by Aaron Cohen
“Okay asshole, let’s roll.”
“You know what we roll with here at The Dark Star?”
“You’ve gone old school and made dice from human bones?”
“No. We did talk that over but it seemed a little…grim.”
David flips open a lock box on a craps table, revealing a stack of chips and a pair of very shiny dice.
“We roll with 24-karat solid gold dice.”
“Subtle, so subtle,” Ben says. “You roll first.”
“Oh no, that would be rude. You’re the guest. Please, roll first.”
David drops the dice into Ben’s hand. They are cold and heavier than regular dice.
“First one to roll a seven loses,” David says.
Ben gives them a soft blow, wishes a tall buxom blonde was standing behind him, something he found always gave him luck. He tosses the dice. One time, a long time ago, Ben rolled 100 times before rolling a seven, won almost $250k. When his hand is hot, he can roll all night. The dice bounce at the end of the table and come up box cars, a 12.
“Your turn, dickhead,” Ben says.
David picks up the dice and smiles.
***
Somewhere in the middle of the Arizona desert, approaching New Mexico…
Owen is asleep, snoozing in the passenger side of the Prius, which he has come to call the “escape pod.”
Beri is driving. She’s getting sleepy and thinking about pulling over, maybe snoozing for a minute or two, but she doesn’t want to stop, doesn’t want their momentum to slow.
We should stop and call Luke again, thinks Beri. The poor boy must be worried. Why didn’t he answer when we called from the gas station? He can wait until we need gas again. No need to stop now while Owen is sleeping.
It’s addicting, the taste of freedom you get when you leave everything behind, every obligation, every bill, a house that always needs cleaning, a business that always seems about to implode, a life that seems like a straight road to death with no more fun, no more surprises.
Old age is a big, fat drag. A series of aches, pains, and disappointments. Realizing that you barely did anything you really wanted to do. Taking an ever increasing amount of pills every day just to stay operational. Growing old means burying your friends, scanning the obituaries every morning for familiar names.
She has had enough of it. She’s dead now, her old life is anyway, and now she can think about living again.
If she stops to sleep, she might wake up and feel the pull of her old life, feel it dragging her back, because going back would be the sane, responsible thing to do. It’s what she should do. And yet, she drives forward, her foot pushing harder on the gas, driving further and further away from a sane, reasonable slide into oblivion, and driving towards…what? She isn’t sure, and she doesn’t care. The question itself — What happens next? — is what delights her.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The Stork is under The Dark Star in a massive parking garage, a great cavern of gray concrete and new black tar marked with gleaming white parking lines. There are 10 or so cars parked close to a door marked “EMPLOYEES ONLY.”
On the right of that door is a sign that says in big, block letters: “Pride, Professionalism, Perfection.” To the left of the door is a full length mirror. Etched into the mirror are the words: “Would you want to be served by this person?”
Hank and Luke, in their ill-fitting guard uniforms, walk in the employee entrance with Charlie, Cecil and Artie cuffed up like perps heading to a cage in the county lock up. A few other guards see them and pay little notice. It seems to Luke that anyone wearing a black turtleneck and blue blazer is okay with any Dark Star employee. The uniforms make them invisible.
They make their way to the security office, following helpful signs mounted at the intersection of each hallway. Luke takes out a key card stolen from one of the guards. He swipes it over the door sensor and its light goes from red to green. The lock clicks and Luke pulls the door open.
“That actually worked,” Luke says.
“Things are going a little too well,” Hank says.
They walk in and find one guy sitting in a chair facing a big board of two dozen video screens, each with a full color, high definition view of some bit of the property. It’s like watching 24 extremely boring TV shows all at once.
The guy swings around in his chair. He looks like a descendant of Humpty Dumpty, his body egg-shaped, his small legs barely touching the ground. He wears a pair of glasses with lenses so hefty they remind Hank of the old joke, “Your mamma wears glasses so thick she could look at a map and see people waving.”
