buzzing, her hair drenched with perspiration.

  The dealer had to help her off.

  “Thanks, Eve,” she told her patient, trying not to be obvious about peering about to make sure neither Peter nor Clay had witnessed her atrocious public behavior.

  Why? That had felt GOOD. How did she order one of these things?

  (Bitch, you’re supposed to be helping the man you love. Not getting cheap orgasms in front of a couple thousand maladaptives who were enablers for the freak who’d skinned him alive.)

  “My card,” Eve said, producing it. “Not that you don’t know how to reach me. It’s so you can tell your friends my company’s website address.”

  Nika managed to smile before she staggered off.

  Clay came across a table filled with scrapbooks, personal compilations of corpse portraits. He got lost for a few moments.

  He finally asked the dealer, “Got anything from the ’50s?”

  “You mean like the Beta book. Yeah,” the guy said around a clove cigarette. “I’ve got similar.”

  “It isn’t the Beta book,” Clay corrected, lips pressing thin with aggravation. “It’s the McFadden… Never mind. Any that are crime scene photos from Los Angeles?”

  The dealer handed him three. Clay set them in his lap. He picked up the first, thumbing through it, concentrating on each savagely sad still. His hands trembled. He set the first back on the table, undeterred by not seeing whatever it was he searched for. He chewed the inside of his cheek as he glanced through the next, breath growing heavy, just like some common death freak. Then he put the second down on top of the first, rejected. He actually growled as he took the third up and flipped past one atrocity after another. He snorted, sighed, cried a couple tears out of those blood-red eyes which came out clear as diamonds. They even sparkled.

  “Nobody you know?” the dealer inquired blandly.

  Clay shook his head.

  The guy guffawed. “Lookin’ for someone you did?”

  Clay did a double-take. “No, asshole. For someone I lost.”

  Peter found himself at a table specializing in Beta shroud tee-shirts, videos, postcards, jewelry. There were lapel buttons with sayings like:

  DEATH, WEAR IT PROUDLY.

  IT WEARS YOU THAT WAY.

  WELCOME TO THE GALLERY.

  YOU PAY BEFORE YOU LEAVE.

  ET TU, STIGMATA?

  “I AM MY ACTS.”

  JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

  PREY FOR STILL MORE.

  A small television set showed a tape endlessly, of each picture moving upon the skin and every portrait in Zane’s scrapbook. Even the ones that weren’t on the skin, being either from solved cases or from suicides.

  He’d seen Clay pause at this, one photograph causing him to bunch his hands into fists and literally steam until his glasses fogged up. Pete hadn’t been close enough then to see which pic it was, but he figured it had to be the crime scene photo of his father’s murder.

  Pete heard some woman say to her companion, “You know, that little boy is there twice on the body and once in the book.”

  He wondered why he’d never noticed that.

  Mesmerized and sickened by the sight of his own former exterior there with the likenesses of those dead he’d come to know so well, Peter touched the screen. He was snapped by an unusually loud static pop. He gulped and thought he’d pass out as he watched a swirl of murder scenes transfer from the set to his finger, a little tornado of black and white carnage. It danced in bloody scintilla, moving inexorably knuckle by knuckle, and then just as abruptly as it had begun was sucked back off into the video. He jumped and looked to either side of him. Had anyone else seen that?

  The woman and her companion had already moved away to purchase a copy of the video.

  Thank god.

  He thought if they had seen (and if he’d been recognized), there’d have been a riot.

  Pete saw necros, sadists, pedophiles, filth-eaters—psychopaths of every stripe—displaying both fascination and reverence for even just the sight of his purloined skin on any sensationalist bit for sale. It was as if these were papal indulgences for a saintly relic, offered to medieval fanatics. He was the Messiah of monsters, proof to them of the tangible power of evil.

  He’d seen bracelets for sale, adorned with gold chips which bore the letters: W.W.B.D.?

  Suddenly he knew what they meant. What Would Beta Do?

  His stomach turned over.

  Personally, Pete reckoned it represented the opposite. His flesh had ‘outted’ every killer who’d remained anonymous in Zane’s case files. One had even recently been tracked down by the LAPD. Do you think Larry Gauzy declared, “Thank you, Satan!” when they showed up at his door?

  “One of Beta’s toenails? For real?” a six foot, six inch tall Nordic blonde cried nearby.

  “Guaranteed,” the dealer promised. “The only one not attached to the shroud.”