“Why have you brought these men into my security room?” the egg man asks with a raspy croak.
“We wanted to see if there were any more trespassers,” Hanks says. “Can’t be too careful. Have you seen anything?”
“I see everything; I am the director of surveillance” says the little round man. “And I have seen no one else. Please leave.”
“Where do we take these guys?” Luke asks. “Where do we keep prisoners?”
“Are you new? Did you fall asleep during your training?”
“Of course we know where to take prisoners,” Hank says, throwing a Luke an annoyed glare. “My new trainee is just an idiot.”
“Then you tell me,” says the egg man. “Where do we take them?”
“To the….lock up?” Hank says.
“What floor is it on?” asks the egg man.
“The…lock up floor?”
“Who are you?”
Artie steps forward boldly, pretty sure he’s finally met a guy he could kick the shit out of if he wanted to, which he does.
“We are the guys you don’t want to fuck with,” he says.
“Those are brave words for a man with his hands cuffed behind his back.”
Hank and Luke pull out their guns. The egg man sighs with exasperation.
“You really don’t want to fuck with us,” Hank says.
“Where is Leanne?” Luke says.
“Who?” the man asks.
Charlie growls loudly.
“Very impressive,” the man says. “Is he housebroken?”
“Fuck this,” Artie says. “Uncuff me.”
Luke uncuffs him and the little man heads to a computer keyboard and begins clacking away. On his screen, numbers, menus and diagrams fly past faster than Luke can keep track of. He’s impressed. The little guy has serious skills.
“Do you have duct tape?” Hank asks Eggy.
“Why?”
“Because I have some ducts to tape, now do you have any or do we need to stuff you into a filing cabinet?” Hank asks.
***
Artie loves showing off his skills. Everyone else is big, has guns, has good looks, has never had to put up with strangers asking him to pose in pictures with their kids. Luke and Hank are especially annoying right now, each of them playing the role of handsome action hero, each pretending like he’s in charge.
This is Artie’s mission, damn it. He’s the one who got them this far, he’s the one who will save Leanne, lovely Leanne, who is always nice to him, who flirts with him, who makes sure he gets a free lay on his birthday and Christmas.
While he thinks about Leanne, something he does often, his fingers type away. He dives deeper and deeper into The Dark Star’s network.
The security system is well-organized with event codes linked to digitally stored footage. If a door to room 1245 opens and closes, the system can tell you when it opened and when it closed, and link directly to a bit of video, letting you see exactly who walked in and out.
What throws him off are the names of the rooms. It isn’t just floor and room number. Each set of rooms has a function. There are Romance Rooms, Hot Tub Rooms and Massage Rooms, which make perfect sense to him, and he figures he can ignore those. But a few others confuse him until he remembers that this isn’t an average hotel; this is a 10,000-room brothel, and one designed to suit any sexual taste.
; That explains the need for specialty rooms like the Medical Room, Alien Probing Room, Military Interrogation Room, Petting Zoo Room (which is stocked with a variety of furry costumes, mostly rabbits, squirrels, beavers and foxes), the Kennel, the Kat Kennel, The Pagan Alter, The Padded Cell, The Shoe Store, The Sweater Store, The Chapel, The Casting Couch, The Confessional, The Boss’s Office, and on and on it went, a room devoted to almost every human fetish Artie could think of, and a few he didn’t want to.
He has no idea where to look, but then the idea comes to him, and it is so simple, so logical. He has worked in a legal brothel for the last ten years and he knows of only one room that is more popular than the standard bedroom…the dungeon.
Sure enough, there are 30 dungeon rooms in The Dark Star, and only one has had a door open and close a few times within the last 8 hours, dungeon 2323.
He brings up the video from a few hours ago, and there she is, Leanne, in all her sexy high-heeled glory, being pulled into the room by that asshole David.
***
Hank and Charlie secure the director of surveillance to his chair with duct tape, wrapping the tape round and round until he looks like a bizarre, dull silver Easter egg.