  Shroud? Shroud? Did they have to keep calling it that?

  She reached for her pocketbook, shrieking in delight, “How much?”

  “Three grand,” the dealer replied without blinking an eye or skipping a beat.

  Peter’s jaw dropped. He felt like telling her, “Shit, lady. For a mere hundred I’ll cut ’em all off for ya, here and now. Anybody got clippers?”

  She paid for it and was handed this thing mounted on a card, with a certificate of authenticity affixed to the back. The nail had an image of a bloodshot eye floating across it.

  This made Peter snort. All his semblances had been in stark black and white. This was only a cheap flicker glued to some thick yellow toe-claw.

  She pranced off with this fungal Grail. And as soon as she was gone, the dealer put another one out. He caught Pete staring at him and said, “A button would look good on that hat.”

  “If I buy, will you pin it to one of your hemorrhoids?” Peter asked curtly.

  He stalked off, headed for the door to the hallway. Nika and Clay saw him leaving and quickly followed.

  They finally found The Grand Ballroom where The Great Auction would take place. There was a bench in front. Nika and Peter sat down while Clay remained in his wheelchair, drinking from one of his bottles of water.

  Pete glanced at his watch and sighed. “Another hour more until this damned thing starts. I wish we hadn’t come so early. I’ve never been so grossed out. Outside of movies—and a certain violent crime done to me personally… And—well—getting beaten up by my students, but they were just kids… No, wait. Curtis, how could I forget again about Curtis? And the hauntings from all those stills. Okay, so I did know people could be so horrible.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Nika said.

  Peter swung around and studied her. “How can you say that?”

  “I just expected more,” she confided.

  “More how?”

  “MORE. I’m a psychiatrist. I know the difference between strange sex practices and genuine cataclysm: violence. If this is all these Videre get up to, they’re vastly overrated. Results of poor toilet training, if you ask me.”

  “That your opinion, too, Clay?” Peter asked.

  He turned around. “Clay?”

  ««—»»

  Clay had seen crates being taken on dollies down a hall behind The Grand Ballroom. He followed. He rolled right up to the door. Dare he enter?

  “I dink you vill vollow me now,” a thickly accented voice said behind him.

  Clay spun as fast as he could in the clumsy chair and looked up at the tall German.

  “Don’t make me call zacurity.”

  McFadden shrugged. Could this be the notorious Dunkel Friedhof?

  He sure as hell hoped so.

  “I haff seen you vit Peter Beda,” the man informed him coldly. “I know vhy you are her
e.”

  Clay chuckled. “You do, huh? And is that accent as ridiculously hard as it seems to be or are you just glad to see me?”

  “Come vit me.” Dunkel led him to a small office and locked the door.

  “You look vamiliar,” Dunk said, leaning down, perching his hands on his knees, and peering at Clay’s face. “Vhere I know you vrom?”

  Clay didn’t wince even though the other man’s breath stank of mustard and strong beer. “You tell me, you’re such an expert.”

  “You vould be zurprized at vhat I ahm ecshpert.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised at all.”

  “You come var duh zkin, huh?”

  Clay shook his head. “No, the scrapbook.”

  Dunk grinned. “Ah! Dat is vhere I know you vrom. You are duh bald crip vrom duh eshdade zale.”

  Clay smiled tightly. “If you say so.”

  Dunk stood up and leaned against the desk, arms folded, casual as those are who consider themselves comfortably superior. “Vhy you vant duh book back?”

  “Just one picture,” Clay admitted.

  Dunkel’s interest was piqued. “Vhich vun?”

  “Get it, I’ll show you.”

  Friedhof was amused. “You can zee id und bid for id ahd duh auction.”

  “I don’t want to wait that long. Besides, I told you, I’m only interested in one. Places to go, people to see. You understand.” Clay did his best to appear to be looking down on the creep even if he was sitting in a wheelchair. It was a matter of bearing.

  Dunkel’s next laugh was a surprised bark. He squinted his blue eyes into slits to regard McFadden with pure contempt. Then he spread his hands like a perverted sunburst.

  “Wirklich? Vhy nawd? You vait here, ya? Warten Sie einen Moment.”

  Clay tilted his head. “Wie Sie wunschen. Das macht mir nichts aus. Lassen Sie sich Zeit.”

  As you wish. I don’t care. Take your time.

  Dunk’s eyebrows went up. He nodded curtly and left the room. He totally believed Clay would stay. If he wanted to see that book.