“I found her! I found her!” Artie says. “She’s on the fifth floor, dungeon 2323.”
“How do you know?” Luke asks.
“Because this place records anything that happens anywhere on the property, and makes it very easy to find,” Artie says. “Best surveillance system I’ve ever seen.”
“Thank you,” says the director of surveillance, who despite being trussed up in duct tape, sounds sincere.
“You’re welcome,” Artie says. “Watch this.”
On one of the big screens above him, a scene snaps into focus. It’s David, pushing a cuffed and gagged Leanne into a room with a door marked 2323. The door closes.
Artie hits a few more buttons and another scene pops on the screen.
“This is two hours later,” Artie says.
David, still in a black suit jacket with his tie tied, stands over a naked Leanne, who is strapped down on a table, struggling against her bonds. David holds a leather paddle. He lifts it and brings it down on her left thigh with a thunderous SLAP.
“Where is the data stick?” David asks on the video.
“I shoved it up your mother’s cunt you bastard,” she spits out.
He brings down the paddle with a SLAP. She issues a moan that doesn’t sound quite appropriate as a pain response.
“Turn it off!” Luke orders.
Artie flicks a key and away it goes.
“Hey! Don’t you want to see what happens next?” Hank asks.
“It’s time for you to earn your money,” Luke says. “We need to get up there right now.”
“Not a good idea,” Artie says.
“Why?” Luke asks.
“Look at the screen. This is right now.”
On the screen, there is door 2323 with two big, burly goons standing watch.
“Is there be no end to this parade of muscle bound behemoths, and do they all have to have the same haircut?” Cecil asks.
“I’ve got an idea,” Luke says.
“Of course you do,” Hanks says. “You’ve got a lot of great, great ideas.”
“It involves putting Charlie back in handcuffs.”
Charlie issues a two syllable grumble that sounds a lot like “fuck you.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Hank and Luke walk briskly, following their “prisoner” Charlie, whose every stride swallows three yards. The long hotel hallway seems to go on for miles. It smells of paint and new carpet. The wallpaper looks like velvet, soft, a subtle wild flower pattern set in faded beiges, pinks and yellows. The numbers on the doors are gold. The doors themselves each have carved images from the Kama Sutra, men and women in various states of complex, acrobatic coitus. To Luke, some of the scenes seem interesting and fun to try and some seem impractical and anatomically impossible. He’s already tried about half of them. He makes a mental note to “try that one” on three of them.
“Some doors, huh kid?” Hank says. “I’m getting a real education. How about you?”
Luke’s brain is doing too many things at once to answer. In part, he is trying not to freak and run the hell away. It would be so easy to turn around and head back to his normal life, instead of moving deeper and deeper into an evil pit from which they might never return. Everyone here has guns and seems to like using them.
Competing with the thoughts of fleeing is the angry sadness that drives him forward, his urgent need for revenge. His aunt and uncle were murdered and for no good reason. He is homeless, probably wanted by the police. Even if he lives through the night, his life is destroyed. What is left for him? Jail? Poverty?
And then, on top of all that, there is the distraction of the Kama Sutra carvings and thoughts of sex (though there are always thoughts of sex in Luke’s head), of naked women and smooth tan legs and bright smiles and moans of pleasure.
And because Luke’s brain never has enough to do, can always take on one more concern, he thinks about who carved all these unique doors, all obviously made by hand. Did every room in the hotel have one? So that would be more than 10,000 ornate, expensive doors? What are the odds that Empire Gaming paid a fair price for all that work? Not high. The odds are in the favor of child labor. Somewhere on some tiny, poverty stricken island a bunch of children were rounded up, given knives and taught to carve. The adults were paid a few dollars a day and the kids got maybe a handful of rice.
That’s the way the world works. Starving kids make things for rich adults who have never known hunger.
They get closer to the guards. This is real. Danger pushes all other thoughts aside. He focuses. He gets in character. His game face is on. He feels calm again, in control, confident.
“Woah,” Hank says and stops walking. Luke and Charlie stop too.
Hank stares at one of the doors with a particularly challenging erotic carving.
“What do they call that one?” he asks. “The Upside Helicopter? How would you do that without a back made of rubber? His leg is where? Behind her back? Who can bend like that?”
Charlie grunts and snarls, making a comment that Luke doesn’t understand.
“Chinese acrobats, yes” Hank says. “And stop reminding me of how we got into this mess. You know who could do that? Yoga teachers. Hey kid, you ever do it with a yoga teacher? Flexibility is not underrated.”
“Would you two shut the fuck up?” Luke says. “We need to get serious.”
Hank looks Luke in the eye and suddenly the carefree, clowning Hank is gone.
“I’m serious as a chest wound,” Hank says. “Kid, if you don’t loosen up and relax, you are going to give us away. Act like we work here, just another day at the office. We’re a couple of guys on the job and looking forward to clocking out so we can go home and fuck whoever it is we fuck. So act like it.”
“Take this seriously. It’s not a joke.”
“You think I’m joking? Now let’s go.”
Hank walks forward, taking Charlie by the arm. Luke steps forward and catches up.
“I don’t need you lecturing me,” Luke says.
“Someone needs to, and the old man isn’t here at the moment,” Hank says.
Charlie grunts and it’s perfectly clear what he says with one mid-ranged, extended syllable: “Both of you shut up. We are close enough for them to hear.”
The Kama Sutra doors end and are replaced with doors encased in black padded leather dotted with metal studs.
Definitely in the dungeon section of the hallway. Whips, chains, nipple clamps and lots of leather. Whatever floats your boat. I think I’ll stick with sex that doesn’t require more equipment than I can carry in my wallet.
The two guards, both big muscle-bound meatheads with closed cropped military haircuts, are leaning against the wall on either side of the door.
It’s show time. This is going to work, or we’re
going to get shot. Just relax. Hank’s right. Just pretend this is perfectly normal, another day at work, just get this done and head out for a few beers with the boys, play some darts, smoke some weed in the bathroom, pick up women in their 40s at the wine and tapas bar around the corner…wait a second. That’s what I actually would be doing if I weren’t here trying to figure out a way to get killed.
“We’re here to pick up the prisoner and take her to the holding cell,” Luke says to the lunkhead on the left.
Lunkhead looks up at Charlie and can’t seem to figure out what he’s seeing. The other goon looks a little suspicious.
“Who the fuck is that?” he asks.
“Another asshole trespasser,” Hank says. “Guy was sleeping in an empty room up on 33. You’d think he would have used the shower, but no, just get a whiff of this guy.”
Charlie rolls his eyes. He seems used to Hank’s abuse.
“We weren’t told the prisoner would be moving,” Lunkhead says. “I have to call it in.”
Luke shrugs. “Don’t bother. There is no need.”
Goon and Lunkhead both look suspicious, their brains working out that something is wrong with this picture.
“Why is that?” Goon asks.
“Because…”
A lie should have come quickly to his lips. But there was none. They should have thought of a cover story before making the walk down the hall, but they hadn’t. The plan was about to crumble.
Fuck it. There is nothing left to do at this point.
He pulls his gun and sticks the barrel of it into the throat of Lunkhead, where it sinks into the hard muscles of his neck.
“Because I’ve never killed anyone and I don’t want to start with a dumbass security guard making ten dollars an hour,” Luke says.
Hank pulls his gun and points it at Goon, who raises his hands, looking scared.
But Lunkhead doesn’t look scared. He looks pissed.
“I don’t make ten dollars an hour, asshole,” he says. “I make twenty.”
He twists his body and drops, his neck disappearing, leaving Luke’s gun pointed at nothing. Luke stares at the wallpaper, not sure where the man went. The man’s fist punches into Luke’s stomach like a piston, driving forward and shoving all the air out of his lungs. Luke thinks he can feel the fist touch his spine.